Notes from the road #19 - #HRTechChina Edition

We are about half way through the inaugural HR Technology China Conference and Exposition in Zhuhai, China and while I am a short break from Conference events and duties, I will try to crank out a quick Top 10 notes and observations from the trip so far:

10. Many of the primary HR issues in China and with Chinese companies seem really similar to those we commonly in the US as well - engagement, retention, the need for innovation and 'modern' people practices. Many of talks I have sat in on so far would not have been out of place in an American or European event as well.

9. One of the opening keynotes was given by former US Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. She gave a great talk about challenges and opportunities for HR leaders worldwide, and how advances in technology are impacting the workforce. But beyond that, Secretary Chao is an absolute ROCK STAR in China. Literally hundreds of attendees lined up to see her up close and try to take a picture with her. And she was really kind, funny, and just all around cool as well.

8. I am the on-stage host of the China Conference like I am at HR Tech in the US, but let's just say the two rooms and audiences are very, very different. I probably need to learn some new jokes if I get to play China again.

7. But another portion of my act seems to be playing well in China - I have been told by no less than four different people in two days that I am the most handsome member of the American contingent at the event. So there's that.

6. I somehow talked Madeline Laurano and Trish McFarlane into making the long trip and presenting at the Conference. And Trish has already wrote a great post about the event which you should check out. 

5. Jason Averbook closed out the opening keynotes with a tight, crisp, but completely on-point talk about what are the really important considerations with HR transformation and technology disruption.

4. I love Chinese food. I might not love it for 12 meals in a row. Time for a burger and a beer. Hopefully soon.

3. Everyone in Zhuhai has been incredibly kind, generous, and patient with us as we have occasionally stumbled our way around. Someday I will write about trying to figure out how to print a batch of pre-ordered ferry tickets from a kiosk that was configured all in Chinese.

2. If you have never come out to China, or this part of the world in general, you really should try to make that happen. This is my second time in China, and really is an amazingly interesting place.

1. As much as I love this place, I will be glad to get back home though. The NBA playoffs are about to start! Congrats to the Warriors for reaching 73 wins.

Notes from the road #19 - Red eye diaries edition

Submitted, or at least started to try and submit, from the new and improved Delta Sky Club in SFO while awaiting a redeye flight from SFO - JFK.  

Here are, for your consideration, a series of slightly disjointed and possible incoherent observations of the red eye flight and the kinds of travelers that find themselves on an 11:45PM - 6:32 AM trip across this great land.

1. Taking a red eye flight is 100% a terrible, horrible, no good, stupid idea. Whatever rationalizations you have worked through that led you to this grim place will all prove to be entirely empty. You will not 'get a lot done the next day' because you will be too tired. You will not score any points with the people back at the office, because they don't give a hoot about you. And you will only tick off your family that you were rushing home to see due to the fact that by about 7:15PM the next night you will be asleep in your Barcalounger.  The red eye flight is an abomination. And yes I am about to board one within the hour.

2. No one, I mean no one on the red eye wants to be there, including the pilots and crew. It is the air travel equivalent of a visit to the DMV at 12:15PM on a Monday. Everyone is angry, tired, hates everyone else for the same reasons they hate themselves for choosing the red eye, and will kill you dead if you so much as make eye contact. It is air travel, which is usually pretty horrific, at its absolute bottom. Thank my lucky stars at least I am in the nice Delta Sky Club and not out in the terminal right about now.

3. You are not going to sleep on the red eye, drop that fantasy right now. It is too crowded, hot, noisy, and altogether unpleasant for most people to get more than 39 minutes of decent sleep on a six hour flight. The one exception? The guy who drops like a rock in the aisle seat of your row, so out of it (and possibly snoring), that you can't get past him to get up and stretch your legs or get to the restroom. I guess you will have to hold it until New York. Awesome.

4. The guy right next to you, inexplicably, will still be working at 11:30PM PT. He will be on the phone as you board. He will not stop texting even after 17 requests to turn off mobile devices. And the second the little chime goes off that indicates you have crossed 10,000 feet he will fire up that ThinkPad and get back online. And he will complain to high heaven if the in-flight Wifi gets a little wonky. He will order black coffee at 2AM. This person is a terrible person. I hope this person is not you.

5. When you finally arrive the next morning you will make a solemn, sober, and serious vow: You will NEVER take another red eye flight again. But of course you know, deep down, that is an empty, empty threat. After a few weeks or months pass by you will be beguiled by the notion of getting home at 9AM instead of 'wasting' an entire day traveling and you will, on your own accord, book another red eye flight sometime soon. You know how I know this is true? I am on another red eye flight next week. We are all silly, silly, stupid people.

Safe travels to anyone out there reading this in an airport, or worse yet, on a plane at 2AM.

Notes from the Road #18 - Semi-coherent thoughts edition

Writing this as I work my way back from China and Hong Kong, (and I promise this will be the last blog post about this trip, it has just dominated the last two weeks such that I pretty much have nothing else to write about). I am about 20 hours in to the trip back home, and in what is certainly not the most awesome news of the day, the last leg of the journey is looking to be about 3 hours late, which puts me home at something like 2 in the morning. That is if I even get home, these kinds of late night delays have a funny way of becoming cancellations. So I am pretty much punchy at this point, not completely sure of basic things like, 'Is it day or night?' and 'Where did I pack my souvenir Chairman Mao statue?'

The trip was a really great experience though, despite the hassles of travel and the distances involved - there is something kind of cool and exhilarating (and sometimes a little dicey), when you are forced out of the comforts and familiarity of home or of the other places you have already seen a few dozen times. I love going to Las Vegas, but it is not exactly a mentally challenging trip if you get my meaning. Navigating Beijing traffic, even from the back seat of a cab, proved to be an exercise that demanded careful planning and attention. And a little bit of luck as well. The most common response from a Beijing cab driver when presented with a request to take us someplace was 'I don't know where that is', followed closely by 'No.' But with the help of the incredibly attentive staffs at a couple of Marriott hotels we were using for the trip, we managed to get everywhere we needed to - eventually.

But overall, it was a fantastic learning experience, and one that I would recommend anyone should attempt at least once. Walking along (and up) the Great Wall of China was something I am sure I will never forget, and something I probably never thought I would ever do.

Some other random updates as I am really fading in and out of coherent thought at the moment - I am still behind catching up on messages and emails from the trip. Having most of my productivity type apps unavailable in mainland China was kind of a drag. So if you are waiting to hear back from me on something, I should be caught up by Friday or so. That is assuming I can figure out what day that is.

Also, really bummed that due to various travel obligations that this year The 8 Man Rotation crew were not able to attend the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. We have, have, have to make sure we get back there in 2016.

And last, look for some new HR Happy Hour Shows very soon, both Trish McFarlane and I have been on the road so much lately, but we plan on getting back in the podcast groove soon.

Ok, that is it, I am out. (Hopefully getting out of Minneapolis soon).

Notes from the Road #17 - You should pay more attention edition

Quick dispatch from Day 4 (or maybe 5) of my trip over to Hong Kong and China to take some meetings and do some on the ground prep work for next April's inaugural HR Technology China Conference. Here are my top 5 thoughts and observations coming from someone who prior to this trip, had never come over to China before:

1. I travel a lot, but the one thing even for me is that I bet 95% of the trips I take are to somewhere I have been to before. Even savvy travelers forget what it is to actually be someplace brand new, and factor in that new place pretty much totally different than anywhere else you have been before, and that is a recipe for trouble. I go to Vegas so much I don't usually know which hotel I am staying in until I get in the cab at McCarran. That kind of 'Oh, I will just figure it out when I get there' is not a great strategy over here.

2. American pop culture is everywhere. We had a long meeting here yesterday in the hotel with some of our local partners and contacts, and every so often when the conversation paused I could here the music that was being piped in to the room. I think I heard 'Hotel California' about 8 times during the meeting. Do the Eagles resonate with the average local? I wonder.

3. Business cards are still a pretty big deal over here. When you come out next April, make sure you have a stack. I am not kidding, this is a much bigger deal than you think.

4. No matter how many or what variety of electonic charging device converter you bring, it will somehow be the wrong one. This is uncanny. I took along two different charging adapters and for reasons I can't fathom, they do not work. Luckily the hotels I have been in so far have converters in the rooms that work just fine. I just have to ration the power back and forth between my phone and PC all night. 

5. Expedia customer service will keep you on hold so long you will eventually break down and hang up.

6. Hand towels folded up in the shape of an elephant is a nice touch.

7. You sometimes find unusual things in the hotel closet (see pic at right).

All kidding aside, this has been a really fun and interesting trip so far. You should definitely come some time.

Notes from the Road #16 - ALL CAPS EDITION

Submitting this brief dispatch from Delta Flight 2316 to Las Vegas where I am heading to attend, cover, and moderate a session at the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference this week. For folks who might not know this, I live just outside of Rochester, NY, a fine place to live for many reasons, but like many mid-size cities in the US, suffers from a lack of direct flights to many popular destinations. It was this circumstance that had me on my first flight of the day - a 6:10AM early morning short hop to Detroit, where I caught the aforementioned flight to Vegas.

The flight from Rochester to Detroit is short, maybe an hour of total flight time. Add in a few minutes taxiing out and the total time for the flight might have clocked in at about 1:10 this morning. Thanks to the fine, fine folks at Delta, I was upgraded on ROC - DTW flight, in seat 2A. Seated next to me in 2B was your perfectly typical, perhaps stereotypical 'business guy sitting in first class' person. He had the look, the manner, the tech, (iPad and iPhone) of a corporate VP-type. Maybe in consulting, maybe in sales, hard to say for sure, but definitely someone pretty high on whatever food chain in which he resides.

So (finally) here's the point of the story. For the entire 1:10 minutes we were on the plane from ROC - DTW the guy in 2B wrote emails, starting on the iPhone, switching to the iPad once airborne, then back to the iPhone again once we landed. Non-stop email.  I mean not one minute he was not emailing. It was an impressive feat of email stamina.

But that was not the most interesting thing about the guy in 2B. Everyone one of his emails, at least every time that I snuck a peak to my right, was typed in ALL CAPS. EVERY EMAIL WAS IN ALL CAPS.

Insane, right?

Can you imagine being a person on the receiving end of one of Mr. VP's all caps emails that was sent from a plane at 6:05AM? I have to think anyone who received one of those this morning could not have been all that excited about that prospect.

Look, everyone knows that emailing in all caps is akin to shouting at someone, and you should never do it. But I think it indicates more than just bad email etiquette. It flags you as having just about no self-awareness, no understanding of what kind of impact you're having on folks, (especially if you are the boss, like I suspect Mr. 2B is). 

I couldn't not stop thinking about Mr 2B's staff when they fired up their email this morning. They had to have been hoping they'd have a quiet day, since 2B was on a 6:00AM flight and would not be around today to bug them. Instead, they likely received an ALL CAPS blast before they got their coffee.

Work can sometimes be a drag. In fact, it often can be a drag. It sometimes is hard to tell why. But guys like Mr. 2B are certainly not helping matters.

If you work for Mr. ALL CAPS guy I feel for you today. Hang in there.