HumanMarkets

Roy Oswalt is one of  the best pitchers in all of Major League Baseball.  He almost certainly on every credible list of the top five pitchers in the game.  He pitches for the Philadelphia Phillies.

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Last night Oswalt played left field.  First time in 39 years that a Phillies pitcher played another position.  (It was required because the game went 16 innings and the Phillies literally ran out of other players when Ryan Howard was ejected from the game. 

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Oswalt caught a fly ball for an out.

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I liked Oswalt before – he is now among my favorites.  I like people who “pitch in” to do what is needed – especially when it is outside of their normal role.

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Great profile for hiring .  Hire Oswalt.

1 Comment | In: Multiple Markets, Recruiting, Talent Management | | #

Source: The US/Mexico border

You go into a staff meeting today and someone, maybe casually in the pre-meeting chit chat, starts talking about immigration reform and the Arizona state law.  Your colleagues then look at you and ask – “Hey HR, what should we be thinking about Immigration Reform? From your perspective, are we for it?

Do you have an answer?

Human Markets is not a political blog and immigration / immigration reform is in the most part a political topic.  However, it is also a labor market issue for some employers.  Here are a few thoughts that we might consider about forming an HR point of view in advance of being asked and looking ill-prepared.

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On the surface, the connection is that Federal policy has used employers as a significant enforcement mechanism for immigration.  I-9s; e-Verify, Work Visas, are all examples of employers having to take responsibility for denying employment to illegal/undocumented workers.  Some in HR focus on this as the totality of the HR issue within the immigration debate. 

The verification issues at point of hire are expensive and open employers up to risk that is uncompensated by the market.  That is, when we take risks in business, we should get paid for managing those risks well.  Here, managing regulatory prosecutorial risk is simply the price of admission.  (In other words, if a customer as two widgets, yours and your competitor’s.  All else being equal, will they pay you more for having a cracker jack I-9 process versus the other guy having a few illegal workers on board?  I am guessing they will not.

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Maybe the more important perspective for HR to have is how immigration reform will impact hiring.  It would be great to have a more holistic view that includes the impact of immigrants as customers or clients for our organizations, but that is likely the purview of the marketing group.

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A few questions that might be helpful in forming a point of view about the impact of immigration on your workforce :

• Does your workforce include a material number of people who are working in the United States illegally already?  (If this is true, you as HR should know this and know the risks your are accepting on behalf of your company.  They may or may not be acceptable risks depending upon your firm’s situation.  However, like Bristol herself – you can’t be a little bit pregnant on this.)

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• Do you compete for labor in a market that pays close to the minimum wage?  In other words, are you competing for labor in a market that is influenced by ultra low wages?  (If immigrant labor dried up, would your cost of labor be directly impacted, even if you do not yourself employ a large population of immigrants?)

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• Do you provide benefits in a community with a significant level of immigrants? Do you understand the relationship between your “unit costs” for health care and whether or not it is influenced by immigration?  (So across the range of recent immigrants there is a range of experience in how they are able to finance their health care – both those working legally or illegally.  Ask your broker or consultant to explain to you if local health care providers have higher costs because of the cost of unpaid services.

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• Do you operate with a labor model that is dependant or high volume or high skill within your workforce?   

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• If you operate on a wider geographic scale, do you see differences in your employment issues in areas closer to large illegal immigration? 

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I would stay away from politics and from the broader economics of immigration.  Unless you are really expert at it, for example, I am not, making political assessment on the job is not so smart.  However, as the Barons of Talent within our organizations, we should understand the labor markets in which we compete.  If immigration policy impacts your labor market, you should have a point of view about it.

No Comments | In: HR Strategy, How to do HR, Multiple Markets, Recruiting, Talent Management | tags: Immigration, Labor Markets. | #

Recently I got a call from a recruiter looking for some networking help on a job. So far, so good. The requirements came over indicating that the candidate needed to have a credential that I don’t have. Their successful candidate needed to have come up through an “HR academy organization – GE, Pepsico, IBM”

That seems really short sighted to me (maybe because I didn’t punch that ticket). They maybe great HR companies but they are not the only ones. These companies can generate their own share of substandard people. Having done HR there is no guarantee of success.

More fundamentally, it struck me that the credential was being used in lieu of real evaluation and decision. To go farther into the rhelm of “I have no idea what I am talking about… ” I wonder if their insistence on that credential betrays an internal HR focus at the expense of a broader range of business skills.

I know some really outstanding “graduates” of the academy. None of them apply what they learned there thoughtlessly. The processes and strategies are all part of the context of their thinking, not the inherent object of their action. The worst of the graduates do their jobs just like they did back at “ACME” or wherever. They do it the same way because it is the “ACME way”.

What do you think? Is it a legitimate strategy to look for a Head of HR for a division based on the credential of being an HR Academy grad?

5 Comments | In: Multiple Markets, Recruiting, Talent Management | tags: HR Academy. | #

Source: SuddenDebt.com

I apologize  because this is not a very timely link, but I just heard about these numbers recently and in doing some research found this link at the very compelling blog Sudden Debt.

The basic fact here is that the most recent information that I can find, and the number that I just heard quoted in private by well informed people, is that 12% of Americans are on food stamps.

Regardless of how you parse unemployment numbers and regardless of whether or not you think that “things are getting better”, that is a hell of a big number and is a practical and factual assessment of the problem of employment and under-employment in the country. 

This is a national issue and a market issue for every HR professional.

No Comments | In: Multiple Markets, Talent Management | tags: Food Stamps. | #

Here is a great question to use in understanding an organizational role. It is a illuminating for market pricing a job; for OD diagnosis; or for talent management questions.

Who does the person in this role affiliate with within the organization?

Let’s take for example you are focused on the “Chief Engineer” of a technology company.  When you ask where the Chief affiliates you are asking, is this person the member of the top executive group who has responsibility for engineering (top down management – flowing management into Engineering); or is the Chief the senior most engineer who then liaisons with the executive function (leads the group from within; an “engineer’s engineer”, a technical leader).

Affiliation tells you a lot about the person in the role; how to pay them’ what support that team may need to balance the affilitation choice; and how others at the level of the Chief may percieve them and their department.

Market Pricing:          Assume from above that the person affiliates with the Engineering group.  Market pricing might then be best seen as classic “Chief Engineer” with an internal reference to a gap between the person and the tier below.  However, if the affiliation is as an executive, the balance of market pricing might be on what executives as a whole are being paid.

Organizational Effectiveness:   Is the engineering group linked directly to competitive customer activity, or is the group more of an infrastructure support.  I don’t know that the answer does or does not make one or the other affiliation ideal.  However, it does seem to me that affiliation with the engineering group would be more typical in an infrastructure group.  In the even that engineering is directly creating customer value, there would need to be another strong executive outside of engineering able to play the watershed role to pull together all of the customers’ interests.

Recruiting:     When thinking about making a placement on a team, exploring the history of affiliation for the person, and thinking about what affiliation the current situation calls for, can make for the difference between a good and a great selection.  A candidate whose passionate affiliation runs downstream is less likely to want to be promoted out of the group.  Is that what you need in your internal labor market?

Executive Direction:   Executives love to use the “my team” phrase.  What is the difference in focus for managers below an executive if she explicitly tells them that they should be affiliating with the group they manage, as oppose to the affiliation being “I am on Sally Smith’s team.”  I think that it comes down to the “who says I’m sorry.” 

Every team has bad days and makes mistakes.  Because we live in an imperfect world, “bad things happen to good departments”.  We all have to say “sorry, we did not get that done”, from time to time.  When an executive allows a subordinate manager to primarily affiliate with being on that executive team, I think it makes it easier for the subordinate manager to “take the I’m sorry” from the folks doing the work below.  When the subordinate manager affiliates with the team, it is the subordinate givingthe I’m sorry to the manager.  This is important not because it is about accountability.  That can be pressed in either scenario.  It is important because it sets the subordinate manager, and the executive up for a different view of risk.  When I think that I an accountable for all risk – planned and unplanned; reasonable and unreasonable – I act differently than if I think that I have pushed that done a level and I am only accountable for risk that is reasonably known.

So, this is not a silver bullet question – it does not answer all of a companies questions or instantly make you the smartest HR wonk in the room.  However, I think that it is a useful lens to look through to understand roles a bit better.  Understanding how the risk is being allocated in your organization, on a de facto real life basis, makes you a better market player.

Make sense or is this a bad case of too much time on my hands?

No Comments | In: HR Strategy, Professional Development, Recruiting, Talent Management | | #

Source:wnbafanclub.com

I have heard a 53 year old woman (born in 1957) suggest that she is right on the horizon of two groups of women.  The groups break down as those that have been raised in a “Title IX World” (younger) and those that were raised in a pre-Title IX World (older).  She is convinced that the experience of competitive athletics have shaped the women that have come behind her.  She admires these younger women and believes that they are better for having had the pervasive experience of competing, striving, winning, and losing in athletics.  With a complete straight face, she likes the younger women, because, well… they are more like the men she likes.  She like that they speak up, they don’t demure from confrontation, they want to compete and win in all things – kids sports, fund raising, neurosurgery and politics.

You clearly can’t put people into buckets as big or as monochromatic as this idea would suggest.  I think the idea has to do with broad tendencies in the “average temperament” of the groups, not an absolute rule.  But even still, isn’t this like the Gen X, Gen Y, Boomer kind of theories?

I think that there is something here.  The impact of women’s improving equality in the employment market generally and in the executive labor market specifically has been largely attributed I think to EEO legislation.  Legal change in employment discrimination has clearly helped, but maybe Title IX and its change in schools and gyms has created as much if not more change.

Environment among peers socially and in the market for success shapes personality, skills and perspective.  I have to think that have more women more pushed to public, obvious competition in an adversarial setting – sports, has to help those women, and all women raised in that environment in business.

When someone wants to cut athletics in your school, look down the road 20 years – how do you want your kids prepared for the market?

Is this too simplistic?  Misogynistic?

4 Comments | In: Talent Management | | #

Someone asked me for some advice about regarding how to be effective as an executive – what are the unwritten rules. Based on the person who asked me, and the seriousness of the ask, I gave some advice that I had not really considered before. It was unknown to me as a principle of operating effectively. I thought I would share it and ask what you think.

The short version is that senior executives trade social capital and commercial capital – not one or the other to the elimination or virtual elimination of the other.  Executives trade in both markets simultaneously. 

By commercial capital I mean – resources, risk, time, and ideas, that are essentially tactical elements of operating the organization.  I will pay that invoice because I have budget; however will I still get my carpet replaced in the spring.  Yes, my department will use your valuation methods and rely on your reports – do you still agree that we can exclude the XYZ transaction.  No, we will not purchase out side services, but will you will agree to staff after 6 pm?  In other words – the puts and takes of items under managerial control with the mutual intent of increasing shareholder value.

By social capital – I mean work friendships.  Loyalty, fidelity, kindness, and protection.  “Yes, I will get the server provisioned next week – you know it normally takes six.”  “Mike, I want to call you to tell you about a memo that is coming out next week.”  “I need to go to Theo’s basketball game – can we move this meeting to Friday?”

Executives bond themselves to each other and not simply to the organization.  Effective executives open themselves to the experience of trading social capital as a means to exchange information, spread risk and create mitigations to unexpected obstacles.  To be clear – I am not talking about collusion or dishonesty.  This is not politics in the sense of aligning with a group to oppose another group or another person.  I am talking about a market dynamic – there is a scarcity of time, resources and attention.  When you give a little now to get a little then, you are playing in this social market.  When you do it generally to make you and your trading partners more effective for the and in the organization – that is a net good.  It makes the place tick.

My point is that some people while personally competent, capable, hardworking and the rest, only trade commercially and do not open themselves up to playing the social market.  My argument is that they are typically less effective that those who effectively play in the social market.

Maybe this is obvious – nice people are more effective than a loof, cold people.  The insight that I had was that, this in fact a skill.  It can be learned and practiced.  Furhter this is a real market dynamic, it is not per se a personal characteristic.  In other words, you can be good and trading social capital, without being nice.  Market action is rarely about nice or not nice.  It is about knowing how to value assets and being effective about exchanging them.

I think that to be effective as an executive you need to be effective in the market.  Executives manage risk – they play in the sandbox of the future unknown.  Social capital mitigates that risk by spreading it across a network of other executives trading in that same social market.

I shared.  Now, what do you think?

2 Comments | In: How to do HR, Multiple Markets, Professional Development, Talent Management | tags: capital, Executive Captial, Executive Effectiveness, Politics. | #

A few Saturday mornings ago, my 14 year old son picked up the ringing kitchen phone.  He looked confused and handed the phone to Mom.  “Some thing is really wrong with Dad Dad.”  Things then started to happen.  I quizzed my son who was clearly upset and I could hear my wife telling my father to hang up so that she could call 911.  I gathered from my son that my Dad was sick – he sounded so bad on the phone.  It took my wife to correctly give me the news that my mom seemed to just have taken a stroke.

We pulled down my parents’ street no more than 10 minutes later.  The back door of the ambulance was already open and a police officer was walking out of the house to his patrol car.  When we went in the signs of stroke were evident.  An 83 year-old woman in her chair at the dining room table – slumped to one side.  No speech, no response, no movement – essentially vegetative.  My mom’s body was there but she wasn’t.

The EMTs did great work- in another 5 minutes we were all out the door, with IVs in, vital signs in hand and a plan to go to the local emergency room – luckily in a hospital, Delaware County Memorial, that is a certified stroke center.  I drove my wife and Dad.  We called my sisters on the way, passing memories and concerns along the way.

Doctor Riley was the ER physician.  Dr. Weinstein was the neurologist. Tara was the nurse.  Three people were now our guide to stroke care simultaneously working to save my mother’s mind and maybe her life.  They did cognitive and motor tests with her.  She got an MRI.  The quick diagnosis was that she did not have bleeding in her brain – luckily she had a blood clot.  The clot could be broken up by a “miracle drug” a TPA.  This drug is a super blood thinner.  It could break up the clot – but, in about 6% of people given the drug, it could induce internal bleeding that would be unstoppable and result in death.  We evaluated the risk and the explanation from Dr. Weinstein.  The TPA was administered.

Within about two more hours my mom was speaking to us, learning the names of the various nurses and doctors coming in and out and moving each of her limbs.  The immediate recovery was stunning and humbling.  My family and I thanked anything that moved.  We were grateful for the hours that these people spent studying from Junior High through Graduate or Medical School.

About a week later in the rehab wing of the hospital Dr. Reilly the ER physician walked by my Mom’s room saw my Dad, nodded, striding towards the end of the hall.  A moment later he came back into view and asked my Dad “how is your wife doing?”  After a great report Dr. Reilly said,

“I won’t forget that day – everything worked just the way it was supposed to – you don’t get many days like that – that was the best day we had in the ER in a long time – because of your wife.  Days like that remind you why you went into medicine.”

Well my family won’t forget that day for a long time either.  We in HR should look for every opportunity to help our employes have days that remind them why they came to work here.  If we can help our employees retouch their passion for this work we can spark the kind of customer interactions that delight customers – or maybe save their lives.

There is a market for the passions of our employees – what a victory for our customers when we compete well in that market. Something tells me that it is more important than the impact of whether the merit pool will be 2% or 3%.

6 Comments | In: Employee Relations, Multiple Markets, Professional Development, Talent Management | tags: Passions. | #

This is Bob Lutz.  Bob is a stud.  He is in his 70 s and is the number 2 guy at GM.  He offered to retire when the President of the United States fired the former CEO.  Everyone around GM asked him to stay.  He is the ideas guy.  He is the Chief Car Guy.  He is the guy.

Bob is the spiritual god father of the Volt.  GM just announced that the Volt will come out next year with a city MPG of about 230.  The Volt might be the best news that American commercial engineering and manufacturing got in a long time.  We all have Bob Lutz to thank for it.

There is a market for courage among executives. If you want to win in it, be like Bob.

4 Comments | In: Multiple Markets, Talent Management | tags: Courage, Lutz. | #

Below is a letter that I sent recently.  I hope that it speaks for itself.  I need to look twice at Amtrak.  They are doing something right and something that I had not expected.

Mr. Howe Carter

Superintendent, Customer Service

Amtrak

900 2^nd Street, N.E.

Washington, D.C. 20002

Re:      C. Joshi – Train #2154 – July 9, 2009

Dear Superintendent Carter:

On July 9, 2009, two colleagues and I intended to meet in the First Class car of Acela Express Train 2154 in Philadelphia; we were traveling to NYP.  One colleague was already on the train from Washington and was riding in Business Class.  The second colleague and I arrived separately at 30^th Street and agreed to meet on the car.

The first colleague moved from Business Class down the platform and boarded the First Class car; I boarded the First Class car.  No Second Colleague.  The train begins to roll out north.  Both First Colleague and I work for the Second Colleague – we begin to think that this is not going to be a good day in New York.

The mobile phone rings, The Second Colleague is on the Regional train by error.  OK, no big deal right?  Wrong.  The Second Colleague has the physical ticket for the First Colleague.  First Colleague and I and now on the Acela – him with no physical ticket because it is on a different north bound train.  Now we meet C. Joshi.

We explain that First Colleague has no ticket but offer to buy one.  This offer does not go over well with Mr. Joshi.  He politely and professionally explains that you don’t buy Acela tickets on the train.  We tell our story in a rambling, incoherent manner, “got on in Washington with Business Class ticket”, “No, I have MY First Class ticket right here”, “We have a First Class ticket for New York, we just don’t have it”.  However, in listening to why First Colleague does not have a ticket, Mr. Joshi gets that the actual ticket is on another northbound Amtrak train.  Now is when the customer service magic happened.

Mr. Joshi tells us that if we get Second Colleague to present the ticket to the Conductor on his train (who Mr. Joshi knows by name), Mr. Joshi will radio that Conductor, verify the ticket, and all will be well. 

We look at each other, one of us a PhD management consultant the other a Fortune 100 executive and sort of have that “why didn’t we think of that” kind of look on our faces.  We call First Colleague and he presents the ticket to the Conductor on the other train.  Mr. Joshi returns to us before Trenton; problem solved.  Great day in New York.  Great story of exceptional customer service on the rails.

I thought you would enjoy knowing about it and I hope you can do something nice to recognize Mr. Joshi.

Sincerely,

William J.T. Strahan

4 Comments | In: Talent Management | | #