Dr. Janice
On Human Infrastructure
Ask Dr. Janice has a new look and a new page. That’s what happens when there are fresh inputs, both from the environment (feels like Spring at last in Philadelphia!) and the growing human infrastructure in my entrepreneurial life.
I took music instead of art in college (it was a choice in those long ago days) so I figured I was remembering wrong when I thought, form dictates function. Googled it to educate myself on who said it and what they meant by it, vaguely remembering it had something to do with buildings designed to house manufacturing plants. It’s actually from this, by American architect Louis Sullivan who coined the phrase in 1896:
First, Fire the Leaders
Another week, another crop of downsizings, and with few notable exceptions, HR people are telling me how they’re choosing the leaders over the non-leaders as the keepers. And I’m groaning inside.
Has anyone figured out how companies run when everyone’s a leader?
What Will Happen to HR?
I gave the keynote at Philadelphia SHRM’s meeting this week and since I’ve been getting a lot of calls and LinkedIn requests from senior HR people lately, I figured I’d offer my help to anyone who’s looking. I never expected there would be that many. More to the point, I never expected to be that many senior level, highly experienced, knowledgeable people with no prospects in sight.
One person lamented that companies just don’t care about people any more. I’m not convinced that they ever did, at least in the sense that HR professional thought they should.
Learning From Interns
It’s like having a learning lab. Not for them, for us. They apply online, take their Role-Based Assessment and we know where they’ll fit. Then the surprises start.
Take Lauren, the Action Mover/Communicator. Could there be anyone more suited to talking to customers and getting them what’s good for them? So I figured she must be majoring in marketing or communications. Was I ever wrong! Some well meaning counselor convinced her that she should stay in accounting after she expressed her doubts.
When Visions Meet
Do you remember those sped-up photos of cells dividing and multiplying until they reach the point where they change direction and something new and different emerges?
It’s like that with visions. When two visions come very close, when they are mergeable in some way, if they are fed the energy of both sources they too become something new – a living, breathing organism of some sort.
Brother, Can You Spare $1.84?
Unemployment figure is out this morning – 8.1% – triggering memories of conversations with people who lived through the Great Depression. One of my favorites was from a couple who had just been married when the bottom fell out in 1929. Every morning she sent him off to look for work with his daily rations – two cigarettes (this was before the Surgeon General’s report, of course) and a dime for coffee. They said people really did ask, can you spare a dime. And although a dime meant something, there was plenty of sharing going around.
I Love You Just the Way You Are
The Wizard on our portal (www.RightFitToolkit.com) got another email from someone wanting to “confront my shortcomings” by taking a Role-Based Assessment and then “making strategic changes.” Sweet, so why am I cringing?
I don’t know this guy personally so I’m just going to speak generally here.
YOU ARE FINE THE WAY YOU ARE.
Arrogance, Greediness, Fear – Oh My!
If the economy isn’t improving, neither is the stuff of the headlines. Downsizings are bad enough: some can’t be helped and some are probably long overdue if the company is to achieve adequate productivity. It’s the ones where the golden parachutes are opening and nothing’s trickling down the food chain that sadden me. And of course there’s always Bernie Madoff. And Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And the suicides – German billionaire speculator Adolf Merckle the latest. Gordon Gekko must be chortling in his celluloid grave.
Arrogance, greediness, fear – oh my! The lions and tigers and bears that threaten to bring our world to collapse are on the prowl.
They are a cycle because they are cut of the same cloth: the greedy denial of reality, the arrogant illusion that you are the only one of importance in the world. You can’t have the infantile arrogance and greediness without the fear that leads to worse and worse decisions. And the evidence says it’s rampant in what e think of as our leaders.
Arrogance, greediness, fear: it’s always a down cycle when these rule. The things that go bump in the night reside inside. Time to out them.
The Value of Resolutions Made Public
I completely forgot about the resolution I made last year (December 2, 2007 to be exact – why wait for the New Year’s rush?) to write the magnum opus. It must have been simmering on the back burner as the thousand and one priorities got in the way because as the year wore on Jack and I returned to working through details. We even submitted a proposal a couple of weeks ago. Now, with two days to go before year’s end, it is almost complete.
The World is Textured
Kevin, our SVP Sales, and Loida, our bilingual trainer, are on their way back from Sao Paolo, Brazil having worked very hard with our friends at Kienbaum, our reseller there. At the same time, Madhu, our technology guru, is on the way to New Delhi and Noida, India, hopefully to return with new business relationships. As I send up prayers for their safe travel, I recall Thomas Friedman’s assertion that The World is Flat and think, no, it’s textured.
Right Size, Right Fit
If people are what make business work, why are they getting laid off while companies fail to cut back on other, presumably less important things?
As CEO, should you keep the corporate jet, continue to fly first class or bite the bullet and go coach?
What is the sound of one stock dropping?
Open Letter to President-elect Obama
Dear President-elect Obama,
Welcome to the ranks of Chief Executives, those of us, large and small, at whom the buck stops. I voted for you, not just because I agree with so many of your values but because you have a compelling Vision. And that’s what it’s going to take to get this enterprise called the USA back on track. Like any other CEO, I’m also here to offer my advice, based not only on my own experience but that of those CEOs whose companies we’ve worked with. I’ll keep it short and sweet, just the big three.
You Can’t Change Change
Someone asked me today to write about managing change. I know it’s a popular topic but when he said it, it sounded so absurd to me. Manage change? The very nature of change is that it’s unpredictable. I think what he really was asking was about how you manage your *reaction* to change: what you do when change happens, rather than maintain the illusion that you actually change the direction of the change.
So here’s my advice:
The Bailout – Enron End Run Revisited
I was going to write something on the bailout but when I started thinking about it, I realized I’d already written what I wanted to say. This was originally published in 2002. The situation is just more of the same (snafu, for the literary) so I’m going to recycle it here. My submission was entitled Enron End Run.
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Lessons From My Mother
My mother passed from this world last week at age 85, having suffered from Parkinson’s and dementia for too many years. This was my eulogy, which I called Lessons From My Mother.
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When I think of who my mother was, I think of her as a woman much younger than I am now. I think of the time when I was on my late teens and she was around 40, when it was her mission to teach me everything she knew about being a good woman.
