IN THIS EPISODE:

This week on The Growth Whisperers we discuss the Job Scorecard from Brad Smart at Topgrading – and why it’s so important for successful hiring.

Over our many years working with companies we’ve seen great hires and bad hires. One thing we’ve noticed is that leaders are often not clear enough upfront about what “great” looks like in a role.

The Job Scorecard determines what success will look like in a role. It’s a tool to use during hiring and onboarding AND throughout the entire lifecycle of each person’s role.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles  00:13

Hi there, welcome to the growth whispers where every week we talk about how to build an enduring great business, all the things, you can’t just do one little thing, if you want to build an enduring business that lasts decades or generations, there are so many important things that you need to do. And that’s what we talk about, right here. This week, every week, I’m joined with my co host, Kevin Lawrence. Kevin, how are you doing today?

Kevin Lawrence  00:41

Doing great, Brad, we’ve spent a few hours tonight getting ready for this and, and working on some of the things we’re working on. So I think I’m doing really good. Looking forward to today’s show. It’s a topic I’m very, very passionate about, because I seen how it prevents painful, unnecessary mistakes in our businesses. So we will dig into that will tell you more about that in just a few minutes.

Brad Giles  01:06

Oh, yes, we will. And I’m excited to talk about it as well. But as always, we like to start with one phrase or one word, what’s your one phrase or word for today?

Kevin Lawrence  01:19

My word is full. You know, it’s interesting. I just did we just had our quarterly meeting with our team on Thursday. It was awesome were remote. So you know, we had some, some great plantings on a combination of zoom and mural. And we figured out a lot of awesome stuff, great debates, great decisions, and Janice, our team even set us up with all fun activity, where everyone got sent a little box, they weren’t allowed to open. And we had a Easter cookie decorating contest. Now I might have to contest the results because I didn’t win. But we did have an impartial judge. My point is we had a lot of fun, it was great. And under that came up with some very, some serious things I need to get done in quarter two of this year, which is you know, April through June. I also want to have some time with my kids and my family and friends at the racetrack. And you and I have some goals too. So I’m feeling like I got a lot of priorities. And I think I might have to and before we started, I was just making a note, I might need to pare back on some of my other goals because it’s just you know this that, you know, there’s that phrase, you’re biting off more than you can chew Yeah, so I’m full because I think I’ve over committed is what it is. And I need to adjust that right away. So that I can have an awesome quarter both for myself and for my work and life too.

Brad Giles  02:56

Oh, very good. Very good. So for that self, myself something slightly different. It’s scoreboard. So yeah, so I was reflecting with the football season has started up here in Australia. And this is not soccer. Despite Yeah, some may think this is Australian rules football. And so that started up again, we’re a couple of games in and I was just reflecting Wait a game last week where it ended up being a one point difference. And so let’s say it was about 70 or 80 points for the whole match. There was only one point difference. And it was an arm wrestle the whole way through. And what it made me think is the power and the trust of the school board. And how much that influences the emotions of the crowd. People are standing up and yelling and people are completely trusting in the scoreboard. And then if you translate that back into our business, Do people really trust our scoreboard? You know, they’ve got to trust the scoreboard to be emotional about it. They’ve got to know that what are the rules of the game that we’re playing? And how much do I trust the scoreboard that we watch together? So yeah, that’s what’s on my mind is the scoreboard and you I know you and I have done a podcast episode about dashboards. And this is kind of on the same thing. But yeah, it was just reflecting just how worked up the crowd get because they trust they know the rules, and they trust the scoreboard.

Kevin Lawrence  04:45

That’s interesting, because you often see in companies where people don’t trust the data that comes from the finance team or the operations team. And they spend so much time in passionate debates about the numbers being right or not, and they’re not Be able to focus on the game metaphorically or what needs to be done in a business because they’re disputing the score. And the accuracy of That’s awesome. So if we kind of mashed together our words of the day, we’re going to have a we’re driving for a full scoreboard, and a full scoreboard could be a great thing, because that could be equated to winning. And or it could also be acquainted to building an enduring great company. So today’s show with a full scoreboard as we talk about scorecards, which is the theme of today, and so today, we’re talking with this wonderful thing, called the job scorecard developed and popularized by Brad smart, the author of top grading, his son Jeff did a book called who, as a almost a mid market version of the book that takes that has a slightly different version of it. But really, it’s instead of taking, you know, the generic, typical job description, which is a almost a little, little, little, little, little literary piece, a whole bunch of words to describe, try and describe a human, we do more of a mathematical piece, or an engineering piece, and come up with numbers and facts and data to define the person we’re looking for. And you know, I recently done a bunch of work with over the past while with Chris Mar saw the this the president of top grading, he runs the business, on behalf of Brad smart. And we were doing a session for a group and we were for CEOs that we work with. And I was describing a metaphor, I came up with a job scorecard. And I know when Chris and I were chuckling about it afterwards, but it’s very simple. It’s like, no most job descriptions when we try to defined the spectacular human who is going to create tremendous value on our company. Most of those job descriptions are equivalent to a three year old child’s drawing of a bridge. And they can be colorful and interesting. They just don’t happen to be that precise in helping us choose who should be a part of the job and not. And, you know, this job scorecard that the smarts have popularized, is closer to an engineer’s drawing of that same bridge, and nothing wrong with starting with a child’s drawing, right. And that’s a typical, we know we need a VP of Finance. And we know that they’re gonna have five direct reports and a team of 25 people and blah, blah, blah. So that’s kind of like the child’s drawing. But then this job scorecard is such an amazing tool, we then send it to the engineering department, and have the engineers do a bunch of testing and mathematics and come back with a very precise drawing that we’re going to work from, rather than the crayon sketch. So that’s kind of what we’re talking about today is, is this amazing tool called job scorecard. So Brad, like to ask you like, Why? I know why I love it so much. But why do you love this thing? so much? Like Why is it such an important thing in your mind?

Brad Giles  08:17

I’m gonna answer that by answering, you know, with politicians, you ask them a question, and they answer the question they really want to be asked. Well, that’s an interesting thing. But I’m going to answer a different question in any sense. So worse. So the reason that I love the job scorecard is I go back when I had a business many, many, many years ago, like 20 years ago. And we needed to hire a role. And it was a new role to our organization. And, you know, we had the mindset of let’s get it done, right, we’ve got to get things, it’s about the result, it’s about the completion, more than it is about what took you to get the completion. So in this context, we did what so many other entrepreneurs do, and we said, Hey, what’s the role? What is the title that we need, and then we would go to the job board, so the online job board, we would copy the job advert that we felt was most aligned to what we need word for word, and then we edit it to our language, and then we would post it up and that would be about the amount of preparation that we would do at that point. And it was, it was it got the job done? Because that was our mindset, okay, but it was completely ineffective from that point onward. Okay. So if you say the job to be done was to post an advert, well, what Yeah, we got to post an advert and people applied to that advert, but we missed a crucial step. So the reason that I love it coming back to your question, the reason I really love it. Is that a bit, because it’s a planning tool, that is a tool that we can use all the way through all of the steps of engagement from Hello, my name is bred right through to you’re fired or you’re retired.

Kevin Lawrence  10:20

Yeah. And not only is it something that helps you to define and make sure you actually get the right human in the company. Yeah, it’s then a tool to help you to manage that person to greatness, not giving examples, and people say, Oh, we need to hire a salesperson, well, go find a job description online for a salesperson copy that put an ad for a salesperson, hey, we’ll get a salesperson. And the truth is, you might hire an excellent salesperson. But you might not realize there’s probably 25 to 30 different versions of that salesperson. It’s like saying, it’s like a hunter saying they want to go get themselves a deer. Well, there’s lots of different types of deer. And there’s, and if you’re not aware, you could get one but it’s not the right one. I’ll give you an example. So even with salespeople, there’s inside salespeople, there’s outside salespeople. There’s outsize relationship managing salespeople, and there’s outside hunting salespeople. And there are different types of we’re gonna sample just to build off of that, I remember a key executive that we hired, he was amazing. He was an A player in a different organization. So he came from a big company with that has been around for years that had processes and systems. And it had a sales cycle that was 18 to 24 months. And an average sale that was a few million dollars, after many million dollars after that 18 to 24 month sales cycle. He came from that corporate environment, long sales cycle, big ticket item. And he came into a business that had a two hour sales cycle. And he reported a and a $30,000, average ticket size. And he reported directly to an awesome, but somewhat crazy entrepreneur. So even though this guy had the rate, he was the right type of person. If we had had a scorecard, we would see that, okay, he doesn’t match on the type of sales. Now he’s type 13 as a sales leader, and we need to type 24 because he doesn’t match that he doesn’t match on the type of person that he’s reporting to you. It says like, there’s a whole bunch of things there that he would predictably fail. But if we had done a really thorough scorecard and really thought about the candidate and evaluated him against it, he wouldn’t have been hired. Now again, we had the guy ended up getting let go, he was a wonderful man, I love the guy. He just he never could have he, he would never would have succeeded in that role. And it’s like, you know, yeah, there’s lots of lots of metaphors for it. But it’s just it was a mis educated hire. And we didn’t do enough of the right work upfront to really spec with an engineering drawing of really, who we needed to be successful.

Brad Giles  13:32

And that’s an important point, the, if we go back to the example that I gave, whereby we’re just copying someone else’s job advert, and that’s all the preparation that we’re really doing until perhaps the candidate arrives for an interview, you know, what we’re doing is reducing the chance of a failure by building a job scorecard, a detailed job scorecard that we’re going to talk about a bit further on in this podcast. But isn’t that what we want? Like, we want to have a much, much better chance of being able to hire the right person, I but then they also we want a tool all the way through that person’s journey that we can use to measure their performance and their activities? And are they going according to what we need from this role? Are they performing?

Kevin Lawrence  14:28

Yeah, because we’ve really clearly defined the rule. That’s the point of it. So let’s talk about the first piece, what is it? And then that first phase, it’s about, you know, the engineers drawing what you want. The second phase is evaluating people against that. Right? And if you need the person in your basketball team, and you need them to be at least six foot six tall, well, that’s an important piece of data. And if someone’s only six, one, you know, maybe and I’m not saying you know, we’re not going to you discriminate basically in business, but in basketball, you know, if it’s whether it’s height or an ability to, to do a slam dunk, or whatever the heck it is that they require, the point of it is, is then you can compare them to the engineers drawn. So, so let’s go to that first piece. And what is on this scorecard is we set up front, it still does have some words, but it’s there more words that define specifics that can be measured, versus feelings and beautiful Pro. Plus, that’s a praise, but prose. So, so grunt, let’s talk about the different the key different aspects of it.

Brad Giles  15:38

Yeah, so I guess we’ll start off by saying, we may have slightly different perspectives on it. And that’s okay. But we’re probably within the ballpark together on most things. So in my experience, what we’ve got is, first of all, a set of responsibilities. And so that is, you are responsible for i and b, and c, and then we’ve got the measures of success are the key performance indicators. And that might be you need to increase the sales budget from 100,000 to 130,000. By October 2021, or whatever that might be some very, very specific measures of success that are set in stone that we know exactly what that is going to be about.

Kevin Lawrence  16:33

And those can be operational metrics or KPIs on an ongoing basis, or they can be targets to achieve within a timeframe, like the first year or something like that, but it’s very tangible outcomes that that person will be accountable for.

Brad Giles  16:47

Yeah, and then recruiting points. So that means things that really matter within this role that are intangible in terms of the KPIs, or the or the responsibilities. And then the competencies that this person requires. So competencies, meaning, if they’re a salesperson, you know, they’ve got to have an engaging personality, perhaps they’ve got to have good listening skills, they’ve got to have good customer focus, or good,

Kevin Lawrence  17:26

or first or first or first impression. Yeah, or maybe they need intelligence. Or maybe they don’t. Yeah, and that’s, and that’s why those competencies are so important, you’re defining on these 50 different factors. You can measure human binders, different set, there’s different competency models out there, the one that they have, is excellent, but it’s defining how good they need to be or don’t need to be at it. And it’s picking 10 or 12 of them that are non negotiables. If they don’t have them, they can’t do the job. And those that competency grid, I tell you, Brad has saved me so much. Yeah, because I know about you, I’m a coach, I believe in people, I love people. But even these 50 competencies are color coded. And color coded. If it’s easy to change. It can be changed to some hard work, or if it’s very difficult to change. And when I look at the ones that are red, and they call very difficult to change in my mind, now it’s not changing unless there’s some massive intervention. That’s the way I think of it. That’s not what they say. And so I think of it, which really means to me, Hey, Kevin, don’t be optimistic. If they don’t have intelligence, it’s not going to change. If they don’t have drive, or ambition, it’s not going to change. If they’re not good with conflict. They’ll never be good with conflict. Yeah, and, and it’s a way to keep the optimists in the room or from over being there or the pessimists who say it can’t change. But yet, if it’s a green competency, it’s been proven it can so that the competencies are massively valuable mass. And if I if I could only keep one piece of the job scorecard, you know, I would fight for that to be it because it helps our clients so much again, that’s the spec. That’s the data that helps to create the engineer’s drawing the rating on a scale of zero or for one to five on those competencies. Sorry, I got excited with that one, Brian, that that one is a game changer. It was a life changer for me once I saw that, and I could see why I’d been involved in some bad hiring decisions.

Brad Giles  19:51

But it really is and what’s important is that before you meet any candidates, you’re looking at these fifth competencies and you’re saying, Well, if it’s a sales person in a sales role, and competency number 50, for example is tenacity. Okay? So if they’re not tenacious, like it’s very difficult to change, and they need to be good at that they need to be tenacious to succeed as a salesperson in our organization. So your mapping layer before you meet them, maybe, maybe, oh, no, no, that was an example. I’m not saying they must be across all exceptions.

Kevin Lawrence  20:34

But I’m saying in some sales organizations they wouldn’t have that’s the key. Yeah, if it’s a retail sales environment, that that tenacity, you know, if you know, the ratings one to five is three is a average college grad, you know, as a baseline, for example, on SEO things, like you know, intelligence or other things, but no, like a three might be okay. In them. Now, if we’re running a timeshare company in Mexico, you know, the tenacious tenacity probably needs to be a five, because that’s all hard clothes, high pressure sale. And that’s and the key and the fascinating part about this, the key is getting the team that’s doing the interviews to agree up front. That is critical, whether the hiring manager HR, and whoever else is involved in this to agree because that they can’t agree on this that don’t hire don’t even promote the role yet. Yeah, because it’s ma was if we can agree, the where the bridge is going to cross the river. And, and, and what style of bridge that we want. But don’t put it out to bid yet to the contractors, we need to be clear on what we’re looking for, before we move on. It’s, it helps you a lot down the road. But we will find when we start when people want to hire, and we start asking a bunch of questions. And for example, I was talking to an entrepreneur of the day someone referred to me, and, and we got talking about this, and as I gotta hire a new, you know, a new salesperson. Well, as I’m talking to him, he’s talking about, oh, both sides of his mouth. He’s talking about hiring a salesperson. And he’s talking about hiring a sales manager. I’m like, buddy, you know, I love your ambition. But you need a salesperson and a sales manager. It’s like a difference between an elephant and the most like, they’re, they’re very different animals, and you’re not going to get an elephant most right? You’re not going to get it, you know, you might have a salesperson that could go to a sales manager. Or you might have a sales manager who’s willing to do a little bit of sales as part of their job. But they’re very different. It’s a very different job. It’s a very different jobs, scorecard very different competencies for each of those roles. So you got to be clear, otherwise, you’re going to likely get yourself in a lot of trouble.

Brad Giles  23:07

Yeah, But so many people shortchange the sales manager role. That’s a different podcast, I’ll tell you that I could get in deep into that, because the sales manager is its own thing. But let’s come back. Oh, my god, yes, competency assessment is a key part of it. So we’ve got the responsibilities, we’ve got the measures of success, we’ve got the company competency assessment, there are these key parts that make it more than job description, as some people may have used that phrase, the old job description is going to maybe have a couple of KPIs maybe have a fluffy sentence. But it’s not a job scorecard. Because this digs in so much deeper, and it gives you so much granularity. Once you’ve built the job scorecard when you begin to interview, and maybe even when you write the job advert, because you know, this is exactly the type of person that we need. I and B then from within the pool of candidates that we get were able to understand what will an AI player actually look like? Which, yeah, that’s our goal and a player?

Kevin Lawrence  24:21

Yep, absolutely. So you know, if one of our points here is is is that you know, why you need one? Well, you need one because you need to be crystal clear about what that role is. And the team involved in the hiring needs to be crystal clear on it for sure. Not everyone’s just like what is it’s really a detailed, take the job description and make it something that’s you know, the finance department and the legal department and be happy with because it’s so specific, and not for financial legal reasons, but technical minds would be very, very happy with it. So, you know, in simple How would you just if to boil down? In simple terms, the differences? What would you say, Brad?

Brad Giles  25:07

Which differences

Kevin Lawrence  25:09

between this and a normal job ever doing a normal job description? Oh, yeah. So just to boil it down, we’ve covered a lot of law, how would you boil it down?

Brad Giles  25:16

Alright, job, just normal job description. Purpose of the role. Number one, who you report to, and what your responsibilities are day to day, maybe some KPIs. That’s what I would expect to see in a normal job description. It’s fluffy. And it’s, not as it’s not written in a specific manner. And therefore, it can’t be used as a tool along the way, in the way in which we want to use the job scorecard. Okay, so it’s a bit fluffier, it can really let many candidates through that won’t fulfill the a player obligation.

Kevin Lawrence  26:02

Yeah, and it’s closer to that child’s drawing versus the mathematical we take, even though some of the content might be the same. If you were just to how would you know beef up that normal job description, is when you would shorten down a lot of the words because they don’t help in a lot of cases. But you would add in a level those KPIs are those outcomes, those those those deliverables that first person must have? And then the second thing is you would put in the competency, the competencies and the ratings of those competencies. And those little two major sections that are game changers.

Brad Giles  26:37

Yeah, oh, you wouldn’t get the job description and chocolate in the bean and then read top grading and then build the example. Friday, right?

Kevin Lawrence  26:45

The best thing to do? Absolutely, Brad, although, you know, I’ve seen situations where you can take and pull out of that two page, verbal job description, you can pull, you know, two or three sentences out for the description of the role. And then you can pull out a few things for some key responsibilities. And then the rest, you have to sit down and start debating what is it or what Yeah, what isn’t it? It’s, it’s pretty clear. So as we dug into, you know, and with companies that we work with, you know, and I’ve shared before, like, I demand that our clients use top grading, and that we use job scorecards, it’s not an option. You know, we’ve got two people on our team who are completely focused on top grading and interviewing. So we jet we are We do lots of training on it. And we generally do the interviews for the top two layers of the organization, direct reports to the CEO, and the ones below that consists and some of the roles we get involved in and help with. Because treatment creating a job scorecards work. And after you’ve done a few it gets easy or, and even then doing the proper interview the top and we’re going to the podcast, we’ve talked about that top grading interview. It’s a serious discipline. And it’s worth because all and all the top grading interview is once you get there is you take the engineers drawing of the bridge, and you’re just doing an engineering spec on the human that you’re interviewing, seeing if they can match the one of the bridge with data and facts and who they are and how they work and where they thrive and where they don’t. But it’s you know, 1020 times the data you pull out of them. Almost per hour, you have the top grading interview. Yeah. Which is that is that second piece, so let’s go to so let’s just say we’re gonna, we’ve got a company that we’re talking to her and everything. Okay, you guys, Brad and Kevin, you’re, you’re saying this is the right thing to do? How does somebody get started? Like, when one company approached us and said, okay, we want you to we want to hire you, we want you to help us do all of our job scorecards for our whole company. And, and, and we probably said, No, that’s a horrible idea. it’s kind of like reading. You know, back in the days when we were in school, Brad, and there used to be these things called encyclopedias. You know, these big collections of books, it would be like reading the entire set of encyclopedias or reading every book in the grade that you’re in school, and then reading one exam. You’re gonna fail.

Brad Giles  29:34

Yeah, it’s way too much.

Kevin Lawrence  29:37

So how do we recommend people get going with doing a proper job scorecard?

Brad Giles  29:46

I’m interested in your advice, but your suggestion, your recommendation, my thought is when you have a vacancy. So as a vacancy comes up bid for a new roll or an existing roll, start the process there. And one thing, one very important thing when hiring, we always recommend hiring in pairs. So you would have one candidate, and you would have two interviewers, and part of the job of the interview is, is to discuss this job scorecard before they do the interview around all of the competencies to be able to go in and agree. Yeah, definitely. likability is hard to change, or easy to change, or whatever, in relation to this role. So having a clear understanding, I have the job scorecard for that individual where I’m going to do that, because that’s an urgency in terms of hiring the person, rather than a role where we’re not might not be hiring for someone for three years. So just focusing on the most important things, having two people who are running that process and building the job scorecard for that, and then measuring the person, the people who they interview along that journey.

Kevin Lawrence  31:13

Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s one of things we recommend is start with the active roles. Yeah. And so either it’s the next role you’re gonna hire or promote, because the same process as wire promote required for promotions, promotions have the same failure rate as external hires, contrary to popular belief, same risk, because, you know, with the internal candidates, we already know, and love them. And we forget that there could be big gaps in their capability at that next level that will cause them to fail. So yes, that’s it, that’s an excellent place to start. For example, we have another company that’s approached us, we did a similar project over the holidays, but another company that’s approached us and wants to help with succession of some key leaders and the CEO. And, and so that that’s a prime example. So we’re going to go in and you know, as long as we end up working together, which likely we will, is when we go in, and we will figure out the scorecard for the CEO, it says a substantial, you know, company, so substantial mid market company. So we will do the scorecard for the CEO, that’ll be quite a bit of work to get it and get it right now, thankfully, the CEO is still in the role, and where we did one before where the CEO and sadly had passed away. But bill define the scorecard. And then we can start to evaluate existing candidates for that role against what’s required. Now, the good news that CEO is not going anywhere, anytime soon. So we’ve got time to develop. If they’re developable, developable competencies, we’ve got three, five years to develop the successors to see who can step up and fill those gaps. So it’s a it’s as much as a development process at this stage, as as it is a decision process. Because we’re just going to find, here’s the, you know, the engineering spec of the bridge, here’s this person, oh, they’re missing these components. Let’s see if we can build those into that person. What projects can we give them? What training can we do? So in that case, yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a for the the the hot hires that you have a hot topic. So the situations that are live hires, or promotions isn’t as is the absolute best place to start from there. Once you start to get it and get a handle of the system, then you’ll naturally cascade it somewhere else. But if you do too much too fast, it’ll fall on its face. It’s

Brad Giles  33:37

It’s not gonna work. Last week, we spoke about Joey chestnut, right? The major league eating champion, you cannot, you know, you’re not Joey chestnut, you can only eat so much or consume produce so much so fast. Same principle here, like you can only get so much done. So what’s an another question that someone might ask us? Or maybe thinking is, well, you know, at the moment, we, we use Myers Briggs, or we use a personality assessment, and that seems to produce good results. Why should I consider changing my job description when this current system seems to work? What might be your answer to that? Well, first

Kevin Lawrence  34:23

thing I would ask is, confirm if they’re making hiring decisions only by a psychometric assessment, which would be in some many cases, not legal, and to unintelligent, because that’s not enough information on a person. I’m one of the biggest fans of psychometrics and we tend to use disc which is like Myers Briggs, and enneagram and strengths that comes out of Gallup. They’re awesome. But all they’ll do is if we go into the animal world, say That you’re kind of elephant Lake, or your most lake or your lion lake or your giraffe Lake, or your hippopotamus like doesn’t mean you’re a good one, or a capable one, it just, it kind of categorizes you into some styles, which is helpful. And we know from benchmarking and companies, you know, there’s a certain roles where elephant like personalities do well. And these other roles rely in types to well, or drive. So it’s, it’s directionally helpful. But my gosh, it’s sure not enough to make a proper decision. So on hiring someone. And the second thing I want to ask is temp, temp, tell me, I’d love to see your stats, of what percentage of your hires turn out to be a player’s after six months? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I and that’s probably good that you don’t. Now I would encourage that you do. So we can validate. Because if you’re getting north, which we aim for North of all of our hires, being what we consider an A player, that’s someone who fits the culture very well, and consistently delivers on expectations. If 75% of people that you hire are that after six months, well then stick to what you’re doing, because that’s what we’re trying to get to so. So from my perspective, scorecard sets the framework. And our firm we do we use disc and enneagram, to give us a better understanding of the client. But just because if the say the I’m using animal metaphors, just to simplify it, but let’s just say that was an elephant type profile that some of the highest performers have had in that role. And this person has that same type of profile, because you can do profile matching Yes, assessments. Um, but that, but that doesn’t mean I mean, you know, that elephant might have mental issues, they might have personal issues, they might have, you know, a whole bunch of other things that that psychometric won’t tell you so, but the combination of psychometric to help you understand them better. And then an incredibly thorough top grading interview, gives you a lot of what you need to make the right decision. But hey, if what you’re doing is working, and you’re happy with it, you know, why would you change?

Brad Giles  37:30

Well, do you know, in the olden days, people used to perform on stage and in the olden days, sometimes some people would take tomatoes to that performance, just in case that performance wasn’t that great. So grab your tomatoes, get them at the ready, because what I’m going to say is I psychometric assessment isn’t a job scorecard. Okay. It’s Gosh, nothing like it. And if it was a spectrum, Now, I’m not saying that it is. But if it was, at one end, you might have a horoscope. And then middle, you might have a psychometric assessment, that’s going to give you a bit of a flavor. And then the other end driven by a lot of information and competency measurement and understanding and thinking you’ve got the job scorecard. So yeah, at one end, you’ve got the job scorecard and the other you’ve got the horoscope, because Sure, maybe Scorpios will work better in your sales team. And maybe we can make that correlation. Okay. And I’m being a little bit silly here. So hopefully, you haven’t thrown too many tomatoes. But the point is, they should be advisory as psychometric assessment, they shouldn’t be the sole decision making Gosh, though,

Kevin Lawrence  38:54

that would be absolutely absurd. And that people and some people, and some people might, but that’s, yeah, it just that just tells you personality and communication like with, with it with communication styles. It doesn’t tell you anything, or whether how good they are the different things you need people to be good at. And it’s and it’s fascinating. Now, and then the worst part about interviewing is that, you know, based on research, you know, most people make their decision within about five minutes of where they’re going to hire the person or less in many cases. Now, the problem with that you’re generally judging the person by one competency in the first five minutes aside from attractiveness, which does have an impact on getting hired. Which is not a competency. But the one competency that you’re normally picking up in the first five minutes, maybe to one, it’s called first impression. And the second is the one about their verbal communication skills. So you’re picking up on those two things, generally within the first five minutes, and you’re making a decision now, if they’re gonna be a greeter at Walmart, and welcoming people to come into the store, hey, first impressions super important, right? Or it may be if it’s the host or hostess in a restaurant, you know, first impression and verbal skills are insanely important. But what percentage of the jobs out there? Do you think that first impression is all that matters? Not many.

Brad Giles  40:35

Yeah, I’d say 15 or 20% anymore. DAX?

Kevin Lawrence  40:39

Yeah. Where I’m saying, where’s the only thing that matters? Oh, it will be less than 1%?

Brad Giles  40:44

Yeah, very good. Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence  40:45

Because it’s like, you got to back it up with something. So that’s a problem that most of our hiring decisions it’s based on first impression and verbal communication skills and attractiveness. Well, in most jobs, that’s, that’s less than 1% of the actual job. But it’s a huge port portion of what’s causing us to make our decisions. If we’re truly making those decisions in five minutes, which months, and that’s what most people do.

Brad Giles  41:10

Yeah, so the job isn’t to be an interviewee. Right? So I’m not trying to win a job to be an interviewee and we should exactly,

Brad Giles  41:19

we should have the tool which is the job scorecard to be able to deliver on that. So quick question, who builds the job scorecard? I think we’ve kind of touched on that. But to be specific.

Kevin Lawrence  41:32

When you get the person in the horoscope department who really likes psychometrics and is a fan of elephants. That’s where you get to do the the the job scorecard you get those. And they sit there and they cross their knees and they go Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s how you do it?

Brad Giles  41:50

Or, if that didn’t work, after you tried it a few times who might be the second best person?

Kevin Lawrence  41:57

Generally, it should be the hiring manager with the support of HR. Yeah, yeah. So who’s the hiring manager? Yeah, yep. And HR should be a part of it. Because they’re the HR is meant to master the processes and hold us to the standards and be masters of these tools. And the best HR people are, an HR can’t do it, because they know the job well enough. The HR manager knows the job, but doesn’t know the process normally. And then it should be reviewed by the managers manager. Right. Right. This does a double check in the process. I just don’t that’s my approach right now. You know, and in some cases, then after that, if you’re if it’s a real serious role, if they work, you know, as part of a, you know, a cross functional teams of pieces like that, you might get someone from those other cross functions to take a look at it as well. You know, this is the critical again, the engineering of the bridge before you build it is darn important. Yeah, so getting that right is super important. I will tell you, we debate them. No, we’ll get the people that the manager and HR to draft it, the other their managers look at it. And then you know, in some somewhere that we will debate them, especially for the senior rules. I’m always, always normally part of that. And we debate the heck out of those.

Brad Giles  43:20

Yeah, it’s, it’s so important to not have a piece of paperwork, but to have a tool that you can use all along the way. And if you say, okay, we’re three weeks, or three months or three years into this role, we can look at this and go Yes, I’m confident if the person is aligning with the needs that we’ve got that will be successful in the role so fundamentally important. Yes,

Kevin Lawrence  43:52

yes. So why don’t we talk about let’s just say, Okay, you’ve got it, you’ve got a credit, great job, great job scorecard, using the templates that the people that top grading, and you know, in the book talking, or who they’ve got some great examples and resources they’ve done, they’ve done an awesome, awesome job, make sure that they are getting the credit for this right, we use it, they developed it, and continue to develop it. So you’ve got this great job scorecard, all the key people agree, let’s just say that you’ve then learned how to do a proper top grading interview excavating boatloads of data. And then at the end, you would now go back with data and decide how well the person fits? Do they meet those key things that they need to have? Does our environment match the environments that they have thrived in? And if we go and rate the candidate on those competencies, where are their scores perfectly in line, and where are the gaps things that can be closed are the gaps things that we can live with and whenever When you get someone who’s so passionate about accounting, Oh, we got to hire them. I love them. I love them. I love them. Okay, let’s take a look at the competencies and look at the facts. You can reground that person, or if you’ve got someone that hates them, well, where in the competencies were they out? Where don’t they match? And it goes from a feeling to a fax conversation. So let’s just say we’ve got that. Yeah. And, and, and we, and we hired the right candidate. Now, that’s easier said than done. That’s work. But let’s say we got that. Then there’s, you know, getting them on boarded, and then managing performance. So you know, and I know, this is a passion of yours, Brad. So what now that we’ve got the right, clarity and role and the right person, how does this tool set us up to win going forward?

Brad Giles  45:45

Yeah. Currently, I’m writing a book about onboarding. I’ve done a research project with 1100, CEOs and hiring managers around the world. So yeah, pretty passionate about it, do for at least at some point, hopefully, in the next year, or 18 months, it’s coming along. Well. So to your question, how, what does success look like from the managers perspective, that’s really a central part, which is why the job scorecard is so pivotal between the hiring process and the onboarding process. This is the vehicle that carries us through so there isn’t a supplemental component to this, which is the onboarding plan. But that feeds straight off the job scorecard. Okay, so the job scorecard shouldn’t tell us should give us a direction or a compass on within 90 days, this person will have this level of clarity and just like you’re building a job scorecard to for the role that will help us to understand the hiring process. And forward, the onboarding plan is very much about the first 90 days, because we want to have confidence to fire the person. Okay, we won’t have confidence to fire that person, in 90 days time, legally, because the research that I’ve done almost all let’s say most countries around the world have legislation, which says that you can fire a person, if they’re the wrong person, within 90 days. Now, of course, check with your local employment law expert, okay. But that’s why this 90 day period is so crucial, because we want to have confidence to exit the person if they’re not right, or to even extend that probation period. And so, the job scorecard, it tells us what the person will do, and then the onboarding plan will tell us how good it how the person what the person must achieve within 90 days.

Kevin Lawrence  48:06

So basically, you take that job scorecard and you build the onboarding plan based on that correct of how you’re going to get them up to speed. And you know, what’s interesting, Brad, and I’m excited to see when your book comes out, because, man, do I see the onboarding get messed up a lot? A lot. Yeah, the best, the best, the best companies I’ve seen do it, they have a very, very defined process for that three-month period, with regular check ins, scheduled pieces, and putting the person in the right psychological state to win. And you know, I have a chat with every new executive that comes into the companies I work with that I get the chance to, and say, Hey, in the first three months, listen, learn, we already know you’re awesome. Don’t go and try and prove yourself. Because if you try and prove yourself, you do way too much, way too fast and generally make a mess. The Smart still super experienced people already know that. But a lot of people are so passionate and excited and want to show their value. And, and they just they make enemies and they and they make they create problems in the system very, very early on. And then again, it’s that’s one tiny piece of a proper onboarding. Tiny, tiny piece that can make or break especially an executive role

Brad Giles  49:25

to pick up on your first point there. The really interesting data from the research that I’ve done. 86% of companies have a 14 day or less onboarding process, okay, 14 days or less. But the real magic happens, the real change in impact happens after 30 days. Okay, so that 30 6090 days the companies had that had those level of onboarding processes. That’s where you really start to see that company. We’re saying, this is where the real impact happens. So it’s, that’s why I love onboarding. Because it’s like this, this great opportunity that no one that 86% of people don’t really know or pay respect to. And that’s where the real massive gains ahead, looking forward. But maybe onboarding is for another podcast, like a nice, thank

Kevin Lawrence  50:24

you. It’s my Brad, the key, the key point of this of everything that we’re talking about here is, is that you have this amazing engineering drawing the scorecard of a role, then you can use that to define onboarding and how we’re going to get them to move ahead. All right, last piece you want to mention, and we’ll wrap up here, Brad, is that it’s also helpful in performance management. So when someone isn’t doing well, in their role, you can go back to the scorecard, which of the competencies, are they not thriving? Are they having a problem with? Where is it they’re failing versus Oh, I don’t like them over this, you can go back to the competencies or the core values, and then help pinpoint the issue. And that might help you because just being able to break a person down into 50 different pieces essentially, helps you to point pinpoint what might help them to grow.

Brad Giles  51:17

So to give us a practical answer, to give a practical example of that, one of the competencies is organization. Okay, yep. And so it may be with that within the job scorecard, one of the competencies, so it may be an absolute requirement, like a five, to do this role, you need to have a five out of five on organization. So then you’re going back in a performance management review a year into the future, and you’re saying, I can see why this person is failing, because they really only a two, maybe a three out of five on organization, that that’s the issue here. So that’s how you can use the job scorecard competency assessment, during performance appraisals in the future. It just came interesting idea.

Kevin Lawrence  52:07

I’m working with my daughter on her business bribe, and she’s having a hard time keeping up with some things. And I just thinking she needs herself to get a bit more organized. Right. And that’s something you can learn. But she hasn’t learned it yet. And I got an idea that I might need to share with her. That’s perfect. Okay, so let’s go back to the beginning, really, we’re talking about in today’s show what this thing called a job scorecard developed by Brad smart, the author of top grading, it’s an amazing tool and resource that we are both massive fans on it’s a game changer. And even when I did the book, scaling up and interviewed 50 CEOs around the world, eight of them cited top grading as being a game changer for their business. That’s how I got trained on it. And that’s how I became so passionate about it just because it’s evidence data, it makes a difference. So within that there’s this thing called the job scorecard where you do an engineer’s drawing of what the job is and what great looks like versus a you know, a kid’s crayon drawing, but most job descriptions unfortunately result in that’s the root of it. We’ve talked about why it’s powerful, how it can help you how to use it, the idea that the team that’s hiring needs to be aligned around it. After they meet candidates instead of an emotional discussion. You go back and evaluate on it. And it’s just a very, very potent and powerful tool that helps you to get better people on your team and avoid the pain for yourself and candidates and putting the wrong people in a spot where they’re going to fail.

Brad Giles  53:38

Awesome. Absolutely fantastic tool before you hire anyone. Make sure before you even decide make sure that you build a job scorecard. Alright, so if you need more information on job scorecards, you can visit one of our websites. Geez, that’s the closest thing that we’ve ever come to an advert but

Kevin Lawrence  53:58

that’s that is wow.

Brad Giles  54:01

Alright, so you can find Kevin at Lawrence and co.com You can find myself at evolution partners.com dot a year. Thank you for listening as always The growth Whisperer is Kevin and Brad, we look forward to having a chat to you every week about building enduring great companies. do enjoy your week. We look forward to seeing you next week. Take care Have a good one.