VIDEO - Disdain the Mundane and other lessons from Clyde

When I saw that the ESPN 30 for 30 video short series latest creation was a feature on New York Knicks legend Walt 'Clyde' Frazier there was no way that I was not going to post about it on the blog.

Some background - ESPN a couple years ago, in conjunction with the network's 30th Anniversary year, commissioned a series of original documentaries called simply 30 for 30, which covered a wide range of sports-themed stories, from the perspective of 30 different, and many well-known directors. If you care about sports at all, you should really spend some time catching the original 30 for 30 run, (my favorite, which I blogged about here, is 'Once Brothers', a moving look back at the Yugoslavian national basketball team of the 80s).

More recently, the 30 for 30 series has expanded into shorter pieces, like the above mentioned piece on Clyde Frazier titled 'Disdain the Mundane', (embedded below, RSS and email subscribers please click through). Check the video below, and then I'll hit you with 5 life and career lessons from Clyde taken straight from 'Disdain the Mundane'

1. 0:56 - On finding a work/life balance

Clyde speaks: 'As a rookie, I wasn't playing up to expectations, so in order to pacify myself, I went shopping. I might not be playing good, but I look good'.

Lesson: Work matters, but it can't be the only thing in your life. Stepping away, finding some solace, especially when in a tough patch at work is the way to keep your sanity.

2. 1:14 - On standing-out

'I see this borsalino hat, brown velour, but it had a wide brim. And those days, like now, they were wearing the narrow brim. I never like the narrow brim. The first time I wore the hat, everyone laughed at me - my teammates, the opposition. But I said, 'Hey man, I look good in this hat, so I'm keeping it on.' Two weeks later the movie Bonnie and Clyde comes out, and everyone says 'Look, there goes Clyde'

Lesson: Go along with everyone else, wear the narrow brim hat, and you are just another guy with the same hat everyone else has. Go a different way, stand out a little - and now you are not just some dude, you are 'Clyde'.

3. 1:48 - On learning your trade 

'When I was Clyde, I was still learning. I used to go on 5th Ave. and just walk. In the 70s, 5th Ave. was the most fashionable street in the world. I used to see different colors people had on, and I'd go to my tailor and I'd make them up, because I actually saw them right there.'

Lesson: Understand you don't know everything, and the only way to really get smarter is to find people that know what you want to know, or at least can help you better articulate where you want to go. And the best way to do that is right on the street as it were, live and in-person.

4. 3:10 - On working with innovative people

'They (the tailors) know I'm looking for something different. I don't want just your basic, generic thing. Usually when I go to a new guy I tell him - 'Hey man, show me something you think nobody would wear.'

Lesson: You want to continue to do great work? It helps to find like-minded people that are up to that challenge, who can think differently, and who won't get in caught up in devising reasons to say 'No.'

5. 4:07  - On lateral thinking

'(when he embarked on his post-NBA broadcasting career) 'I said, 'Man, I've got to improve my vocabulary.' So I used to get the Sunday Times, the Arts & Leisure section, when they critique the plays - riveting, mesmerizing, provocative, profound - all this stuff, dazzling. So I have books and books of words and phrases, and once I learned the words I could start relating them to the players.'

Lesson: You don't get better at something JUST by studying that one thing. Clyde realized that basketball was 'performance', not unlike movies, books, plays, etc.  So by studying the language that the New York Times critics and reviewers used, Clyfe was able to bring a fresh, distinctive element to his basketball broadcasts, further cementing his status as an innovator.

Awesome.

Clyde is a legend. Cool, canny, cunning, creating.

Rockin' Steady.

Disdain the Mundane.

Go Knicks.

Have a Great Weekend!

Modding the Hiring Process

Until my son starting playing Minecraft in earnest, I really had no conception of the concept of the Video Game 'Mod' and how popular and powerful these mods have become in that industry.  For the folks like me that have no clue what I'm talking about, here is a brief explanation from Wikipedia:

Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games (PC games), especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not stand-alone software and require the user to have the original release in order to run. They can include new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, textures, levels, story lines, music, and game modes. They also usually take place in unique locations. They can be single-player or multiplayer. Mods that add new content to the underlying game are often called partial conversions, while mods that create an entirely new game are called total conversions and mods that fix bugs only are called unofficial patches.

Essentially, the 'Mod' is the method where fans, players, or third-party development companies add features, capability, depth, and other elements to existing game foundations or platforms. For avid gamers, these mods contribute to a better, more personal experience, and help a game to continue to hold player interest after it has been 'beaten', i.e. all existing levels or missions having been completed.

Last week a piece in Wired featured how one company, an enterprise 'Big Data' startup called WibiData, is using the concept of video game mods in the recruiting process.  Over time, the folks at WibiData realized that many of their staff were avid fans of the game Portal, and that it was likely that one source of future candidates would be from other Portal players.

So in order to connect with, and hopefully learn more about these prospects, WibiData created their own Portal mod, where players get to learn more about WibiData, see renderings of the offices, and are challenged to solve math puzzles to advance in the mod to a WibiData job application. So far, the results have been really impressive. From the Wired piece:

In the week since WibiData published the levels, they’ve been a huge a hit both for getting quality job candidates and getting people to notice the startup. “Compare this to cost of using a recruiter to place a single candidate, this by far the best investment I’ve made in marketing and recruiting,” says (WibiData's) Bisciglia. Thus far there’s been 30,000 visits to WibiData’s jobs page (which introduces the project), 1,000 downloads of the game modification, and 30 job applications.

You can learn more about the WibiData Mod in their preview video embedded here (Email and RSS subscribers please click through)

I liked this story for a couple of reasons - one, certainly as a stand-alone story of how one company came up with a creative and differentiating recruiting strategy to meet their specific talent challenges. And two, for what stories like this suggest might be the future for enterprise software tools more broadly. 

WibiData (and the other folks that design video game Mods), are taking an existing solution that is embraced in their community, adding some specific and important elements and features, (while not breaking the base solution), and unleashing it out into the world for use, comment, and positive results. 

Could this be the way that companies and service providers supply and 'mod' software in the enterprise in the future? One big, established company creates the base or foundation, and the rest of the community creates openly downloadable 'mods' to fit their particular interests and needs of their specific communities? And, most importantly, in a way that does not 'break' the system?

As the generation that expects the ability to easily 'mod' anything gains more influence in the workplace, I expect we'll see more of this kind of thing going forward.

A system, process, technology - whatever the case - if it doesn't work for you, just get, (or create) a mod.

VIDEO - For when you're certain you could do the other guy's job better

It can get pretty tempting to see someone struggling a little bit in a job, or maybe doing fine in a job that you just don't see as very difficult or challenging and think to yourself -

'Look at Jim Bob over there in Marketing or PR or Comms, (doesn't really matter what), anyone could do that job. Heck, they should let ME do that job for a while, I'd show them it's not that hard and I'd get some things done.'

Yep, it's pretty easy to critique from the sidelines, and it's really common, (you know you've done this at least once), to devalue the relative complexity and contribution of functions of the organization that from the outside seem kind of simple, so simple that anyone could do them. Never mind the fact that it is pretty likely some folks in Operations or Logistics are looking at YOU, Mr. or Ms. Talent Pro and are saying the same thing about HR and Recruiting.

Guys are especially guilty of this kind of hubris I think, and nowhere is that kind of misguided confidence/arrogance manifested more completely in the context of sports.  Most guys have played at least some sports in their lives, more watch professional and amateur contests on a regular basis, and still more 'retired' from their chosen sport more than a little disappointed in how far and how successful they actually were as athletes.

It was from this shared experience of frustration, combined with a good dose of the 'He isn't that great/that isn't so hard' I referenced at the top that led to video below, (email and RSS subscribers please click through), a basketball contest between retired journeyman NBA player Brian Scalabrine, and four talented, but definitely amateur players that all, to a man, must have been thinking - 'Scalabrine? He was a bum. He rode the bench for most of his NBA career. I can take him.'

Check the video below, (you don't need to watch the entire thing, a few minutes will give you enough a feel for what went down.

Long story short?  Scalabrine, the 'bum', and during his career one of the worst players in the league, and no longer in what passed for his 'prime', crushed the assorted challengers by a combined score of 44-6. 

And while the challengers were certainly not professional caliber players, they all tried out for the show to play Scalabrine and were vetted as talented amateur players. From the video you can tell they all were actually pretty solid - the kind of guys that probably dominate their local gyms or rec leagues. But up against NBA-level talent, even the last guy on the end of the bench talent, and now too old and slow to keep playing talent, they all were exposed for what they really are, a bunch of guys who now realize, if only a little, what an NBA player can do.

So what? So what that a few playground ball players lost to a just-retired NBA player? What's that got to do with me?

Maybe nothing. 

But for me, well I just like the little reminder that often even the worst guy at a given job might still be pretty talented at that job, and perhaps more importantly, just because a job looks easy doesn't mean it is, and that just anyone could do it.

Congrats White Mamba... 

Job Titles of the Future #1 - Wikipedian in Residence

Here is a quick hit for a cold, cold Tuesday morning in beautiful Western New York - check out this excerpt from a recent piece in the New York Times Arts Beat blog titled 'Gerald R. Ford Library Hires 'Wikipedian in Residence'':

Gerald R. Ford may have governed during a time of economic stagnation, but his library has just laid claim to a cutting-edge distinction: becoming the first presidential depository to employ an official “Wikipedian in residence.”

Michael Barera, a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s School of Information who has been editing Wikipedia articles for five years, started the job last week, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. He is charged with improving the Wikipedia presence of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, which is housed at the university’s Ann Arbor campus.

More details about the actual role and duties of a 'Wikipedian in Residence' can be found in this piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

A Wikipedian in residence is a Wikipedia editor who has an on-site placement at an institution. It turns out there are many such Wikipedians at archives and museums around the world, including the National Archives, but there has never before been one at a presidential library.

If you dig a little deeper into these pieces you discover the real reason that the Ford museum and some other institutions have taken the step to hire staff to focus explicitly on maintaining, augmenting, and often, correcting information and articles about them on Wikipedia. Namely, that's were they are seeing the majority of web searchers, potential visitors, and heck, maybe even job candidates are landing when they are doing research.

Sure, the Ford museum has a website, they are on Facebook too. They have control (mostly with Facebook) of how their message gets conveyed on those platforms. But they've figured out the important medium for how people learn about them is Wikipedia and by hiring a 'Wikipedian in Residence', they've taken a step toward better managing those messages.

There you go - your first installment of 'Job Titles of the Future' - Wikipedian in Residence.

Have one for your organization yet?

What's 'Study abroad' got to do with it?

Quick piece for a busy Wednesday - take about 2 minutes and check out this summary on the Fashionista site, (and no, don't be surprised that I read Fashionista, I cast a pretty wide net to find good content), of a recent interview with J. Crew CEO and fashion retailing legend Mickey Wexler.

Wexler offered some great nuggets of insight from his 40+ year career from really simple observations that we all know to be true but sometimes try to forget - "Marketing only works if the product does"; to takes on more fundamental elements of business and organizational strategy - "Mission statements are a waste of time. Just live by them."

But the one bit of advice from Wexler that caught my attention and is probably most relevant for the talent professional is Wexler's take on evaluating talent - advice that he was careful to emphasize was applicable for his business, certainly has more fundamental and universal applicability. Here's his take first, and then I'll leave you with a question or two to consider:

The person is a resume, not what’s on a piece of paper. Whoever gives advice about resumes in college should be dismissed. Titles don’t matter. GPAs don’t matter, nor does what school you go to. What matters is hard work, and emotional intelligence. People put ‘study abroad’ on their resume. I actually like when they don’t study abroad because that means they aren’t entitled. What about study abroad will make you a better J.Crew associate? I hire a lot of waiters, waitresses. Someone who’s successful has a background that’s not predictable.

Great quote right? And one that I think, moving beyond the specifics of resume formatting and the relevance of particular academic credentials, gets to a really essential point about talent assessment and evaluation. Namely, a really deep and intrinsic understanding of what backgrounds and types of people are likely to accomplish two things at J. Crew. One, to identify who actually be successful at the company; and two, to determine who is likely to be the type of employee that others want to work with and will 'fit'.

Again, for Wexler and his fashion retail business, 'study abroad' doesn't fit his model, for you and your business it might. The specifics of Study abroad and its value to a person's growth or their job candidacy are not the point, the point is whether or not you know if 'study abroad', (or any other precise indicator) is predictive of success at your company or not.

So here is the question I promised - if the next resume that you review for one of your openings lists 'study abroad' as an accomplishment, does that matter at all in your assessment?

Should it?

Have a great Wednesday all!