Compromise Kills Innovation!

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The most innovative leaders of our time were mostly assholes. Why? They refused to budge on their idea. Everything in their body told them what needed to be done to make their idea happen, and they refused to compromise on even the smallest details. This is how greatness happens.

True change only happens when someone is unwilling to listen to their critics.

This is also the exact way more careers are killed than any others. It’s all or nothing. Greatness happens at the edges, not in the middle.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t fit well in most corporate environments. Most MBA programs don’t teach you to be a tyrant. Leadership development, in today’s corporate world, is about bringing everyone to the middle. Finding ways that we can all get along. Even suppressing those who push the envelope too far.

We want everyone to line up nice and pretty. To play the role they were hired to play. To be the poster children for compromise.

It’s important for leaders to understand this concept if your job as a leader is to drive innovation and change. You don’t drive this through compromise and you need some renegades on your team, that quite frankly you might not even enjoy being around.

It took me so long to learn this because I was a renegade as an employee. I couldn’t understand why my leaders kept pushing me to compromise when I knew the right way to do something, the better way to do something, the new way to do something.

Once I became a leader I acted the exact same way towards those who were like me. Get back in line. Run the play. Do what the others do. That was the leadership I was taught. I didn’t value those who seemed to be fighting me, just as I use to fight. New leaders struggle with this because we take it personally.

We feel like those renegade employees are actually fighting us. When in reality they’re fighting everything. It’s our job as leaders to understand that the fight they have is super valuable if directed at the right target! To get them to understand they don’t need to fight everyone and everything but pick some fights that help us all and then support that fight.

This isn’t everyone you lead. It’s actually a really tiny number, but it seems bigger because they take up a lot of time and cause a lot of commotion amongst the drones who want to stay in their box. But, this is how change and innovation are born. By one person who is unwilling to compromise because they know a better way and they’re willing to fight to make it a reality.

This isn’t to say it will always work. Most ideas fail, but those who are willing to make an uncompromising stand for their idea, stand a better chance of seeing that idea succeed.

Here’s where I struggle. If we believe the above premise is true, it seems exclusionary. So, can we be innovative and inclusive of thought all at the same time? I’m arguing above that you can’t. What do you think? Hit me in the comments.

The Top 5 Gifts to Get that Special Someone at the Office for Valentine’s Day!

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Let’s get creepy today!

Remember back when you were in elementary school and your mom or dad would take you to the store and you would pick out your box of Valentine’s to give out at school? You had to make one of those little ‘mailboxes’ out of shoebox so everyone in your class could drop off one, and then you would go home after school and analyze each one like the Zapruder film!

Did Amber make me her ‘special’ Valentine or did she use a generic message card on me!?! Why did Jill put a ‘heart’ on top of her “i” to me? Why did Billy give me the card with kittens? Oh, the humanity of trying to figure out who loved you through the meaning of store-bought valentine cards!

Talk about stress! I’m not sure a kid goes through something more stressful than getting down to those last two or three cards and having to decide which crappy card you have left to give to the school bully so you don’t get beat up!

Thankfully, we are now all adults! Now we just have some weird or creepy person at work who believes they are in love with us and also believing that Valentine’s Day is the day they should profess this love! I’m going to make it easy for you, weird, creepy peeps! I’ve been there. I’ve been in love and struggled for the right gift! No worries, I got your back:

1. Their favorite work-appropriate drink. That special someone likes Starbucks double-shot, low-fat caramel mocha whatever, get them one! If you don’t know their drink order, you aren’t even trying to be a proper crush! This says, hey, I like you, but I’m not a completely insane stalker. Drop it off and be casual, and just say, “I got you your drink, wanted you to have a good start to your valentine’s day”, then walk away, don’t make it awkward!

2. Something sweet. Candy, cookie, cupcake. It’s traditional. It’s thoughtful. It doesn’t have to be consumed immediately. You can drop it off when they are at their work station or when they aren’t with a little note. Don’t be weird and make some creepy note (“I got you something sweet because I bet you taste sweet!” Vomit!)

3. Flowers from Anonymous. If you really want to win the day. Send that special someone flowers, but make it anonymous, and keep it anonymous! The great thing about the anonymous flowers is that person will talk about it all day, if not longer. The downfall is they might assume they came from the person they are really attracted to and that person might not be you! This doesn’t work if you’re already “kind of talking” to this person.

4. Jewelry! Kidding, don’t ever give jewelry to a co-worker that you are not romantically involved with! This is super creepy! Plus, it’s poor taste to do that level of gift at work. Only give jewelry to that special someone when you’re alone. Those idiots who propose to their special someone in a public place should be shot.

5. An invitation. You don’t know until you know…The reality is we all want to be wanted, but they might not want you, or they might. An email that says, Happy Valentine’s Day! I would love to take you out for a drink or dinner or a coffee. Let me know. Big risk, big payoff or big rejection. But, it allows the person in their own space to make a decision. If you don’t push the issue, you can survive this in the workplace. Pro tip: if you get rejected on this attempt, never do it again with this person and never mention it, ever, to anyone. Lock it away! The most creepy people in the world will turn this into a public thing at the office. Don’t do that!

So, you’ve got your one-week warning! Next Friday is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day on a Friday is like the holy grail of Valentine’s Day. Crazy stuff happens because you have the weekend to fall in love or recover from your heartbreak! Are you ready!?!

Just Do Your Damn Job, Timmy!

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It seems like frustration is at an all-time high. On a daily basis people are coming unglued over things they have no control over, and never will.

We are told to be more empathetic. We are told our employees need us to be “X”. You fill in the “X” because it changes pretty much article to article, generation to generation, leader to leader. One day I’m just supposed to care more. Then the next day I need to listen more. The next day I need to understand more. Today, I need to be more flexible.

Somehow we’ve gone from running businesses to managing a daycare.

I’ve stopped listening to people who don’t do the job I do. To the people who haven’t done the job in the past decade. To the people who claim to be experts but haven’t worked in my field, ever. 

Instead, I’m going out and talking to my employees. The young ones, the old ones, the ones in between that we’re not supposed to pay attention to anymore because they don’t matter because they’re not young or old, or female, or a minority, or gay. I’m going out and talking to them all equally. Since I need them ‘all’ to move my organization forward.

It doesn’t matter what my employees are telling me. That’s for me, to help them. The thing that will help my employees, most likely won’t help your employees. You work in a different culture, location, industry, climate, etc. No one is a better expert on my employees than I am. 

Just like you will be the expert of your employees, your team, your department, your organization.

 But, here’s what I think you’ll find out:

 – Your employees are all individuals with very specific problems, concerns, and desires.

– Their problems start close to them and then move outward. Sure it sucks Trump is making massive change and they want to help America and the World, but first, they have an issue with daycare and paying student loans, and a health scare. Those problems are bigger than the world problems you keep shoving down their throat. Help them solve the problems close first, then solve the world.

– Your millennials employees became adults, and you keep treating them like they just left college and are still kids.

– Your ‘new’ youngest employees are much different than millennials, and they’re not. They’re still young people with young people’s problems and passions.

– Your employees want to be successful. Across the board, it’s a driving and motivating force. You helping them become successful is the most important thing you can do as a leader. What’s successful? That is also very individualized. Your challenge, as a leader, is to find a way to tie their success to the organization’s success. It’s hard to do, and you have to figure it out for your employees.

We keep letting other people tell us how to do our jobs. Have fun with that. I’m going to do the job I was hired to do, the way I know it needs to be done because no one knows how to do this job, better than me.

The 1 Factor You Must Have to be an F500 CEO!

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It’s not what you think.

Right now you’re sitting there reading this thinking, “I need to know what this is so I can see if I have it or can get it because it’s in my life plan to be an F500 CEO!” You probably are thinking it must something like grit, determination, maybe smarts, attractive looks, or maybe it’s Tim talking about this it’s probably height because he’s a short motherf@cker!

Something truly, statistically interesting has happened over the last 14 years to CEOs of the Fortune 500. It really defies logic.

In 2005 the average age of an F500 CEO was 46 years old. Feels about right. 46 feels like young enough but also old enough all at the same time. The perfect combination of youth and wisdom.

In 2019, do you know what the average age of an F500 CEO was? You would think in 14 years that line would probably stay about the same. Maybe because of all the Baby Boomers leaving the workforce we would see it fall, but probably not too much. If a few Boomers were hanging on, we might see it rise a little, but again, it’s hard to move the average all that much.

In 2019 the average age of an F500 CEO was 59! Basically, over 14 years, the average age went up one year every year! It’s hard to even imagine that could be the case!

So, what’ the one factor you need to be an F500 CEO? 

You need to be a Baby Boomer!

That’s right. Stop going to that Ivy league college and working on your MBA. Don’t worry if you’re ugly or short or fat or female or black or white or a dude. The only thing you really need to be is OLD!

Turns out, big giant companies like Old folks running their company!

Why?

If you are running a multi-billion dollar company, maybe even closing in on a trillion (Trillion is the new Billion!) you don’t want some kid at the wheel. You want someone with seasoning who will tend to be less reactive to major events. They’ll be a bit slower in how they move the company, a bit more conservative in how they manage the assets and resources.

Also, think about what’s happened over the past 15 years. We came out of the great recession. We had this young 45-ish CEO taking the lead in turning us around and putting us back on top. It actually worked! We’ve had this great decade of prosperity! Do you know what companies do when things are going really well? They don’t change anything! Including their CEO!

In fact, many times if the CEO wants to retire, and they trade that CEO in for a younger one, and 12 months in the company is slightly underperforming to expectations, they’ll fire that CEO quickly and bring back the old one to right the ship!

So, 37-year-old Millennial who is chomping at the bit to take over. Calm down and wait until you’re old! You really only have about twenty more years to wait until it’s ‘your time’. That isn’t that long, just 25% or so of your life. You’ll get there, be patient!

Kobe on Leadership and Life!

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It seems like the entire world is talking about Kobe. The tragic accident that cost nine people their lives, including Kobe and his daughter.

I’m a Kobe fan.

It’s complicated, being a Kobe fan.

He has been accused of something horrible in his past. Like most rich people in the world, he got it to go away without any of us truly knowing the truth, but suspecting a whole bunch.

Kobe is one of the best basketball players ever. I loved watching him compete. I love watching him yell at teammates and seemingly not care if he was liked or disliked because he wanted to win more than anyone else on the planet. I love watching him with his daughters. Maybe the worst thing in his past, made him even a better father and husband (I don’t know).

Kobe is not like you or I. He was a true genius. He was better than 99.999999% of people who have ever played basketball. Most of us aren’t in the top ten percent of anything we do in life. Genius is extremely rare. Most people can’t understand genius. It’s a bit scary and completely uncomfortable from what we are used to.

As I said, it’s complicated being a Kobe fan.

In 2012, Kobe posted this on Facebook about leadership-

So, let’s breakdown the brilliance of what Kobe is saying about being a great leader:

1. Are you willing to make those around you uncomfortable to make them better?

2. Are you willing to push those around so much they might actually hate you at the time?

3. Success is more important, in the end, than being liked. 

4. Don’t tolerate victims.

5. We all have a leadership style that will get us to our highest level, it’s not all the same. 

I mourn the loss of a great basketball player and parent you died tragically with his daughter in a helicopter crash, as he was taking her to play the game he loved. I can’t imagine the heartache of those they left behind. As a father that has done that thousands of times, my own heart aches.

We are a totality of what we do in the world. That’s hard for me to reconcile. Humans can do the most wonderful, uplifting things we can ever imagine, and the most awful, and be the same person. Like I said, life is complicated and I tend to actually like how Kobe viewed leadership.

 

Would You Be Willing to Guarantee a New Hire One Year’s Worth of Pay and Benefits?

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“People don’t want more choices. They want to be more confident in the choices they make.”

– Scott Galloway

It’s hard to hire not because there isn’t enough talent. There are all kinds of talent. In fact, there has never been a time in our lives where it’s been easier to actually find that talent and connect with that talent!

The technology and access we have to candidates have never been better. So, why is it so damn hard to hire!?

Candidates are fearful of making a bad decision. I might not love my current job, but at least I know what I have. I know the good and the bad. If I move and make a change, I’m not 100% sure of what I’m getting myself into.

So, would your organization be willing to take that fear away from me? 

Just take it clean off the table. If you take our job, we know it’s a stressful decision, we’ll sign a contract where we will play you a guarantee one year’s salary and benefits, no-fault. Meaning, at any time in the first year, if you, or we, decide this just isn’t working out, we’ll pay you the balance of that first year’s salary. It’s a no-risk offer to come to work here!

Would you do that? Why or why not?

If we do our jobs really well, in terms of sourcing, screening, assessing, vetting, and selection, this is really a low-risk proposition for the company, and it might actually help us land some of the best talent that is just a bit more conservative in their decision making. Think about who is naturally conservative in their thinking? Engineers, highly intelligent, logical people like scientists of all types, medical professionals, accounting types, legal types, etc.

You know those hard to land hires!

The dirty little secret of doing something like this is it’s basically almost no risk because most professional hires, given a proper courting process, don’t leave within twelve months. You wouldn’t do this with high volume hiring, but you could do it with your hard to find, low volume hiring.

What do you think? What am I missing? Why would our executives support this or hate this? Hit me in the comments.

And the Prize for the Most Money Goes To…

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No one. You don’t give out prizes for making the most money. Making the most money is the prize!

“Hey, Tim, you made the most money! Congrats! Here’s a membership to Netflix.” Um, what? Just give me more money, I’ll buy my own damn membership to Netflix!

You give out prizes as rewards when people can’t make more money.  And the prize for the best customer service goes to, Billy! Good job, Billy! Here’s a gift card to Applebee’s for $25!

Organizations are constantly giving out ‘prizes’. We give out prizes for being the best employee. We give out prizes for finishing a project faster than we thought you could finish a project. We give out prizes for showing up to work every day.

I think it might be the first thing you learn at leadership college. If in doubt, give out a prize!

Don’t have an organizational vision? That’s okay, give out a prize.

Don’t have a new product to deliver to the market? No problem, give out a prize.

Have no clue what you’re doing? We feel you, give out a prize!

Prizes are a nice distraction from mediocrity. There easy and the honest truth is everyone likes winning a prize. Have you ever been somewhere, like a golf outing, where they pick raffle prizes and the prizes are all basically crap from vendors no one wants and people get so excited when their random number gets called! People clap. Hey, look, Mary won a prize! Good for her! Wonder what she’ll get? The tote bag or the portable battery that charges your phone up exactly once, yes!

But, we are put in this position because not everyone in our organizations can make unlimited money. So, we have to find ways to keep the troops motivated, and prizes seem to be the motivational tool of choice. The key to prize giveaways is that everyone has to believe they have a shot at winning, but not everyone wins.

If everyone wins a prize, it takes away from the prize value. If I win a car, I feel like the most special boy in the world. If everyone wins a car, it’s still great, but no as special.

Our greatest motivational tool of all time – the prize. Go give out one today!

 

 

Announcement! I’m Joining the Josh Bersin Academy as a Senior Faculty Member!

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Today, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining the Josh Bersin Academy as a Senior Faculty Member!

I’ve run in the many of the same circles as Josh for years and, like many of you, have been always loved and admired his insights and data that he has shared with the community for so long, and I’ve seen him present countless times. So, of course, when he asked of my interest in joining, it was a no-brainer! Josh Bersin is the biggest name in our business!

For the past decade I’ve shared, and maybe overshared at times, everything I possibly could with this community of HR and TA professionals. So, this moves makes complete sense for me, because it allows me to continue doing what I love and sharing now with even more people and growing the community.

What’s the Josh Bersin Academy? 

The Josh Bersin Academy, composed of over 3000 members, is a center for the global co-creation of the future of HR by a Community of Practitioners sharing experiences in spirited conversation about what might be.

Adding expert knowledge to this conversation is the Senior Faculty group chosen by Josh Bersin, who of course, is the Dean of Josh Bersin Academy. Their role is to add expertise to the ongoing generation of knowledge by the broader community.  You can see my JBA bio by clicking on the link. I will be joining a distinguished list of Senior Faculty group to 21, plus of course, Josh Bersin as the Dean.  You can see all our bios here: https://bersinacademy.com/faculty.

What is my role as a Senior Faculty Member? 

Within the JBA platform and each specific course, we break up the members who are currently enrolled in courses into smaller teams/groups to have a better ability to have real, active interactions. As a faculty member, it is part of my role to get involved with these conversations, react, add insight, and answer questions.

Josh also will utilize our expertise for various content and research projects, that will add to the growth and understanding of the JBA members on an ongoing basis.

Why this role? 

As you can imagine, I get asked to do a lot of stuff! And I love to stay busy and try everything I can. This role in the JBA Academy allows me to continue on leading HRU Tech, continue to write and speak, and continue to work with the HR and TA Tech community that I have a passion for. I just need to find a way to clone myself or sleep much less!

Truly, I can’t wait to begin interacting with academy members! Helping share knowledge in our community is something that I really enjoy and it brings me great satisfaction.

So, check out the Josh Bersin Academy. It’s a tremendous way to increase your skills in HR, interact with like-minded professionals, and gain high-level insight from some of the best HR and TA minds on the planet (and me).

6 Ways Not to Treat a Speaker at Your Event!

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I’m just getting ready to kick off the spring conference season and I’ve already had a handful of reminders of how not to treat someone who you are trusting to come to speak to your audience! It always amazes me how some conference organizers get this completely right and some fail massively!

Here are a few things you shouldn’t do:

1. Limit the conference pass to one day the speaker will be speaking. 

Really, you are asking me to come to speak at your conference, but then you are only going to give me access to your conference the one day you actually have me speaking? I think you’re missing the boat on what I might bring to the other days by having me there, plus you look super cheap and petty.

2. Only paying for one night of lodging. 

So, I’m coming from a snowy climate and you are now asking me to gamble that I’ll actually make it to your event. I can come the day before to ensure I’ll be there, but then you have me speak at 4 pm so I can’t possibly get a fight out, and now I have to pay for a room for an extra night on my own? Again, if you can’t afford two nights lodging for a speaker, you probably can’t afford to put on a conference!

3. Put limits on expenses that are so under market you are now turning me into a spendthrift to attend your event. 

It’s at minimum a $50 Uber ride from the airport to your venue, but you put in the contract a maximum of $35 for transportation from the airport. Or the only restaurant within walking distance is the hotel restaurant where the cheapest meal will be $40, but your limit is $25. Look, I don’t want to kill you on big expenses, but I also don’t want to pack my own lunch to make this work!

4. Give me a gift that is almost impossible to bring onto a plane. 

Okay, this sounds like I’m a pompous ass, right! Tim is complaining about a gift!?! But, if you give me a cutting board the size of Texas to bring home, I totally love the thought, but know that thing is never coming home with me! It’s not that I don’t love you did this, and it’s not generous, it’s that logistically it’s just a pain.

5. Don’t have diet Mt. Dew. 

Okay, this one is a bit personal but I don’t drink coffee and you want me coming in hot with the audience. Fully caffeinated, and shot out of a cannon!  “Would you like a bottle of water?” Nope! I’d like an IV drip of diet Dew!

6. Put them in a room that isn’t commensurate with the size of their audience.

Hey, we are so thankful for you to come to speak at our conference. To show you we put you in a room that holds 1,000 people, but we know only 50 will show up to see your session. Ugh! This is the worst ever for a speaker. To see hundreds of empty seats is defeating. It’s best to make the rooms smaller, have it standing room only, and the size of the room is a third the size. I don’t care about the size of the room, I care about how full the room is!

I’m a speaker and I hold events, and I understand the struggle of running an event and trying to make everyone happy. It’s next to impossible, but sometimes I think many of us aren’t even trying, or we care so much about the profitability of the event we start to treat people poorly.

The best events treat their speakers like a valuable commodity they want to return. How do we leave you with such a positive impression that you want to come back and you’ll tell your friends they should attend? That’s really the key. It doesn’t have to be about spending a bunch more money, but just making sure the speakers aren’t being put out of their way to perform their best at your event!

The Truly Absurd Power of a Bad Idea!

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Have you ever been caught in a downward vortex of a truly crappy idea that at some point you wondered to yourself, “how the heck did we get here!?”

I like to think I’m the kryptonite of bad ideas in my organization. It’s part of my personality of being a bit unfiltered in my thoughts and ideas. If I think something is a bad idea, I’m probably going to say something. Or at least, I hope I will say something.

Why don’t we stop bad ideas in organizations?

  1. We never want to tell someone their idea is bad. We say things like, “there are no bad ideas!” Of course, there are bad ideas! That’s just a dumb statement. There are ideas that can ruin your company and your career. If some idiot opening shares a bad idea, it should be up to us as peers to point this out and help them out.
  2. The person sharing the idea is in a power position. This one is hard. Well, Tina is the boss! I don’t like her idea, but we have to go along with her or else it will probably look bad and she’ll make sure she crushes my career. This is the worst! If you’re a leader, you need to find someone who will tell you the truth about your stupid ideas.
  3. We all know it’s a bad idea but we’ve got so much already invested we need to make it work. Ugh! My grandmother would call this, “throwing good money after bad”. Well, we’ve come this far, we have to make it work. The best organizations know when to call it quits on a bad idea, take the loss, and begin a new in a better direction.

So, bad ideas grow and prosper basically because we don’t want to hurt feelings or hurt our own careers.

I do think there are some strategies we can use to help get us out of a bad idea. Some things that will allow us to protect our relationships and our careers, and put us on a better path.

If I think of the times that I saw someone’s bad idea blow up in their face, it happened because it was done publicly. If we have the ability to sit down privately with the individual and talk through it, I usually find that together we can create something better, and change a bad idea into something that will work, and it saves face for all involved.

In terms of people in the position of power who have bad ideas, I like, again, speaking to them in private, but also using data and competitive data to try and influence their decision in another direction. I’ve also used a strategy that is a bit risky, but it’s going over their head in a way that seems like you weren’t doing it on purpose. Like, “Oh, I want to share this data with the entire company because I found it so fascinating and thought others would have interest!” Data that shows we should be doing something else, in hopes, it sparks an idea for someone to change.

The reality is bad ideas happen every day in our organizations and it’s up to us to help create a culture where we reward stopping bad ideas. Where we respect each other so highly we are confronting bad ideas as a way to help that person’s career, not point out their failure. If we can get to that point, we put ourselves in a position to take the power out of bad ideas!