Marcus sure gets mentioned a lot both by those who agree you shouldn’t waste time trying to change your weaknesses, only work on strengths and those who strongly dispute that. If you’ve followed my posts you may guess I believe in doing both! That’s the Zen answer. But which ones when and how much?

A key function of Human Resources is trying to get people hired or existing ones moved into jobs that fit their strengths. Buckingham would be right in thinking I’d be wasting my time aiming for the Olympics, definitely not in my strengths. But every athlete or manager who legitimately wants his or her role and has talent still has “weaknesses” to work on. It would make no difference to me if my biggest problem in the 100 meter dash  was my start, but for those who win or lose by microseconds, knowing their weaknesses and working on them is huge. And to suggest they not bother would be completely wrong.

So, should we only work on strengths – no way! But starting with strengths and working on them as well as what makes them weaker than they could be is essential. Since studies show the lowest rated skills for most leaders are all aspects of working with people (versus things), we clearly need to promote those with inclination and relevant ability, but we also need to work hard to ensure they get exposed to experiences that help them grow people skills.

Tips: How to choose what to work on

Ideally trial and error and solid self-reflection have landed you in a job you like a lot. (If not, figuring out what you really prefer is priority #1.) Then, to get better at what you like doing:

1.    Try to evaluate and especially ask others for their opinions of your strengths and weaknesses for this work. Take time to assess accuracy. Don’t be reactive to emotional issues about these and don’t take anyone’s first word, especially your own.

2.    Work on your three or four biggest strengths… by looking at your weaknesses in those areas, planning a strategy to improve them and consistently doing a bit each day whenever they come up. Set reminders for yourself or you’ll forget.

3.    Then look at your two or three biggest weaknesses. Really look. Some may not be as bad as you think; others are worse. Be aware you have a couple of approaches – first, get someone else to do those things instead (a team member, co-leader, spouse, etc.). Figure out how to be great without ever doing these. Don’t let yourself be tempted. Pamper the people who do this for you so you’ll never have to. …But also… decide on one, just one, weakness you really, really, really want to change. Create a plan and work on it every day, asking people continually how you are doing and asking for their help and suggestions. Make this into a daily habit of practice. In a few months or a year or two, evaluate your results. Chances are you’ve made enough progress (and built some continuing habits) that you can choose a second miserable area to work on. But expect to keep working on these for the rest of your life. They will never come entirely naturally.

4.    Periodically assess your results and the balance between work on strengths and weaknesses, not letting either completely absorb your energy – do both. The proportion of time you spend on each is a balance only you can decide.

The bottom line is you can’t easily change weaknesses, but you better know what they are and have a strategy to prevent them de-railing you. Over time you can certainly improve some of these areas, but only if you work hard on one at a time and choose only those you really want to change… and then persist, persist, persist. For me this has meant a lifelong drive to get over feeling shy. I’ve developed tons of behaviors that work most of the time, but there are still areas where my original habits continue to affect what I do and unless the day ever comes that isn’t the case, I’ll keep this in mind and keep working away at little bits.

It seems as soon as you write something like “let’s not change the name of HR” as I did just a few posts ago, the idea comes back to bite you. My point was the name “HR” reflected a true step up from Personnel and the limited administrative duties that implies, but there seems to be no step up intended in changing the name HR to People Department or something like that. Instead what most people want is simply that HR live up to its promise of drawing together everything that would make people happy and productive into one place.

I’ve rethought that. There is another step strategically for HR to take and I think it would be reflected in a term like Human Process. If HR becomes the Human Process Department and we rename its leader to VP, Human Process, I believe there should be a different strategic meaning attached.

The missing strategic step is that bosses can conveniently forget they are involved in human process every single day, that humans carry out the work and they operate according to processes that need to be understood and managed every single day… but not by the HR department, which certainly cannot be everywhere at once.

The problem with the term HR was fundamental. It implies, not too subtly either, that one executive and department owns and is responsible for everything to do with people in the organization. So if something is wrong, call HR to demand a fix. This is as dumb as saying Finance “owns” all the numbers; call finance to fix sales or cost.

We understand that every manager owns his or her own numbers. sales numbers, cost numbers and so forth, while Finance simply helps with the strategy and systems. But with HR countless employees and bosses seem to expect HR to magically fix everything - “go tell my boss” or introduce a new salary or bonus plan, a training program or, worst of all, a brand new performance appraisal system… won’t that surely take care of shortfalls in performance or better salary increases??? And HR falls into the trap time and again.

HP on the other hand would seem more likely to imply an executive with specialized knowledge and supports for human processes everywhere, but make it clearer that HP does not “own” these processes from start to finish. They must inevitably occur throughout every operation. Bosses carry out a continuous performance management process. Do they know how? Are they up on best practices? Are they managing it every day as they do with their budget numbers? Can they just turn it over to HR to create the perfect form and then fill in the blanks? Not if we understand it is a “process.” In other words, someone has to take an employee through a process to get a better result. That someone is not HR, nor is it a lock-step, check here process, hand back the form process.

So unless you expect HP to take over your department, be there every day and manage your employees, you don’t see HP as the owner of results. But you might expect HP to assist you in understanding how best to manage your employee processes based on the systems set up - the salary scales, the bonus plan and, yes, even the performance appraisal system, presuming these are designed to fit the organization, its culture and objectives.

What do you say?

A steady stream of items reflecting progress in human resources arrives every week now. Momentum is picking up. Each step takes us further on the way to full recognition that HR is, in Jack Welch’s words, “the second most important job in any organization.”

Widely reported in the past week, major retail jewelry operator, Zale Corporation, promoted it’s EVP of HR, Legal and Corporate Strategy, Theo Killion, to President. Now you might expect as in years past this would be a legal expert serving as in-house counsel who makes deals and plans strategy from a legal-financial perspective and, oh yes, happens to have HR tucked under his wing. In this case Mr. Killion is a 30-year HR veteran who worked his way up to over-see the other jobs. HR is first in his background. Moreover he is tasked in part with continuing to promote diversity, which he personally exemplifies - a forward-looking strategy for results as well as doing the right thing.

Then the mail bag brought the latest “People & Strategy” - the journal of the Human Resource Planning Society - filled with a series of articles about CEO succession (and pay).

No great news on managing pay better I fear. Boards continue to struggle with the best ways to pay CEOs. Although the theory is firming up they should be paid for on-going performance once they’ve been attracted with a competitive base salary, the problem is how to measure the connection with performance. One article proposed a system that was then nearly universally dumped on by a half dozen experts.

So, what’s good on the horizon for the future?

As an aside, I hear from sources in various industries that top HR salaries are getting into the ozone, too, giving CFOs some concern they might be eclipsed pay-wise. The same group noted they are seeing more MBA students who have chosen the HR track in the belief this is where the action will be. They are right. Hopefully they are getting that advice from their MBA schools, too. The goal really isn’t to get paid well just for the money, but to see HR and what it does for organizations recognized and given the clout at least on a par with other senior roles.

The four main articles on succession were right on, backed up well, agreed on the same key points and made sense. What really stood out were two listing competencies for CEOs of the future - among them both explicitly emphasized a heavy dose of humility along with confidence - in balance. It was refreshing to see it clearly spelled out as a specific requirement!

CEOs need courage to take risks in rapidly changing environments and at the same time the ability to listen, absorb advice and ideas from others in the Board and the organization and meld all of that into best guesses. All this requires the humility to understand no one person has the ultimate right answer to any situation any more and Boards seem finally to be getting that. Complexity is the driving factor and makes the ability to assimilate diversity of opinion, knowledge and experience increasingly crucial.

And why is humility in a CEO such a gain for the HR perspective? For a dozen reasons including primarily that people work best when they are included, listened to and worked with cooperatively. HR struggles to promote this in vain in many organizations where the whims of individual leaders take precedence over team work and cooperation, where the majority of senior executives quite often follow the (bad) example of the CEO. With the right choice of CEO, having senior execs copy the new behavior would be a huge advance.

Thanks to the library’s automated waiting list I got an early copy of the new book “Punching In” by writer, Alex Frankel. I can’t recall where I heard about it, but it’s quite an interesting description of his experience testing and observing applying and working as a front line employee at half a dozen top-rated US employers - UPS, Gap, Starbucks, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the Container store, Apple and applying at others where he wasn’t selected.

This is a chance for senior execs and HR people to hear first hand what it’s like on their front lines or ones that might be very much like theirs. It reaffirms a number of observations that probably ought to be obvious. First, many applicants honestly don’t know what sort of jobs they might fit into and which they won’t. Frankel was impressed that some screening processes correctly judged, but you’d have to say most didn’t.

The overall conclusion he almost gets to is that fit and perceptions are incredibly important. He really liked UPS, a job that sounds as if it would kill some people, while he hated (and implies most people might hate) some of the others. What struck me most is the last chapter in which he returns to his UPS experience and becomes positively rhapsodic about it, to the point where he almost toys with the idea of re-joining permanently. It’s particularly interesting to read how he fell in love with them - via experiences before, during and after his time there - and note what a special and unusual time it was (the Christmas rush, when package delivery takes on a special meaning it doesn’t have to the same extent the other 11 months of the year). For some employees it takes quite a complex of coincidences to hook them.

Considering these are all companies with applicants lined up at the door due to their reputations as employers, it’s daunting to see how difficult it is for even top organizations to impress and hold staff and what a combination of factors it would take to make each company irresistible.

In some ways even more impressive is his recognition that each of these companies has true believers among its staff, people who feel about their employer the way he feels about UPS. He notes how the attitudes of these individuals, particularly when they’re in leadershp roles, get close to rubbing off on him despite his own feelings and scepticism. The human factor is in many ways the most powerful influence, potentially outweighing specific policies and culture as I read it. I’m interested in whether others agree.

Coincidentally this week’s Herman Trend newsletter points to yet another study, this time by BlessingWhite, assessing engagement levels (and strongly correlated retention rates) across organizations in UK/Ireland, Asia Pacific and North America. In general considerably fewer than a quarter to a third of employees are actively engaged while nearly 20% may be actively disengaged. This is actually an improvement on results previously quoted in a number of studies, but not by much. There may be a small trend to improvement as the Hay Group’s Bill Cheshire has noted in Canada, but arguably still a long way to go to reach maximum potential, although we have only thin evidence that this might be in the range of 60% (a number estimated by Michael Koscec at Entec Corporation). While it’s overly optimistic to think we could ever expect all employees to be onside with any organization, it’s important to get a clear picture of where we are at in general. Frankel’s book is an interesting personal look at how such figures come about.

Every so often there’s a serious debate about calling HR something else. I used to think that would be OK and perhaps inevitable. We get tired of terms and the baggage they carry and want something with a new connotation. Hence, the hated, administrative-sounding “Personnel” was replaced by HR over many years and now is rarely heard or seen. However, it coincided with real change in expectations of the function. Now we aren’t changing expectations as much as bemoaning the fact they were rarely met.

There’s another route. Rehabilitation is possible. I don’t object to organizations that have started to use Chief People Officer or Human Capital department. I just think they missed the point… and an opportunity. I love William Lutz’ article Life under the Chief Doublespeak Officer. It can’t be just a cosmetic name change. “A rose by any other name….”

In fact the objective this time is to make HR live up to the initial expectations that it would operate at a higher level, be strategic and deliver real value. Some organizations have achieved that. If you want to signal that yours didn’t and now you’re fixing that by changing the name, just make sure you actually modernize what HR does to the latest knowledge about what works.

All the elements we want are available to us under the title HR. The fact they haven’t been allowed to develop properly isn’t entirely, or at least not always, HR’s fault. Some feel in changing the name, we should perhaps re-title every underlying element. In part we’re seeing that - Recruiting has morphed into Talent Acquisition. I see the point if the new term Talent Management. It covers the complete flow from “acquisition” through orientation, training, leadership development, succession planning and more. In fact, it can refer to the complete employee life cycle - including performance management (itself a far broader term than annual evaluation, for instance). Understanding that the processes should be linked under these broader headings actually contributes to advancing strategy. But Talent Acquisition for Recruiting… I’m not sure… except perhaps that it fits into the broader ideas. I can’t see anything new is added.

Anyway, at the gym I’m constantly reminded there are more meanings to the acronym “HR” - ones that might just help in revitalizing the tired old punching bag we love to criticize. There, when I’m pumping away on the treadmill or exercycle, “HR” stands for something different yet strangely relevant - Heart Rate. Wouldn’t it be great if HR in organizations included the meaning the we should pay attention to everyone heart rates. In two senses: first, we want people pumped up, excited, keen and fully “engaged” and energized - high heart rate, and second, we want people to manage their stress levels, not let their heart rates become unstable, uncontrollably rapid, because therein lies the end of the line for employees through burnout as the Japanese term “Karoshi” or death by overwork signifies at the extreme. One group on the positive side uses the term “Heart Math.” Perhaps if we start rehabilitating HR with some positive references, the name won’t seem so bad. I’m not being entirely facetious here.

Of course America’s grand old game has yet another meaning for the term HR, right? Also not a bad thing to associate with the purpose of the human resources function. After all aren’t we in the business of helping and coaching teams to create “Home Runs?” Again, laugh it off if you wish, but optics and PR being what they are, perhaps it’s time for those of us in HR to point out these serendipitous meanings of the acronym that others seem to overlook.

While making new attempts to convince an audience in a speech yesterday I found myself clarifying convergence between HR, leadership and people skills in ways I had not fully thought through before. Sometimes when you talk and think about ideas for a while they suddenly start to make sense in entirely new ways. Conversation drives insight. This led to more ideas later that will cause me to revise my presentations to emphasize where we are in “the state of the art” today.

Several very different factors are evolving rapidly in society, having begun 30 or 40 years ago, now becoming visible in many places. Best known, most obvious is the impact of the PC dating from the first Apple computers built in Steve Jobs’ garage in 1975. Not only have these changed world history, but we don’t yet know how much or what the most powerful impacts will be. From pure record-keeping to social networking the story is far from finished.

Less well known, but now quite clear in direction, we can date recognition of the amazing power of effective HR from the takeover of GM’s Fremont, California car plant by Toyota, who were able to double production with the same people, machines, suppliers, etc., in just two years and have continued to boost productivity steadily since - for 25 more years - a management/human resources process that in incredibly powerful.

Then Complexity theory, with roots in biology and mathematical systems, least well understood, tells us that complex situations behave in similar ways in all endeavors, all challenges from physics to human behavior. HR - or human behavior - is the most complex area of all.

Complexity theory tells us that thousands or millions of “independent agents” working on problems will evolve rapidly to produce amazingly powerful, unexpected answers that turn out to be based on simple principles. Of course this is exactly what we’re seeing on the Internet… and at Toyota’s Fremont adventure called NUMMI - notice their simple principles: teamwork, equity, involvement, mutual trust and respect, and safety.

With blogging and social networking conversations, often truncated, halting and confusing, by millions of people someone will stumble on answers and ideas that will change the world in dramatic ways - and some of those will be further clarity in HR and leadership.

We now know HR process can revolutionize results. What we don’t fully understand yet are the simple principles that work together to create the right framework for this to occur in the widely varied organizational situations we face. We know what work on auto assembly lines.

Hospitals are struggling to apply complexity theory directly, a confusing path based on the concept of “positive deviance” or “copying the successful people from thousands of attempts” at solving a problem like rampant, drug resistant infections. More of these efforts are being tested world wide. The potential to solve political and organizational problems never before resolved logically is enormous. Those whose conversations lead them to the best solutions stand to reap equally enormous benefits.

Today’s Training Zone (UK) item about pros and cons of blogging (free registration) drew the main opinions - it can be good for marketing, certainly for self-reflection by the writer, but nay-sayers cite their lack of time (and a wide-spread belief that it’s a vanity thing).

The larger question is who reads blogs and do they help? Clearly most of the people writing business blogs intend them to help and most must believe at some level that they do. Vanity undoubtedly drives a lot of short term efforts to get seen on the Internet, but to stick with it year after year, disciplining yourself to write two or three or more times  a week on your subject takes something more than vanity, especially if few ever read or comment on the majority of what’s out there.

Why bother? Of course some derive solid marketing benefits. I doubt that I will. I’m not great at marketing in any forum and see that a more of a by-product of the real question. For me that is… can blogging about leadership really help?

In organizations over the year, my most startling observation is there are so many people talked into leadership roles, for the money, the power, the prestige, the challenges and on and on, who have no training, no real inclination to lead or much knowledge of what its about at least when they start. In some ways perhaps that makes sense because leadership is best learned by doing. But lots of people never learn, which produces pain and misery for vast masses of employees, co-workers and organizations themselves so to speak.

The hopeful fact is that the best approach to leadership is extremely basic, human and easy to follow. Conversation about it can help. For me, I haven’t fully been able to figure out the best way to say it or develop those conversations widely. This medium may work. Only time will tell. It’s a new way to feel that I’m making the effort. As time goes on the results will enhance reflection and perhaps jointly the blogging community will ultimately identify what creates value and how. Right now it’s a bit of the wild west.

Again today I found myself giving a would-be human resources (HR) manager the same advice I give all job hunters - the new boss is the most important factor in any job you’re considering. A great boss can encourage you, give you projects, mentor, coach, guide and introduce you to a world of further possibilities. In other words, they can make your job exciting, worthwhile and a continual learning experience… or they can pigeon-hole you from day 1 and demand nothing, but routine, even menial results.

You can spot the good ones because they are alive, people with plans themselves for things that need to be or could be done that aren’t yet. They will talk about possibilities not only for you, but for themselves, their teams and the organization. You can feel them inviting you into the process. Others in the company will speak highly of them as coaches and cooperative supporters. Just ask around.

By contrast I very often get to hear (from people looking for new jobs) about current bosses who can’t imagine their report ever progressing. No one in their opinion is ever ready. They’ll consider hiring outside in almost every situation before looking at anyone internally… or they’ll constantly pick people they believe will simply follow orders. “Loyalty” plays big with the latter type. Cross them (ie: have a new idea they didn’t tell you to pursue) and you’re on the hit list forever. Bosses who aren’t interested in growing people abound. Which makes it easy to be a great boss.

I’ve spoken with two university researchers recently who express concern that the hoopla over the uniqueness of Gen Y recruits may be overblown.

It’s been 4 months since futurist Dan Pink (other books: Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind) jumped into the fray with The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, said to be the replacement for What Color Is Your Parachute specifically for Gen Y.

Maybe. It’s light and light-hearted in manga comic format so it’s clearly targeted there. Many reviewers are quite taken with this, but the questions remains, are Gen Ys buying it or reading it when it’s bought for them.

Dan’s advice is six simple (all in favor of that!) principles for career path choices:

1. There is no plan. [The economy changes too fast for your career to have a plan]
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses. [Find your advantages]
3. It’s not about you. [Serving others serves you best]
4. Persistence trumps talent. [Keep showing up]
5. Make excellent mistakes. [Take risks, but fail forward]
6. Leave an imprint. [Do something that matters]

The issue is, of course, there never was a plan. We mostly stumbled into careers before so that’s not new. Neither are the other items.

Will Gen Y really change the workplace or, when they get mortgages, spouses and kids, will they “sell out” just as everyone acuses boomers of doing? More to the point, will our concern for what Gen Y thinks continue past the first blush of staffing shortage. Will we genuinely start listening to diverse employees’ needs and interests?

Meanwhile Pink doesn’t substitute for good career ‘how to’ books like Parachute or Barbara Moses’ excellent What Next. It’s a useful add-on whatever your generation - things we should all be considering, not just when we’re starting out, but for once, could we hear from Gen Y if they actually want this stuff instead of hearing from “grown ups” that they for sure will? If we’re really as interested in listening as we say, perhaps we should show it by doing so. Anyone heard what they think?

The Human Capital Institute (whose Talent panel I sit on - full disclosure) has added several very interesting blogs including in my prime area of interest - leadership. The first real post raises the question of followership - what is it, how should it work, etc.?

This is typical of the growing interest in all thing Human Resources. These are perennial questions and will continue to be asked until we develop enough people who simply understand how leadership really works in their bones. Once the principles become a core part of everything we do in management, like the financial concept that income must exceed outgo, they will puzzle each new generation.

The blog refers us to a Harvard Working Knowledge item by Professor Emeritus, Jim Heskett, that is an relevant summary of what’s newly written about Followership, but it is the comments to that make it fascinating. I especially like the fourth one by Narasimhan Gopalan, VP, i-flex solutions, who observes that leadership and followership require the same qualities (and I would add skills).

Personally I prefer to use the term “supporters” rather than “followers.” The days of blind following are grinding slowly, but surely to an end. People think for themselves and are finding ways to act on those thoughts more than in the past. “Supporters” implies a leaders needs to nurture support, that it can be withdrawn at any sign of inconsistency or personal agenda and that the entire process is very much a two-way street. Leaders need supporters and supporters need leaders.

I especially like Narasimhan’s final comment which I thnk raises the most important question that hasn’t yet been well addressed. He says, ”Also, it is interesting to observe in the corporate world, the behavioural expectations set by the boss to his followers are [often] completely at a variance of the boss’ behaviour with his boss and peers. For example, boss expects his directs to engage in collective problem solving and dispute resolution through consensus, share the resources through mutual help, etc. while he/she does not exhibit such behaviour or exhibits exactly opposite behaviour. This is a case of selfishness and hypocrisy and hence it is important for the organizations to assess not only the results achieved by teams per se but also look at how they are achieved at somebody else’s cost! Here, the tools like 360 degree feedback could come in handy.

This very much echoes the comments in my earlier post about Claudia Joyce’s work that I’ve written about elsewhere (and will post when I find time). She endorses the same rules for leaders and the use of 360s to ensure they are promoting collaborative practices. Until more companies do that the problem Narahimhan reminds us of will be only too common.