The Sham of Working on Christmas Eve

If you are sitting in your office reading this post today I have two things to say to you:

One - Thanks for reading, I love and appreciate all my readers, hopefully your received your packages of cookies and fudge

Two - Quit goofing off on the internet and get back to work!

Seriously, unless you are a police officer, firefighter, work in a hospital, or are standing behind a cash register today, 'working' on Christmas Eve is a total sham.

For the typical office, information, or 'knowledge' worker forced to trudge in to the office on Christmas Eve almost no 'real' work will get done, they will be forced to stand around a box of holiday frosted Dunkin' Donuts making awkward small talk with their co-workers, and either watching the clock or waiting with breathless anticipation for the manager/boss/VP to graciously let them leave early at 2 or 3 pm.

And most people that celebrate Christmas still have a million things to do on Christmas Eve, from shopping, to arranging child care (you know the teachers aren't working on Christmas Eve), to traveling or dealing with incoming relatives, and on and on.

I know what you are saying - just take a vacation day then if you are so busy. Flickr - Daniel Slaughter

But most people hate taking a vacation day on Christmas Eve because they know it is not a 'real' day. People will dress casually (or in hideous holiday sweaters), come in later, have a long lunch, and normally leave early.  Why burn a precious vacation day that can be saved for July, when the sun it out and you can actually really feel superior to the rest of the idiots stuck working.

Yep, Christmas Eve and work.  No one who is actually there wants to be there and hardly anything will get done.  And the people who are not there are secretly pissed that they are missing the 'free' day to watch their kids, bake cookies,  or drive 14 hours through the snow to Kansas City.

Do yourself and your workplace a favor, if you are not in the life-saving or trinket-selling business just shut it down on Christmas Eve.

You will make everyone happy. 

Except possibly for the people that live to wear their holiday sweaters.

The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy

The always entertaing former NBA coach turned announcer Jeff Van Gundy was reflecting on the difficulty that many coaches have with connecting with their much younger and far wealthier players.  Van Gundy's opinion was that a coach's message can, over time, start to lose its resonance, and it's effectiveness. JVG

Van Gundy made what I thought was an excellent point in the discussion:

If you as leader are the only one that always has to tell the truth, then you need more leaders on the team.

It makes sense. If the coach, manager, or leader is the sole voice of the organizational 'truth', he or she will always be fighting an uphill battle. In the NBA, Van Gundy felt that you needed one or two players, preferably star players or at least starters, that were completely on board with the coach's approach and could help to reinforce the 'right' way to prepare, practice, and play. These respected players could help keep the team together, and serve as a kind of validation for the coach's program.

I think this concept can apply in corporate organizations as well. Work groups and teams all have some natural leaders, roles models, and respected members. Managers that can forge understanding and connection with these leaders will likely have a better opportunity to fold in all the entire team, perhaps leading to a more cohesive, and better functioning group.

This idea of leveraging key internal leaders or champions also has application in tools and technologies that are being increasingly deployed inside organizations to facilitate collaboration in the enterprise.  Technologies like wikis, forums, and microblogs are often positioned by project leaders as solutions that will bring significant value to all members of the organization. But they also can have 'adoption' problems, with many employees reluctant to replace traditional and proven methods of collaboration (e-mail, phone, voice mail, shared network drives) with the new processes and tools.

Recruiting and deploying 'champions', a few key and hopefully respected employees to serve as guides and leaders in the adoption of these new approaches, and that serve as examples for the other members of the organization to follow is often a critical success factor in these projects. These are the ones that will kick-start forum discussions, post new findings on a wiki page, and actively share bookmarks, and tag and organize content.  Without these leaders, your project may not thrive.

Just like the great JVG says, if you as coach, leader, or technology evangelist are the only one 'telling the truth' you are going to have problems getting everyone to see the light.

The Situation

Full Disclosure - I have never seen the new Reality TV show 'Jersey Shore', the saga of the misadventures of a collection of Italian-American young adults, but the other morning on a cable news show (when they were able to take a break from the Tiger Woods drama), ran a story about how some Italian-American groups and advertisers are up in arms about the show.

These Italian-American groups don't like how the show seems to play to traditional stereotypes, and some advertisers have canceled ads on the show, feeling like the content is inappropriate and don't want their brands associated with such an unsavory and offensive show.

I don't really care about any of that.

What is interesting to me, is that from the 'news' story (on MSNBC), we learned that one of the show's participants calls himself 'The Situation'.

A classic, classic nickname, made all the more timeless since is it is a kind of intangible concept, not a boring nickname that is simply a play on a real name, 'T-Bone', or somehow descriptive of an aspect of a physical trait, 'Shorty'.

No, 'The Situation' is pretty cool, makes you think (I mean besides about how much of an idiot the guy likely is). 

And since there is almost nothing more fun in the workplace than giving out nicknames to our 'friends', I figured I would try and come up with some 'Situation-like' monikers for some of your favorite co-workers.

So here goes:

The Equilibrium - The guy that never can take a side on an issue.  Sees the benefits and drawbacks in every approach.  Never will come out for or against anyone.  Happy to simply go along with the consensus while being sure never to actually help form the consensus.

The Standoff - The one that once takes a position, will dig himself a World War I style trench and hunker down until the bitter end. You will have to practically mustard gas this guy to get him to budge. After a long time in the bunker when the stress is high and hallucinations start to set in, The Standoff might climb out and wade back into the field, where hopefully you can put him out of his misery.

The Malaise - You know this guy.  No matter how exciting the news, how interesting the project, or how crazy the office holiday party gets, The Malaise can't seem to get jazzed up.  Likes to wear old, Mr. Rogers style cardigan sweaters and walk very, very slowly.  Will be the first one to notice when the network is down, or the copier is out of paper. 

The Operation - This guys turns everything, no matter how simple, into a ridiculous drawn-out series of e-mails, discussions, meetings, unnecessary documentation and the like.  Nothing can be solved quicky, and certainly without soliciting input from all members of the team, from management, and possibly the custodial staff.  No decision can be rushed, getting everyone's input is good.  Now, how long should the weekly status meetings be, 30, 45, or 60 minutes?  Let's have a meeting to discuss this.

Last Call - This is the annoying guy that makes sure he is the very last one to leave the office every day, and makes sure the boss and everyone else knows it.  Walks over to the vending machines at about 5:30pm every day and loudly proclaims 'I wish we had Red Bull, I could use a Red Bull about now'.  When you leave at 5:00 likes to stop you in you tracks and ask, 'What's this, half a day?'.  He then retires to his cube and proceeds to put on headphones and play World or Warcraft until 8 o'clock. 

Who are some of your favorite workplace 'Situations'?

Hit me up in the comments.

Is HR Hot?

So during a year when the 'Is HR Dead' discussion seemed to rage on and on,and we are still talking about HR as Secretaries, out of nowhere the Wall Street Journal runs a piece called 'HR Executives Suddenly Get Hot' - about the increasing trend of current and former HR executives being called upon to serve as outside directors for publicly traded firms.Flickr - getmethegun

From the WSJ piece:

Once considered denizens of a corporate backwater, more human-resources executives are being tapped to serve as outside directors because many have become strategic players with bottom-line impact. U.S. companies wooing them seek their insight on hot-button issues such as executive pay, management succession and integrating acquisitions.

I wonder how it makes some long-time HR professionals feel to know that they were 'denizens of a corporate backwater'? That line reminds me of a post I never got around to writing titled 'Trailer Park HR'.

But I digress.

It was interesting that several of the examples in the WSJ piece had to do with firms not just wanting help with managing risk or compliance, or with navigating the recession. Rather items like 'attracting and developing top talent' and assistance in 'detailing strengths, weaknesses, and developmental needs for top staff' were cited as reasons to bring in HR talent into the boardroom.  These are significant, and dare say 'strategic' activities.

More HR professionals an Corporate Boards sound like a good thing for HR and for corporations alike if the increased representation drives improvements; like better alignment of strategy with workforce capability, methods to try and not just preserve jobs but to (gasp) actually grow jobs and opportunities, and for more organizations to truly live up to their myriad 'people first' mission statements.

So maybe, after all this time and effort, HR is rising above filing forms and party planning, and getting (don't kill me for this) the fancy leather seat at the giant mahogany table.

However, a quick glance at this article on 'The Next Hot Jobs' doesn't mention anything about HR.  Jobs like 'Bioinformatician', 'Forensic Accountant', and 'Fuel-Cell Engineer' all make the list though.

Those all sound pretty complicated to me.

What do you think, should more Corporate Boards have HR executive representation?

Is HR actually hot?

Derek Jeter and Winning Teams

Last week Sports Illustrated named New York Yankee captain Derek Jeter as its 'Sportsman of the Year', an annual designation given to the person or team that best exemplifies success, integrity, and class.

For those not familiar with Jeter, he has been the Yankee shortstop for 14 seasons, and has helped the team win 5 World Series championships during that time, including the 2009 season that was recently concluded.

Jeter, while individually an outstanding player, is more revered for his reputation as a 'winning' player, one whose contributions to team success are actually greater than what can be found be simply reviewing his statistical performance.  In the Sports Illustrated piece, Jeter shared what be felt were the five barriers to team success, and while they were described in a sports context, I think there are many lessons for business and personal success that can be drawn.

1. Individuals who don't care about winning

In sports, there is success, and there is winning championships. Some players (and teams) are satisifed with having 'good' years. Decent results, perhaps winning a few more games that they lose, but not really competing seriously for championships.

2. Self-promoters

Players that care more about themselves than the team, and make it a point to constantly draw attention to themselves can be a detriment to team success.  Can we say 'personal branding' anyone? I am starting to think the incredible increase in focus on employee's personal brands could start to inhibit team performance and success. If your team of five folks has four that are obsessing over their personal brands, I think you are going to have a hard time winning.

3. Looking only at statistics

Baseball is a complex game, and while seemingly every activity is recorded, tracked, and analyzed statistically, there are still many nuances of the game, critical to winning, that are not measured quantitatively.  In organizations the primary measurement of employees is an annual performance review score. But in many organizations these reviews are done poorly, don't necessarily reflect all the contributions people make to team success, and can actually be biased and misleading. Perhaps more effort should be exerted in companies to uncover these 'hidden' contributions, one way is by using Social Network Analysis.

4. Injury talk

To Jeter, no one cares if you are injured.  "You either play, or you don't play. No one wants to know what's bothering you. Sometimes it's a built-in excuse for failure." In the organization there are always going to be constraints and limitations. Competitors will have bigger budgets, regulators will impose ridiculous rules, your technology will be inferior, or people will get sick or go on vacation at the worst possible time.  You know what? No one cares.  Either you can get the job done, or you can't.

5. Negativity

When Jeter had gone though an 32 at bats (about 8 games) without a hit early in his career, he refused to admit that he was in a batting slump. Focusing on the negative in situations becomes a habit, and it gets too easy to constantly approach situations with why you can't do something instead of how you will get it done.  I was on a major system implementation once, on a team of about 30 people that was beset with this kind of negativity.  Finally we declared a new policy, no more 'problems' could be logged on the official 'issues list' without first solving one of the open issues. We started to focus more on solving problems in a positive manner instead of just battling each other to uncover more problems, and perpetuate the negativity.

I am a New York Mets fan, so it is not easy to write a post about a Yankeee, but Jeter has been such a winner that it is impossible not to respect what he has accomplished.

I'll close with an example of a 'winning play' that would never appear in the box score from the 2001 playoffs.