What is Potential & How Do You Assess for It? - Allan Church - #171

[00:00:02] Tell us, what's going on right now in your mind with performance and potential? Let's just start there. Sure. Well, first, thanks for having me. So very excited to be here. And I think you said this is like episode 170, Cole? Is that right? It's something like that. Something like that. So it's impressive. I can't remember where it's going to come out, but it's around there. Yeah. Congrats on doing such a great job with this. Well, you know, a couple of things there for sure. So, yeah, I mean, we did some benchmarking years ago. You've probably seen it.

[00:00:29] But I did it with Chris Rotolo, who was at PepsiCo. You know him from those days too, probably. Can I say something really quick? Yeah. We're probably going to name drop a lot on this podcast today. And it's because you have this murderer's row of people that you've worked with, but also that you've mentored throughout your career. And it's just your lineage is like unlike any other person out there. And so I just want to give you the kudos for that as well. It's funny you say that. You mentioned the OD concept a few times. Yeah.

[00:00:56] I think I like more than analytics person. I'm like a low key OD purveyor. You know, I kind of come up through this school like from you, from Alexis Fink, you know, these are like highly technical people, but really at a core we're trying to, you know, do or change in the most effective way possible. Yeah. No, Alexis is great. I've known her, known her for a long time. I dare say 20 years, maybe more, maybe even pre-Pepsiop, but I mean pre-Pepsico days, but certainly through Siop.

[00:01:25] Welcome to Directionally Correct, a people analytics podcast with your host, Cole Knapper, and today's guest, Alan Church, co-founder and managing partner at Maestro Consulting and IO Psychology Legend.

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[00:03:16] As always, all opinions are our own, and thanks for being a listener. Well, so you can feel free to correct this introduction, Alan. But one of the things that I've noticed in my career, which has always been sort of funny to me, is there's really smart people and researchers who go out and create new HR theories or human theories and then processes around them. And then they implement them at leading organizations.

[00:03:46] And then HR systematically dumbs them down and simplifies them and commoditizes them. And what started out as a good idea often becomes a poor idea. And then what happens is people start arguing against the poor, like the dumbed down version, as if the entirety of the process is faulty from its core. Right. Right.

[00:04:09] And so one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on today is because I see a lot of that happening in the performance space, in the potential space, in the AI space. And you are one of the people that I respect most on this earth that knows what they're talking about and has seen the journey from the genesis of a lot of these ideas to the implementation of them at world-class organizations.

[00:04:35] And so I wanted to give you your flowers in that respect, but also tell us what's going on right now in your mind with performance and potential. Let's just start there. Sure. Well, first, thanks for having me. So very excited to be here. And I think you said this is like episode 170, Cole. Is that right? It's something like that. Something like that. So it's impressive. I can't remember where it's going to come out, but it's around there. Yeah. Congrats on doing such a great job with this and having such a successful following too.

[00:05:02] I noticed here, I looked you up on, I looked up actually directionally correct on AI, of course, on Google. And it said, you know, it said the definition, which of course I'm cool with and we can talk about that. But it also said the name of a very popular podcast. I'm like, oh, wow, look at that. So you've made AI, man. So that's great. But excited to be here. So yeah. So potential and performance are interesting ones to me just because so many organizations want like the single answer, right?

[00:05:31] I mean, you were kind of getting at that before. And they want you to, you know, do a reductionistic view of they want science often. They want like what's the cool thing often. And they want to be have it come down to something really simple. And so I think performance in the old days was the, you know, the alternative to potential or the only measure of potential. And so people got stuck with that. And Bob, I can journey, you know, Bob was PepsiCo years and years ago, like in the 80s. And we're, you know, we're friends. We've done stuff together and talked about this in other places.

[00:06:01] But, you know, the original nine box put the two against each other. Right. And there's an assumption and Bob still holds to this, but there's an assumption that people can distinguish between the two when they make ratings. And to me, that's the fundamental problem that everybody has with the nine box today is that most companies can't make the distinction. Most leaders can't make the distinction between performance and potential if they're done kind of at the same time in particular. Yeah. And so, you know, you want to have this simple idea of how you look at potential.

[00:06:29] And so you want to have a nine box that helps you. But the nine box isn't actually doing anything with potential. It's just gritting out your own idea of it already. So that's sort of the second challenge. But I think people want to believe that high performers are going to do well. You know, always. They like they're high performers. They want to pay them well. They just want to say, hey, you're great. I'm going to pay you well and promote you. And then the challenge is, I think this is to your point, called a mix up the research. Right. So people think that being successful in a current job means you're going to be successful in a future job.

[00:06:59] And no, that's not the research. Right. The research is being successful in a current job will predict performance in a job of similar level and compliance. Complexity, not higher level of complexity. And that's like the fundamental principle that a lot of leaders miss. And so they think, you know, high performer equals high potential. And it just doesn't. And, you know, they don't know the Peter principle, although they certainly will recognize it when you talk about it. But, you know, they don't get that you can have somebody who's really fantastic at their job today. You promote them and they're terrible. They flame out.

[00:07:28] And that's because you didn't promote them based on potential. You promoted them based on performance. Well, and then there's the interesting notion around potential itself, which is, I mean, it's defined differently in different circumstances. But many organizations will say that you can do one or two levels, usually two levels above your current position. But then there's, I think, another miscalculation there, which is let's say that person actually makes it two levels above and then they perform adequately.

[00:07:57] They're they are they no longer a high potential? Yeah. Like, are you a high potential forever? Are you high potential until you've achieved your potential from like a Peter principle standpoint? Yeah. Right. And all of the complexity there. Well, you know, a couple of couple of things there for sure. So, yeah, I mean, we did some benchmarking years ago. You've probably seen it, but I did it with Rotolo, Chris Rotolo, who, you know, was at PepsiCo. You know him from those days, too, probably. But I say something really quick. Yeah. We're probably going to name drop a lot on this podcast today.

[00:08:25] And it's because you have this murderer's row of people that you've worked with, but also that you've mentored throughout your career. And it's just your lineage is like unlike any other person out there. And so I just want to give you the kudos for that as well. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We will name drop because, you know, that's our field. Right. And it's very connected. But, yeah, I think, you know, we did some benchmark a couple of years ago, actually. We've done a bunch of studies.

[00:08:50] And one of the things we found, you said it, most companies have a definition of potential that is two-level jump. That's the most common. The problem is, what's that based on? Like if you ask, and we had this at PepsiCo, too. We had the two-level definition. You might remember. Okay, great. So then how do you know that? Well, that's when they flow. Right. I mean, they don't have an answer. It's like, well, I just have it in my gut or I know this or I see this. That's a problem right there. So I sort of approach potential.

[00:09:18] And this is based on all the years at PepsiCo, kind of going back to when I first took on talent management because I'm kind of an OD guy originally. Yeah. And I started sort of taking on TM at PepsiCo and moved into that space forward. And a couple things. So one, there's like three types of potential that organizations think about. And one is this sort of general potential. And that's everybody has it. Right. And that's, you know, that's like the growth mindset potential. And that's the OD version. Right. Everybody has potential.

[00:09:46] As soon as you talk about differentiation and selecting people, the OD people go, no, no, no. You know, you're, you're, no. Okay, great. But that's your kids. That's your dog. Whatever. Everybody has potential to do something somewhere in life. Right. That's great. And that's human potential. And I certainly believe in that. But that's not organization potential. So you think about potential organizations, there's really two key types. And one is this leadership potential idea that people can go higher levels. Right. So that's that two level jump.

[00:10:13] And that's fine for a period of time while you're looking at talent. And hopefully you use that data to inform that. But the other version is destination potential. And that's really more getting at what your challenge is, which is, you know, are you achieving it? So if you have destination potential and you're talking about planning that way, you're talking about key roles. Usually it's C-suite, maybe C-suite minus one or two. But, you know, do you have what it takes wherever you are in your career? One away, three away, five away to get to CFO.

[00:10:41] And if so, then every time you move, you still either have or don't have it. But you're moving towards that plan. Right. And that's what we're working against. So you don't like take it away just because you moved. Right. Whereas that two level jump is just like a trap. I've moved one level, so I can't go two more. So I don't have potential anymore. No, of course you do. Right. So, no, that's a bit of the challenge. But that's sort of the operational, the way you think about it. The other thing I'd say, Cole, is that, and this is what we've been doing at PepsiCo. This is what, you know, they still do now. And what we're doing with clients is applying the science of potential.

[00:11:12] So we have science now. Right. And we know, and, you know, I worked on a model with Rob Silser years and years ago. Back in, what, 2010, we did a chapter and some articles and IOP. And so that's out there. I decided heavily in my dissertation. The leadership potential blueprint. Right. And yeah, I know. I saw that you actually believe in some of the core principles. Right. So, but, you know, there's this idea that there's multiple elements that go into how people think about and can measure potential. And it's this foundational.

[00:11:41] So are you, do you have a solid personality? I mean, you don't have to be perfect, but do you have, like, can you relate to people? Can you talk to people? Right. Right. Are you smart enough? And are you able to be strategic? That's sort of the base. Then there's motivation drive. Like, are you driven to succeed? And that's usually a proxy for a lot of companies too. Just that alone. Right. Like the guidance is tell your boss you want more work. Tell your boss you want two jobs above his or hers. Right. That's that motivation drive ambition and unbridled ambition is crazy, of course, but that's the high end of ambition.

[00:12:11] Learning agility goes with that though. So if you promote people into bigger jobs and they can't learn and can't do well, then that's the fallout. Right. And people who are really good at learning, but have no interest in taking up bigger roles. That's a problem. So you need both. And then the other stuff like leadership skills, inspirational leadership, visioning, you know, delegating, all that stuff. You can train all that. So and even, you know, we're going to get into it later, but where does AI and digital play? They're at the top of the chain too. Right. Those are things you can train. And so you can get people to buy into it, at least to some degree.

[00:12:40] So, you know, I think if you apply the science, you start to get a better sense of it because it answers your very question. If you're ambitious, you have the cognitive capabilities you need to, you know, put dots together, think about data, create a strategy. You can talk to people like in a normal human way. Right. You can actually relate to people, handle conflict, maybe be decent EQ. And you can learn from experiences. None of that changes. So your potential, if you measure it that way, ought to be the same pretty much. Right.

[00:13:08] So that gets you around this issue of, yeah, it's just a label. Well, I want to unpack because what you just shared was so much wisdom about here are some of the latent constructs that go in to what makes someone have potential and potentially even achieve that potential. How do we assess for those things? And maybe how we assess for it historically? And then how is that assessment changing at the moment? Yeah.

[00:13:36] So I think, I mean, I think historically people, again, were using proxies, right? Like performance and maybe just like I said, unbridled ambition, right? And maybe some other basic tools. But, you know, since the mid 2000s, late 2000s, when talent management became a thing, right? Because it wasn't a thing before. It wasn't a label. It wasn't a function. It wasn't a job title. All the practices were there, but they weren't put together into sort of an area.

[00:14:06] Since that started to happen, if people started going after potential more aggressively, you know, the usual tools have come into play. So you've got, if you think about the blueprint, right, it's a map for how you think about the science and you can measure each of those. So you've got some sort of, you know, interesting cognitive tests to go after, you know, strategic thinking. And that can be, you know, as basic as the Ravens. It can be other cognitive tools, but you kind of want to minimize bias as you know well. So personality, pick your favorite personality tool. I mean, I'm a Hogan person, but I've used OPQ as well.

[00:14:36] But Hogan is our sort of preferred tool. But there's lots of other good ones who you can use. You know, at the mid level, you're looking at measuring learning agility. There's unique tools on that, right? There's motivation drive you can pick up from places, right? And then kind of leadership practices, you look at a 360 and maybe a simulation, right? So you kind of look at how you show up today at a 360 and maybe how you show up in novel situations in a simulation. And the thing I would tell you that the first kind of two layers, you know, the cognitive

[00:15:04] personality, learning, agility, and ambition, that can be standardized tools. That's easy. Yeah. Right. My big thing, and this is what Janine and I do, and we did it at PepsiCo. You know, I think I built five leadership models there, right? And we built them for years before consulting, before TM was even big. But we certainly do it now too. And going for a custom or bespoke or unique leadership model for your company is the way to do it. And what you do with that is, you know, you figure out what's unique there, right?

[00:15:33] And what senior leadership and the C-suite and CEO want to hear about. And then you bake in some measures of potential into that model. So you don't have like your own potential thing, right? And so when you use the core tools like a 360, if it's customized and it's relevant to your company and your leaders care about the outcome and you have the science of potential baked in, you've got kind of the optimum tool suite, right? And even that alone can do a great deal of distance in giving you a predictive measure of potential.

[00:16:03] So that's how you do it today. I mean, again, simulations are cool. You know, online simulations today are very engaging and different than they were back when. You don't have assessment centers anymore. Some people still do them. But, you know, you don't need to do that. You can do a cool video of them and things happening. But it's basically the same fundamental measurement tech. Well, let me ask you that because like it's based on kind of the assessment center point because I know some people still do that and some people still swear by it too. Of course.

[00:16:31] Leaderless group discussions and the concept of leader emergence, is that still a thing? It's still there. But I think, you know, leaderless group discussion stuff is kind of, that's a bit OD. Okay. It's an org development, right? That's a, and it's a lot of the group process element, you know, process consultation, group dynamics. And that stuff's all good from the point of view of figuring out, you know, in groups of employees, if you want to try and apply it there. I haven't seen a lot of people apply this call. But nonetheless, you could, right? You could say, all right, in groups, let's get some groups of early career people together

[00:17:02] and we'd have to monitor them, record them, watch who emerges, right? So you'd have to observe them, you know, whatever. Give them a task or task, you know, give them a, I don't know, a project, right? Give them a sprint to do, you know, whatever these days. But, and watch who emerges, you could definitely get a sense from that. And what you'd be seeing is, gee, ambition, right? Cognitive abilities, probably force of will a little bit, right? Dominance. And you'd see in there too, whether or not they're responsive to other people and they

[00:17:31] listen, or they're just a driver and whether they're strategic or whether they're going right for the answer, right? You get a lot of that out of watching that, but it's going to be time intensive, right? And process intensive and not the quickest thing versus, hey, I've got a 20 item, 360 and a couple of small tools and two hours of assessment. I can give you a potential index on 10,000 people. Do you think any AI tools have been built that can just like assess all of that in like five minutes or something like this?

[00:17:59] Like, is this, is this a thing or are people just selling snake oil? I haven't seen it yet. I think, you know, AI is cool from the point of view of being able to pull data like that together. Certainly it should be. And if you were have all the tools and you put them into an algorithm, it will produce something. But, you know, as you know, well, it's going to produce what you've measured as the outcome. Right. So what is the outcome based on? Right. So what is potential based on that you're using to drive that? So, you know, that becomes the challenge.

[00:18:29] And so you can certainly do that with tools, but I haven't seen anything that mirrors necessarily kind of a high end validation model with tools that you understand. Right. So that's the issue. But look, if you used AI and applied 360 data and cognitive data and personality data and send data to an AI application and let it predict and the outcome you're predicting is the same outcome you're using for validation studies, it's probably going to do a pretty good job. Right. Okay. As long as the tools going in were the right tools. Yeah.

[00:18:57] I think there's a lot of not public debate, but I think private debate around the concept of like monitoring. So like what if you just like videotaped executives all day and then you use and you assess for all those latent constructs in their day-to-day interactions, you could probably get pretty accurate data after a while or maybe not even that long of a period of time, but at what cost

[00:19:26] and at what, you know, sacrifice of trust and that type of thing. And so I think that these are very going to be very relevant conversations, maybe not right now, but over the next few years. Yeah. It was funny. I mean, we saw it, I mean, even COVID had the early signs of it, right? Like watching keystrokes and watching who can, putting all the data together of who comes in and how much eye time around the monitor. So we used to get feedback from the early days of that on meeting effectiveness, which

[00:19:54] then was translating to leadership effectiveness in terms of how many people you had in your meetings, as if having more people is better. Right. I mean, and that was the assumption under the algorithm that was provided by, you know, the application. And so if you had five meetings that were one-on-one and three that were a group meeting, you were, you know, whatever, very ineffective overall. But from a leader manager perspective and, or even some strategic decisions, you don't

[00:20:23] want a group every time. Right. So, so there's, and will that get better? Of course, that was rudimentary. You know, that's four years ago. It's like a lifetime ago in AI. But, but I think, you know, more and more of the tools will be able to do it. As long as the outcomes are things that are what you really need. I think that's the key, no matter what. Right. So if it's watching me, if it's watching what I type, if it's watching how I engage with people in the room, whatever it is, that will give you good data on whatever it can measure.

[00:20:51] But it's still missing things like, I mean, unless it's in the back end, can you apply learnings from one situation to another job? Right. Can, have you been successful in multiple jobs? Yeah. And you deal with different types of people that are in different locations or difficult people? How would it know over time without, I mean, again, it would take some time to know that. What that, what you're suggesting is going to be really good at probably predicting, you know, effectiveness and performance on a short-term basis. Do you get things done? Are you effective with people? Can you deliver? Are you focused?

[00:21:21] That kind of thing. I'd still question whether that's potential or performance. Well, we've kind of hinted at it. All right. So let me get my backstory. Okay. You Alan, because this is like a huge full circle moment. Yeah. So when I was in graduate school, it was either probably my first or my second PSYOP. I was going to, because I knew I was going to be writing my dissertation on 360 degree feedback, which, you know, you were just, you know, a Titan in that space.

[00:21:51] And, and so many other people that I know you've collaborated with over the years as well. And I went to this session and panel. I didn't know who you were, but I was, I got there a little early. I was sitting in the front row and there was this, you know, this young man sitting next to me and he introduced himself to me. He says, and I was like, he's like, my name's Mike Tuller. And I'm like, I'm Cole Knapper. And I'm like, so what do you do, Mike? And he's like, I'm interning for the guy up there. And he points to you and then you come out and you're just this firebrand of a presenter

[00:22:20] and talking about all these things. And just such a straight shooter on topics where, you know, academics tend to, you know, be very lofty and use a lot of jargon and that type of thing. You were saying, here's what we're doing. Here's what works. Here doesn't work. Very direct communicator. And I was like, wow, this is a, this is, this guy's a force. And, and then fast forward a little bit, you know, my first job at a graduate school, worked at Frito-Lay as a part of PepsiCo and actually was sort of, sort of in your reporting chain.

[00:22:47] And so I've always kind of had this like, oh my God, Alan, you know, and you, you just, you know, Mike has gone off to do great things. You mentioned Chris Rotolo earlier, my longtime friend, Lori Dawson, you know, she's kind of in your lineage. I don't know. Oh yeah. Lori works for me. Oh yeah. And, and you work with David, right? David Oliver. Yeah. David Oliver, Lauren McIntyre, like a bunch of really cool people. You, that, that generation of people. So when was that call exactly? What was the timing on that?

[00:23:15] This is 15 years ago, something like that. Like 0, 210-ish? I can't even remember. Around there. Yeah. But you would probably then have known, you might've known people like Julie Fuller. You might've known people like Erica DeRoger. I mean, there's a lot of people. Amanda Scholl was there. I mean, who's now head of TM at Nike, right? I mean, that whole, there's been multiple generations there. Obviously there 21 years. I mean, what are you going to expect? Right. But there were multiple generations of great IOs coming through on both my team, but also

[00:23:45] on the, you know, related teams. Yeah. And so it's, it's been fun to see it. And that's when you called or emailed me and said, Hey, we don't do this. I'm like, Oh yeah, I remember, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a family in that sense in the field, but it's also a great training ground, a great experience ground for people on IO too. At least historically it has been. Yeah. I know Lori worked with you for a long time and she's been a long time brand and she's gone out and done amazing things as well. She's an SAP now, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah. She's doing great stuff. That's awesome.

[00:24:14] Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, one of the things that I think would be neat to talk about is, you know, obviously you had such a magnificent career at Pepsi, but you're doing Maestro consulting now and you've done some, some really great work out there. So what are you doing nowadays? And is there anything you can share? Yeah. So, so basically once we, you know, my colleague at Maestro is just Janine, my wife and, you know, long time colleague worked together, went to school together. So, you know how it goes, right? Small, small family kind of thing.

[00:24:44] And she was at PepsiCo 20 years too. So I know you guys didn't connect. I think you told me, but, but she was there. I don't believe Janine and I have ever. Yeah. She, she ended up being CHRO of two parts of the business, you know, towards the end of the career. But, but we, we, you know, retired out of PepsiCo officially. Right. So that was nice coming back from COVID. We honestly didn't want to do the in corporate or in corporate house thing anymore. Um, we were sort of done with that and, um, for Maestro. And what we do is, you know, very select group of clients. Um, we kind of, we don't advertise.

[00:25:13] We're not trying to like build this giant thing. Right. We really only want to work. Yeah. To be clear, I pursued you for this and you, you accepted reluctantly. So I appreciate you doing it. Sure. Of course. Well, I appreciate you asking, but, um, but we basically work with a handful of clients that are in, you know, transformation stages. Right. So new CEO, new CHROs, new head of talent, many of the new CHROs and new heads of talent are people we know. They either work with us, maybe some for us or our friends or colleagues that know us

[00:25:43] from PSYOP and other places. Um, and we go in and we typically take a look at whatever the talent strategy is kind of take, you know, hard look at that. Is it working? But often Cole, it's, um, it's building out a custom leadership model as I talked about. Right. So it's kind of getting the new CEO, CHRO pair engaged in how they want some data. Now on their people. And it's usually an issue of visibility to their people, or maybe it's refreshing what they did. Now there's a change in strategy or direction, um, or maybe it's introducing some rigor to the process.

[00:26:12] And so, you know, we're working with, like I said, it's a handful, but it's, it's a range is everything from, you know, a giant technology firm to, you know, more, you know, sort of biotech firms that are just sort of starting to get into the talent management space in a more aggressive way. Another firm that was a family owned business that went public and is sort of looking at how they get more consistency around leadership and around how they assess talent. So very consistent set of processes, but it's all around giving them a leadership model that

[00:26:41] matters that future focus too. That's the other thing. It's not about, you know, how we are successful today. It can include that, but it's like, what do we need to be successful five to 10 years from now in terms of leadership? And by the way, how do we know who has potential? Well, clarify this for like for people who aren't in this space, like what is a leadership model and what does that entail? Sure. So a leadership model is simply, you know, a set of competencies, right. Or a set of dimensions or a set of sometimes it's, it's phrases. It just depends. Right.

[00:27:11] But underneath it, um, it's what it, the behaviors basically in the practices it takes to be a successful leader in the company, either today or in the future or both. Right. Sometimes it's both and so, you know, a lot of leadership models, I mean, there's a ton out there that are generic and certainly they're all fine, at least for the most part. Um, and measure many of the same things, but the difference about having one in a company is you can amplify what's really important. And I'll give you an example. So during our early days of pep and probably maybe you probably remember the end of this.

[00:27:42] Inclusion was big. It became really big there. It started as diversity. We even started before inclusion was a word, right. It started when I was here to one with Steve Reinemann. But as that became important, we changed the leadership model to make that one of seven dimensions. Right. So it went from being something buried in there. You're inclusive. You respect diversity to you're an inclusive leader. And that's one of a big, a big number. Right. Um, over time, you know, uh, with, with Indra Nui, our, our second CEO that I worked with,

[00:28:09] um, strategy became important and innovation. Um, and that, and even, you know, environmental sustainability and things like that. So those elements then became elevated in a model because those were important for the future of the business. Right. Um, you know, different leaders have different points of view. So we have one organization we're working with. That's a retail business where, um, the application of technology and AI to their space, they don't have any clue and they're trying to make a transformation.

[00:28:37] And so what we've done is added that as a dimension to their leadership model. So everybody that gets to view that model, right. Whether it's, you know, you're hiring people, maybe you're selecting them against that or interviewing against the model, or maybe you're training people internally using the model. Here's what leadership matters here. Or you're actually using 360 based on this or set, you know, assessing them even more aggressively with SIMS and things we talked about. They're getting feedback on how they do on inspirational leadership and collaboration and maybe resilience these days, right? That's a popular one.

[00:29:07] Uh, maybe learning agility. We would certainly drive that in there and then maybe wow, AI and digital mindset. And they're literally behaviors that the company wants every leader or manager or employee to demonstrate to be successful. So it's communicating things to people, which is like an OD perspective, right? That's what we did first 10 years when we built models. Um, but now it's communicating what's important and providing data to leaders to say, all right,

[00:29:33] this is an area we want to grow these people in, or these people have a lot of this, you know, AI tech driven mindset, yet they're not very good at collaborating. So we need to work on their collaboration skills to make them better leaders. And so that's, that's why it's so important to have something like that, that you can all anchor on and have the same language.

[00:30:18] It's funny. I mean, pre Pepsico days, but, uh, certainly through Psy up and, uh, yeah, she's another one that thinks big, you know what I mean? Think strategically about the work that we do, whatever the specialty is. So, you know, I'm not a analytic specialist, although I certainly do a lot of data. I love data and publish on stuff like that, but it's not my core thing. Um, but. You know, once you get people together who think that way, think about, you know, systems, think about organizational systems, right?

[00:30:46] The social systems, which is the org or development kind of point of view. You start to say, all right, if I'm going to work in this area, what else needs to align? How do we think about the bigger picture? Right? So it's not just putting in an analytics function. I mean, Alexis is the kind of person who would say, all right, well, how do we think about this strategically? How do we line it up to the entire organization? What other parts of the infrastructure around the org are going to fit? So, you know, if Alexis and I were doing things together, she'd be working on, on sort of that and sort of strategy around it.

[00:31:15] And I'd be working on leadership skills around it. Yeah. And you put those together and you have, you know, leaders, you know what they're doing and a strategy that supports it. And then you want somebody else to come in who probably is really good at training and development or learning and development who can build courses and, you know, architecture around that, you know, however it's driven to drive those pieces for people. Absolutely. Well, I want to, one of the most kind of special things in prep, prepping for this is I got to hear a little bit about your love for Roger Federer. Oh yeah, sure.

[00:31:44] You know, it was fascinating. And so I'd love for everyone to hear it. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm a huge, I mean, tennis fan. And it's funny because I wasn't before, you know, I was a football fan, you know, typical, you know, American, you know, football fan guy growing up. And, and when we're at PepsiCo, I had the opportunity to go to a tennis match at the U.S. Open, a final, men's final. I'd never been, or maybe once before it wasn't too interesting.

[00:32:13] I think, strangely enough, I think we went once when the day that Serena, oh no, the day that Venus, I think was debuting. I think we saw her in her debut just randomly at some, you know, event. But, but I went to the final and I saw Fed play and he was playing Andy Roddick. And at that time, the U.S. Open was open air and it was very cool. The atmosphere was like electric. It was amazing. I don't know if you've ever been, but it's like amazing. And I was rooting at the time for Andy because he's the American. Who's this Federer guy in a black t-shirt, right?

[00:32:43] You know, he's Darth Federer. That's what they called him at that generation. That was like two six. And, and I watched him destroy Andy. And the crowd was cheering for both. I'm like, okay, this guy, is this guy a villain? Or is this guy like, you know? And then I started watching him on TV and it was, is amazing. I mean, he's called the maestro and that is one of the in jokes around maestro consulting, right? It's the, it's Federer. We love Federer. Janine does too.

[00:33:11] But, but watching him play over the years and following his career, it's just amazing to watch what individual skill can do for yourself, but also for the entire sport. He's elevated the sport and, you know, along came Nadal and along came Djokovic. And so those became the big three for years. You know, Andy Murray came in there for a little while, but those three have completely transformed the tennis landscape. And that's kind of cool. Right. And then he would also win like sportsman of the year award many times and watch him play.

[00:33:40] And it's just like watching someone at the top of their game, at their peak with all the grace and capability and skill he has just do a great job. And also figuring it out when he wasn't working, you know, he had a slump against Nadal for, I don't know, a couple of years where he couldn't beat him. And Roger came back and he had this, this thing called, you know, sneak attack by Roger. And so he changed his approach and he beat Nadal. And I happened to see one of those in Indian Wells in California during one of

[00:34:08] those matches I saw them live, the Fed all right. The famous Fed all kind of meeting up. And it was just like, wow, this guy just continues to grow and evolve and change his game. Even though he's been, he broke all the records at the time. Djokovic has since gone on to break a bunch of his, but Djokovic is amazing. I'm not, you know, he's not my guy, but he's amazing too. But it's been fantastic watching him. And so we've traveled. I mean, I, we've seen him at the French open and we've seen him at Indian Wells in Canada.

[00:34:36] We've, I, I think I told you in my, when I was turning 50, I had tickets to see him in or to see, you know, to go to the Cincinnati open. And I live in New York, right? Not Connecticut, but nonetheless, not exactly close. And it was going to be the next day. And so I was supposed to travel out and Westchester County airport. I don't know if you're familiar, if you remember it from, maybe you came up to New York a few times. It doesn't do well in the rain. Yeah. So it was raining.

[00:35:05] And on my birthday, right. It was all excited. And the doll and fed were going to play. And they're on opposite sides of the drop. And so I got in the car and I, I drove all night, 13 hours. I had most like eight diet dues. And I mean, just, just to get through it all and got there to watch him play. And it was just fantastic. And I drove back the next day to see him in the final at home. Cause I didn't have tickets to that. So it's sort of a, it was like a, a crazy rise and fall of watching his career.

[00:35:32] And I kind of feel like he started in his career when I started PepsiCo in terms of sort of showing up. Yeah. And it was kind of this parallel for a long time about, wow, watch this, this guy. And it culminated funny in 2022. When we retired, we got tickets to the O2 to the labor cup. And we went to England. It was kind of our, you know, retirement gifty for ourselves, if you will. And lo and behold, that was his retirement from tennis. And so we got to see that live, which was awesome. And Andy and, you know,

[00:36:02] Rafa and Novak were all there. And so that was really a cool kind of capstone to the whole thing. But I really, I always appreciate it. One of the reasons I like Fed is I always appreciate, you know, someone who's got super skills and yet who gives back at the same time. Right. And who continues to try and learn and ends up is a sponsor for the sport or for the field. Right. So I've always tried to be a sponsor for, or an ambassador or whatever you want to call it for IO, for OD, for talent management now.

[00:36:30] And Raj was always that for tennis. And so that's kind of why. So, so kind of connected and feeling with him. You know, some people call you the Roger Federer of IO psych practitioners. Who does that? Who does that? Come on. In, in, in small circles, you know, small circles. Okay. But well, you, you've been, I mean, it would be, it would be criminal of me to try to distill down your involvement with

[00:36:57] PSYOP or with the conference board or with like all of these different organizations. I know you teach at Columbia and, you know, you're doing so many things, but like, what does that meant to you in your career? Like how, how has that inspired you and how has it kept you like, you know, engaged with the field? Yeah, I think, you know, I, I wanted to be engaged since the very beginning. Cause I, I sort of believe in a couple of things. And one is, you know, as you learn and grow, you give back. Right. So I, you know, I've had a bunch of mentors in my career and Warner Burke was one of them.

[00:37:27] He was my doctoral advisor and I worked for him for nine years. And, you know, he was always writing and sort of creating theory for the field and teaching as well and consulting. And I loved his classes and that's what kind of turned me, you know, into the space. And it was him talking about, here's the theory of, you know, social psychology, here's Katzen Kahn, whatever it is, you know, here's what social. I saw the Lewin and Burke model. I know, right. Yeah. You got it. And here's, you know, here's what we think about leadership. And then he would talk about how he worked with NASA on that very thing. Right. Right after challenger,

[00:37:56] they called him in or how he worked on Smith line beach, him in the merger there and how they created a model. And so I always loved that he could both bring the science to it, but also share in work as a senior consultant, you know, driving change against what we know. And he would then share that back to other people so they could see it could be done. Right. So one of the things I see a lot of people, you know, early in their career, they come out and say, Oh, I'd love to do this. You know, I'd love to break into this one area and do this kind of thing. And I think that's all super, but,

[00:38:26] but it's hard to know how that's going to work until you've had people that can share with you. What's the reality, right? So if you're putting what's high up and presenting on 360, I've always tried to present on what we do wherever I am. And so that's kind of one piece of it. I also want to inspire people to be in the field. You know, I believe in the field, like I'm what we would call an OD mission driven, right? So I believe in the work we do has a positive impact on the field, on people in organizations and leaders in the organizations themselves.

[00:38:54] So even though talent management's about segmentation, picking the people that are going to, you're going to place your bets on it's differentiated. I mean, John Boudreau and I have had many debates about like, you know, if you, if you had a hundred dollars, you put it all into one hypo or a hundred liters, right? And a hundred liters is the, you know, $1 each. That's the OD version. Talent management's $100 on the one person you're placing your bets on. Probably don't want to do either or, right? Totally. But that's the fundamental issue between TM and OD. And I kind of feel like, you know,

[00:39:23] even doing TM work, I still want people to know what works, what we've seen work, what hasn't, you know, if they're struggling with potential, as we talked about, or struggling with something to me, you know, articulating what I've learned, crystallizing it into an article or a presentation. It's really good for me. First of all, just from a memory point of view, right? Like, but also like a talking about and sharing and that excites other people. And I've heard over the years from colleagues from other companies or, you know, say, text me on LinkedIn and say, Hey,

[00:39:52] we met 10 years ago. And you told me, you gave me like a half an hour of your time to talk about business and people ratings and PMP, right? Two ratings. And we've been implementing that for years. And I just want to tell you it had an impact. I don't even remember this conversation, but nonetheless, I'm glad I could. And so that's the kind of stuff that, that motivates me, you know, sharing back and trying to make the field better and organizations better by default. Absolutely. Well, Alan, do you want to join me in Cole's corner? Sure. Of course.

[00:40:22] Welcome to Cole's corner. All right. Let's start out with some rapid fire questions. If you weren't doing what you're doing today, what would you have done with your career? Yeah. That is a, that is a good one. I think I would have probably tried to go into some other type of science. So maybe, maybe computer science, maybe some sort of analytics. I probably would be out of a job now, depending on what I chose. But,

[00:40:51] but I've always been kind of attracted to science. And I was, I was writing code back when code was like, you know, basic and, Fortran. So I do. And I still write SPSS code myself. I still write my own syntax. So I like code. I like data. And I like being able to create things, you know, create models, create programs. So that's probably where I would have been. Nice. What's the place you've never been to that you'd most like to go and why? Never been to, to China.

[00:41:21] You know, I would love to go see different aspects of that, of that part of the world and, you know, great wall and various things. There are lots of structures and just a different culture completely. I know it's probably challenging now, but, but I would love to get to the other side of the world. The farthest I've been is, you know, Australia, New Zealand and Turkey on the other side. And so, and actually I've been to Moscow too. I've been, I've been to Russia, but, but I still, China is one of those places that is so unique and different. I'd love to, I'd love to go and see it. Nice.

[00:41:51] The other thing I need to do, by the way, at some point is go to the Fiji islands and find the one that's in the James Bond movie, man with the golden gun. Like I'm a big James Bond fan. And that movie, which has never been the biggest James Bond movie. And the planet, but Roger Moore was my guy. Originally Sean Conner, obviously he's the best. And Daniel Craig is really great. But, but I would love to go to the Island. That's Scaramanga. The man with the golden gun has, he's got these big towers and a laser comes out. That was always kind of a kid dream to go find that Island. And it exists. It's out there.

[00:42:21] You have to get there by boat and plane and everything else. But, but one day we'll do that too. Absolutely. If you were a character in any book, TV show or movie, who would you be and why? Captain Kirk. There you go. William Shatner. Yep. Big, big fan of the original Star Trek. The rest are fine, but grew up on Star Trek and just, you know, boldly go. I mean, he's got some characteristics. I'm not sure I'd want to emulate, but the, you know, the learning, the, you know,

[00:42:51] resilience, the adaptive nature, the strategic thinking, the energy, the passion to do the work, to believe in going to places where nobody's been. Right. And having kind of people respect him and live up to that and, and sort of go in first and always be the charger. Captain Kirk's my guy. Well, I'll give a preface. So I've got one big question for you, but the preface for this is most guests that I bring on, it is like pulling teeth to get them to share anything idiosyncratic or

[00:43:20] interesting about them as a human being. You, not at all. And you're, you're just like a wealth of these. And so I've got a question for you. I really think you're going to like this question, but I think you're going to like it, which is if you had to construct the plot for a zombie movie that has never been made that you think would become your new favorite zombie movie, what would the plot be? That's never been made. Is the, is the tough one call because there's a, there's hundreds and hundreds that people wouldn't even be aware of.

[00:43:50] But yeah, I would probably do a really cool zombie boat on a cruise ship. Oh, because there's been strained. People can't leave. Yeah. There's been one or two weaker ones, but it's never been done on a, on sort of a solid high-end version. And you know, one of the things that I always do is think about where I am and what would happen if a zombie attack happened. And my team, some of my team, like I think Lori probably remembers this conversation in some of our team joke meetings, if you will,

[00:44:18] like sort of in the team room when we're sort of relaxing, I would say, all right, if the zombies attacked in here, how would you get out? Now, some people do the same thing. I've heard them do it, but they ask about terrorists, right? I mean, they say, what if something happened? And certainly time periods where things like that have been dangerous for companies, but I always think about it kind of, you know, it's fun with zombies and, you know, where do you go? So you look for the escape routes. How do you do that? And the thing that's always cool about zombie movies in general is trying to

[00:44:45] figure out how you survive in a space that doesn't allow you to just run away. Right? There is a correct answer. You're supposed to take the arm off the chair. You're supposed to fashion it into a state. You're supposed to start stabbing the zombies in the head. Yeah. So I would love to see a zombie in a cruise ship. I've read, there's actually a couple of books I've read where it happens, but I haven't seen a movie like that yet. So if Brad Pitt's out there and wants to do, you know, World War Z2 or Romero's unfortunately dead, but if there are people out there, hey, that's a, that's a plot one could come up with.

[00:45:15] So you told me in prep for the podcast that you're a big zombie movie fan. You're also a paperweight fan. Yeah. So I collect glass paperweights from around the world and both current and historical. And this is one that actually I got, it's Pepsi Cola one that I got from, you know it was when Chris was there, Chris Rotolo and Laurie and all that. And the team was still there. And you know, I think Gina was there and Gina Seton and Jim Scrivani was there. And I mean, there's a lot of people, Rebecca Levine.

[00:45:45] And they got this for me, you know, for a birthday present. And so it's, it's, I love the idea of, of just, the miniature world in glass tubes, or again, it's another one of escapism, right? It's sort of like, I don't know, maybe what would I do if I was inside a glass ball? I don't know. Right. But like, I don't want to escape from that, but it's more, I love the, the fact that, that artists back into the 1800s, even, and even earlier, but starting in kind of the classic period, had figured out how to, to create miniature worlds, right.

[00:46:12] And miniature pieces of glass inside enclosed glass that just tell a story or have a pattern, or it's just cool. It's like the spiral. Some of them are like spirographs. You remember those as a kid? Yeah. Those inside a weight, or maybe there's characters or maybe there's storylines or, or views or vistas or whatever it is. That stuff really fascinates me that people, a have the skill to do that and be, you know, it's, it's sort of cool to look at. The other thing I'll tell you, Cole, is that Janine told me if I'm going to collect something,

[00:46:42] I can't collect cars because I have too many in the yard. Right. So we can't do that. So collect paperweights there. They're fine. They fit in the shelf, you know, all good. So that's what I've been doing for, I think my first one, I got on a trip to Smith Klein beach in my stop at Harrods in London at the airport, the Harrods store on the way out and got a Scottish paperweight in 2001. And it's been like that ever since. So I could go get them in different places. Nice.

[00:47:08] Whether you're a payroll pro or an employee wanting to understand your paycheck better, we've got you covered. Tune into it's about payroll for expert insights on payroll trends and compliance, or check out it's about your paycheck, the go-to podcast for employees looking to understand their pay and rights. Two great shows, two great hosts. Listen now, brought to you by work defined where payroll meets clarity. Well, let's do some,

[00:47:38] what am I reading? Sure. Pull up the first one for you. You'll notice a theme very quickly in these. So this is an article from a sub stack post by a lady named Melissa move Martinez. It's called who decided you weren't high potential, a critique of how we identify and develop talent. And so she goes through, kind of lays out the scene for actually why you do need high potentials,

[00:48:06] some of the logic behind it. And then she talks about some of the measurement problems. She references Dr. Thomas tomorrow for music's book. Why do so many incompetent men become leaders and how to fix it, which has been a very popular book. But really the kind of the meat of the article is where she identifies two problems with how we do high potential programs. The first is that the program lives inside the program itself. It's, it's the quality is typically set up to identify someone as a high potential.

[00:48:36] So results driven, self-reliant execution, focus, all of those types of things that, that there's kind of negative externalities, let's call them to some of those qualities. And that being one problem, the second problem being a little bit less in your face, which is the damage it does to everyone else that are not identified as high potential. And, and so I, I'll pause there and just say, how did you react to, to this article?

[00:49:06] And, and I'm assuming in your career, you've never come across these arguments before. So how is it as a leader in this space, have you talked about potential within the context that, you know, not everybody is one and not, and, you know, sometimes that some of the characteristics of a human to get great results also have some of these negative externalities. Yeah, they're all, they're all great points in there. And I don't disagree with, you know, her points at all, but a couple of things. So one, you know,

[00:49:37] she's taking it from a kind of singular approach, right? So again, I'm, you go back to systems thinking and bigger perspective on TM and you building an architecture. So first of all, the science of potential, if you were applying that, as we talked about, it's going to correct for bad managers, for bad leaders. Like in other words, there's feedback, there's elements of the model around collaboration, how people see you and EQ related items and how, how well you respond to people, how you connect that will show up negatively. If you are driven too much in those negative,

[00:50:06] in those bad ways, right? If your derailers are too high or too ambitious or too aggressive, that's going to show up. Now, whether a company pays attention to that, it's a different issue, but it's going to show up in data. If you do a good job on the data side, as we talked about. So that's kind of one thing, you know, just because it's bad to be ambitious, you know, I mean, I even said unbridled, that's not good, but that's why you use data to kind of get a holistic picture. And that's exactly why you do it. The other thing I'd say about that piece is, it's really important. And we've written about this call.

[00:50:36] And I think I've told you, it's like the Humpty Dumpty article we call. You can look up Alan Church and Janine Wachowski, Humpty Dumpty and find it. It's the, our approach to the alternate nine box. And it really is this idea that, and from everybody I've talked to over the last couple of years, it's resonated. Organizations have something that's called potential in their systems, right? Everybody has their own implicit version. Every leader, manager, when you ask them, but whatever it is, it's this thing we would call designated potential. It's what a company has. And you can't ever change that, right? I mean, like that is,

[00:51:05] they're going to have a designation on you, a label, call it label potential, whatever you like. The company is going to have that regardless. They'll change what your label is, but they will have something. You can't say to them, I have the better answer. That doesn't work. They believe what they believe. If they believe you're a hypo, they're going to believe it. Our job is to give them data based in science, based on kind of a holistic perspective of the people that says, here are the people that you love that our data says are great. They do well,

[00:51:34] they do all the things we want and people like them. They like working with them. They're collaborative. They're strategic. Great. If you have a lot of those people, develop those people, continue on your plan. That's fine. The issue is you love these people and their peers and direct reports hate them, or they don't show up as strategic or they're overly ambitious and they're super bold. They have all Tomas is a narcissistic personality, you know, things he talks about, right? All the negatives, those people, I don't care. You want to call them high potential. Great. But I'm telling you, they're going to derail and they might derail your business, not just themselves.

[00:52:04] And so if you want to keep those people there, your call, you own the town call managers. Like we don't, we're the scientists, right? We're the social scientists. We're going to give you data. You decide what you do with them. And if you want to try to fix those things or develop them against those things, great. That's what I'd recommend if you keep them there. But the other thing it does is say, we've got some people that we think are fantastic from the data and you don't like them. Like you think they're average. Why? Do you not know them? Are they not like you? IE white male, whatever, right? Are they, what is it? Are they biased? Are they,

[00:52:34] did they have old tapes, right? Did they fail 10 years ago? And everybody remembers that one thing, whatever it is, you're missing good talent there. If our data says they're good. And so that to me is the way you work the nine box and potential, not just you assess everybody and spit it out. And that's why my reaction to AI and potential is, is what it is. Cause like, yeah, AI will spit out a list of people and it might be the best list ever. If you gave it all the right data and parameters and tools, it still doesn't have judgment. Yeah. And so it's going to give you the best list of names. And you might say,

[00:53:04] these people are great. And these people are not for these reasons. That should be the answer is a thoughtful approach to both the data and the perceptions and experience, not one or the other. So that's how I address that whole thing. The second piece. Yes. I've certainly heard, you know, having a high potential process makes everybody. I was waiting for this part. Yeah. And we've written about this too, but, and certainly we had this debate of PepsiCo and it's, it's really the transparency debate because, because basically most companies,

[00:53:33] even if they don't say, if they don't have a formerly articulated high potential framework and process, they have a list. Everybody has a list. I had a colleague who went to Google after he retired from PepsiCo in my first couple of years, went to be head of, head of learning, I think at Google. Right. And before he retired again. And, and I remember asking him, so, Hey, Paul, what, what's that potential like there? And he said, everybody's a high potential, but there's a list.

[00:54:04] Right. And so, you know, and I don't know if that's true now, I mean, that was years ago, but what, you know, everyone I talk to in companies all the time, I mean, whether it's the, you know, the actual clients or other people and colleagues, just in general, their companies have a list. And so the issue, it's like the performance management thing. You can't get rid of it. You can't not do performance management because you still have to differentiate to make choices. If you're going to pick people to promote or to develop, and give them extra time with the CEO and whatever it's going to be, you have to choose.

[00:54:34] So you're going to have a list and you're going to make decisions on that list. And you are going to have people see that and that's it. So the question you really have is how transparent do you want to be with that? And how rigorous do you want to be with the process behind it? You know, that's the sort of answer there. But what I will say is, you know, 85% of the people are not hypos, right? 85% of the company are not. And you do have to have back to my OD point. And this is where I disagree with Boudreau, right? This is the a hundred dollar debate. I would tell you,

[00:55:04] maybe it's 50 bucks for the, you know, everybody and maybe so everybody gets 50 cents in the a hundred, right? Or whatever it is. And maybe, maybe it's 50 bucks for the handful of five people you really want, whatever it is. You need both. You need talent management for the few, I call it right. And you need organization development for the many, and you need to offer development for those people, career tools, feedback tools, right? I mean, good performance management tools. You need both. And I think that helps ameliorate the issue between they only have, and they have nots in terms of companies,

[00:55:34] right? If you've got really robust development tools and feedback, then the only difference on being a high potential is you get moved around more. We'll have to bring John back on the podcast and have the hundred dollar debate at some point. Yeah. Well, it'd be fun to do it together. If you ever do those, that would be fun. That's what I mean. Yeah. We've had that debate years ago. I don't know what he'd say now. He probably would agree with me more now, but nonetheless, it was entertaining back when he was doing, he was writing his book with Ramstead. So he and Pete were doing that book together. We had them both on to talk about it. Yeah.

[00:56:03] The talent shifts work in PepsiCo was one of the Northrop Grumman and PepsiCo were two of the original firms that he was exploring it with. The two of them. And so he did some like pilot work with us. So I remember like in some workshop where the PepsiCo HR leaders were doing what they're supposed to do and figure out the strategic stuff and all that. John and I were sitting in the background and debating TM versus OD. It just got entertaining. So I've done classes for him and over the years. So it's been fun. But yeah, it'd be interesting debate to see where he's at on that now. Absolutely. Well,

[00:56:33] let me hit you with the next article. I've got, I don't want to cover all of it, but there's one particular point I want to get your perspective on. So this is a recent personnel psychology article called, A Meta Analysis of Antecedents of High Performance Work System Use, The Role of Firm, Strategic and Institutional Environmental Forces by D.C. Hugh and some other authors. And what they talk about going back to kind of Mark Houselid's high performance work systems that we've had him on the podcast to talk about it before.

[00:57:02] Like what are the antecedents that cause organizations to adopt some of these systems to create kind of the right and McMahon's model of strategic HRM for the firms. And so some of the various studies suggest that, you know, the environmental forces don't actually play as much of a role in the adoption of these tool or these systems, but rather kind of institutional internal forces to a firm.

[00:57:29] And so I want to just pause there because that's really where I wanted to pick this up with you, which is it seems like there, you've used the word talent management a few times. And I think that is kind of what you might call the successor to what they call high performance work systems that many organizations, it just kind of came under a new name. And I find that there's a little bit of homogeneity at many firms for talent management practices, especially, you know, top firms in the country for how those are adopted.

[00:57:59] And it's sort of agnostic to environmental circumstances. And we're in an environment where the environmental circumstances are changing rapidly. And the question I have for you is, do you think that is wise or do you think we should be doing more experimentation with high performance work systems or talent management to incorporate this dynamism? Because basically this meta-analysis found that firms aren't doing that and probably shouldn't be doing that. But I wanted to get your perspective on it in particular.

[00:58:30] Yeah. So I think, I mean, first, you know, if you, if you go back to the Berk-Litwin model, which, you know, I'm like trained in for 10 years of consulting originally and all that, the number one factor in the model is environment, external environment. And Warner believed firmly. And that was all I do too as well, obviously at this point, that the external environment serves as a catalyst for change and for everything else you do in the organization. So you have to take it into context. And, you know, that's, that's just a reality. And companies that put practice in place,

[00:58:59] even if they're best practices with no attention to what's going on, whether it's internal or external problem, it could be against your strategy, mission, vision too, right? Or how your leaders behave. It's just going to be a process that maybe doesn't work too well and doesn't meet the needs. So, so that's sort of one thought out of the gate. I think environment's always important. Now that said, you, you said the sort of magic thing, environments changing rapidly, right? Well, 1980s, you know, Peter Bale talked about the environment changing rapidly and he called it whitewater,

[00:59:29] right? So if you, if you go back, OD people will tell you. And one of the sort of jokes that we all have in OD is that the opening article is companies are, are facing increasingly rapid change from their environment. Right. You could have said that in 1980. You could say it today. So, so it's hard for me to argue that a, you, I think it's more true today, just to be fair, more true, maybe different factors, maybe right. Different types of factors.

[00:59:56] I don't know how much more aggressive the changes. Maybe it's faster. Maybe it's more technology driven. Maybe it's more global. Sure. Maybe more, you know, all that. But I think that's just a reality of organizational life. Nothing is exists in a vacuum. So that's sort of pay attention to it. Yes. But I'm not so worried about it being worse. What I would say though, is this goes back to what you and I talked about earlier. I don't think the practices themselves are really bad. They work, right? We know most of these things work. They've been kind of, you and I were joking about this. What's the same?

[01:00:26] 360 and, you know, surveys for that matter and performance management at some level and identifying talent, however you want to do it and developing people through 70, 2010, right? Experiences and mentoring and training that stuff works. I mean, it's sort of part of the science of the field. And I don't think you need to change that. What I will say though, it's the idea of the future capabilities. So if you're going to start working with people to make them high performance, like it's not just going to be what makes you successful today.

[01:00:54] You need to be thinking about how much they're focused on other factors. And one of the best predictive items, if you will, that we use in 360 and with all clients, and it was at PepsiCo too, is this idea of how much you scan the external environment and bring in outside trends, issues, insights into your strategic thinking. That is one of the best predictors of potential out there for senior leaders. And it's kind of learning agility at some level, right? At some level it's even motivation drive because you're actively

[01:01:24] looking. And a lot of the leaders that we give feedback to that's an outage and they're not seen as strategic because they never talk about anything except what's in front of them. And I will say a lot of my, the leaders I gave feedback to at PepsiCo over the years, that was one of the key differentiators too. The people that were go through any, like the drivers at PepsiCo, which was a key to their culture. As you well remember, the issue was they would drive through any wall. Our people will go through a brick wall. Yeah. It might be the wrong brick wall, right?

[01:01:53] How do you know it's the right brick wall? How do you know it's even a wall? And that's where this extra layer of the ability to take some percentage of your brain and think bigger, think outside, think creatively, figure out what's going on, look ahead, spot trend, bring that into your strategy. That's I think how you should be doing it. And it's okay to say, we're going to do feedback the same way. That's okay. But are you getting feedback on the fact that you do that? Right. That's sort of how I play that together. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well,

[01:02:23] let me, let me hit you with the last one pretty quickly. I suspect you guys are friends, but I don't know this for a fact. So let's, the last one is called the performance problem. Alan Colquitt. Oh no, Alan very well over the years. Yep. Probably known in 20, 25, maybe 30 years. Yep. Alan friend of the podcast. A lot of the people that we've mentioned today have been on the podcast before. It might need to bring Alan back on and his coauthor. Cause they just released a book. Yeah.

[01:02:51] I saw that article is talking about. Yep. but essentially what, what this article discusses is, is, you know, this common belief, well, performance management system, we all know it has wards. It's not really working. Um, but he, he introduces that there's this concept called the wicked problem and a wicked problem. Isn't like a typical problem. It's complex, interconnected, resistant to tactical fixes. And, and these, these things, it's not just it's, Oh,

[01:03:21] it's a little flawed. Oh, it's just the scale. Oh, we just haven't configured the software correctly. It's actually a more kind of damning criticism of what's going on. And so what, you know, what we need to really be doing is kind of doing a wholesale look at how we're looking at the performance problem itself. And I'm assuming they're making suggestions about how to do this in their book that they're selling yada, yada, yada. Um, but I wanted to get your perspective on this. Do you see performance,

[01:03:50] the performance problem as the problem that as Alan states and what is, what are your thoughts on this? Well, I think it's funny. Um, because I, you know, like I said, I've known Alan a long time and we've talked about PMP when he was, you know, in his various places over the years in his career. Um, and I, I've led PMP at PepsiCo and multiple redesigns too, during my time. Um, honestly, nobody likes performance management, not even the HR people that lead it. Okay. So I don't know anybody, maybe Alan does.

[01:04:19] Maybe he can tell me. I got to jump in here. I knew this guy who's like starting a performance management firm. And the other day, and I was like, why? It's, it's just one of those areas. That's no win for anybody because, um, nobody likes doing it. Really? Companies always think it takes time and energy. And employees are never happy with what feedback they get. And they certainly aren't happy with the rewards that go with it. So, you know, all these things about, um, you know,

[01:04:49] taking out performance ratings and, um, you know, going to different cycles on pay versus performance. I mean, all these things that were hot a couple of years ago. Yeah. And then you end up doing it anyway, right? You still have to have differentiated pay or you can't, you can't pay everybody what you want to pay them. And you certainly can't pay everybody what they want. So you got to differentiate one way or another. Um, and you got to give people feedback. We know from classic IO theory, if you don't give them feedback, they're not going to course correct. Right. So, you know, there's important things to it, but the practice, nobody likes it. And I'll tell you,

[01:05:18] I redesigned it so many times because somebody would say some senior HR leader or line leader, it's too complicated. Performance with a purpose wasn't the end. Oh yeah. But that was, that was sort of a, that was a broader strategy for sure. I'm sorry. I had to throw that. Yeah. That's a broader strategy. That was more around the business performance and having a good impact on the world. But, um, performance management, it's like, you know, okay. One rating is no good. Too many people fall in the middle. All right. Two ratings. Okay. That gives you more room, but everybody still kind of falls within a range.

[01:05:48] I remember being told, let's go to five ratings because that's better than three. Sure. And everybody uses the middle three. All right, let's go back to three. Then everybody uses one. All right, let's go to seven. Everybody uses five, right? The human nature is nobody wants to give the high ends. And so what do we do? You follow GE and force rank. And then people are really unhappy with that. So, you know, you say, all right, well, I don't want to just rate their attributes. I want to rate performance. I want to be objective. Okay. So you have objectives. Well,

[01:06:18] people hate writing notes because there's this whole issue of, do they change or not? And are you allowing them to change? And when do they change? And do you account for circumstances in the environment, things that happen? And should you measure for that? And do you pay people if they failed, even though the environment changed on them? Right. I mean, it's all, you can't win Cole. Like you can't win. So there's no perfect PM in my mind. You have to have the system and you just have to go with the best possible one. You can to drive, you know, performance in the culture you have and recognize you're probably

[01:06:47] changing it every couple of years to see if you can make it better. And it won't, but it'll drive a difference for a little while, drive some interest, but you just have to have it and you have to live with it. So I guess that would answer the question. It's the performance issue itself, right? At a big level. But I'll tell you, it's the related topic is why doesn't succession planning work? Yeah. Well, why doesn't succession planning work? I mean, I just did a conference board session on that the other day for one of the councils. And, you know, the bottom line is it's not that we don't know,

[01:07:17] you know, just in performance management, it's not that we don't know how to measure performance. We don't know, we don't know scales, what are good, what scales aren't. We know how to give feedback is important. We know all that in succession. We know differentiating talent is important. Using science is important. Having a system to give you the data at your fingertips for discussions is important. Knowing how to develop people is important. People still do it, right? So they, they'll go in a meeting, they'll chat, they'll put them on a list and they never go back to it. It's an execution problem. It's the same thing with development too. It's, it's fundamentally,

[01:07:47] if you're not doing a good job with performance management or succession or development, it's because you're not executing some of the stuff you're building, right? You get the front end, right? Get the science right. Sure. But even if you do that well, and it still doesn't work, it's because you're not executing. Cause if you do it well and you execute, it should pretty much work. No, that makes a lot of sense. Well, Alan, it's been fantastic having you on as a guest. Is there anything you want to talk with me about today? Well,

[01:08:15] I guess the first question I have for you is why did you come up with directionally correct? I mean, I've used the term, I, and Peggy Moore, my, you know, one of my first CHROs at PepsiCo use it. And we use a lot in the team, but it's been the euphemism for, for in a way, like there's no statistical significance here, but it's in the right direction. So we're okay with it. And that's fine. And the practical world of science and companies, because they need some help if there's nothing there, but why did you pick it? Well,

[01:08:45] first of all, and so when we started with me and Scott Hines, who was my co-host at the time, and we, we always, it was, it was kind of like a multi-level joke of sorts. Okay. So the first, like the surface level is, you know, a lot of kind of like what you guys were saying is a lot, a lot of stuff you put out into the world. You know, we, we talked about Lauren McIntyre, Melo Bosch. She always used to talk, there's a work and then there's C work. And sometimes you have to put out C work just to get the job done. Sure.

[01:09:13] And C work is usually directionally correct. Got it. Okay. You know, it's a joke at that level, but then there's kind of like a more like darker humor side of this, which is like, think about things like we've been talking about today, like the criterion problem. Yeah. There's some of these like insolvable problems that we have from a measurement perspective that we're always trying to get to perfect measurement. And we always know that there's a true score plus the error equals kind of like classical test theory, right? Yep. The real score.

[01:09:44] And the reality is when you get really deep into the space, you, you, you can go one of two directions. One is you just kind of become a nihilist where you're like, we can never know anything. And I think that's completely unproductive or the other direction, which is, Hey, perhaps we can just directionally correct us as good as we're ever going to be. Right. Got it. And, and so I'm much more in kind of the happy direction. You know, you know, it's, it's just my coping mechanism, I guess you could say. Yeah. Well, it's funny. I that's, I mean,

[01:10:14] totally get it. Um, I'm with you on that. I mean, you know, there is no, people want the answer to things, right? I mean, corp, you know, people in corporations, leaders, they always want, you know, the bright, shiny object or the single answer, right? Whatever it is. And the latest tool and the latest fad is going to solve my potential problem or whatever my performance problem. And, um, you're never going to get there with something simple. And so, you know, you can get close, right? And you can get better and you can get more science involved and you can get on the range.

[01:10:44] So I, I totally aligned to it. It's just interesting as a, um, as you as a data guy, right? I mean, so I've met, and I'm sure you have too. I, and I know this is because of your background in IO too, but I've met analytics people over the years, especially as the idea of analytics went from like, people like us just doing it on the side to whole functions outside of HR, even people who started it. Like, yeah, outside of even the HR function. Right. And, and that's dangerous, but I,

[01:11:13] I have a challenge with, you know, values, free analytics and, and context, free analytics. And so the analytics people over the years I've dealt with, who don't have that HR IO background, they just come out with an answer and they are a hundred percent confident in their answer based on the data they have. Yeah. But it's like, I, you know, they probably have a little bit more humility. I don't rail against it as much as I used to, but that was one of the early themes of the podcast is just like all

[01:11:42] these people who think they're too smart and they just keep, you know, sharing things with a level of confidence and lacking of humility that I think is just obnoxious. And so it's, it's, it's unhelpful to the field. Yeah. And I think, and internally, I mean, if somebody comes back and says definitively that, you know, something is, is connected with something else that may be in the relationship may be there and you may feel comfortable in your significance levels. Right. But you're missing the context of how all of that happened.

[01:12:11] You're missing the OD aspect, the social aspect and to your point, even environment, but also just leaders and other behavioral variables you can't pick up. And so you think you have a much greater answer than you do. And the problem is that, and this was true back when big data was the answer before AI, right. And I remember that. And, and, you know, analytics was before that and Y2K was before that. Right. I mean, like let's face it, but, but the answer is always from the emerging trends in data and tech,

[01:12:39] that this will be a better solution guaranteed because of science and data. And I just think, you know, our field, this is why I do a lot of what I do too. It's making sure that people know what they're doing, what's under it, why it is what it is and what questions you should ask. Like one of the things I do in my TM class at a teacher's college, you know, it's a graduate course on strategic talent management. The very first night I talk about OD versus TM, of course, but I also show them a picture of the thinker. And I say,

[01:13:07] the one thing I want you to get out of this class is not necessarily like what I think of potential or whatever. 360 works this way, or here's how sleets work in succession. It's, I want you to think critically about whatever they tell you in organizations. And whenever anybody tells you about the answer, ask about assumptions, ask about the quality of the data, ask about what's going on, because that's the skill that's going to serve you way beyond the current trend of something. Absolutely. Yeah. I know. One of the things I think about is like, you got to know both sides of an argument, right? And so I, I,

[01:13:37] the subscribe to the notion by the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, which is he, who only knows his side of the argument knows little of that. And I think it's just kind of a good dictum to live, live. But Alan, you, you've been a fantastic guest today. This has been a long time coming. I really appreciate you joining. If people want to learn more about you or your organization, where can they reach out? I think the simplest thing is to do it on LinkedIn, honestly.

[01:14:06] And ping me there or email me directly. I mean, it's, you know, it's not hard. It's Alan Church at maestro consulting firm.com. It's easy enough, but, but I'm all over LinkedIn and other places like this. So anybody who wants to find me, sadly can probably find me pretty easily. Absolutely. Well, you've been listening to directionally correct a people on like podcast with your host, Cole Napper and today's guest, Alan Church. Thanks for joining me, Alan. Thanks for having me, Cole. I know. Thank you. Thank you.