TALENT ASSESSMENT TIP: Watch out for 'soft' eyes

The NBA Draft is tonight!  Aside, if you follow me on Twitter at @SteveBoese, be forewarned that there will likely be a flurry of NBA Draft tweets starting at about 8PM ET tonight.

As I am sure I have previously covered on the blog here and over at Fistful of Talent, professional sports drafts offer up extraordinary amounts of interest and intrigue and insights about recruiting and talent management that remain relevant for HR/Talent professionals everywhere.

Team management, coaching staffs, and professional talent assessors all spend months evaluating the top playing prospects coming out of college and the European (and other) professional leagues. The teams spend ages watching the players in game video, measure all manner of player's physical attributes, (down to things like hand size), and often will schedule in-depth personal interviews to try to get a better feel for a potential player's likelihood for success in the NBA.

But even after all of this analysis of the player's actual performance in actual games, their 'measurables' like height, speed, jumping ability, etc., and 1-1 interviews, AND in a sport that has embraced advanced statistical analyses more so than any other in order to assess performance and shape strategy, there remains some let's just say odd ways to judge talent.

On one of the many sports talk radio shows I listened to in advance of tonight's draft, one of the network's 'expert' basketball analysts warned against drafting one particular prospect, a 7-footer from Latvia named Kristaps Porzingis. 

This expert's objections to a team using a high draft pick on Porzingis didn't mention lack of ability to shoot or to pass, didn't mention some specific physical limitation the Latvian has that would make him unlikely to succeed in the NBA, nor bring up anything at all related to how data and statistical review of his game led to this negative assessment.

No, the main objective of this particular expert talent evaluator was, according to him, that Porzingis has 'soft' eyes. 

The host of the show was a little taken aback by the comment, and asked the expert to elaborate. The expert said, and I am paraphrasing here, was that when he gazed at Porzingis he doesn't see a look that convinces him that Porzingis will want to work hard and compete at the extreme levels of intensity the NBA requires. In other words, Porzingis didn't have the proverbial 'Eye of the Tiger', but rather he had 'soft' eyes, and thus will never make it in the NBA.

The host of the show, still a little dumbfounded by this kind of talent assessment, eventually let the point go and moved on, but you could tell he remained unsure of the predictive ability of the expert's 'soft' eye test.

The relevance of this little tale for the rest of us?

That you may have a sophisticated candidate assessment tool, a success profile you have developed from analysis of top performers, and a structured and sound interviewing process designed to consistently identify the best candidate for a position.

You may have all of that, but if you run into a decision maker with their own version of the 'soft eyes' test then all your data, and process, and structure could be in jeopardy.

It will be interesting to see where Porzigins and his soft eyes end up getting selected tonight. With my luck, the 'expert' will be right in his assessment and Porzingis will end up failing for my Knicks. 

Your culture is defined by who you're willing to re-hire

First the news on how owner and Class A jerk, James Dolan continues to destroy my single, favorite sports team, the New York Knicks.  From the Deadspin piece The Knicks and their Owner James Dolan, Are Shameless Garbage:

Earlier today, James Dolan announced that Isiah Thomas, who once sexually harassed one of his co-workers while he was head coach of the Knicks, was going to be named president of the WNBA’s New York Liberty. To most people, putting a sexual harasser in charge of a women’s basketball team is a bad look, but the Knicks would like those people to know that they don’t care about bad looks.

For those who might not be familiar with the entire back story, the facts of the case are these.

1. Isiah Thomas was once the Head Coach and President of Basketball Operations for the New York Knicks from 2006 - 2008

2. In October of 2007, a Federal Court in Manhattan, in response to a claim by a female former team executive, Anucha Browne Sanders, ruled that Thomas had sexually harassed Sanders, and that Madison Square Garden, the owner of the team, improperly fired her for complaining about the unwanted advances.

3. Sanders was awarded $11.6 million in punitive damages from the Garden and James L. Dolan, the chairman of Cablevision, the parent company of the Garden and the Knicks. Of that figure, $6 million was awarded because of the hostile work environment Mr. Thomas was found to have created, and $5.6 million because Ms. Browne Sanders was fired for complaining about it.

4. After finally being fired by the team in 2008, Thomas has drifted in and out of several basketball roles, serving as a college coach at Florida International for a bit, and recently as a TV commentator.

5. And now, yesterday, the aforementioned James Dolan, who still presides over the Knicks and their Women's NBA team, the New York Liberty has not only re-hired the sexual harrasser Thomas, he has also placed him in a position of authority for the WNBA's Liberty. If you were a player or coach on the Liberty you can't be feeling really happy about reporting to a confirmed workplace sexual harasser like Thomas.

I think if I had to pick one, singular data point from the sea of human capital data and information that is available to organizations today that reveals the most about an organization's culture and what it is they believe in (if anything), it would be which former employees that they are or are not willing to re-hire. 

Initial hiring is kind of a crap shoot, even the best shops make 'bad' hires every so often. And really great organizations are sometimes guilty of waiting too long to pull the lever on a termination, even when it is justified or the person is just not working out. It happens.

But the bad hire on a re-hire? That should NEVER happen. The people you are willing to re-hire and who you are done with forever tells anyone what kind of an organization that you want to be. You know exactly who these people are, what they can do, and whether or not you would be proud to have them represent your organization.

The Knicks, it seems, want to be an organization that no one can take pride in.

The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy Part VII - On Visible Failure

Over the weekend as I was doing blog writing/research, i.e., watching NBA basketball, I caught the better part of a game between the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Clippers. At a few points in the game the Bulls invoked a strategy of intentional fouling commonly known as 'Hack-a-Shaq', named after NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal, a notoriously poor free throw shooter. The idea of the 'Hack-a-Shaq' gambit is that since the player targeted to be intentionally fouled is such a poor free throw shooter that he would likely miss both free throws most of the time, thus resulting in an 'empty' or non-scoring possession for his team. Stack a few of these empty possessions in a row, and the fouling team could conceivably stake a large lead, or close a large deficit.JVG

In the Bulls v. Clippers game, (ably announced by Mike Breen and former NBA coach and the star of this semi-regular 'Wisdom' series on the blog, Jeff Van Gundy), the Bulls' target for executing the 'Hack-a-Shaq' strategy was the Clipper center DeAndre Jordan, who like Shaq himself, is a terrible free throw shooter, making only about 40% of his attempts from the line. To set some context, the league average is about 75% accuracy, with the best free throw shooters making about 90% of their attempts.

So Jordan is bad, really, really bad at shooting free throws. And the Bulls exploited that weakness in Jordan's game by repeatedly and intentionally fouling him, and he proceeded to make only 5 out of 12 attempts on the game. And each time he was fouled, he had to stand on the foul line, alone, while all the players, fans, and TV viewers got to watch him struggle, and fail quite a bit during the course of the game. It was during one of these potentially embarrassing Jordan trips to the line where Van Gundy, (JVG), dropped this little nugget of wisdom, (and note, I am paraphrasing here, I was not recording the game so I don't have JVG's quote word for word):

Everyone needs to stop stressing about the 'Hack-a-Shaq' and how poorly DeAndre Jordan is shooting free throws. He is the league's top rebounder and one of, if not the best, defensive center in the game. He does so many other good things on the court that contribute to a winning team that we need to lay off about the free throws. Every player has weaknesses, his are just more noticeable to the naked eye because he's up there on this own at the free throw line where everyone can see.

A super point by JVG, not just the one about Jordan's other demonstrable and measurable positive attributes like rebounds and blocked shots, but rather that since Jordan's struggles at the line are so obvious and clear to see, that we over-emphasize them, and hold Jordan somehow more accountable than we do for other player's whose weaknesses might be so apparent.

There are lots of players who don't really play effective team defense, who don't set solid screens for their teammates, don't contest opponents' shots, or who fail to box out on the defensive glass - but these weaknesses are hard to see, really hard to see for the casual fan. But excelling in these areas all contribute to winning, and also happen to be areas where Jordan himself excels.

We can 'see' Jordan fail at the free throw line. It is visible failure, even. But we fail as observers when we don't see all the less obvious things he does well. And this is not solely a basketball or sports phenomenon.

(Here is the part of the 'Sports and HR' post where the formula tells me I have to relate this tale back to HR or Talent Management or some such)

You know what, I think I am going to skip that part of the formula, I think you can probably make the connection.

Have a great Tuesday.

Culture Change or the Gig Economy: You probably can choose only one

Warning in advance, this post is (sort of) about basketball, but hopefully will resonate beyond the hardwood and make some sense to HR/Talent pros in this increasingly complicated modern age. First a quick take from the NBA, and how perhaps it might hold some insights that apply in the real world.

Exhibit A : Your 2014 - 2015 New York Knicks, current possessors of the NBA's poorest Won-Loss record at 5 - 35, at the time of this writing riding a franchise-record 15 game losing streak, with their two best players currently injured, and recently having traded another two of their more useful players for essentially nothing in return, (the players they received in the trade were immediately released).

The Knicks are a joke, a running tour of poor performances, uninspiring effort, and predictable results. Even for me, a life-long fan, they are almost impossible to watch. 

But let's get to the HR/Talent/Workplace angle of this. Prior to the season the Knicks hired a new head coach, Derek Fisher who had extensive playing experience (and has played on a few championship teams), but no coaching experience. Basically he is a first-time coach. And more importantly, the Knicks threw a ton of money and power to lure legendary coach Phil Jackson, winner of 11 titles with the Bulls and Lakers, to run the entire basketball operation. In corporate terms, the Knicks basically brought in a new CEO and a new COO with the marching orders to turn the franchise into a winner and to make the changes need that will lead to winning - many of these changes centered around instilling a 'winning' culture.

But in the NBA, and in your company, even C-level mandated change, and in particular with attempts to change something as nebulous and imprecise as workplace culture the task is never going to be easy. And often in both sports teams and 'normal' businesses, culture change is completely about the people that make up the organization, their willingness to make and embrace changes, their commitment to these changes longer term, and finally the ability and flexibility of management to add/move/replace talent as needed to better align the workforce to this new culture-driven change program.

Now since the NBA has some specific and unique rules and constraints (salary caps, rules about trading players, deadlines for trading players, etc.) that to some extent limits the flexibility of team executives to simply 'rip and replace' the roster with new players if the current ones are adjudged not good enough or (beg forgiveness) not a 'cultural fit'. And I bet even if your organization is not subject to many, (or any), of these kinds of constraints, it still isn't easy or even advised for you to begin a widespread house cleaning of employees to try to quickly raise the talent level and try for better cultural alignment. I mean, after you fire everyone, who exactly is going to do the work while you scour LinkedIn for replacements?

So NBA teams and normal businesses too that are driving massive change programs, at least in the short term, are going to have to try and effect change by, on, and with many of the existing workforce. And in the 2014 - 2015 Knicks, one specific attribute of their workforce/roster has made driving this kind of major cultural change, (and the actual on-court tactical changes that accompany it), exceedingly difficult. 

At the start of the 2014 - 2015 season, 11 of the 15 Knicks roster players were on the final year of their playing contracts, the sports world's version of being a lame duck. These 11 were not all at the same stage of their careers, some were young, untested players trying to cement a place in the NBA, some were older veterans trying to hang on to their lucrative playing careers, and some were mid-career players that likely were not going to be a part of the Knicks plans beyond this season. In short, 11 of the 15 workers had no guarantee or assurances their services would be wanted by the Knicks past this season - a season where the team executives were also trying to push major strategic and cultural changes on the team.

Basically, the Knicks started 2014 - 2015 trying to drive a massive change program with the vast majority of their front-line workers, (the players), not at all bought in to this long-term program, as these 11 were (and are) essentially short-term, contract, 'gig economy' type workers. They, naturally, have to worry about their next contracts, and will be incented to do the things they think they need to do to obtain those contracts. 

And many of these kinds of behaviors (scoring more, getting court time, developing more personal skills), have not be aligned or compatible with the Knicks executives ideas about how they team should play. Jackson and Fisher want the team to play in a style that will (and has) precluded most of these players from generating the kinds of outcomes they think they need to further their careers.

And therein lies the problem.

The Knicks, (and this could be any business), are trying to drive a massive cultural and strategic change program with a majority workforce working as short-term contingent employees that have to think about their personal agendas and futures. 

The Knicks leaders have expected (and have been surprised by the fact that it has not really worked), that these short-term, 'gig' workers would fully and happily embrace change when the workers had no assurances at all even if they did embrace the changes that one, they would not be shown the door at the end of the season anyway; and two, that embracing these changes would not hinder their opportunities to find new contracts with other teams when/if the Knicks let them go.

You can't change the culture by relying on a bunch of short-timers to execute that change. It doesn't work in basketball and it probably won't work anywhere. 

There are lots of benefits to organizations to increase their reliance on short-term contractors, contingent workers, outsourced services, etc. Less cost, more flexibility, easier admin, etc.  But running the organization as a loose confederacy of 'gig' economy workers has some negatives too.

Chief among them, you can't expect these gig workers to care too much about your culture, and your desire to change that culture. Culture change requires commitment, from both employees and employers.

Happy Thursday.

REPRISE: The Analytics Takeover Won't Always Be Pretty

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next few days (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2014. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2014!

The below post first ran back in March and is a good example of a combination of themes that I love writing about on the blog: NBA basketball and talent management. In this piece I took a look at the trend developing in the modern NBA, where business and tech savvy (and new) team owners are valuing data and analytics skills and experience more than decades of actual basketball experience when making executive hires. As you would expect this change in hiring philosophy will have pretty significant implications for talent, and might just be indicative of bigger talent management challenges. 

Happy Sunday!

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The Analytics Takeover Won't Always Be Pretty

Seems like it has been some time since I dropped a solid 8 Man Rotation contribution here on the blog, so to remedy that, please first take a look at this recent piece on ESPN.com, 'Fears that stats trump hoops acumen', a look at the tensions that are building inside NBA front offices and among team executives.

In case you didn't click over and read the piece, the gist is this: With the increased importance and weight that a new generation of NBA team owners are placing on data-driven decision making and analytical skills, that the traditional people that have been the talent pool for NBA team management and executive roles, (former NBA players), are under threat from a new kind of candidate - ones that have deep math, statistics, and data backgrounds and, importantly, not careers as actual basketball players.

Check this excerpt from the ESPN piece to get a feel for how this change in talent management and sourcing strategies is being interpreted by long time (and anonymously quoted) NBA executives:

Basketball guys who participated in the game through years of rigorous training and practice, decades of observation work through film and field participation work feel under-utilized and under-appreciated and are quite insulted because their PhDs in basketball have been downgraded," the former executive, who chose to remain anonymous, told ESPN NBA Insider Chris Broussard.

One longtime executive, who also chose to remain anonymous, postulated that one reason why so many jobs are going to people with greater analytical backgrounds is because newer and younger owners may better identify with them.

"Generally speaking, neither the [newer generation of] owners nor the analytic guys have basketball in their background," the longtime executive told Broussard. "This fact makes it easy for both parties to dismiss the importance of having experience in and knowledge of the game.

The piece goes on to say that since many newer NBA owners have business and financial industry backgrounds, (and didn't inherit their teams as part of the 'family business'), that they would naturally look for their team executives to share the kinds of educational and work experience profiles of the business executives with which they are accustomed to working with, and have been successful with.

The former players, typically, do not have these kinds of skills, they have spent just about all their adult lives (and most of their childhoods), actually playing basketball. A set of experiences, it is turning out, no longer seems to provide the best training or preparation for running or managing a basketball team. 

But the more interesting point from all this, and the one that might have resonance beyond basketball, is the idea that the change in hiring philosophy is coming right from the top - from a new generation of team owners that have a different set of criteria upon which they are assessing and evaluating talent.

Left to tradition, hiring and promotion decisions would have probably only slowly begun to modernize. But a new generation of owners/leaders in the NBA are changing the talent profile for the next generation of leaders.

The same thing is likely to play out in your organization. Eventually, if it has not happened yet, you are going to go to a meeting with your new CHRO who didn't rise through the HR ranks and maybe is coming into the role from finance, operations, or manufacturing. In that meeting your 19 years of experience in employee relations might be a great asset to brag on. Or it might not be.

And you might find out only when you are introduced to your new boss, who has spent her last 5 years crunching numbers and developing stats models.