Category Archives: The HR Rules

Great is the Enemy of Good

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You know what I find really funny?  That we take a really interesting concept like “Good is the enemy of Great” from the 2001 book Good to Great, and we make it law.  It’s now wildly held belief by most well-read leaders that Good is the enemy of Great.  That is you truly want to be Great, being Good hurts you because it gives you a false sense of accomplishment.

I think this is bullshit.

In fact, it’s such B.S. that I think the opposite might be a more true statement: Great is the enemy of Good!  Think about this for a moment:

  • Great performers are usually difficult to deal with:
    • They are more demanding
    • They tend to share diva qualities
    • Many will ostracize their coworkers because they don’t understand their relative ‘lower’ performance
  • Great performers tend to blow up your compensation bands and raise overall compensation of the position they’re in.
  • Great performers want preferential treatment.

From a corporate sense many great performers are a major pain in the butt.  Plus, great performers don’t raise the bar for everyone else, this is another false premise, just for themselves.  Great performers also raise the expectations of your leaders on what performance should be on average performers which tend to drop engagement of the majority rank and file.

Don’t get me wrong.  Great performers do add their value.  Remember what this post is all about, not great performers, but good performers.  “Good is the enemy of Great” sounds proactive and sexy, but it doesn’t stand up to reality.  The reality is, as corporate leaders, we want to surround out great performers with a bunch of good performers.  Saying good is the enemy, goes against this entire mindset.

To be wildly successful in any organization, I don’t need great performance,  I need good performance from everyone.  I could have a few great performers, and no good performers, and still the great performers, or more precisely our organization, will end up failing.  Give me no great performers, and everyone else are good performers, as we’ll do really, really well!

Next time you find your mouth saying “good is the enemy of great” think about what you’re really saying.  That isn’t leadership speak, it’s just being naive to your reality.

Becoming A Victim Of Can’t

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I spoke in Huntsville, Al this week to a group of around 175 HR and Talent Pros for North Alabama SHRM.  It was a fun group. They had a ton of energy and were willing to put up with me and my fast talking northern ways! My wife told me to be more respectful, than usual, on my way down to Alabama.  She said southern women expected more manners than I was use to!

For those who don’t much about Huntsville it is a big military town, which means most people either work on the base, or work for a contractor supporting one of the many military contracts coming out of the base.  There are literally hundreds of companies in Huntsville that are considered military ‘contractors’.  That’s really just a big fancy term for companies that won a military contract, which is just a scope of work they need to do or deliver to the military.

If you haven’t worked a military contract before, they come with as much red tape and rules as you can expect from the U.S. government.  That becomes a very big problem for HR Pros who love to follow rules!  One thing that was apparent very early into the day was that some Huntsville HR and Talent Pros became very comfortable with saying the following statement:

“We can’t do that, we are a military contractor!”

You can probably guess what my answer was to that!  “Yes, you can! You just have to find a way to do it!”  What they didn’t expect was that my company was also a military contractor, I was going to accept any victim statements.  Yes, you are a military contractor.  Isn’t it great!  Now, let’s find out how we can use Facebook to recruit and find you some really good talent!

But, Tim, OFCCP! OFCCP won’t allow us to social recruit!  Really.  It really says within OFCCP regulations that you can’t recruit on Facebook!?  Well, no, but…you just don’t understand.  Yeah, I understand more than you really know.  I understand it’s going to be hard, but it can be done.  I also understand that it’s really easy to fall the victim and use OFCCP as a crutch to why we can do our job.

I actually spoke to two pros who were going through OFCCP audits.  Scary stuff for any HR or Talent Pro.  But I didn’t even let them use it as a crutch.  I asked them if they would get through it. Yes, was the answer.  Did you get fined? No.  So, now you just have to figure how to make it the sourcing you need to do, work within your OFCCP process.  Not easy. But doable and needed.

The most dangerous thing we’ll ever face in our career is becoming a victim of can’t.   I’m a firm believer you can try to do anything.  We might not succeed, but it shouldn’t stop you from trying.  Things like OFCCP are there to catch bad companies, doing bad things.  I’ve never spoken to a good company, with good people, trying to do the right things, that ever had an issue with OFCCP! Ever!

Go do the right things for your organization, and in the end trust that why you might get audited, you are doing what is right.  That’s ultimately all you really can do.

First Marijuana Job Fair. No Drug Testing Required.

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Want a job?  Like smoking pot?  This is your day!

Doesn’t that sound like a bad Hollywood movie script!?  Unfortunately, it’s real world, as Colorado is in the middle of a talent bubble after legalizing marijuana.  From Time:

This Thursday, March 13, a very special, first-of-its-kind job fair is being held in Denver. It has been dubbed “CannaSearch,” and as the name indicates, it’s a marijuana-themed gathering intended to match job seekers with Colorado employers in the cannabis industry—a field that one is now all but required to cutely describe as “fast-growing” and/or “budding.”

At last check, 15 employers were scheduled to participate in the event, being held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Denver headquarters of the job fair’s sponsor and host, O.PenVAPE, a company that specializes in vaporizer pens that get filled with cannabis oil—and that also bills itself as the “the largest national brand in cannabis.”

No advanced registration is necessary for job seekers. Everyone in attendance must, however, be 21 or older. And to answer the question on everyone’s minds: The event is strictly smoke-free.

So, what does it take to get a job in the Pot Industry?  I’m guessing some of the skill sets would be the following:

1. Like weed.

2. Knows stuff about weed.

3. Likes to talk about weed.

4. Willing to bring your own Doritos to work.

5. Don’t steal the weed.

Doesn’t that sound like every stoner you’ve ever known!?  You know they are all going back to those high school guidance counselors who told them they’d never amount to anything if they kept smoking pot and say “See, smoking pot got me somewhere!  I’m now head manager at Smokes-A-lot!”

It’s all fun and exciting now, wait until these companies really start to ‘grow’ and they need to hire an HR lady to come in and start setting up policies. That will be a ‘drag’.   Can you imagine!?  Margo comes in from her dental office HR manager gig in Pueblo and now is trying to build process and practices for Smokes-A-Lot world headquarters.  First, a few ground rules from the burned out CEO Steve.  No drug testing.  Unlimited smoke breaks.  50% employee discounts.  Go Margo!  Can’t wait to see those insurance premiums come in!

I would actually pay money for the ability to show up at the Marijuana Job Fair and interview potential hires!  They don’t even have to pay me, I’d have blog fodder for the rest of history!

Performance Doesn’t Matter: Women must still sell attractiveness

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True.

Right?  The title of this post is a true statement.  A woman can be a great performer, but she still needs to be attractive to find high success.  This is a parameter for her male peers.  Her male peer can come in with a beer belly and stain on his tie and no one cares. No one!  That same performing lady comes in with a beer belly and stain on her tie, and well, that’s might be a little weird, but you get my point.  She has to sell not only is she great performer, but she looks good doing it!

I grew up with an attractive mother.  Don’t get creepy.  I didn’t think she was attractive, she was my Mom, but I constantly had people tell me, “you’re Mom is attractive”.  Which to this day I’m not really sure on how to respond, but with “thanks, she owes it all to the easy childbirth I put her through”.  She was also a very successful business woman.  But she would be the first to tell you, these things weren’t mutually exclusive.  She always had to have her ‘A’ game on both in business and with her looks.

Oh, but Tim that was the 1970’s and 80’s, today that isn’t the case.

Is it ladies? Do you feel like your attractiveness plays no role in your perceived performance?

I can take a look at my own workforce.  Some of the guys role in here looking like they took all of 10 minutes to get ready and find the cleanest smelling shirt.  The females who work for me carry around ‘toolboxes’ of beauty products and always, I mean always, are put together.  I don’t ask or demand this, but some how there is a perceived culture which makes this seem appropriate.

I’m sure there is a bit of competition going on.  The ladies like to look good, especially when the other ladies in the office look good, and it starts a vicious little game to who’s more beautiful.   Doesn’t matter if you’re married or single, young or old, almost all play the game.  Guys don’t play this game.  Guys play other games, just not the ‘I’m prettier than you’ game.   This still doesn’t speak to why in our culture we expect both great performance and good looking when it comes to female performance.

You then have that big stereotype of the pretty woman who doesn’t perform, but still keeps her job.  This is the traditional stereotype of women and performance.  Oh, Mary is an idiot, but she’s beautiful so they’ll never let her go.  I don’t think this happens as much, but I’m also not naive enough to not think it still has some impact.  Pretty women will always get more chances to screw up, than a less attractive woman.  Always.  Not fair, but true.

Guys, especially those in leadership, will never bring this up.  It’s a taboo subject. Being in HR I’m always amazed that the ones who will bring up this subject more than anyone are other female leaders.  Guys won’t touch performance and attractiveness with 10 foot pool, but the ladies will!  Female executives are some of the first ones who will speak about another female employee in the context of ‘she’s a good performer, but she holy smokes she’s a troll’ and then walk away like it’s completely normal!

So, I ask you female readers, do you feel your looks play a role in your perceived performance at work?

 

 

 

HR’s Biggest Irony: We think we’re Contrarian

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When you get a group of HR Pros together there is one thing I can count on – the majority believe they somehow think differently than everyone else.  Then you look at their words and actions, and you discover they’re just like everyone else.  HR isn’t the only ones who believe this, in fact it’s rampant throughout our organizations.  The reality is, when we get around others, it’s really difficult for us to act and think differently. Hello ‘Group-think’!   The Motely Fool had a great piece on this in regards to investing, but it works for organizations as well:

“In the 1950s, Solomon Asch brought a group of students together and asked them to solve a set of problems, such as whether two lines were the same length. These were simple problems with obvious answers. But several of the students weren’t trying to pick the right answers. They were actors working for Asch, purposely giving the wrong answers in front of their peers. 

Asch repeated the study with varying numbers of actor-students blurting out the wrong answers. His conclusion: Three-quarters of the test subjects went along with the actors’ wrong answers at least once. In any given experiment, at least one-third of test subjects ignored the obvious answer and followed the actors. Just one in four consistently gave the right answer even when their acting peers disagreed with them.

Even when everyone around you is giving an obviously wrong answer, your tendency to second-guess yourself, not want to embarrass yourself, and your natural desire to fit in can trump every bit of rationality you think you have.”

Sound familiar?

The contrarian in most organizations is either the CEO, or the first one fired!  Contrarianism is not valued in the majority of our organizations.  CEO, and many senior executives, will tell you it is, and it’s what they want, but the facts don’t lie.  Most people who go against the grain don’t fit in well in corporate structures.  Which makes it even more funny when I hear HR Pros tell how they are the contrarian voice in their organizations.  No you’re not.  Plus, I would question is that what you really want to be?

I believe HR doesn’t need to be contrarian, HR needs to be conformist.  HR needs someone who is going to take that executive vision and completely conform to it.  Full buy-in, drink the kool-aid, get the tattoo on your ass, conformity.   In away that is contrarian, if you are lead by a visionary leader, either way it’s what our organizations need out of HR.  HR thinks the opposite.  They think our leaders need someone to tell them their full of it.  They don’t. Your leaders don’t want to hear they’re full of it. In fact most, really, just want to hear you think they’re right.  Those who are very self aware still only want to hear how you can help them make their ideas reality, not that their ideas are crap.

That isn’t what you expected was it? HR needs to conform, there, I said it.  Conform to the vision. Conform to the mission. Leading through conformity.

 

The Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers

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I’m a sports geek and recently the sports talk shows and Twitter have been blowing up over The Mt. Rushmore of the NBA.  This happened because Lebron James came out and said he wants to be on the Mt. Rushmore of the NBA when his career is done.  His current NBA Mt. Rushmore is: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Oscar Robinson.  The reality is, is had no bearing on anything, but people love to argue the concept!  Why Oscar? What about Russell or Wilt?! Wouldn’t you put Lebron on it right now!? It’s a never ending argument that sports geeks, like me, love to have.

The Mt. Rushmore got me to thinking about my own world and the Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers.  People can start the argument with just the title! Why not just HR? Aren’t those two separate mountains!?  I don’t think so. While there are thousands of bloggers in the space, I don’t differentiate the two, because to me Talent is part of the HR function, not a separate thing (although I do think it will be out of HR in the future!).

So, here is my Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers:

– Kris Dunn – Mostly HR, writes every freaking day for the past 5+ years at the HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent, has great opinions on topics, ties in pop culture, sports, politics, etc. He entertains and educates. First and foremost he is and has been an actual practitioner in the field – he has gotten his hands dirty cleaning up after an employee picnic, had to do I-9 audits, design hiring processes, facilitate on-boarding and open enrollment meetings. KD knows your world and knows how to give you information to help you get better at what you do.

 – Jessica Merrill-Miller – Jessica is one of the few HR blogger types who has actually made this a paying career.  Also a one-time real HR person, over the past few years she now only blogs and consults, but is a content machine with great opinions, and super helpful advice to HR pros, candidates and leadership alike.  JMM loves this stuff!  In fact, I would put money down that if you made JMM chose between Blogging4Jobs.com (her website) and her husband, it would be a quick divorce! You feel her passion when you read her stuff and go to her site.  Everyone wants to make money blogging, but no one puts in the time and effort that JMM does.

 – Glen Cathey – Many will know Glen by his site Boolean Blackbelt.  Glen gets recruiting and sourcing at a completely different level than 99.9% of people in this industry, and that isn’t an exaggeration!  While some will be intimidated by his writing – it can get technical – the information he provides is more valuable than a Master’s degree in HR.  Also, he does have a beginners guide to get people started, and he loves to use screen shots of what he’s doing to help visual learners.  Of all the people I read, Glen puts the most effort into his posts. Super detailed, great research, it’s like my own personal training guide on how to find talent better and faster – and he just keeps delivering!  Glen is also a working Talent pro – so he’s giving you real, live up-to-date stuff. Not something he did 10 years ago and is still trying to sell as relevant.

 – Laurie Ruettimann – While LFR is currently on blogging hiatus, or sabbatical, or vacation, it really doesn’t matter – she’s the queen of HR blogging.  No one is more opinionated and spot on, usually, with those opinions.  That’s why I love her writing – she can make me laugh and not like her all in the same post.  That’s what a great blogger does, she challenges the way you think.  LFR is the also the only HR/Talent blogger I know who can talk about her bathroom habits and have a thousand people comment. She’s got a great audience and the HR folks love to read her take on things.  She the prototypical anti-HR lady, who was an HR lady, lady.  She’s a CHRO, who decided not to be a CHRO.  For those who need a LFR fix – she has a Tumbler, or you can read her years of content still up at The Cynical Girl.  

People always want to know who I read – it’s these four consistently.  I also read all the folks at Fistful, I think they’re all great as well.  Who would be on your Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers?

 

Closeted Conservative

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Don’t think this is a post about me coming out as a Conservative! I did that a long time ago.   I actually don’t consider myself a conservative.  I would consider myself a social moderate.  I hate big government, tax increases and 24 months of unemployment insurance.  I also hate my government telling women they can’t get an abortion, and the fact our planet is dying and government does little to stop it.  Every time there is a Presidential election I feel none of the candidates are good choices.  The two party system is slowing killing everything that is great about America.

So, who am I calling out of the closet?

All those individuals, male and female, that you have working for you. All ages and ethnicities, that are considered to be ‘conservative’ in their beliefs towards issues in politics, society and culture.

Do you know why they are in the closet?

You put them there.  You make it wrong for them to believe in Jesus, to believe women shouldn’t have abortions, to believe that people on welfare sometimes take advantage of the system.  You make them stay in the closet by making them believe that the only ‘right’ opinion is that of the liberal minority in your workforce.  You teach them that ‘inclusion’ is believing what you believe.  That your liberal beliefs in politics, finances and social responsibility are the ‘right’ beliefs.  That if you believe like we do, feel free to share it publicly around the office, but if you don’t believe like we do you aren’t welcome here.

So, they stay in the closet.

It’s not that they’re really bad people.  They just believe differently than you.  You might look at them as throw backs of by gone era.  Must be from the Midwest, you think to yourself, no one on the coast would think like that.  Must be from a small town, because big city folks are more ‘well rounded’ in their beliefs. You make them feel like their kind is unwelcome in your work environment.  We like are employees to be progressive in their thoughts and beliefs.  We are an ‘Inclusive’ workplace…

Until you’re not.

3 Steps To Make HR Suck Less

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Are you working in a HR department that sucks?  You know if you are, it’s alright, you can admit it – it’s the first step of changing it.

I bet I talk to over a hundred HR Pros a year that begin the conversation with – “our HR department sucks!” or “my company doesn’t get it when it comes to HR” or “Our HR department is terrible”.   It’s not the outlier, it’s the norm.  So, many HR Pros working in HR functions where the organization has the feeling that “HR” sucks in our company.  If you’re not in one now – great – but chances are you have either been in one before, or eventually you’ll make a “grass is greener” decision and put yourself into this situation.

You know what?  We have the power to make HR Suck Less.  Yes, you do.  Stop it, you do.  No really, you do. Alright that’s enough, just play along with me at least!

Here are the 3 steps to making HR Suck Less:

1.  Stop doing stuff that Sucks.  But Tim! We have to do this stuff.  No you don’t – if your HR shop blew up tomorrow – your organization would still go on.  Over time you’ve “negotiated” to do all this sucky stuff – thinking it would “help” the organization, or give you “influence”, etc.  Stop that.  Give it away, push it out to other departments – start doing stuff that doesn’t suck, more than doing stuff that does suck.  It’s not easy, but it can be done, little by little.

2.  Get rid of people in HR who Suck.  Some people get real comfortable with sucking.  They wear their suckiness around like a badge of honor.  You need to cut the suck out of your department – like cancer!

3. Stop saying that you Suck.  We brand ourselves internally with everything we do – and if you say that you suck at something – the organizational will believe you suck at something.  If you say we are the best in the industry at recruiting our competitions talent away from them – you’ll be forced to live up to that – and little by little you will live up to that and the organization will begin to believe it as well.  Signs and Symbols!

Every single HR Shop who feels they suck – doesn’t have to suck.  If you feel you don’t suck, but everyone else tells you that you suck – you suck.  You’re just delusional and you keep telling yourself things like “we have to do this stuff”, “it’s the law”, “we don’t have a choice”, etc.   This is the first sign you’re comfortable with sucking – you aren’t listening to your organization.  No one has to suck – you can decide to do things in a complete different way. Perception is reality in terms of sucking.  You need to change perceptions, not reality.  You can still accomplish the exact same things, just do it in a way that people think you rock.  Start saying “Yes” to everything – not “No”.  “No” sucks.

Sucking less is a decision – not a skill.  You all have the skills – you just need to make the decision – to stand up and believe – Today we will no longer Suck!

I Don’t Want To Work With a Gay Person!

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Michael Sam’s announcement last week, becoming the first openly gay NFL player, rekindled some hot workplace topics.  His acknowledgement has talk shows buzzing about whether NFL players would be comfortable with a gay teammate in the locker room.  I think most people concentrated on one area of the locker room, the showers.  Would male NFL players be comfortable showering with a teammate who was homosexual?  So far, no NFL players have said they would not be.

I wonder what most HR professionals would tell an employee who did come to you and said “I don’t want to work with Tim, he’s gay, and I don’t agree with it.”

I’m assuming 99.9% of HR Pros would come up with something like this:

“You know Mr. Employee, we are an inclusive and diverse company, and that means we support all of our employees and don’t judge them based on things like sexual orientation, religion, etc.  If you feel uncomfortable working with Tim, maybe this isn’t the place for you to work.”

Seems about right, right?

Let’s add some real-life to this scenario.  What if, in your work environment, employees had to share a community, locker room type shower environment, as part of the job function.  Dirty, chemical filled, environment, employees shower after their shift as a normal course of their daily working environment.  Now what would you say?

Does it change what you might tell Mr. Employee?  You’re lying to yourself if you say it wouldn’t.  All of sudden you start trying to make concessions and talking about building individual showers, or asking Tim to shower in a private shower and locker room.  You start accommodating, like being ‘Gay’ is a disability.

What if it is your policy for employees of the same sex, when traveling, to share hotel rooms.  This is a common practice with many companies.  What do you tell Mr. or Mrs. Employee when they feel uncomfortable sharing a hotel room with a gay employee?  Do you make an accommodation for that employee to have their own hotel room?

What if your top sales person came to you and said they don’t want to work with a gay employee.  The sales person who controls and has your largest client in their back pocket – 60% of your current business.  Do you give them the same line above? “Go work someplace else!”  I’ll be honest with you, you won’t, because executives would have your job for letting that person walk from your company.  Oh, I’m sure you’re reading this saying “No, Tim, I would!” That’s great for you.  You have to know most people are unwilling to lose their job over something like this.  That’s real life HR in the trenches.

It seems simple.  So what, we have employees that are gay, who cares.  Until another employee cares.  Then HR has issues.  Being an inclusive employer doesn’t mean you just look for the gay employee, it means also you value the beliefs of the person who doesn’t agree with the gay lifestyle for what ever reason that might be.  That’s really, really hard to except for many of us.  I want to tell the gay-hating employee to go take a walk, but if I do that, I cease being ‘Inclusive’ and begin being ‘exclusive’.  It’s HRs job to make it ‘all’ work.

So, what would you do with an employee who has a problem working with a gay employee?

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.