Category Archives: Leadership

Great Culture in Born from Great Leadership!

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You know what doesn’t work but we keep hoping it might? Grassroots culture!

The kind of culture where you want your employees to establish. The kind of culture that vendors keep telling you that you must have to be sustainable. The reality is a grassroots culture is mostly chaotic and differs wildly between managers, locations, etc.

The greatest work cultures that we can point to all come from a great leader deciding what culture they want, then living it! Completely living it! You can’t have this cool, flip flops, ping pong, and free beer culture, then your leader walks around all day in a suit and tie, sipping an $12 bottle of water. It will fail.

Case in point. T-Mobile was the #4 cell phone carrier in the U.S. It’s a super-competitive marketplace. In 2012 when the new CEO John Legere was hired, he looked and acted like every single big time CEO you see on Wall Street. Suit and tie, said all the right things, always under control.

The problem was, that was not going to get T-Mobile and their #4 culture to move up. So, he decided to make a change:

This would require T-Mobile to behave like a startup disrupting the industry run by giants AT&T and Verizon, who Legere dubbed “dumb and dumber.” He may have already been in his mid-50s, but he needed to look the part. He began experimenting with different combination of loud clothing options, eventually settling with long hair, a bright magenta T-Mobile T-shirt and accessories, and usually a black jacket of some kind.

Accompanying this came the penchant for dropping f-bombs and hurling no-holds-barred insults at the competition (which occasionally got out of hand as he pushed the boundaries).

“On my very first day at T-Mobile, I demanded that every time I spoke publicly to the company, all employees across the country would be invited to watch,” he said. Legere also initiated a stock program with employees, and made sure to not omit any performance details from his speeches to employees. He said he tells them, “Listen, if some of this doesn’t make sense to you, what should make sense is the reason I’m telling you — I respect you as an owner and as a partner and I’m going to tell you this all the time. Feel free to tune out.”

Legere also has a section in his calendar book that contains a color-coded list of how many times he’s visited each of T-Mobile US’s 18 major call centers. When we spoke, he was about to finish his fifth round of trips to each of them.

“It’s not that complicated,” he said. “I go in, they meet me outside, we take selfies as I stand like a piece of furniture, I tell them about how things are going — but most importantly, I say thank you and help them see that their behavior and their work has driven the culture of the company that’s changed the industry and the whole world. It’s a bit of a love affair.”

I know so many culture consultants will say it’s not about long hair and crazy clothing. I disagree. If a leader truly wants to change their culture, to whatever that vision is they have, they must live that vision 100%. They can’t fake it! You’re either all-in, or your culture continues to be flat and goes nowhere.

So many executives try and live two lives as leaders. The leader they believe the board and the public want to see, and the visionary leader they believe their employees want to see. Most of these folks fail. The ones who succeed are the ones who live one life as a leader. They’re the same person to their board and investors that they are to their employees.

It doesn’t take ping pong and snacks to make a great culture. It takes a great leader will to be 100% invested in a vision, and allow those around them to follow that vision with the same passion.

Michigan Recruiter’s Conference 2016 Takeaways

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Last week the 3rd annual Michigan Recruiter’s Conference took place in Grand Rapids, MI onsite at our corporate host Amway World Headquarters. 150 Corporate Talent Acquisition Leaders and Pros participated and heard from an outstanding lineup of speakers including Gerry Crispin, Laurie Ruettimann, Chris Bailey, Kerri Mills and Katie Born.

I leave each time amazed at the talent we are able to bring into Michigan! Some of the brightest minds and ideas in the talent acquisition industry, but also the passion the TA pros in Michigan show in coming in and engaging with each other on a peer level.

My Takeaways from MRC 2016: 

– It takes a very confident HR and/or TA Leader to want to bring in another 150 corporate TA pros into their own shop. We’ve been extremely lucky with Accident Fund, Spectrum Health and now Katie at Amway over the past three years. I think it demonstrates how important TA is to the organizations that host and how important developing their team is to that leader.

– Gerry Crispin comes in and looks like he’s been in TA for 40 years. Wait, he has! But, for those who haven’t seen him, they believe, “oh, here comes some old dude to tell us how he recruited people back in WWII!” Gerry always blows them away!!! He is so on top of how the best, most innovative TA shops are doing it on the planet, he leaves with jaws dropped. I always chuckle at the young bucks who had no idea they are about to get completely schooled by an old dude!

– You know you have a great speaker when people can’t write down the ideas fast enough! Kerri Mills had pens burning up at MRC. I had a feeling she would kill after seeing her presentation at SourceCon and she did awesome. Side note: when you work at Indeed, people expect you to know everything about Indeed!

– People who can tell a good story, are great speakers. Laurie Ruettimann and Chris Bailey both killed with great stories! They had great content as well, but you could tell me how to make Mac and Cheese and if it’s wrapped in a great story I’ll be entertained for an hour! Also, if you have a British accent you’re automatically considered brilliant, funny and adorable by an American audience. (Note to self: work on British accent)

– In classic HROS.co fashion, Amway’s TA Leader Katie Born figuratively opened her Kimono and shared what she and her team were working on to the entire talent market in their area. The good and the bad. What’s working and what they still need to get better at? What tech we’re using and what tech we’re looking at? It was a great example of what we should all strive for as TA Leaders.  Bravo!

I had one trainwreck moment. The idea was to speed network. I hate when people go to a conference and either sit alone or sit with the only people they know, so my idea was to get them to meet 4-5 new people and make some connections. Great idea! But 150 people trying to find smaller groups of three in a room was comical and loud! In the end, people did meet new people!

Our goal for MRC 2017 is to be in the Detroit Metro Area! To bring Detroit its first ever corporate talent acquisition conference specifically for Michigan TA Pros and Leaders! Want to be a part of it?  We are currently looking for a corporate host! What does that mean? We need a big room that can hold 150 or so people, with tables and some AV equipment!

We’ll bring the food, the talent, and the TA Pros!  We just need to use your space for the day. Let me know if you’re interested (timsackett@comcast.net).

 

The Ultimate Gift Guide for Boss’s Day! #MakeBossesGreatAgain

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Does anyone really celebrate National Boss’s Day?  It seems like something made up by some drunk employees one night and then the next day they realized it went too far!

What’s next National “White Man’s” Day? Oh wait, my black friends, women friends, Native American friends, Hillary, etc. say that’s every day! Or was that last week for Columbus Day? I get confused, they keep changing what we can and can’t celebrate.

I have to say I’ve been a ‘boss’ for (well, let’s face it I was born a ‘boss’!) twenty-some years and the only Boss’s Day gift I’ve ever gotten was being taken out to lunch back in the 90’s! Ever since then I was told it was a bad thing to be a boss. I needed to be a leader and leaders don’t get gifts, we give gifts!

I can’t enjoy being white. I can’t enjoy being male. I can’t enjoy being a boss. The struggle is real!

So, since I can’t enjoy Boss’s Day I decided to develop a list of gifts I would like to receive on Boss’s Day is we lived in let’s say Trump’s America! I’m sure part of his political platform is to Make Bosses Great Again!

The Ultimate Boss Gift Guide for Bosses Day:

– Free Back Massage Coupons! Can you imagine anything more magical than giving your well-respected boss a nice good old fashioned in office back rub! Yeah, I thought so!

– Liquor! Hey, this boss in-office bar doesn’t stock itself! Top shelf don’t try and drop off anything you’d find on the rail, no boss wants second tier liquor!

– A nice tie! Just kidding, you should be fired if you give your boss a tie on Boss’s Day! Unless that tie comes with an invitation to tie you up! Now we’re talking boss language!

– Signed copy of “Mean Business” by Chainsaw Al Dunlap!  You kids might have to look up the career of Chainsaw Al, it’s brilliant and inspiring for real bosses. Every boss loves a good bookshelf filled with books they haven’t read but one that scares the hell out of any employee who sees the titles!

– Your Employee of the Month parking spot! Just kidding, again! Ha! Suckers, I park in covered parking or the driver drops me off up front. Keep your Row 1 parking spot, your 2007 Honda Civic looks really nice there.

Boss’s Day! It seems like it only comes around once a year. I’m not quite sure how that happened, you would think bosses would have made it monthly!?

So, remember today isn’t about you, it’s about your Boss! Make them feel special. Treat them with respect. Kiss the ring.

5 Steps to Becoming the Most Liked HR Pro Ever!

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The old adage “I’d rather be respected than liked” was made up by people who didn’t have any friends!  And it’s been perpetuated for centuries by HR Pros who didn’t think it was professional to have friends in their organizations.  “I’m not their friend, Tim, I’m in HR and there is a reason we lock the doors to our department!”

I look it this a bit differently. Make friends first.  That is all.  No, “then” or “after that”, just make friends.  Do you know why HR Pros don’t make friends with employees? Yes, you do, it’s because “We don’t want to fire our friends!” or “We need to remain impartial” or “I’m stupid” (I made that last one up, which if your stupid you probably didn’t know).

The reality is, we do things attempting to stop stuff that probably will never happen.  When is the last time you truly had to fire a friend?  “Never – because I don’t have friends that work for me!” No, really, when? Most of us would say, “Never”.

The problem with not allowing yourself to be friends with non-HR employees is that you lose a major source of influence within your organization.  Also, it sucks eating at your desk every day.  And you decrease your eventual dating pool. But, really it’s the influence!  So, here are 5 steps you can do to be more liked and make more friends at work:

1.  Stop being a know it all.  HR people act like they created Congress, everything is legal this or legal that. Stop it! Be normal. 99% of stuff HR thinks might happen, doesn’t happen. Trying to mitigate 100% of the risk in your organization makes people hate you and it doesn’t help you do your job better.

2. Make a fool out of yourself once in a while.  You’re not that important that you have to act like Mr. Manners all the time. Having employees laugh at you because you did something silly, foolish and/or crazy, will help them believe you might be normal.

3. Hang out with the smokers! Let’s face it smokers are cool and know everything that goes on in your organization – you want them as friends.  I don’t smoke because it’s gross, smells and will kill you, but I love hanging with smokers, especially if they have one of those voice boxes they talk out of!

4. Go out to Lunch with Non-HR Employees.  Preferably not with the smokers because that isn’t appetizing at all.

5. Kiss another employee on the mouth at the office Christmas party! Kidding, just making sure you were paying attention.  Don’t do this, unless you’re really drunk and want to leave a legacy. Here’s the real #5 – Spend 50% of your time away from your desk visiting employees and hiring managers, even the ones you don’t like.  This will change your professional life forever.

Being liked in HR is important it allows you to do your job in a much more efficient manner than when people don’t want you around.  It’s not about respect – you can have both – and given the choice of having respect and being hated or having respect and being liked – well, let’s just say I hang out with smokers.

The Worst Hire You Can Ever Make

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A crazy thing happens almost every day in professional sports, and it’s the one thing that separates great teams from the pack. Talent selection will make or break a team’s success and in professional sports, it’s about getting the right talent for the right price.

The problem with most professional sports team, regardless of the sport, is they continually try to improve their roster incrementally. “Oh, let’s pick up Pitcher A because he’s a little better than Pitcher B”.  Great Pitcher A is better than Pitcher B, but did Pitcher A truly solve the issue you have?

Great Pitcher A is better than Pitcher B, but did Pitcher A truly solve the issue you have?

That’s the real issue!

The worst hire you can ever make is one that doesn’t solve your problem but just make it a little better. “We suck at sales, let’s hire Tim, he’s not great, but he’s better than Bob.” Wonderful, now you only slightly suck less at sales!

Never make a hire that doesn’t solve your problem completely that you are having in that specific position. Upgrading doesn’t always fix problems, and many times it actually continues your main problem longer instead of fixing it completely. We have this belief

We have this belief  that all we need to do is continue to get a little better each day, each week, each month, until we eventually have fixed it. The problem is that this isn’t how most problems are actually solved, by getting a little bit better over time. Most problems are fixed by implementing one solution that solves the problem.

It’s basically this crappy failure paradox we continue to get sold by seemingly everyone with a platform. “Just keep failing and eventually you’ll find success!” Which is complete and utter bullshit, but we LOVE hearing this!

In hiring, you can’t keep failing and find success. You will actually find failure even faster and be out of business. In hiring, it’s critical you find success and hire the right people who will solve your problem the first time, not just make you a little better.

Another great example of this is in the NFL. It’s critical in the NFL that you have a great quarterback, but they’re extremely hard to find. So, if you don’t have an elite quarterback, most teams will continue to try and upgrade with average quarterbacks.

The better advice is work with what you have and make it the best you can, until you get the opportunity to hire, or draft, that one great quarterback that can truly change your franchise. Constant change and churn, just to get a little better, is slowly killing your organization.

Make great hires. Organizational change hires. Individuals who have the ability to make things right. Too often, and we’ve all been there, we make hires that feel safe, knowing they won’t hurt us, but they probably won’t help us much either. Those are the worst hires you can make.

 

 

Women in HR Technology Summit #HRTechConf

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Last week I was at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago and when I arrived on Tuesday afternoon there was this buzz in the air and folks talking about this great pre-conference event called “Women in HR Technology“.

Steve Boese, Co-Chair of the HR Technology Conference, was behind the creation and had this to say prior:

“In the traditionally male-dominated technology industry, there are many successful women leaders introducing new ideas, developing transformative solutions and leading their companies to success. We are proud to hold this long overdue ‘Women in HR Technology’ event, which will not only showcase more than 15 of the most successful women changing the industry, but also provide new insights for how other women can create their own professional roadmaps.”

The agenda was loaded with the leading women from various HR technology companies from across the globe. I spoke with a couple of the speakers including, Brynne Herbert, founder, and CEO, of MOVE Guides. Brynne shared with me that women trying to start their own firms in HR Technology have some serious challenges in that only 7% of Series A funded companies in HR Tech are founded by women, and that number drops to 3% that make it to Series B funding!

Herbert shared with me the three main reasons she believes women backed companies in HR technology struggle:

  1. Females are more risk adverse and starting your company is a risky proposition.
  2. Females don’t tend to be the ones to brag themselves up and when you’re starting a company it’s an important part of making your company success.
  3. You must be able and willing to evangelize your idea against all odds. Many people will tell you that it won’t work, and you have to truly believe it will.

Hebert also mentioned that another challenge is most new HR technology companies rely on VC-backed funding and only about 8% of VC’s are run by women. Like most things in life, we tend to back that what we feel most comfortable with. That makes is super hard for women to get backed by male-run VC’s.

Many people don’t know, but I’m extremely passionate about the concept of women in leadership. I was raised by a single mother who started a technology company back some 35 years ago when no women did this, and my master’s thesis for my HR degree was a study on women and leadership.

It was a big step for the HR Technology Conference to first recognize this issue and second make actually begin to do something about it. I look forward to seeing what will come out of this and I was told by Boese and Herbert that they definitely want to continue the conversation beyond just this one summit. As soon as those next steps become solidified I’ll make sure to share how you can also become part of this conversation.

Cutting Corners Equals Better Performance

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So, there’s this famous behavioral learning study that gets performed over and over by various researchers. It’s basically the lever study in which if you learn to pull the lever something good happens. The classic is usually a monkey and the treat is a banana. Monkey learns to pull the lever and they get a treat.

The question always is, how long does it take or how many steps, can we train them in some way to do this quicker. Recently, a similar study was done with children and dogs. The researchers found they could train the children in five steps to they would get pretty good at pulling the lever and getting the treat.

The dogs, on the other hand, were another story! You see, dogs can be trained very well, but their natural instinct is not to follow rules, but to find the fastest way to gratification. The dogs mostly just went right for the box, tore off the lid, and got the snacks. Guess what? You don’t have to push down a lever if you rip off the top!

Dogs are good at cutting corners.

When I worked for Applebee’s we constantly spent time and resources training cooks how to cook new menu items. We built entire programs, did training sessions, had rewards, would go back and constantly check and test. It was critical that the Tequila Lime Chicken you ordered in Detroit was the same Tequila Lime Chicken you ordered in San Diego!

Problem was, the best cooks would always find ways to cut corners and do it as well, if not better, and faster! We would have it timed out and stepped out to the second and the data would start rolling in and show us that some kitchen in a location in Indiana is cooking it 45 seconds faster than everyone else!

It was our cooks that found if you take a skillet, turn it upside down over a piece of cooking chicken, you can cook that piece of chicken like a third faster without losing any moister or taste! At first, we pushed back in operations and sent memos out to not do this! It wasn’t “procedure”! Not soon after our test kitchen sent out specs on how to ‘dome’ chicken using an upside down skillet!

Cutting corners became the new procedure!

Organizations usually have an issue with folks who cut corners. It’s believed that cutting corners will lead to lower quality, less customer satisfaction, etc.

To me, many times, cutting corners is the first indicator that you’ve loaded in a bunch of waste into your process! Many times the people cutting corners are showing you there might be a better way of doing things, a faster way, an easier way. I’m a big believer in let’s not make this harder than we have to

Want to increase performance in your organization? Look for those cutting corners and determine are they just being lazy, or have they figured out a better way!

How an HR Leader Would Help Trump Get Better

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By now, if you didn’t see the debates live, you’ve heard that Trump, for the most part, was unprepared and got beat pretty good by Hillary. (BTW – the media, and Clinton’s marketing machine have conditioned me to do this – I call Donald Trump – “Trump” and I call Hillary Clinton – “Hillary” – why is that? Because we have a negative reaction to “Clinton” based on Bill!).

All the time I’m watching this butt whipping I thinking to myself if I had an employee who just performed that badly how would I coach them, pick them up from an HR perspective. Here’s what I think most HR leaders would do with Trump:

1. Pull them into a closed door meeting and say something like, “So, tell me, how did ‘you’ feel like it went last night?” Inevitably, Trump, being Trump, would say something stupid like “I was Yuuuge!” or some sexist remark, which would help the HR Leader frame the rest of how this discussion would go.

2. The next statement from HR would most likely be, “Well, the feedback I’m getting is that it didn’t go so well”. It’s a safe statement, non-confrontational, allows us to keep the energy and passion down so the ’employee’ doesn’t get worked up and this gets out of control.

3. “Let’s talk about your preparation. What did you do to prepare for this event?” Now we are getting into helping the employee understand where their performance started going south. You didn’t prepare, it showed up on game day, we need to correct this. Unfortunately, you’re dealing with a high performer, or at least that’s what Trump would consider himself, so ‘preparation’ isn’t something he needs, he’s a natural, he’s always on, he’s a closer.

4. Ugh, so you’re dealing with unreasonable expectations of their own performance (sound familiar!?). At this point who have two choices, either you’re willing to except this performance again, or you need it to change. Let’s assume you want it to change.  You have to define to Trump what would success look like, but first draw a line in the sand that what the past performance was, was not success. “Look, you got your butt handed to you by a ‘girl’ (I like to twist the knife a little, what can I say!) we can’t have this happen again and it’s going to start with preparation!”

5. Now, HR being HR, they will want to give you some tool. Maybe online time management training, a life coach, or something else that will have little impact in actual performance, but make them feel like they really are moving the needle on performance.  Trump being Trump will take the easiest way out, I would guess life coach, as long as she is young, skinny and pretty.

6. Debate #2 happens and Trump does the exact same thing!!! No preparation and once again gets beat up by a girl and once again believes he did great!

7. Go to Step #1

Some will find this funny, some will find this as a painful reminder of their own performance management within their own organizations. Way too many organizations continue to just do the same thing over and over, expecting it to magically change, but it doesn’t.  Accountability happens when step #6 happens and instead of going back to step #1 to jump to step #8 and go back to the definition of success, what was missed and now what is the accountability factor that was agreed to.

Great performance management is comfortable until it has to be uncomfortable.

Exceptionalism is the New Normal

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It’s the fall HR and TA Conference season. Pretty much every single week between September and December you can find multiple HR and TA conferences to attend around the world. It’s a crazy business all fueled by vendor expo dollars, pseudo-thought leadership, and a professional desire to get away from the office for a few days.

The entire conference is built on this secret. The secret that all you have to do is show attendees how bad they suck and they’ll keep returning year after year! Part of that secret, though, is not flat out telling you that you suck, because, well, that would suck! It’s showing you how great everyone else is, so you feel like you suck in comparison!

“Holy crap, Google is now building their own genetically perfect mix-raced, mix-gendered employees that never call in sick! How are we ever going to compete with that? We need to get better! We better buy some more of this crap in the expo to help us catch up with Google!” 

When all you hear about is the greatest and top innovations in an industry, you begin to believe everyone else is there except us, we need to hurry and get there as well. The reality is, we are all so far from perfect it’s actually a little bit scary.

Exceptionalism is the concept that is everyone is great. If we are all this unique and perfect snowflakes, then none of us are really unique and perfect snowflakes. Meaning, if everyone is unique and perfect than that becomes the new normal, the new average.

This is best practice in HR and TA. Google’s innovation becomes Walmart’s best practice. If we are all doing the same thing, we are all average. They don’t tell you that when you book that $500 plane ticket and pay $1995 to attend the HR Universe Conference at the Best Western Plus in Biloxi, MS!

That’s not part of a conference value proposition! Hey, pay $4000 in travel and registration to be like everyone else! Unless, you feel like you’re first less than everyone else! The reality is 99% of TA and HR shops are all about the same. Some are better at certain things than others but then suck way worse at something else.

The truth is…

– Building great HR and TA isn’t about major change, it’s about continual, disciplined improvement and always striving to get better outcomes that your business needs for better results.

– Trying to keep up with the 1% will almost always get you fired as a leader because the majority of organizational leadership just don’t value being in the 1% enough to make that commitment to get there and you trying to push them there will wear thin.

– Most of you aren’t wired or willing to do what it will take to become a truly exceptional HR or TA shop. That takes major vision and major sacrifice to reach, and most of don’t have that level of vision or are willing to have that level of sacrifice individually, let alone both.

But, that message above, doesn’t sell conference passes! Telling you that you also can be a unique and perfect snowflake sells conference passes. You just need to trash your current tech stack and build something completely new, like Google!

 

Taylor Swift doesn’t believe in a 2 week notice. Should you?

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I’m a Taylor Swift fan. I love that everyone tries to bring her down and she just keeps rolling along writing breakup songs, dating again, writing more breakup songs, dating again, writing more breakup songs…you get the picture, I like breakup songs!

The one thing you don’t want to do if you’re close to Taylor Swift is wrong her in any way! If you do, know that will end badly for you and probably another hit record for her! Check out what happened when some of her dancers wanted to leave for another tour:

Apparently, three of Swift’s backup dancers had left her tour in 2013 to join pal Perry’s tour. All three had worked with Perry before they ever worked with Swift, and pretty much no one not intimately connected with either tour would’ve known the transaction had ever occurred until TMZ reported —in September 2014, a year later—that Swift was mightily ticked off by the dancers’ decision, firing them on the spot after they gave notice.

So, the dancers do what we tell them they should do, give your two-week notice. Taylor, like many employers today, accepts their resignation by kicking them out immediately!

That’s the big question today, isn’t it? As an employee, should you give the ‘standard’ two-week notice? As an employer, should you accept that two weeks or kick them curb like the unloyal swine they are!?

As with everything, it depends, right?

Here are my rules on two-week notices:

1. If the employee completely sucks and was basically dead-employee-walking, might as well thank them for nothing and have them leave immediately!

2. If your employer is evil, no need to really stay around for two weeks and be treated terribly.

The problem with both 1 and 2 is it takes a sane person to make this judgment. That’s the problem usually, bad employees and bad employers aren’t sane!  So, we probably need to add some other rules.

3. If the employee who gave two-weeks can cause harm to the organization by hanging around (recruiting other employees away, stealing trade secrets, messing up client relationships, etc.), even if they were a good employee, probably need to cut bait.

4. If you’re an average to above average employee and want to retain this relationship, you probably want to work out the two weeks.

5. Employees working out the two weeks notice know it’s tough not to look ahead. That being said, try and leave no surprises for anyone after you leave.

I still think most employers believe if you give a two-week notice, you should plan on working that out. You never know – read that again – YOU NEVER KNOW where you might end up in life and who you might run into. Skipping out on the two-week notice and be career limiting and you’ll never know how it might limit you!

On the employer side, if you decide to skip the two-week notice and kick a kid to the curb, I suggest, at a minimum, you should pay out that two weeks. I get that sometimes it just doesn’t work for you to keep someone around who has one foot out the door, but that might not be the case for everyone, so at least make them whole if you don’t want them around.