Topgrading

Jack Welch was visibly ticked off.  “Too few of the people we promote turn out to be A players,” he lamented, “and we have the best people management and development programs in the world.”  Fast forward 15 years and I met with just the #1 human resource executives at just the largest 100 companies in the world, and they said that only 25% of the people they promote turn out to be high performers, that 75% of the people they promote turn out to be disappointments, or worse!

Why do so many companies promote people over their head?  The heads of HR from Global 100 companies agreed that it was a matter of people earning promotions.  People who do a super job are given promotions because they “deserve the chance.”  Years ago a book called The Peter Principle documented how companies do this – promote people until they are incompetent in a job and then leave them in that job!  We all know of a top sales rep who was promoted to sales manager and was a horrible manager!

So, what is a good way to promote people?  Consultants hate it when clients arrive at solutions without even asking their opinion.  But Jack Welch was forgiven, because he figured I had the solution, the chronological Topgrading Interview.  He was right – by putting candidates through an interview that covered all aspects of the person’s entire career, the patterns of successes, failures, passions, disappointments, decision making, and relationships across promotion after promotion after promotion would reveal TRUTH, how a person is apt to perform with the next promotion.  And by creating a job scorecard laying out all the specific accountabilities and competencies for the higher level job, the proverbial self-oriented sales rep would not be promoted to a leadership position.

Made sense.  And I had plenty of candidates for promotion to interview at GE – too many!

Then Welch said, “There aren’t enough Brad Smarts around, so Brad teach us to do what you do.”  Thinking that GE managers would never achieve my 90%+ success record, I was pleased when they achieved 50% success, using the Topgrading basics – the Career History Form, the Topgrading Interview, and the Reference Check Guide (with internal references, of course, for candidates for promotion).

Welch was not satisfied with a 50% success rate, asked how they could improve more, and I said, “Jack, we use two interviewers in the Topgrading workshops and they are a lot better than one interviewer – shall we try it?”  Jack said yes instantly, and after several years of fine-tuning the Topgrading promoting processes at GE, the company improved to over 90% success.  That means 90%+ of those promoted were later deemed to be A players in the job.  So, what are the steps to take?

TOPGRADING PROMOTING STEPS

1.  Operating managers and HR managers are trained in the tandem Topgrading hiring methods (because external hiring methods and internal promoting methods are almost identical).

2.  The tandem Topgrading interviewers are chosen from different parts of the company (so they are not politically involved) and asked to perform the tandem Topgrading Interview.

3.  Instead of using external reference checks, the interviewers talk for 45 minutes with boss (es), peers, and direct reports of the person.  An email survey is also conducted.

4.  The interviewers write a report and the same report goes to the company and the person, a summary of the person’s background, potentials, strengths, weaker points, and developmental recommendations.

5.  One of the people considered gets the promotion.

6.  All of the individuals assessed sit down with the tandem interviewers to review all the rich, full data in the report and create Individual Development Plans (IDPs).

7.  The people assessed meet with their boss and HR to finalize the IDP and follow up on implementation.

That’s it!  Two sharp managers trained in Topgrading methods can do a terrific job both assessing candidates for promotion and then coaching them.

What about Assessment Centers? I’ve designed and conducted over 30 different assessment and development centers, with several days of tests, simulations, interviews, and other activities that replicate key aspects of the job people are candidates for.  The Topgrading Interview is always the one most valid predictor of how people promoted will do.  In our experience assessment centers are good for driving organizational change but poor at predicting success at a higher level – the tandem Topgrading Interview method is cheaper, quicker, and better.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Are you interested in learning the latest Topgrading Methods and tools?  Consider attending our 2-day Topgrading Workshop September 15-16, 2010.  Click here for more information.

An article in Human Resources Executive Online reports some disturbing information.  700 senior-level human resources executives were surveyed.

• 92% believe that superior talent is a vital competetive advantage. (good!)
• 17% believe that their workforce strategy is aligned with their business strategy. (bad!)
• 10% consistently measure the effectiveness of talent management programs. (very bad!)
• 7% consistently hold managers accountable for developing direct reports. (terrible!)

To paraphrase, these senior-level managers who are ostensibly responsible for talent management believe that talent drives business results, but most do not have talent strategies aligned with business goals, don’t measure whether the talent management process works, and don’t hold managers responsible for building strong teams!

Though disturbing and disappointing, this information is hardly surprising.  Most companies have something about “the best people” or “top talent” in their mission, vision, or values.  However, after the website is updated, managers go back to focusing on what they are measured on; revenue, efficiency, and profit.

This article also stated that CEOs rarely model the behavior to correct the problems.  We have three suggestions: Read more »

In a recent Fast Company article, Chip and Dan Heath (authors of Switch), conclude that companies shoudl not recruit next generation talent, they should grow it - develop and promote people internally.  The base their conclusions on the material in Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance by Boris Groysberg.

Groysberg makes the point that a high performer in one organization, with its unique resources, talent, and coworkers, will not necessarily be an A player in a different organization.  While we agree with that statement, the authors throw the “baby out with the bathwater” when they state, “The only way to take control of your firm’s talent pool is to create it yourself.”  In other words, they say to develop and promote people rather than recruit from outside the organization.

We are strong advocates of promoting from within, but take heed of Jack Welch’s approach.  He believed that solely promoting from within can make a company in-bred and unreceptive to new ideas, so he required 75% of management jobs to be filled through promotions and 25% from outside talent to enrich the mix, as he put it.

Everyone knows that hiring externally is risky becasue even highly talented people just might not fit a different organization culture.  Fortunately, Topgrading methods are perfoect for answering the question, “Can this person deliver the results we expect and deliver them in an organization like ours?  In other words, will they deliver the goods and fit in with the rest of us?  If a person has delivered excellent results in an organization that is packed with A players, has ample resources available, focuses on developing people, and has excellent training, but your firm is a start-up with no money, there is a high probability that person will fail.  (We’ve observed a 50% failure rate when a candidate transitions from a larger, resource-rich organization to a smaller, entrepreneurial company.) Read more »

Does Topgrading “translate” well into other cultures?  You bet!  During the past 6 months I’ve spent most of my professional time working with global rollouts of companies such as Barclays, DTZ (global commercial real estate management), Argo (insurance), and several other companies in Russia, Europe, South America, and Asia.  Following are key conclusions, insights, and advice:

1.  USE TOPGRADING METHODS NOT JUST FOR HIRING BUT FOR PROMOTING PEOPLE AND FOR AUDITING YOUR PEOPLE TO SEE WHO REALLY ARE THE A, B, AND C PLAYERS.

Companies usually begin using Topgrading methods to hire the best people, but soon realize that those same methods, with a simple tweak, can dramatically improve their success promoting people.

A survey of Global 100 heads of HR showed only 25% of the people they promote into management turn out to be high performers, except for the Topgraders in the room who reported 75%+ success.  My first project with GE was improving their promoting methods and GE soon achieved 90%+ promoting success.

How?  Simple – trained Topgrading interviewers do the same chronological interview they use for hiring, but instead of conducting external reference checks they interview internal people – bosses, peers, and subordinates.

Global companies struggle to understand who are their A, B, and C players in other locations.  A terrific use of Topgrading methods is to parachute in trained Topgrading interviewers who conduct the interview and just as in promoting, interview internal bosses, peers, and subordinates.

Bottom line:  use all 3 applications of Topgrading globally – hiring, promoting, and auditing talent.

2.  ROLLING OUT TOPGRADING IS NO MORE DIFFICULT THAN ANY OTHER GLOBAL CHANGE.

The good news is that global companies find it quite easy to make tweaks to accommodate Topgrading other cultures.

Recently I was in Shanghai, training managers from several parts of China, Singapore, Australia, and Europe, and did not even need a translator.  English truly is the global language of business.

If translations are necessary, the key ones are PowerPoint (slides for workshops), the Topgrading Workbook (with all 12 Topgrading hiring steps plus the latest Topgrading forms and guides), and the 50-page eBook, Avoid Costly Mis-Hires. (My permission for translations and edits is required, but I almost always give it.)

Cautions: Do a double translation – into the language, and from the language back into English.  There will be some weird translations, but this step surfaces them.  For example, there is no Russian word for the most important of 50 management competencies – resourcefulness – so we had to create a paragraph translation, and that took some, uh, resourcefulness.

Also, when using a translator in workshops, slow down 30% and simplify content at least that amount.

3.  TOPGRADING IS LEGAL EVERYWHERE WE KNOW OF.

Chapter 12 (Legalities of Topgrading) of my big book, Topgrading, was written by the largest employment law firm in the US, Seyfarth Shaw, and they vetted all Topgrading methods not only in the US but a lot of other countries (through their partners).

4.  “TWEAK” THE TOPGRADING CAREER HISTORY FORM FOR EACH COUNTRY.

Even if a translation is not required, a few sections – different education systems, currencies, and military requirements – require different terms for each country.  Our British friends will say that indeed a translation is required so the form uses English, not American.

We believe the Topgrading Career History Form is the best pre-selection instrument on the planet.  The TORC Technique is now in the Instructions (”At an appropriate time, near a job offer, you will be asked to arrange personal reference calls with supervisors and others you have worked with in the past decade”).  The form now has supervisor ratings, true reasons for leaving, and ratings on key competencies - all of which are quite accurate because of the TORC Technique.

Companies that do not use the Topgrading Career History Form have a problem – they screen from deceptive resumes, so they waste a lot of time in phone screens, and worst of all, they end up interviewing too many C players.  The Topgrading Career History Form saves a lot of time and, more importantly, assures that only the best candidates will come in for interviews, so it’s important to make those few modifications for each country.

5.  THE WORDING IN THE TOPGRADING INTERVIEW GUIDE SHOULD BE MODIFIED FOR DIFFERENT CULTURES.

In some cultures the wording of some questions is too direct.  For example, asking, “We all make mistakes – what mistakes did you make in that job?” might be changed to, “What are some ways you might have achieved even more?”  Or, in cultures that favor teamwork and downplay individual contributions, instead of asking, “What were your successes, your accomplishments,” you might ask, “In what ways might your efforts have contributed to the team successes?”

6.  TOPGRADING INTERVIEWS SHOULD BE CONDUCTED WITH A TANDEM PARTNER, A LOCAL A PLAYER TRAINED IN TOPGRADING METHODS.

Locals can “read between the lines” with respect to words used and body language.   For example, Americans expect interviewees to look them in the eye but not stare, and can leap to the wrong conclusion when interviewing someone from a culture in which eye contact is considered hostile.

Caution: Become a student of the culture – ask lots and lots of questions about body language, values, history, attire, etc.

7.  BEST PRACTICES IN COACHING ARE UNIVERSAL.

Coaching is part of Topgrading and best practices that are routine in the US, such as using email 360 surveys to track a manager’s progress changing his leadership style, are not commonplace in other cultures.  No problem – just introduce these tools.  Ditto for asking individuals to compose their Individual Development Plan with What they are going to do, Why, When, and How the results will be measured.

“But we’ve never done anything like this” can be true, but when the methods and benefits are stated, and the people in authority express confidence in those methods, people in all cultures comply.  At the risk of being redundant – be sure to modify language for the culture!

As CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch was the first CEO to rollout Topgrading methods globally. The first version was for assessing and coaching candidates for promotion. So, overnight managers around the world learned to create job scorecards with measurable accountabilities; hundreds of managers were trained in the tandem Topgrading Interview, and used the Topgrading Interview Guide.

8.  THE CEO MUST DRIVE GLOBALIZATION OF TOPGRADING.

As with any meaningful change, Topgrading must be driven by the CEO.  Sure, Human Resources is key, but managers can “game” Topgrading if the CEO is not a Topgrader.

9.  IMPLEMENT TOPGRADING FIRST IN THE HOME COUNTRY, TO WORK OUT THE DETAILS.

Then roll it out globally.  There is an exception:  A CEO who has previously Topgraded an organization can implement it globally all at once, confident that the tweaks will be minor and that the company will have a lot more A players, faster, with the global rollout all at once.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Wow, do we have a recommended resource for you today! It truly is the best product ever to teach the Topgrading methods that are the world’s best practices not just for hiring, but for auditing your talent and promoting with terrific success. It’s 7 1/2 hours of high definition DVDs with all the latest Topgrading methods explained by me, with great graphics. But also there is a real life case study so you learn the job scorecard for a real job, study the career history form of a real candidate named Erik, see me and Erik in split screen as I conduct a telephone screening interview with him, observe a tandem Topgrading Interview with him, watch and listen to a real reference call with Erik’s boss, and watch me coach him in a real life setting.

So, whether you are an individual manager wanting to master Topgrading, or you have a team needing thorough training, or you are interested in train-the-trainer, this is the total, total package with the DVDs, Topgrading Workbook, other books and guides, a 3-month license, on-line resources, and quarterly conference calls with Topgraders and me.

Click here to see the basic material, but you’ll want to click on where it says to learn more.

I’ve had the chance to sit with a lot of new Topgrading interviewers over the past several months and there is one piece of advice that was given to almost all of them.  (…and it didn’t matter if it was their first or 20th interview!)

The advice is to stick to the script in the Topgrading Interview Guide.  Too often, new Topgrading interviewers are too creative, rewording questions so as not to sound monotonous.  Rewording can result in not getting the information you need.  For example, asking, “What were some things you learned in that job?” instead of asking, “What mistakes did you make in that job?” gives the interviewee an easy way to dodge the “mistakes” issue and give you a positive answer when you were looking for a situation that did not go so well. Read more »