World Champion or DEI Hire?

In early February, the basketball world was shocked by the Luka Doncic trade. Many wondered if the manager really knows how to evaluate talent. When looking at someone, do we see only the surface and call that person a "DEI hire" or go beyond the surface and recognize a "Tiger Woods", a world champion? History is full of cases where people did not look beyond the surface and let champions walk to their competitors.

Sometimes, we don't recognize the talent because it is in the wrong spot. Joshua Bell, the world-famous violinist, once played his Stradivarius violin in the Washington DC Subway and only seven people stopped and listened. The day before, tickets to his performance went for over $100 a seat.

Likewise, sometimes, there is a mismatch between the person and the position. The sports broadcasting services have tried to put a number of highly successful NFL quarterbacks in the broadcast booth only to see them fail in that position. One NFL team has hired numerous star performers only to not win championships for decades. Many claim that the problem is the General Manager, not the players. When a person isn't succeeding, ask if the position or the management is the problem.

Some people are pushing really hard to remove DEI. But that begs the question if managers know how to evaluate their employees especially the remote worker.

To properly evaluate an employee, the manager needs to know what that employee actually is doing, how those actions fit into the company purpose, and how well the employee is performing relative to the company needs. Managers sometimes do not even know what an employee does or does not know the impact that employee has on others and their work.

Many times, an employee has a positive impact far more than the raw metrics. Someone who makes everyone around them more productive is a huge asset to the company even when their metrics are not that great. Someone who hits great metrics but is causing others to quit is a drag on the company.

With the Luka Doncic trade, some stories suggest that his style was not appreciated by top management. Style can be a huge negative even when the person is a great asset to the company. This is where managers need to look at the real impact and real productivity instead of style.

To see the value of the person, it is important to look at the impact - both raw productivity and the impact on others. This needs to be documented frequently so that important actions and contributions are not forgotten. Attitude and culture are more important than raw productivity. With the right attitude, productivity can be trained.

Employee evaluations need to be done based on written criteria so that personal style or personal dislikes don't become the criteria. Best practices include clearly communicating what is expected of employees, how they can improve, and how their performance will be measured.

Greatness or Just Average

A small business person wanted a new video ad. They were able to use AI to generate such a video within a short time. For small business, AI is a great way to generate ad copy. Many writers view writing ad copy as one of the worst jobs they could have and using AI instead frees them from that. But AI generates average marketing, not great marketing.

Great marketing tells a story, an irresistible story. Great marketing starts by identifying the customers and their pain points. It tells a story based on what motivates them and what they want. The story shows them how to get what they want by getting past obstacles and how you can deliver that outcome.

Greatness is a rare quality. Great market research happens when a human being talks to customers and prospects and discerns where the market is headed and what is needed. Yes, AI can help pull together data points, but the interpretation is a human activity. Relying AI to do market research will result in information that is out of date. It cannot predict where humans will go.

We want great marketing. Many of us have tried a lot of different ideas; mailings, social media, web pages, search engine ads, networking, paying "influencers", and more. Artificial Intelligence is being hyped a lot and it is finding a lot of use in marketing. AI generates results based on the average history of use in that context. Generative AI generates average results, not outstanding or innovative results. Many managers have bought the hype and think that they can use AI to replace quality. Quality will always be a human effort, not a machine effort.

Great marketing is inspired, not created by formula.

Risky World

One technique that helps self-driving cars operate is to memorize the roads. But what happens when the road suddenly changes? Due to the recent heavy rains in San Francisco, a large pothole opened in the road. Multiple autonomous taxis drove over it at full speed as that hole wasn't in their database.