Category Archives: Leadership

The Plains are Covered with the Bodies of Pioneers!

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I will speak at over 25 conferences in 2019. Mostly HR and TA, some leadership conferences. Every single talk I give will have some piece around innovation, at some point during the talk. The need to drive our organizations forward.

Here’s the problem with that concept. The ones that do things first are usually considered pioneers.

Do you know what happened to the pioneers? The ones that went first? I’ll save you time looking it up and going through the history. They died!

You see, those who go first are always at a disadvantage in many respects. You don’t know what you don’t know. In the corporate world, in HR and TA specifically, what this means is you’ll probably fuck it up and be fired. And, yet executives wonder why ‘we’ aren’t more innovative!

It’s a super easy answer! I don’t like to be shot.

Most organizations do not have an appetite for innovation. 100% will tell you they do, but the old white guy sitting in the CEO chair will fire the first person who screws up. That’s not a culture of innovation and change, that’s a culture of “I’ve got a board meeting in two months, get sales up or heads are going to roll!”

So, it is unsurprising to me when an HR or TA leader tell me they would love to be innovative, but then they don’t really do anything differently year after year. Yeah, we know our current system sucks, but that new system is expensive and if the metrics don’t change, I’ll have a target on my back.

The plains are covered with the bodies of pioneers.

We see this happen in organizations constantly. Stuff isn’t going well. Big change must happen. Big change happens. A lot of people get fired. New people come in (walking on the bodies of the pioneers) and get to revel in the glory of a new world ‘they’ created.

You can either be a Pioneer or some Schmuck that thinks they created something amazing but didn’t have the guts to ever really do it themselves. Or just keep doing like you’ve been doing it and life goes on. That’s what most of us actually decide.

I want you to be a pioneer. I want you to drive innovation and help make your organization, your life, and your career better. That comes with some risk. So, I don’t judge anyone when they don’t become a pioneer. When they are unwilling to accept that risk.

The pioneer life isn’t easy. Those who choose to live it do so because they are drawn to a new world, a better world, but mostly they end up dead.

5 Tips for Displaying Company Culture During the Hiring Process

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So, why is company culture important?

We inherently understand why a company’s culture is valuable, sure. It sets up the rules, procedures and best practices for a place where you spend 40-50 hours a week, and it guides employees on how to make decisions, how to deal with customers and more. It’s very important for those intangible reasons.

But, at the same time, for-profit companies are about, well, generating returns for shareholders and stakeholders. In those situations, why does company culture matter? It can easily be dismissed as a “fluffy” or “soft” concept in the big financial meetings, but that’s folly. Company culture deeply impacts the bottom line, with one study in August 2016 showing that bad cultures can lose companies about $52.7 million of value per year. That number will vary drastically between organizations and the verticals they play within, with another estimate putting culture and personnel problems at about $15.5 million lost in a year. We’ve also seen studies about more compassionate, empathetic cultures – which employees tend to respond better to and turnover less within – being tied to improved fiscal performance and customer satisfaction.

What we’ve established: The culture of an organization is important. So now, if you’re growing and hiring, how do you display that culture during the hiring process to make sure you get the best people possible?

Some tips for displaying culture during the hiring process

Here are some of the bigger buckets to consider:

  • What is happening with your Glassdoor? This is a tricky subject for some organizations, but I’ll attempt to break it down for you. First, many candidates will look at your Glassdoor to see what previous employees have said about you. Glassdoor scaled enough within public opinion that it got a profile in The New Yorker. It’s important. That said, when you see an absolutely terrible review in isolation, most humans will dismiss it as a disgruntled former employee (e.g., someone who was fired). Most candidates will look at the more nuanced reviews that address both the good and the bad. As the company, what you want to do is go in and respond to the bad elements – while acknowledging the good – in all the reviews you get. Show that you care. That’s a big element of your culture.
  • Be active on LinkedIn: This should seem obvious, but it often is not. Most information in the early stages for a candidate will come from LinkedIn – seeing what you post as a brand, seeing who works there, how connected (first/second degree) they are to who works there, etc. So, post relevant content there. Post about your industry. Post about employee accomplishments. Post about growth and gains. Post thought-provoking questions. Show that you’re a robust company that is active both online and off. That will make a candidate feel better than “Their last brand post was in 2013.”
  • Have an employee video: This can be cost-prohibitive sometimes, especially if you lack a video production person in-house, but if you can make it happen, it’s very valuable. Show employees at work, at social events, at ball games, volunteering, etc. Break it up with a mix of soundbites from executives and regular employees, and put a dash of history – when founded, where, why – into the video, too. Use the language and actual words of the employees themselves.
  • Have a “What It’s Like to Work Here” page on your website, tied to your Careers Page: Too often, organizations will only have a careers page with open listings, but a candidate can’t find much about what it’s like to work there. (That’s why they turn to LinkedIn and Glassdoor.) Have a page with pictures from work, social events, volunteering, the video mentioned above, quotes from employees, and more. Embed the job openings on that page, too. That way, as someone learns about your culture, they’re one click from actually applying to an opening.
  • Consider using peer interviews: Peer interviews aren’t massively common yet, but more and more companies are embracing them. By letting candidates be interviewed by members of the team they would eventually join, they get a realistic look at the culture, the day-to-day responsibilities and the actual people they’d be completing projects with. Obviously, the hiring manager can have the final say on who gets the offer, but involving the team in hiring is a great way to showcase what the culture really is to a candidate.

What other ways have you seen culture showcased during the hiring process?

Other aspects of company culture

To learn more about company culture, including the types of company culture and what they mean as well as how to promote an organizational culture that is positive and sustainable, check out King University’s guide What’s All the Buzz About? The Importance of Company Culture.

With all the benefits of great culture, it’s easy to see why focusing on it is a must, but it’s also a challenging task. It’s imperative that culture be sustainable and permeate throughout the entire workforce. Much thought is still being put into how to do that, and all companies must customize their approach.

You can learn the latest in this and other business topics by earning an online MBA through King University. Throughout the program, you’ll study management, research, theoretical systems, quantitative analysis, ethical practices and more, preparing you to become an effective and strategic business leader in a variety of settings. Designed with working students in mind, their flexible program can fit easily into your schedule, and no GMAT is required.

Leaders Secretly Hate Succession Planning!

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Do you want to know what you’ll never hear anyone on your leadership team say publicly? Well, let me stop before I get started, because there are probably a ton of things leaders will say behind closed doors, off the record, and then open the door and say the exact opposite. Welcome to the PC version of corporate America.

One of the obvious, which always causes a stir is veteran hiring. I’ve written posts about Veteran Hiring many times, in which I state that companies will always, 100% of the time, publicly say they support veteran hiring, but behind closed doors they don’t really support veteran hiring. At best they want to offer veterans their crappiest jobs, not their best jobs.

If they did truly support veteran hiring, we would not have a veteran hiring crisis in this country! If every organization who claims they want to hire veterans, would just hire veterans, we would have 100% employed veterans! But we don’t. Why? Well, it’s organizational suicide to ever come out and say we don’t really want to hire veterans.  The media would kill that organization. Yet, veterans can’t get hired.

Succession planning is on a similar path. Your leaders say the support succession planning. They’ll claim it is a number one priority for your organization. But, every time you try and do something with succession planning, it goes nowhere!

Why?

Your leaders hate succession planning for a number of reasons, here are few:

1. Financially, succession planning is a huge burden on organizations, if done right. Leaders are paid on the financial success of your organization. If it comes down to Succession Planning, or Michael getting a big bonus, Succession Planning will get pushed to next year, then, next year, then, next year…You see Succession Planning is really over hiring. Preparing for the future. It’s a long term payback. Very few organizations have leadership in place with this type of long term vision of success.

2.  Leaders get too caught up in headcount. We only have 100 FTEs for that group, we couldn’t possibly hire 105 and develop and prepare the team for the future, even though we know we have a 6% turnover each year. Organizations react. Firefight. Most are unwilling to ‘over hire’ and do succession in a meaningful way.

3. Leaders are like 18-year-old boys. They think they can do it forever!  Again, publicly they’ll tell you they’re planning and it’s important. Privately, they look at some smartass 35-year-old VP and think to themselves, there is no way in hell I’ll ever let that kid take over this ship!

So, what can smart HR Pros do?

Begin testing some Succession Planning type tools and data analytics in hot spots in your company. Don’t make it a leadership thing. Make it a functional level initiative, in a carve-out area of your organization. A part of the organization that is highly visible has a direct financial impact on the business, and one you know outwardly has succession issues.

Tinker. Get people involved. Have conversations. Start playing around with some things that could have an impact in terms of development, retention, cross-training, workforce planning, etc.  All those things that constitute succession, but instead of organization level, you are focusing on departmental level or a specific location.

Smart HR Pros get started.  They don’t wait for the organization to do it all at once. That will probably never happen. Just start somewhere, and roll it little by little. Too often we don’t get started because we want to do it all. That is the biggest mistake we can make.

Bad is Stronger than Good in HR!

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I spoke at a conference recently and one of the things that came up during my presentation was a conversation around “Must Do Moves”.  Must do moves are those things in your organization that you grab a hold of, as an HR leader, and make sure they happen.

I asked the group a question:

Do you have anyone in your organization that you need to get rid of?

100%, all hands raised up immediately, “Yes!” If you work in an organization that has a decent employee size, let’s say 100+, you almost always have a least one or two folks you would be better without. (for the record, my staff is less than 100, and I don’t have anyone I need to get rid of, they all rock! Don’t hate, I just follow my own advice!)

As HR Pros we hear about this in meetings with your executives and hiring managers, “Oh if we could only replace John, we would be so much better!” My point to the HR Pros in the audience is this is a value item that we can own in our organizations.  Must do moves. Especially those moves that make our organizations stronger,  need champions in HR.  When it comes to staff moves, we are that champion.

What we realize, but many of our hiring managers fail to realize, is that Bad is Stronger than Good, when it comes to employees.  We hear all the time “Addition through Subtraction”, and yet we struggle in our organizations to make this happen. Most likely this happens in your organization because you are trying to make your hiring managers, manage, and have them make this decision.

When in reality they have made the decision and they told you. They hate conflict, even more than you do, and this was their cry for help. Take it and run with it, make it happen.  It’s the one thing in HR we are all really good at, process and planning.  Put a plan together to get rid of your Bad and make it happen.

I didn’t just say go fire that person. That’s not a plan. Well, it is a plan, but not a very good one. I said make a plan to get rid of the bad. That means working with the hiring manager to determine timing, back-fill options, sourcing, recruiting, progressive discipline, all that good stuff, but make it happen.  Really, make it happen!  Executives like doers!

They like doers that get rid of Bad in our organizations. We own the Bad people in our organizations. Any time you have a Bad person in your organization you need to take on the persona, “this Bad person is my fault and I’m taking care of it.”  Bad is Stronger than Good, so you have to fight hard against Bad.

Want to look and be better in HR? Own the “Must-Do Moves” in your organization.

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 – Limited Tickets On Sale Now!

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DisruptHR Detroit is coming back to Downtown Detroit on September 19th from 5:30-8: 30 pm. Once again we want to give a big shout out to Quicken Loans and the HR and TA teams of Quicken Loans for hosting this great event onsite at The Madison!

We changed things up a bit this year – still great speakers (see the list below) and still great food, drinks, and fun – but we are going smaller, more intimate, can we say a bit more Disruptive! On top of this great, cool venue (that is literally across the street from Tiger Stadium) we have the founder of DisruptHR, Jennifer McClure, making a celebrity speaking appearance!

Here’s the deal though, we can only fit 150 folks into the venue! We’ve already sold half those tickets! Last year we sold 300+! So, if you want to come this year, you better be quick and go buy your tickets! We will sell-out and I apologize in advance, but there’s no way for us to increase seating capacity for this event. The cost is $30 per ticket, which includes the speakers, food, drink & parking!

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 Speakers:

– Becky Andree: SOS! I am Drowning in Complexity

– April Burton-Welch: HR Perspective: Let’s Be Fair, Firm & Consistent

– Adam Klug: Texting Candidates – You’re Not Doing It, but You Should!

– Jennifer Laidlaw: Your Training Did Nothing!

– Jill Melton: Words Can Kill – Words Can Heal! Choose Wisely

– Clarene Mitchell: Don’t be shy…Create Your Own Digital Footprint!

– Greg Mood: Jerry Springer-type HR Stories!

– Joan Morehead: What’s your brand of IPA, and it’s not about beer!

– James Reid: Employment Issues: Drugs Sex Money Rock’n Roll

– Michelle Snay: Show IT the love, HR!

– Jennifer McClure: (She’s surprising us with her title!)

We would also love to thank our sponsors for this event:

Headliner – 

Ultimate Software

Food and Drink Sponsor –

Marsh & McLennan Agency

Gold Sponsors –

Grace & Porta

Purpose Point

HireVue

SkillScout

Silver Sponsors- 

O.C. Tanner

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Want to build a community?

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I get asked quite often by folks who want to build a community and/or are already starting a community to be apart of their community. My first question is always, “Why do you want to build this community?” It’s pretty straight forward. It should be simple to answer.

Most will go all guru-like about wanting to get like-minded folks together, etc., but in the end, it’s mostly about starting a group so they can sell them something. Almost 99% of the time this is the reason. Which is actually fine, if you follow the steps and don’t actually sell!

Here is really the only way I’ve found to build a successful community:

Step 1 – Find some folks who are like you.

Step 2 – Announce that you are starting a community together.

Step 3 – Draft the purpose and some ground rules around that community.

Step 4 – Show up every day, even Saturday and Sunday.

Step 5 – Never sell your stupid shit.

Step 6 – Give.

Step 7 – Go to Step 6

Step 8 – Eventually the community will give you more than you ever gave it.

It’s super simple, and super hard, to build a community, because it’s all about you giving, and giving, and giving, with absolutely no expectation that you’ll get anything back from the community. Those who go into building a community with this mindset and action, though, almost always get more out of it than they put in it.

 

3 Steps to Getting Sh*t Done!

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There are times when I struggle to get things done.  I’m a really good starter of things. I love starting projects!  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 a 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 these 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 and 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 simple:

“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, or a project charter, etc.

Naive?  Probably.  But, sometimes you just need to Begin, go to you come to the End: then Stop.

The Employee Walk of Shame

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I’ve lost jobs and I’ve called old employers to see if they would want to hire me back. I’ve usually gotten a response that sounded something like, “Oh, boy would we want you back but we just don’t have anything. Good Luck!”  Many of us in the talent game talk about our employee Alumni and how we should engage our Alumni but very few of us really take true advantage of leveraging this network.

I was reminded of this recently when a friend of mine took a new job.  You know the deal, shorter drive, more money, growing company and oh, boy, just where do I sign!?  The fact was, it was all they said, shorter drive, more money and they were growing, but they forgot to tell him was our operations are broken beyond repair, you will work 7 days a week and probably 12-14 hours per day because of the mess we have, but keep your head up it’s the only way you won’t drown here!

So, now what does he do?

He already had the going away party, bar night out with the work friends with the promises to do lunches and not get disconnected, packed up and unpack the office into the new office.  Let’s face it, big boy, you’re stuck!  Not so fast.  He did the single hardest thing an employee can do he called his old boss after 7 days and said one thing, “I made a mistake, can I come back?”

Luckily for him, his past boss was a forward-thinking leader and so this past Monday he did the 2nd hardest thing an employee can do he made the “Employee Walk of Shame“.

You can imagine the looks from people who didn’t know him well, “Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you leave?” Having to tell the same story over and over, feeling like he failed, like he wasn’t good enough to make it in the new position.

HR plays a huge part in this story because it was HR who can make this walk of shame a little less rough.  Let’s face it, it is different.  You just don’t leave and come back as nothing happened. Something did happen, there was a reason he left and that reason isn’t going away.  A transition back needs to be put into place even though he was gone seven days.  It’s not about just plugging back in, it is about re-engaging again and finding out what we all can do better so it doesn’t happen again.

It’s also about making sure you let those employees who you truly want back, that they are welcome to come back (assuming you have the job) and not just saying that to everyone.  There are employees who leave that you say a small prayer to G*d and you are thankful they left!  There are others where you wish there was a prayer you could say so they wouldn’t leave.

Make it easy for your employees to do the Walk of Shame, it helps the organization, but realize they are hurting, they are embarrassed, but they are also grateful!

Why Do We Have Chronic Low Performing Employees?

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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 than 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 next meeting we’d have some idiot do something really bad and “Mr. Chronic Low Performer” lives 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 (you didn’t want to fire them but you 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 envelop a little too far and we had to fire them.  My guess is the low performers win hands-down.  You could have a great salesperson 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!

How do you tell an employee they need “development”?

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I’ve been doing a video series over at Saba Software called Talent Talks for the last year or so. Yesterday they put up the latest video where I discuss how does one of your managers tell an employee they need development. Let’s face it, most of our employees think they’re awesome, so being told ‘you need development’ isn’t always a positive uplifting conversation!

Telling an employee that they need development is an area that can easily lead to resentment, hurt feelings and any number of things that would create tension in employee-manager relationships. Telling an employee they need development is difficult; this is a tale as old as time.

Telling an employee, “you need to be developed” with the intention of improving their performance might sound like “you’re not good enough” to the employee. Leaders are hoping these conversations will help the employee prosper in the organization, but this can’t happen if the employee starts off thinking “I’m not good enough” So, how can a leader approach this conversation with positivity and courtesy?

Normally to prepare for the development conversation as a leader, you would benefit from already having asked your employee “do you really want to be developed?” By asking this question, you know the level of commitment and dedication your employee has in their role. These answers will tell you which employees are worth developing, as well as prepare employees for the development process.

Click here to watch the video (it’s like 3 minutes and worth it!)