WorkPuzzle

Drive: New Thoughts and Theories on Motivation

So, we’ve learned (1,2) that the “carrot and stick” motivation techniques often fall short at producing desired results.  Worse yet, deploying such techniques sometimes worsens the status quo to the point where offering no incentives at all produces a better end result.

Of course, this begs the question—if the “carrot and stick” does not work, what does?  Daniel Pink, best-selling author of Drive, spends the majority of his book answering this question.  As you might imagine, the answer is not very simple and concise, but I’ll try to summarize a few of the high points in the next couple of articles.

Motivation techniques take on new and vibrant life when you can get an individual to switch from being extrinsically motivated to being intrinsically motivated.  To address this desired migration, a few prominent researchers are starting to focus on “self-determination theory” (SDT) as the best vehicle to get us there.  Pink describes it this way:

“Many theories of behavior pivot around a particular human tendency:  We’re keen responders to positive and negative reinforcements, or zippy calculators of our self-interest, or lumpy duffel bags of psychological conflicts.  SDT, by contrast, begins with a notion of universal human needs.  It argues that we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness.  When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.  When those needs are thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.”

This may sound overly simplified, but this motivation theory boils down to engaging what many people are now calling a third drive—the capacity each human has for interest (the first drive is biological--eating, sleeping, sex, etc.; the second drive is responding to rewards and punishments in one's environment).  

For many people, this third drive is suppressed—especially when it comes to work and vocation.  But for a small minority, this aspect of humanity emerges and blossoms on the job.  These are the people you would probably already recognize as intrinsically motivated, and it’s the characteristic we desire to develop in those who are missing it.

While the research on this topic is still somewhat limited, it is starting to gain momentum:

“Over the last thirty years…a network of several dozen SDT scholars has been conducting research in the United States, Canada, Israel, Singapore, and throughout Western Europe.  These scientists have explored self-determination and intrinsic motivation in laboratory experiments and field studies that encompass just about every realm—business, education, medicine, sports, exercise, personal productivity, environmentalism, relationships, and physical  and mental health.  They have produced hundreds of research papers, most of which point to the same conclusion.  Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to each other.  And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

Take a minute to inventory your work environment.  If you’re coaching and managing a team, do the individuals on your team have the opportunity to operate under these important principles?  If you’re trying to recruit the best talent, are you able to offer an environment where talented individuals will feel engaged and experience their own intrinsic motivation?

These are important questions to consider if you want to successfully compete in the future.  Next week, we’ll cover how to start to integrate these ideas into your team. 

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Motivation: The Downside of the Carrot and Stick—Part 2

Last week, I introduced the concept that commonly held beliefs about “carrot and stick” motivation techniques may not be very effective.  I shared the results of an experiment conducted at Princeton University that illustrated how a person’s creativity is restricted when “if-then” incentives are introduced into a problem-solving scenario.

While interesting, one experiment is not sufficient to shape our concept of motivation—especially if this means giving up some closely held beliefs that we feel are effective.  In his book Drive, Daniel Pink lays out a more complete case based on research from many different sources to make his point:  There is a significant downside to using carrot and stick motivation techniques.  I’ll summarize the research below. 

The Seven Deadly Flaws of Carrot and Stick Motivation Beliefs

1.  It can extinguish intrinsic motivation.

After examining three decades of studies conducted on this topic, behavioral scientist, Edward Deci, stated, “Careful consideration of reward effects reported in 128 experiments lead to the conclusion that tangible rewards have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation.”   In essence, when you focus on short-term results, you do so at the expense of long-term motivation.

2.  It can backfire and diminish performance.

In recent years, four economists—two from MIT, one from Carnegie Mellon, and one from the University of Chicago-- were asked by the Federal Reserve to affirm the simple business principle that higher rewards lead to higher performance.  Their conclusion… "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”

3.  It can crush creativity.

I shared the candle experiment in my last WorkPuzzle which suggested  that time pressures hinder creativity.  Many other experiments support this finding.  Pink concludes, “For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation—the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing—is essential for high levels of creativity.  But the 'if-then' motivators that are the staple of most businesses often stifle, rather than stir, creative thinking.”

4. It can crowd out good behavior.

In a famous Swedish study, researchers tracked the percentage of people who would donate blood voluntarily.  With no incentive (other than good will), 53% of the test group chose to give blood.  When an incentive was introduced, the percentage dropped to 30%.  Why?  “It tainted an altruistic act and crowded out intrinsic desire to do something good.”

5.  It can encourage unethical behavior.

“Most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.  Executives game their quarterly earnings so they can snag a performance bonus.  Secondary school counselors doctor student transcripts so their seniors can get into college.  Athletes inject themselves with steroids to post better numbers and trigger lucrative performance bonuses.”  Intrinsic motivation doesn’t fit with this model.  When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best—there are no shortcuts.

6.  It can become addictive.

Any parent who has ever thought of paying their kids to take out the garbage knows that the chances of getting them to take out the garbage for free in the future are very slim!  Rewards offered for positive behavior often have to be subsequently increased to get the same level of performance.  The reward becomes addictive.  Casinos have done research on the ability of people to make good decisions when there are rewards at stake.  Their findings?  You guessed it.  When rewards are offered (even small ones), the likelihood of people switching from risk-adverse behavior to risk-seeking behavior, increases significantly.

7.  It fosters short-term thinking.

It only makes sense that offering incentives will often produce short-term results.  Several studies show that paying people to exercise, stop smoking, or take their medicines produces terrific results at first—but the healthy behavior disappears once the incentives are removed.  Pink puts it this way, “Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible.  Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing towards the horizon.”

Conclusion:  Be very careful if you are going to use carrot and stick motivation techniques to get results from yourself or those you manage and coach.  Of course, this begs the question…what does work?  We’ll cover that in our next discussion.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Motivation: The Downside of the Carrot and Stick

Earlier this week, Dave began a discussion regarding motivation, which we hope has jump started your quest to be a better motivational force to those in your circle of influence.  One of the purposes of WorkPuzzle is to help you apply science and thoughtful study to management topics.  We believe this is the best way to separate what’s truly valid from those preconceived notions (that are often false) that keep us from producing the best results.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a book called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  This is the second bestselling book written by author Daniel Pink in the last couple of years, so he’s obviously tapping a nerve with the topics he covers in his books.  

I’ve found this book particularly intriguing.  Pink does a great job of scientifically dispelling many of the misunderstandings I personally have concerning motivation.  These misconceptions involve what I believe will motivate me personally and also what I’ve come to believe will motivate those around me.  Over the next week or so, we’ll discuss a few of the highlights regarding Pink’s work.  You’ll be surprised by what you learn.

Let’s start with the most commonly held motivation topic of all time—the proverbial carrot and stick. Through experience and study, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many advantages to using incentives over punishments to motivate people.  Of course, there are others who believe that punishments, applied correctly and under the right set of circumstances, serve as a better source of motivation.
 
There are good arguments on both sides of this topic, but Daniel Pink points out that scientific research has largely made this debate a moot point.  Why?  Because neither the carrot nor the stick motivation techniques are effective in most circumstances!  In fact, deploying any sort of “if-then” reward system (if you do a task, then you get a reward) typically demotivates those performing a requested task.

To show you how this works, let's review an experiment originally conducted by psychologist, Karl Drucker, in the 1930’s.  The experiment involved a participant being given the articles in the picture below (the items inside the box are common thumb tacks), and then being asked to attach the candle to the wall in a way that when lit, it will not drop any wax on the table below.

Think for a minute how you would solve this problem.  Most people first attempt to use the tacks to fasten the candle to the wall, but quickly discover that it doesn’t work.  Some people then try to use a match to melt the side of the candle and stick it to the wall.  That doesn’t work either.  Eventually, after five to ten minutes, most people figure out that the tacks can be easily used to fasten the box perpendicular to the wall.  This creates a shelf that the candle can be placed upon.  A quick drop of melted wax securely attaches the candle to the shelf, and the shelf ensures that wax will not drip on the table.  Problem solved.

This experiment has been used in many behavioral science studies over the years, but it wasn’t until recently that psychologists at Princeton University started to wonder if motivated individuals could solve the problem more quickly.  Of course, to prove out this hypothesis, the researchers offered incentives (a carrot) to those people who could solve the problem quickly.  The participants in the study were told they would receive a monetary reward if they were among the top (fastest) 25% who solved the problem in the group.  Furthermore, the person who solved the problem first would also receive an additional, quite substantial, bonus.

Guess what happened?  Remember, the problem usually took five to ten minutes to solve when no incentives were offered.  When the participants were given incentives, it took an average of 3.5 minutes longer to solve the candle problem!  The carrot produced the opposite result than what the researchers had hoped for and expected.

This is what makes motivation such a tricky topic.  Well-intended interventions can not only fail to produce the desired results, but can often make things worse.  It’s like going to a casino...you can not only fail to win, you can lose the money you bet in the first place.

In the case of the candle experiment, here’s what happened:  The solution to the problem requires a certain level of creativity - In order to solve the problem, the subject has to eventually stop seeing the box as a container for tacks, and see it as a shelf for a candle.  When the time incentive is offered, the brain starts to shut down some of its creative function and focuses more energy on winning the race.  The very thing needed to win the race is being hampered by the carrot.

This is just one example of many studies where incentives have been documented to produce diminished results.  In fact, the research now suggests that there are only a very few specific circumstances where “if-then” incentives produce better results (we’ll cover those in a future discussion).  For the large majority of conditions, the carrot / stick motivation techniques serve to undermine performance.

We’ll delve into this in more detail in upcoming discussions.  In the meantime, start to inventory your own personal behavior and pinpoint where carrot / stick motivation techniques have become part of the fabric of how you work with people. 

Researchers can help us find better ways to motivate and inspire those around us, but the first step is to identify how and where our current efforts have backfired on us...  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

 

Retention: How David Lee Roth Can Help You Predict Who Will Leave Your Team

If recruiting is the yin, then retention of talented team members is the yang of any successful business.  For real estate companies in particular, there is so much emphasis on recruiting that retention often receives less emphasis, or is completely ignored.

This is a shame because it takes less effort to retain a productive person on your team than it does to acquire, train, and coach a new person to the same level of productivity.  So, why do we ignore such an important priority?  Because, like the weeds in your garden, the factors that cause someone to leave creep in slowly and often go unnoticed until they choke out productivity.  By the time the plant looks sick, it’s too late.

The key to reversing this trend comes in identifying the early warning signals that a person is becoming dissatisfied.  Here is some research that was published in Fast Company that illustrates how this principle plays itself out in schools:

“Walk into an urban high school and look around at the kids.  Roughly half of them will drop out of school.  If you knew which ones, you might be able to steer them toward a different path.  But you can't solve a problem until you can spot it, and how do you spot a future dropout?

Some Johns Hopkins University researchers, frustrated by the high-school-dropout rate, went looking for early-warning signs among students in Philadelphia.  What were the telltale markers of a student who wouldn't graduate?  Their analysis came back with astonishing clarity.  Pouring over eighth-grade attendance records, they found hundreds of students who had missed more than one out of every five class days.  Of those frequent absentees, 78% eventually quit high school.  Similarly, of the eighth graders who had failed either English or Math, three out of four dropped out.  No other factor -- gender, race, age, or standardized-test scores -- had the predictive power of those two patterns.

The researchers concluded that the school district could identify more than half of the students who would be likely to drop out before they even set foot in high school.

The early-warning flags didn't solve the dropout problem, of course, any more than a smoke alarm can put out a fire.  But policy analysts at the National High School Center, armed with this information, were then able to review almost a dozen dropout-prevention programs with documented success that could be targeted toward the most at-risk kids.”

Isn’t this interesting?  Measuring a few very simple things lead to a prediction of something as complex as who would stay in school.  This certainly begs the question:  Are there similar factors that you could be measuring to predict those who are at risk of leaving your organization? 

In order to find these factors for your organization, it may take some focus and creativity.  To get your mind working, the article goes on to share another example of how paying attention to early warning signs is critical to predicting problems that can significantly impact your business.  The example comes from an unexpected source—the rock band Van Halen, and lead singer David Lee Roth.

“[In the ‘80s] Van Halen did dozens of shows every year, and at each venue, the band would show up with nine 18-wheelers full of gear.  Because of the technical complexity, the band's standard contract with venues was thick and convoluted -- Roth, in his inimitable way, said in his autobiography that it read 'like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages.' A typical 'article' in the contract might say, 'There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes.'

Van Halen buried a special clause in the middle of the contract.  It was called Article 126 and it required a special bowl of M&Ms be provided for the band backstage.  It read, 'There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.'  So when Roth would arrive at a new venue, he'd walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl.  If he saw a brown M&M, he'd demand a line check of the entire production.  'Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error,' he wrote.  'They didn't read the contract.... Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show.'"

So, what are the brown M&Ms that will predict a breakdown in the retention strategy for your business?  Smart operators like David Lee Roth understand that it’s much easier to take small innovative steps to detect an upcoming failure than deal with the expensive and painful consequences after it happens.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

 

What Is Talent?

One of the things that we often hear when talking to executive teams about recruiting is that they want to hire talented individuals.  Additionally, most of their frustration with the hiring process comes from interacting with candidates whom they perceive as low quality.
 
With this issue causing such angst in the hiring process, have you ever tried to come up with a clear-cut   
definition of “talent?”  Certainly, common factors such as level of education, work history, and personality are going to contribute to a person’s talent, but these characteristics don’t seem to capture the whole picture.  Is it possible that we have a tough time recognizing talent because we don’t know what we’re looking for?

Recruiting guru, Peter Weddle, seems to think so.  In a recent article, he points out that there are an unprecedented number of experienced, highly-educated individuals who have lost their jobs and are available in today’s labor pool:

"Ironically, even though millions of Americans are now in the job market looking for work, a large percentage of employers believe there is a shortage of individuals with talent.  While their email boxes and mailrooms are filled to overflowing with resumes, they see themselves as increasingly challenged to find, recruit and retain workers who have the critical skills and/or the commitment to superior performance necessary for organizational success in the global marketplace.”

Weddle goes on to offer a great definition of talent.  In practice, a person of talent is someone who has one or both of two attributes:

“They have a skill that is critical to organizational success and a track record which demonstrates their ability to use that skill effectively on-the-job."

and/or

"They perform at a superior level on-the-job which sets a standard that encourages their coworkers to upgrade the caliber of their work, as well.”

If you have the responsibility of recruiting for your organization, it is important to read both parts of this definition a couple of times to let the information sink into your brain.  Many hiring mistakes are made because hiring managers either don’t understand these principles, or they choose to abandon them in the midst of the hiring process.

Here’s how you can begin to apply these principles to your hiring process:

1. Identify the skills that are critical to your organization’s success. Take a quick mental inventory of those who perform at a high level. What skills do they all have in common? As much as possible, go down to the task level. Only at the task level can you make appropriate comparisons between those who are currently performing well in your organization, and candidates who desire a career change and think they'd like to work in your organization.
2. Don’t compromise on track record. If you’ve determined that one of the critical skills necessary to perform well in the role for which you’re hiring is making cold calls, then don’t hire someone who doesn’t have a track record of making cold calls. It’s that simple. It’s financially too risky to have blind faith that a new hire will pick up a critical skill necessary for a new position. It’s better to source more candidates and find someone who possesses the necessary skills.
3. Stop hiring below average people. I know that no one tries to make lousy hires, but we do talk ourselves into accepting candidates that should be screened out. Ask yourself honestly: Do I envision this candidate being in the top 25% of individuals who work in this position? If you can’t see this happening, then consider a different candidate. It is important that the “new blood” in and organization raise the quality of the group—not the other way around.

Once you have a clear picture of what talent is for your organization, you can more passionately pursue those candidates who will be able to successfully apply their talent in your organization.  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

What Bill Walsh Can Teach You About Coaching And Recruiting - Part 4

We’ll finish up our discussion about Bill Walsh today.  If you’re just tuning in, you may want to read the previous discussions (1, 2, 3).

This weekend is the Super Bowl.  As you probably know, it will feature the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints.  What you may not know, is much about the coaches of these teams.

For both coaches, this is their first appearance in the Super Bowl.  So, I would imagine they are probably more than a little nervous.  When the Saints coach, Sean Payton, wanted to get the pre-game practice week off to a good start, what you do you think he did?  The San Jose Mercury News reported that he followed in Bill Walsh's footsteps:

“Sean Payton had taken a few pages from the playbook of the late coaching great Bill Walsh before.  Not quite like this, though.  Ever focused on the mood of his players, the Saints' head coach kicked off Super Bowl week by donning a bellhop uniform and helping with luggage when the team bus showed up at its downtown Miami hotel on Monday.

Drew Brees and the Saints' six other Pro Bowl players joined him, hoping to ease whatever tension accompanied the Saints on the first Super Bowl trip in the club's 43-year history.

'We're always wanting to steal a pretty good idea,' Payton said.  'I think Bill Walsh, a long time ago, had a pretty good idea, and we just kind of took it like one of his offensive plays and ran with it.'
 
When Walsh coached the 1981 49ers to the first of five Super Bowls for that franchise, he did essentially the same thing.  The Joe Montana-led Niners beat Cincinnati 26-21.”

Sean Payton was primarily trained by coaching legend, Bill Parcells, in the Dallas Cowboy franchise, but with this type of stunt, do you think he has spent some time studying Bill Walsh’s methodologies?  Probably a safe bet.

What about Jim Caldwell?  This is great story.  Caldwell spent the first part of his career as an assistant coach at seven different colleges in the midwest.  He was finally awarded the head coaching job at Wake Forest in 1993.  

His record at Wake Forest was dismal.  Over the next eight years, he lead the team to 26 wins and 63 losses (he was 12 - 52 inside the notably weak ACC conference).  I’m not sure if he got fired after the 2000 season, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.  In 2001, he took an assistant coaching job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers under the supervision of their head coach, Tony Dungy.

In 2002, Caldwell followed Dungy to Indianapolis, where Dungy took the helm of the Colts.  Dungy lead the Colts on a remarkable run over the next seven years.  Dungy compiled a record of 85 wins and 27 losses, making the playoffs every year.  Additionally, the Colts won the Super Bowl in 2006.

In 2008, when Dungy announced his retirement, he named his successor as Jim Caldwell.  You wouldn’t think this would be a good choice based on his track record, but Dungy had spent the previous seven years teaching Caldwell his system and felt confident that he could carry on that system after his departure.

Dungy was right.  Caldwell compiled a 14 win – 2 loss record this year as a “rookie” coach.  This is the best start by a rookie head coach in NFL history.  It has been quite a remarkable turnaround from his performance at Wake Forest.  What changed?  I believe that he simply executed Tony Dungy’s system.

Any idea where Tony Dungy learned to coach?  You guessed it—from those heavily influenced by Bill Walsh.  In fact, many of today’s most successful NFL coaches trace their coaching philosophies back to Walsh:

So, we learned from our previous discussions that Walsh had “a magic wand” when if came to quarterbacks—anyone who played inside his system would perform remarkably better.  It now also appears that Bill Walsh may have had the same effect on coaches.  In the end, this speaks to the power and wisdom of the system that he conceived and perfected during his coaching career.

From a business perspective, every owner wants to build a business system that not only works (profitable) but can also be predictably duplicated (scalable).  Bill Walsh did just that in the very competitive arena of professional football…not by focusing his efforts on hiring better talent, but by building a better system to plug that talent into.  As described in Walsh's book, The Score Takes Care of Itself:

“Walsh was not presumptuous enough to write a book that would guarantee good leadership; rather, Walsh sought to help us understand the ways we can increase the probability of success: 'That’s what it all comes down to, namely, intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing in a competitive environment.  When you do that, the score will take care of itself.' ”

Enjoy the Super Bowl this weekend, and see if you can detect some of Bill Walsh’s legacy unfold in the action on the field.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

What Bill Walsh Can Teach You About Coaching And Recruiting - Part 3

How did you do on your assignment from last week?  I know, when it comes to reengineering your business, it is probably not something you can do over a weekend.  If you need to catch-up, take some time to read the last two (1 and 2) discussions.

Since it is Super Bowl week, I thought I would spend a little more time talking about a guy who knew quite a bit about winning Super Bowls—Bill Walsh.  We learned last week that Walsh decided to question (and later abandon) the status quo for NFL football teams.  He did this primarily out of necessity because he didn’t have the resources to play the game like everyone else.

Once he had some initial success with the Cincinnati Bengals, he went on to prove out his theories with three more teams over the next 15 years.  Here’s a quick summary:

Walsh left the Bengals in 1976 to become the offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers.  With the Chargers, Walsh inherited a struggling quarterback named Dan Fouts.  Inside of Walsh’s passing system, Fouts led the NFL in completion percentage the next year.  Fouts went on to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history.

In 1977, Walsh became the Head Football Coach at Stanford University.  He only coached Stanford for two years, but experienced quick success, especially at the quarterback position.  In 1977, Stanford quarterback, Guy Benjamin, led the nation in passing and won the Sammy Baugh Award given to the nation’s best passer.  One might think that was just good luck (i.e. Walsh showed up at the right time), until you notice that in 1978 Benjamin’s replacement, Steve Dils, repeated his accomplishments!

In 1979, Walsh was finally awarded an NFL Head Coaching job—his ultimate goal.  However, the team he inherited, the San Francisco 49ers, had the League’s worst record and the League’s lowest payroll.  He also had, by most statistical measures, the NFL’s worst quarterback—Steve Deberg.  In the previous year, Deberg had a 45.2 pass completion percentage and 22 interceptions.

As usual, quarterbacks seemed to blossom in Walsh’s offensive system--Deberg’s transformation was particularly remarkable.  The next year, Deberg completed more passes than anyone in NFL history.  His interception percentage dropped by 50% and his completion percentage rose to 60%.

As if almost to prove his point, Walsh fired Deberg the next year and brought in a new college recruit to run the 49er offense.  His choice was a third round draft pick from Notre Dame that most people said was too small and had too weak of an arm to play in the NFL.  His name was Joe Montana.

As many of you know, Joe Montana went on to become one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.  He was the starting quarterback in four Super Bowls in the 1980s, and his team won all four.  At this point, you have to start wondering—was he really that good, or did he just play inside a system that allowed him to experience remarkable success?

Michael Lewis, in his book The Blind Side, answers this question:

“How good was [Montana] really?  That’s hard to know, because his coach held a magic wand, and every quarterback over whose head that wand passed instantly looked better than he’d ever been.  When Joe Montana’s play became sloppy in the 1987 season, Walsh replaced him, temporarily, with Steve Young—whose sensational performance caused a lot of 49ers to wonder, and to feel guilt for wondering, if maybe Steve Young was even better than Joe Montana.”

Of course, Steve Young went on to become a Hall of Fame quarterback himself, but there is even more evidence that Walsh was probably the ultimate star.  In 1986, when Joe Montana was injured, Jeff Kemp stepped in as his backup for ten games.  In Walsh’s system, Kemp completed nearly 60% of his passes and averaged 7.77 yards per attempt, posting one of the highest passer ratings in the NFL.  The same year, Kemp was eventually injured also.  He was replaced by a quarterback named Mike Moroski who had only been with the team two weeks before he found himself in a starting role.  Even Moroski completed 57.5% of his passes!

There are some who believe that Walsh changed the entire way that football was played professionally.  In the late ‘70s, NFL teams passed the ball 42% of the time and ran the ball 58% of the time.  By 1995, one year after Walsh retired from coaching; NFL teams passed 59% of the time and ran the ball 41% of the time. 

What’s the lesson here?  Not many of us are going to be as brilliant and as successful as Bill Walsh, but we can learn from his example.  Walsh created a football system that many people (who happen to be quarterbacks) could be successful under.  He gave up on trying to “find the best talent” and instead built the best system.

I talk to many business owners and first level managers who mistakenly believe that recruiting a large number of people will solve their problems.  In the real estate industry particularly, this is the status quo.  It takes a great deal of effort, expense, and focus to execute a high-volume recruiting effort.  And yet, these efforts only produce a success percentage of about 15%.

What if some of this effort was redirected toward creating a sales system where 50% or more of the people who operate inside of it are successful?  You’ll know you’ve developed such a system when, like Walsh, you can plug almost anyone into the position (who has a baseline set of capacities and competencies) and  he/she is successful.  This would be a major paradigm switch for the real estate industry.  While you wouldn’t make it into the football Hall of Fame for developing such a system, you could change an industry and be remembered as a great innovator in your own right.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

 

What Bill Walsh Can Teach You About Coaching And Recruiting - Part 2

Earlier this week, I discussed how Michael Lewis’ bestselling book, The Blind Side, tells the story of how Bill Walsh changed professional football by conceiving a superior “system” later termed the "West Coast Offense."  While I know many of our readers are probably not avid football fans, it’s worth learning a little about football to glean the important business and life lessons that Walsh’s story can teach us.

The topic we’re going to cover today concerns a principle that Walsh used to transform one of the worst performing teams of all time (The San Francisco 49ers) into three-time Super Bowl champions in the 1980s (you may need to read the previous article to understand today’s discussion). 

Here is the principle:  Bill Walsh questioned the status quo.  When Walsh started coaching professional football in the late 1960s, football was primarily a running game.  For each running attempt, a player typically gained 3.9 to 4.1 yards (depending on the statistical year considered), and had a 3% chance of fumbling the ball and turning it over to the opposing team.

Teams did pass the ball also, but at a much lower rate.  Why?  Because the average pass netted just slightly more yardage (4.9 yards on average) and resulted in an interception 6% of the time.  Also, quarterbacks typically completed fewer than 50% of the passes. 

The general strategy for football teams at that time was to run the ball until they got into a pinch and needed a bunch of yards for a first down.  Then, they’d chuck the ball downfield 20 yards or more and hope for the best.  Of course, the desired outcome (a completed pass) didn’t happen very often, and the undesired outcomes (incompletions and interceptions) were common.

Walsh first started questioning the status quo more from necessity than genius.  In 1968, he took a job as the Offensive Coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals—an expansion team that had “comically inadequate football players.”  Without the talent and brute strength necessary to run the football, the Bengals had no choice but to turn to passing if they had any chance of winning.

But unfortunately, their passing game was not that hopeful either.  Their quarterback, Virgil Carter, had his own challenges.  “Carter wasn’t able to get the ball more than 20 yards downfield in any form other than a desperate wobble,” explains Lewis.

If you think about it, Walsh was facing the same situation that many of you are facing today.  Many companies have teams of individuals who are simply not talented enough to get the job done.  Your “players” are operating in sales systems that were designed to take advantage of some extraordinary strengths that only a few people possess. 

For real estate companies in particular, the status quo has been to recruit large numbers of agents with the hope of finding a few that can attune themselves to the existing system and be successful.  As you know, this is a tough road and it is filled with a lot of incompletions and interceptions.  I’ve spoken to many owners and executives who are growing very weary of the status quo.  Maybe you feel the same way. 

What did Bill Walsh do to solve his problem?  He built a better system.  More specifically, he built a system that played to the strengths of the players that were available to him.  While Virgil Carter could not throw the ball very far, he was accurate and quick.  Walsh used his strengths to design pass plays that were short and depended on precision and timing rather than brute strength and superhuman abilities.  

After implementing Walsh’s system, Virgil Carter, who had never completed more than half of his passes in a previous year, led the league in completion percentage (62.2%) and bumped his yard per attempt from 5.9 to 7.3 (remember, the league average was 4.9).  In 1970, the Bengals went to the playoffs just two years after starting this process.  In the playoffs, they put up a good fight against the Baltimore Colts in their final playoff game before the Colts went on to win the Super Bowl.

Here is the surprising part of this story:  The next year, Virgil Carter was replaced by a little known quarterback from a division 3 college named Kenny Anderson.  Walsh made his point loud and clear:  It wasn’t the person in the quarterback position that created the successes, it was the superior nature of the system itself.  Kenny Anderson went on to lead the NFL in total yards, completion percentage and yards per attempt (8.13) in 1974. 

As business owners, it’s easy to fall victim to thinking that the business systems we have (or we’re given as the status quo from an industry that surrounds us) are the business systems we’re stuck with using.  In this state, the only solution seems to be hiring bigger linemen and faster running backs. 

Bill Walsh changed the status quo so that personnel factors played a diminishing role.  He created a system so good that he could plug almost anyone (who happened to be a quarterback) into the system and it produced results.  Take Bill Walsh’s lead..challenge the status quo and start to conceptualize your own system.  Think about creating something that would keep you from playing to factors you can’t control.

This is a tough assignment, so don’t feel bad if the answers don’t come to you quickly.  I’ll write more about Bill Walsh in my next article.  There are few more strategies we can gain from him that may spur your thinking. 

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Blind Side: What Bill Walsh Can Teach You About Coaching and Recruiting

Last Thanksgiving, The Blind Side was released in theaters.  While the movie received lukewarm reviews from many critics, the public seemed to fall in love with it.  By New Year’s Day, the movie had gross sales of over $200M...and it only took $29M to make.  When a low-budget film produces this type of return, it demonstrates the compelling nature of the story that the movie told.

The movie is based on a book (by the same name) written by Michael Lewis.  He is the same author that wrote Moneyball—a book that we wrote about last year in WorkPuzzle.  While the book and the movie both do a great job of chronicling the life of Michael Oher, the book goes into much greater depth about the topic of professional football.  Michael Lewis has a gift for boiling down the complexities of a sport into simple observations and statistics that open your eyes to the realities of why some teams win and others lose.

One of Lewis’ observations involves the impact that coaching legend Bill Walsh had on professional football.  As an offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals in the early ‘70s, Walsh started to figure out how to build an offensive “system” around players who had average skills (as compared to other NFL players).  Because “superstars” were not something that Walsh had at his disposal, the system itself had to compensate for his team’s lack of talent if he hoped to win.

And win he did.  After leaving the Bengals and coaching Stanford to two winning seasons, Walsh took the position of head coach for the poorly performing (2 Wins / 14 losses ) San Francisco 49ers in 1979.  By 1981, Walsh lead the 49ers to the first of three Super Bowl championships during his ten year tenure with the 49ers.

The “system” that Walsh built is now called the “West Coast Offense,” and it was so superior that it was eventually copied by every team in the NFL and landed Bill Walsh in the Football Hall of Fame.  The system changed the nature of how football was played professionally by transforming how a team could gain an advantage by passing the football.  I won’t go into all the details here (it took Lewis a whole chapter to chronicle the events and explain all the particulars), but there are some important business lessons we can learn from Walsh’s accomplishments.

In general, Walsh’s system was designed to take advantage of the possibility of near perfect execution.  If a quarterback and a receiver were able to accomplish fairly simple tasks with near perfect timing, short pass plays were almost impossible to disrupt or curtail.  This style of play did have one major weakness however—if the quarterback did not have enough time to perform his tasks (due to defenders harassing him during the pass rush), the plays would breakdown.  The most effective way to rush the quarterback was from behind his field of vision so he couldn’t see the defender coming.  This is called the quarterback’s “blind side.”  Reliability protecting the blind side has translated into big business—it’s something a team will now pay millions of dollars to have reliably performed.

In my next article, I’ll outline some of the recruiting and coaching lessons that can be taken from Bill Walsh’s successes.  I think you’ll find there are some important similarities to what you’re trying to achieve.  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Checklist Manifesto - A Surgeon’s Attempt to Keep You Alive as a Recruiter

Did you know that over 80,000 people die each year in hospitals due to infections?  Depending on how you define an accident, as many as 225,000 people die each year “accidently” in the United States while being treated by a physician.  (The Journal Of The American Medical Association)  

Compare these numbers to other forms of death, and it becomes apparent that one of the most dangerous things a person can do in the United States is step into a hospital!  However, one of the safest things a person can do is take a trip on a commercial airplane.  On average, only 200 people die each year while undergoing air transport.

A few years ago, an inquisitive surgeon named Atul Gawande noticed this differential and wondered if there was something a surgeon could learn from the airline industry to help save lives.  His discovery was so simple that it almost seems ridiculous:  a checklist saves lives no matter what industry you use it in.

A recent article in the Seattle Times tells the story:

“Commercial pilots have been using checklists for decades.  Gawande traces this back to a fly-off at Wright Field, Ohio, in 1935, when the Army Air Force was choosing its new bomber.  Boeing's entry, the B-17, would later be built by the thousands, but on that first flight it took off, stalled, crashed and burned.  The new airplane was complicated, and the pilot, who was highly experienced, had forgotten a routine step.

For pilots, checklists are part of the culture.  For surgical teams they have not been.  That began to change when a colleague of Gawande's tried using a checklist to reduce infections when using a central venous catheter, a tube to deliver drugs to the bloodstream.

The original checklist:  wash hands; clean patient's skin with antiseptic; use sterile drapes; wear sterile mask, hat, gown and gloves; use a sterile dressing after inserting the line.  These are all things every surgical team knows.  After putting them in a checklist, the number of central-line infections in that hospital fell dramatically.

Then came the big study, the use of a surgical checklist in eight hospitals around the world.  One was in rural Tanzania, in Africa.  One was in the Kingdom of Jordan.  One was the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.  They were hugely different hospitals with much different rates of infection.  Use of the checklist lowered infection rates significantly in all of them.”

This is a very counter-intuitive finding.  You’d think that with all the training, equipment, procedures, and smart people involved in the process of conducting a surgery, the simple things would be covered.  But, the opposite is true.  It seems that failures in the mundane arenas of life have a way of derailing some of the most important things we try to accomplish.  Something as simple as a checklist can have a profound effect on the end result.

If you think about it, this finding can be directly applied to recruiting.  Many of us have been working in and around the recruiting process for many years.  While that experience is valuable and necessary to perform at a high level, it can also be the very thing that trips us up.  When we start to see circumstances that repeat themselves, it is human nature to get bored and start to skip steps.  Before long results start to diminish and the cause is not obvious.  We tend to want to concentrate on what we perceive to be the most significant issues (the condition of the market, the quality of the candidates, our company’s offerings compared to competitors, etc.) and assume we have the basics down.  Dr. Gawande would say that's a mistake.

Have you ever considered building a checklist for your recruiting process?  The new year is a great time to take inventory of the processes you’re using to accomplish the most important functions in your business.  At first, this will feel ridiculous, but as with surgery or commercial air transport, it can have a profound impact on your end result.

Take the time to build a list of 12 to 15 steps that you know work (i.e. best practices) in your recruiting process.  Arrange them in a checklist format and follow the checklist for each candidate.  Then, measure results on a month-by-month basis.  If your results improve, then I guess it's not just those airline "dummies" who need a checklist to be successful.

One of the questions Dr. Gawande often gets regarding his research is:  If providing a checklist can improve results and (in his profession) save lives, then why has this not been done in the past, and why do surgeons still resist the concept?  The answer is almost as simple as the concept of using a checklist--surgeons don't want to use checklists because they are arrogant.  Hopefully, this issue will not be the thing that trips you up...
  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.