Missing Lost

The season finale of the TV series 'Lost' was aired last evening.  Long time fans of the show, and there seemed to be more and more of them in this the final season, would finally learn the secrets of the mysterious island where the survivors of an air crash had been stranded.Lost - ABC.com

I hope that description was more or less accurate, as I admit I have never seen the show, and the last episode did not seem like a good starting point.  

I am certainly not alone in never having seen 'Lost', I took notice of numerous Facebook updates and Tweets yesterday along the lines of 'I have never seen Lost and I am not sorry about that' or 'I can't wait until Lost is over so I don't have to see so many irritating Tweets'.

But just as many smart folks that I admire and respect were almost gloating with a kind of smug superiority that they never watched the show, I also noticed equal numbers of intelligent and successful folks that were clearly and fully immersed in the show, and in the kind of collective experience that social networks can provide as any popular or important event unfolds.  Last night some occasional checks of my Twitter stream revealed the anticipation, excitement, and temporary bonding as they watched and tweeted as the program played out in their living rooms.

So as I said, I did not watch the final episode of 'Lost', I never watched any episode in the series, and I am not at all happy about that.  I certainly don't feel any kind of superiority to any of the show's dedicated fans.  As I write this I am also wasting yet another three hours of my life watching a bunch of millionaires run about trying to put a ball through a hoop. So my tastes in pop culture certainly can be questioned.

Sports, TV, movies, music - they are all parts of our culture, the culture that we live in, that we help create, that our friends and colleagues participate in shaping, and that our companies have to navigate in order to survive and succeed. I know not all 'culture' carries the same weight, or relative importance, but when I see people getting so openly dismissive of one type of culture, be it a TV show, a band or style of music, or whatever I can't help but wonder why they would care enough to publicly denigrate it, and by extension the other people that are its passionate fans.

Melodramatic TV shows, boy bands, 80s hair band reunion tours, American Idol, Karate Kid remakes, Stephen King's 163rd book, or even the NBA, what makes any of these better or inherently more interesting that any other art form or supposedly higher culture?

I wish that I had seen some of 'Lost'.  I wish that I had the time to stay on top of all the interesting books, movies, and music that passes by every day. I am curious. I think by having some appreciation and understanding of a phenomenon like 'Lost', we can develop a better appreciation of understanding of the people in our lives, organizations, and communities.  

Being interested in 'Lost' is not really about caring whether or not the marooned passengers ever get off of the island, it is much more about understanding and empathizing with the millions of people that collectively do care about that island and who tomorrow will be at work, school, and in shops and restaurants. I may not have thought the show was interesting enough to ever watch it, but I know those people are interesting enough, all in their unique way.

I missed 'Lost' last night, and that was indeed my loss. 

Weekly Wrap Up - May 17-23, 2010

Still in keeping with the recurring theme of trying to break out of the echo chamber and making online content (like this blog) more easily accessible and consumable for those people that will never find their way here to read the blog (see the following crude pie chart below analyzing these populations).

I thought I would start posting each Sunday the summary of the week's posts in Tabbloid format. As you might recall from an earlier post, Tabbloid is a free service that lets you create a custom PDF format 'newspaper' from your selected blogs and other sites RSS feeds, and have that newspaper delivered via email on whatever schedule you choose.

Here is this week's collection of posts, in handy PDF format - Steve's Blog : May 17-23, 2010.

I hope making content accessible in this way is a help to someone out there, I will continue to post these collections on Sundays for the time being.  I hope that if you find them useful, or actually download the PDF and give/send it to someone that otherwise would have never seen these posts, you would take a second and let me know in the comments. 

This is one way to try to break out of the echo chamber, but it is certainly not the only way, and if you have other and better thoughts on how to do this, I would love to hear them.

And so I don't get accused of simply 're-purposing' my own content to keep the feed readers fed, here is a new bit of information - the excellent and very cool site Significant Objects in conjunction with their sister site HiLobrow recently announced a neat writing contest. The premise - Write a story set in the town or city where you live, but imagine that it (and its surrounding area) has been flooded with several hundred thousand gallons of crude oil daily, because of a drilling-related crisis some weeks earlier. You might find using the interactive Gulf Coast Oil Spill Map helpful in this eco-catastrophic exercise, but it’s not a requirement. 

The 'story' has a short 250 word maximum, and you can post your entry in the comments of this post on HiLobrow. I mentioned it here since I know at least a few HR bloggers out there are reading this and thinking, 'Man I am getting tired of writing about management/leadership/crazy interview tales again'. So there you go, a good reason to try out a bit of a 'stretch assignment'. 

Happy Sunday!

You want to crown them?

This week I posted my first piece over at the Fistful of Talent blog as a regular contributor - although I don't see my little badge on there yet, what is up with that KD?

The crew at the Fistful of Talent publishes a quarterly review of their Top 25 Talent Management Blog Power Rankings, the latest version of which was posted today.  If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out all the great blogs that made the cut and adding them to your regular HR and Talent reading lists.

To help you out, I set up this Google Reader shared bundle of the FOT Top 25 Talent Management Blogs that you can easily add to your reader.  You will notice that the bundle actually contains 28 blogs, I included the Fistful of Talent feed, FOT founder Kris Dunn's HR Capitalist feed,  and mine as well.  As a former member of the Top 25, and for the last hour I spent creating the bundle and writing this post, I felt entitled. 

Use the 'subscribe' button on the box below to easily add all these great blogs to your reader at once.

One final note, while it is really cool to be named on a list like this one, it is at best a fleeting honor.  I hope that we don't get too caught up in these lists, we continue to see them as fun and informational, and we try to use them to get more folks outside the bubble involved.

On that note, I close with the clip I immediately think about when I consider awards and 'crowning' anyone or anything. I give you the remarkable Denny Green:

Too many choices?

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour show we will be talking about Work/Life 'Fit', and how organizations, specifically the HR professionals in organizations can better understand how to design, implement, and measure the success of workplace flexibility programs. Our guest will be Cali Yost, of the FlexStrategy Group and WorkLife Fit, Inc., writer at Fast Company, and an expert on workplace flexibility

In preparation for the show, I thought to write a 'Technology for Flexibility' kind of post, digging in to some of the many available technologies that organizations have and can bring to bear to better support more flexible, and in many cases more virtual work. Technologies like Google Apps for e-mail and office-type productivity, DimDim for fast and cheap screen sharing and web conferencing, and Socialtext for content creation and collaboration, internal microblogging, etc.  There are scores of solutions ranging from crazy expensive, to 100% free, and everything in between.

But then I thought, the problem for (most) organizations and HR professionals that may be wrestling with the decision of how, or even why to implement more flexible working arrangements (that often have an element of remote working to them), has almost nothing to do with the technology.  Even I, as a technology person, have to admit this. Most large organizations have already embraced the kinds of technology solutions necessary (VPN, company-issued smartphones, web conferencing, collaborative online workspaces) to encourage more workplace flexibility.  In fact, some would argue that these solutions have indeed created the kind of flexibility that the organization desires, employees are 'working' when they are at work in the office, and they can continue to be tethered to 'work' when they are not in the office.

That is the ultimate in flexibility is it not?  No matter where you are, work is right there too.  Sort of like that nagging bug you pick up after you get stuck next to 'Mr. Coughing the Entire Flight Guy' on your last business trip.

To better underscore the point that technology is only a (small) part of better and more evolved workplace flexibility strategy and execution, consider this quote from author and speaker Gil Gordon in a speech given at a Telework conference:

The technology for telework is very good and continues to get better. This does not mean it is perfect, or that it is always the right price. But the best news is that we have plenty of technology - hardware, software, and telecommunications - to allow telework to be effective.

I have seen many of my US clients having a difficult time trying to select from among this big list of technology. There are too many laptops, too many kinds of remote-access solutions, and too many kinds of applications software. What is needed is a way to create packages of tested solutions for various kinds of telework situations.

Gordon goes on to note later in the speech that 'culture', not technology is the true barrier to increased adoption of telework in organizations:

In many cases we have failed to recognize this kind of integrated, connected aspect of telework, and we have also failed to recognize that the very culture of an organization changes when we start to change some of its parts. The very best telework programs I have seen are the ones that involve a lot of planning to consider these cultural changes, and also anticipate what else in the organization must change for telework to succeed in the long term.

By the way, these quotes was from a speech made by Gordon in 1999! We will figure it out eventually I am sure.

So if we believe the basic points of Gordon's talk, that increased adoption of flexibility (at least in the form of telework arrangements) as far back as 1999 presented not a technical barrier, but a behavioral one, then drawing up a list of all the myriad technologies that are available that could support increased flexibility adoption seems a bit like a waste of effort.  

We know these technologies, we have them already, in fact we have too many of them.  Many of you are walking around with 90% of the 'technology' you need for increased workplace flexibility in your back pocket, (or in a belt holster if you are this guy).

So for once, on a technology blog, I will agree that at least this time, it is not about technology at all.

I hope you can join in the fun, tonight at 8PM EDT on the HR Happy Hour show.

Carnivals, Star Wars, and Happy Hours

Just some quick updates and links for a Wednesday:

First - Over at UpstartHR, Ben Eubanks has put together the HRevolution 2010 themed Carnival of HR. Need to catch up on all the post-event recaps, reviews, and action plans?  That is the place to start.

Second - I have a post up over at Fistful of Talent today, 'Clinging to What We Know, the Jar Jar Binks Theory' .  It is not just about Star Wars. Not totally anyway.

Third - The HR Happy Hour show will be live tomorrow night, May 20, at 8PM EDT.  Our guest for the 'Making Work/Life Work' show will be Cali Yost of the FlexStrategy Group and WorkLife Fit, Inc., and writer at Fast Company.

That's it!