The Rare Find, by George Anders

I am grateful to Michael Danubio for recommending me this book. When he did, Michael was Talent Acquisition Director at Hasbro. He is now Human Resources Director at the Boston Red Sox.

Everybody Wants the Top Performers

It is often said that top performers produce as much as 10 times more than the average worker. In specific fields that put a very high premium on excellence, like professional sports, popular music, investment banking or literature, the gap may be even higher.

In business, Jim Collins showed that companies making the leap from good to great build their success on talent : first they recruit outstanding people, then they define a strategy.

So, obviously, everybody wants to recruit exceptional talent. The Rare Find is not a book about recruitment in general. It focuses on how to source and select top performers.

Being a journalist, George Anders interviewed hundreds of successful recruitment professionals. He asked them how they proceed to find exceptional talent. His sources include army officers, basketball scouts, venture capitalists, surgeons, academics, country music producers, CEO recruiters and even a Facebook "Puzzle Master". 

Compromise On Experience; Never Compromise On Character

Anders' inspiring recommendations include the following:

• A wide view of talent: the best assessors don't stick to classic measures of experience. They don't look for people that are immediately ready for the job, but for candidates that might reach excellence in a few years, based on specific traits. In other words, these recruiters can compromise on experience, but not on character. (Other authors have the opposite opinion: they think that, when selecting leaders, we tend to focus too much on the candidates' potential, as opposed to craftsmanship. This view is expressed, for example, in “Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management”, by Martin and Hetrick).
  
• Reading résumés upside down. This means that you focus first on a candidate's biographical details, which give you a sense of his personality. Then, you can check the classic markers of competence, like education and professional experience.
  
• Aggressive listening: great talent scouts are great listeners. Intensely interested and focused, they ask a lot of follow-up questions in order to zero in on the issues that relate to candidates' core character. That's a very good point, that was also made a few months ago by HR blogger Tim Sackett, in a brilliant post called “The Only Interview Questions You’ll Ever Need ».
  
• Picking one trait that matters more than anything. For many jobs, resilience might be what distinguishes high achievers from other good candidates.
• Announcing tough challenges as a way to attract the best candidates. If the position you offer involves high demands, you should not formulate them as liabilities. High achievers might view them as opportunities to learn and grow.
  
• Seeing what could go right. Most assessors use interviews to detect each candidate's flaws. When searching for exceptional talent, a better way could be to start by looking for what can go right. Does the candidate have a hidden potential? Under the right conditions, could he become a great performer in a specific field?

And these are just examples, as the book provides many other useful ideas and advice.

If your job involves recruiting highly talented people, you should definitely read it. In these times of “war for talent” the Rare Find supplies heavy weaponry for HR snipers!

Book Data

• The Rare Find - Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone else
• By George Anders
• Penguin Business
• 247 pages
• Available at Amazon.com: The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else
  

DRIVE, by Daniel H. Pink

In September 2011, HR leader Charlie Judy wrote an enthusiastic post about “Drive” on his HR Fishbowl blog.

Here is how Charlie's article started:

“As an HR Professional you play an integral role in helping your organization motivate its employees. If you believe this, then you really should read Daniel Pink’s bestselling “Drive”. In 220 pages, it will take everything the archaic world of business has taught you about “what motivates us,” turn it on its head, and slap you across the face with an enlightenment toward the binding constraints your organization is likely imposing on its people. »

No More Carrots and Sticks!

In “Drive”, Daniel Pink unveils a major gap between what science knows and what business does. Social scientists have shown that traditional motivation techniques, like cash rewards, often don't work. Worse: they sometimes do more harm than good!

What is called “extrinsic motivation” has a positive effect on performance only when the task at hand is very simple, almost mechanical. But when it comes to the complex tasks that are typical of the 21^st century knowledge workers, carrots and sticks are just a waste of time and money.

So, instead of elaborating traditional bonus schemes, we HR people (as well as all organizational leaders) should focus on fostering “intrinsic motivation” in our organizations. To do that, there are three levers we can activate:

1. Autonomy : To feel motivated, people should have control on what they do, when they do it, with whom, and how. 
   
   
2. Mastery : Seeing that, through relentless efforts, you are getting better and better at something that matters is a very motivating experience. It starts with flow, this good feeling that we have when we perform at the top level of our skills.

3. Purpose: We all do a better job when we know that it serves the greater good, not just profit or personal income.
   
   

A Serious, Useful... and Funny Book!

Drive is a serious book: it is based on a review of the scientific literature.

It is also useful, filled with examples from big corporations, technology companies or hospitals. It offers a toolkit that includes practical advice about:

• Awakening your (personal) motivation
• Fostering intrinsic motivation in your organization
• Compensation : how to pay people in a way that does not get in the way of motivation (specially relevant for HR professionals)
• Educating your kids
• Getting (and staying) motivated to exercise

As part of his toolkit, Pink presents a reading list (I really love that guy!) and the names of six business gurus that offer guidance consistent with Pink's views.

Last but not least, reading “Drive” is really funny. As you will notice in the videos below, Daniel Pink has a great sense of humor!

Videos

In this speech at TED's 2009 Global Conference in Oxford, Daniel Pink offered a passionate and convincing summary of his book: 

And in this one, his summary is illustrated by nice drawings:

Book Data

• DRIVE - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
• By Daniel H. Pink
• Canongate Books
• 215 pages
• Available at Amazon.com: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
  

More about Drive and Daniel H. Pink

• At www.danpink.com/drive-survey you can fill out a survey to assess your own levels of motivation.
• You can also subscribe to a newsletter and receive a free PDF called "The Flip Manifesto: 16 Counterintuitive Ideas About Motivation, Innovation, and Leadership"
• And you can follow @danielpink on Twitter.

  

Financial Intelligence for HR Professionals, by Karen BERMAN and Joe KNIGHT

HR leaders need to be well-rounded managers. If we really want to become strategic partners, we need to understand the business we support. And one key to understand it is to know the language of finance.

I once heard a university professor argue that "If a director of HR can't read his company's balance sheet, he shouldn't be a director". I think he was right (even though his statement made me feel very bad at the time).

More generally, Karen BERMAN and Joe KNIGHT advocate for financial literacy for all. They believe that organizations would be better run if all managers, even all employees, understood the basics of finance.

In this brilliant book, they explain the many subtleties of corporate finance, and how these can affect HR:

• How to read an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement;
• Why these are relevant and complimentary to understand the realities of a particular organization;
• How finance is as much an art as a science, because estimations and assumptions can have a strong impact on the numbers published;
• How this "art of finance" can have important consequences for an HR department;
• How to calculate and use relevant ratios;
• How to champion financial literacy in your organization.

I never thought that a book about finance could be so enjoyable and "reader-friendly". All concepts are explained in simple words and illustrated by real-life examples. The appendixes include the income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements of Kimberly-Clark and Fedex, which can be used in exercises.

This is really a must-read for every HR leader.



Book Data

• Financial Intelligence for HR Professionals: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers
• By Karen BERMAN and Joe KNIGHT, with John CASE
• Harvard Business Press
• 232 pages (+appendixes)
• Available on Amazon.com: Financial Intelligence for HR Professionals: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers

For additional information and updates, the book has an official website: www.financialintelligencebook.com.

"Becoming a Resonant Leader" by Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis, Frances Johnston

Becoming a Resonant Leader offers a practical answer to the question: “How do you use Daniel Goleman's theory of Emotional Intelligence to become an inspiring leader?”

It is a reading recommendation coming from Barcelona, where Rosalinda Hernández works as Europe Talent Acquisition at PepsiCo. She tweets at @Recruiter_Rosie.

More Than 50 Leadership Exercises

You don't read this book as much as you use it, with a pen in your hand. Offering more than 50 exercises, it is really a practical guide that aims to make you reflect on how to become a better leader by leveraging your emotional intelligence. It is also filled with inspiring examples. 

The exercises reminded me very much of those I have found so profoundly useful when I read Total Leadership, by Steward Friedman. 

Both books offer a holistic perspective about personal development and leadership: becoming a great leader requires you to know who you are and what you want.

First, McKee, Boyatzis and Johnston make you think about:

• Important people around you : who do you admire, who do you lead, who can help you...
• How you work : your defensive routines, your passions, your strengths and challenges, your philosophical orientation, your learning style...
• What you want : your ideal life, your dreams, your personal vision...

Then, the authors help you use this knowledge to develop a personal learning plan.

And finally, they explain how to ignite resonance in teams, organizations and communities.

Useful Leadership Tools and Concepts

Let me share five tools or concepts developed in the book that seem particularly useful from my HR point of view.

• Resonance is defined as “a powerful collective energy that reverberates among people and supports higher productivity, creativity, a sense of unity, a sense of purpose, and better results”. It is, in other words, the link between emotional intelligence and organizational success.
• Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence: when you meet a great leader, you feel that she knows who she is and what is important to her. In particular, good leaders show emotional awareness: they can name and manage their emotions. The way to improve emotional awareness is to practice mindfulness, i.e. to become consciously attuned to oneself, others and the environment. (In a recent post on the HRFishbowl blog, I wrote about the link between meditation, mindfulness, and good HR).
• The sacrifice syndrome is precisely one of the things that await leaders when they lack mindfulness. As they try to respond to the many demands they face, their stress mounts above the level they can handle. Their tactics for avoiding this stress are part of the problem. They soon feel overdrawn physically, mentally and emotionally.
• The philosophical orientation questionnaire included in the book lets you determine your preferences regarding three basic operating philosophies:
  • Pragmatic: you appreciate an activity if it helps you achieve your goals. This operating philosophy is linked to utilitarianism and consequentialism.
  • Intellectual: you appreciate an activity if it helps you learn and understand new things. You tend to use abstract variables to understand and describe the world.
    
  • Human: you appreciate an activity if it has a positive impact on specific other people, and on your relationship with them.
    
  • The authors explain that if your scores on those variables are close together, you can feel conflicted when making certain types of decisions. This proved relevant in my case: I scored equally high scores on “intellectual” and “human”, and I'm afraid I'm sometimes an indecisive person indeed.
    
• Planning Style. Annie McKee found in her research that when it comes to think about the future, people use three different approaches:
  • Goal-oriented planners tend to focus on very specific goals and outcomes.
  • Direction-oriented people know the general path they wish to pursue, but they don't set very specific objectives. They might be less effective than goal-oriented people, but they are also more flexible, which helps them spot opportunities.
  • Being action-oriented means living for the moment, without many thoughts about the future. Action-oriented people are spontaneous.
  • And as the authors say, each of these three styles has wisdom for the other.

The book also provides ideas and a methodology to conduct participative processes that could be used for team-building, vision-building or change initiatives.

If you work in HR, it can thus be useful in a variety of ways: for yourself, for people you coach, or for your organization as a whole.

Book Data

• Becoming a Resonant Leader - Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness
• By Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston
• Harvard Business Press
• 213 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Becoming a Resonant Leader

The Case for Meditative HR

I am honored and excited to have an article of mine published today on HRFishbowl.com, Charlie Judy's excellent HR blog:
http://hrfishbowl.com/2012/02/guest-post-case-for-meditative-hr/

REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is recommended by Frédéric Williquet. Frédéric is a Managing HR Consultant at SD Worx. 

This publication stands in the same category as Kawasaki's Enchantment and Ferris' 4-HourWorkweek. Bold, smart, short, easy to read, these books do not try teach us any theories, but they let us feel the trends of the 21th-century workplace.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the leaders of a successful software company called 37signals. In this book, they share the recipes of their entrepreneurial success and give their points of view about different aspects of launching and running a company.

The book is hard to synthesize. It is a collection of ideas and statements about how a business should be run. It could have been titled “Lean Business” or something like that.

Things They Like

Here are a few examples of what Fried and Heinemeier Hansson are in favor of:

• Constraints, because embracing them enhances creativity;
• Good enough (a case against perfectionism);
• Quick wins, as they fuel momentum;
• Tiny decisions, because they are temporary and thus let you change your mind when you realize you've made a mistake;
• Fights: naming your enemy (a big competitor) helps you get noticed and ignite passion;
• Underdoing one's competition, meaning that developing a product that has less features than the competition can be a very competitive strategy;
• Saying no, i.e. resisting the temptation to satisfy every customer request;
• Obscurity, defined as the period when your company is too young and small to get noticed, allows you to make bolder choices;
• Great writers, because good writing is a sign of clear thinking;

Things They Hate

And a few of the things they advocate against:

• Workaholism, because it leads to inefficiency: workaholics prefer staying late and feeling like heroes than imagining smart solutions and focusing their energy on what really matters.
• Learning from mistakes, as learning what not to do is not as useful as knowing what to do.
• Outside money: the investors will always end up telling you what to do, with their own financial interests in mind.
• Mass, i.e. procedures, formal rules, policies, long-term contracts and road maps, office politics, etc. don't let you change things as quickly as you'd like.
• Meetings, which are basically a massive waste of time.
• Heroes, because sometimes it's better to be a quitter than a hero. If you realize that a task is going to be much more difficult or time-consuming than anticipated, you should give it up.
• Estimates, as we human beings are really bad at estimating.
• Long to-do lists (don't get done).
• Press releases, which are comparable to spam.
• ASAP, because when everything you ask is “ASAP”, people can't tell anymore what is really a priority.

What's in It for HR pros?

Rework has an interesting chapter about hiring. It can make us think again about the way we recruit and select. For example, in the authors' view:

• Resumes are spam. They are of much less use than cover letters.
• Requiring five years of experience is irrelevant.
• We should exercise a profession ourselves before hiring someone else to do the job (OK, that might be easier in small companies than in Fortune 500 corporations!).

The book also offers a fresh perspective on our work habits. We in HR might play a key role in fighting against bureaucracy, workaholism, or useless meetings. In our own organizations, big or small, we could be the advocates of the type of lean management presented by Fired and Heinemeier Hansson.

Book data

• Rework - Change the Way you Work Forever
• By Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. They run 37signals.com and a blog called Signal versus Noise
• Vermilion (Ebury Publishing)
• 279 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Rework 

Good to Great, by Jim Collins

What makes a company achieve outstanding results?

• A charismatic, rock-star CEO?
• Huge efforts to build a visionary strategy, followed by a great program intended to catalyze organizational change?
• Powerful incentives to motivate all members of an organization?
• The quick adoption of cutting-edge technologies?
• State-of-the-art HR policies ?

Nope! Building greatness takes disciplined people, engaging in disciplined actions based on disciplined thought.

This is the astonishing conclusion of the in-depth analysis made by Jim COLLINS and his team.

Good to Great is based on the study of eleven American companies that, after a period of ordinariness, at some point made the leap to greatness (as measured by financial performance on the stock market).

The reasons why these companies succeeded in such a spectacular manner derive from a few simple principles:

• Level 5 Leaders. The research showed that Good-to-Great companies were lead by managers who shared two personality traits: a great personal humility and a very strong resolve for their company to achieve greatness.
  
• First Who, Then What. Obviously, you need a great team to build a great company. But what these companies did was first to recruit great people, and then to define a strategy.
  
• The Stockdale Paradox. Good-to-Great companies were able to confront the brutal facts. For example, one of them was able to understand that its core activity was going to disappear and that it needed to redefine its core business. But while acknowledging the tough reality, these organizations never lost faith that in the end, they would prevail. COLLINS called this attitude “the STOCKDALE paradox” after a US army hero. Admiral Jim STOCKDALE was a war prisoner in Vietnam for eight years. He survived and helped his fellow prisoners survive too, by being very realistic about short-term outcomes (don't hope you'll be home for Christmas) yet never stopping to believe that they would be free in the end.
  
  
• The Hedgehog Concept. While a fox is very smart an can implement many strategies, the hedgehog has only one, very simple strategy (rolling up to become a sphere full of spikes) and uses it very consistently. Good-to-Great companies are much more like hedgehogs than like foxes. They find out what they can be the best in the world at, what they are passionate about, and what drives their economic engine. These are simple things, nothing sophisticated. Then, they just focus on this core concept that drives all their actions.
  
• A Culture of Discipline. In Good-to-Great companies, discipline has nothing to do with tyranny or bureaucracy: it is a mix of liberty and responsibility. Discipline also means staying focused on the hedgehog concept, even if it means renouncing to apparent opportunities.

• Technology as an Accelerator. Good-to-Great companies do not feel the need to be the first to adopt new technologies. They take the time to understand how they can use technology in a way that is consistent with their hedgehog concept.

A Solid Methodology

Jim COLLINS used to teach at Stanford. To write this book, he worked with a strong team that spent several years collecting and analyzing huge quantities of relevant data. The statistical significance of their method was validated by two distinguished professors: a statistician and a mathematician.

The skeptical reader can find details about this solid methodology in the notes and appendixes.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors

Working in healthcare, I was particularly interested by “Good to Great and the Social Sectors”, a short monography COLLINS wrote to accompany “Good to Great”.

COLLINS explains why, for non-profit organizations, being more “business-like” is not a relevant approach: after all, most companies are either mediocre or merely good anyway.

We should not try to imitate the world of business but embrace (and adapt) the principles that can lead to greatness.

How is this book useful to HR practitioners?

Good to Great challenges some beliefs that are widely shared amongst HR professionals:

• We often think that we should select the professionals that best fit our organization's strategy. Instead, maybe we should first hire the best professionals and then, define the strategy with them. The “First Who, Then What” principle shows that recruiting is the first step on the path to success. Good news for HR!

• We are generally interested in the theme of Motivation. COLLINS thinks that it is useless: in his view, if you hire the right people and do not make stupid or unfair decisions, they will always be motivated.

• The idea of “Level 5 leaders” may challenge our common approach to leadership. Maybe the best leaders are not the most charismatic.

• Personally, I think I need to use the hedgehog concept. The book has made me understand how discipline and focus are at least as important as creativity and innovation.

Book data

• "Good to Great - Why some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't"
• By Jim COLLINS
• Harper Business
• 218 pages (+appendixes)
• Available on Amazon.com: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

And:

• "Good to Great and the Social Sectors- Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer"- A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
• By Jim COLLINS
• 35 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

This is the first time that I have posted a comment about a book that was not recommended by a fellow Human Resource professional. I simply felt the urge to read it because it was cited as a must-read in many of the other HR books I have read. I'm happy I made this choice !

Nonetheless, if you are an HR practitioner, please do not hesitate to send me your book recommendations (by e-mail or via @HRbooks on Twitter) or to share your thoughts about Good to Great.