Vince Racioppo—Aldridge Electric: Systematically building competencies for critical job roles

Steve

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. This week we're talking with Vince Racioppo, who's the Talent Manager with Aldridge Electric, and Vince talks about how Aldridge Electric wrestled with the issue of having an example of lots of very specialized, highly experienced project managers, and a lot of newly hired people in the organization that they really had the potential to become highly experienced project managers, which is a critical role at Aldridge, and how they systematically went about trying to figure out how we can get people from being new, untested talent, and develop them in a systematic way to these more highly professional, highly skilled and trained project managers from a competencies perspective, not just from a technical skills perspective, and he talks about a very systematic approach for doing this that Aldridge did, so a really interesting way about how one organization has, I wouldn't say they solved, but certainly they addressed the talent shortage that so many of us are feeling right now, so let's listen to Vince Racioppo from Aldridge Electric.

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. Today we're talking with Vince Racioppo, who's the Talent Manager with Aldridge Electric. Vince, welcome to the show.

Vince

Hey, glad to be here — thanks.

Steve

So Vince, you've done some really interesting work on one of the things people often talk about, which is really looking at pivotal or critical roles in an organization and understanding what drives success in those roles, so you can sort of build your talent strategies around that. Can you talk about the work that you did at Aldridge Electric, where you've really sort of dove into one role and said we really need to understand what makes people successful in this role?

Vince

Absolutely. This was all driven from our strategic plant at Aldridge Electric, Aldridge Electric is an electrical contractor, been in business since 1952, and has become the largest electrical contractor in the mid west and one of the top 20 in the country. Well, one of the issues that came up in the strategic plan was, the need to create high-performing project managers, high-performing people in the organization in places where they are contributing the most, so we look at the project managers, they're kind of the rock stars of the organization, they're the ones that deliver the revenue, so what we did first was uncovered the expert performance of our top or expert project managers, and then build a model of expert performance from that, and then we looked at, when we brought in SuccessFactors, we looked at the existing competency library from SuccessFactors, matched up the expert performance pieces with the competencies, so what this has allowed us to do is effectively understand the difference that makes a difference, or the core competencies that are the ones that contribute most to the organization.

Steve

So if we went back like four years ago, what was the state then? — you had Aldridge Electric, and maybe you'll talk a little bit about what Aldridge Electric does, but you had Aldridge Electric and these people who were project managers, and people knew they were important, but what was kind of the current state four or five years ago with this role?

Vince

Well, it even goes a bit back before then, but when I came in to the organization to start working with them, they had a group of top performers, a handful of experts, and then a lot of folks in the organization who were very new to the organization, or relatively new to the organization, because there was a lot of expansion going on, and so what we had was top people, bottom folks, but the bench strength in the middle just wasn't there, and so this made it very difficult for the organization to understand how it was going to be successful in the future.

Steve

So it was really an issue of saying, well we've got some people that we know are very skilled, but we have some people that we think have a lot of talent and potential, but we're not really certain how we're going to get these people with potential into these high-performing skilled experienced professionals, so they're trying to close that gap — is that kind of the situation?

Vince

Exactly, I mean you and I have probably seen this in our careers, as most of the audience has, have observed this, that you get folks in the organization and you hire the best and you find out they have tremendous raw talent, but how do you get them from raw talent into expert or top performers in the organization? And so that's what we needed to do, and so, as I said, the first piece we needed to understand was the expertise of high performers, kind of building a benchmark, Steve, that allows the organization to compare all the other folks against the benchmark, and then to produce a path for those individuals that takes them from where they are, this raw talent, and developing highly experience, high performing project managers who can contribute a terrific amount of revenue, and I think we have a great story to tell around that.

Steve

I'm sorry, I just didn't really want to hear that, because I wanted to think when you started that is, when you ask people, what does a high performer look like, what drives performance, you probably ask ten people, you get almost ten different opinions, I would imagine.

Vince

Exactly. The approach is rather unique, we did not ask folks directly what they thought contributed to performance, because that probably would have been wrong. What we did was understand exactly how folks thought cognitively, what they thought about, but got them that performance — what they believed, what they, as I said, thought about, and it turned out to be surprising at some places. The bottom line for it was, we found how people first operated, in other words how they conceptualized about jobs, how they managed the jobs, and there was a lot of discreet information that came out that was extremely valuable for us, so again, as I say, what we did then, as we then took SuccessFactors, and implemented it, we used the competency model but we used the expert performance to drive which competencies we wanted to pay attention to the most.

Steve

So what was the first step? — so you came and you had these jobs, did you first start by doing competency modelling? — did you develop competency models for the jobs to begin with?

Vince

We developed an expert performance model of the high-performing project managers, and so this came out to be a series of both the beliefs of the individuals as well as their strategies around how they attacked the work, and then example behaviours. Let me give you one example, so part of the front end of any job is to understand how that job will be performed, and what we found, for example, was the top project managers had an ability to visualize the project and build it in their heads, almost start to finish, which was kind of surprising for us. As we think about it, it makes logical sense, but it turned out to be an important item, so as those folks were building this in their head, then they could build effective plans that would allow the managers, the project managers, to have a job that was on target, on budget, and on time.

Steve

So did you identify that ability, sort of building the project ahead — was that identified just through talking with them? — or did you have other information that provided you with insight into that? I'm just curious, was it just from doing focus groups that they sort of articulated that? Or did you collect data that provided you with some insight into that?

Vince

Well, I was using tools from neurolinguistic programming, and it's called modelling, and it literally walks through first asking about a person's beliefs, what is important to that person on the job, and then it takes each one of those beliefs and asks about, how does one conceptualize, how do you go through the process, what do you pay attention to? And then from that we pulled together originally a 360 tool, so we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 items on the 360 tool to allow us to understand and benchmark the high-performers, that 360 became the benchmark, and then we could compare the performance of non-experts to the experts, by going through the 360.

Steve

Were there any — when you started moving from that initial neurolinguistic, which sounds like a sort of a qualitative description of high performance, to collecting 360 data, and then use that 360 data to say, well what — did you look which items differentiate high performers from low performers — did that change the original perception of what a high performer looked like, did it bring more clarity to what are the competencies that really make a difference?

Vince

You know, that happened a little bit later in the organization, in that, from these 40 or 50 items, then we put them into larger categories of six items. For example, for a new person entering the organization, we understand that a person to be successful was, they had to have a great deal of background and experience right away in operations, so that would be, how does a job work, how do you get pieces of equipment to the job, how do you get supplies to the job, how do you manage the job, how do you manage all the aspects of a project. So we found out that that contributes to a great deal of high performance after that. Another piece that comes into play very quickly in the first year is financial performance — how well does that project manager understand the financials behind the job? So these pieces, those competencies, the larger competencies of operations and financial understanding, came from our original interviews, and came as larger categories from the original 360 items. And so we've taken, I believe, it's six items that we know contribute to high performance, and as a person becomes more senior, they get more experience, they have more leadership role, more leadership competencies come into play, more customer development come into play, obviously safety is always an issue, there's also the ability to estimate jobs and understand what a job might look like, and how it can be planned, and then executed on the estimating side.

So as part of what our implementation in the SuccessFactors was, we took those six major categories, and we have sub-categories obviously under each one, and we used the performance management side of SuccessFactors to conduct what we call"project manager grading", so the managers grade each project manager on, there's a thousand point scale, so they're graded on each one of the items that's in the project manager grading, and there's about 40 or 50 items, and then we can rank the project managers top to bottom. Now, what's really interesting is, that ranking correlates to revenue produced by the company, so as we look higher in the ranking, those people are producing more revenue for the organization.

Steve

When you look at those rankings, are there certain competencies that drive rankings more, have you looked and said there's certain competencies that are tied closer to revenue than others?

Vince

There are, in terms of performance, and again it's going to be, obviously everybody has to have the operations piece in place, they're going to be the financials correctly, but as the person moves up in the organization, their ability to lead now comes dramatically into play, because of course they're driving bigger slices of revenue for the company. So leadership becomes very important, the customer relationship becomes more important as a person moves up in the organization, so it depends on their rank in the organization, again coming in the door we're looking at operations and financials. As a person becomes more mature, then they become a first-line manager, and their leadership skills come into play right away, and so those leadership competencies drive more business, because they're driving bigger slices, and that finally you're going to see those folks doing maybe more of the customer and business development, so they're bringing business into the organization. So it's very clear what the pathway or the roadmap is for a project manager, and from the day that a person walks in the door, and they get that first 360 or that first developmental plan, they get a pretty doggone good idea about what they need to do to advance in the organization.

Steve

So is there also a little bit in terms of expectation — it sounds like you're saying, look — if you're an early, less experienced project manager, what the company expects from you is different than if you're a more senior project manager.

Vince

Oh, exactly.

Steve

And I think part of that is being fair to somebody, so they take a 360, in for example leadership, they score low on that, and their new employer, it's like, do you say,"Hey, that's OK","Hey, where you are right now — don't worry about that financial operations stuff, that's more important at your point in the career"?

Vince

Absolutely, there are two aspects to that, I think, that are very important: one is, we say to the person, we expect you to score lower on leadership than you would if you were a more senior person; and item two is, which I think is even more important, we'd look at that low score, and tell the individual that it's time for you to start having some opportunities to lead, so that we can develop that competency, that ability, that skill in that individual. So the project manager, or the manager of that project manager rather, will start to look for, search for, focus on opportunities for that person to lead. That may mean taking a bit of a small project or working with a maybe more junior project manager, and helping to direct that person. So one of the nice things about that whole rating system is that it focuses people on what they need to do for the next step, and so therefore that focuses the company on improving and developing its line of project managers.

Steve

Is there a flipside, where as people become more senior project managers, that certain competencies become less important? — or is it like, no, you need to maintain excellence in everything, they all are important as you get higher up?

Vince

The ratings tell us that all of those competencies will begin to come into play. Now there are some people that specialize in estimating they're going to have a stronger bent towards those competencies, and there's some people that focus more on business development, and they're going to have a stronger rating in those areas, but the operations and financials have to be top notch, and be maintained as top notch all through their tenure here.

Steve

So, it sounds like, if I sort of go back and look at it, the organization started out, and it was in a situation when we said, we had some very experienced, highly successful senior project managers, we have a lot of junior undeveloped talent, and by going through and really talking through the senior project managers, using this qualitative technique, you're sort of defining, well these are the things that these really good project managers do, but there's more than one thing — they're able to visualize the job, but they also show leadership, they also show financials; and then you use the 360 process to say, look, we can't expect people to come in from, and be, senior project managers right out of the gate —what are the competencies that are really important at different stages of their careers? — so you sort of have a natural progression as opposed to having unrealistic expectations, if you will, for an early career person? Have I captured the learning that's happened in the organization?

Vince

I couldn't have said it better myself, it really is so clear, I wish in my early days in my career, if somebody had plotted the roadmaps so clearly for me, that said,"You need to pay attention to this, this, this, this, this and this in the organization, you're going to start with these pieces, this is what we're going to help you do next", and the fact for the organization, what I really appreciate, is that it's taken strategy item and strategy item that says, development of the organization that SuccessFactors' implementation has helped us to take that strategy, which so many people talk about developing of people, and make it tactically, behaviorally, a reality, and from the folks I talk to, this is kind of rare, most organizations don't do this, they're not that deliberate about it.

Steve

You're to have a very systematic engineering-like approach, if you will, which helps make success with that!

Vince

Exactly, it is, it's a very systematic, engineering-like approach to human capital management.

Steve

I'm curious, if you look in the organization, you followed a pretty systematic approach to defining performance, and you're just saying, these are the things, these are the competencies that are important, but one of those steps, you said, is you had people do these ratings and these ranking of project managers, and based on that, you sort of said, well these rankings are associated with financial performance — I'm curious if, in going through that data and looking at that, it caused people to sort of say,"Wow — some things that we thought were really important are not as important, and other things that we hadn't thought are important are more important than we realized" — did it change internally in the organization the focus on what a project manager should be at the senior level? — not just at the junior level?

Vince

I'm not sure it changed what we thought it would be, because as we look at this, we say it makes sense, so it's kind of like, the model is so relatively simple, because it's very intuitive, and it makes sense, which is what I consider a good model should be. It's kind of like a lightbulb, I mean you didn't invent it, I didn't invent it, it's a very simple concept, but it took a lot of effort to get there, so once you get there, everybody intuitively understands basically how a lightbulb works, so the nice part about the process that we went through is that, I think it's the terrific part, you prevent the"not invented here" syndrome, so it's accepted into the organization, so the organization looked at leadership, and said,"Yeah, these are leaders, they're scoring at the top level in our leadership, it's reflecting their revenue performance, it all jives, it all fits together like the pieces of a puzzle. So it wasn't an"a-ha" moment as much as a focusing moment, in other words, we saw the pockets of leadership, but we wanted to make it less haphazard about how we created leaders.

Steve

So you weren't seeking to introduce change, you were seeking to really formalize and institutionalize what you were doing well?

Vince

Exactly, and eliminate a lot of the behaviors or activities that didn't contribute to high performance.

Steve

That makes a lot of sense. I have one last question — did you mention that you have a thousand point rating scale?

Vince

Yeah.

Steve

I'm curious, everyone is wondering — what is the thinking behind a thousand — that couldn't have just happened by chance, there must have been some deliberate thought about having it.

Vince

It's not that complex, it sounds like a thousand point rating skills is, where in the world did that come from? — but actually each item is rated one through five, and then they're given a weighting, and then that weighting adds up too. Basically what it says is 100%, and it originally started out as points, because the individual ratings get multiplied by a weight.

Steve

Oh, I had this vision of this massive rating scale and everything.

Vince

Oh no, no, no — actually, the ratings itself takes — and if somebody put some effort into it, they'd probably take 20 minutes or 30 minutes to do one rating, I mean it's not that bad.

Steve

It's not a really long process?

Vince

No, no, no.

Steve

Well Vince, thank you for sharing this, I think it's an interesting story, sort of saying how a company can come in from recognizing a problem, but not having a systematic solution, and really just through applying systematic measurement techniques identify a systematic pattern to start developing talent and communicating what performance looks like, and how people should map out their career, I think it's a great example. How long did this whole process take from beginning to end? — to get started, get it built up?

Vince

Well, the original modelling started about eight years ago, that was when the original model was done, and we put in place a coaching process through that, and it wasn't until we put in the SuccessFactors, right before we put in SuccessFactors, that we added the project management piece of the grading piece, and then ultimately added the SuccessFactors to it. What that has done is make the whole process much more accepted and used and even required, so now we can track, we can ensure that every person is compliant, before we really have a hard time keeping track of that. So if I had to do it over again, I could probably put this thing together in about a year or less.

Steve

Wow, now you have tools available to you that were not available then, but now of course you also kind of know what you're trying to do?

Vince

Exactly, we know what we want to do and how to do it.

Steve

Wow, well Vince, thank you so much for sharing the story of the success at Aldridge, and I think it's such a great example of a clear focus, and I love that idea, I think what to me is really a differentiation of what you've done is that sense of, yeah, we have a standard competency model, but we're very cognisant that certain competencies are more important at certain stages of your career in terms of, we don't expect you to know everything right out of the bat — there's a natural progression, whereas I think most organizations, they have competency models that, equal weighting no matter where you are in your career.

Vince

And I think that's why a lot of competency programs don't work well for companies is that unequal weighting, I mean the equal weighting, and we try to do everything at once, or we don't identify the critical issues that are needed at each stage of a person's career.

Steve

Well, thank you so much — any final thoughts before we sign off?

Vince

No, I do want to say thanks to all the folks at SuccessFactors, they've been great supporters of this process, and if it wasn't for those folks, we wouldn't have been able to get nearly as far as we have.

Steve

Well thank you, I appreciate that, and so Vince, have a pleasant day, and thank you very much for appearing on People Performance Radio.

Vince

You're welcome.

Speaker

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