The Evil Twin Syndrome

It's only been a week since your new hire started and you're already wondering, Is that the same person I interviewed?

I call this the Evil Twin Syndrome. You interviewed the good twin. The one with all the right answers to your interview questions. The one with the engaging smile and the firm handshake. 

But who showed up for work on the first day?  The evil twin. The one who is 20 minutes late. The one who has already asked off for next Friday. The one who doesn't seem to have the skills the good twin claimed to have.

There are a couple of reasons why this happens:

1. Your interview process is designed to determine which candidate makes the best first impression and interviews the best, not which candidate will perform the job the best. The academic way to say it is the interview lacks validity. The practical way to say it is the way questions are asked and answered doesn't accurately predict whether the candidate will actually do well in the role.

The solution to interviewing better is to ask better questions. Sounds pretty simple, but I've sat-in on many interviews with executives and I'm amazed at how poorly some of them prepare for and conduct interviews. Often they are looking at the resume for the first time as they walk into the conference room. One common mistake I see is providing the candidate the answer before they ask they question. Jane, I'm looking for someone who can do X, Y and Z.  Can you do X, Y and Z?  Jane responds, Absolutely!  The next question is, Great, when can you start?  The executive checks the box and moves to another priority. When Jane's evil twin shows up for work, everyone is surprised when she is struggling with Y.  After all, we asked her if she could do it and she said, Yes.

Really good interviewers ask probing, open-ended questions that don't reveal what the interviewer is specifically looking for. Jane, tell me about a time you did X? What were the challenges you faced doing X? Which X-related projects are you most proud of and why? Have you ever been responsible for Y? Tell me about your experience with Y-related challenges?

For some roles, I recommend giving each interviewer a specific assignment and a list of questions. Interviewer number one might only be responsible for determining if Jane has the technical skills needed to perform the job. Interviewer number 2 might only be responsible for determining if Jane's preferences regarding company culture, manager and peer relationships, and communication styles align with the realities of our organization. This is much more effective than having two or three interviewers in a row ask the same questions - Jane, why did you leave your last job?

In my experience, really good interviewers make good selection choices only about 50-60% of the time when they depend on their gut instinct alone. How can they improve on those statistics? That question is answered when we look at the 2nd reason we end up with the evil twin too often:

2. The interview is not supplemented with anything to highlight those potential discrepancies between what the candidate said in the interview and how they might actually behave.

A lot of managers skip the reference check because so many companies today are hesitant to give out any information beyond confirming the candidate actually worked there when they say they did. Even though some calls are non-informative, I still get some that are helpful. LinkedIn is an excellent resource for accessing people in the candidate's network who might offer some insight into how a candidate might fit into your role.

But an even more important method is layering-on one or more pre-employment assessments. The right mix of assessments will show you how the candidate is likely to behave under pressure, what motivates a candidate to give discretionary effort, and what competencies they really bring to the team. To get the most out of an assessment, it should be benchmarked to the job in advance. Some managers use assessments, but review the results without a benchmark and having already decided they want to hire the candidate. They then rationalize-away any results that might suggest the candidate is not an ideal fit. This pattern leads some to lose confidence in assessments altogether. They used the assessment, but they still got the evil twin.

I haven't made an important hire in the past 15 years without considering assessment results. And I can't imagine making an important hiring decision without them! They have definitely improved my good hire percentage and cut down on the number of times I've experienced The Evil Twin Syndrome.

Management Lessons from the Ryder Cup

I love the Ryder Cup!  For non-golfers, the Ryder Cup is a team competition between top golfers from the U.S. and Europe and occurs every two years. The event has been around since 1927, but has really grown in popularity since the late 1970's.

Besides great golf, the event has provided a great laboratory for looking at the impacts of various management styles on a team through the years. This year was no different and culminated with a contentious post-event press conference in which American star, Phil Mickelson, essentially chastised the management style of the American captain, Tom Watson.

Let's set aside the debate about whether or not the management style of a captain actually impacts the on-course performance of star athletes like Mickelson. A part of me says "no" and in this aspect Mickelson sounded like a whiner in the press conference. If Phil and company can't motivate themselves to play well in the Super Bowl of golf, it's doubtful that Vince Lombardi, Nick Saban or John Wooden would be able to coax winning performance out of them.

But in the real world, the management style of the team leader does greatly impact the performance of the team, and on this front, Mickelson made some very valid points. Tom Watson utilized an old-school, top-down, authoritarian management style. He made all the decisions because in his mind, he knows best. And like most authoritarian managers, he implied that he made all the right decisions and the players (employees) are to blame for the loss.

Mickelson's point was that the team performed better under Paul Azinger in 2008, the last time the U.S. team has won the event. Azinger utilized a personality profile assessment to group players with compatible partners. He also engaged the players who earned their way on the team to help select the final members of the team. This is a great lesson for small and mid-sized business owners who run their businesses like Tom Watson ran the U.S. team. Thinking you have all the answers doesn't necessarily translate to peak performance by your team.

The way Watson was chosen as the leader also contains lessons. The PGA of America selects the captain.  First, like many executive teams, they tend to be reactionary in their approach to selecting a leader.  The Americans lost in 2012 with captain Davis Love III, whom they determined to be too soft.  So their answer was to select someone tough. And no one is tougher than Tom Watson. Second, like many executive teams, they overvalue the wrong criteria.  Every U.S. captain in recent memory has been a major champion - meaning they've won at least one of golf's four major championships. Being a great individual contributor has never been a valid criteria for selecting a team leader. We've all witnessed the top sales producer fail as sales manager, for example. And third, like many executives, they undervalue succession planning and continuity. Each U.S. captaincy has been a whole new team with a totally different philosophy.

Contrast that with the European team that won this year with Paul McGinley as captain. McGinley only won four European tour events in his career and never finished higher than 6th in a major championship. McGinley served as vice captain in 2010 with Colin Montgomery (who also never won a major championship) and 2012 with Jose-Maria Olazabel. McGinley is beloved by the European players and he brought stability and continuity from the 2010 and 2012 teams to his own captaincy. Had the Euro's lost, I have a hard time believing a member of their team would have taken to the podium and skewered McGinley the way Mickelson skewered Watson.

No vice captains from Paul Azinger's 2008 championship team were part of the 2010 team, and while there have been a few repeat vice captains, the U.S. hasn't tended to view the vice captaincy as place to develop future captains. Captains are selected primarily on the merit of their individual accomplishments, not on their past performance as vice captains or their demonstrated ability to rally a team to peak performance.

The Europeans use a succession plan which puts a premium on effective teamwork over individual accomplishments, while the Americans bounce back and forth from "soft" management styles like Love III and Pavin and "hard" management styles like Watson and Hal Sutton.  The Europeans consistently win and the Americans consistently lose. Is anyone paying attention at the PGA of America?

Can I Fire Someone For a Facebook Post?

I have a Facebook contact who frequently bashes her employer on her posts. Does her employer have to take that or can they take employment action?

Social media has been around long enough now that there is a decent amount of legal precedent. But as you might expect, the answer is, it depends.

If the posts fall under the umbrella of protected concerted activity there is not much the employer can do from a disciplinary perspective (although there is plenty they can do to attempt to re-engage this employee - but that's the subject of another blog post). Protected activity includes things like pleas to other employees to help her do something related to her grievances or comments about working conditions, wages, etc. 

However, if the employee simply goes on a rant and says disparaging things about the company and her boss, threatens other employees, says things that aren't true, or discloses confidential or proprietary company information, this may fall outside of the protected activity umbrella and may be actionable.

When I made my first effort at writing a social media policy, I found two distinct types of examples. The first were written by lawyers and risk managers who clearly didn't understand social media. They were full of thou shalt nots but were not particularly useful. Rulings by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2011 and 2012 determined some of the provisions of these early social media policies to be illegal.

But the second group of examples I found were written by lawyers and marketers who do understand the power of social media to help a company, its brand and its culture. These policies encourage the positive use of social media but provide employees with some simple guidelines that will keep them out of trouble with the company.

Having a well-written social media policy can be a life-saver when faced with the inevitable situation when someone posts something that rubs the wrong way. Without one, management finds itself reacting to what they run across and potentially making a bad situation worse. And worst case, they run afoul of the NLRB.

Misdiagnosing Organizational Aches and Pains

When our grandparents went to the doctor, they described their symptoms, the doctor conducted an exam, ran some tests, made a diagnosis and prescribed the recommended treatment.

Today, patients come into the doctor's office having already researched their symptoms on WebMD, diagnosed their condition, and researched the various drug alternatives. Before the doc even sits down, they say, Doc, I have a case of Cooties and I need a prescription for Cootiebegone.

This is great when the diagnosis is correct. The patient is already well-educated on the conditon and their treatment alternatives and can carry on an educated conversation with their physician. But when the patient's self-diagnosis is wrong, the doctor must both correct the diagnosis and educate the patient on their error.

I find that small and mid-sized business owners sometimes misdiagnose their organzations' condition. They recognize the symptoms and they know where it hurts, but they often attribute the symptoms to the wrong organizational "disease."

The most common misdiagnosis occurs when business owners tell me they have a recruiting problem. The pain or symptom they are experiencing is related to vacant positions that are costing them money or putting a strain on the rest of the team. The disease, according to the owner, is that they can't find good people.  

If they invite me to conduct an organizational assessment, I might find that a) they are growing rapidly and are having a hard time finding qualified people to fill newly created positions fast enough, or b) they have a handful of positions that are revolving doors.

If they are company a, then the owner may have properly diagnosed the problem as a recruiting problem. But most are company b, who don't have a recruiting problem, they have a management problem. They've had and lost people who could have been good, but chose not to be. Unfortunately, company history usually records that every ex-employee was a bum from day one, so getting owners to admit they have a management problem is difficult.  

Another example occurs when organizations think they need a new performance review form or platform. If the company has a low-trust culture, it doesn't really matter whether they use a 4 or 5 point scale or whether the review is memorialized on-paper or on-line. They have diagnosed a performance management problem when they may have a organizational culture problem.

It is difficult to treat organizational "diseases" if they have been misdiagnosed. The first step toward the cure is taking an honest look at what is really happening. 

Half of an HR Department?

I once called a prospect and asked for an appointment. He replied, "My CFO is a CPA, so we're fine." Another prospect responded, "we outsource our HR to our payroll company." Both of those responses instantly told me that these mid-sized companies have half of an HR department, but don't know it.

The HR function to these business owners consists of risk management (compliance) activities and administrative (payroll and benefits) activities. And since that's what HR is to them, they are confident they have HR covered. 

CPAs are generally good at risk management, so I'm confident that the first prospect's CPA has made certain that the company is compliant with basic employment laws and regulations. Finance folks are also normally good at developing efficient administrative work flows, so I'm also sure that this company's employees get paid accurately and on-time and their benefits are administered efficiently. In my experience, as companies grow from the bookkeeper stage to the controller stage to the CFO stage, they get better and better at this half of the HR pie - the "cost" side. 

I refer to the compliance/administrative side of HR as the "cost side" because there is no return-on-investment from compliance activities unless you make assumptions about the fines or lawsuits you "might" have experienced. Compliance is comparable to insurance - there are risks if you don't have it, but no real benefit from having it until you need it. No one chooses to do business with a company because it has a great Employee Handbook!

Likewise, any ROI from process improvements comes from efficiency gains. Outsourcing portions of HR to payroll providers can be a legitimate way to generate some process improvement and compliance peace-of-mind. But administrative process improvements in support functions, like accounting or HR, don't typically help a company win in its competitive space.

The real ROI from an HR department comes from strategic initiatives. Strategic HR includes:

- identifying who are the right people for the jobs in your organization.

- ensuring jobs are designed well. 

- measuring and improving employee engagement which impacts productivity and reduces unnecessary turnover.

- developing supervisors and managers before you need them.

- managing performance in a way that actually improves performance.

- getting people in the right roles.

- having an organizational structure that aligns with your strategic objectives.

- training and development programs that support stated strategic objectives.

CPAs, finance professionals and HR processes companies are generally not as prepared to influence organizations in these areas as an experienced HR professional is. The realities of growing a company require the addition of a capable finance leader earlier in the growth curve than a capable HR leader. However, the earlier a company commits to having a "whole" HR department, the healthier its culture will be. 

One effective strategy that many small and mid-sized companies are utilizing that is both scalable and keeps costs variable is outsourcing HR leadership. In some cases they are outsourcing processes, such as payroll, to one company and strategic HR leadership to another. This model has a lot of potential to make the right expertise available to small but growing organizations in the proper dosage.

Three Mistakes To Avoid When Firing

In my work with small and mid-sized companies, I see three common mistakes related to terminating poor performers.

The first, and most common, is waiting too long. Most small business owners and managers are basically nice people. They sometimes tolerate poor performance much longer than they should, hoping the employee will turn things around on their own. I know one CEO who is so conflict avoidant that when he's finally had enough, he asks his HR person to handle the terminations of his direct reports while he's out of town. Typically, when this type owner or manager finally decides to terminate, the rest of the team asks, What took you so long?

The second mistake is not waiting long enough. I remember complaining to a manager at a restaurant once about a service issue. He went to check on it, came back to the table and told us our server had been fired and introduced us to another server who would be taking care of us for the rest of our dinner.  I remember thinking, I hope that server has made a lot of other mistakes, because the mistake he made with us was something that could easily have been handled through coaching or training and was certainly not termination-worthy.

In my experience, there are many more nice people than hot heads in the world. Hot heads do exist, however. These owners and managers use termination as punishment for mistakes and as a way to signal to the rest of team team, his or her peers, and sometimes customers, that errors will not be tolerated.  No doubt the restaurant manager thought he was impressing me with his quick action. Unfortunately the hot-head often fires people who could have been rehabilitated with good management practices. These managers wrongly assume that the cost to replace an employee is lower than the cost to rehab one, even in low-skill, high-turnover industries. And they overestimate the emotional capital they gain (or think they gain) from the rest of the team, peers and clients for the termination. Often, after this type of owner or manager acts, the rest of the team asks, What was he/she thinking?

The third mistake is not having sufficient documentation. This puts the employer at risk for charges of discrimination or retaliation as well as higher unemployment insurance premiums. Remember, employers are basically guilty until proven innocent when facing the ESC, EEOC or any division of the Dept of Labor. And the only way to prove your innocence is with solid documentation.

The best way to avoid all three of these mistakes is through early intervention when poor performance is noted. Make a legitimate effort at rehabilitating a poor performer, but document each step so that you can demonstrate that you were fair and consistent in your treatment of that individual.

When you decide that the performance is not going to improve satisfactorily, fire quickly!

Bad Referees and the Blue Lens Effect

I guess you could call me a sports fan. I don't consider myself a fanatic, but I watch my fair share of football and basketball games. Whenever I attend a game in person I always notice how many fans in my section are obsessed with officiating. It seems that all the bad calls go against their team. They spend more of their energy yelling at the refs than they spend supporting their players.

I decided to do an experiment. I watched several games on ESPN between teams I don't care about. I kept track of calls I thought were probably missed. I discovered that, 1) there aren't as many bad calls as people think, 2) the poor calls were pretty evenly distributed, and 3) the refs didn't really affect the outcome of most games. The team that played better generally won. Why, then, are almost all fans convinced that their team gets the worst officiating outcomes every game? 

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It must be human nature to filter our observations according to our passions.  It reminds me of my 35mm photography days. Whenever I would use a red or blue filter, I would get a totally different image on film than my naked eye saw through the viewfinder. If red represents bad calls and anger, then imagine a stadium full of fans wearing red-lensed sunglasses. 

What does this mean for a business owner? 

We care about our businesses, therefore we tend to filter out things that are going well and only see what we think might be mistakes. In other words, management sees the business through the same red lenses sports fans wear. We end up spending the bulk of our time storming around trying to correct the mistakes through punishment ("you're fired") or negative reinforcement ("if I do what the boss says, maybe he'll shut up").

Punishment or negative reinforcement is sometimes effective at weakening undesired behaviors. But positive reinforcement almost always strengthens desired behaviors. So, why do we focus on the negative? The same reason we never see the bad calls that go in our team's favor - it's human nature. But can we take off the red glasses and don blue ones in order to see the things that are going right more clearly? Absolutely! But it takes practice and discipline. The red-lensed glasses fit so well and are so comfortable. We just grab them out of habit even though a practically unused blue-lensed pair is sitting right there.

The moral of this story is, stop yelling at the refs and start praising the players when they do something right! They're the ones that are going to win the game for us. And they're more likely to do that if the right behaviors are praised and celebrated. That also means re-training yourself to notice!

What I Learned from The Dog Whisperer

I don't currently own a dog, so it's probably a little odd that The Dog Whisperer is one of my favorite television shows. Even though the series ended in 2012, it's still on in syndication and I often find myself pausing to watch when I surf by.

What is a dude with no dog learning from Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer? 

Most people call Cesar because they think they have a dog problem - the dog is barking, the dog is destructive, or the dog is aggressive.  Nearly always, Cesar shows that the problem lies in the owner's behavior, not the dog's. The dog is behaving the way you would expect a dog to behave given the environment and the stimuli. When the owner changes his or her behavior, the dog's behavior changes accordingly.

I regularly speak with companies who think they have a people problem when turnover is high, productivity is low or performance is poor. Once I become familiar with the company, I often find that they don't have an employee problem, they have a management problem and their employees are behaving in predictable ways, given the system of rewards, punishment and feedback that are present in the culture.

I know that comparing humans to canines is probably not the most popular metaphor, but there are similarities. The new hire who was so aggressively recruited frequently finds him or herself like the cute puppy everyone wanted, but grew into the dog no one wants to feed or walk. 

Company leaders often ask, "why can't we find good people?" But they are asking the wrong question. They should be asking, "why don't people who looked like good prospects during the interview process perform well once they get into our organization?" 

These managers almost always have a good excuse as to why those 2 or 10 people didn't work out.  "They just weren't a good fit" or "They oversold their abilities" are popular sayings.  But the best managers are wise enough to realize that if they have a pattern of hiring people who were successful in other organizations but fail in theirs, it might be "us."

An organization that asks the right questions, measures employee engagement and satisfaction, and makes smart, timely adjustments to its management and performance management culture, can create and sustain an environment where employees are voluntarily contributing at a high level. But that's a lot harder than behaving the way bad dog owners do - relying on punishment as the primary motivator and/or withholding feedback altogether.

What High Performing Companies Have In Common

I could never be a full-time professor, but I enjoy teaching one class per semester at a local university. I value the interactions with my students and the discipline required to prepare a meaningful course each semester.

While preparing for my class this Spring, I came across some interesting research from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). They found that among large companies (think Fortune 1000), high performing companies have fewer HR resources per 100 employees than their lower performing peers. But the exact opposite is true with small and mid-sized companies. The top performing companies outspend their industry competitors in HR.

Why do well-performing large companies need less HR?  

My guess is that those companies have solid, healthy cultures, they value management skills and train their managers well. They recruit and retain the right people for their organizations. Their competitors over-value technical skills and under-value people management skills, so they get weaker management at every level. This leads to lower engagement, higher turnover and more employee relations issues. Those extra HR people are recruiting and cleaning up messes!

Why do well-performing small and mid-sized companies spend more on HR than their lower performing peers?  

Visionary owners see HR resources as an investment rather than an expense. They hire HR resources earlier in their growth cycle and implement good HR platforms sooner. They are actively engaged with the HR team in the development of these platforms. And they reap the benefits.

What is HR doing for these companies?

1. These companies make better hiring and promotion decisions. They utilize proven HR tools to aid in selection and promotion. The underperforming competitors tend to make snap hiring decisions based only on interviews and promote based on tenure and technical skills.

  

2. These companies communicate better with employees, define what good performance looks like more clearly, have better performance management tools, and give better feedback. 

3. These companies have clearer policies and enforce them more fairly, keeping them out of trouble and wasting fewer resources reacting to charges of misconduct.

4. These organizations have a built-in pressure valve - a place employees can go to be heard and receive coaching when they're unhappy, rather than going straight to the boss and perhaps making things worse.

5. These organizations have a more engaged workforce as a result of good people management practices.

Does this mean throwing money at the HR function will make a small or mid-sized organization more profitable? Of course not. Just like with any investment, they must be wise investments.  Adding full-time people to a support function is a difficult and expensive decision. That's why some wise owners choose outsourced solutions. They get a higher level of expertise at a lower investment as they begin building that platform that's going to help them develop that solid culture when they're small, so they will need less HR when they're large!

Flood Zones and Wind Tunnels

Flood Zones is an apt description for those periods where there is an abundance of work and never enough staff to get it all done. Wind Tunnels describes those periods where management methods and tools that used to work, are no longer effective.

One or the other of these periods, according to James Fischer in his excellent book, Navigating the Growth Curve, typically occurs as growing companies approach the 10, 19, 34, 57, 95 and 160 employee mark.

The need to invest in new management or supervisor roles occurs precisely when the company is at its busiest and most productive - in a Flood Zone. Management often waits too long, makes hasty decisions, and puts people into roles they are not properly prepared for. 

The way to avoid the costs associated with those mistakes is to have talented individuals identified before the flood hits.  And, have them prepared for their new role before they assume it.

I recommend companies track productivity in ways that tell the most accurate story (rev and/or profit per employee, rev and/or profit per labor hour, etc.).  A good productivity graph that shows historical results can also be projected into the future allowing for some analysis. "What happens if our business grows faster than we expect?"  "What happens if we lose a key customer and shrink by 10%?"  "When will we need to add people or when must we cut?"    

Having identified triggers for when you need to add a supervisor or manager and planning for the short-term productivity impact in order to prepare for longer-term productivity gains allows management to identify and train those new supervisors and managers before they are needed.

Without a productivity target, owners and managers may get addicted to artificially high productivity numbers and ignore the risks associated with working the team too hard, for too long.

Manager response to Wind Tunnels is similar.  These also typically occur during periods of growth, which is the hardest time to reorganize the company, redesign work flows or implement new technologies.  It takes a lot of discipline (and confidence) to reorganize, reengineer or invest in new technologies when business is flat, but it is a lot easier to execute a plan in a Wind Tunnel if that plan was well-designed during less turbulent times.