HR

punk rock HR worksluts

I’ve got punk rock and HR on the brain this week, so let’s build on it. A little while back, Laurie Ruettimann over at The Cynical Girl ran a great post on 5 Lessons from Henry Rollins. Tons of great stuff in there (go read it!), but the lesson that really stuck with me was “Don’t be a workaholic, be a workslut.”

As Laurie says:

Henry Rollins works hard, but he doesn’t have one job that defines him. He speaks, he writes and he plays music. He works in media, he travels and he volunteers. He doesn’t say no to opportunities that can lead to more opportunities. What’s the alternative? Sit at home and let your muscles (and your brain) atrophy?

I love this. As a jack of all trades with too many interests and too short of attention span, I’ve struggled with being defined by one job, one category, one field. How freeing to open things up and embrace it all!

We tend to over-define ourselves through our jobs and under-define ourselves through our interests and passions. Remember, there is no such thing as work/life balance. There is only Life and work is but one (significant) component of it. Every aspect of our life is a potential outlet for our passions and interests.

Some (including me) will point out there are opportunity costs to everything you say “yes” to so you need to be selective. Absolutely. But how much fun is it to be engaged it things that really jazz you. Being too focused on any one thing creates burnout – you tire of it. Slipping back and forth between interests builds stimulation and ideas and recharges. Exercise provides a great example: if you only do one exercise you set yourself up for injury, boredom, lack of interest, and diminishing returns. But if you keep changing it up, the routine stays fresh, challenging, invigorating, and your results don’t plateau.

My 11 year old daughter recently demonstrated all this beautifully (and made me feel like a no talent slacker). The world will need to step it up in a big way if we’re going to keep up with her. I recently mentioned that she wrote a short book for National Novel Writing Month last year and she’s back at it for this year. Saturday morning, I got up at 6:30 and she was already typing away before she had to get ready to compete in a horse show where she won High Point for the day and the season before leaving to go do a final evening performance in a school play (where she also sold several copies of her book to other kids) before coming home and getting in trouble for staying up too late working on the new book. Start to finish, it was a 16+ hour day of focused effort. An unusually long day for her, but a great demonstration of how to be successful in several arenas without becoming overly defined by any one.

What do I take from my daughter, Henry Rollins, and Laurie’s insights?

1. Passion is the heart to motivation. I could never-in-a-million-years get anyone to put forth the effort my daughter does willingly and without a paycheck.

2. Having several interests is good. Over-commitment is a real risk, but mixing it up keeps the spark alive. When we’re tiring of one thing we can fluidly shift to another. Also, creativity, innovation, and inspiration are ignited when we pull disparate concepts together (some refer to this as being at the intersections of ideas). From my experience, the most innovative people have wide ranging interests and experiences to pull from.

3. There is a huge difference between saying yes to all things asked of you and saying yes to the things that excite you. The first prevents you from doing the things you’re passionate about; the second keeps you focused on them.

4. You never know where the opportunity is going to come from. Pour enough passionate effort into the world and it will come back – even if it’s not from where you expect it. Name one other punk with Henry Rollins’ longevity, credibility, and vibrancy.

5. Define yourself before the world does it for you. Authenticity is a doubled edged sword, but a key advantage when used well. When we allow others to define us by their narrow perspective of who they think we are, we get typecast and stuck. Look at all the musicians, writers, and actors unable to move beyond their past success. They are damned to recreate the past over and over and over.

6. All work and no play is no good at all. But when we can hit the sweet spot of working really stinkin’ hard on “play” – our areas of passion – really amazing things can happen. I use the phrase “play bigger” to describe this. Changing the world, denting the universe, being the difference we want to see in the world is hard work and big fun.

The title of this post is Punk Rock HR Worksluts, so how can we apply these lessons to HR?

1. How broadly have you let HR in your company be defined? Are you the “payroll people” or the “policy police” or are you the place employees and leaders go to make better decisions about careers and leadership? Do people only see you when they have been called to HR (ugh!) or is HR a strong and continual presence throughout the company? Is HR involved in non-HR committees and task forces (you know, beyond the Christmas party) or is HR isolated, barricaded, siloed, and remote?

2. Do you like HR; are you passionate about it? Were you drawn to it or did you just sort of end up here? Are you passionate about people and business or did you just need a job and HR seemed as good as any?

3. Can you understand and talk all aspects of the business? You don’t need to be a CFO, but can you understand the income statement? Does the marketing strategy make sense? Can you explain your company’s core business and competitive advantage? Do you know the most important company goals for next year (and how your job supports them)?

4. What projects are coming up that you are really excited about? What new skills are you fired up about learning? What are you actively doing to make next year 2X better than this one?

5. Who shows up at work – you or the plastic worker drone persona so many of us have perfected? Are you playing safe or playing to win?

6. As an HR professional, do you like you? Are you proud of who you are, what you do, and how you do it?

Your thoughts?

DIY, mosh pits, and HR conferences

Why conferences?

Are you going to a conference this year? Why?

No really, why? As an HR professional, why are you taking time out of your life to go? Is it because you’re a professional and professionals go to conferences because other professionals go to conferences? Is it because you need to keep up on your certifications? Is it because you have no other opportunity to talk to vendors? Is it because you feel it is the best or most cost effective way to keep up with the field? Is it because you really need a three day drinking binge? Is it because your company pays for you to go? Why go?

How will you decide which conference to attend? Location? Price? The keynote speaker(s)? The size of the conference? Reputation? Theme? Topics?

I have a confession to make: I haven’t been a huge fan of conferences. My sense is that conferences have often been more about the status quo, rubbing elbows, and comparing merit badges. The organizers play it safe and stay (far!) away from controversy, have a known keynote, offer professional/educational credit to justify the employer paying for it, and make sure that everyone has a pleasant time. It seemed less about advancing the field than celebrating where it is right now.

So what about those who see the status quo as a very low bar? Where do those who want to create, innovate, and push the boundaries go? What’s available for those who simultaneously love Human Resources and ask, ask, and ask again those tough and awkward questions about how to make it truly better – those who want to tear it down, shake it up, and create something meaningful and powerful?

This fall I went to a conference for the first time in probably six years and discovered the world changed while I wasn’t looking. More and more options seem to be springing up. Unconferences, small non-traditional conferences, conferences that are re-thinking the model. Conferences I’d be excited to attend.

Conferencepalooza

Back in the day, before blogs, there were ‘zines. ‘Zines (short for “fan magazines”) existed on the edges of the music world. Self-published, they ranged from a few pages slapped together at Kinko’s to actual magazines with (sort of) national presence like Maximum Rock ‘n Roll and Flipside. This was a place where the status quo was kicked, the unknown could voice their opinion, and those who hadn’t quite made it yet were first introduced to the world. If you knew who Nirvana, Soundgarden, or Rage Against the Machine were prior to ’91 you were likely reading ‘zines.

Did HR have the equivalent? It amuses me to think of the contrarians, innovators, and boundary pushers sitting around the office after everyone has gone home and creating crudely photocopied flyers and ‘zines with tips, editorials, best practices, rants, and ads for HR seminars being held in someone’s basement or an old warehouse. It makes me smile to think of the DIY punk spirit infusing the old model uptight bureaucratic world of “personnel”. And in its own weird way, I think it has.

Today, we meet the misfits, the voices in the wilderness, and those screaming out for better through social media. In its own way, social media has turned the punk rock misfits of HR into rock star thought leaders. Thanks to social media it’s easier than ever before to know of and about the people who are pushing the boundaries and asking “why?” and “what is possible?” It’s bringing legitimacy and momentum to innovation and change.

I suspect that’s really changing the conference model to look more like a music festival than a conference. An event where the lineup matters at least as much as the topics. A place where the new, exciting, loud, and challenging are brought together. A place where there is the main stage big names and the side stage up and comers. A place where people are there because they really dig HR and want to feel it, enjoy it, and do it better.

Social media has made rock stars of thought leaders, but it’s also humanized them. Made them accessible. Through their blogs, tweets, comments, and postings, it feels like we really know the person. We probably have a good sense of their family situation, their jobs, their hobbies, favorite books, etc. It feels like we really know them. As though they are old friends we just haven’t met. I want to go to conferences where, not only can I see my heros, but I can talk and interact and share ideas and just hang out with them.

The golden question of conferences

Until this year, every conference I attended was paid from of my own pocket. I suffered both the cost of the conference and the loss in billable hours. When I’m losing money two ways, whatever I’m spending it on better have a very high return on investment.

Consequently, that has become my standard for conferences: would I pay my own way without hesitation? Does it provide so much value for me that I would burn up vacation days to go? Would I be as excited to pay for it as I would be to buy tickets to see my favorite bands? Would I get on an airplane to go? Would I make apologies to my family while I was packing my bags? Would I enthusiastically inconvenience myself in several ways and on several levels to attend?

HR mosh pit

What makes me excited to open my wallet? I want speakers whose ideas challenge me to rethink and think again. I want participants who are enthusiastic, passionate, and are creating so much Awesome-with-a-capital-A for the world that I’m inspired to raise my own game. I want to be so fired up and enthused that I’m hassling my boss and team with all the ideas pouring out of my head before lunch on the first day. I want speakers and presenters who want to rub elbows and learn from me as much as I learn from them.

I don’t want to have safe, neatly packaged thoughts handed to me while I look on and clap politely as though I were at a niece’s piano recital. I want to mix it up in a chaotic stage diving, slam dancing, mosh pit of HR ideas, philosophies, innovations, maybe-could-be’s, and practicality. [Have I pushed the analogy too far yet?] I don’t want to be a passive attendee, I want to be an active participant.

Tomorrow is today

I’m clearly not alone and that has me looking forward to 2013 in a big way. Lots of great conferences, big and small, out there with more springing up all the time. Let’s talk, question, push boundaries, and #playbigger.

Which conferences are you most excited about?

what’s it going to take, HR?

I hear HR describe itself as a business partner, internal consultant, and key support function. Listen to me long enough and I’ll start talking about HR as an untapped competitive advantage. We like to describe ourselves though the value we bring.

But, so what… Is all our self-description just wishful affirmations or an accurate description of our value? How do our customers think about HR? How would they describe our central purpose? Business partner or bureaucratic roadblock? Competitive catalyst or necessary evil? At the hub of organizational performance or rule driven box checkers?

Let’s push it further: what would it take for a leader/company to be proud of its HR department? What would HR have to be and do for our company’s key leaders brag to their peers: “Things are great and a big part of it is our HR department. Our people are our advantage and HR has been instrumental in helping  energize this company. They’ve found, developed, and helped us keep some phenomenal people. Our managers see them as a great resource to help make better decisions. I don’t see how we could have done it without them.”

I’m crazy/stupid/naïve/wishful/hopeful enough to believe it could happen. What’s it going to take?

flashback friday: easy or great?

It’s been said that you become like the five people you spend the most time with. Is that good news?

Did the last person you hire make you think, “Man, I’m going to have to raise my game! I love being around people who inspire my best!” OR did you think, “I’m glad that slot’s filled. Next.”

The people you’re filling the company with – the people you’re surrounding yourself with – are pulling you up or dragging you down. There is no neutral, there is no holding steady – they are forcing you to be better or letting you slack. Do you go for easy and comfortable or do you go for greatness?

 

[This was originally posted on July 31, 2012.]

flashback friday: do you have a job or a career?

[Today’s flashback is a short piece I originally posted on September 5, 2011. Enjoy!]

I was watching Chris Rock’s “Kill the Messenger” the other night and was really struck by one of his comments. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said that you know you have a career when there’s never enough time. You look at your watch and it’s already after 5pm so you plan on coming in early the next day. With a job, there’s too much time. You look at your watch and it’s just after 9am and the day stretches out ahead.

Absolutely brilliant! It doesn’t matter if you’re overpaid or underpaid, hourly or salaried, educated or uneducated, or what field you’re in or company you work for: if there’s never enough time to accomplish all that you’re excited about getting done, you have a career; if time is your enemy, you have a job. There’s a lot of people with college degrees in high paying jobs and there’s a lot of people just getting by (for now) who are forging their career.

So, what’s the scoop? Do you have a job or a career? If you have a job, what would it take to get a career?

 

human resources’ top goal?

From time to time I see HR folks insisting that the primary purpose of Human Resources is to keep the company from being sued. This philosophy is at the very core of everything I find wrong with HR.

Yes, HR can play a huge role in preventing or mitigating employment lawsuits. This is an important result of HR, but the top goal? Prevent lawsuits vs. select and train really great people? Prevent lawsuits vs. creating an environment where people actually want to be there? Prevent lawsuits vs. helping managers be the best leaders they can be? It really seems to be putting the cart before the horse. After all, a company can get sued if it mismanages its money but no one ever says that the number one goal of the finance department is to prevent lawsuits. You can get sued for being abusive to customers or false advertising, but I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the primary purpose of customer service and marketing are to prevent lawsuits.

Want to know the #1 way to ensure that HR is never involved in any strategic level conversations? Want to guarantee that your company culture is rife with fear and managers don’t manage? Want to be stuck in the glorious tar pit of HR as bureaucracy? Spend all your time focused on not getting sued.

In the perfect little world in my head, HR’s #1 goal is to help the company perform at its best. Minimizing lawsuits is a byproduct of doing things right; it’s a means to an end but not the end itself. The best processes and practices will help the company perform in a way that comply with all the laws and regulations. However, “not getting sued” as an end goal will never, ever create high performance. It’s like a runner training for a marathon with the #1 goal of not getting injured. Sure, they don’t want to get injured, but the best way to not get injured is to not train. After all, you can’t pull a muscle sitting on the couch. But that doesn’t work because their #1 goal is to perform at their best on race day. Not getting hurt is a part of that, but it’s obviously not the focus. Instead, the runner knows that with good planning, preparation, and execution of a training program they will minimize their chances of getting injured while maximizing the chances of high performance.

It’s an idea worth repeating: HR’s #1 goal is to help the company perform at its best.  And if you do it well, you automatically reduce the chance of getting sued. But that’s an outcome of doing things right not the other way around. For example, adhering to all the anti-discrimination laws does not ensure that you hire great people. But when you are focused on hiring the best people you will naturally seek diverse talent pools because you don’t want to exclude the best talent because of arbitrary bias.

Can we move HR out of the dark ages now? Instead of operating out of continual fear of lawsuit, let’s create high performing companies by helping people be at their best.

 

[This was first posted on November 14, 2011. I’ve reposted it because the issue was on my mind this morning.]

statistics can’t predict the individual

That position you’re trying to fill? All those candidates you’re interviewing and assessing, scrutinizing and evaluating to find the very best person for the job? I’ve got some bad news for you.

I’ve probably never met you. Certainly don’t know the position you’re trying to fill or the candidates you’re looking for but I do know one thing. It is impossible to predict whether an individual will excel at the job or not. Can’t be done.

We want to. We want to know that we’re hiring the right person. We want to believe we can look them over and just know. Hiring managers think they can tell something by the way a person shakes hands or looks them in the eye or where they went to school or their GPA in Junior High or how nicely dressed they are or where they have worked in the past or the recommendation of a friend of a friend’s friend. Vendors really want us to believe that if we purchase their assessment, their interview guide, their hiring secrets book that we’ll suddenly know the perfect match for the job. But, no matter how good we are overall, we can’t predict the outcome of any one individual.

If you go to a doctor and get diagnosed with a life endangering disease, the doctor cannot predict your chance of survival. This is important: they can only tell you the survival rate of people with a similar set of symptoms. They can tell you that, as a group, X% survive, but they cannot tell you your exact chance of survival. There are just too many individually specific factors at play such as genetics, skill of the doctor/medical facility, resources, your state of mind, willingness to fight, etc. Statistics can’t predict the individual.

Credit scores are used to predict how likely someone is to pay their debt based on past history, current debt load, etc. The strongest we can say is that people with X credit score tend to be a safe credit risk. But it can’t say how likely an individual is to pay their debt. Again, there are just too many uncontrollable variables: a person with a great credit score might lose their job, have a financially catastrophic medical emergency, go through an ugly divorce, develop a drug habit – who knows? Likewise, although people with low credit scores tend to be more of a credit risk, it’s impossible to predict what a specific person with a low credit score will do. After all, there are plenty of people with low credit scores who are determined to turn it around. Statistics can’t predict the individual.

I can tell you that the average height of a professional basketball player is right at about 6’7” (thank you Wikipedia). I don’t know much about basketball, but I do know that height is an advantage. Yet, there have been 24 NBA players shorter than 5’9” including Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy who was right at 5’9” and 5’3” (!) Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues. Statistically speaking, there’s no chance of a 5’3” person being successful, but statistics can’t predict individual results. Again, too many variables, including talent, drive, determination, creativity, etc. The strongest we can say is that the most successful people in the NBA tend to be tall, averaging 6’7” but we cannot say that any particular individual will be successful l due to their height. Statistics can’t predict the individual.

“Improves the odds.” That’s really all a good hiring system does. We try to accurately identify demands of the job and skills, knowledge, and experience required to be successful at the job. They we try it identify people who might have a chance at being successful and we measure a lot of different things in different ways and try to remove any evaluator  bias from the process (or at least cancel it out). All this to try to determine which of the candidates is most likely to be successful.

“Most likely to be successful.” That’s it. A great selection system will do a good job of identifying who is most likely to be successful BUT it cannot predict that any particular person will be successful. There are just too many other factors. We try to minimize those other factors with a well thought out selection system, but there are still too many uncontrollable variables. Someone who was a superstar might have family troubles, not get along with their boss, or not fit well with the company culture. And, there’re those who get weeded out by the select system but would have been fantastic.

Does this mean we shouldn’t create rigorous hiring processes? Just the opposite. I am a very strong believer in minimizing the variables and improving the odds when hiring. The more data and the more measures and the bigger the sample size, the more accurately we can predict. But, despite all the best efforts, there may be some who just don’t work out and there may be some phenomenal people that get missed.

Statistics can’t predict the individual.

diagnosis of organization and human resources (doh!)

Normally, if you want to find out what your company could do better you need to hire big dollar consultants who will come in and talk to the employees you’ve been ignoring conduct an extensive analysis and provide you with a lengthy report complete with graphs describing what you need to do different.

But that’s expensive and time consuming. So, in today’s post, I’m piloting the  Diagnosis of Organization and Human resources (DOH!). This diagnostic tool will analyze your organization and highlight five areas that are, ahem, “opportunities for improvement”. Given the beta nature of this tool, it’s not 100% accurate yet, but I think you’ll find it remarkably close. Give it a minute to run and this diagnostic will provide you with a customized summary specific to your organization.

(It’s working, give it time… give it time…)

If you put your ear up to the screen you can hear the computering electrons working their magic in the background. [it sounds like: whirr whirr whirr]

(Give it time… give it time…)

Done! Scroll down for your customized summary analysis.

Customized Summary Analysis Results of Your Organization:

Your organization fails at: can optimize performance by focusing on:

1. Communication. Seriously, does anyone in your company talk to anyone else? Between the silos, walls, moats, and fiefdoms how do you get anything accomplished? Communicate occasionally and you’ll be amazed at the improvements. No, your passive aggressive emails that cc the everyone in the company do not count as “communication”. Back away from the keyboard and pick up the phone. Better yet, go talk to people face to face.

2. Customer Service. Consider the possibility that not blatantly offending the customer isn’t the same as providing great service. Even being better at customer service than your competition isn’t really enough because that isn’t really a high bar to beat. Try this: make a list of the five companies you will go out of your way to do business with. It’s probably less than half a dozen. Why is the list so short? Because while many companies can do inoffensive, vanilla-bland customer service, very, very few can do great customer service. Remember: better than bad doesn’t equal good.

3. Innovation. Yes, your company wants to be known as innovative, but your company punishes risk taking, frowns on anything different, and dogmatically enforces the status quo. “Innovation” is left to the seasoned senior managers who know how things ought to be done.

4. Diversity. Your organization treats diversity as a compliance issue instead of a way to benefit from many, many perspectives and ideas. Oh, and the lack of diversity is killing your “innovation” efforts.

5. Leadership. Your managers try hard and mean well, but most of them have never been taught how to lead. While there are a few standouts, many have trouble holding people accountable, a few (and you know who they are) are on a power trip, and the rest are doing ok, but just ok. “Sink or swim” is not a development strategy and flavor of the month training doesn’t teach anyone anything but cynicism. Your managers deserve better.

Bonus: As a thank you for trying out this diagnostic tool, we’re including an extra area of opportunity:

6. Hiring. Companies live or die on the quality of their employees and your hiring process is haphazard, misunderstood by some, ignored by others, and ineffective even on the best of days.

 

Analysis Summary:

Face it, your organization is in rough shape. The only thing keeping the doors open is that your competition has the exact same their own growth opportunities. The good news is that most of your challenges are very fixable: Improve your hiring process, focus on developing your current and future leaders, hire people who look and think differently (and listen to them), make customer service a top priority, and communicate to keep everyone connected and prevent isolation.

Yes, I’m in a smart aleck mood this morning. Although I make this stuff sound obviously simple, I know it’s not easy. There’s a reason many/most companies face these challenges. There is also a great advantage that goes to the companies that get it figured out.

Your thoughts?

people, profits, and HR

I bought a car a couple of weeks ago, an experience that has inspired several blog posts. One of the things that really struck me was that, amidst a rather amazing and intimidating amount of paperwork, there was a paragraph in fine print where I had to acknowledge that the dealer might be making a profit off of the transaction.

Huh?

Why wouldn’t they? Why should I have to sign an agreement saying I realize they just might benefit? They certainly don’t need my permission. No other store I’ve ever been in has been concerned that I was aware and ok that they were selling me something for (gasp) more than they paid for it. Stranger still, it was in fine print on a two foot long page of fine print – most people wouldn’t notice or realize or even care. Have car dealers had a problem of people suing when they found out the dealers weren’t losing money on the deals?

Actually the boilerplate fine print nonsense is not what has me concerned. It was more the fear behind it. Why on earth, in a capitalist nation proud of its entrepreneurial spirit, would we resent a business profiting? The doors were open, the lights, were on, the and the employees and owners want to get paid for their efforts. That money has to come from somewhere…

It really got me thinking about where else do we resent profits? How often do those of us in Human Resources think that we’re above business and dollars? That it’s not about the money, that it’s about the people? That the HR department is a humanitarian oasis in a desert of cut-throat capitalism? That we don’t need to understand the business because it doesn’t apply to us?

Here is a simple formula I like to use: Profits = People = Profits. Profits are a direct result of people and people create profits. We cannot remove people from the profit equation, so why pretend that we can? Why pretend that they are somehow separate?

Human Resources, at its very best, impacts organizational performance. We hire, develop, and retain great people who care about the business’ success, who deliver great results. We advise and help leaders get the most out of their people and out of themselves. We assist people when there are things going on in their lives that get in the way of them being great. We help create, shape, and support the very personality of the company.

Human Resources at its most mediocre doesn’t understand, doesn’t care about, or resents the connection between people and profit. When that happens, we fill the slot, check the box, file the paperwork, say “no” a lot, and become an irrelevant barrier.

It’s really our call.