Category Archives: The HR Rules

Lawyer-Up

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Years from now when I retire and look back on my career in HR I think I’m only going to be surprised about one thing.  It won’t be how crazy some employees can be, or dumb things supervisors have said to employees or even the shocking employee relations issues I’ve dealt with.  The one thing will be how totally comfortable I’ve become in dealing with lawsuits and potential lawsuits!   If you really thing about it, most people in the world are not comfortable with lawyers.  Just as HR Pros are looked at like the Grim Reaper in many organizations – no one wants to see the lawyer’s number pop up on their caller ID!  Combine the Lawyer and HR Pro together and you have most employees worst nightmare.

I’ve gotten to the point now in my career where I actually try and beat employees to the punch.  Here’s how it normally goes: Employee is either being terminated, or had a boss be a little too touchy or somehow slipped in the parking lot on a dry sunny day and HR gets a call/visit that sounds something like this:

Employee: “Yeah, well, ‘we’ve’ got a problem!”

HR Pro: “Really!? What problem do ‘we’ have?”

Employee: “Jill took my stapler and told me my ‘Boo’ is sleeping with Mary.”

HR Pro: “And…”

Employee: “And!  And that’s stealing and I’m working in a ‘hospitable’ work environment!”

HR Pro: “Hostile.”

Employee: “I’m not being “Hostile”! Oh, you’re against me to – I see how this is. I know my rights! I don’t want to have to get ‘others’ involved but I will.”

HR Pro: “Others. Oh, you mean a lawyer?” (I like to act like I’m surprised and that thought had never come to me that they might go this direction.) “Tell you what – I think you’re right on.  Have your lawyer contact me immediately so we can start working through some of these details, like how another employee stole your work issued stapler and how your “boo” is sleeping with Mary.”

That usually ends the conversation right there.

The fastest way to get an employee off ‘Lawyering-Up’ is to push them to ‘Lawyer-Up’.  The reality is for HR Pros – either way – you will either need to Lawyer-Up or you don’t, depending on the details.As an HR Pro I’ve become very comfortable with this issue.  I think about 100% of the time when  I hear from an employee that they are “going to call their attorney”, I try and tell them that is a really good idea.  I encourage them constantly to seek legal advice. Why? Because here’s another thing I’ve learned from being an HR Pro – the majority of attorneys will tell people to take a hike when they have nothing.  Honestly. We tend to think lawyers will sue for anything, but in most employment cases they won’t. 99 out of 100 times you have an employee seek legal advice – you’ll never hear from them again because some attorney will tell them – “You have no case.”  The one case you do hear from – is probably the one you already knew you had problems with already.

Yep – being told “I’m going to sue you”, who knew someone could ever hear those words and not feel nervous!? Only HR Pros and Lawyers.

 

Uncommon Trait of a Great Leader

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For those who don’t know – I had great seats for the MSU vs. Iowa basketball game last week (see pic above of me being an idiot on national TV – it was AWESOME!).  My company, HRU, does a bunch of IT business with MSU and we are big supporters (yep, I now have the infamous “donor” tag at MSU) of MSU athletics – heck, our corporate headquarters is about 2 miles from campus and roughly 1/2 of my staff are Sparty grads.  All those things being put together – I was offered a chance to travel with the MSU basketball team to the Iowa game and got a chance to sit behind the bench for the game.

So, what does this have to do with Leadership Traits?  This is probably where you’ll believe I’ll go on and on about how great MSU Head Coach Tom Izzo (he’s also the guy on the front page of this blog in the pic with me) is – because he is – but you’re wrong.  The leader I want to talk about is one of the team captains from MSU, Russel Byrd (only a sophomore).  Here’s a kid who barely plays.  Was a highly recruited kid out of high school, but still hasn’t found his shot at the college level.  I think most of Spartan Nation was stunned when he was named one of the Captains for the 2012-12013 team.  How does a kid who rarely plays, become Captain of the team?

The uncommon trait of a leader – not being the most skilled.

Normally, in most organizations, the people who ascend to leadership positions, tend to be the most skilled, or pretty close to the most skilled.  It is very rare that a person is selected who isn’t the most skilled.  Why?  Traditional thinking says how can you lead people who are better than you.  The reality is, and we know this in HR, having high skill in a function and having the ability to lead in that same function – really have zero correlation.   No doubt, many great leaders are also highly skilled, but not always.

Back to my Spartys!  What I came away with from my trip with MSU Basketball was that Russell Byrd is a natural leader.  I called him the mayor, the entire trip – I might be his biggest fan now! He never missed an opportunity to engage with those traveling with him – his teammates, his coaches, the team managers, us tag-along donors, the hotel staff, etc.  It might be a handshake, eye contact with a wink and a smile or putting his arm around you and joking around.  He was encouraging, always, he kept a positive attitude even when his own performance, that night, wasn’t what he would have wanted.  While not having a good game, he set his own feelings aside, to pick up those on his team, who were more skilled, who needed some picking up.  He put his team, before himself.

When you think about succession in your organization, I wonder how many of us really look at one’s ability to lead vs. how skilled they are.  I immediately assumed Russell Byrd would not make a good Captain for his team, based on his skill level.  I think too often, those responsible for hiring leaders, do the same thing.  We pass over many of our most influential employees and give the job to the best performer – who often struggle in that role.  I’m not saying Byrd is a great leader because he’s not the most skilled, I’m saying he’s a great leader in spite of not being the most skilled.

Great skill does not equal great leadership.  Great leadership comes from having an ability to connect with people.

 

 

 

 

 

You’re Uninvited

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I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone.  I do invite people to join me.  Join me on this journey, on this path – it’s going to be a trip.  I invite them to be  apart of my family.  Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family.  I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours).  So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone.  From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part part of what we have going on.  Just like a party.  You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited – you can’t attend the next party.  I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand.  Sometimes couple have issues with this – where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.  Not in my family – we only invite those people we want to be around – life is too short.

Here’s the deal.  When you invited someone into your family – you usually end up falling in love with them.  It’s that way in business – it’s the main reason we have such a hard time moving on bad performers.  We fall in love with those people we hire.  “Oh, Jenny, she’s such a nice person!”  But, Jenny, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time.  So, we give Jenny chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Jenny is part of the family.  It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Jenny to attend work any longer.  “Hey, Jenny, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work.  We’ll still see you at 5pm over at the bar for drinks.”  Sounds so much easier, right!?  It happens all the time.  I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road the group stopped inviting me.  I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone.  Termination is so permanent – it’s like death.  Being uninvited sends the same message – but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what – maybe it was you, maybe it was us – but let’s just face it – together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

HR Can Succeed By Doing Less

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You know Jim Collins – the ‘Good to Great’ guy?  He has another book to, it’s called How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In.  This isn’t a book review, or for that matter an endorsement of this book.  I will say, Jim brings up one very interesting concept in this book on why companies, organizations, departments, etc. – fail.  It’s something that we do constantly within HR, and most of us would never view it as something that would actually be hurting our organization.  We do too much!

This over-riding pursuit ‘to do more’ has some drastic consequences.

I will tell my HR brothers and sisters, if you never worked in a large HR/Talent shop – you might understand where I’m going with this.  That’s because small to medium sized HR shops usually are working their tails off just to keep their heads above water.  Large HR/Talent shops are a little like the game Monopoly. You’re either making yourself larger in some way or another, or you’re going through a ‘right-sizing’ so you can start over at making yourself larger again!  Within that mentality comes this ‘more’ cycle.

Most large HR shops don’t try to reduce their work because that goes against this empire building mindset.  They try and come up with more programs, more projects, more ways to measure, more ways to ensure an employee is engaged, more ways to check the checklist to ensure compliance, more ways to well, show that you’re doing more than the other guy/gal.  If you aren’t creating more, you’re aren’t valuable and showing your worth.  No one ever got promoted in HR for eliminating programs – the saying goes!

Here’s the other way to do HR that 90% of HR/Talent Pros don’t do:

1. Eliminate any HR program/project that doesn’t save employees time (not your HR department – but the time of the actual employee).  Remember that new Open Enrollment process you put in to eliminate all of that data entry by your department – but it now takes employees 25 minutes to sign up for benefits vs. 5 minutes – that 20 minutes times the number of employees just cost your company a ton of time – which means money in the real world.

2. Develop a talent management process that works for your hiring managers, not one that makes your feel good about yourself.  That 5 page annual review sure looks great – but it’s a pain in the ass of your hiring managers, and the reality is the employees aren’t getting in more feedback.  Stop that.

3. Stop designing processes around gaining 100% compliance and start designing processes so simple you’ll have 99% compliance (which is more than you should hope for).

Doing less HR is actually harder than doing more HR!  It seems like that should be the opposite, but it’s not.  Doing less means you have to really think strategically about what your function should be delivering and what it shouldn’t.  It means you move some things out of your department, that never should have been there in the first place, but “we’re in HR and we’re suppose to do whatever we can to help.”  No, you shouldn’t.  You’re in HR – you should deliver great HR that is simple and easy to understand.  For most HR/Talent Pros that I know – this concept of doing less goes against every bone in their body.  Great HR isn’t about doing more – it’s about doing the least amount possible to deliver the services that are needed for your organization to have great people.  That is really hard to do without adding more for people to do!

 

 

 

Which Best Practice is Ruining Your HR Shop?

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There is a brilliant article over at Harvard Business Review called: Which Best Practice is Ruining Your Business by Freek Vermeulen (I’m naming my next child “Freek” by the way!).  ‘Best Practices’ are a sore spot for me when I attend HR/Talent conferences.  No matter what the conference you’ll find some HR/Talent Pro talking about their “best practice” and God bless them you’ll see a standing room only audience of HR/Talent Pros trying to find out all about this “best practice’ to take back to their own shops.  Therein lies the problem.  From Vermeulen’s article:

“Most companies follow “best practices.” Often, these are practices that most firms in their line of business have been following for many years, leading people in the industry to assume that it is simply the best way of doing things. Or, as one senior executive declared to me when I queried one of his company’s practices: “everybody in our business does it this way, and everybody has always been doing it this way. If it wasn’t the best way of doing things, I am sure it would have disappeared by now”.
But, no matter how intuitively appealing this may sound, the assumption is wrong. Of course, well-intended managers think they are implementing best practices but, in fact, unknowingly, sometimes the practice does more harm than good.

One reason why a practice’s inefficiency may be difficult to spot is because when it came into existence, it was beneficial — like broadsheet newspapers once made sense. But when circumstances have changed and it has become inefficient, nobody remembers, and because everybody is now doing it, it is difficult to spot that doing it differently would in fact be better.”

Best practices aren’t new ideas, they are tried and true ideas, proven out over time to work well for the organization that started using them.  Theoretically, if you use another organizations ‘best practice’ the best thing you can hope for is that you’ll meet what they’ve accomplished.  I know a ton of business leaders that would kick you out of their office if you came to them saying “Hey! I’ve got an idea that will allow us to meet our competitors!”   Most leaders want ideas that will allow you to ‘beat’ your competitors, even when you’re trailing in the industry that you’re in.

I’m not saying that many HR/Talent shops can’t improve by using a best practice from another organization.  That actually might be true.  But, again, you’ll only improve, at best, to the level that other organization has achieved.  You’ll never be industry leading – you’ll be industry following.  I always assume when I hear a best practice that it was something that worked really well for that organization, at a specific time, and then ask – “what are you doing now?”  Almost always, I’ll get a response of something new they are actually working on – but it’s not, yet, a ‘best practice’ in their eyes!  That’s what I want to hear – the new stuff – not what they’ve been doing for 5 years!

For me, true innovation does not start at best practice – that is an ending point.  If you truly want to innovate and turn your HR Shop into World Class – you have to be a best practice creator, not a best practice follower.  I’d rather hear presentations at SHRM (or any other conference) about stuff people haven’t even tried yet – but they think it could be out of this world and why they think it would be great!  Then we both go back and try it, fix it, try it again, and compare notes.

So, which Best Practice is going to ruin your HR Shop this year?

HR! Inclusion doesn’t equal you.

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Many of you probably missed what happened to one of your HR peers recently.  This HR peer was fired, and it was upheld in courts, for using their First Amendment Rights. This was a senior level HR executive at a public university.  Here’s the article: Federal appeals court upholds termination of anti-gay human resources administrator.  From reading the title, what is the picture that immediately came to your mind?  If you didn’t say over 60, white male – you’re a liar!  The administrator is Crystal Dixon, and she’s a black female. Here’s what she did:

“A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the University of Toledo’s decision to fire a high-level human resources administrator, who wrote a newspaper opinion column challenging the idea that LGBT people deserve the same civil rights protections as members of racial minority groups. 

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that Crystal Dixon’s column “contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing, and cannot be excused as merely a statement of her own views as a private citizen.”

The court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

Dixon, who had been the University’s interim Associate Vice President for Human Resources, wrote the essay published in the Toledo Free Press in April 2008 in which she took aim at LGBT people.

Dixon wrote that she was greatly offended that “those person who choose the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil rights victims.'” adding that she “cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman” because she is biologically and genetically such “as my creator intended.”

I’m not here to challenge Crystal’s views on the “homosexual lifestyle” – she clearly believes something, and it’s her God given right to believe what she wants.  I don’t agree with her – I think her thought process is ignorant and callous at best.

I’m here to challenge her being fired.

You see Inclusion works really well when you’re liberal, and you have your liberal ideas, and others have to listen to your ideas because we/organizations need to be “inclusive”.  But have a differing idea, a way more conservative idea, and somehow “being inclusive” doesn’t work for you.  I think Crystal’s ideas about the LGBT community are completely ridiculous.  But, if I’m, truly, being inclusive as an organization – I don’t fire her.  I work to help her become more educated and understanding of all people in our organization.  “But Tim! She’s in a senior level HR position – she should be the one that understands this!”  But she doesn’t.

Inclusion in 90% of organizations is broken.  It’s broken because those who ‘support’ inclusion – are the same folks who don’t allow inclusive thought to be a part of your organization.  We support the gay young male who wants to hang up a poster advertising the gay pride parade this weekend, but we chastise the old white man who wants to advertise his gun show this weekend.  That’s not inclusion, that’s bigotry in the opposite direction.  Neither one of those things is wrong, or right – it’s just two different ways of thinking.

Crystal was fired for: “contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing, and cannot be excused as merely a statement of her own views as a private citizen.”  The Diversity and Inclusion policy she was in charge of creating I assume meant she had to think the exact same way as everyone else in her organization. Is that what “Inclusion” means to you?

Don’t Fire Me Because I’m Beautiful!

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By now most HR folks have seen the articles about the Iowa worker who was fired for being “too irresistible“!  If not, here a little of the back story:

Melissa Nelson, who is married with children, had worked for James Knight for 10 years before his wife complained about his infatuation with her.  Nelson told the court that she had seen Knight as a father figure and a man of “integrity” who generally treated her with respect.  But about nine years into the job, Knight started to complain that her clothes were “distracting” because they “accentuated her body,” and he sometimes asked her to cover up with her lab coat.  At one point, Knight told Nelson that “if she saw his pants bulging, she would know her clothing was too revealing,” court records showed.

After she told him that his complaint about the tightness of her shirt wasn’t fair, he texted back that it was a good thing she didn’t wear tight pants too “because then he would get it coming and going,” the court records showed. And at one point when Knight discussed infrequency in Nelson’s sex life, he told her “that’s like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it.” Knight’s wife, who also worked in the dental office, put her foot down when she discovered the two were texting each other.  After meeting with their pastor, Knight agreed to fire Nelson because she was a “big threat to our marriage.”

…Since Nelson did not consider Knight’s behavior to be sexual harassment, the Iowa Supreme Court determined the question to be “whether an employee who has not engaged in flirtatious conduct may be lawfully terminated simply because the boss views the employee as an irresistible attraction.”

While Iowa law prohibits discrimination against employees based on gender, the all-male court ruled that Knight’s conduct was “unfair” but “did not amount to unlawful discrimination.”

Wow! This is crazy on so many levels it’s hard to even comprehend!

This is why, if you’re a dude, should should add in an attractiveness meter to your hiring process.  Anyone over a 6, doesn’t make the next round (unless you have low standards, then feel free to add in some 5’s).  Believe me, this is hard for me to say – I’m the original one who advocated for you to hire beautiful people, not because they’re pretty, but because science has proven they perform better!  Kris Dunn is the one who says hire ugly people – because, well, he has low standards and lives in Alabama!

Honestly, I truly feel for Mrs. Nelson – let’s face it her boss was a creeper and if Iowans have any morals at all they will stop using him as a Dentist and he’ll go out business. Let’s all hope this happens!  Also, this should really teach all beautiful women a good lesson.  If you’re really that beautiful, why are you working!?  Beautiful women are suppose to be going to Yoga classes and having lunch with their other beautiful girlfriends on their rich husband’s Platinum American Express card, before heading over to the upscale mall to pick out some new shoes – not working.  Overall, good lessons to be learned from this entire story!

HR Can’t Forget Your Past

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What I’ve found in HR is that most great lessons are taught to you by the Spice Girls.

“If you want my future, forget my past”

So, I’m going to tell you what I want. What I really, really want.

I want you to understand this one little concept – HR has the memory of an elephant!  Seriously.  If you do something wrong, if you screw up once, don’t think your going to “work through it” and change their mind in the future.  It won’t happen.  HR loves to label employees.  Oh, Steve is our best sales guy – even though he hasn’t closed a deal in 3 years.  Mary is a drama queen – because she had drama 18 months ago, but nothing since.  Doesn’t matter – HR has you labeled!

So, what should you do?

If you screw up, if you already know you’ve been labeled, if you’ve been talked to more than once about a specific issue – you need to move on with your career to a new organization. Period.  Being talked to “more than” once is key.  You can live, organizationally, after being talked to once, because it might be forgotten.  Once you’re talked to twice, or more, it’s probably documented and thus you’ll have an organizational lifetime label (or OLL as we say in the business!).  O.L.L’s happen all the time.  Sleep with one subordinate, and now you’ll always be “that” creepy boss who sleeps with their employees.  Unless you marry that person – then you’ll be labeled positively as having ‘commitment’.  Unless, you then get divorced from that person because you slept with another employees – then you’re back to “creepy boss”.

It works that way on the positive side as well.  When I was working for Applebee’s we had a General Manager who had taken a ‘broken’ restaurant and turned it around to be a ‘star’ restaurant.  We actually moved this person to two other ‘broken’ restaurants to perform their ‘magic’, but they failed both times.  Still that person’s name was brought up every single time a ‘broken’ restaurant was brought up as needing someone to fix it.  What really happened was the first restaurant they fixed had more to do with the “team” that was put in place to fix that restaurant than that one person.  When that one person was put in other similar circumstances, with different teams, they failed.  Yet – the past followed this person around like they were Mr. Broken Restaurant Fixer.  You see – it works both ways – but with the same outcome – HR isn’t going to forget your past!

Here’s the real problem with this concept – you won’t find one HR person who will admit to it!  That’s why I say – if you really, really wanna zigazig ha – you need to move on.

The Secret to Happy Work

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We’ve all been sold a really harmful lie, by a lot of people.  That lie is:  To be truly happy at work, you must do what you love (or some variation of the same theme). It’s complete garbage that is usually told to you by – an ultra-rich people who can do anything they want, someone who really doesn’t have to earn a living because they have a spouse earning a living for them or someone who just flat out got lucky, right place-right time and does something they actually love.  I know, I know – “Tim, you create your own luck!” – said by the same idiot who’s wife is a brain surgeon and allows her deadbeat husband to be a “writer” at home.

Still most of us define our happiness like this:

Step 1 – Work really super hard.

Step 2 – Really super hard work will make you successful.

Step 3 – Being successful will make me happy.

I hate to break this to you – being successful will not make you happy.  It will allow you to buy a lot of stuff, you’ll probably have less money arguments and you might even feel good about your success, but if you’re not happy before all of that, there is a really good chance you won’t be happy after to gain success.

Let’s start with this concept:

Work Success ≠ Happiness

Have you ever met someone working a dead-end job, a just-not-going-anywhere type of job, but they are completely joyous?  I have.  I envy those people.  They do not define their happiness in life by the level of success they’ve obtained in their career. Their happiness is defined by a number of other things: are their basic needs met, do they enjoy the people they surround themselves with, do they have a positive outlook on life, etc.  These individuals do not allow the external world to impact their happiness.  Their happiness is derived from within.

In HR I’ve been forced to learn this, because I’ve had people try and sell me on that Engagement =’s Happiness – which is also a lie.  I’ve had incredibly engaged workers who are very unhappy people and very happy people who were not engaged.  I’ve found over time, I can do almost nothing to “make” someone be happier.  I’m an external factor to their life.  Don’t get me wrong – as a leader I can give praise and recognition, I can give merit and bonuses, etc. While that might have a short-term impact to ones happiness, it’s not truly lasting happiness that comes from within.

So, how can you help someone find their happiness?  I think we have to start realizing that you don’t have to ‘work’ at something you love, to have happiness at work.  Putting work into perspective of life is key. I like what I do a whole bunch – hell, I blog about it! But if I really thought about it, I don’t ‘love’ it.  I love my family.  I love floating on a lake on a warm summer day.  I love listening to my sons laugh in pure joy.  I find my happiness in many ways – only part of which I gain through my career. My secret to happy work is finding happiness in a number of aspects in my life.  That way if I’m having a bad day at work, or a bad day at home, I still have pockets of happiness I can adjust my focus to.

What is your secret to being happy at work?

Right-To-Work or Wrong-To-Work

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I have to say it’s been fun to have a front row seat in the Right-To-Work debate that raged on in Michigan this past week!  Even President Obama made an appearance in Michigan and was probably the only one to put this debate into it’s proper context – he said Right-To-Work legislation is not about economics, it’s about politics – and for once in his life he was right.  Unfortunately, he then spewed a bunch of union propaganda numbers and made it even more political – but hey, he’s a politician.  I have a bunch of thoughts on this that don’t really make one coherent post, so I’m just going to share those thoughts and we can take it from there:

– Unions are dying a slow death. 17% of Michigan’s workforce, 7% of the national workforce.  What does this say? It says companies get it more today than ever.  You have to treat your employees well and you have to compete for talent.  If you don’t get this – you won’t be a competitive company for long, because the best and brightest won’t work for you.

– Unions in Right-To-Work states, and really nationally, need to get back to getting their membership to understand their ‘true’ value.  In HR we have to do this constantly in our organizations.  Unions have forgotten this for decades!  They just kept collecting their monthly dues and assumed their membership got it!  They don’t.

– Somebody explain to me how it’s a bad thing for an employee to have the choice of not paying union dues, if they don’t think their union is giving them value.  I pay a stock broker to give me stock tips – I find value in his opinion, I pay for it.  If I found value in the service a union was giving me, I’d pay for it.  I spoke to 3 long term teachers who are members of the MEA this week – all 3 said they would not pay dues if given the option. All 3 said, and I quote: “My union does nothing for me.”

– Unions believe ‘branding’ = scaring their membership into believing they can’t live without them.

– Michigan citizens voted for a Republican governor, a Republican Senate and Republican House.  Those 3 functions voted exactly the way they were suppose to, by the citizens who voted them in.  There is nothing shocking about his at all.  If Michigan’s citizens didn’t want Right-To-Work legislation, and similar types of legislation, they would have voted differently. But they didn’t.  If you lived in Michigan during the recession you would probably understand why – it sucks to lead the nation in unemployment.

I’m an HR Pro, so in my career I’ve been on the opposite side of the table from unions -I’m management.  I don’t have a positive view of unions because I believe they don’t make my workforce better they make it weaker.  Everyone in a union is treated the same, which just pushes everyone to the middle. High performers have no reason to be high performers when they are treated the same as the weakest performer.  I’ve seen this and have dealt with it professionally.  Unions telling me I have to treat these two groups the same.  This does not create high performance, it creates worse performance. This is what I know.

Everyone needs a wake up call.  I think Michigan enacting Right-To-Work legislation is a wake up call to Unions to reinvent themselves.  To start to really think, “how do we show our membership we are adding value to their lives.”  It can’t just be about ‘protecting’ jobs.  They’ve protected jobs right out of this state. It has to be about creating opportunities for their membership – that is a 180 degree difference in philosophy from where they are at.  They need to find a way that employers are begging for their membership to come and work in their companies, because their membership is so highly performing and skilled.  Right now employers are running away from unions because the value equation of skills and dollars don’t match up.