Talentism

Fixing Recruiting Over at Glassdoor

If you have a good idea about how to make recruiting work better for candidates please leave a comment over at my post on Glassdoor. Your input is appreciated.

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Looking for a Good Recruiter

Note: I am frequently at odds with myself over posting something such as the following. I count many friends in the world of recruiting, all of them dedicated professionals who care about the value they deliver. And yet I can't help but feel that our profession is at a crossroads that many are ill-equipped to face, no less capitalize upon. It is my hope that these postings help prepare us all for our likely future.

The Clearview Collection (the name of the group of bloggers over at Glassdoor of whom I count myself fortunate to be a part) is primarily targeting candidates rather than recruiters. My purpose for the most part is to get candidates to take control of their careers, building on the theme of Brand Talent. My post this past week over at Glassdoor explained how a candidate can evaluate whether a recruiter is worth an investment of time. 

I started out writing on Glassdoor as a way to connect with candidates, to understand what they are thinking and feeling and to offer my meager advice about how best to take advantage of the changing world of work. But a funny thing happened on the way to that objective: my posts have become a Trojan Horse enterprise, sneaking better candidates into the world of the recruiter. I found myself believing that raising the candidate's game may be the only way to get recruiters to confront the realities of their changing industry.

From where I sit, the millions of hours and dollars that have gone into providing recruiters with improved tools and processes have largely been worthless or wasted. It is not that all the work and advice is without value. It is that the value is not keeping pace with what the market needs.

Imagine if Chevrolet started marketing a car that they trumpeted as "every bit as good as the 1955 Corvette." The 55 Vet is a classic. Compared to a Model T, it was a huge improvement in transportation capability and value. But consumers today are faced with higher gas prices, faster travel speeds, more populated roads and longer average commutes. Therefore the average consumer doesn't pine away for an equivalent of a car that is 54 years old. They require high-mileage, trouble-free vehicles that has creature comforts that make the long suburban commutes bearable.

My latest post over at Glassdoor talks about four things that good recruiters look for in a candidate: business focus, problem solving, agility and purpose. Continuing with the car analogy, this is what I would expect from a recruiting Camry. This is what I believe the average business buyer demands. Nothing fancy. Just the basics. Unfortunately I would have to equate that level of capability to a recruiting Rolls Royce. The recruiting Camry isn't functionally superior to the Model T.

I base this conclusion on my own experience, not on the scientific method. I know of only two recruiters that even attempt to evaluate candidates for their abilities I listed in the post. It is not that they are incapable of doing so. It is that recruiters are caught between two worlds: what they were taught and what is needed.

What recruiters were taught is that hiring manager satisfaction is their number one priority (of course this is a generous assessment - there are many people who believe that recruiters continue to be taught about various tricks for putting butts in seats, many of which do no credit to the profession). The implicit assumption behind this teaching is that hiring managers are wise buyers of recruiting services. And I guess if you are a third-party recruiter you have to assume that whoever is signing the checks knows what they are doing. But if you are a corporate recruiter, you exist for the benefit of the business (rule 18), not the benefit of the hiring manager. The implicit assumption is that the hiring manager really knows how to best attract, engage and optimize talent. That is patently untrue.

Most hiring managers are too busy to understand the depth of their ignorance in the area of talent. They fail to understand the potential value of talent to their organization at the same time they over-estimate the risks of not homogenizing and controlling their teams. They write poor specifications, fail to understand biases that hurt their operational effectiveness, employ sub-optimal hiring processes that hurt organization productivity, evaluate risk improperly and fail to learn from previous hiring failures. This is the customer for recruiting services: march to their tune at your own peril.

This is the recruiting Camry: recruiters blindly accept job descriptions that are thrown their way by harried and distracted hiring managers, scanning resumes for keywords that they don't understand, eliminating candidates based on the "don't fit" criteria that they can't explain, and treating candidates like cattle. And this is not just in the trenches - I run into a lot of executive and retained search specialist who exhibit the same behaviors.

The entire system of recruiting (recruiters, candidates, management, consultants, specialists and hiring managers) continues to reinforce these behaviors even though they add little value. Woe be to the recruiter who dares challenge a hiring manager, or demands that a candidate stop bs'ing them and answer some questions directly. I am not saying that the needs of tomorrow are easy. But the problem remains: a recruiter who merely responds to quixotic requests from ignorant customers is bound to be automated or outsourced.

The standard retort to this indictment is that I don't really understand recruiting. I am glibly told that transactional recruiters will always be in demand because those same harried managers don't want to have to deal with talent problems themselves. The recruiter may not be doing brain surgery, but what they are doing is valued. The people who say these things are dangerously mistaken.

At the turn of the 19th century there were more people employed as household servants than as almost any other profession except farm laborers. The advent of household self-service destroyed the domestic help industry. Technological advancement always displaces work. Today I type my own memos, book my own meetings, arrange for conference rooms, book my own travel and manage a budget. How many of those tasks do you think were done by executives in the early 70's?

Transactional recruiting is a costly luxury. As costs continue to be eradicated more work will continue to be pushed from specialist (i.e. recruiters) to internal clients (i.e. hiring managers). The same trend that reduced the steno pool to a distant memory and that demolished the number of secretaries and AP clerks to just what is necessary to manage the work that hasn't yet been automated will inexorably reduce the role of the transactional recruiter. The technology exists to make this a reality today, but the corporate will required to force hiring managers to take the load has not widely existed. That is changing as companies look to deeper cost control as a competitive advantage. And that is the reason that what recruiters were taught and what is needed is growing into an ever widening gap.

But all is not lost. There is still a huge market opportunity for talent services. The changing world of work is challenging hiring managers too. Good hiring managers understand that just as manufacturing needed to bring in supply chain, robotics and computer control specialists to increase throughput, most hiring managers will need to bring in talent specialists to provide the capabilities needed to redefine who specifications are created, talent sourced and engaged, people motivated and organizations formed.

The two recruiters I mention above are already delivering this service. They force their clients to be clear about their desired business objectives, require that inefficient and ineffective talent practices be modified, challenge bad specifications based on their deep knowledge of the industry, the company and the businesses needs. They operate as true consultants, winning the trust of their clients so that when they have to deliver the hard news the client is open to change.

These recruiters usually don't have direct candidate relationships, because they know that this is increasingly the role of the corporate sourcer and the hiring manager themselves. Instead they are the translator of the businesses objectives into talent specifications, practices and processes that can be implemented, measured and improved upon rapidly. They don't just own the client relationship - they own the client's success. They take accountability for failure to make the numbers. In short, they are an integral part of the business. They are the ones who are truly at the fabled table.

And now to the punchline: Dolby is looking for someone to be the talent consultant for the sales and marketing organization. Put another way: I am looking for a good recruiter. Do you know of any? Would you be willing to loudly proclaim their existence in the comments section of this post, quickly desrcibing how this rare individual has already been delivering the next generation services that are described above? Or, if you are too shy for that public display, would you be willing to send me an email at jjhunter@gmail.com with your narrative and link to your public profile? And if you are in the market for a talent consultant, know what they are and how to use them, please let me know that as well. Creating a market for this higher-value recruiting is the best possible way to ensure the longevity of the profession.

Tom Friedman Gets Talentism

5 years. Hundreds of posts. Thousand of pages. And Tom Friedman does it better in just one editorial.

Let me boil down what Friedman's piece (and Talentism) is all about:

• America cannot compete on price.
• America cannot borrow its way to prosperity.
• America is uniquely able to innovate, but nothing is inevitable.
• Organizations that commit to maximizing creative productivity (innovation) will create jobs and continue to grow our standard of living.
• Organizations that compete on price will continue to ship jobs overseas.

America is a consumerist nation. Consumerism: borrowing money you don't have, to buy things you don't need from companies you don't trust. We are experiencing the inevitable consequences of the tragic illusion that every marketing campaign has sold us for the last 20 years: that we are inevitably great, that we can buy our way to happiness and that if it feels good it must be right.

We must move to Talentism.

Organizations that are committed to innovation (Talentist organizations) will:

• Remove the artifacts of Taylor, Sloan and their progeny, including compensation plans, organizational hierarchies, job descriptions and performance management. We must summon the human spirit, its resilience and creativity, if we are to grow our way out of our present situation. You cannot achieve economic greatness by making people do things they think are wasteful and stupid.
• Do something about education to get us away from believing that by being better at math and science we will be able to compete on price. (If you want to know what education should be all about, check out Dr. Tony Wagner's book The Global Achievement Gap - I have listed his "Global Survival Skills" at the end of this piece).
• Commit to implementing the "Principles."

It is an economic certainty that we will continue to see a declining standard of living, and a precarious economic situation for our children, if we don't change the way we do business: the way we create, sell and employ. We cannot borrow our way to prosperity, and we cannot compete on price. Fortunately, we still live in the best place to innovate on earth. There is hope. But we must act.

Dr. Tony Wagner's "Seven Survival Skills"

• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving 
• Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence 
• Agility and Adaptability 
• Initiative and Entrepreneurialism 
• Effective Oral and Written Communication. 
• Accessing and Analyzing Information 
• Curiosity and Imagination 

John Lennons, The Future of HR and Talent Camp

John Lennon was a great musician and a bad business person. Anyone reading the recent Rolling Stone piece on “Why the Beatles Broke Up” would be struck by this. But the fact that Lennon hired bad management, broke up the group and did other generally silly things doesn’t really matter. Given his body of work, the fact that he wasn't Jack Welch doesn't seem important.

Great artists are rarely great business people. For every Picasso there are a hundred John Lennons. This doesn’t seem to prevent great artists from existing, and some times even thriving. But HR may be standing in the way of John Lennon joining our band. This is a subject I hope my compatriots at Talent Camp will discuss, even though I may not be present.

As we have discussed before, business tends to look at work in vertically integrated slices. A job title and level covers an increasing scope of capabilities. A Vice President of HR may be expected to have a great eye for talent, the capability to negotiate complex contracts, the analytical ability to assemble complex compensation structures and the knack for coaching CEOs to greatness. Everyone takes for granted that as one climbs the ladder that they have demonstrated proficiencies in an ever greater number of areas. HR writes job descriptions, selects talent, manages performance and compensates people based on this deeply held assumption.

But this vertical integration means that we never get someone who is great at just one or two things. And this is preventing us from developing agile, competitive and productive organizations.

Imagine an HR leader who has just one competency: coaching. Whenever a search firm is looking for talent, they always land on this person, because they have been a long-time leaders at a very successful company. And yet, as the firm digs into the individual’s back story, they hear a long string of complaints: doesn't understand compensation, bad manager, doesn't understand technology, etc. We know where this story ends: the search firm passes the individual over and heads to the vertically integrated example of "executiveness."

But what if this leader is the John Lennon of coaching: the best in the business? This leader gets the CEO to do the right thing nine times out of ten. In fact, the reason that their company is so successful is because this leader has John Lennon's ability to create hits, but instead of writing and playing a guitar, our theoretical leader creates hits through their unique coaching ability.

Because this mythical hit maker doesn't fit the mold of the vertical genius HR is likely to pass them over. How would you compensate them? Where would they fit in your organization? Who would they report to? How would you measure their success? What the heck would you do with John Lennon?

This is why the HR of the future will have to change the structure of the organization. In the creative age, no company will be able to turn away John Lennon. And the company that puts in systems and supports that turn your average Joe's into John Lennons will have competitive advantage.

Finding, unleashing and commercializing these talents will be the key to sustainable innovation. HR won't care that the “John Lennon of Coaching” can't manage a team, program a system or develop a compensation plan. Why would they? There is a "John Lennon of compensation" and a "John Lennon of systems". Expecting someone to suboptimize what they love and are good at so that they can climb a ladder that requires a broad spectrum of adequate mediocrity will be (must be) a thing of the past.

Many will point out that the present business structure of hierarchically stacked positions with every greater vertical integration won't support this vision. They are right. HR will have to become "system architects."  But the system that will be established isn't going to be easy.

The system we need is a series of interconnected nodes, a network, not a hierarchy. People will be able to access the nodes given the problem they are trying to solve or opportunity they are trying to create. This networked-based system is often dismissed as being unworkable due to its chaos and inherent risk. But these naysayers fail to understand that the present miltary-type organization is simply unsustainable. It creates too much waste. It pays people for delivering a whole host of capabilities, none of which are world-class or market leading. Organizations simply can't afford to pay for something which adds little value.

Unfortunately, HR is largely engaged in other conversations. Engagement to prevent the coming recovery exodus, moving jobs offshore to help the CEO with their operational cost obsession and helping the CFO meet the street's expectations by changing compensation plans seem to be at the top of most HR leader's list of priorities. Unfortunately this will leave them at a significant disadvantage when the CEO finally realizes that none of what they are doing will help their organization compete on value in a global market.

HR's obsession should be creative productivity: increasing the creative commercialization opportunity of their talent investments. Here are some questions that such a new "creative productivity-centric" HR organization might ask:

• What is a person’s unique capability? Where are they “John Lennon”?
  
• What is the value of that unique capability to the business?
  
• What does that unique capability say about a person’s purpose (their sense of direction towards achieving a larger goal)? How has this been exhibited through previous work (the portfolio)?
  
• How does that purpose align to the organization’s purpose?
  
• Assuming that the purposes align, that the capability is unique, and that the business can effectively commercialize that capability to achieve its purpose, how will that individual’s work be integrated and supported so that they are as productive as possible?
  
• Assuming that you can solve for all that, how do you connect that “John Lennon” node into a network that will both utilize that unique capability AND challenge that individual to constantly grow and extend that capability into other areas that could be of value? How do you set up a structure that gets the maximum unique creative value from that node?
  
• And finally, how do you compensate that individual for the value they add (not the position they hold) in a way that is uniquely meaningful to the individual (give them a uniquely compelling return for the successful investment of their capability)?

Notice that these questions do not even remotely touch on identifying managers, putting people in boxes in an org chart, training, engagement exercises, detailed global compensation plans, performance management, feedback, employee relations, benefits programs, back-office systems or any of the other standard tasks of today's HR department.

And yet, only HR is really positioned to do this work. A functional manager cannot possibly see their way to this future vision, since they suffer from the problem of vertical integration even more than the HR professional. And executive leadership is heads-down worrying about operational cost management and the other obsessions identified above. Finance, IT? Only HR is ever called on to even think about topics like this.

And after all is said and done, it boils down to this tension: the opportunity of an incredible future of value and innovation being held back by the reality of a transactional and misguided present. How do we all help get HR to that new future? How do we help create a million John Lennons with a million different unique value propositions, helping our companies commercialize creativity and build global advantage?

This is what I am hoping gets discussed at Talent Camp.

The Future of HR, Susan Burns & Talent Camp

When I hear my good friend Susan Burns talk about talent I become inspired. She speaks passionately about the disconnect between executive management and talent, about people preparing to jump the corporate ship once the economy reaches better waters. She recognizes the fundamental disconnect between corporate actions and corporate words: people may be every businesses top priority but there is a growing feeling that there is an inability to put meaningful deeds behind those words.

Unfortunately, HR stands in the middle of that conundrum. With “Human” right in the name, there is a growing expectation that the HR department can develop new, insightful and consequential ways to increase talent engagement. But the disengagement does not arise from a lack of enough generalists or a failure to provide enough development opportunities. The disengagement is structural and systemic and can only be solved by rethinking the value and system of HR.

The problem is hard to describe but easy to capture. Simply ask the following question: “Who is accountable for productivity in a company that wins through innovation?” I still haven’t found anyone who can answer that question. For me, it is clear: HR. It is the only logical place that productivity ownership can sit. The CHRO is really the next COO, even if the well-intentioned people who found themselves detoured into HR on the road to their dreams shrink from this characterization.

The HR of truly great thinkers like Ulrich, while being significantly better at helping the organization than the picnic and payroll personnel organizations of days past, is fundamentally ill-equipped to take on this challenge. Engagement is just the latest problem that shows the basic quandary with the modern HR organization: policies don’t prevent risk, reviews don’t increase performance, compensation doesn’t motivate, programs can’t convince people to give their soul to the organization, classes don’t instill creativity and agility doesn’t come from management fiat. Everything assumption that HR uses as its operational foundation is being swept away in the current of momentous change. The function’s inability to turn around a bad engagement situation is a symptom of that problem, not the cause.

Productivity in the Creative Age starts with getting alignment between the purpose of the organization, the purpose of the individual. It continues with identifying and aligning the return requirements of talent, customer and financial investors. It ends with defining waste as work that doesn’t add value to the shareholders, the market and talent simultaneously. When innovation is the only way your organization competes in the global market, we can no longer afford the arbitrarily wasteful belief that an individuals' commitment born of their passion is second to shareholder return. Talent’s commitment is everything: you cannot have business success without personal success.

This new HR is an incredibly difficult job, requiring deep understanding of behavioral economics, finance, system dynamics, investment methodology, business fundamentals, marketing, learning organizations, human psychology and the creative process. There has never been a more difficult job in all of corporate history. 

Being adept at eliminating spiritual and economic waste out of business systems will be hard enough in-and-of itself. But developing a new way of thinking and working in the face of HR’s historical inertia and reluctance to change will be a truly Herculean task. For every Netflix manifesto there are thousands of group-think surveys and cheerleader webinars extolling the virtue of optimizing a broken past. Like any Black Swan event, this will work right up to the point that it catastrophically doesn’t, at which point our organizations and our people will be left the poorer for our willful ignorance.

The HR of the future must be about unleashing the human spirit, because only people whose life and work are indistinguishable can possible maximize organizational productivity in the Creative Age. It really is that simple. And that complex.

Into the vortex created by radical and unpredictable change steps people like Susan Burns, whose commitment to change that helps both organizations and individuals goes beyond writing and speaking. Susan is actually determined to be a catalyst in this momentous change. The first step in her revolution is Talent Camp, and I am excited to be a part of it. If Talent Camp proves to be half as inspiring as Susan, it will be time well spent indeed.

Hopefully a thousand Talent Camps will bloom in every corner of the HR ecosystem, with young idealist committing themselves to the idea that there can be no more noble and honorable work than helping people profit from their purpose. And when that day comes, I will thank Susan for her tireless work helping to make that better future a reality. 

Brand Talent Over at Glassdoor

There is a new article over at the Glassdoor blog that I would love to get your comments on.

Almost four years ago I was struck by this idea of Brand Talent. Three years ago Dave Lefkow and I spent an exciting couple of days locked in a beach house, drinking Jack Daniels, trying to develop Brand Talent into a book idea. Dave got smart and decided to go Bacon and get all famous, leaving me to keep muddling this idea over in my head.

Every once in a while I would put something new up about the topic, but overall it just sat there in the corner of my brain. And then about two months ago I was approach by the eponymous Rusty Rueff and asked to be a part of a new blogging adventure over at Glassdoor. I eagerly and gratefully accepted.

That was the easy part. Thinking about what I wanted to write about was of course the much tougher follow-up to acceptance. I wanted to have freedom to cover areas that are interesting to me and (I think) important to job seekers, but also wanted a certain coherence to my arguments at the same time. And I also wanted the topics to help both Glassdoor achieve their objectives, but also help support Dolby as I started to work with my new team over there to create the "next big thing."

One night, during a late writing binge, it struck me that Brand Talent might fit the bill. As I mulled it over, I became more excited about the topic, and am now fully committed to it. I hope that the few readers who haven't abandoned me due to my unpredictable writing schedule will kindly help by reading and leaving comments to drive the discussion forward. If you do, I can promise you a front-row seat at the next unconference, which is indeed going to happen and be focused on the "next big thing." More on that later.

The Glassdoor experience has been wonderful so far. I would heartily recommend reading all the posts. Of course it is no secret that I am a John Sumser partisan, and when he writes things like:

"School did not prepare you for twenty-first century work life. It’s no longer a question of jumping through the right hoops. You can’t get good enough grades. You have to be your own employment agency."

Thus my partisanship becomes even more entrenched. John is exactly right, and I am looking forward to using the venue to riff with all the authors about topics that are near and dead to our talent futures.

John O'Neil: Leaders

I had the good fortune to get to know John O'Neil during my start-up days. His wisdom, grace and humility belied a keen intellect and broad understanding of business. I just ran across one of John's most recent articles entitled "Virtues and Character Markings of Future Leaders", and I highly recommend it.

John's vision of leadership is spot on. I would love to say that there is no way to run a successful creative age organization without following his advice, but Apple proves that is not true. Even so, the Apple model is not broadly replicable. But we could see a lot more profitable companies if we followed John's insights.

Declaration

(Author's note: This is an essay about the urgent need to challenge the assumptions that limit businesses ability to sustainably create wealth. I am not attempting to justify the morality or rationale of empire, or make a case for colonialism. The reader’s temporary suspension of resentment against, or devotion to, the founding fathers is deeply appreciated.)

233 years worth of yesterdays ago, a group of rebels made a simple declaration: "The assumptions are wrong." We call them patriots, but on July 4 1776 many thought of them as heretics. Our founders were questioning the very foundations of a system that was taken for granted as essential for safety and commerce. But the system couldn't adapt and so it was challenged.

Our "traitors" weren’t just demanding lower taxes or a chance to have their voice heard.  They were demanding that the very people who had profited most from British colonial rule challenge the very assumptions by which they had been granted power and influence. They were asking people to question themselves and the world they lived in.

The British monarchy had delivered wealth and power to its figureheads and supporters. And the people who were challenging that system, our founders, had prospered under that system. They were challenging themselves.

It is difficult to conceive just how extraordinary it is for a group of people invested in the status quo to stand up and proclaim "The assumptions are wrong." And yet that is exactly what gave the founder’s Declaration power and resilience: the insurgents were the insiders. The Declaration was created and supported by the elites at the core of the establishment. This insider status gave credibility to their revolt.

When the pillars of the establishment say “The assumptions are wrong”, if those most invested in the present system are willing to risk their prosperity for a better future, even though the fruits of that future be nothing but dreams and promises, then perhaps that is worth notice.

Our elites, our founders, stood and claimed "The assumptions are wrong." They stood against the long-held belief of the inevitability of monarchy and enumerated many complaints against the status quo. Perhaps the most compelling of those arguments was that their comfortable system, the system of divine monarchy that had made most of the insurgents powerful and rich, was not suitable for the future. A young people, standing on the edge of an entire continent of wealth and opportunity, yet to unleash their full creative potential and to bring forth a greater prosperity than could have been imagined before; those people could not achieve their potential under the yoke of tyranny.

The heretics challenged the assumptions of power by asserting Locke's argument that power arises from the governed, not the government, and only the governed can grant license of power through their own free will. Yet the desire that compelled that argument from theory to practice was a feeling that the people needed to be free to do even more. "Unshackle us so that we may rise to the opportunity offered by our future." The old system was holding them back.

And so America’s founders acted upon the belief that more people would receive more benefit over time from a new system based on new assumptions than from the old system based on old assumptions.

The assumptions they challenged had been withstood the tests of time, written in stone in churches and meeting halls in countless cities on every populated continent at the time. These shibboleths had fostered a set of institutions, structures, principles and cultural norms that were successful by many measures. The old assumptions, that all power derived from monarchs, that those monarchs were unassailable in their wisdom and purpose, and that there was no law greater than the monarch's will... those assumptions had lead to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the discovery of new lands and the enrichment of many people.

Were the founders crazy to question their benefactors? Weren’t they sure to kill the proverbial goose that was laying their golden egg? Are people who stand to profit from the present crazy to demand a different, better future? Certainly. But the belief that the monarchical system was more limiting that a democratic system was ultimately proven to be true. Only time tells whether one is crazy or visionary. 

Today, 233 years and some days later, here we are, pillars in a system of our own making, a system that is showing signs of wear and that may no longer be equipped to deliver the most benefit to the most people. That system is the western economic system of business, our business system. It is a system based on certain assumptions: the efficacy of central planning and central control, distributed power that is granted from the top, distribution of wealth largely based on fealty to the system and ability to manage personal risk, selection based on congruity to past masters, the primacy of profit over purpose, functional alignment of work, and workers as important, but ultimately interchangeable, pieces of a whole. These assumptions, and the system they helped create, have produced an extraordinary amount of wealth and progress for millions of people. It is not a system to be challenged lightly.

And yet the future we bequeath to our children must provide at least as much opportunity as the past and present that were created for us. We cannot sit idly by and ignore that the business system is rapidly coming unhinged. Its not just perp walks and bailouts and the growing disparity between rich and poor and the extraordinary amount of waste that is being poured into our skies and streams. It is not just our feeling that business institutions are not worth the investment of our hope and spirit, ineluctably devolving from creators of wealth to temples of mindless greed and intellectual torpor. Those reasons have meaning, but ultimately they are tainted with outsider reasoning and outsider language. The people within the present business system, the ones chartered by the system to protect the flanks and staff the barricades, can easily dismiss the critiques of those who have little invested in business’s success even as they demand cheaper products and services.

Intellectual insurgents such as Gary Hamel and Michael Malone have sought to work within our present system, to participate and therefore become accepted, only then to point out that the present system isn't working well for ANYBODY. Hamel helps managers understand that companies that challenge the old assumptions are doing better over the long run. Malone helps us to understand how many different ways there are to organize work, and how authoritarian systems are not always the fastest or most efficient. They have delicately sought to point out that the present system all too often has not produced optimal returns on investment, not generated the needed levels of innovation and failed to create a platform for sustainable profits for the next 5 years, no less the next century.

And yet, those gentlemen, mighty as their pens may be, are ultimately ensconced in their ivory towers. They are people who have the time and luxury of developing theories and challenging dogma as academics and executive consultants. This is what is expected of them. And their contribution, while significant, still lacks the credibility developed by the people who struggle and innovate to survive as they serve internal and external customers. If the revolution is going to turn from declarations to a constitutions, then we must include the property owners, pamphleteers and generals. We must find our Washingtons, Jeffersons and Henrys.

These new business insurgents must confront the present business system’s inability to meet with increasingly unpredictable and complex change. They must proclaim that what the 21st century business system, the new way, needs is institutions, principles, structures, strategies and owners who evaluate financial and legal risk, market opportunities and brand identity through the lens of talent first and foremost, and not only through the lens of lawyers and accountants. Who view all people, whether they be customers, shareholders, employees or contractors, as investors who are freely giving of their own time, attention and money based on a expected and personally relevant return. Leaders who are clear with everyone about the purpose of their enterprise and what that means for all investors.

These heretics will demand that the needs of the talent investor be brought into alignment with the requirements of the financial investor with the demands of the customers investor, and that all three will be aligned by the defined and practiced purpose of the enterprise, not by get-rich-quick schemes and the worst devils of our nature. Marketing will be a two-way, transparent dialogue between the different investors, and PR will constantly be asking questions rather than trying to create an emotional need for something of little value.

The new founders will say enough to our consumerist miasma, which has built so many  chimerical organizations and so created so much unnecessary suffering. They will demand the end of a system that mindless seeks to profit from people who are buying things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, from vendors they don’t trust. And finally and perhaps most importantly, these founders will see that it will no longer be advisable to achieve individual prosperity by shifting costs onto communities, burying the inefficiencies and waste of their operations and processes in the air, the water and the people.

It feels a fleeting dream, all the more so because this revolution will not start in the board room, or in the executive staff. How many times have we desperately looked up in the org chart and demanded that they change their ways? It will never do, for the reality is that pressures of the present systems demand that these lofty insiders are enlisted to be the ultimate defense against change. We, the HR insurgents, must be the first to take to the barricades, to positively and persuasively, but forcefully nonetheless, to show our clients a better way, a better system of commerce. We are the translators between the talk of the boardroom and the voice of the talent.

Yet HR, more than any other function except possibly finance, is typically aligned with the protectors of the status quo. Our assignment, which we often blindly accept, is to keep the insurgents out, to ensure that management’s law is enforced through policy and fiat, and that the finance department’s need to react to a spastically distracted Street be taken for granted as the ultimate purpose to work towards.

The assumptions are wrong. We fail to question the belief that head management is the same as cost management, and thus our friends lose their jobs and fall into despair. We nod in mindless agreement when managers demand that we only hire people like them, and thus those who haven’t been to the right schools and developed the right friendships are confirmed in their belief that they have no opportunity. We bow low when investors tell us that the only thing that really matters, the talent, OUR talent, is a cost to be controlled and minimized and not an asset to be explored and optimized. We cry and wail that people don’t get talent, just don’t understand how to treat people, even as we secretly wink in our own social circles about how it is always, ALWAYS, HR that is the worst at people-focused capabilities and accountabilities. We berate managers when we tell them that they have to share their talent and compete for the best, even as we jealously hide our own talent and lash out blindly at those who would dare to try to “poach our people.”

We are part of our own business system, the old system. We don’t do these things because we are evil or have bad intent. We do these things because they worked in the past, sometimes despite the assumption and sometimes because of it, but always as one and the same. We have been taught by time, practice, custom, mentorship and habit that this is what HR does, that this is who HR is. We are told in a thousand different ways “You are not the rebels! You are the administrative functionaries who do the evil bidding of the CFO and don’t understand the business and think about payroll and picnics! You are HR, the paper pushers and people executers and job fillers! Get back to your work. Your value is in how fast you react to my frightened whims. We will let you know when we need you next!” And eventually, like a guard who is no longer horrified at the thoughtless jailor they have become, we assume that this is us, and this is what we do, and that because we do it, it is right.

No. The assumptions are wrong.

The assumptions are wrong. It is us, you and me, who bear the responsibility to challenge the system and bring about a more prosperous and sustainable world. We cannot afford to sit in the shadows and let our consciences die with the memories of our dreams. It is us, because we have the biggest club, the largest lever, the loudest bullhorn. We have talent. We are talent. 

Yes, the change will start with talent: with the way we identify and engage the people investors of every type. That is our job, our purpose. The primacy of capital, of avoiding risks to capital at the expense of our humanity and expertise, and of accruing ever more capital to a special few, that day must give way to the day of talent. Capitalism must become Talentism, or we will need to find another purpose.

Change is never easy, but in our case it will be especially hard. Many of us, including myself, have tripped and fallen into our present roles. On my way to be a writer I found myself sitting at a security guard’s desk during the swing shift at a friend’s company. Yes, I started in HR in the security department. Your story is different, but we most likely share a common experience of finding ourselves in HR on the way to some other place. Some of us are closet social workers, trying to feel that our work makes a difference as we leave the messy business of commerce to the “B school guys.” Others tried to put a foot in both worlds, working the craft of compensation while still wanting to be close to the business of people. I have met psychologists and sociologists, frustrated economists and resigned sales people. Whatever your story, you may have felt the sting of the outsider, knowing that your work makes a difference no matter how much the bean counters whisper otherwise.

It is not just that we feel we are ill-equipped to meet the challenge of revolution. It is not just that we didn’t sign up for the fight. It is that the ability to be insurgents has been trained out of us. We have been evaluated, taught and counseled that our role in HR is to develop new policies, new procedures, new systems and new guidelines. We have been trained like Pavlov’s pets to salivate at the first sign of complex, enterprise level “strategy” work. Our value is reinforced by the rewards we get from making things bigger and more complex.

Yet this is another trap. Insurgents do not bring about change by lining up in rank and file and forming more elaborate formations. As insurgents we must heed the words of Einstein who said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.” We must fight the assumption that putting together a enterprise-wide engagement program is more important than showing the courage of fighting against waste in our own departments.

We must constantly be on guard against the grand design that accompanies local ignorance. Ask yourself... When was the last time you went up to someone in your department and asked them “What did you want to do when you were a kid? How can I help you turn that passion into something of value for this company?” Perhaps the most recent project to quantify the people around you has made you forget that simple questions, kindness, empathy and genuine desire to make other’s lives better are by far the most powerful motivating tools we have at our disposal. But our assumptions, the assumptions of our system, is that only the self-important engagement program with its measures and metrics will bring about greater productivity. The assumptions are wrong.

Life is truly unfair. We find ourselves confronted with a situation we never really wanted to be in, deep inside a system that rewards us for doing the wrong work. But if we fail to rise  beyond our state of continual victimization, our angry murmurs about not being at the table drowning out our own desire for real significance and meaning, then we will all be irrelevant. Transactions get automated. Dishes go in dishwashers, payroll is cut by computers, and people are starting to turn to computers to answer their benefits questions. Managers are being told by their managers that it is cheaper to source, hire, manage and fire themselves than it is to rely on the perpetually backwards HR department. We, you and I, are betting that complete people transaction technology and automation won’t become implemented before we retire. Yet that is surely a more fantastical dream than believing we can help make tomorrow’s businesses better than todays.

And so the moment is now, for our children’s future but also for ours. We hope that we can hide and believe that some day some magical soul will rise through the ranks, climb the ladder, and they will “get it” and save us from the future. And yet time has always taught that those who rise through the ranks, who claw their way to the top, must comply with the pressures of the old system or lose their ability to have any influence whatsoever. And so we sit there, waiting for the savior, whispering that the day will come when the crisis of leadership will end. And all the time, we were the crisis. Not our leadership, the pillars of today. It was us, the solution for tomorrow.

It is us. Us is we. And if we don’t undertake to challenge our assumptions, to build a more sustainable system, then we will live with the consequences. You cannot hide from your own system. You may hope to rise with it’s successes, but we will all definitely fall with its failure.

The assumptions are wrong. But you can change that.

First Ask Why

You start a new project. The team sits down together and the narrative begins. The leader asks:

What, when, who, how and maybe why.

The leader is responsible for results. He wants action. The team wants approval. So everyone starts with what. What is tangible and deceptively easy to describe. No messy language, no feelings. Just rough descriptions punctuated with waving hands. The team is following the leader, the leader is fulfilled. The project starts.

The leader asks when?  When are you going to give me what?

The team agrees, and the deadline is set. The people who are results focused start fantasizing about implementation details and heroic rescues. But some intrepid souls venture further.

“Who are our customers?” someone asks. Or maybe “Who will use this?”

The leader acknowledges the question. The brave soul is rescued. A quick answer ensues.

The critical project questions have now been answered. The experts are ready to deliver on how. They hope that how is delayed to another meeting.

And finally, drinking lattes and looking smugly at their new Volvo’s, a few tweed wearing bearded philosophical masochists ponder “Why?” But silently and with great confidence.

What, when, who, how, why. It’s the way it works. Except for one thing: it doesn’t work that well. Things are changing too fast. The project fails.

The new project team sits down. The new narrative begins.

Why, how, who, when, what…

Why would anyone start on a project without knowing the problem to be solved, or the opportunity that needs to be created? Why would anyone want to begin work without naming and considering the system? Why is purpose. Without purpose there can be no alignment. Without alignment there can be no success.

Purpose leads to potential. How is potential. Not how to get what done. How are we going to work with each other? How can I make you successful? How will we know when we are done? How will we let the insurgents in so we create the future, instead of repeating the past?

From purpose to potential to people. People are who. Who has the problem we are trying to solve? Or... who will be helped if we create this opportunity? Who are they? Do we know their stories? Are their stories heroic, desperate, banal or romantic? Who will our work matter to?

Purpose, potential, people and then place. When is place. Is this the right time to do this? Are stars in the system aligned? Is the environment right? Can we afford to wait? When would be better?

Purpose, potential, people, place and then finally, product. Product means what. If we know why we are here, and we know how we will work with each other, and we know who our work will matter to, and we believe that when is now… then what are we creating together? Only now should we focus on what. What is last. Because while what is what who will touch, why and how are how what has meaning when everything changes.

When time moves slowly, and there are powerful people and weak people, and the powerful can predict the future… then submit to “what first?”.

But when the clock spins faster, and the weak make your market and only the enlightened can tell you what tomorrow brings… then first ask why.

A Welcoming Community

Being welcomed back to a community is a wonderful experience. Colin Kingsbury calling me "John" aside (it's my middle name, so I guess it makes sense), the many people who have reached out to congratulate me on my new position and to welcome me back into the recruiting world have warmed my heart.

Ami Givertz, one of the many friends I made over the last 4+ years of blogging, writing and speaking, asked me the following question via Facebook:

If I was asked what is the motivation behind your rekindling of Talentism is what would be the best answer?

To which I respond: 68 Posts !

As I said in that post (oh so long ago):

But the secret to participating in the creative economy ...is that I have to pay in advance, before I ever get anything in return. And the market that I am paying ...sits in silent witness to my authenticity, commitment and competence. Because each of the participants in my market is seeking the same things I am. Those customers can’t evaluate whether I am worth adding to their market if I am not trustworthy, consistent, and valuable. (In talent markets value gets discounted heavily for lying and flaking out.)

So what is my motivation? To reconnect to the community I worked so hard to engage those many years ago, and through that reconnection fuel my passion for innovating and making a difference through the world of talent.

Why now? That will be the subject for another post at another time.

Thanks again to everyone. Onboarding to a new position is my focus for the next month, but I will try to post as often as possible to answer questions. Hopefully, at some point in the near future, I will have regained credibility with the community and be able to start having some interesting discussions about how to make the 20 rules a reality.