Yearly Archives: 2006

Better to be passionate than smart

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Or so Seth Godin seems to say. Here, he advocates for hiring passionate people who may or may not be particularly efficient or effective. Truth be told, I tend to agree with him.

I’m dealing with a situation now with my bank. It involves a lost wire transfer – they sent it, and no one got it. They’ve spent the last two weeks “tracking it” but have yet to “find anything.” How can this be possible?

It’s possible because the people just don’t care. It’s not a big enough amount of money, and I’m not important enough a customer for anyone to really give a hoot about tracking it down.

It reminds me of part of a speech I listened to last week by Jason Fried of 37 signals. In it, he says that hiring “happy people” is more important than hiring for the perfect skill-set. Why? Because happy people come to work everyday ready to do what needs to be done. They bring people up instead of dragging them down.

Seth is right - even if the sales clerk in his article seems overly detailed -  passionate people make all the difference. They go the extra mile to get things done and keep customers happy. And ultimately, customer success matters most.

Headless Harvard

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If you’ve stayed current on Harvard’s leadership difficulties involving President Lawrence Summers’ rocky 5 year tenure, you know that he recently conducted his last commencement. (If you haven’t stayed current, I don’t blame you. Not even a little.)

One would think that Harvard might have seen the writing on the wall around January of last year, when Summers made his feelings on women in the sciences known. That would have given them a good 18 months to start thinking about a succession plan. Alas, this seems to have been far from their minds.

A Harvard alum sent me this letter he recently received soliciting thoughts and opinions on Summers’ replacement. Innocent enough in its appearance, it reveals a fairly serious lack of planning. Have a look. Click the image to blow up a section of the letter.

It’s remarkable how many organizations of every kind don’t think about succession until they’re headless.

HarvardLetter

 

 

Do benefits matter?

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Of course they do? But why? 

Mckinsey-surveyWell, according to this McKinsey survey, everyone thinks they matter for reasons like employee attraction and retention, meeting responsibilities to employees and so on. But when asked whether in fact they actually do matter, in other words – whether the results of the benefits programs have ever been measured – the vast majority (78%) of people surveyed said no.

Now, the point of the survey isn’t to say that because the benefits of the benefits aren’t measured, they should be stopped. Rather, it’s to point out that executives don’t understand why the benefits they provide matter to employees. And since thy don’t understand it, they don’t know what levers to pull to help attract and retain talent.

So I pose the question to you – what kinds of benefits do you think are most attractive to top talent? I’m curious to hear your comments, and perhaps we can help sort these unknowing executives out.

systematicHR interviews SuccessFactors

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MicrophoneWanted to point you to an interview that DubDubs at systematicHR did with our very own Rob Bernshteyn. He just published the article, but the interview was done a ways back. In any case, I think Dubs picks up one some important points about us (technology, analytics) in the context of the market, and I encourage you to read it.

He’s also done some other great posts recently on the future of HR technology and Does HR technology define HR strategy?

Why new employees fail

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According to this Fortune article, it’s because they don’t know what’s expected of them. “A big reason is that a huge percentage of new employees, including new managers, are not clearly told what they were hired to do or what their goals should be for the first six months and the first year.”

Makes good sense.

Apparently, nearly 50% of employees fail in the first 18 months of their jobs. And we’re not just talking about individual contributors, either. Actually, the higher up you are, the more likely you are to fail.

But it seems to me that blaming lack of direction for failure doesn’t address the whole problem. It’s a company’s fault for not providing enough direction – but it’s an employee’s fault for not seeking one out. Beyond that, bad managers, personality mismatches and lack of appropriate competencies are all good reasons for why new employees fail.

It’s always been a belief of mine that taking a job (or hiring someone) is like the beginning of a new relationship. There are all kinds of reasons why personal relationships fail. I’m sure we’re all familiar with many of them. Sometimes, even knowing our goals for the relationships is not enough to keep it alive when other parts are missing.

Check the article out, there’s even a cool quiz to take to find out if you’ll succeed in your new job.

A sad, sad fable…

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About an American company. As told by Jason Corsello.

It’s an entertaining tale, you should read it even if just for a laugh. But it make you take note of the fact that Performance management ain’t a cure for stupidity, – that’s for sure.

It often occurs to me that some of the highly educated people that comprise the management ranks at our nation’s most highly regarded companies are so capable of strategizing that they never actually DO anything. They just think.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that by itself.

But, in that world, the people that are actually doing the work are just that – doers. Well what if the doers thought and the thinkers did? What a wonderful, productive world it would be. In some ways, I think that’s part of the promise of goal alignment in particular and performance management in general.

Just a thought.

Microsoft ditches forced ranking

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Regina points us to a post by Robert Scoble – Microsoft’s unofficial but omnipresent blogger – on MS’s ditching if it’s forced ranking process.

“One big thing that’s gone? Stack ranking. No longer am I judged against Charles and Adam and Tina and Jeff. Now, either I’m doing a good job for Microsoft or I’m not and my review will now reflect that.”

I know Dick Grote think that forced ranking is great (I just saw him discuss the topic at World at Work in Anaheim) – at least for a period of time – so perhaps Microsoft’s forced ranking simply outlived it’s usefulness. Perhaps they culled enough low performers to start demotivating the people that were left.

Thoughts?

 

What to do with $45 million?

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Corsello wonders what we will do with $45 million. The answer is simple. One huge party. Invites will be sent out by the end of the week.

Not really.

How ‘bout this:
Build a company that continues to get results for our customers. End of story.

The responsibility and accountability we feel towards our customers is something we take very seriously. This isn’t just about numbers to us. We want to add real value. Make organizations more productive and profitable. Help employees get rewarded fairly and attain their personal goals.

As we continue to take on the responsibility of new customers, we want to make sure our ability to deliver on our commitment to them is as solid as with our very first customer. So we’re hiring the best people around to get our customers live quickly and to support them as they navigate the opportunities in, and achieve the benefits of, performance and talent management.

Good people don’t come cheap, but ultimately, they’re the reason that both customers and investors continue to put their faith in us. It may be a little trite to say this in our industry - but for SuccessFactors, it’s all about the people, and they’re worth every penny.

From our research: Talent management is more than efficiency

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Note: This post was written by SuccessFactors’ Director of Customer Results, Erik Berggren.  Erik is leading a team focused on understanding - through detailed, data-driven analysis - how specific talent management behaviors drive business results – and then working to build those learnings into our product for the benefit of our customers. I’m excited to host his thoughts here, and I look forward to sharing more of our new knowledge via this blog in the future. So please enjoy Erik’s contribution and as always, I encourage comments. We want to know what you think. – Max

Talent management is about more than efficiency
Pull, don’t push your way to meaningful ROI

TugofwarI recently came across The 2006 talent management survey, conducted by IHRIM and Knowledge Infusion, which found that 77% of HR professionals think that talent management will only increase in importance over the next three years. In general, I think that’s great, because it means that people as an asset is a concept that’s making its way into the HR mindset. But, it also worries me, and here’s why: If HR Professionals think they can simply buy the software, put it in, turn it on and get full benefits, they are mistaken.

To maximize the return on investment in talent management, the solution isn’t just to put the processes out there and hope for the best, nor is it to push it out with smart internal marketing and hard selling. HR professionals need to make sure that their internal customers believe that there is value in using it the enhanced process, and get involved in making it work. That “pull” is critical, without it, organizations will not get a full return on their investment.
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