When's the last time you got a letter like this?

How is your customer service?  Do you have the right people on the bus?  Do they do the right things?  This letter might be a good judge for you.  See if you can recognize the supermarket...

I wanted you to know that I notice when a company hires the best people. On Saturday, 4/14/12, I was shopping with my 17 month old and we were in the aisle by the seafood dept. He dropped the pacifier out of the cart and when I picked it up, Dave (in the seafood dept) asked "sir, can I wash that for you?" I can tell you this is one of the outliers in the customer service world. He took the pacifier, washed it and dried it for me and said "I understand. I've been there." Please, never forget that your people are the reason "shopping is a pleasure." I spend about $1k/month at this store but he had no idea. That's why it's so impressive. Great people make all the difference! I wonder how that would have looked if I'd been at Walmart... Thanks, A VERY satisfied customer

Crap! Evaluations again? How am I supposed to do that?

"Things are tight, right? I mean, if the economy is in the proverbial toilet and we're cutting costs everywhere, you can't possibly think you're getting a raise, can you? Of course not! It wouldn't be fiscally responsible."

As you sit and listen to the manager conference call your company has once or twice a month, all of these thoughts run through your head. You've killed it this year but it's been tough! The entire market shrank but you managed to stay flat even though others around you weren't so fortunate.

"If I worked in another industry or even for our competitor, I bet they'd see that I am valuable enough to scrape out some cash..." you mutter under your breath.

Suddenly, you hear the words you've been dreading for at least six months..."we've got the year-end evaluations due by the end of the month so make sure you're working with your people to complete these. They are an important tool for our company and our employee's professional development."


"Really?" you ask, "How am I supposed to motivate someone to perform better when there is no money for raises, bonuses, toilet paper for the men's room, etc.?" Immediately you think to yourself "why do we even bother giving out evaluations in a year so bad?"


Now that you've convinced yourself that you're under-appreciated, it's time to go show your employees just how valuable they are to the team. How do you manage that?  


It's easy...but difficult.


1. Be honest. People can sniff out BS from miles away and know when you're upset too. They'll appreciate your sincerity and sympathy when they understand that you don't like it either. NEVER blame the company, however, or you'll lose credibility.


2. Find a way. Barring the whole can't buy toilet paper thing, find some way to reward your team. Even if you have to pay for it out of pocket, show the team you care. If you do pay out of pocket, something simple works best. Extravagance shows you're now "they" rather than one of us. If it's cheap, make sure they know you paid for it and it wasn't the company; otherwise, they'll wonder why the company won't give bonuses if they can afford this.


3. Be optimistic. Sure, things suck this year but if it looks like things are going to turn around, let your people know that you'll remember their loyalty. That gets left out by managers who forget that their people are the one's who kept the company from sliding further than it did.


See what I mean? It's easy, right?

Should you make waves?

Making waves is a good thing right?  I mean, that's how you get noticed!  Why would you not want to come into a situation and think outside the box?  It only makes sense that the ones who make waves are the ones who get promoted.

The HRCapitalist recently published a post giving advice to young HR professionals or to those trying to break into the field. 

What about your HR career?  How do you compete as a Gen Y up and comer in the HR game when all the dinosaurs like me have the spots you want to grow into?

You change the game.  Get good at things the dinosaurs don't want to do but companies place value on.  Then stick with the plan.

Tired of that HR VP/Director standing in the way of your career progress?  How are you different than them?  What differences do you have that are marketable?

Most importantly, are you willing to find ways that you can contribute that are far from the norms you see but add tremendous value? Are you willing to use and market those contributions in a way that the establishment would mark as "socially horrifying"?

Socially horrifying.  I like the phrase, kind of gets you in the right frame of mind to think differently.

I can say that breaking into this field isn't easy.  I've found that although only 7% of the workforce in the Birmingham area has a Masters level education or above, hr insiders still seem to be reluctant to give an outsider much of a chance.  This coming from the department that is screaming about the importance of diversity, fresh thought, training, continuing education, and the like, from the rooftops.

Making waves is certainly important in this field.  Breaking into it or changing the face of it, HR needs to make waves.  Don't get complacent.  Don't think you've been doing what you're doing for long enough that you don't have to make waves.  At the same time, don't be discouraged.  All old fish had to be minnows at some point.

Make waves.  Make changes.  Keep pushing higher.  Keep Thinking!

Find a new guy!

There's a new study from the Kellog School of Business Associate Professor Katherine Phillips that delves into the advantages of diversity within teams.  The research suggests that teams performed better when a newcomer was introduced to an existing team, even when the new ideas did not come from the new member.  This suggests, of course, that diversity in and of itself actually promotes productivity increases.  

We've long believed that diversity promotes different perspectives and different thought processes which ultimately lead to better results.  This does occur, but the reasons might be different than expected.  In my earlier post Sometimes success is an accident, I eluded to the idea that we should always examine why we succeed rather than just why we fail.  It appears that the new study by Professor Phillips shows that our success from diversity might be for a different reason all together than what we've long thought.  New people make us dig deeper and perform better.

Obviously this is important in a company setting, but the challenge is to transition this into our personal lives.  It's no secret that people gravitate towards people like themselves.  Heck, one of the most famous sayings in the world is "birds of a feather..." See.  I didn't even have to finish it!

The study demonstrates that injecting someone different into a team makes that team perform at a higher level.  Why not our own lives?  With the understanding that diversity breeds elevated performance, why not interject a little diversity into the rest of your life?  

I'm not talking about taking a different route to work, although some are in such a need of change that this might help, but maybe its listening to different music.  How about listening to the guy on talk radio that thinks totally opposite of you rather than the guy who you know what he's going to say before he gets the words out.  What would happen if you have lunch at least once a week with someone from a different department than your own?  How about going to a different blog from time to time?  

The point is, it's like a marraige; if two of you are exactly alike, you don't need one of you.  You are better when you are challenged.  You are better when you have to think.  Make sure you are challenged in every area of your life.  Find a new guy!  Keep pushing.  Keep Thinking!!!

Success is sometimes accidental.

"Sometimes, success is a total accident."  When I heard someone repeat this, I was a little taken by surprised.  "What's he talking about?" I thought as he went on to explain.  It comes down to the idea that sometimes, we find success by accident.  

This doesn't mean that we should go through life without a plan or hoping to stumble upon success, but rather that we should always analyze the situation, be it success or failure, and ensure that we are learning from it.  There is no rule that we can only learn from our failures, only our own ignorance that causes us to think successes must be a result of only our intentional efforts.

When we succeed, it is sometimes due to factors we do not suspect.  Regardless, we should always look to the experience and learn from it.  Relationships might succeed because of our partner's traits rather than our own.  Business ventures might succeed thanks to an unforseen competitive advantage rather than our "better mousetrap." A team might win because the other team drops a pass.  A business might succeed because an employee is superb, even thought the manager is terrible.

It doesn't matter what causes the success.  What matters is that we identify what causes that success or negates our failures and learn from that.  I'm reminded of McDonald's introduction of the Filet-O-Fish sandwich.  This sandwich is one of McDonald's top sellers by accident because someone figured out that Catholics need a no meat alternative on Fridays.  

The best way to get skinny is to find what skinny people do and do more of that.  The best way to be wealthy is to find out what wealthy people do and do more of that.  Find out what makes something successful and do more of that!

The point is, if you can determine what causes it, always learn from failure.  Always learn from success.  Keep learning.  KEEP THINKING!!!

For Love or Money

This is a question that most of us wrestle with at some point in our lives.  Do we look for the position with the better pay, the better chance for advancement, better chance to learn the industry, or do we try to find a happy medium of those things.  

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to learn from a few people who I would consider very successful in their careers and one common theme kept coming up.  Many times before I'd heard, "Don't do it for the money," or "Find what you love, not what pays the best," but this time it was different!  Maybe it's getting older.  Call it living experience.  Whatever.  This time what I heard was put best by Leigh Davis, a successful manager in Southern Company's real estate division.  She said, "Don't chase a dollar, chase an experience."

Life forces us to choose...or so we think.  Richard Murray, Group President of RBC Bank in Alabama and Florida said, "Don't look for a chance to make money, look for a chance to learn something."  I'd always thought of it as a tradeoff: if you want to be successful, you have to always start with the higher salary/best opportunity for a promotion.  Now, several years into my career, I realize that it's much more important to keep learning.  

My challenge is just that.  Chase an experience.  Learn something.  KEEP THINKING!!!

KEEP THINKING!!! That's the challenge. When we finish our 

"formal education," what do we do with it? Yesterday a young 

man told me that he was working 2 jobs to put himself through 

college with only the purpose in mind of getting that heralded 

piece of paper. While that piece of paper might get your 

resume on the desk of a potential employer, it really only 

shows that you have the ability and discipline to learn.  

Our challenge is to continue learning. I'm afraid our 

educational system rewards memorization when it should be 

concerned with teaching people to think. Push your 

people to think. If you find someone who can think, hang

on to them.