Category Archives: Performance

Consistency Is Way Underrated

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You know what your organization wants from you?

It’s not to be great. Or an A player. Or high energy. Or Top 10%.

It’s also not to just show up.

The only thing you really need to do is to be consistent.  Not consistently great or consistently sucky.  Just come in and meet expectations.  Every day. Every week. Every year.  Consistent.  We can count on Tim, he’s consistent.

But we don’t feel that way, do we?  We feel like we need to be more than consistent.  Consistent is somehow the new below average.

We strive to be ‘world class’ and create ‘best practices’ and ‘industry leading’.  Which leads everyone to believe that just being consistent is like having a disease.   In reality, if everyone was consistent in our organizations, we would kick the crap out of our competition.

So, why aren’t we all kicking the crap out of our competition?  Because it’s really hard be consistent!  It’s why we push so hard for rock star performance.  We need those rock stars to make up for the trolls because it’s impossible to get everyone to just meet expectations.

The next time you sit down with an employee who is ‘meeting expectations’, who is consistent.  Hug them.  Thank them for what they do each day.  Tell them if I could only get everyone else to be just like you, we would be great!

We don’t need exceptional performance to be great.  We just need everyone to do what they’re suppose to do.  Consistent.  Let’s put that on a leadership poster and sell it – “Strive to do what you’re suppose to do!”

 

What would it take to get you to punch an employee?

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For most HR Pros, the answer might be – “Not much!” if they were joking behind the locked doors of their HR department!

This came up close and personal this past weekend when a college basketball player from Oklahoma State University, Marcus Smart, fell into the crowd during a play in the game and forcibly shoved a fan that made a comment to him that caused him to react.   It’s the first time anyone can really remember a NCAA athlete leaving the field of play and purposely making contact with a fan – in a manner that wasn’t positive.  It happened years ago in the NBA with the now infamous, Malice at the Palace, where a fight broke out between professional basketball players and fans that got completely out of control.

I’m not here to say Marcus was wrong or right.  If the guy said what Marcus said he said, I think the kid should have done more than just shove it, and I applaud his restraint.  If the guy didn’t say what is thought to be said, but some other dumb thing, well Marcus wasn’t living up to his namesake. Either way, Marcus understands that leaving the court of play to shove a fan is wrong, and has said so.  Being in HR, we know that at well.  There is nothing any employee could say to me that would get me to physically assault them.

Okay, that’s lie!  There is all kinds of things that might happen at work that I could justify an employee punching or shoving another employee!

I’ve witnessed employees saying the most outrageous, cruel things to each other.  What usually happens? One, or both, get fired.  It’s pretty easy from the HR side of things.  We can’t have this in our workplace, zero-tolerance, you’re gone.  It’s the easiest termination in the HR game.  In 20 years I’ve never even had anyone come back and try to fight it.  You punch an employee – you get fired.  Period.

I actually don’t agree with this, but it’s what happens in HR.  I think there are times that an employee is completely justified in hitting another employee – and the one who got hit should lose their job!  I had a former employee tell another employee, who was a father that recently had his son die, that ‘he deserved it’, to have his son die.  Beyond cruel.  The guy deserved to get hit, and the father deserved to react.  Legal made me fire him.  I fought it as far as I could, almost lost my job.  There are times in the workplace that an employee should get punched.  Just like there are times in an athletic event where a fan should get hit.  There are no absolutes in HR or life.

What would it take to get you to punch one of your coworkers?

Check out this video – even though it’s parents and a school principal – it totally reminds of how employees act when they are in the HR office. Enjoy.

2 Ways to Tell If You’re An Essential Employee

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I’ve had many conversations in my career with employees who “essentially” felt they were probably more important to the business than they really were.  You know who I’m talking about!   The ones who at some point let it slip: “This place would shut down if I wasn’t here” or “Let’s see how you do if I leave” or “I made this company what it is today”.  It’s usually a sales person, or technical person who have had big roles, no doubt, but they begin to get a little to big for their own britches (as my grandmother would say).  Over time I’ve developed a good two point test to determine if someone is Essential or Non-essential to your business:

1.  In a snow storm, is this person required to make it into the office/facility no matter what? (think large storm – more than one day)

Example: I worked in a large Health System – Doctors & Nurses had to get in – we actually had plans on how to get them to work in an emergency.  I on the other hand, being in HR – didn’t have anyone coming to pick me up in a 4 wheel drive SUV.

2.  Does the person in question spend way too much of their time trying to convince you of how important they are to your operation?

Examples:  “Without me are largest client wouldn’t be here.” ; “Our department (a non-revenue generating department) saved the organization over $500K last year.” – on a budget of $3.7M…

You know what is really interesting about looking at the life of an organization – when they start out, in their infancy, there is only Essential employees.  We make widgets, all you need is someone to get widget material, someone to make widgets and someone to sell widgets and someone to collect the cash and pay the bills.  Pretty basic.  No HR, No Marketing or Finance, No customer service – it’s a very straight line organization.   Most companies don’t even add an HR element to their organizations until they get over 100 employees – usually an office manager/payroll/accounting person or the owner takes on this responsibility.

I always like to remind myself of who is “really” essential in my organization.  It’s important.  It’s important that as a “client” to those people, I make sure I focus what I’m doing on things that will help them do what they are doing.  That only happens when I actually talk to them, face-to-face, and ask them – “What can I do, to help you do what you do?”  Doesn’t seem overly complicated – but somehow we try and make it harder than that.  You see, that’s what non-essentials do – we convince you that what we do is really important!

I like to look at organizations the same way you pick a team on the playground.  If you had the most essential person in your company begin picking a team – where would you get picked?  First, 10th, last?   It’s a good exercise to go through.  What you’ll see is your most essential person will pick individuals who will/can help them get the job done – without hassle, without issues, without extra work.

Are you Essential to your organization?

It’s not you, It’s me!

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I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it’s part of corporate culture, almost everywhere.  You do a really great at a job, and because you do really great, you get promoted. Eventually, through great performance, you’ll be promoted to a position of leadership.  That’s when ‘it’ happens…

“You’ve changed!”

“You aren’t the same person any longer!”

“You never would have done that when you were one of ‘us’!”

Doesn’t matter what organization, large, medium, small, public, private, government, profit or non-profit, people who know you best are going to treat you differently when you rise to a position of leadership.

They’ll say it’s you.  The problem is, it won’t feel like you. It’ll feel like them.

You’re right, it is them.

People will make you feel like you’ve changed, when in reality it’s how they look at you that has really changed.  Before you were ‘just’ one of them.  In the trenches everyday working it.  Now you’re you, the leader.  Their new perception of you, thus their reality, is that you can now do something for them.  Before you couldn’t.  Now you can.  But you don’t.  You keep being you.  That’s not what they want.  They want you to be the new you. The ‘you’ that can get them something.  Maybe it’s a better job.  Maybe it’s more money. Maybe it’s getting out an hour early on Friday, who the hell knows.

What I know is that it’s not you. It’s them. But you’ll say it’s you, because you’re the leader.

 

5 Crippling HR Behaviors That Keep Employees From Becoming Leaders

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In HR (OD, Training, etc. – pick your title) we like to believe we develop our employees constantly and ongoing to become the next generation of leaders.  But many times our actions tell a very different story.  We (HR and our Leadership teams) do and say things daily that keep people from truly reaching their full potential.  Self awareness of these behaviors is the key to making sure you are the roadblock to creating great leaders in your organization.

Here are 5 things you are doing to stop leadership development in your organization:

1. We try to mitigate 100% of risk.  Leaders need to understand and experience risk.  It’s part of the growth process to becoming a leader.  If we never allow our future leaders to experience risk, they’ll fail when they finally face it, or will be unwilling to face it, thus missing out on huge opportunities for your organization.

2. We don’t allow our employees to fail.  There are two parts to this. First, we get personal gratification by saving the day.  Second, we have this false sense that ‘great’ leaders won’t allow their employees to fail, so we step in quickly when we see things going south.   We tell ourselves that we need to let our people fail, and failure is good, etc. But we can’t stop ourselves from stepping in when failure is about to happen, or is happening.

3. We mistake what is expected with great.  Words are so powerful.  It’s so easy to say “You’re doing Great!”, when in actuality the correct phrase is probably closer to “You’re doing the exact job you’re paid to do!”  That’s not great. That’s is expected.  You can’t blow hot air up everyone’s butt and think they’re going to get great.  They have to know what great is, and then get rewarded with praise when great is reached.

4. We mistake high performance for the ability to lead.  Just because you’re great at ‘the’ job, doesn’t mean you’ll be great at leading people who do ‘the’ job.  This might be the one behavior that is hardest to change.  All of our lives we tell people the way to ‘move up’ is through great performance.  But it isn’t.  The way to move up into leadership, is to do those things that great leaders do – which does include high performance, but it also includes so much more than just being good at ‘the’ job you’re doing.

5. We are not honest about our own failures.  Developing leaders will learn more about leadership from you, if they know and understand your own failures at leadership.  We all have major failures in our lives, and many of those are hard to share because they are embarrassing, they show weakness, they might still be a weakness, etc. Developing leaders will learn more from your failures about being a great leader, then from any of your successes.

Developing future leaders has always been a critical part of HR in organizations, but we are quickly approaching a time in our history where your ability to develop leaders might be the most valuable skill you can provide to your organization.

(adapted from the Forbes article “7 Crippling Parenting Behaviors That Keep Your Children From Growing Into Leaders“

Right To Play

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Football players at the Big Ten University Northwestern are taking steps to launch, for the first time in history, a labor union for college athletes.  College athletics is a growing business worth billions of dollars to the higher education institutions that sponsor these activities.  It was just a matter of time until either the athletes, current or former, would come up with the idea that they wanted, and needed, a larger voice in the activities in which they participate.  Let’s face it, the billions being made are being made on the backs of these young men and women.

From the article:

Backed by the United Steelworkers union, Huma also filed union cards signed by an undisclosed number of Northwestern players with the NLRB — the federal statutory body that recognizes groups that seek collective bargaining rights.

“This is about finally giving college athletes a seat at the table,” said Huma, a former UCLA linebacker who created the NCPA as an advocacy group in 2001. “Athletes deserve an equal voice when it comes to their physical, academic and financial protections…

“The action we’re taking isn’t because of any mistreatment by Northwestern,” Colter said. “We love Northwestern. The school is just playing by the rules of their governing body, the NCAA. We’re interested in trying to help all players — at USC, Stanford, Oklahoma State, everywhere. It’s about protecting them and future generations to come.

“Right now the NCAA is like a dictatorship. No one represents us in negotiations. The only way things are going to change is if players have a union.”

Sounds very legitimate.  This is a very hard topic for me to argue for – I hate Unions!  With a passion and fire of a thousand suns.  I see absolutely no use for labor unions in today’s society.  That being said, I think are strong arguments on both sides of this fight. Here are some thoughts I have about the Unionization of College Athletics:

1. Universities continue to empire build on the blood, sweat, talent, brand, and hard work of these athletes.   It’s time that the athletes get a piece of this pie.  Yes, I know they get a scholarship and free education.  Yes, I know what that means for lifetime earnings.  We’re talking about billions of dollars per year.

2. Only a few sports, in a few schools actually make money, and that money is usually used to fund all the other athletic teams.  No, Volleyball, Baseball, Tennis, Golf, Wrestling, Swimming, etc. are not revenue generating sports.  It take big time Football and Basketball in college athletics to make money.  Unionizing College Athletes, could actually hurt more people than it helps.

3. The NCAA has a monopoly on major college athletics and I would love to see it broken up.  Unionization might be the first step to that.

4. We shouldn’t need Unions to keep college athletes safe.  That should be the universities responsibility over all else.  Aren’t these athletes students first?

5.  Players want an equal voice in Academics?  I’m sure that’s what they were thinking when they used that athletic waiver to get into the school they couldn’t have if it wasn’t for athletics.

6. Players want financial protections.  Isn’t that what they are getting by getting an education?  The ability to make a living outside of their physical attributes?

I always say that I see no use for Unions in today’s society, with one small caveat, if there isn’t legitimate competition and that group is then being taken advantage of.  The problem is we aren’t really talking about ‘college athletics’, we are talking about major college Football and Basketball.  No one cares that the rower at Cornell isn’t getting extra payments for the big win last weekend.  With no competition, the NCAA has put their member schools in a precarious position of making unionization a real threat.

Bad Hires Worse

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I wrote this 2 years ago.  It still rings true.  I still need to be reminded of this.  I still run into examples of this monthly. Enjoy.

If I could take all of my HR education, My SPHR and 20 years of experience and boil it down to this one piece of advice, it would be this:

Bad Hires Worse.

In HR we love to talk about our hiring and screening processes, and how we “only” hire the best talent, but in the end we, more times than not, leave the final decision on who to hire to the person who will be responsible to supervise the person being hired – the Hiring Manager.   I don’t know about all of you, but in my stops across corporate America, all of my hiring managers haven’t been “A” players, many have been “B” players and a good handful of “C” players.  Yet, in almost all of those stops, we (I) didn’t stop bad hiring managers from hiring when the need came.  Sure I would try to influence more with my struggling managers, be more involved – but they still ultimately had to make a decision that they had to live with.

I know I’m not the only one – it happens every single day.  Everyday we allow bad hiring managers to make talent decisions in our organizations, just as we are making plans to move the bad manager off the bus.   It’s not an easy change to make in your organization.  It’s something that has to come from the top.  But, if you are serious about making a positive impact to talent in your organization you can not allow bad managers to make talent decisions.  They have to know, through performance management, that: 1. You’re bad (and need fixing or moving); 2. You no longer have the ability to make hiring decisions.  That is when you hit your High Potential manager succession list and tap on some shoulders.  “Hey, Mrs. Hi-Po, guess what we need your help with some interviewing and selection decisions.”  It sends a clear and direct message to your organization – we won’t hire worse.

Remember, this isn’t just an operational issue – it happens at all levels, in all departments.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is look in the mirror at our own departments.  If you have bad talent in HR, don’t allow them to hire (“but it’s different we’re in HR, we know better!” – No you don’t – stop it).   Bad hires worse – over and over and over.  Bad needs to hire worse, they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to protect themselves, they make bad decisions – they are Bad.  We/HR own this.  We have the ability and influence to stop it.  No executive is going to tell you “No” when you suggest we stop allowing our bad managers the ability to make hiring decisions – they’ll probably hug you.

It’s a regret I have – something I will change.  If it happens again, I won’t allow it.  I vow from this day forward, I will never allow a bad hiring manager to make a hiring decision – at least not without a fight!

The Hard Work Lie

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I was raised, like many of you, by parents who said if I worked hard I could do anything I wanted.  I’m raising my kids with the same philosophy, hard work gets you to where you want to go.  But what happens when it doesn’t?

You see, sometimes you work harder than everyone else, put in more time, more effort, all of your blood, sweat and tears, and still others seemingly get there before you.

Did hard work fail you?

There is a famous saying “Nothing Beats Hard Work!”  Yes.  Yes, there is something, it’s called Talent.  Sometimes, in short periods, talent will beat hard work.  Here’s where parenting and leadership gets hard.  Hard work is suppose to make us the best, but sometimes it doesn’t.  Hard work is suppose to make us better than those who don’t work hard, but sometimes it doesn’t.  Hard work is suppose to make me the most successful, but sometimes I’m not.

That goddamn hard work lied to me.

Here’s what my parents didn’t tell me. All things being equal, he or she who works the hardest will win – always.  That’s different than ‘work hard and you can do anything’.

So, what do we tell those we lead?

That hard work only works some of the time?

No, I don’t think so.  I think we share a little bit of reality in the world.  Sometimes people will have god given talent, or resources, that for this time and place will be better than your hard work.  That doesn’t make you second forever, it makes you second in this moment.  Hard work, you  see, is about you, not someone else.  Hard work is what you control.  You can’t change the talent that someone else might have, but you can change your own talent through hard work.

That’s really what we should be sharing.  We say the right thing initially – Hard Work Will Take You Where You Want To Go.  But then the focus is on ‘beating’ or ‘winning’ or ‘leading’ – that brings someone or something else into the hard work equation.  The Hard Work Equation is just this:

Hard Work + You = You reaching your self-betterment goals

Self-betterment goals being measures of things you can control.  You want to run a 7 minute mile.  Hard work will get you there.  You want to beat the best miler in the entire world – that’s not a self-betterment goal – hard work isn’t all you need to do that.  You want to be the best recruiter in your organization.  That’s not self-betterment, that’s a competition against other people, you’re adding variables.  You want to source and place 5 new hires each month, hard work is your ally and friend.

Hard work won’t allow you to anything, but it will allow you to do something.  You must decide, specifically what that something will be.

 

Work Clothes That Measure Your Performance

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One of the big things that came out of the CES 2014 technology show is wearable technology.  We already are aware of wearable technology like Google Glass and various bracelets that do everything from working as your smartphone to measuring if your fat butt is moving enough.  I think what CES did this year, though, was to stretch our imagination to what could wearable technology become.

Here’s my idea – work clothes that measure whether or not you’re on task or doing exactly what you should be doing.

Think about that for a second:

1. All employees must wear company issued ‘uniform’

2. Company issued uniform has integrated wearable fibers that not only measure movements, but also give you the exact time and location of said uniform, measure the health of the worker, measure the interactions with worker tools, etc. (Hello Big Brother!)

3. Your systems measure everything to the point you can tell which employee is the most productive, which employee takes too many bathroom breaks, which employee said they were going to deliver a load to a client but also decided to stop and have a refreshing adult beverage on the way.

4. Not only measuring performance and output, but also relaying exact ways that an employee can get better at their job. “Tim continues to drop his arm down to his side after every motion “X”, if Tim would keep his arm at a 45 degree angle he would get 14% more output” – now that is some serious specific feedback!

5. Wearable uniforms could also reduce workplace accidents.  If the clothes new the operator was getting too clothes to a dangerous situation, or forgot to put down a safety gate, the clothes could shut down the system before an accident could happen. That’s really cool!

6. Wearable technology could measure the health of your workers, and deliver warning signs to HR. Have you ever had someone die of a heart attack at your place of business?  I have. It sucks really, really bad to see a coworker die.

Some of this seems Star Wars, super techy, fantasy kinds of things, but it’s not.  Technology is getting very close to begin doing some these things in the next years.  While some will think of these things as intrusive to their privacy, I’m guessing companies and worker’s compensation insurance companies will not.  You want this great job, with great pay and benefits, at our great company, please put on this company issues uniform.

It’s not about control. It’s about becoming better, faster.  For all the training we do, nothing could get folks up to speed, with 100% compliance, faster than your shirt not allowing to continue to do a work around that is dangerous and delivers a less than quality product.

What do you think?  Would you wear clothes that measured everything you do in your job?

 

 

Your Open Office is Killing Your Productivity

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You know what’s funny – everyone, who is anyone, wants to work in a new, cool, ultra modern open office concept!  Organizations are spending billions creating these environments, and now studies are coming out and showing that productivity suffers in open concepts, especially with younger workers and those that love to multitask. From the New Yorker:

The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve…In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.

So, why do we continue to design our workplaces around this open office concept?  Here’s what I think:

1. Recruiting.  Young talent likes to walk into the ‘cool’ office.  Executives feel that this is a recruiting advantage and a marketing advantage when customers see a new, ultra-modern office environment.

2. We think we want our office, like we want our homes.  Over the past 2 decades home builders have been ask to build open home plan designs.  We then go to our office which is all cut up into small rooms and think ‘Hey, wouldn’t this be ‘nicer’ if this was all opened up?’

3. Collaboration. Open office design was billed as the next best thing for creativity and collaboration.  It was a theory.  It was never really tested out. Someone had an idea, ‘you know what, if we break down these walls and have everyone in one big room, we’ll be more collaborative, we’ll be more creative”.  Sounds good.  Research is showing us that theory was just that, a theory.

I think for certain aspects the open concept still has merit.  Sales offices for years have been using the open concept with success, in a bullpen environment.  Hear your peers next to you on the phone, and your competitive nature takes over, you get on the phone.  You can feel and hear a buzz in the air in a well run sales bullpen.  I tend to think I’m creative, but having others around me, talking, doesn’t help my creative process.  I hear this from IT and Design professionals as well.  Have you been in a big IT shop or Design house?  Most of the pros where headphones, dim the lights, try and create an environment that the open concept isn’t giving them.

Be careful my friends.  I love the look of many of the new offices, but if it’s hurting productivity and making my workers worse – I’ll gladly give them back their offices!