photo by sflovestory
We’ve written a lot about why we think chemistry matters. RoundPegg, after all, is all about finding people who will fit on your team without creating a cloud of chaos around them. The better people fit into the team, the more energy they can spend driving the team forward instead of playing politics.
Kevin Millar, former Boston Red Sox, was recently signed by the Chicago Cubs. While he plays a position at which the Cubs need a backup, the odds of him making the big league team are incredibly slim. He’s fourth on the depth chart where only two will play with the big club. Plus, he’s advancing in his career and hasn’t hit much in the past few years. He was signed strictly to set the team’s mood in the clubhouse over the six-week stretch of spring training.
Millar’s take: chemistry matters.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Is team chemistry overrated?’ Well, you tell me. You’re with 25 guys more than your family from basically end of February to October. That’s not overrated. You try to bring a team and a group together. When you get everyone pulling on the same rope, it’s exciting.”
Last year, the Cubbies signed notorious clubhouse cancer Milton Bradley and paid the price. He’s the epitome of how companies often hire. An ‘A’ player by all statistical measurements, but little mind was paid to whether he’d fit in with the rest of the guys in the clubhouse. While impossible to attribute Bradley’s antics to the Cubs 14-game decline from 2007 to 2008, it’s obvious the front office has gotten the message and is determined not to repeat that mistake. Clearly, they lay some of the blame on a chemistry experiment gone bad.
Baseball is a unique sport where every play is a series of one on one battles. Between the lines, I’d go so far to argue that chemistry matters less in baseball than in other sports. Or your company. But as Millar points out, you live with these guys. If you don’t like being around them it’s going to be harder to bring your best every day.
The Cubs are willing to spend potentially up to a million dollars to set the right mood in the clubhouse. Meanwhile, your company is probably more dependent upon teamwork than any baseball team. How much time, effort and money are spent aligning your culture, your team and getting the most out of your employees?
photo by dbking
Hiring is a headache.
Dr. John Sullivan’s latest post at ERE pulls together a ton of shocking numbers that should convince you we need to find a better way.
50% new executive turnover — nearly half of new executive hires quit or are fired within the first 18 months at a new employer (Source: Corporate Leadership Council).
50% of the processes users (both managers and new hires) later regret their “buying” decision (Source: The Recruiting Roundtable). In addition, 25% of new hires later regret taking their new job within one year (Source: Challenger, Gray)
66% regret hiring decisions — Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers come to regret their interview-based hiring decisions (Source: DDI)
Hiring and retaining below or even average performers have real opportunity costs because top performers can increase productivity, revenue, and profit by between 40% and 67% over average performers (Source: McKinsey & Co.)
Only a 19% success rate — only one out of five of the process output can be classified as unequivocal successes (Source: Leadership IQ).
Basically, we’re not good at hiring, we regret most of the decisions we make, there’s a big difference in contribution between average and good people and the people we hire are often unhappy we choose them. That’s pretty damning.
A good hire requires finding someone with the skills to do the job AND the right person who can thrive in your company’s work environment. Our guts don’t adequately assess the latter because inevitably we revert to deciding whether the candidate is one we can imagine having a beer with after work.
Again, why we created RoundPegg. RoundPegg will objectively and rigorously identify which candidates will function best with your company’s culture, with the work team and the hiring manager. We just released the first version of the application. If you’d like to learn more please drop us a line at employers [at] roundpegg [dot] com.
photo by antkriz
Dueling philosophies on hiring and employee retention at the latest Web2.0 conference (via WSJ Blog).
Mark Zuckerberg touted the Facebook culture of hiring entrepreneurially inclined people who burn brilliantly and then fade away (presumably of their own volition). Tony Hsieh of Zappos provided the counter philosophy of finding the folks who fit the culture and aspire to stick with the company for 10 years or more.
Who is right?
Both. The key that makes both of them right is that everyone is aware of the culture. Each CEO knows exactly what they’re looking for and how to identify it. Success is achieved by aligning the culture/working philosophy and getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
Corporate success comes from recognizing what you want to achieve and defining the culture accordingly.
Facebook is about changing our relationship with each other and the Internet. Thus, they need people who can conceptualize a radically different world and execute to get everyone there.
Meanwhile, Zappos is about customer service. So it makes sense that Zappos creates a very cultivative company. How employees are treated is how they’ll in turn treat customers.
There aren’t necessarily good or bad cultures. But there are good or bad cultures for you.
The ability to explicitly describe what each company is looking for enables people to opt-in or out of the application process. And that same explicitness enables everyone hiring at the company to hold all applicants up to the same light and identify the ones who will be successful by honoring the company’s philosophy.
Unfortunately, most companies can’t state their cultural philosophy as passionately or clearly as Zuckerberg and Hsieh. And, it’s not much of a surprise there aren’t many companies doing as well as these two either.
photo by pattyequalsawesome
Sometimes you run across derivatives of the same idea from multiple sources and it gets you to stop and listen.
Two recent examples have come from Netflix and Miles Davis.
Ultimately, it’s about how best to maintain a leadership position by enabling those around you to explore new boundaries. Leading and corralling rather than managing.
Netflix has posted a rather lengthy, but worthwhile slide show about their culture and how they work. They put it best by asking their managers to provide ‘context, not control’ (slides 76 - 84). In essence, describe where you want to go, not how you want to get there.
And The Miles Davis Story (as relayed by a friend) explored Miles’ proclivity to assemble talented musicians, set the mood for the evening and then walk around the stage as they do their thing. His job was to capture each individual’s wandering explorations and create something cohesive out of it. Sometimes it worked brilliantly. Often it didn’t. But his purpose was to create something that hadn’t been felt before. To do that you have to be willing to try things that don’t pan out.
It takes a unique type of person to be able to lead in this manner.
It’s no wonder that people who are at the top of their game are attracted by this environment. If you’re looking to set the direction for your industry then it’s a leadership style worth considering.
photo by mrpattersonsir
Work is draining. For many, rare are the days when we leave the office feeling energized.
As a manager you have to recognize that people are going through this. Chances are you are too. But change has to start somewhere.
Sure, technically your job is to make sure the ball is being advanced down the field. But if your team is too exhausted (or detached) to run the plays how far is the ball going to move?
Your real job is to make deposits into the emotional bank so that when the inevitable time comes when the team needs to hunker down and everything has gone sideways that people are present, engaged and have the persistence to get through the rough patches.
From the employees perspective, they have gone out of their way to make the relationship work. They started in their role excited and ready to roll up their sleeves and make a real difference. But every slight along the way has made a withdrawal on their emotional involvement with you, the team and with the company.
It all adds up and you may be responsible for making many of those emotional withdrawals. If you expect them to dig in then you need to exert the energy to refill that account.
Focus on your people. Feed them the projects that keep them energized. Recognize they’re all different and build those relationships accordingly. People do want to be treated differently. They’re not all the same and not universally motivated by the same things.
Start today. Hold one on ones that don’t focus on tasks but rather the individual. The work will still get done.
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