I’ve been watching the Public Television show on Bill Clinton’s presidency the past two days and one of the things I’ve been most interested in is how much confidence and skill President Clinton had around influence.

Almost everyone (at least the democrats) described Clinton as the consummate influencer. Put him in a room with just about anyone and he would win them over through his power or personality . I’ve been around a few national politicians and I know that they have an amazing ability to make someone feel a constituent feel like the constituent is the most important person in the world and I imagine Bill must have had this skill to the nth degree.

The show described the story about the Federal shutdown and how Clinton was sure that if he got then Speaker Newt Gingrich in a room with him, he could win him over and get Gingrich to back down from his request for a balanced budget. But no matter what Clinton did, Newt would not budge.

What broke the stalemate was when Clinton’s pollster and trusted friend, Dick Morris conducted a poll of Americans and determined that citizens wanted a balanced budget but not on the backs of Medicare and Social Security recipients. Armed with that information, Clinton and his team played out that scenario and convinced the republicans to yield on their budget requirements.

Being a great influencer requires a great many skills and may vary from “I feel your pain” (Clinton) to “I’ll kick your ass” (LBJ). Regardless of the tools of the trade nothing else is more important than having the right information to know how the tide is turning and the wind is blowing.

©  Richard Citrin, 2012

Last year, the movie MoneyBall talked about how the old traditions of baseball’s talent management system grossly misunderstood important factors that should be considered when looking for an all star baseball player. Today we know that another professional sport “stumbled upon” a potentially great player more by luck than intent.

By now the entire world has heard about Jeremy Lin. An unheralded undrafted New York Knick basketball player whose resume highlighted his Harvard education more than his professional basketball prowess. While he helped his high school team win a California championship, he received no Division I scholarships and “settled” on Harvard as his number 2 choice.

After an outstanding career at Harvard, he wound up signing a contract with his hometown Golden State Warriors where was heralded for his Asian-American roots more so than his basketball play–something that seemed to bother him as he wanted to prove himself as a basketball player. But he was waived by the Warriors and then went onto Houston where he played 7 minutes in 2 exhibition games before getting the send off.

It was just this past December that the Knicks picked him up as a third string point guard and he spent his first month with the Knicks playing well for their farm team before being recalled since their players at that position were still rehabbing from injuries.

Given that Lin had not played much in his first month, the Knicks were planning to waive him on February 10 but after a devestating loss to the Boston Celtics on February 3, the Knick head coach, Mike D’Antoni decided to give him a chance.

191 points, 60 assists and seven victories later, Jeremy Lin is hot.  He’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the New York Post has run out of “Linisms” for their headlines and his #17 Knick jersey and t-shirts have increased on-line sales for the Knicks 3000%.

In the talent world, Jeremy Lin would be described as a “diamond in the rough”. Smart, hardworking, focused and committed on improving his craft and a man who works with a sense of perseverance and purpose.

His story, while still new and fresh portrays a great message for both employers and employees. For the boss, always keep your eyes open for that person in the background at the end of the bench who has a secret desire to contribute and who keeps working at it. For the rest of us, keep at it and when your turn comes go for it big time.

So what happens when we review what the senior management team identifies as the strategic roles in the company and they discover that they do not necessarily have the strongest people in these critical roles? Perhaps it has been someone who has been with the company for 25 years or maybe they got bumped up because the prior manager left unexpectedly. While everyone thinks they may have earned the opportunity to be in an important role in the organization they may not be the best person for that particular strategic role. I see this occurring in many organizations where the metric of seniority and tenure trumps competency and value. 

I remember a conversation I was having with a retired Air Force Colonel who told me that in the military they expect officers to change jobs every 5 years or so. “The Air Force doesn’t want people to get stale and that means new jobs and new responsibilities”. But in the private sector, he told me, he was surprised how many people had survived in their current role for 10-15-20-25 or 30 years just doing an okay job. But just an okay job in today’s competitive environment leaves any company behind the proverbial “eight ball”. 

Before you panic, however, remember that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, so what is required is to evaluate who are your top performers, what are the key or critical positions and then evaluate the options for how to realign the organization to make certain that you get your best people in the key roles within your company. 

As Jack Welch, the legendary leader of General Electric once said “The team with the best players wins”.

One of the most important aspects of talent management is that it identifies the different kinds of roles within the organization. While every role in your company is important, not every role is critical or strategic. And by identifying the big picture responsibility of the jobs in your organization, employers can see if their best employees (most talented staff) are in the most important roles in the company. Let’s begin by identifying the three kinds of roles that exist within every company.

The first are strategic roles. About 10-15% of roles within the organization are strategic. Most people typically think that the strategic roles are roles like the president of the company, the senior vice-president of the company, the chief financial officer of the company or the chief technology officer of the company. These may in fact be strategic roles within the organization but surprisingly strategic roles may be roles that you wouldn’t think about as being strategic. For example, I wrote an article recently called “Why is Joe Smith the FedEx Driver More Important Than Fred Smith the CEO of FedEx?” and the reason for that is that Fed Ex recognizes that the strategic role for their organization are the truck drivers: The men and women who get those packages from the warehouse where they land to the office or home where the people who need them need them. This is what FedEx is all about and these roles are very much strategic for this company.

Another great example points to employees who are in the same job but in one company they are strategic and in another company they are not strategic and that would be the difference between an airline like Southwest which is a low budget quick turnaround, point-to-point airline versus American Airlines which is a hub and spoke airline that is going to connect people from one place to another. At Southwest Airlines the ramp people – the people who get the bags out of the plane and onto the ramp and out so that that plane is ready to turn around and get going quickly and effectively are strategic roles: At American Airlines not so much. The plane is going to be on the ground for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. The ramp people want to get it out efficiently, that is obviously good customer service but it is not nearly as important as it is for Southwest Airlines where their planes are going to be turned around in 10 minutes. You have got to get those bags off. You have got to get the new bags on. Southwest Airlines, American Airlines.-both same positions, ramp people. One strategic and the other one is the second area that we talk about related to organizations which have to do with supporting roles.

The next group of job roles is “supporting roles”. Supporting roles keep internal operations moving. Information technology is a supporting role. Operations is a supporting role. Human resources is a supporting role. Safety manager is a supporting role. These roles are very important and vital to the organization. However, their importance is really secondary to the more important strategic roles.

Finally, the third group of roles in an organization are the core roles. These are the ones that are required for operational excellence. They may be your manufacturing roles if you are manufacturing steel or some other product. They may be your sales and marketing positions. Again, these roles are vitally important to the success of the organization but they are not strategic. By the way, the core roles will fill about 20-25% of all jobs while strategic are about 10-15% of the company and operational around 60%.

Understanding these roles in any organization is central to building a talent management model. You recognize immediately where you need to put your energy, where you need to find the best people, where you need to actually assess what roles are most important and whether those people that you have in those roles are the best people for the organization.