Bad management is a chronic corporate illness. And it’s an epidemic. Bad management reproduces quickly in today’s world because in many cases (especially in public companies) performance is measured on a quarter to quarter basis and some of the fastest ways to achieve short-term goals is through fear and intimidation. And managers who use those arcane techniques are the people …
HR’s New Motto: “Memento te Esse Iniuriam”
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller 1986 That infamous line is now 32 years old. And it has never been more true than it is today (more true? I guess in today’s reality there are gradations of true so it works.) Everything moves fast. I …
HR and FOT’s Law
Huh, you say. FOT’s Law. What is that? Hold on for a minute and I’ll clue you in. I don’t work in HR. I’ve never played one on TV and I didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn last night (actually it was a Marriott) but I do know that HR gets a bad rap. I read the blogs and articles …
New Generations Are Spawning! Birth of the Nano-Generation
Just when we thought the hype about millennials might die down to a dull roar so we could get back to treating people like, well, people, some consultant needed to make another yacht payment and created a “new” generational cohort. One they could ride for a couple more years until they create something new for corporate HR to feel stupid …
Is Your Investment in Social Recognition Solving a Problem or Creating One?
All the world’s agog over “social recognition.” For those of you in Washington, DC “social recognition” is the act of surfacing recognition in a company through the use of an intranet portal or social stream, much like Facebook, with “likes”, comments, and “way to go Kevin” notations. The goal is to provide increased visibility into all the various recognition events …
Are You Earning Your HR Badges?
A friend of mine, and a true friend of HR, recently posted on Facebook that he received a mentorship badge. That friend was Steve Browne (AKA – @sbrowneHR – the tie-dyed hippie HR man). Actually, it was his FIFTH mentorship badge. The badges Steve is referring to are given to mentors by newly minted Eagle Scouts to recognize those that …
Why Innovation Requires Rules
When you hear the word innovation most people think, new, groundbreaking, disruptive, interesting, free-form. The word doesn’t evoke images of strict processes and rules. Yet my experience working with most companies is that rules are required for creating innovative ideas and processes. Let me set up this discussion with a story. About 10 years ago, we took in one of …
Ask Your Team Why You Suck – The Next Great HR Technique
Sometimes the universe has a way of conspiring to bring you what you need when you need it. I know some of you are thinking the universe did exactly the opposite in the past few months. Except Tom Brady. The universe loves Tom Brady. Rich, sports hero, attractive, attractive wife, 800 thread count sheets (I’m guessing.) I pray his feet …
Hey HR – Slow Your Roll! These are people’s lives.
Are you feelin’ groovy? Are you feeling like the hep cat who ate the canary? Are you one of the first movers who stopped doing annual performance reviews and become too cool for school? Are you one of the folks who saw the bright shiny object and grabbed it? Did you stop doing annual reviews because Consultants who don’t do …
A Date Which Will Live In Infamy…
It is always a challenge for me to write some pithy post about HR and its adjacent issues when the post falls on a pretty historic day. 9-11 is one of those days. And in that vein so is today. December 7, 1941. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked. That event changed so many lives. It was a prime mover …