Measurement and Analytics: Neglected HR Strategies?

Author: Dave Crisp

15 Jan

More than half a dozen items crossed my screen within two days on HR analytics or metrics – that’s a rate of more than one a day – so is it right to suggest it’s a neglected strategy? It appears a lot more people now are getting excited about what this offers, but the caution is these ‘most people’ don’t seem to include HR. There are even several articles mentioning measurement and analytics in the current issue of Canadian HR Reporter, which is why I included it as a key future trend in my own article there.

The recent parade was led off with no less than analytics guru Thomas H. Davenport, who now operates as Research Director at the International Institute, offering a teleconference on their evolving ideas. Their web site asks who is moving into the lead for analytics in organizations – the CEO or the CFO? That should signal a warning to HR, which is also echoed in CHRR. Tom admittedly has always been an analytics guy first and focused on HR topics second, but when you review his list of books HR is never far from the center, from early work on re-engineering through a recent release on making smarter decisions, they have a people-overtone – managing knowledge in the organization, “The Attention Economy” and how to get better performance from knowledge workers. So why is the CHRO not on the list to own some piece of analytics in organizations?

The answer has to be that in almost all cases, HR is getting a late start on the band-wagon. CFOs deal with numbers from day 1. So, too, do IT departments, the other functional group that is mentioned far more often than HR. But we manage the most interesting issues that aren’t as clear or straight forward as budget numbers or widgets rolling off the line. Where analytics can really shine in offering truly new insight ought to be in exactly those fuzzy human areas where it isn’t clear on the surface what people will or should do.

Unfortunately HR departments are rarely staffed with even a single individual who really understands the use of analytics. At best the function may have someone dedicated to pulling reports from the many systems from which HR needs data – how many do we have in our pension plan, what are their total contributions, what’s the headcount by business unit that we should be monitoring and limiting? These sorts of ‘analytics’ questions almost don’t qualify for the name. They are just counting.

Google, as noted in several posts, makes it clear they don’t put a single HR policy change on the table for discussion without extensive numerical evaluation. Is that the other extreme? Perhaps, but we’ve known for a long time that executives in the business are frustrated not having such information as part of the decision-making process on HR issues. We have a responsibility to get that information for them in a digestible form if we expect to be included in every business discussion. From professors John Boudreau to Dave Ulrich, the message is clear – get with the program if you expect to be recognized for contributions.

Also on trend, the Grapevine site for HR and Talent Managers comments on Engineering HR Business Partners (the underlying idea? Analytics). Rebecca Shockley of IBM discusses building an analytics-friendly culture. At a macro level McBassi & Company continues to pound away at measuring the overall value of HR elements to a business and various ways to measure. For their part HRPA continues to develop and promote its Metrics Service through which organizations can share benchmarking data – not advanced analytics, but potentially base comparisons that might help make data more meaningful (not sure how well they’re doing, but they put on lots of demos). Lots of direct vendors are in the game, too, of course, such as SAP offering a white paper in infrastructure for analytics in CIO online magazine. A further bit of overview is offered by SmartData Collective on what sorts of things are under discussion, such as “Big Data.” I could go on since a bunch more arrived in the days between drafting and editing this.

All this would be useful information for HR, if one ignored research experts, i4CP’s, finding that only 1/5 or organizations use HR analytics. A significant part of that problem has to lie with us in HR not pulling the data together or making it digestible for other executives. It’s one challenge to calculate, it’s another to make it understandable. All this takes practice to learn to do well and that takes time. With all the advice out there on the need, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of directly applicable analysis on exactly what HR should do. Opinions abound, but practical examples are rarer. Until practicing HR pros start discovering and sharing the truly valuable ways to put data together, anyone working on this in HR is going to be developing new ideas in creative ways that may not always work.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Business/Strategy, Current Affairs, Human Resources (HR), Learning Organization

Job Security, The Trickiest HR Requirement

Author: Dave Crisp

16 Oct

Like most aspects of HR and leadership, job security involves paradoxes. It’s rarely discussed as an essential for positive engagement especially today when so many companies have had to lay people off. It’s an elephant in almost every room. An effective leadership team has to come to terms with how to handle it.

Promising iron-clad job security for life is clearly not what’s required or advisable for good employee relations. There will always be exceptions – an odd specialty department that’s no longer needed or, in the minds of some employees, even if you fire someone for cause or poor performance, the perception can be that you violated your promise. A real danger of making any formal commitment to security is the possibility it will create an entitlement mind-set in at least some areas of the company. It can be tricky to find a balance.

At Hbc, where turbulence and regular layoffs for ‘re-organization’ were commonplace, I was shocked to hear a senior director in one function suddenly accuse the CEO of being unconscionable for laying of half a dozen in the director’s division while he’d said nothing throughout much larger layoffs elsewhere in the company. Apparently it was OK everywhere else, but ‘not in my backyard.’

Some companies are fortunate never to have had to do any significant layoffs. RIM fit in that category until recently and earlier this year achieved #1 spot on a survey of “most attractive companies to work for” by Randstad Canada who collected 7000 opinions. Almost certainly that result was in before the layoffs. It will be interesting to see what happens in future years, since job security had to have been a pretty firm expectation of anyone signing on with them before recent events. People make assumptions. That’s in fact how job security is mostly evaluated in North America and helps explain the very high ratings obtained routinely by companies like P&G and even governments (during recessions). Of course it doesn’t earn such ratings by itself, but is a key ingredient.

Engagement requires employees to be satisfied with a number of factors, but disengagement can often result from a poor record in just one and that includes job security. But it’s a relative concept thankfully. Most people understand nothing is or can be 100% guaranteed. They make their analysis based on track record mostly and on the messages given out by employees of the firm – so employee culture, perceptions and what they tell others is likewise very important and can be managed in this respect through honesty and clarity as with so many other elements. People judge which companies are most likely to provide security largely by track record, often the recent record, though big splashes that got lots of publicity hang around a long time.

The key is don’t foolishly promise complete job security, but rather promise and demonstrate that leadership operates prudently. Don’t over-hire in good times (since they won’t last). Try for steady growth rather than spurts of uncontrolled hiring binges. Above all encourage and support cross-training so when tough times arrive, you can shift people to needed areas from those being reduced so as to minimize outright terminations. People understand if you’ve done the best you can and treated those who absolutely cannot be placed to fair severance arrangements, job search support and more. You can afford to be a bit more generous than average if you’ve minimized the numbers you have to let go. For others, it’s a vicious downhill spiral – the more they fire, the more it costs, the more they try to shortchange departing employees and blacken their reputation for future hiring. As with all other areas of HR, trying for balance is best. and most easily explained to those who need explanations if they are to be dissuaded from bad-mouthing how they were handled. Unfortunate, but often inevitable, this area, too, fits into a strategic approach to how we lead.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, Current Affairs, Happiness, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Can the US Get Its Leadership Act Together?

Author: Dave Crisp

4 Sep

In the explosively gyrating markets following S&P’s decision to downgrade the US debt rating we don’t want to miss the most startling reason they gave.
. that US leadership has demonstrated it couldn’t get its act together effectively enough to ensure stability for the future.

Of course they fell back on a financial result they didn’t like as well – saying another $4 billion should have been cut from spending, but the headline reason, which we all need to pay attention to is the leadership issue.

By contrast hardly anyone blinked when Moody’s cut Japan’s rating three weeks later because that decision was based almost purely on financial concerns. Ho hum. With the US, now all pension and investment companies are looking at what S&P’s action means to their management of funds. No one imagined the US could be shaken off the top rating. A different anchor for investment safety has to be considered. and for a reason that sounds like a long term systemic flaw in their government process – the dependable capitalist democratic ideal – not just a temporary over-spending problem. Ouch.

It’s ironic that the US currently has perhaps the best democratic leader since Abe Lincoln, but he’s saddled with impossibly high hopes from an electorate hungry for jobs and an economy seriously damaged by eight years of another unwinnable war started and pursued by ‘the other guys’ who poured unbelievable amounts of cash down a drain massively bigger than Vietnam ever was.

So we have an electorate, no doubt tired of all the wrangling, but desperate to find a fix. and a lot of opportunists taking advantage of the intensity to present themselves and their narrow interests as the savior. We also have a political system with such embedded checks and balances it won’t allow even four years of consistent policies to take root. Unlike the Canadian and British system which allows one party to organize things if they develop a majority, the US seems almost guaranteed not to be able to put together a program without it being destroyed by opposition between, as well as at, elections.

What does every politician say the moment they’re elected? “Let’s put aside our differences; I’ve been elected to govern ALL the people.” Many try, but interest groups adhere to no such principles. They can stand back and bash away at their points of view no matter how tiny a minority they are. and should they have clout in some other area of government, they think nothing of simply attempting to block every plan.

When we look at business leadership, we’re reminded of Jim Collins’ finding in his book Good to Great that the first requirement for leaders is to ‘get the right people on the bus’ and, by extension, the wrong ones off. How a leader does this is critical so as not to alienate and paralyze the remainder with fear, but still sooner or later, lining up those who want to work toward the goal and moving those who don’t somewhere else is fundamental. In government you don’t have that luxury despite the bigots’ common admonition that ‘if they don’t like it here they should go home.’ Obama seems able to develop a common plan, but how to prevent a few from scuttling every agreement?

In any case, it appears the US will have to spearhead a new model that sustains efforts at consensus or compromise or face the critics worst predictions that they may be slowly losing their dominant position in the world. mostly due to inability of anyone to gel anything done on any issue at all.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Business/Strategy, Current Affairs, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

Strategy for HR Pay?

Author: Dave Crisp

14 Aug

Given we keep noting that effective HR strategies are the most powerful force for future results in businesses of all sizes it was a bit of a surprise, though only a small one, to find that Chief HR Officer (CHRO) salaries haven’t more fully converged with CFOs, not even in the US where so much research proves the value.

I happened across one of those ‘what are pay rates these days’ sites, of which there are a number including the big job boards. To test it out I looked up what I might have expected to make if I took a job near my favorite Florida vacation spot. Don’t ask why I’d be thinking of that in mid-summer. If it had been winter, an obvious reason.

That got me looking at my old ‘competitors’ – the CFOs – and at different regions. The short story is:

Median Salaries:

	Florida	New York City
CHRO	$208,000	$252,000
CFO	$343,000	$395,000

While there is slightly more convergence in New York where the median CHRO salary is just under two thirds of the CFO, Florida hasn’t moved up as much, although when I was in the job 10 years ago most CHROs were making less than half in many cases.

One can’t judge too much from these data, which can’t be trusted to be highly accurate statistically and will certainly have lots of variation company to company, by size, industry and more, but assuming they were collected more or less the same way by a common survey method, the variances a distinct and sizable enough to draw the obvious conclusion.

What this confirms is the slowness of progress even in big companies toward recognizing the value, choosing the right people and paying competitively for the best CHRO candidates, as well as the candidates themselves accepting less than the competitive rate. One can argue that CFOs or both are overpaid or CHROs are underpaid, but either way we can see that the established faith Boards of Directors have in the importance of financial issues over people issues is still alive and well.

I didn’t try, but almost certainly would find roughly the same ratios in Canadian statistics. Of course there will be exceptions, but chances are we’re closer to the Florida situation than New York where competitive pressures are bound to be more strongly pushing organizations, especially the bigger global ones, to the logical conclusion that HR is increasingly important.

It’s a small measure, perhaps not especially significant to people outside HR, that we still haven’t dragged most companies into the twenty-first century understanding of the value of effective HR practices and strategies.

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Filed under: Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Current Affairs, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Rays of Insight in the Jumbled Field of Leadership

Author: Dave Crisp

17 Jun

Annually I’ve had a chance to sit in with about 24 Senior VPs of HR as we examine some topic related to, but beyond the normal scope of day to day HR work. At the latest event, Professor Mary Crossan, an expert in business strategy from Ivey School of Business at University of Western Ontario, walked us through a full day discussing the ‘bleeding edge’ of study of Character that is emerging rapidly. She was on her way to a world conference on the subject the following week and was as eager to bounce ideas around as we were. As with any evolving study there are differing opinions.

In a nutshell this followed themes from Western’s research into “Leadership on Trial” from which they offer a downloadable slide deck. To oversimplify somewhat this arises from the belief coming out of the research that the last economic meltdown was caused in large part by greed and lack of risk-consciousness on the part of a great many leaders who should have both known and behaved better – in short a result of character flaws. From this view, effective leadership requires three elements – competencies, commitment and character. but what exactly is character, how can it be measured, can it be taught, learned or improved on. or are we stuck with whatever character our top leaders were born with?

Looked at another way, we observe that many leaders power their way to the top through tremendous determination or commitment (perhaps driven by personal needs including greed) and by developing good competencies, but along the way there seems to be no corresponding well of character development in operation in many cases that we see.

Many financial leaders rely on Adam Smith’s economic insight that drives free market capitalism – if everyone tries to act in their own best self-interest, things should progress and market forces will make it all self-managing. Like all great observations, this holds considerable truth, but also a real danger of swinging pendulums before the self-managing features take effect. Yes, markets self-regulate to a degree, but not without endless cycles of periodic bubbles — manias like the one in the mortgage markets that led to this latest fiasco.

In short, with more on this complicated topic planned for future posts, the key thing about Character as it is being revealed in newer studies is that it’s quite different from competencies. Where Marcus Buckingham can reasonably recommend the value of focusing on your top three to five competencies rather than trying to change stubborn weaknesses in your skill set, the reverse is true for character traits.

Whether you categorize character traits into six groups totaling 24 traits in all, as Marty Seligman and Christopher Peterson do in their massively complex, and likely flawed, work on the subject, or you use some other list, it is the weak areas of character that can stop us cold as leaders and create boundless trouble. So we have to work on our weaknesses in all areas, at least attempting to become more well-rounded. Nor can we simply assemble a leadership team comprising people with different strengths (and weaknesses) of character and expect it to work – with one, say, very honest and another, who might be quite weak on honesty, but strong on some of the other traits like bravery, persistence, curiosity, etc. Missing that strength in honesty would likely make that team member a fatal liability, if not for the entire group, for at least many of its projects.

Unfortunately few Boards in the financial industry appear to have recognized the potential downside of the flaws of greed and imprudence in many of their top leaders who, in other respects, had many competencies and strengths that otherwise made them good choices to run such operations. This looks like a rich field of study for further understanding of leadership.

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Filed under: 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Current Affairs, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

The Rational Optimist

Author: Dave Crisp

28 Feb

Just when you think it’s all bad news, a writer comes along with a fundamentally optimistic view. That’s certainly true of a new book, The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley. In fact, it’s so optimistic, you are bound to find something unbelievable about it, but it makes you question the prevailing pessimism and perhaps rightly so. He even argues we don’t have a global warming crisis and that we can overcome our energy shortages, though he’s slightly less optimistic about water shortages.

What he argues basically is what I’ve been harping on – that we can solve pretty much any of the problems facing us with ingenuity if we build our capacity to innovate in all our organizations. He makes his arguments in context of a very interesting survey of history in which he insists the urge to trade, to do business with each other, leads to each of us specializing in some skill set we can get exceptionally good at. therefore producing far more than if each of us tried to produce all the things we individually need. By becoming specialized we can ‘over-produce’ beyond what we each need and thus trade the surpluses among ourselves so we all have more of everything. It’s fascinating to view the history of the world in this light (and I have to agree generally with his conclusions).

Overall it’s a great, positive message for those who choose to work in commercial endeavors. Of course, not surprisingly my copy was a gift from a Canadian mutual fund company, Vertex One, that stands to gain if we believe the future is literally worth investing in. Good marketing (the second year in a row they’ve chosen a book that is definitely worth not only reading, but thinking about). On a cautionary note, this isn’t a fund recommendation, but for disclosure, it is one I hold a small stake in. It definitely promotes the concept that business can have a significant role in saving the world, perhaps not a surprise from a West coast company.

Of course, we can never be sure of the future, but Ridley’s makes a good point that throughout our spectacular rise to technological superiority of today, there have always been pessimists predicting we would run out of the ability to improve things. Every generation has predicted we’d run out of food, etc., but so far we haven’t. so far.

What we can’t disagree with is his conclusion that we better continue to innovate at a rapid pace or we most certainly will be faced with problems the globe can’t overcome. Innovation has become the prime strategic imperative and we know that a unique sort of leadership and human resources environment is required to support that. In one sense, we’ve set ourselves on a treadmill and have to keep it going at least until we find population numbers decreasing significantly (hopefully not due to catastrophe). His view of ‘evolution’ is most interesting, too, arguing we’re the only species to have ‘evolved’ through social re-structuring, education and development. It’s a powerful conclusion, but just how true or how much we can count on this continuing remains to be seen.

Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the new insights and would recommend this for many college curricula.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, All That We Know, Books, Current Affairs, How Simplicity Works, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

WikiLeaks About YOUR Business?

Author: Dave Crisp

9 Feb

Now that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is preparing to go after a business in addition to his government targets, perhaps that casts some light on what he or the justice system should or shouldn’t do.

Shares of the suspected target, Bank of America, tumbled 3.5% or $4 billion worth in a few hours. Of course, that’s the stock market for you and presumably some seemingly savvy investors would then take advantage of buying low and help stabilize the price almost as soon as it was perceived to be dropping. After all no one actually knew at that point (and still don’t) whether Assange’s claims to have damning evidence of downright illegal dealing actually were being made about this particular bank or not. Only by putting together information he dropped in earlier interviews was any connection guessed.

Whatever the outcome of this event, a few things seem clear. Assange has found a new use of the Internet and hacking (which he was convicted of earlier in life). Many people seem OK that he’s revealed classified documents from governments. Whether they seem as willing to stand by now that he’s moving on to business is an unknown. The debate will no doubt rage extensively.

What his move toward business revelations raises is the question of what would have been the right approach if this isn’t. If you or I had evidence of illegal activity of a business or an individual, the more accepted course of action would be to present it to legal authorities, the police or SEC, and expect them to deal with it.

Innocent until proven guilty clearly falls into a gray zone if such information is simply published. No matter how clearly damning the ‘evidence’ might be, there are rules about whether it is validated, admitted into judicial process and more. Simply dumping into the public domain may be a journalistic scoop approach applicable to public figures, institutions and public information, but when it is classified or proprietary material, however obtained, one would expect going through proper authorities first might be more appropriate. Would that be any less public? Perhaps initially, but certainly not as soon as charges are laid. and that, too, removes much of the right to presumption of innocence unless convicted.

What’s also clear is there are very few true secrets one can or should depend on staying secret no matter what line of work or social endeavor you’re in. In one sense it’s great if we operate all the time as if anyone should be able to know what we’re saying or doing. Companies with rules against negative, behind-the-back gossip, for instance, clearly are straying into questions of confidentiality of individual conversations, hearsay and innuendo.

On the other hand, if a manager has a clear discussion with an employee about short-comings, isn’t gossiping behind their back, and puts this on record as a warning or developmental advice and that sort of personal information is made public by something like WikiLeaks, I think both we and law enforcement would take a pretty dim view of that. It seems likely we’d conclude the information would be damaging to all concerned. The employee’s reputation and future job prospects would suffer and so would the ability of managers to act properly in evaluating work in the future, thus damaging the ability of employees to improve. Some might argue pure verbal discussions should suffice, but we all know that until something is in writing it is often ignored.

It’s not like any of this is completely new. It’s probably more that a single individual with no grounding or connection to established process, like editorial over-sight, for instance, has been able to rock some very large boats single-handedly in a dramatic way. Like so many new initiatives fuelled by wide open Internet and technology, this simply raises old questions in new ways and suggests that we’re all going to be extremely busy trying to figure out what’s best and what policies are needed to ensure that. If it’s all right for Wikileaks to leak your information, how can you ensure your employees don’t routinely use conduits like that to reveal what they cannot themselves? Interesting?

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 3 Strategic - Thinking, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Business/Strategy, Communicating Effectively, Current Affairs

What Are The Best Objectives For Organizations?

Author: Dave Crisp

29 Jan

At a time when many observers are calling for evolution in human thinking so that executives make better decisions, it isn’t only individual executives who need to think more clearly, with more emphasis on facts and opposing views, but entire organizational decision-making teams.

A new web site has seen some remarkable growth recently focusing on just these sorts of questions and others having to do with innovation in management thinking. ‘The MIX’ or “Management Innovation eXchange” is worth a look if you’re following changes needed in managing organizations. They describe themselves as an innovation ‘project’ to which contributors are welcome. You’ll recognize some of the originators like Gary Hamel, for instance.

I liked one recent article in particular, pointing out that in the years since ‘shareholder value’ became the nearly exclusive measure of success in many businesses, success on that measure has actually declined on average almost 30%, arguing the worst performances in the latest financial crisis were turned in by those with the most “independent Boards” and worst of all were those Boards weighted with institutional shareholders – ie: shareholders big enough to drive their own direct shareholder interests. They argue there are other reasons to run organizations.

On one hand that clashes with some of my earlier posts in which I’ve argued against letting senior executives determine directions alone, since they have been shown to tend to favor decisions that benefit themselves. Yet clearly the idea of shareholder oversight is equally being called into question here.

What alternatives are there? The key would seem to be that strategies have to be looked at from multiple points of view – that neither individuals nor one or two large groups should be allowed to drive agendas exclusively or almost so. That suggests a need to review decisions more broadly.

What this argues for is that strategies need to serve composite, multiple needs. We live in the midst of complexity that is growing more complex all the time. The best solutions are rarely likely to be one-sided, no matter which side is favored. The challenge, of course, is that all of us as individuals have reasons that seem eminently reasonable to each of us for tilting decisions in our favor.

This, of course, is supposed to be the strength of democracy as a system. Everyone gets a vote. The problem is what political scientists took to calling the ‘tyranny of democracy’ many years ago – the tendency of the largest group in society to suppress interests of the minorities in favor of rewarding themselves. If you have the power, whether it is to out-vote or simply to outweigh the ‘opposition,’ it is tempting to see the other interests as ‘less important’ and decide to suit yourselves.

Going forward we have to find better ways of ensuring inclusiveness, not only in hiring or accepting people who are different, but in terms of including differing interests and agendas. Everyone with every agenda has to work together to ensure as many constituencies benefit as possible. Unfortunately we only have to look south to see the worst behavior in years to ignore this in public political debate, to use negative campaigning to try to win and eliminate opposing interests and points of view. And worse, we can see it spill over into their press, which has the freedom to say and campaign for what it likes exclusively apparently. So although we see more written by researchers and observers for more inclusiveness, we see less public debate paying any attention to clear facts that pure partisanship hurts results.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Business/Strategy, Current Affairs, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Divergence in HR Strategies

Author: Dave Crisp

30 Oct

More and more I’m coming to believe there are essentially two tracks in people strategy that will simply never converge, albeit both appear with lots of variations. We’ll have to stamp one out if we want to be rid of it. That one can be characterized as old-fashioned fiefdom-style rule by the top boss versus the newer, positive model of working on problems in more or less cooperative teams. Teamwork and decency not new you say? They might as well be for some Boards and owners. The era of the imperial marauding corporate barons is far from over as story after story attests. Will it end? That may be up to us.

There are still large companies, strange as it seems, that empower an owner or CEO to virtually go it alone with ideas that suit them regardless of the impact on staff or results, surrounded by a line up of toadies who are apparently willing to carry out the most outlandish plans no matter how many of them are hurt or unhappy. The sad fact is that organizations can be wrenched away from the team type by a single idiotic owner in a matter of a couple of years, but switching them back seems less easy.

Photo by klynslis

One such story unraveled in the last week or so with the firing of the CEO of the Tribune Company, a media conglomerate including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs. Although one could be pleased that the unbelievably outrageous behavior of the owner and his CEO have ended in a sad and, hopefully, predictable crack up, the ultimate reason for the failure is almost certainly more due to dropping ad revenues resulting most visibly from the recession, not the bad behavior per se. Even with this on-going disaster unfolding it doesn’t appear that the root causes were being addressed the way we might hope.

North America passes ever stronger legislation against stress-inducing work environments as reported in Canadian HR Reporter. Yet we can read how they are nonetheless perpetuated in some organizations. In the case of the Tribune Company, the CEO actually instigated a rewrite of the employee handbook to say, “Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use. You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process. This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment [emphasis mine].”

This provided thin cover for top executives publicly discussing the “sexual suitability” of various female employees and announcement of the promotion of a female sales VP thusly: “.a former waitress at Knockers – the Place for Hot Racks and Cold Brews,” as The New York Times describes it – “a jocular reference to a fictitious restaurant chain.” Needless to say, henchmen actually produced these documents, not the CEO himself.

This isn’t some penny ante fly-by-night, but a huge organization worth billions. Yet top notch executives were afraid that filing complaints would tarnish their reputations in their industry. And the Board of Directors did nothing. Legislation or no, we still suspect those who stand up to bullies almost more than the bullies themselves. Almost no one wants to be the whistle-blower no matter how much they want the whistle blown.

Thankfully this CEO has been fired just days after job postings for news reporters declared: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.” His new model employee it seems would have to be an “anti-establishment revolutionary” [translation: inexperienced and inexpensive - a new winning strategy to beat bankruptcy?]. Apparently the revolution finally caught up with him, though exactly why we will likely never know. Will the new operators rethink? We can only hope. because it appears the model of dictatorship, good or bad, is still very much alive even in major organizations. We may have new laws, but not enough new courage to fight nor common sense on the part of owners and Boards of Directors to stifle such behavior.

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Filed under: Business/Strategy, Current Affairs, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

We’ve Come A Long Way… Maybe

Author: Dave Crisp

15 Aug

Perhaps the title should be “the more it changes..” Last night’s news highlighted two workplace-related items. First 61 charges laid, with potential fines totaling $17,000,000, for safety violations in a building renovation that resulted in four workers dying. Will company leaders get the message? Does it really take that much to ensure people understand job safety is mandatory?

And in the same newscast, the lead item was government approval of a sporting workplace in which the main objective is for one employee to batter another as brutally as possible, albeit within rules that prevent the use of lethal weapons, but in ways virtually guaranteed to result in at least a few deaths – a sport where doctors have called for a nationwide ban. What happened to the new Workplace Violence and Harassment legislation, let alone Health and Safety laws? Don’t workplace rules say you have to provide a shield so employees never come into contact with dangerous moving parts? Can you see inspectors ordering a screen between battling competitors in such a violent sport?

The Romans set up rules for gladiators, and bullfights and cockfights follow rules as well, but we wouldn’t really want to call any of those safety rules, so let’s ignore the argument that there are rules that make this safe. Safer than handing out swords for sure, but really.

The Romans used their ‘games’ to divert and pacify unruly citizenry during tough economic times. It cost their governors a lot of money to run them, but apparently the results were worth it. We seem to have done one better since MMA, so-called Mixed Martial Arts combat (where’s the Art?), will be a source of revenue for promoters and tax-collectors. How does that make it OK that someone else’s sons will be given the “opportunity” to beat each other unmercifully? Interesting that we still won’t let those same young men ride to their combats on motorcycles without wearing helmets or in cars without seat belts fastened, but we suspend virtually all normal safety rules for sport.

My point? I can’t answer whether it is completely right or wrong in the grand scheme of things to let youth who want to beat each other do so under some sort of supervision. We know from YouTube it happens spontaneously, without rules. Perhaps they would find more dangerous ways of doing the same if left on their own. But we have laws in other areas to try to prevent as many people as possible doing dangerous things to themselves or others. Maybe this is a small safety valve for the aggressiveness that would otherwise bubble over somewhere else in society as it seemed for the Romans. Maybe, but reliable studies show at least with children that seeing violence generally results in desensitization and more violent behavior.

Perhaps the larger question is whether we will ever raise a generation of leaders who stand for a better solution, one that protects everyone while still achieving economic objectives, that engages workers so they feel satisfaction not the desire to strike out. This has certainly become the strategic goal of many companies that are doing well on a grand scale. Perhaps there will always be rogue CEOs who encourage harassment and battering of employees verbally or otherwise as a means to get rich and MMA is just one limited, perhaps minor, example. But isn’t there some hope that we will someday be better than this?

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