Common Sense Talent Management

Zak

Hello, and welcome to People Performance Radio, sponsored by SuccessFactors, the global leader in performance and talent management software solutions. Without further a do, please allow me to introduce Dr Steve, and Jim "The Mad Dog" Matheson.

Jim

Welcome back to People Performance Radio, you are here with your host Jim Matheson …

Steve

… and Steve Hunt.

Jim

Just wanted to do it right up front, let everybody know if you want to get hold of us, you can email us podcast@successfactors.com, or leave us a voicemail which we can hopefully get played on the air, or if you have questions, comments, whatever it may be, the number is 650-425-7474. So, now that we have got that stuff out of the way, Steve—I heard a rumor.

Steve

What's the rumor?

Jim

The rumor is that you got a new book that you are working on?

Steve

I am working on a new book, as a matter of fact I am just formally agreeing to write a book between now and November 15th of next year.

Jim

I thought you were going to say November 15th of this year, I was like, I guess the podcast is cancelled.

Steve

No, I will just be writing while we do it. No, it's still ambitious but, this is actually it's kind of my third book that I have written. I am really excited about it because it's a book that, the working title, and I'll keep it, is called, "Common Sense Talent Management" and it's going to be a book that really talks about basic things about managing people in organizations. I think what it goes back to is, for all this talk about how the world is changing, we don't evolve that quickly, and when you go in and look at a lot of these talent management practices that are being viewed as cutting edge, you look at them and peel back the onion on them and you say, really it's just getting back to some basic sound psychological principles. If you want to predict and change people's behavior, which as I said before is what talent management is basically about, it's trying to get particular people to do, if you put them in certain jobs and, kind of get them to change their behavior to be more effective in jobs. There are really some basic truths about how to do that and there is a short whitepaper that I wrote on this today, I believe it is on our podcast site, but this is expanding, I showed it to some publishers and some other people and they said, "Wow, this could be a good book", so I thought "Hey, cool, it could be" so that's what I'm really to be working on.

Jim

Great, sounds interesting. I already want to know all the answers now, but I guess you haven't even written it yet so.

Steve

Ah, yeah, I have all the answers in my head, Jim, it's just articulating them in a way that makes sense. At least I like to think I have them! The problem with that is, when you actually write the answers that you think are right down on paper, it gives people a chance to tell you that you're wrong.

Jim

This is true. So that's good, and that book, next November?

Steve

Yes, so look for it, well it's actually not going to come out in November, it will come out the following year. It takes a while for them actually to print these things but yes, if all goes well, about a year and a half, and another book, and I'm sure I will talk about it more as it gets closer, I will probably be cursing this in a year from now about the stress of trying to actually write it, but once it's actually written, I will talk about it a lot no doubt.

Jim

Right, well you've just got to get your goals on line for that, and you should be good to go.

Steve

That's exactly right, which is one of the things I talk about in the book, and one of the things interestingly enough, in this next interview that we did with a customer. It's an interesting interview, because he starts talking about how, and this is true for a lot of our customers, how they first looked at the system as a way to increase efficiency, but then soon found as they're deploying it, that it really increased the impact of talent management. Also to increase, he said, the visibility of HR, has been really a strategic play in the organization, because suddenly HR, primarily through their goal setting net, through their goal setting capabilities provided by the SuccessFactors system, enabled HR to have that classic mythical seat at the table, because suddenly they could really engage with the leaders in the organization and say, "OK, you want the strategy, it means you need to translate the goals, and get it to people, here's the technology and process for doing it, for actually going from strategy to execution", which is kind of an interesting and powerful story so, with that being said, I would encourage you to listen to this interview and really focus on the discussion of goals because it's pretty fascinating.

Jim

Sounds good, and I think once we switch over to the interview, we can stop hearing whatever you're multi-tasking in the background, it sounds like you're cutting down trees or vacuuming or something back there.

Steve

It's my neighbors, what can I say. They are trying to keep their yard neat and tidy, I can't complain.

Jim

I see, well that's good. So we are going to jump into Dave Dejear, one of our correspondents out in the field, he interviewed Mark Rutherford from Baypoint, who was working on a project with Kelly Blue Book, so let's give it a listen.

Dave

We are speaking with Mark Rutherford, the Principal of Baypoint Partners. Mark, can you tell us a little bit about what Baypoint does?

Mark

Baypoint Partners is a southern California-based HR consulting firm with really four primary focuses, retain search, director level and blow, executive comp and comp design, HR projects and interim HR support, and then we have also supported the implementation of SuccessFactors at a number of clients.

Dave

I would like to talk about one of those implementations that Baypoint did with Kelly Blue Book—can you describe a little bit about the working relationship that you have developed with Kelly Blue Book?

Mark

Yes, I have worked with Liz Haut, who is the VP of HR at Kelly Blue Book, over the last three years, supporting her in a variety of different HR projects, and then Liz and I went through a process to select a system to allow them to automate their performance management process and we actually ended up automating their performance management process and much much more.

Dave

Great, can you talk a little bit about the process that they went through in selecting a system?

Mark

We actually looked, we didn't go through the process to actually define a formal, RF cube, but we did know what we wanted to be able to do, and we wanted to be able to create something that allowed the company to share goals across the company. We wanted to be able to define competencies, we wanted to be able to weight goals and we wanted to have something that would ultimately be paperless, and looked at a couple of different vendors, even drifted over a little bit into the HRIS space to see what was available over there and, in the final call, I believe in late 2005, made the selection of SuccessFactors and started to queue ourselves up to start an implementation first thing in 2006.

Dave

Great, with a widescale implementation, the way that you describe it, was the order in which you deployed the products unique or, anything to talk about there?

Mark

Well, I don't know if it was unique other than I think we originally sold the concept as a bringing some efficiency to the performance management process, but we actually implemented the goals module first and I think it's one of the things that we've really learned and one of the things that I have shared with some of my other clients. I think, by implementing the goals module first, it really allowed the HR team to become part of the strategic planning process for the company, and with the goals in place, we then had the capability to actually think about the performance management process at the end of the year and the way the product works, you get to where it's time to do the performance management process, and if you've done it right, you have got the goals that individuals were supposed to achieve that have been cascaded down to the organization, and you have got a set of competencies, either shared competencies across the company combined with individual competencies and those things are pulled together, to allow you to have a very clean performance management process.

Dave

A lot of practitioners of HR talk about the importance of becoming a partner at the table. What does that mean?

Mark

I think, what it means to Liz and her team, and as hard as it is to believe, Kelly Blue Book didn't even have an HR department in 1999, and now has an HR function that Liz has basically created but, you know in my mind, being at the table means that you are bringing systems and processes into the company that add value to the business, and that the HR function is viewed as being business-relevant and that's certainly something Liz and her team have been able to achieve.

Dave

So stated in another way, essentially, SuccessFactors is more than just an HR tool at Kelly Blue Book?

Mark

I think SuccessFactors has facilitated the roll out of several important processes at Kelly Blue Book. They facilitated a much cleaner way to roll out the strategic planning process, and the result of this strategic planning process across the company, and share those not with just a select few, but be able to share those across the company, and allow both functional groups and individuals to be able to see how their contributions link ultimately with a particular goal for the company, and then to have their individual goal actually get rolled up and appear in a performance management process at the end of the year, and get tracked throughout the year and at Kelly Blue Book, its something that is actually looked at month to month to month.

Dave

That's great, so a lot of companies are looking at technology to help them develop their talent. Do you have a couple of pieces of advice that you would offer for companies looking at this?

Mark

Well, two things that come to mind, one that may sound a little trite is, just be sure you have got all the basics in place, be sure you have got job descriptions in place, be sure you have got your organization structure defined and an organization chart in place, be sure you have taken the time to put a comp structure in place and done market matches on all your jobs. Be sure the basics are in place so you've got a good foundation to leverage off of.

The other thing that I'll say, and I'll say this at some risk, since I the question's coming straight from SuccessFactors, is, when you implement the tool, there is a significant event that happens that's called your "go live date", and at that point in time SuccessFactors has really worked with you to make sure that the product works and is functioning, but man, there's still a lot more work to do and that work, especially over the first year, is really shouldered by the senior management team and by the HR staff, and if you can get through that first year and really populate that database, the decisions that you'll be able to make as you stratify that data and look for different themes across your company will become very very valuable, but that first year is tough.

Dave

So, how do you know if the project has been a success?

Mark

I think in the case of Kelly Blue Book, Liz Haut knew when the project had been a success, not just by the data and the dialogue she'd created with the senior management team, but in her performance review done online looking at her goals, and looking at the set of competencies she was evaluated on, in one of the comments that was made under one of her competencies, the CFO at Kelly Blue Book made the comment that he thought that the HR team had had more of an impact on the strategy of Kelly Blue Book than on any other functional group in that time period. It was, something I think a lot of HR people actually live to hear, and something I think that Liz and her team achieved in record time.

Dave

That's great, we have been speaking with Mark Rutherford, the Principal of Baypoint Partners. Mark, thanks for your time today.

Mark

You're welcome, I enjoyed it.

Speaker

If you would like to be a guest on the show, or sponsor, please drop us a line at podcast@successfactors.com, or you can leave us a message at 650-425-7474. This podcast is copywritten by SuccessFactors. The views expressed are the individual’s own, and do not necessarily represent those of SuccessFactors, SuccessFactors’ partners or customers. See you next week.