I will by flying on 9/11 this year, I don’t seem overly concerned by this, just as I’m sure people in Hawaii aren’t concerned about going down to the naval shipyards on December 7th.  Dates and history have a funny way to making us do weird things – like not flying a specific day because a number of years ago an unthinkable tragedy happened on that day, so we now know that it’s a possibility it could happen again.  So, we schedule are flights for 9/12 thinking somehow it’s safer.  It probably isn’t.

I read an article this week that put the tragedy of 9/11 into perspective for me ten years later.  The writer is a local Michigan writer, and he relates the 9/11 tragedies with tragedies that many people face at certain times in their life.  In Michigan this past spring we had a young man die on the basketball court after hitting a game winning shot, when his heart stopped.  It made national news for many weeks, was covered on ESPN as his team went on to play in the state playoffs without their star players and friend.  It was heart wrenching (see the Wes Leonard story here).   From the CNN article by LZ Granderson:

“I didn’t tell him I loved him or hugged him or anything,” Charles said. “Now I won’t ever get that chance again.”

Sadly I hear some element of that phrase over and over again from mourners reflecting on words left unsaid, gestures not made. And even though we all understand in our heads that tomorrow is not guaranteed, it is so hard to live a life that illustrates that understanding in our hearts.

Over the next several days, our nation will spend a significant amount of time looking back at the morning of September 11, 2001, and how much that event changed us.

We will analyze the war on terror and relive accounts of that day from first responders.

Celebrities will talk about where they were when the towers were struck, experts will look at what we need to do to shore up our security and pundits will pontificate on whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have really made us safer.

Undoubtedly, there will be moments in which it will feel like overkill, and I’m sure some of it will be. But I believe these are important stories to cover, important questions of morality to ask.

However in the midst of this 9/11 media avalanche, we should be careful not to overlook the most important lesson from the attack, and that is not to take life for granted. You never know which day is your last.

Hug your children.

Hold your spouse’s hand.

Call your mother.

Like most people I’m fascinated by all the stories of heroism during 9/11 and I love watching them on TV, and it still today makes me sick to my stomach to watch in horror the planes hitting the towers and the towers coming down.  10 years later it still seems unreal this happened in America.  I agree with Mr. Granderson’s take in that many people face tragedy each and every day, and for those who never got a chance to say goodbye, when it seemed like just another day when you left in the morning – what we miss, what we really want back, is that opportunity – the opportunity to tell that person how we feel, to hug them, to tell them we love them.  When that is taken away – it’s a personal tragedy for all of us, because you live with that regret forever.

Don’t miss your opportunity today to tell those you love how you feel, take that extra moment to give your wife and kid a hug on the way to work, and stop by and give your HR Manager a hug – G*d knows they need it!

For those who aren’t big Major League Baseball (MLB) fans you probably don’t know what the “September Call-Up” or “Expanded Rosters” mean.  Each year on September 1st, as the MLB season goes into its final month, the league allows teams to invite players from their minor league teams and the roster number expands from 25 to 40.  For teams who are out of the playoff race, this allows them to give some younger guys an opportunity to perform on a larger stage.  For those in playoff races, or teams that have already solidified a playoff berth, the extra players allow them to rest some regulars.  For playoff teams these extra 15 players can’t play in actual playoff games, only in the final regular season games.

Ok, Tim – why the hell should we care about Major League Baseball’s September Call-ups?

In any HR shop I’ve ever worked in, or with any HR Pro I’ve ever had a conversation with – Succession Planning is always an issue HR Pros struggle with in their organizations.  Many times sports shows us there is a way that it can be done, you just need to find a way to tailor it to your environment, and I think the MLB gives us a window to how a competitive organization attempts to get this done.

Succession is difficult and costly, there is no way around it.  If your organization is truly trying to do succession and not spend money – it won’t be pretty and it probably won’t be effective.  To really know a person has the ability to step into someones shoes when they leave, you have to see them actually do the job.  In most organizations this just isn’t an option – how many of us have the ability to pull out a high performer from their current position, and put them into a new position, while the other person is still in that position?  Not many of us!  It’s just not a reality most of live in.

Baseball’s September call-ups is one strategy that you might be able to use within your organization.  While pulling someone full-time into a new position, might not be something you could do – could you do it for 30 days?  Before telling me you can’t – what would you do it that same person had a medical issue and had to be hospitalized or home-bound for a month?  You’d make it, you’d get by – that’s what we do in organizations.  The team would rally and make it work. So, giving someone a 1 month succession stint into a new potential role – full immersion – would actually give  you some decent insight to whether or not the person could actually handle that role in the future, or at least show you some great development needs that have to ensure success.

Is it perfect? No – but that’s why it works.  We don’t get perfect in HR – we get good enough and move onto the next fire.  We don’t get million dollar budgets to formalize succession and have a bench full of high performing talent to just step in when someone leaves our organization.  It’s our job to figure out succession, while we figure out how to keep the lights on at the same time.  I love the September Call-Up – gives me insight to the future of my team, shows me how someone performs in an environment that doesn’t pigeonhole them forever, and let’s me know if they show some potential for The Show!

In terms of one part of your corporate Compensation Philosophy you can be a Pay Follower, a Pay Leader or Market Rate.

You never hear Pay Leaders complain about Turnover…

You always her Pay Followers complain about how Pay Leaders can actually pay that much…

Those who Pay at the Market always talk about how money isn’t that important…

HR and Compensation Pros will always talk about how it’s not about how much someone makes, it’s about the total compensation package.  Ironically, those Best Companies To Work for – tend to have the highest total compensation packages and be Pay Leaders.  It’s a vicious cycle to get the best talent.  If your a pay follower you will never have the best talent.  If you pay at market, you will never have the best talent for long.  If you’re a Pay Leader you’ll have the ability to attract the best talent and the resources to hook them – but you still have to have the culture and leadership to keep the long term.

This is everything I know about compensation after 20 years of working in HR.

What have I learned?

I always try and work for Pay Leaders – otherwise you end up chasing your tail a lot within the HR world.

Consider yourself graduated.

Fun article on Xfinity listing the Top 10 Highest Paying jobs you can get with a High School degree. Check them out:

10.  Boat/Water Vessel Captain (I guess there assuming you might captain a submarine) – $64,000 – $117,000

9. Gaming Manager (think Pit Boss Vegas) – $66,000 – $116,000

8. Detective/Criminal Investigator – $68,000 – $119,000

7. Elevator Installer – $70,900 – $101,000 (Milk-a-what!? Who knew)

6. Web Developers – $75,000 – $119,000

5. Nuclear Power Plant Operator – $75,600 – $119,000 (yep, that’s right Homer Simpson was banking)

4. Police Chief – $78,000 – $123,000

3. Construction Manager – $83,000 – $150,000

2. Software Developers – $87,000 – $133,000

1. Commercial Airline Pilot – $101,000 – $139,000

For my money I can think of 3 that they completely missed from their list:

1. Drug Dealer – easily 6 figures, maybe 7 if you got some street game

2. Professional Athlete – sure there aren’t many jobs, but it can pay well.

3. Recruiter! (Holla) – Say what you want, but a good headhunter can make some scratch!

Have a great week.

Look out HR Leaders – this one is going to sting a little – from The Harvard Business Review:

“In management, fairness is a virtue. Numerous academic studies have shown that the most effective leaders are generally those who give employees a voice, treat them with dignity and consistency, and base decisions on accurate and complete information.

But there’s a hidden cost to this behavior. We’ve found that although fair managers earn respect, they’re seen as less powerful than other managers—less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish—and that may hurt their odds of attaining certain key, contentious leadership roles.”

Wow, that really flies in the face of all that we’ve been taught by our HR Heroes, doesn’t it!   Well, not exactly, just because treating employees fairly and with respect might not get you promoted, it doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do.  That’s a hard pill to swallow thought, right?  How many times in your career have you looked at someone who was promoted and said to yourself “how the hell did they get promoted!?”  It’s usually the leader who is pushing people around, and no one likes, and the CEO taps them on the shoulder for the next VP role.  Some more from the HBR article:

“We’ve long wondered why managers don’t always behave fairly, because doing so would clearly benefit their organizations: Studies show that the success of change initiatives depends largely on fair implementation. Our research suggests an answer. Managers see respect and power as two mutually exclusive avenues to influence, and many choose the latter.  Although this appears to be the more rational choice, it’s not always the correct one—and it poses big risks for organizations.” 

Do you know why managers choose “Power” over “Respect” as a leadership style?  It’s easier!  I mean way EASIER!  Positional power makes your job so much easier to move things through organizations and get things done – but you burn a lot of bridges and relationships on that path.  Getting things accomplished through mutual respect and influence can take time, but ultimately is more rewarding.  Time tends to be the big factor with this, though.  In today’s organizations we frequently feel pushed by time to get things done – Now – and that “now” tends not to work well with “respect”.   More from HBR:

“Companies can benefit from placing more value on fairness when assessing managerial performance. Our early follow-up research suggests that managers whose style is based on respect can gain power. Their path upward may be difficult, but it’s one worth taking, for their company’s sake as well as their own.”

Thus, this is the key – want to build Great leaders in your organization? Give them this time to get things done through leading with a style based in respect.  Want to get something done tomorrow, and not care about how your employees are getting treated?  Let positional power rule the day, and be comfortable with your leaders throwing their weight around the office to get things done.  Let’s face it, this isn’t an all or nothing exclusive thing.  We need our leaders to do both – treat employees with respect, and get results quickly.  That’s why we have HR!  That is a tough thing to accomplish, but HR Pros can help leaders accomplish this task.

I actually don’t have 50 ways to piss off an HR Pro – well, let me take that back – I could easily come up with 50 ways, but you don’t pay me to do this and that would be a lot of work (well, probably not that much work, but you still don’t pay me) – BUT, I do have one major way to Piss off an HR Pro – but liked the title from Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover:

The Wall Street Journal had a pretty cool article this week called: The Unemployed Worker’s New Friend: Outsourcers which dives into a relatively new industry of offshore companies that are mass sending a person’s resume to as many job openings as possible, for very little investment.  Now don’t get me wrong, resume services have been around for a long time, but add off-shoring to the mix and some language barriers – and what you get is a recipe for a bunch of unqualified resumes coming across your desk. From the article:

For a $10 monthly fee ($40 for the first month) an automated service called MyJobHunter.com sent out more than 500 job applications in five months on Mr. Moomjean’s behalf. Within a day after a job opening hit the Web, the service scanned it for certain keywords. In Mr. Moomjean’s case, the words included “sales” and “retail.” If the listing was a match, the service would fire off a résumé to the employer without so much as showing it to the applicant…

In a span of 240 hours over three months last summer, JobSerf’s staff applied to 711 jobs on behalf of IT manager Colin Campbell, 34, of Cincinnati. Mr. Campbell said he got dozens of calls from potential employers. But he didn’t get his current job that way; he got it through a personal connection.

On a single day last summer, Greg Moffitt, 47, of Houston, sent out more than 100 applications via MyJobHunter. An irritated recruiter, who got his résumé three times, eventually called to ask him to stop.

“I knew that 20% of positions were a complete miss, but I’d rather have too many submissions than too few,” Mr. Moffitt said.

So, here’s the #1 way to piss off an HR Pro – send them a resume for a position that you are not remotely qualified for!

Look, I get it – when you’re out of work, sending out 500 resumes to any job seems like the right thing to do – and what the heck – if I can get a 9 year old in China to do it for $4 a day – well, that’s just the good old lazy American way!   But it’s not.  There aren’t easy ways out in finding the “right” job. Sure a resume service will find you some opportunities, but mass sending resumes isn’t going to find you that perfect fit – you need to put in the research and make the calls and tap your inner circle of contacts.  Plus, I truly believe there is some value that you gain from the sweat equity of looking for a job, and sending out those 500 resumes on your own.  You gain some empathy, some respect, some appreciation – for which many of us take for granted – Being Employed!

So, do it yourself – you don’t have a job, so you have 24 hours a day to spend to look for one. You don’t have a pay check, so even $10 per month is too much to spend on something you can do yourself.  Plus – you won’t piss me off when I get your resume sent to from a bot in India for my sales position, when you haven’t sold anything since that lemonade stand you had when you were 8 – and even then only your mom bought.

Closing Keynote speaker at SHRM11  – was Michael J. Fox, former Teen Wolf, Back to the Future, Alex P. Keaton – MJF!

Here’s a guy who goes from High School Drop out, to major TV and Movie Star, to being dropped back to earth with Parkinson’s, and what struck me most were some of his key takeaways from his experiences.  Rule #9 of The Sackett Rules is – Don’t be a Victim – and this guy is an Anti-Victim, he’s so far away from being a victim I want to wear a t-shirt with his picture on it, like he’s Superman!

Here are a few of the gems he shared with the capacity crowd at SHRM 11 –

– “Speaking of my Dad, he’s the first person you call in a crisis, but the last person you want to show up!”

–“Life changes and you change with it, the script of your life is not written.”

–“If you’re going to be a lumberjack, you have to go to the forest.”

–“My Mom thought my head was in the clouds. My Dad was convinced it was somewhere farther south!”

–“Early success and fame is like throwing Miracle Grow on your character defects.”

-On his wife Tracey calling him an Asshole upon first meeting him on Family Ties – “Nobody talks to me that way, I’m Marty McFly!”

-After learning he had Parkinson’s – “My happiness would grow in direct proportion to my acceptance of the disease.”

–“Loss doesn’t leave a vacuum, it creates opportunity.”

–“Parkinson’s, its like standing in the road with your feet in cement knowing that a bus is coming, but not when.”

–“I was still me, just me with Parkinson’s.” on going through the 5 stages of grief.

– On telling his 5 year old son about his disease – “He still realized I was Dad, I was just shaky Dad.”

–“The only decision I don’t have in life is Parkinson’s, everything else is my call.”

–“I know about loss, about how it feels when life gets re-arranged, still, don’t play to the results.”

–“I like my job, finding a cure for Parkinson’s, but I’m looking forward to being Unemployed!”

– On his wife Tracey, her role of a caretaker and their marriage – “The more complicated it gets, the more it seems to bring out the best in us.”

It always make me feel like less of a person when I see someone who is facing a great challenge, but they aren’t complaining, they aren’t giving up, they are facing it head-on and kicking it in the Ass!  Michael J. Fox is really an inspiration to so many people who feel like they are stuck in life, or can’t make a change – he reminded a bunch of people today that they can, that they hold the power within themselves to do whatever it is they want.

Please check out www.MichaelJFox.org to support Micheal’s search for a Parkinson’s cure.

Got into a really good HR conversation yesterday at #SHRM11 in Las Vegas.  The conversation wasn’t at a session or about a session or with someone I even knew – and to me this is the real value of an event like SHRM National.  I’m sitting down, having something to eat, and I strike up a conversation with the guy sitting next to.  He’s from Dallas, TX – we go through the small talk stuff – Mavericks rocked this year, yeah it’s hot and muggy – my brother in-law lives in Frisco, etc.  Come to find out we share some similar background of both having past work experience of working in the casual dining industry – which leads to a really cool dynamic conversation about how HR and Operations work best together and how to make that happen.

The details of this conversation really don’t matter – why it happened does.

17,000 people are at this conference.  It seems like most are here to go to the expo and see what cool HR products are out there – and there are a ton, or they’re here to get continuing ed credits and attend sessions.  Here is where there is a huge miss!  I see way to many thousands of HR Pros here that hang with their own tribe, and don’t venture outside of the tight network.  I’ve been here for two days and have met new HR Pros and made connections with people in 10 different states, multiple industries and in multiple HR disciplines.  My social/professional network in HR has expanded exponentially and that is the real value of attending a conference.

So, here’s my challenge to you.

Today, tomorrow, or the next conference you attend, challenge yourself to go out of your way to purposely go out and introduce yourself to a HR Pro you don’t know, purposely begin to build and expand your social/professional network.  It doesn’t have to be someone in your same industry and your same career path – in fact sometimes this isn’t even the most valuable connections you want to have.  You’ll be amazed at the results – maybe not with just one meeting, but as you go out and do this over and over you’ll begin to see how this expands your view of HR in general.

It use to be that you were only as strong as your weakest player. Today, you are as strong as your strongest connection!  Go get stronger.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about development vs. performance.  How much money should you put into an employee to get out of them the performance that you need vs. how much money should you pay to get the talent that will perform at the level you need without having to develop them.  Remember – Training and Development are two different things.  Training is the knowledge you give someone to do a specific function or job at your company that is unlike another company.  Development is knowledge you give an employee that will help them at your company, or any other company – it’s transferable.  Yes, there’s some gray area – some training will help some at other places as well.

Here is the dilemma – you have a position to fill – and you can do it a number of ways but two are predominant –

1. Hire High Level Talent – will cost more, but you don’t have development costs, they will come in and perform at a higher level right off the bat.  Let’s think about an engineer with experience – for $85K

2. Hire lower/no experience Talent – costs you much less, but you’ll have a ton of ramp up time to get them up to speed and performing at a level you need. Let’s think about the same engineer at $45K.

So, our opportunity cost seems to be around $40K in development -simplistically (clearly the opportunity costs are much greater taking into account an experienced person in the short-term will produce more, make fewer errors, etc. – so $40K is just the salary difference) .   If you were to take $40K and a young fresh engineer with a great attitude – could you have them producing the same as an engineer with 5 years experience within a year?  That’s the $40K question right!?

As HR Pros we tend to gloss over this entire equation on every position we have and let our hiring managers tell us what they need, instead of really analyzing the organization needs short-term and long-term.  If a group already has 80% of their headcount with under 5 years of experience, maybe it makes perfect sense to go after the senior talent. But if the group is loaded with senior talent and the hiring manager just doesn’t want to take the time and energy to “develop” a new employee – so they ask for another senior – are you really thinking strategically about your people needs?

The flip side of this is having the patience as an organization to know – we hired low level experience with a commitment to develop – we can’t freak out when the person is at 9 months and not giving us the same performance as our person with 10 years.  We struggle with this concept many times – and let our hiring managers pull us down with them.  “Well, there both engineers – so we shouldn’t expect different levels of performance.” Yes, we should – one has 1 year, the other has 10 years – they better be performing different – or I’m paying my 10 year guy way the hell to much!

The Big Question – When was the last time you sat down with a hiring manager and did and ROI on their employee development costs, as a comparison to the talent they have within their group?

If I hear someone tell me they are getting “out of the box” one more time, in terms of solving a problem, I’m going to shoot myself!   “But Tim! Isn’t that what every boss wants to hear?”  (is anyone annoyed, yet, that I ask myself questions in my posts, because I assume the reader is to dumb to ask these questions themselves!? Me, I am!) Anyway, one of the only reasons someone gets out of the box, if they are somewhat intelligent, is they are trying to find a way to solve the problem, by doing less work.  99.9% of all of your problem can be solved by just doing the work that is in front of you – but that can be hard, time consuming and takes discretionary effort.  So, we get “out of the box”! 

We feel this need to do more with less, think smarter not work harder, find a way to work an end-around, around this problem.   We tend to value “out-of-the-box” thinking over “plain-old” hard work.  One of my 3 rules of Blogging is: I can’t talk about my wife (it’s just like the Fight Club rules) – first rule of The Tim Sackett Project – can’t talk about the wife.  So, let’s just say there is a special woman in my life (you’ll come to learn I’m not a very good rule follower). This special woman is the most successful person I know, personally, in my life – there hasn’t ever been a time in her life when she was not wildly successful at whatever it was she put her mind to (again this isn’t my wife ;).   Now my special woman friend, is not an out-of-the-box thinker, in fact she very much likes being in the box – it’s warm and comfortable and you know what to expect.  Remember, she’s not successful – she’s “wildly” successful!

So, what does she do – she works harder than everyone else – always.  In fact, if there is any easy way to get something done, she won’t accept it, she’ll find a harder way to do it!  She sees a problem and immediately goes to work on it, gets dirty, sweats, stays up late, gets up early, and flat out-works everyone else to solve the problem.  We tend to over value Out-of-the-Box thinking in our society.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place to creative thinking and planning – but there is also a time and place for hard work – and that time and place should be taking up more time than most of us are allowing for.  Too many buy into Abe Lincoln’s quote: “Give me 6 hours to cut down a tree, and I’ll spend the first 4 sharpening the ax.” That’s great – but if your “ax” is already sharp enough, start chopping down that damn tree!   Eventually the diminishing returns law comes into effect, the ax can only be so sharp, where is actually helps you cut faster – after a certain point you’re just sharpening to sharpen.

What did we learn:

1.  There is absolutely no replacement for hard work (try assessing for that!). 

2. Creative thinking is wonderful, to a point, and that point is when work needs to get done.

3. I’m not seeing another woman – my wife is a really hard worker and wildly successful and this isn’t a make-up piece!