Something a bit different this week. It’s always really important to look outside of corporate talent acquisition to see what lessons can be learned from other industries. When it comes to talent innovation it is fair to say that professional sports lead the way.
My guest this week is Cody Royle, Managing Partner of NTSQ Sports and Head Coach of AFL Team Canada. Cody has recently written a book on people innovation based on lessons he has learnt by talking to elite coaches and sporting executives such as Ralph Krueger, Joe Dumars and Ted Sundquist.
In the interview we discuss:
• How top sports coaches think about recruiting and talent management
• The importance of motivation and team environment
• Rethinking interviews
• Challenging definitions of talent to recruit for competitive advantage
• Why tenure has nothing to do with leadership
Cody also shares his key advice for Talent Acquisition professionals in 2018 and some of his favourite anecdotes from the book
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 117 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Something a bit different this week. I think it’s really important to sometimes look outside of the corporate talent acquisition world to see what lessons can be learned from other industries. When it comes to talent innovation, it’s fair to say that professional sports probably leads the way. My guest this week is Cody Royle, head coach of AFL Team Canada. Cody has recently written a book on people innovation which is based on lessons he’s learned by talking to elite coaches and sporting leaders such as Ralph Krueger, Joe Dumars and Ted Sundquist. Some fascinating stuff here. Enjoy the interview. Hi Cody, and welcome to the podcast.
Cody Royle [00:02:03]:
Thanks Matt. Appreciate you having me on.
Matt Alder [00:02:05]:
My absolute pleasure. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Cody Royale [00:02:11]:
Sure thing. My name is Cody Royle. I’m an Australian. Obviously you’ll tell by my accent. I live in Toronto in Canada. I’m the national team head coach for the Aussie Rules program here and I’ve just finished my first book Where Others Won’t, which kind of marries up my coaching experience with the experiences I’ve had in the corporate world.
Matt Alder [00:02:34]:
And you’ve got some sort of previous experience in recruiting, is that right?
Cody Royle [00:02:38]:
Yeah. So I spent the first roughly 10 years in HR and recruitment. So I spent three years in pure HR in a generalist role in Australia. I studied HR at university and then moved into that role in the corporate world. And then when I moved over to Canada, I moved into agency recruiting. So I spent about six or seven years in North America selling recruiting into, you know, Fortune 500s.
Matt Alder [00:03:06]:
Fantastic. And obviously we’re going to talk, you know, talk at length about your book and all that sort of stuff. But I’m for a European. I’m dying to ask this question straight off which is how popular is Aussie Rules football in Canada?
Cody Royle [00:03:21]:
It’s a growing sport. We now have teams in, I think it’s seven provinces across Canada, which is getting as close to the mark for being recognised as a sport by Sport Canada. So you have to hit a lot of criteria. And we’re also on television, which is helping a lot. So late at night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you can see live Aussie rules games, which is obviously helping the game boom a little bit. Specifically because in North America you don’t have club environments like we have in, say, the UK and Australia, where after university you’d go and play for your local rugby club or your local soccer club or your local Aussie rules club and you would play until you’re 40. That doesn’t exist here. So we get a lot of, you know, football players as an example that come out of university in Canada and don’t have an avenue to play sport.
Matt Alder [00:04:23]:
So let’s get back to talking about your book. What’s it about and why did you write it?
Cody Royle [00:04:28]:
Yeah, good question. The book is about people, innovation and how teams work. And it came from my background and, you know, this experience of coaching a high level of sport and then, you know, as a day job going in and seeing how teams work in the corporate environment and I guess the frustration at how little I found that there was an understanding of how teams work and how people work. And I just didn’t see those same frustrations in the sporting world where people are really all you have. And so I started writing about it about five years ago and then went through a process about a year ago where I started to interview some pretty high level people in pro sport to ask them about their recruitment and their leadership and culture and high performance and just kind of bundle it all together.
Matt Alder [00:05:22]:
Fantastic. And talk us through the people that you actually interviewed. Now, I know that there are, you know, people who might be specific to specific sports and specific countries, but, you know, with a global audience for the podcast, I’m sure that people will have heard of, you know, will have heard of some of them. Could you sort of give us some, some examples of the people that you spoke to?
Cody Royle [00:05:44]:
Yeah, definitely. The big three, I guess you would call them, to use a sporting analogy, Ralph Krueger, who’s the president and chairman of Southampton Football Club, he’s got a fascinating story as an ice hockey coach in Canada and then was engaged by the Southampton Football Club to run their team. So he’s got some incredible anecdotes that have made the book. Joe Dumas, who was obviously an NBA hall of Famer with the Detroit Pistons and then went back as their president and built a championship winning team. You remember the 2004 Detroit Pistons, they overcame the mighty Los Angeles Lakers, who’d won three in a row. And so again, just a fascinating discussion and talking of recruitment, the way that team was built was absolutely fascinating. And then the other one would be Ted Sundquist, who was the general manager of the Denver Broncos through the early 2000s. So there’s obviously a raft of other executives and coaches and CEOs and CFOs that I’ve spoken to, but they’re kind of the big three that I really have kind of latched onto a lot of their examples.
Matt Alder [00:07:04]:
Fantastic. So to, to confess all, I’m actually a fan of Southampton Football Club. So tempted though I am to ask you about Ralph Krueger’s plans for the next five years, kind of pulling it back to recruitment. What were the, you know, what were the most sort of interesting, interesting insights that you got from, from those interviews in terms of, you know, how these guys think about recruiting and how they, you know, get the, the sort of, the best possible talent into their teams?
Cody Royle [00:07:36]:
Yeah, the biggest light bulb moment, I think, in marrying all these concepts up. And there’s three solid chapters on recruitment and there’s a bunch of anecdotes within those chapters. I think that the core element is that humans recruit humans and all of these teams, regardless of whether it’s Southampton Football Club, Detroit Pistons, whoever it is at the top, there is someone that is grounded very much in human interaction and motivation and that kind of filters through as a cultural element into their recruiting. So it’s not like viewing leadership and recruitment and culture and high performance as separate silos. They all feed into each other. To give you an example, Joe Dumas recruited a bunch of ragtag players that were, you know, had been traded a bunch of times and basically put them into an environment that just facilitated their strengths. And that was a long term play. But it was all about for him, you know, he was interested in their journey. So the first questions that he asked them was, wasn’t about basketball, it was like, tell me about where you’ve come from. And so he had a really innate understanding of how to motivate that person once they’re in the job. And I think there’s a lot of crossover for that in, in the corporate world.
Matt Alder [00:09:06]:
Absolutely. And I think in the book you talk about, is it, is it, is it vulnerable interviewing or something? Could you, could you sort of talk A bit more about that.
Cody Royle [00:09:15]:
Yeah. So I came up with this concept of a vulnerable job description, and then I started to think about that more, and I realized that it was kind of an interview process as well. But the idea came from the sporting world, again, where you, let’s say you’ve just been relegated from the Premier League as an example. Everyone knows that everyone understands where you are and they understand the flaws in your team. And so really, the interview process and the whole kind of onboarding process needs to start with that vulnerability. And if you lie to a candidate at that stage of the job process, that’s going to continue on for the rest of that person’s tenure, whether it’s them lying to you or you lying to them. And I think there’s, you know, there’s examples now, like a Bridgewater Associates as an example, where, you know, Ray Dalio has just released his book Principles, which is number one everywhere. And one of his biggest fundamental principles was to show your warts and basically tell candidates where you’re at. And, yeah, I see a commonality there with the sporting world where you can’t lie that the Cleveland Browns went or about to go 0:16. So when they’re recruiting next year, they have to lay all their cards on the table. And I think that’s just a better foothold to grasp onto for people coming into your organization to actually start there and just admit that that’s where you’re at and ask for help from them.
Matt Alder [00:10:56]:
I suppose one of the other interesting things for me from the sporting world is so in the book that I wrote, Exceptional Talent, we, you know, we talk about what is exceptional talent. And the past experience doesn’t necessarily equate to feature performance. And companies need to think much more flexibly about the, you know, their definition of talent if they’re going, you know, fill the sort of, the new types of roles they have and deal with skill shortages. How does that, you know, how does that kind of sit in the sporting world? Because I guess that, you know, you’ve got sort of very expensive players with, with past track records, but you’ve also got, you know, players, players coming through who turn into future stars. Was there. Did you get kind of any insights into that sort of, that definition of talent within these sports teams?
Cody Royle [00:11:50]:
Yeah, definitely. There’s a whole area that I start to talk about underutilized and underappreciated. And to go back to the Detroit Pistons example, they built a whole team of those guys, guys that were ragtag. They were about to be discarded by the industry. But what they did was find out what they could do. And I think the crossover in the corporate world is that we kind of interview people for the job, like for the job description and not bother finding out what else they can do. And so when you’re talking about identifying what talent is, so many people have so many different skills that could actually be a competitive advantage for you, but you don’t even bother to ask. And that’s where I think the disconnect is in a sporting world, I think they go and find out, can you just rebound the ball? Or the New England Patriots are another example where they’ve built an entire roster of guys. I think it was a couple years ago, their whole offensive line was undrafted and so they went and found guys that could just do different things, but they bothered to ask the question, what can this guy do? And I think particularly in the corporate environment, just asking that simple question can spark an idea that might lead to a product innovation that might lead to a huge competitive advantage. But you’ve got to ask the question first.
Matt Alder [00:13:24]:
So beyond recruiting, the rest of the books about teamwork and motivation and other sort of people lessons that companies can get from high performing sports teams, can you sort of give us an insight into that side? Because I think, you know that that’s obviously a really sort of interesting, interesting, interesting factor.
Cody Royle [00:13:46]:
Yeah. So in all, I think I. Well, I’ve counted 53 core ideas in the book and they’re broken down into recruiting, leadership, culture and high performance. There are examples from the corporate world as well of companies that I see as being thought leaders in this area. But for example, in leadership, I think there’s two real learnings that I clued in on. And one was that tenure has nothing to do with leadership. And you’re seeing now young professional coaches in sport that are thriving when put into the right environment. Julian Nagelsmann is now a high profile manager in Germany. Guy was 28 when he took the job and rescued them from a relegation battle and now has them in the top six. Now in the corporate world, putting a 28 year old in charge of a team that was about to be relegated or the equivalent of, is unheard of. But he actually, Hugh Stevens was in the job before him and that’s a guy that had 25 years of experience. And so you’re starting to see these people strategies in pro sport that are actually doing quality assurance for the corporate world. And I just wanted to bring a lot of them to light. Probably the other key one would be that I see Kind of a leadership style as being a bit of a sliding scale, so not necessarily set in stone. You don’t need to be an authoritative leader, you don’t need to be a laissez faire leader. You actually adapt based on what your team needs. And so going back to the recruitment anecdote I was talking about before, you’ve kind of got to understand what motivates each individual and slide with them and slide with what the team needs. And yeah, so there’s quite a few. 53 obviously, but it’s broken down, the whole book is broken down into small bite sized nuggets with, with the idea that not all are going to be relevant to everyone, but hopefully there’s one that kind of gets you thinking that this is quite relevant to me and we could implement this fairly quickly and it could change something for us, I.
Matt Alder [00:16:14]:
Suppose, to sort of distill that down into a bit of a summary. As companies sort of move into 2018, what would your core advice be to talent acquisition professionals to sort of help them hit their objectives for the, the air?
Cody Royle [00:16:30]:
Yeah, the thing that I learned through this process and this is years of research and speaking to various people, but the way I see it is people or people innovation is the new competitive advantage. And so I would be beating that drum to my company and saying that everything is fast becoming so commoditized. Technology has leveled the playing field to the point where people the way to get the fastest way to get a competitive advantage. If I was still in the industry, that’s what I would be cluing in on and looking at these examples of companies that they’re not necessarily innovating on products to the level that they used to be. They’re really innovating on people and making sure that their people are successful and looking at strategies that can allow their individuals and their teams to thrive. Because that’s really where you’re going to go from scrapping for 1 and 2% gains to 5 and 10% gains.
Matt Alder [00:17:41]:
So, final question. You know, you mentioned that you sort of heard lots of anecdotes during the, you know, the interviews that you, that you did. What was your favorite?
Cody Royle [00:17:52]:
Well, I’m not saying this one just because you pumped him up earlier, Matt, but my conversation with Ralph Krueger was definitely the favorite. Not only just because he’s so insightful, but just his general demeanor. He’s a Canadian, so, you know, they’re known as very nice people. But his perspective on, on leadership was fantastic. Not only from being a hockey coach for so long and now leading a Premier League team. But, you know, he’s consulted with the World Economic Forum and the nugget that he left me with was, you know, the big disconnect in culture, in corporate culture, is that leaders don’t bother to involve people in building the culture that’s ultimately going to affect them. And so one of the things that he did, one of the first things that he did at Southampton was he grabbed all 204, I think it was full time employees, they sat them in a conference room and everyone got to speak on the microphone about their role and what they wanted Southampton Football Club to become. So every single person in the company spoke to the new chairman and said, this is where I think we can go. And then they went and molded the corporate culture around what those people had said, rather than just him coming in and saying, this is how we’re going to do it. And, you know, for that from, to come from a guy in such a high profile position was just astounding to me. And so, as you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation.
Matt Alder [00:19:41]:
Obviously I’m biased, but that’s absolutely brilliant. And I’m hoping it translates into long term sporting success brilliant. To talk to you where, where can people find you and where can they find the book?
Cody Royle [00:19:55]:
Yeah, the book is called Where Others Want. It’s available on Amazon only at the moment. And so, yeah, punch in Amazon.com, amazon, ca, wherever you are, and search for where others won’t. And I’m also at whereotherswon’t.com Cody, thank.
Matt Alder [00:20:13]:
You very much for talking to me.
Cody Royle [00:20:14]:
Thanks, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:20:16]:
My thanks to Cody Royle. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes via Stitcher or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for recruiting future in your app store. If you’re a Spotify user, the podcast is also available there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
