Leerom Segal - The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers

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First published by Portfolio / Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Segal, Leerom.

The decoded company : know your talent better than you know your customers / Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein, Jay Goldman, and Rahaf Harfoush.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59184-714-4

1. Organizational behavior. 2. Employees. 3. Corporations. 4. Big data. I. Title.

HD58.7.S435 2014

658.3'14dc23

2013039082

Leerom

My father, who made me into who I am today, and Peter Cordy, who has been a second father to me.

Aaron

For my loving families, both at home and at work.

Jay

For Bianca and Sophie. You make life worth Decoding.

Rahaf

To Jesse, my partner in crime and the pictures to my words.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Dear Reader,

On behalf of my coauthors Aaron, Jay, and Rahaf, its my pleasure to welcome you to The Decoded Company.

Were living in a time of accelerating change and increasing uncertainty in the workplacejust as much as (or even more than) we are in our personal lives. A global war for talent is already under way and we firmly believe that its victors, the companies that survive and thrive over the next decades, will be the ones that reject the status quo and redefine the very basics of their approach. To borrow from Einstein, todays problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them. The way we organize, communicate, train, and make decisionsthe technology of managementis the very thinking that has created todays managerial challenges. Unbelievable advances in consumer technology have changed almost every facet of our lives over the last twenty years, and yet the rickety technology of management that most managers use today is older than they are.

The Decoded Company argues that the consumer technology revolution sparked by the Internet has only begun to invade the workplace. These advancements have come primarily in the form of user centered design, consumer devices brought into the workplace, and the adoption of cloud-based technologies. That said, the marketplace has largely missed whats at the heart of why companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have outperformed their counterparts. These companies have understood how to leverage data as a sixth sense, how to personalize their customers experiences with that data, and how to completely embrace the open and participatory nature of the Web. We believe these ideas are universal and can be effectively leveraged by any company in any industry, with both their internal and external stakeholders.

The Decoded Company encourages organizations of any size to reject the notion that their people are interchangeable resources and to invest in systems and processes that are action oriented, people centered, disruptive, and sometimes radical. We believe that audacious and exponential ideas trump incremental thinking. Youll be provoked into making big bets based on real data, to experiment early and often, to systematically codify learnings, and to allow urgency to conquer your fears.

If you accept the challenge, the benefits of decoding your organization include increased agility and speed, evidence-based decision making, decreased bureaucracy, and the ability to predict problems before they occur. By creatively applying technology and data analysis to all of your internal processes youll be able to understand and optimize systematically. Decoding delivers personalized training at the precise moment that its required, resulting in increased consistency and performance in everything your organization does. The true advantage of decoding your company is for it to become a center of gravity, attracting and retaining the best talent your industry has to offer and unlocking crazy-high engagement from them.

Decoded is the right philosophy for you if youve read enough strategy books to know that you dont need a shiny new strategy but a better way to orchestrate your peoples efforts and execution. We all have the same questions whenever we pick up a business management philosophy book: Will this be relevant to me? Can I apply these methods within my team? Will these ideas translate into my industry? Will it have a real material business impact?

Wed like to respond with a question of our own: Do you work with people?

If so, you probably have endless meetings that you wish you could avoid. What if you could respond efficiently to patterns instead of to exceptions? What if your meeting agenda was informed by evidence and the right information you need to make an effective decision?

You probably also find yourself buried in e-mail threads that get longer without solving any real issues, and certainly not with intelligent prioritization. Is e-mail your primary collaboration tool? What if you could get a dynamically prioritized list of goals and then capture, socialize, and reward the best ideas?

You probably suffer through some form of performance review that does nothing to improve performance. There are probably times when you wish you had some coaching or feedback but have to operate in a leadership void. How certain are you that your people are clear on their objectives? Do they have a daily feedback loop that they can see? How clear are you on yours? What if you could operate in a constant state of clarity that showed you what your people need and helped you deliver it right when they needed it most?

The solutions to these problemsthe tools we will introduce throughout this bookbecome the basis of your center of gravity and enable you to attract, activate, and lead an incredible team. Thats the first step. Your next objective is to operate with speed and confidence. At its core, strategy is about moving resources toward opportunity and away from risk. Execution is about increasing predictability and consistency while minimizing risk. These were competing priorities in the data-poor world in which management technology was forged. Minimizing risk required structure, formalized processes, and policies that introduced and exploded bureaucracy. Maximizing opportunity requires autonomy to make evidence-based decisions and orchestrate teams with the agility to respond to rapid environmental changes.

We no longer live in a data-poor world, but we continue to use the management tools designed for one. If youre a manager, youre probably sensing that the world gets a little faster every day, and the degree of uncertainty is accelerating. The techniques and tools youre using to manage your people can barely keep up with the challenges youre now facing. The sad part is that weve solved this challenge in the consumer world. Amazon, for example, has developed an entire toolbox of clever ways to learn about you, adapt to your preferences, and separate you from your hard-earned dough. Why havent we applied these learnings to the world of work?