Kirk Hallowell – How to talk talent management with your CXO

Steve

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. This week we spoke with Kirk Hallowell, who’s a principal for MatchPointCoaching.com, which is a succession planning and consulting company, and I had an interesting conversation between two seasoned talent management professionals, if I can call us that, about how do you get attention of people like CEOs and other line of business leaders in talent management concepts, and I’ll tell you, for me I like all the podcasts I do, but this was very interesting in terms of really getting me to think exactly how is it we’re able to get the attention of people that aren’t in talent management to give more focus on talent management concepts, and the power of stories, and weaving stories and using stories to get attention about talent management systems and processes, so let’s give a listen to Kirk Hallowell from MatchPoint Consulting.

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. This week we’re speaking with Kirk Hallowell, who’s the Principal of MatchPointCoaching.com, which is an organization focusing on coaching and succession planning. Now, Kirk has been working in the field of talent management for over ten years, he’s worked with Lomager and PDI, done a lot of work mainly in the area of succession planning and assessment, and Kirk is going to be sharing with us some stories about how he has seen companies successfully answer the classic question of, how do you get the attention of C level leaders, and so Kirk is willing to share some of his experiences, because I know this is something that so many people in talent management struggle with, how do we get a seat at the table, and what does it take to really get people who really aren’t talent management professionals to take talent management seriously.

So Kirk, thank you very much for appearing on People Performance Radio.

Kirk

Thank you Steve, I appreciate the opportunity.

Steve

So, before we start talking about the topic of getting the attention of non-HR senior executives, can you tell us a little bit about your background, and why are you qualified to talk about this topic?

Kirk

Well absolutely, well I’m a developmental psychologist by academic training, and spent a number of years in academia teaching and doing research on cognitive assessment, and then moved over to the field of business, my first position was Director of Research for the Amoco Management Learning Center, where I was responsible for determining the return on investment for learning, and particularly the $8 million investment that Amoco made every year in its executive trainee program, and from that platform I launched a career in really helping organizations assess the effectiveness of educational and talent management and talent development programs, and linking that investment to return for the organization.

Steve

So right off the bat, I can imagine telling a CEO, “Do you want to talk to this educational psychologist”, and their eyes rolling up in their head – no offense!

Kirk

Absolutely.

Steve

How have you, both personally and with companies you’ve worked with, seen people be successful in getting C level people engaged in talking about talent? Can you share some stories?

Kirk

Sure, well here’s the key and the connection between being a developmental psychologist and a measurement person, and what I know is how to set up systems and processes to measure developmental outcomes, and so the key to getting the attention of the C-suite is to be able to put a dollar sign in front of the independent variable that determines the outcome of what we’ve done in terms of investing in people.

So I think a great opportunity is to illustrate that principle is one of the very first reports that I made to senior executives at Amoco about their investment in learning and development, and I had an enormous amount of data based on months of research about what factors accounted for variability in productivity as an outcome of that learning experience, and I prepared enormous amounts of qualitative and quantitative data, put this huge presentation together, and during the presentation I alluded to one particular story in which a team of finance people from around the organization had got together and saved Amoco £80 million over five years, based on constructive, or the way they refinanced a particular debt, and that story was sort of thrown in there. Well of my all great analysis and insight and great evidence that proved that the investment in the Amoco Management Learning Center was a good investment, it is that one story that carried the day, and I assure you this day, if you asked people from that executive group, what the value of the organization it would be, it would be probably that one particular story.

Steve

I think that’s a great example, that really resonates with my experiences too, where I get very enamored with debt analysis, but at the end of the day I think people tend to think more in terms of anecdotes and stories. Is that then something that you’ve found in general, that the key is to come up with a very compelling story and then have data to back that story up?

Kirk

Absolutely, and I think that’s the key, is that people make meaning out of narrative. Data in itself can illustrate narrative, but people will interpret that in a context of narrative.

The other thing that I think was compelling about that story was that there’s a dollar sign attached to it, and I think if you had to point to one thing that would open the door to the C-suite is being able to tell a compelling story with real data that has that dollar sign in front of it in some meaningful way.

Steve

I think that’s true, I think also maybe in the dollar sign relative to discussion is that it doesn’t have to be some really, depending on the story you have, you can either have, the business plan is showing this input variables related, this output financials variable, and systematically we’ll see this kind of increase in profitability, but I think as you’re talking about stories and bringing that dollar sign to it, one of the things that strikes me just listening to you talk is that the dollar sign doesn’t necessarily have to be some, they send some rigorous mathematical formulae, often the most powerful ones, can be where you have a story of some specific thing that an employee did that led to a lot of financial return, base and tie that to some HR talent system, so for example, one retail company I’ve worked with had this story about how an hourly employee had put in an idea that made this company over a million dollars, and the reason they were able to capture that idea is they put in a process for collecting employee input, but simply the story is, look, this one idea generated this much, over a million dollars for us from this person who’s paid £10 an hour, and the reason that we got this idea was because of this process, so it wasn’t like a really rigorous financial analysis, it was more like a really good story with a dollar sign in it, and then linking it back to an HR process.

Kirk

Absolutely, and I think at the same time, one of my frustrations has been that as I introduce more statistic headed analytics approaches that take in various data points and look at variances in performance and regression analysis or linear regression analysis or making some of these more statistical connections, it seems like I’m losing more credibility with the C-suite instead of gaining it, unless by chance you have a particular academic or a C-suite where individuals are trained in research methodology and can really appreciate that.

And then as you go down in the organization, I find that line managers tend to be more skeptical about data that’s backed by more rigorous and more sophisticated statistical analysis. What’s been your experience?

Steve

Well, this sounds like me, this is very counter-intuitive, I think that is definitely true that you can have certain people that are swayed by very anecdotal stories, obviously like the best analysis ROI program in the world can be completely undone by one golf game a CEO plays with the wrong person, but I think it does vary tremendously, depending on the CEO or the CFO, although I think it’s shifting, if you look back again, have you found when you’re talking to different senior level leaders, is the story that resonates with the CFO different than a story that resonates with the COO or a CEO? Have you found that certain stories work better with different kinds of people?

Kirk

Absolutely, and I think there’s usually within the C-suite group, there’s someone that’s sort of identified as the person who’s knowledgeable about a particular kind of information, and people tend to defer to that individual, so it could be the CFO who looks at things from a rigorous financial aspect, or it could be the CEO who looks at things more from a strategy or competitive analysis, but there tends to be, when you’re presenting to the C-suite, an individual who is the gatekeeper of truth for that particular kind of information.

Steve

So it’s really trying to figure out who is the analytical thinker on the team, and making sure that you speak to them appropriately, they’re the one that’s going to ask about, “Where’s the data that backs this up?”.

Kirk

Exactly, and it’s what kind of data that’s so important.

Steve

Can you share any stories you’ve had where you have seen some senior leaders really making decisions based on intuition or a gut feel that were wrong, and you were able to make them realize, hey look, this intuition you’re making really isn’t based on what the data would tell us, and get them to take that seriously?

Kirk

Yeah, I think I see a lot of that happening right now with downsizing decisions, and I think that one of the key challenges that right now organizations are making is, they’re looking at downsizing decisions based on cashflow, and they’re responding in a very nervous way, as they’re publicly held to Wall Street analyst expectations, and they’re doing anything to save share price, and they’re making, in some cases, quick decisions about reducing headcount with the idea of improving balance sheet and improving quarterly performance, and in some cases admittedly some of these companies are making life-saving decisions by staying afloat by making headcount, but I think one of the great challenges that executive suites face right now is really thinking beyond the current financial decisions, a certain situation, and really thinking through on a longer term basis what cuts in headcount now are going to mean for the potential growth of their organizations when things start to turn around, and that’s one of the key messages that I know that Eric Bergerin and I have been working on is really understanding investments in human capital from an asset perspective, rather than just a cost perspective.

Steve

I think that makes total sense, I think the challenges, getting people that are sort of union organization, through as numbers on a spreadsheet more than as groups of people, and nobody thinks totally one way or the other, but a continuum – how have you been able to talk to somebody who’s very budget-oriented, very financially-oriented, and very focused on the tangible costs of people, and is not as comfortable talking about the intangible value of things like loyalty? – getting them to put a little more credence to that, what’s the key to getting them to take that conversation seriously?

Kirk

Well, I think the key to making that conversation or making that real is actually to think about people in the most dispassionate economic terms, which is to actually understand them as assets, in the same way that we would make decisions about intangible assets, and that’s where I’ve been doing a lot of writing and work in education, and that is to help that CFO who is looking at the balance sheets, but has understood from their early financial training that their goal in business is to maximise return on investment and assets, and when they start looking at people and the spend which could be 60 - 70% of their total operating spend, as not a cost but as an investment, and then thinking about return on investment in the human capital as they would any other asset-class investment, you start helping them understand the connection between investing in people and building things like loyalty, which translates to consistency, customer service, reducing turnover, cost, and you help them start to understand how that human equation actually impacts the bottom line.

Steve

I think that’s a good way of approaching it, I think it’s an interesting thing about getting people to think about talent differently, as you know, talent is, when I say the word talent, loyalty, commitment, engagement, are all very emotional-sounding words, but I think if done appropriately, it’s a really very cold sort of mathematical exercise, these measures that we’re using to look at employee engagement happen to be measuring something called an engagement is not what’s interesting; what’s important is that these numbers, for whatever reason or wherever they come from, are associated with certain employee behaviors that are associated with certain success, so it’s like I used to do a lot of staffing work, and at the end of the day I really don’t care what personality traits it measures, I just care what it predicts.

Kirk

Absolutely.

Steve

And I think the challenge is maybe, when talking to somebody who’s very focused on financial numbers, is say look, all we’re looking at is expanding the number of numbers that you have to predict financial outcomes, and there are a lot that look at talent that you could use, and maybe that’s probably one of the challenges is, there’s a tendency to assume that people care why the number works, and sometimes I don’t necessarily think they do.

Kirk

I would agree.

Steve

So, what about lessons learned in terms of times when you’ve tried to engage with senior level people, and it hasn’t worked, it’s backfired? Have you had any, “Wow, I’ll never do that again” type experiences?

Kirk

That’s a good one, I think they’d had less to do with numbers and more to do with style of interaction, or obviously there’s times where you wanted, as a consultant, you’re always looking for that balance between challenging the current view, and at the same time not getting yourself into political pressures or challenges between prevailing points of view within a C-suite, and so probably the only areas that I can think of have been places where I’ve maybe pushed a little bit too hard, or been a little bit too forthcoming with a particular point of view, without understanding how perspectives lie in that particular constellation of thought.

Steve

I would think, in your succession planning work, you must see a lot of that, obviously, right or wrong, politics is going to play a big role, especially in senior level succession planning. Based on that experience, what advice would you give to the enthusiastic talent management professional who said, “Wow, I’ve finally got a chance to talk to the CEO and their direct reports about this project I’m working on” – what advice would you give to them when they suddenly find themselves with that seat at the table, even if it’s only for five or ten minutes?

Kirk

Absolutely, well I think it’s a very simple and basic aspect of consulting and in all interactions, and that is to focus on at least two-thirds listening to one-third stating, and I think the deeper understanding you have of the way a CEO in particular thinks and makes sense of their business, to remember that somehow, believe it or not, they’ve been successful without you to this point, and whether you agree with their perception or not, that is the way they think and operate their organization, so coming to a clear understanding of that before adding advice or direction to that system is absolutely imperative, and that’s probably where I’ve made my errors in the past, is not fully understanding a CEO’s perspective before I push forward.

Steve

I think that’s good too, and I know it’s real, is that painful truth that the world in fact does revolve without us, whether we want to admit it or not!

I like that comment about, understanding how the CEO views the organization – how can you quickly figure out, when you’re working with a senior leader, what their philosophy or perspective, or how they tend to view the world, are there any questions or things that you look for that will help you say, “How is this person wired, and what should I focus on and what should I avoid talking about?”

Kirk

Right, well when I work with any senior executive, but in particular C-suite, what I want to understand is, how do they make decisions? What data do they take in to mind, are they the kind of individual who’s going to make decisions based on very cool, aloof procedural analysis of the situation? – or are they, at the other end of the continuum, going to make a lot of intuitive, gut feel decisions? – and that’s a really interesting process, particularly in succession planning, where you have a CEO who really has been successful to date by making gut feel decisions, making a lot of internal promotion decisions, and when you introduce the idea of bringing objective data and process to that decision-making and perhaps challenging some of his decisions or her decisions based on that data, that can be an interesting challenge to communicate.

So again, I think it’s really understanding what kind of data do they look to, and how do they analyze that data to make a clear decision.

Steve

Well, I think especially when you’re dealing with ones that are more intuitive, when you have ten times more the analytical focus, that’s going to be more of a challenge. vSomething is, just hearing you talk, two books that I think are really well-written, although there’s always limitations to go and buy, Malcolm Gladwell, the book “Blink”, and then the book he just came out, with “Outliers”? Blink is interesting because it’s a discussion about the power of intuition, how it can be powerfully right and powerfully wrong, but the other one, Outliers, which just came out, one thing that struck and really we were talking about is having this story, like the story of the financial group and how training impacted it, where saying that people who are very successful, it’s never entirely due to them, that there was something in their environment that allowed them to be successful, and a lot of what talent management is about is creating the environment that’s going to promote success, it’s going to encourage success in people, and I think that that might be a general key to really engaging people outside of talent management to start with a story of somebody who is very successful that they want to emulate, and then track that back and say, “Well, here’s how talent management programs can create more people like that.”

So it’s an interesting book, just was hearing you talk, I think just recommend it to the audience, I think it’s an interesting book, “Outliers”, which talks about the influence of the situation, because there’s a tendency, and I’d be curious in your thoughts on that, for people to naturally go, “Well, if somebody is an A-player, or a successful executive, it’s them, they’re a born leader, they did it”, but in reality, if you probe back, they probably came from an environment that supported that.

Kirk

Absolutely, and Steve, that’s an area where I’ve gotten myself into trouble in the past, in consulting firms where there’s a great deal of emphasis on assessing performance or potential as individual characteristics, and my sense is that both performance and potential are characteristics that are expressed with an interaction between the individual and their environment, and so an A-player who may be coming from, let’s say a sales organization, who just gets results and gets the numbers and motivates their organization, maybe have demonstrated remarkable performance and potential in that position, but move them to a corporate role where they’re going to have to manage the implementation of a sales program and going to have to engage design, marketing, production and play well with others, they may fail tremendously, and I think you and I have probably seen situations like that, so the whole idea of what performance and potential are is absolutely based on environment and interaction.

Steve

So a last comment as we close this up, and trying to get somebody who doesn’t spend a lot of their time thinking about talent, certainly at the level that somebody like yourself would think about it, but at least trying to get them to open up and engage in the conversation, and have this discussion so they can understand what the organization can do systematically to improve their talent – what have you done in the past to help people engage in the conversation? I like your comment about one-third talking, two-thirds listening, but are there certain things that you’ve found are effective to get a operations focus leader to stop and say, “You know, I want to understand more about why some people are successful and other people aren’t?”

Kirk

Yes, well I think you brought up one good point, and that is helping people understand their own story, and understanding what’s helped them to be successful and help them to understand how their circumstances, their environment, a particular boss or mentor, has been instrumental in making them successful, so if they can relate to things in their own careers that have differentiated, then relate those back to the kinds of things that you’re proposing, that’s always helpful, and then in general I think any time that you can get people to understand success stories and understand how programs have worked in the past, and get a line of sight again into that narrative of how a particular program or approach or an assessment or succession plan or development process has made a difference, and they can get a clear understanding of that and relate that to what’s going on in their organization, you can catch their imagination and their attention.

Steve

I think that’s a good point to end on, this is an interesting conversation, Kirk, because it’s something that everyone struggles with, which is how to get basically people outside of talent management as interested in and excited about it, at least maybe partially, as we in talent management are, which is so much about this reaching out to line leaders, and really what I’ve heard from you, and tell me if this is a good summary, is the key is, get some really good stories that they’re interested in, and then show them how those stories didn’t happen by chance.

Kirk

Yeah, oh I like that, I think that’s a great summary, yeah, by design.

Steve

You get those stories by design, so well, we’ve been speaking with Kirk Hallowell from MatchPoint Consulting, thank you so much, Kirk, for spending some time with People Performance Radio, and look forward to talking to you again.

Kirk

Steve, I appreciate it, thank you.

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.