Promotions and job fit

So often I see managers and employees confusing promotion with recognition.  This is a real shame, as often this doesn’t work out well for anyone.

Job recognition should come from your performance review and ideally as part of regular and continuous feedback you get from your boss, your peers and others that you work with.

Too often life imitates art and managers wanting to keep someone happy,  will grant a promotion with little or no consideration to the job fit question.  Promotion involves taking on a bigger or new role and should only be done if that role is a good progression for the individual.

I’ve seen a lot of cases where this is not done well and everyone can be hurt as a result.

The most frequent promotion blunder, is putting someone in a management role when this is not a good fit for their skills.  This puts not only the individual in a tough spot, but it also impacts those unfortunate individuals who are now reporting to someone who does not understand what the job requires.  Moving into a manager role is not a path to individual recognition, but rather a complete shift in the job skills, values and priorities.

I’m growing into the belief that we need to find better and more effective ways to recognize people vs. putting so much pressure on the promotion process.

Promotion should not be the individual  goal, job fit should be the goal.

If we do a better job identifying the roles that fit us and how we can best contribute, then it is much more clear when a promotion would be needed.  A promotion is really only then needed when you outgrow your current job.  Nothing more.

If you are not getting the right kind of challenges in your role, you need a different one.  If you are succeeding at your current role and are not bored or feeling underutilized you should consider this a great job fit and celebrate your own professional nirvana.

I think the message I learned at my first yoga class fits here precisely, you are not here to compete with anyone, not even yourself.

The sooner we focus on getting our job fit right, the happier and more successful we will be.

So the next time you talk to your boss about your role, I suggest you focus the conversation on job fit.  If that takes you both to the topic of promotion then so be it, but if not, hopefully it will lead to more job satisfaction and success.

Confessions of a performance review convert: no pain, no gain?…no longer!

I’ve noticed that performance review meetings with my manager have evolved over the past couple of years, and my performance document looks very different too. It has become a living, breathing document over the course of the entire year, and, as a result it is more complete and more relevant, both as a history and as a roadmap.

In the past, I admit I was prone to similar mistakes that Meg called out in an earlier post on performance reviews. Thanks Meg, I learned a lot from that post!

Happily, over time, she and others have encouraged me to improve my own self-evaluation process, and this in turn has provided better input for my manager, enabling him to make more comprehensive and constructive comments himself. I spend more time on the process than I used to, because it matters to me more – and it matters to me more, because it’s very evident that it matters to our management team.

Meg has strongly encouraged us to have more frequent reviews with our manager, to summarize progress on our goals, and adjust as necessary. On second thoughts, for ‘strongly encouraged’ read ‘mercilessly nagged’!!

When I perceive the importance that’s placed on this process, then I’m willing to invest more in it myself.

This has meant, for this past year in particular, that I’ve updated my performance document at quarterly intervals, which made the final summary far more manageable and more meaningful, as I could see my own progress over the entire year. Since I didn’t have to conjure up 52 weeks’ worth of information when faced with the end-of-year deadline, it also meant I spent that time more productively reflecting on the year’s events and on where I want to go in the future.

In support of this frequent update process, a recent BusinessWeek article, The Trouble with Performance Reviews, states: “…reviews occur too infrequently to provide meaningful feedback.” Luckily for me, many of the negatives raised in the article no longer apply to my performance reviews: we do “make criteria more explicit and objective and have more people involved in the ratings process, so that one person’s perceptions and biases don’t matter so much”; we do “focus more on facts and evidence and less on benchmarking and unexamined conventional wisdom.”

The annual task that I used to dread is no longer drudgery, it’s my opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not a breeze. I spent a long time thinking and working on this year’s self-evaluation, but it was a more satisfying process because I was able to focus my attention differently, and now that I see the positive outcome I certainly don’t feel the pain as I used to. So: less pain, more gain – gotta love that!

For those of you who lack the benefit of your own Meg kicking you up the proverbial backside, I encourage you to do yourselves a favor: proactively keep frequent notes and write your own quarterly review – schedule it in your calendar and don’t (as I’ve been known to do) let it slide into obscurity in deference to seemingly(!) higher priorities.

However, for those subjected to the same regular nagging that I am, be grateful that your managers encourage you to review your goals and keep them current. My management team recognizes the benefit of ensuring that team members are continually aligned to valid smart organizational goals, for the good of me as an individual as well as for the good of the team and the business.

I’ve already updated my 2010 performance document twice in the past 2 months! Quite a change for the person who (like our Ken) was previously dragged, kicking and screaming, through the once dreaded annual process.

Which are you, a diehard or a convert?

Photo by Little Jeanne

Self-serving feminist or pro-diversity?

Recently I flew cross country (twice actually, long story) so I was able to catch up on my quality reading (People, US Weekly, Men’s Health, etc.).

Ironically, one of the topics that I read (Men’s Health) was about the advantages women have in the workplace due to our Venus-like characteristics.

The funniest part, was the accompanying photo of a woman, in a low cut dress, sprawling  on a sofa.  It really gave you a sense that the author was attempting to raise a nuanced conversation about gender differences in the workplace, but I digress…

I then came back to work and stumbled upon this outstanding presentation where a handy plug-in was being authored to replace that annoying

.. content authored by women, because the stuff that is made by women really, generally, isn’t as good.

Very reminiscent of the question what have the Romans ever done for us?  To which I say [incredulously].. oh… peace! …Shut Up!

The truth is that diversity, in general, is a good thing.  Different points of view and different perspectives and different skills are helpful and can make a team more effective.  When talking about women (something I know more about than other minority groups) you are also talking about [roughly] 50% of the population, at that point it’s not just about different skills, it’s about size of the market of total talent.

Consider the approach they took in Norway, mandating a [gasp] quota of 40% female participation on boards, and all without requiring photos of plunging necklines.

The truth is, diversity is best served when the organization makes an effort to protect against blind spots, and when minorities show themselves to be capable for the roles.

I feel privileged to work for a company like Oracle, that has made a real commitment to women in leadership.  I am also very grateful to be working at a time where awareness, opportunity and a voice are available to everyone.

I strongly believe that we live in a time where we cannot afford to squander any talent that is available to us, not if we want to compete in a global economy.  This is not an EEO issue, it’s a common sense business issue.

While I know that we are probably a long way off from a day where these topics are discussed without the sophomoric element, I say, if it takes a sexy-photo to get people to read an article on gender diversity… well it’s a step in the right direction.

So, Bravo Men’s Health.

HR Carnival Comes to Town

The newest Carnival of HR, brought to you by Training Time, is up! You’ll find 30 terrific posts from a wide variety of blogs, all gathered together. Each has a brief description, so you can get a sense of the topic to help you decide if you want to check it out.

The carnival provides you a great opportunity to first, focus your time on what the bloggers have themselves thought were good posts to read and second, sample blogs that you did not know about before. Who knows, you might find a new blog to subscribe to!

Included in the carnival is our recent post on how integrating social media with enterprise systems can improve your ability to influence behaviors that improve performance. Go check out the carnival!

Photo by Flintlocker

Our Role As Leaders During Times Of Change

I recently attended a webinar titled “Remarkable Leaders Create Team Alignment” from the The Kevin Eikenberry Group. The seminar content resonated with me really well.

I especially liked what Kevin said about our role as leaders during times of change:

“Leaders need to focus the team on something positive, uplifting and productive. We don’t deny feelings of past staff cut, it’s our job to have a dialogue with people so they know we do understand them, use them as a jumping off point to get to the goal, re-energize them to give them something to focus on.”

One attendee asked: “How do you keep people calm in the midst of economic crisis?”

Kevin’s response was spot on: “Keeping people focused on the goal is key. We need to re-focus people on the organizational goal to help the organization be more successful and thus improve their chance of keeping their jobs.  The ONLY thing in one’s personal control is to do a great job. “

Don’t you find it much more energizing to focus on goals rather than the alligators at your feet?

Working with “what is IN our control” rather than getting paralyzed by “what is OUT of our control” just makes perfect sense to me.

How do you navigate and lead your teams through times of change?

Missing Layer, Filled?

Network and collaboration tools not only offer ways to directly improve productivity and innovation by connecting previously isolated parts of your organization, they can also help identify and influence behaviors that lead to better overall performance. In a way, you can look at integration of these tools with enterprise systems as “filling in” a missing layer between two other ways behaviors are already being influenced.

“Influencer: The Power to Change Anything” by Patterson, et al, provides some excellent examples of people creating change in many different areas, both public and private, under daunting circumstances. They achieved this by focusing on vital behaviors and by using combinations of sources of influence to change those behaviors. Briefly put, their sources of influence model distills the forces that impact behavior down to just two mental maps, Motivation (“Is it worth it?”) and Ability (“Can I do it?”). In addition, these mental maps are subdivided into Personal, Social, and Structural sources. This results in a total of six sources and the authors make two important points:

1. The more of the six sources you can tap into, the more likely your influence efforts will succeed.
2. The more you tap into the Personal first, followed by the Social second, and then finally the Structural third, the more likely you will succeed.

What does this have to do with integrating network and collaboration tools with enterprise systems? We can view these systems as initially having been focused on supporting influencing behaviors from a Structural perspective. This was through things like performance and compensation (Structural – Motivation) and resource planning (Structural – Ability). Gradually, they added focus on supporting influencing behaviors from a Personal perspective. This was through things like tracking competencies (Personal – Ability) and development (Personal – Motivation). This mapping isn’t perfect and there aren’t hard lines between these areas, but you can see how the framework can be applied to understanding how influence is supported.

This framework then causes us to ask, “Where is the support for the Social layer?” Is there a way in which systems can support influencing behavior through Social-Motivation (i.e. networks of relationships that encourage the kinds of behavior someone would like to do more of) and Social-Ability (i.e. ones that support these new behaviors)? One way Social-Ability could be supported is by integrating networking and collaboration tools to support people finding the expertise they need to help achieve their goals. A way in which Social-Motivation could be supported is by integrating these tools with an individual’s development efforts.

Those are just a couple of examples and this is only a start at looking into how to support changing behaviors more effectively. Changing behaviors is one of the trickiest and most difficult, but in many ways the most effective, way to improve performance. We are often uncomfortable with it because we often confuse influence with manipulation or coercion. This makes us either reluctant to attempt influence because we don’t want our intentions to be misunderstood or it makes us resistant to influence because we don’t want to feel we’re being controlled. The former can be addressed by being transparent and honest with people about intention (the antithesis of manipulation) and the latter can be addressed by starting with the individual at the Personal level (as advised by the authors.)

Photo by Dog Company

I am my own customer profile

I was thinking on the drive in today about how lucky I am to know exactly what the users of our Talent products do each day.

I know what they do because I am one.  Not just in the sense that we use our own software here at Oracle (which we do), but in the broader sense of the profile of the people we want to help with our  solutions.

Talent applications are unique in that they are built/implemented to help organizations be strategic with their talent, but they are primarily used by individual employees and managers.

Luckily, I happen to be each of those.   So I get to build a product that helps me.

And here is what I want.

As an employee I want to add value to my company in exchange for my paycheck.  I don’t just want to do work, I want to do work that is meaningful to the company.  I want to know what I should work on, how I can do it more effectively and I want to be rewarded if [when] I get it right.

As a manager, I want to help my people succeed.  I want to help them have the tools and skills they need to do their best job.  I want to help them grow, I want to focus their efforts on the most important problems and I want to reward them for their accomplishments.

I was reminded in my thinking about a session I attended at PBWC a few months back where Dev Patanik was telling about his book Wired to Care.

Wired to Care tells the story of how companies prosper when they stop worrying about their own problems and start caring about ordinary people.

I realized how fortunate I am to be working for a product that I care so much about.  I care about it not only as something I’m paid to do, I care about it because getting it right is so important to me.

And in the end isn’t that really what it’s all about?

But enough about me, let’s talk about you… what do YOU think of me?

The Global HR Carnival is Here

Prem Rao over at People at Work & Play has put together a diverse field of enlightening posts. The theme is a global carnival!

Our own witty Brit Louise shares a childhood observation of excellence gone unpracticed.

Take a look at all the posts as there are many gems and new sites to add to your reader!

Nice Reports Finish Last

Back when I was an implementation consultant, we always left reporting to the end.  Often, we’d even Go Live on the transactional system and throw reporting into a Phase II project.   Theory was that we had to first get the data in before we needed to even think about getting it out.

That worked really well.  I still have nightmares of those oh-so-complicated SQR’s I had to write with 12 table joins and performance that would choke a horse.

Fortunately, there’s been an evolution in thinking over the last couple years.  Not only have reports taken on an earlier and more critical role in projects, they are becoming central to applications themselves.  We have been hearing about embedded analytics for some time.  These are reports that appear directly in the transaction, providing users with access to information right when they need it to complete the transaction.  This kind of structure highlights the importance of information when doing our jobs.  But it is still, in many ways, an afterthought.

What we really need are applications that are built as reports first and transactions second. Give people the information that they need to get their job done and then, and only then, give them a spot to make a change, add some thoughts, perform a task.

We should be talking about embedded transactions, not embedded analytics.

Reports, it’s time to lead the way!

photo source: outdoors.webshots.com