You don't know what you got until.........

Had lunch with a friend. Her bank recently hired a new senior trust person. Unfortunately, the new hire has already soured on many of their colleagues. Why? My guess (based on some obviously biased comments) was that the person was not senior enough. It didn't take long before the team discovered that their leader wasn't experienced in certain areas and lacked skills in others that they were expecting to be there in a senior person. In other words, they weren't impressed which could spell trouble.

When you don't have a clear superiority in skill or knowledge or experience then it is extremely difficult to be in a position of power as people will start challenging your judgement/decisions/authority and eventually start scheming to undermine, override or supplant you. Simple "Lord of the Flies" scenario. The thing in Asia is that you usually won't know what hit you until it's too late. Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger. Your enemies are cunning, silent and often 2-faced and rarely confrontational. Art of War.

This is mismatch is not uncommon. Different institutions, different clientèle and different roles lends to giving different experiences. Previous job titles can be misleading. Some Trust Managers are more RM-types, dealing with clients is their strong suit. Others are more trust documentation/administration oriented types, handling paperwork is where they excel. It is difficult to slot one type into a role more suited for the other type. The number of years of service does not always have a direct baring on scope and depth of their ability. Not every 10-year veteran has the same skills or knowledge. Some people have been doing the same job for years, resulting in no growth or expansion of skills in other areas. It doesn't mean they have no value, it means their value lies in that specific job only. The key is tapping what that person has and whether it is right for the role you envision. My friend's problem is they hired a person who can't cover all the bases. That person may be great at certain things but now how do you deal with the things they are not good at?

The key is knowing where their deficiencies are and compensating accordingly. Fluidity in roles is often a better solution than rigid job descriptions. This is very much like team sports. You have a basketball point guard who can run fast and dribble but is a terrible shot so you have them run with ball and pass off to a better shooter. If you continually and stubbornly try to have the guard shoot (and miss) you will doom the team. You'll eventually have to replace the guard and have under-utilized your shooter. You may mistakenly forgo your shooter too because you think it's him that is also not producing. To the casual observer, Yao Ming is great basketball player. Wrong, Yao Ming plays the center position, he is a great center. There are many positions or roles on the basketball team that he does not do well. If Yao is on your team, you need to recognize the things he cannot do or does not do well at and find complementary players. Don't try to sell him to internal or external parties as a great basketball player as you will raise false expectations and make his weaknesses so much more glaring.

Where you can, you find players to fit the scheme. When you can't, you change the scheme to fit the players you have. Of course, whoever is doing the hiring has to intimately know the scheme and be able to evaluate talent. That is often the weakness companies (particularly smaller bank trustees or independents) where the decision-maker is often not a trust person, they do not understand the scheme. They hire the wrong person to run (or fill important positions within) the trust business and the domino effect flows downward. Let's say this new trust hire was a poor marketer....then hire a marketer to handle client facing tasks. Or if they have no local technical experience, then hire a local trust lawyer, etc.. This is called having a game plan. The sooner you have one the better. Some never do, destined to repeat this mistake over and over again.

I once carried a nice lady on the team until her retirement. Starting out as assistant in the Jurassic era and slowly (more like begrudgingly) promoted to manager by the time I got there. She was crippling shy and incomprehensible in front of clients. She had no sense of management whatsoever. She would wilt under the pressure of having a full plate of tasks that her peers had. She hated certain aspects of her job. She was 40. No doubt she would have been fired if we didn't have the luxury to do something out of the ordinary. I would have paid anyone to take her off my hands had we been stuck to keep her as full fledged manager. I would have laughed had anyone hired her to be a regular trust manager. But she was also one of the most efficient and detailed-oriented persons ever and could do certain parts of her job blindfolded. We reached an accord to keep her in the back office. Restricted her role to certain tasks. She accepted a static pay and grade package over the last 10 years and had little to do except her job as we narrowly defined it. Worked out great for both parties as she held the fort, freed up others to concentrate on their other tasks, passed on her "good" skills to her assistants, minimalized her liability to the company and made her a happy camper. She was like a designated hitter in baseball. She couldn't run, she couldn't pitch, she couldn't catch. But she could hit well. We made her the designated hitter. She produced. The team won. It could have been a long road trying to find someone who has the right combination of ability to run, pitch, catch, run and hit.

Far too often in HR and building a team business is you don't know what you got until:

1. The person is on the job. All the lies and exaggerations on the CV reveal themselves. Character flaws come out. Almost never is botching a hire a factor in assessing management or the HR function. Does anyone keep records on hit & misses? Or do they just file another personnel requisition form? Hiring the wrong person should be a punishable offense for the offender.
2. The predecessor has left the job. All the things you took for granted reveal themselves. Things that weren't taught now need to be. Good HR is also about retainment an not just about recruitment. Good help is sometimes truly hard to find. Losing the wrong person can be crippling and more far reaching than you can image.
3. You underpay someone. There are usually reasons why people are willing to accept lowball offers. Yes, economics are a factor in today's market but more often than not, these people are in some way, flawed and are passed over by others for a reason. Needles in haystacks can be found. There are those that win the lottery. Are you really that lucky? This is not to say that aren't good at some aspects of the job. It is that you were expecting and perhaps counting on a Grand Slam tennis player but will find out that they can't play on clay or grass. If they are good, they will leave as they will get a better offer one day. If they're not, then you got what you paid for. There are no bargains, just trade-offs.
4. You hire someone at above market. People with consistently high pay grades usually can do something special. Forget the 1 year, one-hit wonders, but if the guy/gal has been pulling $X for several years, then they got something. There is a difference between overpaying (not getting your money's worth) and paying a premium (to get more than your money's worth) and that boils down to your talent assessment skills. I often hear people balk at even paying market, and the thought of going above market never occurs to them. It's unfortunate that managers are too often reluctant to challenge preset budgets or "wheel & deal" to get good staff. Meeting payroll budget is more important than finding a shoe that fits. They rather live with what they can afford and live with the callouses or pain than seek out the better, forget about a quest for the best. Some are just blind to the opportunities. They wouldn't recognize talent if it came up and bit them. I would be sympathetic to those very small organisations where meeting the next month's rent is the goal, but is there any excuse for any of the larger firms? Far too often, they have a bargain hunting mentality and they immediately give up and say we can't afford him/her. Can you say the sirloin you have is good until you've tried the filet mignon? You may find out you don't even have sirloin. Try it, you're allowed to make mistakes...remember no one is counting. Signing David Beckham to your team may not bring championships but has anyone said it wasn't worth it? It's not always goals scored but also intangibles like skill sets, experience, marketing, credibility, leadership, work ethics, increasing the professionalism of your team, raising profile of your organisation, etc. that could take you places your organisation have never been. Unlike Beckham, we are not talking tens of millions here. Very often, the difference between an average trust person and great trust person is a matter of a few thousand US$ per month. I've seen entertainment expenses higher than that. Read the part about American football coach/manager Sean Payton and his recruitment tale here (#2 story): http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/peter_king/10/04/mmqb.week.4/index.html It appears a mere 25% budget increase in one single salary offer changed the fortunes of the organisation. Now that's a bargain. Forget the personal sacrifice aspect, do you even have such "visionaries" who would suggest such a move doing the hiring for your team? Or did they just come back with someone who came in under budget?
5. You study team sports. I strongly recommend that your HR people and senior personnel decision makers spend a weekend at some offsite facility and "analyze" (not watch but read all the books, and writings of managers of) team sports, like American NFL football or North America NHL ice hockey or NBA basketball, European UEFA football/soccer. These organizations' success depends greatly on the skills of the people they put on the playing field. Aren't we the same? Every year, there are batch of young collegiate graduates/juniors that get drafted onto your team. Don't many of us use new recruits? Every season, there are players that get traded/transferred/poached from one team to another or retire or get released or change positions on the team. Don't we have the same people moves? All these personnel transactions are done within the constraint of team size and team budget. Don't we have headcounts and budgets? There are a limited number of superstars like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James to go around, so how do teams compensate when they don't have a superstar at certain positions? The managers have to be good judge of talent, balance team chemistry as well as produce wins in addition to balancing the books except team managers often get fired for their bad transactions. Look closely at the critiques of the strategies and techniques of team managers that have been successful and also those that have been abysmal. In case you think it's trivial, the sums that a Cristiano Renaldo or Alex Rodriguez command may exceed the payroll of more than a few small banks. The value of Man U or the Dallas Cowboys run close to $2billion, not Citigroup-sized but how many trust businesses are worth $2billion? Sustained success like the New York Yankees organization shows that it can be done and done by having a formula for acquiring and retaining talent, not luck. Finding the formula that's right for your organization is the goal. Lastly, remember no one wants to play for or support a dysfunctional team as they lose more often than they win. Your intermediaries are watching your personnel moves. Your competitors are watching your personnel moves. Your staff and prospective hires are also watching.