Author Archives: Tim Sackett

Career Confessions from GenZ: What Attracts GenZ to Your Work Place?

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Career Confessions from GenZ is a weekly series authored by Cameron Sackett, a Sophomore at the Univesity of Michigan majoring in Communications and Advertising. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn:

I’m going to be frank: the prospect of working for the rest of my life is absolutely terrifying. I’ve been saying for years that I can’t wait to retire, and I’m only 19. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than the thought of waking up early every day (I’m such a teenager it hurts) and going to sit in uncomfortable clothing at an ugly office surrounded by people I don’t even like.

Whenever this gets brought up, people always try to reassure me that I might enjoy working and I might really like my job. While I hope this is the case, I do believe that a major part of making those 40 hours a week a little more enjoyable is the company and its culture.

There are definitely things that I know will make me more attracted to work for a company that can hopefully combat some of my worries. First, I would love to have flexible work hours. Something about 10-6 instead of 9-5 (Editor/Dad Note: This made me LOL 10-6! Oh, boy, reality is really going to hurt!) sounds so much more appealing to me. Waking up at 8 sounds infinitely better than 7, and I can tell you that most other teenagers will say the same.

Additionally, the thought of 10 vacation days a year HURTS. I feel physical pain when I hear that some people have that. The European Union mandates a minimum of 22 vacation days a year with 13 paid holidays. Now, I know we’re in America, the land of opportunity, where you make your own fortune. But please just give me some dang vacation days! This plays into one of my biggest fears which is working my life away. I can confidently say that so many of my peers have the same worries and a way to ease this pain is some time off!

On one of my first interviews for an internship this past year, I got to tour one of the coolest offices I have ever seen. It was right out of my Gen-Z dreams: brick walls with modern finishes, an open floor plan, Apple products everywhere (#TeamiPhone). If I’m going to sit in an office for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, I would like it to look nice, not like a doctor’s office.

Similarly, my Dad has instituted something at his work that I love: a casual dress code. I really enjoy dressing up, but wearing a suit or even dress pants and a nice shirt everyday sounds exhausting. Please let me come to work with my shirt untucked and in a nice pair of sneakers, and I promise I will be much more focused than I would be with a tie and dress shoes on all day long.

Most important to me is the culture. I want to work in a place where everyone collaborates and there’s a mutual respect. Ideally, I’d love to be friends with my co-workers, but at least I’d like us to be able to work together in an environment where we aren’t in constant competition. Being a member of the Sackett family means that you are inherently a monster competitor and it’s exhausting. As much as I love to be competitive from time to time, I don’t want to work in an environment where everyone is constantly pitted against each other, instead of working together to achieve a common goal.

An added little bonus to my list would be food related days/events. I hear that a common event in some companies is Bagel Fridays and I’m ALL about it. I strongly relate to Stanley on Pretzel Day at Dunder Mifflin and if you don’t get the reference, exit the page (once you finish reading of course!) and go watch season 3, episode 5 of The Office. 

My job wish-list might not seem as wild as you may think. I’m not asking for a new iPhone or a new car when I commit (although that’d be nice!); I’m asking for things that are pretty common. Although I still can’t wait until my mid-60s when I’ll have no responsibilities, getting some items checked off my wish-list could help make my time in the workforce more pleasant.

 

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Greenhouse Recruiting Software & ATS

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The week on the Weekly Dose I review the popular applicant tracking system Greenhouse. I first learned about Greenhouse in 2015 and wrote about as a startup SMB ATS, but it was time to update that review and let you know how they’ve grown.

Since my last review Greenhouse has grown considerably (3,000+ customers) and has a number of companies using them with over 25,000 employees, so we can easily place them in the mid to enterprise market in the ATS space. Definitely, if you’re in that 1,000 to 25,000+ world, this is one of the stand-alone recruiting platforms that you must consider.

The “enterprise” HCM suites (from vendors like Oracle, Workday, etc) are generally able to support the complex IT requirements of big companies, but the Talent Acquisition module has been an afterthought and not really designed to support world-class TA functions. Greenhouse does both – handle the global complexities but with a focus on delivering the tools needed for a strategic, high-performing TA function.

What I like about Greenhouse: 

– The only ATS I’ve seen that has a built-in candidate experience survey.  If Candidate Satisfaction is important to your organization Greenhouse customers have a significantly higher rate than others based on Talent Board results.

– Built-in CRM tech allows you to keep pipelines engaged and nurture candidates in your database. Sourcing Quality Report which not only tells you where you hire the most candidates from but how far into the process do candidates get via each source.

– Blinded ‘take home’ assessments that help reduce hiring bias within the organization, combined with interview kits for hiring managers to ensure you improve diversity and inclusion within your organization.

– Predictive analytics that can help show you if you’ll be able to fill the positions you have open at the time needed, allowing you to adjust sourcing as needed to reach goals.

– Recruiter/hiring manager auto-alerts when candidates have been in process for too long, which kills candidate experience.

Greenhouse is the real deal when it comes to ATS technology. I can’t really do justice how much you can do with them, especially on the collaboration side of working through the interview process with everyone involved from approval through hire. If you’re looking to upgrade your talent acquisition technology Greenhouse is a great foundational piece to start with.

Greenhouse is definitely one to add to your demo list if you’re in the process of selecting a new ATS. I’ve yet to speak to a TA Leader who was using Greenhouse and left them because they wanted to find something better. I’ve spoken to many who have left others to go to Greenhouse and seem really satisfied.

You can also check out Greenhouse at their annual conference in New York – OPEN 2018 April 2-4, where Patty McCord (one of my favs!) will be keynoting.  

Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Are you willing to reduce your office cafeteria prices for female employees?

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I read an article a few weeks back in Detroit about a local gym that is offering a reduced gym membership for females. Males pay full price, females pay 30% less because females make less than males. How does that sound?

From the article:

“Ever wonder why XY>XX? WE DO! The Gym values its male members tremendously but we don’t value them a THIRD more than our female members!” the ad reads

The ad goes on to read that women can join for $20 a month with no initiation fee. The Gym Lake Orion’s ad promoting that women will pay 1/3 less for membership than men. (Photo: Rich Garvin)

The manager and operator of the gym, Rich Garvin, wants to even the playing field for women due to the pay disparity between men and women. “It’s just difficult to observe injustice or unfairness,” said Garvin. “I think it’s important that we don’t sit idly by … if we do, we condone it. And I don’t condone it.”

Garvin also said he’s not raising anyone’s prices. “You can get a $30 a month membership (for $20) … having a discount, encouraging women to come in, in an attempt to make it a little easier for them to do so, I think is a good business practice and just the right thing to do.”

So, first let me call B.S. on this entire thing and say I don’t believe Rich the owner one even little bit!

The type of gym that Garvin runs is more likely frequented by weightlifting dudes. He knows if he can get more women to sign up, even more, weightlifting dudes will show up. This is just good old fashion marketing, wrapped in activism for a hook.

Can you imagine if you actually tried to do something real like this in your workplace!?

Hey, employees!

This year we’ve decided instead of actually fixing pay inequality, we’re just going to reduce the cost of everything females might pay for in our environment! Health insurance is now 30% off! Coffee at the coffee bar is now 30% off and get scones buy 1, get 1! All full priced menu items in the cafeteria will be 30% off for women only.

Male employees don’t get upset, you make more money!

Have a great week!

HR

Yeah, that probably wouldn’t play well! But, is that the ‘right thing to do’?

So, this sounds completely crazy. Of course, you would never charge employees differently for the same access to healthcare and cafeteria food! I mean come on!

But, what do you do when you know you have certain employees making less for doing the same work? Do you automatically do what’s right and adjust their salary to make it equitable?

Giving your female employees a 30% discount on cafeteria food and drinks sounds ridiculous, but so does paying a woman less for doing the same work.

Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting At His School

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Last night I had to sit my 14-year-old son down and have “the ‘talk”.

It was uncomfortable, it should be, having “the talk” is never easy for parents and their kids. Unfortunately, this wasn’t “the talk” I thought I would be having with him. This talk was about what he needed to do to stay alive when a shooter comes into his school and starts mowing down innocent kids because our American government refuses to do anything about it.

I need to take my shoes off to get on an airplane because I might have a shoe bomb and want to blow up a plane. I have to do this because 1 person, 1 time, got on a plane with a shoe bomb and burned himself.

Hundreds of school shootings have happened and thousands of kids have been killed or hurt, and we can’t figure out a way to stop this from happening. It’s not important enough for our society to change this.

This isn’t a political statement. This is a dad crying out to the universe to please stop this so I won’t be that parent on CNN telling my own child’s story because they were never given a chance to tell it on their own.

Those who were voted into a position of political power in our country, every party, every single person, have failed this nation. This isn’t a party issue. This is a kid’s are getting killed issue. You don’t need an arsenal of guns in your house to go deer hunting. You need one rifle that shoots one bullet at a time.

The 2nd Amendment in our Bill of Rights that gives us this ‘freedom’ as Americans to bear arms was written and approved by Congress in 1789. 229 years ago we needed to bear arms because a bear actually might kill you! Now, we don’t need to bear arms. We have the world’s best, most highly funded military force to protect us.

That we live in a society that allows any kind of access to teens to get their hands on guns is shameful. Teens are mostly crazy! They’re emotional. They act impulsively. They don’t think beyond the minute they’re living in. That is not a good combination to mix in access to guns and ammunition. Every single parent in the world understands this simple concept.

But, now I have to give tips and strategy to my son on how to save his life when a school shooter commences to mowing down innocent victims because Timmy’s Dad had to have an arsenal in his basement because this is “America!”

Fuck you, Timmy’s Dad!

So, here’s the advice I gave to my son, and I’m sure you’ll give to your sons and daughters. I told him to survive. Do anything you have to do to survive. Like the Hunger Games, you survive. That’s an order. For some reason, we’ve regressed hundreds of years as a society that my ‘life’ advice to my son in 2018 is simply to “Survive”.

So, ultimately, this is a failure of parenting. We have failed as parents that we elected people in our own image who have refused to fix a problem that we all want to be fixed. We failed because we don’t think this will happen to ‘our’ kid. We hate that it happens to any kid, but it won’t happen to “my” kid.

We’re stupid. It is going to happen to my kid and I can’t sleep at night knowing when I drop my son off at school tomorrow there isn’t one thing being done to save his life by those in charge of our laws in this country. Not one single thing.

Just survive, I told him…

We can stop this. In our world, it takes money to beat the bad guys who have more money right now. I donated to Everytown.org – The Movement to End Gun Violence. I’m not associated with Everytown, but I donated money so I support them. If you want to support them, great! 

(Photo cred: Larry Nodarse)

 

1% of Job Descriptions have Pictures or Video! Why?

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Smashfly, the enterprise recruitment marketing platform, released their 2018 Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report this week and it’s loaded with data. As you can see from the image above, some things have gotten better than others!

What’s up with Job Description and why the hell can’t we figure this out!? 

So, apparently, we are really against having pictures and video in job descriptions! 1% of job descriptions having this type of media is actually a really strange stat to have in 2018. You would think by now we would have shoved just about anything into a JD to make it more appealing for job seekers. But, we haven’t!

Why?

A few things are at play here that I think corporate TA folks will want to point out:

– Job descriptions are a legal document, not a toy like job postings are, so we treat them appropriately. Okay, yes, a JD is a legal document. But, that doesn’t mean you need to bore people to death to read it! “Legal” doesn’t mean you can’t add pictures or videos. Just be smart.

– Our ATS only allows text. Okay, you need a new ATS that was built in the last decade!

– JD’s are an HR issue, not a TA issue. We’re lucky if we can get the hiring manager to look at them, let alone update them!

So, there are problems. No real problems. Mostly made up, we don’t like change problems.

There is no reason that your Job Descriptions shouldn’t have pictures and video. Some organizations have gone completely to video-based job descriptions, and guess what!? They didn’t even take those TA pros to jail! No, really! Not even a ticket from the EEOC or OFCCP or anything!

Here’s what we know. Having a job description that actually gets people excited about a job will get people to apply, at a far higher rate than a text-based document with paragraphs and bullet points. Also, you don’t have to have a production studio to do this! You have an iPhone, go down to the department and take some pics and video. Take ten minutes to work with your ATS and IT to figure it out.

We think JD’s don’t matter but they do. They matter because the JD is the one thing every candidate reads about the job and your company. They might not visit your career site, or stop by your lobby, or your social feeds. Everyone reads the JD. Also, the JD is basically the only thing we share socially and within our talent networks (which is an entire another post!):

95% of organizations in the Fortune 500 only send JD’s to their Talent Networks. Oh boy, that sounds like a great network to be apart of! Come on! We’re better than this!

Some other cool facts from Smashfly’s Benchmark Report:

– There’s a correlation between having Recruitment Marketing strategy and Revenue growth. Be careful. That doesn’t mean those with Recruitment Marketing Strategies will grow Revenue, there’s no causation, just correlation. There’s also a correlation between me starting to blog and the stock market going up 1265% since I started writing!

– Those who do really great at Recruitment Marketing will have higher Glassdoor ratings. Make sense, right! Tell people you’re awesome and people will say you’re awesome. I love marketing! It works!

– Only 15 Fortune 500 companies won a Candidate Experience Award in 2017. All 15 had Recruitment Marketing Strategies in place! Want a better CX? Probably helps to have a strategy.

– Only 1% of organizations have implemented the most talked about technology on the planet! A chatbot! Seems low. Seems like I’m running into them more and more as I look at career sites, but not surprising. We like to wait and see when it comes to TA Tech. I’m guessing that number will be higher next year!

Check out the full report, it has some great data and some great ideas as well on Recruitment Marketing!

 

 

Career Confessions from GenZ: What Does GenZ Want From You at a Career Fair?

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Career Confessions from GenZ is a weekly series authored by Cameron Sackett, a Sophomore at the Univesity of Michigan majoring in Communications and Advertising. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn:

Honestly, there is nothing more terrifying to me than a career fair! It seems almost like speed dating, where you have to make a lasting impression and a meaningful connection with someone in a matter of minutes. While I’m not sold on this option as a way to find potential jobs/internships, it is a great resource for most college students to find jobs.

Disclaimer: I have never been to a career fair, so my opinion is based on hypothetical situations. When I attend one, there are certain things that will definitely catch my eye.

1.SWAG: I honestly don’t care what it is, but I’m a “broke” college student and I love free things. Whether it be a notebook, lanyard, or even a dang pen, swag draws me in immediately. At the University of Michigan’s club and activities fair my friends and I will walk around for hours with the sole purpose of collecting as many free things as possible. My suggestion is to bring snacks to give away, slap a company logo sticker on the package and your set!. While this might not be as long-lasting as maybe a lanyard, I am way more likely to actually use it and therefore, think more fondly of your company!

2.PEOPLE: This is completely opinion based, but I personally feel more comfortable talking to women than men. Personally, I think that talking with a male fosters a more competitive atmosphere, thus making me nervous and less likely to approach a table. Now when it comes to women, especially in their 30s and 40s, I feel right at home. This is probably because my Mom is my best friend, but I would feel more comfortable approaching a table with a middle-aged woman at the front.

3.BRANDS: Obviously recognizable brands are definitely going to have a leg up on the competition. I’m going to be way more compelled approaching the Google table rather than a company I’ve never heard of. This is when you have to play the game by creating a cool/modern display (maybe with some technology) and bringing some sweet swag (free T-Shirts are golden for getting college students – especially if you incorporate the actual school logo). I believe the most important goal for less recognizable companies at a career fair is to be memorable and remembering the audience you’re catering to is vital to achieving this.

As I get closer to the impending doom of adulthood, I will probably have more experience with career fairs, so look out for part 2 in about a year! My biggest piece of advice is to remember the audience you’re working with: insecure, desperate, tired college students that want a job as badly as you want to fill your positions! And if you need anyone to try out some swag, I think I could help you with that 😉

 

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Great_Recruiters – Real Time Recruiter Ratings!

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This week on The Weekly Dose I review the Recruiter rating technology, Great Recruiters! Great Recruiters is not a yelp-type rating site type of technology. There are some on the market that do that now, but just like Yelp/TripAdvisor/etc. you run into problems with a free market unsolicited feedback sites.

Great Recruiters looked to take what we all want as Talent Acquisition Leaders and make it super simple and fast to gather data about recruiter performance from those who are actually being serviced by that recruiter. Not only does Great Recruiters measure recruiter performance, but it also measures your candidate experience in a real, timely way.

The technology is built to use with any sized recruiting team in virtually any type of recruiting – Corporate, staffing, RPO, you name it. If you have a team of recruiters or one recruiter, you can get feedback instantly from candidates on how your recruiters are doing. Great Recruiters allows you to gather recruiter insights from known candidates (candidates you know the recruiter is working with) and also gives each recruiter a unique url to gather feedback more broadly.

What I like about Great Recruiters: 

– Recruiting leaders get a dashboard of their entire team with easy access to all the feedback on each recruiter. In fact, both the TA Leader and the Recruiter get an instant notification when new feedback arrives.

– Great Recruiters gathers both solicited and unsolicited feedback. The first one is what you think, it’s the one-to-one candidate to recruiter relationship. The recruiter works with a candidate, you can easily see that in your ATS, and a survey is sent out to the candidate. The technology also allows you to gather unsolicited feedback as well through a unique url. Maybe you have a recruiter at a career fair and you want to measure that experience.

– Great Recruiters measures five key traits on each recruiter: Are your recruiters Genuine, Responsive, Experienced, an Advisor, and Transparent. 1 to 5 scale, 5 being the best. If your recruiter averages a certain level they can obtain a Great Recruiter rating badge to use on their social profiles.

– There is also a box on each survey for freeform comments, and the data shows that roughly 60% of candidates will add comments. Plus, it also asks each candidate if they have anyone who they would like to refer to the recruiter, with the hope being a great experience will lead to more referrals.

– Great Recruiters does one more really cool thing. Within the dashboard which each recruiter has access to, for their own data, they also have access to a “Knowledgebase” which is a learning tool where your recruiters can capture their best practices and share them within the team.

I feel in love with this technology because I don’t know of one Talent Acquisition leader that is responsible for a team of recruiters who wouldn’t want to use this immediately! It’s the ultimate recruiter performance/feedback tool, that will drive better candidate experience. Plus, it’s a Detroit-based team that put it together!

Clearly, if you run a team of recruiters, let’s say 10+, this is something you need to demo. If you run teams of recruiters at 100+, I would demo and implement as soon as possible, because here’s what I know. About 10% of those recruiters on big teams are just cruising and your managers have no real data to turn them over. This tech will drive recruiter behavior and performance in a way you don’t have currently.

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The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Do you know what you really want in your career?

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About ten years ago I came home one day and said to my wife, “I can’t do this anymore”. It doesn’t matter what I was doing, I just couldn’t do that anymore. I knew it. Something had to change.

Steve Jobs is famously quoted as saying, “people don’t know what they want until you show them”, I think Henry Ford said something similar about one hundred years before Jobs. Both were talking about consumers, but in reality, it fits people in almost every aspect of life.

I find it really rings true for people in their careers. We think we know what we want. “I want to be a vice president by the time I’m 35”, I told my wife when I was 25 years old. I thought I knew what I wanted in my career. In reality, I was just title chasing.

I became a vice president and I found out I felt no difference in my career, and I definitely didn’t feel satisfied. So, a title was not what I truly wanted. What I discovered was I wanted to be in control. Success or failure, I wanted that on my shoulders. It didn’t matter what I was actually doing in my career, I needed control.

As a leader, I find probably only about ten percent of those who you support will truly have an idea about what they want out of a career. The other ninety percent, are just like me, they think they know, but they really don’t until they’ve reached whatever goal they’ve set for themselves, then they’ll find out if they actually had any clue, or they were just guessing.

If we start with most employees have no idea what they want in their career, or at best they have an idea, but it’ll be wrong, it’s now up to leaders to help shape this path. It might be the only real thing we can do for those we supervise as leaders are to help guide them on their career path.

Employees don’t know what they want in a career until you show them. 

If you believe this is your job as a leader to show those you work with what their career can be, this really helps to crystallize what you do each day.

What I know from my experience is the best people I ever worked for had a vision and path they wanted for their career. That path was usually developed and born from a mentor or boss that took the time to care about this person enough to show them what their career could be.

I can point to four different leaders and mentors in my life who helped shape my path, and by the way, all said I was an idiot for my obsession with a title. I was too young to listen, and thankfully they were too smart to give up on me.

It’s your job as a leader to show your people what they want. Don’t ever assume that your people already know what they want, most don’t. They won’t admit this because admitting it makes you sound like a moron, but it shouldn’t stop you as a leader from showing them the possibilities.

What I find is the more you show them the path, the more they’ll gravitate towards it and raise their performance to meet it.

The Future of Executive Performance Reviews are Here! Are you ready?

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A small news story hit this past week and you might have missed it. It was about Facebook hiring a pollster to follow Mark Zuckerburg around to measure what people (all people) thought of him, not Facebook. Here’s a bit from The Verge:

“It was a very unusual role,” McGinn says. “It was my job to do surveys and focus groups globally to understand why people like Mark Zuckerberg, whether they think they can trust him, and whether they’ve even heard of him. That’s especially important outside of the United States.”

McGinn tracked a wide range of questions related to Zuckerberg’s public perception. “Not just him in the abstract, but do people like Mark’s speeches? Do they like his interviews with the press? Do people like his posts on Facebook? It’s a bit like a political campaign, in the sense that you’re constantly measuring how every piece of communication lands. If Mark’s doing a barbecue in his backyard and he hops on Facebook Live, how do people respond to that?”

Facebook worked to develop an understanding of Zuckerberg’s perception that went beyond simple “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” metrics, McGinn says. “If Mark gives a speech and he’s talking about immigration and universal health care and access to equal education, it’s looking at all the different topics that Mark mentions and seeing what resonates with different audiences in the United States,” he says. “It’s very advanced research.”

Facebook also conducted similar research on behalf of the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. Surveys measured awareness about Sandberg, whether people liked and trusted her, and how they felt about her speeches, interviews, and Facebook posts…The company further measured how Sandberg’s public image compared with Zuckerberg’s. The results were shared directly with Zuckerberg and Sandberg” 

Most Executives of very large companies don’t really get performance reviews. The board of directors will do something formally, but it’s all wink, wink, fairly surface level stuff, we’re all in this together, how much of a raise should we give ourselves this year kind of thing.

Can you imagine how your C-suite would respond to having themselves polled at every turn on an ongoing basis kind of performance feedback! I’ll tell you, most would lose their minds!

When I first read this, I thought, oh, this is just Mark looking into Presidency options, but when Sheryl was also put into the mix, and they were compared, that changes the dynamic. If you think about the impact of the C-suite in the largest companies in the world in terms of performance of stock price, earnings, revenue, etc., you’re talking billions of dollars to the positive or negative.

Look at what Uber’s CEO did to their brand! Can you imagine how that might have played out differently from the start if he was constantly being polled on his behaviors? Can you imagine how most executives would be if they knew they were constantly being polled on their behaviors!?

I’m not sure we need or want constant polling of executives. Bad things can happen with that as well. They become politicians bowing to the whims of the masses, and that might not be what’s right for the organization. But I do believe this Facebook experiment gives us some foreshadowing of how we might start tracking and measuring the performance of our most senior executives in the future.

Internal 360 feedback has always been a great tool to use to get feedback on our senior leaders. This kind of surveying takes it one step further in taking it outside of the organization as well.

If you want to see how this kind of constant feedback loop could go really wrong, check out Netflix’s Black Mirror Season 3, Episode 1 – Nosedive, that looks at our constant need for social reinforcement with “likes”! (Reader alert – Black Mirror as a series is super Alfred Hitchcock meets 2050 weird – don’t judge me for watching!).

Life is Better With Rivals!

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I like it all! The winning, the competition, the energy, and yes, even the losing. Without losing you stop caring about trying to win.

Not everyone thinks this way. In fact, many don’t think this way. There is a belief in the world we don’t need rivals. We should all get along and “rival” is a concept that is no longer relevant.

Can’t we all just get along?

I have a belief that true rival competition brings out of us a level we did not believe we are capable of. Without this “rival”, we would never reach our upper limits of performance.

The problem with rivals in work is that it can quickly become negative and destructive if left unchecked. This is one reason that some people will say the concept of having rivals isn’t really needed in society.

A rivalry is not channeled properly, especially in the work environment, can kill a culture faster than almost any single factor. It becomes a her vs. her event, or a us vs. them event when the ‘them’ is really just another part of us!

Rivalries, though, give leaders a great motivation element that can take individuals and teams to very high levels of performance. It’s great when that rival is an outside rival. When it’s about kicking the competition’s ass! We love those rivalries.

Internal rivals can also be super motivating, in fact, sometimes more motivating because the rival is real. Your rival is someone you know very well or at least more than you probably know someone at your competition.

This relationship with an internal rival is where the energy comes from, both positive and negative. Our hope is internally these rivalries will drive both sides to greatness, but that’s not how it usually works out.

Usually, those internal rivals end up trying to beat each other, when what we truly want is both to reach great levels of performance and then celebrate each other. I used to think this wasn’t possible when I was a young leader.

One side won. One side lost. That’s a rivalry.

I’ve learned over time that the best leaders actually find ways for healthy rivalries, and get all those participating to support each other and their success. The concept of plenty. There’s plenty here for all of us. As you find success, and your co-workers find success, that wave of success will carry us all higher.

The first time I witnessed this was on the athletic field with college athletics and a kid taught me. This college kid was fighting his butt off each and every day to win a starting position, and keep that starting position, against teammates who were desperately trying to take that position for themselves.

I asked this kid how does your coach get you to fight each other so hard for playing time, but then at the game time you support each other with such passion and love?

He looked at me and said, “We have one common goal, to win. To win, we have to be pushed to be our very best. We owe it to each other to push each other in practice. Once we get to the game we only have each other to rely on to reach our goal of winning. It’s about the team.”

The coach, the leader, if they’re good, teach this concept. We push each other as rivals when it’s beneficial for us to be rivals to reach the best we can be. Also, we support each other to reach our ultimate ‘team’ goal. It’s not one or the other, it’s both.

I want to wildly successful. I want you to be wildly successful. I want us to be wildly successful. Me being successful without you being successful pains me, because you are part of my team.

As leaders, when you look to create internal rivals, understand that concept of plenty and together. It’s about me, until it’s about we. The leader, often has to show us where that line is.