Moneyball for HR

photo by j9sk9s

Three years ago this month I started the research behind RoundPegg.  I’m a bit of a baseball nerd and love the assorted flavors of statistics that have brought evidenced-based management to the sport.

My goal was to help business professionals replace some of the subjectivity within talent management with statistical rigor.  We are still on step 2 of this process now, but the vision hasn’t changed.

At the risk of seeming narcissistic, I thought it was a good time (given Moneyball’s huge box office opening last weekend) to trot out a soliloquy I wrote to my soon-to-be business partners about the opportunity we had to make an impact.

———RoundPegg: The Beginnings———–

I’ve been thinking a lot more about RoundPegg’s place in the changing the future and why I get so fired up about all this.  I tried to elucidate the concept through an incoherent story I told on Friday about the conversation I had with a friend at the Houston Rockets and how they were using statistical measurements to assemble teams to predict the outcome of highly inter-connected interactions.  Particularly in a sport where individual success often comes at the expense of team success and the stats reported are selfishly obtained.  Like our workplaces.

Coincidentally that same conversation he and I had was recently played out by Michael Lewis (author of MoneyBall) in what makes a tremendously long article to read online, but if you’re into sports or using statistical measurements to build teams, an interesting one.

With that, I hope, a better explanation of why this is so huge and the direction we could take this is such a game-changer.

Ultimately, I see RoundPegg completely changing how people work together by changing how we evaluate, grow and utilize people.

Where we begin to de-emphasize previous experiences (having already done a task) and recognize the inter-connectedness of our work teams and the importance the ‘softer’ skills play on our work outcomes.  Where we stop managing and supervising and start coaching and leading.  Where we let people put their strengths to use and the current ‘managers’ are only there to herd energy and keep the bus running straight.  I wrote a post on why I thought this was important over the weekend.

A couple sentences that illustrated this point for me in the NYT article:

“Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding.”

What we’re trying to do now by making sure we get the right people on the bus is just the beginning.  It’s vital and quite lucrative, undoubtedly, but if we succeed in forcing the conversation to acknowledge that our working relationships are as much or more important than the tasks I’ve previously completed then it’s a foot in the door and we can continue that story into the workplace.

After that it comes down to providing the tools for personnel development on an ongoing basis.  Eliminating the bullshit, demoralizing annual review and collecting regular data on our performances, like box scores, that will enable organizations to develop and get more out of their employees and allow RoundPegg to collect data about how we all work together and what drives success.

We’ll be able to recognize whether someone is a net positive or negative to a team regardless of what his individual track record may be.  We can identify strengths and weaknesses in a far more objective measure than ever available before.  We will be able to put them in a position to capitalize on their strengths, figure out the secret sauce behind work teams and cobble them together for organizations in a way that drives the business like we only hope for today.

We’ll also change what we acknowledge as contribution.  Our organizations will foster collaboration as a way to move ideas forward instead of internal competition (e.g. boxing out the right guy so your teammate can grab the rebound).  And we’ll be able to measure the intangibles.  Where it’s not always the guy who speaks loudest or most or with the most conviction who is construed as having the best ideas.  It comes down to evaluating people for their unselfish play that often gets overlooked now.

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It’s been fun to re-read this.  Our vision remains and we’ve made a lot of progress to the goal.  But, obviously, this is something that is going to take time, but we’ll get there…for the good of us all.

Introducing HR3.0

photo by mysza831

RoundPegg was mentioned on NPR’s Marketplace program last week talking about HR3.0 in the context of the hiring process.  (Disclaimer: we may very well have made up the term.)

Despite that, we fervently believe in the idea behind it and want to define it a little more detail.

HR3.0 introduces transparency to the job search/hiring process.

Even with more of the hiring process moving online, we are only just now beginning to catch up with where the process was in the offline world 15 years ago.

That’s not to say the digitization and transition online hasn’t improved the process some.  But it’s mainly recreated what’s already existed into 1s and 0s and improved things at the margins (see after the jump for a brief history of the online job industry).

HR3.0 marks the day when the power of the Internet is brought to bear to actually do things that were difficult, if not impossible, to do in the offline world.  HR3.0 starts the process of changing the game.

At its core, it is about transparency.

Transparency to ultimately figure out whether you can work successfully within a company or whether a job candidate will return you a positive ROI.

That includes peppering who you know and their contacts for information on working at a company or peppering shared contacts to get the real scoop on a candidate.  It also means having the ability to drill deep into a company’s real culture or a team’s sub-culture or drilling into whether a candidate will be able to work well with a team.

Changing jobs/hiring is a massive commitment and one where the deal is typically sealed after a three dates.  If a job seeker makes the wrong decision the downstream effects could derail the individual’s career path for a couple of years.  And a bad hire costs a company a ton of money (~150% of compensation) and has ripple effects throughout the team.

The commitment for both sides though is largely psychic though.  Will a new hire ruin a team’s chemistry?  Will a new gig and manager make your life miserable?  Team politics (used neutrally – every team has them) can be crushing for a new individual who doesn’t quite fit.

Being able to put more of that work-style information in the hands of the players involved means better decision-making (usually).

LinkedIn and apps like BranchOut have made it much easier to be proactive in the process.  It’s much easier to collect information about potential managers and candidates alike to begin painting the picture of what working together may be like.

We at RoundPegg are taking an exhaustive, objective approach to help companies understand their culture and who best fits while GlassDoor has started on the other end and offers candidates a peek behind the wizard’s curtain.

Ultimately it all paints a better picture of whether the grass really is greener.  Calling provided references is a joke and asking your uncle’s college roommate what it’s like to work at GloboCorp is a silly, invalid data point of one.

The Internet is helping reveal the true drivers of workplace success and providing both sides the opportunity to do things differently (and better).

Welcome to HR3.0.  This is just the beginning.  It’s going to get really damn exciting especially when these approaches start to converge.

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Morality’s Place in Leadership

Jason Seiden always has insightful posts on leadership.  His latest on A Fistful of Talent that good leaders must be amoral in order to be successful misses the mark for me, however.

While I wholly agree that leading and morality are largely independent, I bristle at the inference that leaders must be free from shackles of morality in order to be effective.  Leaders of all kinds exist including those who are amoral or even immoral (i.e. Hitler, Charles Manson).

photo by kristalynn

But, I’d suggest that there is a connection when you speak of the world’s most effective and enduring leaders.  Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi and Nelson Mandela inspired millions into action, accomplished the seemingly impossible and have a spirit that moves others to this day.  They did all this while following strict moral guidelines by which few others would have been able to abide.  Hence, one reason why they remain such lasting and inspirational figures.

Indeed morality doesn’t define a leader, actions do.  A leader is so deemed because they are uncompromising in aligning their actions to their beliefs.  The power of their leadership is in their words and actions.  The more true the former ring and the more consistent the latter, the stronger the leader.

Yes, anyone, regardless of moral standing, can be a leader.  But by defining a leader as one who gets someone to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise distorts the definition for the sake of expediency.  Going into battle is the fulfillment of an explicit contract not changing behaviors.  If anything, a leader is one who gets someone to do what they didn’t think was possible.

Mistaking titles for leaders is also a straw man.  Not all Presidents, Generals or CEOs could or should be classified as leaders.  In both war and business there is an explicit agreement made in which I will get something in exchange for my services.  My presence on either a battlefield or in a conference room means you’ve upheld your end of the obligation and I am now doing the same.

So please don’t think that your desire to be or status as a leader gives you a hall pass to act immorally.  Nor should we strive any less to be moral in our leadership.

If you want to be a leader align your words and actions.  If you want to be a great leader align your words and actions with your morals.

Yes We Can

“This is our moment.  This is our time. …To reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we are one.  While we breathe, we hope.  And where we are met with cynicism and doubt…we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the people: Yes we can.”

-Barack Obama

We are at a crossroads in our country’s history.  We have allowed divisive issues to define who we are and, in the name of freedom and false hope, have forsaken many of the pillars upon which our country was founded.  But last night we took the first step down the very long road to reclaiming the soul of our country.

That journey won’t be easy and there will be missteps.  But we will not be making it blindly.  Or alone.  We have walked this path before, we’ve merely forgotten.

And now we have somebody who can inspire us to lift our foot when we are tired.  To overcome when we meet obstacles.  And to help our neighbor when they cannot go on.  For this is a collective race, not an individual one.

While we are mired in war, on the brink of environmental disaster and have a rapidly collapsing financial system we must still take the next step.  We must come back together.

To solve these problems we must to collectively believe again.  To work together again.

This election had nothing to do with experience.  Or policy.   It was about finding the right leader.  Finding the person who could inspire a nation.

And last night was more than breaking racial barriers.  It was more than engaging a generation just now coming of age.

It was about restoring America as a beacon of hope for people the world around.  And particularly for everyone of us living under the fifty-starred flag charged with keeping the lamp lit.

For without hope, success means nothing.  Without hope we are merely individuals.  And without hope we leave our children and their children nothing.

Hope can unite us and can make us a collective once again.  Today we take the first step away from being 300 million individuals fighting for our share and the first step toward being the united America that has overcome every challenge put in front of us.

On September 12th, 2001 we bonded.  We vowed to remember that feeling.  That sense of purpose.  We were reminded of what mattered and the American Dream was reinvigorated.  We realized the American Dream wasn’t about accumulating wealth or a house or a bigger SUV.  Nor was it about living an easy, comfortable life.

In fact, the American Dream isn’t really a dream at all.  It is a way of thinking.

The American Dream is about making ourselves better people.  The better people we see in our dreams.

Rooted in that is the belief that merit triumphs.  That you can’t keep a good man or woman or country down.  And that standing on the shoulders of men does not make one a giant.

The American Dream is hope.

And yet, that feeling slipped from our grasp.  That feeling and our bonds were rooted in the tenuous emotions of fear and uncertainty.  Two emotions with which our country has little collective experience dealing.  And it tore us apart.

The last decade has been difficult.  The challenges we now face are enormous.  But this election showed that millions of people are ready, willing and able to get behind something.  To take a stand and believe in the American Dream and the country they love once again.

Today, November 5th, is a lot like September 12th.  We again have a collective notion of what hope feels like.  We have the clarity of vision that comes from focusing on what it takes to be the better people we see in our dreams.

Most importantly, we now have a leader who can remind us of this feeling, of the better us and who will enable us to begin to live again the American Dream.

This time that feeling and our bonds are rooted in hope and optimism.  Two emotions that are inextricably woven into the our social fabric.  This time we are focused on what is possible, not what is scary.  This time, I hope, it is here to stay.

Remember this feeling.  This moment.  For this is the moment when we rediscovered who we are.

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Update: Consider subscribing to the Office of the new President’s blog.

Revising the Electoral Process

Last week I made my second political donation ever and it immediately dawned on me what a dumb idea that was.  Why should any of us fund a campaign?

How is a campaign funded by the people any different than one funded by lobbyists, big business and blue bloods?  The candidate funded by the former may not be as beholden to contributors, but in either case, the election is still being purchased.

And what do we the people get for that money?  Smear attacks, intentionally misleading information and/or outright lies about the opponent’s intentions and a distillation of talking points into a 30-second television spot rather than a discourse on real beliefs and ideas.

(To put it into perspective: spending for the 2008 presidential election alone is going to top 1/700th of what it apparently costs to bail out the financial industry or it could fund a war in Iraq for 3 days 2 hours and 24 minutes.)

If we ceased all advertising for political purposes (even and especially 527s) what would we be left with?

Put the politicians back on whistle-stop tours.  But, not being a total Luddite, I would also like to still see them debate, blog, vlog and tweet (if they must).  The difference is pulling versus pushing the message.  In this new world, only the people who cared would get it.

And I cannot believe I am going to publicly admit this, but George Will and I share a belief.  In a diatribe about early voting he says, ‘…surely the quality of the electoral turnout declines when the quantity is increased…’  That is true of everything, not just voting.  As soon as you broaden the circle beyond experts you are going to dilute the quality of a decision.

Now, I will not advocate eliminating early voting, but I think limiting how the ‘presidential’ messages get out will effectively limit voting.  After all, the politicians can no longer police themselves.  We have officially arrived at the point where one of the parties believes that if they say something enough times it makes it true.   And the rest of us do not care enough to actually learn the truth.  Instead, we rely on biting sound clips, false Internet chain letters, 30-second lies and ranting radio talk-show host buffoons.  Our reward?  A collective dumbing down of the process, our leaders and our country.

I do not want to disenfranchise anyone.  But there should be some litmus test.  So long as they care enough to look behind the curtain they should vote.  This is not a red/blue thing or a rich/poor thing.  This is an American thing.  This is about getting people more involved in the process.

A great country should be ruled by a set of ideals (which we used to have), not by the emotionally manipulative and misleading crap we see on television.

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Public Service:  Check the facts about the claims you hear.