Topgrading

A Player executives have very common reading habits, and what they read varies dramatically from what C Players and lower level managers read.  For anyone aspiring to be a successful CEO, or a C-level executive, emulating the reading habits of the best and the brightest might give you an edge.

Sorting through my hard copy files of 6,500+ senior executives I focused on C-level executives (CEOs and those reporting to CEOs) who are North American, and only those whom I rated “A Player.”  There are about 500 in the sample.

First I’ll report the results, and then explain why those executives believe their reading habits give them a competitive advantage in their career.

The Results of the Study:  What Periodicals A Player Executives Read:

1.  Wall Street Journal – Almost all read the front page and in the Opinion section, the Review and Outlook column (this column, in my sample, is the single most powerful source of political thought for senior executives).

For all the remaining periodicals, most executives skim them and only read a few articles.

2.  Forbes
3.  Fortune
4.  BusinessWeek
5.  The Economist
6.  trade publications (all skim their industry “rags”)
7.  New York Times
8.  local newspapers – almost all skim one or two

Over the past 3½ decades the above list has hardly changed, although many executives read online versions these days, supplementing reading these publications with headlines and 1-paragraph “articles” they receive as soon as they turn on their PC.  Younger executives (in the 30’s or younger) read much less than their older counterparts, and small company (fewer than 500 employees) read much less than Global 1000 executives.

What Books Do They Read?

The bigger company executives read a couple of books per month, typically one fiction (for relaxation) and one good, solid non-fiction book – topics such as how international politics impacts business, best sellers such as Good to Great (Collins), and books on strategy, and finance (understanding the subtle implications of finance/accounting/M & A).  Recently Kindle and iPad have captured the imagination of only a small percentage of our sample, but they are enthusiasts!  AudioTech Book Summaries is a great way to get written and audio summaries of books.

TV and Radio Sources of Information

Most top executives watch national and international news, particularly business news, programs, daily.  And when in a car they sometimes listen to news stations.  But they say that what they read gives them the most in-depth understanding.

How to “Skim” Articles

You might wonder how busy executives have time to, as listed above, “skim” so many periodicals.  Any business writer knows the answer: as a writer you use the first sentence in each paragraph to say what you’re going to say, and then you say it.  So, to skim and get most of the “meat,” read the first sentence of each paragraph.

How to Read Your Way into the Executive Suite

Forgive my cute title; I’m dramatizing a truth that most mid-managers simply don’t get:  if you want to BE an executive, THINK like an executive, and in order to do that, READ what the best, brightest, A Player executives read.

We don’t assess or coach many mid-managers, but we conduct a lot of 2-day Topgrading workshops, and during meals and breaks we frequently find out what mid-managers read.  Those who will not break into the C suite read mostly sports and entertainment magazines, and almost no books.

And most mid-mangers bore the heck out of A Player top executives.  I can see it at lunches in which the top team dines with lower-level managers.  Top executives in global companies know that international and domestic policies of 30 nations will affect their business, and if they are tuned into the powerful underlying forces in the world, and their competitors aren’t, they win.  And they want their peers and rising stars to be global in their views as well.

So in hundreds of lunches we’ve seen a typical scenario play out, in which a top executive is testing, to see which mid-managers have that global perspective:

CEO: “So, are oil prices going to go up or down?”
Mid-manager: “There are 5 factors pushing up and as many down, ”  (whether the answer is up or down is irrelevant; what the CEO wants to see is a globally sophisticated response from a manager who reads, learns, analyzes, connects the dots, and forms an opinion).

Other CEO-instigated discussions in the past couple of years:

• “How will an Israeli attack on Iran nuclear facilities affect our business?”

• “Will the Chinese float their currency, and if they do, what will the impact be on our company?”

• “Is now a good time to buy back our stock?”

• “What acquisitions, if any, make sense for us?”

• “How will likely tax rates in the next couple of years affect our business?”

Too often such questions are met with an awkward silence, with mid-managers embarrassed and their expressions are daffy.  “I dunno,” they say, raising their shoulders.  And if the CEO asks, “What do you folks read?” the awkward silence tells all.

What Reading Habits Drive CEOs Nuts

Many CEOs have complained, “Young managers these days live in their own little narcissistic world, and find current events boring and depressing.  Too many mid-managers these days think like technical professionals, specialists who will never understand the big picture.  Stated bluntly, they are not well-read and they are not well-informed.”

Why Reading Your Way into the Executive Suite Works

About a zillion years ago I entered grad school, and mentor, Dr. Bob Perloff, who became President of the American Psychological Association, said, “Brad, to get out of here (Purdue) with a doctorate, all you have to do is make the professors think of you as their peer.”  Good advice – translated it meant sure, get the grades and do the papers, but more than that find out what the professors read, what conferences they attend, what issues they exuded passion over, how they think.

That’s what A Player CEOs want – direct reports and high potential lower level managers they consider peers, who share their concerns for not just how tactical issues should be addressed, but how world and national issues and policies will affect the business.

SUMMARY: To be an A Player top executive, learn what the CEO and other top executives think about, what global/national/business issues they are passionate about, and to get inside their brain – read what they read, so they consider you well-read, and well-informed.

Talent Management Magazine’s August edition included an excellent overview of current best practices in performance management.  The author contends that, “…traditional performance reviews do little, if anything, to reinforce desired behaviors or to correct poor ones.”  She goes on to describe five things that can be done to improve performance reviews.  We agree, but feel an essential ingredient is missing.

We’ve found that the performance review process is ineffective in most of the hundreds of companies we have worked with…until they began Topgrading.

The specific Topgrading Step that significantly improves the effectiveness of performance reviews is Step 2, creating Job Scorecards.  Read more »

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 »

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.