2008 Blog-to Show: 260 Blogs Aggregate Post!

Liz Strauss has just hosted the Second Official Successful-Blog Blog-to Show featuring blogs from all over the blogosphere including the Rant.

Liz has brought together a great community of bloggers so have a look, walk around, and enjoy yourself. Click the blog titles to visit the blogs for a closer look. Comments are welcome here and at each invidivual blog. Take a second to let people know you were there. It’s a great chance to build some new relationships!

If you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis you'll bore your audience to tears

There is a lot to be learnt from screenwriters for those of us engaged in corporate communications, seminar speaking and leadership.

Robert McKee is the most widely known and respected screenwriting lecturer in the world today. His former students' accomplishments are unmatched: They have won 27 Academy Awards, 141+ Emmy Awards, 21 Writers Guild of America Awards, and 17 Directors Guild of America Awards and even the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Some recent notable former students to win or be nominated for Oscars include Akiva Goldsman (Winner - Best Writing: Adapted Screenplay) for his screenplay "A Beautiful Mind," Peter Jackson (writer/director of "Lord of the Rings I, II and III", Nominated - Best Picture) and many others.

In this video which I found via Presentation Zen, Brian Cox (Scottish actor) plays the part of McKeee and utters the words

If you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis you'll bore your audience to tears

I just wonder how we could adapt this to the business world generally and to corporate communications and presentations specifically?

Other resources:

The Real McKee
Happy Tales: The CEO as Storyteller

Thanks to Andy Breeding posting at Presentation Zen for these links

Pecha Kucha - still PowerPoint but not fatal

Is Japanease presentation technique, Pecha Kucha, one answer to "death by PowerPoint"?

Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-cha ku-cha) was started in Tokyo in February 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one event. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up.

I really like the idea of this technique as it appeals to the way the brain works, is short and therefore effective from a learning point of view and provides a framework for people to be creative within.

Has anyone seen the technique being used in the business context and if yes what was your experience - did it work?

Other resources:

Presentation Zen
Beyond Bullet Points (thanks to Jo Jordan for this link)

Bucky Covington, SHRM and 36 HR Bloggers - Headlining the 39th "Carnival of HR"...

This months Carnival of HR is up over at The HR Capitalist. Kris Dunn is a great host and provides more of the high standard of commentary we have become used to on his great blog.

A couple of the highlights include:

Figure out what the problem is before you buy a tool - Rather than rushing to buy the next great tool for your HR shop, you need to figure out what problem you are trying to solve. Meg Bear sees this issue in the HRMS space, but it applies elsewhere as well. Why you're at it, make sure that technology isn't seen as a replacement for talent, as Chris Young reminds us...

Use pop culture to teach those around you about talent issues - HR can be a snoozefest to many, so act different and add value by putting it in terms that anyone can understand. HR Minion displays the skill with this post...

Next month the Carnival celebrates it's 40th edition and I am delighted to be hosting this auspicious event. If you have never been involved before of you just want to get something off your chest and out there to the HR world please send your stories to me lets make it another great show.

Have a talent for dealing with tough times

A new report by Successfactors suggests that effective talent management can enable HR to help organisations manage their way through turbulent times.

How often have you been through a downsizing, redundancy programme, rightsizing initative or whatever sizing exercise? I've been through and managed a few in my time and it always drives me mad that when the focus is on the numbers we take our eye off of the talent in our businesses. Stressed CEOs driven by the bottom line will let even their best people go if it allows them to meet their financial targets. This is shortsighted and naive in many instances; selling the family jewels is never a good option.

This new white paper suggests 4 strategies to avoid this nonsense:

1. Establish clarity of goals and rapidly align your workforce to execute the new strategy — When change is forced upon your business by the external environment, you cannot afford to lose focus or to delay the necessary course shift.
2. Cut with precision, if you must, but not bluntly — If layoffs become necessary, view them as your chance to weed out the low performers and let your best talent grow. Optimize the workforce!
3. Focus on your core talent and invest where it counts — Identify the talent that will be essential for your new strategic direction and invest heavily when others are cutting. Turmoil is when leaders emerge.
4. Be transparent — Avoid the rumor mills. During uncertain times, transparency drives trust and employee engagement. Companies with high trust financially outperform those with low trust.

Good advice for any HR professional.

The full report can be read here - TALENT

The Perfect Exit – How to leave your job with no repercussions

It’s not the most pleasant of situations, but it’s something that has to be done. Irrespective of whether you’ve been forced to leave or whether you’ve chosen to leave of your own will, moving from one place of employment to another is awkward and embarrassing if you don’t handle yourself and the situation well. Here are a few pointers on how you can make a graceful exit without burning your bridges and leaving behind a sour taste in your mouth:

·Take time to ponder over your decision to leave. Remember, if you act in haste, there’s no turning back. Wait till you have another job lined up before you breathe a word of your plans to anyone at the office.
·If you’re quitting because of personal reasons, make sure you give enough notice according to the rules of your organization.
·If you’re being fired, hold on to your temper and be composed in your exit. If possible, find out the reason you’re being asked to leave so you can avoid such a situation at the next job you hold.
·Clean out your desk well before you’re scheduled to leave and hand in all keys, identification cards and other articles that belong to the company. Do not take anything that does not belong to you.
·Take part in exit interviews with good grace and offer an honest opinion of why you feel the need to leave without indulging in personal abuses and rants against your coworkers or superiors.
·Do not give vent to your negative feelings against colleagues and superiors just because you are leaving. You never know when you may come back to the same company or meet these people elsewhere in the course of your career.
·Be polite to everyone as you leave and maintain cordial relationships with your ex-colleagues so that you can take advantage of their help when you feel the need.
·Take the time to train your replacement and complete all pending tasks before you leave.
·Make alternative arrangements for your retirement and pension plans and your health insurance coverage.
·Ask for a reference before you leave. The only way you can do this without losing face is to maintain cordial relationships with everyone at work till the time you leave.
·If you’re leaving to start out on the path of entrepreneurship, make sure you retain contacts and relationships with people who will benefit your business sometime in the future.
·If you have to leave but do not have a new job lined up, make sure your finances are enough to tide you over until you’re able to secure a new position.

It’s not why you leave but how you leave that matters. Do yourself and your employers a favor by being calm and composed about the whole affair – neither crow from the rooftops if you’ve found a better paying nor rant about the fact that you’re being fired or laid off. Set an example by doing your job well for the remainder of your days at the office and leave on a high note, no matter what cloud you’re leaving under.

By-line:

This article is contributed by Heather Johnson, who regularly writes on how to become a talent agent. She invites your questions and writing job opportunities at her personal email address: heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Changing work practices – it’s a no brainer

Most of us appreciate that the structure of the “modern” workplace and classroom originate from the industrial revolution. At that time Europe and the USA were very different places with economies dominated by manufacturing, farming and the military sectors. Accordingly, our schools and workplaces were structured around processes, with rows of pupils and employees engaged in “manufacturing” lines learning and working by rote. This was, at best, OK if you had a predominant left brain and therefore a fondness for logic and numbers but if you were at all right brained and therefore focused on emotions and feelings then you left school as an under performer and disliked your employment with a passion. (OK I exaggerate a little but you get the gist).

Today, we appreciate much more about the ways of the human brain and therefore about the demographics of learning and working preferences. We have seen the growth of homeworking, e-learning etc. and other more flexible ways of organising ourselves. However, what has not happened is a revolution in how we structure education and work.

So what can we do to make the workplace more aligned with the workings of the human brain? The good news is that a new book called Brain Rules by John Medina sheds some light on this challenging subject. Having studied the brain and human behaviour for many years Medina makes several interesting observations on how we can improve productivity at work:

1. Let morning people work in the morning and night people work at night
2. Don’t hold important meetings at 3pm – have a 30 minute nap instead and see productivity soar as a result
3. Have 1 -2 -1 meetings on the move – it keeps the brain awake
4. Multi-tasking is a myth – get off the grid to get some focus (switch the laptop and fone off) by going analogue (use paper and pen for a change)

Medina presents a compelling and articulate view of the future which all HR professionals would do well to pay attention to. His thinking reminds me of something I read years ago

As maths is to physics - psychology is to human resources

Further reading:
http://brainrules.net/
http://brainbasedbiz.blogspot.com/

Best Leadership Blogs

I've promised a list on this for some time, so imagine how chuffed I was that someone had beaten me too it! Over at Kevin's Remarkable Learning blog you will find a competition aimed at finding the best leadership blog. Here are the nominations with my comments:

All Things Workplace by Steve Roesler - Great blog with fantastic insight into leadership
Leading Blog by Michael McKinney - I especially like the stories on this blog
Personal Leadership Insight by Rhett Laubach - Great blog list and detailed posts
Leadership Made Simple by Ed Oakley - Good use of video to make his point
The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner - I like the style of this site
Slow Leadership by Carmine Coyote, Peter Vajda and John Fletcher - very comprehensive
Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg - I love this site - great ideas and straight talking
Lead Quietly by Don Frederiksen - different approach to leadership - relax!
Extreme Leadership by Steve Farber - multi media site with great and original content
Dispatches from the New World of Work by Tom Peters and others - still a classic and the free presentations are a revalation.

Some really good recommendations and a good place to start looking for all you leaders out there with challenges.

How to deal with negative managers

The issues of how to deal with workplace dementors is the subject of a lead article in the latest edition of Dear Workforce. The article responds specifically to the question on how to deal with managers who don't take responsibility or back up corporate decisions.

Workforce suggests a number of options such as taking remedial action to remind managers of their place in the business, undertaking a cultural review to ascertain if this behavior is a business wide issue by asking the question “…is this a learned behavior and if so how is it learnt?”or finally, could it be managers do not feel like they are being listened too and that they are taking matters into their own hands?

This is clearly a complex issue that must be dealt with sensitively. There will always be people who are negative about work (and life). One thing I always do is to monitor new start (hire) behavior. People are usually on their best behavior during their first few months with a new employer. If at this point they exhibit dementor tendencies I would suggest termination rather than risking the chance of long pain.

Improve your conference call skills

Like parenting, networking and love, conference calls are a topic rarely the subject of education programmes. Speaker Sue has attempted to plug this gap on her excellent blog where she provides some great advice on how to improve your conferance call skills.

How good are your conference call skills? How do you keep the group’s attention, make your points powerfully and persuasively and still keep the call short? Check these ideas:

1. Designate a call leader/group facilitator.
2. Create an agenda if you’re the leader. Ask for an agenda if you aren’t.
3. Be prepared. Know what points you want to make.
4. Announce yourself immediately. Don’t lurk.
5. Pre-sell your ideas. If you need allies, call them before the call.
6. Say your name before speaking. Speak to a point only when you know who made the point.
7. If you don’t recognize the voice and if they weren’t courteous enough to say their name, clarify, or stay quiet.
8. If you know you need to leave the call early, ask the leader to announce it 5 minutes before you have to leave.
9. Don’t make apologies and waste time if you need to leave the call early. Just go.
10. Make your points quickly and only once.
11. Let people finish their sentences.
12. Use the words yes and to move to another thought.
13. Keep control. If someone asks a question off topic, ask to discuss it at the end of the call.
14. If you multi-task, don’t let them hear you or your other activity. That’s what the mute key is for.
15. If you need a break, announce that you’ll be back in 5 minutes. Don’t gamble that no one will want your input while you’re in the bathroom.
16. Ask the leader to send a follow-up email with action items and next steps.

And as someone once said, “don’t make me reach through this phone and slap you.”

These are great tips and despite my frequent loathing of the dreaded "con call" I'm going to take Sue's advice and do my best to avoid a slap on my next call.

HR Carnival 38!

This months HR carnival is hosted by Changeboard. As always the show has a number of attractive articles for us and this month there is a strong Corporate Social Responsibility flavour.

A couple of articles caught my eye:

Try engaging your people about CSR & social justice through teambuilding exercises but beware, Steve Roesler, co-author at The Age of Conversation, CEO/trusted advisor at Roesler Consulting Group/Steve Roesler Learning (United States) in his posting: “We need team spirit argues against the perils of badly thought out team building exercises.

He explains: "Building business teams requires an experienced consultant/facilitator, a leader who is also willing to look at his/her part in the team's performance, and a group of people who believe they can improve with some focused help." Steve goes on to say that work gets done through people collaborating. "That makes legitimate group development a high priority item for every business."

Prasad Kurian, director of Learning & Career Acceleration Programs, Asia at Flextronics (Bangalore area, India), in his posting in praise of HR generalists believes that HR generalists are perfectly placed to be able to do the kind of great process facilitation/ process consulting work with business leadership teams that would make an OD (organizational development) specialist proud. He suggests that HR generalists are able to synthesize the inputs from multiple specialists (staffing, compensation, resource management, workforce planning, employee relations, capability development etc.) and provide the business leaders with an integrated HR response (diagnosis and solutions) to business challenges.

He argues that: "Some of these HR leaders have a much higher understanding of the business as compared to that of the specialists and they are able to look at the organization from a 'total system perspective' - to identify and exploit 'leverage points' - those points/areas/factors in the system where a small change made can have a huge impact on the overall system/business."

I really like the HR carnival and I’m also delighted to see that we now have Learning and Development carnival to look forward to over at the excellent Learn to Develop.

Zentation - new development in web based presentations

In the same way that TED and SlideShare have transformed how we view, buy and develop ideas and presentations, Zentation promises to add to the quality of material available free online by mixing video (Google video and YouTube) and slideware.

I like the simple design of the site and as if to get their point across even stronger one of the key presentations they are currently holding is Guy Kawasaki's brilliant "The Art of Innovation".

Guy presents a compelling discussion on what is meant by innovation; I especially like the section on creating Mantras rather than mission statements.



A really great presentation facilitated by a very helpful new website.

Shock News from the BBC - HR strike

I found the following being reported on the BBC website yesterday. Well it made me laugh/cry (delete as appropriate)

Britain was a country gripped by fear this morning as the first ever national Human Resources strike threatened to leave a number of staffing issues unresolved in many offices.

The news prompted chaotic scenes in Westminster as pressure mounted for Government intervention to prevent the long-running strike by Human Resources Departments from bringing businesses around the country to a level of intolerable inconvenience.

Leader of the opposition, David Cameron, used Prime Minister’s Questions to raise the spectre of an economy grinding to a halt as employees deserted their desks due to neck-strain from poorly positioned computer screens. ‘When…’, he asked, “was the government going to accept that a no-strike regime for personnel managers was the only way to bring them into line with other essential services including the fire service, police, prison officers and the armed forces.’

On the ground, employers were really beginning to feel the pinch as senior management attempted to cover the void left by their missing HR departments for yet another week. ‘We just have no idea which of the first-aid kits are fully stocked,’ confided a director of one major corporation. ‘And we are already more than a month late on our annual office chair audit. If things continue like this, who knows, I could lose half of my staff to repetitive strain injury. Or whatever it is they monitor.’

However a spokesman for the union was in defiant mood. ‘This is only the beginning’ he threatened. ‘Just wait until people realise that their holiday forms are not being signed off, or that performance appraisals haven’t been sent out. Employers will be crawling back to us on their knees soon enough’.

At noon yesterday the Prime Minister gave the go-ahead for the army to be sent in to provide emergency cover, and teams of soldiers were rapidly deployed at key points in personnel departments around the country. ‘We have some paratroopers stationed in the office by the photocopier’ said one secretary. ‘I went to get some advice on an equal opportunities training course I’m interested in and they just made obscene comments about my breasts.’

The HR strike, now entering its tenth week, has resulted in a UK-wide loss of efficiency of 0.0003%, or £1.27. Striking HR professionals have been advising themselves on whether they are ‘working from home’ or taking annual leave. ‘My biggest problem is that I can never remember if I am getting time-off-in-lieu for picketing or not’, said one striker. ‘But when I ring myself up for advice I’m not there.’

How HR can help your business survive a downturn

HR understanding how it's business is performing and helping to make plans that reflect core business requirements provides an opportunity for the profession to help organisations survive the onset of recession.

People Management suggests that there are 5 core areas of focus for HR:

Understand the business context

Work closely with senior managers and think creatively about how you can organise your workforce most effectively to cope with a downturn, while positioning the business to come out ahead of the competition when the inevitable recovery happens. If your organisation is profitable, growing and optimistic about the future, it’s important that you do not get caught up in the wave of negativity. Instead, ensure that you’re allocated the funds that are needed to support the business.

Look at competitors

In these uncertain times there will be plenty of talented people working for struggling organisations who will want to maintain the initiative in career terms by jumping ship before they are pushed. There will also be others who, although they’re not actively seeking a new job, are likely to be far more receptive to approaches from recruiters than was previously the case. This could be the perfect time to recruit these people into your organisation and ensure that the business has the right talent in place for the long run, but…

Protect your talent

Don’t fall into the same trap. To prevent your own recruitment costs from spiralling, you need to make sure that you’re able to hang on to your people. This means that you need to do all you can to ensure that they remain challenged, engaged, motivated, rewarded and assured that there is a clear path for career advancement in your organisation. As such, now is not the time to scrimp on training courses, coaching programmes or anything else that aids employee development. It would be a false economy to do so, and visible cutbacks would have a demotivating effect, particularly if the development initiatives have already been approved and signed off by the senior management.

Think long term

If there will be less recruitment and induction activity for your team members to manage during the coming year, take advantage of their availability and tackle the important strategic projects that are critical to long-term success but which keep getting postponed because other activities have taken precedence. For example, take the opportunity to develop the online selection system that your business needs, refresh your competency or performance management frameworks and begin putting in place the talent development programmes that will help you to hold on to the leaders of the future.

Do your homework

Given the active role that HR will have to play in the coming year, you may want to argue for an increase in your budget. In the current environment, finance directors will be looking to challenge any expenditure that doesn’t appear to be vital to the organisation’s survival.

The article concludes:

To be successful, therefore, you will need to feel confident of any figures that you put forward and be able to discuss them in detail. Before going into any budget meetings, make sure that you have rehearsed your arguments and counter-arguments thoroughly in advance. Be ready to negotiate and have a fall-back plan. Explain that the HR team will be responsible for ensuring that people feel informed, supported and valued. Lastly, ensure that what you are asking for is realistic in the context of the industry and your company’s performance.

This all makes sense but it did leave me thinking if this wasn't what HR should be doing regardless of whether there is a recession or not?