Category Archives: Succession

Yahoo’s Mayer Fails At Performance Management, Again

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It hit the news wire last week Yahoo’s embattled CEO, Marissa Mayer, is set to fire 500 lower performing employees.  Sounds all well and good, right?!  It’s about time!  The HR blogging community as a whole kills managers and executives for not moving fast enough on getting rid of under performing employees.  Mayer is finally doing it! Well, not so fast…

From Business Insider:

“The reviews were part of Mayer’s plans to trim the Yahoo workforce “very surgically, very carefully,” according to a source close to the company.

Now, Swisher reports, Mayer is planning to let go any employees who were rated “misses” or “occasionally misses” at least twice during the past five quarters.

Swisher says as many as 500 employees could eventually be effected. She says that some Yahoo employees are already being let go.

Yahoo has many thousands more employees than many industry experts believes it needs to have.”

Here’s what will happen in reality.
Anytime you ‘decide’ to make cuts based on a large group is rated, as Yahoo is doing above, you’ll always end up with rater error.  Hiring managers are going to know what’s going on.  “Oh, so if I rate Timmy “occasionally misses” on completing projects on time, you’re going to make me fire him? No problem, Timmy “never” misses, now.”  What you’ve done is completely take out your managers ability to develop talent through your performance management process.  You’ve decided to use your performance management process as a weapon.  This will not end well.
When you begin down this path, you end up in a death spiral corporately.  You’ve handcuffed your managers’ ability to manage their teams. “Well, I can’t deliver effective performance messages because you’ll just fire the person. So now, everyone is ‘completely’ average or above!”  Even when their not.  You’ve taken away your ability as an organization to get better internally, and driven home the message “You either be a rock star or we will hire a rock star from the outside”.  No longer can you ‘work’ to get better in our environment.  Most people do not want to work in that type of environment.
How should Yahoo handle this issue?
First and foremost you can’t have a ‘black and white’ cut off.  This doesn’t work anywhere!  What is an employee had two “occasionally misses” three quarters ago, but since has been great.  Under your plan, they’re gone anyway.  Does that really make sense?  Ultimately you need to let your individual leaders make these decisions and hold them accountable to the budget.  This is real world stuff, the budget is desperately important in Yahoo’s case.  Leaders get paid the big bucks to make tough decisions.  Make them, make those decisions.  If they can’t, or won’t, you know who really needs to be replaced.
I get it, Yahoo is in a really bad position.  They need to get leaner and they are attempting to do this by letting the weak performers ago first.  I actually admire that.  Way to many companies just layoff based on seniority and end up cutting great talent and keeping bad talent.  This is better, but I think they could have made it even more effective with a little more leadership influence to the decision making process.

LeBron James Isn’t Good Enough For My Team

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Just putting together the roster for my annual Men’s City Rec Basketball team.  I’ve been pretty lucky in the past and have gotten some great players to come out and let me jump on their back to the championships.  As of right now here’s my roster for 2013-2014 season:

Current Starters (based on last years roster):

Point Guard: Craig Miller – Mid 30’s, 5’10”- still in ‘decent shape’ (this means he’s younger and faster than most of us).  He’s good for one wide open layup per quarter and one turnover.

Shooting Guard:  Don McCormick – 39, 6’0″ – He’s flat out money, I don’t think he’s missed a shot since 1998. Played DIII ball back in the early 90’s.  His job sometimes makes it so he can’t make games – we struggle in those games.

Small Forward: Marcus Jones – 47, 6’2″ – He’s our one black guy (we’d like more black guys, but it’s hard to find middle aged black guys in the suburbs who want to play with a bunch of white guys), he’s also the oldest guy we have.  Really never makes a mistake unless it’s a no look pass to one of us which we weren’t expecting.

Big Forward: James Brookes – 32, 5’11” – He’s not a basketball player, he’s a weight lifter.  Can’t shoot or dribble, but he’s good to hurt at least one opposing player each game, sometimes two.

Center: Mikey ‘Stretch’ McGee – 42, 6′ 5″ – He’s our tallest guy.  He likes to shoot the three.  Could have played D1, ended up going the CC route.  Currently he’s a UPS driver.

The Backups:

Point Guard: Me – 43, 5’7″- player/coach/manager – I get in if we are really up big or down big.  I’ve never seen a shot I didn’t like.  My philosophy: ‘Shoot till you get hot, then shoot to stay hot”

The 6 footers:  Ben, Jerry and Ken: All of these guys are 6 foot and basically play any position.  I lumped them together because they really are the same player. Solid, can do it all, just don’t make them run too many minutes at one time.

We are looking to add one more player to our roster this year.  We lost Billy.  He had to have his knee replaced and his real estate business was taking off again after the recession, so he’s out.  Here are the three candidates we have to replace:

1. Matt Smith – New guy in town.  He’s really in shape.  His wife is way hot.  He has a great basement man cave.  Seems like he would fit in with the guys really well.

2. Josh Moore – Another six footer.  He’s subbed for us in the past.  Likes to shoot (meaning he takes my shots).  The guys know him, but he rubs some guys the wrong way (mostly me, he takes my shots)

3. LeBron James – Yep! You read that correctly.  Let’s just say I have a connection.  Nothing in his contract to stop him from playing with us on Tuesday nights.  His schedule actually allows him to make 90% of our 12 game schedule.  We would own the league!

Seems like a really easy choice right!?  Wrong!  You see, I went to the guys to vote.  Knowing they would all laugh and Lebron would get his ‘Legion 124’ jersey shipped in the mail.  But to my surprise Matt Smith won the vote.  I couldn’t believe it, I had to find out why.  Across the board the guys came back with the following reasons why LeBron wouldn’t be a good fit for our team:  Wouldn’t find it a challenge, he would be bored, he was over qualified, he would end up quitting half way into the season, he wouldn’t take it seriously.

We had a shot a Lebron James for our team, and we didn’t take him.  Hard to believe, right?

It’s your reality.  Everyday you turn down great talent in your organization.  You turn down LeBron James because you’re scared.  We don’t say we’re scared.  We give ‘legitimate’ reasons like: “You’re over qualified” and “You wouldn’t find this position challenging”.  But we are just telling ourselves this, to make us feel better about making a terrible decision to turn away great talent.  ‘Being over qualified’ for a position is the single lamest reason to turn down talent that HR and Talent Acquisition has ever come up with.

The question is, would you turn down LeBron James if he wanted to join your team?

3 Things That Gurantee Career Sucess!

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I’ve been given the honor to speak to some upcoming graduates at a prestigious university about what it takes to have a successful and sustained career.  Now comes the hard part!  What do I tell these kids!?  My first question to the person who asked me to come speak was, “Have you ever read anything I’ve written?”  She said yes, but I have a feeling she was lying as she frantically Googled “Tim Sackett” and tried to actually read something I’ve written.  Next she dropped the, “we don’t have much money, we can pay you”, which in speaking circles means, this is a one-time gig, so let’s have some fun with it!

I really took some time to think about all those great traits you need to have in having a long term successful career.  Great work ethic, ability to learn new concepts quickly, being adaptable, being disciplined, high attention to detail, getting along with others, having high Emotional Intelligence, finding purpose in your daily work, Perseverance, being trustworthy, taking initiative, managing up, being open minded, a change agent, a savvy networker, of course intellectual fire power, passion for what you do, someone of high morals and values, empathetic, willingness to fail, willingness to succeed, high internal motivation, ability to gain alignment, focused, positive accountability, follow-up skills, creative, pragmatic, ability to gain buy-in, ability to prioritize, works well in a team, works well alone, political organizational savvy, telling it like it is, effective problem solver, being self aware, effective decision maker, your ability to influence, learning agility, technical savvy, being proactive, being a great listener, being a great presenter, being optimistic, being committed, goal setting, expert communicator, managing conflict and making a great cup of coffee are all fantastic traits!  But how could I choose only 3.  That was my mission.  Give the kids 3 things that would guarantee their success in their chosen career paths.

I knew right away there were a few traits I wouldn’t choose, primarily because I don’t have them and, well, look at me, I have a blog, which means I must be successful.  You don’t need these traits to be successful:

1. Good Grammar. Only old HR ladies and copy editors care about grammar.  Once you get past having no mistakes on your resume, you’re home free the rest of your career — unless you want to be a paid writer.

2. Trigonometry.  No one needs Trig really, it’s just a public school torture device to keep kids in check.  Unless you want to be a rocket scientist, Trig is not a trait you need for a successful career.

That’s is really the only traits I could think of that weren’t important to your long term success of your career.

Then it hit me, after 20 years in the HR and Talent Acquisition fields, I knew!  There are 3 things that can guarantee you long term career success.  Here they are in order of importance:

1. Beauty.

2. Family Wealth.

3. DNA.

The first one was really a no-brainer!  Beautiful people always have jobs or job prospects. Let’s face it, we all love hiring beautiful people!  In fact the only reason you have ugly people working for you is there wasn’t a beautiful candidate.  The positive piece of this for the kids is that with enough money you can change your outward appearance and increase your chances for success!

Family wealth was fairly easy as well.  If you come from a wealthy family you can be a complete tool and still have lifetime employment and career upward mobility.  The rich get richer, and so do their kids.  Nothing says great hirer like your CEO telling you to hire so-and-so because he plays golf with me. Opportunities are rare, unless you’re wealthy.

The prospect of coming from the ‘right’ genes having an impact on long term career success intrigues me.  The reality of it is, the only way to have a sustained successful career if you have sustained long term health — that’s your DNA baby!  Some people never pick up a cigarette and die of lung cancer at 53.  Some people smoke 2 packs a day for 60 years and die of old age at 90.  You can’t teach DNA!

I can’t wait to share these with the kids!

 

 

Most Embarrassing Termination Ever

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You probably saw this when it hit the interwebs on Sunday and blew up yesterday, but if you didn’t, AOL’s CEO, Tim Armstrong, fired an employee while on a conference call with 1000 AOL employees!  Here’s the actual verbiage from Slate:

“It was supposed to be a conference call to rally the troops ahead of what would undoubtedly be hard times. And at first it sounded that way. But then at one point Armstrong can be heard saying (minute two of the recording), “Abel, put that camera down, now.” And then: “Abel, you’re fired. Out.” A few seconds later, he went on as if nothing had happened. The victim? Patch creative director Abel Lenz. Business Insider notes that if Armstrong fired Lenz for taking photographs it was an odd reason. Lenz always took photographs of meetings to then post in the company’s internal site.” 

And we wonder why American CEOs get a bad rap…

I’ve been a part of some pretty ugly terminations in my day.  Terminations when the CEO, or another senior executive, comes to you and says “Tim, go let go of ‘so-and-so'”.  My response is always, “Sure! What for?”  I say ‘Sure!’ first to make sure I’m on their page.  I need the ‘what for’ because I need to put it on the form. In HR we always have a form, for that executive to sign-off on.  In the business we call that ‘CYA’, technically.   If the superior I was speaking to was hot, I would usually get this response, “Because I said so”.  I would then quickly type termination reason: “Because I said so” on the form and ask them to sign it.  This usually got to the real reason, as I’ve yet to run into a senior executive willing to sign the form with the reason being “Because I said so.”

To Abel’s credit, he responded with “No Comment” on Twitter from a bar soon after being fired with a picture of the bar.  G*d, I love social media!  This might be the most public firing I’ve ever heard of in a corporate setting!  Clearly, we don’t know the behind the scenes information.  Did Tim tell Abel not to take pics beforehand, and Abel decided to do it anyway?  Did Abel sleep with Tim’s wife the night before, and Tim just got a text from the misses?  Did Tim just hate Abel and actually planned to do this all along?  I doubt those facts will ever some out.

I would pay to be a part of the HR weekly meetings at AOL this week!  HR is vilified about 99% of the time by executives, the 1% when we are their needed ‘partner’ just happened at AOL.  The CEO had a major brain fart, and now needs to know how HR will get his ass out of this mess.

So, I’ll ask you HR Pros!  What would you do in this scenario?

 

 

HR You’re the GM of your Company!

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I’m a huge baseball fan – specifically a Detroit Tiger fan – and I was reminded last week by the Tigers how important talent is to your organization and how HR could be at the center of it all.  In professional sports, like Major League Baseball, they call the main person in charge a General Manager (GM).  He’s the person behind the scenes (kind of like HR) making deals to keep their club competitive during the season or looking into the future.  It’s a very strategic role.  While they are not managing or coaching players on a daily basis, or playing the game – ultimately they are making decisions that have huge impact to the team you watch play the game.  Doesn’t that sound like a role you would love to have in HR?

The Tigers made some major moves last week to a team that is already one of the best in the majors.  Why would a GM do such a thing?  It would be like you going into your sales department, who is having record breaking sales, and moving on of your top sales people out and bring in someone new.  Doesn’t seem like it makes sense – if it’s not broke, why break it! The Tigers were facing a couple of things – 1. the pending suspension of their starting shortstop; 2. the need to bolster their pitching staff for a run at the world series.  They also have some long term needs – an aging short stop, so they need someone for the future.  I know, I know – boring sports stuff – but it shows how HR should be thinking in a similar matter.  How do we keep our organization running smoothly, and how do we make it better in the future – those two things don’t necessarily go together.

It’s HR’s job to figure all of this out.  It’s actually easier as an HR Pro to come into a broken company.  At that point you know what has to be done, and you start doing it.  If you come into a great company the question is how do you make it better, and potentially any change you make might make it worse.  Harder yet, is how do you make that organization better, when it’s already doing great?  Your the GM what do you do?  Sit on your hands and ride out the run?  Look to the future and start getting the next generation ready?  It’s the heart of people strategy and the single coolest thing we get to do in HR!

The Tigers are one of the top teams in the MLB for a simple reason – they have one of the best GM’s, Dave Dombrowski.  He constantly is looking for ways to make his team better, but also not mortgaging the future away be giving away their developing talent. It’s a difficult balance.  It’s the same in your role in HR.  Your organization needs you to find ways to make them better right now, and keep them great in the future – sometimes that means making unpopular changes.  Sometimes that means you’ll be helping influence your leaders to make courageous decisions.  Decisions you not only have to support, but champion.  A good GM helps the fans of their organization see the bigger picture – half marketing person, half prophet. HR needs to do the same.  Our employees look to leadership and HR during major decisions and changes to see the reactions.  They analyze every word, every facial expression and read into everything. Great GM’s/HR Pros know how to paint a bright future and a realistic positive outlook presence.  Are you ready to be the GM of your organization?

3 Reasons To Hire Back An Employee You Fired

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There is an unwritten HR law that needs to be addressed.  This law states:

“If you fire an employee, at no time in the history of mankind should you hire back that employee to your organization.”

So it is said, so shall it be…

I was reading an article recently about ESPN’s new CEO, John Skipper, when he was asked about bringing back former polarizing Sports Center anchor, Keith Oolbermann.  Here’s what Skipper had to say about the possibility of bringing back Olbermann:

“I wasn’t here when Keith was here, but he is very talented. So I had dinner with Keith — it was delightful and fun. And I would not have had dinner with him if we didn’t sit around and think about whether there was a reason to bring Keith back. I haven’t met with him again, but we don’t have a policy here that you can never come back.”

So, ESPN doesn’t have a policy about bringing back terminated employees.  Do you?

I know of companies that actually have it written into the policy manual about bringing back terminated employees.  Sometimes it’s a time thing – ‘it has to be more than 5 years’ – or a position thing – ‘it has to be into a different position than they had previously’  – or a severity thing – ‘the termination could not have been for cause’, etc.  Sometimes it’s just the classic unwritten rule thing!  Regardless if it’s written or unwritten any organization that refuses to hire back terminated employees is extremely shortsighted!  Let’s be clear – I’m not saying your should bring back the jerk who embezzled money or sexually harassed every female employee.  What I’m saying is – if you analyzed every single termination you’ve had over the past 10 years in your organization, there are probably some really good hire-backs in that group!  But you wouldn’t know that – because it’s not something you’re going to do – it’s a policy…err…un-policy thing!

Here’s 3 reasons you of when you should potentially hire back a previously terminated employee:

1. They’re the best at what they do.  Yep – talent and performance trumps all.  Well, mostly!  If the person got fired for some kind of behavior that they can’t or won’t change – well, it will end bad again – but many times – having years away and proving themselves all over again in another organization – makes these folks ultra-valuable again to your organization.

2. New Leadership.  Let’s face facts – a large percentage of your terminations happen because of personalities not matching.  In almost every leadership change organizations see high turnover.  This doesn’t truly mean those leaving are bad employees – it’s a phenomenon that happens when you new leadership and ideas meet old leadership behaviors and ideas and they don’t match.

3. Former Employee and You (your organization and leadership) have had significant growth.  I’ve seen some young, less experienced people get fired, who 5 -10 years later were completely different people.  All of that blind fight and energy that had when they were younger which distracted from their talent is gone, and what you have left is this focused high performing employee.  At the same token, our leader who was less experienced and didn’t know how to handle high potential employees, now does.  Growth happens.

Unfortunately, 99% of organizations refuse to bring back an employee who was fired, ever!  It’s too bad really – you’re probably missing out on some great talent, especially if you’re in a smaller geographic area with limited talent pools to begin with.  Sometimes it’s up to get our organizations to become a little more open minded to the fact that change happens, and not every person who gets fired, is a bad employee.

HR Announces – ‘We’re Out of Ideas’

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Recently the crew at FOT has been having some conversations about what’s new in HR.  It use to be all you had to do was show up at a HR conference and listen to someone from Zappos, Google, Sodexo, etc. to find out what were the latest and greatest happenings going on in HR!  But no more – it seems like HR is in a dead period of new ideas!  I blame the recession – why wouldn’t I – the ‘Great Recession’ gets blamed for everything – might as well take some HR heat!   Nobody at FOT could really come up with any ideas that were new.  But thankfully the good HR folks at Google came through one more idea, but I don’t how new it is…

From Quartz – Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring:

“Google has admitted that the headscratching questions it once used to quiz job applicants (How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? Why are manhole covers round?) were utterly useless as a predictor of who will be a good employee.

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart…

Bock says Google now relies on more quotidian means of interviewing prospective employees, such as standardizing interviews so that candidates can be assessed consistently, and “behavioral interviewing,” such as asking people to describe a time they solved a difficult problem. It’s also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT scores.”

Yes, you are reading that correctly – Google’s ‘new’ HR idea is to go retro!  Back to behavioral interviewing and standardized interview decks – hello 90’s!  Isn’t that wonderful – I can’t believe Google didn’t have someone at SHRM 13 leading a session like “Google’s Strategic HR Innovations – Just Interview Them Stupid!”  HR ladies would have packed the house to find out how they to could jump into the 90’s.  Also, let’s just come right out corporately and validate to all those kids in college – you’re just wasting your time and spending your parents retirement.  I’ve really never been so excited for our industry!

So, I would like to take it upon myself and the entire HR community to let the world know – HR is out of ideas!

Here’s were we/HR stand:

– Still need to hire people

– Still need to train our employees

– Still need to provide benefits and pay administration

– Still planning the company picnic, and/or ‘holiday party

Long live HR.

The Proactive Recruiting Myth

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If there is one thing that I hear more from hiring managers and executives, especially executives!, it is why can’t recruiting, as a function, be more proactive!  Both groups look at it like an economic lesson – supply and demand – like recruiting is an assembly line.  In ‘their’ world they have expected needs, and to meet those needs they will need product, so they schedule that much product to be produced and ready for delivery on the date needed.  Simple.  What is wrong with recruiting!? That’s what we want!

Simple.

Being proactive in recruiting and having a pipeline of candidates ready to go and start working isn’t simple.  You’re dealing with two parallel moving time lines – the candidates and the organizations need of that talent – it’s highly complex.  Whenever I hear about an organization that is ‘proactively’ recruiting it makes me smile – because they probably really aren’t proactively recruiting, they’re probably actually recruiting for needs they know they’ll have in the future – which is reactive, since they already know of the need.  Proactive recruiting is preparing for a need you don’t know of yet, but expect will happen.  Those are two different things.  One you have money for, one you don’t.

If you truly want your Recruiting department to do proactive recruiting, you have to be willing to ‘over-hire’ the amount of staff you actually need.  Some companies are actually willing to do this, and fund this.  But stop and think for a minute the message that sends to your organization.  You’re hiring replacements for people who haven’t left, so you’re assuming we are going to leave, crap I don’t want to be the person who gets let go, I better go out and find something!  You get people to think about leaving by being proactive.  ‘Proactive’ recruiting in this sense might actually cause higher turnover (I actually know this from experience when a highly successful organization I worked with thought this would be a brilliant idea – it wasn’t).

Now, some of you HR/Talent Pros reading this will say – but wait, what if your proactively recruiting for growth! Again – that’s not proactive, that’s reactive. If you know you’re growing, you would be hiring those folks for spots you plan on having in the future – this doesn’t cause your workforce to freak out and think they might be replaced – these people are being hired for growth.

The problem is very few HR/Talent Pros are willing to tell their hiring managers and executives the truth about Proactive Hiring.  We can do it – but – it will cost money and it might cause some folks to leave that we don’t want to leave!  Now, you can combat this – but that takes strong leaders willing to have great performance and developmental discussions with their team. There is a false assumptions by hiring managers and leaders that recruiting can somehow magically pipeline great talent for a long time.  Some organizations that a brand that can do this – but 97% don’t!  Google can pipeline candidates for months, years – folks are willing to wait in cue to get on board.  Walmart can’t. Nike can.  Bank of America can’t.

What can you do?  Share reality.  Explain why, what they want is difficult and costs a ton of money.  Then give them some other solutions, that are most cost effective.  Ways to lower turnover, ways to develop talent and ways to onboard talent faster. Also, start changing their vocabulary – Proactive – in their vernacular is the wrong word!

Mailbag: How Can I Get My Employees To Refer More?

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From The Project mailbag –

“Tim –

My company is doing a ton of hiring and we are trying to get our employees to refer former co-workers, friends, family, etc.  We offer a great referral bonus.  We make it easy. Still we get little, if any, referrals – and usually it’s the same people who refer candidates.  What can we do to get our employees to refer more people?

-Jennifer, Talent Acquisition Director, Austin, TX”

I love this question, because I think 99.9% of Talent and HR Pros face this same dilemma at some point in their career.  We spend a ton of time and resources putting together a great referral program – then we get the same results we got from the old referral program!  It’s frustrating. It makes us feel like our employees don’t care about the company. It makes us feel like we must not be doing something that we should.  You’re right! Well, somewhat right!

Here is my response to Jennifer:

“Jen – (It’s funny but I have a small pet peeve – if someone has a longer name with multiple syllables or one that seems formal – I like to call them by the shorter easier name. Sometimes people take offense to that. Like with ‘Jennifer’ – I like ‘Jen’ – with William – I like Will or Bill – Steven is Steve – James is Jim – you get the picture.  If you tell me “No, it’s James”, in my head I’m thinking “No, it’s asshole!” Anywho…back to Jen!)

Everything with your program is fine. Sure you can make tweaks and add technology, etc.  But basically referral programs don’t work because Talent Acquisition does two things wrong:

1. You’re asking the wrong question.  Almost every HR shop wants their employee to refer more candidates – and they will ask “Who do you know that is looking?”  The reply, almost 100% of the time – “No.”  Instead, ask this one question, then have your recruiters shut up and write down what they say: “Tell me the name of one of your previous co-workers from your last company.”  That’s it.  Each name is a referral.  You can tweak it for certain companies you want to pull from and focus the question to those current employees who came from those companies.  It works.   

2. You Don’t Ask Face-to-face.  Employees can blow off email easier than anything. Stop sending email and even calling them.  Get your lazy butt off your chair and have your recruiters sit down face-to-face when they ask this question. 

This change, to how you go about getting Employee Referrals, forces your recruiters to actually recruit – which is why 99% of companies don’t do this on the corporate side of Talent Acquisition!  If all you get is a name and a place of employment – your recruiters will have to Google a phone number and call into a company to speak to the person – they also might be able to find the person on social networks and track them down that way, but it’s faster to just call them at work.  People LOVE being called about a job opportunity!  It’s flattering. You found them – they don’t know how – they must be doing something right!  

Let me know how this works!

Tim”

I hope Jen tries this with her team, but I don’t hold out hope.  People say they want more of something – you tell them how to get it – and they reply with “Oh, I didn’t want to do that”.  Oh, so you were looking for magical unicorns to give you more referrals – my bad – yeah, those work to, magical unicorns are great for referrals!  What people really are saying is “How can I get more referrals without doing anything to get them?”  My answer to that question would be different from what I told Jen above – that answer is:  “Nothing”.

 

 

 

 

A Diversity Plan Even White People Can Live With!

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When was the last time you went to a crowded beach or park, or even went to an outdoor concert where you had to sit on the grass?  I can bet you did something – because everyone does this.  You set up a perimeter didn’t you? A what?! A perimeter. You put down your blanket, maybe an umbrella, some chairs, etc.  You made sure you carved out ‘your’ space, in a public space that is open to everyone.  Hell, let’s face it – if you would have had portable fencing you would have put that up as well.  Humans like to collect, build and attempt to keep all of it.  It’s why the Great Wall of China was built.  It’s why we have a silly fence up between the U.S. and Mexico.  It’s why you have a 6 foot high fence up around your 40 foot by 40 foot backyard in the suburbs.  You’re protecting ‘your’ space.

Diversity is about breaking down those walls, those barriers, so it stands to reason that those barriers that are being broken down are going to cause some folks to be uncomfortable.  In 99.9% of the cases in today’s work world – those folks are white people – and to slice it even further – white men.  Let me give you an example so we can discuss:

Let’s say you work in a company with 100 employees and 88% of those employees are white.  Now HR comes out and says “we value Diversity” (not sure who the ‘we’ is, but we’ll assume our white leadership team who live in the $750K homes and their kids go to schools with zero diversity), and we are going to do a bunch of ‘stuff’ to increase the diversity of our workforce.  Here’s what the 88% hear.  “You 88 white people aren’t good enough.  We need to get rid of some of you and bring in minorities because they can do it better.”  Which might be true.

Remember your blanket in the park?  Someone just sat their chair down in the middle of your white work forces blanket. That isn’t a good feeling.  (It’s uncomfortable for you to hear/read ‘white work force’ isn’t it? Most people who write about diversity/inclusion will use ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ because it puts it in less black and white terms – makes it easier to accept.)

Most organizations and HR shops struggle to do Diversity and Inclusion successfully in their organizations because they are unwilling to recognize this simple reality and address it.   Oh, believe me I hear you right now!  “Tim – diversity and inclusion isn’t about color – it’s about thoughts and ideas!” Then you my friend don’t get the reality of 90% of the organizations out there today.  For most it is still about faces – shouldn’t be – but it is.  To be successful – we have to move beyond that.  So, how do you do that?

There isn’t a perfect solution.  A silver bullet.  But I do know one way that has helped some organizations – but it might give you (HR and leadership) some answers that will be hard for to live with!  Data.  Data doesn’t lie.  It just gives you the truth.  If you ‘truly’ want better performance – through data, find the exact makeup of the highest performing groups and teams in your organization, industry, competitors, etc.  Here’s the catch – data might show you that your 100% all white guy sales team isn’t the most effective.  You might find that the makeup should be 90% 24 year old Asian females and 10% middle age Hispanic males.  You also might find that 100% white guy is the best.  Data will give you truth – most organizations don’t want the truth.  Most HR shops don’t want the truth.  They want to take your 88% white and turn it into 75% white because ‘feels’ better.

I’m not saying your white employees will like to hear that they are all getting let go so you can bring in your all female Asian team, but at least there is a reason based on data – not feelings.  HR and leadership have been sold a false premise that Diversity and Inclusion is good for all.  It makes you better.  And so we march forward like lemmings off a cliff, not questioning the truth.  The truth is – diversity and inclusion might be great for your organization.  The truth is – it also might be disastrous for your organization.  Do the research.  Stop reading USA Today articles.  Figure out what is actually best for your organization.  Don’t blindly follow anything, just because everyone else is doing it.  There is a ‘right’ answer out their for your organization, and you might be surprised at what that answer is.