Tag: Talent_Management

WHY I HAVE MENTORS BOTH DEAD AND ALIVE

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Who is your mentor today? Who have your mentors been in the past?  Are they family, community members, business professionals, celebrities, athletes, politicians or historical figures?

I personally have several mentors.  Dead and Alive.  I find that I can draw knowledge and wisdom from my ancestors.  Learning about their struggles, their impacts or their sheer perseverance often helps me ‘fill my watering can’.

Why do I use that metaphor?  Well, because I believe knowledge is the lifeblood that blossoms to new growth and learning.  Either way, what I do know is that I draw strength from inspiring and impactful human beings.  They are my water, sustenance, something that’s developed into more of a need than a want. The needs to be not only inspired, but to give you drive, if I had used a different metaphor, I would say fuel to your fire. When I face difficulties in my life, perspective can be the thing that can remind me of what I have, what I lack, and what I can stand to learn and gain. We’ve all had those days; you know the ones where things are disorganized and chaotic.  Where the organizations don’t have solid design structures, lack clarity with regards to the business and division goals, and more importantly lack transparent leaders who are the embodiment of trust and integrity.  Fluffy words, I know, but often times we get into these projects and get lost in the sea of work, life and chaos.

It’s hard to find clarity in strength. Especially if you have management without experience, lean budgets, and /or egomaniacs. It can be simply unbearable.  Often times I find turning on some music (like if you were at the gym) and find an inspirational work space, alongside mentors, you can muster through.  It isn’t so bad, but if you don’t have people who are experienced or trusted advisors you can look to for ‘strength’ it can be cumbersome. This is why I encourage a myriad of sources.

Family is always good, since most of them love unconditionally.  But often times, they don’t understand your field, so you need to seek out people who understand your work culture or industry.  At the same time, you as a mentee must be willing to listen and probe. Try to better understand your shortcomings, blind spots or more importantly opportunity areas.  I also find a lot of strength in reading biographies of people who have carved or blazed their own trails in their lifetimes.  I’ve noticed, reading and art are strong fuels for my own passion.  For example, as a young woman I was introduced to Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist who overcame several life challenges.  She suffered for many years, but took her suffering and turned it into something she could offer to others, and in turn brought her pride and personal satisfaction.  Since I admire her journey, I enjoy putting up copies of her art to be reminded of her struggle.  It often can trigger me to step back, think through my situation differently or more importantly dig deeper inside myself for new strength and renewal.

The Change Games

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Wearables, real time insights and feedback are here to stay.

It is taking people by storm.  Overwhelming, intrusive, and too much noise I’ve heard from a variety of people regarding this pivot we are all experiencing with the vast integration that technology is having in our day to day lives.

In the US, we are reminded of the familiar concept of competition with March Madness.  Yet we now see these concepts sliding into our crossfit (exercise) class  leaderboards our company  intranets and our personal applications.  I’ve see organizations taking these tournaments to new levels and allowing their divisions to compete against each other for charitable fundraising efforts or hackathons.

What I find ironic is that we have engineers leading technology programs who are great at what they do, but lack in the H2H strategy acumen.  So, why doesn’t HR have a seat at the table?  Why don’t the engineers invite them to the technology implementations?  Perhaps because our HR leaders don’t have the business acumen.  They grew up out of the transactional processing world and don’t have the field experience that allows them to truly understand what it takes to be a strategic business partner.  This is what haunts many great ideas that fall flat.  They lack thoughtful people strategies that look at the extrinsic and intrinsic motivators across these programs, not to mention integration into the diversity and inclusion mission.

My hope is that C Suite leaders hold their People Leaders accountable to embody this behavior themselves.  We ask our People / HR organizations to move from transactional into business partners who are change junkies and realize that the new world order has changed. 

Experienced designer and technologist Kristen Corpolongo stated, “From a creative technologist perspective Lauren brings up an excellent point. Have we begun to reflect on the irony that we are implementing collaborative technologies without engaging collaboration in the process?”  

Perhaps our organizational design structures haven’t evolved in tandem with the times?  Kristen shares that “we want our enterprise social networks to be successful, so we need to make our implementations social from day one, too. In our enterprise Change Games, we need to recognize that business is changing, the skills we need to have are changing, and that the process is more democratized than before. Innovation and creativity are not top-down cycles – they start by opening up to the diversity of thought in our organizations.”

Kristen recommends that “Engineers, designers, managers, and people leaders all belong at the forefront of social initiatives, and they need to look beyond the technology to the human factors that collaborative technology engages. Success in the Change Games begins with trust. Trust builds with consistency. Start with transparency, and coach your people leaders to share knowledge, build relationships, and honor the organic creative process in our enterprises and within themselves.”

Leadership and innovation are changing.  Harvard Business Review bloggers shared a Pixar innovation use case for their collective genius.  Leaders must look in the mirror to reflect on their own approaches while modeling the behavior if they expect their teams to innovate themselves.  So what are they waiting for?  Let the Change Games begin!

Mergers, HR and Social Technologies

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We are heading into another era of M&A activity.  Just look at all the Big Data companies fighting for market share.  For me, feels like Déjà vu from the 1990s and I hear the Pac man chomping up those little fruits, ahem, I mean companies now.

So the question I’m asking myself is, “How many of your People organizations are leveraging the insights from their tools?  How many are taking the talent analytics, performance data and collaboration metrics?”

According to Talent Management Magazine, “Successful companies begin by recognizing that people-related decisions present the most difficult variables in almost any transaction and pose the greatest risks, such as turnover up to 60 percent, or lingering cultural issues that cripple productivity. They beat the odds by carefully managing human capital to transform two groups of people into one functioning company.”

I’ve seen some progressive organizations taking the data from their enterprise systems to help them identify hi potential talent, which is laudable.  Why not take it a step further and allow these same individuals the opportunity to innovate on the merger and acquisition.  It becomes more about mentorship and learning than it is transactional.  Yes, there are financial and transactional tasks that need to be completed, of course.  But with all the human capital work streams and risk, why not invite new thinking to the process versus hiring an external consulting firm for all roles relating to the acquisition?  Fresh approaches can feel risky, but they could also reap big rewards. 

At a minimum, we can find ways to incorporate employees with strong relationships to help request feedback and spread information throughout an organization.