RoundPegg Available via Jive Software
photo by Mel B.
[Self-promo alert]
We are excited to announce that RoundPegg is one of first few companies to partner with Jive Software on their new social business platform.
The RoundPegg application is currently available to Jive consumers and allows employees to assess their cultural values, personality and communication style.
This matters because business is social. Now more so than ever.
It’s rare these days that our success is truly our own. We often have to lean on others in order to shine (and vice versa). The more effectively we can tap into how others operate the more successful the result.
Too often, frustration mounts when we seemingly can’t get through to others. That makes it difficult to get through to people who operate differently.
RoundPegg enables Jive’s 15 million business professionals to share their psychometric results with one another and get specific actions detailing how to improve their professional relationship to get the best out of their reports, peers, managers and vendors.
For a limited time, the RoundPegg app on Jive will improve the inner workings of all Jive customers for free. Over time we will also provide companies with the ability to quantitatively assess their culture to understand what cultural values truly drive the differences in performance as well as the opportunity for customer companies to identify which candidates best exemplify their culture as well. (All of this can already be done via RoundPegg by contacting us at TellMeMore@roundpegg.com.)
Until then, let’s all understand our differences and work better together.
Sales People Are People Too
photo by AMagill
Neil Davidson at Red Gate Software had a great post the other day on their new approach to compensating salespeople. In sum, they’ve stopped assuming salespeople are only motivated by money and have begun compensating them like everyone else.
Not only has this cut down on the time it takes to manage the process, but it has eliminated unintended, but perverse, incentives and helped to align their sales team with the rest of organization.
As Neil’s post mentions, fear is not a good motivator. And as I noted a few weeks ago, neither are extrinsic rewards.
Sales people aren’t all that different from everyone else in your organization in that they have values which motivate them and they have professional goals they want to achieve.
In many cases, the exorbitant rewards that come with the ‘eat what you kill’ mentality are a stand-in for something else. Recognition. Though they work outside of the company’s walls more than others they want to be a part of a team and be recognized for doing a great job.
With apologies to Adam Smith, that is human nature.
We’ve boiled recognition down to money because it’s the easiest thing to do. Rarely is it not valued. But it’s typically not what is most valued.
When rewards (for anyone) come in the form of legal tender then you’re bound to lose them to a higher bidder when one inevitably comes along. You wind up attracting mercenaries when you really want people who are dedicated, engaged and work well with others.
So let’s stop taking shortcuts to motivate our employees. Money is nice, but most people just want to know that they are being fairly compensated and that when they do a good job that they will be recognized in a way that is meaningful to them.
It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more effective to try to identify people’s goals and then align the rewards to help meet them.
While I don’t know if Red Gate’s approach will work, I’d like to believe it will. It just feels right. I would love to read a follow up post on how this works out in another several months once the existing sales pipeline has been turned over.
What are you thoughts? Will it work?
Promoting Experience, Not Abilities
It never ceases to amaze that seemingly progressive companies still have, ahem, ‘guidelines’ for how long an individual must be in a particular role prior to being considered for a promotion. Unless you’re running a prison, time should have no bearing on your decision to move someone beyond their existing role. (Though in fairness, it may feel like just that to the people in the organization.)
photo by daniel james
I touched on how ridiculous this practice is by equating to the sports world several months ago, but I wanted to take a deeper look at why this practice is far dumber than it sounds.
- Weeding out your stars. The best people want to be challenged. They want to learn new things and be forced to step up their game in order to succeed. If you’re bright, highly effective at what you do but aren’t challenged and have no prospects of being challenged until you log the requisite service time then you aren’t going to stick around. Good people have options. Bad companies do not.
- Losing your edge. Service time often comes along with a checklist whereby various tasks need to have been completed. All this translates into stocking your company full of passive bureaucrats who accept that ‘that’s the way things are.’ If you’re looking to succeed within your industry you have to constantly be redefining the rules of the game in order to fit your strengths. Success is rarely bred from people who accept the status quo.
- Breeding helplessness. It doesn’t take too many repetitions for one to learn new behavior. If after knocking a couple projects out of the park and wildly succeeding there is no reward then that extra effort will rapidly diminish. Other than personal pride, what’s the point of doing excellent work if it’s not rewarded? Promotions based on service time are an implicit statement to your employees that it doesn’t matter how well they do so long as they do it for a long time. You’ve completely taken an employee’s control over their own destiny out of their hands. That helplessness rarely concocts innovative solutions, creates new ideas or pushes ahead. (See Motor Vehicles, Department of)
- Failing to develop home-grown talent. Why bother coaching your stars if they still have 24-months prior to even being considered for doing more? It provides such a convenient out for managers that they’ll inevitably grab it. Coaching is hard. It isn’t rewarded. And it takes time away from doing the ‘real work.’ In the long run you’ll feel as though you have to keep hiring from outside to fill the gaps in your organization because you didn’t spend the time early on to fill those gaps. You also don’t truly understand what you have in your talent pool because you haven’t pushed it.
Feel free to disagree and tell me how wrong I am, but this is a mindset that I just can’t seem to understand. The more I try, the more frustrated I get. Over to you…
Brown-Nosing, Sycophantism & Sucking Up
We’re all guilty of kissing ass at some point. We laugh at a boss’ joke that isn’t funny. We concede that an idea might work despite it’s obvious (to us) flaws. But what is that ingratiating behavior costing us?
Not much as it turns out. Despite the article being titled Workers “Sucking Up” Bad For Business: Experts the only evidence given shows what a boon it is to workers:
- 20% more likely to land a job when ingratiating themselves to the hiring manager
- 64% more likely to get appointed to a corporate board
Forget for a moment, what that does to a business. What does that say about you and I that we are so easily fooled? We think we’re smart enough to evaluate people based on merit, but obviously we’re susceptible to a little ass kissing. This means in all of our evaluative efforts where our subjectivity comes into play (hiring, annual reviews, promotions and firing) we can’t be trusted.
photo by mallix
We need more rigorous and objective measures in terms of who to hire and who to promote. While it’s impossible and foolhardy to do away with human measure in these areas we too often think we’re God’s gift to intuition and therefore aren’t willing to allow another objective data source to interfere with our decision-making process.
So back to why this is bad for business. Sure, group think is a problem. Yep, it fails to reward good ideas.
But it’s also a vicious circle. When we promote the suck ups it’s because we don’t have the self-confidence to firmly stand behind our own decisions. Likewise, the people sucking up will be the ones who can’t get ahead on the quality of their own thoughts. This creates an organizational weak-mindedness that dumbs down innovation and work quality. And in a knowledge-based company that trades on its ideas that’s a deathblow. Inertia will carry you along for a while, but the friction of the marketplace and the internal competition to see who can suck up best will grind you to a halt soon enough.
For all the leaders out there, don’t succumb to the sycophants. If for no other reason than it points to your own obvious flaws and weaknesses. Have a little self respect and self confidence. You’re better than that.
Make Performance Evaluations Useful
photo by sassyart
When have you ever come out of a performance evaluation more energetic and ready to kick some serious ass for your company? Doesn’t matter if it is glowing, that one negative (because there always has to be something) will sit with you and fester.
This has been on my mind for a while. It is, after all, a multi-month process that is only this month coming to a head for many companies. After running across an old post from Bob Sutton, the head of Stanford’s d.school, where he wondered about the usefulness of performance evaluations it was time to chime in.
Performance evaluations, as most are implemented, could not be more detrimental to our organizations. Period.
Showing incredible restraint, I’ll limit my rationale to ten reasons. They,
- create internal competition amongst people who need to work together
- give manager’s an out for not giving consistent on-going feedback
- deliver ‘feedback’ that often comes completely out of the blue
- mandate we stack rank everyone on the team, even high-performing teams
- often use misaligned goals as a yardstick (or defunct goals established 12-months prior)
- are not consistent between groups under different managers
- are useless for promotions since those are often dictated by the manager who fights hardest for their employee
- often measure the interpersonal intangibles for which training and support is rarely offered
- reaffirm an ‘us vs. them’ mentality
- are highly susceptible to the failings and neuroticism of the evaluating manager
- bonus: are incredibly subject to recency biases
Not just useless, but counter-productive.
Try holding a weekly review instead. Set aside 15-minutes at the end of the week for some two-way communication and focus on the individual’s own goals and their effectiveness within the team. I’d suggest knowing and reviewing goals on both sides weekly and then answering questions that will help make your relationship more productive and keep the employee engaged.
Some starters:
- How much progress was made in helping the employee reach their stated goals
- How could you be more effective in helping the employee accomplish, learn, progress
- What opportunities would the employee like to take on
- What did you appreciate
- What went really well
- How effective was the team (team success or lack thereof is also the individual’s)
- What didn’t work for you (keep this short, provide a clear example and demonstrate why it wasn’t the most effective approach)
- What did other team member’s do that helped the employee be better
That said, if you lack sincerity, don’t come prepared to these meetings or are just looking out for number one then these will still be worthless.
Being a coach (translation: manager in today’s archaic vernacular) means prioritizing your employees and helping them reach their goals in the context of the company’s. It’s not easy. You’re serving two masters. But there aren’t too many people who can do it well so it’s a huge opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves and our companies.
Some performance evaluations may work for what they were designed to do. Regardless, I’d still suggest they be done weekly instead of annually.
