Everyone thinks they’re above average.

This tidbit found via the Damn Interesting blog where they deconstructed a report by some Cornell researchers on the topic. What they found was that the worst performers in a variety of tested categories often rated themselves on par with the best performers and in most cases far above average. Top performers are of no help either. Even they weren’t able to accurately assess themselves, rating themselves lower than their performance merited.

The reasoning for these behaviors is fascinating. Poor performers lack the skills to perform – which are the same skills required to evaluate their performance. They don’t understand that they don’t understand, and so believe their abilities compare positively to their peers.

On the other hand, Top performers incorrectly assume that their competence is shared among their peers – leading them to rank themselves lower than they deserve.

You can see what this looks like in the chart above. People that fall into the lower three quartiles believe they performed better than they actually did. The highest performers underestimate themselves.

There’s relevance here to self-assessments as the HR world understands them. When asked to evaluate themselves on a variety of competencies, it would seem that people can be expected to incorrectly rate themselves most of the time. Poor and average performers will overestimate their abilities, and top performers will underestimate them.

So what to do? I think that the importance of gap analysis makes itself evident here. It’s only through external feedback that people can understand the difference between what they believe to be true and others’ perceptions of the reality. There’s nothing clearer than a competency gap:

 When you can see what you think about yourself right next to what others think about you – there’s simply nothing more compelling to a change in perceptions and ultimately, in behavior.

Our new poll for the next couple of weeks is on the topic of employee engagement. Specifically, what, in your opinion, are the most important drivers of engagement?

The responses are based on a 2003 report from Towers Perrin called “Understanding what drives employee engagement.” (PDF) Based on some statistical analysis, they arrived at 10 workplace attributes that they determined to be the most critical in driving employee engagement.

Of these 10, which are the most important in your organization?

You may have noticed a poll in the left-hand column over the past couple of weeks. Though clearly not scientific in any way, the poll has provided some insight into what’s on the minds of our readers.

We asked, “What is your most pressing HR issue?” 

We had 50 people respond to the poll, and the results are interesting. Despite all the talk about succession and compensation, the core issue (28%) for our respondents was Performance Reviews followed followed closely by Goal Alignment (24%).

To me, it indicates that Performance Management and Goal Alignment are still the biggest pain points for HR practitioners. They represent the heart of talent management initiatives, and Succession and Comp. are just further down in the hierarchy of HR needs.

I’d be curious to hear what you guys have to say about the results. Do you think they’re generally representative, or are they skewed for some reason?

A management issues article points out that employee engagement is THE KEY concept in retention:

Rather than working on employee engagement in parallel with staff retention and talent management, a high quality strategic emphasis on employee engagement will as a matter of course positively influence both staff retention and talent management.

Make employee engagement your ‘hub’ not an after-thought.

Often, we run into opposition from the IT departments at potential customers. A frequent refrains goes: “We should just go with our ERP vendor. It’s the safe bet.”

Remember the old saying that went: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM?” Well in this industry, the corollary is that no one ever got fired for buying Peoplesoft or SAP. IT groups at many large companies have embraced this mantra fully and completely.

The problem? It’s just not true anymore.

We hear frequent stories about companies joining our customer ranks after trying (sometimes for years) and failing to implement solutions from ERP competitors. The reality is that buying Peoplesoft/Oracle and SAP just isn’t as safe as it used to be. Furthermore, those solutions are not any more flexible or secure than those offered by On-Demand vendors. In fact, there are numerous arguments to be made that in fact SaaS solutions are MORE flexible and secure.

There’s a concept in the technology world called FUD that is a core component of sales strategies for ERP companies. It stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. ERP salespeople plant these seeds of FUD in IT groups around the world to cement their incumbent positions.

I’d like to suggest that we’ve reached the point where the FUD is facing the wrong way.  The danger is not in On-Demand, where if it doesn’t work, you shut it off. Where vendors are aligned towards customer success, because they have to win the business again and again, year after year. Where professional services employees are domain experts who can ensure business results and not software consultants who can ensure software roll-outs.

The risk is shifting towards the incumbents. The installed, behind-the-firewall guys who require big hardware and software purchases with some consulting and implementation fees for dessert. Where you’ve got to pay for the software before you find out if it works and are between a rock and a hard place when it doesn’t.

The FUD, my friends, should be with the ERP solutions. Make a wrong call there, and you’ve spent untold amounts on failure. So, good IT folks, fear not On-Demand: We’re on your side.

Oh, and here’s an article from an IT guy that makes the point a little differently.

Quote:

For its part, on-demand is relatively neutral. But when coupled with something that enhances value or functionality, it’s an amazing solution that should be at the top of managers’ must-do lists. In the end, on-demand will make careers, not break them. It’s just too hard to keep a good idea down.

As you might imagine, this article on one of our competitors made its way around the office like wildfire today. Why? Well, for one reason it shows that good technology is hard to find and even harder to deploy. There are just a lot of vendors who over-promise and under-deliver. Its a solid and sobering reminder of the challenges we face as we work to continue to deliver for our hundreds of customers and nearly 1.5 million end users who have entrusted us with their success.

By way of background, apparently after months of delay in implementing a jail management system in Arkansas, “There was a last-ditch effort by Softscape to try to get a functional system in, and it didn’t work,” said Assistant County Attorney Amanda Mankin-Mitchell.” So after managing the jail with pen and paper since the end of last year, Pulaski County officials switched back to their old system and are asking for their money back.

The bottom line for me, and really for all of the employees at SuccessFactors, is that the ONLY thing that matters is customer success. In evaluating software vendors, it’s obviously important to make sure the systems can functionally accomplish your goals. But if that system can’t get rolled out, adopted and then used successfully for years to come, it simply doesn’t matter if it can do every single thing on your wish-list down to the smallest piece of custom functionality.

At a Conference Board event in NYC this week, I had the pleasure of watching our customers Tim Toterhi from Quintiles Transnational and Susan O’Connor from Gartner talk about their journeys and successes with performance and talent management to a room of about one hundred top HR professionals. That was another kind of reminder for me: When we work hard at execution and focus on customer success, it actually can and does happen.

That’s the kind of reminder I like. The successful kind.

Let’s keep those coming.

Via Gautam, I came to this Time article about “microinequities” and “microgestures” – fancy talk for the horribly frustrating, inconsiderate, rude and otherwise small but rage-inducing behaviors like using your BlackBerry in the middle of a conversation or saying someone’s name incorrectly or talking on your cell phone during a meeting, etc.

Besides the crass ignorance displayed by such actions, it turns out they may actually have a negative impact on workforce performance as they work to demotivate otherwise engaged employees.

And, of course, there’s a consultant who goes around advising companies on these issues.

A Fortune Magazine article discusses the genesis of big ideas and concludes that they don’t come from working hard. 

We all know that when our bodies and brains are overworked, our ability to think creatively is substantively diminished. So why should you care? Mostly because as business shifts to a knowledge-based economy, it is just that sort of big thinking that will ultimately equate to competitive advantage.

Almost 40 years ago, Peter Drucker noted that “All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done.”  So in our CrackBerry, Instant Messaging, Multi-tasking universe – doing more little things doesn’t necessarily (or even usually) add up to something consequential.

So if doing more doesn’t get us ahead, what does? How about doing less? If you’ve ever had a great idea while sitting on the toilet or doing some gardening in the backyard, you understand the point. According to the article, a  “team of Dutch psychologists revealed last month in the journal Science that the unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.”

In other words, big ideas come when you’re not thinking anything that’s obviously productive at all. Maybe the best competitive advantage HR departments can provide for their companies is more flex-time, vacation days and the like. More opportunities to do everything by doing absolutely nothing.

Something to think about, anyway. What do you think?

With March Madness upon us (college basketball’s NCAA tournament for those of us who could care less) there’s a lot of talk about lost productivity due to workday engagement with the games. This is especially true now that the games are being broadcast over the Internet -making it possible for employees to watch from their desktops.

This Washington Post article explains how some companies are simply shutting them off  by blocking access to the tournament site. But in the cat and mouse game that is workplace recreation, some websites like CBS’s SportsLine are offering a “Boss Button.” A simple click while watching a game will switch the screen to a spreadsheet.

In any event, it’s no laughing matter. By some estimates the economy will lose productivity valued at more than $3.8 billion. 

What are you doing, if anything, to curb the enthusiasm?

A financial times article on leadership  (subscription required) argues that “Managers need the S-factor to set workers’ hearts a-flutter.” The s-factor you ask? S is for scary.

Based on research done by a fellow named Roderick Kramer, a psychologist at Stanford, the article makes the case for leaders to use fear and intimidation as a key tenet of their interactions. The gist seems to be that by keeping people on their toes, they will perform better.

My favorite bit is where Mr. Kramer makes some suggestions for being  scary:

• Intimidate people by invading their personal space.
• Get angry. Even if you aren’t really angry that some idiot is wasting your time, then you pretend to be angry, which is easy enough.
• Keep people guessing by acting sullen and silent. This means you can change your mind completely (which leaders do all the time) without losing face.
• Know the facts, and even if you don’t, pretend you do. Make them up when necessary and use with complete conviction. People will go along with you.

It’s an interesting script. And some of it may be valid. It seems to me that great leaders know how to adjust their posture depending on who they are managing. Some employees need to be scared into doing good work. Others may have a violently negative reaction to managers who pretend to know the facts (as in #4 above) when they clearly do not.

I also don’t think great leaders follow fad-ish leadership mantras as in this and the previous post. They know who they are and how to leverage what they have to rally people around them and towards a cause.