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!

Big news this past weekend on Osama Bin Laden finally getting found and killed by U.S. Forces.  I’m told by the media it is suppose to be a day of celebration as we finally made due on what Al Qaeda did on 9/11 – but you know what?  I don’t feel like celebrating.  We lost thousands of innocent people on 9/11 – we have lost more since fighting this war on terrorism – and it’s sad.  It’s sad because I know killing Bin Laden isn’t going to stop Al Qaeda, it isn’t going to stop terrorism – this is bigger than one person.

I have the same feeling today as I had when OJ was acquitted and people were celebrating in the streets.  I didn’t understand it and it left me with an empty feeling.  A feeling that we as a society still didn’t understand the other side – a side that would celebrate a murderer (allegedly) going free. 

So today, we are out again in the streets celebrating. Celebrating we got our guy. Celebrating that we finally got back at the man who caused our nation so much pain.  I don’t feel like celebrating – I feel like getting down on my knees and praying to G*d that this will all stop – that we won’t feel the need to celebrate revenge, that we can get back to celebrating life.

God Bless the men and women of our Armed Forces who gave their life to stop this monster – I wish they wouldn’t have had to do it in the first place.

Matt (@akaBruno) Stollak put together an eBook of some of our favorite Sports related HR posts from an impressive group of HR bloggers and myself (see how I didn’t include myself in the “impressive group of HR bloggers” – that’s called self-insight my fellow HR Pros!). 

Here’s our Line Up:

– Kris Dunn – The HR Capitalist; Head FOT’er , KinetixHR and smooth shooting 2 guard, maybe a 3 if he’s playing with all white guys – but on this team we have him play the 5 – plus he’s probably the only one who can actually play anyway.

– Lance Huan – Of the @TheLance, Rehaul, TLNT fame – definitely a point guard build, but with a Barkley personality.

– Steve Boese – HR Technology, HR Happy Hour host, and he works someplace but doesn’t like to talk about it (we think he might actually be a spy!) – a solid two guard who likes to spot up in the corner, wearing the old school Chucks.

– Matt Stollak – @akaBruno, St. Norberts HR Professor straight out of Green Bay (err, DePere), the prof that you always wanted in school, we have him play the 3 the primarily because most teams don’t run well with 3 point guards on the floor at the same time.

– Me– The Tim Sackett Project (that’s original), FOT’er 4 Life, HRU EVP – playing the 4 spot because although I have a personality like Barkley, I also have the backside to match – which means I can box out anyone!

So, check out our eBook –  The 8 Man Rotation

A funny thing happened a couple of years ago – I went to go run my Mom’s business. That in of itself isn’t funny – the funny part took place during a 5 minute conversation before we (she) decided it was final, I was coming in to run the show.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Mom: So, what should we call you?

Me: Well, I don’t care, as long as the check clears.

Mom: Very funny, I’m the President and CEO.

Me: How about VP?

Mom: We already have a VP.

Me: How about COO?

Mom: We aren’t that big.

Me: How about Executive VP?

Mom:Perfect. You can have my office in the corner, be ready to take over in 3 months. (4 days later she left and I was the new Executive VP in charge)

Now, this was more than 4 days in the making – I had previously spent 8 years working at HRU, then 10 years working corporate recruiting and HR positions across a number of industries with some fantastic companies – so I was groomed so-to-speak. Plus the fact I can remember sitting on my Mom’s bed at night when I was a kid while she called candidates about positions she was recruiting for – you could say I was bred to do this job.

So – what about the title?

I was reminded a couple of days ago when a good friend of mine got a new title – going from Sr. Manager to VP of Talent or something (all before she turned 30).  It reminded me of me – I had a goal (like most young ambitious people have) to be a VP before the age of 35.  I was young enough, and naive enough, not to really care about what I was going to VP of – I just needed that title!  That title would give me so many things:

• Prestige
• Honor
• Responsibility
• Credibility (I mean they just don’t give out VP titles to anyone, right? Right?…)
• Perceived Importance to the Organization
• Etc, etc., etc.

Ben Horowitz had a great article at Fortune recently – Titles and Promotions – where he theorizes titles are important because:

1. Employees want them—while you may plan to work at your company forever, at least some of your employees need to plan for life after your company. When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was “Dude.”

2. Eventually, people need to know who is whom—As companies grow, everybody won’t know everybody else. Importantly, employees won’t know what each other do and whom they should work with to get their jobs done. Job titles provide an excellent short hand for describing roles in the company. In addition, customers and business partners can also make use of this short hand to figure out how to best work with your company.

Beyond these core reasons, employees will use titles to calibrate their value and compensation against their colleagues. If an employee with a title of Junior Engineer believes that she is a far better programmer than her counterpart with the title Senior Architect, this will indicate to her that she may be under paid and undervalued. Because titles will be used to calculate relative value, they must be managed carefully.

So, do I think titles are important – No, I don’t – Yes, I do.  No, because I’ve learned now after almost 20 years in HR – titles are meaningless to who actually performs and gets the job done. Yes, because, like Ben says above, enough people care about them, that as HR Pros we have to care.  Let’s face it, very few people have the internal fortitude and confidence, to work without stripes.  Most employees like to know who’s in charge and who is caring the “A” card in the decision making tree.   Whether I like it or not, titles matter to many people for many reasons and it’s our job in HR to figure out how to best utilize this tool, than, for the benefit of our organizations.

But for the record – no matter what my title is – I still report to Mom!

I was reminded of something recently – getting out of the box – isn’t comfortable.

Now – I know what some of your are thinking – “But, Tim, you need to get out of the box to challenge yourself, to push the limits, to get you and your organization better!”

Really?

Or have we been sold this by this eras snake oil salesmen and women (leadership trainers, life coaches, every motivation and leadership book written in the last 20 years)?

I’m not sure.

Here’s what I know:

1. People perform better when they know their boundaries. (their box)

2. There is comfort in knowing what to expect, with comfort comes sustained performance long-term.

3. In reality, a very small percentage of your employees will actually perform above their average performance being “out of the box”.

We as HR Pros tend to a little overboard sometimes, in the attempt to “help out” the cause within our organization – that can be both good and bad.  Things are going as well as they could be, so we push to get everyone out of their box and reinvent themselves, in hopes that this will lead to better performance and higher organizational results.  When in fact, many times, it will lead to the exact opposite.  Not everyone is wired to get “out of the box” – in fact probably at a minimum 80% of workforce should stay in their box, and keep plugging along with their solid performance that they are already giving you.

The trick to great HR in getting great performance – is to find those race horses who you can push out of the box, and they show you a whole other level of performance that you and they didn’t know existed.  But if you keep pushing plow horses out on to the track in hopes of turning them into a race horse – you and they will fail.  So, don’t drink the Kool-aid and believe everyone can and wants to be out of the box thinkers and performers – not everyone does – and you limit yourself by thinking in such general terms.