Humans Are Underrated – Geoff Colvin’s new book

by

I read an article this morning on Fortune magazine’s website entitled, “Humans Are Underrated”.  The article is adapted from Geoff Colvin’s upcoming book by the same title.

The article discusses Geoff’s premise that technology continues to grow at an incredible pace.  Computers are able to perform increasingly complicated tasks that no one ever anticipated them having the ability to perform.  Computers are beating Grandmasters in Chess.  Computers are starting to drive cars. It seems everywhere we turn – computers are replacing human.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Kumar’s Edit http://ow.ly/Q4ztT
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Kumar’s Edit http://ow.ly/Q4ztT

But there is definitely hope…

According to Geoff – humans should stop trying to beat the machines at the tasks that machines are designed to do. Instead humans should focus on developing the skills and abilities that are distinctly human.

He goes into more detail in the article regarding what are the specific skills and abilities that we need to develop to not only survive but to thrive in the future.

It is an incredible read….

I am waiting to get a copy of the book – and I will blog about it in more detail at a later date.

But if you have time – wander over to Fortune’s website and read the article.

You’ll be glad you did….

How Managers Should Say Goodbye to Your Employees

by

Kevin Chou over on LinkedIn Pulse has a wonderful post about how to say goodbye to an employee who is leaving for a position at another company.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Reynermedia http://ow.ly/LPaKq
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Reynermedia http://ow.ly/LPaKq

Kevin writes:

“As founding CEO of Kabam, I take a certain pride in saying goodbye to my employees. But not in a Donald Trump-like “You’re Fired!” way.

When I do my job right, Kabam employees rapidly grow their skills and advance their careers. An unfortunate bi-product is Kabam employees also rise to A-list status with industry recruiters. Retaining high performers is almost as difficult as hiring them in the first place, and sometimes we lose people to other companies. When that happens, saying goodbye is bittersweet. I don’t like to lose valued employees, but I am proud to have given them the opportunity to grow in their careers and become even more marketable.”

Kevin’s words echo the sentiment of a good client and good friend of mine.  About 15 years ago, he said to me:

“Being a good manager is a lot like being a good parent.  A good parent spends time with their child preparing them for the future.  They teach them, challenge them and help that child to grow.  And at some point, the child will “leave the nest” and venture forth into the world.  While the parent will obviously has some degree of sadness when their child leaves – no good parent would ever attempt to stop the child from leaving.  Instead the parent will possess a sense of pride in the future success of that child and rightfully feel that they have helped play a role in their future success.

Good managers should act the same way.”

Sage advice indeed….

 

 

Mark Zuckerberg – The One Question He Asks Before Hiring A New Employee

by

Interesting article over on ABC News re: Mark Zuckerberg’s hiring philosophy.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Jason McELweenie
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Jason McElweenie

The Facebook CEO is quoted as saying:

“I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person…It’s a pretty good test.”

I agree with Mark’s assessment.

One thing I was told early in my career as a Recruiter was that a good way to judge how a Hiring Manager’s competence was was to see who they hired.  Competent managers tended to hire strong candidates. Incompetent managers tended to hire weak candidates.  The reason for this – competent managers want to bring strong, accomplished employees in their departments because they feel that strong employees make for a strong organizations.  Incompetent managers see strong employees as a threat.

So while you may not agree with everything Mark Zuckerberg says, or you may not agree with every change in policy on Facebook, you have to admit that Facebook is a well run company.  And Mark Zuckerberg’s hiring philosophy is a good reason why.

Pay More For Top Talent – A Winning Bet

by

Josh Linkner is a very successful entrepreneur, VC, and bestselling author.

He wrote a fantastic  article about the importance of companies paying top dollar to ensure they acquire top talent.

And here’s the thing to remember – Josh is not some academic theorizing about the value of top talent.  This is a man with a proven track record of building successful companies. He speaks from experience.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © www.flazingo.com/creativecommons http://ow.ly/Isd6c
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © www.flazingo.com/creativecommons http://ow.ly/Isd6c

Josh writes:

As the companies in our portfolio continue to grow, the biggest conundrum for our leaders is hiring top talent. Many find high salaries hard to swallow, especially on a startup budget and when they’re not making as much money as the potential recruits they’re considering. Tough cookies. Paying more for A+ talent at your company is worth the investment many times over, 99.9% of the time.

He continues by writing:

While it’s easy to tally up your “savings” by settling for a B or C-level person, the upside that an A+ team member can bring will far exceed the near term cost difference. When you get down to it, the “risk” of paying up for the best and brightest is simply not a risk at all. Rather, it’s the way you’ll accelerate growth and ultimately win big.

Bottom line – when a person with a successful record of building companies preaches about the importance of paying top dollar to secure the best talent – we would all do well to listen….

To Hire Top Talent – Bring out the Big Guns

by

In their book, The War for Talent, the authors (Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones & Beth Axelrod) wrote:

“What distinguishes the high-performing companies from the average performing was not better HR processes, but the fundamental belief in the importance of talent.”

While many companies subscribe to their belief in the importance of talent – their interview practices suggest otherwise.

One thing that companies need to do when trying to fill a key position with top level talent is to ensure that the “Big Guns” are involved in the interview.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by Laszlo Ilyes http://ow.ly/HFsn2
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by Laszlo Ilyes http://ow.ly/HFsn2

If the position is important and the candidate is an “A” level performer, then senior management must be involved.

In an article from a few years ago entitled “Waging a War for Talent”, Ann Dowsett Johnston writes:

“Last month, Bill Gates went shopping for talent at the University of Waterloo, one of six universities he visited in three days…Call it a one-person career fair.”

The moral of this story?

If Bill Gates (who at the time of the article was still actively running Microsoft) was still leaving the friendly confines of his office in Redmond to help conduct interviews, there is absolutely no reason that anyone in your organization can claim that they are too busy to interview.

I have had a number of instances during my career where a mid level candidate was floored that a VP or President actually took the time to interview them.  And they later admitted that meeting senior management during the interview process was one of the key factors in their accepting the offer.

Obviously – this practice needs to be used judiciously.  A company can’t trot out senior management for every interview.

But when trying to fill a key position, bringing out the “Big Guns” can mean the difference between hiring the best person for the job as opposed to simply hiring the best person applying.

 

 

The Importance of Hiring Top Talent

by

 

One of the great truths in life is that superior talent, whether on the playing field, in the Executive Suite, or in the laboratory, usually wins in the end.

Good Coaches – and good Managers – have always intuitively grasped this concept.

Alfred Sloan, the former head of General Motors once famously said:

“Take my assets, leave my people, and in 5 years I will have it all back.”

 

CC Image courtesy of Creative Commons -U.S. Army Photos by Tim Hipps - FMWRC Public Affairs http://ow.ly/Hzq1s
CC Image courtesy of Creative Commons -U.S. Army Photos by Tim Hipps http://ow.ly/Hzq1s

 

Yet, the question remains, exactly how much difference does talent make?

In the mid-1990s, consulting firm McKinsey & Company set out to answer that question. After interviewing hundreds of executives and extensively studying numerous companies, the consulting firm reported having strong talent in key positions creates huge improvements in performance.

For instance, top Plant Managers grew profits 130% while the lowest performing managers achieved no improvement; the best Center Managers in Industrial Service Firms grew profits 80%; and Portfolio Managers in Financial Services institutions grew revenues by nearly 50% while average performers’ portfolios remained flat.

But the positive effects of superior talent extend beyond improvements at the individual and/or departmental level. The most striking effect of talent is seen on the company’s bottom line. The consultants at McKinsey stated that the companies that excel in talent management achieved total returns to shareholders that were 22 percentage points better than the average in their industry.

The difference talent makes is striking.

The concept that superior talent enables superior results is not something that we need to only grasp intuitively.

The data shows that companies with better talent are not merely better than their peers – They are vastly superior to them. 

2014 – America’s best year of job growth since 1999

by

2014 ended up being America’s best year for job growth since 1999 according to a post by Matt Egan and Heather Long on the CNN website.

According to the post:

“More than 2.95 million jobs were created last year, according to the latest figures from the Department of Labor.

It’s encouraging news as the U.S. tries to put the Great Recession and sluggish recovery solidly behind it. Many economists expect 2015 to be equally as strong, if not better, for job seekers….’American businesses are on a hiring binge,’ said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. ‘It clearly suggests the economy is on a much stronger growth track than the first four years of the recovery.'”

But the news wasn’t all good.

The article continues:

“While job growth continues to pick up steam, wages have not. The government said average hourly earnings fell slightly in December from the previous month.”

Nevertheless, while wage growth has been negligible, the overall jobs situation is still much stronger than it has been in years.

And that is good news for all of us….

The Importance of Talent

by

I came across an interesting post on the Wall Street Journal site on how ‘Talentism’ is replacing Capitalism.   You can read the article here.

The post quotes Dr.Klaus Schwab (founder of The World Economic Forum), who stated at the opening of the 2013 event in Davos:

“Capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate – and therefore by human talents – as the most important factors of production. Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent. Talentism is the new capitalism.”

The author goes on to write:

“Bob DeRodes, executive vice president and chief information officer for Target Corp., agrees. ‘In my 40 years in information technology,” Mr. DeRodes says, “I have never seen the battle for talent more heated than it is right now.” Asked why, he says, “It’s because more companies realize that technology talent is make-or-break in today’s world.’ “

Great business leaders have always understood the importance of Talent. Alfred Sloan, former head of General Motors once famously quipped:

“Take my assets, leave my people, and in 5 years I will have it all back.”

Bottom line:

No matter how well crafted company’s business model is, no matter how brilliantly conceived a company’s Manufacturing process is, they are worthless without the right people to implement them.

Superior talent always wins in the end.