Using Software in Requisitely Managing the Talent Pool

Speaker A What I wanted to do is first give you a sense about why technology is useful. And so I want to give you about a three minute historical sketch and then what we found. I began working with Elliot in 1990 with a big project with Pablo. He and I both sat at his knee and learned from the master for three years. And when we went through our first serious appraisal process and assessment process let me just get in here. It must have taken Elliot, Pablo, Norberto and me. And I think I don't even remember since he was there. Must have taken us a week to get ready for making all of these huge wall charts, for getting the Post it notes, for figuring out how we're going to translate the initials in the projection curves to the wall charts, how to put it in Excel spreadsheets. It was a nightmare. And it was not very user friendly in terms of making all of these who are trying to get a sense of people's current potential as against future potential and they couldn't figure out how to introduce mode into all of this, as opposed to where wall charts how to a certain point in time and we'd have to go back and check it. And as I continued to work with Elliot over the next three and a half years in terms of found out that he didn't have a methodology in mind for doing this as a consultancy tool, because Elliot never agreed. He was a consultant, he was a researcher. And so I began to explore with Elliot ways of doing it. And so we would then put up wall charts as well for current and career potential, and we'd have someone quickly calculating and crawling over and going back and forth. So about ten years ago, twelve years ago, I had a client that was going through a pre y two K issue, and they were going to be putting about $20 million into this systems engineering process. And he threw in a million dollars to develop what I consider to be the first robust talent pool development system. Total bust. I didn't know what I needed. They were so interested in structure and not in the actual outcome. So a couple of years later, one of the It guys in the firm we were working for, not the consultants to them, was leaving the company and started to work for one of the big It firms, but was very interested in the process. And so he moonlit for me. He worked 240 50 hours jobs a week for about two years. And we began to put together a consultancy tool. We basically did it with Visual Basic and Visual Studio, and it was not developed for prime time for clients, but it allowed us to do these large scale gearing sessions that weren't possible otherwise and to not lose data and to keep track of it. We began to put together what we noticed about four years ago, because we've now been using this for eight years, is our clients were so intrigued with this. It was so powerful and by now we were helping clients. 30 different companies assess hundreds of thousands of people. They said, we want this as our HRIT system. And well, we'd never really developed it as a commercial product and there were a lot of problems. So a couple of clients paid us to essentially have a kind of Internet access to it. But it was clunky. And finally a year and a half ago we had a huge project with, they said, we're organization a succession planning process and it was very successful. In the end of it they said, we want a system, we're willing to pay for a system, we're willing to buy a system. Now the problem with the federal government in the US is if they paid to develop it, they own the code. And finally basically took a risk and said we're going to develop it ourselves. I'd already poured in an incredible amount of money, but I really and write. So we found a very smart systems engineering firm. They took our code, converted it into Java, and then we've been working for the last four or five months to put this software together. And what I want to give you a brief demo of first with PowerPoint is the screenshots and the logic and then demonstrate the software itself. It's going to be going into beta with two clients in about four or five weeks. Now the question that you got to ask is what do you want software for? And that's what we asked. It's got to, I think, eventually support all of Requisite organization. So what does that mean? Well, number one, at the beginning of Requisite organization you got to get a client. So the software has to allow you to go to a senior executive and show him or her in a half hour three cases from clients and then they were changed here and here's the business results and here's the talent results. They've got to be able to see it visually and graphically. If you're going to take advantage of that 30 minutes section that Steve Clement correctly said is all we've got, then it's got to support the consultancy. It's got to support the assessment of role size, existing process, existing accountabilities, existing talent so that you can then formulate a diagnosis. It's then got to support the modeling of new advantage of that, the modeling of which of these are not only consistent with the processes that you want. And so you have to have an ability to map processes, but which of these are affordable given. And so then you've got to have a compensation system that allows you to say, if we went forward with this and we assumed a value of X was this, this one will cost you this, this will cost you this, this will cost you this. And then finally, as you implement it, it's got to in a very efficient and intuitive way support the generation and so therefore role specifications. So that our goal is someone new to a role in 3 hours. Can understand everything about his accountabilities. Needs to understand the title, the times as you implement the processes, the direct and indirect accountabilities, the tears and the tars, the critical working relationships, the basket of Qqtrs, the rolling Qqtrs, the general accountabilities. And it's got to support the thread of context from build the time span through the high level goals to the immediate context. If you're going to get people in disparate parts of the organization working effectively together cross functionally, they need to understand the overarching principles that they have to satisfy when they're coming up with optimal cross functional solutions. And it's got to satisfy the needs for talent assessment, talent development, sesh, context. If you're going to get people in how to recruit strategically what gaps in the pipelines you need to fill. And it's got to support people in their need for transparency to know how they've been assessed, to have ready access to the development plan that they are in part accountable for executing. And they have to have the ability to input into the progress they're making. So the manager can be aware of everything. That's all we want, right? So what we decided to do oh, and by the way, we've been working with OMA Steele with this from the moment we input in consultancy software the progress through some of our additional managerial access to the software. But the chairman of the board who's a venture capitalist said oh my lord, as a venture capitalist, does this mean we can then go into a company we're looking at do due diligence, understand the capability of their organization where there's compression and vacuum? This is something that we've always needed, we've never had. And they're one of the audiences that we're hoping to get to. Okay, so what did we do? We developed this software could we turn off the lights here? And we basically wanted people to understand it's about defining the work, the role and understanding the capability and aspirations of the people and bringing them together into an integrated managerial leadership system. So we've kind of tried to graphically depict that. I've got some of the teaching slides that we use when we are working with people in the assessment process here, so you understand how they've been trained in using this. And so we basically come up with the model that for a person to effectively fill a role, they've got to have the raw potential, the skilled knowledge, the valuing, the work of the role and the maturity to deal with the working relationships. So what a manager sees when he or she boots up the computer is a portal. And this is an early screen. It doesn't have some of the current features. In Will a role stands the state of all initiatives around talent and managerial development where things he's got to focus on has a recording of all of the assessments of his what a Manager role and current potential future potential effectiveness and has a number of graphical icons as a dashboard to take a look at the progress of the Qqtr's. One, two, three levels down in the organization we want every employee eventually it depends on the company's courage to be able to look up his own role specification, his own effectiveness, appraisal his own coaching and mentoring plan to contribute to his own CV and enter progress notes about his effectiveness. Every employee of a crude plan for in version one release is the ability to create role specifications where we based on the time span and the gearing process and based on the functions and processes and general accountabilities. Basically help people in an intuitive way attach to any one role the processes and the functions and the general accountabilities that it has and if they're tiers what kind of tier? In relationship to whom and for any process function. Or general accountability to describe the skilled nature required, the skilled knowledge required, and the nature of work that people must value, the criticality of that component and the level of proficiency required. Then we get to how do we help managers evaluate the level of role complexity, the strata of roles once we've got some benchmarks with time span because we then need to use that. So we have a way of zeroing in on any part of the organization. We teach managers about the different levels of complexity and how do we, if you will, say okay, now we've got to figure out what the roles are. So we then have a graphical user interface where the CEO and each of his subordinates and then their subordinates and then our ability managers about up or down and use that first for a manager on his own and then is the gearing process. And so we now for ten years, eight years have had our gearing sessions with managers in a semicircle and as large as the wall is all of that information there is for them in real time. And that's when the discussions really begin, when they can literally we give them all literature on his own, that one up, move that one down and someone is working the laptop years. Then if you've got managers once removed or hire, they can at any time as large as and start to look at the judged role size and potential, current and future and effectiveness and effectiveness break. We give them all laser anywhere down the organization and like an Excel spreadsheet you can begin to rank and look at it, begin to model the talent, what you need to do about your talent can at any time assessment of current and future. The judge really got me going. You all know the need for equilibrating it. I don't want to talk about the logic, but basically we're asking people to judge how big a role the person could handle today, now, and in the future. And that is the question. The assessed person is today how big a role? If he had the skilled knowledge, if he were committed, if we could get rid of the dysfunction, could he handle? And so we then bring up each person. We zoom in so you can actually see the individuals and then they go through that gearing process. Then we say, now, how about in the future? So then we split the screen and say, if that's where you think they are today, this is where we would predict they'd be in the future or in ten years. Does that feel right? And then they gear that. And if they move something on the right, it moves it on the left. Until managers feel comfortable that this person is at the right level in terms of the level he's at the right level in terms of current potential with others and at the right future potential predict, they'd be in the then we have found we've had to go well beyond is he in the bottom half or the top half? This has been with at least 30 clients. We've refined this over the last 15 years. Of the level m half has everything to do with getting results consistent with fully mastering the role as defined. The top half of the role has to do with exhibiting and getting results, exhibiting extraordinary initiative. And we've taken time to define that and the minus T or what we call the X fact, that the bottom behavior that detracts from someone's effectiveness. So mastering the role have the same model. Let me just sort of move in half of the role. We had three different and get well if they mastered the role as defined. What extraordinary initiative, any dysfunctional behavior. The overall effectiveness is the sum of those three. We've come up with definitions, but definitions really make sure that when they have the actual calibration discussions, they know they're talking about the same thing, going to just sort of move on. We have found now we've got enough clients with software and data, we're able to begin to come up effectiveness patterns of distribution, of demonstrated effectiveness. And we're tracks from Solation with the actual in privately held companies and publicly traded companies. I'm sorry. We're beginning to see a correlation with the company's range in its industry and the stock market and the overall effectiveness of its employees. So once again, we use technology to help managers assess people's effectiveness in basic role gearing. It extraordinary initiative in terms of intensity and companies I'm sorry, dysfunctional behavior. And then we move to the coaching process. The coaching process, as Elliot has described it very well, and he and Steve Clement in their book, you got to explain to people, clarify the gaps and what is the basis of each of the gaps in terms of skill behavior and dysfunctional behavior with them, construct a development plan and then have some way of Elliot implementation did very well and can then right click on any employee and help them build out the development plan so that managers are helped to go through the logic of constructing the gap analysis in terms of skill. Now. Same thing for the mentoring and career development plan that we have a different screen for the manager once removed to implementation her in having the discussion and documenting long term midterm short term interests. And then based on the judged and agreed upon current and future potential to try to articulate what alternative career paths are consistent with the person's potential, the person's interests. And how feasible is it in this company? And then that all goes into the database, allowing us then to do a thousand different kinds of analyses for any one manager. Which managers have the most effective teams? Which managers show the greatest rate of improvement of their team year unto year? That's a direct index of managerial effectiveness. Where do we have strong pockets of dysfunction? Where do we have excesses of compression or vacuum in the organization? A whole slew of issues, and then effective teams, which managers show at least the hot market is succession planning. That's the big buzzword. Do you have a way to help us with succession planning? We say, well look, if you're willing to do everything else, then the data exit fingertip how well, we want to fill a bunch of we're now focusing on our level four roles. How many do you have? Twelve of them. Session planning go into the database and say, who are all of the Peeps accession planning? We say, well look, if you're we're talking about filling them ten years from now, who are all of it five years from now? Who are all of the people today who are in low level three roles, up to mid level four roles because you don't want to demote someone, you don't want to go below level three because that may be pulling someone up too quickly. Who show today that they've mastered their role as evidence of their commitment and skilled knowledge, who've shown already extraordinary initiative, who will have the future potential in five years to operate at that level. And then that pulls up the first pass and then let's now go in one of them very quickly and have a scan of their capabilities, their judge capabilities, and which of these people value a role of this sort because they've already documented that with their mentor. And then you move them over and then you dump it into the succession plan. And so now you have a tool for understanding, oh my God. Every third role is recruit in five years, or we have an abundance of people, or the same person shows up in six different roles in five years. That's not very healthy either. The tool, then, can be used, if you will, for reorganization, designing new organizations and seeing do we have the capability in our current organization to populate that new organization? If not now, what do we have to do to have a more delayed stepwise progression into that new organization?