2012 Rewind: On Culture, Strategy, and Talent

Note: I am winding down the last, waning days of 2012 by re-running a few posts from this year that either I liked, were (reasonably) popular, or just didn't get a fair shake the first time around.  If that is not your sort of thing, then come back on January 2, 2013 when fresh and tasty content resumes. Thanks for reading in 2012!

First up, a post from February on Culture, Strategy, Talent and Rock, Paper, and Scissors.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

If Culture Eats Strategy, then what Eats Culture?

I still play Rock-Paper-Scissors.

For a simple game, it is incredibly nuanced and complex. Like all good games, there is no sure way to win, and no sure way to lose. Some day I hope to hone my skills to the point where I can compete for big bucks on the R-P-S circuit.

Why mention Rock-Paper-Scissors? Choose wisely

It came to mind from thinking about two things - one, another run around the park for the popular 'Culture Eats Strategy' meme, (ok, it is not really a meme, I just couldn't think of a better word. Sorry.). This line of thought posits that without the 'right' or 'good' or 'well managed' company culture, that it does not really matter much what the business strategies are, that decreased or lacking employee engagement levels caused by that poor culture will effectively short-circuit and lead to failure even the best, most intelligent strategies. It makes plenty of sense, is fairly hard to argue against, and tends to play to the part of us that simply likes to believe if we create great places to work, great experiences, and happy/engaged/satisfied employees that everything else might just fall into place.

But like the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, that is non-linear, and where any choice you make can potentially be trumped by another choice, is it possible that while Culture may eat Strategy, that there might be something out there that might eat Culture?

How about Talent?

A few days ago mega fast food franchise company Yum! Brands, (think, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell), announced its latest quarterly earnings, and one of the highlights was the company's strong growth and performance in China, with an expansion of locations and same-store sales up 21% on the quarter. On the quarterly earnings call, Yum! CEO David Novak was asked about the company's successes in the often difficult to crack Chinese market, and his explanation of the reasons behind this excellent performance curiously did not attribute it at least primarily to some kind of superior business strategy, or wonderful organizational culture. No, he talked about Talent. From the transcript of the earnings call:

I think our whole formula for success in China has been geared on great local management team with phenomenal local operating capability. And we've always had one rule, we never want to expand any further than or faster than our people capability.

But we're like the Procter and Gambles, the king of marketing talent in the United States. We see ourselves as the leader in operating talent in China. The second big thing on people capability is just our development operations. Our development team -- we have 700 people in our development team. And we have the best retail management base in China. This is a huge competitive advantage as we go forward. 

Let that sink in a minute. People capability. The leader in operating talent. The main reason Yum! is winning in China.

Later in the discussion Novak does talk about the importance of flagship locations, and arriving first to local markets, both clearly business strategy type decisions, but the overall emphasis and the main reason for success and ongoing competitive advantage is finding, developing, and pipelining great local managerial talent.

Talent. Not culture, not strategy, not some innovative marketing or social media outreach.

It is a very interesting take, and I'd recommend reading the full transcript of the earnings call, (come on, you have time, lay off Facebook for ten minutes).

What do you think - if culture eats strategy, could it be that talent eats them both?

Step stone or destination? If you are not sure, the talent will let you know

In my continued examination of the intersections between Sports and HR, Talent, and Recruiting, there may be no better spectacle and opportunity for examination than the Winter 'silly season' where American college football teams and coaching talent undergo their annual period of firing, resigning, and hiring to re-set the (rarified) talent pool for head football coaching positions.

There are generally three reasons that a head football coaching position becomes available, and they are pretty similar to the reasons any executive, well-paid, position opens up in any organization:

Performance - There are always a handful of these each season. Whether the football team under performed, or there is a true mis-alignment between management expectations and the reasonable likelihood of those expectations being met - either way the 'performance' termination is a common and generally straightforward situation.

Retirement - Head college football coach is an outstanding job. Heck, if you can have any degree of success and tenure in a position, it is a multi-million dollar while enjoying the love and adoration of the fan base and community life.  So naturally, the men (and that is not a sexist take, these jobs are ONLY held by men), that have these jobs tend to hold on to them for a really long time.  But once they hit 75 or 80 or so, (not entirely kidding), they often have to hang up the whistle.

Better gig somewhere else - This one, where the coach, (or for your shop, the Director of Marketing, or the VP of Sales), leaves to take the same or similar job elsewhere, is the most interesting scenario at least in the college football talent pool. Because in football, the 'job' itself is the same one everywhere, so the evaluation of whether or not the next opportunity is a step up, a step down, or a lateral move is completely reliant on other criteria.  Some of these are objective - like salary and bonuses, others are subjective - the 'prestige' of the job mostly driving this.

And the tough part of situation three, when your coach or executive ditches you for what you think is at best a lateral move, is often it takes this kind of high profile resignation and move to make you and your leadership realize where you stand on the industry desirability pecking order.  Make no mistake - the talent, their choices, and the decisions your competitors make do more to 'place' you on the attractiveness scale than most of the things you can do, at least in the short term.

Net-net of this?  It helps to understand where you 'rank' in the eyes of the talent, particularly for those key positions that do not have an enormously deep talent pool.  Your gig can be a starter job, you can be a step along the way for a high-flier, or you (sometimes) can be a true destination.

It's better to know what you are than have the talent surprise you.

Have a great week!

In the interview, talk about your talent plan

Cool story from (Shock!), the world of sports, in this case professional basketball.  The National Basketball Association, (NBA), is not unlike most competitive businesses in that strategy and leadership, while important, will only take an organization so far. To win, heck, to even compete for NBA titles, a supremely talented and thoughtfully assembled roster of players is mandatory. And even then, since almost all the teams possess top talent, you'll never be guaranteed of success, for the teams that usually win rely on two or three superstars - ultra-rare talents that all teams need and compete for.Like a young Lance Haun

So last summer when Los Angeles Clippers executive Neal Olshey was interviewing for the General Manager job with the Portland Trail Blazers, he, in his words, spent almost the entire interview with Portand owner Paul Allen talking about talent - specifically how the Blazers biggest talent need was at the point guard position, AND the team should address that need by selecting a college player named Damian Lillard in the upcoming player draft. 

From a piece on SI.com on the Blazers, Olshey, and Lillard:

In the first week of June, Olshey left the Clippers, a team stocked with point guards but devoid of prominent draft picks, for the Trail Blazers, who had no reliable point guard but two lottery picks.

During his interview with Blazers owner Paul Allen, Olshey talked about Lillard almost as much as himself. "It was basically the whole interview," Olshey said. "The biggest need was clearly point guard and Damian was the guy. There was no question he was the guy." The Blazers wanted to draft him at No. 11, but feared, for good reason, that he would be gone, so they snagged him sixth.

So far, about a dozen games into the NBA season, and Lillard's career, Olshey's talent assessment has been right on the money - Lillard leads the Blazers in scoring, assists, and has impressed fans, rivals, and teammates with his outstanding and heady play.

The larger point I think this story illustrates is how having a talent plan, not just a 'business' or 'strategy' plan was to both Olshey's successful candidacy for the General Manager job, but also the ultimate success of the team, and by extension, Olshey's job performance.

It is fantastic in an interview setting if you can talk confidently about the target company's industry, competitive situation, opportunities, and challenges. It is great to be able to confidently describe how your skills and experience can help the company solve problems or operate more effectively. But if you can talk about talent - the needs, gaps, where to find talent, what kind of talent you'd recommend to bring into the organization, and how you will bring them in - then I think you have the advantage.

And if you can, like Mr. Olshey has so far in his tenure, execute on your talent plans, then you win.

The rest of the room is against you

Quick take for a Friday that seems like a Thursday. Why is it that these so-called 'short' workweeks always feel so long?

Anyway - catch the video embedded below, (email and RSS readers will need to click through), courtesy of the sports and pop culture website Grantland, that takes us through the recent NBA Draft experience of one Royce White, a star college player at Iowa State with sure-fire NBA-level talent, but carrying a significant 'too risky' label for many teams, due to his struggles with anxiety disorder and an admitted fear of flying.

The video is about 8:30, you should watch it all, then come back and be ready to answer a few questions I think White's situation raises for everyone involved in talent assessment, selection, and management.

Wow, pretty powerful and compelling stuff. White, with in the words of his agent, 'The rest of the room against you', will get his chance at the highest level with the Houston Rockets, who seem to be the only team willing to take a chance on a talented guy with a few off the court problems that may or may not effect his ability to perform to the best of his ability.

Ok, I promised a few questions then I'll wrap this up:

1. Are the Rockets taking an unnecessary and perhaps reckless risk with one of their prized assets, their 1st round draft pick, by taking White?

2.  Are the fans, customers, owners of the Rockets going to be patient and understanding if indeed White's problems with anxiety disorder impact negatively his ability to produce results on the court?

3. Would you, in your role in HR, Recruiting, or just someone with any kind of responsibility or participation in a hiring process be willing to take the bad with the good in a candidate like White? Are you able to play a bit of a long game in your hiring and are you ready to have your own reputation and judgment called into question by making a so-called 'risky' hire?

After watching the video and learning a little more about Royce White, you can't help feel for the guy and to hope that he is able to overcome or at least deal with his issues and become a successful and productive player.

But also you want to root for his success not just for him, but for the Rockets organization, (largely Head Coach and NBA legend Kevin McHale), for taking a risk, for looking at the talent as a whole person not just a set of measurements and statistics, and reminding all of us that every candidate deserves a fair reckoning.

Have a Great Weekend!

The more you Tweet, the more I'll know you're about to quit

Check out the findings from a very cool study out of the University of Rochester, (hey, that's where I live), designed to assess whether or not researchers could accurately predict whether or not a given individual in New York City would come down with the flu based on analyses of geo-location tagged tweets.Adam Sadilek, University of Rochester

Essentially, the answer was yes, that when applying a sophisticated machine-learning algorithm to over 4 million tweets, from over 600,000 users over a one-month period, the researchers were able to predict when healthy people were about to fall ill - and then tweet about it - with about 90 per cent accuracy out to eight days in the future.

From the New Scientist piece summarizing the study findings: 

If you've been walking around a public place lately, you've come in contact with a lot of people. Some of those people may have been sick. And if you've been hanging around enough of them as they cough and sneeze, then you might be about to get sick too.

That may sound obvious, but Adam Sadilek at the University of Rochester in New York and colleagues have applied the idea to a pile of Twitter data from people in New York City, and found that they can predict when an individual person will come down with the flu up to eight days before they show symptoms.

Makes perfect sense right?

If you happen to go to enough places where other sick people have been, the chances increase that you'll get sick as well. And in the social media age, with our insatiable appetite to share the mundane and pedestrian developments in our lives with the entire universe, 'OMG, I feel so terrible today. I just want to crawl back under the covers' as you check-in on Foursquare, smart machines can mine that data, compare it to actions of the next batch of (for the moment), healthy people, and offer really informed predictions about the likelihood of who will fall ill next. Thanks for speading your disgusting germs all over town by the way.

Taking the premise and approach from the UofR (that is a well-known shortener for the University of Rochester up here), to additional and logical ends, then it certainly seems possible, and probable, that soon we'll have smart machines that will be able to examine the social network signals to predict all kinds of likely actions and behaviors.

It used to be a dead giveaway in offices when a colleague had a job interview somewhere else - he or she would suddenly show up to work dressed impeccably - new suit, new shoes, hair just right, etc. That signal, (while still solid), morphed to the digital age in the form of the LinkedIn profile update. Hmm. Why did Joe just update his profile and add a picture after all these years? What's he up to?

But the showing up in a new suit at work, or even the LinkedIn update are behaviors four, five, or six steps removed from whatever initial signals someone might take who is thinking of a career move. That new suit had to come from somewhere? Did Joe check in at the local Jos. A Bank in the last two weeks?

That LinkedIn profile update? Was that preceded by joining a few new groups, or connecting to a few new people? Did some Facebook pictures from the last company picnic, taken after perhaps a few too many PBRs were consumed, suddenly disappear?

Truth is, whether used for predicting who next will get the flu, or who might be giving their 2 weeks notice on Monday - increasingly the clues are out there - in a string of Tweets, check-ins, status updates, and the like. 

As we continue to live our lives online, and on display, the signals we send as to what we really have in mind, and our devious little plans will become more and more discoverable.

Eventually, we'll know even more about each other. Not just what we have been doing, but what we are about to do next.

Happy Monday everyone!