Open Door Policy?

Come by any time, you know I have an 'Open Door' policy.

I mean, unless I am in one of my 8 standing weekly meetings, or 10-12 ad-hoc meetings that pop up every week.

Or if I am on the phone.  

Or if I am intently responding to one of the 79 e-mails in my inbox marked 'Urgent'.  

Aside - if you send e-mails and mark them as 'urgent' and the subject matter does not involve  bodily injury, hospitalization, or natural disaster, then you are half a jerk.

Or if I am setting the roster for my fantasy sports team.

Or if I am actively monitoring our employer brand on the Social Networks playing Mafia Wars.

Come to think of it, I am not sure I really have an 'Open Door' policy after all.  

In fact, I had better close the door and enact a new policy :

Sign outside Frank Sinatra's residence circa 1965

If that is the 'true' policy, better to be upfront about it, don't you think?

Before they walk in the door

This morning I walked my 9 year old son to school, (and proved, despite his assertions, that the walk was not actually 'Uphill in both directions').  As we approached the main entrance of the school the school's Principal was outside, greeting students and parents, asking questions, checking on two students that were attempting to raise the American flag, and generally and actively presenting a positive message of enthusiasm, encouragement, and in a way, acting like an old friend.Patrick - too cool for school

At one point, as he was chatting with a student and her Mom (I am making an assumption it was her Mom, go with me on this), his phone rang.  He glanced at it quickly, silenced the ringing, and continued to talk with the student and parent, while keeping one eye on the flagpole, one on the buses unloading, and the third one on the back of his head on people entering/exiting the doors.

Yes, the kids are right, the principal really does have eyes in the back of his head.

What was telling to me was how the principal was so out there, so up front, outside the school before the 'official' start of the day making sure that for as many students as possible their first interaction with school was going to be positive, welcoming, and in a way comforting.  

It is the middle of May, these 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are mostly probably sick of school at this point, counting down the days to summer break, tired of the routine and the teacher, and maybe even their classmates.  A random Thursday in May can't seem to be all that exciting to them. 

The principal knows this,  I am sure, and in this small way, by being the physical face of the school, by showing his engagement, attention, and genuine interest in the students and parents that he encountered outside the building he works to combat the natural disengagement of the average 10 year old.

I am out here, I am interested in you, I want you to succeed, I will encourage you to achieve. 

I am not sure if that message, delivered in less than 30 seconds by the principal, actually impacted my 9 year old this morning, but it made an impression on me. 

I am sure in the time he spent outside with the student and parents, being a kind of cheerleader to some extent, the calls, emails, voice mails were piling up in his office.  I am sure he has to find time to read, reply, forward, comment on many hundreds of messages each day. 

But for me, by taking a few minutes to connect with students before they walk in the door, seems much more valuable than anything he could of been doing tucked away in the dreaded 'Principal's Office'.

This is an ineffective blog post, since I don't really have a 'call to action' I suppose, just an observation of a leader trying to inspire and encourage in an environment where the 'followers' can be really tough to motivate.

Maybe my 9 year old was not inspired, but I was.  Hat's off to Principal Hall.

The Next Indie Superstar

In the comments on last weeks' 'HR and Indie Culture' post my friend Kris Dunn and I had an exchange about what was ostensibly a simple question: How do you as a open-networking, tweeting, blogging, cutting-edge type of HR pro keep the 'indie' mindset and streak of rebelliousness once (or perhaps more accurately if), you actually bust into the C-suite, get the big time job, or (please don't brutalize me in the comments), get the 'seat at the table'.

Which on the surface is a decent, if not terribly interesting question.  The 'right' answer is pretty obvious, stay true to yourself, keep doing the things you did on the way up, don't sell out, etc.  I think when faced with that as a hypothetical question, it is pretty easy to answer it in that way.  In the real Seger (but you certainly knew that)world it is not always so simple.  How many times have we heard individualists and 'rebels' like Bob Seger and John Mellencamp providing the background music for a series of forgettable, (yet I am sure lucrative for them) truck commercials?

When the suits come in waving around the big money and trips on the private jet it has to be pretty tempting to forget about (or at least alter slightly) ideals that made sense to you when you were 22 or 25.  Let's go back to Bob Seger. You're getting pitched to have 'Like a Rock' used as the soundtrack to 50 million truck commercials. You have to be thinking, what's the harm really? And if I don't do it they'll just grab Tom Petty or Aerosmith while I get to keep it real and work the state fair circuit for another year or three.

Actually the entire conversation is predictable and kind of boring.  Some people will remain true to their Indie roots, some will forget them entirely to get by (and I am NOT judging at all), and most will fall somewhere in-between. Eventually you have to make a living, you make some concessions to fit in, and every once in a while you bust out on the weekend to see the Warped tour in your cargo shorts and golf shirt. 

The better question that KD and I kicked around was not just would he, or anyone else stay 'Indie' after they hit the big time, but would they coach, support, and encourage the next generation of indie, even if it meant that the new blood would take indie in a different direction, perhaps one that is better, more imaginative, and perhaps even more 'indie' than you had ever done yourself?

Would you be comfortable enough to see folks on your team actually surpass what you have accomplished?

In indie music the pioneering bands like the Minutemen and Mission of Burma ultimately were seen as extremely influential to scores of bands that followed, but they did not directly 'train' or necessarily mentor any of the acts that came after them.  Their influence, and I suppose most kinds of influence, is from observation, anecdote, and to some extent legend. Budding musicians went to their shows, traded bootlegged concert tapes, and tried to mine bits of inspiration from all they saw and heard. It was a passing relationship at best.

But the rest of us are not touring the country playing in a band (or in my personal dream competing on the professional barbecue circuit). We are mostly inside our organizations, leading, collaborating, and yes, influencing the people around us. So maybe some of us are doing amazing things, perhaps a few of us are bringing exciting and innovative ideas and strategies to the table, and we have mastered this whole blog, twitter, unconference game to the point where we have the other folks in the organization scratching their heads at just why the heck we suddenly got so popular. That's awesome and an achievement to be proud of.

So I will leave you with this question: What are you doing to find, support, mentor, and cultivate the next indie superstar?

And if you have someone in mind already - let us know in the comments, you can think about it while you listen to Mellencamp singing about a truck.

The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy - Part II

Several weeks ago I posted 'The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy' - a little piece highlighting the sage advice of the former NBA coach and current announcer with respect to developing leadership capability throughout the organization.

Well JVG the Wise is at it again.

During a broadcast of a Los Angeles Lakers game this week, in a timeout while the Laker team was in a huddle, the Laker coach Phil Jackson was overheard on audio encouraging/admonishing/coaching star player Kobe Bryant to get more aggressive and attack the basket more strongly on offense.

For the non-basketball fans reading this post (assuming you haven't bailed by now), Kobe Bryant is by far the best player on the team, the team leader, and one of the very best players in NBA history.  He has four league championships, an Olympic gold medal, a league Most Valuable Player trophy, numerous All-Star game appearances and league scoring titles.

In HR or workforce terms he is a 'Top Performer', 'A-player', 'rockstar', take your pick.

So in the huddle, as the viewers listened to Coach Jackson talk to Bryant, JVG the Wise offered up this comment:

See this is why Phil Jackson is a great leader. He is not afraid to coach his best player. He needs his best player to get more aggressive and is not shy about letting him know.  That sends a message to everyone on the team, that if the star player can be coached, then everyone else can as well.

JVG is on to something here, I think.  When the coach singles out the team's best player and gives some instruction, feedback, or direction it makes such an important statement to the both the star (Bryant) and the rest of the team (other guys that are all talented in their own right, and may at times feel they might be 'above' coaching as well).

The star gets the message that being the 'star' means delivering great performance, and that they simply can't be satisfied with what they have achieved in the past. The rest of the team sees that the top performer still has room to improve and can be coached and guided.

Inside sports teams and often in work teams it becomes clear who the top performers are.  It really isn't much of a secret. When these stars set the right example, if they can be coached, if they continue to try and make themselves better, while realizing that the team objectives are primary, the team has a much better chance for enduring success.

To win a team needs a star.  But it also needs a coach that is not afraid to coach that star.

And that is this edition of the Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy.

When Millionaires bring Guns to Work

Professional basketball players Gilbert 'Agent Zero' Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton are under investigation for allegedly drawing handguns on one another in the Washington Wizards team locker room during a heated argument.

The argument apparently involved a dispute over Arenas' failure to settle a gambling debt with Crittenton. It has also been reported that the gambling in question took place on a team flight returning from a recent road trip. Arenas' contract pays him about $15M/year, I wonder what the table stakes were in the card game.

Ironically, the Wizards were known as the 'Bullets' for decades before changing the team name in 1997 When the Bullets were still the Bulletsamidst concerns of the glorification of gun culture and violence.  It would have been a better move for Arenas and Crittenton to draw some magic wands instead of guns I think.

So far the Wizards and the NBA are stepping up to the plate.  And by stepping up, I mean assuming no responsibility, taking no action, and allowing the Washington police to investigate, surely hoping that this whole issue disappears.

I love the story though. Gambling, (alleged) gunplay -  is this an NBA locker room or a saloon in Dodge City?

Yep, gambling and guns in the workplace, and I only have one question - WHERE WAS HR?

Surely there needed to be some kind of policy in the handbook that specifically banned this sort of activity in the workplace. 

Maybe just something simple like - 'Committing a felony on company property is against corporate policy'.

That should cover it.