Bill Byham holds a doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology — but that’s not the only way to define him. While he is not only considered an expert in the scientific study of employees, workplaces and organizations, he was one of the first in the world to use a groundbreaking hiring technique called assessment centers.
Some 35 years ago, Byham worked for J.C. Penney Co. when he began using simulated on-the-job techniques to find the most qualified potential employees.
“Assessment centers are a way of evaluating people by putting them through simulations where the people can show what they can do rather than just conducting an interview,” Byham says. “It’s like picking a basketball player — you wouldn’t interview them, you would put them out on the basketball court to see what they could do.”
Byham had great success with these assessment centers at J.C. Penney and wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review that made him famous, gaining the interest of many big companies looking to use this technique.
It wasn’t long until an entrepreneurial opportunity was born. He partnered with Doug Bray of AT&T and started Development Dimensions International Inc., which today is a leader in talent management, leadership development, hiring and talent acquisition.
“We help companies make the most of their employees,” says Byham, chairman and CEO. “We help organizations be more successful in hiring people by teaching interviewing skills. We are very big in the training business, particularly at the supervisory level, where we train more than 500,000 people a year.
“We also have a big business to help companies determine who will be their fast trackers and how to develop them for higher-level jobs.”
Since Byham started DDI, a 1,100-employee, $200 million organization, the company has trained upwards of 20 million people. Today, his focus is on the continued R&D of products in training and development techniques.
Here’s how Byham goes about R&D to keep DDI in front of its customers and on the cutting edge of its industry.
Generate ideas
DDI places a great deal of energy into its R&D process. As a global company, DDI offers its products in as many as 20 languages. Rolling out changes to an existing product or developing a completely new one is a big cost. Costs and language aside, however, to remain an industry leader, you need to have plenty of ideas, and good ones.
“We do so much R&D here,” Byham says. “A problem that we do not have is a lack of good ideas. We have more good ideas than we know what to do with.
“So the first problem is trying to slim down the list of projects because all the projects are in the multimillion dollar range.”
In order to develop all these good ideas that DDI brings to the table, the company fosters a sense of empowerment among its employees.
“The whole company is built on empowerment — that is to empower people to own their job and feel responsible to make decisions,” Byham says. “If you treat your employees so that they feel empowered and they treat their job like they own it, then people will always want to improve and come up with ideas.”
In addition to a sense of empowerment, DDI prides itself on having a management team that is very open to new ideas and has a willingness to make changes.
“That’s one of our big problems — we make so many changes all the time because people come up with new ideas,” he says.
The management team works to narrow down the options.
“We have a series of meetings to cut them out and usually it’s not hard to get it down to eight,” he says. “But then to get it down to two or three new projects is tougher. R&D to us is brand new, game-changing products, or a big change in what we’re doing.”
DDI’s biggest product is called Interaction Management, which is a supervisory training program that is among the best-selling of its kind in the world.
“We try to update it every six or seven years,” Byham says. “That essentially becomes a new product.”
DDI recently finished a new middle management training program. The concept rethinks how middle managers get trained, including what they get trained on and how their skills are developed and what happens after that in the company to make sure they really learn it and apply those new skills.
“It’s not just coming up with a new idea,” he says. “It’s coming up with the whole pathway to learning and change, which starts out with a better understanding of their needs.”
Focus your R&D efforts
Part of having a strong R&D process is being able to not only take suggestions from your customers for products and develop those, but also being able to develop products out in front of what your clients want before they know they want it.
“You have to look at R&D in that sense as a 50/50 balance,” Byham says. “We do a lot of customer surveys. We’re out with our customers a lot and they’ll say, ‘We want a training program on this.’ However, I think it was Steve Jobs who said, ‘If you only give your customers what they ask for, you’ll always be behind.’
“What I’ve always noticed is you have to be out in front of the customer because sometimes it takes us several years to develop these things. If you just try to keep up with that hot topic, we won’t get it out until it is no longer a hot topic. So we have to anticipate needs and then be ahead of that.”
DDI has had instances where it was ahead of customers on products. Just a few years ago DDI developed a product to help companies prepare for retirements and how to handle an older workforce.
“We’ve been way ahead of our contemporaries and competitors on that,” he says. “The bad side is the whole thing is built on the assumption there is going to be a huge amount of retirements. With the economy being what it was until recently, a whole lot of people who were going to retire decided not to. We’re still ahead of the tide there a little bit.”
The R&D process isn’t just about finding the next new product, but also devoting some effort to keeping well-performing, existing products up-to-date.
“The more products you have, the more it costs you to keep the old products good,” he says. “The ratio for us is around 60 to 70 percent old products and 40 to 30 percent new. You have to look at the sales of the old product. If you’re still going up with the old product, you will want to keep investing in it.”
Byham likens it to Tide for Procter & Gamble. There have been 20 new versions of Tide and they’re still making money on it. They’re going to keep that product and put it in front of customers.
“If you really have an excellent old product, like we have with Interaction Management, you would not want to let that go, but you still want to be out looking for new things,” Byham says.
Plan for the future
Byham’s biggest focus may be on R&D, but another forward-thinking area he is keeping in mind is succession planning. Byham is 76, and very aware of his age. He knows that anything could happen at any time requiring someone else to lead the company.
“There’s never been a company more ready for retirements because the whole company is so dedicated to growing our own leaders,” Byham says. “We practice what we preach.”
One of the keys to succession planning that DDI lives by is that you can’t develop everyone for high-level jobs.
“If you try to spread your money out evenly across people, you don’t have any effect by it,” he says. “The first big thing is to define who are the people who have the most raw talent to be developed. Then you have to look at how you accelerate their development.
“You keep on developing everybody and you keep on promoting people, but there are certain people you promote faster who are being accelerated up the ladder.”
DDI also believes that you don’t aim people at high-level jobs. You aim people at a level of jobs, like the C-level, but you don’t name the job specifically because companies today are too dynamic.
“We preach that companies should do away with the old succession plan, which was to take an organizational chart and move people up who are next in line,” Byham says. “We have done all kinds of research that proved that did not work.
“Instead you should get a pool of people who are the most talented and get them to aim at a level within the organization rather than a particular job. Then when the job is open, you choose from that pool.”
How to reach: Development Dimensions International Inc., (412) 257-0600 or www.ddiworld.com
Takeaways
Foster an environment that breeds
idea generation.
Focus R&D on a mix of customer demands and brand new ideas.
Think about the future of your company and who’s going to lead it.
The Byham File
Bill Byham
Chairman and CEO
Development Dimensions International Inc.
Born: Parkersburg, W.Va.
Education: He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio University and a doctorate from Purdue University.
What was your first job and what did you learn from that experience?
My family was in the undertaking business. If you work in a funeral home, there’s a lot of work to do. My early job experiences taught me the importance of good interpersonal skills.
How would you describe your work habits?
I value creativity a lot, but at the same time, I have a strong scientific orientation of proving it and challenging and doing research. I’m pretty good about coming up with new ideas, but I’m also very good about punching holes in new ideas and doing research to make sure they really work.
Who is someone you look up to in business?
I looked up to my father. He was an entrepreneur and owned his own company.
What is your favorite DDI product?
It would have to be our supervisory training program called Interaction Management. We have trained millions and millions of supervisors.
