Categories - Talent Management

Football isn’t just a sport, it’s a business. A BIG business. The players are big and so are their bonuses. With Super Bowl hype swirling and 30 second TV ads being sold for $3 million apiece, it’s not surprising that Hoovers reports estimated annual sales of $6.9 billion for the NFL.

So what is it that makes the NFL so successful?

A great deal of the success of the NFL can be attributed to the incredible motivation of football players and staff who have taken game-play to an extraordinary level. From an HR perspective, it’s worth considering what motivates the players and what we can learn from the success of the NFL.

As any football fan will tell you, there is a lot more that motivates football players than just making money. There is fame, glory and love of the game, amongst other things. These motivating factors are important and shouldn’t be ignored, but let’s look at how the NFL rewards achievement with compensation.

Picture a room full of executives and senior managers who have just endured a solid day of presentations “looking back” on the previous year. It’s the annual planning process, and it’s time to start planning for the coming year. The COO makes a brief presentation on the company’s strategic objectives that includes a list of powerful sounding statements like: “be the market leader,” “increase new product revenue,” and “drive customer satisfaction.” It is going to be a challenging year, but the group is committed and ready to move.

But then everyone returns from the break, and things quickly go south. The COO asks that we all meet as sub-teams to build out the next level of “the plan.” Several executives are assigned as team leads, and we begin meeting. Some see the lack of structure as an opportunity, and pushed to have their favorite initiatives incorporated into the plan. Others simply disengage to avoid being assigned to anything. In two hours, the next draft of the plan is done, and each executive and manager is responsible to take it back to their departments and make it happen.

As painful as this situation sounds, it was more painful to actually be there. And sadly, I think many executives and managers have this type of experience at some point during their career. The allure of goal setting and alignment can be so very powerful that often times the discipline and structure needed to set goals is mostly overlooked. Anyone can set a goal, but building a culture of goal setting is a different story entirely.

Goal setting is a critical step toward achieving long-term business success. I've experienced first-hand the use of cascading goals for ensuring that individual employee performance targets are linked to strategic business goals and performance measures. This goal-setting practice is put in place by high performance organizations to ensure alignment of strategic initiatives across the organization.

This practice provides value at the company, organizational and employee levels.

Establishes Business Priorities - Goal-setting allows the company to prioritize and allocate resources more effectively by focusing on the most pivotal activities for achieving business objectives.

Facilitates Collaboration - The use of cascading goals creates a corporate culture of accountability and shared responsibility. Good performance management practices highlight the contribution of an entire workgroup and recognize and reward collaborative efforts.

Increases Employee Engagement - This practice provides a clear path for how employees can specifically add value to the business. Simply knowing which practices are important to the organization changes an employee’s behavior. Naturally, employees who understand how their individual goals relate to those of the company are more engaged with the business.

For goal-setting to be successful, however, the process absolutely must start at the top. To ensure continuous alignment and drive a high-performance culture, organizations must adapt to real-time performance management and talent development. While this may seem arduous, an automated technology solution eliminates what would indeed be a labor intensive goal-setting process. Though not a replacement for high-impact practices, performance management technology does provide many process efficiencies and offers necessary transparency across an entire organization.

Kim Lamoureux directs Bersin & Associates' research in leadership development, succession management, competency management, and career management.

I recently heard a story about a troubled HR manager who was in the market for a compensation system. She had been comfortably working in a jumble of spreadsheets for quite awhile – until she ran into some major legal problems. With no knowledge of the kinds of systems that are available, she hired a costly consultant to make the decision for her.

I’ve heard a handful of similar stories over the past month about HR professionals who are technology adverse. In this digital age, and with so many great HR tools available, I’m a bit surprised and worried, so I thought I’d address a few possible reasons for this technophobia.

Some people don’t understand technology. Sometimes I find it hard to imagine that the Internet and personal computers didn’t always exist. We often take for granted the great innovations that we work with every day, but it wasn’t long ago when employees weren’t tech savvy because they didn’t have to be to be productive. Many people in today’s workforce weren’t required to be masters of technology for most of their careers, but they now find themselves at a disadvantage to workers who grew up with technology at their fingertips. To succeed in the modern day workplace, these veteran employees need to adapt by embracing and understanding technology, or they will be quickly replaced by those who already do.

As soon as he tells you he's from Vermont, a piece of the Kevin Wheeler puzzle falls into place. The small town friendliness sticks with him. Although he left home to spend seven years in Thailand (in the Peace Corps), Wheeler is quintessential, down-home Vermont, a clear thinker with the mannered reserve that comes from cold childhood winters. He's the only one of his family to have left home. When Kevin left, he kept going.

By far the most easily likable of the major figures in talent management, Wheeler's Vermont plain-speak dovetails nicely with his penchant for visions of the future. Wheeler tells a good story. When he does, it's usually about his passion, The Future of Talent.The gentle demeanor is a soft cover for a guy who like people and likes being with them.

Wheeler built his career portfolio with an astonishing track record in HR. For seventeen years, he was HR at National Semiconductor when it was the Google of it's time. He specialized in acquiring talent from Intel, their major competitor. Wheeler says, "Since no one knew what HR was, you could reinvent it. It was a great time to experiment. Pieces of the problem were easy. No one wanted to work for Intel, so picking them up was a snap."

When she was 19, Libby Sartain knew that she wanted to be in personnel. “Back then”,  she says, “there was no human resources department. It was industrial relations at best and personnel most of the time.” The plucky New Orleans native made her mark over the next 31 years revolutionizing the practice of HR wherever she went.

Always at the forefront, Libby was the first ever Chief People Officer (at Southwest Airlines). She ruled the roost on HR at Yahoo! for much of the past decade. If you look closely, you'll see her everywhere.

These days, Libby is enjoying being outside of the business world. After leaving Yahoo!, she’s started a consulting practice, wrote a new book and waded into a massive renovation project. Saying that she’s outside of the business world ignores the fact that she sits on the board of Peet’s coffee and advise a slew of small-startups. Libby flies to work almost as much as she did during her full time years in Silicon Valley.

Posts to Salary.com HR Voice continually remind us of how competencies, succession planning and skills gaps are encountered outside of our own business world. A recent post weighed in on the issues associated with talent management and succession planning in NBC’s late night entertainment. We’ve also reviewed the relevance of competencies, succession planning and skills gaps in professional sports. 

Where else do we use or observe competencies in perhaps a more subconscious way?

- How do we select and rate our physicians and hospitals?

- What about contractors who are called to fix the plumbing or add a new room to the house?

Recent studies have made it clear that U.S. workers are growing unhappy, especially the younger ones. A recent Conference Board survey of 5,000 households, found that only 45 percent of U.S. workers were satisfied in their jobs – down from 61 percent in 1987.

Employee satisfaction dipped across the board, but workers younger than 25 were most unhappy in their jobs. “Less interesting jobs” was a key reason for worker unhappiness.

Similarly, a recent Tower Perrins report found that workers are falling victim to recession fatigue. The report notes that employees across large global organizations are expressing more negative views on a range of factors, from long-term career opportunities to company leadership. The report noted that “the most dramatic declines are in employees’ perceptions about their career development opportunities at their current employers.”

Everyone’s heard about the controversy over at NBC. After a not-so-successful attempt at prime time, Jay Leno is moving back to his old time slot and Conan O’Brien is hitting the road.

As all the drama unfolded, I started thinking about how NBC isn’t the only organization to mismanage its succession planning and face a battle of superstar wills. Consider the following...

You’ve got two superstars working for you in similar positions. Star A has been around the longest and is your #1 player. Star B is quickly coming up the ranks though and shows a tremendous amount of potential. Both stars have their own unique style, and both work hard and contribute substantially to your business.

It’s often impossible for an organization to pick who it values more – its seasoned veteran or its hot-shot rookie. While one has made substantial contributions, the other promises to be the next big thing – or an even better thing. Balancing the needs of both can be a tricky task…

I am lucky to work for a company that has developed a strong track record of growth for the past 10 years, where many of my teammates remain driven just like we're working at a start-up. For someone like me, it's a perfect fit. I love pushing the envelope and trying to make things better. It makes the work we do very meaningful.

Making things work better, however, often means change. Change is such a loaded word. Recent political campaigns emphasized change, and the concept proved sometimes divisive. For others, change means different, and different can be difficult.