Author: Kris Dunn

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First Mover vs. Disruptor How Would You Change HR if You Could Start From Scratch

How does the conventional wisdom go? First-mover advantage in business is key, right? Be the first to market and build a solution or product that’s good enough, and to the victor go the spoils. Combine first-mover advantage with some barriers to entry for potential competitors, and you’ve got a market position that has cash cow written all over it.


Without question, first-mover advantage is great to have. However, I’d offer this alternative view: The first-mover advantage can and will diminish over time, especially as that nimble approach/solution you started with grows into a legacy battleship that’s hard to move and vulnerable to the disruptor.


More on the HR connection in a moment; first, what does a “disruptor” look like?


Case in point: Microsoft Money vs. Mint.


I’ve been a Microsoft Money user for at least five years, using Money to track my finances and do budgeting for our household. Unfortunately, 2009 was so busy I didn’t use the product at all.


One of my resolutions for 2010 was to get back on the budgeting front and understand where our money was going and to save more. So I fired up my copy of Money on a home laptop and proceeded to attempt to load up the first three months of transactions for our household in 2010.


What I found out shocked me. Microsoft Money has been discontinued. No more downloads; too much competition.


Too many competitors like Mint.com who changed the game.


While Microsoft had a nice run at the money management segment, their advantage (No. 2 market position after Quicken, but tons of market power in the personal finance segment) faded over time.


Their solution was based on the local license model, whereby you had to install the software on your PC. As the complexity of their solution grew, it became hard for the end user to maximize. Usability was also an issue given the fact that you couldn’t grab your account from any computer like Gmail and other on-demand services.


Enter Mint.com. Mint is a Web-based personal finance solution. There’s nothing to install, with your account being on-demand from any computer you need it to be. That’s two things Money was not: free and simple.


After Money shut down, I remembered the glowing reviews I had seen of Mint and opened an account. What I found was an interface that was simple to use, and while Mint had only 50 percent of the features of Money, it easily had 90 percent of the functionality I needed, including an iPhone app.


Mint’s a great example of a disruptor that was able to overcome the dominant market advantage of a giant like Microsoft. Change the game dramatically enough with your solution and make it simple yet functional and you’ve got a shot to unseat the first-mover who’s printing cash and unable to turn the battleship as quickly as you.


And that serves as a nice transition to the HR focus of this column: If you were going to disrupt the first-mover advantage of the traditional HR practice, what features would your new solution (we’ll call it HR Disruption) have?


If I were building it, HR Disruption would include the following features:


• I’d make sure every HR manager and up (director, vice president) had recruiting in their active skill set. The best way to get the respect of the line manager is to find the talent they don’t have the time or the will to identify and secure on their own. HR Disruption would have a lot of features to enable higher-quality results when it comes to talent acquisition.


• I’d design HR Disruption so it was non-negotiable that a substantial investment was made in managerial skills over the first two years of a new manager’s career. I don’t mean a couple of classes at Dale Carnegie. I mean a $30,000 to $40,000 investment in the new manager’s ability to communicate, motivate and draw higher performance from his/her team. Without question, some folks would use HR Disruption for a few years and then leave, but trust me, once word got out that HR Disruption had this training feature set, my turnover over time would go way down.


• I’d design HR Disruption so it was non-negotiable that a substantial investment was made in career planning for team members, regardless of whether it resulted in that career path taking them away from my company—same product strategy as the managerial skill training outlined above. We hire new team members at a brisk pace, put them through some onboarding and then expect them to figure out what they want out of the next five years of their career. No wonder people leave us at times for inferior products/companies. They’re just flailing about, trying to find the right fit. A robust career planning model would fix that pain point.


• I’d design selection practices so that the capacity to coach (or capacity to learn how to coach) was the first priority when promoting an individual contributor to a manager role, not subject-matter expertise. What’s the most important role of the manager of people in your organization? Coaching for performance, of course. I’d design HR Disruption to include screening tools to tell me which managerial newbies had the capacity to coach with the right training and tools, then I’d hire those people even if there were candidates with stronger technical skills available in the same selection pool.


That’s my list of how I would disrupt the HR battleship, if I was designing a new HR product offering/service model. What would you do if you wanted to be the Mint.com of HR?


There’s good news, should you decide to pursue the role of the disruptor, when it comes to the traditional HR practice. Established products (in this case, traditional HR) will laugh at you initially, then they’ll start to become reactive once they see your solution gaining traction.


That means you might not get a chance to change the world, but you might get acquired. Mint.com got acquired in 2009 by Intuit (makers of the No. 1 personal finance software, Quicken) for $170 million just two years into operation.


You might not make $170 million, but disrupt the HR game in a meaningful and visible way and you can bet there’s someone out there willing to snap you up for a fresh look at the HR game.


What are you waiting for? Disrupt!


Workforce Management Online, May 2010 — Register Now!

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All I Ever Needed to Know About Performance Management I Learned From Little League Baseball

Dave Ulrich. Jack Welch. Patrick Lencioni. All are big names that have something to teach us about the art of people management and motivating talent to perform at a high level in your organization. You’ve heard of them, paid money for their books and been attracted to conferences they’ve headlined.


I’m adding Kelly Leak and Tanner Boyle to that list. But you won’t find them signing books or pulling down 20-large to speak to your local SHRM chapter.


Instead, the modern-day versions of Kelly and Tanner are more likely to be playing Xbox with your kids or threatening your cat with a pellet gun. Before you call the police, wait! Although they’re neighborhood kids (and maybe hellions sometimes), you can learn more from them than you can from the HR thought leaders. You just have to take time to stop, watch and listen.


Today I’m simply here to tell you that all I need to know about performance management I learned from 9-year-olds and Little League baseball. Here’s the scenario that made the connection for me:


• I’m currently coaching a baseball team of 9-year-olds.


• We look pretty good, but we lost a recent game and our outfield was struggling. Really struggling. Like Bad News Bears struggling.


• We had practice the next night. We did outfield drills that were pretty simple in concept. Run and catch the ball, and if you can’t catch it, don’t let the ball get by you. Rinse and repeat.


• No one could catch or stop the ball. It was bad.


• I let it go on for about 10 minutes, feeling like the most inept coach in the history of sports.


• Then I thought, it’s scoreboard time.


• I said the following to the kids: “Guys, we’re going to make this a competition. If you catch the ball in the air or stop it from going to the fence, you get a +1. If you drop the ball or the ball gets by you, it’s a -1. After 15 minutes, we’ll stop, add up the scores and declare a winner. Winner gets to watch the others take a hard lap around the field and soak in the glory of their win.”


• The result: Intensity went up 500 percent, and the kids kept competing even when they dropped a ball. We were keeping score, and as a result, the kids had skin in the game.


The lesson from a performance management standpoint is clear: That which is measured and communicated gets results. Competition is good. Never apologize for setting up a system where everybody competes and, as a result, the players perform their best.


If you don’t fully appreciate the connection between your organization and a bunch of 9-year-olds on a scrubby baseball field, it’s probably because you don’t have kids, or have never been a volunteer youth coach. I’m using baseball as my example, but I’m positive the lessons are seen in non-athletic activities as well.


Regardless of the youth activity, the challenges are the same. You’re a volunteer. The kids aren’t paid to be there. You’re competing against 101 other things for the attention of Kelly and Tanner and the other Bears. If it goes poorly, you have two choices. One choice is to muddle through the season and celebrate when it’s over. The other choice is to work to improve the performance of the kids.


Let’s stay with the baseball example, since I’m currently living it. Here are some other lessons my Little League team is currently teaching me in ways my workforce can’t:


1. The power of praise: One of the most underrated skills involved in being a performance coach in corporate America is the power of the positive comment. I’m not talking about your formal recognition program or the clichéd certificates of recognition some managers seem to focus on. Instead, I’m talking about the concept of “saying it when you see it.”


In Little League baseball, you generally have to praise good skill, effort or attitude before a kid is going to respond to your efforts to improve their skill. A good rule of thumb is three “spot praises” (you give the quick, positive feedback immediately when you see good stuff) for every attempt to correct them or improve their performance in any way. The praise becomes the currency between you and the kids that allows you to coach them for improvement. You should try that in the office sometime.


2. Coaching isn’t telling: I know I’ve done my job on the baseball field when a kid tells me why they missed the ball or overthrew first base by six feet before I coach them on a given play. That means I’ve invested the time to help them understand a skill at a level where they know the steps that are required, but also can troubleshoot their own performance as well. Powerful stuff.


You know what the role of a coach is when this self-assessment happens on the field or in your office? You just praise the player. She doesn’t need you as much because you’ve taken the time to teach her, rather than simply tell her repeatedly.


3. The same words that motivate Kelly don’t work for Tanner: In corporate America, you have a hammer called at-will employment. You pay employees to work for your company, and as a result, even the most progressive managers have a tendency to talk the same way to all employees on their team. After all, you have a job to do and time is limited.


That one-size-fits-all approach won’t work on the youth baseball field. Talk the same way to Tanner as you do to Kelly, and Tanner shuts down. Youth activities remind you quickly that customized coaching is necessary to improve the skills of individuals and get the best team results possible.


The next time a high-potential employee is struggling in his first role as a manager of people, don’t buy him a bunch of business books on management. Save your money, and instead require him to coach a youth sports team.


If newly minted managers open their eyes, they’ll learn lots from the kids—things like calming talented individual contributors down when they’re upset, breaking up unproductive meetings and teaching the kids how to stay humble when they’re riding a hot streak.


You know, the important stuff.


Workforce Management Online, April 2010 — Register Now!

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Why the Best HR Leaders Are Moderate Republicans

You realize I’m baiting you Fox News and MSNBC viewers with that title, right?


Good. Because it’s quiz time today with the HR Capitalist! Look at the list below and tell me the presidential career that most resembles the arc of a world-class HR pro (at any career level):


1. Bill Clinton
2. Jimmy Carter
3. Ronald Reagan


Time’s up. Which one did you pick? If you only picked one, you’re either a single-lever-pulling Republican, or you’re telling me what I want to hear based on the title of this column. Or maybe you just wanted to make a Monica Lewinsky reference when talking about your HR team. (Have you no shame?) The truth is that two names on this list resemble world-class HR leaders at their best.


Both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan could have been great HR pros. Turns out that in order to be a great HR leader, it’s more important to be a moderate than either a Republican or a Democrat. Need proof? Let’s examine the relationship between getting things done in politics and getting things done in HR.


First, let’s talk about politics. As conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer recently outlined in The Washington Post, Jimmy Carter struggled so much to get things done in Washington that his own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers, citing that the system had become “unmanageable” and congressional gridlock had made America “ungovernable”.


That talk ended when Ronald Reagan came to town, continuously reaching outside his Republican base to Democrats like Tip O’Neill (for Social Security reform) and Bill Bradley (tax reform) to get results that were good for America.


As proof that getting results isn’t limited to Republicans, Bill Clinton continued that tradition of collaboration, working with GOP leader Newt Gingrich to abolish welfare as an entitlement, among other key bipartisan initiatives.


Still with me? Great, because here’s the point related to great HR: Great HR leaders, like effective presidents, understand that in order to get results, they have to be the moderate voice of reason.


Think about it: In order to get things done for the American people, effective presidents have to be moderates and reach across the aisle for balance and compromise. The same holds true for great HR pros, except that instead of moderating their stance as Republicans or Democrats, great HR pros have to balance the conflicting platforms of the following interest groups:

• The company: Most HR pros are employed by the company they serve. That company is in business to serve customers and make money. If HR pros don’t have a firm grasp and appreciation of that and are only concerned about the welfare of employees, they’ll systematically help kill the enterprise that employs the people. Ironic, don’t you think?

• The people: HR pros get paid to understand the finer points of people management and have to be advocates for talent in any organization. If HR pros fail to realize this and are only concerned about the interests of the company they serve, all kinds of bad stuff happens (unions, bad culture, retention issues), most of which affects the company in a negative fashion. Yet more irony.

It doesn’t take much creativity to see that in comparison to the major political parties, an HR pro only concerned about the company can easily be compared to a rabid Republican, and an HR pro only concerned about the people looks like a staunch Democrat. Without question, there are waves of HR pros who have adopted these caricatures as their professional identities.


They’re dead weight. Great HR is played between the 40-yard lines of the business world, at the intersection of company and people interests. Move too far to either the left or the right and the blitz comes, and you find yourself lying on your back. Decreased profitability and layoffs usually follow.


Here are a couple of ways you can channel your inner Reagan or Clinton as an HR pro:

1. Advocate for a reasonable spend on people, then live within the budget: Times are tight, so spending on people initiatives is usually the first thing stripped out of the budget. Your job isn’t to dream of unlimited spending on programs you wish you could have; it’s to get agreement that a certain amount of spending on people is strategic. Once you have that budget, it’s up to you to figure out where the ROI is. Just make sure you have a budget on people that equates to the corporate equivalent of a percentage of GNP.

 2. Pork programs focused on your best talent are cool: The true moderate politician takes care of the masses, then looks out for special interests that are strategic to the citizens they serve. Once you’ve secured the budget for your general programs, it’s time to find some pork, Washington-style. Rather than focusing on junk projects like a bridge to nowhere, the moderate HR pro focuses all pork programs on the best talent in the company. You’ve taken care of the masses with the merit budget; now you should be politicking for a discretionary budget to accelerate increases for your stars, without taking something away from the normal citizen. That’s why you’re a dealmaker like Reagan or Clinton.

3. Help the masses understand the leaders and vice versa: Once you’ve flexed your moderate muscles through funding and development of programs that help the company and people, your attention must turn to communication. You need a communication plan that helps the masses understand the challenges your company faces, and also helps your leaders understand what keeps the average employee up at night. If you really want to channel Reagan or Clinton, guess who needs to be in the middle of the message, showing the balanced approach? That’s right, you, the moderate HR pro. Clinton and Reagan were never afraid to represent the interests of one group to a rival tribe in an effort to bring people together. If you’re going to lead, you’ll need to show that ability as well.

You can get your Fox News or MSNBC game face on and rant that Clinton was a socialist or Reagan was an arms-escalating warmonger. If you chose either of those stances, you’re missing the point.


Clinton and Reagan found the strength to be moderates and get things done. And that’s what you have to do in the world of HR if you want to be viewed as great.


Workforce Management Online, March 2010 — Register Now!

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The Five Biggest Lies in HR

I’m here today not to give you the normal PR spin about how strategic the HR function can be, but instead to call BS on the biggest lies in HR. It’s not that HR people want to lie. It’s just that we’ve created our own prison: the urban myths that have developed over the last 20 years as the HR function has matured.

And so we’re trapped. We’ve spawned narratives that make the HR function seem like a cross between Mother Teresa and Stuart Smalley, while the team members—aka employees—we serve actually need more tough love, a cross between Jack Welch and Dennis Miller. They need that little thing called the truth, effectively washed down with a bit of leadership, personality and, at times, humor.

I know that you’re one of the good HR pros who doesn’t subscribe to the lies. But humor me as I move through the list, and we’ll see whether you’re part of the problem when we wrap this up:

Lie No. 1: We’re responsible for the work/life balance of team members. I believe it was a man named Jack Welch who infuriated a bunch of HR pros at SHRM 2009 in New Orleans by daring to say that “there’s no such thing as work/life balance. There are work/life choices.” I’ve never met a star who didn’t absolutely outwork the competition for promotions, yet in our HR universe there’s endless talk about the search for balance.

The truth: Employees are responsible for their own work/life balance, and if they want more money, promotions and fame, they’re going to have to work harder than those around them. That holds true even if they’re as smart as Al Gore, who had to work really hard to create the Internet and get invited to SHRM 2010 as one of the keynote speakers. If you happen to be a team member reading this, the reality is that the business world is chaotic, and everyone’s winging it, to a certain extent. Most companies try to staff at levels relative to the work at hand (more revenue always helps in that regard), but it’s always going to feel like a free-for-all at times. Or, as Neutron Jack might say, it’s your choice. Either you work hard and create the Internet, or you don’t.

Lie No. 2: It’s the company’s desire to provide strong benefits to all team members. How many shades of gray are there on the color wheel? While we like to take care of team members, if it wasn’t part of the American health care system and a competitive necessity related to talent, employers would be out of the benefits business so fast it would make the collapse of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts seem glacial in comparison. As someone who has been fortunate enough to run a self-insured health care plan in a smaller business environment and witness the humanity firsthand, I can tell you the biggest component to this lie is our unwillingness to hold employees accountable for their own health. HR professionals talk about our cost increases during open enrollment, but most of us never really try to change employee behavior through incentives or penalties.

The truth: If we had the guts, we’d tell employees: We’re not Mom. We only provide benefits because it’s an expectation we have to meet in order to compete in the talent game. We have little to no control over insurance costs incurred, and due to our collective unwillingness to penalize smokers and team members who are gold members at Krispy Kreme, we never will. Employees have to take the cost increases we give them as a result, and if we ever get brave enough to try to change the behavior of the outliers, we’ll find we’re too late due to a legislative environment that protects those making unhealthy choices. Wow, that was depressing to write.

Lie No. 3: We’re into pay for performance. Everyone loves seeing a high performer get a 10 percent raise just for being a star—a reward that’s unrelated to a promotion. It doesn’t happen enough, and the reason is pretty simple: In this Darwinian world we call global business, cost pressure is everywhere. As a result, we’ve got to budget for salary increases and then live by the budget to make sure razor-thin margins stay intact. That means that in order to give Sally the superstar an 8 percent increase at review time, we’ve got to give nothing to Johnny and Rickey, who are good cogs in the wheel, but average at best.

The truth: We (business leaders and HR pros) need average performers to make the business formula work. In a world where 90 percent of team members think they’re in the top 10 percent of all performers, we’re screwed from the jump. We’d rather find unbudgeted money for the star than tell the average performers they’re getting nothing, which is what it takes to put pure pay for performance in place within a merit budget system. Our managers are unwilling to do that, and we’re unwilling as HR pros (perhaps rightfully so) to be a Han Solo-style mercenary.

Lie No. 4: We want only “A” players. I gave Neutron Jack some love earlier, but now allow me now to take a Tonya Harding-like whack at his kneecaps. Like many of you, I love the sexy GE thought leadership and the Netflix slides that say you’re either up or out. I’d love to say that our companies should be on a quest to fill our ranks with nothing but “A” players. There’s just this one little problem with this theory.

The truth: “All ‘A’ players” doesn’t work. We can’t find enough of them, and even if we could, the world needs ditch diggers too. We need steady people who come into the office and crank out a solid day’s work, don’t bitch and don’t act like divas when the company doesn’t stop the operation to thank them personally every Tuesday. Granted, we still have the little issue with 90 percent of team members thinking they’re “A” players, but that’s a puzzle to solve another day. For now, we appreciate the fact that employees understand where to put their noses: to the grindstone.

Lie No. 5: Everyone’s equal here. It’s true that we are the stewards of ensuring discrimination doesn’t occur in the organizations that we serve as HR pros. While the world’s still not a perfect place, the American workplace has progressed tremendously when it comes to people of different backgrounds having equal opportunity to succeed. However, it gets dicey once individual performance becomes visible. At that point, no one is truly equal; people actually make different levels of contribution to the enterprise.

The truth: Everyone’s equal until we see business results, then decisions get made and conflicts are resolved with an eye toward who produces. The good news is that producing results is a process that is free of race, gender or national origin bias. The bad news is that it feels unfair that someone with a drinking problem gets three strikes instead of being thrown out at two, all because he was the top-performing salesperson nationally. Welcome to the show, kid, where the curveballs curve and all the hotels have room service.

That’s my list of the top lies in HR. If you’re a good HR pro and don’t feel like you fib every day, I’ve got one question for you: If you don’t actively pitch the lies outlined above, do you actively preach the truth?

If the answer is no, you’ve got work to do before you’re part of the solution.

Workforce Management Online, March 2010 — Register Now!

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Why Forcing Managers to Interview Minority Candidates Is Good Business

If you follow sports, you’re probably aware that Pete Carroll, former head football coach at the University of Southern California, left the school to become the head coach of the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks. On the surface, this is pretty pedestrian stuff, as a head coach with a national title at the college level getting a chance at a big payday in the pros happens frequently.


What you probably don’t know is this: Before the Seahawks and Carroll could sign a contract that had already been agreed to verbally, the Seahawks had to interview at least one minority candidate as part of the process. It’s required in the NFL, and here’s how the rule (known as the Rooney Rule) is positioned, according to lawyer/writer Jack Oceano:


“Under the NFL’s Rooney Rule, any team in the National Football League offering a head coaching position must interview at least one minority candidate. Named after the Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, chairman of the league’s diversity committee, the rule was created in the hopes of increasing the number of minority head coaches in the league.”


How do you feel about that? There’s nothing that gets the blood flowing on all sides like a situational hiring analysis with an affirmative-action feel. Since I’m pro-employer on most issues I tackle, you’ll more than likely be surprised by my take on the Rooney Rule: I think it’s a good business practice.


Before you decide to hate me or unsubscribe to my blogs, allow me to explain.


To effectively think about this scenario and strip the emotion out of the issue, you have to stop talking about affirmative action and start talking about how the world of hiring works. To do that, let’s replace “minority candidate” with “internal candidate” and evaluate the general merits of forcing interviews even if it seems the decision has already been made.


Many companies struggle with forcing managers to interview internal candidates for posted positions, with the struggle usually emerging as follows:


1. The position is posted, and the hiring manager is looking for a purple squirrel. That means the hiring manager has no confidence that any internal candidate can do the job. He needs the best and believes that the necessary talent can be acquired only outside the company.


2. On many occasions, hiring managers have an external candidate in mind they want to plug into the job. When this happens, they’re usually so set on the decision that they think any other interviews are a waste of time. The tough part about this is that your company still has a process, and the hiring manager needs to put forth a little more effort to keep everyone happy.


3. Your hiring manager has an external candidate, but you’ve also got three internal candidates who have applied for the position. Your company has a process that says all internal candidates are, at the very least, going to get a brief conversation/interview with the hiring manager in question. Your hiring manager doesn’t want to do it, and he’s bitching about it.


4. You’re faced with the classic Catch-22 in this situation. You either force the process with the internal interviews and risk looking like a complete bureaucrat, or you let the hiring manager do his thing without interviewing the internals, which is decidedly bad for your culture and employee relations.


Recognize this morality play yet? If you’ve been anywhere near the front lines of a hiring process in corporate America, you’ve lived it. With a name like The HR Capitalist, you might think I would allow the hiring manager to skip the internal interviews, right? I don’t, and here’s why:


1. I’ve learned that for every 10 internal interviews you make a hiring manager perform against their will, they are going to get two or three pleasant surprises. They had no clue about the experience Lisa from marketing had in their new target sector. Lisa’s résumé doesn’t capture it either, but because you forced the interview, the resulting dialogue made both parties aware they had a much better match than previously thought.


2. When those internal surprises happen, good things follow. It might mean the hiring manager was impressed enough by the candidate in question they’ll change their mind and offer them the job. Maybe they’ll keep that candidate in mind and hire them for a future role. Perhaps they’ll refer the person to others in the organization.


Regardless of the outcome, your organization wins by forcing internal interviews for candidates who apply. My stance on internal interviews is easily carried over to the Rooney Rule. By forcing interviews of minority candidates, you’ve got a shot to make the hiring managers go, “Hmmm.”


Need proof? Look no further than when Mike Tomlin became the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers at the young age of 34 (and later led the team to an NFL championship). This from an ESPN.com story:


“Mike Tomlin wouldn’t have gotten this opportunity without this rule,” said [Art] Shell, the first modern black NFL head coach. “He never would have sat down with Dan Rooney.”


Said Rooney: “To be honest with you, before the interview he was just another guy who was an assistant coach. Once we interviewed him the first time, he just came through and we thought it was great. And we brought him back and talked to him on the phone and went through the process that we do, and he ended up winning the job.”


The Rooney Rule and a progressive approach to internal candidates accomplish the same thing: They put the best people in the interview mix. You don’t put rules on interviewing minorities or internal candidates in place because it’s the right thing to do. You do it because the exposure gives strong talent an opportunity to surprise hiring managers who wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to them.


And that, my friends, should be our main objective in the talent game. Whether you’re in the front office of the NFL, looking for someone to manage the IT shop at your consulting firm or looking for a line manager at your plant, you always win by forcing some interviews. Don’t be intimidated by being called a bureaucrat. You’ve got bigger goals in mind.

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Why Integrity Doesn’t Drive Performance

What did Enron, HealthSouth and Madoff Investment Securities all have in common besides broken leadership that decided to live a lie rather than own up to business failures?

They all undoubtedly had the words “integrity,” “teamwork” and “communication” (or close synonyms) as part of their corporate core values or vision statement. There’s a message embedded in that reality. The message is about lip service versus what’s real in your company, and how empty organizational values can be if there’s no attempt made to make them operational.

I’ve been thinking a lot about performance management lately. Of special note is the fact that I’m trying to think of ways (real ways, not mere lip service) that the performance management process can be used to reinforce or build cultural values at a company.

The main thought I’ve had is that to make the true cultural play when it comes to your performance management system, you’ve invariably got to make some of your current team members uncomfortable with your view of values, and possibly even make them think that they don’t belong at your company.

See if you can identify your own company in this morality tale. Let’s start with the following assumptions and realities about company values and performance management:

1. Most companies have some form of the following values in their values, vision or mission statements: integrity, teamwork, communication and community. It’s Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet to put these components into your values or mission statement. (At least it was before Chevrolet became the backwater label in a lineup of 164 different brands at GM. Maybe it’s more like Mom, apple pie and Toyota in today’s world.) Everybody includes these in their statements. It’s easy to do, whether the leadership truly believes in the values or not.

2. The same companies usually make no meaningful effort to provide real feedback to team members on how they stack up against those values. Most companies write their values or mission statements, print the posters and then perhaps create an annual or quarterly recognition program around the values. Poof! They’re done. Back slaps all around as the senior leadership team congratulates itself for being so ethical and team-oriented. Nice work, gang.

3. Some companies have the right instincts and go further by attempting to tie core values to their performance management systems, but invariably fall short of the goal. It’s good when companies see that the values they’ve identified aren’t linked closely enough to behavior on the front lines, and attempt to incorporate those values into their performance management systems. Few of the companies that choose this path go far enough, however. To truly link the values with frontline behavior, you’ve got to get into the ugly details of what’s expected related to each value. And those requirements have got to have some teeth.

To summarize the problem, most company values and mission statements are so far removed from daily activity that they never become useful as gauges on how work is actually done in a company. They also aren’t front and center enough to guide decision-making on a daily, weekly or even quarterly basis.

But there’s a better way. If a company really wants to make a culture out of core values, you need to put what you truly value in the “Company X Values” section of your performance review document, in whatever form that takes.

You know where to find that, right? It’s usually the second section of a mature performance review process. It comes right after the position-specific goals and objectives. While the goals and objectives section of the review is tailored to a position or an individual, the values section usually uses the same values for all employees within the company.

Here’s an example of what most companies would use when incorporating “integrity” in the values section of their performance review process:

INTEGRITY – Demonstrates uncompromised integrity in all actions with customers, team members and all other stakeholders.

Yawn. That approach sounds great on the surface, but the problem with this methodology is that it places the manager in a classic trap. You’ve given your view of integrity and told employees, via this performance review process, that it’s important. Unfortunately, by simply citing it and giving your managers no other tools to work with, you’ve pushed them into an uncomfortable corner.

If you’ve ever tried to rate someone on integrity via a definition like this (and the same holds true for teamwork, communication and other “softer” values), you know it’s next to impossible to defend yourself for giving anything other than the highest score to an employee. How do you tell someone she’s a “3” or a “meets” on integrity? The next question out of the smart employee’s mouth is one of the following: “How do I improve my score on integrity?” or “Why am I not an ‘exceeds’ on integrity?” The average manager’s response is 20 seconds of silence before he changes the subject.

Enter the opportunity: Arm the manager with tools that enable a real conversation on the value in question. This conversation might actually drive behavior related to the soft value the company claims it holds in high regard.

Instead of rating the employee on the super-broad integrity statement cited above, take it and then create three to four statements that illustrate how integrity plays out on a daily basis in your organization. Then have the manager rate employees on how they perform against the behavioral statements you created.

Here’s an example:

INTEGRITY–Demonstrates uncompromised integrity in all actions with customers, team members and all other stakeholders.

As evidenced by:

1. Team member keeps all commitments (large and small) and effectively communicates changes as they occur.

2. Team member effectively balances needs of company with needs of customer, doing best to represent the interests of both parties.

3. Team member acts upon identified unethical conduct.

(Rate team member on each desired behavior using your existing rating scale; roll-up of all ratings leads to overall rating for value.)

By using this approach, you go from an impossible theoretical exercise to actually beginning to make your core values operational. Note that I used one behavior you would expect with integrity (acting upon unethical conduct), but I threw in two that dramatically expand the conversation and integrate the concept of integrity the employee’s day-to-day work. My definition of integrity includes keeping all commitments, communicating changes in commitments in a timely fashion and keeping the profit mission of the company in mind when dealing with customers.

Having a meaningful conversation with an employee about how to improve an “integrity” score just got easier—if you’re willing to be candid. Insert your own evidence statements to meet your needs. Spice it up more than I did if you really want to drive conversation.

This approach is not without risks. To many, outlining the specific behaviors you expect for each core value is going to feel a bit nasty or a little mean. It may make many of your employees feel like they don’t belong in your company (if your managers can deliver the feedback in an honest and authentic fashion, that is).

But it’s what it takes to make your core values mean something beyond the posters and balloons you ordered for the mission statement launch party.

It might also be the most meaningful step you can take to help your company avoid being the next Enron, HealthSouth or Madoff Investment Securities.

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Why You Wont Get Rid of Your Organizations Jerks

Who could argue with having a No Asshole Rule in a company? You don’t like them (the assholes, that is), they’re cancerous to your enterprise, and the rule spices up your values statement nicely, preventing it from being boring and stale.


There’s just this one little problem: The No Asshole Rule is almost impossible to enforce and live up to. So while most companies love the sound of it, they invariably blink when it comes to implementing it.


I love Bob Sutton, who coined the term, and his award-winning book, but I can’t honestly tell most companies that the No Asshole Rule is in their best interests. In other words: If you can’t live the rule, don’t institute it.


Most of us can’t live it. With that in mind, here are the six big reasons your company doesn’t have a No Asshole Rule (which from this point forward will simply be called “the rule.” And those who routinely violate it we’ll call “utter jerks”):


1. Your company has utter jerks, and you don’t (code for “won’t”) do anything about it. This is the No. 1 reason you don’t have the rule. Human nature is what it is, so for every 100 employees, you’re going to have at least five people who are in violation of the rule on a weekly, if not daily, basis. You can have a lot of reasons for not doing anything about the utter jerks in your midst, but the biggest one is the following rationalization: “If we move the jerks out, we’ll lose some of our best talent.”
Not confronting those in violation of the rule assumes a couple of things. First, it assumes utter jerks can’t modify their behavior and improve if confronted. It also assumes your company won’t be net positive if you show the jerks the door. Regardless of what you believe, you’ve bought into these assumptions if you refuse to deal with the problem. Whether you have the official rule or not, you’re making the choice to live with the situation if you refuse to deal with the jerks.
2. Change management has hit your company in a big way, and you can’t afford to write the cultural check necessary to incorporate the rule.
You didn’t incorporate the rule into your culture when things were good (i.e., pre-October 2007).Then the recession hit, and guess what? When it came times for layoffs, the utter jerks were more politically savvy and managed to keep their jobs. The good guys got laid off, not the jerks. The percentage of utter jerks went up in your organization, so much so that it would make it harder to implement the rule than it would have been before the recession hit. That’s gotta sting.
3. Michael freaking Jordan. That’s right. The best basketball player in the history of the planet was difficult enough that he would have warranted potential termination under the rule. Need proof? See this list of quotes from his Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech, where instead of thanking those who helped him achieve greatness, he went after a high school coach, teammates, rivals and his own kids with comments that would have ejected him under the rule. It’s a well known fact that teammates regularly felt the ire of Jordan for being ordinary during Jordan’s playing days.
If you institute the rule, would you then walk Michael Jordan to the door because he couldn’t abide by it? That’s what you should think about, because the reality is that most people are unwilling to fire even people with much less talent than a corporate Michael Jordan. They think they can’t live without them.
Everybody wants to keep their Jordan equivalent. Utter-jerk behavior rarely causes ejection of the superstar. That’s a problem if you choose to install the rule.
4. Your company is one of the few that manages performance in a hardcore way. Here’s an interesting twist to the rule as company policy: If you choose to enshrine the rule in your culture, and also choose to remove non-performers from your organization in a quick and decisive way, many of your employees are going to feel like you are in violation of the rule you created. After all, how utterly jerky is it to hire people and then quickly turn around and fire some of them? Couldn’t you have given them more time? Was the issue really that you can’t train them properly or that you had unrealistic expectations? Why are you so ruthless? Why such an utter jerk?
You’re hardcore for firing fast, but I love you anyway. Your employees won’t, however, especially if you are supposedly following the rule.
If you want a great performance management case study that relates to the perception of the rule, look no further than performance management software provider SuccessFactors, which has the rule as part of its culture. When quizzed about a net decrease in quarterly headcount, the company stated publicly that it used its own software to identify low performers, then terminated them. It wasn’t a layoff, in other words; it was a performance-based termination. SuccessFactors has done more than anyone else to raise the profile of performance management in corporate America. That being said, it’s undeniable that there has been backlash from many employees (hard to figure out whether they are current or past associates) who think SuccessFactors falls short of its own rule.
5. Your leaders would be in immediate violation of the rule. Always problematic, right? You’re thinking about lining up the rule as a formal company policy, and you push the thought up the food chain, only to realize your C-level executives are rule violations in action. They’re difficult, they’re brash, they’re rude, and they break the rule with nearly every breath they take. I hope you caught this glitch in time, because there’s only one thing worse than having a C-level that’s in violation of the rule—and that’s C-levels approving the rule as policy before you realize their behavior makes the rule a joke.
6. The HR team in your company doesn’t have the employee-relations chops to defend the rule. It’s a hard-knock life, my HR friends. It’s one thing to put the rule on paper; it’s another thing to be on the front lines enforcing it. Having an official rule puts a target on HR’s back. You had better be able to see the game, and you had better be good—ninja good—at engaging and closing conflict in your organization. Everyone’s going to expect you to identify and remove the utter jerks from the organization. However, everyone in power is going to tell you why their rule violator is mission-critical and can’t be touched. Good luck and put on your helmet. You’re going to need it.

Everybody loves the rule in principle. Most of us don’t have it as formal policy because we have Neanderthals for executives, weak HR teams and—let’s face it—we love the Michael Jordans of our organizations. Would you settle for a nice “Professional Conduct Policy” instead? All the language of the rule—and only half the expectations.

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HR Feedback for Your Boss

So you’re in HR, a partner to whomever you serve. Guess what? That means you’re supposed to tell people when they’re messing up. For a lot of us, that’s easy when the target of the constructive feedback is an employee, or even the managers we serve in other departments. It gets trickier when we have to tell our bosses that there’s something rotten in Denmark related to, well, them.

If you, as an HR professional, have been faced with giving your boss needed feedback, you will know that bosses come in one of these two different flavors:

  • Your boss is a line manager or business executive to whom you report directly. While the personalities and styles of the business-focused, non-HR boss are many, the common denominator here is they aren’t HR pros. You are. That means your relationship and communication style should be focused on the fact that you are the expert in the areas you cover. I’ve always found it easier to give straight feedback to the line managers and executives to whom I reported. After all, they aren’t in HR. So when you apply the people and culture stuff to them, they can easily rationalize it, thinking, “Well, you know, that’s why I’ve got you.” But that only works if your overall relationship with them makes them feel that way.
  • Your boss is an HR manager or HR executive to whom you report directly. If you report directly to an HR manager, HR director or HR vice president, giving feedback to your boss is usually either going to be really easy or really hard. When it’s easy, it flows as it should. The HR boss gets what you are saying and why you are saying it. But it’s not always like that. Sometimes, especially if the issue is an emotional one for them, it’s harder for the HR boss to hear the feedback you must provide. Deep in your heart, you know why: The boss is in the HR game, so he should likely be aware of what you are telling her. Except he isn’t. And yes, it’s very uncomfortable.

But like the boys from Depeche Mode once reminded the world, people are people. It’s the same with bosses, whether yours is in HR or is running the entire show. Even bosses need some straight talk from the HR pros before an oversight or blind spot mortally wounds them.

With that realty in mind, here’s my list of things to keep in mind once you decide to give the boss an “opportunity for improvement,” otherwise known as feedback or coaching:

  1. You’ve got to give to get. Mix positive reinforcement often. It’s a good practice and money in the bank when you need to make an “opportunity for improvement” withdrawal. If the boss has heard good stuff from you periodically, you’ll automatically have credibility with the challenges you eventually point out.

Positive reinforcement to the boss, while not necessary for your survival, is necessary if you want real dialog. The one-on-one opportunities are everywhere and don’t take a lot of time. For example, you can hit the boss with a private reply to a group e-mail they sent out that simply says “Nice job.” You can also share “heard on the street” feedback that’s positive about how the boss is viewed by the troops. The only limit is your imagination.

Actually, there’s another limitation. It’s the potential for you to feel like a brown-noser in giving positive feedback to the boss. You can avoid feeling like a suck-up by only sharing positives periodically, keeping it business-focused (skip the daily affirmations about boss attire), and above all else, being willing to share the negative as well.

  1. Timing is everything. Financials just came out and the division missed revenue by 20 percent, but you’ve got “Talk to boss” in your day planner? Don’t be a sucker. Kick your FranklinCovey binder across the room and live to fight another day.

You might hold on to the feedback for a month looking for the right time. That’s OK. Deliver it when the time is right. Be sensitive to the weather report that is your boss’s mood.

  1. Don’t throw someone else under the bus. When coaching for improvement to the boss as an HR pro, own your observation. Don’t say, “Johnny mentioned that you had an anger problem in the meeting”. By putting your observations on someone else, the boss wants to go tackle Johnny, not listen to you about the issue. If you’ve done a good job with positive feedback, your boss will listen to you when you need help from her, even regarding her own actions.

What if the boss still wants the name of a complainer? If you have a solid relationship with her, you’ll have to give the name, but only after you’ve provided the necessary context and the rundown of the feedback topic, and received her buy-in.

  1. Have the boss’s back once in awhile. As with the need for positive feedback, you’ve got to be there to take a bullet for the boss once in a while, or at least identify a sniper for her before you both go into a dicey meeting. If the boss knows you’ve acted like a Secret Service agent when needed, she’ll listen when you have something to say on the coaching front.

Think of yourself as the boss’s personal AWACS plane. If providing some context for a political situation in the office might help her stay out of the ditch, you’ll build credibility that can be cashed in later.

And the most important factor to consider when giving negative feedback to your boss:

  1. You’re not judging her; you’re her agent. No one likes to feel judged when getting negative feedback from a subordinate. But everyone likes to have an agent looking out for their corporate image. That’s why you’re going to have the boss’s back, so that you can lead coaching moments with something like the following: “Susan, you know I’m out there making it happen, but at the same time, I’m looking out for you. That’s why I have to make sure you understand that you shouldn’t have fired that coordinator on the spot in front of 25 people. Here’s how I think you should fix it so you’re not hurt by this long term.”

Be the Gladys Kravitz of the office, and the boss will hate you. Be the boss’s personal corporate-image agent, and you’ve got a chance to be heard and maybe, just maybe, get improvement in the area you need, when you need it.

Here’s a final note on the role of an upscale HR pro in today’s organization. (And when I say “upscale,” I mean that you have the personality and political skills to handle something in the right way. It has nothing to do with where you live or what car you drive.) Lots of people won’t challenge the boss or provide feedback under any circumstance. When things get crazy or a little strange, there’s just one individual all those people think could actually handle coaching the boss.

That person is you, the HR pro. When everyone is looking around but afraid to say something, that’s when your boss needs you the most. So advance the cause of upscale HR and do it, but start prepping for the need now by following the points listed above.

It’s not easy, but both you and the boss will be glad you did.

Kris Dunn is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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The Four-Day Workweek Now Wrecking Innovation at a Company Near You

Here’s a rule of thumb for all you capitalists working undercover as HR pros in corporate America: If your local, state or federal government is leading the charge to implement a seemingly progressive workplace policy, don’t rush to be included in the “me too” camp.


    In fact, when you get the brochure for the “government best practices seminar,” run like hell.


   As an example of such a policy, I give you the four-day workweek for exempt, salaried employees. I understand that nonexempt, hourly employees are going to work a certain number of hours, then go home. For hourly workers, the four-day workweek is a simple exercise in scheduling production and ensuring availability for customers.


   The four-day workweek for exempt professionals is different, and it makes sense only if you don’t think about it too hard. Here’s the spin: We’ll work smarter, not harder, enhance work/life balance through organizational design and improve the morale of exempt workers. All this will be accomplished by chopping a calendar day off the workweek that we’ve carried over from the industrial age.


   Listen to the logic, and you can fill up a buzzword bingo card with the catchphrases. As the gifted poet Flavor Flav once said, “Don’t believe the hype.“


   Before I go off on a rant, allow me to be fair and balanced in presenting the reported positives of the four-day workweek. The City of Birmingham, Alabama (headquarters of the HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent), recently made a voluntary switch to a four-day workweek (similar to many other municipalities are across the U.S.) for exempt and nonexempt employees, and the Birmingham News reports the benefits include improved employee absenteeism and reduced fuel costs for the city and employees alike.


Still not convinced? Consider these hard stats from the Magic City, as Birmingham calls itself:


  • The four-day workweek saves money for the city. Birmingham offered statistics showing that the city consumed 5,581 fewer gallons of diesel fuel and 13,669 fewer gallons of unleaded fuel in July compared with June, a net savings for the month of more than $73,000. Annualize the run rate and the city is projected to save $885,000 on fuel over the course of a year.


  •  The four-day workweek saves money for employees. Birmingham also projects the 2,467 employees who work four-day weeks could save as much as $513,136 in personal fuel costs over the course of a year. The math is based on a 20-mile average daily commute in a 20-mile-per-gallon personal vehicle, with gas at $4 a gallon.


   I know what you’re thinking: How can you argue with stats like that?


Easily. The early statistics from the city of Birmingham point to raw savings, almost solely focused on fuel usage reductions for the city and employees alike. What the stats don’t tell you is whether the city reduced services to save fuel. What the stats can’t tell you is whether results, innovation and creativity are negatively affected by this practice over time.


Here’s why you should think twice before implementing a four-day workweek that includes your exempt workforce:


1. Results are replaced by time. When we think about developing a performance culture in our organizations, most of us say we value results over time spent at work. For exempt-level positions, that’s the way it should be. Unfortunately, if you look behind the rhetoric and talking points, you’ll find many of us reinforcing the old industrial model of clocking in and clocking out. Office hours and face time are still the norm. We criticize people who don’t work like us (I’m here at 7:30 p.m. and Tom’s out of here at 5:15. What’s up with that?”) or don’t follow the company norm, oftentimes refusing to look at the output of those who work “differently.”


If you choose to implement a four-day workweek, you’re sending the classic message that you value time over results for your exempt employees. Some people can get their objectives knocked out in 40 hours, some need 60. Put the four-day workweek in, and you’re sending an institutional message to your salaried workers that your organization expects 40 hours rather than continuous effort until their objectives are met.


2. Driving for high performance becomes almost impossible. When you replace a focus on results with a focus on time, performance management becomes increasingly difficult. At the macro level, you’re limited in the conversations you can have related to overall contributions and results. After all, you replaced a focus on results with one focused on time. As a result, when you push for higher overall performance and nudge your talent to exceed expectations, you’re going to hear the following: “Man, I’d love to do that, but there just aren’t enough hours in the week”.
As for the increased performance you need to make your department work: Don’t worry, you can always request additional budgeted headcount to get it done. Good luck with that one.


3. By implementing a four-day workweek and placing an emphasis on face time, you’ve discounted the creativity and maturity of your employees. Think about it. You’ve mandated one solution and one work schedule, rather than allowing employees to find what works best for them. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have office hours. I get the need for people to be seen on regular schedules. But if you truly want results in your organization, you’ve got to provide the vision to your people on what the objectives are, then allow them to get their groove on in a way that unlocks their potential.


Sally doesn’t like to work the same way as Johnny. By making them work under identical conditions, you’re guaranteeing one thing: They won’t meet their collective potential. Loosen up and let them figure it out, individually and with each other as a team.


4. Innovation isn’t scheduled. There’s a reason HP was founded in a garage, Yahoo was launched in a trailer. And there’s a couple of kids today in an RV with no tires cooking up the technology that will ultimately make Google a dinosaur. Innovation can’t be scheduled. Your best and brightest need a lab that is flexible enough to give them the tools they need, but allows them to work how and when they see fit. By providing this, you’ll maximize the ability of your employees to innovate.


Instead of focusing on the four-day workweek, loosen your iron grip on face time, enhance how you measure performance in your organization, and let go. Allow people to telecommute. Offer flexible hours as long as the customer (internal and external) gets served. Measure how people are doing every couple of months.


Manage by results and manage by objectives. Just don’t manage by counting hours. All you’ll get from that is less of lots of things, including engagement, passion, creativity and innovation.

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The Five Sweetest Jobs in HR and Talent Management

Readers of Workforce, the HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent know that I have opinions. Opinions on whether your HR job stinks, career killers for HR pros, how to limp through the year with the immense challenges you face, and the five worst jobs in HR.

Notice a trend? When you’re providing opinions as part of your gig, it’s always easy to focus on the negative stuff.

But that’s an easy way out, sometimes. And so I interrupt the normal stream of columns written with a slightly negative spin to bring you a little ray of sunshine: the sweetest jobs in HR and talent management.

I’ve expanded the list to include the mystic (and maybe mystifying) term “talent management.” Your BS meter has likely started buzzing.

But there’s a reason for the terminology shift. Over the past 30 years, there’s been a progressive movement to redefine the value proposition of HR through titles and classification. Here’s the rough timeline:

  • Back in the day: HR wasn’t called HR, it was called personnel (and still is, in some places). Move the forms, get the transactions done. That was pretty much it.
  • Today: The profession got reclassified from personnel to human resources, in part to signify we had arrived as a strategic partner. Some fulfilled the vision, some didn’t.
  • The future: Less than satisfied with being classified as HR along with folks still doing personnel-type activities, those in the high end of the HR practice have begun to classify themselves as talent management.

With history and semantics in mind, I’ve expanded the list of sweetest HR jobs to include talent management roles. If you’re a performer in HR, you’ll increasingly find strategic opportunities for growth in roles with talent management in the title. Don’t be intimidated, because you’re qualified for consideration as long as you’ve kept an active hand in areas like recruiting, performance management and leadership development.

Here’s my countdown of the Sweetest Jobs in HR/Talent Management, fed to you again in countdown style like I’m Casey Kasem (keep reaching for the stars, by the way):

  1. (Tie) Corporate recruiter (professional/management positions and up) and niche third-party recruiter: The heart of any organization is talent, and it’s the recruiter who goes out and brings the carcasses back to your office park. If you love the chase, the key to the best internal and external recruiter jobs is the focus. For the internal corporate recruiter, it’s a sole focus on filling professional and management-grade positions for the mother ship. Sell the company brand and go pick off top talent, without the nastiness that comes with heavy entry-level recruiting or the churn and burn focus of the call center. What could be better?

Of course, corporate recruiters aren’t going to buy beach houses with their compensation. That’s where the niche third-party recruiter comes into play. Armed with a singular focus on a specific industry or micro-niche (think health care IT sales professionals as an example), the niche third-party recruiter has the ability to build relationships nationally and develop deep subject-matter expertise. That reduces the number of cold calls over time, and a little sales/marketing ability, combined with deep expertise in the niche, can catapult the third-party recruiter into the earnings stratosphere.

Both types of recruiters still get to enjoy the thrill of the chase. Whether you can chase new business effectively determines which role you end up in, and also your lifetime earnings.

  1. Director of talent management: Turn the aforementioned BS meter off for a second, and let’s talk about what’s real. First up, no one can agree on the total scope of this role. With that in mind, most people seem to agree that the director of talent management role starts with talent acquisition (a highfalutin way of saying “recruiting”), then helps to maximize the abilities of those hires as they enter and move through the organization. Strategic activities like leadership development, succession planning and performance management are usually part of the mix in this role. How is that different from the director of HR role? No messy employee relations, risk management or cost-of-health-care considerations to deal with. Just deal with the talent, my friend.
  1. Google HR: If you’re reading this, chances are you’re an HR or talent pro at some level. If you’re an HR professional, you’ve seen Google at the top of the best places to work lists and turned green with envy. Admit it, you want to be part of the Google HR team so you can live large and take charge from a people and talent perspective. It’s the HR version of joining the Yankees or The View, depending on your perspective, gender or interests in life. Just don’t be the person managing the massage specialist, corporate concierge or the day care center. Back rubs, laundry runs and diaper changes are traps for the upscale HR pro. Even at Google.
  1. Recruiter, Microsoft Xbox Division: That’s right, Microsoft comes in ahead of Google, but not just for any job. The one you want holds responsibility for recruiting technical and creative talent for the Xbox division in Redmond. Washington. I didn’t even know this job existed until Jason Pankow, senior recruiter for Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE and Xbox Software groups, was referred to me and started sharing his thoughts at the Fistful of Talent blog. Think about it: You’re recruiting for one of the strongest corporations in America, but your sole focus is on the gaming industry. You’re the gatekeeper for the jobs that about 21 million kids consider to be their dream gig, and you get to help pick the cream of the crop. Heavy interviewing day? No sweat, just fire up the Xbox in your office and take in a session of “Halo” to reduce your stress. Heck, invite the candidate in and make that part of your interview.
  1. HR manager, director or VP (excluding single-person HR practices): You want the seat at the table. You’re told to take the seat at the table. Guess what? There’s only one job that qualifies you to be at the table, and that’s the HR generalist role at the manager, director and VP levels. Everything else in HR and talent management contributes to these leadership generalist roles. From the HR manager level and up, you’re responsible for everything related to employees in your operational unit or company. Without question, it’s a tough role, and you’ll have to balance the needs of the business with employee advocacy. It’s No. 1 on the list because it means you lead the function. You get to help call the shots in your unit or company. That’s why you got in the game to begin with, right?

So that’s the list. By the way, you probably can’t afford day care (or a house) in Silicon Valley, and Jason Pankow has already glued himself to the chair of sweet job No. 2 in Redmond. But there are three other sweet-job categories left, and to land a position in one of them, make sure you have a hand in how talent comes into your company and what happens once it’s there.

Whether you call that personnel, HR or talent management, that’s where the growth and opportunity will be in the years to come.