Jobs and Apple – Poor Leader, Great Company?

Author: Dave Crisp

4 Mar

Now that Apple has survived Steve Jobs twice, it will be interesting to see what comes next. Insider Tom Cook looks like a good CEO choice for now especially since he’s filled in for Jobs a few times before taking the top role more permanently. He survived the later Jobs era, but that also means he’s been part of the culture that’s evolved, good or bad, or probably better to say ‘good and bad.’

Few company cultures can be characterized as entirely ‘good’ (I don’t only mean virtuous, though that should be one consideration). We’re never really sure exactly what ‘good’ is for an organization culture. Continued, sustainable top-level success undoubtedly requires continual balancing and some of that shows up in the discussions around Apple. Even the latest controversy is one example – in the words of the New York Times quoted by no less than the Hollywood Reporter, “The New York Times story highlighted what some former Apple executives called the "unresolved tension" between a desire to improve factory conditions and the pursuit of cheaper products delivered faster.” “Unresolved tension” can be another name for a challenge you’re attempting to balance, and so it seems here.

Cook jumped into the fray, saying of course Apple cares about employees, while others admit they’ve known about labor abuses for some time. Such contradictions undoubtedly characterize the efforts of many companies to find better, cheaper ways to produce their products, but still safeguard staff. As long as it’s being worked on I’m sympathetic, but what about Apple’s own internal culture which hasn’t exactly generated consistently positive reviews and may or may not improve?

I may get around to reading the newly published book “Inside Apple” by Adam Lashinsky, a respected senior financial editor, presently for Fortune, or I may just wait and see, but I think some of the answer is contained in the book’s subtitle: “How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works.” Secretive, Really? Those words telegraph a message.

For good measure I read the Amazon review by master reviewer Loyd E. Eskildson. It’s typical of the tangled way we get information that free reviews like Eskildson’s form an enormously helpful resource today. The book’s official publication date was January 25 (yes, 2012), though it was likely available in preview earlier, and there were already 7 reviews by January 28 and another 18 within two more weeks.

Eskildson has reviewed over 3000 items according to Amazon (?! not all books, but still ?!), positively appreciated by more than 30,000 of nearly 48,000 readers – about 60%. And here’s a quote from his comments, “Steve Jobs was a micro-manager, bully, made ‘impossible’ demands and took a non-excuses perspective, and made Apple a very secretive entity. Fortune magazine Lashinsky, however, manages to provide useful insights nonetheless. The secrecy about future products and its management methods was intended to make life more difficult for its competitors, avoid stealing thunder from existing products, milk additional free media coverage on product launch days, and avoid disappointments if the eventually released product failed to match the hype.” I even take the slight grammatical glitches without worry because writing 3000+ reviews can’t leave tons of time for proofing and the content is otherwise clear and concise.

Wow – a goldmine for free on a book a few days old. That nails Apple’s culture for sure – remember the law suits, criminal charges, firings and threats over the lost prototype iPhones? Just one example of their operations. Secrecy is widely believed now-a-days to be antithetical to creative innovation. We’re told we have to break down silos, to share information across departments to stimulate ideas and there are plenty of examples pointing in that direction. Amazon’s de facto culture certainly follows that in allowing anyone and everyone to express more or less whatever opinions they wish about everyone else’s books and products, to our great benefit.

Should we conclude that Amazon is right and Apple culturally wrong? Jobs held it together, forcing creativity out of a secretive culture, but can Tim Cook or anyone else? Only time will tell. What it demonstrates is that when assessing leadership there are few absolutes, few opportunities to make either a quick or definite decision about what’s best or worst other than judging purely by results. and the latter, as we know from Enron’s mighty reputation up to just one day before their scandal, can be a very temporary measure.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, How Simplicity Works, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Why Companies Fail: Culture, Not HR

Author: Dave Crisp

19 Feb

In a lengthy article in The Atlantic, senior editor Megan McArdle makes very good points under the title “Why Companies Fail.”

Zeroing in on GM a year after its return via IPO as a public company, she notes it tried to revamp its culture on a number of occasions previously, but quickly fell back into its old way. She wonders whether this time will be different.

She concludes only time will tell if the culture change sticks, but this time the inputs are bit different: the unions are more cooperative, poor dealerships and factories have been closed and wasteful model duplication eliminated. In other words, there is almost literally only culture left on the table as a failure point. She doesn’t limit her critique to GM, citing a number of times when the US auto industry and others have been declared on the way out and then hailed as fully recovered only to go through the cycle again as soon as the companies began to believe once again in their own infallibility and success and old habits return.

The bottom line – it’s at least as hard to change culture, that amassed body of habit that organizations develop, as it is to change our own personal habits – poor diet, lack of exercise, procrastination or any of the hundreds of other challenges we face individually – and make them stick.

This has to be the biggest corporate culture change experiment of all time – a $50 billion bailout – will it have a payback? $50 billion for just one company! The US has recently pushed the banks into allocating just half this amount to help a massive number of underwater homeowners. Europe is hesitating at turning over not so much more, $179 billion, to bail out an entire country that could bring down the entire European Common Market. One could conclude that such a bailout for just one company ought to have a guaranteed likelihood of working. But that may be wrong. That’s why this is such a terrific experiment, if perhaps not the wisest use of money we could dream up. If it can’t work for whatever reason, we may have to conclude this sort of culture change is a foolish gamble.

Don’t hold your breath. This isn’t likely to be the over-night fix so many would like to see. That’s probably why the last year’s IPO shares have fallen by a third in price. It’s maybe easier than expecting a new US President in one term to eradicate the effects of the worst spending debacle (Iraq and Afghanistan), the worst domestic financial meltdown and subsequently one of the worst developed world meltdowns in history, but it probably depends at least in part on those being fixed.

GM has had a good start in one way – with pent up demand after the meltdowns leading to an massive 10%+ increase in auto purchasing. They were aided further by Toyota losing sight of its own cultural strengths and producing problem vehicles for the first time in memory plus massive setbacks from the Japan tsunami. With these three boosts on its side, GM has, in one year, retaken its status as seller of the most vehicles world wide for the moment and it has a chance to re-build its culture in a new image while Toyota struggles to restore its to what it used to be.

Whatever happens, this is a contest to watch that is as important to future strategies in HR as any in history. We can’t know for sure when, if ever, we can expect a definitive victory. In fact, it’s arguably foolish to expect that at all. What we really need to see is whether any of these giants can not only re-orient and recover temporarily, but whether they can keep adapting, changing and innovating to last another 30, 50 or 100 years. In theory that ought to be possible. In practice it will be a massive comment on the evolution of human behavior whatever the outcomes.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Current Affairs, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Learning Organization

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up File

Author: Dave Crisp

19 Feb

I know I’m supposed to focus on strategic stuff, but when something comes along that just gets me laughing I can’t resist a comment. Maybe that’s strategic. We all need a good laugh occasionally to break the stress of modern living and the economy and help our co-workers cope as well. In my leadership model humor is definitely one of the elements that can help one find balance in difficult situations.

In fact, was approached not long ago by a fellow speaker (www.laughlong.com) who is going to target HR as a potential market for humor programs at work. He’s already commented, partly in jest, that HR isn’t exactly filled with laughing matters. In fact, I’m probably going to agree when it comes to our demeanor when dealing with laid off or fired employees, harassment complaints, human rights and the like – not the best times to appear to take things lightly let alone find them funny.

I agreed to the interview with some trepidation that it might reveal how little I know about the subject and opinions I have may sound unfortunately humorless. No one really wants to appear as sourly serious all the time as dealing with on-going internal disasters might suggest. I fear he undoubtedly knows more about the subject than I so I could easily be tongue-tied and find nothing to say (however unlikely that is for someone like me who lives to speak to audiences, even individuals as audiences). Fortunately Jim’s web site reassuringly asserts that we all have a funny bone (which I think is true despite those certain individuals that every HR manager eventually meets). So I thought it wouldn’t hurt me to take a shot myself.

Maybe I was just in the mood to find things funny in the HR/leadership world. In any case this article from the Calgary Herald struck me in particular. Perhaps it shouldn’t. The subject company, www.kudosnow.com, really exists and was set up for a serious and important purpose – to promote managers and employees giving each other kudos and thanks for all sorts of contributions they make.

In fact, increasing the recognition we give each other and especially that leaders give their team members is strategic. It’s been shown to improve future results, boost morale and engagement measurably and reduce problems in the workplace. If that isn’t strategic in terms of what we want for results, it’s hard to find anything more so… and easily done for free. That’s a point we’ve made often right here in this blog, so what’s funny about a system designed to boost those objectives?

Well, maybe you just have to be in certain frame of mind. The first thing that struck me in this article, though worthy enough to be pointed out in an HRPA daily news roundup, was ‘why can’t we just do this face to face.’ Call me old fashioned. Maybe it’s a version of the tired joke that Gen Y staff text each other in the next cubicle rather than lean over and talk. I’ve got nothing against texting, but for a boss giving kudos?? Not my choice as a standard routine.

I can see how building up a pile of kudos would be reassuring and refreshing over the usual silence that surrounds one’s best efforts in most organizations. But I have a feeling more satirical writers than I could have a field day with this. It’s like Facebook where one person racks up 42,000 friends and I might have 5, where certain people’s pages become ‘go to’ spots for enormous followings while the average person’s is read by a handful of cronies. Does it mean I’m unworthy? Might cause some anxiety!

Most of all I picture stern CEOs rushing back to their corner offices to pound out 15 or 20 kudos a day to keep the wheels of engagement humming rather than exerting the exhausting effort required to say “thank you” out loud to people during the numerous conversations they have each day. I expect putting it in writing will make it more impactful, to use good management jargon.

Now, it will be on record, sort of like being in the employee’s personal file. Oops, hold on, is that legal? Would we, at least in our Canadian jurisdictions, require regulatory changes to enable us to put kudos on record without first getting the employee’s permission? Must the system build in disclaimers? What if others see a kudo before the employee him- or herself? No sense of humor, that’s us in HR for sure.

Seriously, I smell an opportunity for us to suggest this before the CEO gets this advice from his neighborly lawyer friend. He needs to command a new HR program launch – collecting signatures from every employee so the CEO can start delivering these all important kudos without fear of law suits or reprisals. Now if we could just get those senior execs to write the blurbs in positive way, not the usual kudo: “Hey, your program that just added $5 million in sales needs to be ramped up with 12 new segments. Can you do that by Wednesday?”

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching Others, Communicating Effectively, Happiness, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Wish I’d Said It: Why We Shouldn’t Hate HR

Author: Dave Crisp

12 Feb

This will be a slightly grumpier sounding post because I’m going to point you to Liz Ryan’s blog post on Huffington Post’s site for a fabulous article everyone should be reading that answers this challenge enormously well.

In future when this subject comes up – like the old Why We Hate HR article from Fast Company, which is still being written about widely these many years later – these are some of the arguments and constructive suggestions I’ll add to what I’ve put forward before.

From an HR executive’s perspective, Ryan’s comments should feel like pure common sense.

We have just one more question to ask – why aren’t more executives aware of or paying attention to similar arguments? With good arguments on our side, well thought out, perhaps now is the time to dig in a bit.

One reason has to be that most simply don’t want to sit still to hear about the logic of the most complex workplace function. Many probably fear it would overwhelm them – too distracting to master – and it won’t add value. Little value, massive time? They couldn’t be more wrong on all counts.

When we think of ‘business’ or ‘non-profit’ we think about the objectives – make money or deliver service – not about the people who do these. We hide behind umbrella words – ‘a business is an individual or an organization set up to make money.’ Somehow in that word ‘organization’ we lose all sense of the many individuals – single individuals – persons who each contribute, or don’t. Dealing with the needs of so many one at a time seems impossible, though successful companies prove it isn’t.

The second major reason to overcome, sadly, has to be because executives have long been able to ignore HR issues with virtual impunity. They can, so they do. That’s ending and we can help.

Executives can’t ignore poor sales for very long or poor budgeting or over-spending or poor IT (any more) or poor whatever, but they can ignore poor behavior on the part of managers, including themselves, for years.

They can ‘save time’ by ignoring people in the organization because ‘people are adults who can take care of themselves’ or should be, so they think. They suppose people should just grow up and suck it up, yet they are often the first to cry wounded when someone slights THEM.

If someone’s nose is out of joint, if they’re not fully engaged, having a bad day, week, month, year – well, many think, they should know how to get over it. The cream will rise to the top on its own and a handful of highly effective people will pop up who can be depended on to pull everything out of the fire one more time without all this “HR hand-holding.” Won’t they? After all, isn’t that what they’re paid for. If they want to continue to have jobs..?

So executives tolerate the admin and legal functions of HR that ‘somebody has to look after’ and complain bitterly that HR just gets in the way – especially of their personal desire to behave as they wish – and other silly rules HR imposes (which, even though necessary for some in the organization, shouldn’t be necessary for me).

Most of the time, the complaints about HR don’t arise from evil intent on the part of such executives, but from imaginary lack of time, patience or interest for people topics. Unfortunately a great many still believe that taking an interest just isn’t part of their jobs, but something that can be delegated to a function they ignore like taking out the trash. If they felt that way about budgeting or other parts of their job, well, they wouldn’t be around long after being told flatly to shape up or else. Oddly that doesn’t happen with HR in many cases.

These people like to feel they’re playing hardball. Perhaps it’s time we do, too?

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Steve Jobs Leadership?

Author: Dave Crisp

29 Jan

One might think this question absurd in light of his company’s financial results over the last few years or you might write off his success to pure luck. I’m not sure either fits. His style is nothing if not controversial, but just maybe it can be explained with current theories of leadership success.

I used to puzzle over an expression I haven’t heard in a while – “the exception proves the rule.” How can we say this, I always wondered, when an exception by definition would seem to defy the rule. Later I read that the old meaning of “prove” was “test” as in “proving grounds.” So an exception tests the rule. and certainly if you find the rule still applies, it adds to the proof that the rule makes sense.

One can write off any success to luck and it’s always a key factor, but Jobs clearly was successful several times and clearly followed rules of his own, whether they seemed understandable to us or not, so it’s unlikely to have been pure randomness. The core question remains – was that good leadership. and, if so what does that mean to my leadership theory or the many others that would seem to say his style is unlikely to succeed (and certainly wasn’t pleasant for employees)?

In the wake of Jobs passing I put off drawing conclusions because I felt I was missing something. In the interim I’ve read two Jobs biographies, a number of reviews and a good many articles because I think it is important to answer such puzzles. Ultimately I’ve come to conclusions.

My leadership theory says three relevant things. First, luck is always a factor, but you increase your chances of success if you (second) include five key elements in your leadership style – balancing positive with honest, and strategies with habit-building or implementation skills (those are the five in italics). And you improve your odds further if you either develop great strengths in all five areas (rare) or develop them in some areas and find partners to assist you in the areas where you lack strengths.

Jobs is a very, very extreme case of this, but it worked, albeit in a rather odd way he certainly never planned out. I conclude he wasn’t a great leader by himself nor by knowing how, just through sheer determination and somehow sensing the need for the five elements in strength and finding ways to supplement what he didn’t have.

What he did bring to the party was mostly a rather strange twist on emotional intelligence abilities – those being the positive/honest dimension in my model. His staff used to say he could create a ‘reality distortion field’ in any lengthy conversation or presentation. He was amazing at presenting his arguments in such a way that people walked away totally pumped, completely positive he would succeed, wanting to participate. They ‘drank the cool-aid’ as some would say, time after time – and so did analysts at conferences and trade shows. He even pushed Apple to design top notch presentation software as a key priority, many say, in order to use it to further this over-the-top skill of his.

One reason he was forced to this super-positivity was because he constantly went over the top on the other end of the EI or EQ spectrum. He aimed to be so brutally honest that it was extremely painful to work with him. He would rip people to shreds the second they failed to deliver to his image of what he expected, often highly unrealistic expectations. The latter is typical of great leaders who ‘get away with it’ – to push for results that seem to almost everyone else beyond the realm of what’s even possible – but it’s also typical of wild visionaries whose whacky dreams fail miserably. Jobs stumbled into a very extreme balance, but balance nonetheless, by accident I think.

On another key axis – IQ, the ability to generate workable ideas and implement them, I think Jobs was much less adept, but no less extreme, perhaps even weaker would not be too strong. The defining feature that made his initial fortune through the Mac for instance was the concept of the computer ‘mouse’ with its ability to point, click and activate menus, commands, highlights and more. He didn’t invent this, but saw it at the Xerox PARC labs and recognized – that was his skill in the strategy area – recognized that it had world-class appeal and function. It did, but he couldn’t build it or implement it himself, lacking all the skills needed to do so.

Through his belief that one truly good employee could deliver fifty times the actual implementation of a poor one, he triaged through computer geniuses, insulting and humiliating many in the interests of finding a few who would buy into his reality distortions and deliver fabulous technical machines in a fraction of the time everyone imagined was necessary. It seems certain he was never happy with the results or the speed, but settled for the best he could get by cracking his whip and driving toward the idea he’d spotted that would appeal to consumers.

His strength in the strategies (or ideas) area was to spot and in the implantation area was to drive others since he had absolutely no skills there himself except to see when something wasn’t yet good enough to appeal, wasn’t simple enough to be mass marketed to non-technical individuals. In that respect you have to say his inability to do any of the technical stuff himself was actually an asset – he would simply keep pushing until something worked simply enough even for him.

So in a very odd way, Jobs does in fact fit my theory of leadership, albeit in a way I never imagined and would never recommend. He found a peculiar balance of the key elements, requiring that to balance them he had to be beyond optimistic on the other to balance brutal on the other and capable of identifying the one core idea that was better than every other on one end and driving the associates he could bamboozle into joining to produce it ever more simply, quickly and cheaply on the other.

But it didn’t always work. In several tries – with his Lisa computer, NEXT and in film animation he nearly bankrupted himself or the company because a reliable overall balance never really there. Nevertheless he believed in his own distortion field to the point of nearly losing his house investing in a new idea before it caught on barely in time and took off.

I’m far more interested in tamer applications of my model, ones that anyone can learn and succeed with, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this exception does ‘prove the rule.’ It also could have been disastrous had luck not clicked at the moments it did for Jobs because there was absolutely NO balance in the third dimension – how fast you go. As with riding a bicycle (an example of balancing several skills that I often liken to leadership), if you don’t go fast enough or if you go too fast the balance is in danger of being lost. Jobs risked going far too fast for safety, but that was simply another of his personality quirks and unlike many, many other entrepreneurs he got away with it big time. At the end of the day, it appears he was driven somewhat like Alexander the Great, by believing he might die young and so had to achieve greatness in the short time he had. and, like Alexander, the prophecy seemed to come true unfortunately, just when Jobs had matured more toward the point of planning the balance instead of crashing into it and nearly wrecking everyone along his way. We can thank his indomitable impetuousness for speeding us along the digital path, but we should be glad we weren’t part of the painful process.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, Coaching Issues, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

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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Ed Lawler: Time for a Reset in HR

Author: Dave Crisp

11 Dec

HRPA’s roundup of news continues to be interesting. They included a link to HR professor/guru Ed Lawler’s recent article in Forbes, which in turn is widely read among senior executives. I agree with Lawler and think his views are not only worthy of attention, but essential for HR people to know these are key messages going to senior executives from such highly respected sources.

Although critical and recommending change in HR, he is constructive – also recommending commensurate compensation, and – perhaps more importantly – highlighting the distinction that is rarely made in articles complaining about HR (like the old “Why We Hate HR” from Fast Company, which is still a teaching tool in some very high level HR courses and still draws comment even in Fast Company. The latter, by the way, is a very solid talent-management based commentary on HR strategy as it’s evolving.

Lawler’s ultimate point is the theme that HR is merely administration surfaces again and again for a reason- but one which has a solution. Lawler doesn’t make the link, but we can see the parallel in finance. He argues HR should be regarded as having two distinct levels or divisions – one handling highly administrative tasks needed to be done by someone to keep organizations going. This isn’t to say these are simple, easy or unimportant, but they aren’t the whole story. The other level or division needs to be concerned with more strategic solutions – organization effectiveness, which is far more intangible, takes time and is often short-changed when busy HR people get bogged down in the admin duties.

Think finance divided into Accounting and Business Strategy – Controllership and CFO roles, which admittedly are sometimes combined in smaller organizations. Even when combined, however, we need to recognize clearly the differences and we are helped if we distinguish between the wrongly maligned ‘bean counters,’ whose jobs are nonetheless essential, and the financial strategists in our organizations.

Admin versus strategic roles are often lumped together by complainers who dislike financial or HR controls that were set up as part of a strategy at one point. It’s human to personalize a gatekeeper as the author of a ‘stupid’ rule, but there are virtually no articles suggesting the companies try to run entirely without finance people or that they completely outsource finance. Most organizations would rather have the bean counting end of finance in-house actually, where they can argue and improve procedures they don’t like than outsource to an inflexible, lock step system that doesn’t quite fit their organization.

This is so much the case that you probably haven’t even heard much about financial outsourcing apart from occasional admin items such as payroll or basic bookkeeping. Few suggest finance be outsourced entirely and let line managers set their own strategies, yet we continually hear this question or “threat” about HR. The answer is, of course you can outsource whatever you want, but outsourcing HR is more than sending out benefits admin and letting managers decide who can have promotions, days off, special pay increases or be fired on their own. Promote the wrong people through expediency or favoritism and you have a formula for destroying the very engagement you want HR to strategize for.

By keeping in mind the distinction between admin and strategic principles, we give gatekeepers in HR the opportunity to seem more logical. They aren’t preventing a pay increase to be petty, nor because they fail to understand good people need bigger rewards. Unfortunately some in the admin roles leave the impression they are personally making the decisions about what’s “right” or “wrong,” leaving a trail of line managers who feel they have “tangled” with HR too many times and just want to be rid of them. What we need is everyone to understand the strategies and that includes gatekeeping HR staff who have to explain at the lowest level why they can accede to every individual’s personal desires of the moment.

Oddly finance doesn’t seem to suffer this personalization except perhaps in the way people feel about them when their travel expenses are refused. But in the end that’s just money and generally not a lot of it, not highly emotional questions like whether I get paid for a sick day for taking my kid to the hospital. With every one of these situations involving different facts, the myriad of possible answers and long-lasting frustration is far greater and more delicate than ‘you can’t charge that new tie because you spilled gravy on it.’ Do we really want to outsource such HR decisions to a lock step process or would it make sense to use such complex questions to improve policies over time in keeping with a long term culture strategy?

Internally we have a greater challenge in educating HR gatekeepers about how to communicate such decisions and refer people to the strategy level when they simply don’t understand the explanation. HR has to be the best communication department in the organization to prevent these sorts of frustrations from festering. Keeping both eyes on both admin and strategy, but recognizing the difference, is crucial.

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Sorting Out Value from Hype

Author: Dave Crisp

4 Dec

Is it me or is there an increasing deluge of workplace advice to leaders? Of course I read this stuff routinely for work, but the sheer volume is staggering. Take just one issue of Talent Management’s email newsletter a couple of weeks ago, with some pros and cons.

One might think the topics would have to do with succession planning systems or the like and the lead article (from their magazine) fits. The HR guy for Sean “Diddy” Combs, Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group, talks about talent audits, identifying hipos (high potentials) and, interestingly, career pathing among their 300 employees to ensure engagement and prevent poaching by rival entertainment organizations. That’s interesting and a great overview of talent management in brief as a unified, centrally branded approach that many companies would do well to emulate. Good for them for poaching a chief talent officer from a “global advertising media company” (I should say so – Young and Rubicam) – wow, what were they doing wrong?

So far so good, but it’s tough to find unique items like that every month or week. Next is a plea to help newly hired executives craft a leadership message – echoing others’ advice that being great presenters is now almost a prerequisite for leaders. Scary, but likely valid – and we might do well to help new leaders out with this. Again a relatively unusual bit of advice to ponder, a good second lead.

Skip the next report of a survey showing bomb squad technician is the scariest US job (edging out stunt person and high school teacher – maybe it wasn’t as difficult when I was in the latter role early on since I don’t recall shaking in my boots). Then an article on the need to convert annual reviews to on-going feedback to enhance performance. Not new, but true, followed by a pitch to get more value than damage from 360s by focusing them on development opportunities rather than (negative) assessment. OK, we’re still in talent management if not terribly fresh territory.

Skipping to popular stories of the week and archived favorites we see: a new look at engagement (not so new), how to create a solid working relationship with your boss, lessons from the ousted Tribune CEO (as noted in earlier posts here: a startling example of dreadful behavior), then: backstabbing bosses followed by building a civilized workplace (definitely some themes here for leaders, but do we really need this again and again).

But the one that caught my eye most was ‘Man’agers Best Friend: Sniff Out New Management Skills.

Oh my.

OK, I read these for my spouse who’s violently allergic to dogs and others in her family who are terrified of them even as adults because they had to avoid them as kids. Of course there’s an argument it can reduce stress in the workplace (for the dog’s owner and dog fans, that is), but it rarely rates a mention that it can severely increase stress and illness for others, to the point they quit or don’t take the job. Writers of such articles tend to pooh-pooh “a few” oddballs who are fearful of pets, but isn’t that a bit like saying ‘only some people get sick from cigarette smoke, so to heck with them, it reduces stress for smokers?’

How is this worthwhile Talent Management advice?

Well it turns out we can also learn major leadership lessons from dogs, too, to paraphrase: “patience, listening, forgiveness, minimal ego, minimal judgment, learning how to read people and how to be more open – a wonderful mirror on how others read your cues – just by watching how your dog reacts and recognizes.”

OK, I’m off the rails on the last bits. Are we to take one fond owner’s word for it that she can, and therefore that we should be able to, see these qualities in dogs. If you love animals and anthropomorphize their behavior, perhaps this is what you might think you notice reasonably consistently, but if you tend to see dogs behaving when afraid or over-excited, as unpredictable dangers that might bite unexpectedly or jump on you with muddy paws, claws and energetic licks that, to some, seem like germy opportunities to catch diseases, I don’t think you’ll be noticing patience or listening (as you cry, “down rover”). And dogs with muzzles? Somehow it’s hard to see them as patient.

By the way, I’d just as soon not work for a boss who took his or her leadership lessons from these creatures who probably know how to behave just fine in their appropriate habitats, but perhaps not so much at work, thanks.

At least it’s different. Oh the topics we have to call on to fill publications continually with new stuff. Aren’t we criticized in HR for always having a ‘program flavor of the month?’ There’s some inconsistency here.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), NewsLetters

Time to Put HR Under a Microscope?

Author: Dave Crisp

27 Nov

OK, if you follow HR issues at all you have to read an article with that title and the tag line: ‘we have to drive the HR professionals into making more strategic decisions’ (that’s the clip HRPA’s daily headline newsletter posted).

In short, CFO magazine published this report a week or so ago that makes one a bit dizzy. It aims to summarize a presentation given by the CEO of Taleo (the Talent Management software company) at a US Conference Board event on Human Capital Metrics. The report seems to be an effort to pull out the highlights, which include a blast at companies using too many contract workers (getting less engaged employees) and the need to localize HR programs when operating globally rather than ‘drop in an American or Australian solution consultant’ into China, for instance. In the latter case, the reason pulled out by the reporter is ‘you need a local person who speaks the language and understands the cost structure.’ Admittedly these are among the reasons for wanting local help, but surely from an HR view, there are quite a few others – understand the culture, the local HR regulations, what motivates local people and more. By this time you can see a mish mash of partial ideas and wording shaping up.

From here we launch into a clip of comments about the need to use social media better, emphasizing that referrals result in employees who typically stay longer.

So far I’m following the reporter, a little buzzed by the quick shifts, but still puzzling about the title ‘HR under microscope’ and waiting for the major criticism. I’m guessing the headline is due to an editor creating something to sell. But no, there’s more.

An interesting segue takes us through an interesting comment that HR can’t be more than an administrative function if it runs on a staffing ratio of 1 HR pro to 350 employees when (in the CEO’s reported opinion) it started at more like 1:60.

Then the blast arrives. Asking reasonably whether HR at these large ratios can be expected to know more about talent than the manager of 10 people, it concludes: “Yet in exit interviews, employees say the number one reason why they leave is that they [don't like] their manager. It doesn’t make sense. We have to drive the HR professional into making more strategic decisions.” Wouldn’t logic suggest from this we need to convince senior management teams to make more strategic decisions about how to staff HR?

Wow. I’m not sure what the point is here, but given that it made it into the tag line for the article, I’m sure it must seem important. Let’s see – HR doesn’t have the resources to get properly close to talent issues, so it falls to managers who are doing a lousy job. In some way that doesn’t make sense so we have to drive – great concept there: “drive” HR professionals to make more strategic decisions. Would that be strategic decisions to hire themselves more staff? Is that their fault? Or is it that perhaps they really could create a better environment at their 350:1 skinny department ratios if they just tried harder? Or am I being paranoid?

All this ignores analyses from years back that HR staff ratios vary greatly due to the structure of the organization as well as sheer volume decisions (you typically need more HR per employee if you have 600 units spread geographically than if you have all, say, 25,000 employees under one roof like a big plant). But of course what really catches everyone is the facile move to turn this into blame for HR’s lack of strategic decision-making. Get the whip, let’s drive ‘em. By this point I’m not sure exactly who said what, but the result certainly seems to have ended up twisted in a familiar way. Sorry we can’t score one for CFO Magazine’s effort to make an ally of HR and mitigate inter-departmental silos. Except for the punch lines it sounded for a minute there like we were on the right track.

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

If Only All CEOs Believed

Author: Dave Crisp

20 Nov

When three CEOs presented their views recently at SCNetwork that HR is a valuable contributor at the most senior level of their organizations someone commented there wasn’t much new. I disagree. It’s not that we heard earth-shattering new techniques, but we did see something new in three CEOs who expect and insist HR should not only be at the senior table (our former peak aim), but should be challenging the other executives at that level, the CEO him- or herself and managers throughout the company to step up to higher levels of understanding and behavior with respect to HR issues. That’s a bit different from the usual “of course we value HR.”

When the CEOs broke it down, they were unanimous this won’t happen unless the CEO personally drives it. They’re aware managers in lower ranks feel quite justified in viewing HR as a purely transactional role – hiring, firing, disciplining and generally keeping up with the paperwork, the regulations and ‘all that stuff’ that line managers say they have no time for. That’s on a good day. These CEOs want to turn that around and help lower ranking managers develop greater appreciation for their own and HR’s strategic role. It’s interesting how they all seemed to be using similar key ways to go about this.

The two CEOs who hadn’t had direct experience in support roles expressed their surprise at discovering when they reached the CEO chair that they immediately started wanting strategic input from HR. Who else partners with the CEO to improve teamwork at the senior table? How they are expected to partner is also enlightening.

Although I’ve heard and read plenty in the last few years about the need for tough conversations as a regular diet, I was surprised at the vehemence with which this group supported the concept, one also mentioning Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which expands the same basic concepts more specifically toward team development. It’s true we might expect CEOs chosen for a panel to be on their best behavior with respect to HR, especially with their HR directors sitting in the audience, but asking them to challenge executives in such specific ways is new. Of course we’re looking at a select group, but one whose members are serious about engaging HR effectively.

A couple commented there isn’t enough tough feedback coming at the senior team from around the company and that ‘maybe we haven’t made it safe enough.’ The move to encourage constructive confrontation of issues in tough conversations is key to developing teams and turning them into high performing leadership groups, but not many CEOs are ready or willing to face up to that. They know they need HR to help that happen with fairness and balance, a word they mentioned frequently.

When asked about values, they were unanimous about their importance. Again this wasn’t new to an audience of converts in the HR field as the grounding for high performance, but two things stood out. These individuals are serious about making their values work to the point of insisting they and every manager in the company be called out if they weren’t walking the talk. That’s still truly rare, although getting more widespread as the news leaks that this is the way to financial results and customer satisfaction.

As an aside, it was interesting they are quite happy to promote values with t-shirts, mugs, posters, handout cards among the more common tools that have been called into question or made the butt of jokes. Either they’re too new at the game to realize this stuff is perceived by many as hokey or those who see it that way are missing the point – it all contributes – if, but only if, the CEO backs it up and is willing to be held accountable to live those values along with everyone else.

That of course led to the million dollar challenge question – will you fire a top producer who doesn’t live up to the values. To a person all three not only said they would, but gave examples of where they had (thanking their HR people for advice to treat long service well on the way out the door and do things right, but nevertheless, do them). To paraphrase one, ‘if you let stuff like this go, you’re just expanding the problem and undermining everything you’re working toward.’ That’s new despite having heard so many times before, as one said, “if the CEO doesn’t get it..”

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Archive for the ‘Human Resources (HR)’ Category

Jobs and Apple – Poor Leader, Great Company?

Why Companies Fail: Culture, Not HR

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up File

Wish I’d Said It: Why We Shouldn’t Hate HR

Steve Jobs Leadership?

Measurement and Analytics: Neglected HR Strategies?

Ed Lawler: Time for a Reset in HR

Sorting Out Value from Hype

Time to Put HR Under a Microscope?

If Only All CEOs Believed

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