Some Goodness Podcast - Episode 2
===
[00:00:00] Richard: According to Clear Company, performance statistics show that 98 percent of organizations believe performance management is necessary, yet less than two thirds say they have the right approach to it. We're back for part two of our discussion with Al Montserrat, where he'll provide tips not only on performance management, but also hiring, firing, and more.
[00:00:25] Welcome back to Some Goodness, where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips to help aspiring and up and coming leaders maximize their impact. In this episode, we cover part two of my discussion with Al Montserrat, partner of Korten Capital and a seasoned board member and CEO.
[00:00:43] We are working through Al's Getting Back to the Basics list. Let's dive back in. So let's talk about two on your list. They qualify as getting back to the basics, but they can be challenging. Right? 1 is let's talk about performance evaluations. What did you mean by that?
[00:01:01] And why did that make your short list here?
[00:01:04] Al: If there's 1 thing that I am most grateful for in my career. It's the fact that my first serious job was at Anderson Consulting, uh, now Accenture, and the focus, the emphasis, the investment they made in people development in mentoring, in coaching In training was the best and one process they had that was outstanding was their performance validation or their coaching conversations process and from day one, you learned that it was there to help you.
[00:01:43] It was not there to get you fired. I think a lot of companies only write detailed performance evaluations for people that are on a performance plan. Right. And never actually write good performance evaluations. And at at Anderson it was well known, it was well understood that they were going to be tough.
[00:02:01] They were going to always include things you did not do well, and especially early in your career there's a lot of things that you don't do well. And they were going to be very critical. Right. There was this radical candor around the good and the bad, but with a lot of focus on the bad, on the areas where you need it to develop.
[00:02:18] And the whole premise was that the sooner you were aware of those things, and the sooner you could start working on them, the more quickly you would progress in your career. And so you were always looking forward to getting a performance evaluation and you were always looking forward to learning from it and understanding how you were going to, what you needed to develop and how you were going to develop those skills.
[00:02:38] And so that focus that emphasis and that belief in that tool as a positive tool was a very strong foundation for my career. The other thing the company did really well was teaching people how to write them. What was proper, what was effective, what were the things you should point out, why you should point them out, and how you should help people through showing them what they didn't do well, what the right way to do something was, and then putting them in a situation where they could show that they had learned how to do that.
[00:03:08] So, a lot of things that they did that in the environment that they had were easier to do. You know, I lived in that model, whether at Accenture or in the company we started, after Accenture, I lived in that model for a good decade. And then I arrived at a company that did not have a culture like that around coaching conversations where they were seen mostly as negative.
[00:03:30] Nobody wanted to get a detailed one because if you got a detailed one, you knew that it was the setup for getting fired and I was shocked at that. And I was, you know, not shocked at how little professional development happened because of the absence of such a tool and using it effectively. And so what I would encourage everybody to do is to always have a good model for performance evaluations be very honest and transparent in them.
[00:03:55] And if you're on the receiving end. To accept them as radical candor and not try to avoid them or worse, I've had senior people work for me where I gave them a, an honest and transparent and candid performance evaluation. And then I actually got back three times the content I had written with all the excuses and rationale for why, I was wrong.
[00:04:16] And and so there's, there's three things you can always do with feedback. You can ignore it. And that's actually not the worst. You can excuse it all the way that is the word, or you can actually accept it and act on it, and recognize that somebody else has another point of view or perhaps more experience and is trying to help you, right?
[00:04:35] Not hinder you. But that's that's my belief on coaching conversations and how to use them positively.
[00:04:42] Richard: That's great. I love that perspective. And certainly, in our experience, you know, this idea of performance review or performance plan, it is very negative, right? We do a lot of work with leaders and part of that is building in a consistent cadence of coaching.
[00:04:56] And that requires having some tool or framework to assess where their people are, right? So that not. You know, you can manage them out, but so that you can develop a coaching plan, a training and development plan to up level their skills and to work with them to get to the next level. And I can't tell you how many times when we'll have these conversations with the leaders and they like, hang on Richard.
[00:05:22] If we say, I'm going to schedule a coaching call with my person, right? They're going to be all nervous and think, oh, I'm on my way out. I'm like. Yeah. How did coaching turn into such a negative term? And so, we had to just be careful in, in some of our client work to say, well, maybe we, we at least for now, we call it something different, right?
[00:05:43] Because there's some baggage with performance review or assessment or coaching conversation. Yeah, but I like the idea that you bring up that you got to be intentional right about having them and it's not just negative. It's not at the year end. Right? Yeah, it shouldn't be only driven by H. R. to drive, whether you get bonus attainment or not.
[00:06:01] Right? It's more about skill development and performance improvement
[00:06:06] Al: and another important principle that we always had and that I was taught it at Anderson was nothing in the coaching conversation should be a surprise. Positive or negative. One thing I always tried to do was, along the way, any given day at a meeting, if somebody did really well, or if somebody did some activity, performed something in an exceptional manner was to immediately go and give them that feedback.
[00:06:31] It's not, wait, for three months or however long until the next coaching conversation to tell them about it. You tell them right away. And if you actually make a note of that in the coaching conversation that you're going to give them in three months. By the time the three months are over, the six months are over, you've got the coaching conversation written.
[00:06:47] Uh, same thing with bad. If somebody does something that's, that's negative, that they should not have said, they should not have done, that was performed poorly for whatever reason, uh, you should always immediately bring it to their attention. You don't wait until, six or 10 months later to say, Hey, remember back in February you know, that, that doesn't work.
[00:07:04] Nothing in the coaching conversation should surprise the person when you're having it. That's great
[00:07:09] Richard: perspective. That's good. Well, along with kind of performance evaluations comes your next topic, and that is recruiting, hiring and firing are, you know, the basics we need to maintain or get back to in some cases all in the spirit of building the best possible team, right?
[00:07:25] Give me your perspective of what comes to mind as a leader that may be getting promoted, uh, over a new team, or maybe hired in over a new team.
[00:07:33] Al: Sure, for me, that the first step is always walking into any team or any organization. There are two levels that I pay the most attention to, or try to pay the most attention to.
[00:07:46] The first one is my direct reports. And and assessing them very quickly, assessing them as to whether they are the individuals that I would hire for the role that they have. And historically, when I've taken over a new team, it's been fairly consistent that I ended up turning over about 50 percent of the team. Not everybody, usually there's no need to turn everybody over but usually it's been about 50 percent of the team. And then a few times of the 50 percent that remains, I've switched people to a different role because they, they might have been the right person, very competent, very capable, very motivated.
[00:08:21] But they might've been in the wrong role. And so ensuring that everybody that's on your direct team is somebody who you would hire into that role. And it's a question that I would recommend you ask yourself every year, at least about your direct team, because things change very quickly, especially in tech and somebody that was good for you.
[00:08:41] For a specific point in time may not be good for a different point in time, or somebody may lose their motivation, their energy, their enthusiasm over time, because they may have achieved other goals where they may suddenly have other interests. And so it should be a continuous evaluation process as to whether those are the right people for the right roles.
[00:08:58] And for the direct team, it's very important because number one, you need them collaborating and engaging with each other, and you're always thinking of building the best team. And number two, the people that report to them and from there onward, Look at those people as a reflection of the leader and the smart people will quickly know if there's somebody on that leadership team that is not competent, that is not the best person for that job, and then that becomes a negative reflection on the lead.
[00:09:25] And so making sure that first team is the best team it can be, and that you have the right people on that team is very important. And then the next level that I believe is extremely important and I always try to spend time with, and it's also something that I learned early days at Accenture are the first level managers because those are the people that are hiring, retaining, training, developing, and that need to fire.
[00:09:50] The frontline team, which is the team that is meeting with customers, with partners, it's the team that's developing the actual code, it's the team that from an HR perspective is engaging with the rest of the team, they're the ones that are actually, having the most direct contact, the individual contributors are having the most direct contact with all of your customers.
[00:10:10] As per our prior definition. And and so you want to make sure that those two teams are solid. And then the way things work out is if that first line management is solid, there'll be hiring smart people. And if your first level team is solid, then it just begins to work, both ways and you end up with a very solid team.
[00:10:26] And so digging into those two layers is probably the most important thing you can do. And then in terms of the process itself, for me, the most important thing is about fairness. I've been on teams where I have peers that, I didn't feel we're pulling their weight, or I didn't feel we're the best person for that role.
[00:10:44] And then it demoralizes me because I don't think it's fair that I'm having to perform a lot better because somebody else may not be pulling their own weight. And and so when I look at teams that report to me, I always look at that. I don't want to make sure that everybody, that there's that fairness that's there.
[00:10:57] That's not only perceived, but that it's real. One of the more painful things I've had to do was fire a large number of people at the same time. And it was because these people, not their fault but these people had come in through an acquisition and their competencies, their capabilities were not what the new company needed.
[00:11:18] And and so I had half of the team. Working really hard, traveling extensively, spending 10, 12 hours at customer sites every day doing work and then half the team in the office playing ping pong, because they didn't have the skills they needed to actually go do a lot of the work that was now required and and the fair thing to do.
[00:11:39] Was, to, to reduce the team and hire people with the right skills. And it was painful. It was a large number of people. And it was unfair, to them, but for fairness of the rest of the team and for fairness of the company and the company's customers it was the right thing to do to bring in people that could do the job.
[00:11:58] And so fairness is important, also quantity versus quality. A lot of people say if I need to do that, I'm going to need, 10 people. And the truth is, two really good people can get more done than six, bad people. And so when you're hiring, always think about quality versus quantity.
[00:12:15] And then go back and think about when I hire this person for this role, if it's somebody that you already have in a role, there's a there's a short, easy read called top grading. We've probably talked about it before. But it's I think that book lays out a lot of the great principles for hiring, recruiting, firing and just maintaining a team.
[00:12:34] That's
[00:12:34] Richard: a that's a yeah, a great recommendation. And I, I love your layers. So as a visual thinker, I'm already thinking about, oh, I'm going to make a graphic about that. That's good. You've been gracious with your time. And I know we're almost out of time. The last 1 on your list, I want you to touch on just real quickly.
[00:12:51] Because I think it's so helpful for especially newer leaders, and that is developing your own personal board of advisors. So just explain in your words what you mean by that and any tips you have.
[00:13:02] Al: Yeah, I mean, the, the, just like a company, any organization, if you're starting a company, if you're starting a business, you want to go out and you want to find advisors for your business.
[00:13:11] I've always believed in this concept of having a personal board of advisors and and over the years there, there's probably two or three people who have been permanent, members. And then there are people that have joined or left depending on the circumstance and what I was doing at the time whether it was professional, or personal things that I had an interest in new hobbies.
[00:13:32] You go find an advisor that that, that understands the hobby and or professionally people that have gone through a similar experience right before you're going through it, or that you trust to make the right wise recommendations. And so I've always had this list of personal advisors and I'll call them at different points, whether it's because I'm making a specific decision at work or I'm looking into some job, new job opportunity.
[00:13:55] Or I might be looking to relocate to a new place but I have a depth chart of personal advisors and they joined the board and they probably never know that they were on the board but they're there. And and like you said earlier, people always want to help, always want to share their experience.
[00:14:10] And so having that kind of intentional, as you also said earlier, but having that kind of intentional process towards a personal board of advisors is something I'd highly recommend. That's great.
[00:14:21] Richard: That's such good advice. I need to rethink my personal board of advisors. I don't think I'm touching on all angles that I could.
[00:14:28] So, so I'll definitely take this as a challenge to go look at that for myself. Well, let's wrap up. Certainly we shared lots of goodness today in terms of getting back to the basics. Lots of practical ideas that we can go make sure we go implement, but, outside of business context, personally what's one thing that that you found valuable recently or fun, right?
[00:14:49] A book, a gadget, a new social media account, a new hobby. Yeah. Let's just take it personal here for the close.
[00:14:56] Al: I was not prepared for that one, but fortunately I, I did, I did something yesterday that I've started doing and and it's something that I would highly recommend, especially for people like us who are very committed to their jobs, who work very hard and who oftentimes what you leave out the quickest is exercise and and exercising, getting the body in motion.
[00:15:22] Body that stays, the body of motion stays in motion. And and one of my dad's best friends at 80. He was like 82 or 83. He went out and bought a Corvette and and I, and I asked him that's insane. Like why, like why on earth would you go buy a Corvette? And he goes, well, he goes, I have a really hard time getting in and out of it.
[00:15:43] And the only way I'm sure I'll continue to be able to get in and out of it is if I exercise every day. So it motivates me. It motivates me to go to the gym and just get on the treadmill and walk, for some time and do some lightweights. And and he lived to past 90 and, and was doing some kind of workout every day.
[00:16:03] So I think exercise is important. And the one thing that I'm really enjoying that I started doing recently. is playing, some people call it padel, some people call it paddle but it's a mini tennis in a somewhat of a racquetball type court where you use the walls, and it's a really good exercise, it's a lot of fun.
[00:16:21] I play with some older friends and some newer friends that I've met, and so it's a good exercise, I try to do it a couple times a week, and it's just a fun way to get some activity in.
[00:16:31] Richard: That's awesome. That's a great a great suggestion. I'm gonna have to go look it up. Maybe that's the next pickleball because I missed the pickleball wave.
[00:16:37] And so I'll have to go through that. I do love staying active and exercising. Well, thanks, Al. You spent more than the expected time with us today. I think it's going to be valuable for you. Always love catching up with you and I really appreciate it. Thanks Richard. Appreciate you inviting
[00:16:53] Al: me and thinking of me and look forward to the next one.
[00:16:56] All right. Thank you.
[00:17:01] Some Goodness is a creation of Revenue Innovations. Visit us at revenueinnovations. com and subscribe to our newsletter.
