Fistful of Talent

Dear HR (Sucky Economy Version)...

One of my favorite parts of Business Week is the last page.  For those of you who only read online, the actual last page of the magazine is always a column called "The Welch Way" by Jack and Suzy Welch.  Granted, they could come up with a catchier title, but generally, the advice is worth reading and on point.

Recently, they published their annual "Dear Graduate" article, a commencement address of sorts.  While not as entertaining as Ellen's speech to Tulane, I thought the advice was worth repeating to the HR pros out there regardless of new grad or "seasoned" executive status.  The premise of the piece is advice on how to succeed in a sucky economy, so I think you'll agree it is relevant to all.

Do read the full article, and here are the four "codicils" highlighted with my commentary to HR:

#1 - "Get off your computer." HR folks tend to like to hide behind technology.  Whether it was the old-timey voicemail message left after hours or the policy riddled email - we've all done it.  It is easier to tell employees they will now have to pay to park or to remind the Sales Director that his reviews are a year overdue via technology, right!?!  Jack and Suzy are not saying they don't love technology and use it appropriately, but they are saying that to get ahead you have to get in front of people.  Building relationships only leads to good things - whether it is a promotion, recognition, increased credibility or being "in the know", so get out from behind your desk...NOW.

#2 - "You've got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues."  Here, our gurus are referring to the desire of new grads to have work-life balance and they suggest that you've got to EARN your stripes before asking for balance of any sort.  I love the thought that "flexibility is a reward, not an entitlement".  FOT regulars know this is some of my favorite HR jargon.  Balance is possibly achievable in HR if you work in a status-quo job in a company where everyone is 9 to 5, and really, how fun is that??!

#3 - "Love everyone."  OK, so seems a bit odd coming from Jack but the follow-on comments deal with office politics and how people attempt to align themselves with one group or the other in order to get ahead.  HR folks fall into this trap as well, in addition to thinking we know more than anyone else when it comes to people, culture and organizational structure.  Truly listening to your co-workers, regardless of where they sit on an org chart, and believing there is something of value you can gain from those interactions is critical for HR.

#4 - "Please stop apologizing if you have a business degree."  Yes, capitalism has taken a credibility hit but Jack and Suzy emphasize that business is still a noble profession.  HR is part of that profession that helps create "jobs, opportunity and hope" and we all need to remember that - especially when 50% or more of HR jobs today deal with RIFs, expense control and doing more with less.  Stop apologizing and/or agonizing if you are in HR right now.  This too shall pass.

Whether you are a new grad or HR type struggling in today's environment, Jack & Suzy have sound advice. My two cents to the HR pros...well, is my advice.  What would you add?

Editors Note- Kathy Rapp is the Managing Director of hrQ in Texas, where she helps progressive companies find groovy HR Talent to drive business results.  Prior to joining hrQ, Kathy booked more than 15 years of human resources leadership experience working for such companies as Morgan Stanley and First Data Corporation.  A connoisseur of the intersection between pop culture and business, Kathy believes many talent issues can be addressed via the succession planning lessons experienced by Van Halen (David Lee/Sammy and sadly, Gary Cherone).

Tonight Show Viewers Who Miss Leno - You'll Dance With the One Who Brought You...

My Dad always told me this quote, and over time I understood it as follows - "stick with what's working, there is no reason to change".  Also, this harkened back to my Dad's loyalty to just about anything and everyone he ever knew - (why get an iPhone when this nice grey brick Motorola from 1980 still works).  I now get to use this same back-woods-country logic on my own kids, so they'll enjoy the same rewarding hours of therapy I was able to enjoy after leaving home for college! 

This quote came back to me this week when I saw all the news around Jay Leno leaving the tonight show and Conan O'Brien taking over, with a CNN poll showing that only 38% of us would continue to watch the tonight show with Conan as the new host.  This seemed a little strange to me - So, where are the 62% of viewers really going to go?  Is David Letterman all of a sudden going to pick up this huge market share?!  I highly doubt it - most of us are creatures of habit and while we are more than willing to tell you we won't keep watching, then Monday night at 11:30pm, 98.4% will probably still be tuning into the tonight show with Johnny Carson, I mean - Jay Leno, I mean - Conan O'Brien.

The only reason I bring this up here at FOT is this is no different than when you have a great leader leave your organization.  I can think of multiple times in my career that I've worked for absolutely great leaders (no Ted you weren't one of them - sorry for personal shout out, but I don't want to leave any room for interpretation) and when they left, I didn't leave because they left - unless they recruited me to come with them for more money, but I digress.  We all like to think we are irreplaceable and the company couldn't go on without us, but in the end, the company usually does go on quite fine without us - and many times gets better.  It has taken many years to learn this. When I was late 20's, I thought I was the man and the company couldn't do anything without me.

Over the years, I've come to realize no matter what the company - good or bad - they all lived on just fine without me being a part of it. I've also seen these great leaders, I've worked for at one company, become very average leaders at new companies - same person, new environment and supporters.  Great leaders don't always translate from company to company - do you really feel like Steve Jobs could lead Microsoft as he has with Apple - or Phil Knight would do the same with Adidas as he is with Nike? I believe we tend to discount the relationship between great leader and company - and the company is a major part of the equation we tend to discount most. 

So, be careful in believing your own press and don't discount how you got to where you are - and by all means "Dance with the one that Brung Ya" as my Daddy would say.

Editor's Note - Tim Sackett is the Executive Vice President for HRU Technical Resources, which really means they just ran out of titles between Director and CEO.  Tim's job is to make sure everyone is happy and productive – for those who have worked in staffing firms, you know exactly what that means. HRU is primarily an engineering and technical contingency firm that specializes in the manufacturing sector in defense, consumer products, automotive, higher ed, etc.  HRU is based in Lansing, MI – but has close to 500 employees all over the country. 

Why Enterprise Rent-A-Car is Smarter Than Your Company in Talent....

I'm going to describe a service encounter I have frequently when I travel, followed in parentheses by what I experience with the competition:

At the company I'm referencing, the service reps at the counter:

-Smile when I enter (competition - sporadic smiles, with variability to grumpy).

-Are great at stage banter - the art of making small talk while they serve you - meaning you get an emotional connection that's hard to get elsewhere (competition - rare stage banter, most of the reps are just trying to get the transaction done).

-Are conversational while they try to upsell me, meaning it feels like a conversation - I don't even mind telling them "no" (competition - sells via a pre-packaged script that they've memorized, which is quoted as they sound like a robot).

-Seem genuinely interested in what I do for a living, what I'm in town for, where I'm from.  I've learned it's because most of the reps at this company have strong career ambitions of their own, and they've learned to ask questions and network (competition - rarely am I asked what I'm doing in town).  They're naturally curious...

Which service encounter would you rather have?  The answer is obvious.  The company referenced is Enterprise-Rent-A-Car.

The secret sauce for Enterprise?  As reported by Fay Hansen in Workforce Recruiting, Enterprise will employ 1,800 interns this summer, most of them rising juniors and seniors. By the time the interns head back to school in September, most of the rising seniors will have received a formal job offer from the company, and by the end of the fall semester, most will have accepted.

Here's what the article doesn't tell you.  While Enterprise fills their talent pipeline almost exclusively with young college grads, the strategy isn't about age.

The strategy instead is about opportunity and competition.  All the college grads take the job with Enterprise for one big reason - career opportunity.  Enterprise actively sells the career dream of being promoted and rising through the ranks.  They've got thousands of stories related to kids starting with them out of college, then becoming branch, district and regional managers.  It's one of the best cultural plays you'll find in the area of career opportunity.

Of course, with 80% of their positions in retail-based customer service, they're perfectly positioned for the model but give them props - the strategy leads to a culture where I'll actively choose Enterprise as a customer, because I know when I go in that I'll get the responsiveness that I outlined above.

Enterprise rocks.  I'm not getting paid for this post.  Try them if you never have and experience what I outlined above, then ask yourself, "Did that feel different"?

I'm betting it will....

Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...

Should HR Be So Easy to Fall Into?

If we were to take a quick poll among SHRM's 250,000 members and ask... did you choose HR, or did you fall into HR as a career? I wonder what the breakdown in responses would be. What's your guess?

Like a lot of other HR pros I know, I fell into HR. Here's the quick version of my story. In college, I wanted an "office" job to get exposure to the business world. It just so happened that I found a part-time job for a healthcare company doing admin work for their HR team. The position evolved and grew over time and then four years later, I was in a generalist role. I would say that classifies as falling into HR. I've chosen to stick with it though.

In thinking about "falling" into HR though - I started to wonder... why do so many HR people fall into this career? And maybe more importantly, why HR is so easy for people to fall into? Taking a quick Twitter poll on the topic, some interesting comments came through including these included here...  

Good stuff (And see! The lovely things you can learn through Twitter! I love using Twitter for a call and response...). You might ask yourself why we should even care about this issue in the first place; that's fair. Here's my argument - it absolutely matters that people constantly fall into HR, or rather, they don't choose HR, for two reasons -

• HR's not seen as interesting enough, it's not seen as attractive enough, and it's not viewed as a rewarding enough path for people to pursue en mass. (And rewarding from a monetary perspective, too...)
• HR related responsibilities are carelessly handed over to a seemingly responsible and organized person who has demonstrated an ability to manage process and pays attention to details... or who is silly enough to be willing to take on some new "high level" admin responsibilities. 

Ugh. HR can be easy to manage and do at times - even I'll admit that. This isn't science so much as I think it's art... but that doesn't mean anyone can and should do it, right?. I wrote about a similar theme a while ago when we were interviewing HR intern candidates and the disappointment I felt with HR not being the career of choice for these candidates. I know the HR profession has some image issues... but could part of the solution be that we stop letting people fall into HR?

It might be a little hypocritical of me to say it, I realize this... but what if we continued working towards improving the profession and the caliber of our own talent... and really worked toward making it a career of choice, and we ourselves were a bit more choosy about who we let in? Or maybe I'm just dreaming again... but it's something I've been thinking about of late. Hit us in the comments and share your thoughts. Did you fall into HR? And why is HR so easy to fall into? Are things changing for the better though? 

Editor's Note- Jessica Lee is an Employment Manager for APCO Worldwide, a global PR firm in D.C. Like most upscale HR pros, she spends half of her time on recruiting, the other half on ER, Training and OD.  When she's not hammering a candidate to determine Motivational Fit, she's thinking about the future of HR and wondering how she can avoid using the job boards to fill the next spot in her organization...

KICK THE GRADUATE - Help a Kid Improve This Resume/Career Plan...

New feature today called "Kick the Graduate", where you (the reader and FOT team member) get to judge the career goals and positioning of a new graduate as they aspire to land a choice job in the Talent game right out of undergrad or graduate school.  First up is Nathan Mallory, who penned the following note to me over at the Capitalist:

"I am not writing to you to apply for a job, nor in the hope that you might be able to find one for me.  I am a 28 year old recent JD/MBA graduate searching for a job to begin my career, and in a moment of frustration at my lack of success I did a Google search and found your "HR Capitalist" blog.  My reason for writing this email is seeking any advice you could offer regarding my lack of success.  You seem to be knowledgeable, friendly and sympathetic to some of the problems facing job seekers, so it is my hope you can spare me a few minutes, or at the least receive a few moments in your day not dealing with your own desperate job candidates.

I am pursuing a career in the video games industry, armed with several decades of school, two graduate and two undergraduate degrees.  I have applied to positions at fifteen or so companies, for jobs ranging from Associate Producer to Legal Assistant, and not a single one has sent even a follow-up email or telephone call.  The result is that after much searching and a few moments of desperation, I am right back where I started, not knowing whether my resume is bad, my cover letter is unprofessional, or whether I am unqualified due to lack of experience or over-education.  (As a side note, it amazes me to think that a company could simultaneously disqualify you for having too much education but not enough experience.  It's very frustrating for a new grad.)

I've attached copies of a resume and cover letter typical of the kind I have sent out.  I would be extremely grateful if you could take a look at them with your HR expertise, and let me know if I am doing anything horribly wrong.  That said, I'm not ignorant of the recurring theme from your blog that you do not appreciate anyone wasting HR's time, so I will not be upset if this request falls squarely into that category."

Ordinarily, I don't do advice in response to reader mails on this blog or the Capitalist.  However, when a JD/MBA presents himself for help into an industry like the video games industry, I can't resist offering him up (with his permission) and allowing you to tell him the following:

--How he can modify his resume to maximize his chances of landing any job, including one in the video game industry,

--What he needs to have available in addition to the resume to maximize his chances of landing an entry-level spot in the video game industry,

--What you would tell him about the realism of his dream to land a spot in the video game industry, and any alternative career objective at this stage in his career that you would recommend, plus

--Anything else you got....

Make sense?  Pop up Nathan's resume by clicking here, and help the graduate out by hitting him up with your notes in the comments section of this post. 

Kick the graduate/Help the graduate.  Same thing.  Shoot straight and give him the tough love if he needs it... I've got Jason Pankow, who gets paid for talking to enthusiastic kids for XBOX, warming up in the bullpen to come in once everyone else throws their best pitch...

You Are What You Eat - And Where You Work...

Good stuff to share with Talent professionals from Seth Godin (I heard he could use some exposure, thus the link...) - the topic is YOUR career, rather than thinking about the careers of others.

From Seth:

"The single most important marketing decision most people make is also the one we spend precious little time on: where you work.

Think about this for a second. Your boss and your job determine not only what you do all day, but what you learn and who you interact with. Where you work is what you market. Work in a high stress place and you're likely to become a highly stressed person, and your interactions will display that. Work for a narcissist and you'll develop into someone who's good at shining a light on someone else, not into someone who can lead. Work for someone who plays the fads and you'll discover that instead of building a steadily improving brand, you're jumping from one thing to another, enduring layoffs in-between gold rushes. Work for a bully and be prepared to be bullied.

And yet, there are plenty of books about getting a job, but no books I know of about choosing a job. There are hundreds of sites where job seekers can go to find a new job, and virtually none where you can find reviews of bosses or companies or jobs."

Couple of angles that immediately came to mind:

1.  Some sites, like Vault, have attempted to become a marketplace to discover more about the culture of companies.  Unfortunately, I think those type of sites have a reputation for being rantfests that rarely include a silent majority of satisfied employees.

2.  Choosing the right job is always multi-dimensional and you're always working with imperfect information.  For example, finding the right job to accelerate your career includes the following factors - the company's reputation, the boss you'll work for, and what you'll be working on and how that experience makes you more valuable for the future.

3.  What's the best way to run a reverse reference check on a Company or boss? For my money, it has to be reverse engineering a social network that's professional-based like LinkedIn.  Checking out shared contacts or simply the contacts of the person you'd be working for or the people you'd be working with seems like the best way to go.  If I got a call from one of my contacts saying a person to whom I had offered a job contacted them to talk about what it's like to work for me, I 'd think that person was pretty sharp.

Then I'd drill my contact for what they asked about and what he/she told them.  Just joking...

Still, for the thoughtful candidate among us, the prospect of being picky during an economic downturn is a little unsettling.  After all, such a call for the bigger picture involves considering leaving a poor fit now, passing up a paycheck with a poor fit if you're currently out of work, or not working with clients who are bad fits for your culture if you're self employed or own your own company.

Easy to be picky when things are good, harder when things are bad.  But, that's the very time when it's probably most important - if you can afford to act on principle...

Love Your Deviants...

Managing talent in an organization today is tough.  Lots of people, lots of regulations, lots of opinions, lots of just plain work.

If you are responsible for “HR” or talent in a division of a large organization or just a few folks for the local law office, you have a tough job.  Keeping up with all the change that today’s markets throw at us is difficult.  I’m betting that in order to keep doing your job – and doing it well – you’ve instituted a few processes and forms to help you manage this chaos.  To keep the machine humming you need to categorize, segment, aggregate, etc.  It’s normal to want to put some order into managing the talent for your company.

Unfortunately (I know you’ll hate me for saying this) - that won’t add any value to your company and help it compete in the future.

Before you start throwing coffee mugs and pencil holders at me (do people still have pencil holders?) take a breath and let me explain.

First – I’m generalizing to make a point.  I’m sure there are a fair number of you who eschew forms and processes and work very hard to create a free-thinking, less structured environment for your employees.  However – I’m more worried about the fact that most folks lump employees into a bell-curve and manage to the “average.”  If you look at a normal distribution curve, you see that the center is larger than the tails.  That’s where most folks fit – and that is where we typically spend our time – managing the middle.  We typically spend our time where the most people are – it’s human nature.

But, I think you can add more value to your company if you look at the tails of the normal distribution – in other words – look at those that deviate from the “norm.”

Deviants Are Your Friends

When I go in to do a diagnostic on performance within a company, the first place I look is at the tails – those that deviate from the norm.  When I tell the client I want to hang out with their deviants, they just dismiss them as either beyond hope (negative deviants) or special (positive deviants).  Most companies try to fire the negative deviants and assume that the positive deviants are just special and their performance can’t be transferred to the larger population.

But consider this quote from a Fast Company article in February 2002:

"Deviance is the source of all innovation. It's the wellspring of new ideas, new products, new personalities, and, ultimately, new markets. It can be a force for good or for evil (and sometimes both). In its purest sense, deviance is really nothing more -- or less -- than any one of us taking one measurable step away from the middle of the road."

Time to Let the Tail Wag the Dog

To truly help your company compete in the future, spend time in the tails – both positive and negative.

On the positive side, find out what they do, how they do it, who they rely on to do it, what they don’t do that you would think they would, etc., etc.  In other words, deconstruct as much as possible what makes them deviant.

On the negative side, do the same.  Find out why they don’t measure up.  Is there a training issue?  Do negative deviants come from a particular background?  Do they seem to be in one division, territory, etc.?  Figure out what is making them a negative deviant and eliminate that from the mix.

Look for Surprises

Nothing is better for business than surprises.  Most top managers hate surprises – they believe surprises are the result of bad planning and bad management.  But from a people standpoint, surprises mean someone did something different – out of the norm – and that is where innovation, change, success (and failure) reside.  Without those little surprises, nothing new happens.

Deviants give us surprises – deviants are your friend.  Go hang out on the wrong side of the tracks for a while and – vive la difference!

Editor's Note - Paul Hebert is the brain behind Incentive Intelligence and a recognized authority on incentives and performance motivation... 

Career Security - Find a National Micro-Niche and Live Where You Want to Live...

In this world of plant closings, offshoring and general economic upheaval, I've become a big believer in the value of developing your personal brand.  Part of developing that personal brand is clearly communicating who you are and the value you provide those who associate with you. 

Another big component to personal branding?  Finding your micro-niche. With the world shrinking daily, you can choose to become to the best "left-handed sheepherder with a BA in Mathematics".  Aggregate a good enough image nationally and locally through effective performance and marketing, and bam!  There's probably a big enough market, if you're number one in your niche, to be a career.

Don't believe that?  What if I told you that athletes like Tiger Woods, Dwayne Wade, Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, as well as hundreds of other world class athletes, come to Birmingham, AL to get surgery and advice necessary to save their careers? 

Birmingham?  It's true, they come to see a world class niche guy and personal brander name James Andrews.  From the article on Dr. James Andrews at Fast Company:

"For more than three decades, Andrews has been a leader not only in spurring cutting-edge research but also in pioneering and refining operations and therapies that return athletes to action. Along with free agency and TV, this evolution of sports medicine has transformed sports from pastime to megabusiness. Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center in Birmingham functions as a powerful lever, a multimillion-dollar enterprise that affects multibillion-dollar leagues.

If you could assemble a superstar, Frankenstein-style, from Andrews's patients, it would have repaired knees from quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb; a hip from dual-sports sensation Bo Jackson; shoulders from Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley; and elbows from the New York Yankees' Andy Pettitte and the Chicago Cubs' Kerry Wood. "I've always liked fixing people," Andrews says. "I want to get these athletes back to doing what they did before."

In baseball, Andrews is best known for performing ulnar-collateral-ligament reconstruction, the career-saving elbow graft called "Tommy John surgery" (named for the first patient, in 1974, the fine Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher). Although Andrews didn't invent this clever fix, which replaces the torn ligament with a tendon, he has done it more often than anyone else -- 2,500 times and counting -- and performs the hour-long procedure nearly 300 times a year.  Since his first in 1980, Andrews has fine-tuned the diagnosis, surgery, and rehabilitation, establishing a recovery rate of 85%. "A lot of players think it's 100%," he says, "but nothing is."

Andrews, 66, seems like an unlikely character to play such an outsize role. His regular-guy manner suggests a pickup truck and bass boat. His office uniform isn't a white doctor's coat but a Sunday-best suit and tie. For all his digital-age ingenuity, he doesn't do email. He greets both high-school athletes and Major Leaguers, "Hey, big man."

So, here's the big thought.  In this digital world, if James Andrews can develop a micro niche and have all-stars come to Birmingham to see him, don't you think it's possible for you to live where you want to live, figure out the niche that you can fill, and get career satisfaction at the same time?

You want the niche.  You need the niche.  You'll find it at the intersection of your interests, passions and years of hard work.

Find the list of All-Stars who have come to Birmingham to seek the guidance/knife of Andrews here... 

Clues You Shouldn't Be in HR and Rookie Mistakes...

True story. My friend IM's me an HR question. Usually, when friends have HR queries it's one of three things: 1) How do I ask for a raise? 2) Can you help me find a new job? 3) My HR person stinks. Can you help me with my benefits?

This question was different though. It turns out, another friend of his is also in HR. She needed some advice and wondered: A) Would it be wrong of her to engage in an office romance, and out of curiosity, do most companies have policies against dating in the workplace, and B) Is HR the wrong line of work if she's curt in her mannerisms (and not willing to change)?

I just about died. I couldn't type fast enough and communicate over the interwebs that whoever this friend of his is, she needs to get out of HR. Now. Quickly. But before I could lash out any further, my friend fed me some more details- turns out she is still a bit new to the world of HR, she's 23, and she wants to grow her career yet she's not sure if she's cut out for HR. At that point, my sympathy grew, just ever so slightly. New to the field, and younger, she's bound to make some mistakes. Because we all have, haven't we?

It got me thinking about my first mistake. In my first HR role, I become chummy with someone outside of the HR team. Turns out she wasn't happy with her job and the growth she wanted wasn't being offered. She didn't see herself going anywhere and wanted out... and I thought she deserved better too, so we set out on a quest to find her a new gig - together, and somewhere else. I didn't consider retention. I didn't consider development. I only considered that she wanted out and never stopped to realize that in my role, I probably should have looked for ways to help her grow and stay with the organization.

As it would happen, word got out about me trying to help the friend find a new gig. Issue one - it's tricky developing close friendships with people outside of HR. Issue two - my actions went completely against my primary role - to recruit and retain talent. Folks weren't happy with me. Why on earth would I help someone great leave the company? Things finally clicked when it was pointed out to me that my actions were completely counter to what my role in HR was... I had forgotten my place.

So, we all make mistakes... maybe mine wasn't falling for someone in the office, and maybe yours isn't that you haven't figured out that curt is fine, in the right time and place. The trick is to not destroy your career with the first big mistake, and to "survive and advance" - hopefully as a stronger professional.

Your biggest mistake as a rookie?  Give me your story. I'm sure we've all been there at one time or another.

Employees Will be Part of the Matrix

"One of the most promising laboratories for the Numerati is the workplace, where every keystroke, click, and e-mail can be studied."

One would think that the above quote is from a recently found rough draft of the Orwell book 1984, but it is part of the introduction to an article about a new book by Stephen Baker called "The Numerati."  Based on a Business Week cover story from 2006 called "Math Will Rock Your World", author Stephen Baker highlights the work being done to peer into the mountains of personal data available - from credit card purchases to web site history - in order to predict your behavior.  We've known for years that data drives the marketing of most products and services, so most of us would just yawn and go about our business.  But IBM is taking the idea of using data to a whole new level - one I think many of us would not be too happy with.  A quote from the chapter called "The Worker."

"His assignment is to translate the complexity of highly intelligent knowledge workers into the same types of equations and algorithms that are used to fine-tune shipping or predict the life span and production of a mainframe computer. With time, he and his team hope to build detailed models for each worker, each one complete with a person's quirks, daily commute, and allies, perhaps even enemies. These models might one day include whether the workers eat beef or pork, how seriously they take the Sabbath, whether a bee sting or a peanut sauce could lay them low. No doubt, some of them thrive even in the filthy air in Beijing or Mexico City, while others wheeze. If so, the models would eventually include this detail, among countless others. The idea is to build richly textured models that behave in their symbolic realm just like their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Then planners can manipulate them, looking for the most efficient combinations. "

So, just as in the Matrix - we are increasingly becoming just bits and bytes - no longer people but data to be manipulated and combined to create the perfect machine for a specific task.  The data will drive the outcome.  The equation will create the result. 

What this screams to me is that in the future, an individual will be relegated to the tasks they have performed in the past.  Growth, as an individual contributor will be stymied.  If I do a great job on, say, project management, the data will show this, and I'll be assigned project management duties.  But what if I really, really want to be in the creative end of the work flow?  How will the computer know this?  How will I ever be able to realize my dream, if my future is the sum of my past rather than the combination of my past work and my future desires?

From a talent management standpoint, how will the computer be able to quantify that certain something we can see in people's eyes when they are given a challenge that is new and different - that something that lets us know that this person will absolutely nail the assignment?  From a worker standpoint - why would I ever take a risk in a position if I know that it will be documented and held for all eternity in my permanent record?  And will the equations that drive the recommendations be open to the public?  If so, I can manipulate the output by focusing on those variables I know have more impact.  If it is a secret, then everyone will work to the lowest common denominator - unwilling to take a chance and do something "insanely great."

For many things, predictability is a wonderful thing.  Knowing that a part will come down the assembly line in perfect condition at a specific point in time increases output and quality.  But in today's business world, where innovation is the new mantra of success, predictability is the last thing we need.  Innovation isn't predictable.  Neither is behavior. 

My practice thrives on the fact that people are not predictable.  While historical data can be a predictor of future behavior - I can influence that behavior, change it, and create something that wasn't predictable.  I'm a bit worried that the corporate world will see this as another way to reduce the risk of business and take to it like Paris Hilton in a red carpet factory.  Any one else a bit worried?

Editor's Note - Paul Hebert is the brain behind Incentive Intelligence and a recognized authority on incentives and performance motivation...