T3 – Boon

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This week on T3 I take a look at Boon. Boon is a new talent crowdsourcing marketplace. Basically, Boon is a referral marketplace for sharing relevant opportunities with your personal network. Ther are some others in this space, that do it a bit differently, but it’s basically a recruiting disrupter that cuts out the middle man.

Boon is set up a bit differently, by allowing agency and independent recruiters to set up a profile and work within their system as well. This would allow a recruiter, or any employee, to refer their ‘network’ to your openings. The real goal though is to allow anyone to do this kind of referring.

Membership is free, both for companies and for the individuals who sign up to refer candidates. If the employer hires someone via Boon, it’s billed $5,000. Boon then takes a 10% cut—and passes $4,500 to the member who made the referral.

5 Things I like about Boon:

1. Boon uses a matching algorithm to automatically match your network with jobs on their platform, so you don’t have to do the work. It then shows you who might be a good match, so you can decide which ones you want to refer easily

2. You could easily use Boon as an internal employee referral program. From the dashboard you can input all of your employees, they can decide if they want to tap their own networks, but the system makes it easy to share and match their company jobs to their networks, plus it also eliminates tracking and paying out of referrals.

3. From the referral side, Boon, auto tracks your referrals and the dashboard shows you where your referral is within the process, so you don’t ever have to wonder what happened to that person you referred.

4. Boon takes 10% off the top of the referral to the referring person, the company pays Boon directly. Currently, the Boon referral is $5000, but soon a company using Boon for employee referrals will be able to customize that amount as a percent of the hiring salary.

5. Boon also allows organizations to post their jobs privately, to only your employees, or publicly to all Boon users, in case you wanted to give your employees first shot at referring a friend or peer.

Boon is really simple to use and upload job descriptions. The matching technology to the referring user’s network sets it apart from similar technology on the market.  Well worth taking a look, especially if you don’t have any technology for employee referrals, this could be a very inexpensive alternative!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

@SHRM Talent Management in Orlando – I’m Here, Are you?

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I’m speaking twice this week at SHRM Talent Management in Orlando.  SHRM’s TM conference is a combination of Talent Management and quickly becoming SHRM’s Talent Acquisition conference. The agenda content is about 50/50, with some really great Talent Acquisition speakers on the agenda.

I like the SHRM events from a speaker’s point of view because the attendees at SHRM are real-life in the trenches everyday HR and Talent Acquisition Pros. It’s not about being the most innovative, it’s about trying to get unburied and many times just surviving the day and week!  This is real HR and Recruiting.

I have a problem. I’m not sure how to solve it. Do you have some ideas?  A lot of ideas flow from conferences like this, and that’s my style of speaking. I want to give you a few things you can take back and start using immediately.  I’m not here to change your entire world. I’ve been in HR and Recruiting too long, to understand, one conference session isn’t going to change your world. But, I might be able to make a bit better.

My two sessions are – Moneyball Recruiting – The Simple Science Behind Great Hiring on Monday at 3pm. Think a lot of slides with pictures of Brad Pitt and me talking about how you can turn your recruiting into the Oakland A’s draft board. Did you hear me!? Brad Pitt slides!  My second session is Wednesday morning at 9:45am and is titled: See What’s Next. Be What’s Next. The Future of Talent Acquisition.  Less slides with Brad Pitt, but I threw in some slides of my cutest kid!

Shoutout to the SHRM folks for giving me the best time slots I’ve ever gotten at a SHRM conference! I feel like Steve Browne!

Let me know if you are around and we can meet up for a hug and Diet Mt. Dew – I’m on the Twitters @TimSackett or send me an email to timsackett@comcast.net.

 

Top 70 Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in 2016

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Ongig released this study this past week – The Top 70 Applicant Tracking Systems of 2016. This study is based on around 3300 employers around the world, most in the U.S.  To put that into perspective, there are over 200,000 employers in the U.S. alone with over 100 employees.

I use 100 employees, because once you get to that magic 100 employee number, usually at that point we see companies begin to purchase their first real HR technology – HR System of Record and an ATS. So, it’s a pretty limited sample, but better than anything else you’ll find, plus, it’s a good list of a possible 70 ATSs to take a look at. Also, realize, and I don’t have an exact number, but I would be there are well over 500 ATS systems on the market right now.

Here’s the list:

ATS 2015 Share
Taleo 36.43%
Homegrown 11.10%
Jobvite 8.58%
Kenexa – Brassring 7.56%
iCims 6.39%
ADP 4.79%
SAP-SuccessFactors 3.72%
PeopleFluent (Formerly PeopleClick) 2.52%
Silkroad 2.27%
iRecruitment/PeopleSoft 1.74%
Ultipro 1.67%
Greenhouse 1.67%
HRDepartment 1.28%
Newton Software 0.78%
Jobscore 0.50%
Lumesse 0.50%
WorkDay 0.46%
Lever 0.46%
PeopleAnswers 0.46%
Kronos 0.39%
Jazz.co 0.39%
HRSmart 0.39%
MyStaffingPro 0.35%
ContactHR 0.32%
Ceridian 0.32%
HireBridge 0.28%
PCRecruiter.com 0.28%
Force.com 0.25%
HealthCareResource 0.25%
ApplicantPro 0.21%
ATS OnDemand 0.21%
ApplicantStack 0.21%
HRMDirect 0.21%
eRecruiting 0.18%
Cornertone OnDemand 0.18%
Smartrecruiter 0.18%
CATS ATS 0.14%
SmartSearch 0.14%
Luceo 0.14%
Pereless 0.14%
Bird Dog 0.11%
GlobalSuccessor 0.11%
Hiredesk 0.11%
iApplicants 0.11%
TrueBlue 0.11%
Hyrell 0.11%
Bullhorn 0.11%
JobScience 0.11%
Vitae 0.11%
ResumeWare 0.11%
Navicus 0.07%
RecruiterBox 0.07%
Workable 0.07%
Recruiting.com 0.07%
Snaphire 0.07%
Tribepad 0.07%
ClearCompany 0.04%
Jobstreet 0.04%
Konetic 0.04%
Njoyn 0.04%
Selctrak 0.04%
SpeediARMS 0.04%
HireRabbit 0.04%
JJ Keller 0.04%
netMedia 0.04%
NovaHire 0.04%
PracticeMatch 0.04%
TeamWorkOnline 0.04%
PeopleAdmin 0.04%

Crazy, right?

Obviously, Taleo has a huge market share, and many large enterprise clients use them because of the integration with Oracle. Taleo has a giant built-in market.

More surprising for many would be the huge number of homegrown ATSs being used. I’ve seen so many of these, and almost every single one is awful! In fact, you can get a free ATS that is better than 99% of the homegrown systems being used today.

Another thing you’ll see, and it won’t change, is that the top enterprise level HRIS systems on the market, will also have a huge share of the ATS market – Orcale/Taleo, Workday, ADP, Kronos, SAP/SuccessFactors, UltiPro, etc.  Most of these ATS systems are designed for big, giant cumbersome talent acquisition processes. They are not the best ATS technology on the market, but HR executives who know nothing about recruiting, usually, just want integration. This is one major reason why most giant organizations fail at TA.

This list, alone, is why buying a new, or first, ATS system is so difficult. The choices are endless, and many of these on the list, are frankly, not very good ATS technology, some are brilliant. So, you can’t just buy what everyone else is buying, because that is a major trap as well.  So, do your research, and if you still feel lost, find someone who actually knows this technology!

At the very least, before you sign the contract, talk to current customers of the ATS that are at all stages – current implementation, a year into using it, seasoned users. Also, talk to people that have left them in the past year and find out why. If the ATS vendor won’t help you find these contacts, run away from them!

Thanks to Ongig for putting this together – cool stuff, if you’re a geek like me!

The Best Recruiters are Competitive, A Hypothesis

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I’ve worked in recruiting and HR for about twenty years. At this point in my career, I estimate that I’ve hired about 100 Recruiters.

I’ve hired recruiters that come from almost every environment and education. I’ve gone the Enterprise Rent A Car route and hired college athletes. I’ve gone to colleges and hired HR graduates. I’ve hired seasoned recruiting veterans from both agency and corporate. I’ve hired uneducated individuals from service backgrounds. I’ve hired specific practitioners who have deep knowledge of what they’re recruiting – nurses, IT pros, etc.

None of these things made one bit of difference when it came to performance as a recruiter, in either environment, corporate or agency.

The only thing I’ve found to be a differentiator of true recruiting performance is the level of competitiveness an individual has internally. This is why it’s so popular to hire former athletes as recruiters, we assume since they are athletic, that they must be competitive. But, this also fails, many times.

You see, you don’t have to play sports to be competitive.  You might just be that kid you threw the Monopoly board across the room when you lost to your sister. You might be that person who can’t stand that your neighbor’s lawn looks better than yours. Who knows why and what you’re competitive with, but it’s the key to being great a recruiting.

Many will wrongly assume that males are more competitive than females. In my experience, I’ve found this not to be true. Both sexes can be very competitive, it’s finding which ones are competitive that becomes the difficult thing.

So, why does being competitive help make you a great recruiter?

I believe competitiveness is a great trait for recruiters because it leads them to want to ‘win’.  What’s the win in recruiting? It’s filling the position! Recruiting is just one small game, after another. Each one that is slightly different, with new complexities to complete.  Each time you fill an opening, that is like making a point on your scoreboard.

If you put a group of these people together, even though they’re all working on separate openings, they see each other making placements and they want to do this as well. This competitive drive, alone, makes an individual succeed or fail at recruiting.

This becomes the main issue of why selecting non-proven recruiters is such a crap shoot. It’s very difficult to measure someone’s competitive drive accurately, and interview questioning is unreliable. In my 100 hires, I would say I’m 50/50 in getting it right. When I talk to other agency executives and TA Leaders, many share the same ratio.

Want to hire better recruiters?

Focus completely on finding ultra competitive people, who love keeping score, and throw them into the game.  I like to say Recruiting isn’t hard, but I know that it is.  Recruiting is easy if you’ve got the right people, who will do whatever it takes to win. That’s the competitive difference!

The Most Average Place on Earth

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I was on Spring Break last week and I took my wife and two youngest sons to California. First, let me say, SoCal was pretty great! 70’s and Sunny, like 8 days in a row. I don’t think I’ve seen 70s and sunny for eight straight days in Michigan, ever! We stayed in Hermosa Beach. It was awesome. Perfect California vibe.

We also did a day at Disneyland and California Adventure.

I would say I’m a casual fan of Disney. I’m not a crazy Disney person, you know who you are. My sons are 19, 17 and 12. We haven’t been to Disney in about ten years. The last time we went was to Orlando and Disney World. We had a great experience.

This experience was fine.  Do you think Disney would like as a review? “Yeah, it was fine. It cost about $1000 for one day for a family of four and it seemed pretty fine…”

Fine.

The weather was great. Disney didn’t provide that. That was California and Delta Airlines.

It started off with me entering the Disney parking garage and paying $10. $10 to park? I’m about to pay $169 per person for one-day hopper passes and Disney feels like I should also pay $10. I would have rather paid $179 for each ticket ($40 towards parking), and not have paid anything for parking!  It’s the principle of it. You’re killing me to enter the park, at least, let me park for free.

The reason we go to Disney is because it’s supposed to Magical! That magic includes how you are treated, the cleanliness of the parks, how helpful the workers are, etc. You leave going, “Holy crap! Now that is customer service!” I left saying, “It was fine.”

The cost of stuff at Disney isn’t an issue for me. If you go to Disney you have to know you’re giving up a year of college for your kids. It’s a trade off so many families make on an annual basis. It just is what it is. For that huge cost, I do expect to the ‘classic’ Disney customer service.

I’ll give you some examples of things I was part of that showed me Disney has dropped off considerably:

  1. When you go on a ride at Disney those workers who are manning the ride are really into it, or at least, they should be. The workers at Disneyland were similar to the workers of any theme park I’ve been to in the last ten years. For that matter, they were similar to any fast-food workers I’ve come into contact with. I’m here. I’m getting paid to do this job. Next.
  2. Part of going to Disney is waiting in line. You have a lot of time to watch what’s going on. The details are what used to make Disney great. We were going on the Buzz Lightyear ride and the line was going out into the walkway. Disney likes to keep people in the line maze, so the guy in charge of Buzz Lightyear stopped to passing Disney workers from another ride to ask for help in extending his line. Both looked at him like, how dare you ask us! The one even said, “this isn’t my ride, I don’t know how to do that.” He was good, knowing he had guests watching, he said, “if you just watch my post for ten seconds I’ll take care of it.” She agreed and he ran and took care of it. She then complained to her coworker the entire thirty seconds he went to take care of this problem. This is not the Disney I expected.
  3. At one point I needed to use the restroom. I stopped a Disney worker and asked where I could find a restroom. He gave me directions. Go down that road, take a right, etc. Okay. My Disney expectation was this worker would have shown me where to go, at least, part way. “Let me show you.” Instead of, “Take the third right at the next intersection.”

For those who haven’t ever been to Disney, this might seem silly. I would say Disney expects more. Thus, I expect more when I go. My $1000 expects more ($10 for parking, $700 for tickets, $200 for food and drinks and $100 for souvenirs).

After spending 14 hours at the two parks on one day, I left feeling like Disney is no longer the most magical place on Earth. It was more like the most average place on Earth. My wife and kids felt the same way.

So, why does any of this matter? If you position yourself as “great”, as “the best”, as “magical”, people expect you’ll actually be that thing. Universal Studios doesn’t have this issue, but the experience is almost exactly the same. Under promise, over deliver. Disney is in an over promise, under deliver problem.

The one bad thing about marketing yourself as ‘magical’ is that people expect the experience to be, magical.

T3 – Elevated Careers

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This week on T3 I take a look at new careers site being developed by dating site eHarmony, called Elevated Careers. I actually reviewed them back in October of 2015 at the HR Technology Conference, but they were in beta. They had their big launch recently, so I wanted to remind folks to check them out now that it’s live!

I was at the launch and learned a few things to add:

  • Dr. Warren is super passionate about making this work. He truly believes Elevated Careers can match companies and candidates for the right fit.
  • Organizational Fit is still something that organizations haven’t figured out. Which makes this a giant market that is basically untapped.
  • Elevated Careers is taking great care not to become a job site for eHarmony.

Elevated has taken the successful compatibility matching technology of eHarmony that is responsible for 438 marriages per day – that’s 4% of all marriages in the U.S. per day! – and applied the same scientific methods to match employees with jobs and companies. Just as eHarmony came about because Dr. Neil Clark Warren knew there had to be a better way to finding love than just luck, Elevated believes that if jobs and employees are matched based on compatibility, people will be much more satisfied and fulfilled in their jobs, and companies will have higher rates of employee retention, motivation, engagement, and productivity.

If you’re like me, the first time I heard of Elevated Careers, I chuckled a bit. I admit, I’m sophomoric and a twelve-year-old at heart! Once I got a chance to see the product, and smart minds behind it, I was chuckling for a different reason. These folks know what they’re doing, and they have a giant captured audience to leverage. Think what you want about dating sites, but they know how to build trust, get massive amounts of data on their members and at that point is just a matter of leveraging that data.

5 Things I really like about Elevated Careers:

1. Elevated Careers gets what most career sites don’t even focus on – Fit Matters!  Their backbone is a freaking dating website; they’re going to be better at matching and fit than almost anyone!

2. eHarmony has been public about making this work. This bodes well for ensuring they’ll get the investment needed to make a great product. The UI is already very tight and intuitive. They made a very easy to use product.

3. Elevated will have a unique talent pool to leverage, that is unlike any other product on the market. You won’t be able to contact dating website members, that would kill that brand, which they have to very protective over, but you will be able to market to those members through Elevated.

4. Their fit technology will give candidates a Compatibility Score. This will help candidates know how well they will potentially fit with a potential company, but also show them where and why they fall short.

5. The job function is more than just an aggregator, as organizations will have to validate themselves before their jobs will show up in search. This way candidates know the jobs they’re applying for are current and up-to-date.

Having trouble hiring people that fit your company and culture?  Give Elevated Careers a demo and see what they’ve got.  The science behind their product is proven and very strong. They just might have found the secret sauce for organizational and job fit!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Should people be paid based on their value to their organization?

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Every day we see examples of people, usually women, and minorities, that aren’t paid fairly, as compared to their counterparts doing the same work. Here is a recent example dealing with the U.S. Women’s Soccer team:

Five key members of the U.S. women’s soccer team have filed a federal complaint against the U.S. Soccer Federation to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging wage discrimination. In the complaint, the players cite USSF figures from last year showing that they were paid nearly four times less than men’s players despite generating much more revenue…

The pay disparities exist even though the U.S. women have been successful not only on the field, but also at the ticket booth and in terms of television ratings. The team’s 5-2 win over Japan in last year’s World Cup final was the second-most-watched soccer match in U.S. television history, with 25.4 million viewers. That’s also the largest television audience for a game involving a U.S. national team; the biggest audience for a U.S. men’s game was 18.2 million for a USA-Portugal World Cup match in 2014….

Soccer payRevenues for 4-year cycle: $60.2 million for US men, $51.2 million for US women…Former U.S. men’s star Landon Donovan, meanwhile, says pay should be commensurate with revenue.”

So, what should it be? Should the women get paid the same, or more, than the men?

The women have had a much better performance. The men have brought in more money to U.S. Soccer.

Should they be paid exactly the same?

This is why compensation, on both an organizational and individual level, is so tough!  Many people want to  believe in pay for performance, but it’s not that easy.

If we truly compensated people based on what revenue, and profit, they drove to the organization, pay disparity would be worse than it already is.

What would I do in this circumstance?

Clearly, you need to bring the women’s compensation up closer to the men. I would not make it equal because the finances of it don’t work out. The men, at this point, make more revenue. So, I would develop a compensation model based on revenue. Since they are technically a nonprofit, you can’t base it on profit.

Because the revenues are close, the women would get a huge pay increase, but still be slightly below the men, right now. If revenues change, the comp models adjusts with the revenue change. I would also incorporate performance incentives based on reaching certain levels. This might actually push the women’s total comp above that of the men’s comp.

This puts a ton of risk on the players side. They think they want this, but what happens when revenue sucks some year, and now everyone takes a huge pay cut?  Then either side would lose their minds and still want to get paid. I want to have my cake and eat it too. Welcome to the world of compensation!

Welcome to the world of compensation!

So, what would you do for the U.S. Women’s soccer team?

Rerun – The #1 Cause of Bad Hires

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It’s Spring Break in Michigan, so I’m going to step away from the daily grind and throw some Reruns at you! You guys remember Rerun, from What’s Happening? (look it up, kids!) So, enjoy the Reruns, they’re some of my favorites!

Originally ran May 2013 – 

A while back I interviewed a lady that would make a great recruiter. She was high energy, great on the phone, could source and an HR degree.  She applied for the job we had open for a recruiter and 100% positive she would have accepted the position if I would have offered it. I didn’t. 

She wasn’t a ‘fit’.  The job she truly wanted, her ‘dream’ job, was in straight HR, not recruiting.  She was willing to recruit – she really didn’t want to recruit.  We walked away from a terrific candidate.

Poor job fit is the #1 reason most people fail at a job.

Organizations spend so much time and resources ensuring they’re hiring the right skills, but most totally fail when it comes to organization and job fit.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy to determine organizational fit.  Sure you can design an assessment, do peer interviewing, etc. But it always seems like a moving target, and it is.  Job fit also has multiple components:

1. The job you have open.

2. The company culture.

3. The job the candidate actually wants to do.

4. The job the candidate is willing to do and how good of an actor they are to prove to you that is the real job they want.

5. Your inability to see your perception of the candidate and their perception of themselves doesn’t align.

How many of you have ‘Poor Job Fit’ as a reason for termination on your exit interview form?

My guess is almost none.  Most managers and HR pros will list things like: performance, personality conflict, attitude, low skill set, personal reasons, schedule, etc.  We don’t want to use something like “Poor Job Fit” because what that says is “We suck at our jobs!”

The reality is – probably 75% of your terminations are because of poor job fit.  You hired someone with the skills you wanted, but the job you have doesn’t use or need most of those skills.  The job you have doesn’t meet the expectation you sold to the candidate.  The job you have isn’t really the job the person wants.

Most organizations would be farther off to hire by fit, than by skills. True statement.  HR pros hate to hear that – because it discounts a lot of what we do.  Job fit is the key to retention – not skills.  Find someone who wants to be a recruiter – and they probably

HR pros hate to hear that – because it discounts a lot of what we do.  Job fit is the key to retention – not skills.  Find someone who wants to be a recruiter – and they probably be a decent recruiter.  Find someone with great skills who doesn’t want to be a recruiter – and they’ll be a terrible recruiter. 

In almost every occupation where you don’t need professional certifications (doctor, lawyer, CPA, etc.) this holds true.  I know a great Accountant who never went to accounting school – better than anyone I’ve met you graduated from accounting school.  Some of the best teachers – never went to college to become a teacher – but they love teaching.

Do one thing for me the next time you interview a candidate for a job – ask them this one question:

“If you could have any job, in any location, what job would you select?  Why?” 

Their answer doesn’t have to be the job they’re interviewing for to be the ‘right’ answer.  Their answer should be in line with what you’re asking them to do – or you’re going to have a bad fit – and either you will eventually be terminating them, or they will eventually be resigning.

Rerun – I Love Hiring People Who Have Been Fired!

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It’s Spring Break in Michigan, so I’m going to step away from the daily grind and throw some Reruns at you! You guys remember Rerun, from What’s Happening? (look it up, kids!) So, enjoy the Reruns, they’re some of my favorites!

Originally ran July 2013 – 

There are few truisms I know in HR.

1. As soon as you think you’ll never be surprised again by something dumb done by an employee – you’ll be surprised.

2. You’ll be asked every year in HR to reduce your budget.

3. Employees will always believe HR knows more than HR really does know.

4. HR vendors always say they’re giving you their ‘lowest’ price until you say ‘no’, then a magical new lower price will come up.

5. Many employees who get fired were at one time really good employees.

The last one is one I really love!  It is a simple fact of life that most people will at some point in their life be fired from a job.   Might be their fault, or not, either way it’s not uncommon.  Here’s what happens to most people when they get fired – it’s like the 5 stages of grieving : You’re shocked – even when you know it’s coming; you’re pissed – how could you do this to ‘me’; you’re sad – what am I going to do; you’re anxious – I’ve got to get something, now!; and you’re determined – I’ll show you.   It doesn’t happen in this exact path for every person – but for many the flow is about the same.

Here’s what happens to most people when they get fired – it’s like the 5 stages of grieving : You’re shocked – even when you know it’s coming; you’re pissed – how could you do this to ‘me’; you’re sad – what am I going to do; you’re anxious – I’ve got to get something, now!; and you’re determined – I’ll show you.   It doesn’t happen in this exact path for every person – but for many the flow is about the same.

What you find is that someone who has been fired from a job comes with this cool little chip on their shoulder when you hire them.  It’s this deep down fire to show you and everyone else they know – that the person who was fired, isn’t who they truly are – they are more than that person.  This motivation is great!  It’s a completely different motivation than you get when you hire an employee who is currently employed and doesn’t really need your job.  I want people with some ‘want’ in them – some hunger – maybe a little pissed off with a chip on their shoulder! This edge, and memory of being fired, can carry people to great performance for years!

It’s a completely different motivation than you get when you hire an employee who is currently employed and doesn’t really need your job.  I want people with some ‘want’ in them – some hunger – maybe a little pissed off with a chip on their shoulder! This edge, and memory of being fired, can carry people to great performance for years!

In our organizations, we fire so many people who use to be great, and for a number or reasons you now believe they are crap.  And for you, they truly might be performing like crap – but for me they might be willing to be great again!  We had a saying when I was in HR at Applebee’s while doing annual calibration of our teams –

“if you talk about someone for more than 10 minutes they turn into a piece of crap”. 

Doesn’t matter who – our best to our worst employee – the longer you talk about them, the worse you start to view them.  This happens because it’s in our nature to focus on their opportunities, not their strengths – so the longer you talk the more you talk about what they can’t do, not what they can do.

So, there you have it – send me your crap employees – I’ll love them!

Rerun – Your Going Away Party

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It’s Spring Break in Michigan, so I’m going to step away from the daily grind and throw some Reruns at you! You guys remember Rerun, from What’s Happening? (look it up, kids!) So, enjoy the Reruns, they’re some of my favorites!

Originally ran January 2011 – I like to use a lot – of – dashes – in my writing in – early – 2011!

I think like everyone, I want to be a good leader.  I think like any leader, the definition of good is dependent on who is listening to your message, and what they take away from that message.  Leaders are constantly asked to walk a fine line – do what is right for the business and do what is right for our employees.

Most of you know, these two things don’t go in opposite directions but run parallel in the same direction (although many times, our employees don’t feel they are traveling in the same direction).  It’s not one or the other – business vs. employees – it’s both.  You need the health of both groups, one can’t live without the other – although – sometimes both sides think that one can live without the other.

In my 20 years of professional background, I think what I’ve learned from watching both good and bad leaders is that your ability to walk that fine line successfully – determines your fate.

It’s a very small margin for error.   You must be fair, consistent and above all communicate in an upfront, transparent way when you can.   Before I was put into a leader position – I didn’t get this fine line.  I would be frustrated with my leaders – why didn’t they support us more, why did they seemingly always support the business?  I vowed, when I was a leader, I’d be that person they didn’t have the courage to be.

It’s funny how careers have a way of giving you what you ask for!

The best HR leader I ever worked for gave me some advice, and frequently I reach back for it.  He said,

“Tim, employees will never throw you a party when you take something away.  But if it is the right thing to do, then you have to do it.  Because they will throw you a going away party when you get fired for not doing the right thing.” 

He wanted to know if I wanted to be the kind of leader that employees wanted to throw a party for or a kind of leader that didn’t want employees to throw a party for.

I think, I can do without the party.