IN THE ARENA...

For the love of humanity...!

2008-05-21T10:24:00.012-04:00

I love getting to know People -- their achievements, their hopes & dreams, their purpose and passion in life.

I love getting People excited about the mission.

And most of all, I love helping People align themselves in order that they make their maximum contribution to humanity by self actualizing themselves through their work.

Humans have a need for productive contribution to society. This is a beautiful thing and all People should be making use of their greatest talents, skills, preferences and interests for the advancement of their own abilities and to contribute and thereby make the enterprise and society better.

This I have come to realize is perhaps one of the greatest contributions a leader can make...

To help People see the forest and the trees, to help see the vision of a better world and self...

The Art of Recruiting

2008-05-14T22:44:00.002-04:00

Nary is the art of recruiting so important as when making the transformational, A+ level recruit.

Like the championship game, you need: a strong gameplan, everyone involved to play their position well, to execute on the basic fundamentals and most importantly - the human creativity to adapt your selection process to seize the moment, to create special moments or the right experience for your candidate.

We're fortunate to be on a winning streak with 5 key leadership recruits being closed within 6 weeks.

Here's how we're doing it:

1) Research - target & source the right candidates. Always post on TheLadders first even if you have to post a 'Confidential' job posting.
2) Process - use the TopGrading methodology and appropriate assessment tools.
3) Product - Remember it's not about your needs, rather about THEIR needs. They are making a purchasing decision of an employment product for which they will pay with their their livelihoods. They need a full understanding of that employment product. Craft an interview lineup so that every meeting and interviewer has a specific message and purpose aside from assessing the candidate. We meet and prep every interviewer so they understand their mission going into each interview.
4) Service - Check in with your candidate after every interview day. Ask them if they have any thoughts, ideas, questions or concerns about the Company, the job, the People they've met. Get a pulse on their interview experience. Think of your candidates as customers.
5) Customer Experience - the candidates experience is a result of a creative production intended to give the candidate the right experience. Adapt your process to achieve more than just information transfer about the Company and job and rather to achieve the right interview experience for your candidate replete with a magic moment or two.

Beyond assessment and selection, the art of recruiting is a combination of attaining the insight into a candidates desire for self actualization, executing on a planned interview strategy, and creating a candidate experience that makes them feel warm and fuzzy in the same way that a beautiful work of art does.

Think and feel like an architect, painter, chef or musician...

Hiring the 'BEST' Athlete

2008-05-13T16:04:00.001-04:00

You hear this alot in start-up land. The concept evades people sometimes, so I hope to provide some clarity here:

1st - it comes from the NFL draft and college recruits.
2nd - it's the idea that you hire based on overall 'athleticism'. In the context of work that means people who can be effective in taking on additional responsibilities and/or different roles.
3rd - this should not be the criteria for a specific search, rather the deciding factor between the top candidates for a position.

And, lastly, the notion of hiring the BEST athlete is mostly for the early days of a start-up. In the early days of the start-up, hiring best athletes is great for establishing the DNA of the organization.

As business and demand continue to pick up, the need for 'division of labor' and 'specialization' will invariably require you to hire more specialists with deep specific expertise... Hiring then should have some basis on competency and behavioral assessments. At TheLadders we like the TopGrading methodology.

Alignment

2008-05-13T14:50:00.000-04:00

Alignment is the key to victory. (Alignment is also the key to recruiting great people - post on this coming soon...stay tuned!) Alignment takes courage. Most leadership teams won't do it. I see the lack of alignment all the time. I saw this when I was SVP at HotJobs and the polite people from Yahoo! came in to run and transform our triple digit growth into single digit growth. They created so much confusion and malignment between what was decided in Sunnyvale and what New York was allowed to do. I see it when A+ talent come in to interview with us from "top companies" with big brand names here in New York, NY. They are often deflated from this agony of non-alignment. They carry still their hopes, dreams, values and beliefs. They aspire for greatness still. They are tired of being frustrated. They want to execute. They want to make an impact. They don't want bureaucracy or political disarray or dysfunctional leadership -- all symptions of this non-alignment between what leaders "say" is important (external measures) and the reality of their half-hearted actions. It crushes their hope of achieving external success. I feel their pain. It demotivates and eventually brings business to a grinding slowness. The A+ talent leave for a place where they can thrive...we accomodate as many as we can.

In the war for business success -- product launches, deadlines, project kickoffs, customer acquisition, conversion, product lifecycles, costs, features and functionality are the battles for market share and just some of the measures of external success.

You cannot have external world success without inner world alignment.

The inner world being composed of your hopes, dreams, values & beliefs.

This holds true for individuals as much as teams or working groups.

Understanding the inner world is not enough, it's important to reconcile and align the inner world drivers with external factors like deadlines and resource constraints.

Great leaders help their people bridge the gap between the inner & external worlds...they contextualize the victory...

In business and in war it is the indefatigable pursuit of high victory and creating alignment between our hopes/dreams and what we are prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve these external measures as if our lives depended on it that makes all the difference in the world. Because in the final analysis, if it's not worth fighting for or not worth doing right...then shouldn't you be doing something else...?

Validation

2008-05-12T12:45:00.002-04:00

In the workplace, validation is more important than affection.

I interview strongly qualified candidates about their illustrious careers.

I dig to find out about their real aspirations and desires for self actualization through work...

Too often, I find that People get caught up with the need to be liked or the need to like their peers, colleagues, leaders, staff. This gets in the way of good business and proper decision making. When people spend too much time managing around emotions, very little gets done. Suddenly, the most productive People are mired in useless meetings to make people feel good about decisions. Decision-making gets delayed, postponed, rescheduled...too much time being spent trying to make nice with People.

Generally, I think humans have trouble sorting out trust, respect & validation.

Awareness of communication styles and working preferences is the key to a better social structure in the context of work.

It's incumbent on leaders to determine who gets to make which types of decisions, who must weigh in, and who plays a supportive role on decisions.

I see this in our own growing organization of more than 230 great human beings.

I'll take the liberty here to state how I see it:

Trust comes from knowing that everyone on the team/partnership wants the same thing (to win).

Respect comes from knowing that everyone on the team/partnership brings something different (skills, styles, communication, preferences, etc) to the team.

Validation is the act of hearing and/or recognizing ideas, insights and/or suggestions regardless of an employees level. The simple act of hearing & recognizing the Truth, no matter who speaketh it is so important and yet can be very difficult for leaders.

Affection comes from an appreciation for the differences that People bring to a conversation and the human sensitivity that helps People reconcile their differing views in order to achieve that 'same thing' (to win).

It is possible to have very strong success with only trust and respect; these are the most important for working well together and are required for effective leadership.

Affection is not a requirement for good work or leadership. It is, however, what creates great teams and legendary leadership. This is the stuff of greatness.

Validation is the key to achieving it.

To achieve it requires understanding, self assessment, self awareness, active listening, and performance feedback.

Why 'in the arena'...?

2008-05-08T15:55:00.000-04:00

A wise and successful guy for whom I have tremendous respect said something quite interesting to me a few years ago..."the best advice doesn't usually come from the 'advice-giving types'..."

I processed that comment deeply and over the ensuing years validated it at every opportunity.

In fact, I've stayed away from the 'advice-giving types' in favor of people who have actually excelled and mastered areas of focus in which I have interest.

These people, "The Masters" tend to be too busy to give advice. They tend to be...in the arena.

in the arena...

2008-05-08T14:41:00.000-04:00

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

-- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States of America