Employees roll their eyes. Dilbert strips and “The Office” episodes are discussed. Kumbaya is spoken of in hushed ridicule.

I have tried pretty much every team-building technique out there.  Some were successful, others less so (do not use paintball as a team-builder unless you are looking to engender a revengeful win-lose culture).  After we had tried many, we tried an experiment with our own idea.  It worked.

Instead of simulating situations that would create teamwork we tried something that would force teamwork:  Spend the investment for a day-off on a day-long project for the community.  Being a fun, mechanically oriented company, the idea of building a playground for a school in need seemed a perfect fit.

Finding the right project turned out to be surprisingly easy.  After a couple of dead ends, we called the Social Services department in Boulder, who quickly found a recipient.  There was a day care center in a nearby town that supported lower income families, was short on improvement funds and was desperate for playground equipment.  Our off-site committee made a visit to interview the day care center and declared it a great fit.

A couple more visits were made by the off-site committee to line up what needed to be done and what materials would be needed for the work.  The tasks included landscape work, furniture assembly, purchasing and installing playground equipment, painting and computer set-up. The company contributed the money that would have otherwise been spent on the off-site for construction materials and the playground hardware. 

On the day of the off-site we were surprised by the daycare center really rolling out the red carpet, greeting us with tables of homemade food prepared by the parents and refreshments.  This set a great context for the day, letting the group understand their help was truly appreciated. There was a tangible shift in the company as they realized the impact the day would have.

An original concern, that putting 50 people on a project, without much organization would be chaotic and unproductive turned out to be unwarranted. The group quickly self organized into work teams and split up to take on about ten tasks simultaneously.  The great thing was that a different work structure spontaneously developed, with people that were skilled in particular tasks (such as patio laying or carpentry) taking the lead while helpers organized around them.  This structure was independent of the company work structure so that in many cases company managers were directed by those that normally worked for them.  People had a chance to demonstrate effective leadership in ways that normally didn’t happen at work.  There were enough tasks to take on that as a person finished their job, they could pick up a paintbrush and begin work on something else.

 An astonishing amount of work happened that day.  We were surprised to find that pretty much everything that the center had come up with for us to do was completed, including substantial tasks such as laying pavers for a patio, building shelves into an empty closet, programming computers and assembling two sets of playground equipment.  At the end of the day the kids came out to try out the equipment and we got some great group photos of a bunch of tired employees with some excited kids. 

We capped off the day with a dinner in a local brewpub.  My fondest memory of the day is of a group of worn-out folks, swapping stories of the day over pizza and beer, and not wanting the evening to end.

As with any process, there were lessons learned from the experience. A few to pass along:

• Remember those old-style monkey bars we all used to swing on?  They are cemented in holes that reach down to China.  Take our advice.  Do Not try to dig them out.  Lop them off with a Saws-All  (this was our HR directors initial suggestion, ignored by 6 engineers with shovels for close to an hour).
• You will be astounded by the difficulty of assembling playground equipment.  Don’t worry about having enough to do, even the simple sets take lots of time to assemble.  We opted for some “simple” polyethylene Tiny Tots equipment  and it brought a half dozen technicians to their knees.
• Pick an activity that matches what the company or group does for work. Assembling things turned out to be perfect for a company that builds space mechanisms. 
• It is not at all difficult to find a worthy cause.  With a few phone calls you should be able to find someone in Social Services that is aware of organizations or people in need. Once you find these people the momentum builds.
• Interview candidate organizations and don’t settle for anything other than a great fit.  It is important that the work is badly needed, what the need is what your company can do well, and that the organization will be grateful.
• Have a large variety of useful things to do, some of which don’t need much direction.  As people free up, they will want to have something to do.  Make sure that some of the work is not too physically demanding.
• Don’t fully organizing the group.  Value comes from the team self-organizing.  It is helpful however to select a lead for most of the tasks  (preferably people that are not normally in a leadership position in the company to mix things up a bit).
• Cap it off with a celebration near-by to close-out the day.

A week after the off-site, a package arrived.   Inside were hand written thank you’s from each of the kids and a set of pictures from the day.  The letter from the director was read to the company and brought tears to many eyes.  For weeks afterwards people kept talking about the “best off-site ever”. For some folks in the company, it was their first taste of being in service to the community.   From a team-building aspect it was a slam-dunk win.  After that first experiment there was no going back to trust-falls.   It became a part of the culture of the company that once a year we would pick a cause, stop work, and help.  We found another pre-school, we transformed a women’s shelter. Throughout the year, the employees would hunt for the next great project.  

Was it expensive?  Yes.  On paper you can argue it reduced our annual profit by ½ percent. Was it money well spent?  Absolutely.  I believe that the ½ percent came back many times over in retention, company pride, teamwork and the intangible return of a company giving back to the community.

 I challenge you to give it a go in your company, and suggest it will become a company tradition if you do.  If you are considering doing so, send me an email.  I would be pleased to help if I can.

If you can find one, an honest, transparent employee reference is a great shortcut to discovering whether this person sitting in front of you is as great a candidate as your interview team claims. An RGR (Really Great Reference).

The hitch is that there are two factors conspiring to prevent you from having that conversation:

·      Human resources departments of previous employers are sensitive to the legal liability. In most cases the company HR department has made it clear to all: “Thou shall never provide a reference for a former employee.”

·      The candidate will be directing you to friendly references that have been briefed on the upcoming call and coached on what to say.

You will not always be successful, but if you can find an RGR, and couple it with a great interview, you have significantly upped your chances of finding a great hire.

Independent of the references provided, ask the candidate for contact information for a senior individual they worked for or with in a previous role and who knows their work well. How these references respond to an inquiry is in itself is a great filter; talent most often leaves previous roles on great terms, whether of their own choice or not.They will have impressed people in leadership, and those individuals are often willing to go out on a limb to support the individual – HR policies or not.

• Connect personally.  RGR’s will not open up to your HR personnel as they will to someone they see as in a similar role to themselves; they will empathize with the leader’s desire to find the right talent for a role.

• Set up a time when they can put their feet up and chat for 10 minutes or so.  If they are not willing to find the time, that in itself can be telling.

• In your conversation, describe the role in detail and ask how good a fit it is for the candidate.You are looking for an honest discussion of how this person would fit in the role, and an RGR should be just as interested in find the right role for the candidate.

• Listen for and draw out areas that are not a good fit, as you are looking to understand the weak suits, as well.This is as much a qualifier for the reference as the candidate.Hearing “Can’t think of anything, I think they would be a good in this role” is a red flag for a coached reference. 

• Listen for grand slam reference statements, such as “It was a mistake for the company to let them go,” or “If you have a chance to hire this individual, do it.”When we heard these, we often moved quickly to a hire.

• Use the reference as a source for additional references.The further you get from the initial reference, the less biased the inputs become.

RGR’s are not much help in knowing if someone is NOT a fit for a role, but can be a great shortcut to the eureka moment of “Our search is over … hire that person now!”

The Real Challenge of Deep Space Exploration

When astronauts share their experience of spending months on space station, there is an unexpected challenge they talk of.  Simply the difficulty of being away from earth.  The first month on station is incredible, the second and third are focused and exciting, by the sixth, there is a hunger for home.   It includes simple things, like grass, plants, smells.

 Some have grown plants or sections of grass to run their fingers through, to remind of the richness of earth.  

Going to Mars has technical challenges, but along with those come the challenges of being away from home for so long.  

The attached, by Knate Meyers is the most beautiful video I’ve seen of earth from space, that reminds us of although space is beautiful, there is truly nothing as beautiful as our home.

Thanks Knate.

You have to love the candidate that is Good At Interviewing.  The tip-off happens early in the interview; 

“So Taylor; do you see yourself as having any significant faults?”. 

“Well Scott, sometimes I hear I just work too hard, sometimes 60 hours a week”. 

At Starsys a canned response like this often led to this question:

“Taylor…imagine you find yourself sitting in a rowboat in a swimming pool and you notice a ruler taped to the side of the pool that measures the depth…”

 Ridiculously hard interview questions are a powerful tool for drilling through image to what is beneath.  Once we got the hang of how to apply them, they became a fail-safe method to quickly measure an important attribute set we were looking for. Within five minutes we could know if these attributes were present.  Like a lie-detector test, the result was hard to fake. 

By their nature, these questions push the candidates into a process of discovery and problem solving while under pressure. Watching how they worked through the problems was far more telling than whether they arrived at the right answer.   

Famous examples of RHIQs come from Google, Apple and Microsoft, such as “Why is a manhole cover round rather than square?”.  You might think that you succeed when you have the right answer; in this case, “So that it can’t fall into the hole”.  That is actually not so, and an immediate right answer might count as a mark against you.   Over 20 years, we walked hundreds of candidates through the two RHIQ’s we used.  We came to recognize how much ground truth can be gleaned from a single interview question. 

The key to a great RHIQ is to pose a question for which the answer is not dependent on experience or education but on innate abilities.  The puzzles we presented seduced folks down a quick path to solution that led to a dead end, requiring a retreat and rethink of the problem.  We found that the best questions are just as tough (or easy) for an 10^th grader as they are for a CEO, as they were not measuring education or experience, but an individuals hard-wired attributes important for success. 

Every company is different in what attributes – skills and values – their employees need to thrive. The RHIQ gave us a window into both. In our case, we we were looking to saturate our company with people that were characterized by:

1) Personal transparency and self-confidence.

2) Ability to learn from mistakes.

3) Innate ability to problem solve.

4) Strong performance under pressure.

5) Intelligent.

6) Thrive when challenged.

7) Out of the box thinker. 

8) Belief that work can be fun.

In about five minutes the RHIQ shined a strong light on each of these attributes.  At times we got a “false negative”’ when skills we were looking for were masked by the pressure of the question.  But when we got a strong response, there was a good chance we had found a star.

 Picture yourself in an interview answering Taylor’s question:

“Imagine you find yourself sitting in a rowboat in a swimming pool and you notice a ruler taped to the side of the pool that measures the depth.  There is a bowling ball in the bottom of the rowboat.  You note the depth of the pool and then pick up the bowling ball and drop it over the side where it sinks quickly to the bottom.  You look at the ruler.  Did the water depth go up, go down or stay the same?

Think for 30 seconds about your answer (and shame on those tempted to cheat by scrolling down).

While asking the question, we would watch for the person’s reaction; were they leaning in looking forward to an unexpected turn in the interview, or were they a deer in headlights?  The former was an indication of 1,4,6 and 8.

In an interview, nine out of ten folks either got their first answer wrong or clearly were guessing.  The guessers got a short interview.  The one in 10 that got it right, usually paused first at the intuitive, wrong answer, and then said “Wait a minute….”, before verbally walking through to the right answer on their own.  We listened carefully to their process; how they deconstructed the problem.  This was usually a four or five step exercise in logic, which they could not help but speak out loud, providing much insight into their problem solving skills and approach: did they use a right-brain (creative) or a left-brain (analytical) approach.  At some point they reached an “Aha!” moment  as they discovered the right answer.  Working through this on their own to the right answer scored very high mark for 3,4,5,6 and 7. If they clearly enjoyed the process we added 8.

However, most folks answered “The water level stays the same.”. Getting it wrong on the first pass did not score against them.  Instead we would reframe the problem to give them more ammunition:

“OK, now imagine the same situation, however the bowling ball is made of lead.  You struggle to lift it and succeed in dropping it into the water.  Does the water level go up down or stay the same?”

We watched for a quick “wait a minute” as they recognized that something might be amiss in their first answer as they realized that a much heavier bowling ball must create a different result.  If we saw this, we marked high scores for 3,4,5,6 and 7. If they quickly brushed off their wrong answer and focused on getting it right they scored high on 2.  If they leaned in with something akin to glee, they got high marks on 8.  At this point most eventually converged on “the water level must go down”.  A quick response indicated an intuitive approach to problem solving.  A longer response indicated an analytical approach. If they still got it wrong at this point they were less likely to be a fit for a technical role in the company.  If those that got it right then circled back to their first answer and asked if they could change it to “the water goes down but not as much as with the lead ball” that was also a strong positive.  If they did not, we gave them a final hint “Do you want to change your first answer?”.

This was only one, small element of our interview process, but it provided great insight early on that would help guide the rest of the interview. It also became part of our culture and a right of passage.  After someone was hired, they were invariably asked “How did you do on The Problem?” and answers were compared.

 I encourage you to add RHIQ’s to your interviewing process, as they add a powerful tool to quickly identifying talent, and frankly, they are great fun.  So you want to give it go?   Here is the Hiring Cheats Guide To Ridiculously Hard Questions:

 1) Look for RFIQ’s that do not require special expertise or intelligence to solve.  RHIQ’s should be able to be solved by a series of steps, none herculean.  As the candidate gets stalled you can provide hints that guide them down the solution path.  Noticing the interaction as you work with them to solve the problem is more telling than their ability to solve the problem. 

 2) Plagiarize:  These types of puzzles are in the common domain and there are scads of them.  Try googling “interview puzzles” or “Microsoft interview questions”.  Or… start with the RFIQ’s we used.

 3) Avoid Mensa IQ puzzles:  For instance, “What number comes next in the sequence 10,9,60, 70, 66,?” may identify brilliant out of the box thinkers but little else.   Similarly avoid puzzles that are only solved by an epiphany;  “A man is pushing his car to a hotel and loses his fortune. What happened? (Anser to both of these questions, reportedly used by Google, can be found below.)

 4) Spend time with the RFIQ ahead of time; what aptitudes are you looking for, and how can you present and guide the question to make these visible.

 5) Establish a baseline.  Have a handful of current employees, friends and family try the test and notice how they do and how this correlates with who they are.  Try it out at dinner parties.  Tweak #4 based on the results.

 6) Add it to your interview process and listen carefully to the responses.  You are looking for how they behave when their defenses and down and they are challenged.  You will be surprised by what you are able to pick up through the process.   Tweak #4 based on results.

7) Find a good RFIQ and stick with it.  The more candidates that answer the same RFIQ, the more data you add to your baseline, and the better you are able to correlate RFIQ performance with performance in your company.

 8) Apply broadly.  The RHIQ we used was a great tool for vetting engineers but also was effective for technicians, quality personnel, supply chain management, admin assistants and finance staff.  Not only were we finding great problem solvers, but we were filling the company with people cut from similar cloth.

9) Be gentle.  As folks struggled with questions and started to panic, we would assure them that few get the problem right and that we were interested in their approach to the problem. 

 Good luck and let me know how it goes. I’ll close with the other RFIQ that we used.  One hint; the problem yields to a logical approach until you get to the last, final trick.  You will know when you get there.

“You are a product manager for a company that makes desk calendars.  Your boss comes in with two golf-ball sized wooden cubes with blank faces and a Sharpee marker.  He says that he saw a desk calendar comprised of two cubes on a tray with a single digit on the face of each cube, and that by orienting the cubes on the tray every day of the year from 01 to 31 could be represented.  He says he has to bring a prototype into a meeting in five minutes and asks you to make a quick prototype by writing a single digit on each face of the cube.  What digits do you put on each face of each cube?

(answers: 1) each number in the series has an increasing number of letters when spelled, the next number should have eleven letters.  2) He is playing Monopoly)

How much is a truly great employee worth to you? Right now, cash on the barrelhead. If it were possible for me to deliver you a person that was a perfect fit for your open hiring requisition, how much would you pay?

Hiring. 

The simplicity of the process is seductive. Announce the opportunity.  Sort through the resume’s.  Bring in the best fits.   Interview.  Pick the best of the lot.  Repeat until properly staffed. What could possibly go wrong?  That question should engender a chuckle followed by “Where do I even start?” 

Who you on-board can make or break you. Once hired, you won’t know for months if you made the right decision.  There is a chance you didn’t and the cost of a redo is pricey, even more costly is settling for “good enough”.

It can seem easy now with Monster and other web-based tools to access masses of candidates and increase your odds.  But in the case of hiring, having too much information is the enemy of great.  Drinking from a fire-hose of candidate-provided data is a long path to the diamonds in the rough you are looking for.  You need to find the cheats.  I’ll explain with an example from my living room:

Mario Kart is the one and only video game I can still play with my daughter without it being an embarrassing experience for us both.   This is because the controller is not a device with seven buttons that looks like an ocarina, but it is a steering wheel -  something I have 30 years of experience with, and she none.  Nevertheless, I always lose because she cheats.

I will be slightly ahead of her and then in an instant, she’s half a lap ahead of me.  I’ll ask how.  She shows me how you can turn left after the blue mushroom, drive straight at the cliff, and you pop out a half lap ahead.  These are the game “cheats”, designed into the game to reward mistakes.

Over 20 years at Starsys we spent quite a bit of time going around the hiring track and making plenty of mistakes, and eventually figured out our own ways to short-cut the process. In this and blogs to follow, I will share five of the cheats that we discovered that provided us a faster path to great talent. 

#1: Announce your opportunity in code:

Conventional thinking is cast a wide net.  We found that when we needed a very specific, hard-to-find set of skills for a role, we needed to spearfish - find a quick way to target just the right candidates.  We did this by describing the opportunity in a language that only they would understand. 

For example, one of the most critical hires for us were aerospace manufacturing technicians.  They were the last to touch the hardware, and if it was not perfect, we could be out of business. 

We discovered a particular demographic that was a great fit for this role; no previous aerospace experience, intelligent out-of-the-box thinkers, great with their hands, passionate about space, but had written aerospace off as they couldn’t afford technical school or college. 

As an experiment we tried a new approach to finding these people and announced the opportunity in a language that would resonate with our target demographic but would be off-putting to more traditional candidates.

“Are you a passionate, slightly maniacal individual, great with your hands, tired of flipping burgers, and has always wanted to build spacecraft hardware?  If so, we would like to talk to you here at Starsys.” 

We had many fewer people respond, but the ones that did walked in the door with a glazed look saying “you wrote that for me. How did you know?” They were adamant that they were the perfect fit of the job.   We found that if they had this response, there was a good chance we were talking to one of our diamonds in the rough. 

The key was an approach to describing the opportunity that included a polarizing filter for the personality and values we were looking for.

Passionate= willing to do whatever it takes, excited about their work, finds the right work intrinsically rewarding.

Slightly maniacal= non-traditional thinker, out of the box, inventor tendencies, looking for a company that honors this.

Tired of flipping burgers= Recognizes their unrealized potential. Ambitious, looking for company that honors this.

That has always wanted to build spacecraft hardware= Has personal vision, a hard-wired love for our business, will be intensely loyal as a result of getting an opportunity to realize a dream.

Whimsical context of the announcement=A person that resonates with our company’s mantra that “Work should be Fun”.

Most importantly, several of those that came to Starsys because of this opportunity went on to earn their engineering degrees while working, and really did become the rocket scientists they dreamed to be.

Here’s the recipe for creating your own listing:

·      Create a minimalistic shopping list: What are the 3 to 5 attributes that are hard to find, but make the difference between good and great?

·      Write the opportunity description as an elevator pitch: short, powerful, complete, compelling.

·      Write the opportunity in a polarizing manner:  If the candidate is cut from this cloth, they will be drawn like a moth to a flame, of they are not, they will run.  Want courageous, and bold?:  “You live by ‘Go Big or Go Home’. “ Want high quality standards: “You thrive when held to a standard of near perfection.” 

·      Run it by those that are already great in that role: Would you be drawn to this?  Iterate until they say “I would rush to check this opportunity out.”

This approach is certainly not for every new-hire; sometimes a casting call is needed. But when you know exactly what you want, and it is going to be hard to find, try publishing the opportunity in a language that only they will understand.

More cheats to come:

·      The effective use of bribery.

·      The ridiculously hard interview question.

·      The Reference-That-Tell-the-Truth.

·      Hire when you don’t need to.

As a speaker for Space Access, I had the opportunity to talk to moonandback about how Starsys came to be.