Everyone is Human - Even the Boss

You need to know this and so does your boss. The boss is human, HR People are human, the Controller is human. Just because these people have more responsibility, doesn't mean they don't have bad days, make mistakes, get grumpy, and react negatively to others that are grumpy. The boss shouldn't have to be more professional, more calm or more anything than anybody else. Employees constantly want the world to be fair. To make that happen, if I have to let you yell at me, you have to let me yell at you. Isn't being fair really a game of tit for tat where you get the same thing that I get and no one else gets more? Wait, that doesn't sound very "American" didn't we come here or our ancestors come here to get ahead in the world? How is it fair that the employee next to me gets more money because they were with the company longer even though we have the same years of experience? Wow, that whole fair thing is a trick. The distorted concept of fair and the misguided notion that we need to make every employee "comfortable" to address their concern has degraded respect and humanity for leadership in the workplace. My mom was right when she said fair is a week in August and she could show me where it will be. Now that we have established that the concept of fair is a trick of the mind. Let's get back to the idea that we need to cut the leadership some slack when their turn comes for a bad day or a mistake. The majority of bosses are okay people that want to help the company run so all of us have a job tomorrow. Take a minute to assume positive intent in their approach and have the respect to approach them directly. The biggest mistake we have made in establishing employee expectations is allowing them to expect managers to be super human and letting them call an employee hotline or go straight to the top every time their feelings are hurt. Personal accountability and adult interaction are endangered species. Please remember you work with humans that deserve to be treated humanely.

Having a Life

Last week was a major goat rodeo. Already booked up with compliance training, a new program was initiated that required a lot of calls and followup, while requiring an audit of completion for another project. 3 nights in the unenviable motor capital of the U.S. waking at 4am, working until 11pm and crossing the state to close it up. The coming week is the mother of all conference call weeks and a little mix of doing someone else's job thrown into it all. The travel budget is nearly exhausted and I definitely am. In thinking it over, I can't figure out what having a life really means. The nasty, busy weeks that have plagued my work lately are as much a life as knitting, target shooting, hanging with my pets (including the hubby)and publishing this blog. What does it really mean to get a life? My last post was about deciding your own trajectory and if that involves some crappy hours and weekend crackberry usage then it is still your life. Reconciling this thought poses a bigger challenge. It has taken me over 2 years to find a massage therapist and eyebrow waxes that I will regularly frequent in my new hometown. Those and a new church would help me feel more like I've found a "life". Maybe having a life is more about each person's need to feel that they have more to contribute than being a cog in the machine. It is possible to feel that way, even when you know that you make a difference for the people you serve. Some of us need to know that we are respected by the people above us and there will be opportunities to grow. Odd, because I consider myself someone that determines her self-worth by caveat as opposed to consensus. My sister would tell you that it is sleep deprivation. It might just be time to find a church choir and practice flute for a while.

How Do You Want to Go Out?

I don't know about you, but I prefer to choose my exit. Deciding when to leave an event, determining the right time to sever a relationship, choosing when to take on my next role, and picking the point to leave an argument. The more I practice, the better I get at making my own choice instead of letting life act against me. There is much to be said for prevailing over the circumstances in front of you and then deciding to walk away from it, because you can. Too many people live life believing that things happen to them and they don't believe in their ability to impact their environment. The other day, I ran across a quote in one of my journals. "Life is finite. The end is coming no matter what. The question is, how do you want to go out? On your feet, or on you knees?" When my time comes, whether I crawl there or saunter up, I will be under my own power and I definitely won't be on my knees. Remember to respect your own dignity and it will be easier to respect the dignity of others.

Reformed out of a Doctor

Well, I didn't think that age 40 is old until I received a letter from my healthcare provider that I have exceeded the maximum age for the primary care physician that I selected. This is one of many joyous items we get to look forward to with the healthcare reform act. Providers are running a business and have to decide if these new constraints on costs and processes will allow them to be profitable. If not, they will dump us “old people” or general practices will stop seeing children. Pediatricians or Gerontologists could decide to change specialties. If any of you are thinking this is alarmist, wait until your insurance company sends you a letter that they changed your PCP or your spouse’s, parent’s or child’s PCP because of their age or they just “decided” they have too many patients. Once enough of this happens the government will “have to step in” because there aren’t enough doctors in the critical specialties. This is part of a chain reaction leading to the need for full government intervention in healthcare controlling doctors and removing insurers from the equation. I hope that they have planned out where they will employ all of the former insurance workers. These folks will probably find gainful employment in different legal organizations for suing the government and/or with the government defending them from their own citizens. Healthcare is a very personal thing and I am currently taking this personally and so should the rest of the country.

Information for the sake of Information

Tonight I decided that I had to have a clear understanding of the term Sociopath, just in case I am one. Sometimes, it is interesting to learn more and obtain a higher level of clarity. However, the search for more data can be destructive. There is a point where the evidence is clear and additional information is sought only for the purpose of creating doubt. Data, no matter how apparently factual, can be colored and spun from black and white to a soft, cotton-candy rainbow with the addition of carefully chosen info. For those of us that have forsaken our rose colored glasses for a nice clear pair of 20/20 lenses there is a web of sticky-gray fluff that is not very fun or satisfying. It is shameful to try to sell the candy to the folks that see the gray fluff. Just get to the point of what you really need and let's save time on the data overload. Are you trying to convince me, or just yourself? Things move too quickly to waste time playing info games.

Entropy

Entropy in layman's terms is the tendency of all things to break down to their smallest possible components. This is a product of Chaos theory and would start quite a lively discourse amongst Physicists. The rest of us simply go about life experiencing encounters with it without knowing it has a name. Have you ever sent out 4 items that require as response from your managers. One is a planning item, one is an execution item, one is a survey, and one is a scheduling piece. Did you get 100% response on any of them on time? Depending on the strengths of your players, you received the responses easiest for them. A few were on time of all, but response qualified varied and at least one did none of them. While you were chasing the answers to these, three new things came that were due to your leadership. This time, you focused on the aligning the people to execute the critical process of removing and replacing the poor performers and not on the pieces of paper corporate wanted to close the process on their end. You were a week and 1/2 late where in the past you were always the first one. You would have been even later, but you know how to scramble. Well, while you were looking backward to clean that up, a couple of little in fights that you were attempting to address by guiding the so-called adults to better behaviour blow up. Now the important process of providing training and hiring talented folks is interrupted by the urgent need to pick of the pieces of several volcanic employee relations eruptions. Too bad the guy that said to get the urget out of the way and focus on the important isn't here to take those statements while I'm on a business trip out of state. We never signed up to be the side show performer that juggles bowling balls and spins plates. The time spent healing lumps from falling bowling balls and gluing together shattered plates alone makes this practice prohibiitive. The best managers I know leave some of the bowling balls on the ground for a while and some plates just don't need fixed today. The important and the urgent that by legal default must get done are enough for today. My stage may be littered with bits of porcelain and balls with finger holes, but I am no longer getting hit in the head. I'm happy to tiptoe through my entropy for now. It turns out having things in little bits is not all bad. Louis Comfort Tiffany created beautiful garden scenes with shards of glass and bits of melted metal. Success is in how you compose your mosaic.

The Not-So-Secret Affair

This note of explicit work intrigue brought to you by the Ghost Writer while Marti wrangles outlaws in the wild, wild west world of retail.

So after months, now I know years, of unconfirmed sitings of two people together with thin business reasons for being in the same place for a week at a time, I asked a colleague, "So what's going on there?"  He replies, "The worst kept secret in the business."  It's the oh-so-typical man-in-power scenario with the woman two layers below him in the organization.  She has a committed partnership.  He has a marriage and a child that I'm sure is his noble, yet misguided, impetus for staying married. 

While I could really care less how the two of them screw up their personal lives, when he used me as pawn to get her to the same place he was, I got wrinkled about it.  Did he not realize that I can see manipulation a mile away?  He used every type known to humanity -- praise, criticism, power implication, consequence implication, and personal "give me a break" pleas.  It was just pathetic.  Now I feel slimy every time I'm near the guy, and I want to tell the woman he's wrecking her career.

However, there are very real implications associated with confronting either of them directly.  I'm one of her superiors, and he's my peer.  Hello?  Rock.  Yes.  Meet Hard Place.  Hard Place.  This is Rock.  As on HR Leader, not HR Manager, I enjoy the deliberation associated with calling the ethics hotline and reporting them or just letting it go like apparently everyone else does in the company.  Does it really hurt performance?  No.  Is it distracting?  Yes.  Does it hurt anyone?  Yes, her more than him.  It doesn't really hurt me, just annoys me.  Does it hurt anyone financially?  Not really.  The company is paying a few more bucks for travel for the two of them to play house, but compared to other places money gets blown, it's minor.

So if any of you HR pros out there have some advice for this Ghost Writer, I'm up for it.  Marti says, "Go to a pay phone, block the caller ID, and call the ethics line."  I may just do that.

America Might Get Paid Back

Well, I was listening to the news because it interrupted a perfectly good footbal game. I heard a newscaster say that Tarp has ended and America might get paid back. Wow, thanks there Mr. Obvious. The fact that we might never get paid was clear when our government gave the money away. Either tell me legitimate facts like that money was flushed down the crapper and it is time for us to move on or that it was miraculously all paid back. You never know. Maybe Bill and Melinda Gates will loan them the interest from their foundation to give the taxpayers of the U.S. back their money. AIG is purported to have used their TARP funds to pay someone else back. While unconfirmed, this information is just as useful as the fact we "might" get paid back one day. We might also be visited by a fairy named Tinkerbell and fly away to Neverland to fight pirates with the lost boys. One thing is certain, our government is deciding who fails and who succeeds without good old fashioned business competition. With this in mind, be careful not to take the Pledge of Allegiance too seriously for a while. Our Republic is looking desparingly socialist at a time where the strength of business is her greatest hope.

Serendipity

Other than being the name of my 8th grade reading textbook, there is something to be said for the nexxus of events in life that leads to what we desire, while we busy working on something else. Serendipity, by definition, is a propensity for making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated. Just when I move on from a desired outcome because circumstances prevent it, things come together without me. Either way, there is work to be done once this happens. Those that are present and accounted for when circumstances align are able to greaty impact the business. Moving onto other things does not mean giving up on the desired outcome. Continuing to look at other ways to get to your goal, means you will put the time into preparing for the events that follow it. In HR, there are a lot of fires to put out and we get all of the complaints after something goes wrong. We get tired of hearing that we have to make time for planning succession or developing pools of candidates. Whether we want to hear it or not, the value in making a priority out these activities is tremendous.