I think that reason, largely, was why the commencement address given at Bard College by Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke got so much play over the last few days.

We are used to, and expect, economists like Bernanke to focus on the nuts and bolts of economic policy. Interest rates and inflation. Money supply and surpluses and deficits. The kinds of eyeballs are glazing over topics many of us have last thought about in Economics 101 and then spent years trying to forget. The brain only has so much room for stuff, and did you hear a new season of Arrested Development is getting made?

But what made Bernanke's speech interesting was I think two things - that is wasn't really, primarily what we are used to hearing from him; and secondly, that the essence and importance of the entire message is relevant not just for 21 year-old new grads about to return to Mom and Dad's house, but for all professionals that need to come to terms with how work, workplaces, and careers are changing - mainly driven by technological advances.

Here's Bernanke's money quote:

"During your working lives, you will have to reinvent yourselves many times. Success and satisfaction will not come from mastering a fixed body of knowledge but from constant adaptation and creativity in a rapidly changing world. Engaging with and applying new technologies will be a crucial part of that adaptation."

 I'd suggest that his advice - about adaptation, creativity, and mastering, (or at least coming to terms with), the changing nature of human-technology relationships in the workplace (and in society), are crucial not only for people just starting out in their careers, but perhaps more acutely, for mid-career professionals as well. 

Change, especially change to the definitions, organization, and execution of work and industry impacts the people caught up in the middle much more that the new grad that often is still on outside looking in.

A new grad might spend the next year or three on the sofa at home coming to terms with the fact that the shiny, expensive degree they went $86,000 in debt to obtain doesn't really matter to many employers, or that the all-knowing market and its career-selection process seems to equate their skills, experience, and degree with 'barista'. That kind of stinks, but it isn't, at least not yet, a fatal outcome. When you are that young you still have time to react, to pivot, to try out a Plan B or C even. 

At least until Mom and Dad kick you out, you lousy freeloader.

But if you are say, 44, been working for two decades, have a house, mortgage, big SUV, kids that need new iPhones - well getting caught up unprepared for the kinds of dramatic shifts we are seeing and will continue to see in the workplace is a much more serious matter.

While it seems like the game is more and more getting rigged to the detriment of the new college grads at least they have something that the mid-career pro doesn't - lots and lots of time. And also, often, the luxury of being able to make a mistake or two.

Bernanke's address really isn't that remarkable on it's own. But instead of giving it to the class of 2013, it should be read at all the 20 and 25 year class reunions coming up. Those folks need the advice more.

Have a great week! 

For whatever reason the people in the organization that get to decide the 'what' of what people do are more important and 'strategic' than the people that (largely) are responsible for finding and hiring those people in the first place (HR), and identifying, procuring, deploying, and maintaining all the technologies that the people rely on every day (IT). That is probably true in most organizations and it's also true that it's unlikely to change unless HR and IT start to think a little differently about the problem.

I was thinking about this over the weekend when I read this piece in the New York Times, Solving the Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data, about a new method or process where Hollywood film scripts are evaluated, and suggestions for improvement given, based on data-driven analysis. How does the process work? From the NYT piece:

Netflix tells customers what to rent based on algorithms that analyze previous selections, Pandora does the same with music, and studios have started using Facebook “likes” and online trailer views to mold advertising and even films.

Now, the slicing and dicing is seeping into one of the last corners of Hollywood where creativity and old-fashioned instinct still hold sway: the screenplay

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

Pretty interesting and still in this age of data trumping everything kind of unusual. Although even as I recently wrote about here, data and algorithms and machine learning approaches encroaching on formerly 'creative' endeavors are starting to pop up more and more.

Applying intelligence, Big Data, and more powerful technologies for improving movie screenplays does more than just fix up the dramatic scene in Act III, it allows a guy like Vinny Bruzzese, who as far as we can tell had no 'real' movie experience, to become an influential participant in the movie-making process.

His data, team of analysts, and statistically-backed conclusions and suggestions, now put him more and more 'at the table' (sorry), where formerly only writers and movie producers used to meet. It doesn't really matter that he didn't go to film school or he didn't spend the 80s directing episodes of Full House, his data-driven solutions make him a Hollywood player.

Influence in business seems to be becoming more about who can gather, assess, and make data actionable, than who has the 'right' degree or experience. And the background of the people who can do that might be a lot different than who normally used to have that kind of influence. 

You can register for the free webinar here.

But why should you?

Because chances are at your organization either performance management, goal setting and tracking, or the capability of your front-line managers to really manage employee performance and inspire and encourage development need some help.

Because your company is probably like 98% of companies out there that are not getting enough - enough improvement, enough accountability, enough understanding of who the best performers really are - out of your performance management process.

Because despite the hype and buzz about 'scrapping performance reviews' you know that will never happen anytime soon where you work, and that you as a talent pro have to find ways to make the system work for you, and not try and invent something entirely new.

And last, because you secretly know if your organization doesn't continue to improve and innovate and stay one step ahead, there are 4 dudes who just dropped out of Stanford that have already figured out a way to do what your firm does, only cheaper, faster, and using only an iPhone app. 

So what will you learn from  Get My Agent On The Phone- How Smart Managers Position Themselves as Agents Via Performance Goals?

Simple.

Making sure the goals you set represent the Five Most Important Things (5MIT) for the employee in question. What are the most important things your employee has to focus on this year? If you can only talk to them about five things, what would those things be and why? Smart managers skip discussing the busy work and get to what's going to change the game - for the company and the employee. We'll give you the 411 on how to do that.

Offering up ways each of the Five Most Important Things might be measured in the months that follow. You want measurements - we get it. The key in offering up how you’re going to measure the 5MIT in question is not to limit yourself. The more you box yourself in, the less innovation you get. We'll show you how to set the expectation your direct reports are going to be measured without actually taking performance off the table. PS - They'll love you for this if you deliver it in the right way.

Having Thoughts on what “Good” and “Great” performance looks like in each area. That’s right – we’re going through a goal setting process not because HR told us we had to, but because it can set us up to be a great performance coach for the rest of the year. Nothing sets you up as a coach more than owning the difference between “good” and “great”. We'll tell you how to reserve the “great” tag for employees who really innovate, drive change or add true value in the job they’re in.

Including a section that details “What’s In It for Me?” for each area of focus. Being an agent is about talking about how chasing great performance in the area in question could be great for the employee’s career. We'll show you how to frame this as the agent/coach. It's the most important thing you can do.

Putting it all in an easy to follow, informal format. If you go beyond one page, you’re making goal setting too complex. List everything we’ve described to this point in one page, and make the headers conversational in nature, and you win. We've got some format to share with you.

Look you and your managers want to be viewed as career agents for your employees rather than a run of the mill corporate bureaucrat. The robots are coming for those jobs. Trust me on that.

Join FOT for "Get My Agent on the Phone"  on Tuesday, May 21st from 1:00PM  - 2:00PM EDT and we'll show how the secret sauce to goal setting and follow-up conversations can dramatically change the positioning of what you do in performance management.

As always, the free FOT webinar comes guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.

It shows how despite corporate profits, expressed as a percentage of GDP, continuing to set records, that those record profits have not (taken in aggregate), translated into lots of new jobs, as the labor participation rate shows.

Source - FRED 

As the chart pretty clearly shows, aggregate corporate profits (the red line), after plunging to a low at about the middle of the recession, late 2008, have rebounded considerably, and now are at all-time record levels as a percentage of GDP.

The employment rate however, after taking an equally dramatic fall throughout the entire recession, finally stabilized at a far lower level than pre-recession, and despite, (or some might argue what has been the primary driver of), rising corporate profits is showing no signs of regaining its former levels of around 62%.

Profits are up, way up even, yet corporations are achieving these profits with far fewer workers than before, (and paying them less, generally. We could also factor in wage growth or lack thereof to make that point at well).

There are lots of reasons for this - technological progress, increased automation, continuing reliance on relatively cheaper foreign labor, diminishing influence of labor unions, the aging of the workforce, etc. but the bottom line seems to be an ever-growing bottom line with less and less actual people needed to make that happen.

No doubt if you are one of the workers in the 'right' kind of job, you are probably doing pretty well or are on the way to doing pretty well. But if you are one of the people that might be in a field that has simply figured out to continue to drive profits without as many people, then things could be looking kind of grim.

Where does all this leave you as an HR/Talent pro?

A lot depend on the company/industry you are in. But in aggregate, certainly, when there are less and less 'humans' in the workforce, then corporations will figure out they need less and less Human Resources people to help look after them all. I have talked with a few HR leaders lately that are seeing both the size of their labor forces hold steady and their HR/EE ratios holding an extremely high levels.

Advice?

Make sure you are spending a decent chunk of your time and energy on things that are truly additive - technology that will help employees generate new ideas and innovations, marketing and recruiting strategies that will let you land more than your share of the best talent at the expense of your competitors, and even in an 'addition-by-subtraction' way, elimination of silly rules, policies, or processes that in any way get in the way of employee performance.

And you could spend some time figuring out what kinds of planning, services, training, development, and team building activities that 'resources' like our pal Baxter needs and you might ride this out a little longer.

Have a great weekend!

So here's the take - if you are an experienced professional near the top of your game, but still have some room to grow to truly reach your ultimate goals - the big promotion, the fatty paycheck, or in the sports world, it might be the Championship title, etc. the outside advice that you seek and who you choose to engage with makes a pretty big statement about your dedication to your craft.

What do I mean by that?

Let's take a look at two recent examples from the Association:

Exhibit A - Deron Williams of the Brooklyn Nets  hires his own personal beat reporter

Here's an odd story from today's Wall Street Journal, about a new member of the Brooklyn Nets corps of beat writers. Devon Jeffreys is a credentialed reporter like all of the rest, but he's really only at Nets games to cover one player: Deron Williams. And he's there to cover Deron Williams for a website that Deron Williams himself is the owner of: DeronWilliams.com. Athletes having a personal website to trumpet their accomplishments is nothing new, but Williams's site is rare in that it features content that is written like regular news stories, save for the fact that Williams is always the central figure.

Exhibit B - Kevin Durant of the OKC Thunder hires his own personal performance analytics coach/consultant

Kevin Durant has hired his own analytics expert. He tailors workouts to remedy numerical imbalances. He harps on efficiency more than a Prius dealer. Durant sat in a leather terminal chair next to a practice court and pointed toward the 90-degree- angle at the upper-right corner of the key that represents the elbow. “See that spot,” Durant said. “I used to shoot 38, 39 percent from there off the catch coming around pin-down screens.” He paused for emphasis. “I’m up to 45, 46 percent now.”

Pretty obvious that these two 'hires', or personal development strategies represent two strikingly different approaches to performance improvement. Williams' personal beat reporter is there to make Williams look better.  Durant's analytics coach is there to help Durant get better. 

Now to be fair these examples are kind of cherry-picked - Williams might have his own analytics coach, personal trainer, dietitian, etc. to help his actual game improve. And Durant might have his own PR reps and spin doctors to help his public image. Both players have the resources necessary to have all of their professional bases covered. So it isn't completely fair to call them out in this way with imperfect or incomplete information.

But you and me?

If we are engaging with experts or taking the time to get some outside 'performance' help, we probably do have to make choices about where to invest our more limited resources, and perhaps more importantly, our limited time. I think about this a lot in the context of what people do online - maybe it's changing profile pics every other day or making sure they shoehorn in a comment on every LinkedIn group discussion that they know people in their field will see. Or perhaps it's the proliferation of personal branding or career coaches - to me that entire field only exists because people are getting a little too focused on looking better vs. actually getting better.

If you worry about looking better too much, you might end up looking a little better, sure.

If you care mostly about getting better, then the looking part takes care of itself.