A Personal Philosophy: Be the Best
Execupundit featured this quote last week and it’s a great one to live by.
You do not want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.
- Jerry Garcia
That’s how we run our business. It works. Imagine if you ran your HR shop that way. The hell with doing what everyone else does and attenuating to the mean. Do your own thing and do it the best. You won’t be disappointed.
Escape from Corporate America
Short Read: Buy this book. Read it.
The Corporate Malcontent’s iPod Playlist
Who could go wrong with a book that includes “The Corporate Malcontent’s iPod Playlist” and “The Corporate Malcontent’s Movie Night”? (”Back on the Chain Gang” and “Office Space” as song and movie examples.) Journalist Pamela Skillings pulls off the early HR book of the year in my…book…with Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams.
Clever Writing and Stats: Quite a Mix for a Business Book
Skillings writes with a cleverness backed up with solid stats:
Recent surveys show that 50 percent of American workers are dissatisfied with their jobs and 80 percent fantasize about leaving their current gigs.
A Cautionary Tale for HR Recruiting and EE Development
With the economy declining and the workforce changing rapidly, Escape from Corporate America is an even more important read for HR professionals who care about the psyche of their employees. And the book can be read as a cautionary tale for those who are responsible for attraction and retention of an essential workforce. That’s very pointed by what Skillings writes in “We Are All Entrepreneurs Now”:
The age of the employee is over. No matter whom you work for or how many stock options you own, the future of your career is ultimately up to you.
Advice for Corporate Types, Too
The cool thing about Escape from Corporate America is that it’s not corporate bashing. It’s great advice for people who are considering escaping as well as for those who will stay. In fact, Skillings wrote an entire chapter titled “How to Get a Corporate Job That Doesn’t Suck: A Step-by-Step Guide.”
Daring Tales of Corporate Escape
Pamela Skillings interviewed dozens of escapees from corporate America, from Dilbert-creator Scott Adams to Samuel Adams brewer Jim Koch. The book is full of “Daring Tales of Corporate Escape” that are the results of the interviews.
I’m an Escapee from Corporate America
Perhaps Escape from Corporate America appeals to me because I’m a fellow escapee from the big office. I like having a small business where we make the rules (or get rid of most of them). I highly recommend this book. It’s my favorite so far this year and one that HR people should read…then put on their bookshelf.
Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams
Publisher: Ballantine Books (May 13, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0345499743
ISBN-13: 978-0345499745
Why Doesn’t HR Talk to the Press More Often?
Why don’t HR executives talk to the press more often? With “people being our most important asset,” you would think that HR executives would have a big story to tell. Why don’t they?
Is their reluctance because PR now runs the media show and scares everyone with creepy tales of a career derailed by a comment misquoted? Is it because senior management doesn’t want HR to be the voice of the company? Is it because HR doesn’t have anything to say?
It bugs me to see those negative executive pay stories that run every year without a single HR executive standing up to correct the information and explain what it takes to get executive talent.
Why doesn’t HR talk to the press more often? It doesn’t make sense to me. I say, if you have something to say, then say it. You don’t report to PR. Tell them that.
Performance Reviews Poo-Pooed by High Performers
I was talking to a friend last night about her performance appraisal. She’s a superstar, one of those people that companies drool over. Big talent. Dedicated. Gets up in the middle of the night to work on extra projects. That type.
So what happened during her performance review? Nothing bad. She got a good rating, but not the top rating. Plus she heard the “seven good things and three things we can work on” approach to performance management. No good.
Here’s what I know from empirical evidence: Great performers don’t need performance reviews. Especially the yucky and typical kind. They have a great distaste for ratings that can’t adequately capture what it means to be up at two in the morning working on a project while the rest of the company sleeps. On top of that, they really resent getting a rating that’s anywhere near what Joe Average gets.
It’s pretty simple: If you want to understand real employee engagement, look at your top performers. And get rid of the performance management system you’re using. Maybe that works for the broader population, but it’s terrible for high performers. How about a dual system, one for high performers and one for everyone else? Kind of like an Honors College for high performers?
Talent Wars, Nothing but Talent Wars
We talk about “talent” a lot in HR. After all, it’s about the people.
So, what’s talent? Do you, like Justice Potter Stewart, know it when you see it? And what do you do if someone thinks she’s talented — like the woman in the video — and is painfully unaware of her shortcomings? In fact, more people than not rate themselves above average in talent and performance.
Our job in HR is to help managers find the right people, encourage performance that helps the company, and weed out people who think they can dance and play the trumpet to Star Wars.
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