Think Not, Do and Social Media

Posted on Monday, July 30, 2007 by Frank Roche

The Yoda Part
In Accomplishment is What Matters, Chris Brogan writes:

In all transactions in your professional life, the weight of things will likely rest on whether or not you accomplished what you set out to achieve. Did you get the project completed on time? If the answer is no (with subtext of “because Jerry called out sick and we had nothing we could do”), then you didn’t achieve your goal. Who cares why not?

Our job in HR is to help employees be successful. A large part of that success is getting things done, no matter the obstacles. No excuses. Figure out ways to get things done rather than why it can’t be done. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you say you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

The Social Media Part
You can read the entire essay here. You know how I found this, by the way? Social media. I saw Steve Rubel’s Twitter post that he had loaded up from Facebook. Not on any of those? Your employees, especially the young ones, are.

User Comments

Chris Brogan…

Jul 30th, 2007

I really like your point that your role as HR is to help employees be successful. We had a great HR department at my last company, but I could never have told you that was their role. As far as I knew, their role was to staff jobs, price salaries, and work on benefits. These things are all helpful, but they are more behind-the-scenes helpful. It’s refreshing to imagine an HR team thinking up ways to strengthen their employees’ abilities.

Great blog!
Frank Roche

Jul 30th, 2007

Hi Chris,

I thought what you wrote was so right on the money for business. I’ve passed your article along to many of my consulting colleagues — how true it is that accomplishment matters. In the Self Esteem Movement Era of 2007, too many people have been brought up on the “nice effort” platform. That’s just not good enough, as you point out.

Yes, I do think that HR’s job is to help employees be successful. Unfortunately, too often HR can get caught in the back office stuff. Or worse yet, the punitive actions. How about HR uses performance management to help everyone be successful? That would work for me!

Thanks much for your powerful post…and for your comments here. Back at you about your work.

Cheers.