Resilient HR, Resilient Company

Why does HR still struggle to find the right balance between administration and strategy? 

How can HR continue to build its influence and drive strategy in the post-Corona workplace?

Where can I find the answers without reading a long blog post?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF3jpuQf6TE

Diversity and Inclusion for Introverts

I spoke at an HR event recently where the key themes were company culture and employee experience.  Following my talk, I was asked by the event moderator if I would accept less money in exchange for more fun at work. 

‘No way,’ I said.  ‘I’m an introvert.  If you want me to have ‘fun’ at work, you have to pay me more.’

That got a big chuckle, but I wasn’t trying to be funny.  I like working with people, but for me ‘fun’ is reading a book alone in my house.  That’s how I shake my funky stuff.  

Just to be clear, introverts like me aren’t shy or unsocial but unlike extroverts we recharge in solitude.  Whereas extroverts find solitude lonely and tiring, and recharge in more social settings. 

In all the HR forums speaking about diversity and inclusion I’ve participated in, I have yet to see anyone bring up how to include introverts.  No one considers that if your company culture is highly collaborative, it can suck to be an introvert.  No one takes introverted work styles into account although it impacts everything from how people do their best work to how they communicate.

Hiring for cultural fit should mean hiring people who are passionate about your mission, not people who all behave or think the same way.  

Sadly, however, despite so much focus on diversity and inclusion, companies expect people to be extroverts at work if they want to advance. This isn’t as unfair as it sounds because communication and relationships are the cornerstone of successful business and no one can do great work in isolation. 

Nonetheless, while extroverts are more likely to excel at sales and proactive customer service, it’s typically introverts who show up in areas that require methodical execution and deep expertise.  That’s because introverts are more likely to invest the time and solitary deep work required for mastery of complex topics than extroverts.

LEADERS TAKE NOTE: Not everyone on your team has the same preferred work and communication style.  A one-size-fits-all management style won't bring out the best in everyone.  Take time to understand your team and help them play to their strengths, not yours.

But it is what it is.  For the time being, extroverts will continue to be in the spotlight at work and are also more likely to advance and earn more. So, here are some tips and reading recommendations for introverts to help you design your dream career without attending lots of networking events and pretending to be someone you aren't: 

Know what you want – If you feel stuck in your career, you may be Barking up the Wrong Tree.  Do you want to lead a team or be an executive?  You’ll need a support base to get promoted and if you’re an introvert who hates talking to people it’s worth asking yourself if that’s really what you want.  Do you want to work remotely or part-time?  You’ll need expertise and in demand skills to earn that flexibility.  Most things are easy if you know exactly what you want and what you’ll compromise – or not compromise – to get it.

Focus on relationships, not networks – You don't have to be an extrovert to be friendly and supportive of the people you work with.  Most opportunity comes from either being top of mind, where extroverts have an undeniable advantage, or being someone who helps others be successful, where introverts do.  Remember, no one succeeds without support, including you, so pay it forward.

Walk the talk – People who get what they want adapt their approach until they get it.  I’m not saying you should try to change into an extrovert because you’ll fail but you may have to have a difficult conversation or change jobs to get what you want.  Take a deep breath and commit to asking for what you want and finding something better if you don’t get it.

Play to your strengths – Great ideas are cheap - the real magic happens in the execution.  If you have a dream and lack the charismatic charm of an extrovert that creates its own luck, work at getting so good they can’t ignore you.  Fortunately, as an introvert, you have a natural advantage when it comes to deep work.

Find a communication style that works for you - Just because you don’t enjoy team lunches or networking doesn’t mean you can’t proactively reach out to different stakeholders in your company or write energized and positive emails.  Introverts can be great communicators if they organize themselves around outreach activities and use their natural empathy and powers of observation.  You may never be the life of the party, but you can be a great communicator.

Let’s face it, if you’re an extrovert with acceptable skills the world is your oyster.  Sadly, my introverted friends, that’s not you but you have your own superpowers.  Figure out what they are, develop them to peak performance, be nice to people along the way and the world can be your oyster, too.

Leadership: The Art of Honesty and Affirmation

I've worked for and with some fantastic companies but one still stands out as a model of wise and pragmatic leadership and talent management:

RECRUITING:
Candidates had an opportunity to meet with employees at each level of the business, giving both sides an ample opportunity to sum each other up. Not surprisingly, their openness and attention to detail in the hiring process resulted in a high success rate among new hires.

JOB INTERVIEW: 
The partner who interviewed me exuded friendly, polished confidence.  The contrast to myself - I was in graduate school at the time - intimidated me for the first few minutes of the interview until I noticed he was re-phrasing everything I said to make it sound better.

For example, he saw on my resume that I was graduate student body president at UCSD and asked what that involved.  I said I ran meetings and sometimes met with the dean to discuss student affairs or speak at a campus event. He responded, 'Ah, so you're an experienced facilitator, negotiator and public speaker.'

The entire interview was like this and as we shook hands at the end of the interview he told me I’d made it to the next round and wished me luck.  Interesting, no?  He could have easily tripped me up with tough questions but he built me up instead.

COMPENSATION:
They paid less than competing companies and explained it like this: "We pay a bit less but we'll train you and give you so much practical business experience that you can walk out of here and earn three times as much after two years. Or stay the course and work your way up to partner." Sounded fair to me.

TRAINING:
There was a full-sized campus near Chicago to handle classroom training needs, but onboarding at my home office included an online simulation in which I spent a week managing a virtual project team. My simulated team members came to me with various problems, complaints and requests and it was my job to keep them motivated and productive. After the program concluded, an HR director pulled me aside to tell me I got the highest score ever on this part of the exam.

I hadn't done anything special.  I just followed two very simple rules that I have continued to follow in every leadership role: 1) I said yes to all reasonable requests from my team; and 2) I let people go with good grace when they were ready.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT:
My first manager gave me the best - meaning useful, not glowing - employee review I've ever had to date. I don't remember the specifics of the review. I received an adequate rating accompanied by some positive feedback about my hard work, discipline and quality output, yada, yada, yada. Then came the useful part that stuck with me.

'I've gotten some feedback about you that concerns me a little,' she said, after all the nice bits. Apparently I had a habit of asking the same question over and over again in different ways until I got the answer I liked.'  Several folks had mentioned it to her, and not in a good way.

This isn't all bad,' said reassured me. 'A good consultant and project manager needs to be tenacious. But you may want to tone it down a little.'

I leapt valiantly to my own defense: I was just seeking clarification. I was just trying to save everyone from making huge costly mistakes. I was just this and I was just that.

'Stop,' she said mildly with a hint of a twinkle. 'I know you have your reasons and I'm sure they are good ones. But here's the thing. If one person says something about you they may be biased. If you get the same feedback from several people, however, take a mental note and watch yourself in action.'

This excellent advice has served me well over the years and I hereby pass it on.

TAKEAWAY: Everyone knows honesty, good will, and building people up make great places to work.  Why don't companies insist on these qualities in all their leaders?

What HR is Paid to Do

Recently I’ve seen a lot of posts about freeing HR from administrative work so they can finally spend more time doing ‘what they’re paid to do.’  It would seem there are some different opinions about what HR is actually paid to do.  

The business expects HR to handle people admin, liability, reporting and skills development – so arguably, that’s what HR is paid to do, even if some folks disagree.

This may not be a popular viewpoint, but the HR Business Partner model proposed by David Ulrich was a bust in several key areas.  Don't get me wrong, the idea made sense (and he's doing some great new stuff now), but there were serious flaws in the execution that I don't think were intended or anticipated:

• Doing it right required an extra layer of highly skilled – not to mention expensive - people running around moderating, coaching, advising, witnessing, and generally strategizing about all things people. 
• Typically, HR business partners were (instead) sourced from a mostly business-as-usual HR talent pool, rather than hiring them from, say, the business. 
• In many cases the newly minted ‘business partners’ continued having to do admin work while test driving the new role.
• To create more time for strategic work, HR adopted technology to delegate administration and data entry to line managers and employees - shifting but not solving the admin problem. 
• Although there was some progress on strategic initiatives, local teams tended to be left out of the strategic 'inner circle’, creating a 2-tier system within HR.

Fast forward about fifteen years: Too many HR professionals lack the field experience and operational skills of a true business partner and lack real authority to shape company culture and policy.  Somewhat ironically, HR gets blamed by the workforce for unpopular business decisions while having to defend them publicly.

There are companies where HR plays an integral role in business strategy and is recognized for leading the charge on the people agenda.  However, in my experience this usually goes hand in hand with a passionate and charismatic CHRO rather than than any particular framework or model.

According to recent Fosway research, a third of surveyed organizations plan to reduce HR headcount, so it would seem the case for investing more in HR isn't obvious to everyone.  Meanwhile, HR continues to struggle to do more with less while trying to find the time - and be taken seriously enough - to be strategic.

It may sound like I’m criticizing HR but I’m not.  HR has a tremendously important job that creates a lot of value to the business.  It is thanks to HR that people are hired and fired legally, onboarded, paid on time, trained, periodically coached or promoted, somewhat protected from egregious conduct and blatant discrimination, and terminated with due process and consideration. 

This is what HR is paid to do, and it’s strategic to boot because it helps the business run smoothly while supporting the people who deliver the company’s products and services.  HR doesn't get nearly enough credit for these things, in part - I think - because they've been so focused on establishing the HR Business Partner role with the executive team they've distanced themselves from what they do best.

Even in organizations where HR has successfully established the HR business partner role within the C-suite, there's a huge opportunity to position strategic HR to everyone else in the business. Ask the average employee what an HR business partner does all day and you will likely get a blank look.  

(To be fair, most people probably don't have a clue what the CEO does all day, either.)

If that’s not the case at your company, feel free to ignore everything I just said.

If it is the case, let’s forget the HR business partner model for just a moment and take a fresh look at how HR can partner with employees to create a better work experience:

Help people connect – People look for community and a sense of belonging.  When selecting HR technologies, consider whether they help people find their tribe at work and create meaningful connections across the business.  Also think about how to enable and encourage talent mobility, as one’s tribe or passion may be in a different part of the company or even outside of it.

Help people contribute – Use storytelling and coaching to help people find their superpower and connect the dots between their work and their impact.  Instead of copying best practices, use design thinking to include people in creating their own employee experience.  Above all, show genuine appreciation to everyone who does their bit to help your company be successful.

Help people grow – Think critically about how to support people on their career journey by letting them try new things and providing learning opportunities.  Schools have career guides, why don’t companies?  Consider providing professional development, feedback and coaching tools, and reimagine the annual performance process with a professional growth lens.

If HR does these things well - plus all the unsexy stuff they don't take enough credit for - it’ll be a strategic partner to the business and the people who work there.  Employer brand, retention and bottom line results will improve and before you know it companies will be looking to grow the HR function rather than downsize it.

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There aren't enough blog posts about gender inequality

Picture courtesy of matheus-ferrero-226756-unsplash

Just kidding, there totally are enough blog posts about gender inequality, and looking at recent C-level announcements from large multinationals it seems to be working.

I too have written on this topic, although not recently, and it's been fun revisiting what I used to think, mostly because I used to be a lot funnier.

Besides my lamentable reduction in hilarity, my opinions haven't changed that much.  I've never bought into the glass ceiling, even back when I was a lowly product manager hoping to be promoted to director.  Fast forward, I eventually got the promotion, went on to be a VP, and have been approached about two C-level roles that I declined to apply for.  So, I guess you could say I still don't believe in it.

My journey hasn't been completely smooth or without a hitch.  I've had difficult colleagues, colleagues who thought I was the difficult one, and managers who didn't support my advance.  I've held the fort and worked part time while my husband focused on his career. I've taken maternity leave for three kids, and we're talking European maternity leave here (so longer than the two weeks or whatever it is you get in the US).

I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time, I've made my share of mistakes, and I've spilled various beverages on various white blouses right before important meetings.

But enough about me.  I get it.  The system is sometimes unfair, but it's a still great time to be a professional woman.  Network, ask for help, pay it forward, don't burn (too many) bridges, add value, learn stuff, take care of your customers, and tell people what you want.

And if you're a professional woman looking to navigate the system, or a working mom trying to have it all, don't believe everything you read - even if something is generally true, that doesn't mean it applies to you.

It's fine if you disagree but I invite you to read the following posts before you judge.

Is There Really a Glass Ceiling?
Poor Working Moms
There'll be No Cake in Hell
Debugging the Gender Gap

Leadership Lessons from Taekwondo

Since becoming a ‘solopreneuer‘, I’ve doubled down on my taekwondo practice.  In fact, I’ll be spending the next ten days in Italy at a training camp practicing 3-5 hours per day in the hot sun, followed by my green belt test.  My family is coming along and my kids, as you can imagine, are delighted to spend their summer vacation watching me break boards.

Breaking a board in one shot feels great but if you had to hit the board over and over without ever breaking it you’d probably give up, which you can compare to some workplace situations.  Patty Azzarello wrote a great article (here) about becoming one’s better self – with way better hair - when work doesn’t go your way.  She’s one of the best at navigating difficult workplace situations, but it’s also worth exploring why leaders have to expend so much energy navigating instead of leading. 

You could argue that’s part of what leaders get paid to do.  Given that businesses need to run profitably, some competition for attention, mindshare and resources is inevitable.  Besides, friction can be a positive creative force, up to a point.

However, past that point it’s just wasteful and erodes trust.  How do you know where that point is?  Oh, you'll know. 

After that ‘People don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses,’ meme went around for about the ten thousandth time, Christie Lindor resoundingly qualified that statement in a blog post that has received over 30K likes and more than 1000 comments, so I guess it struck a chord.  Here are the crib notes, but I recommend the entire article (and Patty’s):

Yes, people leave bad bosses but what they really leave is an entire organization.  Symptoms of the kind of culture people want to get away from include stagnant processes, increased toxicity in interactions, frustration with wasted time in meetings, lack of support from leadership during difficult times, gossip and bad mouthing, favouritism, and pockets of motivation being drowned in organizational inertia.

Wow, who knew?

Even a good boss in this kind of environment will lose people.  In fact, they may lose more than average because they are the ones coaching and developing people to be strong external candidates. In other words, if people are leaving in one part of the business, you may have a problem with a particular leader, but if people are leaving across the business, chances are you have a bigger problem. 

What can a healthy Taekwondo practice teach us about trust and motivation? Taekwondo is based on a martial arts discipline that is thousands of years old, when they never heard of new-fangled organizational models or open offices.  It’s strictly hierarchical and based on mutual respect between masters and students.  Advancement is merit-based but open to all.  New students are welcome and masters help and mentor beginners – it’s expected.  There are rules and forms and you follow them, period.  You work at your own pace but those who show up and work the hardest advance the fastest. 

And yet, although it’s very structured it’s also very creative.  You have to think and move fast, innovate by combining movements your muscles know by heart in new ways, and anticipate your opponent’s moves.  It’s a one stop shop for autonomy, progress, mastery, flow, and purpose.

There are real workplaces that follow a similar model.  My first job at one of the leading management consulting companies, for example.  The partners were responsive and generous with their time, project leads were expected to mentor, performance standards were applied fairly, and advancement was both merit and time-based.  In other words, there weren’t organizational limits on how many folks could advance so good people didn’t get stuck in career limbo, which creates unhealthy competition at many companies.  New hires were made to feel welcome with a proper orientation and a regular influx of new staff kept the organization fresh.  

I’m not going to say it was perfect - and believe me when I say the hours were long – but notice the similarities to a well-run martial arts practice. I’ve had many great jobs and work experiences since, but each time I break a board I wonder why more companies don’t put real effort into mentoring, recognizing contributions and creating opportunities for more individuals to grow professionally.  It costs money but it creates abundance.

Great leaders know you don’t engage people with surveys, performance evaluations or 2.3% merit increases.  You engage them by taking a genuine interest in their development; recognizing a job well done - or a board well broken; enabling them to master the moves; empowering them to try new moves; and helping them advance to the next level.

Here's me breaking a board.  As you can see, it's a team effort.

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The HR Journey from Productivity to Purpose

My last post Is HR Stuck in a Rut? asked whether HR can evolve beyond process efficiency and employee satisfaction surveys to take the lead on offering an inspiring employee experience.  Here are a few suggestions to get started:

Know Your Personas: Some HR solutions support tailored talent management practices, but what matters is in how you personalize.  If you do it strictly by job or employee category, you’ll miss important nuances like seniority, extroversion v. introversion, or individual goals and not surprisingly, the process will work better for some than others.  Like marketers, HR should view employees as customers and personas to be served up a tailored and personal experience. 

Design Thinking: HR people love to talk to other HR people and that’s awesome because it marks them as curious, friendly, and open.  However, it’s also important to get out there and talk to your internal customers about how you can better serve them.  If you got out there more, you might have dodged the open office bullet.  Stop falling for fads and best practices and go talk to people!

Playfulness: Gamification utilizes well-understood principles to motivate people to do more of what you want them to do and have fun while they’re doing it.  It introduces a spirit of friendly play and – depending on what is more appropriate – facilitates cooperation or competition.  It’s a topic by itself that you can read more about here.

Mastery and Progress: On demand learning is a great time and money saver and quite a few organizations have done an amazing job implementing creative and engaging modules.  Yay!  But now that you’ve made it possible for employees to learn in 5-minute intervals between meetings, it’s worth exploring the benefits of allowing dedicated time for coaching, mentoring, knowledge sharing and professional development.

Trust: No matter what you say, people will look at what you do.  If your organization fails to pay out bonuses, if your leaders exclude or attack people, if new ideas fall on deaf ears, or if people feel taken for granted or stuck in place, you won’t have an environment where people want to bring their most creative selves to work. 

Joyful Workspace: It’s been proven that bright colours and feelings of abundance can create feelings of joy and endless possibility, so why do so many workspaces look like this?  I’ll just leave that out there.

Experience Design:  We know in our hearts that employee surveys are blunt instruments at best, and that satisfaction is a poor predictor of performance.  Maybe it’s time to shift focus to creating purpose and opportunity at work so people want to be there, feel connected to their work, and believe their contributions matter and will help them achieve their personal goals.

Note that none of these suggestions require high tech solutions to get started. The HR journey begins – like any journey of discovery – not at a conference but with a piece of paper, a sharp pencil, a pack of sticky notes if you’re feeling agile, and your customers.

How to Find, Hire and Lead Great Talent

I don’t believe in the war for talent.  Yes, there are some specialized skills that are challenging to acquire but since most people are dissatisfied at work for largely the same reasons involving company culture, managers and rewards, even ‘hard to find talent’ is open to making a change.

FINDING GREAT TALENT

You can hire great people without making extravagant offers or breaking the budget by following three simple rules:

• Be creative: Everyone out there’s looking for the same hard to find profiles, but what you really need is someone who can succeed in the job.  If you can’t get the exact skills you are looking for in your price range, look for transferable skills or consider bringing in a contractor to meet your short-term needs while searching or training someone (see my blog post on HR and the Gig Economy).
• Be flexible: There’s no shortage of qualified and hard-working people out there who, because hiring them feels risky, are often overlooked: moms returning to the workplace, remote workers, people who want to change careers, young professionals looking for growth opportunities, people not currently employed, semi-retired people, etc. 
• Have a talent pipeline: One of your jobs as a manager is to have a rolodex of potential talent you’d like in your team should the right opportunity arise.  If you have an opportunity to travel to events, talk to people, connect with interesting profiles on LinkedIn, and keep people in mind who applied for previous job postings. 

HIRING GREAT TALENT

So, those are some tips for finding and making yourself attractive to great talent, but the trickier bit is knowing who to hire.  Again, a few simple rules have served me well over the years:

• Have an audition: Ask your candidates to prepare a presentation to showcase how they approach work.  AI may help identify talent in future, but so long as LinkedIn keeps showing me Spanish speaking sales jobs I’m not holding my breath.  Profiles can be gamed but a solid presentation can’t be faked.  Inviting people who will be working with the person you hire will enable them to weigh in on and buy into the decision.
• Don’t be Goldilocks: I wrote a short post about Goldilocks Syndrome here.  You should always wait until you find someone who can succeed in the job and complement the team, but I’ve seen job posts with completely unrealistic expectations.  Similarly, don’t immediately write off people who seem too senior, as they can bring invaluable experience to the team.  Instead of ticking skills boxes, hire people who can learn, play well with others, and think on their feet.
• Hire people who can grow: According to the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, if you are selecting from a pool of candidates that all share a basic level of competence it doesn’t really matter who you hire, because they will learn on the job.  I totally buy into that, having learned coding on the job early in my career and pretty much everything else at an advertising agency in Tokyo.  An audition or trial period will help you assess growth potential.

LEADING GREAT TALENT

So now you’ve hired someone and it’s your job to help them be successful and grow professionally.  A few tips:

• Let people be stars:  Managing ambitious high potentials can be challenging, especially when they think their work is better than it is – it takes humour, lots of listening and putting your own ego on mute.  There’s also a body of thought leadership that is pro-team and anti-star, which I find interesting but limited.  In my experience, everyone has star quality if you help them find and express it at work.  
• Be dream compliant: At the recent Club Talentsoft event, Co-Founder Alex Pachulski predicted that organizations will need to become dream compliant and help people connect with opportunities (more about the event and his presentation here).  Money aside, the best way to keep ambitious self-starters happy is providing opportunities and encouragement to try things, grow, take responsibility and make visible contributions, and be recognized. 
• Expect people to move on: People leave bad bosses, but good people leave good bosses, too.  If you lead in a way that attracts high potentials and performers to work for you, and give them opportunities to grow, chances are they will at some point receive a better offer.  That’s OK, first because you want what’s best for them, second because they’ll go the extra mile for you to wrap up and/or transition projects before they go, and third because it creates opportunity for others on the team.  Voluntary attrition helps keep the team fresh.

Look, most of what we thought we knew about talent management has turned out to be wrong, and everything we think we know today probably will, too.  I believe part of the reason is a tendency to over-engineer talent strategies, but fortunately, basic leadership principles never change: 

If you hire people who love to learn, encourage collaboration and new ideas, recognize contributions, and weed out trust-destroying behaviours, you’ll never have trouble finding, hiring and leading great talent.

Talent Profiling 2.0

My oldest daughter (9) has successfully lobbied for riding lessons.  A former equestrian myself, I was all for the idea but my husband was harder to convince.

His initial response: ‘No way. What a completely useless skill!’

I bristled a bit at this. I rode horses competitively for seven years growing up, two of them on the school rodeo team, and while I don’t exactly use those skills today they are part of who I am.

‘Oh, yeah?’ I retorted. ‘If I’d married a Texan rancher instead of you I bet he wouldn’t say that to me!’

My husband stared at me blankly. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know I used to ride on a rodeo team in school,’ I responded icily.

I knew he knew because he’d laughed heartily at my tales of lining up to tie the understandably depressed school goat. I can still hear its plaintive ‘baaaaah’ each time it got flipped to the ground.

‘Oh, right.’ He still looked confused.

I sighed. This is the man who didn’t realize I could swim until we’d been married for about six years because he thinks an icy cold lake is perfect for a ‘refreshing dip.’

(He's German.)

‘Rodeo’s no cake walk, you know,’ I said sternly. ‘You have to keep your seat, pay attention to your posture, keep your ride in check, and often as not you have to rope a running cow or something from the back of a galloping horse. It’s a real skill.’

He stared at me thoughtfully, presumably trying to picture the woman he married on the back of a racing horse whirling a lasso in the air and yelling, ‘Yeee-haaaaw!’

He seemed to be looking for the right words. Finally he settled for, ‘I find that hard to imagine.’

By now you're probably wondering what my point is, beyond letting the world know I know more about cows and horses than one might assume meeting me for the first time.

My point is that people have histories, skills and experience beyond what you hired them to do. Many of these skills may be completely useless but others could be exactly what you need for a particular project or job.

For example, if you're looking for a project manager you might try asking if anyone on your team knows how to herd cows. Trust me, I've done both and it's a transferrable skill.

One of the best ways to motivate people is to look beyond the tasks they perform for you today and consider how they can develop and integrate other skills going forward. Everybody wins.

All you need is a way to track skills, experience and interests globally and the ability to search against this information  when trying to fill a new job or staff a project.  The global visibility is really important because you may have the skills you need elsewhere in the organisation.

It's called talent profiling and some HR systems do it better than others.  Profiling your internal talent can help you find the right skills in your organisation when you need them as easily as buying a book or booking travel online. 

For hard to match skills, it's also a great way to find, leverage and develop the 'hard to imagine' talent in your organization.

Bottom line: In organizations that struggle to attract the right skills, developing and retaining talent matters.  And if you only look for obvious skills you may be neighing up the wrong tree.