Pork Chop on a Stick

Or really anything on a stick is the food theme at the Iowa State Fair.  My extended family is all from the Des Moines area and I was back around fair time a few years ago.  That was the best darn pork chop I’d ever had and if you’re ever in the area of Iowa, Minn, Neb, or surrounding states, I highly recommended getting yourself one too. 

State Fairs remind me of carnivals and speaking of carnivals, The March Leadership Development Carnival was just posted on the Great Leadership by Dan blog.  Lots of great Leadership Development on a Stick for you to sample including my recent post on Circumstantial Potential.

Circumstantial Potential

Does a person’s career potential vary depending on circumstances or rather is it the perception of potential that varies?  You be the judge.

One circumstance is whether the person is in the right position or not.  This will likely affect their performance.  If they are not in the right position, they may be unmotivated to show their best side.  Or they may be failing and their managers are unable to see past that to the real potential.

Another circumstance is whether the person fits with the management of the organization or not.  I worked with a guy once that was doing really well within the organization.  Over time, however, some key players within his management chain shifted and he just was not part of the in crowd of that organization.  He got moved around, repositioned with less and less responsibility until finally he’d been assigned to “special projects”.  It was clear that if he wanted growth opportunities, he needed to find a new position.  He did within the same company and low and behold, he was back on track again.  Did his potential wain during that time?  Or were other factors influencing the perception of his potential?

You hear about bringing out the most in a child by having high expectations of them.  So what happens when the child isn’t being held to the same high standards?   Does that child have less potential?

Potential is really a complex thing to ascertain and is dependent on so many variables.  Change one and their potential might come shining through.  Change another and it might get masked and hidden away.  It’s not tangible like performance which is based mostly on the past where goals were set and either were met or not. 

Potential is a fascinating thing to think about.  I plan to do a series of posts in the next few months delving deeper into how organizations assess their employees’ potential.  I welcome your comments about how you’ve seen potential assessed, whether you thought it was an effective method and what variables have you seen that can impact a person’s potential.

In the meantime, think about what overlay circumstances may be either bringing out your best potential or hiding it away.  What can you do to enhance the good ones and remove the limiting ones?

Must Everything Change in a Down Economy?

It’s hard to miss that we’re in a down economy.  But some how it feels as if it was sprung on me.  As a Talent Management product strategist, I’ve been blissfully thinking about TM applications and their uses from a more ‘ideal’ point of view.  Large multinational companies with unlimited growth opportunities doing everything they can to hire, retain, and develop their talent.

Now that the Big R is staring me in the face, must I also rethink my product strategy?  Let’s take Talent Reviews for example.  I’ve spoken with many companies that are conducting Talent Reviews to ensure they are properly engaging their talent.  And my partner in crime, Ken, fell in love while discovering the same.

Well, that’s all great, but in a down economy, do companies continue to conduct Talent Reviews?  And if so, is it with the same purpose in mind?  I believe the answers should be 1) “yes, they very much should” and 2) “yes, plus some”.

When resources are tight and opportunities are limited, it’s even more important to know that you are spending your human resoure $$ wisely.  And while I’m certainly not meaning to project this on anyone, Talent Reviews can enable organizations to focus on the right talent and also identify the talent that is not as necessary.  Now I know this is a touchy topic so please do not blast me, but it is a reality.  I’d much rather see organizations thoughtfully assess their talent and make the best decisions as I believe healthy companies lead to a healthy economy which then leads to healthy hiring.  Talent Reviews can help in this by allowing an organization to comparatively assess their employees, look at the talent in lagging business units, identify new opportunities for those with transferable skills, and yes, also identify those that are least able to contribute to the company’s bottom line in a tough economy.  (Hmmm, is this an argument for generalists?)

My conclusion is that Talent Management applications are very relevant in an up economy, and possibly even more relevant in a down economy.  They allow organizations to make thoughtful decisions vs. to react in a knee jerk fashion.  And as a generalist and a TM product strategist, that actually makes me feel pretty good.

The View Keeps Me Coming Back

I have a great view from my *home* office window of the walnut tree in my back yard. I watch squirrels chasing around and storing nuts. It’s a great visual lava lamp while I’m focusing on the conference call I’m on or working hard at getting a point across. But the best thing about this view is it keeps me coming back. Yes, I work with great people and I truly enjoy my job. But the fact that I have the flexibility to work from home most of the time with zero commute and only 5 minutes away from my 6 month old ranks way up there with things that keep me loyal to my company and my job.

I know how lucky I am, but it really surprises me when I hear someone say their company doesn’t allow telecommuting or allow for some flexibility. I think some organizations don’t understand how committed that employee is to the job because they know what a good thing they have and wouldn’t want to mess things up.

My team has some pretty fun ways of keeping connected when we’re not all sitting right next to each other. Of course there’s the phone, web conferencing and instant messaging. Those are the basic requirements of telecommuting. But what really gives a sense of team awareness are things like Twitter and Facebook and blogging. These really let me follow the mental processing of my coworkers. What are they thinking about when NOT in a meeting? What are they reading? What new ideas are inspiring them? And because they put those ideas, links and hooks into their posts, I can follow right along with them. Mental proximity can be much more intimate than physical proximity. And in many ways I feel much more connected to my peers now than when I sat in the next office over from them all day.

So, the next time someone asks if they can work remotely… make sure they’re Twittering.

Wide Open Spaces

I feel like I’ve rushed a sorority and I now have to complete that one final embarrassing thing that gets me totally into the group.  TOTALLY!  So here comes my “9 things you might not know about Marcie” post.

1. I’m a morning person.  Once when I was recovering from jet lag and back home in my flat in San Francisco, I secretly loved that I was waking up at 5 am and not able to get back to sleep.  I’d slip out the door and walk around the neighborhood, watching the shops slowly come to life and the bread get delivered at the local grocery store. 
2. My least favorite holiday is New Year’s Eve and one of my favorites is New Year’s Day.  I think for a similar reason as #1.  It’s the start of something new and fresh.  All wrongs from yesteryear are forgotten and forgiven and there’s so much potential for the next year.  I get excited just thinking about it.
3. “Dress Up” was my favorite game growing up.  High heeled shoes, bangles, make-up, fancy dresses and fake fur shawls.  I never liked playing with dolls much, but boy, give me a box of costume jewelery and I was in heaven.
4. My first real kiss was at a church camp weekend.  So, yes, it’s a good idea parents to volunteer to chaperon.  And that’s all I’m saying.
5. When I first moved to San Francisco at the age of 26, I forced myself to drink coffee and wine so I’d acquire a taste for them.  How silly is that?
6. I went to more schools between Kindergarten and Senior year than there are grades.  Really!  We moved around a lot when I was growing up and thus many grades were split between 2 schools and sometimes even 3 once when we lived in Iran.  Yes, you read me right, Iran.
7. I am a rule follower.  Though I really wish I had more rule breaking in my blood, so I like to have friends that push me out of my comfort zone so I get to experience life for a while on the other side.  Plus, it’s just more fun over there.
8. I’ve completed several Olympic distance triathlons.  Great experiences which taught me how to swim, bike and yes, even run, but I do not consider myself a triathlete and don’t intend to do another one.
9. I love to go 4-wheeling in the Colorado mountains on steep and rocky trails.  I was going to buy my own machine this year even, but I had a baby instead.  I even had my then 2 month old out on the trails though we rode behind and stayed on easy and safe terrain.  This picture is from a ride the previous year.

I wish you all good mornings, happy new years and wide open spaces on the trails ahead.

Performance Calibration – Good or Bad?

I’ll admit that I’ve been going along for awhile now believing that performance calibration is a good thing.  What could be bad about coming together as a management team, discussing your employees’ performance and using these conversations and comparisons to help calibrate the final performance ratings?  So I was surprised today when a co-worker referred to performance calibration as being dated and old-school and assumed, but was dismayed that companies were still dong it.  Enough so that I stopped the conversation to dig in deeper.

Well, it turns out her mental image of performance calibration was completely different than mine.  Whew, thank goodness.  But I think this difference warrants further investigation.  She associated performance calibrations with the exercise of having managers take their initial performance ratings they’ve assigned their employees and then forcing them into a bell curve assignment – or calibrating them to the curve.  This forced ranking would then likely be used to identify the bottom 10% and well, you know what happens next.  So this performance calibration to the bell curve had a very negative connotation to her, and, in my opinion, rightly so.

Performance calibration is more accurately seen today as an exercise by which an organization comes together to discuss employees’ performance ratings to ensure a consistent and fair assessment has been made based on past performance.  It’s an opportunity for managers to start the conversation about their employees with the next step to be to conduct talent calibrations where the future performance, or potential, of employees is discussed.  Talent calibration… now that’s a whole other post.

Performance calibration is good, but we should be aware that there is still some perception out there that it’s about ranking to a bell curve.  And while good, it’s not the whole story and we shouldn’t stop there.  There’s talent calibration and even talent reviews to conduct. 

But for now, good prevails over evil and all is again right in the world.  And as always, there’s the opportunity to do better.

It’s A Party

I’m all for a good party.  That’s the extrovert coming out in me.  So once there were over 10 contributors to TalentedApps, I decided I had to get to the party and quick.  The next thing I had to figure out then was what to blog about that would remotely be related to Talent.  Well, I’m not yet convinced I’ll get there, but keep reading to see if I can pull it off. 

I’ve decided to blog about something that’s got me totally hooked right now… my crockpot.  It all started when I ran across this blog by a gal who’s feeding her family via a new crockpot recipe every day of the year 2008 and blogging about it.  So, you guessed it, by the end of the year, she’ll have blogged 365 crockpot recipes.  Pretty exciting stuff you say.  I agree.  Since I work from home and I have a new baby, I’m thinking that I can throw a bunch of stuff in the crockpot in the morning, work all day smelling the yummy aroma, go pick up my little guy at the end of the day and get him to bed and then sit in front of the t.v. enjoying my home-cooked meal.  I’m one day into this and I’d give myself about a B-.  I didn’t follow the recipe exactly and thus the rice got pretty mushy.  And it was done by about 2 pm so I ended up eating it for a late lunch (or as someone called it last night – dunch).  But it tasted pretty good and I’m not giving up. 

This has me thinking though.  She’s having to get pretty creative to come up with a new and I will say often times pretty innovative crockpot creation to feed her family.   As I’m thinking of ways to tie this whole crockpot thing into Talent, I have a few thoughts.  First is that crockpots have been around for a long while. You might even call them a bit old school and out of the 70s.  Possibly not too unlike HR.  And it seems that both are experiencing a revival of sorts.  For crockpots, the recipes and techniques have come a long way since chicken and cream of mushroom soup.  HR too has come a long way and it’s because every day we’re being required to think up that 1 new thing to support our customers or our business partners.

I challenge us each to think of 1 new thing each day that we can do in our own area of HR — whether you’re a practitioner, a developer of TalentedApps, a product strategist, or a consultant.  When we look back at the prior year(s), it’s amazing to me how far we’ve taken this already.  And there’s still so many new ideas to come.  How exciting is that.  I just love HR!  

I’m committed to coming back and giving you more of my TalentedApps insight.  And while you may only give me a B- on this post, every so often I’ll hit a home run and that’s what it’s all about.