Instant People Skills: Coach Yourself & Others

Chief Blogging Officer, Social Networking?

The world is getting more complex, so skills that simplify it are more valuable than ever. Small businesses must go nuts hearing data such as Workforce Management's revelation this week that 11% of large companies now have corporate blogs, some even appointing Chief Blogging Officers (http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/25/50/77.html). Should they try to keep up and what has to give elsewhere if they do? 

This raises tons of questions. How many companies at this point even have Chief HR Officers for instance? What are the priorities - people or some poorly understood marketing or recruiting tool? More to the point, where should they do be to be successful and sustain their people through these turbulent times?

In this start-up period, while we figure out the place for Social Networking in business, we need to remember we can't do everything. There's a growing need to understand blogging and other Web 2.0 and 3.0 options - what can they do, what does it take and what are the best ways to use or not use this vast array. Can we have it in simple terms - and perhaps even more importantly, what do they replace or what do we drop to fit them in?

I just heard a marketing guru who successfully specializes in getting PR at every turn say, "I've got a blog; I have no idea why, but they say you have to have one, so I got one." He was articulate and to the point about what other things you need to do to boost PR, but here he was clearly lost - and not even touching on newer social networking alternatives.

The best advice this past week came from VP, Susan Van Klink, of Select Minds (www.SelectMinds.com) where they specialize Social Networking tools for use within companies to get employees sharing information and networking better. She advises: avoid knee-jerk reactions and watch security.

Don't ban employees from blogging and networking, but help them understand company rules still make sense - pay attention to confidentiality of information, the fact your words will live forever on the Internet (and may reflect badly on both you and the company) and don't get hooked into something you haven't thought through from a security point of view, whether individual identity or leaking company information might be the issue. In general, proceed… but watch and think first, cautiously and with small steps till you have a feel for where things are going. If you don't have time for much, let others make the mistakes while systems and approaches shake out. Look for the simpler, single, proven uses.

Answers To The Outsourcing Rant

A reader was kind enough to undertake to set me straight as follows: "On the outsourcing point of view the key question for me is what is the return on the asset and people unfortunately are assets in a company. If I'm in banking my assets are money and financial minds tat create retrurns. If my business is commercial real estate then my assets are property, buildings and people who know a good deal from a bad one. If I'm an HR outsourcer then my assets are HR savvy people who others are willing to buy expertise from. If I'm a multinational pharma company or software company then I'm afraid I don't see much return from an HR person.

It's all about following the money."

I started to write a return comment and realized it needed to be longer and more people might want to see it…. Thanks for the comment Darren. I think you've succinctly captured one point of view. Where can I start to explain more clearly. You can always outsource "hard" HR basics - the transactional systems, record-keeping and benefits. But people absolutely are assets in every company - like the financial minds you mention. Those minds can get balled up in worrying about minor stuff on benefits or they can worry about when their next promotion is coming. While they're worrying, they aren't creating as good returns as they could. Often those worries don't fit in boxes like, "what does the dental plan pay for this?" The real key is continual coaching approach from their direct leader, but who helps the leaders who aren't naturally good at this?

People are unique in being assets you don't own or control. Leaders can use them up by hiring for great potential, using them for a while till they feel they're being used and toss them out as some bosses regularly do or you can have someone who helps develop and coaches bosses who in turn listen and respond to concerns. In a small business (as most are) if you hand pick business leaders and they have good listening skills, see the need and the CEO listen as well, you can get by without a designated HR person for a long time. But as you grow, merge, acquire others and have to expand your ranks, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure enough people who give the continual time to listening that is needed as part of their job, as part of getting the work flowing smoothly and to give the thinking time to make good decisions about every person. And coordinating all this takes time.

In every company someone tends to fall into the role of listener and thinker for resolving HR "soft" issues. That person becomes the de facto HR person, the go to individual when someone has a problem or a manager has a problem with an employee. They may do other things, too, as I did even in a very large corporation, but they need some latitude to help set the tone for how people are treated and to counsel those who behave outside the program, to be a second set of ears and eyes for the CEO to marshal people on track continually to get the best return on those assets. As Colin Powell says in his first book, "every division needs it's 'chaplain' [his description for someone who listens and helps resolve]." You can leave the role informal, but that tends to hide a very important lever in getting things moving and keeping them moving smoothly.

Quite often this person doesn't carry the title HR and isn't hired for that alone, but they are in a real sense running the HR program of the organization and it takes a real and usually substantial portion of their time. If you lose that person, your return on human assets tanks fairly quickly. Research shows great HR multiplies financial results by four or more times over the average company. I probably don't need to say that anything that runs "great" like "great HR" is great because it is run by an effective leader. Who is leading HR in any company is a key question. It's a daily culture-building influence that you cannot thrive without. Someone organizes that and it almost never can be the entrepreneurial leader who drives the business attack - the roles and the things you have to do and dedicate the majority of your time to are simply incompatible. So do you give the HR role to someone formally (full or part time) or just let it happen by itself, haphazardly? Contractors can't do this for you unless they're on site virtually full time and have the ear of the senior leadership continually.

Rant: Outsourcing Core Business Factors Is Dubious

Sure you can outsource human resources… some would argue completely. But why? Line managers, no matter how well we train, will never have time to gain experience with the vast range of complex situations needed to get an overall handle on things that may, and inevitably do, pop up unexpectedly.

Some will face human rights, some unions, some leave and temporary replacement and many, many more highly specific issues. We want line managers concentrating on business and day-to-day management of people, with some sensitivity to complicated HR items, but not to try to be expert in all of them. We don't even want them tied up for long worrying about where to find the right sort of expert for the challenge they're suddenly facing. For them to be able to turn to someone with more overall knowledge about what's possible and who knows the internal culture seems totally logical.

The more we can automate and outsource details and "transactional" stuff (HR systems, payroll, benefits, even parts of recruiting and substantial parts of training) the better, but to suggest we outsource all of HR is just plain dopey in virtually every case.

In fact, a big beef with in-house HR professionals is that even they don't have complete experience and expertise with the vast range of challenges that can arise. But at least they know where to look fo what's available, what pitfalls to avoid until expertise is engaged and, if they're any good, how that expertise needs to adapt to fit the in-house culture.

Hardly a week goes by without another "expert" threatening the possibility that Human Resources in organizations will become totally irrelevant and be totally outsourced. Stop already! The latest article is by a former Toronto senior human resource executive (who shall remain nameless) who helped outsource a major chunk of his company's HR operations and is now himself providing outsourced services to others. Frequently it is outsourcers who write this stuff.

Here's a question - how do these outsourcing companies (some of which are now huge) do their own HR for their own people? Do they outsource it? If their in-house people can do it effectively (is it by calling on subject experts in-house on each piece of HR?) what makes other companies' in-house HR people so unable to achieve the same skill?

No one would argue that every in-house HR person is fully knowledgeable or even knowledgeable enough on all that is available today. But that's the nature of virtually every profession - constant learning. My beef is with HR people who think they know it all, not with the concept that HR contributes value when done well and when decisions about what resources are needed, internal or external, are made with good, logical judgment. Today, many of the know-it-all HR types are not those inside organizations.

Handling people effectively is at least as core a business function as handling money effectively. Regardless of what portion is farmed out, doesn't it make sense to have an expert or two in-house to coordinate issues that arise every single day in virtually every organization? Is that best done by line managers who already have busy workloads and over-worked brains?

It's Not Really Multitasking, Is It?

Often when you've had a chance to sleep on it, some remark you've made the day before seems incorrect (that's the polite word) or maybe just dumb.

Yesterday I suggested that "multitasking" would be OK if you're working to help people become better while also working toward an objective was an exception to the rule against trying to do two things at once. That's not what I intended, I see in retrospect.

In fact, it's better to say you should look for ways to achieve two ends at the same time with the same, single action. By helping others improve, you get work done - through them, with them and even on your own as you model for them how they could approach things. It's a way of working and thinking about work that ultimately produces better results in every situation.

It really isn't a "multitask" because you're not stopping to help them and then stopping that to go back to work, you are doing both together, sometimes working alongside them on a problem, sometimes on your own, but with the objective that your work will help them move forward in some way.

Of course, we can't avoid distractions. They happen all day long inevitably. But we can avoid distracting ourselves by attempting multiple tasks at the same time. Everyone gets caught up in the sense of urgency and the layering on of one new demand on top of the last.

We have to catch our breath sometimes and say stop the roller coaster, let me sort out what to work on first, second and third and then do those in that order… without trying to do every task simultaneously. If the goals of every task include how this improves things for people as well as achieves results, we're on the right track. If we can't see how, we need to rethink our approach to it until we find a better strategy for it.

We Need To Change The Way We Multitask

By now you've read that multitasking isn't what people imagine and largely distracts us from effective work (Slashdot link, for instance). It's really switching quickly back and forth between two or more tasks and each switch wastes time as we struggle to re-orient to the next item. That's been well researched.

The problem is we all do it. And actually, if you think about it, a certain type of multitasking is necessary and worthwhile, though much isn't. We need to understand the difference.

What helps is if we pay attention to the one key multitasking that helps us to be most effective, a facet we often overlook. While doing anything, the key question is what its effect will be on other people - will they be more motivated and more capable of helping get things done as a result of what we do?

Everything we do connects with others - customers, co-workers, family members, even other drivers on the road. If we plough through task after task to get "things" done as quickly as we can, it's inevitable that we start ignoring people - the loud cell conversations in crowded places, the calls taken during meetings and dinners, the brush-offs of co-workers when we "absolutely" have to make something else a priority. No one learns from us, except that in future they'd rather have less to do with us.

The real multitasking requirement we all face is how our work can get done and at the same time people can be helped along the way so they, too, can be optimally productive, learn new skills, improve, grow and thrive. What else are we in business and in life for? And, by the way, some of that greater productivity and improvement will come back to help us get more things done faster ourselves. If we model helping, we will be helped in return. Reciprocity is our human link.

Some Great Blog Sites

Every once in a while you stumble onto a gold mine and wonder why you missed it for so long. Trevor Gay is a long-term British Health System executive who retired into his own consulting practice and has created a blog actually worth looking through.

His own blog, Simplicity, I'd describe as a rather quirky, opinionated version of the concept, but that's a plus. It takes your thinking in new directions and collects links to some other very interesting, somewhat quirky stuff as well.

I started with his video and then some background, but was very interested to skim some of the blogs he links to, like these: Promanager , Hillbilly PhD, Phil Gerbyshak's Make It Great which in turn refers to this list: Top Productivity and Lifehack Blogs (a Lifehack, by the way is blog-speak for cute tips and shortcuts you can use to improve your life - or "hack" your life, in other words).

The only trouble I have with blogs, including my own is too many and too much to read. They work if you keep focused, but it's easy to get sidetracked in a thousand directions.

What bloggers link to is often misleading because they mix personal and business interests and some bloggers waver back and forth between the two far too much to make either aspect useful. If you believe in Serendipity (lucky coincidence) great, but finding what you're actually looking for can be a long haul.

New Year's Alone Doesn't Produce Effective Resolutions

Networking expert Michael Hughes wrote a comment in a newsletter that captured a key insight. It isn't only New Year's Day that produces resolutions. I always resisted that idea. After all what's different about one day, just because it's designated as the start of something.

Rather it's the combination of a designated new start following a substantial mental break with the preceding grind and what you do after that. The elements work best when the work together.

Mentally we think "the old can be left behind at least partly" and "we have an accepted point at which to start something new," where, for instance, sales people begin with a fresh set of goals, a blank page. There's nothing they can change about the past, but mentally a "do over" opportunity appears.

Whatever different stresses the holiday season presents - last minute shopping, more family than you see all year, special efforts for parties, celebrations, dinners and possibly travel - the new stresses ensure time for the old routines to fall into a bit of perspective.

You can think in terms of a "do over" each day, too, as Mark LeBlanc, outgoing President of the US National Speakers Association captures in his book, Growing Your Business (reviews at bottom of the linked page).

It's a great idea for tasks with targets like selling or losing weight - do just one thing each day. Get into a habit. Don't beat yourself up if you didn't do it one day, but make sure you do that one thing TODAY. Don't feel you have to "catch up" and do two today. The goal is simply to get into the pattern of one per day until it feels comfortable, you know where in your typical days to fit it in and it starts to get done regularly.

One sales call a day, or one task on some project you need to get done (sending out those resumes?) or one step in building a strategy (signing up for or scheduling training?) or implementing an idea. One-a-day. 

Even Jerry Seinfeld says, "Mark each day on the calendar when you do that one thing. Don't break the chain whatever you do." If you keep shooting to lengthen that unbroken chain the habit becomes more and more automatic and you get better and more comfortable. Doing whatever it is just once in a day generally seems easy enough to keep you going. Once you've mastered the flow, you can move on to a new "one thing."

Not a bad reminder for two weeks into the new year. That's when I start to see people at the gym who made an early new year's effort start to drop away. Are they doing just one thing to stay fit somewhere else? We can hope. It's fine for the way you do it to evolve. Just don't stop. But don't beat yourself up for one miss. Make sure you do it next time… today, tomorrow, the day after, somewhere, sometime, somehow. Get into the groove.

By the way. If you find you just can't, that you rarely or never get it into your day and that continues week after week, it's time to think up a new strategy to try out, a new variation that you CAN do once each day. You only get better at what you can tolerate doing regularly. Don't wait for another New Year's to modify your plan. The real commitment is to progress, whatever it might be or however it comes about.

Boosting Creativity

A group of financial executives recently asked me to help them develop more creativity.  They feel their profession requires so much attention to detail that being creative is an under-used area for them and they know little about it.

It's great to have a group identify an area they want to know more about and recognize they might have limitations.  It's often said you can't learn anything you think you already know.

The good news is most of this group already have a great deal of creative skill.  They just don't know what it feels like and how to find it.  That's a key purpose of understanding the five basic leadership skills.  When you know how they work, you know where to find your creativity.

Creativity arises together with use of the other four skills as a package.  Each of us tends to be more creative in areas where we do the most work.  Since accounting frowns on "creative bookkeeping," it's a concept accountants don't think they know much about, but as a group they're about as creative as anyone else.

The first key to creativity is to develop a goal for something new you'd like to achieve.  That takes practice.  Goals aren't as easy to come by as people make out.  In fact developing a goal happens while using the other skills, through repetition. 

Great goal setting is a habit like any other.  Take your best shot at setting a new goal for yourself, then working toward it will clarify the process. As you start toward this tentative goal, you need to believe you can achieve it or, more accurately, get beyond it.  Don't let it be too small.  This also takes practice.  Just do your best. 

Start to research how others achieve this sort of goal.  As you do, you'll struggle with doubts and flashes of inspiration and positive thinking.  Keep balancing pros and cons as you test out each new idea for achieving your goal.  Keep trying. 

Keep looking for new ideas as you encounter hurdles.  Don't give up the goal… but you can modify it, expand it and refine it.  Persist.  Think of this process as developing habits that will help you piece by piece to move forward. Here's where creativity really begins. As you persist you'll find yourself coming up with more and more creative, new ideas that didn't occur to you at first.  Eventually they will begin to be substantially different and new, beyond things you've been reading or have heard about.  That's creativity pure and simple.  Remember the famous quote from the most prolific inventor of all time, Thomas Edison, "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."  This is the way to perspire effectively.

In short, creativity is a habit that takes time to build.  No matter how creative we think someone is they got there trying one idea at a time with a stretch objective in mind.

Don't Believe Everything You Think

Okay, I've finally been sucked in.  Visiting a bookstore to use a gift certificate, a new book (with an Amazon release date of January 1) by Marci Shimoff caught my eye.  On her web site she is billed as a key teacher of The Secret, a book I have consistently avoided.

Her new book, Happy for No Reason, summarizes seven ingredients for happiness in easy chapters, a more useful topic. With the Secret I certainly believe the thoughts you hold are critical to the results you achieve.  Since there isn't a lot more in the book judging from what others tell me, I haven't taken time to read it.

In Happy for No Reason the standard basics about achieving happiness appear: the concept of a happiness set point, physical health, meaningful work, friends, a close love relationship and several others, some of which she reveals in her You Tube video, linked from the book's site.  Very slick. You can pretty much get the ideas in the first few listings if you search "Happy for No Reason" in Google. She calls them seven "steps," but they're really not steps as much as habits that must work together.  Not a heavy-duty book, but with generally solid, comprehensive ideas.

The idea that stood out most as new and different is summarized in a chapter about a step called "Don't Believe Everything Think." I notice she describes the same concept in a video on her site about The Secret, arguing that many of the 60,000 thoughts we are said to process daily are misleading and that feelings are a better indicator of whether we are moving forward positively or feeling so negative that we will mess things up.  This sounds like an interesting idea that bears some further thought.

More than anything I was impressed by the packaging.  I see she is even a cofounder a group of 100 motivational speakers who have created a site called the Transformational Leadership Council. It's a quick list of many big as well as smaller names in the motivation business. 

Slick packaging doesn't mean the information is any less helpful.  If anything we can hope that it will encourage more people to take key ideas seriously and use them.  We're all in the process of trying to lay out the most useful, simplest and most appealing ways of getting the same principles in front of people. A good effort.  Both her MBA and media training certainly lend power to the message whether or not they make her an expert in these areas.

Imagination - Our Necessary Blessing and Curse

Imagination makes us human, but challenges our happiness. Dan Gilbert points out in Stumbling on Happiness that what distinguishes us is our ability to imagine a different present, future or even past. Though he identifies many pitfalls, he doesn't offer a lot of advice for solving the problem this raises.

We need this ability to be able to plan change, but it comes with a cost.

Writers such as Nobel Prize winner, Andre Gide, pointed out long ago that comparison makes us miserable. When we think how things could have been or could be different, we often torture ourselves with the thought. He noted: "In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future." 

Buddha offered a solution among his first principles (All life is suffering; all suffering results from desire), advising us to work at avoiding desire, meditating toward peace and acceptance, while Helen Keller advised: "Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged." That she could do this despite severe disabilities provides a ray of clarity.

It isn't imagination that creates problems, but what we do with it.

The same is true in leadership. If we dwell on what people could have done and make them miserable because of it, we won't get nearly as good performance as if we appreciate even small progress and encourage thinking about what else can be done right now that can lead to great results in future. Finding the right balance, as always is the key.