The TrueTalk Blog

Do You Trust HR?

Do you trust HR?

I heard a story yesterday that once again brought this question to mind.

A friend told me of someone who had recently been assigned an "executive coach." Apparently, there were some performance areas in need of improvement.

The coach collected 360° feedback data from over 30 people. The process took a few weeks.

The executive and the coach scheduled a meeting to discuss the data and to formulate a coaching plan.

The executive showed up for the meeting.

Instead of finding the coach, an HR person was there. 

The HR person informed the executive that s/he was being immediately terminated.

I don't know any other particulars.

My question is: What do you suppose happens the next time someone in this organization is offered an executive coach?

I'm certainly in no position to judge this incident. Who knows what happened.

But I do know that HR is the organizational function that is responsible for attracting, engaging, energizing and retaining talented people. HR professionals are an organization's experts in the complexities of personal and interpersonal dynamics.

And, in today's deeply interconnected workplace, those dynamics almost always rest on a foundation of trust. Study after study finds that workplaces characterized by high trust deliver significantly greater levels of innovation.

A day doesn't pass that we don't hear about the importance of trying new things, risking failure, learning from failure and moving on.

All of which require a lot of trust.  

To my way of thinking, one of HR's greatest contributions to an organization's success is the degree to which HR experts help develop a culture of trust. 

But, when I hear stories like the one I heard yesterday, I wonder if HR, as a discipline, is up to the task. 

How about you? 

Do you trust HR? Do people in your company trust HR? What are HR professionals in your company doing to enable trusting cultures? 

Prepare To Succeed: It's All About The Mindset

We live in the era of the Tri-Gen Workplace.

Three distinctly different generations now need to work together in a highly collaborative way to create innovative solutions to problems that didn't even exist when two of those generations were born. 

It's a tall order.

The key to success in this context is appreciating that the visible differences among those generations (preferences of dress, music, technology, behavior) are reflections of deeper, invisible ones. 

In future posts, we'll explore those differences in detail. For now, let's just say that those differences arise from dramatically different ways of perceiving and thinking about the world.

Let's call those, generational mindsets. 

Mindsets develop early in life. They're substantially the product of the culture into which we're born as well as the particulars of our individual and familial background.

Being born into an Italian family in the Bronx in the early Baby Boom, for example, provides a person with a dramatically different mindset platform than coming into the world on Manhattan's Upper East Side when Bill Clinton was president.  

There are plenty of ways to describe those differences.

Jack Myers captures one intriguing lens into different generational mindsets in his new book, Hooked Up: A New Generations Surprising Take on Sex, Politics and Saving the World. The book chronicles many of the ways that "Internet Pioneers," a subgroup of Millennials born between 1991 and 1995, view today's world and tomorrow's challenges.

In a chapter entitled, "Television Explains It All," Myers describes the Nickelodeon Declaration of Kids' Rights, written when the network launched in 1990. He calls it, "a mantra that Internet Pioneers grew up with and that defines how they perceive their rights and entitlements." 

That last word, "entitlements" has become an emblem of generational differences, particularly in the TriGen Workplace. Baby Boomers and GenXers look at Millennials and see a group acting as if they can simply enter the corporation and have things go the way they want. Millennials, acting as if they were entitled to take on roles and responsibilities, and make decisions that, in the past, had to be earned with years or even decades of service.

Where did they get these idea?

Their generational mindset. 

Most of which was passed along to them, wittingly or not, by their Baby Boomer parents.

Most of the time, we did so implicitly, teaching them through our actions that the values and beliefs that our parents passed along needed to be tweaked and strengthened to serve as the infrastructure for the society we were building; that we were striving for.

But sometimes someone did so explicitly, making a statement that planted the seeds for the mindset we would see working behind the Millennial's incredulous eyes in the corporate staff meeting 20 years later.

Like Nickelodeon's Declaration of Kids' Rights:

In the course of history, it has become pretty clear that all people are born with certain inalienable rights; among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But these rights haven’t always applied to kids.

And that stinks!

Now, 200 years after the creation of America’s Bill of Rights, this declaration proclaims to the world that you have rights too:

You have the right to be seen, heard and respected as a citizen of the world.

You have the right to a world that’s peaceful and an environment that’s not spoiled.

You have the right to be treated with equality; regardless of race, religion, nationality, sex, personality, grades or size.

You have the right to make mistakes without someone making you feel like a jerkhead.

You have the right to be protected from harm, injustice and hatred.

You have the right to an education that prepares you to run the world when it’s your turn.

You have the right to your opinions and feelings, even if others don’t agree with them.

So there!

The right to be seen, heard, and respected, regardless of age (or years of corporate experience.)

The right to make mistakes without some jerk making you feel stupid.

The right to your own opinions. 

Generational mindsets aren't a mystery. They grow from early experiences in cultures and families.

What we're seeing in today's TriGen Workplace is the product of three generations trying to live up to the promises we've made to ourselves and our children for the last 200+ years. 

But that doesn't make it easy...

Prepare To Succeed: Why Can't They Be Like We Are?

Life in the Tri-Gen Workplace is a little like this classic scene from "Bye, Bye Birdie." Three generations under one roof, each wondering, "why can't they be like we are, perfect in every way?" 

 

Overcoming that attitude is step one in preparing to succeed in today's complex corporate social environment.

It's natural for each of us to see the world as simply there. We assume that the way we experience things and other people is "reality," that our values, beliefs and circumstances have no affect on our perceptions.

Of course things are the way we see them. How else could they be?

And then we go to work and are stunned that the other people there are so screwed up!

Where do these entitled Millennials come off thinking they can just stroll in here and have things their own way? Who do they think they are, with their piercings and tattoos? This isn't their everybody-gets-a-trophy Little League team! This is business. 

And these whiny GenXers, always complaining about the rules. When are they going to suck it up and make a commitment to the organization? How can we trust them to lead when all want to do is talk about this mythical "work-life balance?"

And, please, don't even get me started on those Boomers! Nothing matters if it happened before or since those Age of Aquarius 60s. Everybody else needs to sit around and wait their turn as the inhabitants of the big offices take their sweet time fighting their petty political turf battles.

Ugh!

Sound at all familiar?

In some form or another, these self-centric judgments of our younger and older colleagues are taking place minute-by-minute in your workplace.

And it's costing everyone time and money.

The fact is, figuring out how to get the workforce working together productively, collaboratively, is the largest single challenge facing most organizations.

And while there are plenty of complex details to consider, the headline is simple: it all starts with understanding.

If we don't take the time and effort to recognize both the differences and the benefits of diverse generational perspectives for our organizations we will certainly squander the contributions that the people we're paying can make. 

Given the current power structures, it's clear that this challenge falls most squarely on Boomers and GenXers; specifically, in both groups coming to terms with their beliefs, attitudes and behavior towards Millennials.

How can Baby Boomer and GenX leaders use their experience to unleash the intelligence and talent that Millennials bring to the workplace? 

That's a question we'll be taking up next. 

How are things going in your Tri-Gen Workplace?

Prepare To Succeed: The TriGen Workplace

One of the biggest challenges facing today's leaders is effectively communicating with three generations within the business ecosystem.

Baby Boomers, GenX and Millennials in various numbers are everwhere in today's workplace.

Think about your own company. Chances are Baby Boomers dominate the executive ranks, with GenXers beginning to assume greater positions of power and influence. Much of the frontline workforce may well be made up of Millennials.

What impact does that mix have on your company's culture?

If you're in the tech industry, those characterizations might not hold. Your company may be predominantly Millennial, with some key GenXers and a few Boomer bankers or board members.

How are you tailoring your messages and methods to that audience?

Healthcare is dominated by a large number of GenX and late Baby Boom practitioners with a wave of Millennials graduating from medical training. Not to mention your patients.

How are the differences among those generational groups shaping your practice?

You get the picture: no matter where you work today, your challenge is communicating effectively with people from three widely different generational backgrounds.

This means strongly varying cultural beliefs, assumptions and values, all of which need to be taken into account if you are to successfully attain your organizational and personal objectives.

Are you prepared for this challenge? Do you know the key similarities and differences between employees from different generations? Is your organization particularly successful (or unsuccessful) communicating across generational groups? Stronger at one than the others? 

The TriGen Workplace is the topic we'll be taking up in the next series of posts in the Prepare To Succeed series. 

Hope you'll stop back and let us know your thoughts about this important issue. 

Prepare To Succeed: What Are "The W's?"

Preparing for important interactions is one of the most valuable habits you can establish. It's your best bet for making those conversations successful. 

Over the last week, I've written about how to identify "important interactions" and how to define what "success" means. 

Now it's time to take a look at the five critical dimensions of every important conversation.

I call these dimensions, "The W's":

Here's an overview of The W's:

1. Who? - Obviously, every interaction you have takes place between yourself and at least one other person. Who is this other person? Preparing means taking everything I know about her/him into account. To do so, I'll have to use my knowledge about this person—my intellect. I'll also want to reflect on my feelings about her/him—using my emotions to inform my impressions. Finally, I'll want to use my creative imagination to fill in a complete picture of who this person is. Thoroughness here will pay great dividends later.


2. Why? - Every important interaction takes place in a bigger context; we're in always relationships for a reason. Why, specifically, do you and the other(s) have a relationship? What's the relationship's fundamental purpose? To some degree, every important conversation needs to tie back to the relationship's purpose; it's reason for existing. Consider this, too, intellectually, emotionally and creatively. 


3. What? - The "agenda" (either written down and formal or implicit and informal) for this conversation. What are you (and they) trying to achieve by the end of this interaction? This is often the most obvious factor that we use to determine how successful any interaction is. Again, think beyond the intellectual reasons to emotional and creative factors.


4. Where? - The setting for the interaction establishes its cultural context. Are you having a meeting in your boss' office or coffee at Starbucks with your best friend? Where an interaction will take place is important. Context changes everything about behavior. What's comfortable in one setting is awkward in another. Context has intellectual, emotional and creative implications. 


5. When? - The old adage still holds: "timing is everything." Think about the timing of your interaction on both a micro and macro scale. What time of day, month, year will your conversation take place? What are the implications (intellectually, emotionally, creatively)? Where are you and the other(s) in the history of your relationship? How many other important interactions have you had? What does that history tell you about the one you're preparing for?  

Concentrating on these five areas in anticipation of important conversations can make an enormous difference in your success. 

Now that we've gone through the fundamentals of the Prepare To Succeed toolkit, we can begin looking at how to use the tools to prepare for important interactions. Each of the W's will be explored in detail in future as we go through the preparation process and look at some of the things that make it harder to parepare than to "just wing it."

How do you prepare for important interactions?

What does your experience tell you about improving your success?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Prepare To Succeed: What Are "Successful Interactions?"

Over the past couple of days I've introduced some ideas from a new project I'm calling "Prepare To Succeed."

"Prepare To Succeed" is a model designed to help you get ready for the important conversations you're going to have this week. 

Here's Part One. 

Here's Part Two. 

Before you start preparing, however, it would be good to know what you want the results to be.

What, exactly, is a "successful interaction?"

For me, a successful interaction is one that fulfills both the intellectual and emotional expectations of the participants. 

Intellectual expectations are the things we want to get done as a result of having the conversation. Think: getting finance to agree to your department's budget; or, convincing your husband to watch Oprah.

Emotional expectations are how we want to feel (and have the other partcipant(s) feel) both when the conversation is taking place and when it's over. Think: having finance feel comfortable about your budget presentation; having your husband not feel resentful about not watching what he originally wanted to watch.

In everyday language, we say that we are “happy” with how these interactions went; that they were “good” ones. 

Taking this a step further, what if you established outcome objectives for all the key interactions you will have this week? Not every conversation. Only those you'd judge as "Important" or "Critical" on the Interaction Importance scale. 

And, what if you decided that you'd know how successful the conversation really was by having both you and the other interaction participant(s) rate the interaction on a scale from 1 to 5 stars?

Something like this:

Let's take a look at what those ratings might mean:

1. Lousy - The interaction was a failure. Both you and the other participant(s) would agree that the conversation did not accomplish either the intellectual or emotional objectives you wanted it to accomplish. Maybe #EpicFail would be better! 


2. Disappointing - Not what you'd hoped for. The conversation did not produce the kinds of intellectual and/or emotional results you were trying to achieve. It had its moments but, overall, it was not successful.


3. OK - Many of our important interactions fall in this category. The conversation got the job done. You got your point across and everybody signed off. Check marks all around. Fine, but nothing special. 


4. Happy - Both you and the other people involved are jazzed about the conversation. Not only were your ideas embraced, but the interaction's emotional tone was excellent. This is when everyone walks away saying, "that was a really good meeting," or, "I'm glad we had this conversation."


5. Awesome - Rare as hen's teeth. These are interactions that electrify everyone involved. You've not just influenced or convinced the other participant(s), you've created committed allies. Everyone agrees: something special happened. 

If you approached your calendar this way, you'd now have a model that would help you determine which interactions were most important to your personal and/or professional goals and how you'd like both you and the others to answer the question: "How'd it go?" when it was over.

So, you might say to yourself: "I've got a Level 5 (Critical) meeting with my boss on Friday. I'll be fine with a 3 Star (OK) outcome but I'm shooting for a 4 (Happy)."  

Great.

But, how are you going to make that happen?

How do you prepare for important interactions?

I'll take up that question in upcoming posts about "Prepare To Succeed."

Prepare To Succeed: What Are "Important Interactions?"

Yesterday, I introduced a new series of posts entitled, "Prepare To Succeed." In them, my goal is to help you prepare for the important conversations you'll have this week.  

While we all have an intuitive appreciation for what important interactions are, it's helpful to think about them more deeply. Paying attention is one of the crucial steps in succeeding at anything. 

Let's take a look at a model for evaluating the importance of upcoming interactions:

Here are some definitions:

1. Casual - These are interactions that come up incidentally in our day. We’re walking down the street and we encounter someone we know. We stop for a second and say hello. We comment on a friend’s Facebook wall. We get a phone call from a sibling.


2. Transactional - A stop at Starbucks or the gas station. A conversation with a dentist’s office on the phone. These are a little more formal than Casual interactions but very well-defined in their purpose and in the manner in which we approach them. They have a definite purpose.


3. Routine - A conversation with a colleague about a project. A weekly staff meeting. Dinner with your boyfriend. These are interactions that are more open-ended and more personal than Transactional but not special in themselves. Routine interactions hold great potential for using the "Prepare To Succeed" process.


4. Important - A meeting with your boss. A serious conversation with your teenage daughter. Congratulating a friend on getting engaged. Important interactions are about meaningful topics and take place within significant relationships. 


5. Critical - A sales meeting with a big client. A conversation with your parents about their living arrangements. An interview for admission to a graduate program. These are potentially life-changing interactions. 

This model will help you decide which interactions you should prepare for. 

It's pretty clear that you'll probably want to prepare for Level 4 (Important) and Level 5 (Critical) interactions. After you practice and gain confidence with the method, you may also find yourself deciding to prepare for some Level 3 (Routine) conversations. 

But, what does "prepare for an interaction" mean?

And, how do you do it?

I'll take a look at those questions in upcoming posts.

Meanwhile, try this.

Take a look at your schedule for this week. How would you categorize the meetings/interactions you're going to have? 

How many of them are above Level 3?

Are you prepared for them?

Prepare To Succeed

I was not a Boy Scout.

I grew up in the Bronx in the 50s and 60s. The only Boy Scouts I knew were...to put it kindly...not cool. 

So, I was not steeped in the tradition of the Boy Scout motto.

I now know that "Be Prepared" is one of life's most important lessons. 

But, what does it mean?

We all know that the range of possible situations that we might want to be prepared for is huge. 

Got enough flashlights and batteries to get around during a power failure?

Yep.

Spare tire properly inflated?

Check.

Kids' college fund savings going along smoothly.

Er...I guess.

All set for that conversation with your boss on Thursday?

Huh?

This we know: some things are easy to prepare for. You stock up on stuff you know you'll need in an emergency and you're covered.

Other things are trickier.

Like important conversations.

Think about it. Over the next week you're going to have scores, maybe hundreds of conversations.

Most of them will be mundane; many, off the cuff; trivial.

But a some of them will be important. Some, very important. A couple, crucial.

What if we applied the Boy Scout motto to our conversations?

What if we were prepared for this week's important conversations?

That question is one that we use all the time in our consulting work with individual leaders and larger organizational units.

It's founded on a simple assumption: some of the people you'll speak with this week are important to you achieving personal and professional goals. 

Friends, family, co-workers, bosses.

Are you prepared to have conversations that will help you (and the others you'll be speaking with) achieve your goals?

Well, what exactly does it mean to "be prepared" for a conversation?

How do you do it?

What difference does it make?

Those are the questions I'll be taking up in a new blog series I'm calling, "Prepare To Succeed."

I hope you'll follow along and share your thoughts about the ideas.

To begin with, think about this: what are the most important conversations you know you're going to have this week? 

Apple Misses Steve Jobs, Part 2

 

OK, so this is Part 2 in a series of posts about why Apple misses Steve Jobs.

In case you missed it, Part 1 contended that the whole EPEAT charade would never have happened if Steve was at the helm. 

Can you imagine Jobs saying, "I recognize that this was a mistake?"

Me neither.

Nor can I imagine him being foolish enough to put himself in a position to have to say so. 

Why?

No upside. Only downside.

It didn't take a chess grandmaster to see that many moves ahead. 

OK, now comes Part 2. 

Today, John Browett, Apple's head of retail operations, says, "We messed up" by slashing employee wages and cutting their hours. 

Never would have happened under Steve.

Why?

Same answer.

No upside. Only downside.

Remember, Apple is sitting on a mountain, no, a megamountain of cash.

King Midas would be green over their margins.

So, what do they do?

They let the retail guy cut payroll in the stores that have the greatest per square foot sales figures in the history of commerce. Twice as much as Tiffany's!?! 

Really? 

No.

Not on Steve's watch. 

Which is why I say Apple misses Steve Jobs.

Could the third strike be some kind of real doozie?

Like a mediocre iPhone or me-too iPad mini?

Apple fanboy that I am, I hope not. 

PS - If you can't find Part 1 of this post it's because I never wrote it. But, you get the idea!

Can Marissa Mayer Save Yahoo!?

Yesterday, Yahoo's board of directors suprised practically everyone by naming as its new CEO Google employee #20, veteran engineer and user experience guru, Marissa Mayer.

An hour or so later, Mayer announced on Twitter that she and her husband are also expecting their first child, a boy, in October.

Quite a day!

By all accounts, Yahoo's a mess. It's one of the original Internet giants but has become synonymous with bureaucratic bloat and repeated missteps over the past decade. It still has an impressive total of over 600 million users but, like AOL, is seen as a company whose best days are behind it.

I've admired Mayer for years. I've met her at conferences on a couple of occasions and was impressed with her easygoing, personable style. She's undoubtedly one of the brightest stars in tech and Yahoo's pulled off quite a coup in landing her.

The question is: is it too late for Yahoo!? 

Marc Andreeson, a pretty solid source, says he thinks it's not, but that Mayer would have to begin by cutting about 10,000 jobs.

Maybe more important than who she lets go will be who she brings in? Changing Yahoo's culture will be a massive undertaking.

I was impressed by the amount of positive reaction on Twitter yesterday when the news hit. Having a woman at the helm of one of the Internet's biggest brands brought out lots of support.

But the job is huge. I'm not sure it's doable. It may be that no one can save Yahoo!

What do you think? One year from now, what will we be saying about Marissa Mayer's quest to save Yahoo!?