The Future of Analytics

With history and law in my educational background, few people, including me, would have predicted back in 1981 that I would become one of the first in my career of community destination marketing to embrace analytics.

Although I took statistics, in essence history is a form of analytical thinking.  But back in 1972 when I earned a degree in that major it was less likely to involve data.

Law school certainly teaches critical thinking but not open-mindedness.

As NYU Stern researcher Dr. Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, put it this week on the Diane Rehm Show:

“But as soon as we want to reach a conclusion, or as soon as we get emotional, we get angry and open-minded thinking shuts down and we become lawyers.”

Researchers know today that the natural talent for analytics that I began to tap into in the early 1980s is a competitive advantage that was central to the DMOs I led being able to quickly leapfrog more established competitors.

Unfortunately, other than various aspects, I was never really able to teach it to others on staff before I retired at the end of 2009, with the exception of my eventual successor.

Even so, she had an innate talent for analytics. You can teach skills but not talents, especially not nuance.

Rare even among those now formally trained in analytics is the ability or talent to see nuanced patterns and then apply them strategically to an objective.

Research conducted by MIT’s Sloan Management Review and SAS calculates that only 12% of organizations overall have this ability.

More than a third are “analytically challenged” and more than half are “analytic practitioners” that employ it primarily for operations, sometimes predictively, although that is not their focus.

So one-in-eight of these organizations are “analytic innovators” which are found to be seven times as likely to employ analytics predictively and six times more likely to deploy it prescriptively.

The Sloan/SAS report entitled The Talent Dividend well worth downloading, reading and applying.

Recently, while writing an essay about what organizations such I led will look like in the future, I noted that analytical ability will soon be required for every job in an organization, kind of like how keyboard skills became in the 1990s.

When I retired, still only 37% of organizations overall saw analytics as a competitive advantage.  This peaked at 67% in 2012 and is now a view held by six-in-ten organizations.

But I believe the true value of analytics going forward will always be strategic including innovation.

Equivalent to a Management MBA

I have a good friend who is weeks away from successfully matriculating a two-year residential substance abuse treatment program in Durham, North Carolina.  The program is called TROSA, which stands for Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers.

As an aside, he will have also learned the equivalent of an MBA when it comes to managing people, every type imaginable in the workforce.

In addition to hours of therapy, TROSA teaches residents, who are willing, everything one needs to know to succeed in the workplace including how to work, how to adapt to organizational culture, how to resolve conflict, and how to be accountable.

But the organization also has an eye for identifying and nurturing people who have a talent for managing other people.

It isn’t based on tenure or non-managerial success in one of the many enterprises it uses to help fund the program and instill values.  They have learned what Gallup researchers have proven.

Those elements, while important overall, only count for so much when developing managers.

Much more predictive of management success, according to Gallup’s research is talent.

It is the natural capacity one-in-ten people have for management, which they have found enables people to “learn a role faster” and “adapt to variance in a role more quickly” than those without it.

Another two-in-ten have what they call “functioning managerial talent.”

Tenure and success as an individual contributor, which is how most are promoted to management, don’t lend themselves to being in a management role.

As TROSA has learned as well, talent to become a manager has five dimensions as outlined in Gallup’s State of the American Manager Report:

Motivator – they perpetually challenge themselves and their teams to improve and perform.

Assertiveness – they overcome challenges, adversities and resistance.

Accountability – they ultimately assume responsibility for their teams’ success and create the structure and processes to help deliver on expectations.

Relationships – they build a positive, engaging work environment and shield it from infiltrators who aren’t engaged.

Decision-Making - They solve complex issues and problems inherent to the role of thinking ahead, planning for contingencies, balancing competing interests and taking an analytical approach.

Gallup quantifies the percentage of the American workforce that is engaged or just putting in time or actually working to undermine others or the organization.

But it also surveys to determine the proportion of managers who fall in those categories.

Managers overall are only slightly more prone to be engaged, which contributes, along with personal traits, to employees who are not engaged.

But the report finds that high-talent managers are twice as likely to be engaged as those with limited talent and engagement in a workforce, not just putting in time, is closely linked to a slew of positive business outcomes.

Engaged employees thrive under high-talent managers who are open and approachable, who manage performance continually rather than just with performance reviews, who help them  set priorities and goals and who focus on strengths.

One of the most corrosive things an organization can do is to promote managers with limited talent for it and then tolerate those who are not engaged or even actively disengaged themselves.

Gallup has found that managers who work for highly engaged leaders are 39% more likely to be engaged themselves.  Employees who work for engaged managers are 59% more likely to also be engaged.

One of the cruel hoaxes perpetrated on people in most careers or organizations is to make being a manager a stepping stone from tenure or being a good individual contributor.

The former should never be a consideration and the latter is where many people can continue to thrive and showcase their talents in other areas.

Subjecting them to managers who lack talent in the five dimensions Gallup research has identified is negligent.  Leaving them trapped once a mistaken promotion has been discovered is near criminal.

I was rated highly as a leader, but guilty of both.

Capacity for Managing

Having just read a report entitled, The State of the American Manager, I’m reminded of a retort from Elder Cunningham, a character in the touring Broadway musical, Book of Mormon.

Reminded before leaving by his father to just do whatever his companion tells him to do, Cunningham humorously declares:

“Right, I am a follower.”

I won’t be a “spoiler” for anyone who has yet to see it, but researchers at Gallup find that only 1-in-10 people have the innate talent to lead and another two-in-10 manifest some of the talents necessary.

A talent by this definition is a “natural capacity for excellence.”  We can “learn skills, develop knowledge and gain experience” but we cannot “acquire talent.”

I must divulge that for several years beginning in the late 1980s, I was a mentee of the late Don Clifton, who did a lot of research on talent and strengths.

The company Gallup, which was acquired by his company during that span, has continued to delve deeper and deeper into the psychology of strengths and workplace engagement.

I kept a copy of an assessment he and an associate did of me in November 1986 which had been requested by my governing board to serve as a template for selecting a successor.

We stayed in touch off and on until the early 1990s but based on my spotty track record at vetting individual contributors who would also be good managers, I needed much more of his tutelage.

The just-released report lists five talent “dimensions” for good managers that have evolved from his work: “motivator,” “assertiveness,” “accountability,” relationships” and “decision-making.”

These “dimensions” have evolved only slightly from those Clifton noted in November 1986 on a profile my governing board would use to select my successor.

Two areas highlighted in Clifton’s assessment of me proved cautionary and useful during the remainder of my four-decade career as an executive.

I “attracted and worked best,” he noted, with “talented, bright, aggressive individuals” whom I could develop and grow but a “duality” in my nature led me to be conservative, introspective—and at times, even insecure” when it came to building and trusting relationships.

In small organizations, such as those that I led, with a workforce of no more than two dozen, it is hard not to want and need individual contributions to take on management roles in order to keep good talent.

But without the required talents for management, this backfires, leading to managers who are half as engaged as those with the talents noted in the report, and who often when compared to when they were individual contributors become disengaged, or even actively disengaged.

The report notes that the top two reasons people are typically made managers are because they were successful in a previous non-management role or because they had a lot of experience and tenure.

This is even more typical in a small organization.  But as the report notes, “managers should be grown not promoted” and that should start with an assessment of whether they have the natural capacities.

Subsequent analysis of why previously successful organizations often fail cite a decline in capacity, which even more than sustainable funding, is identified by a gradual decline in management capacity.

The landscapes of communities are littered with the corpses of broken organizations, not because they were obsolete or ineffective but because officials and governing boards failed to give them the capacity to endure, including good leadership.

The only thing worse than a “glass ceiling” is placing people in positions of management who lack the talent, interest or engagement.

On the upside, someone with management talent will have “a profound impact on engagement [within an organization’s workforce], and that engagement has a profound impact on just about everything that matters to an organization’s long-term viability.”

The report is well worth reading and re-reading.

Training is a must, but may not be the answer.  It is far better to do a talent assessment of an individual for management before investing in training.

A recent report by McKinsey & Company based on a survey of executives around the world last year shows a high level of frustration over the lack of metrics tying training to business performance.

The 14% of organizations that identified capability building as on of their top-three strategic priorities, appear more confident that learning programs that “use a range of qualitative and quantitative measures were generally better at meeting the stated targets.”

Gallup appears to have a model worth investigating which first identifies the talents and strengths of individuals and then tailors learning to build on those foundations.

The consummate individual contributors are sales people.  Based on his research, Steve W. Martin who teaches at USC Marshall noted What Separates the Strongest Salespeople from the Weakest in an article in Harvard Business Review.

Some talents such as verbal acuity, achievement oriented personality and situational dominance were not surprising based on my experience nor was the fact that only 46% agreed that their sales manager had an impact.

But nearly 70% of the higher performers rated their sales manager as excellent or above average.  But high performers and low performers identified different attributes for a great sales manager.

Standing out was leadership, management and coaching skills.

A key to selecting high performing individual contributors as sales people is an “inward pessimism” that drives them to ask prospects tougher qualifying questions and seek out true decision-makers.

Key for a high performing sales organization overall is super-accountability, one of the five talent “dimensions” identified for managers in general in the Gallup report.

Don Clifton would be smiling.

Looking Out 35 Years From Now

Frankly, I was always a bit puzzled, back in the day, to hear myself introduced as innovative or strategic.  I still am whenever I guest lecture college students, including many who are pursuing my former career.

On reflection, I have probably always been more of a “repurposer.”  Studies show that less than 14% of Americans are strategically inclined. 

However, according to experts who study strengths, inclinations such as this, otherwise known as talents, are “naturally occurring patterns of thought, feeling and behavior.”  They are building blocks that can be refined and amplified through education and skill development.

For the rest of us, talents such as being strategic don’t come as naturally but we can still develop a certain level through practice and study.

Studies show that learning to see things strategically is also the secret to why some people can juggle multiple priorities making it is just as relevant to working through a daily list of assignments.

My first brush with thinking strategically probably began in 1970 when a history professor recommended that I read a newly published book entitled, Future Shock.

A quote that has stuck with me through the years is, “The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read.  It will be the person who doesn’t know how to learn.”

But it is the co-author’s second book entitled, The Third Wave which I refer to students today who are serious about learning to think strategically, more than 35 years after I read it for the first time.

It isn’t just because so many of the possibilities the authors concluded have come or are coming to pass today.  It is because it is written to show how they arrived at those conclusions by understanding the patterns of the past.

For instance, the book foretold the “collapse of consensus” we are experiencing today but it also sheds light on where we might go from here.

The revolutionaries who founded this country revolted against the feudal systems of governance then in place.

Societal headlines today reflect those who want to move forward to a more sustainable path and those who are trying to pull us back into another era or at the very least keep one foot in the past.

By looking at past patterns, the authors of The Third Wave, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, were also able to predict the change in how we will view being employed or unemployed in a world with more and more people but fewer and fewer jobs.

A blog I enjoy reading is Carolina Demography.  A recent post noted that of the nearly 4.5 million North Carolinians (age 16 and older,) 3.3 million or nearly three-quarters are of prime working age (25-64.)

That definition is slightly more broad than the norm.

Experts who have suggested that unemployment analysis would be much more relevant if it focused on the prime working age population, generally use ages 25 to 54 for this cohort.

A poll published three months ago by the Kaiser Family Foundation with the New York Times and CBS found that a little more than half of the U.S. population age 18 and older falls in the prime working age.

About 18% are prime working age but unemployed.  This group includes 26% homemakers but able to work outside the home, 34% disabled and unable to work and 24% unemployed and able to work.

Of the 24% who are unemployed but able to work, 5% don’t want a job now or in the future, 8% will want a job in the future, leaving 19% who want a part-time job and 67% who want a full-time job.

When this group is asked which factors are a major or minor reason they aren’t working, 52% cite family responsibilities, 32% cite health problems (although they are not disabled,) 38% note lack of education or skills, and 34% say their job was replaced by technology.

Other factors listed are 32% jobs because jobs are going overseas, 28% because of discrimination and 35% apparently don’t need the income.

Of the 78% who are unemployed, able to work, and have looked in the last year, 86% are open to entry-level in another field, 81% are willing to return to school or job training, 77% are open to non-traditional hours, 64 would take minimum wage, 45% would move to another city, 46% would commute more than hour each way, 69% would take 10% less than the last job and 37% would take 25% less.

There are some smart people across the full length of the ideological spectrum who are noodling about what we do as it becomes more and more a privilege to have a job.

One is called a universal basic income that would replace the myriad of safety net programs and a better option for the 25% of all workers including 40% of those in restaurants or food service who need public assistance on top of what they earn.

Ben Schiller makes a good argument that this is also a better way to eliminate poverty.

People who dismiss the ability to look ahead any more than three years if that, including many serving on governing and elected boards, as well as far too many executives are well advised to read or reread The Third Wave, but for process rather than content.

The exercise may be not only be inspiration to look back for clues to the possibilities lying beyond the horizon – perhaps another 35 years.

The Rare 2.5%

Over lunch, prior to giving a guest lecture a few months ago, a college professor friend of mind told me I had always been entrepreneurial.

It was a mixed message to me.

The same observation had been made by others but I always took it to mean that during my now concluded career, I had specialized in startups for community marketing three different destinations.

The mixed message came from other friends and associates who criticized me for being too data-driven, for not “thinking big,” for being too strategic and process oriented, even too altruistic.

To them, the latter were not hallmarks of being entrepreneurial which contrasted to their view of me they instead fashioned themselves to be.

It wasn’t until the last few years of my career, when I met Christopher Gergen, who walks the entrepreneurial walk and also teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at Duke University that I began to grasp why he and others such as Dr. Dana Clark at ASU saw me as entrepreneurial.

The idea that entrepreneurism could, in part, be altruistic was also becoming clear to me by then.  The organization I led until retiring five years ago spearheads the Durham’s Annual Tribute Luncheon, in lieu of an annual meeting.

The idea was and maybe still is to shine a light on people who fostered and shaped Durham values and unique sense of place.  In the year I retired, the event honored social entrepreneurs such as my neighbor Kevin McDonald.

Being entrepreneurial has become one of those traits that without any idea of what it means now gets salt and peppered into resumes.

For others who boldly claim to have this trait, I am reminded of a saying by a friend of mine had that “there is only room for one person at a time to stand on principle.”

Actually, being entrepreneurial, as a trait, exists along a spectrum.

Over three decades of research and analysis, Gallup has zeroed in on the ten talents exhibited by successful entrepreneurs.  On a scale of 1 to 10, I score higher than six on all but one of them and through working hard brought that one up to a 4 or 5.

Turns out I score much higher on “thinking big” than I was given credit for by detractors, because as Gallup has ascertained, I took an “analytical approach to challenging or uncertain decisions.”

Who knew?

“Replacing emotion with a rational thought process,” according to Gallup’s findings, “helps accurately calculate their odds of success.”  By this this they mean in the long term and in association with other needs.

Looking at a distribution of entrepreneurial talent nationally, Gallup calculates that just 5% have it at a level that produces “significant superior business performance. 

Gallup also calculates that of those working adults in the US who currently do not own a business, about 2.5% have very high-level entrepreneurial talent.

That’s about 5 million people who could, if tapped, generate an addition $25 trillion into the US economy.

Or a few may get scooped up by community marketing organizations tasked with generating visitor-centric economic and cultural development by guarding and leveraging sense of place.

Judging by Gallup’s calculus, that means for those community DMOs wanting to scoop up an exec with talent for innovation and entrepreneurialism, there would currently be about 15 in the entire U.S. currently at the helm of community marketing organizations.

I know of two and possibly even three running DMOs in North Carolina which matches Gallup’s calculation.  Most communities won’t despair because they don’t value those traits anyway beyond lip-service.

Even those that do and are fortunately to land someone with those talents must be eternally vigilant against some in the community who instead will try to undermine them.

Hopefully, my friends in the program at Appalachian State University are fostering students with natural talent for innovation and entrepreneurism in quantities sure to increase that pool beyond just replacing those who retire.

Gallup ascertains that we are born with certain talents but rarely would anyone be born with very high levels of each of the 10 talents found in high-performing entrepreneurs.

Training, support and development such as education won’t create a talent where it doesn’t exist but they can move someone with those traits up the scale.

That’s why, for instance, I was only able to get one of those traits up to average while some that came easier moved much higher on the scale.

But the challenge for educators seeking to generate a new generation of DMO execs with these traits, it is a challenge.  The typical management program may find that 17% are interested in tourism including 4% who are inclined to DMO management.

Between 2.5% and 5% will have the innate talents to work with that will make them highly successful in as entrepreneurs and innovators. 

Of course, many communities only give those qualities lip-service but for those seeking leadership with those capacities, the odds are very tight.

I hope that colleges now use tests such as Gallup’s StrengthsFinder to help students understand their particular latent talents so they can work at improving them and avoid thinking these can be accumulated merely with coursework or certifications.

When he was younger, one of my grandsons used the term “talkers” to describe news and sports analysts and commentators. Perhaps I am considered one in retirement (smile.)

Many communities now have boosters capable of being “talkers” about the importance of drawing talent.  Being a “talker” is a talent in and of itself.

But this doesn’t mean these people realize how rare entrepreneurial talent is let alone understand the community attributes and values people with those talents find most essential and appealing.

More can often be ascertained by the values a community consistently exhibits across each and every touch point than from any volume of marketing materials.

When it comes to fostering community brand appeal, it is as much about “storydoing” as “storytelling,” and many who are only “talkers” when it comes to attracting talent are betrayed as otherwise by their “storydoing.”

Hubs such as American Underground with two sites in Durham nurturing 158 startups and a satellite in Raleigh with 32 are pivotal.

But venture capital and nurturing become less relevant to retaining entrepreneurial talent when communities fail to exhibit other core values and traits that are important to them.

Only with that understanding and alignment at every touch point across both public policy and every organization related to economic and training will the best and most consistent decisions be made.

The Rarest of Competencies

Experts at performance appraisal recommend no less than three and no more than five performance objectives.

During my four-decade career as a community marketing executive the number varied but mostly my performance was evaluated on five objectives, each weighted differently and recalibrated every few years.

It was only coincidence that there are now considered to be five roles for such organizations.

Like baseball statisticians are forever trying to do, periodically we would see if we could come up with a single performance metric, a sabremetric

It isn’t an unreasonable exercise because each of my five performance objectives was woven from at least five sub-objectives.  But more than three decades ago, researchers began identifying the dangers associated with too narrow a goal.

Remember the Vietnam War and “body counts?”  It is an example experts often cite because that obsession drew the military away from other more valuable metrics, a mix of which may have changed the outcome.

Overlapping with that period was the explosive (literally) Ford Pinto which was built using only two metrics, “under 2,000 pounds/under $2,000,” which turned out to lead to structural design issues.

Many management studies have warned that too narrowly focusing an organization’s leadership can lead to unintended consequences such as strategic breakdowns and dysfunctional systems, even unethical behavior.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, this had even been given a name, Campbell’s law:

"The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

Many years ago one of my board members, who was very concerned for my welfare, tried to persuade my governing board as a whole to refocus one of my/our objectives around a couple of people who were bending ears about us, especially me.

He, as many do in business circles, just wanted to stop the “boat from rocking.

But prevailing voices raised an even more valid point.

Unless those concerns were far more broadly held, spending too much time on so few would take away from energizing far greater numbers of stakeholders who supported what was apparently irritating to so few.

In political circumstances like this, experts encourage organizations to look at the positive-to-negative ratio using scientific, generalizable methods.  This is the ratio of people who feel passionately one way or the other about an issue or person.

As long as the ratio is positive, focus as much energy as possible into energizing those stakeholders.

This holds true in nearly every facet of life…not just community destination marketing and including hallway politics that carry over from high school into business and politics.

For example, as I’ve mentioned before, 1% of performers generate more than half of all concert revenues.

But Perry Marshall reminds us in his new book 80/20 that the same is true of sports teams where half of the fan revenue comes from 1% of the customers.

He argues that this is a law of nature, not just business, because the same is true of a faith congregation of 400 members, 1% do half of the work and nearly all of the volunteering is done by less than 100 members.

It is also true of our internal stakeholders for any cause, especially grass-roots support.  Those most passionate about a cause represent 1% of the total but more than half of the passion and energy.

Two expert data scientists argued recently in Harvard Business Review that “analyzing the data is the easy part.  The hard part is deciding what data matters.”

Of course, 30% of any performance rating should relate to specific “core competencies,” which for CEOs today should include both innovation and strategic thinking.

This is especially true for those in my former field, community destination marketing organizations where a CEO’s job description should include visioning along with strategic thinking and strategy making.

The problem is that these abilities are hard to teach and resumes now indiscriminately throw these characteristics in without a clue as to what these terms mean.

Studies show that fewer than 14% of Americans are strategically inclined.  Research shows that executives average only 1% to 3% of their time building perspective for the future.

Those who study strengths argue that competencies such as strategic thinking begin as talents that get refined by knowledge and skill-training and then refined with practice.

This is why some people become disenchanted with higher education.  They expected to graduate with talents and came away with only knowledge for a skill.

As a professional discipline, strategy making began in earnest in the 1980s according to observations this month by experts at McKinsey & Company.

But in many organizations it is delegated as only a process, negating the most important aspect of strategy making, agility.

McKinsey applies ten tests to measure the effectiveness of strategies and four years ago a survey of executives around the world found that only a third believed theirs would pass more than three.

Organizations that do best at strategy making are twice as likely to view it as an ongoing function in real-time, which makes it even more crucial as a core competency for CEOs.

Planning has a place, but it is a platform from which to innovate and adapt strategically every single day.  The report details the 13 facets of a chief strategist, broken down into five archetypes: architect, mobilizer, visionary, surveyor and resource manager.

A few months ago, the founder of McKinsey’s Strategy Practice, Fred Gluck, who served as the firm’s managing director during my career, wrote that “strategic planning…provides the raw material and factual basis for strategic thinking and opportunistic decision making.”

But in his experience, it is the latter two that are most important.

Planning defines the dimensions of strategy making but Gluck explains there are also within each “strategic degrees of freedom” and strategy making must react daily to new developments and trends.

To be meaningful and effective, according to Gluck, executives must synthesize and resynthesize analyses into strategic initiatives for continuing and never ending improvement and agile evolution.

From my four decades as a CEO, the challenge for even the most strategically inclined CEOs is that many board members, community policy makers and especially investors, don’t have a strategic bone in their bodies.

This is also why they talk innovation but don’t walk the walk.  If you want a quick way to differentiate those who use strategic and innovation only as “buzz words,” they are the first to undermine data analysis and marketing intelligence while pushing worst practices such as traditional advertising.

An alumnus who overlapped my time at BYU, Dr. Clayton Christensen, who coined the term “disruptive innovation” used to take notes in class by writing down the questions asked and later looking for the patterns that distinguished the most brilliant from the ordinary.

He was putting into practice what management guru Peter Drucker had recommended in the 1950s when we were both in elementary school.  I’m afraid to see his notations about my questions in class.

Clayton’s been searching for a metric for innovation.  In an article for Inc. Magazine, Ilan Mochari reminds us of terms that Christensen uses as a metaphors to distinguish organizations that are strategic and innovative.

He recommends that organizations that are interested in long-term success should ignore stakeholders who act like tourists and focus on those who act like residents.

Another way to view this in sense of place parlance is ignore those who are boomers and focus on the stayers.

Community destination marketing, at its highest and most strategic level, is about guarding sense of place.  These organizations pursue tourists by appealing to their instincts for being rooted, almost as if they were residents.

They grasp that marketing is about asking questions, as much about disqualifying potential visitors for whom a destination would not be a good fit as it is storytelling to engage those in conversation for whom it would be.

By nature, marketing community appeal is about strategic differentiation, marketing innovation and credibility. 

It can also be a very lonely job, thus my I forecast this week that executive levels will be increasingly inhabited by introverts and omniverts capable of strategic sustainability in rooms filled with stakeholders who simply aren’t.

Inclinations Frozen On Paper

In 1987 psychologists used me as a test subject and analyzed my handwriting as part of considering graphology in a suite of talent-selection tools being considered by the community-destination marketing organization (DMO) I was leading at the time in Alaska.

This occurred a decade after studies began to link signature size with high self-regard and then narcissism but the technique has a long history and has been validated by thousands of researchers.

At the time my handwriting was analyzed, it was reported that 3,000 American corporations were already using the tool to screen new hires, a number that has reportedly transcended 5,000 today. 

However, I was skeptical it would work on me, given a gradually worsening movement disorder called “essential tremor.” The condition had first manifested itself in my right hand when I was a teenager.

By the time of the analysis it was even worse in my left or writing hand.  But the analysis, which is conducted “blind,” worked and very accurately.  Experts, usually psychologists who are trained in graphology, study handwriting as a form of unfiltered body language  but “frozen on paper.”

As we mature, the rules we all learned in school for handwriting gradually become informed by aspects of our temperament, personality, inclinations and unique neurological patterns.  Forensically and in courtrooms, handwriting is much like a fingerprint.

In fact, experts using handwriting analysis have even identified a number of movements common in criminals.  Linked here for instance, is an analysis of the handwriting of executed domestic terrorist and mass bomber Timothy McVeigh done by the company HRC.

In addition to potential as a tool for talent selection, handwriting analysis is used in team building, assessments of leadership or promotional potential, substance abuse detection and even relationship compatibility, the latter of which would have come in handy during my lifetime.

We ended up selecting other tools, but re-reading the analysis of my handwriting nearly 25 years later in retirement reveals in retrospect just how accurate it was.  It confirmed indications of my education level and upbringing, but also pinpointed an inclination to sensitivity, even self-defense.

It identified my tendency to challenge conventional wisdom and an openness to fresh ideas as well as an intensity, a need to participate in change.  It also delved into aspects of my nature such as understanding and tolerance.

The analysis foretold a tireless determination in the pursuit and conversion of ideals to reality, and a strong ego without being narcissistic.  Even more significantly, the analysis accurately notes some vulnerabilities that come with these tendencies.

Earlier in her life, when angry or hurt, my daughter has disputed the part about me not being narcissistic, and always with good reason.  Coincidentally, one of the first studies correlating signature size to self-esteem occurred the year she was born.

At extreme levels, narcissism is a personality disorder but at another level it is a stable personality trait as I learned from a report published a few months ago by researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina, which is located in a community just south of where I live in Durham, NC.

Narcissism has been linked to large signature size since the late 1970s but this new study also links narcissism and large CEO signature size to poor performance and also, paradoxically, to larger compensation.

Narcissistic CEOs are not only conceited but overvalue their abilities.  They bring about poorer group decisions “because they dominate the decision process without incorporating feedback or ideas from other group members.”

Ironically, though, these CEOs are also considered more capable by the same group members they dominate during decision processes, resulting a type of closed-feedback-loop.  This is why toleration of dissent is much better than peer loyalty as a gut-check on narcissism.

The study crossed my mind recently as I was leaving a Rotary luncheon at the Durham Convention Center.  My attendance is spotty as best, often bringing puzzled expressions from new members as they spy my past-president name badge.

Dr. Dan Ariely, who teaches at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, had spoken at the luncheon about experiments that show that people are more likely to be dishonest if what they are doing benefits friends and associates.  I suppose this is enabling a sort of group narcissism.

A friend kidded me unmercifully as a little of my own narcissism eked out as we left the building.  Instinctively I glanced quickly back over my shoulder at a portrait that was hung in the Center three months before I retired a few years ago after 21 years as guardian of Durham’s community’s brand and sense of place.

As stand-ins for thousands of people who are even more deserving, a depiction of me in the portrait is shown against the Durham skyline next to Mayor Bill Bell who continues more than three decades as a public official and downtown advocate Bill Kalkhof who is also retiring this year after nearly 20 years of services.

I can’t remember the size of their signatures, but I know they have given their all to Durham, as I tried to do, often at significant personal sacrifice.  I am honored to be in their company.

As I file and store away personal papers, I can see the effects of essential tremor on my signature over time. Eventually, to control the movement in my hands, my signature grew in size.

Many years ago, it became impossible to manage anything other than a large “R” with a line after it.  Today, I can’t even make the “R” and even the line is illegible.

Along with the disappearance of my signature, I guess any narcissist tendencies I may have had must have receded in retirement because my daughter frequently kids me with a big smile by saying,

“Who are you and what have you done with my dad?”

An 8th Grade Lesson In Managing Talent

He never talked about it much, but I learned while frequently pawing through a my Grandmother Adah Rae’s trunk full of army uniforms and sports memorabilia that my Dad was a four-sport standout in high school but he didn’t say a word when I came home with a “D” in P.E. in the 8th Grade. P.E? Really, REALLY?

Of course he also didn’t let me hide behind the excuse that I was going through an incredible growth spurt that reduced me to all knees and elbows and kept me out of football that year. Some things defy determination and will and grit.

It was my most embarrassing moment, rivaled only by the day when as a first grader, the third graders suddenly asked me to join in the tackle football games (no helmets or pads) they played during recess along one side of the Ashton, Idaho Elementary School.

I picked up a fumble on the first play and ran for a touchdown - the wrong direction! I’m not making this stuff up.

I had always excelled in sports before the dreaded “D",” but during that 8th grade year no amount of determination seemed to work until I caught up with my body that Spring and things started to click again in both baseball and track and field.

My Dad’s response, when I got that “D,” ignored that failure or anything having to do with improving in P.E. class. He simply said, “Why don’t you go out for varsity football in the 9th grade,” which I did. I made the team as a wide receiver so I wouldn’t get hurt. Everyone could tell I didn’t have my Dad’s frame.

I promptly and seriously aggravated an Achilles tendon in an “away” game and spent several months going to school early so I could soak in the whirlpool or what we called a whirlpool in those days, and doing other things to help the inflammation heal.

Dad’s next suggestion – “Why don’t you go for the school record in the 440 next Spring?” I did and not only broke that record but received the “most improved” award for athletics in Junior High. I wish I could say the happy ending is that I was a stand-out in High School. But I blew my left knee out.

My Dad’s solution – “Why don’t you focus on grades and getting into college,” Good idea!

Dad never came to one of my games or meets or matches. Maybe he knew the pressure I was under trying to live up to his name. He worked two jobs most of those years along with my Mom rather than declare bankruptcy like a middle man did after he took delivery of my parents’ stock one year before paying them a red “cent.”

For as far back as I can remember, he always played sports with me incessantly when he came home and that continued until I left home as an adult and even after. When it became clear I was a south paw when I was handwriting or eating but right-handed in sports, he encouraged me to switch hit. When I did excel on a team and came home to tell him about it, he was quick to bring me back to earth, sometimes not so gently.

My Dad didn’t make sense to me then, and our love and respect for him now that he is gone are much stronger than the humorous “bigger than life” caricatures that light up conversations about him at family gatherings today.

He was a star in sports but he didn’t do what the other parents did when it came to competitive sports. Knowing what I know now after a nearly 40-year career in building destination marketing teams and trying to help people motivate themselves, I realize my Dad never got the credit he deserved as a parent or as an astute manager of talent.

He never focused on failure or living up to expectations. He knew the kind of pressure I put on myself and my inherent grit and determination, a pressure I wasn’t always keen to modulate for those around me.

In hindsight I see that he had a very unique knack for helping me focus beyond the hurdle I had just missed, to a new and higher goal. I would have been a better executive and developer of destination marketing talent and teams, if I had taken more cues from my Dad.

He was always so proud of his children and grandchildren and he would have been delighted to see the pure enthusiasm his mid-kindergarten and first grade great-grandsons have for sports, as they took me through basketball, football, soccer and baseball workouts in just the first few hours of my recent visit with them.

Thanks to my Dad, I also have a great road-map for how to deal with any “D” they may ever get in P.E.