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Training chivalry

05/10/2009
tags: , ,
I was sitting on the old packed out commuter train this week, smug with the fact that a) I had a seat b) I was on an earlier train and c) I had a copy of the new Jim Collins book (yeah I know it doesn’t take much).  When I saw a lady get on in her 50s and looking around seeing there were no seats.  She clearly was not a commuter and had not bought into the madness that is our daily lives.
Now my instinct in this situation is to give my seat up (thank you mum and dad).  In the same way that I hold doors open, let women onto the tube first, offer my coat if its cold etc.  And in this case I followed my instinct.  The lady was very grateful and as some weird anti-Pavlovian reward, I got to stand for 45 minutes.  
More interestingly , what followed was a Mexican wave of chivalry.  Every time a lady stepped into the carriage men were fighting to offer her their seat (apart from the three young male bible students…but that’s a whole other story!).  The reactions of the women were mixed.  Some accepted, some looked decidedly put out.
So I ask, in a world where we are suppose to strive for equality, does this make me chivalrous, or does it make me anti-feminist?  And should I really care or just keep on doing what I am doing?
From the Oxford Dictionary

chivalry • noun courteous behaviour, especially that of a man towards women.

feminism • noun the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of sexual equality.

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from → Uncategorized

Is it all balls?

05/07/2009
tags: , , , , , , ,

A few years ago one of my team members came to me at their wits end. Whilst hugely talented, they were struggling to win over their client group to the need to apply progressive HR management tools with their teams.

Now lets be clear these guys were uber difficult, think the bastard offspring of engineering, logistics and procurement and you’re not even getting close….engagement scores were rock bottom, turnover was high and it was easier to recruit vegan Ronald McDonalds than it was to get people into that area.

Now at that time a guy called Roy Keane was managing a soccer team called Sunderland. He had taken them from the bottom of the 24 team league to the top, within a year, and with very little change in personnel or investment.

And if there is one thing that turned these guys on it was football……

So together we hit upon a plan and built an intervention based on the teachings of Roy Keane…..

1) motivation,
2) teamwork,
3) shared goals and vision,
4) understanding how our role contributes to the vision,
5) recognition,
6) feedback on performance

It worked a dream, they bought in and before we knew it, very talented HR professional was leading them forward. Engagement scores went up and people started to consider working there as a career move that didn’t spell ultimate death. Now it wasn’t all down to the work of Mr. Keane but it started to engage minds.

Then yesterday I saw this and it reminded me of the Roy Keane tale. But at the same time it started me thinking is this another HR lesson to be learnt from soccer.

“…now any player late for a meeting, training or travel will have 10 per cent of their weekly salary deducted. That increases to 20 per cent for a second offence and 40 per cent for a third”

Now that’s my kind of management and surely worth a pitch to the Board!

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from → employee engagement, motivation, performance

Hell really is other people

05/04/2009
tags: ,

I’ve been struggling over this situation and this post for the past ten days.  
A department manager (in his late 50s…necessary info for later) comes to me, he has been touting around a proposal for a new innovation to the board and he wants to talk through how he sees it working.  Essentially he wants the CEO and I to agree to take his team (of two including him) out of their current business unit and place them in a different one, so they can work on this project.  Its not a bad idea, but it doesn’t warrant the +£250k overhead and doesn’t account for the need we will need to backfill into the current business.
We meet, we talk, we say no.  He struggles with this.  He can’t understand why we don’t do it, he says that if we can’t deliver this he thinks his team report (of one) will leave.  In fact, he says she has an offer from our major competitor.  Only this solution would retain her, we need to do it.  We say that whilst we want her to stay, we can’t change the organisational structure for her and could they not work on the project along with their day jobs?  Or alternatively we have this vacancy which she would be great for…in another company.  He rebuffs us.
She resigns.  He again comes back and says that the only way we can save her is by giving the green light for the project.  Again we say no.  He comes back and says that she will take one of our major clients with her…..we need to start this project for him.  We ask what he is doing to mitigate the risk with the client?  He comes back and says that she will take two clients.  We ask what he is doing to mitigate the risk with the two clients and suggest what he needs to do.  He returns and says that she thinks our actions to mitigate the risks are aggressive.  He says that he cannot believe that we are doing this….letting her go.
His team member is in her early thirties.  He the manager is having an affair with her.  Now he has lost his lover (during work at least), his honour and our respect.  He may not be far from losing his job.  
Work is work.  Life is life.  Mixing the two is both wrong and dangerous.

 

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from → CEO

You give me fever

05/01/2009
tags: , , ,

CEO: HRD? C’est moi

HRD: Wassup…..
CEO: This f***ing pig sickness thing….maladie des cochons
HRD: Mmhmmm
CEO: I mean…..do we have a strategy?  We need to give the board some reassurance.
HRD: Do we……
CEO: We do…..
HRD: OK, well….I have it on my list of things to do….along with world peace
CEO: I mean, what do we do if it spreads?
HRD: I thought we’d try not to catch it….
CEO: You’re not f***ing funny.  Anyway I need you to come up with a f***ing plan and PDQ.
HRD: CEO I’m not sure you realised when you hired me, but actually I have quite a lot of experience in the niche area of Swine Fever
CEO: Really?….Fantastic!  Thats excellent……………….you’re joking aren’t you?
HRD: Mmhmm 
CEO: Just get it f***ing done
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from → CEO, strategy

Are we all equal?

04/28/2009
tags: , ,
**ring-ring, ring-ring**

CEO: HRD t’is I.  You know I’ve been doing these media interviews all morning?

HRD: Mmhmm
CEO: They’ve been asking me about this equal pay bill thingy
HRD: ………uhhuh…
CEO: Tell me we don’t have any equal pay issues
HRD: We don’t have any equal pay issues
CEO: OK….but do we?
HRD: Not that we can’t reasonably justify…..
CEO: Thank f**k for that……I haven’t lied
HRD:…..apart of course from the board…….
**clunk**
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from → CEO

S**t hot career advice….

04/23/2009
tags: , , , , ,

Ok so in the budget in the UK, the Government has announced another £1.7bn investment in JobCentreplus.  

For those of you outside the UK this is like a nationalised recruitment agency that is as effective as a chocolate fireguard…but if you don’t go there, you don’t get any state support….so actually more like state sponsored torture and apparently recently ruled out in Guantanamo as being inhumane.  
For those of you in the UK, its the Job Centre…..but plus!

And as its nearly Friday, it started me thinking, given carte blanche what career advice would you give?  Here are my top five:
1) Remain moderately incompetent.  Not too competent or you’ll get promoted and ultimately fail.  Not too incompetent or you’ll end up on a secondment to corporate procurement…the department where noone can here you scream.
2) Novelty ties are a really good look if you work in accounts.  If you work anywhere else and want to have any kind of sex life…..ever….they are not.  No means No.
3) If your colleague gets a promotion ahead of you.  Its ok, its done on merit…you shouldn’t worry.  But to reward and congratulate them, don’t forget to put chewing gum in their stapler, pour coke (cola) on their keyboard and spread vicious rumours about a penchant for dwarves, fists and marigolds…..(in combination)
4) When your boss says, “do you have any feedback for me?” they are being polite.  You are being literal.  Go for it.  They want it really.  Remember feedback is a gift.
5) Trainers are not there to make you better at your job.  Its about giving a job to a would-be television presenter who either doesn’t have the balls or personality to make it.  Its like seeing a cute stray dog…..Pity them sure, but keep your distance and remember they are ultimately full of c**p.
 
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from → unemployment

A little time

04/22/2009
tags: , , , ,

There is a tube strike on my line. I won’t go into it…..ok just this once. This guy got sacked for opening the doors on the wrong side of the train. His union brothers and sisters don’t think this is fair as the company should have fitted some contraption to stop him from doing this. Therefore they are striking.

And two things strike me (geddit?),

1) Opening the doors on the correct side seem kind of fundamental to the job and imperative for safety (I don’t want to think I’m landing on sweet platform and instead come tete a tete with a piece of curved wall)
2) There’s an element of duty and responsibility missing in the argument…while we are at it lets automate the entire function of the tube….then we will have no need for….. oh c**p!

Anyway the non-noxious by-product of this is that I took a walk along the Thames on the way to work. Thirty beautiful minutes in the sun with my thoughts. An event less frequent than a leader in the Daily Mail on the valuable contribution of immigration to the British economy.

There is so much going on that sometimes it’s a struggle to process it all and little breaks prove all powerful in helping to put everything in order and take a fresh perspective. To deal with the big, the small, the rational and the emotional.

Sometimes the hardest things to get your head around become easier with time. What I don’t know is whether this is because we need the time to figure it out, or over time we just capitulate and find an easy route. Is the human brain designed to find a solution or the right solution? And in the end does it really matter?

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Embrace the suck

04/20/2009
tags: , , ,

Two things bring me to this post. First is my response to a question raised on the blog of HR Good_Witch. Second is a tribute to the person that taught me this phrase and whom I suspect has had to embrace more than her fair share. I write it here to impart a little of the wisdom that she shared with me and as a note of thanks.

I was having a day. You know the sort, where every shade of s**t has conspired to gang up and unleash its evil full in my face (try to work with the imagery…). The sort where I had the anti-Midas touch, where everything just seemed more difficult than it needed to, every phonecall filled me with dread. I was at a loss, I had serious inertia and this in turn was spreading through my team. I turned to this friend for something to cheer me up, to cling on to and she told me the following,

“The bad news is there’s nothing you can do about those kinds of days. Nothing at all. Oh sure, I could wax lyrical about how you should always look on the bright side of life (hey, there’s a song in that), to think positive, to focus on something that makes you happy, like unicorns or frolicking kittens. But we both know that’s all c**p. For me, I have a method

Embrace The Suck. Today is going to suck. Keep that in mind, try to not take anyone’s head off, and just bear up under The Suckness.”

This may sound weird but quite frankly this is the most helpful, timely piece of advice that I have ever received. (Cue the simultaneous hari kari of a multitude of professors, consultants, experts…and my parents). It wasn’t an aggressive “put up and shut up” or a “take the pain”. It was instead direction to flow with the acceptance that things can be grim, unfair and unjust…and that its ok.

At that point in time it was exactly what I needed to do. To be at peace with myself, to stop dwelling and worrying, to stand up and be a leader and to lead my team and the business through the difficult days that we were having.

So as you progress through your week, month, life and things get trying, I offer to you these words of wisdom…..”embrace the suck”. At least it will get you smiling….

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from → motivation

Ass…..me?

04/18/2009
tags: , ,

So that’s a poor workaround of the Brentesque “assume makes an ass out of u and me”…..and far be it for me to indulge in cliches, but sometimes situations come along that make you realise that, in the words of the great Lloyd Cole, “the reason its a cliche is because its true”.

I had to tell a couple of my team they were being made redundant this week.  In typical fashion HR always comes last, when all the dirty work has been done!  Its never nice, but I think as an HR professional its also good to have to put yourself through the things that you support managers to do.  Its easy to snigger amongst yourselves about Bob the line manager getting worked up about telling his team member they are being made redundant, it another thing when you are Bob.
So I was sitting there in the morning getting my head around what I was going to say and the potential questions I might be asked when one of the team members I was going to speak to came in to the office.  He was obviously on edge and upset and my initial reaction was that he had found out what I was going to say to him.  Anyway I sat him down and asked him what was wrong and he tells me that his wife has been diagnosed with cancer and he is beside himself with concern and worry.  We talk about it, I listen, I support, we arrange some additional health cover and he leaves to go to a meeting.
I sit back and reflect.  What am I gong to do?  If I can’t speak to him then I can’t speak to any of the others.  If I do speak to him, what is the impact going to be on his health and well being?The HR man in me is telling me that there will always be something going on in someones life, that no time is good and to stick to the plan.  The HU man in me is telling me that nothing is more important than life itself, that this guy has taken enough and the business can go swivel.  At this point normally there would be an HR rep advising the manager, but that person is me.
After much soul searching I sat the guy down and told him that I really didn’t want to tell him this today, but I hoped he’d understand.  That the business was changing and we needed to change with it and that time doesn’t account for personal circumstances.  You know what?  He took it like a champion.  Said that there were more important things in life than work.  That he respected my honesty and openness and that I had his complete loyalty until he left.
And that brings me back to assumptions.  I’m not saying that what I did was right.  Maybe the other route would have brought untold benefit.  But the fear was in my head and the worst case scenario I had painted was limiting my ability to act.  When I chose to act, the nightmare subsided.  Is this luck?  Or is it a lesson, that as long as we deal with any situation honestly, openly and with dignity, the worst will never happen.  
I honestly don’t know.
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from → honesty

Coachy Coachy Coo Coo

04/16/2009
tags: , , ,

Ok, bad title…I admit it but after the day I’ve had you need something to make you laugh.  Never before have I received a genuine writ for defamation of character….its a long story.

Anyway, I have had two conversations over the last couple of days about coaching interventions, one sublime and one ridiculous.  I was speaking to our main coaching provider this morning and it fills me with deep joy (in a wholesome and appropriate way).  There are more people claiming to be coaches these days than there are claiming to be straight.  In fact I am sure there is a correlation there, but lets leave that for another time.  But these guys they know their limitations, they turn work down and most importantly they have a sense of humour.  I am not a coach, lets be clear, coaching and I are like pan fried bream and liquorice…..it ain’t ever going to happen.
The other conversation was with a line manager, who came to see my L&D Manager declaring that they wanted to talk about development for a member of middle management.  Rightly L&D guru asked what they were trying to develop…..”well we can’t quite work it out”.   Unperturbed she ventured on asking what conversations they had had with aforementioned individual…..”well we haven’t really spoken about it”.  L&D hero carries on, so asking what it was they felt we could provide or how we could help…..”We were thinking they need a coach.  They could then have a conversation with them about what the issues are and work out what they need to do and then they could let us know.”
Yeah, that will be your job then…..remember kiddies a coach is for life a coach is not for Christmas……
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from → development
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