As a part of our talent acquisition engagements, we ask our clients how they define “top talent” and how they would assess those traits in the interview process. Reflecting on the insightful comments we hear every day, we thought there would be great value in a new blog in which senior executives/thought leaders share their “Take on Talent.”
This is the second in a series of blogs/interviews with senior executives who are thought leaders in the areas of Talent Acquisition, Career Development and Leadership who will share their perspectives on this ever present question.
Mark Trepanier is the EVP Managed Services, Client Delivery of Axiom, a recognized leader in the business of law and the world’s largest provider of tech-enabled legal, contracts and compliance solutions for large enterprises. Axiom’s unique solutions combine legal expertise, technology and data analytics to deliver work in a way that dramatically reduces risk, cost and cycle-time.
Please share with us the top five characteristics (in priority order, first to fifth) of the most talented people you have encountered during your career, and your definition of each.
Axiom has a unique approach to defining the characteristics, or core values we, as a company, regard above all others and that contribute to our innovative/eccentric culture. One of the things that attracted me to Axiom, and keeps me here, is our core value philosophy and believe our value set serves as a unique contributor to, and definition of, talent. These values/characteristics are as follows:
- Committed: The best, most successful talent is eager to serve, will own their successes and failures, and will be mindful of an organization’s broader mission. When a committed person encounters adversity, s/he searches far and wide for the opportunity hidden behind it.
- Fresh: The best talent will inject new energy and new thinking into a precedent-bound profession (like the law). Such people will combine innovation, personality and common sense in a way that invigorates clients and colleagues.
- Irresistible: The best talent feels like an integral part of the company they are creating and as such have contagious energy and incurable passion.
- Thoughtful: The most successful hires will be those that pride themselves on listening and relating to colleagues and clients in a way that’s genuine, human and memorable.
- Business Intelligence: If pressed for a fifth, outside of our defined “core values,” it would be business intelligence. In many ways the law is an example of a vocation. You can be extremely competent in that vocation but unable to service clients in any meaningful way. To make an impact on our clients, we must not only be well versed in the nuances of the law, but we must understand our clients’ broader business goals and implications of the law therein. The best hires immerse themselves in their client’s business and let that inform the legal solutions they provide. The same applies to the various areas of subject matter expertise we hire, including sales and account management, service delivery, technology, finance, H&R and marketing.
How do you communicate these characteristics to your HR and senior management team?
That’s the wonderful thing about Axiom. I don’t need to communicate these characteristics to HR or our senior management. They have been defined for us. Our senior team consists of the founders of our culture and the HR team is its ambassadors. As a member of our Executive Leadership team I can confirm that not only is that culture endemic in how we operate, we actually take time to evaluate ourselves against those criteria to ensure we are, as a team and as leaders in the organization, staying true to our core values. Some people talk about it, we as a company take ourselves to task on this dimension regularly.
How do you handle challenges to the existing culture by talent you have brought in?
While the core values that contribute to creating an identifiable culture should be constant, the culture itself should not be static. It should, instead, be viewed as an evolutionary entity that morphs according to the changing corporate landscape and the people who comprise the organization. I welcome when new people challenge the culture of our organization because it forces us to continually re-define what our culture is, and how our core values are reflected in the culture. Sometimes those challenges make our vision more clear with respect to the parts of our culture that really define our organization. Sometimes those challenges alert us to those places within our organization that don’t necessary reflect our values, or where our culture has taken an unexpected path. And for that reason the challenge is good.
That said, you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole. And, we like being round. When a challenge becomes more combative than constructive it’s time to re-evaluate how that hires fit in the organization.
Bottom line – even if a new hire is exceptionally proficient in the area for which we have hired them, a good cultural fit is paramount. If that person challenges the culture in unique or unexpected ways, that’s icing on the proverbial cake. If instead, that person challenges the culture in ways that seem totally counter to our core values, then it’s time to suggest that person take their abundant talents elsewhere. And we don’t kid around on this one, when we see this tension (to the extent this happens – which is rare because we are very careful in whom we bring on board) we move quickly.