Generator Group: Your Search, Selection, and Talent Management Partner

Check out this article from The Portland Business Journal in which Generator Group’s own Enrique Washington has a little something to say on salaries and job responsibilities.

From all the Generators here at Generator Group we want to send a huge thanks to our client Brooks Sports for sponsoring our 10 year anniversary triathlon event at Hagg Lake on July 10th.  The apparel and footwear for the team is greatly appreciated and we look forward to wearing it proudly!

Check out Elaine Lee’s new article in Talent Management magazine. “Just read the Wiki”

OSI will conduct a one day workshop for a limited number of certified coaches and/or HR professionals interested in the OSI Polaris®    Competency Model and its supporting applications, especially the 3600 developmental assessment. This workshop is being co-sponsored by Generator Group and will be conducted by Bruce Griffiths, President OSI. While the workshop is designed to certify participates in the OSI 3600 feedback system it is also an introduction to competency modeling and its applications.

Now that the teams are a couple weeks into the triathlon training, workouts are getting longer and more difficult. So we wanted to find out what is it that keeps you going on your workout? When you can’t catch your breath and your muscles are burning with the fire of a thousand suns, but that song comes on your iPod and you feel like you could do cartwheels to the finish line. What is that song?

We asked our athletes that question, and this is what we got –> the Ultimate Generator Group Workout Playlist.

Did we miss anything? Add your workout favorites in the comment section and we’ll update the playlist to include your selections!

This year Generator Group will be celebrating its 10th anniversary! It has taken unyielding strength and endurance to make it through this economy and we’re putting it all out on display at the Hagg Lake Triathlon, July 10th, to celebrate.

Over the course of the next four months our staff will undergo a rigorous training and diet regime, pitting recruiters vs. recruiters and partners vs. partners in the name of competition.

Starting this today, stay tuned for all the insider information, including everything from workout playlists to training updates to the smack talk that has already started.

Team 1: Patent Pending

ATHLETE PROFILES:

Heidi Barnaby – half mile swim
Heidi spent her high school days either skiing down the slopes or tearing up the soccer field. Not only has she run two  marathons, but with multiple triathlons and Hood to Coast runs to her name she is hardly new to this game. But, if you ask Heidi, she’ll tell you her most impressive athletic feat is being a mother of two boys under age of seven.

Workout mantra – “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness”…. we will be spending some time on the road.
Favorite athlete - Andre Agassi
Biggest threat on the other team – Art, the other team’s swimmer, since we are going head to head in the water.. or, actually, fin to fin.

Jeremy Barnaby – 19k cycle
As a t-ball Coach for Scappoose, Jeremy regularly deals with the intense pressures of competitive sports. Although he is a former high school wrestler with multiple triathlons and Hood to Coast runs under his belt, his passion is cycling, biking as far as Seattle to Portland. As with Heidi, Jeremy attributes his athleticism to the fact that he has to keep up with his two boys (both under the age of seven).

Workout mantra – Pain is temporary, quitting lasts a lifetime.
Favorite athlete – George St. Pierre
Biggest threat on the other team – The biggest threat is the ride itself.

Kevin Servino – 5k run
Kevin’s long and impressive history of high school athletics positions him as a fierce competitor. He was a 3 year high school varsity football player, co-captain and recipient of “Most Inspirational Player” award, as well playing 2 years of varsity basketball. Additionally, Kevin was a  member of the Oregon class 3A State Championship team (Astoria). Like Jeremy and Heidi, he now runs around with his boys, both below the age of five.

Workout mantra - Shake… and Bake
Favorite athlete – Walter Payton
Biggest threat on the other team – Enrique Washington, just the former collegiate record holder in the 800m for Seton Hall. But he is going down!!! But honestly, the real threat is that I will be recruited to join the U.S. Olympic team and have to leave the sport of Recruiting.

Team 2: Mo’GO™

ATHLETE PROFILES:

Cody Johns aka Ceej – 19k cycle
In high school Cody lit it up on the basketball court, ran cross-country and aced her serves on the tennis court.

Workout mantra – Keep going!!!!
Favorite athlete – Right now my favorite athlete is Ashley Fiolek, 5′ 2″ 18 year old fastest female motocross racer  — and she’s deaf.
Biggest threat on the other team – Jeremy because he has been putting in 60 mile rides on the weekend.

Elaine Lees – 5k run
Elaine’s claim to fame is having won a three legged race with her husband for three years in a row.

Workout mantra – This too shall pass.
Favorite athlete – Oprah.
Biggest threat on the other team - Kevin, he has been leaning up.

Enrique Washington aka Roadrunner – 5k run
Enrique is known for his victory at a sprint contest eating a box of Cheerios. His prize? Bruce Springstein box seats.

Workout mantra – Take out the competition!
Favorite athlete – Major Taylor.
Biggest threat on the other team – No one threatens me.

The pressures of competition, meeting customer needs, and increasing productivity are just a few reasons that organizations approach and accomplish work in a team environment.  The development of appropriate and relevant methods for appraising the performance of individuals working in teams and performance of teams as a unit are critical for organizational success. While these methods should focus on the desired behaviors for the team as a whole, it is important to differentiate between behaviors relevant to individual team members and behaviors relevant to team performance.

A successful team-based performance appraisal system will define and use appropriate performance measures and will incorporate useful approaches to assess team performance that include: direct measures of outcomes, multisource assessment and integrated assessments of objectives. Finally, communication is necessary to ensure clear performance expectations.

Successful team performance relies on three critical components in the appraisal process. These components are an absolute must when measuring teams and are not usually considered outside of the team environment. They are:

1. Supply an adequate system of information that can be utilized to impact the team’s success. It is difficult to successfully evaluate the team on its level of success when team members do not have all the information to be successful.
2. Provide the team with an opportunity to design its own measurement systems to address the contextual factors that impact performance but are beyond their control.
3. Combine direct measures of performance and multisource assessment into one an integrated assessment. This will allow the team members to understand and balance the needs of short-range team goals with the needs of long-term strategic goals of the organization.

Considerations to make regarding these areas to produce valid assessment for individual performance from these settings include the following.

1. Identification of relevant competencies and the communication of desired behaviors.  Behaviors related to self-management, communication, decision-making and collaboration are critical for the development of individual assessment in a team setting.
2. Establishing performance criteria that will account for contextual factors that impact team performance and individual performance.
3. Establishing a periodic review of evaluations to ensure ratings meet reasonable standards for reliable measurement. In addition, validity should be a part of the review process since conditions and work processes change.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out Performance Appraisal: State of the Art in Practice, by James W. Smither.

– Enrique Washington, Partner and CEO

Jac Fitz-enz, or Dr. “Jac” as he prefers, the acknowledged father of human capital metrics and founder of the Saratoga Institute, will be one of several presenters at the Talent Management Magazine Strategy 2010 Conference in Atlanta March 3-5. Generator Group is excited to be attending as a guest of our partners at PreVisor.

I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Jac at a conference in the mid 1980s where the attendance for his session was a small but intense group of HR professionals.  At the time, his views were extremely unorthodox.  He wanted HR to be measured, improved and held accountable.  He wanted HR to be able to prove how it contributed to the bottom line.  Today it makes sense – back then he was talking heresy. It was a long hard road to advocate, educate and influence the business world, but several books, awards and successful companies later, he’s still going. Recently, he was cited as one of the 50 people in the past 50 years who has significantly changed what HR does and how it does it.

When I met him again, it was 20 years later. He was standing in our boardroom in Beaverton, Oregon greeting our team and considering becoming a part of an advisory group for our talent management software. I spoke with him of the earlier meeting and he told me that was the time when the Saratoga “Institute” was a desk in his bedroom.  From that desk he grew his benchmarking service to cover 2,000 companies in a dozen countries.

Today, Dr. Jac, is in his mid-70s. He sold the Saratoga Institute when he turned 65 but he did not retire. He formed a new company and continued his research. His latest book, due out in May, is entitled The New HR Analytics where he goes beyond benchmarking. As he explains, benchmarking is about the past and we can’t manage the past. In his new book, Dr. Jac reveals how to predict the continuing value of present and future human capital investments. I’m really looking forward to hearing his new methods and approach.

By the way, I could have hired Dr. Jac as a consultant to my company that first year I heard him speak.   I knew what he was onto would change the world of human resources – but, I hadn’t found my voice yet. I didn’t think I could convince my executives to spend the money it would have taken to hire him – but here’s the catch – I didn’t even ask. Did I miss a transformational moment? Or was it too ahead of its time? (as Dr. Jac says, it took many, many years, before people “got it.”)

As we’ve been talking to people about our new Talent Management practice, we’ve found people who don’t get it, too. It’s OK. We know we’re ahead of the curve. It’s a good place to be.

– Elaine Lees, Partner & VP Talent Management