Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Hiring Talent – Next Session – March 19, 2012

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We are gathering the next group for our online program Hiring Talent, which kicks off March 19, 2012. As the economy (slowly) recovers, your next hires are critical. This is not a time to be casual about the hiring process. Mistakes are too expensive and margins are too thin.

Purpose of this program – to train managers and HR specialists in the discipline of conducting more effective interviews in the context of a managed recruiting process.

Candidate Interview

How long is the program? We have streamlined the program so that it can be completed in six weeks. We have also added a self-paced feature so participants can work through the program even faster.

How do people participate in the program? This is an online program conducted by Tom Foster. Participants will be responsible for online assignments and participate in online facilitated discussion groups with other participants. This online platform is highly interactive. Participants will interact with Tom Foster and other participants as they work through the program.

Who should participate? This program is designed for Stratum III and Stratum IV managers and HR managers who play active roles in the recruiting process for their organizations.

What is the cost? The program investment is $499 per participant.

When is the program scheduled? Pre-registration is now open. The program is scheduled to kick-off March 19, 2012.

How much time is required to participate in this program? Participants should reserve approximately 2 hours per week. This program is designed so participants can complete their assignments on their own schedule anytime during each week’s assignment period.

Pre-register now. No payment due at this time.

March 19, 2012

  • Orientation

Week One – Role Descriptions – It’s All About the Work

  • What we are up against
  • Specific challenges in the process
  • Problems in the process
  • Defining the overall process
  • Introduction to the Role Description
  • Organizing the Role Description
  • Defining Tasks
  • Defining Goals
  • Identifying the Level of Work

Week Two

  • Publish and discuss Role Descriptions

Week Three – Interviewing for Future Behavior

  • Creating effective interview questions
  • General characteristics of effective questions
  • How to develop effective questions
  • How to interview for attitudes and non-behavioral elements
  • How to interview for Time Span
  • Assignment – Create a bank of interview questions for the specific role description

Week Four

  • Publish and discuss bank of interview questions

Week Five – Conducting the Interview

  • Organizing the interview process
  • Taking Notes during the process
  • Telephone Screening
  • Conducting the telephone interview
  • Conducting the face-to-face interview
  • Working with an interview team
  • Compiling the interview data into a Decision Matrix
  • Background Checks, Reference Checks
  • Behavioral Assessments
  • Drug Testing
  • Assignment – Conduct a face-to-face interview

Week Six

  • Publish and discuss results of interview process

Pre-registration is now open for this program. No payment is due at this time.

The Value in a Manager’s Role

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“What do you mean, bring value?” Joan asked. “Sounds easy to say, but I don’t know what you mean. How does a manager bring value to the problem solving and decision making in the team?”

“Do you bring value by telling people what to do?” I asked.

Joan sat back, looking for the odd angle in the question. “No,” she replied.

“You and I are sitting here talking,” I nodded. “And in our conversation, am I directing you, telling you how to be a manager?”

Again, the answer was “No.”

“And would you say that our conversations are valuable, valuable to you, in your role, as a manager?”

Joan followed the nod. “Yes,” she said slowly.

“I am not telling you what to do, yet, am I bringing value to the conversation?” I could see Joan making a leap in her mind to follow. “How am I doing that? If I am not telling you what to do, what kinds of sentences am I using?”

“Questions,” she responded. “You are not telling me what to do. You are asking questions and listening. And your questions are bringing value to the decisions I have to make and the problems I have to solve.”

Culture Fit as Part of a Role Description

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Yesterday, I got a question from a participant in our Hiring Talent online program. In the Field Work assignment to create a Role Description (according to a specific template), the question came up.

Question:
I wasn’t sure about including the culture/values piece, as it is not something I typically see in role descriptions, however I felt strongly in doing so, as I think this is something that really lives in our organization, provides a compass for how decisions are made, how people interact, and is why we are able to attract and retain top talent.

Just curious – is the culture/value piece something you are seeing companies incorporate more and more into their role descriptions?

Response:
The culture/values piece is rare to find in a role description, but think about this.

What is culture? It is that unwritten set of rules, intentional or not, that governs the way we behave as a group. It governs the way we work together.

Here are the four criteria I interview for –
1. Capability for the level of work in the role (Time Span)
2. Skill (Technical knowledge and practiced performance)
3. Interest, passion (Value for the work)
4. Reasonable behavior (Habits, absence of an extreme negative temperament, -T)

The elements you describe in the Role Description, related to culture/values have a distinct place in the interview process. Where I can ask questions related to values, specifically value for the work we do, I am looking for interest or passion. Where I can ask questions related to habits, reasonable behavior, I am looking for fit with our culture.

These elements, interest, passion and culture fit are as critical to success as capability and skills. I look forward to seeing the questions generated by this Key Result Area in the Role Description.

If you would like more information about our online program Hiring Talent, let me know. I am gathering the next group to start on March 19, 2012.

Evidence, Not Hope

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How do you un-do some internal promotions that probably shouldn’t have happened? The person is just not effective in their new Stratum III role?

Response:
Troubleshooting effectiveness in a role can be traced to one of these four factors –

  • Capability
  • Skill
  • Interest (Value for the work)
  • Reasonable Behavior

I rely on the manager’s judgment to determine which of the factors may be in play. In my Time Span workshop, I describe a team member with the following characteristics –

  • Worked for the company – 8 years
  • Always shows up early, stays late
  • Wears a snappy company uniform (belt around waist, cap on straight)
  • Knows the company Fight Song
  • Makes the best potato salad at the company picnic

And yet, is under performing in his role. Put that list against the four factors and I arrive at capability mis-matched for the role. To do a thorough inspection, I would examine each of the Key Result Areas in the role to see where the underperformance occurs. It is likely there are parts of the role that are done well, and parts where we observe underperformance. The mis-match is likely to occur on those longest Time Span task assignments.

In your question, you describe a Stratum III role. I would examine each of the KRAs and task assignments to see which is the culprit and modify that specific task assignment. The modification might be to break the longer task into a series of shorter tasks with more oversight, or to shift an analytic step to another resource.

All of this can be avoided by assigning project work to team members BEFORE they receive promotions. Successful completion, evidence is what I look for, not hopes and promises.

Where to Start

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I have been following your posts on Requisite Organization. How do I implement this management strategy after seven years with a lack of organization or structure?

Response:
You start at the beginning, of course. Before you wreak havoc on everyone else, start with yourself. The first place to look is at your own Role Description. If you can even find it, it’s likely a mess. That’s where you start.

List out all the tasks and activities in your role. I use 2×2 sticky notes, one for each task. You should end up with 50-75 tasks. Look at the tasks and see which go together. Separate the tasks (the ones that go together) into piles. You will likely end up with 5-8 piles.

Next, name each pile with a short 2-3 word name. These names will be things like –

  • Planning
  • Personnel and Recruiting
  • Production
  • Administrative (Paperwork, every role has paperwork)
  • Reporting (Metrics, measurements)
  • Process Improvement
  • Safety
  • Equipment Maintenance
  • Scheduling
  • Training
  • Quality Control
  • Research

The names of these piles-of-tasks become the Key Result Areas for your role. These Key Result Areas (KRAs) become the structure for your Role Description.

Drafting the Role Description, using your KRAs as your outline, the organization of the document falls together. Inside each KRA, list the specific tasks, identify the Level of Work, and the accountability.

KRA #1
Tasks
Level of Work
Accountabilities

KRA #2
Tasks
Level of Work
Accountabilities

And so on.

Once you have written your Role Description, then pick a team member (to torture) and collaborate through this same exercise. Pick someone friendly and cooperative. It will likely take 3-4 meetings over a period of 1-2 weeks before you get agreement. Then move to the next team member. By then, you will get the hang of it and you will be ready to move to the next step.

Let me know how it goes.

Rare Air

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I have started the process of locating candidates for a Stratum IV position. How do you test an individual for capability given a specific job requirement. Specifically, after narrowing the field of candidates I would like to have them tested for the capability required in the position? Most of the canidates in our pool are age 30-38 and have promise but lack validating comparative experience.

Response:
I know you have been following the series we completed yesterday, defining the Level of Work in typical roles.
Calibrating Level I Roles
Calibrating Level II Roles
Calibrating Level III Roles
Calibrating Level IV Roles

I am often asked to interview candidates to assess their current capability or potential capability. It’s like a dog barking up the wrong tree. The cat’s not in that tree.

Instead of attempting to assess the potential capability of the candidate, spend your time defining the Level of Work in the role. Then, interview the candidates related to the work. I know this is a simple solution, but here is the brilliance.

You are absolutely NOT qualified to assess a person’s current or potential capability. Here is my humble news. I’m not either. Leave that assessment to higher powers.

But, managers are absolutely qualified to observe and assess behavior related to work. Competent managers can easily spot positive behavior, negative behavior and can instantaneously tell the difference. Play to your strengths as a manager. Define the Level of Work and interview the candidates related to the work. You will always stand on firm ground within your competence to conduct that interview.

The second part of your question indicates you are working through a young candidate pool, age 30-38, for a Stratum IV role. Elliott’s research is very clear. In the snapshot of a candidate pool, age 21-50, the frequency of people demonstrating capability for Stratum IV roles was 1 in 200. If you can expand your age search up to age 21-70, you will double your odds to 1 in 100. It is rare air. (Source – Life and Behavior of Living Organisms, pp 188).

Calibrating Level IV Roles

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How do you incorporate Time Span into a Role Description?

Response:
This is the fourth post in this series.
Calibrating Level I Roles
Calibrating Level II Roles
Calibrating Level III Roles

Level IV Roles
Level IV roles are typically responsible for multiple systems and subsystems. Left to their own devices, organizational systems fend for themselves and create friction at the departmental level. It is the role at Level IV to integrate these systems together. More than multi-tasking, Level IV managers understand the dependencies, inter-dependencies, contingencies and bottlenecks that exist between multiple systems. The goal is to integrate these systems together into a “whole system.”

Problem solving at Level IV is generally related to longer term initiatives which may take 2-5 years to achieve defined objectives. The focus in problem solving often requires the Level IV manager to step out of the internal elements of a single system to examine (often counter-intuitive) the output of multiple systems interacting together. This may involve the momentum of a reinforcing system offset by the impact of a balancing system. Sales, as a reinforcing system, are often offset by the capacity of operations, as a balancing system. Unrestrained sales that outstrip operational fulfillment create backorders and unhappy customers. Unrestrained operations that outstrip sales create inventory overstocks, carrying costs and bloated balance sheets.

Task assignments at Level IV are defined by operational planning and longer term strategic planning.

Calibrating Level III Roles

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How do you incorporate Time Span into a Role Description?

Response:
This is the third post in this series.
Calibrating Level I Roles
Calibrating Level II Roles

Level III Roles
Level III roles are populated by managers responsible for production consistency, to create predictability in organizational output. Their focus is on the creation, monitoring and improvement of systems. We depend on Level III roles to create sustainable efficiencies. The problems they solve are related to work flow, system layout and sequence.

Given a problem to solve, the central question at Level III is, “why didn’t our system anticipate this problem, or why didn’t our system, at least, mitigate the damage from this problem?” To solve these problems, those in Level III roles engage in comparative analysis or root cause analysis.

The Time Span of their longest projects typically range from 1-2 years. To manage projects of this length, Level III roles depend on planning scenarios, employing “what if” analysis. In pursuit of any task assignment, they create alternate paths to the goal, contingency planning to anticipate roadblocks outside their control.

Calibrating Level II Roles

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How do you incorporate Time Span into a Role Description?

Response:
This is the second post in this series. Yesterday, we discussed Level I roles.

Level II Roles
Level II roles are populated by supervisors, coordinators, project managers. The problems solved and decisions made are longer in Time Span than Level I roles. Level II roles are concerned with the coordination of production with materials and equipment. It is a team orientation rather than individual orientation.

Level II roles are concerned not only with the organization of materials for the current working session, but the ordering of future materials, for next week, next month. Experienced Level II roles may be responsible for materials and equipment procurement for projects three to six months in the future. The most experienced Level II roles may be expected to work on projects up to 12 months in the future.

Since Level II roles are typically responsible for the assembly of people, materials and equipment, all in place, at the appropriate time. To be effective, their tools consist of schedules, checklists and conducting short meetings.

Tomorrow, we will look at Level III roles.
_______
We are currently pre-registering for our next Hiring Talent program, beginning March 1, 2012.

Incorporating Time Span into a Role Description

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Can you give me an example of how you would incorporate Time Span in a job description?

Response:
In a role description, Time Span leads us to better understand the Level of Work in the role. Traditionally we describe the tasks and activities associated with the role, but rarely define the Level of Work.

In each level, we have to understand the nature of problems to be solved and the decisions to be made.

Level I Roles
Level I roles typically consist of individual direct output. This is where we find technicians, equipment operators, clerical, data entry. Team members in Level I roles receive task assignments from a supervisor, coordinator or designated manager. Most discretionary decisions revolve around pace and quality.

“Am I working fast enough to complete the assigned task in the time expected? Am I working carefully enough to meet the quality standard set for this task?”

The output of a Level I role is often the direct product or service experienced by your customer.

Team members in Level I roles may work in the same room with other people, but are rarely concerned with other teammates’ activities unless there are direct hand-offs of work tasks, one to another.

Work materials and equipment are organized only for the working session. Ordering additional work materials for future work, next week, next month, is generally outside the bounds of Level I, unless specifically authorized by min/max standards set by their manager.

Goals, or task assignments are generally expected to be completed within one day or a few days. Experienced team members may be expected to continue projects without supervision as long as a month. The most experienced team members in Level I roles may informally assist other team members in trial and error troubleshooting or modeling work routines or special skills and may be assigned projects as long as three months in length.

Tomorrow, we will look closer at Level II.
______
We are currently pre-registering for our next Hiring Talent program, beginning March 1, 2012.