Nuggets On
spotting potential
As we move towards a world where intrinsic capabilities count for more and more, how we spot diamonds in the rough is a capability that will begin to matter more and more. This is as relevant for hiring as for investing. Leaders across disciplines share their insights on how they look for raw potential that can then be honed.
Spotting Long Term Potential
Vijay talks about the role of effort in the context of long-term growth and development. People often get into a debate about whether it is nature or nurture and he makes a strong case for hard work through which people can often make up for significant deficiencies in talent. This is arguably all the more relevant in the world we live in where the half-life of the relevant of talent in a certain area is diminishing with the velocity of change around.
How Army looks for Potential
Anyone who wants to join the Indian Armed Forces as an officer has to go through the Service Selection Board (SSB). The ultimate goal is to select people with Officer Like Qualities (OLQs). Thus, the focus is on hiring based solely on potential rather than experience or academic qualifications. Our digital world is also moving towards potential-based hiring. Hear how the corporate world can learn some lessons from the SSB.
Spotting potential
Judging potential can be a very tricky thing to do in companies. While outcomes are very visible but markers of potential are often buried deep within and one has to look for them with a keen eye. OGQ’s youngest athlete is 8 years old, an indication of how much they are betting on future potential. Viren talks about how they use a combination of metrics and elements of judgment to figure out which athletes to back.
Unlocking the potential
Prakash talks about what sometimes comes in the way of people achieving their full potential. He talks about the importance of hard work (however clichéd it may sound) but also talks about the key element of enlisting others on the “bus”
Backing the best founders
Success of a Venture Investing firm is inexorably tied to the fortunes of the investors they back. Avnish talks about the science and art of how they pick investors and engage with them to drive value.
Backing an entrepreneur
Apart from being an academician, Kartik is also an active entrepreneur and invests and mentors start ups. So who better to ask, how does one pick an idea to back? Kartik elaborates on three main skills he looks at before deciding to support an idea or a person.
More from Kartik Hosanagar EP1
Picking leaders to invest behind
One of the many hats Ravi wears in his professional life is that of an investor. He is a venture partner and invests in young companies. In this nugget, he talks about the five main qualities he looks for in any entrepreneur before backing him and how he goes about deciphering whether those qualities exist in the individual or not. Hint: It is much more to do than your academics or career record!
Hiring for the Digital World
Unlike the analog world, employees and customers in the digital world are at the centre and the organization and processes are built around them. This makes the hiring of employees a very significant task. How does a leader go about hiring someone and what are their markers for potential? Don’t miss the insightful anecdote about The Knowledge test that the London cab drivers have to take and how that is relevant to this nugget.
Picking Founders effectively
Backing the right founders is a combination of art and science. How do you back an entrepreneur who has the conviction around his idea but is also amenable to input. At the stage of Venture Investing, a big part of value creation is often around getting this judgment right on the Founder. Karthik talks about what he looks for during investing.
Identifying and unlocking potential
Vishy talks about what he looks for when he is looking for long-term potential. He talks about the criticality of consistency in performance coupled with an attitude where someone is willing to grind away at a goal. He also discusses the success of academies that have produced a pipeline of talent and juxtaposes that with examples of a Roger Federer emerging from Switzerland or a Magnus Carlsen emerging from Norway.
Markers of Long term Potential
Jay discusses what a “lambi race ka ghoda” looks like in Politics. He also talks about the role of circumstance playing a much bigger role in Politics than in other domains. He talks about how effective politicians stay relevant by appealing to different segments over time as the public sentiment shifts over time.
Assembling an effective team
Vinay talks about how Narasimha Rao picked his team members and think about the portfolio of capabilities in his team. He specifically alludes to the fact that he was self-aware about what he knew and didn’t know and was able to hire best in class talent without feeling insecure. He also talks about how Narasimha Rao brought in diversity of thought across various topics to ensure it was a balanced team.
Committing to a career in Music
Jayashri talks about her chance meeting with Shri Lalgudi Jayaraman and how that changed everything for her. She discusses the faith that he had in her when he asked her to learn music under his guidance and how that instilled a sense of responsibility for her to stay committed to the path.
Leadership Development in the Digital economy
Rich talks about how Google things about spotting potential and about Leadership Development. He quotes an interesting statistic from a piece of research by Corporate Leadership Council. He said that they found that that in 71% of the time people who are high performers were not high potentials but conversely 93% percent of high potentials are also high performers. He also goes on to talk about “Googliness” a term that encapsulates some of the softer aspects of an individual that flourishes inside Google.
Dealing with aberrant geniuses
Alan speaks about how Bill and leaders at Google deal with super-star performers who can have enormous impact given their talent can be leveraged and multiplied with technology. He specifically speaks about what to watch out for as determine if we should put up with the complexity or the toxicity that is caused by the employee.
Identifying and nurturing potential
Sudhir speaks about Judgment, Influence and Drive as the three markers of potential and how the emphasis shifts across these three during the career of a professional in HUL. For the first few years it is Drive, then it moves to Influence and eventually in senior management it is judgment. He also speaks about how HUL thinks about what is a considered a good hit rate with judgment. He goes on to speak about how HUL filters for caliber and character, often two orthogonal dimensions.
Making robust hiring decisions
RG speaks about his experiences from having made around 200 odd CEO appointments in his years as a mentor and as a Board Member. He goes onto say that his hit-rate might only be around 50-60% over the years. He shares some principles around how we can build robustness in hiring decisions and how we can think about experience, competency and potential as we evaluate different types of candidates.
Remote Leadership hiring
Darleen speaks about the challenges in hiring effectively in the remote world. Atul Bhandari, Ritu Kochhar and Rohit also share their perspectives around how we need to tap into stories much more in these times and how remote work has opened up the aperture in terms of where people look for talent. They also share an interesting perspective around how companies are thinking about experience versus potential in these times.
Signs of early potential
Chris speaks about how people were talking about Roger’s potential when he was just 13 or 14. He speaks about how Regis Brunet saw Roger in action in Florida and then immediately ran to the payphone to get hold of Roger’s parents back in Switzerland.
Shifting the paradigm through beliefs
Stephen speaks about five underlying beliefs that are at the heart of a Trust and Inspire approach. 1) People have greatness inside of them 2) People are whole in body, heart, mind and spirit 3) There is enough for everyone (abundance) 4) Leadership is about responsibility, not rights (stewardship) 5) My job as a leader is to go first
Spotting and unlocking Potential
Stephen speaks about how we can tune into micro-moments where we get a glimpse of what somebody might be capable of. He says that if we don’t look for it, we will never find it. He goes on to talk about the four steps involved in unlocking the potential of the person - See, Communicate, Develop, Unleash.
