PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 334 - Driving Engagement and Results with Performance Management

HR Happy Hour 334 - Driving Engagement and Results with Performance Management

Sponsored by Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Michael Heller, iRevu

Listen HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish are joined by Michael Heller or iRevu, an HR technology provider of performance and goal management solutions to talk about how performance management is evolving, how organizations are making the transition from the traditional annual performance review process to something more frequent and impactful, and how leaders and managers can get better at providing useful and productive feedback more regularly. 

Michael also shared his insights on how organizations can still manage downstream processes like compensation and rewards in a 'no performance rating' environment and his tips for making feedback more effective - namely, focusing on transparency, honesty, and directness.

Additionally, we discussed the naming of dogs, our best bosses ever, the advice Steve was given on his first day at a 'real' job, and we celebrated a recent HR Happy Hour Show milestone - 1 Million downloads!

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, on your favorite podcast app, or by using the widget player below:

This was a fun and interesting show, thanks to Michael for joining us.

Remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts - just search for 'HR Happy Hour'.

Expect Great Things

The other day I caught an interview with Kevin Dann, the author of 'Expect Great Things: The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau'. I don't know any more than the average person about Thoreau, I read Walden Pond I am pretty sure back in high school, but that is about it.

But the interview with Dann, the most recent of Thoreau's many biographers really resonated for me, and mainly for the author's reasoning behind the book's title.

Here's the section from the interview, courtesy of the Art of Manliness Podcast:

Kevin Dann - And you’re pointing to my contextualizing Thoreau in this way. A big part of that was a signature I found right away was this sense, you know, I used it for the title of the book. “Expect great things”. So his mantra was, that he said in a hundred different ways, “In the long run, we find what we expect. We shall be fortunate then if we expect great things.” And whether it’s astrology, or reading tea leaves, the operative principle of magic is that what we think manifests in the world as being real, and that’s what his mantra was. “Expect great things”.

I pretty much stopped really taking in the rest of the hour-long conversation after hearing that. The 'Expect Great Things' concept I just could not stop thinking about. Maybe because it is so different than what I am comfortable or used to doing. I might, on a good day, 'hope' for good things to happen, but I have to admit it is the more rare situation that I 'expect' great things. 

And Thoreau's point, as far as I think I understand it, is that eventually we find what we expect to find. We find what we think or believe we are going to find. There is also at least a bit of mysticism in what Thoreau was talking about. We also, I came to learn, communicated with faeries out in the woods.

But if Thoreau was right, and we do indeed, eventually, find what we expect to find, then it makes perfect sense to expect great things. Who would expect less?

Ok, I am signing off for the week. I am going to try better to expect great things in work, at home, for my Liverpool FC team, and for the folks that I hold dear. I hope you will too.

Have a great weekend!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Voting for the Next Great HR Technology Company is Open #HRTechConf

The competition for the Final Four places in the 2018 Discovering the Next Great HR Technology Company Competition at the HR Technology Conference is on!

Head over to the HR Tech Insiders site to read profiles, view screenshots, and check out videos for all seven semi-finalist companies vying for a place in the Final Four at the Next Great HR Technology Company session at the Conference in September.

From there, you can register your selections for your favorites in our online voting and on August 27 learn which four companies have advanced to the finals.

Good luck to all the companies in the Semi-Finals.

Voting will close at Midnight EDT Friday, August 24, so don’t hesitate – vote today!

CHART OF THE DAY: ETFs, Active Managers, and Human Specialization

Today's Chart of the Day comes to us from the world of Finance and our pals at Bloomberg and shows just how once type of job, the "active", (and human) mutual fund manager is being disrupted by another kind of manager - a 'passive' one, modeled against the market more broadly, and dominated by algorithms and sophisticated computers.

Long story short - investors have been migrating their money away from the active, people-driven funds and strategies and towards the passive, ETF-type funds. Here's the chart from Bloomberg, then some comments below from your favorite active blog manager (me).

Some really interesting things to note from this chart. And recall, just like when we blog about basketball here, this blog about finance and investing isn't really just about finance and investing.

1. Highlighted on the chart is the worst of the financial crisis, September 2008. This appears to be the inflection point where investors bailed on active investment management in favor of passive investing. In other words, when times were tough, investors didn't seek 'expert' human management for their diminishing funds. In fact, they sought out the opposite.

2. As the chart above demonstrates, the current active management model for investments simply can't compete any longer with the cheaper passive/ETF model in either total asset gathering (trying to simply grow the way to prosperity), or in terms of returns. Whatever the current strategy is for the active managers, it is definitely not working and has not been for a decade.

3. So what can these highly-paid, expensive, and under threat active fund managers do to at least try and maintain some relevance and hold on to their country club memberships and beach houses? Bloomberg suggests one approach - hyper specialization.

From the piece:

What does the future of active management look like? We believe it should only seek a portion of an investor's assets. To do this, they will have to create highly idiosyncratic and concentrated portfolios. They will have to find the one thing they do well and do it in a concentrated, risk-seeking way, whether it be health-care, emerging markets, macro themes, algorithms, technology or trading. The manager will need to be known as the "go to" person in that space to emerge as the next star, allocating capital as efficiently as possible.

Again, the specific example/industry/job role doesn't matter here. What matters is the method and approach for people to remain valuable and competitive in a situation where machines and algorithms have plenty of advantages. The advice is not to try and out-compete the robots where you simply can't defeat them, but rather to seek out those areas, pockets, and opportunities where you can leverage uniquely human skills and experience to stay one step ahead of the machines.

Super interesing article and one that I think no matter what industry or job you are in, has something we can learn from as well.

Have a great day!

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 333 - How AI in HR Will Enhance the Employee Experience

HR Happy Hour 333 - How AI in HR Will Enhance the Employee Experience

Sponsored by Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Jeanne Meister, Future Workplace

Listen HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, hosts Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane are joined by Jeanne Meister for a conversation on Artificial Intelligence in HR and how it will enhance the employee experience. Jeanne shared her insights on how AI will impact HR, how the skills and roles of HR will adapt and change over time and supported by AI technology, the connection between customer experience and employee experience, and gave HR leaders some advice about how to begin to introduce AI into their HR practices and programs.

We also got an update on the Logic concert, Steve's acute 'uncoolness', a James Taylor update, and previewed some of the AI related content that will be showcased at the upcoming HR Technology Conference.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, on your favorite podcast app, or by using the widget player below:

This was a fun show, thanks Jeanne for joining us!

Subscribe the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts - just search for 'HR Happy Hour'.