HRevolution - The Beginning

Joe,

First let me say that you were missed in Chicago. For me personally, I was trapped in my own personal purgatory of explaining where the hell you were over and over again. Not sure why people like you so much . . . clearly, they've never visited your garage. But I digress.

HRevolution was an experience, that's for sure. There has been a lot said about the conference, so I'll try not to rehash the experience, but rather try to share what I took away from the event. While I certainly brought my Talent Anarchist game to this gathering, I found myself coming more from the perspective of the corporate HR leader in the conversations, trying to provide the perspective of a person who was living in the work on a day to day basis.

As others have said, the participant base came from all corners of the HR world--vendors, consultants, bloggers, speakers, publishers, and even a few practitioners. The value of the experience for me came from the connections and conversations I was able to share with these bright, passionate people. But, a connection is simply a beginning, it's what happens next that truly matters. Here are my prevailing thoughts as I left the event:

• Ideas are cheap. Everyone has ideas. They are everywhere. What differentiates the best from the rest is execution--taking those ideas and turning them into results.
• If HRevolution is truly about evolving the discipline of HR, we have to find a way to engage more practicing HR leaders in the conversation. It has to continue to evolve from a gathering of social media savvy HR folks to an event that promotes ideas that serve as the foundation for a new reality in the work of HR.
• Talking does not equal change. HR transformation isn't going to happen in blogs or unconferences. It will happen when a new kind of leader and practitioner emerges who execute their role in a different way that creates breakthrough results for our organizations.
• Social capital and influence are, in my opinion, at the center of what top performing HR people need. I worry that some of the practitioners at the conference are spending too much time blogging and engaging in the twittersphere at the expense of building and developing the relationships they need in their organization to take their game to the next level.

So, while I completely agree with you that Curiosity, Critical Thinking and Courage are critical to participating in this (r)evoution, the list isn't complete. I have a couple others to add.

• Accountability: Leadership means giving away credit when things go right and accepting more than you share of the blame when things go wrong. In HR, it's amplified by 100 times. There was a lot of discussion about what HR should and shouldn't take responsibility for. If you want to be a revolutionary HR pro, take responsibility for it all, even if you only influence a small part of the result. We have to completely stop this blame assignment game and just step up. Yep, management may be "who" is supposed to be growing and developing people. If they aren't, raise your hand and take responsiblity for it. Then, go make it better.
  
• Execution: I've already mentioned this point. Ideas by themselves don't do anything. You have to be able to turn those ideas into results. Trish and Ben, the founders of HRevolution, are great examples of execution. They could have stopped at the discussion of this idea, but they didn't. Two unconferences later, they have started a movement. Another example--I have heard and read a lot of criticism by attendees about there not being more HR practitioners at HRevolution. If they really feel that way, then when this event roles around next time, they will work hard to get the other HR leaders from their network to attend. The vendors who came might even pay for some of their HR clients to be there next time. We have to stop our complaining and realize that we own the solution if we'd just step up and do it.
• Influence/Political Skill: The stark reality that most of us in corporate leadership aren't prepared for as we get promoted to larger roles is that our effectiveness becomes less and less about what we do and more about what we can influence others to do. HR leaders must become students of human behavior and political systems. We have to understand how things get done, who the players are and how those players make decisions. We need to be able to navigate in the shark tank without being eaten. This means studying things like power, sales techniques and social capital. Start here.

Thank you to HRevolution and the planning committee. It was a remarkable event and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to participate. It has definitely stoked the fire for me. Up with the revolution!

Jason

HRevolution 2011 in my garage?

Jason-

I hope that you had a miserable time in Chicago this weekend, I was home with the kids and watched about 47,000 hours of Curious George. Being a grown-up can be downright brutal at times.

The HR blogosphere (which, fortunately for me, happens to be just around the corner from my house) has been abuzz about a couple of things the past few days. Lots of folks talking (and whispering and tweeting and blogging and screaming) about HRevolution and about China Gorman leaving SHRM, and about what these things might mean to the future of this work.

I do not know China Gorman, but some people that I respect think pretty highly of her and I did see her doing a good job of providing a face for SHRM where it did not really have one. It clearly reflects well on her that so many folks are disappointed to see her go, but part of what I hear in this conversation is concern about the role and direction of SHRM.

In the noisy, “pay attention to me” intersection of HR and social media, SHRM is the easiest target in the world for anyone that wants to find a large credible “friend” or a large credible “enemy.” I think that people who are legitimately about moving this work forward know that SHRM is not the problem or the solution, but contains elements of both as it is a reflection of the craft, and not its creator. I like to throw a stone or two at SHRM from time to time myself. It is fun, easy and safe, especially since the people at SHRM have real jobs and are not likely to have the time to pay any attention to me. I also enjoy being invited (and paid) to speak at SHRM events local, regional and national and the interwebs are chock-full of hypocrites like myself.

We love to throw stones at large institutions, but large institutions (SHRM, the auto industry, congress, Big Bacon) are a product of what we did (and what we did not do) yesterday. Stop worrying about what SHRM is doing. Change your organization, tell your story and help someone else change their organization. If you do these things, you will be moving the profession forward in a very real way.

I personally do not have an organization so I am probably just going to lie down. Talking about change wears me out.

And then there is HRevolution. This was kind of hard to miss because the people that were there spent all last week talking about it on Twitter and on their blogs and in their sleep, they talked about it all weekend, and they are still talking about it right now…as far as I can tell, they are really an annoying bunch of self-obsessed, self-promoting jerk offs and I am filled with rage, bitterness and jealousy that I was not able to spend the day with them on Saturday. I am going on record right now saying that I will be at HRevolution 2011 if I have to host it in my garage and provide the play doh myself.

Since I was not there, my perspective on this unconference is probably the most insightful one and you are all welcome for my insightfulness. And my humor. And my good looks. I would also like to take this opportunity to make it clear that this is technically an unpost on an unblog. I do not know what HRevolution was like and obviously cannot speak to its value, but I do know there was a lot of sharp folks there that are very passionate about this work. But in the spirit of evolution (and revolution) there are a few traits that I believe are becoming increasingly important to those wanting to help create the future of this body of work.

Curiosity: I think that we need to ask more question and do a better job of seeking out information from different places. Questions are powerful and can determine the direction of our growth. Are we asking good questions, big open-ended questions? It can be easy to talk about all of the stuff that we do know, but to wonder about the stuff that we do not yet know is different. Are we looking outside of our networks and our profession for new ideas, new archetypes, new models, new language?

Critical Thinking: Social media is a tricky thing because if we are not careful we can use it to just replace the old talking heads with new more hip talking heads with iphones. Are we using our new tools and new connectivity to distribute power? Are we putting more power in the hands of the practitioner? Are we developing greater discernment? HR has been very susceptible to fads, so called “best practices” and shiny new metrics…even those measuring nothing that matters. Are we getting better at making the decisions that are right for our organizations?

Courage: If you want to help create tomorrow you have to be willing to walk out to the very edge of today and that can be a scary place to be. I would imagine that this topic showed up at HRevolution either formally or informally because I know that there were a lot of smart folks there with a lot of knowledge and expertise. And when you know your stuff it eventually becomes a question of courage. Are you willing to tell the truth and help your organization to tell the truth?

Maybe we can dig into these themes a bit more of the next week or two, I know that you will have some interesting perspectives as an internal practitioner.

-joe

Getting Messy in HR

Joe,

You were absolutely right in your last post to call out courage as a critical marker of the progress we are seeing in HR. The courageous are leading the way.

There is one more thing that I'd like to add to this discussion. It occurred to me as I was having an email conversation with a friend of mine about a project we are undertaking together. Here's a snapshot of how the conversation went:

My Friend: "It's good to have you back in the game on this thing."

Me: "It's good to be back in the game. Let's go make a mess and get something started."

My Friend: "I've been a slow learner, but I've come to realize that I need to make more messes. I now know that not everyone is going to like me all the time, and so I need to be willing to get more messy. Plus, what good is amassing this political capital if I'm not going to use it once in a while? It's not worth anything anywhere else."

Progress is messy. Change is messy. Revolutions don't happen in orderly, comfortable ways. Most of the time, we have to let go of the old ways of doing things before the new way emerges. We have no guaranty of success when we start, so we have to put ourselves in a tough position sometimes. Talking about the future, about change, makes people around you uncomfortable and when people get uncomfortable, they begin to resist. I'll say it again, progress is messy.

You know what's not messy?

• Status quo
• Complacency
• Irrelevance

All very orderly and predictable. All very widely embraced by those around us because it allows them to stay in their comfortable existence without interference.

So, this is another reason why an event like HRevolution is so important. It's an "unconference" so it's bound to break many of the rules we've come to expect for conferences. It will allow for conversation and even encourage discourse. It should press us into discussions that feel unsafe and wildly uncomfortable. It's built around creating social capital and furthering ideas, not selling products. It might just make us change our views on things.

It's going to be messy. That might be the best lesson we can learn from this experience. Less order, more chaos. This is HR for the future.

Let's go make a mess.

-Jason

Rally 'round the Family

Jason-

Nice post and good points.

I completely agree and feel that it is important from time to time to remind ourselves and each other why we do this stuff. We poke and prod and stomp and shout because we love this body of work and we love its potential to change the world. If it were not for that love we would not care and we would find something else to stomp and shout about.

I am going to add one more thing to your list...

Courage. I see more and more evidence that there are courageous people stepping up to move our flag forward. I see more and more:

• people that are not willing to wait until someone in charge of something will decide how things are supposed to be done
  
• people that are less interested in what worked yesterday
• people that are less interested in asking for permission
• people that are quite happy to go make stuff up

Case in point, HRevolution 2010

I am not saying that it takes any courage or us to attend or participate in this event, but I do think it takes some courage to make something like this happen. Truth be told, there are about eleventy wazillion of us that have been complaining about the shortcomings of traditional conferences. Almost all of us eleventy wazillion talented complainers did nothing more than complain. A few people actually did something. They decided to try something different.

I think it will prove to be extremely valuable to this profession that there are people now having different kinds of conversations about different kinds of things, and they are doing it online and they are doing it with different kinds of events.

I think that this is significant not only to our profession, but also to business in general. I think that we continue to get evidence that the courage to do what needs to be done is often lacking and that courage just might be showing up in the craft of Human Resources.

See you in Chicago.
-joe

In Defense of HR

Joe,

Since we do work that flies under the heading of "Human Resources," we've always treated HR like family. Because we love our family, we are typically overly critical of them. We want our family to do well, so we dish out the feedback and share ways that our family members can get better. And, like most families, we don't tell those closest to use that we love them enough. That brings me to the reason for my post.

Human Resources, as a profession, is evolving. We started out from a disadvantaged position from our very creation and have been clawing our way to respectability ever since. In many places, HR is still clinging to past at their own expense, but I also see a lot going on within HR that makes me really proud. And, if I was a business school graduate coming into the corporate world today, I don't think you could find a more exciting place to start your career than in HR. Here's why.

1. Self-awareness. We teach leaders all the time that self-awareness is the foundation of leadership. If this is true, then HR should be developing great leadership skills. I don't think that there's another profession out there that spends as much time talking about what it means to be in it's own profession than HR. We know how we are viewed (there's seemingly a new survey punching us in the face with it every week). We know that we need to get better because our business peers don't seem to have any problem telling us when we suck. There's a lot out there about where our gaps are and how we need to get better. And, I think that HR has largely embraced this feedback. What we do with it is the key.
2. Commitment to Development. I am floored every day by how many blogs exist out there that are written by smart HR professionals who are sharing their war stories and lessons learned with the whole world. We spend a lot of time not only talking about our own profession, but also sharing information and taking in information to try and get better at it. This sharing and learning dynamic is closing the HR skill gap quickly.
3. Momentum. While some may argue that HR hasn't changed all that much in the past 20 years, I think they need to take a closer look. In HR, we didn't need a change, we needed a revolution. We need a complete paradigm shift from viewing ourselves as managing the personnel side of the business, to leading the strategy of the organization. A revolution doesn't happen overnight, it's starts with a few courageous visionaries and a groundswell starts from there. There's a lot of evidence that this is taking place within HR. If you peek in on the conversations between HR pros on Twitter, you feel the movement. You also see gatherings like HRevolution beginning to happen where the purpose of the event is to bring those on the fringe together to weave the social fabric required for a revolution (I'm proud to say that we are involved in this event).

We aren't always the nicest when it comes to our HR family. We poke and prod, we challenge, and we criticize. So, today I want to be very clear. HR, we love you. We believe in you. We know that you are up to the enormous challenges we are called to meet. That's why we are so tough on you.

Okay, now let's get off our asses and go make it happen. There's work to do.

-Jason

Empowerment is Overrated

Jason-

“Empower” is increasingly becoming one of those words that tends to make me a little twitchy, but interesting post nonetheless.

I agree that personal responsibility is an important part of this conversation. I subscribe to the framework Kurt Lewin laid out nearly 100 years ago:

B = f(P,E)

Behavior is a function of both the person and the environment.

When we say that we need to “empower” employees I start to twitch because it seems to me that we are saying that the environment is fine or acceptable and employees just need to deal with it and "step up"...and I think that is a fundamentally flawed place to start from. I think that the organizational environment is almost always dysfunctional and that should always be our first obligation.

I think that we almost always overlook this, accepting our organizational environment as the default context. And I think that in HR this underlying belief shows up in our actions and words all the time. For example, you said:

"As we discussed personal accountability of the employee, your comments quickly turned to how the organization bears the responsibility for making it "safe" to confront bad management. That's a bit like choosing not to play a game unless you are certain you will win before you decide to play. There isn't much accountability or responsibility in that equation on the employee's side. The reality is that any environment where it's "safe" to confront bad management probably has pretty decent management already."

I disagree with pretty much every single word in this paragraph.

Choosing not to play a game unless you are certain you will win is actually something very, very different than what I am talking about. I am talking about having some rules in place that apply to all the players. If the game is rigged there is not much point in playing it, and it is bit ridiculous for you to think that you will "empower" me to do so. Choosing not to play the game unless you are certain about the outcome is actually what management (and at times HR) has a tendency to do when they punish or exclude truth-tellers. And when we say that places where it is safe to tell the truth have "pretty decent management" we are setting the bar really, really low for decent management.

The presence of truth-telling is not an indication of good management, it is simply an indication of an organization that actually values the truth and wants to create the opportunity for management to learn and improve.

I think that we should be advocates for personal responsibility for all employees and especially for senior leaders because they have a disproportionate influence on the working environment of others.

I think that if HR is going to break this cycle you are talking about, it is far less about “empowering” employees than it is about getting ridiculous bullshit (see organizational politics, HR policy, bad management, etc.) out of their way so that they can be honest with each other and with their supervisors, so that they can apply some common sense to their work.

-joe