Friday, March 25, 2011

The Parallels between the Old and New Ways

The Ghost Writer channels her inner-Marti while Marti switches channels on the radio running around to see all of her big boxes.

    So as I sit wrapped in a shawl Marti made for me a number of years ago, I find myself thinking a lot like her -- drawing parallels between the seemingly unconnectable -- and connecting Marriage and Career.  All capitals intentional.
    Marriage, capital M to differentiate what I'm talking about from those microsecond affairs of the heart characterized by modern society, is a condition where, much like Marti, you meet a young person of similar age, get married and over a lifetime create a Marriage.  Marti readily says of her long-suffering spouse, "We raised each other."  Having watched this relationship from the outside, and despite how easy it would be to think otherwise, these two are intensely private about their Marriage.  It's clear they are a unit, a force to be reckoned with relative to all outside forces.  Only years after the fact does a by-stander hear a dropped anecdote about an internal train wreck that could have cost their Marriage its life.  They've been through youth together, are kicking around at mid-life, and will someday hold hands while sitting on a bench at the assisted living facility.  That's Marriage.
    Career, capital C to differentiate my discussion from the modern-day crash-here for 6-24 months as a consultant or out-and-out hire process, is condition where, very unlike most of us anymore, you meet a company at a young age, get a job and work there for 30-50 years creating a Career.  Of the fine professionals I know who have built a Career, most say a version of, "We raised each other."  These people talk about how "when I was young" this crazy thing would get done or that crazy shift would get worked.  Then they move into Career mid-life of managing the work of others, and as I have met this group, the good ones are mentors of young fools like me building a career.  The bad ones are putting sticks in the spokes of the company's wheel chair as they toddle into the assisted living facility.  That's Career.
    Companies and spouses don't raise each other anymore.  We pass in the night, get while the getting is good, and move on to the next big thing.  As a result, every person has to act like a young person at work -- do crazy things to impress with an ever less impressionable audience.  It's like that painted-on-hair mid-50s guy at the bar on Friday night.  He's looking young, but the audience isn't buying it anymore.  Trying something new, he goes and gets a crazy car and new clothes and moves to a new bar.  That impresses folks for a while, he gets married, the shine wears off and it's time to find a new bar again.  The woman he married didn't get to see the youthful vigor, appreciate how he's grown, or understand all he's built.  She just enjoyed a few years with who he was in the moment. 
    Much like the modern job cycle. 
    We shine ourselves up, go out on interviews, feel fortunate when someone buys from the scarily competitive mid-life hang-out bar of job seekers, and we give it our all.  Until our all isn't good enough.  No one appreciates how we've grown or the perspective time brings to a member of the workforce.  It's just "deliver results now or leave".
    And at some point in each person's life or career, the person or the spouse gets sick or, worse yet, hits menopause.  When there was Marriage and Career, these tough personal times were looked at with a benevolent eye and a "I remember when it was better, and it will be better again.  Give him/her a break.  He/She has done a great deal to get here."  However, there is now marriage and career with a comment, "Get help, get shiny and new again, or get out."
    So HR leaders, I leave you with this twisted metaphor as a reminder to admire each person who have built a Career.  They helped raise the company to where it is, and while we just got picked up off a bar stool, they will be here long after to carry the process.  Embrace Career Professionals.  Give them opportunities to mentor and speak their time-experienced piece, even when it sounds like "because we don't do it that way", because maybe, they do know better.  After all, they saw sickness or, worse yet, menopause and lived to tell.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Hitting When You're Down

If you are not a hockey fan, bear with me. It seems somewhat violent from the outside, but the etiquette is fairly strict. You never hear hockey guys talking smack to the media or even providing an arrogant opinion of their own skills. Hockey fights are legendary and known to be penalized by rule. The fans appreciate periodic retribution and sometimes players need to vent. There is one hard and fast rule; you never hit someone that is down on the ice. Guys that do that get a misconduct and a fresh beating later in the game. As rough as it seems, this is a gentlemen's game and there is punishment for being a jerk. Business has forever lacked this level of expectation for positive behavior. The only thing I can say is, "keep your head up and your stick on the ice, or you won't see a dirty hit coming".
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Back to Basics

Ghost Writer stealing a moment while Marti's back is turned to snark on how the old thing might just be better.

In a world where "new" is synonymous with "better", increasingly complex systems have been brought to play to manage seemingly simple tasks.  For example, Marti's recent R.I.P.  Really?  That much work?  For what?
One of my prior blog mentions that policies are for 3% of the people, and I believe I suggested shock collars for them.  The reason being so the rest of us could quit working so hard on all those darn rules and noting compliance with same, when we would have complied because it was the right thing to do.  This blog picks up about there.
I fix stuff.  That's my job.  I take broken things and fix them.  Physical processes.  Paper processes.  Fix it.  And really, fixing them usually falls to three things:  someone didn't do what they were supposed to, somebody didn't tell someone what to do, someone didn't enforce compliance consistently.
Really, folks.  That's it.  Period.
But we dress it up with "one-on-one" and with "six sigma" and "employee engagement" and ... buzzword bingo starts in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
As a colleague of mine once said, "The firings will continue until morale improves."  Most of what our employees need are simple, clear directions, the tools to do it with, including communication, and the bad people fired.  Quickly! 
So HR Leaders, when you have your boss hat on and are considering another program.  STOP! Think twice.  And ask yourself... what about the current process isn't working?  Am I not giving clear direction?  Am I not communicating?  Am I not consistently reinforcing the behavior?  Bottomline:  it's all the boss' fault, and usually what went wrong happened with the answers to those three questions.
It's that simple.  Throw out all the books on "being nice" and "singing kum-by-ya".

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

R.I.P. - Fun at Work

Hi All, We have been in a hurricane of work for the past 4 weeks. A fierce flurry off add-on tasks tied added to the everyday. Implementing a major project for an annual process and preparing to deliver FY objectives to the team. As we worked, late for the umpteenth time preparing a presentation, a punchy coworker said, "Let's call this the Regional Initiative Program, R.I.P.". This was irresistible. I said, "We have objectives to die for! Let's put them on little tombstones!". Needless to say, we have a standard company branded presentation with no hint of tomb humor. I brought it up because it's creative and funny. Is it super professional to do? No and that's okay. It is okay to have fun at work. Try it folks! The world is intense; break it up with a little humor.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Monday, March 14, 2011

Balance and ADD

So while Marti lives in the adverse world of Big Box Land, Ghost Writer confronts the world of Balance and Attention Deficit Disorder.
Balance -- ahhh --- that holy grail of the world of work that each professional seeks.  The mystical land where work is work and play is play and there's time for both each and every day.  [A little Dr. Seuss, but you get the point.]  Balance, much like a unicorn, is fantastically beautiful and perfect and yet cannot be captured.  It can be seen and enjoyed for an infinitesimal moment, and then it flies away and we wonder if it was ever there at all.
Except right now.  Right now, I have awesome balance at work.  It's the slow season.  I have proactive projects that I keep chugging on as long as I give them a lump of coal every week to stoke the engine.  At night, or before work, I work out.  It's like I'm living in Disneyland.
Except I'm not.  I keep checking my email, almost panicked that I'm missing some emergency.  To an extent, hoping I am, since that would be way more entertaining than updating documentation due for its annual love and attention.
So I have captured the unicorn, have it in a cage as my personal pet, and really just wish it wasn't quite so in my grasp.  Which brings me to the tie with ADD.  Do Blackberries and constant demands impart ADD and dischord in our worklife?  Hmmm, that might go under the heading of, "No s#$%, Sherlock.  Brilliant deduction."  But really, it's only supposed to do that when things are broke, not when things are going well.  Right?  Wrong.  I'm too used to checking it.  Too used to responding to the chaos at the other end.
So, I'm backing away from the Blackberry.  Time to do the mundane and relish in the rate I complete it.  Time to quit hoping for the next emergency, and time to really think about enjoying what's at hand.
 
 

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Adversity

It has been too long since I posted. We came into a major roll out with significant investment in training, follow up and review. In the process, I got sick and really burned the health line right to the edge. Took one day to rest in between emails and audits, then back at it. There are still residual effects 2 weeks later and probably another doctor visit coming. In the meantime, the deadlines were met and the only use of personal time was for sleeping and eating. Everything else was work, late at the office, at home at the kitchen table, early starts and long days. We have all been there at some point, whether it was personal dedication or tremendous loyalty or pure insanity. We overcome to achieve. The deadlines have been met, the team is perceived as put together and strong, and the utilitarian sacrifice is satisfied. It is doubtful that this looks like adversity, yet it can easily lead to a resentment or entitlement in our teams if we expect it frequently. We burn any loyalty we have garnered from our team, when we want a high level of sacrifice week after week after week. All the bosses out there need to keep their eyes open for the workaholics that drive their team for no good reason, the bad planners that leave their team working over to clean up all the time, and leaving a crew understaffed and putting in excessive hours to cover. This wasn't where I was or am, but it made me think about the teams under my care. The world is becoming more demanding and less humane in their expectations of others. Employees have issues they try to blame on the employer and the employer tries to blame their shortcomings on the employees. Adversity seems to bring out the bus driver in most folks, so watch out for the track marks. In the end, the conclusion that I came to is that leaders need to be aware of the demands and temper them for the team. Create breaks in the action so everyone can take a breather. Thanking and recognizing the team is nice, but it wears thin when they miss their child's events or plans with their spouse one time too many. Sometimes the best thing we can do is approve the paid time off request without batting an eye and help cover the work that week. This is yet another plea from a normally tough and demanding business professional to ensure that work is still a humane world.
 
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People Platform HR by Marti Nelson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.