Care. More.

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Tim Sackett

My wife loves a super funny scene from the moving “Knocked Up”, here’s the scene:

“Care more!” My wife and I laugh at this because this one scene defines most marriages with kids!

I like “care more”. I want those I work with to care more. To care as much as I do. Care more about what we do. Care more about each other. Care more about your own development. Care more about our customers.

Care more!

Here’s the problem with ‘Care More!’ You’re assuming those around you don’t care more. Think about that for a moment. What if it was you being told to ‘care more’?

Feels like an insult, doesn’t it?

As leaders, we constantly feel like we care more about everything than all of those who work for us, but that’s just not true. It feels that way because we are surrounded by people who also care, but we are caring about different things at different times.

I’m surrounded by great people at my company, HRU Technical Resources, who are constantly caring more, but often it’s just not that we are aligned on our caring! I’m caring about something one day, and they also have things they are caring about. Some days we are all caring about the same thing, some days we are caring about different things.

When I first started as a leader in my career I would have high frustration over ‘care more’. I wanted every single person who I worked with to care as much as I did about the exact same things that I did. Let’s be honest, this is a behavior that still crops up for me from time to time!

What I’ve learned, is that almost every person that I have worked with does care more. The key is understanding what they care about, letting them know that I understand what they care about, and also have them know what I care about. I think this alignment lets all of us help each other.

Most employees working for you want to ‘care more’ about something. It’s not my job to judge what they care about, but to support them in caring more for what is important to them, not getting them to only ‘care more’ to what’s important to me.

That’s my key to great leadership and a happy marriage! Understand what others care more about. Help them care more. Don’t judge what someone else is caring more about. Let others know what you care more about so they aren’t assuming or guessing what you care more about.

The people I don’t want in my life are those who don’t want to care more about anything. I have no room for that!

Does Your Annual Review Process Include Terminations?

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Tim Sackett

By now most of you probably have had the chance to read the Telsla article where they terminated 400 employees directly after their annual review process. If not, check out the link. Also, my buddy Kris Dunn did a great write up on Tesla’s ‘unique’ culture as well over at the HR Capitalist.(Go Check it Out!)

My take is a bit different from Kris’s. Sure Tesla is a unique culture that has been ultra successful, but I’m wondering from an employee performance point of view, is firing employees during your annual process something that drives a sustainable culture?

Tesla is ultra cool, everyone wants “Tesla” on their resume or in their client list. Does that continue to be the case if you treat employees like this? I’m all for firing bad, underperforming employees, we all need to do this more and quicker. I think we all agree on that.

The question is, do you fire employees during your annual review process?

I’m wondering what the day or week before annual review time looks like at Tesla? Probably a lot of going away lunches and after hour drinks, but for everyone since no one really knows who will get ‘cut’ this time. Can you imagine those lunches!?

“Hey, team, everyone is invited to lunch next Thursday, just because, well, you know, it’s annual review time and we just want to say ‘thanks’ (“Thanks” now meaning “Goodbye” in Tesla speak) for all of your hard work, and, well, again, you just never know when one of us might want to do something else, and, oh gosh, we just never spend enough time together, so let’s break some bread!”

I’m also guessing the Friday after Tesla Annual Performance Review week is one big giant after-party!

Let’s face it, firing anyone during performance evaluation time is an awful way to run that process. You wait around for once a year to do most of your terminations, you’re not doing employee performance well at all!

If you have performance issues, high-performance companies address those issues immediately, work to correct, and if that doesn’t happen, they move to terminate as soon as it’s clear performance will not improve. Or you can wait around for f’ing ‘Death Day’ once a year and add a million times more stress to the process than is ever needed.

But what do I know, I mean it’s Tesla and Tesla knows all. Can’t wait to meet the ‘unicorn’ HR leader from Tesla at next conference I go to explain how brilliant they are for coming up with this nightmare.

HR on my friends.

GenX Rant: You’re not lonely, you’re just an idiot…

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Tim Sackett

So, the Washington Post ran an article this week where the former Surgeon General states that the U.S. has a “loneliness epidemic” it’s currently facing. A what?!

From the article:

“Vivek H. Murthy, who became the U.S. surgeon general in late 2014 after a lengthy confirmation battle over his remarks about guns being a health-care issue, added emotional well-being and loneliness to his list of big public health worries.

Now he’s writing about the impact the workplace has on those issues, taking his concerns to employers and speaking out about how the “loneliness epidemic” plays out on the job. In a new cover story in the Harvard Business Review, Murthy treats loneliness like a public health crisis, and the workplace as one of the primary places where it can get better — or worse. “Our social connections are in fact largely influenced by the institutions and settings where we spend the majority of our time,” Murthy said in an interview with The Washington Post. “That includes the workplace.”

Have we lost our f#*king minds!?

So, Timmy doesn’t make friends at work, goes home and spends eight straight hours on social media, or binge watches 8 episodes of Breaking Bad and feels like no one is his friend. That not an epidemic. Tim is an idiot!

I wasn’t a lonely kid, and I didn’t grow up being a lonely adult. Why? My parents would physically lock me out of the house from like after school to whenever the street lights came on. I was no ‘allowed’ in the house. They forced me to got out and make friends. It’s a learned skill, making friends. They said only one thing, “Go make friends.”

No instructions. No scheduled playgroups. Get your lazy ass outside and make friends. It’s not hard, just don’t be an idiot to the other kids who are were also forced outside. A ‘friend’ is not a social connection. It’s someone you physically talk to, touch, you know what each other’s likes and hates. You know their dreams and fears.

So, here we are in 2017, we can’t find enough talent, we’re struggling to help our leaders manage the performance of our workforce, and now we have to teach adults how to make friends? You have to be freaking kidding me!

A decade ago Gallup found out the ‘trick’ too happy employees is they have a ‘best friend’ at work. Little did we know, then, but apparently we do today, HR would become best friend matchmaker for friendship illiterate millennials who couldn’t look up from their phones for fifteen seconds to say an actual “hello” to Timmy as he walked by.

I give up. We’re all morons. Society is lost. China, please come takeover already…

Being a Fair Leader Won’t Get You Promoted!

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Look out HR Leaders this one is going to sting a little – from The Harvard Business Review:

“In management, fairness is a virtue. Numerous academic studies have shown that the most effective leaders are generally those who give employees a voice, treat them with dignity and consistency, and base decisions on accurate and complete information.

But there’s a hidden cost to this behavior. We’ve found that although fair managers earn respect, they’re seen as less powerful than other managers—less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish—and that may hurt their odds of attaining certain key, contentious leadership roles.”

Wow, that really flies in the face of all that we’ve been taught by our HR Heroes, doesn’t it! Well, not exactly, just because treating employees fairly and with respect might not get you promoted, it doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. That’s a hard pill to swallow though, right?

How many times in your career have you looked at someone who was promoted and said to yourself “how the hell did they get promoted!?” It’s usually the leader who is pushing people around, and no one likes, and the CEO taps them on the shoulder for the next VP role. Some more from the HBR article:

“We’ve long wondered why managers don’t always behave fairly because doing so would clearly benefit their organizations: Studies show that the success of change initiatives depends largely on fair implementation. Our research suggests an answer. Managers see respect and power as two mutually exclusive avenues to influence, and many choose the latter. Although this appears to be the more rational choice, it’s not always the correct one—and it poses big risks for organizations.”

Do you know why managers choose “Power” over “Respect” as a leadership style? It’s easier! I mean way EASIER! Positional power makes your job so much easier to move things through organizations and get things done, but you burn a lot of bridges and relationships on that path.

Getting things accomplished through mutual respect and influence can take time, but ultimately is more rewarding. Time tends to be the big factor with this, though. In today’s organizations we frequently feel pushed by time to get things done – Now – and that “now” tends not to work well with “respect”. More from HBR:

“Companies can benefit from placing more value on fairness when assessing managerial performance. Our early follow-up research suggests that managers whose style is based on respect can gain power. Their path upward may be difficult, but it’s one worth taking, for their company’s sake as well as their own.”

Thus, this is the key! Want to build Great leaders in your organization? Give them this time to get things done through leading with a style based in respect. Want to get something done tomorrow, and not care about how your employees are getting treated? Let positional power rule the day, and be comfortable with your leaders throwing their weight around the office to get things done.

Let’s face it, this isn’t an all or nothing exclusive thing. We need our leaders to do both – treat employees with respect, and get results quickly. That’s why we have HR! That is a tough thing to accomplish, but HR Pros can help leaders accomplish this task.

It’s Better to Make a Wrong Decision Fast

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Tim Sackett

For those that don’t know I played and coached volleyball for a great deal of my life. Being from Michigan I can tell you that is rare (being a male) and I got called “gay” more than once while fundraising to make money to pay for traveling nationally for major tournaments (I think the actual phrases were more like “don’t girls only play volleyball”, etc. Welcome to the rust belt).

Anyway, one piece of my coaching stuck with me (we used with our middle blockers) that I also have used into my adult life and I use it still today:

It’s better to make a wrong decision fast, then make the right decision to slow.

Why? In volleyball, when you go to block you have to make split second decisions. You have 3 options: block middle, block right side hitter, or block left side hitter. You rely on your instincts, you rely on communication from your teammates and you survey the situation (where is the pass coming from, where is the setter, how far off the net is the setter, etc.), then you make a decision.

The problem most middle blockers have at a young age is they want to be up on every block. They want to make the right decision every time, but by doing this, they rarely make it to block any position because they are frozen with indecision. I taught my middles to decide quickly and then do it. Do it 110%! Go to which ever spot you decided to block and block and even if the ball went to another position!

Why? Some positive things happen by you making the wrong decision quickly. For starters it allows your teammates to make adjustments they need to make to try and get the best possible outcome. Believe me your back row players know you made the wrong decision because they’re staring down the hitter with only one blocker! BUT, it also allows them to know how to try and defend that.

If you’re late, and you have a hole in the middle of the block and now they have to guess where to go. Fill the hole, cover the line, take the cross, etc. It becomes a guessing game. One which you rarely win. What happens if you make the right decision to slow? About 99% of the time, what was going to happen, already happened. You didn’t make the decision, it was made for you. I like being in control, so this isn’t an option I like.

So what? What the heck does this have anything to do with you becoming a better leader?

Fast Company has a wonderful article on this concept called: Why Keeping Your Options Open is Really, Really Bad Idea – from the article:

Why does keeping our options open make us less happy? Because once we make a final, no-turning-back decision, the psychological immune system kicks in. This is how psychologists like Gilbert refer to the mind’s uncanny ability to make us feel good about our decisions. Once we’ve committed to a course of action, we stop thinking about alternatives. Or, if we do bother to think about them, we think about how lousy they are compared to our clearly superior and awesome choice.

Most of us have had to make a choice between two colleges, or job offers, or apartments. You may have had to choose which candidate to hire for a job, or which vendor your company would engage for a project. When you were making your decision, it was probably a tough one–every option had significant pros and cons. But after you made that decision, did you ever wonder how you could have even considered the now obviously inferior alternative?…

When you keep your options open, however, you can’t stop thinking about the downside–because you’re still trying to figure out if you made the right choice. The psychological immune system doesn’t kick in, and you’re left feeling less happy about whatever choice you end up making.

This brings us to the other problem with reversible decisions–new research shows that they don’t just rob you of happiness, they also lead to poorer performance.

I tend to run into this with younger workers who want to make the right choice, fearing “death” or some other less desirable outcome if they make the wrong choice. They tend to defer decision making to their boss or a peer instead of making it themselves, thus giving away the chance for superior performance.

When in reality, all I want is for them to make any choice, and we’ll live with the outcome. I hire great people, so I’m sure they’ll make very wise, research driven decisions, and even then, sometimes they’ll fail. I’m willing to live with that. If it’s fast! Because that allows us to adjust and find a way to make it right.

Two things at play in this concept: 1. Fast action; 2. Failure is an option, that we can live with. Give me those two things, and I’ll show you an organization that is on the move and that can block pretty well!

Is Talent Acquisition Wasting Your Hiring Manager’s Time?

Posted on September 14, 2017 by Tim Sackett

I had a conversation the other day with a corporate HR Director and we were talking recruiters, corporate recruiters. My friend had a dilemma, a classic corporate recruiting scenario. The problem is she has recruiters who are doing a decent job, but they won’t get out from behind their desk and get out into the organization and get face-to-face feedback from the hiring managers. But, here is the real reason: the recruiters feel like they are “wasting” the hiring manager’s time.

“So,” she asked, “How do I get them out to build these relationships?”

Great question, but she asked the wrong question (was partially my answer). Her problem isn’t that her recruiters aren’t building the relationships face-to-face with managers. The problem is they feel they are “wasting” someone’s time.

They don’t value or understand the value they are providing to the hiring manager. If they did, it sounds like they wouldn’t have a problem with visiting with the hiring managers. It’s a classic leadership fail, solving a symptom instead of solving the actual problem.

I don’t think that this is rare, recruiters feeling like they are wasting hiring managers time. It happens constantly at the corporate level. Once you train your recruiters (and hiring managers) on the value the recruiters are providing, you see much less resistance of the recruiters feeling comfortable getting in front of hiring managers to get feedback on candidates, and actually making a decision. This moves your process along much quicker.

What value do recruiters provide? Well, that seems like a really stupid question, but there aren’t stupid questions (just stupid people who ask questions). Here are few that will help your corporate recruiters understand their real value to hiring managers:

Corporate recruiters are the talent pipeline for a hiring manager. (or should be!)
Corporate recruiters can be the conduit for hiring managers to increase or better the talent within their department.
Corporate recruiters are a partner to the hiring managers in assessing talent.
Corporate recruiters are a strategist for the hiring managers group succession planning
Corporate recruiters are your hiring managers first line of performance management (setting expectations before someone even comes in the door)
Corporate recruiters are tacticians of organizational culture.

So, the next time you hear a recruiter tell you “I don’t want to waste their time.” Don’t go off on them and tell them to “just go out there and build the relationship”. Educate them on why they aren’t wasting their time. Then do an assessment for yourself to determine are they adding value or are they just wasting time. All recruiters are not created equal and some waste time, and it’s your job as a leader to find ones add value.

A critical component to all of this is building an expectation of your hiring managers of what they should expect from your recruiters. They should expect value. They should expect a recruiter who is a pro, and who is going to help them maneuver the organizational landscape and politics of hiring. They should expect a recruiter is going to deliver to them better talent than they already have. They should expect a partner, someone who is looking out for the best interest of the hiring managers department.

Ultimately, what they should expect is someone who won’t waste their time!

The 3 Conclusive Steps to Getting Sh*t Done

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Tim Sackett

There are times when I struggle to get things done. I’m a really good starter of things. In fact, I love starting things. I can always see how I want it finished (a little shout out to Covey – Begin with the end in mind). But like most things you start, eventually things get bogged down, and getting them over the finish line can be hard.

It’s probably why most projects fail, it gets tough, so we stop and move onto the beginning of something else because that’s fun and exciting. I’ve learned this about myself over the years and I do two things to help myself. First, I surround myself with people who have great resolve to getting things done, the type of folks who don’t sleep well at night because they know there was that one glass left in the sink, and they should really get up and put in away. I love those folks, they aren’t me, I hire them every time I get the chance. I even married one of those types she makes me better!

Second, I force myself to not start something new, until I finish what I’ve already started. This can be annoying, I’m sure, for those around me because sometimes projects have to go on hold while you wait for feedback, or other resources, etc. This makes me antsy, I like to get things finished!

I was re-introduced recently to a quote from the novel Alice in Wonderland that I think really puts in perspective what it takes to get something done. The quote is from the King of Hearts and it is quite simply:

“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Your 3 Steps:

1. Begin

2. Go till the end

3. Stop

We make it much harder than that, but it really isn’t. I like simple stuff, it fits into my mind quite well. It might be the best advice I’ve gotten in a really long time. I don’t need pre-planning, or post project assessments, or update meetings, or budget reviews, etc.

Naive? Probably. But, sometimes you just need to begin, go to you come to the end, then stop.

The Questions Leaders Ask When Great Talent Leaves

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Employee Turnover is a major problem in the majority of organizations, and it’s going to get worse. The economy might not continue to be as strong in the near future as it has been, but it doesn’t look to be any major downturn as well. Plus, demographics are playing into the job seekers favor with so many people retiring.

I’ve never been too concerned with low performers leaving my organization. I do have an issue with hiring managers telling me a performer is average or above, then when they leave the ‘new’ story comes out about how that person was a piece of garbage and now we are ‘better’ off that they left. Wait? What? You said this person was solid, but now they’re awful?

This happens all the time, especially in organizations that segment and track turnover by performance and hold managers accountable to this metric.

For me, I think the best organizations at controlling turnover are the ones where the leadership asks certain questions when they see their best talent leave. The ones that really dig into the reasons and not allow a middle-level manager make up a reason. The ones that have a documented ‘save’ strategy in place.

Here are some of the questions I ask myself when great talent leaves:

Is there anything I could have done to keep this person with our organization? Why wasn’t that done?
Was there anything the employee asked for to stay but we couldn’t deliver?
What would have had to take place to keep this employee with us?
Can we get this employee to return to us in the future?
What was the ‘real’ reason this employee left?
Did we ask this employee what it would take to keep them with us? What was the answer?

I’m a firm believer that you can talk anyone into staying with your organization. I’m also a firm believer that the ‘studies’ that tell you people who accept a counter offer will leave in 18 months anyway are completely wrong and out of date!

What I’ve found in all my years of doing this is that for about 50% of people who tell you they’re leaving, small things can keep them and ultimately they actually want to stay, but someone else showed them some love, and that feels so good to be wanted by another! The other 50% probably have a larger issue that is harder to solve, but if you work really hard it can get done.

One issue organizations with high turnover face is they let each other off the hook with turnover by giving each other excuses. “Yeah, Tim used to be good, but lately, he’s been awful.” “Well, it’ll hurt losing Mary, but we weren’t going to keep her happy for long.” “George is our best sales person, but he was holding other back that can be great as well.”

To control turnover leadership needs to change this narrative and stop the excuses for every single turn. The one caveat I allow is documented bottom performers that are on a plan. That’s good turnover, but it better be documented, or it’s bad turnover. Leadership owns this and it starts with tough questions about their own behavior that led to the turn.

If you get to this place, turnover will stop being a problem, and start being an opportunity.

The Special Secret of Chronic Low Performers

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Do you guys want to know a little secret? You know how I like hanging out with smokers because they have all the cool inside information before anyone else? Your chronic low performers have a similar skill. It’s kind of like information. Chronic low performers are really good at being low performers! They’ve figured it out! They’ve figured out how to do the bare minimum, without getting fired, and you still pay them for showing up and continuing to give you low performance.

If that isn’t a skill then I don’t know what skills are! Let that marinate a little on your mind.

The only reason you have a chronic low performer, is they’ve figured out how to master low performance.

All of us have chronic low performers. We’ve shot them a million times behind closed doors but never pulled the trigger when the door was open. I can distinctly remember having conversations about a certain manager when I was at Applebees at 6 straight calibration meetings over 3 years and heard stories about him before I’d come into the organization. He just was good/bad enough to keep hanging on. One meeting we’d be short, so he’d make it one more session. Then, the next meeting we’d have some idiot do something really bad and Mr. Chronic Low Performer lives on to suck another day! The next meeting it would be some other lame reason. Each time just squeaking by.

Then, the next meeting we’d have some idiot do something really bad and Mr. Chronic Low Performer lives on to suck another day! The next meeting it would be some other lame reason. Each time just squeaking by.

Think about all of the people you’ve ever let go. They usually fall into 3 – 4 groups:

1. Bad Performer/bad fit from the start (you shot them early)

2. Good Performer did something really stupid (didn’t want to fire, but had to)

3. Layoffs (decision above your pay grade)

4. Chronic Low Performers (hardly ever happens, they do anything really stupid, personally you don’t hate them)

We have Chronic Low Performers because they make it easy for us to keep them. They say the right things when we tell them they need to pick it up or else. They’re ‘company’ people, all except for actually adding value part. They give you no major reason to let them go, all except for not really doing that good of a job. They always seem to have a semi-legitimate reason for not performing well.

I always wonder how much money chronic low performers have cost organizations vs. the good/great performers we had to let go because they pushed the envelope a little too far and we had to fire them. My guess is the low performers win hands-down. You could have a great sales person who is constantly fudging his expense reports or a chronic low performer in the same role. Who would you take?

You don’t have to answer, you do every day. You take the low performer. “Well, what do you want us to keep the thief!” No. But I’m wondering if great performance can be rehabbed? I know Chronic Low Performance can’t. My guess is good/great probably can. Just a thought.

So, why do you have chronic low performers? It’s not that you allow it. It’s because you just found out what they are really good at!

I’m a Transactional Memory Leader, are you?

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Tim Sackett

There is this concept called ‘group transactional memory‘. Simply, this is your ability to allow memories you need or want to be stored within someone else. Let me give you an example. My wife is our family calendar. I unconsciously (and maybe a little consciously) don’t remember anything regarding our family calendar because I ‘rely’ on her memory to store this information.

I’m completely a Transactional Memory Leader!

I’m not the guy who knows everything in HR and Recruiting. I’m the guy who knows the people who know everything in HR and Recruiting. Why should I remember every single piece of HR technology when I have a half a dozen friends who I know will know the answer I need. Why would I remember every aspect of employment branding when I know at least five the top employment branding minds on the planet?!

I’m an inch deep and a mile wide. Some folks are a mile deep and an inch wide.

Frequently you’ll hear older people say “a piece of me died” when their long term companion dies. By the group transactional memory theory, this is actually true. If my wife would die, I would lose so much memory I can’t even tell you. She makes way better than I could ever be on my own. She’s like this awesome additional hard drive add-on that no one else has. A secret weapon!

She allows me to fill up my memory capacity with all the stupid stuff I fill my days with, and she handles all the personal daily stuff. For her, I fill my memory with stuff like directions and well, mostly directions to places (I’m also really good with movie quotes in case she needs a movie quote at any time!).

I think the best leaders are also group transactional memory leaders.

I surround myself with really talented, dynamic people who all have various specialties. I then let them do what they do best, knowing that if I need that knowledge, it’s there for me to tap into when I need it. Why would I learn every aspect of some process, when I know I have someone who is already doing that for me?

I think we used to call that delegation, but for me, transactional memory is delegation 2.0.

To me, the best thing a leader can do for their teams is to allow them to be this group transactional memory buddy. Give them your trust that when called upon to use their memory banks they’ll come through and be that personal memory bank you needed. This trust that they will perform when needed if the basis of leadership.

My wife will probably read this and think “I can’t believe he found a scientific way to be lazy!” She’s probably right! I’m really just looking for more capacity for more pop culture references and athletic statistics!

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

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