What a 9 Year Old Can Teach Us About L&D

“SWEET! I wiped out! They should make pads for your butt!”

Five minutes into his first ride on his first skateboard and my son was bouncing up off the ground, getting his board out of the shrubbery, and jumping right back on.Skating There were no tentative “baby steps”, no hesitation. It was full force, hop on and go enthusiasm. That brief moment contained the most important aspect of successful training.

 

What is the most important aspect of successful training? Today, I’m guest blogging over at Performance I Create. Read the rest of this post here .

got to move it, move it
Moving On

Head ‘Em Up, Move ‘Em Out

Ok, the last time I did an update was back in April. Things had gotten crazybusy and I hadn’t been blogging much. It’s now the end of July and things have been crazybusy and I haven’t been blogging much since April. Sigh. Apologies all around and some updates on what’s happened and what’s happening.

 

I Left My Job & Moved Across the Country

After five and a half years as Director of Learning & Leadership for a great organization in Central Texas, I left to return to my hometown in Northern Nevada. Family reasons prompted the move and I’m using it as an opportunity to redefine my career and contribution to the world.

My last day was Friday, June 13, we loaded a 26’ moving van on the 14th, and my kids and I started driving on the 15th. After three days, one destroyed windshield, a few whiteknuckle moments of 19,000 pounds of vehicles and stuff getting squirrely, a snowstorm (!) over a mountain pass, and too much time spent looking for gas stations with enough space for the van and trailer, we arrived. If everything goes as planned over the next few days, my wife will have her last day at work, close on our house in Texas, and arrive in Nevada with horses in tow and dogs in the cab of her truck. Looking forward to having a complete family again.

 

Wait! I Left My Job! What Will I Do?

I’m back on my own as an independent. Much like an outrageous roller coaster, being independent is an exhilarating, uncertain, fun, terrifying place to be and I’m enjoying it. My calendar over the next several months is filling up with:

  • Advising a very cool training and assessment tech start-up on content.
  • Coaching new leaders as they go through a year-long development program.
  • Providing leadership and professional development for a government agency.
  • Ghostwriting blogs / content development.
  • Speaking and presenting conferences.
  • ???? Have ideas on how I could help you and your company? Know someone I should meet?  Please reach out. I am always excited to add more interesting work with interesting people to the list.

 

Speaking of Speaking and Conferences

This has been a fun year for conferences. Most I have or will attend are smaller or aimed at shaking things up. What’s great about those conferences is the people who show up are full of ideas for change and the speakers are all very accessible. Such a great chance to pick up new perspectives and insights (if you’re into that kind of thing). Here’s the list so far:

(March) TalentNet Interactive, put on by Craig Fisher and crew. Even though it’s targeted at recruiters and I haven’t recruited in a long time, I still came away with lots of ideas and fantastic conversations.

(April) Louisiana SHRM. Once again, Robin Schooling brought together an amazing group of speakers. The list of speakers and sessions read like the Woodstock of HR (minus the mud). It’s a state conference that would be well worth coming in from out of state to attend.

(May) HR Reinvention. Here’s a tip: if you come across any sort of workshop or conference held in Omaha and it involves Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt, just go. Not only are they fantastic speakers with kick-you-in-the-back-of-the-head-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that ideas, but they attract and surround themselves with other phenomenal people. And they do it in an amazing, three story working art gallery that inspires creativity and conversation and leaves you wondering why other conferences don’t find more original spaces and formats.

(May) TLNT’s High Performance Workplace. The first year for this conference and I expect it will grow substantially as more people hear about it and it gains traction.

(July) Bank Trainer’s Conference. It was the second year for this niche conference and this is another one that I anticipate will continue to build momentum.

(August) Illinois SHRM. A favorite of mine. Like Louisiana SHRM, this is a state conference with a list of presenters worth traveling out of state to see. You still have a few days to register at get a plane ticket.

(November) HR Evolution. Cannot, cannot wait. Like HR Reinvention, just go.

 (????) What am I missing? What other conferences should I be seeking out or speaking at?

 

Enough about me. How are things in your world?

branding, HR, and the customer experience

Want to build your company’s brand? Give a close look at your HR department.

That’s not how we typically approach it, is it? There are a ton of articles on branding, but far too many that discuss it as though it’s a separate activity, as though it’s a shiny bit of chrome that gets bolted on to make the company look nice. Company leaders just decide how they want the company to be known by customers, then they create marketing to support that and it’s done, right? Um, no.

In reality, branding is deeply woven throughout the entire organization, despite our attempts to reduce branding to some eye catching advertisements. It’s a circular “chicken and egg” problem that has to be addressed as a whole and looks something like this:

Brand –> Values/Culture –> Hiring/Retention/Development –> Employee Experience –> Customer Experience –> Brand

 

Brand. The company decides what it wants to be known for and how it wants to be viewed by its customers. Highest quality, best value, best service, the choice of people in the know, whatever.

Values/Culture. Not the stupid mission statement nailed to the wall that no one can remember and everyone ignores. Not the list of safe values that shows up in the “About Us” section of the webpage but how things actually get down and the (unwritten) values the company uses to make decisions and set priorities. (Lest we forget: Enron’s posted values included “Integrity” and “Excellence” but those clearly weren’t the values underscoring their day-to-day operations.)

Hiring/Retention/Development. I cannot emphasize this enough: business gets done for, through, and by people. What the company stands for and how it operates is determined, supported, and reinforced by its people and the behaviors that are encouraged (and tolerated). The ideals written on the wall are irrelevant if they are not fully supported by who gets hired, who is allowed and encouraged to stay, and what they are taught through formal training AND daily interactions with managers and peers.

Employee Experience (EX). I’m not convinced we can create employee engagement or motivation – that’s one reason why who we hire is so important – but I’m very confident that we can utterly destroy it through the daily employee experience. Is the EX one of support, growth, and pride or terrible manager, toxic peers, inane policies, and a dehumanizing culture? Or, is it trapped in between and a daily dose of apathetic meh?

Customer Experience (CX). The customer experience determines how they think of your company. Your definition of the brand is meaningless next to the customer’s. Who determines the customer experience? It’s a combination of your culture (i.e., how things get done around your company) and your employees. It’s been said the customer experience will never exceed employee experienced (I like to think of it as: CX<EX). That makes sense. It’s ridiculous to think we can make our employees’ lives miserable and have them turn around and create a wonderfully fantastic experience for the customer.

Brand. Yep, all of this leads right back to brand. Not the one you want, but the one you actually have.

None of these operate in isolation; they all feed into each other. You can’t build the brand without linking it to your people and how you expect them to operate day in and day out. So how is you HR department supporting the brand?

Might be time to give it some thought.

the three guaranteed new secrets of ancient best practices

Some days it’s all about the headlines isn’t it? A catchy, grabby declaration meant to attract eyeballs and wallets. There is so much content – so much content competing for your time and attention – that the headlines have become formulaic in their attempt to stand out.

“The”. We humans like to know there is definitive certainty. No wishy-washy possibilities or discussion here. This article is all about chiseled in stone absoluteness.

“Three”.  We also like definitive numbers. It tells us right up front that there is only a certain amount of info being discussed. Interestingly, the number is either single digit or a fairly high double-digit. Seven is fine, sixty-three is fine, fourteen just doesn’t work.

“Guaranteed”. Who doesn’t love a good guarantee. This is proof it works right? Um, sure. The most relevant legal definition from Law.com is: a promise to make a product good if it has some defect. Most often, if something you purchase doesn’t work, the guarantee would be for money-back, repair, or replacement. How much did you pay for the blog post? If it doesn’t work, how much recourse do you have? Yep, zilch. I guarantee it. A great, sounds good, but meaningless word.

“New”. Yep, none of those old ideas for me, thank you very much.  What? You mean I shouldn’t be a complete jackass as a manager if I want people to care about their jobs, I shouldn’t eat more than I burn off if I want to lose weight, and I shouldn’t drive like a teenage boy late for a first date if I want to save fuel? I know that already (even if I don’t do it, like, ever). No, tell me something new. And make it a…

“Secrets”. This goes right along with “new”. There will never be a blog post, article, or book titled, “Common Sense Stuff That Everyone Already Knows”. And the secrets must be either so hot off the press that the ink smears, or they better be…

“Ancient”. Yep, old. Been around for years and recently recovered from the mists of time. But not twenty years old, more like 200+. Bonus points if you connect it to a revered, yet mysterious people from: a) a long time ago; and/or b) far, far away. Tibetan monks, Peruvian priests, Spartan warriors. Tailored to the topic of course. “Leadership Secrets of the Viking Berserkers” would sell like water in the Sahara, but “Human Resource Secrets of the Druids” might not work so well.

“Best Practices”. This is the greatest term ever invented for selling ideas, because it looks buzzwordy, businessy, and authoritative, yet is essentially meaningless. It sounds like it means cutting edge, but it really means status quo. “Best practices” is more eye-catching than “currently fashionable ideas” or “the stuff we’re doing today that seems to work OK, but we’ll look back upon in fifteen years and face palm ourselves in sheer embarrassment.” Interestingly, these best practices can contradict other best practices in the same site or magazine and no one seems to notice or care.

The best part is the topic at hand doesn’t matter. Not a bit. It’s common across every professional, enthusiast, and tabloid subject I’ve seen. Unfortunately, using or not using these secret (ha!) headline best practices (ha!) is no guarantee (ha!) of quality. Some great articles use them and some don’t. Some horrendously vapid and vacant articles use them and some don’t.  But the trite articles trending through the interwebs? Definitely.

 

should you become a manager, part II

Part 1 was a teensy bit tongue in cheek. I get concerned that we often only see the Hollywood aspect of leadership – power, money, cars, Donald Trump – and miss the daily, grinding realities of it. Being a leader is difficult and comes with a lot of downsides. Leadership also comes with several upsides that don’t get much press. They aren’t flashy and aren’t for everyone, but they are important.

1. As a leader, the culture of your team is up to you. It gets established and reinforced daily just by how you show up, how you interact, and how you make sure work gets done. You can make it a great place to be where people want to do their best.

2. You are crucial to your employees’ growth and development. Sure, they have to actually do the learning, but the tone you set determines how much importance they’ll place on development and what they get out of it. You also have a perspective they don’t have and are in a position to coach and foster their strengths and build on their, um, not-so-strengths. And, how you champion them in the company determines a big part of their career trajectory. Leaders with a reputation for developing great talent tend to stand out.

3. You determine the customer experience. Whether your customers are internal or external, how your team treats those customers will be a direct reflection of two things: 1) the expectations you set, model, and reinforce; and 2) how your employees get treated by you. I’m a firm believer in the adage: the customer experience rarely exceeds the employee experience. It’s easy to tell who has a great manager just by how the customer gets treated.

4. You get to solve bigger and more interesting problems. The TV version of leadership shows your problems getting smaller as you move up in the company. NOT TRUE. Everyone’s pay is ultimately based on the problems they are expected to solve. The bigger and more complicated, uncertain, and ambiguous problems you solve, the more you get paid. And, the more you get paid, the more challenging the problems are. For example, entry-level positions deal with problems that are simple and have pre-determined answers (e.g., scanning a product and giving change to customers) and executives deal with huge problems affecting the entire company where there aren’t obvious answers (e.g., determining the best balance of stability, profitability, and growth over the next five years and the best way to achieve that balance).

5. Leadership is knowing and working with people. Although leaders do deal with technical problems, the leader’s job has people at its core. Business gets done for, through, and by people and people are logical, irrational, funny, bitter, kind, mean, caring, apathetic, generous, selfish, and a whole bunch of other paradoxes operating at the same time. As a leader you are at the center of all that, juggling a thousand things, and trying to make sense of it all. Every day is different and every day brings fresh challenges.

The best part is you don’t need title to do any of this. Leadership is about influence; about bringing out the best in those around you. Some days a title helps, but there is nothing preventing you from setting great examples, treating teammates and customers well, encouraging other people’s development, and becoming known as a problem solver.

Should you be a leader? Yes, every day. Should you accept a job with a leadership title? That one’s up to you.

should you become a manager?

So you’ve been offered your first leadership role and you’re trying to decide whether or not to take it. Good, most people just grab on to any promotion they can get, but you’re taking a moment to think it out. Ask about your new responsibilities, ask about your new career path, ask about your pay raise. All good things to know, but there are a few important aspects to leadership people never seem to mention.

1. It’s now your fault. What’s that you say, you didn’t do it? It was one of your staff? Great, good to know. You’re still responsible. That’s right, you’re now accountable for other people’s mistakes.

2. Not everyone has your work ethic. Those lazy slackers you outworked right into your new promotion? It’s now your job to motivate them. You know how you take pride in never missing a day of work? Some of your team take pride in minimizing their days of work.

3. You’re now hated. To your team you are now one of them. People will talk about you, mock you behind your back, and worry about what you’re going to say to them. You remember what you used to tell your friends or family about what an idiot your boss was? You’re now that idiot in other people’s conversations.

4. The big problems are now yours. As a manager you will be delegating work to others and anytime it gets difficult they will hand it right back to you. Angry customer? You. Someone in another department is causing problems? You. Any other manager mad about someone on your team? You. Telling someone they have eye watering body odor, aren’t dressed appropriately, can’t have time off, and settling pre-school level arguments between employees. Yep, that’s all you.

5. You probably don’t really get paid more. Yes, there’s a bump in pay, but… probably not in line with the bump in responsibilities and headaches. But… you’re now expected to work more hours, which is great if you’re hourly but not if you’re salaried. But… if your new job switches you from hourly to salary you might even make less than you did before if you used to get regular overtime. A few more promotions and you will be making more, but not this first promotion.

6. You will probably stink as a manager. No one will tell you this, but it’s true. Leading and managing others is a very distinct skill set (with a whole bunch of new, fun legal issues) and you didn’t get promoted for your leadership skills. Think hard about that: you got promoted because you were really good at your old job, not because you are good at the things needed in your new job. It’s one of the few promotions where the responsibilities come on day one and the knowledge and skills come (much) later.

7. Meetings. Those team meetings you always hated? They’re yours to lead now. Oh, and you probably get to attend lots of new meetings you never knew existed. Good times.

8. HR is now your friend. Or your enemy. Either way, they will be more involved in your life so I suggest making them your friend.

Of course, there are some downsides to leadership also, but I’ll save those for another time. 😉

be the change in HR? easy for Gandhi to say

“Be the change you wish to see in HR.” Ok, so that isn’t actually what Gandhi said, but a nice paraphrasing. Lots of us talk about changing HR, but being the change is a whole ‘nother level of commitment. That was the theme behind HR Reinvention held in Omaha in May. It was a fantastic event with a great group of presenters and participants. I love being around people who inspire me to play bigger!

In addition to the keynote and concurrent sessions, there were the Ignite! presentations kicking off the day. I’ve been intrigued by the format of these very cool micro-presentations for a while so I was thrilled when my proposal was accepted. The guidelines for writing the presentation were very simple: You have 20 slides, each automatically advancing every 15 seconds, for a grand total of five minutes. The theme is “Be the Change”. Go!

I present at several conferences each year and can tell you that these five minutes took more out of me than any 75-minute presentation ever has. It was like switching from running marathons to a 50-yard dash. No time for pacing yourself, no time for recovery from an error, no time to expand an idea. It’s a full on sprint and you hope it goes well. (Imagine if presentations at work had to be so focused!) I loved it and would absolutely do it again – I highly recommend it if you get the chance.

Sooo… here’s my quick take on being the change in HR:

What thinks you?

You think like a complete banker

There is no regulation preventing banks from providing great customer service. In fact, banking services are an easily copied commodity – the only thing that sets one bank apart from another is the customer experience. But you sure wouldn’t know it the way many (most?) banks act.

lessons from experimenting with innovation

I get sick of hearing about innovation. It’s too buzzwordy; there’s too much noise around it and far too many misconceptions. Yet, wherever an old idea isn’t working, wherever a new idea would work better, we need more innovation. We really need less talk and more action, but telling people to “go be innovative” doesn’t work.

I recently wrote about a class I put together around the soon-to-be-published The Innovation Book from Max Mckeown (@maxmckeown). Not only did the class help people in my organization better understand how to bring innovation and creativity into their own jobs, but by playing with class format and location it served as an experiment for me about learning and development.

Over the six session class we held sessions in two common conference rooms and one out-of-the-way board room, hosted a session on WebEx, had a Twitter chat, and met up in a city park. There were pros and cons to each format but board rooms have an oppressive/stuffy/stifling feel, technical difficulties devolved the WebEx session into a slightly more painful than normal conference call, user inexperience with Twitter kept two from participating in the chat, and I didn’t give good directions so two people got lost on the way to the park. Failure, right?

Not a bit, because I learned some important things along the way:

  • People want to experiment. They want to play and try new things. Not everyone, but more than we generally think. They are looking for permission; signs that it’s ok to tinker and tweak.
  • People want to be successful. No one wants to fail and a lot of the fear around change and trying new things is simply fear of failure. So, it’s important to let people know that it’s an experiment and you know that some of it won’t work the first (or second or third) time out. Keep a sense of humor about it and be transparent when it doesn’t work. Then use that to fuel better discussions.
  • People can deal with ambiguity if they aren’t concerned about 100% success right from the start. Remove blame and turn it into a journey where everyone’s in it together and they are more than happy to join in.
  • People confuse innovation with computer magic worked by geniuses with big budgets. No surprise then that they don’t know how to bring innovation into their jobs. But, they are pretty comfortable with figuring out how to make new ideas practical (The Innovation Book’s definition of innovation) or finding new uses for existing ideas.
  • Location matters. A lot. There isn’t a single perfect location and each has its own distinctive feel. I can’t help be wonder what would happen if teams experimented with meeting locations. How might that affect participation, creativity, idea development, information flow, etc.?

It turns out that just talking about innovation isn’t the same as experiencing experimentation. I’d do this class again in a heartbeat and I’d push and twist the formats and locations even further to help participants get even more comfortable with play, change, stretching comfort zones, and stuff just not working out as planned. Innovation is a creative process so it’s not static, it’s not linear, and it’s not formulaic.

So why do we try so hard to pretend otherwise?

(Note: this was originally posted on brocedwards.com)