nfl, recruiting, strategy, round, irrelevant, Toby Elwin, blog

The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy (round 2)

The NFL draft reveals all things wrong with talent acquisition and recruiting. Looking at how an NFL team drafts provides terrific insight into what you and your company can improve upon. I wrote in the last blog, The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy round 1, a sample list of the assessments an NFL team uses to evaluate fit: 40 yard dash, Bench press, Vertical jump, Broad jump, 20-yard shuttle, Three-cone drill, 60-yard shuttle, Position-specific drills, Physical measurements, Injury evaluation, Drug screen*, The Cybex test, The Wonderlic Test, game film* [work samples], scouts and coaches who attend games, interviews*, and recommendations* That list, like your interview and recruiting strategy, is intended to project future performance, but like all the great financial advisors tell us, “past performance is not an indication of future results”. The asterisk next to some of their tests …

change management, bottom up, top down, Toby Elwin, blog

Change management bottom up or top down

Classic change theory: leadership drives change and leadership needs to commit for change to work. Seems to make sense, but in reality leadership is irrelevant. The organization’s ability to change is dictated by operational units and employees, not leadership. The reality: culture eats strategy for lunch. Your workers dictate change and strategy. Leadership doesn’t drive change, total quality management, Lean manufacturing, or Six Sigma. None of it relies on leadership. Change relies on culture and in the case of culture, leadership is along for the ride and rarely in the driver seat. The reason your organization changes fail is you continue to believe change has to do with you. Organization change management has little to, and everything to, do with them. Organizations change for their reasons, not yours, not the stockholders, not the competition, not the tax payer. Capsize to …

Borg, Competing Values Framework, Toby Elwin, Star Trek

Competing values drive your organization out of business

Change very often comes in multitudes and magnitudes, rarely in order and procedure, but change resistance seems to come in constant waves.

A Competing Values Framework will identify your current state organization strength and desired state.

Organizations that understand competing values and the impact of culture can train and manage and cultivate people who can grow with the organization. The Competing Values Framework identifies the culture people are working in, any disconnect, by team or business unit, to then create strategies that align to the culture needs to challenge the culture.

What to keep and what focus to adjustment needed to survive or to excel.

VC’s missing formula, discounted cash flow, human capital, alchemy,

The VC’s missing formula: human capital discounted cash flow

Accounting assigns of assets and liabilities and financial management’s current or pro forma valuation both rely on art and interpretation more than any professional standard, science, or law. What valuation models measure human capital ability to meet financial and strategic business goals? What formulas are used to measure human capital contribution to profits? What are the human capital risk factors you justify when you build your financial statements and projections? Organization valuation usually involves four areas: Physical capital, Financial capital, Intellectual capital, and Human capital Both accounting and financial management start with familiar industry formulas to measure physical, financial, and intellectual capital. The departure from formula comes with asset classification and subjectivity of inputs. You most often witness this in the beta, or the numerical representation of risk, used in the discounted cash flow formulas on glitzy, initial public offering, road shows. …

Red Sox, Yankees, competing values, Toby Elwin, blog

Competing values drive organization resistance

Organizations, like people, develop.  A start-up has different organization qualities than a 25-year-old, Fortune 500 company.  As operations increase in scale and scope a start-up faces new pressures.  Each increase in production, staffing, or market share increases their operating risk. What worked as a start-up company with a staff of 5 and $500,000 in revenues can no longer manage the same way with a staff of 85 and $2.5 million in revenues. Merely doubling the numbers, however, risks compounding the challenge of planned, intentional human capital growth to meet financial and intellectual capacity. Competing Values is Not Myers Briggs Frustration over organization culture, values, and communication many times comes down to values and interpretations: enter the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessments that seem the rage. The MBTI assessment focus on the individual and the individual to convey and manage both …