LeBron James Isn’t Good Enough For My Team

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Just putting together the roster for my annual Men’s City Rec Basketball team.  I’ve been pretty lucky in the past and have gotten some great players to come out and let me jump on their back to the championships.  As of right now here’s my roster for 2013-2014 season:

Current Starters (based on last years roster):

Point Guard: Craig Miller – Mid 30’s, 5’10”- still in ‘decent shape’ (this means he’s younger and faster than most of us).  He’s good for one wide open layup per quarter and one turnover.

Shooting Guard:  Don McCormick – 39, 6’0″ – He’s flat out money, I don’t think he’s missed a shot since 1998. Played DIII ball back in the early 90’s.  His job sometimes makes it so he can’t make games – we struggle in those games.

Small Forward: Marcus Jones – 47, 6’2″ – He’s our one black guy (we’d like more black guys, but it’s hard to find middle aged black guys in the suburbs who want to play with a bunch of white guys), he’s also the oldest guy we have.  Really never makes a mistake unless it’s a no look pass to one of us which we weren’t expecting.

Big Forward: James Brookes – 32, 5’11” – He’s not a basketball player, he’s a weight lifter.  Can’t shoot or dribble, but he’s good to hurt at least one opposing player each game, sometimes two.

Center: Mikey ‘Stretch’ McGee – 42, 6′ 5″ – He’s our tallest guy.  He likes to shoot the three.  Could have played D1, ended up going the CC route.  Currently he’s a UPS driver.

The Backups:

Point Guard: Me – 43, 5’7″- player/coach/manager – I get in if we are really up big or down big.  I’ve never seen a shot I didn’t like.  My philosophy: ‘Shoot till you get hot, then shoot to stay hot”

The 6 footers:  Ben, Jerry and Ken: All of these guys are 6 foot and basically play any position.  I lumped them together because they really are the same player. Solid, can do it all, just don’t make them run too many minutes at one time.

We are looking to add one more player to our roster this year.  We lost Billy.  He had to have his knee replaced and his real estate business was taking off again after the recession, so he’s out.  Here are the three candidates we have to replace:

1. Matt Smith – New guy in town.  He’s really in shape.  His wife is way hot.  He has a great basement man cave.  Seems like he would fit in with the guys really well.

2. Josh Moore – Another six footer.  He’s subbed for us in the past.  Likes to shoot (meaning he takes my shots).  The guys know him, but he rubs some guys the wrong way (mostly me, he takes my shots)

3. LeBron James – Yep! You read that correctly.  Let’s just say I have a connection.  Nothing in his contract to stop him from playing with us on Tuesday nights.  His schedule actually allows him to make 90% of our 12 game schedule.  We would own the league!

Seems like a really easy choice right!?  Wrong!  You see, I went to the guys to vote.  Knowing they would all laugh and Lebron would get his ‘Legion 124’ jersey shipped in the mail.  But to my surprise Matt Smith won the vote.  I couldn’t believe it, I had to find out why.  Across the board the guys came back with the following reasons why LeBron wouldn’t be a good fit for our team:  Wouldn’t find it a challenge, he would be bored, he was over qualified, he would end up quitting half way into the season, he wouldn’t take it seriously.

We had a shot a Lebron James for our team, and we didn’t take him.  Hard to believe, right?

It’s your reality.  Everyday you turn down great talent in your organization.  You turn down LeBron James because you’re scared.  We don’t say we’re scared.  We give ‘legitimate’ reasons like: “You’re over qualified” and “You wouldn’t find this position challenging”.  But we are just telling ourselves this, to make us feel better about making a terrible decision to turn away great talent.  ‘Being over qualified’ for a position is the single lamest reason to turn down talent that HR and Talent Acquisition has ever come up with.

The question is, would you turn down LeBron James if he wanted to join your team?

I Once Got Fired In A Burger King Bathroom

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It didn’t escape me this past Sunday that USC head coach Lane Kiffin was fired in a private room at an airport.  Kiffin and the USC team were just returning from a loss at Arizona State University and the AD thought the best thing to do was fire him in the airport.  An airport seems like an odd place to perform a termination of a Division 1 Football coach. I mean, why fire him at the airport, why not bring him into the AD’s office, the next day or that evening, and have that conversation?  Make sure you have all of your paperwork and have talked through everything with your legal team.

It wasn’t that I was surprised.  Being in the HR field for 20 years, I’ve had my share of odd places to fire people.  For the most part you can call an employee into their bosses office, an HR conference room, etc. to be fired.  The tricky ones are when you’re dealing with an employee who is off site, a remote worker or the supervisor and worker reside at different locations.  Sometimes leadership termination locations can be tricky as well.

I started to think where were some of the odd places I’ve had to terminate an individual?  Here’s the top 4 I could come up with:

1. My Car.  Yep, right there in the front seat of my Hyundai.  I was a Regional HR Manager and was mostly on the road working out of my car.  I once had to fire a manager in my car.  From a spacial standpoint it was a little uncomfortable. Think about any serious conversation you’ve ever had in a car. You have to turn sideways, you’re only inches from the other person.

2. A Burger King.  It wasn’t the bathroom!  But afterwards, I joked with an HR coworker of mine that ‘I got busy in a Burger King bathroom’ doing HR (Digital Underground shout out!). Many times we don’t want to terminate someone onsite at your own work location, so you set up some elaborate scheme to get them offsite and terminate them there.  The problem is, you’re in a public location!  You might have the best intentions and you show up at 10am at your local Burger King just as they have a class field trip going through and learning about the new “Satisries!”  It’s recipe for disaster, but everyone I know in HR has at some point made the decision to go offsite to terminate someone!

3. A Starbucks.  Starbucks might actually be the official SHRM location for Terminations!  Starbucks should sell official naming rights for a termination spot.  Nothing says ‘Termination’ like a nondescript meeting notice at Starbucks on a Friday afternoon around 3pm.  Coffee shops in general are great firing locations.  Quiet, you don’t have to buy anything if you don’t want, and it seems semi-plausible that you might actually just meet an employee there to discuss work stuff.

4. A Walk-in Freezer.  When you work in restaurants, sometimes the only private place you have is the walk-in cooler and/or freezer.  The freezer works best for two reasons: 1. You want these conversations to go quickly; and 2. Tears will freeze.  Plus I think the extreme cold helps to break the shock factor.

So, what about it HR Pros – give me your best/worst location for terminations that you’ve had to use!

 

 

 

 

 

Introduce Yourself in 90 Seconds

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First let me tell you this is not a paid post or endorsement.  Second, I’ve found something really cool for Free! HR and Talent Acquisition folks love FREE!

I found a company called ZipIntro.com and basically what they do is give anyone a really simple platform to make introductory videos for free.  Check out the one I did on the link below:

http://zipintro.com/v/timsackett/intro

As you can see it’s pretty bare bones, and that’s what is great about it.  As a recruiter I don’t need bells and whistles, I need simple and easy, and this is as easy as product as I’ve found for candidates to begin using video as part of their resume submission.  If I can use this, it’s almost completely idiot proof!

Here’s what I know after working in HR and Talent Acquisition for 20 years:

1. It’s tough to get hiring managers to move on the candidates you’ve presented to them.

2. Many times by the time they do get around to looking at them, the best ones are gone.

3. A quick video intro of a candidate gets hiring managers to react.

Why?

Here’s something about hiring managers they don’t want you to know.  They actually trust that you can find talent for them that will be close to what they need!  So, going through each resume and giving you feedback seems like a waste of time.  Watching 3 videos that are all 90 seconds in length and telling you which ones they want to interview — well, that’s really easy!

I have a classic real-life example of when I working with an executive on trying to fill one of his direct report positions.  I presented resumes of pre-screened candidates of over 20 individuals over a period of months.  Each time I would force myself into his office and get feedback.  Always the final answer was “No”.  I almost gave up when I decided to do one more thing.  I had my best three candidates come into the HR office and I set up a video camera (yeah, this was way before all the cool apps and sites now – VHS baby!).   We went live, I asked each the same three questions, and we let it roll.  Each video was less than five minutes.  I asked the executive for 15 minutes to present three ‘new’ candidates.  I didn’t take any resumes.  He watched the videos and decided to interview all three live.  One of those three eventually got the job.  All three had previously been turned down when looking only at their resume and my feedback.  Video is very persuasive!

What else is useful about ZipIntro?  Well, you can use it to intro yourself!  Think about what happens when you send out those 50 emails per day to potential candidates.  Usually, none of those 50 people have any idea who you are.  All they have is an email telling them you’re interested in them.  But who are you!?  Having a ZipIntro url in your email signature gives them the ability to ‘check’ you out very quickly, and allows you to send a compelling message to potential candidates.  You can be professional, you can be creative, you can be funny.  It’s up to you.

Like I said — ZipIntro isn’t paying me for this, I just wanted to share a free and very easy tool that might help you get a job, and/or land some candidates. Enjoy.

 

The Slowest Generation Ever!

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Here’s a quick little experiment to take in your office or department:

1.     Rank everyone by performance – first to worst.

2.    Rank everyone by how fast they can actually run.

3.    Check for correlation.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea if there is any correlation, it’s just a feeling I have.  People who tend to move fast, tend to be higher performers in my 20 years of HR Experience.  Also, there was a recent article out in the Wall Street Journal that examined how 25-35 year olds have been slowing down in endurance races as compared to prior generations at the same age.  From the article:

“They’re just not very fast. “There’s not as many super-competitive athletes today as when the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s,” said Ryan Lamppa, spokesman for Running USA, an industry-funded research group. While noting the health benefits that endurance racing confers regardless of pace, Lamppa—a 54-year-old competitive runner—said, “Many new runners come from a mind-set where everyone gets a medal and it’s good enough just to finish.”

Now, a generational battle is raging in endurance athletics. Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes helps explain why America hasn’t won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004.

Of the two Americans who won marathon medals that year, one—Deena Kastor, who is now 40—was the top finishing American woman at the marathon World Championships in Moscow last month. The other—38-year-old Meb Keflezighi—was the top American male finisher at the London Olympics marathon last year. Hunter Kemper, the 37-year-old winner of last month’s Chicago Triathlon, remains arguably America’s top triathlete as he aims for his fifth Olympics.”

So, how did your experiment work out in your office?  Does speed correlate to higher performance? If so, are your youngest employees faster or slower than other generations in your workplace?  Competitiveness, and incoming generations of kids who are all use to just ‘participating’ versus ‘winning’ might also have an impact to this as well.  This lack of competitiveness probably has more of an impact than anyone really understands.  More from WSJ:

“After finishing last month’s Virginia Beach half marathon in the top 2% of the 50-54 age group, Brendan Reilly was shocked to find he’d made the top 1% of the overall field—despite running 27 minutes slower than the personal best he’d set more than two decades earlier.

“I wasn’t thrilled,” said Reilly, a sports agent in Boulder, Colo., adding that “races are turning into parades.”

Is your workplace a race or a parade? 

3 Things That Gurantee Career Sucess!

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I’ve been given the honor to speak to some upcoming graduates at a prestigious university about what it takes to have a successful and sustained career.  Now comes the hard part!  What do I tell these kids!?  My first question to the person who asked me to come speak was, “Have you ever read anything I’ve written?”  She said yes, but I have a feeling she was lying as she frantically Googled “Tim Sackett” and tried to actually read something I’ve written.  Next she dropped the, “we don’t have much money, we can pay you”, which in speaking circles means, this is a one-time gig, so let’s have some fun with it!

I really took some time to think about all those great traits you need to have in having a long term successful career.  Great work ethic, ability to learn new concepts quickly, being adaptable, being disciplined, high attention to detail, getting along with others, having high Emotional Intelligence, finding purpose in your daily work, Perseverance, being trustworthy, taking initiative, managing up, being open minded, a change agent, a savvy networker, of course intellectual fire power, passion for what you do, someone of high morals and values, empathetic, willingness to fail, willingness to succeed, high internal motivation, ability to gain alignment, focused, positive accountability, follow-up skills, creative, pragmatic, ability to gain buy-in, ability to prioritize, works well in a team, works well alone, political organizational savvy, telling it like it is, effective problem solver, being self aware, effective decision maker, your ability to influence, learning agility, technical savvy, being proactive, being a great listener, being a great presenter, being optimistic, being committed, goal setting, expert communicator, managing conflict and making a great cup of coffee are all fantastic traits!  But how could I choose only 3.  That was my mission.  Give the kids 3 things that would guarantee their success in their chosen career paths.

I knew right away there were a few traits I wouldn’t choose, primarily because I don’t have them and, well, look at me, I have a blog, which means I must be successful.  You don’t need these traits to be successful:

1. Good Grammar. Only old HR ladies and copy editors care about grammar.  Once you get past having no mistakes on your resume, you’re home free the rest of your career — unless you want to be a paid writer.

2. Trigonometry.  No one needs Trig really, it’s just a public school torture device to keep kids in check.  Unless you want to be a rocket scientist, Trig is not a trait you need for a successful career.

That’s is really the only traits I could think of that weren’t important to your long term success of your career.

Then it hit me, after 20 years in the HR and Talent Acquisition fields, I knew!  There are 3 things that can guarantee you long term career success.  Here they are in order of importance:

1. Beauty.

2. Family Wealth.

3. DNA.

The first one was really a no-brainer!  Beautiful people always have jobs or job prospects. Let’s face it, we all love hiring beautiful people!  In fact the only reason you have ugly people working for you is there wasn’t a beautiful candidate.  The positive piece of this for the kids is that with enough money you can change your outward appearance and increase your chances for success!

Family wealth was fairly easy as well.  If you come from a wealthy family you can be a complete tool and still have lifetime employment and career upward mobility.  The rich get richer, and so do their kids.  Nothing says great hirer like your CEO telling you to hire so-and-so because he plays golf with me. Opportunities are rare, unless you’re wealthy.

The prospect of coming from the ‘right’ genes having an impact on long term career success intrigues me.  The reality of it is, the only way to have a sustained successful career if you have sustained long term health — that’s your DNA baby!  Some people never pick up a cigarette and die of lung cancer at 53.  Some people smoke 2 packs a day for 60 years and die of old age at 90.  You can’t teach DNA!

I can’t wait to share these with the kids!

 

 

It’s Super Not Stressful Being At The Top

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It’s common knowledge that leaders are very lonely and under super amounts of stress.  Well, at least that’s what we’ve been made to believe from 1950’s research!  There is new evidence out that has found it’s not all that bad being in a leader position.  From Scientific American:

When the executive or the general complains that they are “stressed,” we have to pay careful attention to what exactly they mean. They may have more emails in their inbox than they can get to. They may work long hours. But in most cases they can say no to requests and they can decide when and how to deal with challenges. They have much more control over how their lives are arranged than does the secretary who schedules their appointments or the janitor who cleans their office.

People so crave control over their lives that when control is scarce they will manufacture it. In studies by psychologist Aaron Kay and colleagues, people made to feel that they lacked control believed more fervently in a controlling God. They believed also in a controlling government, conspiracy theories, and superstitions. Someone has to be in control. Lacking control is associated with higher blood pressure, lowered immune function, and a host of stress-related diseases. Control is the essence of power, the linchpin binding status to stress.

So why did the executive monkeys drop dead of ulcers if control protects against stress? It turned out that the study had a fatal flaw. The monkeys were not assigned to be in the executive or helpless groups at random, which is the cornerstone of an experiment. The monkeys who learned how to use the lever to prevent shocks the fastest were “promoted” to executives. Those fast learners may have learned fast because they were especially upset by the shocks. If so, then it was not control that doomed them but their heightened stress response to being shocked. There is a lesson here, and not only in the scientific method. If you are trying furiously to control a situation because you are terrified of what would happen if you don’t, you are not really in control at all.

Turns out leaders have stress, but they also have power to control their environment more than non-leaders.  So, while we want to believe having ultimate decision making power is also powerful and stressful, it probably isn’t as much as those who don’t have any of that power surrounding you. 

Control, or better, one’s ability to control what happens to them is actually a higher stressor than just having a ton things to do, or even the feeling of being under a lot of ‘pressure’. Everyone has pressure, but those who have pressure and no ability to influence that pressure face a level of stress that can actually physically cause them harm to their health.

Want less stress in your life?  Reach a level in your career where you have more control of what actually happens!

Blah, blah, blah…

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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah:

1. Blah!

2. Blah…

3. blah — blah — blah

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

5 Ways for Recruiters to Engage Talent minus the Stalking!

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Let’s face it, it’s easy to say you’re going to build talent pools filled with passive candidates—but it’s hard to actually do. And it’s even harder once you’ve built a talent pool in your area of need to figure out what to do next.  You know how to recruit, but what do you say to a talent pool filled with passive candidates who aren’t ready or willing to buy in to the positions you’re selling?

 Never fear, Fistful of Talent (with an assist from our friends at Jobvite) is here. We thought about the pain described above and created our October webinar entitled “5 Easy Ways For Recruiters to Engage Talent Pools – Without Looking Like Complete Stalkers” to help solve the problem.  Join us on October 3, 2013 at 1pm EST and we’ll hit you with the following:

 ·         A simple definition of what a talent pool is, how you organize it in your ATS, and how to manage the concept of “opt-in” to the people you include in that talent pool.  The definition of who gets included and “opt-in” is important, because you’re gong to broadcast a bit over time– which will feel different (in a good way) to candidates included in the talent pool.

·         A checklist of information you already have access to in your company that those passive talent pool candidates would love to hear about.  It’s a checklist!  All you have to do is go find the info we list and you’re golden.

·         Data on best practices in thinking like a marketer (do you use email, LinkedIn, snail mail, text, etc.) to engage your talent pool – without looking like a stalker.

·         Grand Finale, we’ll deliver the top 5 ways to engage talent pools – and for each engagement method, we’ll list what the communication looks like, where to find the information and why doing it the way we recommend is the best practice.

Special Bonus: we’re even going to give you a monthly calendar of what to do and when to do it related to our list of 5 ways for you to engage your talent pool. It couldn’t be simpler than that.

 It’s time to make the talent pools you’ve built in your ATS actually like you and your company.  Join us on for October 3, 2013 at 1pm EST, “5 Easy Ways For Recruiters to Engage Talent Pools – Without Looking Like Complete Stalkers” and we’ll show you how.

Would You Take Performance Enhancing Drugs to Save Your Job?

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It seems like daily we are bombarded by stories coming out in the media of professional athletes who are caught taking performance enhancing drugs.  They risk their entire career by taking these drugs and getting caught.  I’ve often wondered if I was in that position, being a professional athlete making millions, would I take PEDs to sustain or grow my career?  I can’t initially say I wouldn’t.  I’m always thankful for not having been put in that situation, I’m extremely competitive, I’m not sure I would have the will power not to take PEDs if I thought I was failing. Slate recently had a great piece about a former professional football player, Nate Jackson of the Denver Broncos.  Nate was a tight end and was cut from the roster after 6 years and turned to PEDs to get back:

“I sit down in my locker for the last time. It was always a bit out of sorts, full of clothes and shoes and tape and gloves, notebooks and letters and gifts. Do I even want these cleats? These gloves? These memories? Yes. I fill up my box. Six years as a Denver Bronco. Six more than most people can say. Still feels like a failure, though. So this is how the end feels? Standing in an empty locker room with a box in my hand? Yep. Now leave.”

That’s it right?  It’s the fear of losing all that you have.  It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, fear of losing what you have is a powerful adversary. I’ve seen a grown man, with a wife and children, and a strong member of his church, sit in down in front of me and lie to my face, because of this fear.  You don’t have to be a professional athlete.

I completely understand this fear, and why athletes do PEDs.  So, I’ll ask you the question, if tomorrow you had a choice, lose your job or take a drug that will save your job, would you do it?

Hit me in the comments.  I have a feeling many people will say they wouldn’t.  I’ll let you know right now, based on my experiences, I’ll be skeptical.  Saying you wouldn’t tells me potentially two things about you: 1. You don’t have fear of losing your job because you have another source income (I run into a lot of women you ‘become’ consultants and talk about how you have to ‘do what you love’, all the while having a husband who is paying the bills); 2. You lack self-insight and/or haven’t ever experienced this fear of loss.

I guess, in a round about way, I answered my own question about what I might do facing the end.  Fear sucks – remember that HR Pros.

Reality sucks – Most Employees are Dumb!

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We are at a watershed moment in the history of employee healthcare in the United States.  As Obamacare gets ready to go live on October 1st, many company are making moves to move their normal company sponsored to private healthcare exchanges.  What’s a private healthcare exchange, you ask?  In a nut shell it’s very similar to a 401K offering, but for health insurance.  Basically, your company will give you an amount of cash, usually similar to what they pay normally for your healthcare, and they make you make the decision of what health insurance you want to buy.  Don’t panic, you don’t have to do this on your own.  Insurance companies have figured out how to best take advantage of you and keep within the Obamacare rules.

Your companies HR/Benefit Pros will bring in an insurance company they contract with to ‘administer’ your private healthcare exchange, which mimics in many ways the Obamacare public healthcare exchange.  You will be given many options.  Might be 5, might be 10, it’s all up to the insurance company and your HR team.  Insurance options will run a wide spectrum of options.  There might be great low cost plans for young singles.  Plans designed for families with children, and even plans for older workers.  All kinds of options and plans.  Exactly what President Obama believes you want — Choice.

This will be a disaster for many people, because most people are dumb when it comes to insurance.  Also, these plans will more than likely cost you more money.  Companies are going this route for a reason, healthcare exchanges take them out of the healthcare business.  You will now be responsible for managing your health insurance, not your HR department.  I’m sorry, you choose a plan that was cheap because you never go to the doctor and now you’re very sick — it was nice knowing you.

You see one thing Benefit Pros did in your organization was ensure you couldn’t be stupid!  They designed plans that wouldn’t allow you to make stupid choices.  Basically, they were acting like your Mom.  Now your Mom, is you.

Check out this audio cast from Money Talks at Time.com — it’s outstanding in breaking down a very complex issue in a few minutes.

I don’t want to call employees dumb, but data shows when it comes to health insurance and options, you’re dumb.

Just as you are in picking your 401K options.  Give you too many choices, and you make bad, emotional decisions.  It doesn’t matter if we are talking about your financial future, or your healthcare future, emotion has no place in the discussion.  There’s a reason most industrialized companies in the world have a single-payer national healthcare system — people are dumb.  Also, when given the chance companies will find a way to take your money from you, when you’re dumb.  Insurance companies aren’t going out of business, and they’ll continue to ‘donate’ heavily to political campaigns.  Choice isn’t a bad thing, uninformed choice is.  Be careful my friends, change is coming.