LinkedIn: Mike West I spend days helping executives solve profound organization problems, with people data....... People analytics is the systematic application of behavioral science & statistics to management to achieve probabilistic business advantages. I use data to identify where resource investments will have the most impact, get everyone on the same, and produce decisive action. ........ First @Google to develop people analytics for employee benefits. Google's first global employee survey, HR metrics dashboard & exit prediction model. First, to connect them. Many of these projects spawn have been reported in the news. Google is the first to win the Fortune Best Company to Work 7+ times.
A Call & Offer to People Analytics & Data Science Professionals Sometimes the people I'm close with tell me my emotions about my work scare them. Why do I care so much? For me, it is a total madness. When you see it, you can't unsee it. ....... Right now, I'm interested in people all around the world that build things that work with data and code. You know the type; they use Github. They read Packt. They figure things out on their own. ....... they didn't study behavioral science and just don't know what they don't know. ........ What I want to do is get very practical about how to offer entry into very rigorous and practical behavioral science methods that can be ported more readily into data science. ........ That's the book I want to write. I want to learn more in writing this book than I know. I want to go places I haven't gone before. ........ improving the intersection of behavioral science and data science who are willing to be earlier reviewers of deep but rough draft chapters on an ambitious book project. .
A new, humanistic organization-centered congruence philosophy of people analytics With trepidation, I would like to share with the world an emerging personal philosophy of people analytics. ....... Is anything in this philosophy just flat wrong? ...... As you read more of my writing, I will share my uncertainties, failures, insecurities, and emotions. I do so to a fault. ....... I have worked at the intersection of behavioral science, HR strategy, systems, and statistics, what we now call people analytics, for approximately twenty years. ........ People are a messy and cantankerous species. We have our line of sight, we have our blinds spots, we have our tools of choice, and for heaven's sake, if it looks anything like a nail we are going to bang the life out of it with our hammer to get it to go down into the wood. Meanwhile, somebody else is trying to wrench the damn thing off. I personally just wanted to hang my stethoscope from that nail so I’m not pleased when it is gone. ........... I went on to do this new type of work with data in HR, and in many cases start that practice, at PetSmart, Google, Children’s Health in Dallas, and eventually in my own consulting company. ........... the Kevin Bacon of people analytics, but a lot less attractive, and fun ........ I have worked for organizations that stubbornly refuse to change. I have picked fights and walked away. I don’t encourage picking fights, but if you want to do anything meaningful in the world, I’m sorry but you are going to have to. ........ It turns out that figuring out what I want to say to the world about all this has been a substantially difficult and precarious journey in itself. I think my honesty has helped some people. I’m sure my honesty has ticked some other people off. ......... I painstakingly tried to synthesize the most profound things I have learned, into a specific practical approach that I thought would benefit the widest possible audience ....... starting with sound philosophy, then going deep in a few small places that I thought could produce big results with very little money for the widest audience. ........... The 4S Framework, The Triple-A Model, Activation, CAMS Constraint Theory, Net Activated Value (NAV). ........ The 4S framework I see taking on life. ....... The other ideas remain simply theories. Foreign, if not even bizarre, to most the people in my field. People don’t take up a leadership responsibility in people analytics and whip out the Triple-A Model playbook. ......... For my own part, after a year without income, I had to figure out how to go make money again, and then the thoughts and conversations trail off. That is unfortunate. And I’m sorry. ......... I still have a hard time picking up my own book, because in my mind I know it is incomplete, and needs a new life and different wardrobe. .
Some meandering thoughts on the evolution of performance management at Google, with implications for humanity Universally people despise formal evaluation processes. Yet, it is challenging to run a company at scale without one. Indeed, you can't run differentiated pay based on a characteristic of an individual without a recorded measure. At least not defensibly. So you either go for even pay parity by clear objective criteria or have a performance mgt system with a rating. Suppose you want to use subjective individual pay differentials. In that case, technically, you have to have an evaluative position of some type (call it a rating or not, it's a rating), and if you do have a rating, it should be written down, and it should be made transparent. This is for ethical, legal, social, and frankly, just if you want what you are doing with pay differentials to work. Hiding things about other people in dark corners of metal file cabinets doesn't work. It doesn't. Just don't do it. It is crass. ............ We were super special. If we wore our company t-shirts in public, girls would swoon, and people would stop us to ask questions, or they might whisper things to their friends when we walked by. There was an actual time like that. So soon we forget. ........ As the official "Retention Czar" at this company, more often than not, I presented to a stupefied executive team, who only had one question for me. "Wait, I don't understand. Why isn't this zero?" "I really want to know, Mike, why would anyone want to leave? Please tell." These "outliers" were so unexpected that they were extraordinarily interesting. They were obsessed. Obsessed. .......... Inevitably, the people who were leaving at that time were going because they were bored. They wanted to do something new. They were bored with life. Certainly bored with money. Also smart enough to be annoyed by any attempts to manipulate them with something so banal as money. .
Human Error Implies a Human Equation When I hear error my ears perk up. I want to find the equation. ....... Since I work as a sort of mathematical consultant in the "Human Area", I am keen to identify and test human equations. ........ In an organization human error implies a breakdown somewhere in: People, Processes, Partnerships, Programs and Policies. Like it or hate it, these P's are how large organizations run "at scale". ...... The money invested was put in people, the rest of the money invested was directed by those people. So you can't ignore the energy is people. ....... Speaking of rocket science, it is not a secret that "human error" is also what caused the space shuttle challenger to blow up with humans on board, while being watched by nearly every school child in America. ....... The reality is that an error of this scale can get as far as it did it suggests many people in error - importantly a failure to understand how to build an effective organization. ........ The P related variables precede all profits (past innovations), all innovation (future profits), and all sources of destruction (wasted value). Examine any great success or any great failure carefully and you will always see it. Error is caused by a lack of awareness and responsiveness to something, which until instructed otherwise, is not the machines jobs to identify. Humans are responsible for identifying customer changes, competition changes, constraint changes, constraints and other conditions. That's what humans are designed for. It is what we are good at. ........ You aimed for the moon and hurtled into outer space. Total and utter fail. ........ but there is an equation. We ignored it and we shipped. ....... What caused de-activation in this, or any case, can be found through a simple recursive exploration of four variables, which can be measured on team by team basis, compared, related to outcomes, and trended. It consists of looking for the presence or absence of four simultaneous minimum conditions: a.) alignment on customer value, b.) motivation, c.) capability, and d.) support. You cannot actually spot the error with this equation, but you can spot unactivated human sensors, whose job it is. Unactivated human sensors is what produces all business failures.
An Anti-Valentine from Peter Drucker to HR Plus ca change. A french exclamation used to express resigned acknowledgment of the fundamental immutability of human nature and institutions. ....... He wrote, “the constant worry of all personal administrators is their inability to prove that they are making a contribution to the enterprise. Their preoccupation is with the search for a gimmick that will impress their management associates. Their persistent complaint is that they lack status.” ......... He added a joke that personal management has been described as “an amalgamation of all those things that do not deal with the work of people and that are not management.” ....... But the two most important features, the organization of work, and the organization of people that do work, he said, were generally avoided. ....... the personnel role assumed that people did not want to work ....... gimmicks. Family-friendly policies, 360 degree assessment, employee assistance programs, mentoring, and benchmarking are just few the process in vogue. ......... Human Resources was about sweating the most valuable assets of the company. It still is. ........ The alphabet was impractical unless letters resembled into pronounceable words that had their own sounds. ....... He decided that planning - a vital part of management - did not need to be carried out by some designated manager. It could be achieved by workers themselves if they were given the necessary information. ......... The railroad managers did not need an HR assistant to explain to them the theory of empowerment. They simply sat down with employees and listened to their ideas. “We have overwhelming evidence that there is actually better planning if the man who does the work first responsibly participates in the planning” ........ Drucker's writings was illuminating but subversive. Personnel management, he said was “insolvent,” Personnel preferring to ignore “the frozen assets” of scientific management and human relations in favor of “techniques and gadgets”. Perhaps he bruised too many egos, not only those in personnel management, but also those in general management. After all, he had written that “many workers of tomorrow may have to be able to do more planning than a good many people who call themselves managers today are capable of.” .
Making Sense of HR Metrics 50 general hires in a time period of modest growth represent one thing, 50 sales producing hires in a time period of rapid market expansion and conquest represent something else entirely. .
People Analyst
People Analytics For Dummies Lead with People Data
On Amazon
Maximize performance with better data
Developing a successful workforce requires more than a gut check. Data can help guide your decisions on everything from where to seat a team to optimizing production processes to engaging with your employees in ways that ring true to them.
People analytics is the study of your number one business asset—your people—and this book shows you how to collect data, analyze that data, and then apply your findings to create a happier and more engaged workforce.
Start a people analytics project Work with qualitative data Collect data via communications Find the right tools and approach for analyzing data.
If your organization is ready to better understand why high performers leave, why one department has more personnel issues than another, and why employees violate, People Analytics For Dummies makes it easier.
How to Game the Best Company to Work For Awards This is continued from a "Gloves Off Friday Post" by Mike West on Linkedin Pulse here: How the Best Company Award is Wrong .
People Analytics For Dummies Mike West was the founder of People Analytics at Merck, PetSmart, Google, Children's Health Dallas and VMWare before starting his own firm, PeopleAnalyst, LLC. He brings unique perspective to the field and motivation to help smaller organizations stand up to and outmaneuver giants, like Google, by using data to find more focus, agility and speed in People Operations.
Making Sense of HR Metrics
Attraction: Quantifying Talent Acquisition
Estimating Employee Lifetime Value
Introducing People Analytics
How you arrive at good people
What I know about Employee Surveys - 30 Ideas - by Mike West
Measuring your fuzzy leadership ideas with surveys
Some meandering thoughts on the evolution of performance management at Google, with implications for humanity
A new, humanistic organization-centered congruence philosophy of people analytics
Corporate culture is the operating system of a company. No company achieved greatness without it. Six core values of that corporate culture are: (1) Work Hard (2) Play By The Rules (3) Innovate (4) Treat People With Respect (5) Communicate and (6) Serve.
