An online interactive calibration tool that sharpens managerial perception

Speaker A We're continuing the work on talent pool management. And Barry and Sheila Dean have developed a tool that they would like to share with us that helps managers do their work. So with that, Sheila, thank you.

Speaker B I'll just make a quick introduction for Sheila to show you a few things. Shiny things. Shiny things. You'll be aware by now from what we've said that in our work, we focus the manager, the practicing manager is the key focus for all that we do. That's a simple statement, but it grows legs as you talk about it. We've always looked for different ways and multiple ways of making meaning to practicing managers of the body of knowledge of Ro as appropriate to what challenges they're facing. And talent management is a piece of Ro, which, interestingly, you can actually pick out and take to a total stranger and do some interesting things with and use it as a Trojan horse for exploring reckless organization. Okay? It's a form of subversion influence. Sorry, darling, influence. I think of it of subversion first. But yes, you're right, the political correct way is saying it is influence. But I think of it that way because what we're facing is a whole bunch of orthodoxy that's very powerful and well invested HR systems, business systems with HR components in them. Everybody's got a talent management system that's built on something else. And when somebody installs a system that they spent $60 million on or $100 million or whatever it is for worldwide business system, that's a serious barrier to entry for any other ideas. So those barriers to entry, they're always front of mind for me, and that's why I chose the term subversion. But then again, you could think about it as persuasion rather than manipulation. In our consulting, we found a need when we were doing talent management to gather the data and do something with the data and help our clients to do their work around the data. So we developed a little tool and we developed that from a manager's point of view. Now, as a former manager, one of my points of view is if you're going to give me a system, give me something that gives me more value than I have to spend getting it, okay? And I mean my time and my energy as well, then I'll use it if it's valuable to me. In this morning's discussion, I thought I heard or Don was saying people don't do talent management or the mor doesn't do the work. It's difficult to get people together to do calibration sessions and so on. Part of that might well be that the systems don't support are not productive, they're not sufficiently valuable to managers to handle the systems and processes. So in putting together what we put together, we'd be mindful of that. This is a consulting tool that started off as a consulting tool. It's simple and it's aimed at enabling the processes. What we found is that our clients have picked it up and started using it. And it's interesting the way some of them have started using it. They do have an in house system, but for every business system there's a workaround, right? There's a workaround. So this is in the nature of what you might consider an individual app. All right.

Speaker C The assumption here is that you've gone through all the strategic work that you understand the concepts of CAC, current supply capabilities, BPC, SPC, et cetera. So all I'm going to show you is just this nifty little tool that we developed for ourselves and we use it as an engagement tool. That's really the purpose is how to engage the manager to help guide them through some questions they need to ask themselves about their structure and the fit to role in their structure and then how to help the manager once removed at level have those same insights and then how to quickly bring them together. So a manager said to me, look, you've got 60 minutes of my time. That's about all I've got. What can we do in 60 minutes? So that's how we ended up designing a way of talking to a manager given that they understand we've already taken through them through the concept of structure. So a couple of things we have that's just to say we give them samples of the talent, what they have in a policy, how to how to assess roles, pacpc a glossary terms and then a little user guide for this particular tool. Managers never read any of those. So this really to help specialists and the experts support managers because our philosophy is we pass the tools and practices and the knowledge to the people in the organization who can then carry it for day by day water bike. I'm sure you'll be very aware of the gearing process. I'm just restating that the 1 hour really is the pre work to work with an individual manager first to get their judgment of the role and then capability of individual to the role both in current applied. So what they are actually delivering it and they can describe the deliverable in performance terms and then the CPC, and we usually find the CPC is the thing that they really have difficulty with. We spend quite a bit of time talking to them about that. But we find within 60 minutes we can map that and then show them their feature. And what they enjoy is the hands on nature of it, where they say maybe I've overset that. So we say this is not definitive, this is an iterative tool. This is something you'll use over time and your judgment sharpens over time, both as an individual working with us regularly and also as a team. So there's the pre work first. We do managers first or we actually support specialists in the organization to do the aid and then independently the manager on the move to get their judgment of the Sor. And then we show them that to the manager on the move. And if there are significant variations, the mor may want to have a one on one appropriate. It's all about trying to see why we have these variations. And then there's calibration with the whole team, so MD, direct after that. And two things happen in that process. The manager's data is represented to everybody. So it's the noi's data. Then we do the hearing. They as a collegiate group offer evidence based information to the manager about what they've seen of the individual and project organizations. Many of them have direct contact and the mor listens to that conversation. But the manager makes the decision on the DSP, the mor makes the decision on straightforward. I know you all know that. I'll show you the system shortly. But basically it's plotting very quickly, interactively. The manager's judgment, mor and the calibrator, then green manager perform the morator. And the tool just has an ability to in the moment, get the adjustment. So as people are thinking and talking no, up a bit, down a bit. So you can either they usually like to grab a hold of the tool when you're one on one and play with it, and then they take the tool away as they're talking on their laptop. And then when they have their one on ones, or they give you feedback or tasks with an individual, they've got the picture in mind. So this talent is cool. Picture is not just once a year, it's done regularly as a whole team, but for an individual manager. We find that once they're engaged and they see the value to them of helping them monitor the tasks, think about capabilities, input to their performance discussions, and for the mor as input on an ongoing basis to the ask. That's why they've asked for the tool. We didn't intend to give it and that's why they asked for it. And they feel in control. There is also a way, it's simple for them, they can actually interrogate it. How many are ready now in my team? Ready in two years, five years? And they also do the typical similar to the way he's done that, the identification of knowledge building experience in the development. The outcome is the manager. And we found that managers are quite comfortable with this because it's updated year on year. So this is a formal year on year document which is a record of what they've agreed. This organization uses. This is an actual manager's document, this organization uses their own. So we work with organizations, whether we wild about, we always work with the organizations on their method of defining cost. But here you'll see the previous judgment broadly of review and development activities and a comment and then what the manager has agreed, the manager's comments this time around. That then goes on to their formal form document and the manager and the manager one. So the way we just start off with that we've got this in Excel, but we also have an individual basic access depending on where the organization is. What but start off, they can actually build their function in five minutes just by going into functions up here and updating it. You can actually build it and type in the name. And then this is a Stratum Three group that we're looking at here. And all the manager does is this is already data provided in here. But they determine the level of the role. They then, through the guided conversation, determine the current flight capabilities and the current potential. They do that for each of their people. And then they calibrate themselves the picture, the judgment that they've made to see whether it makes sense. And then it's easy enough to adjust up or down. So I get the interactive nature of it is what they really enjoy. It's not on a piece of paper. It's not file. There's no sense that it's concrete. It's my judgment today. And what we find is they really enjoy with the sharpening of the judgment. It deepens their knowledge of these concepts in a way that makes sense. When that's done, the specialist goes through this conversation with each of the managers. The manager takes away their own tool. I'm just going to assume that it's now done. Managers. So now from an organization perspective, as you gather in the data, it's done in real time. There's no pre the meeting. It that's the documentation, no paperwork. You leave the manager for their picture, but you're also collecting information across the organization. Saves time for the specialist, takes time for the manager. So you end up with a whole picture across the organization. Of course, at the same time, you're talking to the MLR. So independently, the MLR does their own judgment. They don't see what the manager's done. They do their own judgment, go through the same process, and the MLR takes away their picture. And I'll just pretend, and we end up with the mor judgment. So assume you've met with everybody. You've now got the mor judgment. So now you've got a picture of the manager and the mor in the moment. Again, no documentation, no paperwork, just carrying your tool around with you from office to office. And now you can start to see variations here, for example, in the judgment between manager, manager. So we prepare the mor, who is accountable to lead the hearing process ahead of time. What they have the picture that they can see. And sometimes times there are significant differences. Don't worry about that one. That was just the NR said these people were new and he really had no knowledge of the two months in the organization. So they said, I simply cannot make a judgment right now. I might be ready two or three hearing meetings time, but I'm not ready now. But it gives them an opportunity to have a good discussion with the manager if need be, but to prepare. Then in the gearing meeting the team come together and we found the very first time we did it, we spent a morning, the team had a picture of the whole organization manager, Moi, in front of them. They also had this picture. And then we started the gearing process. And in the gearing process the manager starts explaining their judgment of the roles, the CAC and the CPC. And then each person in their team is offered only if they've got evidence based judgments to make, a contribution to make. And that can easily be typed in. I mean, there's a little place in the moment. Again, this is just trying to make it simple and easy so you can type it in the moment and if somebody's giving you some feedback, you can follow it up with them later, but you're capturing it all right. And then in the calibration process, again, what you're doing as you're going through it is you're getting agreement where the mor decides, the manager settles pac and the moral. But again, the group contributes. Everybody gets an opportunity to speak about everybody else's individual. What you're going to be doing in the session is you're ending up with picture that's once you've done that, you can remove all the management judgments. They've got their own judgments anyway. Or you have a whole picture of calibrated sessions that then can also translate into the questions instantaneously. So as part of that calibration session, so you can see the picture immediately in the calibration session of what this looks like for the organization. And the interrogation of that is by function. You can actually select one function, two functions, et cetera. You can interrogate it so that you can see what your organizational issues, organizational design issues come out with role, certainly issues around judgment in here because it's valuable when you have regular meetings. Eventually, if they look at it every three months, it's a 1 hour session. What's changed? How are we progressing on that project that we side that hypertension too. And a manager then says and I've changed my judgment of something's changed and this is why I've changed it. And then you can also do a readiness report. Individual function, all functions. You can in a moment say how many have you got that you now two years, five years. So if the individual managers have said there's been nothing that this particular system, the one system that helps rag in all the other practices that we teach, they get a sense of consistency because it's instant in time. They value their input so that other colleagues are also part of the team, accountable to the whole current school and building it for the future. So they're driving home that they're accountable, not something you actually have to say. They feel it and they do value and therefore fairness and judgment. They have confidence, they build their confidence in having the one on one discussions with their Sor and then the high potential conversations around their development. They will start to have them in between. Formally, they reach quarterly, usually depending on what the organization should.

Speaker A That's a wonderful overview. Would you share how long it took you to develop and how many people it's been tested with? And we can open it to questions.

Speaker B I would say getting to a draft of it, about two months. It wasn't really any big deal. The people we've used it with, about four companies so far have dropped caught onto it. But it's probably the number of managers who are using it that's more relevant.

Speaker A How many?

Speaker B Oh, a couple of hundred.

Speaker A Probably several hundred.

Speaker B Okay.

Speaker A Other questions. Mike?

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker D Can you explain to me how you do the CAC measure using a Stratum scale?

Speaker B It's a performance judgment by the manager.

Speaker D Okay. I'm stuck in my mind around CPC. Makes sense to me in terms of a Stratum measurement. But when we're looking at current applied capability which has things in it such as skills or knowledge or temperament, in my mind, those don't lend themselves to a stratum scale. So that's why I'm trying to make.

Speaker B The connection they must do. The complete capability profile is made up of the story knowledge, Skills, Experience, Values, Preference and Inhibitors and CIP. Or we would call it Level of workability. So managers understand it right. And deficits in knowledge, skills and Experience or in Values, preferences and inhibitors will lower the level at which a person's working. So we simply ask the manager, relative to the role. We make it relative to the role, where is this person working? Can he or she do the job right? So there's an assumption there that the role is correctly sized and that's something else that comes out, some other discussions that come out in these sessions. So we ask the question relative to the role can this person do this job? Well, they're struggling at the moment. So in relation to the job, where are they? Where are they delivering? This is managerial judgment.