Don't miss Transform — a new HR conference from TLNT that will change the way you think about HR — February 26-28, 2012 in Austin, TX. Learn more »
By Stephen M. Paskoff
Tell business leaders there’s a new operational process that has the potential to transform their organization. Then notice their reactions when you list what it can do for them:
By Susan R. Meisinger
If you Google the words “leadership, innovation, growth” you’ll get about 50 million hits, give or take a few million.
There are links to scholarly journals, business magazines, management books, leadership books, conferences, and seminars — all of which try to explain how to do it: how to be a great leader who creates a culture of innovation which drives an organization’s growth.
Many of the links are to consultants who have their own proprietary approach that they assert will help leaders and organizations put into place processes that will build an innovative culture in a disciplined way, leading to growth and profitability. Still more links are to company websites, which proclaim that this is what they do best: they have the secret sauce and have the perfect recipe for a company that’s more innovative than its competitors.
But there’s a dirty little secret that leaders don’t like to share. Read more…
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We all want the quick fix and easy do to cure what ails us in the business world. Unfortunately, it isn’t always that easy in the world of human resources. We’re dealing with people and people don’t respond uniformly to any action.
So when we talk about the world of incentives, recognition, culture and cold, hard cash, the incentive programs we design and put a huge amount of effort may not be making the most important change we need it to make: a shift in core values.
I was reading an article the other evening over at Huffington Post titled Welcome to the Club: Lessons From One Mom to Another.
(Why was I reading this, I hear some of my dude HR guy pros asking themselves? Let’s face it; I’m 40ish and woman are still mostly a mystery to me, so I try and find out their secrets! Plus I hate being left in the dark on this parenting thing, so “I need the info,” as Dr. Evil would say.)
I don’t want to spoil the article, but suffice it to say, either I’m very in touch with the feminine side of parenting, or, what they were sharing really wasn’t the “real” secrets Moms know! Read more…
As a person who sees a ton of recruiting videos (and I just got done judging ERE’s Recruiting Excellence Awards so you can bet I’ve had my fill of these things), they seem to follow a few general rules:
All good moves by any measure, but Twitter took it one step further: they did all of those things while humorously demonstrating how not to pull off a recruiting vid. To say the least, it was brilliant.
I’m always interested in surveys that look ahead and give some sense of where we might be going, even if they don’t always seem to get the forecast quite right.
That’s why this new survey just released by Taleo caught my eye. It’s called U.S. Talent Trends for 2012 (you can sign up for a copy here), and it summarizes both the 2011 business climate as well as the talent management trends we can expect this year.
The five key findings from the survey are as follows: Read more…
Bob Sutton, Stanford University professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss, is on the top of my list of must-read blogs and books.
Last week, Prof. Sutton recounted his assessment of why Google is regularly at the top of Fortune magazine’s annual Best Companies to Work For list.
The first reason is that Google does not unduly emphasize status differences among people at different levels or within in the same level. If you watch how people interact there — receptionists and executives, young engineers and senior executives, and people from less prestigious versus more prestigious parts of the company — the more powerful people treat the less powerful people with an unusually large amount of respect, even deference, and the less powerful people don’t cower or kiss-up nearly as much as I see in most places.” Read more…
What’s surprising about a new analyst report from Aberdeen is that in 2012, HR professionals still need to be reminded that talent management is as much a strategy as a tactic they should be captaining.
“HR still struggles to become a ‘strategic partner’ with the business, engaging employees and aligning integrated talent management initiatives with overall organizational goals,” write the authors of an Aberdeen Analyst Insight about developing a “Talent First” culture.
Drawing from an upcoming Aberdeen report, analysts Madeline Laurano and Mollie Lombardi say HR’s day-to-day work and the lack of support and buy-in from other business leaders and senior management stand in the way of developing the strategic approach that HR leaders say must be a part of their skill set. Read more…
Do CEOs – other than Tony Hsieh of Zappos, of course – actually think about the company’s culture and core values to the extent of using the values as means to hire, fire, promote and reward employees?
Yes, they do. Christine Fruechte, president and chief executive of Colle + McVoy, was recently featured discussing just that in The New York Times “Corner Office” column. Ms. Fruechte draws three clear lessons we should all learn when considering core values for our own organizations. Read more…
By Stephen M. Shapiro
Leaders of organizations often use the expression “Think outside the box” when urging their employees to innovate. The belief is that eliminating constraints and allowing people to think freely will increase creativity.
Although this tabula rasa, or “blank slate,” method of innovation is conventional wisdom, this unbounded approach actually reduces creativity and leads to abstract or impractical solutions. A television scriptwriter in Hollywood once told me that he actually liked the idea of “creativity within constraints,” as it gave him a starting point and then he could “riff” from there.
Instead of telling your employees to think outside the box, give them a “better box” to innovate inside of. These constraints will actually increase creativity and lead to useful solutions. Read more…
Feb 26-28, 2012. Austin, TX
The HR conference — transformed. From the publishers of TLNT. Learn more »
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