Perhaps somewhat off topic, I thought I would point out an interesting show that’s been airing on the Sundance channel. Called “House of Boateng,” it follows the zany misadventures of Ozwald Boateng (seen left), a London-based fashion designer, in his attempts to penetrate the US market. Along the way, he meets wild and wacky investors, throws tempter tantrums and alienates employees in his attempt to make it big across the pond. (He also does this strange dance when he feels uncomfortable, or is in the spotlight, and that alone makes the show worth watching.)

Now, ordinarily, you wouldn’t find me watching much reality television – especially on the Sundance Channel – but in all fairness to myself, this is the summer season and good TV is hard to find. In any case, the reason I mention it here is that Mr. Boateng is like a lot of small business owners. While exceptionally talented at what he does, and very successful to boot, Boateng’s domineering style and penchant for micro-management results in all sorts of fun-to-watch chaos as the business leaps and lurches it’s way to growth.

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Really, truly an invigorating little article from a couple of days ago in the UK’s Telegraph. In it, Jack and wife Suzy embark on a spirited defense of the importance of HR. I wish I had something to add to the article beyond a straightforward “see, I told you so” but I don’t. So in place of the usual musings, I give you a few of my favorite bits:

Bit #1:
“Look, HR should be every company’s “killer app”. What could possibly be more important than who gets hired, developed, promoted or moved out the door?”

Bit #2:
“If you owned Real Madrid, for instance, would you hang around with the team accountant or the director of player personnel?  Sure, the accountant can tell you the financials. But the director of player personnel knows what it takes to win: how good each player is and where to find strong recruits to fill talent gaps.”

Bit #3:
“Leaders need to put their money where their mouths are and let HR do its real job: elevating people management to the same level of professionalism and integrity as financial management.”

Yes, indeed.

Read the whole article. You’ll be better off for it.

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.

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.

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?

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

I 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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Jason Corsello picks up on our recent research announcement – calling the approach “groundbreaking.”

You can see some early thoughts from SuccessFactors Research as previously posted here. Keep checking back for more of the “From our research” series.

(Note: click on the graph to see a larger version)
I’m closing the vizu.com powered poll that’s been running on the blog for the past few weeks and the results are pretty interesting.

The question asked was “What are the most important factors in employee engagement?” and I based the answers on a Towers Perrin Survey report from 2003 on the topic.

The poll attracted 47 responses, 59% of which indicated that “challenging work” was the most important factor in employee engagement. Close behind were “Senior manager’s interest in employees well being” with 55%, “clear vision from senior management about future success” with 53% and “Input on decision making” and “A collaborative work environment where people work well in teams” with 51% each.

The least important were “evidence the company is focused on customers” with only 25% and “company’s reputation as a good employer” with 36%.

Certainly there’s nothing scientific about this poll, but the split between issues that center around “me” and those that are about “the company” seems clear from these results. The answers that specifically related to my job, the level of attention paid to me, my likelihood of future success, and my input topped the heap.

From these results, it seems fair to conclude that engagement is largely defined by the extent to which people like their work and feel taken care of by those for whom they are working. Or, to put it another way, “What have you done for me lately”

Anybody get something different?

New poll coming soon.

Gautam has a list of the top 10 reasons why people leave organizations. Remarkable how many would fall under the banner of performance and talent management.

The 2006 talent management survey, conducted by IHRIM and Knowledge Infusion, found that 77% of the HR professionals think that talent management will only increase in importance over the next three years.

Some of the factors, according to Jason Averbrook of Knowledge Infusion, are “the looming talent shortage, the increased focus on redeploying internal employees rather than recruiting and the realization that organizations must link training, knowledge and performance.”

The most interesting piece, I thought, was this quote from Averbrook: “Many organizations roll out a performance management system or workforce analytics system and simply just put it out there. They don’t do a good job of making sure that people know why these systems are implemented, show people the value of the systems, etc. So if organizations don’t market these systems to their employees, the employees will just think of them as another online tool and won’t actually use them to their full advantage.”

Employees can themselves get real benefits from performance management initiatives. And there’s far more to it than just making reviews easier. ( I refer you to a previous post on the topic.) But making those benefits clear to employees and explaining why usage of the system will help THEM is an important part of a successful deployment and not to be overlooked.