‘Workplace’ Articles at Everyday People, Page 14

Great HR is messy !!

Just recently I was involved in conversations with supervisors who both said, “I wish people would just do what I say !!” It wasn’t a passing phrase. It was emphatic !! They were both frustrated with employee situations and felt they had hit a wall.

I asked them both if things would be easier if what they said came true. If people jumped at every word, command or thought from a person above them, would things be better? They didn’t waste one second in telling me, “Yes, of course it would.” I couldn’t let this coachable moment pass . . .

(Steve) “So, if people would never disagree, never have their own ideas and input, you’d be good with that?”

Silence. They stammered and said that they didn’t mean it to be so concrete, but I think they did. I understood their frustration and it all boils down to this . . . Working with people is messy !! That is why it ROCKS to work with people !!

I don’t think anyone wants to be in a situation of constant turmoil. However, that is not usually the case for people in most workplaces. We tend to manage and lead to the extremes, so when frustrating people and/or situations arise, we think that ALL people are now awful. It really is intriguing because another component that usually comes along with these impasses is that the OTHER people involved are the frustrating ones . . . never us.

Too many HR people want to manage from the outside and keep things clean and tidy. The more “defined” everything is at work, the more control you wield. It isn’t true actually, but it’s how we feel.

If you truly want to practice diversity, leadership and development in your companies, then you need to dive into the fray and get messed up yourself !! Show people your quirks, your vulnerabilities and your willingness to show them how HUMAN you are !!

I readily admit that I’m a mess. It’s how I approach things because it allows me to meet people where they are and not where I think they should be. It has led to more situations working themselves out versus causing more frustration.

This week, get messy !! You’ll love it !!

Buffaloes, Planes and Wiffle Ball !!

This past week I was completely unplugged as I was at Summer Camp at the Pioneer Scout Reservation with the Boy Scouts. To say it was spectacular would not capture the experience enough !! I know that the idea of camping for a week in 100+ degree weather for a few days followed by 14 straight hours of monsoonlike rain isn’t for everyone, but I wouldn’t trade it in for the world !!

There were so many memories forged, but let me highlight just a few . . .

I slept through a heat lightning thunderstorm in an open field approximately 100 yards from a herd of buffalo at the Wild Winds Buffalo Preserve.
My son flew an airplane including lift off . . . and he’s 14 !!
Our Troop built a wiffle ball field inside our campsite. They made the bases from log pieces cut by them with a two-man saw.
The kids challenged the camp staff to a wiffle ball game on our field and beat them 16 – 6. I was deemed a “traitor” because I put on a staff shirt and hat and played for their team !!

The list could go on and on. The amazing thing is that even when I’m away from the “normal” world of work – HR still happens. Our leaders and scouts went out of our way to bond with the Staff and encourage them in all the great work that they do. Everyday staff members were in our site to socialize, play Euchre (an essential of scouting life !!) and even ask for advice. They are talented young men and women who choose to take their summers to help boys advance in their scouting career.

The best lesson I learned from camp this year was that, because I was disconnected from the outside/electronic/social media world, I could focus. I could focus on what mattered the most . . . the people around me.

Whether it was calming a young kid down from a serious bought of home sickness, or seeing my son become a young man and lead others, you didn’t have the chance to focus on anything else. You could take in every challenge, obstacle and opportunity and encourage, coach and guide people to be successful in what they were pursuing.

We hosted the leaders from the summer camp’s other Troops at our site and I taught them how to share one great thing about their kids and they stayed at our site for 2 1/2 hours sharing amazing things !!

This break from the wild pace of life reminded me that I want to continue to be an HR professional who focused on people first. You know that when we focused on the boys they completed their work, laughed for hours and hours, and worked together to do things that they’d never try on their own.

I think we make HR too hard. I am taking the lessons from this past week and implementing them even more. So, each night I’m going outside to gaze into the night sky and breathe deep to keep me grounded. Of course I’ll be wearing tie-dye, and you can see that this legacy will continue with at least a handful of young men for years to come.

Ah, Creativity !!

This past weekend, my wife and I celebrated “date night” by going to see the new movie Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson. It was spectacular !! A quirky love story that was colorful, insightful, well acted and involved incredible visual images and dialogue. Also, it portrays Scouting in a perfect way which made me proud to be a Scoutmaster. But I digress . . .

This post isn’t a movie review, but an observation. You see, this movie is rare in this day and age of film. Companies tend to opt for the bombastic blockbuster with the hopes of pulling in mass amounts of revenue regardless of the quality of the characters or the story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m right in line to see these visual joy rides as well. My son and I have an agreement to see all comic book related movies (except Ghost Rider – I mean . . .) We love the distraction and the ability to pretend to be Superheroes. It is fun !!

But . . . it is also short lived. We keep wondering “what’s next?” Will there be a sequel, and will it “live up” to the one we just saw? It’s honestly a lot like many people approach HR.

We want to have the blockbuster program, change, initiative that would make the Senior Management team take notice and give us that strategic position that we yearn for. So, we focus so much on grand moves and positioning within our organizations to get noticed and justified, that we stop being creative.

Whenever I hear the term “best practices,” it just means that you’re copying what someone else is already doing. That may work for you and certain components to transfer between companies in their HR efforts, but many do not.

It’s time for us to be creative !! When you were a kid, you could take ANYTHING and make it into something incredible and limitless !! As adults, we keep forcing ourselves, and our employees, to be rational and pragmatic beings. Creativity gets sapped when it runs into policies, procedures and rules.

So, what can YOU do about it? Willing to be the Moonrise Kingdom in your organization? Willing to look at things differently and see how they lead to have long-lasting, meaningful change?

I am. I hope you join me !! It’s a far brighter adventure !!

Staring at a blank page . . .

Who here lives a “full” life? One where it seems you never have enough time to get done what you wanted to accomplish?

The answer is that everyone has a life that’s full. What’s different for us is what we choose to use to fill it. Whenever I hear someone say they don’t have enough time, I truly am skeptical. It doesn’t seem like they’re bored. In fact, when you ask them, they say they’re “busy.” When you ask what they’re busy with, there is rarely a good answer because they really don’t know. They just know they’re exhausted being busy.

Whenever I make a surprise phone call to friends, our first question to each other is, “So, how are you doing?” I usually answer, “Man, I’m full and I love it !!” Then we talk about the amazing things going on in our lives, our families, our friends and our work. I do my best to get off the HR “what’s the new project” talk to make sure that we talk about all facets of our lives.

There are days that do seem to get away from me. I’ve given up the notion that I control much at all. Being in HR, I truly want to be in a position to move things forward while including everyone around me as much as possible. I look at each day as a blank page.

This isn’t some idealistic, pie in the sky, you really can’t live that way approach. It just allows for things to happen at different paces and within the flow that they need to occur.

I mentioned last week that I’ve been on this crusade to list 3 great things a day in my journal. At first, I looked at the blank page in front of my journal and the regular anxiety of what to write crept in. “Would it be interesting enough?” “Am I just going through the motions?” “Did anything great really happen?”

Now, the words pour out of the pen themselves and I stop at 3, but I could write pages and pages. You see, before doing this, being busy was easy and it followed the path of everyone around me. I was frustrated. I felt overwhelmed and out of control. That’s lessened considerably because having the blank page is honestly welcoming.

As you start this work week, and your to-do list is already 14 behind when you roll over to hit the snooze button – stop, breathe, and start over. Start with a blank page and let your day be filled with the great things that are sure to happen to you.

Remember, when you hit the office, you’ll be running into people who are already “full” and won’t be able to get past being busy. Help them out. Add them to your page and see what stories unfold !!

3 Great Things !!

Yesterday we celebrated my daughter’s graduation with a party where family, friends and fellow seniors came from her class to wish her congratulations. Our party was “scheduled” from 2:00pm to 6:00pm, so it made sense that it wrapped up at 10:30pm with friends sitting around a fire pit taking in the great day that we all experienced !!

This day just fit in with what I’ve been following lately and telling others about. There is an amazing book out there from Shawn Achor called The Happiness Advantage. I love the book personally and I’ve taken just one of the many nuggets from the book and have put it into practice. One of the chapters talks about writing a journal and listing 3 great things that happened the day before. The study that was conducted said that people who did this for only one week were more positive for up to six months later.

I shared this with the State Council of Ohio SHRM and asked everyone to start a journal because they work with great HR folks in their chapters and their workplaces. There were two great folks from SHRM their as well and I asked them to join in (and they have). Sensing the momentum and the incredible response, I introduced the 3 great things journal to my own HR department that I head as well as the GM’s from our restaurants, the leaders of our Ops group and some of our Executives !!

The results have been amazing (and we’re two weeks into it.) In fact, a group of the OHSHRM presidents and I have been listing one of our “great things” on Twitter every day since the Council meeting – EVERY day !!

There are so many great and positive things around us, and we have the option to choose whether we’ll face each day negatively or positively. It doesn’t mean that things don’t get rough or that challenges aren’t present. However, HOW you approach things is in your control. As humans, and as HR professionals, it’s time to change how we approach the phenomenal people that are all around us.

I know it works !! It’s not some parlor trick or “trend,” it’s a way of life. Try it out and let me know how your journal builds and flows. You’ll start noticing amazing things that have been right in front of you all the time.

By the way – journal entry from yesterday:

1) Scout friends coming over to set up the massive dining fly/tent we had for the party early in the morning !!

2) Sitting around the fire pit and taking in the day’s memories !!

and (most importantly)

3) My daughter with my Mom getting a hand made quilt for graduation. A family tradition of love and creativity that my Mom does for all the grandkids. Here it is . . .

The Mystique of HR ??

At a recent HR Roundtable I facilitate, an attendee gave the answer that “HR isn’t in the trenches to keep up the ‘Mystique of HR’ !!” I doubled over in laughter and so did the room. However, then he gave some background to his answer. He said, “HR keeps people guessing as to what they do, and why they do it, so employees are never clear about what HR does.” The room then fell silent.

It fell silent, because the context he gave around his answer truly hit home with those at the Roundtable and with me personally. How can I work in a profession where people think that some mystical being is behind some magical field of smoke and illusion in order to practice the art of Human Resources?

Unfortunately, the sentiment echoed at the Roundtable has truth to it. We have allowed HR to be someplace people “go to.” It’s a destination with some unknown consequence just waiting to be unleashed on people for coming to visit. (cue dark, scary music)

Can you even think of another industry that allows “ambiguity” to be it’s brand ?? I can’t.

The only way this moniker and conception of the whirling mists dissipate is for us to be forthright in who we are and what we do. We can’t want people to see our value, we have to BRING IT !! If people in your organization don’t know what HR is, or what they offer to the business, then it’s up to YOU to change that. This isn’t Senior Managment’s job and you can’t wait for it to be written into the Strategic Plan. You have to model clarity and consistency in how you drive HR throughout the organization.

This isn’t a pipe dream – it’s an expectation. We can’t continue to think that HR will one day in the distant future get recognized for the invaluable contributions it tirelessly, and selflessly brings each day to the workplace. (cue the Heavenly AAAAAHHHHS here)

I love the field I’m in and I work to make it an integral part of my company and encourage others in HR to do the same. I think we need to take our cue from the sage philosopher Bruce Hornsby in his classic “The Way It Is.” The chorus goes:

“That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it is. Ahh, but don’t you believe them !!”

We can, and must, eliminate the mystique of HR. We can’t continue to let people guess what we do. I’m in . . . are you ??

Everyone needs a Homer !!

This past week was tough, and something that no one in HR looks forward to. One of my co-workers passed away. His name was Homer.

Homer was amazing !! He was the first person I saw everyday as I came into the office. He greeted me with a smile and a warm handshake. We exchanged jokes, laughed about life and talked about the day, our families and our work. He loved working for LaRosa’s, and it wasn’t something to “say”, it was what he believed. His pride in his work showed.

By the way, Homer cleaned the parking lot of the Corporate Office and also two of our nearby restaurants . . . and he was 79.

Homer was a great loving husband, father and veteran. Also, he was my friend.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a trend in HR and in the blogosphere to group folks together so that we can better “address” or “handle” their generation. I’m concerned by this because I think it waters down the spectacular fact of our diversity as individuals. When I was born can be proven, but who I am as a person is an individual characteristic. I think HR suffers when we try to group people into different categories so they can be more homogeneous. It may seem “easier,” but it devalues what each person brings to work each and every day.

I’ve said it before, but I truly feel that HR should be practiced person-by-person. Our employees deserve our focus, attention and care. If you ever hope to be a diverse organization, then you need to really look at how HR is practiced in your place. If everyone fits into a giant herd, or a “generation”, then you need to make an adjustment.

This week our company lost a dear individual who impacted the lives of many. He did this intentionally and unabashedly. I hope to carry on his example so that others can see how amazing each person who touches our lives really is. I deeply miss him already.

Look around you this coming week at work. Is there a Homer at your place? There should be.

So Much Room to Move !!

Rain for hours. Mud everywhere. Solemn flag retirement. Scavenger hunt. Tons of Euchre games. Food that is flat amazing. Big word Saturday (you got credit if you used big words during your conversations). Flames shooting from a lantern, and everyone points and says, “Mr. Browne – look !! Cool !!”

As I type this week’s post, I’ll be honest, I’m exhausted. I just returned from a weekend of scouting with the great boys and adults of Troop 941. It’s our annual “advancement outing” where we get our new scouts started along their way, and the older scouts also work on things to advance in their ranks. It seems that every Advancement Outing is filled with challenging weather and unexpected surprises. This one was no different !!

One of the things I truly love about Scouting is that the focus is to let the boys learn, fail, learn again, teach and then move forward. The hope is that they get the spark to someday reach Eagle Scout.

It’s interesting because the Troop is a microcosm (big word) of the workplace. Every boy is different and has quirks that make them truly standout. As adult leaders, we do our best to guide them to making the decisions that will allow them to truly develop. We are constantly fighting the urge to jump in and fix it all because we learn that our greatest trial is . . . patience.

The beauty of the system is that the boys can do so many things in so many ways to reach their goals. This drives some adults (and boys) crazy because they feel that tight structure will lend a successful end for one and all. Some kids don’t even see the structure (which warms my heart !!)

In the workplace, we in HR use policies as our “structure” and we do our best to enforce, cajole and discipline everyone who falls outside of them. We think we’re doing our job, but not really. I think policies are broader than most. They should be parameters that allow people room to move and perform. They should never be vehicles for control than can never be fully reached and will most certainly not allow people to be consistent.

We need to be like the scouts who look at eminent danger and say, ” Oooh, cool !!” I learn something every time I get to go and lay under the stars and the rain and the mud. Amid all that, you only hear playing, laughter and memories being made. It’s a great “workplace.” Maybe we’d all enjoy what we did a bit better if we loosened the reigns and allowed people room to move !!

It’s Opening Day !!

This week I participated in a true Cincinnati tradition !! My family and I went to Opening Day for the Cincinnati Reds. It was truly a spectacle to behold !! Everyone was smiling, laughing and anxious for the start of a new baseball season. The smell of bratwurst, pizza, beer, popcorn and peanuts filled the air.

People didn’t want to miss any second of the festivities. The Reds have always valued this tradition since they were the first Major League team ever. Fans are loyal and educated about the storied past as well as being encouraged about the current team. They know stats, performance indicators and have strong opinions about their favorite players.

All eyes were glued to the field when they paid honor to wounded veterans who had proudly served our country. Next was the unveiling of a gigantic American flag that covered the outfield as an enormous plane flew over the stadium at the perfect moment amid roaring cheers !! The ceremonial first pitch followed and then we moved onto the game. You could hear all types of conversations going on all around you, and every “ooh” and “ahh” of the plays on the field was palpable.

Seeing this event was truly a treat for my family and me. It also made me think . . .

42,000+ people were filled with awe, joy and hope for baseball players that don’t even know they exist. We go to work everyday with a team of people we need to have succeed more than any sports team ever will.

So, what if we treated the beginning of the day like Opening Day at work? We were geeked to see everyone !! We cheered their performance on and wanted to see them bring their best in all they did !! We knew that each person had a role that made the team thrive and we built on it, encouraged it and gave them the equipment to “knock it out of the park.”

As you start this work week, you can have that Opening Day feel !! What do you say?

Who gets your attention ??

The past few weeks are some of my most favorite as a basketball fan with the NCAA tournaments (both the men’s and women’s tournaments.) I’m a giant basketball fan having played since I was young, seeing my kids play and being an AVID fan of my alma mater . . . Ohio University !!

You know Ohio University, it’s that one in Athens, Ohio. The 1st public university in Ohio. The one who’s mascot is a Bobcat . . . NOT a ~~Buckeye~~ !!

So, you can imagine my excitement when the men’s team won their conference tournament and made it to the “Big Dance” !! They were matched up against Big 10 power – Michigan in the first round, but you wouldn’t know that because the commentators from CBS focused on the “more talented and more recognizable” school.

NOTE: This is not Michigan’s fault and I actually admire their school, and all the schools who worked hard enough to make the tournament. Please read on . . .

After Ohio U. pulled off the upset to advance in the tournament, CBS then struggled because their next opponent was the University of South Florida from the Big East. Who would they focus on? Well, it honestly was a mix, but the commentators stammered throughout the broadcast because neither school was considered “premier.” OU triumphed again and moved on to play a truly legendary program – the University of North Carolina.

The game Friday was incredible and Ohio University took the mighty Tar Heels to the very last second and just missed a basket that would have clinched the victory. Instead, they played overtime and UNC won. I was sitting in my basement so excited about how great my alma mater had played, and was interested in seeing what would be said after the game by Roy Williams, the UNC coach.

Both he, and one of his stars, Tyler Zeller, said that Ohio played a great game and they were fortunate to win. They both wanted to give Ohio credit. There was one Bobcat fan who had tears in his eyes.

You see, this is so similar to what we do in organizations. We focus on the “stars” and the “high performers” because they are well-known, visible and (in most cases) performers. But where do future stars come from? What do we do with people who are a great team, but may not have a superstar?

Our feedback to employees tends to be like the commentators from CBS who did this with EVERY team that wasn’t well known or listed as a better seed. Isn’t it time we look for those who bring great strengths to the workplace every day?

What would happen if we had a great focus about ALL our employees? What if we expected the best from everyone and gave them the opportunity to perform? What if we quit focusing on negative and what isn’t working with things, and instead, encouraged people to do their best? Then, when they do, give them feedback on their success !!

I’m proud of Ohio University and what they accomplished. I can’t wait to see what happens next season !!

Image courtesy of the College Book Store, Inc. page on Facebook