Experiences with Recruiters

I had coffee with a friend this week (and I truly thank her for all the help she has given me in building this blog and I hope I have reciprocated) and we were talking about what leads/interviews she had recently in the marketplace. This topic lead to her experiences with retained search people. This was not a good discussion and my personal experiences didn't add anything positive to it either.

Well, a recruiter sends out a query on a job through an email blast. How many people respond you can only imagine. The big question is how many people heard back from the recruiter after they responded to the email with all their critical information and job history. The even bigger question is after the job seeker calls to follow-up how many of those people ever received a return phone call?

So if you are in the relationship market as most retained search people are why wouldn't they respond even if they were inundated with email responses and why wouldn't they return your phone call. That is not relationship building and I'll tell you one thing, it is a game that if they worked for me they would be fired immediately.

The problem is job seekers spend a large amount of time trolling the Internet for leads on positions, they do it with the idea that someone will respond. Human resources people are suppose to be people friendly and servants to the people they support. The same goes for recruiters. If you don't want to serve then find a job where you are an individual contributor and you do not have to speak to anyone. Just do research only. I was told by someone and supported by a blog I read recently that the 3 things a recruiter will not tell you is:

1. he/she is not working for you at all
2. he/she has a real hard deadline to fill a position, if there is one to fill, and
3. he/she is just trolling to build a database

Something good finally came out of our discussion over coffee though. A recruiter did return her query by email and said to call him. So she did and he told her the number of applicants he received, how he was going to cull it down to a reasonable number by a certain date, that he would call the first pass people by a certain date, from that pass and telephone screen, he would cull those numbers down to 20 or so by a certain date and present 5-6 candidates to the company he was representing by X date. This was all laid out to all the applicants so they know where they stood at any given point in time. The recruiter had a plan and communicated it effectively to those applicants. GREAT FOR HIM AND HE SHOULD RECEIVE A GOLD STAR FOR HIS WORK. The others, you fail miserably.

So share with me your experiences at wgstevens2@gmail.com or comment to this blog.

Proactive Thinking vs. Reactive Thinking

Many stories and sayings try to inspire us to be more "proactive", as opposed to "reactive".

In this context, the word “reactive” implies that you don’t have the initiative. You let the events set the agenda. You’re tossed and turned, so to speak, by the tides of life. Each new wave catches you by surprise. Huffing and puffing, you scramble to react to it in order to just stay afloat.

In contrast, the image we associate with “proactivity” is one of grace under stress. To stay with the previous analogy, let’s say you’re in choppy waters. Now, you look more at ease. It’s not just that you anticipate the waves. You’re in tune with them. You’re not desperately trying to escape them; you’re dancing with them.

It would be great to dance with the rhythm of life, using the ebb and flow of events as a source of energy. But is this only possible to those people who are endowed with a proactive attitude (or, maybe, a “proactive gene”)?

I believe that being proactive is not a mysterious quality that we have, or don’t have. It is a way of dealing with things which we can develop and strengthen.

What, then, is this skill?

In a nutshell, being proactive is the same thing as being reactive. The only difference is: you do the reacting ahead of time.

Let’s go back to the example of the two swimmers on the choppy seas. The difference between them is that the proactive swimmer anticipates that there will be waves, whereas the reactive one is painfully surprised by each wave.

The difference is one of perspective. The proactive swimmer sees the big picture: each wave is not an isolated incident, but is part of a pattern. While there is stress in dealing with difficult circumstances, there is a consistency and a logic to the environment. There’s a degree of predictability.

With this bigger picture in mind, the proactive swimmer is able to adapt to the ups and downs. As he does so, he “learns” the patterns of the waves from inside out, so that his reactions become more and more spontaneous, more and more in tune with the rhythm of the waves.

So, being proactive means being able to anticipate what the future will be, and to react accordingly before it actually happens.

What is it that prevents the reactive swimmer from doing so? It could be lack of information. There are plenty of events in life that we simply cannot predict. It could also be lack of intelligence: some people are better than others at thinking in terms of patterns.

But let’s assume, for the moment, that our two swimmers have both the same levels of information and intelligence. Then, the difference between them would simply be that the proactive swimmer has enough energy to take in the available information and adapt to it. In contrast, the reactive swimmer is exhausted and overwhelmed (“Somebody get me out of here, please!”).

What does this metaphor have to do with understanding how you can be more proactive in your life? Three things:

1. To be proactive, what you have to do is ask yourself what is likely to happen, and react to it before it happens.
2. It takes energy to rise above the difficulties of the moment, to see the big picture and to make the changes you need to make.
3. Sometimes, you may not have that energy. At such times, it serves no purpose to berate yourself for being weak. Think of your “reactivity” as a symptom instead of a failure. You need a break. Take it.

Let’s imagine that our exhausted swimmer finds a raft. From this stable vantage point, wouldn’t he be better able to see the big picture? After some rest, wouldn’t he be better able to deal with the pattern of the waves?

Sometimes, the most proactive thing you can do is take a break. Use this “Time Out” to refocus on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

So what do you think, let me know your thoughts at wgstevens2@gmail.com ?

Corporate Employment Incentives

I said when I started this HR blog that I would not inject any political biases or humor. Well given that our new president elect will take office in January there are a few opportunities for companies to cash in on the tax incentives that Obama wants to pass. Given the history of tax changes expect them to be retroactive to January. Think about how your company can take advantage:

• hiring employees through state unemployment offices
• incentive based positions with up to $3,000 in tax credits

But you should also think about retooling your corporate practices and educate or reeducate your management on union organizing. The new president elect favors union organizing and co-sponsored a bill "the Employee Free Choice Act". Keep your ears to the ground on this one since it requires companies to recognize a union when a majority of workers sign cards. Yikes!!!!!!!!!

Your contributions and opinions are important please contact me at wgstevens2@gmail.com with your comments.

Changing Jobs in a Recession

With the stock markets down again this week, more bankruptcies, and layoffs happening across industries, a rewarding job that provides a steady source of income is your best friend. So why would someone even consider moving jobs in this economy? CIO Magazine investigated and came to the conclusion that conventional wisdom be damned, changing jobs during a downturn can actually be a good idea.

Their rationale? Companies tend to hire more for "critical" positions during a downturn, since every opening is scrutinized more carefully. Basically, the roles that are being filled are ones that offer the potential to both make a huge impact and advance your career. Firms that are recruiting in a downturn are doing so because the roles they have to fill have a major importance to their organizations

They also point out that staying put during a recession can create a bad perception of you at your current company. Whether or not you agree with their take, it certainly makes compelling reading.

CIO On-Line has this to offer in relation to this post by Meredith Levinson:

Is It a Good Idea to Change Jobs During a Recession?

Conventional wisdom says that an economic downturn is not a good time to change jobs and that employed professionals should just hunker down in their current positions and try to prevent getting laid off. But staying put could potentially do more harm to your career than pursuing a new opportunity. And a new opportunity could be your ticket to stability and economic prosperity.

Conventional wisdom says that a recession or economic downturn is not a good time to change jobs. During a recession, most employed professionals hunker down and try to prevent getting laid off. Who can blame them?


But a recession can be an excellent time to take a new job, provided you've done your due diligence, says Sam Gordon, a recruiter with Harvey Nash Executive Search. "Firms that are recruiting in a downturn are doing so because the roles they have to fill have a major importance to their organizations," he says.

Such strategic roles are unlikely to be cut if a company has committed to investing in them in spite of a downturn. These positions also present opportunities for professionals to progress in their careers instead of stagnating in their existing roles while riding out a recession, says Gordon (who's not just trying to drum up by talking up the value of taking a new job.) He adds that companies that continue to fill key positions and invest in strategic projects tend to be more innovative and dynamic--and are better prepared to capitalize on an economic rebound--than companies that unilaterally pull back their spending when the going gets tough.

"If you look back on the last downturn, the dot com crash, there were lots of firms that had cut back their investment, and when they needed to grow again, they had a much bigger ramp up than companies that continued to invest," he says.

What's more, staying put during a recession could potentially do more harm to your career than good. You might think that hunkering down, taking on extra projects and working longer hours will put you in a position to be promoted when the economy rebounds, but, says Gordon, that's not often the case. Lots of companies take advantage of employees who fear layoffs and who work extra hard to keep their jobs, he says.


"Quite often, the person who has proven himself to be amenable and willing to do extra things can get himself into a hole," says Gordon. "The perception of you as someone who always acquiesces to demands can be hard to shake. When the good times come back and there's a new, exciting project, very often the company will still go externally to find the person they're looking for."

So really, your only reward for redoubling your efforts is keeping your current job, and even that's no guarantee in this economy.

What's your strategy for surviving the recession? Are you going to "stay low and keep moving" in your current position, or are you going to look for something new? If you lay low have to totally recession proofed your job. Please refer to an earlier post on this issue.

As always your comments and opinions are important and I'd like to hear from you.

Why an Economic Crisis Could Be the Right Time for Companies to Engage in 'Disruptive Innovation'

While globalization has witnessed the decline of U.S. dominance in manufacturing, energy and even finance, one thing had long been presumed unassailable: Good old American ingenuity.

Now it appears that's not safe, either. China, whose industries have been envied in the West more for their tenacity than their ingenuity, has established a multi-year framework to become more innovative and, therefore, competitive. So has Singapore. Finland is merging its top business school, design school and technology school to create a multi-disciplinary "university of innovation" next year.

Council members of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering have "expressed concern that a weakening of science and technology in the United States would inevitably degrade its social and economic conditions and in particular erode the ability of its citizens to compete for high-quality jobs," according to a 600-page report from the National Academies published in 2007 and titled, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm."

The wild card these days is what will happen to innovation -- the advance of progressive ideas in science, technology and business -- now that the world economy is in a tailspin. The conventional wisdom might suggest that business, government and academia will be less willing to embrace the risk-taking and short-term costs that come with the territory of innovating.

Yet Paul J.H. Schoemaker, research director for the Mack Center for Technological Innovation, suggests that, for some companies, the economic crisis can actually provide an innovation platform. "The crisis has multiple impacts," Schoemaker says. "Loss of revenue and profit will at first instill a cost cutting mentality, which is not good for innovation. But if the patient is bleeding you need to stop that first. Then, however, a phase starts where leaders ask which parts of their business model are weak (and perhaps unsustainable) and that, in turn, can lead to restructuring and reinvention."

He also cautions against too much caution -- over-reliance on incremental innovation versus transformative, or "disruptive," innovation. In innovation circles, the two have come to be differentiated as "little i" and "Big I" innovation. "The largest gains in business come from more daring innovations that challenge the paradigm and the organization," Schoemaker says. 

The Business of Being Disruptive

While "disruptive innovation" has enjoyed office buzz-phrase status for only about a decade, the idea is quite old: Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter had it in mind when he borrowed the phrase "creative destruction" to describe his theories of how entrepreneurs sustain the capitalist system.

So just how does an entrepreneur or business go about being "disruptive?" How does one convince investors or top brass of a radical idea's worth?

One person who knows something about bringing disruptive innovations to market is Jeong Kim, president of Bell Labs at Alcatel-Lucent and a successful tech entrepreneur. He offered some suggestions in a recent presentation titled, "Paving the Way for Disruptive Innovation," that was part of the Executive Master's in Technology Management (EMTM) program's ongoing lecture series: Aligning Emerging Technology and Business.

Among the most critical assets one can possess, he says, is company-wide recognition that disruptive innovation is actually important. In a company that's already successful -- or one with layers of bureaucracy that hinder new ideas -- this can prove difficult. The firm also must commit itself to research. "Disruptive research is absolutely critical, especially in the technology space."

Furthermore, it is not enough to simply have brilliant engineers. Without competent management on the business side, the most elegant technology can wind up on the scrap heap of business history, or even worse, usurped by a competitor: "Disruptive innovation is not sufficient," says Kim. "You can [cite] numerous examples of companies that came up with [new] technology but eventually were displaced by somebody else."

In the innovator's lingo, these "somebody elses" are known as "fast followers" -- that is, companies with better funding or sharper management who were able to exploit a technology more quickly and effectively in the marketplace than the original creator. "You like to be the first to develop technologies," Kim says. "But the more flexible, the more innovative in terms of business model that the company is, the longer you can maintain advantage."

That point gives rise to the question: What is the best business model for fostering innovation? As it turns out, numerous decision-making tools exist to help firms systematically manage an innovation program, says Schoemaker, co-author of a book titled, Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies.

According to Schoemaker, when it comes to innovating, the analogy is to firing a shotgun, not a rifle. Given the high failure rate of innovative projects, companies are smart to develop an array of possible situations and contingencies, rather than pin all their hopes on one plan. "Sticking to our knitting" might appear to be a sound business cliché -- it worked for a lot of companies that survived the dot.com era. But Schoemaker and other innovation gurus advocate looking at areas adjacent to one's main business as fertile soil for innovative breakthroughs. Old-fashioned, linear approaches that rely on standard measurement schemes are often outdated if relied upon solely. "By examining a company's growth gap, developing scenarios, exploring adjacencies and venturing more into blue oceans, companies can reap greater benefits," Schoemaker says. ("Blue ocean" is innovator-speak for unrealized, and therefore uncontested, markets.) "The investment approach, however, has to emphasize more of an options and portfolio strategy rather than static NPV (Net Present Value valuation method)."

Wharton management professor Mary Benner sees the "stick to our knitting" syndrome as impinging on large companies' ability to react to competitive threats. "I find that firms' innovation into radically new technologies or new markets can seem to shareholders and securities analysts like too great a departure from their expectations for these firms. Investors and analysts often prefer that firms maximize shareholder value by 'sticking to their knitting.' The result is that large firms, particularly those expected to have stable, predictable earnings and dividend payments -- i.e., "income stocks" -- are not likely to be rewarded by the stock market for entering new technologies or undertaking radical innovation, and instead may be punished by reductions in stock price and market value."

A prime example she has found in her own research, she noted, is Verizon Communications, the giant telecommunications firm. Stock analysts questioned Verizon's large capital outlays on FiOS, a high-volume fiber-optic network intended to counter a "triple-play" threat to its business posed by Comcast's cable television, high-speed Internet and voice-over-Internet phone service.

"Recent research suggests the stock market is not good at valuing intangibles, uncertain innovation or technological change," Benner says. "What this means for large, publicly traded firms is that they may face a disadvantage in engaging in radical innovation, and this innovation may instead take place in venture capital-funded startups."

Indeed, outsourcing of innovation itself could turn out to be the wave of the not-so-distant future. "Particularly in the pharmaceutical area, there has been a focus on how firms acquire innovation that has been undertaken by small, privately funded firms such as biotech startups," Benner says. "It may be that the locus of much really radical innovation is shifting outside of the large organizations to small start-ups."

That points to a "big trend" emerging in product development, so called "Open Innovation," according to Wharton marketing professor George S. Day, co-director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation and co-author of Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies. Open Innovation, also known as "crowdsourcing," entails collaborating with partners to solve business problems.

The archetype of that model is Waltham, Mass.-based InnoCentive. It matches corporate "seekers" who have science, engineering and business problems with amateur "solvers" worldwide. The "solvers" then compete -- for bragging rights and often token rewards -- to provide the best answers to the corporate problems. "Most companies are not looking for a big innovation they can knock out of the ballpark," Day says. Rather, they want a relatively quick fix for a specific piece of a larger puzzle.

For firms that want the "secret sauce" to always come from in-house, previous success can present a huge roadblock to innovation, according to Kim. The problem is that success creates a virtual construct, a paradigm of "How to Do Things," inside of which new thinking cannot flourish. Kim calls it "The Curse of Knowledge." Cross-discipline teaming "is one way of breaking the Curse of Knowledge," he says. Another is "experience pairing," or matching a senior employee with an individual who has considerably less experience, but a fresh perspective on how to solve problems.

An incredible opportunity to innovate disruptively lies in the problem of information overload, says Kim. Knowledge is being created at a far faster rate than any one human can ever hope to assimilate. The flip side is that we constantly filter out vast stores of data because we are bombarded with information like never before in history.

To prove his point, Kim showed audience members a movie clip that repeated an old psychology experiment. Two teams, one dressed in white, the other in black, dribbled basketballs and passed them back and forth. Audience members were told to count the number of passes made by the black-shirted players. A few of the students missed the person in the gorilla suit who nonchalantly walked through the middle of the scene, because they were not looking for it. "I can assure you that all of you saw the gorilla. But some people processed it, stored it, some people missed it. You were looking for a particular thing."

Seven Hours of Whitewater Rafting

The term "disruptive technology" went viral in the late 1990s after the release of Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma. But in practice, Bell Laboratories has served as an incubator of paradigm-shifting, "disruptive" innovations since its creation in 1925 as a joint venture of AT&T and Western Electric.

Researchers at northern New Jersey-based Bell Labs have won six Nobel Prizes and take credit for an inventory of innovations: The photovoltaic cell, the silicon-based transistor, statistical process control, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language, digital cell phone technology and wireless local area networks are just a few of the better-recognized innovations that have taken shape there.

Today, Kim said, Bell Labs researchers are working on similarly ground-breaking technologies. They are developing, for instance, a liquid sensor that can be transformed to any shape by applying voltage -- Kim envisions it being used as a zoomable lens. The division is also using nanotechnology to create 3-D images. "You have seen, in science fiction movies, 3-D holographic movie images? It can be done. It can be done using these technologies today. It's just not very cost effective."

Kim offered a case study from Alcatel-Lucent -- Lucent Technologies at the time -- on how to inject a spirit of disruptive innovation into an existing and stagnant culture. Lucent's optical networking division was severely underperforming and the company fired the unit's top managers. "I was really convinced that the reason I was put in there was that nobody else would do it, and they needed somebody to blame," says Kim.

The division was moribund: Financial results were disappointing and morale was low. Kim shook up the management team and took the survivors to an off-site retreat that featured whitewater rafting. "First thing they do is say, 'Why are we doing this ...?' After a while, they get really bored." The exercise, intended to foster teamwork and cooperation, was designed with the help of a psychologist. Instead of cooperating, the managers began splashing one another with their oars, "like little kids."

But the exercise-psychology experiment wasn't over at the end of the rafting run. "After six or seven hours of whitewater rafting like this, they were tired." That evening over dinner, people let their "at-work" guardedness down and spent time learning about one another.

The next day included all the off-site strategizing and white board sessions one might expect, but Kim says the interaction was more genuine and productive than if they had met as they were previously, a grouping of near strangers. In the first quarter following that meeting, he says, the group posted revenues of $510 million, $560 million the next quarter, then $730 million, then $970 million. The point, he adds, is that "teamwork is so critical for the success of a company."

Kim's advice for jumpstarting disruptive innovation is not exactly revolutionary, though it can seem exceedingly rare when many companies still think quarter-to-quarter and employees take a similarly short-ranged view.

Not even storied Bell Labs, it seems, is immune from the pressure to produce quickly exploitable technology. In a shock to the science world, Alcatel-Lucent all but shuttered its funding for the Lab's basic physics research over the summer. Company officials said the move was done to align the Lab more closely with the parent company's commercial pursuits in wireless, optics, networking and computer science. Or, as Alcatel-Lucent spokesman Peter Benedict toldWired Magazine in August, "In the new innovation model, research needs to keep addressing the needs of the mother company."

Basic research investigates the most fundamental of scientific questions and has no direct commercial application. At the same time, it has laid the groundwork for most of the modern technological conveniences we enjoy today, including commercial aviation, the GPS system and lasers.

"You have to make an investment in capital, human knowledge and networking," says Kim. "That's the way to get ahead."

Your comments and opinions are appreciated. Please send them to wgstevens2@gmail.com . 

Layoff or Time Off

Things to think about when running your business. Given the very hard economic times more companies are looking to lay off employees to reduce their overhead and fixed costs, thus to boost profits.

I would look at an alternative approach that may be the best of both worlds, keeping fixed costs low and retaining the employees you have worked so hard to train and grow with your business, to say nothing about loyalty. Well what is this magic elixir? Have employees take unpaid time off casting it as unpaid vacation or personal time. Look at what Dell has done!! Exactly that and they have a great loyalty base because of it. Well think about it if this works for your business.

Strategy Adjustments or Concept

Some companies are adjusting their strategies to compensate for the current economic conditions, but if "strategy" is the long-term blueprint for an organization, why change it for temporary insecurity?

Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor and leader of the University's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, told the senior-level executive audience at HSM's World Business Forum in late September that many leaders are misinformed about how to develop long-term competitive strategy plans for their companies. They often confuse strategy with some type of action, such as merging, internationalizing or outsourcing. Other flawed concepts are strategy as aspiration (becoming the "tech leader" or to "grow"), and strategy as mission/vision statement. "Companies spend days arguing over which six words go in the sentence. It's a concept. Don't confuse it with strategy," said Porter.

A simple, yet accurate, way to test whether your organization is on the right strategic track is to see if your entire management team would be able to independently articulate the same thing. If they can't, Porter said, you don't have a true strategy.
There are five tests of a good strategy, Porter outlined:

• A unique value proposition. "If you don't have one, you're competing on operational excellence but unlikely to achieve superiority."
• A different, tailored value chain. "If not, you are competing on operational excellence — who can do the same thing better?"
• Clear tradeoffs, and choosing what not to do. "If you choose what to do, you have to also choose what not to do because they are incompatible. It's very hard because tradeoffs limit opportunity."
• Activities that fit together and reinforce each other. Porter said to harness the synergies across the value chain instead of discrete advantages.
• Strategic continuity with continual improvement in realization. "Strategy takes about three years to kick in. If you shift strategy every year, year and a half, you'll never get there."
  

As the economic markets fluctuate by the moment, the senior leaders who presented at Argyle Executive Forum's CEO Leadership Forum in early October also had long-term strategy on their minds, and one CEO summed it up best: "If you are not in a crisis, assume you are."

Your comments and input are always appreciated, please email me at wgstevens2@gmail.com .

Coaching Tips - October 2008

This month’s tips come from Charlie Goretsky, one of the newest members of the CCI team. Given that strategic thinking, planning, and measuring progress on strategic goals are areas within the scope of his expertise, we asked him to write about just that.

Great leaders think broadly, in an inter-connected manner, and into the future. They anticipate trends, understand their customer’s needs and competitor’s strengths, and have an awareness of global trends that may impact the ability to achieve their vision. Strategic thinking is essential for success in leadership positions, and can be developed. The key lies in understanding the world around you, both inside and outside your organization, with a conscious effort to collect, analyze and apply knowledge to both your strategies and daily work. To develop and hone your strategic thinking:

Broaden your perspective beyond your current function or role in the organization. This requires ongoing consideration of potentially interrelated factors by staying abreast of the strategies employed and the challenges faced by your peers in other parts of the company. This is done in through building relationships and communications with the leaders of other functions, and by scanning their reports and presentations for issues that impact them and potentially yours. How might the CFO’s stated concerns about capital spending levels impact your strategy to increase investments in necessary technology or facilities upgrades? How does a lowered sales forecast for the next two quarters impact your customer service strategies? Understanding how other functions interconnect can lead to improved decision making for the overall organization.

Know your marketplace and competitors. What are customers buying in your segment of the economy? How are they using the products and services provided by you and your competitors? With whom are you in direct competition, and how do their products compare with your own? Not the sole domain of the marketing or product development teams, all leaders need to be aware so they can improve service delivery, product quality, and internal resource allocation. This is also crucial information to be used when recruiting top talent. Success is driven by understanding your employment offering relative to peer companies and how to target your recruiting efforts to both bolster capability shortcomings and assess cultural matches with potential recruits from competitors.

Anticipate future trends, changes and consequences. This drives quality executive thinking and action. Keeping abreast of technological, political, regulatory, economic, social, and workplace trends arms leaders with the ability to prepare for and respond to changes well in advance, thus leveraging opportunities and avoiding downturns. Scanning news clipping services, newspapers, magazines, blogs, business and trade publications, attending professional meetings and networking will all keep you informed about the current and future business environment.

Focus on possibilities. This is the most challenging, in as much as it requires both creativity and a positive outlook, which can be difficult when you are facing serious and multiple challenges to your business outlook. While some people certainly come by this naturally, all leaders need to scan the environment for clues and cues to how operations can be improved or the future re-imagined. An excellent vehicle to both communicate your thinking and gain different perspectives and ideas is an annual or quarterly brainstorming meeting with your team to discuss what could enhance or accelerate the achievement of your organizational vision. Time away from the office to collect and crystallize your thinking can reinvigorate your focus on possibilities.

Practice integrative thinking and action. Take disparate concepts and ideas from a variety of venues and disciplines and bring them together for unique solutions to old issues and challenges. Look outside of the traditional solution sets for answers. Integrating all that you learn from the previously mentioned actions and bringing them back to your own organization creates informs great tactical decision-making and strategic direction.

Charles is a former executive of Reed Business Information and a good colleague. We had the opportunity to work together in the late 90's and colloborated on many human resources issues and topics. He is a consultant for CCI in California.

Is HR for Me - Have You Asked Yourself That Question?

I am sure all of you have asked that question one time or another during your career. Some of you have stumbled into human resources and some knew that it was the profession you always wanted to be in from an early age or at least when you were in college.

The question is "do you really think it is for you or are you riding out your career in human resources because there is no other path for you to take"? Well here are a couple of thoughts:

• if you are not dedicated to HR - get out
• if you do not understand business from the ground floor up - get out
• if you just tolerate people - get out
• if you stumbled into HR and you are not a student of the craft - get out
• if you are not flexible and fluid in these trying times - get out
• if you do not add value - get out while there is still time.

If you are dedicated - stay in it and add extra value to your business.

This is all food for thought in these fluid and volatile times. Think about it and really have a heart to heart with yourself.

Your opinions and comments are welcome lease send them to wgstevens2@gmail.com

Matrix Organizations: When and How They Can, Can’t Work

NEW YORK—Matrix organization, or the idea of balancing multiple organizational dimensions and building the “organizational infrastructure” for success, was popular in the 1970s before falling out of favor.

“In the 1980s and 1990s, matrix organizations were toxic—you didn’t want to touch one, didn’t want your boss to know you were using one,” Jay R. Galbraith, an organization design expert, told attendees at a recent organizational development conference sponsored by The Conference Board.

In recent years, Galbraith said, top performing companies such as Nokia, Proctor & Gamble, IBM and Toyota have been using matrix structures to gain competitive advantage.

“Matrix is out of the closet, and you have to learn how to make these things work,” Galbraith said.

Most matrix implementations fail to meet their objectives, so companies conclude that matrix does not work. But it doesn’t have to be that way. “It’s that most managements fail at matrix,” Galbraith said.

Design Challenges, Matrix Solutions

During the session, Amy Kates, principal of Downey Kates Associates, a New York City-based organization design firm, highlighted the design challenges that many companies face and how matrix organization helps cut across those challenges:

• Customer-centric design: Matrix organizations design around the customer, segmenting markets and selling solutions. Matrix organizations address how to be “operationally excellent and a product leader.”
• Readiness for innovation, organic growth: Matrix organizations help companies maintain a stable base of business units while they build their capability to assemble and disassemble teams around opportunities and projects.
  Matrix effectiveness.
• Centralization/decentralization dilemma: Matrix organizations are able to gain value from the parent company, make smart centralization/decentralization choices and connect units laterally.
• Global expansion: Matrix organizations look at options for connecting international units to the home country, create truly transnational companies, and balance globalization and localization.

“The one that we will focus on ends up falling into all these categories and we end up with some sort of matrix organization,” said Kates, who has co-authored a book on organization design with Galbraith.

Star Model

Galbraith is founder of the Breckenridge, Colo.-based Galbraith Management Consultants and a senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California.

In the 1960s, he developed a framework for more structured decision making dubbed the “Star Model.” It encompasses strategy, organization design criteria, people, structure, rewards and processes. According to Galbraith, organization design is more than just structure. Different strategies lead to different organizations. For an organization to be effective, all the policies must be aligned with one another.

“This is the model I’ve used, and today every consulting firm has something like this,” Galbraith said.

The essence of strategies leading to matrix designs is the pursuit of the “and” rather than the “or,” Galbraith said. In other words, global and local, functional excellence and fast time to market, and national accounts and local accounts.

The key when designing a matrix, Galbraith noted, is to start with strategy. “The keys for me are the business processes and management processes,” he said. “You want to minimize the levels [of organizational structure that] you have. I try to get the levels out and make the matrix as tight as possible. Don’t spend all your time on dotted and solid lines.”

Different Matrix Designs

Organizations have adopted several different types of matrix designs with various degrees of success. Galbraith said most companies have mastered the simplest, which are two-dimensional and include products and functions.

Other matrix designs can be three-dimensional and might include functions, business units and countries. “This type is far more challenging and encounters cultural differences,” Galbraith said.

Others are even more complex and include four or more dimensions, such as those that arise when serving global customers. “This type is the cutting edge,” Galbraith said.

“The leadership at the top sees mastering the requisite complexity as a source of advantage,” Galbraith said. “They keep it simple for the customer.”

High-Performing Matrix Organizations

A lot can be learned from companies making it work, Galbraith said. Here are some key characteristics of successful matrix-driven organizations:

• They have sophisticated leaders who grew up on both sides of a matrix, manage conflict, work as a team and spend time “getting clear roles and understand power balancing,” he said.
• They create organization designs “that aren’t just about structure,” which are complete, and completely aligned. “It takes a complete design to make this work,” he said.
• They manage an effective change process that’s incorporated into the matrix.
  Matrix is inherently a team-based design that runs on open debate and dialogue.
• The high performers use the same techniques to guide the change process.

Kates added that “matrix is less of a structure problem and more about the other parts of the Star [Model].” Rewards result from more subjective assessments of performance, she said. The assessments result from top management’s discussions of what people achieved and how they achieved their results.

“Hire hard, manage easy” is the key guideline, according to Kates. “Some people thrive in a matrix, while command controllers do not.”

Assessing Matrix

Selecting the right people to be in a matrix is critical. “If you build a critical mass of people who have a similar mindset, you get to a tipping point,” Kates said.

There are several steps companies can take to assess their matrix and get it back on track if it’s not where it should be. It pays to look first at interpersonal skills and work and management processes.

“There isn’t really magic to making this work—it’s about the basics,” Kates said, adding that companies that succeed at matrix design “do all the basics all the time and pay attention to making all of them work.”

When it comes to interpersonal skills, make sure there are opportunities to build networks and relationships. Staff can use the tension created by the matrix to collaborate rather than compromise, ensuring that managers who share resources can work well together. Also, make sure matrixed positions are at the right level and that there is a culture of teamwork, with joint accountability when things “go well and when they go wrong” and frequent giving of credit to others, Kates said.

“If you don’t have a good team-based organization to start with, matrix shouldn’t even be on the table,” Kates said.

Work processes should be clear and streamlined, and there should be clear information flows and clarity around roles, responsibilities and handoffs. And when it comes to management processes, Kates said, there should be governance mechanisms “to force dialogue” and resolve issues quickly and at the right level, efficient and effective meetings, a minimum of management “rework” and “a robust process for objective setting, performance management and feedback.”

More on Organizational Structure

During another session, Michael G. Winston, former managing director, global head and chief leadership officer for Countrywide Financial Corp., said you can take two companies that are structured identically, with the same skill sets and same market conditions, and “one will skyrocket and the other will plummet.”

What makes some succeed? “The common denominator is that people seem to be the catalyst for great things to happen,” Winston said. “Leadership is the ultimate arbiter of organization success.”

Winston cautioned that no matter what organizational structure is put into place, “it will almost always be out of date” shortly after its inception if companies don’t organize and reorganize because the rate of change environmentally or technically “is usually fast enough to force distortions in that structure.”

Winston, a consultant who has held leadership positions in high tech and aerospace, shared several “personal convictions” about effective organization design. Among them:

• Proper structure facilitates performance but doesn’t guarantee successful performance. Meanwhile, improper structure leads to “doing it the hard way.”
  
• Changes in structure are disruptive—be careful.
  
• All structural benefits cannot be gained at the same time. Tradeoffs are needed to get the optimum balance of benefits.
  
• Proper staffing is critical to the success of the revised structure. Improper staffing frequently undermines sound structure.
  
• The most neglected aspect of organization design is the allocation of power.

Do Your Job Postings Work for You?

Are your ads succeeding in attracting the right kinds of candidates for your openings? Recruiting firm Dice, which specializes in technology and engineering employees, recently conducted a survey among more than 650 passive and active information technology (IT) candidates, which yielded some valuable tips.

Dice asked what kinds of facts or descriptions are often missing from IT job postings that they would find most helpful. When we saw the results, it seemed to us that the responses might apply equally well to all kinds of job applicants, especially those with skills that are much in demand. For example, Dice also seeks out candidates in accounting and finance. More than a third of respondents said that information about the actual work they would do is missing from most job postings. Here's sample language from a real job description that Dice offered as a good example: "You will be responsible for improving our foundational software to enable our company to scale to hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. You will collaborate with operations to steadily improve the scalability of the current service without suffering downtime."

Other inclusions that job seekers said they like to see are the particular skills they will need, a salary range for the position, a list of the benefits and perks the company offers, including any that are unique, what they will have the chance to learn on the job, how their work would serve the company's overall mission, and more. Dice also advises employers to show the zip code where candidates would work and include information about the culture, so seekers can tell if they'd be a good fit.

Says Dice regarding work culture, "Is your organization an aggressive Web 2.0 company with a start-up feel and an open-cube environment where flexible IT folks, who can wear many hats, thrive? Or are you more 'big company,' with private offices, well-defined jobs, and a culture that offers great work-life balance and excellent formal career paths?" We can think of lots of examples of work culture advantages that would appeal to all kinds of candidates. For example, if many employees have long tenure, you could highlight the presence of potential mentors to share their institutional knowledge.

If employees seldom come into personal contact with customers, you might highlight the casual, relaxed atmosphere. By contrast, if customer contact is routine, stress employees' roles in creating a friendly and professional atmosphere. Intrigued by the idea of podcasts or blogs to attract candidates? Dice advises that you avoid making them too slick; candidates are suspicious of hype.

So you have to ask yourself these important questions:

• what differentiates you from other employers
• is your culture nurturing
• is there job path creation
• are you getting the cream of the crop
• are you spending your recruitment budget in the right places

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

'Our senior leaders just don't get it!'

We all want our senior leaders to "get it"—to support, participate, and buy in to the organization's leadership development initiatives. We know for sure what it looks like when senior leadership is not bought in—fragmented communication, unclear direction, and few breakthrough results. But what does it look like when senior leadership "gets it"?

A senior leadership that "gets it" incorporates the leadership development needs of the organization into its strategic planning process.

What leaders are learning and the ways in which they are being developed should be a reflection of the organization's strategic goals. For instance, if a major strategic initiative is to dramatically grow the business, leaders should be trained on how to lead during times of growth and how to deal with capacity issues.

Development planners should actively seek senior leadership's input on what the most pressing business needs of the organization are and how the leadership development efforts can work to meet these needs.

At the same time, senior leaders should ensure there is an active linkage between the organization's strategic plan and the leadership development curriculum.

A recent Baptist Leadership Institute Web poll showed that about 65 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that senior leaders in their organization are taking active steps to make sure the strategic plan and the leadership development efforts are aligned.

A senior leadership that "gets it" is visibly engaged in leadership development, including teaching and actively participating in course work.

At Baptist Health Care, one of our leadership development mantras is that "Baptist leaders should teach Baptist leaders how to be Baptist leaders."

If senior leaders are not actively engaged in teaching, then they are not truly committed to leadership development. Taking the time to teach and develop other leaders is the price of leadership. A healthy culture will allow no compromise on this point.
Slightly more than half (53 percent) of poll respondents agreed or strongly agreed that senior leaders are visibly engaged in leadership development.

A senior leadership that "gets it" holds leaders accountable for implementing skills learned in the organization's leadership development journey.

On this item, we saw less optimism reflected by our web poll respondents. Only 41 percent agreed or strongly agreed that their senior leadership applies accountability to leadership development.

Leadership development without accountability is just "putting butts in seats" and expecting our cultures to change as a result. That doesn't bring breakthrough results.

Esteemed executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, "A lot of what passes for leadership development in companies can be a waste of time." See if you recognize this process, he says. At a convention, you're entertained by a parade of speakers, and afterward you're required to critique the speakers and rate how effective they were. And you may be asked to critique the hotel and the food. But nobody is critiquing you. Nobody is following up to see what you learned or if you have actually become a more effective leader.

So who's learning (and changing) the most? The speakers, the hotel staff members, and the cooks.

Do the Senior Leaders in Your Organization "Get It"?

I hope so. In my experience working with organizations and helping them create healthy cultures, I have seen that a strong commitment from senior leadership is absolutely necessary to create anything more than casual, cosmetic change.

The good news is that with senior leadership's involvement and commitment, nothing can stop the organization's pursuit of excellence!

What do you think? Do the senior leaders in your organization "get it"? Share Your Comments

Public vs. Private Company Managers: Which Are More Likely to Impact the Bottom Line?

Executives who hone their skills at the helm of private companies tend to be more driven, more bottom line-oriented and have much more flexibility than CEOs at publicly owned companies, who are constrained by their need to balance multiple objectives in a corporate ecosystem.

That was the consensus of four panelists who discussed the management challenges at private equity-backed firms during the recent Wharton General Management Conference. The panel was titled, "Managing Public vs. Private Companies in an Age of Buy-outs."

Today, private equity is facing "an industry transition from competing on capital [and] financial engineering to competing on value creation and access to the best management talent," said panelist Elena Botelho, a partner at ghSmart, an executive assessment and talent management consulting firm for investors, boards and CEOs. "This is driven by the need for these firms to get maximum improvements in their portfolio, especially now that the market is tough."

Botelho noted that this affects the way CEOs are hired as well as how top executives perform in an era of increasingly common corporate buy-outs. The result is a blurring of the lines between public and private firms, with shifting expectations of senior management. Although the current credit freeze has limited the number of recent private equity deals, the situation has created a unique set of pressures for managers, since so much attention -- from the media and the federal government -- remains focused on financial performance. At publicly traded companies, the normal expectations of shareholders about quarterly earnings have been ratcheted up with the significant increase of federal regulatory involvement. But as private equity firms gain more investor interest as an alternative to the public markets, CEOs at private companies find themselves expected to reap quick gains in a rapidly changing environment.

Gone, however, are the days of private equity "strip-and-flip" buying and selling, a period that many see as having ended with the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds in July 2007 -- the beginning of the ongoing credit turmoil. A key question now is whether private CEOs, accustomed to taking greater short-term risks to maximize long-term returns, can thrive in a new, more transparent environment under unprecedented demands.

"Private equity firms get measured on IRR (internal rate of return), which is highly sensitive to the time they hold an investment, so every extra year means they have to drive more EBITDA [Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization] improvements," Botelho said. "Before, if they bought the company, took on leverage and flipped it in two years, especially in an environment where multiples [or] valuation was expanding, it was a lot easier to show attractive IRR. Now they need to attract the best managers to improve the business."

More Science than Art

According to panelist Mark Brownlee, associate vice president at Infosys Technologies, CEOs in publicly traded firms necessarily practice business as more of an "art" compared to the top executives at privately held entities, where expectations and results are uncluttered by the corporate "ecosystem." In public companies, this ecosystem comprises "their trading partners, shareholders, their public culture and brand, and ... far too many people to answer to," Brownlee said.

At the private companies he has worked with, however, executives "don't care about an ecosystem," Brownlee noted. "[They] are much more isolated and can make more independent decisions. Management teams can be more like business technologists -- they understand the science of running a business. With a public company, you need to be the face of the company, dealing with analysts and [having] a constant interaction with the media. [Private] companies are great places to be because that's where you can work with people practicing the science of business."

Jonathan Hsu, CEO of New York-based 24/7 Real Media, a digital marketing firm, agreed. The comparison is "pretty stark," Hsu said. "Running a mid-size company and [being] responsible for everything makes you tougher than someone entrenched in a large public company."

Increased liability for public company executives and enforcement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in addition to the comparisons shareholders have made with returns garnered by hedge funds -- fair or not -- have only exaggerated the distinction, Hsu added. "These trends have made public company executives more short-term focused [on] quarterly earnings targets, and in general, more risk-averse."

"For us, the title of CEO doesn't really exist," said Jude Tuma, founder and managing partner at Geminus Capital Partners. "When hiring a CEO, I do not look to a public company, [where a candidate would have] a very defined role. At private enterprise, we're looking for someone who can do a lot of different things."

Hsu suggests that the time it takes to interact with a public company's board and its shareholders -- what he called "a glorified cocktail party that you have on the road, all the time" -- detracts from a CEO's performance. At private companies, "quite frankly if you do well with the bottom line they leave you alone." Not so with public "corporate overlords," he said.

Lambs and Cheetahs

Botelho stressed that the panel was discussing private equity-backed firms, not necessarily private companies in general, and that top CEOs at publicly traded firms can be just as nimble and focused on the bottom line as their private counterparts. "Jack Welch is probably one of the best examples," she said.

To fine-tune the comparison, she referred to a study that ghSmart did in collaboration with economists and finance professors at the University of Chicago. It analyzed in detail assessments of more than 300 candidates for CEO jobs at firms funded by buy-out or venture capital investors. Candidates were rated on more than 30 specific abilities under three leadership categories. The "Hard" category included leaders who are efficient, aggressive, persistent and proactive. "Soft" was characterized as being flexible, a good listener, open to criticism and a team player. The third group was neither particularly hard nor soft, but seen as being persuasive, organized, analytical and calm. These are all positive traits, of course, but the "hard" and "soft" candidates were later re-defined as "cheetahs" and "lambs," making it clear which group made for better performers in terms of the bottom line.

A surprising finding of the study was that buy-out investors are twice as likely to invest in lambs, probably owing to their interpersonal skills and the level of comfort they instill. The cheetahs made board members nervous with their aggressiveness and willingness to move forward without waiting for direction.

The "success" of the candidates who won the jobs at the firms ghSmart studied was determined in two ways, depending on if the CEO was still in the job or had left. If still with the firm at the time of the study, success was measured as meeting or exceeding targeted EBITDA. If he had exited, an attractive return on the investment was deemed successful.

The bottom line? According to the study's metrics, lambs achieved success only 57% of the time. The cheetah outpaced even the most bullish expectations, with 100% of those in the study earning their money in a "successful" fashion, according to investors' expectations.

"Where [the cheetahs] really spiked was what we call 'PEP talk' -- persistence, efficiency and productivity," Botelho said. "They drove hard, made the right decisions and went at it pretty relentlessly. The other group is [the one] we'd like to have dinner with. What made them special was consensus-building."

Given the results, she said, "When looking at CEOs, you're probably going to go for a cheetah." Later, in an interview, Botelho said she would never suggest that the best public company CEOs are not talented, driven and bottom-line oriented. Though the panel focused on private equity-backed firms with assumed profitability, it was also true that "there are scores of private companies that are family- or founder-owned, or are partnerships that don't have the performance pressure that comes from having public shareholders or active financial investors.... Some of those fall far behind public companies in quality of talent, business practices and results."

Still, Brownlee's point about corporate ecosystems rang true to her. "The point is that the set of issues a public company CEO has to deal with is broader than that of a private company," Botelho said. "Therefore, their balancing act between different objectives is more complex.

She added that firms that take a long-term view -- public and private -- use down markets like the current one to grab talent they otherwise couldn't afford or attract. "For example, in the last downtown of 2001, American Express hired a lot of people out of top strategy consulting firms when those firms were struggling with decline in demand. We see the same with our clients now -- they are actively looking for strong performers that are 'poachable.' In private equity in particular, it's typically difficult to attract senior talent from other firms because of carry (the executive's financial interest in the portfolio companies when they sell the company). In times like this, some of the portfolio companies are starting to struggle, and therefore carry is not looking as valuable as it did 18 months ago. The challenge for these companies is to have strong assessment processes to differentiate truly strong performers from thousands of average players."

Have You Organized to Maximize Business Partnerships?

For years I have organized my HR group around the departments/business groups they supported. As you look at all the discussion lines, websites, and blogs relating to HR being a business partner one could only wonder why we have centralized HR departments. Sure, there are come corporate needs but at the divisional, subsidiary, or non-corporate locations at are not noted beforehand here why is there a need.

Well some will say that is how we are organized and that's that. I can only say you who say that are not the HR leaders of today or in the future. How better can your HR managers/directors get more involved in the business, outset of issues, than when they are embedded in those groups they support. CENTRALIZED OFFICES ARE OUT!!!!!!!!!!

When you look at the competencies for HR professionals now and in the future, as Issac Dixson notes how better to hone these skills than to be in the thick of things with the managers, directors, and employees an HR person supports. Again these competencies are:

• Business Acumen
• Financial Savvy
• Quality Decision Making
• Managing Diversity
• Learn on the Fly
• Sizing People Up

These competencies are more in demand than ever in our businesses. So, take a look at your organization and think hard about your structure and how you can better develop your staff. Move them into the firing line to learn, grow, and develop into the HR leaders of the future.

Your opinions and thoughts are welcomed. Challenge this premise and let me know your thoughts.

HR Competencies for Today and the Future

If I had to look at competencies for HR professionals now and in the future Issac Dixson says these are important:

• Business Acumen
• Financial Savvy
• Quality Decision Making
• Managing Diversity
• Learn on the Fly
• Sizing People Up
  

These competencies are more in demand than ever in our businesses yet he still finds people entering the field that have little to no background or experience in any of these areas. If we add to this the significant legal exposure it makes me wonder why many organizations still feel that “anyone” can do HR stuff.

As a profession we must continue to insist on excellence, shun party planning and gift basket preparation (employee committees can do this stuff). Focus on strategy, get our staff’s tactically proficient and push information out to managers, leaders and employees.