Writer’s Block, Business Books and Hemingway

I am in writing avoidance mode.  Several people have griped that I have not posted for a week, but the problem is deeper than that.  Should I finish Chapter 5 or paint the garage?  No contest.  Get out the bucket and brush, set aside the keyboard.

Feeling guilty as I put a coat of paint on the wall, I decided that, rather than get depressed or defensive, I should turn to the masters, and read some good writing.  Hemingway.  The king of the run-on sentence.

So, I was already grumpy when I flipped open my copy of his articles for magazines in the ’30s.  I started reading and realized very quickly just how sterile and lifeless my writing is compared to his.  He opens one article with a description of how he got shot.  Another is a first person diary of being in Pamplona for the Fiesta de San Fermin.  Another is a powerful story about Key West.

How does this make me feel?  Inspired?  No, REALLY depressed.  My first reaction is to scrap what I have done and rewrite my business “how to” book into the next great American novel.  Romance.  Intrigue.  Sweeping vistas.  Maybe even a scene in Havana or Cuzco.  Something exotic.  What do I have now?  Quotes from Indianapolis and Crawfordsville.  Charts about demographics.  Trend lines and future threats.

I am tempted to change my style.  I spend a couple of weeks a year in Key West, and occasionally have a gin in the bar that Hemingway frequented.  Photo attached of the spot.

I realize that what I am writing has a completely different audience.  Chief Financial Officers and CEOs and Human Resources types.  Not exactly the audience that Hemingway had.  He had literate readers who appreciated a finely turned sentence, and I’m facing an audience that hopes for concise  sentences with bullet points.  He had people with long attention spans, and I have Blackberry savants.

So, what have I learned?  I now know that it is tough to write if you have a short attention span.  Perhaps that qualifies me to write for the audience that are my peers, my fellow poster children of ADHD.

And I have learned to not read Hemingway for inspiration while writing a business book.  Stick to the classics.  Peter Drucker.  Malcom Gladwell.  And stay away from Gin.

Must get back to writing.  My garage looks nice, tho….

A view from CFOs – a surprising end to a card game

I played cards with a table of CFOs recently. I learned a lot.

 

Coffee, cards and secret codes

 

 

The cards were a part of an exercise of the CFO Roundtable, a monthly gathering of CFOs that I co-facilitate with Bruce Kidd.  An interesting view from the financial side of the table.

We were at WalkerInformation, playing their Face Value card game, a business decision simulator.  I learned two things.

1 – When you think you have won you may be losing.

2 -  CFOs keep score in different ways.

The game did a good job of simulating the real world.  You revealing a changing set of criteria.  You would draw cards with symbols that represented customers for your business, and make “keep or hold” decisions based on what you thought you knew.  Sort of a business poker with theoretical customers.  With each round more data was revealed, and the decisions made in past rounds was called into question.  Just like real life.

By the end of the game, I was feeling smug.  I knew that I had the winning hand for my table.  I was showing my braniac financial powers.  This was good.  I had gathered a hand full of ersatz clients that all were loyal and highly profitable.   Good stuff.  Then, the facilitator asked that the table vote on the hand that they would want for the future.

What?  I had played to have a hand for the present.  Profitable.  Productive.  The rules had just changed again.  %@%$@!

The table voted, and I knew I had lost.  The CFOs clearly saw that another’s hand had more growth potential.  Mine was a mature set of customers, filled with current productivity but no room for growth.  Another CFO held cards indicating  small payback this year, but had potential to be be a big payback in the future.  I pretended that I knew that all along, but I was mad.   Mad at myself for being so one-dimensional, and mad at the game for clarifying my error.

 

The CFOs hold all the cards

So, I learned a lesson.  We have hunkered down and gone into defensive “protect business” mode, yet now is the time to start moving into growth mode.  I have heard that the economy is done contracting.  We need to start taking risks again, and selecting customers that will grow, not just be stable.

All of our human capital decisions need to align with the strategy.  We need to be hiring high performers and paying them well.

And that will be a competitive advantage, and will make the CFOs happy….

 

 

Working on your employment brand? So is our country….

We’re number one!

Of course, with marketing it is tough to get numbers and metrics that you can trust.  But, we’re number one!

Specifically, a global tracking survey on perceptions of national global image is in.  The 2009 Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, which measures the global image of 50 countries, show the United States taking the top spot.

From the survey -

“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States in 2009,” explains Simon Anholt, NBI founder and an independent advisor to over a dozen national governments around the world. “Despite recent economic turmoil, the U.S. actually gained significant ground. The results suggest that the new U.S. administration has been well received abroad and the American electorate’s decision to vote in President Obama has given the United States the status of the world’s most admired country.”

Read all about it here – Click to read the story.

Now it’s getting interesting – Compensation is big. Who knew?

Wow.   Pay for performance policy?  Restricting the pay of big shots?  Is there an Easter Bunny?

In the 2 years I worked inside a nation compensation and benefits consulting firm, I never thought that compensation policy was interesting.  Right up there with watching paint dry.  I thought that accountants with big brains set some secret algorithm and the magic box would just whir and paychecks would emerge.  At least that was my impression.

Now, compensation is big.  Really big.

It all comes down to $$$

Proof came in several forms.  Over the weekend, did you see the protests at the Chicago American Bankers Association conference?  If not, check out the link here.  Democracy can be messy, but it works, mostly.

On the Washington front, pundits are saying that one of the biggest things that Obama has done so far is step in and cap the compensation of the larger TARP-related banks.  But it isn’t simple.  One critic of the plan said the news of the decision may undermine a program that Obama traveled to Landover, Md., to announce on the same day. Obama went to the headquarters of a small company to tout his proposal to let small banks into the TARP program, as a part of the effort to get small business lending going again.

Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America who attended the event with Obama, says the pay master’s decision could doom the idea, as community bankers will be loath to take TARP funds if they think Feinberg will set their pay.

Want a good article on the subject?  Here tiz.

So, what does this mean?  It means that awareness about what people are paid for the work that they do is back on the front burner, and that is probably a good thing.  It also means that compensation theory experts are going to have their moment in the sun.  Whee.

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to “The New Normal”

Sip your coffee and look out the window, if you have one.  The sun that just came up is shining on a “New Normal” world.  The Dow Jones is up, the economists are squawking that the recession is starting to pass, and I’m still cranky.

I took this on Main Street in Carmel...

What if the recession passes but everyone who is out of work stays that way?  I am being asked to help write a lot of resumes these days for “a friend of a friend” and I’m getting a window into a tough job market.  My gut tells me that the rehiring that is starting to happen is not going to re-hire many of the folks that are out, and the expansion that is underway is going to find lots of “Lean” ways to stay at “lean levels”.  Productivity is up and will stay up, and new growth may come from an outsourced workforce.

I just read a good bog post on the subject – here is the link

A lot of the stimulus $$$ went to pay the bills for the unsustainable world we were living in.  Now that we’re re-set at 80% of our former economy, we have to get used to a lower standard of living…and along with that comes a lower employment level.

What to do?  Simply put, now is the time for HR to play a big role in the design and operation of the new organization.  Now is the decade of HR – the folks in finance need low risk and high return, operation needs flexibility and creativity, and the workplace needs leadership.

Now is the time for HR to step up with new tools to be a competitive advantage.  Start using new methods, and leave the ones that got us here in the closet.

Because the sun just came up in a “New Normal” world.  Happy Tuesday.

November will be special – heads up!

I’m doing assessment work, and am studying superstition.

Fact – If a month starts with Sunday the 1st, it WILL have a Friday the 13th.  November is just such a month.

On a cold and grey Friday, I thought you might enjoy…everyone seems cranky.

Everyone is getting cranky...

This smells interesting. Can we turn this into an assessment for hiring with Emotional Intelligence?

Smell this.

Wuff?

I am always looking for predictors of behavior.  I work with organizations on how to find and keep high performng people, and I’m always fighting  the use of wacky “parlor games”.  I always go for the scientific, normed assessment.

I am working on applying Emotional Intelligence, and found a new wrinkle.  It could be a link with scientific evidence, involving smell (yes, smell) and the ability to read the emotional state of others.  Or it could be nothing.

Check out this study I just found - click here.

The headline - “People with sharper senses of smell really have a nose for relating to others’ emotions, new research suggests.” from an article that will appear in an upcoming edition of  Psychological Science.

Your thoughts?  Valid or a parlor game?  A possible valid assessment for one of the components of Emotional Intelligence?  Make application forms with a scratch ‘n sniff question?

Hmm.

Smells like teen angst.

News flash – Obama wins Nobel, Health Insurance Reform will pass.

I’m in Washington, meeting with SHRM and some other Associations.  It’s like being at ground zero for the last day.

Yesterday I met with Mike Pence (R-IN), and saw Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about the chances for health care.  As I got up this morning, the Nobel News was hitting.

Here is my prediction – health insurance reform will be passed by mid-2010.  It may not include a full public option, but there will be major changes in how we handle the un-insured.  The Congressional Accounting Office’s projections show a cost savings over time, and the leadership of the Democratic party is threatening party moderates that if they vote against health insurance reform they will lose their chairmanship of any committee they are on.  This is big.

Lots of new ideas will spin out of this.  More details to come – I’m off to catch the metro to get to SHRM.

Some pictures from yesterday -

Congressmen have very nice offices - I was left unguarded in Mike Pence's office so I made myself comfortable

Some meetings and tour of the capitol -

Waiting for the politicians

We waited for the House to adjourn.

Met with Pence, Pelosi stopped by

She was pleasant but noncommital

A staff worker makes a deposit of political capital.

In the shadows of the capitol…more details to follow.  Off to SHRM.  This town is buzzing on the news of the Nobel Prize.

News Flash – The National Press Club has endorsed a product

The National Press Club clearly endorses drinking.

I’m in Washington for a few days.  Some association meetings about keynote speeches next month.

Across from the white house is the National Press Club, the “mother ship” for professional journalists.  I have been fortunate to attend some great briefings there.

I never noticed that the retail space was not taken up with an office supply store or business clothing or whatever, but instead is occupied by the only booze shop for blocks.

Maybe the newspaper business is recognizing the state they are in, and endorsing a coping mechanism.

That is not a Diet Coke in my hand.

…and the shift in the workforce begins. Now.

Wow.  I have been predicting for some time now that the workplace will change in surprising ways, and evidence is showing up to support it.  Fresh evidence begins in a recent news story…but the real story is in the comments that have been posted in response to the journalism.

This is important.  Close your door (if you have one) and read this story, then read 20 or 30 random comments that are attached to it.  Just ignore the political hacks that are fighting in the comments section of every forum – look for the comments from people in the workforce.  Start with this link and read backwards for a while until you get the picture.

Yikes.  There appears to be  a real frustration building in the workforce, and your organization can either benefit from it by understanding this energy and harnessing it, or you can ignore it and possibly get hurt.  This is where our economy will benefit from a rethinking of what we call “work” and how it is done.  This is where HR becomes far more important than just being administrators and cops.  This is where we can make a real difference.

What to do?  Learn and engage your critical thinking skills.  Use this blog to share the news from the front.  I’ve found some people that might have ideas – in the coming days I will share some interview and content that I am using in my book.

We have to stay a step ahead…

People that "get it" - Chuck Gillespie and Chris Woolard