Category Archives: Brilliant Mind

How Much Did Your Dreams Cost?

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It’s the holidays, do yourself a favor and go out and download or Redbox the movie “Up In the Air“.  It’s a great movie for HR pros. One of the best scenes is this one (below) between George Clooney and J.K. Simmons:

Enjoy your time off, if you have it. Either way, answer me this, how much did you get paid to give up your dreams?

I got paid $20,000.  That’s how much I get paid, salary, for my first Recruiting job right out of college.

I wanted to be a college volleyball coach.  I was good at it. I loved doing it. I found my wife because of it.

$20,000.

It seems silly, now, looking back on it.  $20,000 is nothing.  My life has worked out wonderfully, but it’s a lesson I’ll pass along to my kids. Dreams are wasted on the young.  Don’t give up your chance when you are young. All too soon, you’ll reach a stage in life where your dreams won’t seem that important any longer.

We are told that the key to a happy work life is to find a job you love, and you’ll never ‘work’ another day as long as you live. About .01% of people actually find jobs they truly love. The rest of the 99.9% work jobs that are fine, but not love. You only fall in love with a job when you follow your dreams.

It’s not 100%. Sometimes your dreams end up sucking. Don’t get down about that. Many, many people suck at their dreams. That’s life. You’re allowed to change your dreams.  Just don’t wait too long to do it!

How President Obama Would Build a Team.

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One of my favorite writers is Bill Simmons of Grantland fame.  Recently, Bill got the chance to interview President Obama for GQ Magazine. Bill is traditionally a sports writer, huge NBA fan, but also does a ton of pop culture pieces as well. So, why not the President!?

The article is great. A good read for sure. One thing I took out of it was how President Obama explains how he builds a team around him. It came when Bill asked him who he would take a call from of he was out to dinner with his wife, Michelle. A tricky situation for all husbands! My wife is the most important person in my life, BUT sometimes you have to take that call!

From the GQ article:

“Malia and Sasha. [laughs] And maybe my mother-in-law. My national security adviser, Susan Rice, and Denis McDonough, my chief of staff. Those are the only people whose call I would take during a date night with Michelle. But the entire White House is full of people who have enormous responsibilities. You can’t do this by yourself. The principle of team building in the White House is really no different than the principle of team building anywhere, on a sports team or a well-run business. Do they put team ahead of themselves? Do you make sure all the pieces fit together? Because just having the best athletes, if they’re knocking heads and nobody’s doing rebounding and everybody wants the ball, it isn’t always going to work.”

It’s the essence of leadership, right?

Surround yourself with great talent that is willing to work as a team for the greater good of the whole organization. Sounds so easy, but it’s so freaking hard to get right!

We tend to overly believe in just getting the best talent, but too often the team with the best talent fails.  Too many organizations do not put enough time into the concept of the pieces fitting together, but that is the secret sauce of great leaders.  The talent doesn’t have to be the best. Usually, the space between the best and very good is so small you wouldn’t be able to tell anyway!

The one thing you must get right is whether or not the talent you have, fits together and works together. The final step, once they all fit together and work together is getting them to works together towards that overarching organizational goal. Another tough thing to consistently make happen. Some teams love working together, but can’t complete the task of reaching the organizational goal.

President Obama gets it. It’s probably the reason he got elected for two terms. Any leadership position has very little to do with what you know, and everything to do with the team you are able to put around you. That team will define your leadership success.

Open Office Spaces Now Suck…But wait for it…

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This just in! Google got it wrong! It seems like we keep hearing that more and more these days. The company that seemingly invited HR and Talent Acquisition keeps getting it wrong. This time, it’s around the open office concept. To be fair to Google, they weren’t the first ones to jump on the open office bandwagon. They just became the poster child for crazy office spaces gone wild. From The Washington Post:

Despite its obvious problems, the open-office model has continued to encroach on workers across the country. Now, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions, according to the International Facility Management Association. Silicon Valley has been the leader in bringing down the dividers. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Goldman Sachs and American Express are all adherents.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enlisted famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world, housing nearly 3,000 engineers. And as a businessman, Michael Bloomberg was an early adopter of the open-space trend, saying it promoted transparency and fairness. He famously carried the model into city hall when he became mayor of New York,  making “the Bullpen” a symbol of open communication and accessibility to the city’s chief.One more reason we should be allowed to work from home!…

…But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting. In fact, those with private offices wereleast likely to identify their ability to communicate with colleagues as an issue. In a previous study, researchers concluded that “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices.”

But wait for it…

Why is all of this Open Office hating coming out right now? Are open offices really that bad? My own opinion is that the office furniture industry is truly behind all of this anyway. Every decade or so, they need to sell new furniture and the way to do that is to tell executives that a new design will give them magical productivity gains and super happy employees! Just buy our new desk and chair!

I suspect this round of Open Office hating is coming from another corner of the universe. Can you guess?  So, closed offices don’t work. You don’t get collaboration. Open offices don’t work, because you don’t get privacy. So, what are we HR Pros to do?

Oh, I have an idea, came from the corner, of the employees who just don’t’ feel cozy enough at work!  The NEW research says that Working From Home is the real answer to all of our problems!  Yep. Open offices suck because working from home is soooo much better!

Did you see that coming?

There are seven-year-old kids in China making $100 Nikes by candle light, and amazingly their productivity goes up every day! Be careful about getting pulled down the rabbit hole of what next great office design will ‘fix’ your company.  Everyone has an agenda. Your employees who really would rather just work from home. The office supply companies who need to push product. The HR executive who needs productivity increases to show the board or at least, a reason we aren’t getting them!

What is the magical office design after work from home crashes?  I hear working from the beach in Cayman really, really increases productivity!

2015 Top Post: HR Emoji Etiquette

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I’m on vacation this week, so you’re getting a best of week from The Project. These are the most read posts of 2015 to this point. Enjoy! 

I never was a huge fan of emojis.  I’m probably just too old, and out of touch to really understand.  My emojis consist of basically two: smiley face :) and winky face ;).  Really, I’ve been able to get through my life with these two emojis.  I’ve never truly felt compelled to go beyond these.  I either liked what you wrote = smiley face, or I wanted you to know I wasn’t seriously going to fire you = winky face.

One of my favorite comedy writers is Jenny Johnson and she recently had an article in GQ Jenny Johnson’s Guide to Emoji Etiquette.  It’s brilliantly funny and it gave me the idea that HR should have its own emoji etiquette, so I decided to give it a run.  Here’s what I came up with:

I’m going to fire Fred in Accounting with the creepy mustache:

 (you’ll notice I like my HR ladies to wear a crown!)

We are a no smoking facility:

(also can be used to land planes)

We offer same-sex benefits:

Dear hiring manager, I’m going to look the other way at what you just did:

Diversity and Inclusion meeting will take place today and there will be cookies:

A failed random drug test will get you fired:

We love you, you’re our top choice and we want to make you an offer, but you only have so much time to accept:

Happy hour Friday! Yay! But, be cautious, too much drinking with coworkers can lead to romance, and unwanted pregnancies:

Mary in Payroll is acting like she’s sick so she can go get her hair and nails done. HR doesn’t like this!

 Hit me up with your favorite emojis in the comments!

 

2015 Top Post: Sometimes A Job Isn’t Worth It

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I’m on vacation this week, so you’re getting a best of week from The Project. These are the most read posts of 2015 to this point. Enjoy! 

Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It  all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing ToiletsThe uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world anddocument the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey (they’re currently in Athens, having traveled 25,000 kilometers so far), they’ve posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.

The Best Places To Work for Men!

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Have you noticed that Best Places type lists are starting to go a bit far.  I get we need lists like Best Places to Work for Women, Minorities, LGBT, etc. It just seems like we’ve jumped the shark when it comes to best places to work lists.  At this point, anyone can get on one of these lists, you just need to find the right one!

I keep waiting for some company to just allow you to make up your own list. You pay, you get on the list you want for whatever marketing purposes you want. Can you imagine:

-Best Places to Work for Single Dads who have Inappropriately Younger Girlfriends

-Best Places to Work for Pug Owners

-Best Places to Work for Electric Car Owners

-Best Places to Work for Women Who Like Crossfit, but Aren’t Vegan

It’s become a bit much.

I have noticed that I haven’t ever seen a Best Places list for Dudes.  Okay, calm down. I already the hens clucking. But, for real, wouldn’t that list make sense?

The demographic of our working population in many industries now have more female than male workers, so it would make sense in these cases to highlight the best employees for the minority male worker. Right? Oh, wait, I forgot, inclusion only counts if you’re a non-white male.

Think about it. Best Places to Work for Male Nurses. Best Places to Work for Male Elementary Teachers. Best Places to Work for Male Strippers.

Here’s my list of Best Places to Work for Males:

-The NFL (okay, this one is easy, and you can also add MLB, NBA and NHL)

-Any Division I or II college athletic department (yes, Title 9 equaled the scholarships, but it’s still a male-dominated field across the board for jobs)

-Almost all manufacturing facilities (Boy those Unions sure protect workers…)

-The C-Suite of Almost all Companys

-The Executive Board of every Fortune 500 company

-Every Major Tech Firm in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, Austin, Chicago, etc.

-Every Service, Retail and Restuarant Company in a Leadership position

-The Banking Industry

-The Oil and Gas Industry.

-Higher Education

Yeah, that’s a good start.  I think the guys would be happy with that list.

I’m assuming you’re all smart enough to catch the irony, but if not, hit me in the comments with how upset you are at me because you just read the title and want to beat me up.

 

 

 

The Starting Point of a Great Recruiting Practice

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I love to taking a look back at great things and trying to determine that one point in time where the path to greatness was started.  It happens all the time in sports with teams. It’s usually a great hire of a visionary coach or a draft pick of some player who ends up being an all-time great. You almost always point to an exact time and place when the path to becoming great started.

You can do this with organizations as well. When did Apple make that turn from just being that educational Apple II computer company selling to schools, to the company they are today? The rehire of Steve Jobs? The launch of a certain product.

It’s more difficult when it comes to individual departments within an organization. When I hear about a great recruiting practice, I always wonder how did they become great, but also what started them on the path to greatness.  I always ask the person who is probably most responsible. Rarely does this person ever really have an answer.

The starting point of a great recruiting practice is always going to be different for each organization, but they all have one thing in common. Great recruiting practices all started with one person deciding they were going to make a change.  They didn’t even start out believing they were going to be great, but they knew something had to change to start making it better.

The starting point of a great recruiting practice is making the decision that the status quo will no longer be something that is acceptable. A great recruiting practice comes from the interactions of people who seek to make a change.

Having Fun at Work

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Mark Manson is a brilliant writer, one of my favorites. He recently wrote an article titled, “Screw Finding Your Passion” where he made a comment about fun:

“A child does not walk onto a playground and say to himself, “How do I find fun?” She just goes and has fun.”

I get asked a lot by HR Pros who are working hard to influence their work culture and raise employee engagement about how can they make their workplaces more fun.  I think the above quote will be my new go-to answer!

If you offer a fun environment, meaning you don’t stamp out the fun your employees naturally want to have, all you need to do is allow fun to happen.

Now, you know your problem.

You try and manufacture a certain kind of fund. A kind of fun that you and your executives feel employees will feel is fun. But, it’s not fun. Safe fun is not fun.

Did you want to use the safety scissors as a kid, or the big sharp ones the teacher had?  Did you want to play the game the parents put together at the birthday party, or just run around with the other kids making up something?  Planned fun, is the opposite of fun.

If you want a fun work environment, you have to allow fun to happen in a way your employees believe is fun. Sometimes that will make you nervous. That’s okay, that is what fun is all about.  If it didn’t make you a bit nervous, it wouldn’t be fun!

When I took my first job as an HR pro, I worked in an office where ‘fun’ wasn’t really something that was being had. I brought in one of those little indoor basketball hoops that hook onto the back of a door and put in my office door.  I would then challenge people to a game of “Pig”.  The office battles became epic!

One day the CHRO came down to the HR offices and saw the hoop and asked me to play.  No one, including me, expected this! He was the opposite of fun. He was a buttoned-up executive! But, he was letting us know, that he approved of us having fun! He wouldn’t do it often, but every once in a while, he would come down and challenge one of use to a game. People would gather, they would laugh, they would have fun.

How do you create a fun work environment?  Let people have fun.

 

If You’re Going To Do It, Do It Now!

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I have three sons, two of which are college age-ish (one if college, one on his way).  They can do anything right now!  If they wanted, they could fill a backpack and walk the earth. No one is going to stop them, in fact, many will congratulate them for taking this leap while they’re young.

In just a few years, people won’t say that.  They’ll tell them it’s crazy and you’re going to hurt your career, etc.

I’m 45 years old.  I have a feeling that I’m getting to an age where I no longer can make a change in my career path.

Before you start commenting with things like, “Tim, age is a state of mind”, or “You can do anything you want”, or “Follow you passion”.  Stop it. I’m a grown ass man.  I like to think I’m an adult, although my wife and kids question that frequently. I have adult obligations – mortgage, college tuition, kids to raise, health insurance. I can’t just go off and polish rocks.

We all get to certain points in our life where you can no longer just go do ‘it’. Whatever ‘it’ is for you.   I feel like I’m at a point where I can’t change careers, not because I don’t think I could, but because society doesn’t look well upon 45-year-old dudes looking to change careers. Something is now wrong with me if I wanted to change careers. BTW – I don’t want to change careers, I actually think what I do is pretty cool. Or hip. Or On Fleek. Or whatever the kids are saying.

If I decided to go back and become a nurse, right now, at 45 years old, with all of my responsibilities. People would say something is wrong with me. You know what? I would think there was something wrong with me.

My question is more around what is ‘that’ time when if you’re going to do it, you better do it now?

For traveling the world: I think it’s 18-22 yrs old, or after 60.

For completely changing careers: I think you have to do it around 30-35 years old. Later, and you just look like your reaching. (I think most people won’t agree with this, but it comes from my recruiting background and how hiring managers look at older candidates who have made this move)

For having kids: this one has changed a bit, but before 40 seems safe. Otherwise, you’re just tempting science to give you problems. One caveat, if you’re adopting, I’ll push out this age because those kids just need someone who will love them.

For completely your high school or college education: I’m really open on this one – I would say anytime before death! I’m a huge advocate of lifelong learning!

For having grandkids: After 45 years old for sure. If you have grandkids prior to becoming 45, you did something wrong as a parent.

For getting your nose pierced: 17-28 years old. Yeah, I’m looking at you 37-year-old mom with the kid with a mohawk not wearing his seatbelt in the back of your Ford Mustang.

So, hit me in the comments with your age ranges on when you think it’s no longer socially acceptable to change careers!

 

 

Who Will Your Pallbearers Be?

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I had lunch last week with a good friend of mine.  We’ve been trying for six months to get this lunch set up, but just haven’t been able to make it happen.

This is a guy I love!  We worked together at Applebee’s, spent basically every day together. He’s the best operations person I know, great leader, and one of the few people I would ever go to work for.

So, why haven’t we been able to find time to get together more often?

Well, he told me, “Tim, you know I think you’re great. You are the best HR person I’ve ever worked with. But, I’ve been trying to focus on who my Pallbearers will be!”

What!?!

He’s been trying to focus on six relationships. The six people who will carry his casket when he dies. His Pallbearers!

His theory is I can’t keep up with everyone. I’ve probably got six relationships that I can really focus on in my life. These six people I call my Pallbearers. They are the ones who will carry me to my final resting place, and given that, I better focus on having a really good relationship with them.

So, two things:

  1. I didn’t make his Pallbearer list. Which I’m actually okay with. I loved hearing the philosophy to behind why he’s dodged me for six straight months, and how he selected his six!
  2. I don’t have six!

It really got me to thinking.  Who the hell would my Pallbearers be?  If you take out family, because I really don’t want them to work to hard the day I go six feet under, who would carry my casket? Sadly, I couldn’t come up with six.

I’m 45 years old, and I couldn’t think of six people who would carry my casket. Not if they were asked. I’ve been asked to be a pallbearer, and you can’t say No, even if you really don’t know the person. I mean six people who wouldn’t allow anyone else to carry my casket because they wanted the honor!

In my mind, I’m thinking six men.  I have some close friends that are ladies, but I’m a little traditional in that you don’t normally see ladies carrying a casket. I’ve either got a bunch of relationship building to do, or I need to lose a bunch of weight! If I’m super skinny, maybe I can get away with just four pallbearers!

Another thought was cremation. If I get cremated I really only need one person to carry the ashes.  That would be way easier to find just one!

I still kept coming back to the pallbearer six.  Why don’t I have six male relationships in my life who would really want to carry my casket?  Need to change that.

In the end, it comes down to priorities.  For the better part of 19 years I’ve put my time into my family and raising kids. And, I don’t regret a moment of that! But, my friendships suffered because of it. Pallbearer type friendships take time and effort. Time and effort I didn’t give.

Do you know who your pallbearers will be?