Best Practices in Talent Management: A book review by Bob Morris

Best Practices in Talent Management: How the World’s Leading Corporations Manage, Develop, and Retain Talent
Marshall Goldsmith and Louis Carter, Co-Editors
Pfeiffer/A Wiley Imprint

Ultimately, the effectiveness of best practices depends on those who execute them

As co-editors Marshall Goldsmith and Louis Carter explain, the material in this book focuses on 14 dynamic enterprises (i.e. Avon Products, Bank of America, Corning, CES, Ecolab, GE, IRS, Kaiser Permanente/Colorado Region, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Murray & Roberts, Porter Novelli, Southern Company, and Whirlpool) that were selected by the Best Practice Institute because they have succeeded in implementing talent enhancement programs – “although, to be fair, to call them ‘programs’ is not entirely accurate, as they are in reality vital strategic components integrated into the companies’ core operating values.” Indeed, had they not been so integrated, neither they nor their companies could become, much less remain, vital and dynamic. There is a separate chapter devoted to each of the 14, written by one or more of the contributors who were invited to participate. It is important to keep in mind that in an age when several companies “built to last” haven’t and others once great are no longer even good, at least a few of the 14 in this book may no long be exemplars of anything, except perhaps of how quickly an organization can become weakened in one way or another.

I appreciate the material provided in the Conclusion introduced by this explanation: “In order t0 present a fuller and more complete picture of the best practices in talent management, in March 2009 the Best Practice Institute [of which Cater is founder and CEO] released results from a groundbreaking survey of some of America’s most dynamic companies.” An overview is provided in the Conclusion. Then in the Epilogue, William J. Rothwell suggests several “key take-away points” from each of the 14 mini-case studies. From Ecolab, for example, “This case is outstanding for illustrating how a talent program can be built on, and leverage, the organization’s culture and values. These values include, according to the case, (1) spirit; (2) pride; (3) determination; (4) commitment; (5) passion; and (6) integrity. The talent program was based on internal interviews of company executives.”  Obviously, brief take-away points merely serve as triggers to recall insights that are developed in much greater depth, in context.

Presumably Goldsmith and Carter are responsible for the reader-friendly format that most of the contributors adopt (with only minor modification) and graphic devices such as Figures that consolidate a wealth of information about an especially important subject such as Avon’s “Talent Investment Matrix” (Page 6), Corning’s “Program Snapshot – Week One” (50), Ecolab’s “Success Indicators for Business Drivers at Each Pipeline Level” (90), “IRS Leadership Core Responsibilities” (119), McDonald’s “Performance Drivers” (162), and Microsoft’s “Key Stakeholder Roles for HiPo Coaching program” (196). Because they are best practices, these and others examined in the book should serve as exempla that suggest possibilities rather than as templates to be adopted without revision or modification. That is to say, doing what is right and doing it right pose entirely different challenges.

Those who share my high regard for the material in this volume are urged to check out George Anders’ recently published book, The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else, as well as Dean Spitzer’s Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne R. Ross, Peter Weill, and David C. Robertson.

Let Me Tell You a Story: A book review by Bob Morris

Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game
John Feinstein and Arnold (“Red”) Auerbach
Back Bay Books (2005)

Emperor of the Celtic Dynasty

This is one of two best sports biographies that I have read in recent years, the other being Jeff Davis’ Papa Bear: The Life and Legacy of George Halas. Both Auerbach and Halas were obviously great coaches but also outstanding CEOs, each building a successful and profitable franchise while playing a key role in a multi-billion dollar professional organization. In this instance, the National Basketball Association.

Although generally viewed as a sportswriter, Feinstein has always seemed (to me, at least) to be a cultural anthropologist who works very hard to understand not only major sports figures and events but also their social context. This is especially true of A March to Madness: A View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference, The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball, A Civil War: Army Vs. Navy (A Year Inside College Football’s Purest Rivalry), and A Season on the Brink, a detailed account of the Indiana University men’s basketball team’s 1985-1986 season.

What we have in this volume is Feinstein’s account of his close association with Arnold (“Red”) Auerbach over a four-year period during which Feinstein was included among a select few who regularly met with Auerbach for lunch almost every week at the China Doll restaurant in Washington (DC). What emerges is a multi-dimensional portrait of Auerbach as revealed by his and others’ reminiscences and observations. Feinstein also includes relevant information from his extensive research on Auerbach, the N.B.A., the Boston Celtics teams Auerbach coached, and their opponents.

By all accounts, he was a ferocious but highly-principled competitor. Agreeing with Sun Tzu that every battle is won or lost before it is fought, Auerbach drove his carefully selected players hard during the pre-season (and whenever the N.B.A. schedule allowed a practice) but then allowed them to play to their individual talents while insisting that they do so as a team. He expresses contempt for coaches who draw attention to themselves during a game in progress as well as for selfish or lazy players. All of his favorite coaches (notably Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, and Morgan Wootten) were/are dedicated teachers as well as strict disciplinarians and relentless taskmasters, renowned for developing individual talent while never allowing team integrity to be compromised. It is no coincidence that these same coaches are also among those whose teams have won the most games as well as numerous conference and national championships.

Of greatest interest to me are Auerbach’s self-revelations, most of which preceded by “Did I ever tell you about….?” or “Let me tell you about….” He seems eager to share stories about everyone he has known, with two exceptions: Len Bias, the University of Maryland All-American who died of a drug overdose immediately after being drafted #1 by the Celtics, and, Reggie Smith who was the Celtics captain when dying of a massive heart attack during a pickup game. “Both names bring a cloud to his face, a look of sadness. They are, without question, the two most tragic figures in the history of the Celtics.” Feinstein provides a wealth of information about the sad circumstances in Chapter 8, “Dark Days.”

Auerbach continues to have many close friends and countless admirers, not only in basketball or even in the sports world but throughout almost all elements of American society. For whatever reasons (Feinstein suggests several), he retains a certain mystique…especially for those who recall all the great Celtics teams and their N.B.A. Hall of Famers which include Auerbach; also Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Tom Heinsohn, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Frank Ramsey, Bill Russell, and Bill Sharman.

Perhaps Auerbauch’s closest personal friend in the media, the Boston Globe‘s Will McDonough offers these comments about him. “First, he’s smarter than you, he’s smarter than me, he’s smarter than just about all of us. He’s got an amazing feel for people. That’s what made him a great coach. People say he had great players. Who do you think chose those players? [Auerbach's Celtic teams won nine league championships in ten years with talent which he fully developed.] Every one of those guys is in the Hall of Fame. But every one of them listened to Red and did whatever he told them they had to do in order to win. That’s why he always said that he never `handled’ players. He never tried to handle anyone. He was completely honest with them, told them what was expected of them, and gave them a choice: my way or the highway. There was never any ambiguity.”

Many of us who read this book will be somewhat envious of Feinstein because he was able to have lunch almost every Tuesday with Auerbach and his cronies, privy to what must have been exceptionally lively, often confrontational conversations. But we are also grateful that he shares so much of those conversations as well as much of what was revealed to him during interviews of hundreds of others who also had a close association with Arnold (“Red”) Auerbach, arguably the greatest basketball coach ever and without doubt one of the most interesting human beings I have as yet encountered.

Note: Feinstein’s latest and, in my opinion, his best book thus far, One on One, has just been published. For those of us who cherish sports journalism of the very highest quality, it is a “must read.”

How leaders kill meaning at work

Here is an excerpt from still another outstanding article written by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, featured online by The McKinsey Quarterly (January 2012), published by McKinsey & Company. To read the complete article, obtain information about the firm, access other resources, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.

Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways.

As a senior executive, you may think you know what Job Number 1 is: developing a killer strategy. In fact, this is only Job 1a. You have a second, equally important task. Call it Job 1b: enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in the trenches of your organization who strive to execute that strategy. A multiyear research project whose results we described in our recent book, The Progress Principle [Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, August 2011], found that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.

Even incremental steps forward—small wins—boost what we call “inner work life”: the constant flow of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that constitute a person’s reactions to the events of the work day. Beyond affecting the well-being of employees, inner work life affects the bottom line. [See Sangeeta Agrawal, James W. Asplund, James K. Harter, Emily A. Killham, and Frank L. Schmidt, “Causal impact of employee work perceptions on the bottom line of organizations,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, July 2010, Volume 5, Number 4, pp. 378–89.]  People are more creative, productive, committed, and collegial in their jobs when they have positive inner work lives. But it’s not just any sort of progress in work that matters. The first, and fundamental, requirement is that the work be meaningful to the people doing it.

In our book and a recent Harvard Business Review article [See Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, “The power of small wins,” Harvard Business Review, May 2011, Volume 89, Number 5, pp. 70–80.], we argue that managers at all levels routinely—and unwittingly—undermine the meaningfulness of work for their direct subordinates through everyday words and actions. These include dismissing the importance of subordinates’ work or ideas, destroying a sense of ownership by switching people off project teams before work is finalized, shifting goals so frequently that people despair that their work will ever see the light of day, and neglecting to keep subordinates up to date on changing priorities for customers.

But what about a company’s most senior leaders? What is their role in making—or killing—meaning at work? To be sure, as a high-level leader, you have fewer opportunities to directly affect the inner work lives of employees than do frontline supervisors. Yet your smallest actions pack a wallop because what you say and do is intensely observed by people down the line. A sense of purpose in the work [See Robert Sutton, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best . . . and Learn from the Worst, New York: Business Plus, 2010; and Sutton’s related article, “Why good bosses tune in to their people,” mckinseyquarterly.com, August 2010.], and consistent action to reinforce it, has to come from the top.

[Next, Amabile and Kramer identify and then discuss the "four avoidable ways" or “traps” by which "leaders kill meaning at work. To read the complete article, please click here.]

“      *     *

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School and co-author of the aforementioned The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.  Originally educated as a chemist, Teresa received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University. She studies how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Steven Kramer is an independent researcher and writer in Wayland, Massachusetts. He is also co-author of The Progress Principle. He received his undergraduate degree in psychology from UCLA, and his doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Virginia.

To Teach Effectively, Show and Tell

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

How many times have you trained a colleague in a task, only to have that person come knocking on your door every five minutes with a question?

People learn by watching others, so instead of telling people how to solve a problem, show them.

Take them through each step, explaining the reasons behind each.

Then allow them to ask as many questions as needed.

This will not only give them the foundation they need to do the task, but will prompt you to master the task more deeply as you provide a justification for each step.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “The Best Approach to Training” by Richard Catrambone.

To read that article and join the discussion, please click here.

Also, you may wish to check out the new book Management Tips from Harvard Business Review, based on HBR’s Management Tip of the Day by clicking here.

Richard Catrambone is a Professor in the School of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has consulted on instructional design and human-computer interaction topics for various organizations. His teaching and mentoring has been recognized by multiple teaching awards.
TAGs: To Teach Effectively [comma] Show and Tell, Management Tip of the Day, Harvard Business Review. HBR newsletters, “The Best Approach to Training”, Richard Catrambone