Author: Blog

Lessons in life

Posted on by Blog

When I think about the things that my father taught me, two immediate pieces of wisdom come to mind:

– Never put a cork back in an open bottle

– Life is too short to stuff a mushroom

I’m sure there were others. He probably told me not to go in to hotel management (I listened), not to get married young (I didn’t listen) and not to do drugs or get a tattoo (I’m staying silent on these elements).

That’s the way we roll.

When I think about my approach to organisations, to management and leadership, however, I realise that I’ve maybe taken a little bit more on board over the years. Dad was a leader, a leader of people in some of the hardest circumstances that you can imagine. He ran prisons throughout his career, dealing with the good, the bad and the ugly.

Dad believed in trust. I know, because I heard this time and time again. He believed that people were best when they were trusted and should be trusted until they proved they couldn’t be. Dad believed in fairness, in equity and in transparency. Dad believed in building a workplace that showed respect and in turn earned respect.

My dad was a pretty awesome guy.

When I talk to people about my organisational philosophy, they often tell me that, “it won’t work in larger organisations”, or “it is fine in the creative industry”. I even hear, “that’s fine with professional people, but my staff….”

All of which are, of course, just excuses for inaction and ineptitude. Because dad was doing this years ago and in environments that would make your hair curl. Indeed, when a prison publicly melted down in 1995, they called on my dad.

Dad turns 70 today. We don’t always have a perfect relationship, we don’t always see eye to eye, we argue and say things that we don’t mean. But deep down, I’m starting to realise that so much of what I believe, so much of what I do, so much of who I am is driven by the way in which he ran, led and managed his organisations.

I hope one day to get to the top of my profession, in the way my father did. To be the exemplar, in the way he was. And when I do, I know that so much of everything that I believe is down to the early lessons I learnt as a kid. The beliefs bashed out over the dinner table.

Life IS too short to stuff a mushroom. You should NEVER put a cork back in to an open bottle. And you should lead people with dignity, respect and trust. Those are the lessons that my father taught me.

You can’t ask for more than that as a son.

It’s #mjday

Posted on by Blog

Many bloggers will tell you they write to express themselves. Whilst that might be true, we also like to be read. As a blogger of some years, I’ll admit to the pleasure of a reweet, the joy of a good day on the stats, the pleasure of a string of comments. Of course we write for self expression, but we write in public for reaction and opinion.

As there are too many voices in the social sphere, scrapping for space and time and attention. There are also far too few curators, sharers, linkers. The glue that binds the fractious world of egos and opinions together. The people that give space to new and old voices aside one another.

For me, since I started writing years ago, one person, one Twitter handle has always been there as a supportive voice on my shoulder. Sharing, encouraging, never short of a positive word or a comment. That person is @MJCarty or Michael Carty as he is known to his mum. Michael stands amongst us I n the world of social HR as a pillar of everything that is good and positive, low ego, low attention seeking, but high in giving of time, energy and commitment. His timeline is a “go to” for HR blogs, you’ll find him at HR events connecting with people in person and his addition to the general discussion and frivolity of Twitter is perhaps second to none.

In a strange turn of fate, on the day I saw a number of people unfairly criticising Michael for being selective in his coverage (never a more untrue word has been said) it also turns out it’s his 5th anniversary on Twitter today. So to my friends, my enemies, my supporters and detractors. Those I know, never knew, will know and don’t want to know. I ask you this, join with me in passing our thanks on to a true giant (in personality not stature) amongst us to @MJCarty.

Let’s celebrate. It’s #mjday.

Just because you can

Posted on by Blog

There are many things that this increasingly connected, digital world enables us to do. We have opportunities and possibilities beyond the wildest dreams of our forefathers and seemingly each day the horizon proves to be just a staging point for greater and further exploration.

Society, human interaction and behaviour is changing. No more or less than it has changed in the past, just differently and perhaps more quickly. The things that we accept now, would make our grandparents blush. The things that they accepted would have had the same effect on theirs. It is just the way that the world works, develops and moves on. For better, for worse, for ever.

Increasingly, lives are being lived in a potentially more open way. The fact that I can express these thoughts in public, promote and publicise them through social tools and yet also share the music that I’m listening to, what I’m eating and what I’m doing seems normal to me, but perhaps less so to my parents. My children in turn will share things that will make my toes curl. They probably are. I don’t want to think about that.

As employers, as organisations, we have to constantly readjust to the changes. We have choices about how we harness, use, or ignore the opportunities that this world offers us. We can see, follow, know more about our employees and our future employees than ever before. We can understand how they work, how they socialise, what they do. We can see in to their lives in a way that was previously impossible.

But as employers we need to think incredibly hard before delving in to the private lives of employees, even when they’re presented in public. The increasing societal acceptance of openness isn’t an invitation to blur the boundaries between the professional and the personal. The ease of access to the “private” lives of employees, shouldn’t be mistaken for a willingness to allow employers in to it.

The received wisdom is that employees need to think hard about their social footprints and the impact that this can have on their employability. My belief is that this will change, instead employers will need to think hard about their invasion in to the private lives of employees, no matter how public the private. Do you want to work for an organisation that is willing to spy on the things that you do in your private life? Do you want to be employed by someone who makes judgments on your ability to do a job based on your choice of activities at weekends?

Article 8 of the European Human Convention on Human Rights sets out the right to respect for private and family life. We’ve seen the backlash against “government snooping” as a result of the Snowden leaks. The individual publication of personal information in to public spaces isn’t going to abate or diminish, regardless of whether people are looking for a job or not. Their expectations of how organisations use this information is. And their perceptions of organisations that handle this situation badly will be less than favourable.

At the end of the day, we employ employees to work. We are interested in what they do and deliver in the sphere of the organisation, in their role as paid agents. Before the internet, before the advent of social tools, we wouldn’t send references to the pubs and clubs that were local to a prospective employee, we didn’t send them to the various social groups or political parties that they might have been members of, we sent them to their previous employers and educational establishments. We did so because that was the information that we were interested in, anything else would have seemed perverse and wrong. And funnily enough, despite the ability to do otherwise, it still is.

Just because something is easy, doesn’t make it right.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Back to reality

Posted on by Blog

I am first and foremost an HR practitioner. That is the job that I’m employed to do, that I’ve trained to do and that I’ve fulfilled for the best part of two decades. Every day, every morning I get up and go in to work to practice my profession. The following day I come in and I see the results and the impact. I see it year after year. I was with my last company for nine years, I’ve been with my current company for over five years.

When we get things right, I get to see the results.
When things go wrong, I take responsibility.

That is the responsibility beholden on the practitioner to do what is organisationally sustainable, what is culturally achievable, to fulfill their mandate as an employee and as the temporary guardian of their remit.

As an outsider, you can talk. You can make proclamations. You can enthuse and criticise, propose and deny. You wake up and all that is left of the previous day’s noise are the final echoes reverberating around the empty stadium of your mind. You rarely see the results and never accept the failures.

Innovation, revolution, chaos and new agendas are so much easier when you only have responsibility for your self image.

If I have a wish for 2014, it is for an honest, open conversation, practitioner to practitioner, about how we can make the working lives of our employees better and at the same time improve the performance of our organisations. Without the guff and the noise of those that have no responsibility other than for themselves.

I want to hear about how we might incrementally improve things for real, not rip the rule book up in our dreams.

If you’re a practitioner I’m interested in what you’ve done, where you’ve done it, what you’ve learnt from it and what you would do differently. If you’ve got strong views but no evidence of achievement, my question to you is, why not? Why can’t you demonstrate what you believe? What are you doing to find an organisation where you can work, long term, to deliver that vision?

2014, let’s make it the year that the realists, the pragmatists, the grafters take back the agenda. Let’s make it the year that those who are delivering change, every day, lead the conversation.

Debate is helpful, ideas are good. And even better when they’re focused on delivery and grounded in reality. Let’s make this the year where we move the conversation back there.