Bloggers Meetup at OpenWorld

For bloggers attending OpenWorld I wanted to get the word out about a blogger meetup organized by our friends at Pythian.

So… all of you Oracle bloggers attending Oracle Open World 2010…
… you are invited to attend this Oracle Bloggers Meetup during OOW 2010 — a chance to meet your online buddies face-to-face in relaxed and informal atmosphere.

When: Wed, 22-Sep-2010, 5:30pm

Where: Lower Dining Room, Jillian’s Billiards @ Metreon, 101 Fourth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

I hope you can make it.

You probably also want to keep an eye on their blog for any any changes as OOW can be a pretty dynamic event.  If you scroll down to the photos you will see that Vivian came quite close to winning the contest for the most signatures last year.

How do you deal with a star performer that is a loose cannon?

We all would have worked with or come across people in our organizations that are star performers – and these folks can be in a variety of roles, all contributing tremendously towards the achievement of critical organizational goals.

We all appreciate their contributions and most of these star performers are great team players but in this post I want to talk about the star performers who leave a trail of damage behind them, usually this will be in the form of hurt feelings and humiliation in their fellow team members. In the extreme case, these “stars” can cause their teammates  to move to different teams or even leave the company.

Even in an organization that puts strong focus on mutual respect and sharing between its workforce the situation can result in

-          The star performer’s liability/damage being disregarded by the management as they don’t want to upset the star performer and this worsens the situation (or)

-          Coaching is provided for the star performer to help them work better in a team environment

What if the coaching doesn’t work and the star performer doesn’t change his ways?

The star performer should be let go.  Simple – an organization’s values cannot be compromised for the sake of an individual how much ever good the person is.

It will be good to hear your experiences on dealing with star performers that are not team players and if / how anything made them change their behavior?

The Jukebox Carnival of HR is Playing…

Paul Smith over at Welcome to the Occupation has posted the HR Carnival Jukebox. Paul has assembled over 35 contributed posts on a huge range of HR topics, associated them to a particular song, and organized them by genre,  so check it out and listen.

There are seriously a huge number of great posts (and music selections), so do take the time to go over and experience this unique and enjoyable Carnival. Some notable posts include:

• Ben Eubanks’ “How To Find/Make Meaningful Work“
• Lance Haun’s “Confusion About The War For Talent“
• Steve Boese’s “Designing Experiences“
• Trish McFarlane’s “Becoming A Social Media Pitchman“
• Susan Burns’ “Crossing the Chasm of Workplace Irony“

This Carnival of HR offers a terrific opportunity for you to get a great sample of a variety of perspectives, thinking, and just plain good writing. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a great blog you never heard of before.

The Power of Developing Teams

Ravi and I had just been discussing the question of values and culture, when I saw Kris Dunn’s post on Which Managers Are Responsible for the Reality of Your Culture? All it Takes is One Question…

What I liked most was that Kris captured not only how managers and their behaviors are the real indicators of values and culture, but that perhaps the single most desirable value sought by employees is “they’re looking for managers who seem to care about development of their teams.”

This is a really powerful statement. Developing teams is key in two ways. First, developing people helps them find the meaning in their work. Done right, it links their passion to achieving the purpose the organization has laid out. Second, you are developing all the members of the team, which helps them see how, as each member brings their increasing knowledge and experience to the team as they develop, they in turn increase the knowledge of every other member of the team as well as that of the whole organization. But there’s a lot to making this happen.

But I Do Develop People!

First, the notion of developing individuals is seen as a risky proposition. If you invest in the development of someone and they leave, you’ve lost your investment. If they go to a competitor, it stings twice as much. Of course, your best people will leave if you don’t invest in their development, so what do you do? One thing that can help make the development investment create a tighter bond between the individual and the organization is to focus on things the individual is passionate about. In other words, rather than simply roll out a plain vanilla development plan, or throw a generic catalog at them, or stick them in programs or assignments that are tilted solely to what the organization needs, spend time to find what really makes them tick and help them create a plan (and a backup plan) that meets both party’s needs.

I know + You Know = We Know More

Second, the actual team aspect of development is often overlooked and that’s really a shame. This isn’t about everybody on the team getting the same development; it’s about how unique individual development and team development are intertwined and can amplify each other as well as create more cohesive teams. Instead of everybody getting the exact same development and thus very likely seeing others’ development as potential competition, each person brings their unique development experience into a truly collaborative team environment. That is, each person shares and exchanges their knowledge and what they’ve learned. This has multiple benefits – each person feels and is seen as a source of valuable knowledge and teaching to the other team members and everybody in total learns more than if they had all gone through the exact same development. It give them a greater sense of identity. What’s more, in the very act of sharing knowledge with their teammates, each person learns more about their subject because of the questions they get as well as their desire to teach it well.

We really believe in the positive impact these values have on organizational performance and it’s great to see the survey data back it up. Thanks for sharing with us, Kris!

Photo by papalars

Leadership Series

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership and scale.  How do successful leaders of large scale organizations, think about talent and leadership.

Here at TalentedApps we talk  (and think) a lot about business leaders.  What do business leaders need from their teams?  What do they care about?  How do they make it happen?

and then it occurred to me…

I know a lot of strong leaders here at Oracle and I could ask them.

and just that fast, a new blog series was born!

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting interviews of leaders at Oracle, to share some of their thoughts with our community.

For those of you who think this is just some lame excuse to avoid writing my own blog topics, or to have an excuse to better know people at Oracle, I say…

you got me!

So now that you are on to my tactics, and I’m mentally referring to you as smartypants, hit me with the comments on some of the burning questions you would like me to ask.

You CAN teach an old dog new tricks

For all you social networking naysayers out there, I want to share a recent conversation between two of my uncles.  Amidst a family reunion filled with people of all ages, my uncle Stu (age 70) wholeheartedly convinced his older brother Warren (age 72) to join Facebook.  He was successful, too, that darn whipper-snapper!

Stu: “Warren, when are you going to join Facebook?”

My dad and his brothers - convincing and agreeable!

Warren: “Seems like a lot of work.”

Stu: “You don’t have to do anything.”

Warren: “Isn’t there a lot of junk out there?”

Stu: “Just friend who you want.  I only friend relatives – if they’re not related to me, they’re not my friend!  I hide all that farming and mafia crap.”

Warren: “Oh, I can hide that?  Well, what would I get out of it?”

Stu: “It’s the first thing I look at in the morning.  If I didn’t look at it, I wouldn’t know what’s going on with my kids and my grandkids.  I find out everything I need to know there.

Warren: “That sounds good …”

Stu: “Amy – what was that TED thing you sent around?  Those videos are great and I never would have learned any of that stuff if you hadn’t posted it.  It’s not like I’m going to go out to that YouTube and just hunt around.  Everything I want to know/learn I get from Facebook.”

A few days later, Warren joined Facebook and is now officially stalking his family and friends … like the rest of us.

Remember this conversation that next time someone says “social networking is for generation Y.”  Social networking is about connecting and learning and it is for everyone.

Both the HR and Leadership Development Carnivals are up!

Both the new Carnival of HR at Humor That Works and Leadership Development Carnival at Fail Spectacularly! are up. They both have a terrific amount of excellent content and it’s worth it to spend some time in each to enrich your thinking on both Talent and Leadership.

Drew Tarvin over at Humor That Works has assembled over 25 contributed posts on a huge range of HR topics and has written a humorous comment for each, so check it out. Some notable posts include:

• Laura Schroeder’s Teamwork or Talent?
• Dan McCarthy‘s Leadership Development: Executive Self-Assessment
• Steve Boese‘s Infinite Choice
• Mark Stelzner‘s The Art of Saying No
• Tanmay Vora‘s Connecting, Building Relationships and Team Success

Jason Seiden over at Fail Spectacularly! has gathered together over 30 posts contributed from all over the leadership community. It’s worth your time to look them over and follow the links on the ones that catch your eye. Some notable posts include:

• Wally Bock‘s Be the boss, but don’t be a jerk. Read this post as it also links to some other excellent posts (including Mike Henry‘s) referring to the same topic article.
• Art Petty‘s The Triple Threat to Good Decisions: Data, Time and Emotion.
• Dan McCarthy‘s Defensive Driving for Leaders: Watch Out for Your Blind Spots.
• Germane Insight‘s Leading Change: Lessons from the Sandbox.
• Laura Schroeder‘s Are High Performers the Worst Managers?

Both of these carnivals offer a terrific opportunity for you to get a great sample of a variety of perspectives, thinking, and just plain good writing. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a great blog you never heard of before.