performance

We have no future, we have no Somewhere

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One of the joys of being a little bit stupid, is that you constantly learn. Arrogant people bathe in their ignorance. Simple folk, like me, swim in the waters of collective knowledge in an ignorantly blissful haze.

But in this seeming bliss there fall moments where the brain starts to stir, the neural pathways buzz. The moments that really make you think.

I’ve made a career of not doing what everyone else is doing. I’m obstinate. I get it. But I love a good idea.

It’s last Wednesday, I’m in Berlin. I’m in a collective workspace. There is a remarkably un-nervous presenter in front of me. And she introduces me to “Somewhere“.

And my brain starts to buzz.

“Work matters.

Find work that truly matters to you and your life will change. Forget about traditional recruitment and searching for a job. It’s time to find the people you should be working with.”

How about that for a vision?

I’m not here to do a sales pitch for Somewhere. I’m not being paid by them (although I admit they offered to buy me a coffee the next time I’m in Berlin….just for full disclosure). But it seems to me they’re on to something.

People want to work with people that they like. That is maybe more important than the skills that they have.

Because, in a world that is in constant change, where skills become obsolete in the blink of an eye, where yesterday’s giants are tomorrow’s victims. Is there another way to build commercially competitive teams?

Would it be different if we recruited people who cared for what we were doing rather than a traditional skills for currency transaction?

What if we hid our brands and exposed ourself for our values? Would people choose different companies? Different careers?

And where would you go, if you really had a choice?

Nobody wants to be engaged

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I once said that “nothing says past it” more than Human Capital Management.

I was wrong.

Don’t worry, I haven’t suddenly become a HCM groupie.

Far from it…..

I was wrong because NOTHING says past it more than the term “Employee Engagement”.

I recently tweeted that “every time I hear this term another part of me dies“…so you can imagine what writing about it does to me.

But sometimes I just can’t help myself. We all have our crosses to bear.

I have a confession. Never…..absolutely NEVER in my life have I woken up and thought….”I wish I was more engaged”. Moreover, I can guarantee that there is not a single employee within your organisation that has either.

Engagement doesn’t exist. Engagement is the sort of term a consultant would create. And then claim it was measurable and sell it at massively inflated amounts to a profession that was insecure and desperate to find some data to prove that they were both relevant and commercial.

I have no idea where they would find a profession like that. Do you?

Please. Let’s stop.

Let’s grow up.

Let’s be human.

For generations people worked for the same companies. They worked there because the organisations valued them, they treated them well, they gave them security, they gave them incentives to stay. But, they NEVER TALKED ABOUT ENGAGEMENT.

Engagement doesn’t replace a decent pension scheme, engagement doesn’t pay the mortgage on your house, engagement doesn’t provide job security.

Engagement is a term that we create to apologise for using people to generate profit.

We need to stop focussing on vacuous self-created concepts that are completely alien to the vast majority of human beings. We need to start talking about the things that matter to people. Real people.

Call me uncool, call me old-fashioned. Call me naïve.

I’m ok with that.

You aim for engaged employees…..I’ll do what’s right for my people and treat them like valued grown ups.

I think they deserve that.

The poor performer, is you.

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How many times have you heard a HR person tell you, “You can’t reward poor performance”?

You can’t reward poor performance. Of course……

But the thing is, it isn’t their poor performance. It’s yours.

Who recruited the person?

Who promoted the person?

Who trained the person?

Who rewarded the person?

As convenient as it is to say that individual poor performance just “happens”. It doesn’t. Organisations make poor performers. You make poor performers.

If HR is accountable for organisation performance, it is also accountable for individual performance.

Getting rid of poor performers is a quick and convenient way of papering over your organisational incompetence.

Papering over your incompetence.

You can’t reward poor performance? Too right.

How confident are you, that you’re earning what YOU deserve?

Continuous learning is your own competitive advantage

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We’re all looking for that extra something. Those of us in the corporate jungle know, that at one time or another, we will come up against someone else, someone powerful. Head to head, face to face, nose to nose. You get the point.

When you come up against someone, the question that you will ask yourself is, “what is my advantage?” But, by then it will be too late, because by then you will be pushing heavy stuff up a hill against a downhill wind. And that, my friends, is both an uphill struggle and a blow off in one simple sentence.

So the question is, or the question should be, how can I gain that advantage now?

A lot of my free time is spent cooking, I love the challenge of creating dishes that surprise, entertain but also simply nourish people.  I love providing people with things that they really want. That they enjoy.

And you know what? That would be the most amazing way to approach the world of work. What if we strived every day to dish up something to our co-workers that surprised, entertained and nourished them? What if we constantly tried to learn, improve and deliver delight?

How about….

1)    We absorb technique. We read, we learn, we are inquisitive. We look to others for knowledge and understanding.

2)    We experiment unremittingly. We try, we serve, we receive feedback, we improve, we try again. There is never a sense of “that will do”.

3)    We learn from others, unafraid to listen, taste, learn and accept the knowledge of others that may have been there first.

4)    We constantly seek to amaze.

This is all about continuous improvement, about continuous learning, about striving to improve, to excite, to surpass our history.

All of us know that one time or another, we will come up against someone else and at that point, we will have had a couple of choices.

But the most important ones, will already have passed.

If we can be good, be strong, be wild and be focussed on being amazing every day. Well then, the rest, it can work itself out.