I was asked at a conference recently to give one word on how HR can make a difference in 2023.
What was my word?
What do you think? Hat or no hat?
How can HR make a difference in 2023?
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Category Archives: Motivation
How do you “practice” HR?
We are constantly told that if we want to be good at anything in life, we must practice. It starts when we are kids, and we want to be our heroes. If you want to be good at sports, or dance, or computer games, you must practice. Not just “play” but specific steps that lead to success in the endeavor we’ve chosen.
Tyler Cowen released his book “Talent” in 2022 and I really like this quote from it:
“What is it you do to practice that is analogous to how a pianist practice scales?”
What do you do each day to practice your profession?
What I find when I ask HR and TA professionals this question, and we really dig in, is there “practice” is showing up and doing the job. That is akin to an NBA player just showing up and playing games but never putting in time and effort outside of the game to increase or maintain their basketball skill level. They wouldn’t be successful for long.
Just showing up and doing the job isn’t practice. That’s the job.
Are we talking about practice…
YES!
Let me tell you how I practice my skill in HR and TA:
- I write on this blog that has nothing to do with my paying job.
- I design and present content for roughly 20+ webinars every year.
- I design and present content to present live on stage for around 20 different talks every year.
- I consciously reach out and schedule calls with experts in our industry to “talk shop” each month that has nothing to do with my paying job.
- I network on sites like LinkedIn to expand my professional network and ask and answer as many questions as I can.
- I will do upwards of 100 tech demos per year in the technology that impacts my industry.
- I will attend upwards of 12 HR and TA professional conferences.
Okay, I’m a complete freak around personal development, primarily because I actually really like this stuff. That makes it easier to do, for sure.
But, I rarely get into a professional dilemma where I don’t feel prepared to handle the situation. I believe that is because I’ve “practiced” a whole bunch!
I get asked frequently, “How did you learn this stuff?”
Practice.
Honestly, my hope is one day, I’ll take this love of practice in my professional life and turn it into some other sort of practice in my personal life. Like, someday, I’ll roll out of bed and be like, “okay, today is the day I stop being an out-of-shape dough ball and get back into shape like I was in college!
I mean, if I can put this level of practice into my professional life, it stands to believe I could put that same level of practice into any part of my life.
Do you want to be “Great” at your Career?
I find almost 100% of people I would ask this question to will say, “Yes, of course!”
But like my lazy butt sitting on the couch at night watching Netflix, they are willing to put in the practice of being great. They are just showing up to work and doing the job. That usually doesn’t lead to greatness.
Don’t get me wrong. Some folks can show up and be great, just like freak athletes. That is about .001% of our society. So slow your roll. That isn’t you.
I want to be great at my job, but I don’t really do anything other than the job to ensure I’ll be great at it. Doesn’t that sound funny? It goes against everything we know about greatness in our lives.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe I’m great at HR and TA. I think I’m pretty good at certain parts of it, but I know people who are so much better than me at so many parts. When you compare yourself against the top 1% in your profession, you feel small. You feel like you need more practice.
When you compare yourself against Kevin in payroll, that constantly loses his way back to his cube, you feel like you’re a giant. Practice isn’t needed to be greater than Kevin. That’s our problem. Most of us are surrounded by average players, and your slightly above-average performance makes you feel like you no longer need practice.
Pick higher performance targets. Chose to emulate someone who amazes you in your profession. Chase greatness through practice.
Hiring for High Give-a-Damn!
Josh Zywien, the CMO of Paradox, made a great hire recently, and I sent him a note telling him so. I like to do that. He knows he made a great hire, but it’s always nice to get a note confirming your belief! If you don’t know Josh, you should give me a follow, he’s one of the good guys in our industry.
Josh responded to my note with a statement I wanted to share because it’s profound:
I like to hire people who have a ‘high give-a-damn’!
I absolutely love that and told him I was stealing it!
What does hiring for High Give-a-Damn Mean?
It’s one of those intangibles you know when you see it. Like porn. Hard to explain, but when I see it, I know what it is. High Give-a-Damn (HGD) individuals don’t just care about their job and their company. HGD is pervasive in all aspects of their life. You’ll see it come out in other ways away from their career as well.
The High Give-a-Damn Traits:
- High attention to detail
- Live an orderly life
- Most likely, they have a well-kept house, clean, and probably make their bed every single morning.
- Classic fashionable dress styles that don’t stand out, but you notice them
- They say the right things and the right times
- They can be counted on
- Follow-through is impeccable
- They give a shit about stuff that matters
- Have a habit of taking care of their physical & mental self more than the average person.
People with HGD don’t drive around in a messy car with a coffee stain on their shirt. They might not have a lot of money, but what they have, they take care of. They do more with less because part of HGD is not to waste resources, both professionally and personally. So, you take care of your stuff. Part of your ‘stuff’ is your personal self.
I’ve written about organizations “Hiring Pretty” in the past. Scientific research shows that organizations that tend to hire more attractive people actually have higher results. There is a bit of this in HGD. Individuals with HGD most likely get the most out of the attractiveness they have.
It doesn’t mean the person has to be naturally ‘pretty,’ but think of the time when you took that one selfie, that one time when you were feeling super cute, had that one hat on, the light was right, and now it’s your favorite IG photo. Yeah, that, but now what if you did that every day? That’s HGD. “Felt cute, not ever gonna delete!”
Now, at this point, you might be saying, “Tim, all of this seems superficial. There is nothing here about skill or performance, about actually being able to do the job.” Yeah, I’m not only hiring for HGD and nothing else. This is about what if I had three people who had similar skill levels, education, and experience. At that point, my tiebreaker is, who has the most HGD?
Who is going to bring the most HGD to the team? Because in the end, when I’m going to war with my team, I want people who give a damn. Yeah, we might be making widgets for crackheads, but I still want people who want to make the best widgets for crackheads. People who want to make sure that crackhead has the best experience with our product and service. (Right now, Josh is like, WTF, how did I get in a Tim Sackett Blog Post with Crackheads!?)
Not enough Hiring Managers are hiring for HGD. In fact, as a society, we have kind of gone soft on HGD. We have this belief that you can be HGD in your personal life but not your professional life, or vice versa. The reality is true that HGD is always on or never on as a personality trait. You either give a damn about your life, or you don’t. I want to be around and work with people who are HGD.
I’ve Got a Great Business Opportunity For You!
No. No, you don’t. You have a great business opportunity for you, and you need me to make it happen.
Email Subject Lines in the Past Week
- “Business Opportunity”
- “Potential Opportunity”
- “Great Business Opportunity for You!”
There was one common theme with each one of these messages sent to me. Not one of them was an opportunity for me to make money, but each was an opportunity for me to pay someone else money!
Idiots Using these Subject Lines
Do you seriously believe that these subject lines are working? That people are reading them and going, “OMG! I’m the Luckiest Girl alive today! This beautiful human chose me for this opportunity that I was neither looking for nor really even wanting! #Blessed”
I have a feeling there is something clinically wrong with the person who uses this subject line. I want to get them professional help. Medication, therapy, a punch to the throat, whatever it takes, I’m a giver, a helper of sorts.
I would love it if we could have a law where if some moron uses a subject line like this, we can send them away for a while. Like prison, but more used car sales lot they have to live in for eternity. Every day, all day, just wandering the lot and getting approached by an overly aggressive used car salesman that won’t leave them alone.
Look, I Get It
I run a company that has to sell our services. Every morning I get up, shower, get dressed, and head off to work. “Gotta make the donuts!” They don’t make themselves. Our world is predicated on someone buying whatever it is we’re selling.
So, I feel for you, but I’ve got a few words of advice –
Be Better!
Be someone who you want your kids to be. Be someone you want your grandmother to talk about at bridge club. Be someone who will get referred by one client to a future client.
Also, I get you can’t just put up a subject line that says, “Hey, buy my crappy lead generation tool!” (Although, I bet your click-through rate on that is a minimum of 100% higher than “Business Opportunity.”
The world isn’t looking to do work, to make you money. Maybe I’m wrong, but maybe your subject line of “Business Opportunity” was just one big miss by me. You were saying, “Hey, I’ve got a business opportunity for me. I just need a sucker like you to bite” if that’s the case, my bad, continue being an awful person.
Great Business Opportunity
As always, I’m here to help fellow sales pros. Here are some subject lines that are guaranteed to get some click-through:
– I’ve got your bag full of puppies!
– You need to verify your Pornhub password
– BOGO on Wine, Chocolate, and Jimmy Choos
– Is this your Mom on Facebook?
“But, Tim, these are all lies!” I know, and I’m super excited you found the commonality between my subject lines and yours. Good luck!
“My company” vs. “Our company”
I was listening to some of my recruiters talk to candidates the other day. I like to do that from time to time. You learn a lot about your team, your jobs, your hiring managers, and your engagement levels.
One of the things I overheard was something like, “I’m going to tell you about the benefits that “MY” company offers.” There was another conversation where someone used “our,” “I’m going to tell you about the benefits that “OUR” company offers”.
It seems like a small difference, right? Both are positive, for sure.
I will tell you, as a leader, “my company” brings me to tears. The one thing I consistently hear from senior executives is, “I can get my team to care about this company the same way I do”. It’s a very common issue that comes up all the time. How do we get employees to take ownership when they don’t have ‘real’ ownership?
It’s a cop-out and too easy to say, “oh, just give them some real ownership”! Having an employee-owned company isn’t simple or easy. It’s very complex.
Using “My company” says to me that this employee is 100% in. Onboard. Wearing the logo! Reppin the gear! It’s not that saying “our company” doesn’t say that, but “my company” definitely says that!
It’s similar to when you hire a new employee from a competitor, and it takes some time to get them away from “we” vs. “them” vs. “you guys,” etc. “So, I know ‘you guys’ do it this way….” Oh, you mean “us guys,” right!? You’re now on the team. You’re not a ‘them.’ You are a ‘we’!
Sometimes some of the biggest changes we make to culture are simple changes in our own language and what those changes end up meaning to all those stakeholders in an organization.
Want to be happier at work?
In 1942 Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist, was taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, his pregnant wife and parents had already been killed by the Nazis. He survived and, in 1946, went on to write the book “Man’s Search For Meaning. “ In this great book, Frankl writes:
“It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”
What Frankl knew was that you can’t make happiness out of something outside yourself. Riding the Waverunner doesn’t make you happy. You decide to be happy while doing that activity, but you could as easily decide to be angry or sad while doing this activity (although Daniel Tosh would disagree!). Frankl also wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
I get asked frequently by HR Pros about how they can make their employees or workplace happier. I want to tell them about Frankl’s research and what he learned in the concentration camps. I want to tell them that you can’t make your employees happy. They have to decide they want to be happy first. But I don’t. People don’t want to hear the truth.
Coming up with ‘things’ isn’t going to make your employees happy. You might provide free lunch, which some will really like, but it also might make someone struggling with their weight very depressed. You might give extra time off, and most of your employees will love it, but those who define themselves by their work will find this a burden.
Ultimately, I think people tend to swing a certain way on the emotional scale. Some are usually happier than others. Some relish in being angry or depressed. It’s their comfort zone. They don’t know how to be any other way. Instead of working to ‘make’ people happy, spend your time selecting happy people to come work for you.
In the middle of a concentration camp, the most horrific experience imaginable, Frankl witnessed people who made the decision to be happy. Maybe they were happy to have one more day on earth. Maybe they were happy because, like Frankl, they discovered that the Nazis could take everything from them except their mind.
Provide the best work environment that you can. Continue to try and make it better with the resources you have. Give meaning to work and the things you do. Every organization has this, no matter what you do at your company. Don’t pursue happiness. It’s a fleeting emotion that is impossible to maintain. Pursue being the best organization you can be. It doesn’t mean you have to be someone you’re not. Just be ‘you’ and find others who like ‘you.’
The 1 Thing You Have to Do to Fall In Love With Your Job!
Do you know what it felt like the last time you fell in love?
I mean, real love?
The kind of love where you talk 42 times per day, in between text and Facebook messages, and feel physical pain from being apart? Ok, maybe for some, it’s been a while, and you didn’t have the texts or Facebook! But, you remember those times when you really didn’t think about anything else or even imagine not seeing the other person the next day, hell, the next hour. Falling “in” love is one of the best parts of love; it doesn’t last that long, and you never get it back.
I hear people all the time say, “I love my job,” and I never used to pay much attention; in fact, I’ve said it myself. The reality is that I don’t love my job. I mean, I like it a whole lot, but I love my wife, I love my kids, and I love Diet Mt. Dew at 7 am on a Monday morning. The important things in life! But my job? I’m not sure about that one. As an HR Pro, I’m supposed to work to get my employees to “love” their jobs. Love.
Want to know the difference between like and love? The next time your significant other tells you, “I love you!” just say in return, “Yeah, I like you as well!” Then get ready for an argument!
Let me go all Dr. Phil on you for a second. Do you know why most relationships fail? No, it’s not cheating. No, it’s not the drugs and/or alcohol. No, it’s not money. No, it’s not that he stops caring. No, it’s not your parents. Ok, stop it. I’ll just tell you!
Relationships fail because expectations aren’t met. It seems logical knowing what we know about how people fall in love and lose their minds. Once that calms down, the real work begins. So, if you expect love to be the love of the first 4-6 months of a relationship, you’re going to be disappointed a whole bunch over and over.
Jobs aren’t much different.
You get a new job, and it’s usually really good! People listen to your opinion. You seem smarter. Hell, you seem better looking (primarily because people are sick of looking at their older co-workers). Everything seems better in a new job. Then you have your one-year anniversary, and you come to find out you’re just like the other idiots you’re working with.
This is when falling in love with your job really begins. When you know about all the stuff, the company hid in the closet. The past employees they think are better and smarter than you, the good old days when they made more money, etc. Now is when you have to put some work into making it work.
I see people all the time moving around to different employers and never seeming to be satisfied. They’re searching. Not for a better job or a better company. They’re searching for that feeling that will last. But it never will, not without them working for it.
The best love has to be worked for. Passion is easy and fleeting. Love is hard to sustain and has to be worked on, but it can last forever.
7 Things a Tech Startup Can Teach You About Your Own Success!
My buddy John Hill works for Techstars as the VP of Network. Go connect with him, he’s completely an awesome guy who will sit down and have a beer with you and talk about how to change the world for hours! Last week he got to meet the latest crop of Techstar startups and came away motivated with some great learnings.
Here are John’s takeaways from the newest Techstar startups:
1. Nothing beats hustle. Nothing.
2. The world is full of good ideas, but only a few will execute them.
3. Relational capital is vital.
4. Networks matter. Surround yourself with those who can help you.
5. There are some wicked smart people in the world.
6. To build a great company, you need help with funding, talent, and connections to business/industry to scale and the understanding of how to navigate each.
7. Suspend disbelief!
I’m drawn to each of the seven for different reasons, but #2 jumps out because I witness this on a daily basis. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who execute and those who talk about executing. Hire those who execute. Understand that they are rare, and you should overpay for this ‘skill.’
Do you notice nowhere on his list does he talk about failure. John is a motherfucking doer! He gets shit done. Techstars will only take a chance on startups led by people who will execute. John talks about ways to succeed, not about just throwing caution to the wind and failing. The reality is most will fail. Setting yourself up for success is key.
I love that he ends his list with “Suspend disbelief.” The world is a critic. Those who make it big have that special combination of John’s list. Great idea, ability to execute, the right network to make it happen, super smart, etc. What they also have is true belief! At the end of the day, you have to believe 1000% of your idea is going to work. No part of you even questions that it won’t.
If it didn’t work, you would be destroyed because your belief was so strong that you never saw it coming when it failed. That’s how most great ideas actually make it. You find a combination of all of these things and you put money and resources behind it.
These seven learnings aren’t about how to make a startup successful. These are how you make anything successful that you’re working on.
Don’t Offer Yourself Up to the Burden.
I was on TikTok the other night. TikTok for me has become my mindless tv. You know when you’ve had your normal busy day and you just want mindless interaction before you go to bed. The TikTok algorithm is amazing. I get all my golf vids, funny vids, political vids, puppy vids, and out of nowhere last night the algo snuck in Conor Crippen.
I was now all in down the Conor Crippen rabbit hole. I don’t even know why the algo surfaced this up, but damn it, I love it! it’s an inspiring story and I’m laying there watching Conor videos and I’m laughing and crying and smiling and if anyone saw me they would have thought I was probably having a breakdown of some sort!
Here’s Conor’s story:
On Conor’s site, he has this saying and it won’t get out of my brain: “Don’t offer yourself up to the burden.” He goes on:
“Every day, no matter what you are going through, you have a choice. You can either give in to the burden you’re facing or refuse to let it define you.”
I needed to hear that. Almost everyone I know needs to hear that.
Conor’s story is inspiring not just because of this perseverance and strength, but also because of his mother’s perseverance and strength! His aunt wrote their story in the book titled, “Just Give Me the Road” based on a quote his mother said just hours after his accident. It’s an amazing story.
Make sure you follow Conor on TikTok:
You can also hire Conor to come to speak at your event! I hope that I get to meet Conor at an event I’m speaking at in the near future!
Also, shoutout to TIkTok for taking my mindless activity time and helping me find such an amazing person!
What is the Health Insurance Design Impact to Employer Paid Abortions?
Obviously, we had major news recently around abortion rights in America.
What I really want to talk about today is an amazingly quick response by organizations to immediately offer a new health benefit. Within hours of the announcement, we saw major employers come out publicly stating they would pay for the expense of their employees to obtain legal abortions if they could not get one in the state they lived and worked. Some employers also announced that they would pay for relocations for their employees to live in states with legal abortions.
All of this, just from a health benefit plan design perspective is quite remarkable!
Most employers can’t agree on offering smoking cessation programs for their employees or paying for gym memberships, but within hours, we are now paying for abortions. We have severely unhealthy obese employees, but we won’t pay for bariatric surgery. Organizations tend to move very slowly in making benefit design changes, and those changes tend to mostly be around cost/benefit.
Are we being “Inclusive” by offering an abortion benefit?
Again – I’m 100% in favor of a woman’s right to choose!
But we need to have a conversation about the hypocrisy of some of these decisions being made around this issue. This is what we do as professionals in HR. We discuss decisions we make as organizations, and how each decision tends to lead to other issues we can’t yet know what they might be.
So, we are now offering abortions as a health benefit. Why?
Let’s say we are willing to pay $5,000 dollars for our female employees to get an abortion. It definitely makes us sound like we are a very progressive employer! It’s interesting, though, that many of the employers who are willing to pay for your abortion are not willing to pay for your parental leave if you chose to keep your baby. They are unwilling to pay for childcare assistance after you have your baby.
Why is that?
Could it be, that not having children make you a more productive and less expensive to insure employee?
We must ask ourselves this question, if not only to ensure we are being inclusive in our insurance offerings to our female employees.
If you want to be “inclusive” you offer a woman a full choice. Yes, you can choose to have an abortion and we’ll support you! Yes, you can have the baby, and we will still support you! If you only choose one side, you are being exclusionary. Why?
Abortion as an employer-paid health benefit
There are benefits we pay as employers that have very little financial impact but make us look like we are an employer of choice. College Tuition reimbursement was always the biggest one. We offer you college tuition reimbursement knowing almost no one actually takes advantage of it. It’s one of the lowest-used benefits a company can offer! But, we feel great about ourselves when we market this out to candidates and employees.
Are abortion benefits the next college tuition benefit? You offer it up, knowing it makes you look like a progressive employer, but you know it really has very little financial impact. On the flip side, offering paid parental leave and childcare assistance, well, those benefits actually cost us real money, so no, we won’t offer those!
All women should be allowed to make their own choice with their bodies. Period. Employers are going to decide if they should help women with that decision. I think we, as HR leaders and professionals, should be advising our executives that having a “Choice” is about more than one option. Our benefit plans should support any choice a woman wants to make, not just one.
Abortion is health care. Having and caring for a child is health care. Organizations need to support all choices that a woman might want to make.