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Are you hitting the weights?

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Thoughts on building stronger professionals

Paul Currey

“Hey Boobie, you didn’t lift.”

“C’mon man. This is god given. The only thing I gotta do is show up.”

If you’ve seen Friday Night Lights (spoiler alert for those who haven’t), you know that Boobie Miles – Permian High’s star running back – suffers a career ending injury a few scenes later. Boobie was the Panther’s most talented, dynamic, and exciting player…and it all came naturally. But what happens when natural talent isn’t enough? What happens when you’re up against equivalent talent with a substantially stronger work ethic, grit, and determination to win. You lose.

Athletics provide an easy and tangible arena for the “hard work pays off” adage. If you’ve ever trained for a marathon, you know that more miles yield more base fitness, more base fitness yields more speed, and more speed yields a faster race result. All sports have an equivalent payoff; with success coming to those who put in the work. Conversely, we’ve all been on a team with talented superstars who lack drive and work ethic. These superstars are objectively good (at times infuriatingly so); but everyone around them knows they’re leaving potential on the table.

I think you know where this is going (after all, this is a business blog, not Sports Illustrated). Reflect with me on your career and professional life, ask yourself the question “are you hitting the weights”? For what it’s worth, I find this question convicting and need to explicitly clarify that I fall short here often. Most of us would love to emphatically answer, “absolutely, I’m essentially a corporate powerlifter.” But, if we’re really honest with ourselves, it’s easy to slide towards the Boobie Miles camp of, “the only thing I gotta do is show up” to my job. Hitting the weights in your career is difficult. For starters, your season is 40+ years long with no recurring offseason (unless you’re French, I think they take an annual off-season). Additionally, the game evolves incessantly (several folks reading this didn’t start their career with a computer in-hand, now you can use Excel in your Meta Quest VR headset). Your career is a long game that requires a lot of stamina and endurance…so how do you build it?

That answer is long, varies by profession, and in the proverbial words of a consultant “it depends” on a lot of factors. That said, here’s a few practical ways I think we can all “hit the weights” together. You might ask, why does it matter if we’re “hitting the weights”? My assertion is that the world doesn’t need more corporate “Boobie Miles superstars” – it needs folks who work hard, care about their contributions to the greater good, and serve their teams well. That’s a much more enjoyable huddle to be in on a daily basis. That said, here’s some “workouts” to consider:

  • Read, a lot: Some of the most impressive professionals I’ve encountered have an avaricious appetite for reading. Novels and news are a free gym membership for the brain…turn off The Office re-runs and pick up a book (I started rewatching Succession last night, I’m a hypocrite).
  • Keep up with your industry: It’s imperative to stay apprised of key updates and the long-term direction of the industries we work in. This dovetails nicely into the reading piece…stay current on industry trends and implications for your company through trusted sources. It’s not enough to be a “finance, supply chain, or [insert functional expertise] area person,” you need to know the landscape of the industry you’re playing in.
  • Learn and develop hard skills: Do you remember trying a clean and jerk for the first time? I do, I was an overweight rising Freshman with less muscle mass than a wet rag and aspirations of playing in the NFL – it went really well. Like trying a new lift, there’s a ton of hard skills we can go learn, grow in, and develop into real professional assets (e.g., data analytics, accounting, project management, etc.). Learning hard skills is a great way to evolve professionally and be a “5 tool player” on any team.

The three points above are far from exhaustive (and thousands of books, lectures, and TikToks exist on similar themes), but I hope it spurs some thought and action towards ways we can get stronger in our day-to-day professional lives. If nothing else, I hope we’re all reflecting on the work ethic we bring to the office every day; and, I hope we’re all hitting the weights.

What are other practical ways you “hit the weights” in your professional life?

Your bag, your gig, and theirs too!

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Want to be a great leader? Align what you like to do with what you have to do, and then find people who will follow the formula.

Geoff Wilson

Recently, I was part of a conversation about the abject drain it would be for me and other people around the table to perform the duties of the typical politician these days.

Be at the center of attention and stand, smile, shake hands, smile, stand, say something about the baby, stand, smile, shake hands, ask for the vote.  Rinse, repeat.

This is the stuff horror stories are made of for me. I would be terrible at it and would be terrible supporting it.

And that’s where the story turned.  I happen to be in the thick of Robert Caro’s biographical book series on Lyndon B. Johnson. In the midst of what I would characterize as a highly unflattering analysis of one of our country’s more enduring political figures, a thing stands out:  LBJ absolutely thrived on the gritty aspects of politics.  It gave him energy to see people, to give the same speech over and over and over in an era where taping wasn’t possible (talking about his early days), and to connive and scheme about how to buy votes and steal elections.

I’m not kidding or even exaggerating.  The guy was a machine.  And, it worked.  Further than that, he surrounded himself with acolytes who understood his drive and energy, and were just as committed.

LBJ without his team was just a disliked, lying blowhard who was literally nicknamed Bull (short for Bull****) in college.  LBJ with his team was a formidable presence in American politics for nearly five decades.

He did it by thriving on the dirty stuff that other people didn’t, and by building a team that did the same.

Yes, some people just absolutely thrive on what others of us view as drudgery, skullduggery, or even pain. And the ones who are great–even at dirty pursuits like politics–build teams with the same alignment.  And that’s maybe the gist of this post.

I’ve written before on how most people want to be great at something, but they are limited by lack of enjoyment for what it takes to be great. Want to be great at playing the guitar?  Best start to enjoy sore hands and bleeding fingers.  That post, Everybody wants to be a rockstar, got a lot of play years ago.  I’m going to take this one a step further to say it’s not only about you, it’s about the people around you, too.

A quote makes its way around the internet every now and then, attributed to a character on DRAGNET from many years ago:

Everybody has a bag. Everybody has a gig. When your bag and your gig jive, man thats groovy.

In other words, everyone has something they like to do, and everyone has something they get paid to do.  And when those two things are in alignment, life is good.

LBJ had a bag and a gig that jived.  Politics was his thing.

LBJ’s surrounded himself with people who bought into the same thing.

And that’s where you come in.  As an individual, you have to manage the tension between your bag and your gig.  If you really enjoy spending your time gardening but make money in accounting, you can survive and thrive but I know where your incremental effort is going…into the dirt.

If you really enjoy gardening and your life’s work is a garden center that serves the community, then, man, that’s like rocket fuel. You might find yourself sitting around at 6am writing silly blog posts about it.

As a builder of teams, you have to make the same analysis.  If the people on your team thrive on the success of the team, then you’re onto something.  If they thrive on the success of some other team or on their own individual success or hobbies, then you probably aren’t on your way to building a great team.

Align your bag and your gig, and then find people who share a similar alignment.

What do you think?  Is it possible not only to derive energy from the hard stuff for YOU, but to build a team with the same values?

 

Are your people uninspired? Maybe it’s time to hang the DJ.

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Your strategy is supposed to inspire.  Have you forgotten?

Geoff Wilson

What’s the purpose of your strategic plan?

The possibilities are endless.  Some might say that the sole purpose is to “enhance shareholder value.”  I’d argue that this old trope is no longer the gold standard.  Some adhere to the stakeholder model…which might be closer.  Regardless of the “concept,” a given business strategy has to appeal to a lot of people.

Strategy, inasmuch as it deals with things that are less certain and immediate, is an argument.  It’s an argument formed from assumptions that are (or should be) formed from knowable facts and less knowable (but educated) estimates.

But, something tends to happen on the way to building business strategies that derails one of the most important imperatives.  We lose the power of inspiration. Usually, we lose it when the hardcore management nerds get ahold of the strategic planning and implementation “ecosystem” and start overswhelming the organization with jargon, tools, and really smart pablum.

A strategy is an argument, for sure.  But it’s an argument that is–in the main–supposed to inspire action against specific aims.  And, when you lose inspiration, you lose action.

How do you know if you are building an uninspiring strategy?  Well, if it’s uninspiring to investors and the board they usually let you know.  Where it gets tricky is when it’s uninspiring for employees, customers, partners, or other stakeholders.  A lot of times, they will vote with their feet; and you don’t want that. The best way to test is usually to ask.  I know, I know…too easy. But, it’s true.

So what’s a well-rounded leader like yourself to do if you find less than stellar inspiration in the ranks?  Well, it depends on who the uninspiring one is. I’m reminded of the lyrics from The Smiths’ still fantastic song “Panic.”

It goes something like this:

Hang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play 

It says nothing to me about my life

Hang the blessed DJ

Do you see it?  Are you the DJ?  Do you know who is? Did you hire the DJ?  Did you allow the DJ (in the form of very smart but totally uninspiring consultants, perhaps) to hijack the strategy and make it a “value creation strategy” vs a truly inspiring enterprise strategy?

If you are authoring uninspired strategy, or hiring those who are, then consider starting over.  If your strategy isn’t touching people where they live…through things that are relevant to their lives and livelihoods, then you are probably going to get hung at some point anyway, so why not just do it yourself?

Build strategy to inspire. And if you haven’t done that?  Hang the DJ.

What do you think?

New year, new you?

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Renewal is the word to embrace at the start of the year.

Geoff Wilson

2020.

Two thousand twenty.

For those of us born and reared prior to the turn of the century, just the concept of 2020 is striking…it’s as if we are living in the future.

The turn of the decade brings to mind an important habit for executives of all kinds:  the habit of reflection and renewal.  More than just “re-setting your plan,” a habit of reflection and renewal is about a full breakdown of your career and personal aspirations and–this is the important part–how your current actions align against them.

The most effective executives I know are experts at reinvention. Without being haphazard, they are thoughtful about what to cast off and what to bring into the fold when it comes to their professional lives and their overall endeavors. The kicker is that this habit isn’t done as “change for change’s sake,” it’s done as a means of renewal. 

Renewal.

Not change.

Renewal implies the continuation of the good, a re-upping of time and effort against things that matter most.  And, it implies that some things are left to expire.

As we start this new decade, it’s good to consider what your own points of renewal are.  This habit can be focused on your personal life, your career, or your overall business.

Maybe, in your personal life, you might seek to renew a writing hobby but to allow a portion of your screen habits to expire.

Maybe, in your professional life, you might have a renewed focus on developing new expertise in your particular function or profession.

Maybe, in your overall business, you might have a renewed focus on a particular strategic thrust at the expense of boondoggles of the past.

Think renewal.

What do you think?

The importance of doing career due diligence

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A little research and a few hints are plenty when you’re looking for your next job.

Geoff Wilson

Picture it: You’re thinking about joining a new organization. You just so happen to know a few people with very solid inside knowledge of the organization. One of them gives you this pearl: “On a scale of 1 to 10, the leadership team you would join is a solid 8—but the leader is a 4.”

What would you do? You might say “8, wow. That’s pretty good. I could do much worse.” Or you might say “Ugh, a leader who’s a 4. Back to the drawing board.”

Here’s what I’d tell you …

KEEP SHOPPING!

Any leader who has engendered enough bad will to have innocent observers rate them a 4 probably deserves elimination from your solution set. Of course, I write this with the assumption that you have other options; if you’re desperate, take your chances with a bad leader. After all, bad leaders deserve to have teams of desperate people.

Why does this matter to your career? Because a little due diligence is a good thing.

I’m actually wary of people who take jobs without asking questions. Like, really wary. Scary wary. Why? Because a person who will take a job with you without a question asked is probably just looking for a job. And you know what? There are lots of jobs out there.

People with purpose ask questions that relate to their purposes. I’ve had people ask questions about firm strategy, the career path, and even faith in the workplace. None of them were off-putting; these people showed sincere curiosity about where their own skills, purposes, and beliefs fit. But people without purpose just ask for offers; they don’t do any due diligence.

And those candidates deserve no offers when it comes to professional roles. “Ouch,” you might say. “What about junior people who don’t know any better?” Yep, they get a pass. But anyone who’s been around the block even once should know better.

I know of an executive who left a role with a firm after years within it, and the particular role he left was open and advertised for months and months. He constituted what I would consider a juicy due diligence target. Why? Well, he was there for all the world to see, regardless of what he could or couldn’t say about the role. He did, in fact, receive dozens of calls about the role and the organization. While I’m not sure how he talked about the role to those who were interested, I do know one thing: The person who actually took the role never called him. That would be a glaring red flag for me if I were filling the role. It says a lot about the depth of curiosity of the person who took the role, doesn’t it?

It’s not a sin to ask questions about a role that might be offered to you. And if you encounter resistance from your potential future organization when you do ask questions … run away! Any team that questions your motives for doing due diligence on them, particularly if you’re a very senior executive, doesn’t deserve to attract top talent.

Go ahead and look them in the mouths. Gift horses, they ain’t.

What do you think? Have you ever encountered resistance from an organization when you asked about it during an interview cycle? 

Everybody wants to be a rock star

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You gotta love the process to be great, in management or any field.

Geoff Wilson

You know something funny? Pretty much everybody wants to be a rock star. No, I don’t literally mean a rock-‘n’-roll celebrity with long hair, tattoos, piercings, and leather pants. I mean a figurative rock star nailing every performance at whatever they do.

But you know something else? Very few people want—no, like—to do what it takes to get there. And therein lies the rub of achieving success in just about any field. It can be boiled down to a single phrase: You have to love the process of achieving greatness to have the best chance of becoming great.

That means that no matter how much you’d love to be Eddie Van Halen on the guitar, if you don’t love or at least appreciate the pain of cracked and bleeding fingers that comes from countless hours of practicing new licks, you probably won’t get there. Ever.

Show me someone great at something, anything, and I’ll show you someone who has honed their craft through the process of becoming great. The process is typically exhausting, frustrating, painful, and tedious. If it weren’t, everyone would doggedly pursue greatness rather than passively wish for it.

Great speaker? Many hours of practice—probably in their closet or in front of the mirror, but still. Great strategist? Yep, lots of practice—possibly by observing a magnificent depth of strategic patterns and behaviors. Great mechanic? Plenty of practice, as well as burns, cuts, and sore muscles. Great typist? Lots. Of. Tedious. Typing.

Sure, the great ones are often gifted. But, most of the time, they love the process, too. They love the bloody fingers, skinned knuckles, and late nights in front of a spreadsheet. They crave the smell of engine exhaust or sweaty locker rooms.

These people relish the act of building greatness. They may love it even more than being great.

One cautionary note: I’m not talking about someone who has a great position. That’s totally different. There are people with great titles and positions, and then there are great professionals. They aren’t always the same. After enough years, you start to realize that.

So, you want to be a rock star? Find a stage where you enjoy the process of building toward greatness. If you never liked practice, you were probably in the wrong field. The great ones love the grind.

What do you think?

 

What If You Gig a Lemon?

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As the gig economy continues to evolve, how do we define value in it?

I had this link come across my newsfeed today.

It looks like seminal gig economy facilitator TaskRabbit is pursuing a strategic sale.

From the article:

One of the earliest and most prominent startups of the so-called “sharing economy” or “gig economy” is evaluating the possibility of selling itself. As reported by Recode, freelance work marketplace TaskRabbit acknowledged that it is contemplating a sale after receiving inbound interest from a possible strategic buyer.

Now, I won’t comment on the merits fo the report other than to say that “inbound interest” usually means “we put ourselves up for sale and somebody called.”

Usually.

But it raises the question in this whole gig economy concept.  How do we place value on freelance contractors?  This issue is one that certainly matters to anybody contemplating the valuation of TaskRabbit as a company (because, one would assume, the value of a broker is in its ability to consistently snag a vig out of a high-value transaction for both the buyer and seller of a service).

When it comes to well-defined services like Uber, one can establish real regulating metrics for the service and scare out poor quality relatively quickly (especially when it comes to competing against taxis in most cities, which are decidedly…crappy). And, as with the mountains of venture capital that have underwritten Uber’s below market prices show, you can incite trial use of almost any simple service.

But, when it comes to more trust-oriented services, like those TaskRabbit sells, the ability to assure value becomes a big issue.  If I’m going to invite someone into my house to assemble furniture (one of the tasks that TaskRabbit puts right on its front page as an example), I have to know what risk I’m actually taking for the price.

And, you know what?  That risk is highly variable.  The person might break the furniture, soil the carpet, and scratch the floor.  Sure, TaskRabbit can reimburse for that, but who takes the risk of time, disappointment, and re-work?

You do.

And that’s where the gig economy will face its biggest challenge:  quality assurance a priori.

The more complex and critical the task, the more difficult the quality assurance mountain to climb.  Move from a contractor who assembles your furniture to one who builds your financial plan, and you start to see how trust gets built into the equation.  You always seek references (or the backing of a big balance sheet) when looking for a new financial advisor.

The problem with mass-market matching services (in both the consumer market, like Task Rabbit, and in professional markets, like any number of talent agencies out there), is two-fold.

First, the discerning buyer who cares deeply about quality and who is likely far more loyal to high-quality experiences–we at WGP call these the “clients you want”–won’t take the risk on a mass-market service. They will either demand a barebones price, or just go on about their business.

Second–and this is the real challenge for gig-talent-markets–people with real high-quality and trustworthy talents are usually already busy.  There’s a reason the A/V contractor all your friends like is booked 4 months out.

He’s a good one.

The confluence of these two factors leads gig-market-makers like TaskRabbit to face a version of the classic “lemons problem” in used car markets:  Because sellers can hide the true quality of their services ex-ante, buyers demand pricing that assumes the service is already a lemon.

This is a problem for any broker, and acts as a weight on prices (to the benefit of the buyer, to be sure…but to the detriment of the seller and the broker). So, companies focused on brokering services that are increasingly ambiguous will face the biggest issues and talent validation costs.  Talent markets for high profile independent consultants are already seeing some of these cracks.  Those services place, on average, very strong consultants with their companies. But that’s on average, which means not systematically.  And, it only takes one “oh crap” to screw up a whole lot of “atta boys.”

The solution?  The more critical the task, the more intense the background check and validation of the service needed. In the home furniture assembly market, it probably only means a handful of 5 star ratings on an app.  In the independent consulting market, it probably means a handful of real, solid references not coming from the broker themselves.

It’s the same as it ever was.  The outer circles may (and should) get contracted out through efficient means (like Uber, Lyft, etc.), but for the inner circles?

Trust is king.

I suppose this spells danger for the “strategic buyer” evaluating TaskRabbit today. In-home services are a challenge, and risk sharing in that world is doubtless fraught with concerns.

What do you think? 

 

Selfish Selflessness

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Hard-nosed pride makes it all possible.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, so how about a post on football?

I was an offensive lineman.  That fact has left physical and mental imprints on me that are hard to ignore.

The paradox of the great offensive lineman (and, to be clear, I make no claim of greatness…) is that he is able to take a fantastically selfless objective and make it selfish.

Yes, you heard that right. An offensive lineman, who toils ideally in anonymity (unless he’s doing it wrong), has to be at once selfless and selfish. He has to be able to work selfishly at a trade that is intensely individual–working for a win on every single play of a football game against another man–while at the same time doing all his work for the success of others and team.  He doesn’t carry the ball.  He doesn’t score.  He just puts in work in hopes that others will, too.

I played in 35 college football games and started 30 of them. In my college days, I officially touched a “live” football perhaps twice (on fumble recoveries), and never in a position other than on the ground.

That is twice that I actually had the football in my hands, out of perhaps 2200 total plays I was a part of in official collegiate football games.

Every single other play required absolute dedication to a job that resulted in somebody else’s ability to move the ball down the field.  It required dedication to playing within a unit of four other offensive linemen plying their trades at the same time, and dedication to doing whatever it took to help the ballcarrier get down the field.

The interesting reality of a lineman’s role is that the lineman can have a massive victory against his opponent on a play that goes nowhere, and he can get beaten on a play that results in a touchdown (ask me how I know). What matters is a commitment to the success of another person and an absolute commitment to getting the job done.  There is an odd sense of humility in knowing that you can be a dominant player and a failure at the same time.

There’s an odd selfishness that one must develop in the job. More importantly, there’s an odd selflessness that one must develop in the job.  It’s selfish selflessness, perhaps best described as pride.

It’s pride in doing what it takes to help the team.

The play called requires you to sprint on sprained ankles to hit a 320-pound defensive tackle with your left shoulder–the one you just sprained–to use your head (connected to your neck which has been sprained since that game three weeks ago) to cut off his path to the ballcarrier?

Get it done.  It’s your job.

It has been a long time since I’ve been on a football field as a player.  But, you know what?  I miss the simplicity of that sort of grinding pride.  The pride in being a key but anonymous part of moving the team forward.

And, I’ll tell you this: Finding people with the right combination of selfish selflessness is exceedingly difficult.

We live in a fantasy football age.  Everybody scores points. It just ain’t so in the real world.  When you find someone with a combination of true ability and pride in being able to help others that can be characterized as selfish selflessness, hold onto them.  Their less interesting counterparts–the ones more focused on their rights than their responsibilities–will pale in comparison to someone who can combine ability with personal pride.

As the proprietor of a now years old consulting firm, I get to apply my sense of selfish selflessness every day.  It’s embodied in the bar that I hold for myself and for my teams in delivering for clients.  We don’t carry the ball.  We don’t score touchdowns.  We work hard to prepare the ground and direction for the ballcarrier.

We hear words like “selfish” and “prideful” nowadays, and they sound very negative.  That’s because we impute some negative traits along with them like arrogance, stubbornness, and greed.

Those things don’t go along with the kind of selfish selflessness I’m writing about this morning.

I’m here to tell you that pride in a job well done, whether one is carrying the ball or wallowing in the mud in front of the ballcarrier, is one sports analogy that truly does convert to the business world.

Hard-nosed pride–combined with a selfless mindset of helping others–makes it all possible.

What do you think?

Talent or Motor?

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Don’t underplay the intangibles–motor matters.

One of the more useful metaphors used in the American Football world is the concept of “motor.”

Anybody who has been inside of football at the highest levels has heard a very particular description of players that is, perhaps, the highest compliment there is to an individual’s character as a player… “He’s got a great motor.”

It’s actually kind of a funny phrase to think about, as if some guys have better engines inside their bodies than others. But, it’s one of the more honest assessments that can come out of a scout’s mouth.

Why?  Because it cuts through the crap.  A guy can be 6’6″, leap tall buildings and lift elephants; but if he plays with “no motor” he’ll be an also-ran.  Professional football’s history is littered with magnificent physical specimens who have been outplayed by shorter, fatter, weaker teammates with bad bodies, stiff joints, balding heads, and great motors.  In fact, one of the dirty little secrets of the National Football League is that for every “best athlete” on the field, there are probably a half dozen or more so-called “high motor” guys who couldn’t win a footrace.

Count on it.

High motor guys may not have the most talent, but they get the most out of what they have.  They are, in a broader vocabulary world, tenacious.  They are relentless.  They are dogged. They are aggressive, earnest, forceful, focused, incessant, persistent, ceaseless, and unremitting.

You get the picture.

Why this matters to you as an executive.

In forming highly executable strategic plans, we always end up in the discussion about talent.  A given organization having the talent to execute a given strategy is not…a given.  So, as practical practitioners, we focus in on the who once the what and when are coming into focus.

Unfortunately, talent discussions can focus in on tangible qualities of individuals and ignore intangibles.  In other words, talent discussions focus on a guy’s time in the footrace vs. productivity on the field.  Only, in a corporate environment, this looks like “where he went to school,” “what degree he has,” “who he has worked for,” and “what business he has been in.”  vs. “what he did to change things while there.”

People with motor in the business world make things happen as individuals.  They may be system players, but they rise above others and show what they can do through their tenacity and relentlessness.

And, you can see it from the earliest points in their career.  High motor professionals do things that others don’t.  They deliver work beyond their years.  They teach themselves.  They think about issues even when they are off the clock. They care about their work as a reflection of themselves. 

In your strategic planning, don’t forget the talent.  In your talent planning, don’t forget the intangibles.

Motor matters.

What do you think?

Got Talent? Prove it.

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Talent can only look good on paper for so long.

I happen to follow a certain college football team that has been in the process of breaking in a new quarterback while having–at the same time–one of the most exciting backs in the game. The new quarterback looks good on paper: Big guy, good athlete, strong arm.

Half a season ago, the new quarterback (and, no, there’s no reason to get into names because that would be personal and there’s too much press on these guys as it is) was coming along very slowly.  He wasn’t showing much, but made a few plays.  The coaches would say he was “doing what was needed” while the superstar back did his job and basically carried the team.

Only, the back couldn’t do it all.

And, the quarterback–when asked to do more–hasn’t been able to deliver.  The so-called smart money is starting to move from the incumbent new guy to “player to be named later.”

The quarterback, able to ride along with great talent, didn’t have to make many plays.  But, when it came time for him to actually carry the team, he hasn’t been able to do so.  It’s a truism in sports just as much as it is in business:  When bringing new players online, it’s good to develop them slowly. This is especially true if you can surround your new players with great talent.

But, eventually, the new players have to answer the bell…on their own.

This post is about answering the bell.

The “point” of this post for management and boards

Developing players is a critical part of any manager’s role in an organization. And, knowing whether you’ve chosen the right players is a substantial part of any executive’s or board member’s role.

So, what does my little football vignette tell you?

1. Developing players slowly is fine, but you have to have a glimpse.

Just like the quarterback in my story above, it’s fine to place a new executive in a role and let them get used to the organization and culture before making decisions. It’s fine to move people into roles slowly.  But you have to see something of substance during the transition.

You have to see them want to make a decision or two.

Ask yourself:  Have I seen a glimpse of the production I need from this new player?

2. Surrounding new players with supportive talent is great, but the new player has to bring something to the table.

I’m a big fan of “scaffolding” new hires and new executive teams with supportive structures that get them up to speed. In the story above, our new quarterback has an all-America back in the backfield with him.  That makes things easier.  Surrounding new executives with talented people who provide data, insight, direction, and suggestions goes a long way toward “apprenticing” great new talent.  But, how the new player responds to the scaffolding can be instructive.  You’ve placed a new executive at the head of a team of high talent sales people. Do they start to bring anything to the table, or do they just “hold office?”

If they just hide (or just warm their seat), especially behind other talent, then you need to know that.

Ask yourself: Does the new player produce without leaning inordinately on the talent around them?

3. Eventually, everybody is exposed.

This may be the most important point. In fact, it’s the point that prompted the post.  Eventually, your player’s talent will be tested.  You will have to have your player stand up in front of your board or a key customer and perform.  They will eventually have to answer the call.  Their scaffolding will be stripped away, they will have had enough time to absorb and reflect. They will be laid bare.  What happens then? If you are counting on an incompetent hire–whether it’s your account manager in sales, your VP of HR, or your CEO–to hide forever (or even just until you retire), then you are playing with fire.

Eventually, everybody is exposed. Some are exposed faster than others.

Ask yourself: Will my new player survive exposure as the individual talent they are supposed to be?

4. Other people are watching.

Your new player may take longer than you planned to develop. That can be ok. Unless they are exposed early, timing can be flexible. You hire a new guy to do a bunch of M&A work, and it takes years to get off the ground. That can be fine.  But…and it’s a big but…you have to watch out for collateral damage.  A CEO who comes into a new company with board mandate but without much vision or knowledge can only survive for so long before the executive team and the organization realize the new emperor has no clothes. Same can be said of any new hire or new player.  I’ve witnessed senior leaders who make no decisions of any substance due to their own lack of conviction and knowledge.  They wander hither and yon without any real point of view–letting the rest of the team do the real work.

One senior executive I spent some time around spent more time contemplating the design and furnishing of facility renovations and figuring out ways to manage around board meetings than he ever spent on business strategy, customer value propositions, financial plans, or anything else that might have been “strategic” to an executive of his standing.  Whether through lack of insight, energy, or ability, his “happy place” just wasn’t in actually doing the job of a a senior executive. His people knew it, and it hurt.

If you are the person who hire the “hither and yon” executive, you have to know that such hires reflect on your own competence.

Ask yourself: Is my new hire hurting my organization and my own reputations via his own incompetence?

So what?

All of this is to say one thing:  In the world of strategic management, player selections can only look good on paper for so long.

The players eventually have to show glimpses.

They eventually have to carry the load on their own.

They have to survive exposure.

Your performance depends on it, not to mention your reputation.

What do you think?