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.

Topgraders frequently tell non-Topgraders that the far superior results hiring and promoting people come from the rather obvious, not-particularly creative, “common sense” Topgrading methods.  I’ve even been guilty of downplaying its revolutionary components.

At the end of a typical 2-day Topgrading workshop managers frequently say, “Yeah, Brad – it’s all common sense.”  But after decades of witnessing how managers struggle with making the changes required of Topgrading, I truly believe most of the Topgrading methods are far from “common sense” until you know they work!

IT’S NOT COMMON SENSE TO

1.  Use two interviewers, using a 4-hour chronological interview, as the major practice in hiring, promoting, and auditing talent.

After all three applications are part of a company’s culture, with up to 90% of those hired and promoted turning out to be high performers; of course such rigor seems “obvious.”  And when managers want to do a talent inventory, an audit to figure out who are their A, B, and C players, and who has the greatest potentials, it seems “obvious” to use the same technique as used for hiring and promoting!  (The only difference between hiring and promoting or auditing is that external references are checked for hiring, but the Topgrading interviewers actually talk with internal bosses, peers, and subordinates when using Topgrading for promoting or auditing.)

These methods require rigor – 90% hiring and promoting success has only been achieved when the interviewers are trained and follow the Topgrading interview guides.

2.  Measure percent high performers hired and promoted, or measure costs of mis-hires and mis-promotions.

Although business people say, “If it’s important, we have to measure it,” and “talent is our most important asset,” no company we have ever seen, surveyed, or heard of systematically measured how successful they were at hiring and promoting people.  In a meeting of Global 100 heads of HR, only Topgrading companies disclosed rigorous methods for measuring success.  And when asked, the Global 100 heads of HR admitted that 75%+ of the people they hired or promoted into managements jobs were mistakes.

3.  Expect candidates to arrange personal reference calls with former bosses (and others).

After all, most companies prohibit their people from even taking reference calls.  But the simple truth is A players do get their former associates to accept those reference calls.  Why does it work?  Former bosses of A players are not at all worried that because they might say something negative about their former A player, that A player won’t get a job and sue.  Fact:  in 30 years and hundreds of companies performing this step, 40+ Topgrading professionals have never heard of any legal issue. None!

4.  Expect managerial candidates for hire or promotion to sit through a 4-hour Topgrading Interview.

High performers love the chronological interview, the walk down memory lane in which they are asked to describe all their wonderful successes and triumphs.  In addition to the ego trip, they understand that by participating in the thorough Topgrading hiring or promoting steps, there is a very good chance they will succeed in the job (if offered, obviously), and with the huge amount of information about them their new boss will be able to coach them to a) assimilate smoothly into the job, b) perform well, and c) continue a career development process right now – within weeks of joining the company.

5.  Be able to keep in mind and rate candidates accurately on 50 competencies.

If you’re not a Topgrader, you know you wouldn’t be able to track 50 competencies, right?  But in 2-day Topgrading workshops every manager actually does it.

How can this be possible?  Because in the Topgrading Interview there are thousands of data points.  For example, when the person describes a success 10 years ago, more than a dozen competencies are revealed.  “I got the President’s award for pulling off the project,” and in explaining how she did it, she shows teamwork, intelligence, drive, dedication, analysis skills, leadership, stress management, etc., etc.

6.  Learn enough from a competed Topgrading Career History Form to screen out most weak candidates for hire and screen in only the best.

In our Topgrading workshops people analyze the completed form of a real person (names have been changed).  They then guess at how the fellow’s real boss rated him on all 50 competencies.  People amaze themselves because most are “off” only an average of 2 points on a 10-point scale and some, without even seeing the candidate, were off by only 1 point.

This fun little exercise convinces everyone that a) they can track and rate 50 competencies, and b) this Topgrading Career History Form is the best pre-selection tool on the planet.

7.  (saving the best for last)  Achieve 90% high performers hired and promoted.

About 15 years ago, thanks to the work I did with Jack Welch at GE, we proved that managers like you can be almost as good as Topgrading professionals when hiring and promoting people.

Since my profession for 3 decades had been interviewing candidates for hire or promotion, I effectively put myself out the screening business (and into the training business).

How can managers like you do almost as well as professionals with the Ph.D. and 30 years of experience?  Jack Welch asked me that, I suggested we use two interviewers who could cover for each other, he agreed, and the rest is history.  GE shot up to 90%+ success picking high performers, and since then, hundreds of companies have embraced Topgrading.

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.

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.

This short article spells out the quick and dirty “Cliff Notes” version of Topgrading methods that are truly best practices NOT just for hiring but for auditing your talent and for promoting people with great success.

We’ll start with Topgrading hiring: the 1 – 2 – 3 punch, the 3 most important practices any manager can use to hire better, and then you’ll learn the simple tweaks that can show you who are your A, B, and C players and can help you triple your success promoting people.

(Experienced Topgraders, please forward this article to managers who, as you well know, can literally use these methods today and immediately improve their hiring and promoting “batting averages,” and also to audit their talent to see who really are As, Bs, and Cs, and which of their people have the best potentials for the future.)

The Topgrading hiring advice that follows may seem like common sense but it’s not the common practice even in many Global 100 companies.  Hundreds of companies and thousands of managers have doubled and tripled their hiring success following these methods:

1.  Use the Topgrading “Truth Serum,” the TORC Technique.

TORC stands for Threat of Reference Check.  At every step in the hiring process let candidates know that just prior to a job offer they will have to arrange personal reference calls with supervisors and others you choose.

C players, who probably fudged their resumes, don’t want you talking to their former supervisors, and they know they can’t get them to talk anyway, so they drop out of the hiring process.  Good!  A players, whose resumes are accurate and complete, want to arrange calls with former supervisors. Good!

2.  No matter what hiring methods you currently use, add the Topgrading Interview.

Okay, I’ve written 4 books on this interviewing method and every manager we know of who achieves 90%+ high performers hired uses this interview.  And in our 2-day workshop the entire second day teaches it and gives managers coaching.  However, here is the essence of a Topgrading Interview in a nutshell:

Starting with the first fulltime job and coming forward to the present job, ask 7 basic questions plus follow-up questions:

1. What were your responsibilities?
2. What were your successes and how did you achieve them?
3. What were your mistakes — what do you wish you’d done differently and what lessons were learned?
4. What was your supervisor’s name and what did you like and dislike about him/her?
5. What’s your best guess as to what that supervisor would say, in a personal reference call you would arrange, were your strengths, weaker points, and overall performance?
6. Of your direct reports, how many A, B, and C players did you inherit, how many in each category did you end up with, and what did you do with respect to coaching, hiring, and firing?
7. Why did you leave that job?

What’s so brilliant about a thorough chronological interview?  It’s the patterns that are revealed about literally dozens of competencies.  Those patterns reveal what a candidate is really like today.

For example, suppose a candidate, taking the TORC “truth serum,” admits that her supervisor 10 years ago would criticize her for being disorganized, and she admits that her biggest mistake was lacking a follow-up system; so, she missed due dates and went over budget on 3 of 8 projects.

Okay, that’s useful, but the pattern is most revealing and as you discuss her performance in the past decade you will learn if she got organized or not.  Those patterns give you extremely deep and accurate insights into all key competencies.

3.  Ask finalists to arrange personal reference calls with supervisors and others you choose.

The TORC Technique is not an idle threat; you absolutely should talk with supervisors and others, but make the candidate do the work of arranging them.  After you have gotten descriptions of all supervisors (and others), you choose which ones you’d like to talk with.

Chances are you want to talk with all supervisors in the past 10 years (if the candidate doesn’t want you to talk with the current supervisor, okay, but ask the candidate to arrange a call with someone at the supervisor’s level who left the company).

THE WORLD’S BEST PRACTICES FOR AUDITING TALENT AND PROMOTING PEOPLE

Topgraders usually learn hiring methods first and find that with just a small tweak, they can promote with much greater success and they can audit their people to learn who is the most talented.

My first Topgrading project with GE was not to improve hiring, but to improve their success promoting people.  And it worked!

I met with the #1 Human Resource executives at Global 100 companies, and they said only 25% of the people they promoted into management turned out to be high performers, except for the Topgraders in the room, who said they doubled or tripled their promoting success using Topgrading methods.

How did GE and others do it?  Simple – train managers in Topgrading methods and instead of using external reference calls, arrange internal interviews with boss(es), peers, and subordinates. GE improved to over 90% of those promoted turning out to be high performers.

Finally, do you need deeper insights into your current managers?  In these problematic times former high performers slip and it’s common to wonder if they still have what it takes.  Or do you simply want to know who are your a, B, and C players?

The Topgrading audit methodology is exactly the same as the promoting methods just described with one tweak:  in promoting people you have one job in mind, and in the audit you look broadly at where someone can be an A player.

CONGRATULATIONS! If you use that Topgrading 1 – 2 – 3 punch, you may not achieve 90% high performers hired and promoted, but you will know you’ve been far more thorough, and you’ve gotten much deeper insights into candidates, than ever before.  And simply by using internal rather than external “references,” you can use the same basic methods to audit your talent, to get much deeper insights into who really are the high potentials.

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.