WEBINAR: What does Game of Thrones have to do with performance coaching?

So what does the popular TV series Game of Thrones have to do with performance coaching and building great teams at work?

I have no idea, really.

I must admit to have never seen even a minute of Game of Thrones. But it seems popular with you kids, and even more popular with your pals over at Fistful of Talent - so much so that they have latched on to the idea of tying the show into some lessons for the workplace in the next installment of the FOT free webinar series.

Here are the details:

“Winter is Coming.” “You Win or You Die.” “You Know Nothing, Jon Snow.”

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you know these quotes as parts of iconic conversations from your favorite series. If you’re not a fan of the series (TV or book), you still likely recognize these quotes as fodder from a series that’s made a friend a bit too obsessive.

The team at Fistful of Talent? We view these quotes as coaching conversations. That’s why we’ve built our next webinar around Game of Thrones.

Join us on May 19th at 2pm Eastern for “RAISING DRAGONS: What Game of Thrones Teaches Us About Performance Coaching and Building Teams, and we’ll use Castle Black and King’s Landing to explore best practices in performance coaching by giving you the following goodies:

1. A quick rundown of the history of Game of Thrones from a leadership perspective. Have a favorite character who’s dead? Whether it’s Ned Stark or Khal Drago, we’ll go rapid fire and tell you what they did well from a coaching perspective, then tell you what dysfunction caused them to be… well… cancelled.

2. We’ll feature the 5 most notorious leaders currently alive on the show and break down their coaching style—where they’re strong and where they struggle—with the help of the performance management experts at Halogen Software. Odds are you’ll find a mother of dragons, a short fellow and dire wolf owner in this breakdown.

3. We’ll breakdown the five most common coaching conversations in corporate America today and tell you which Game of Thrones leader your managers should emulate to nail the conversation—so they can maximize their team member’s performance.

4. We’ll wrap up the webinar by telling you what the coaching styles of the 5 characters featured means for their future—and the future of the teams they lead.

You’ve signed up for enough boring webinars, right? Break the pattern and register for our Game of Thrones, webinar, and we’ll deliver the performance management/coaching science with a layer of pop culture you’ve grown to expect from Fistful of Talent.

REGISTER HERE!

Signs of the corporate death spiral #2 - no more free lunches for you

Quick shot for a super-busy day where I am simultaneously juggle attending an event, sorting out numerous technical issues, (I know, no one cares), and trying to keep the content engines humming around here.

Thought it would be time to resurrect my 'Signs of the corporate death spiral' series that has long been dormant. Although I could just write about Yahoo every day and that would cover things.

No, this post is not about Yahoo, but rather another Silicon Valley tech company Dropbox, who you may know from their pretty large data and file storage business. What signal is there that Dropbox may be lurching towards the dreaded death spiral? Check an excerpt from a recent piece on Slashdot:

Not everything is working out at Dropbox, popular cloud storage and sharing service, last valued at $10 billion. Business Insider is reporting a major cost cutting at the San Francisco-based company. As part of it, the publication reports, Dropbox has cancelled its free shuttle in San Francisco, its gym washing service, pushed back dinner time by an hour and curtailed the number of guests to five per month (previously it was unlimited). These cuttings will directly impact Dropbox's profitability. According to a leaked memo, obtained by BI, employee perks alone cost the company at least $25,000 a year for each employee. (Dropbox has nearly 1,500 employees.)

Look, no doubt Dropbox's pretty lavish perks package would be considered incredibly excessive by the average organization. I mean, have you ever worked anywhere that let you bring in five friends each month to the open bar on Fridays? Have you ever even had an open bar at work? And I am not talking about that bottle you think is 'hidden' in your bottom drawer. Everyone knows about that by the way.

But why this benefits/perks cut at Dropbox could potentially be more serious longer term to them than the average organization's occasional need to cut benefits (which can usually be survivable), is that Dropbox exists almost entirely in a world where 'excessive' benefits are not considered excessive at all, rather they are more or less expected components of their Employer Value Proposition.

That's right, I went all EVP on you all. But it is the best, most concise way to describe what I think is going on here and the potential warning signal this kind of a benefit pull back might end up having at Dropbox.

No workplace or employee needs free dry cleaning service at work in order to be considered fairly compensated, and (hopefully), happy with their organization. No one needs this for sure.

But at Dropbox, and maybe 100 other companies in the Valley that are chasing similar pools of workers?

The end of free dry cleaning and posh gym memberships and open bars?

They might move towards the need category a lot faster than you think. For you and your organization? It would be good for you to know what is your version of free dry cleaning before the CFO decides to come down with the cost-cutting axe.

n = 1

1.  We love to talk about 'hiring for cultural fit' but have no idea if we really know how to do that, and if it really matters.

2. You don't really have to be glued to your email 24/7. People who are emailing at all hours are mostly competing on responsiveness instead of on talent/skill/ideas. You can try to do compete on responsiveness for a while, but eventually, maybe soon, you''ll burn out and won't have enough talent/skill/ideas to fall back on.

3. The number of people you can trust, who you can count on, and who really do have your best interests top of mind is fewer than you think. Maybe a lot fewer. But that is ok. One true ally is worth more than twenty impostors.

4. Not everyone in the 'gig' economy is all that thrilled to be chasing gigs all of the time. You might be able to lock up some of your most talented and productive contractors or temp workers for much less than you think.

5. It's probably too late to panic. Just get on with it.

6. Incomplete or incongruous information about prices and salaries make so many of us leave money on the table. Whatever you are thinking of asking for, ask for 20% more.

7. Stop working for free. Truly. You are devaluing your own skills and you are killing the market for everyone else. And to those big, giant companies that continue to want to compensate labor with 'exposure?'. Shame on you too.

8. The single greatest disruption in the 'robots are going to take all the jobs' dynamic might be when self-driving trucks put a million drivers (in the USA only) out of work.

9. Listen to the input of the (few) people you can trust, but always make your own decisions

10. Once your network hits 150 or people, you can't really know them all that well, or meaningfully engage with any more. But you can let them think they know you by sharing just enough information,  in the right places at the right times. It isn't about being fake, it's about recognizing the limits of our capacity to engage. And also about making sure you give yourself the time and space to work on your own ideas, and not be too influenced by what everyone else seems to be fascinated with at the moment.

11. I had a weird dream where I directed a movie. It was like a 'Planet of the Apes' except instead of apes, they were dinosaurs that walked on two legs. Million dollar idea!

To be continued...

Have a great weekend!

HRE Column: Five Ways to Succeed with HR Technology

Here is my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech and that archives of which can be found here.

As usual, the Inside HR Tech column is about, well, HR Tech, (sort of like I used to write about all the time on this blog), and it was inspired by the planning process for the upcoming HR Technology Conference, (October 4-7, 2016 in Chicago).

A big part of the Conference program is set of sessions that we call "Customer Success", which we launched for the first time in 2015. The Customer Success content was so well-received and highly attended last year that we are bringing it back again in 2016 (stay tuned for more details, the full agenda for HR Tech 2016 will be posted soon). So as I sat down to write my latest HR Executive Magazine column, which I wanted to be about the Conference, I kept coming back to this content and the larger ideas of Customer Success with HR tech.

Here is an excerpt of the HR Exec column titled 'Five Ways to Succeed with HR Tech'

Thankfully for me, I have almost completed the program for the 19th annual HR Technology Conference and Expo^®to be held Oct. 4 through 7 in Chicago. And, as an aside, I am really thrilled that the conference is returning to Chicago, as it will be great to be back in such a fantastic city after several years' absence.

One question I always get during the program development for HR Tech is "What is the main theme for the conference this year?" And each year I usually give the same type of answer: There isn't a singular theme, but rather there are several sub-themes that seem to permeate and influence the development of the program, and thus become the "big ideas" for the overall event. But one idea that I know for sure will once again feature prominently at the event, (as it did in 2015), is the concept of "customer success," i.e., how organizations can make the most out of their HR technology investments. I'd like to talk about some of these ideas around customer success, as they have been on my mind quite a bit as I finalize the conference program.

What are some of the key considerations for HR leaders and their organizations when attempting to make the best decisions to maximize their investments in HR tech? Here are five ideas that we will be talking about at the conference this year.

Do your homework.

A huge part of succeeding with HR technology is in knowing where to start, and that's where educating yourself about the HR-technology market and landscape factors in. There are numerous sources of information about HR technology for the HR leader -- attending the HR Tech Conference being one of them -- and investments you can make to prepare and research the market. Of course, there are plenty of other sources of HR tech market and solution information, and we will help conference-goers better understand these various information sources as well as the landscape of the HR tech marketplace overall. This market is moving so fast and has so many players that HR leaders need a plan and an approach to market education and research that we hope to provide.

Make sure the numbers add up.

For years, new HR-technology investments were justified by productivity gains and reduced HR-systems costs. But after many years of implementing HR systems, your organization could be at a crossroads, wondering what opportunities for savings and increased efficiency remain. You should also be aware there are additional opportunities for savings and it will take a new approach to serving the business and thinking about IT working together with HR that will drive strategic advantage. At the conference, HR leaders will have the opportunity to learn valuable lessons in how non-HR and boards of directors evaluate HR-technology-investment-capital decisions, the metrics that work in moving an HR-change initiative forward, how to get the funding for those big change initiatives that HR needs and how understanding the key HR technologies will propel your next HR business case.

Read the rest at HR Executive online...

You know you are intrigued about what ways 3 - 5 are, right? Well, hop over to HRE to find out.

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and take your dog out for a walk or re-seal your driveway if you do sign up for the monthly email.

Have a great day!

Things you should never say at work #1 - "I'm not technical"

New series on the blog launching today called 'Things you should never say at work' - hopefully that will focus on the non-obvious but still highly damaging things you should never say on the job.

Here goes...

(Slightly) edited for purposes of clarity and anonymity story from a former colleague of mine who has been talking to a potential client about a new (largely) technical project - the implementation of some new, pretty large enterprise systems for a mid-size manufacturing company.

My former colleague walks into a 'discovery' kind of meeting with the two ostensible subject matter experts in charge of the two most critical process areas of the project - let's call them Inventory Management and Supply Chain Optimization.  The two client folks that run these functional areas are pretty experienced, my colleague guessed they had at least 10 or 15 years each inside the company.

When my colleague asked them how the early pilots of the new enterprise tech had been going, what the main challenges were, how the systems were being set up in order to support the organization's workflows, etc., both client subject matter experts responded similarly. Something along the lines of: "I really don't know - I'm not technical." 

A huge red flag for my colleague for sure, as the two primary customers of the upcoming tech implementation were not only pretty disengaged from the process, they were seemingly proud of their lack of expertise and interest in what was going on with the new technology.

Maybe these two experts are able to get away with this open apathy towards the technology, due to years of accrued expertise and perhaps some organizational stagnation, but you can be sure their (and their kind) days are numbered.

I would bet that almost no one reading this post today would be able to proudly declare out loud in your shop something along the lines of "That new headcount trends dashboard? No, i have not looked at it. I'm not technical'. Or, "What do I think the 10% bonus pool reduction will do to voluntary turnover? I don't know. I'm not technical.'

It doesn't matter if you don't know about a specific technology. Tech moves so fast anyway that what specific skills that are in demand now probably won't be the same ones in demand in 2 or 3 years.

But the approach, the attitude, the willingness to 'be' technical?

It doesn't matter what kind of job you have now, the 'I'm not technical' card is one no one can afford to play today.

So you should never say it. I mean it. 'Cause if I find out you did...