Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I hope you have a great day full of family, friends, football, and food.  It’s been a great year and we have a lot to be thankful for.

That is my Dad and my awesome nephew Cayden.  Dad’s shirt says “This is what a cool dad looks like”.  I would have to agree.  If you have ever met him you would agree too.  Given it’s Thanksgiving, and also that it was my father’s birthday in November I thought, hey, I should do a lessons from Dad post.  Boom. Done.  This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for these awesome lessons from my dad.

1. Sleep when you are dead.

My Dad owns this phrase.  A lot of my friends immediately say this when my Dad comes up in conversation.  He would say it whenever he wanted us to go on some crazy trip last minute.  My favorite was in the Summer of 1999.  I was on my summer break from the US Air Force Academy and hanging out in the backyard with friends.  Dad came out and said “I am leaving for Woodstock in 15 minutes, who is coming with me?”  About ten college kids standing around and only two takers.  We drove to Rome, NY and had a great time at Woodstock 99 – Rusted Root, Jewel, Our Lady Peace, Chili Peppers.  Loads of great bands and good times on less than an hour notice.  Lessons here are endless – Be spontaneous.  Life your life.  Have fun.  Don’t wait until tomorrow to do something you could do today.

2. Show Up; 2a. Do what you said you would do

Half of the battle is showing up.  Commit to attending an event and thinking about blowing it off?  Don’t.  Have a little too much fun and thinking about calling in sick?  Don’t.  My dad taught me that it was important to be reliable.  If you say you are going to do something – Do it.  This is obviously important in both your personal and your professional life.  If you consistently show up and do what you commit to… if you are reliable… you put yourself in the position to be a go-to friend, or the go-to resource in the workplace, and that is gold.  So show up.  And Do what you said you would do.  Every time.

3. Behind every great project manager is at least one exceptional technical resource who they have not pissed off yet.

My Dad is a problem solver.  He’s a technologist at heart that fixes tough technical problems.  I am a project manager slash business development type.  I know enough to know when there is a problem, but I usually have to convince someone else to fix it (hey, that is harder than it sounds!).  Dad ribs me quite a bit on this point -  “I want to DO the work”.  “I fix things.  You just plan things.”  While  knowing your role, learning the art of escalation, and managing scope are all important, I learned perhaps the number one rule of thumb for any successful PM from my father before I was even a PM: Behind every great project manager (or business sponsor for that matter), is at least one exceptional technology resource who they have not pissed off yet.  Take it to the bank.  You lose your tech team, you’re done.

This list could be way longer, like be nice to your mom (and make sure everyone else is too).  I also know by now that he brought me into this world, and that he can take me out of it, and that even though he taught me everything I know, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.  I’m looking forward to learning the rest of it, because I have a Dad that I like to hang out with. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful For… Lessons From Dad is a post from: HR Think Tank

In August, I was pumped to be starting on a challenging project at a new client.  I had met the team, and was content with the fact that I was faced with a few long days of ramp up.  I had all of the documents laid out on my desk and only one thing was missing – my standard afternoon Diet Coke.  So I strolled into the break room, and BAM.  It hit me.  There it was, like a shining beacon of despair.  The PEPSI machine.

I think Coke takes better, and I’m not alone.  Yet Pepsi and Coke alike have blasted us with their blind taste test campaigns to try to turn their non-believers.  I’m not buying it.  What I am buying, is the notion of Brand Imagery, supported scientifically, that when study participants are aware of the brand before they drink, three quarters of the participants chose Coke over Pepsi.

American Cancer Society VP Andy Goldsmith gives you more detail in his article Coke vs. Pepsi: The Taste Test They Don’t Want You to Know About. Goldmith highlights studies that suggest that there is such a thing as Brand Imagery:

The brain studies suggest that Coke’s iconic brand and arguably stronger cultural connection may in fact make a difference in preference. And that preference is linked not just to taste (hello, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) but also memory-related brain regions that are related to cultural influences.

At the most basic level, this means that your company, and your product, are not evaluated on quality alone.  It means that your sales process has to appeal to both rationally and emotionally to your target customers.   This example focuses on the Coke vs. Pepsi debate, but the phenomenon certainly transcends consumer goods.  Technology vendors and consulting firms need to be aware that there is an emotional response to their brand that affects their ability to penetrate new accounts and grow their business.

You may be a handshake company that doesn’t need marketing or fancy brand strategists.  I won’t disagree… that type of overhead isn’t a fit for all organizations.  But there is no denying that there are no companies that are isolated from science and human psychology.  If your sales are lacking or you are having trouble convincing new clients to invest in your product or services, your lack of focus on brand positioning may pose an improvement opportunity for your company.

Now can someone get me a Coke please?  This Pepsi vending machine has got to go…

Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand Image is a post from: HR Think Tank

Steve Jobs of Apple used this image to explain their approach to product development, saying:

We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users – the users don’t have to come to them, they come to the user.

Yesterday I was following the analyst updates from #workdaytech, primarily updates from Naomi Bloom and Jason Averbook, and it became apparent that the market leaders in the enterprise software space will be the ones who have a defined roadmap that allow them to compete, figure out social integration (i.e. conversational transactions, micro-blogging, social ‘tool’ integration, etc), and most importantly are able to articulate the benefits of their product to both IT AND business sponsors.  In Workday’s case, this means selling the advantages of true-SaaS/multi-tenancy, and it’s ability to deliver significant cost-savings due to more efficient delivery of their software, not to mention being able to drastically reduce implementation timelines and simplify future upgrade planning.

That isn’t rocket science right?  To sell enterprise software you must appeal to buyers with different agendas and priorities, in this case IT users whose concerns are around infrastructure costs, data security, authentication, and a slew of other technical areas to the HR user, who cares most about usability, employee experience, and being able to intuitively perform transactions in the system to manage human capital processes for the organization.  But the question remains – are we training and preparing the workforce for today’s word of blended technology and business responsibilities?  Are they prepared to operate in the gray area of defining application security around business processes, configuring applications to meet business priorities, and understanding of often-complex IT and business hand-offs to manage the applications supporting the enterprise?

I would argue that today’s marketplace demands professionals on both sides of the fence that understand their counterparts to a greater degree than ever before.  Authors have preached about the differences between IT and Business professionals in books like The Geek Gap and Leading Geeks.  Today, HR professionals, you are amongst the ‘geek ranks’.  The successful HR professional sits at the intersection of technology and business, and understands how they compliment each other to turn human capital management into a competitive advantage, instead of a cost center.  The successful HR professional doesn’t code or manage environments, but they understand how to leverage data within the HRMS to generate information that ultimately affects compensation programs, retention, talent acquisition, and other critical areas of HR.  Similarly, the IT professional supporting HR needs to understand the business.  They need to talk the language, and understand what drives projects, business requirements, and application configuration decisions.

Today, the intersection of technology and business is a crowded one with blurred center lines.  It’s the dangerous intersection with the flashing yellow lights.  The most prepared to learn and adapt will survive, and excel.  Those who prefer to stick to a narrow view of their job responsibilities might as well pull over and get out of the way.

Thoughts from the Intersection of Technology and Business is a post from: HR Think Tank

The power of social media is not rocket science – it provides a channel to increase connections and enhance communications by exponentially expanding your reach.  What you do with those connections and your now boundary-less network is up to you – no tool will convince people to buy your services, be your friend, or connect you or your company to clients, consumers, or partners.

However, I believe that if you focus on engaging your community, listening, and adding value where possible, you will find that social media will open doors that you didn’t even know were there before.

My new charity website, cyclingagainstcancer.com, launched yesterday, and it would have never happened the way it did without my community that I have built through my social media presence.  It went a little something like this…

In November 2009, I was reading more and more about the power of Twitter.  I started to think that I was missing a big opportunity to engage with thought leaders in my industry, as well as potential clients and business partners.  I quickly discovered that I was right.  I had already known that my strategy was also to develop a blog – that I had ideas and discussion that wouldn’t fit in 140-character tweets – and conceptually I had developed the idea of HR Think Tank.  Problem is, I knew nothing about developing a blog.  I didn’t know what WordPress was.  Or the Thesis theme, Google XML Sitemaps, or Feedburner.  Enter Michael Long.  Despite the fact that we barely knew each other, Michael stepped up and got me going.  This site wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Michael, and he was in on the call talking conceptually about cyclingagainstcancer.com as well.  He’s a great guy, and there’s a reason he has 17,000+ followers on Twitter – he’s smart, adds value, and he’ll help you out when you need it.

Right around that same time, I attended the #socialrecruiting summit in New York City.  When I committed to increasing my social media footprint, I promised myself I wouldn’t just engage online – where appropriate, I would take the opportunity to meet in person.  That, combined with SEI investigating an increased business presence (both recruiting and otherwise) on various social media platforms, brought me to the Social Recruiting Summit.  It was there that I first started talking to Laurie Ruettimann and Sarah White.  Both are respected thought leaders in the HR and recruitment space, and I am glad I know them.  Increased awareness of both this blog, and of cyclingagainstcancer.com can be attributed to Laurie, who featured me on her Sunday HR Shout Out, and Sarah has continuously gone above and beyond, with one of the many things being the purchase and subsequent donation of a design day from the idesignyourlogo.com team for our logo design.  Speaking of idesignyourlogo.com, they are some great guys – not only do they design some amazing logos, but they also raised money for my PMC, effectively donating over 7 times the cost of the logo in the first place.

With the logo in hand, cyclingagainstcancer.com started to become a reality.  It was then that Veronica Ludwig stepped up huge.  Like with Michael, I had hardly engaged Veronica before she offered to help with design and hosting of the new site.  Lucky for me, she is a great person with a soft-spot for philanthropic efforts and social media.  When Veronica got busy, I turned to Matt Chevy, who blogs over at Life Without Pants, to put my mental concept of the site into a design.  Matt was flexible with our partnership, and was a truly engaging consultant.  His portfolio of work is impressive, and I am happy that I chose him to put my thoughts online to help build the cyclingagainstcancer.com community.

Last but not least, there’s Meghan M. Biro.  I think every one of my readers knows Meghan.  It’s hard not to – she’s engaging, personable, and the founder of TalentCulture, a social community focused on building a culture of innovation, awareness, creativity, and understanding.  That’s what we’re trying to do as well, but around the PMC and cancer advocacy.  Despite being spread thin across a number of other commitments, Meghan stepped up as our first corporate sponsor for cyclingagainstcancer.  It’s very much appreciated.

I’m sure I forgot a host of others, and I am positive there will be many more to add to this list.  Being successful in social media and in business is about the give, more than the take, and as I read back through this post and think about the last 6 months, I find it hard to believe that I have given back half of what I have received from this great community.  I’ll keep trying, and together, we will keep on moving the ball forward.  Thanks for your continued support, and please know that you will always have mine!

Leveraging Social Media Where It Counts: Charity is a post from: HR Think Tank

Over two hundred years ago, a bunch of really smart guys in bad wigs drafted and eventually adopted a Bill of Rights to limit the power of federal government and ensure the protection of what they saw as fundamental liberties of the people.  The freedom of speech became the First Amendment, adopted on December 15, 1791.

To the Founding Fathers, I raise a glass.  Freedom of speech is a great thing.  I’m also a huge fan of the Second Amendment (right to bear arms) in case I eventually have a daughter.  But anyway, I digress…

I am also a huge Dilbert fan.  I like it for the same reason that I think the office is a great show, and similar to why I have Office Space in my DVD collection: I find all three to be really funny because there is a shred of truth in their skits and jokes, and that makes it relevant.  At some point in our careers, there are things about our jobs that really suck.  Sometimes those things are bosses or coworkers.  Maybe it’s a particularly difficult clients, or an annoying policy.  Some of these people and things will be borderline ridiculous, to the point of being funny (like when in my first job my boss asked me to write down on his white board the three things I found to be most annoying about him.  Not a good situation to be in during your first review, or ever).

In any case, you know what isn’t funny? Getting fired. Especially for saying something stupid, including disclosing company sensitive information, on your blog, Facebook, or anywhere else that is public and readily available to your employer.  Say it with me: My employer is monitoring social media.  My employer is monitoring social media. My employer…. you get the point.

In August 2009, Proofpoint released a study that found 18 percent of the companies surveyed had investigated a data loss event via a blog or message board in the past 12 months.  17 percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies and nearly 9 percent reported terminations related to those activities.  The study also found that there was almost a 50 percent increase in exposure incidents over social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn (17 percent compared to 12 percent in 2008), and eight percent reported terminating an employee for these violations.

There’s a new market out there for companies like Teneros, who is developing software-as-a-service products that automate the process of examining employee activity on social networking sites.  Don’t believe me?  Check out this article on Network World.  As social media continues to explode, companies are becoming more and more keen on keeping their finger on the pulse… listening to the conversation so that they can be quicker to react and proactively impact consumer and employee satisfaction in a positive way.  Your company’s customer feedback is out there, and so is your griping and complaining about the boss who takes credit for your work and pawns it off as his own or your comments about how your company’s vacation plan sucks so you just call in sick whenever you want.  In college?  You are at risk as well.  As you graduate and join the large pool of job seekers potential employers will be ‘Googling’ you, reading your tweets, and checking out your keg-stand pictures online.

So the next time your boss asks you if you are using your proper TPS reports just take your medicine and don’t start ranting on Twitter.  You may have freedom of speech, but you are likely employed ‘at will’….well, used to be employed.

Be Careful, Thomas Jefferson Isn’t Signing Your Paycheck is a post from: HR Think Tank

Nearly every time I tell my friends, family, and even coworkers that I’m on Twitter the SAME thing happens: They look at me like I just told them that I secretly play Dungeons and Dragons in my basement.  Or Farmville.  Or maybe that I run a secret Star Trek book club on the weekends.

Let’s be real – Social Media brings the geek out (see my post on it) But after only being on Twitter since December – I’ve tweeted 1,416, gained 662 followers, and been recognized on 55+ lists – and I’ve become a believer in the impact that it can have professionally.

In addition to all the geekyness and noise – we are talking about an extremely powerful tool that is growing at an incredible rate.  On the twitter blog this month @kevinweil (Analytics Lead at Twitter) detailed the growth using the metric of Tweets per Day: “Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.”

Friends, family, coworkers – let me tell you that is either a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, serious fake farmers, and a massive Klingon population- or, alternatively, we could be on to something here…

To be honest, I question why most of the same people giving me a hard time about being on Twitter aren’t driving themselves crazy thinking about what they are missing… about the potential opportunity cost of not being connected to people and companies that they otherwise may never have a relationship with.  Think about this for a second – Are you in a job that sells services?  Is your style the “consultative” sales approach?  Do you have a medium to long sales cycles?  Yes, Yes, & Yes and you are STILL not on Twitter?  Beware – you are missing potential opportunities!  Chris Brogan gives you the answer in his book, Trust Agents – page 165 – Twitter is a big time enabler by allowing you to Be In the Relationship Before the Sale.

Still not convinced?  Check out Amber Naslund‘s recent post on how she made $100K with Twitter.  It’s the same idea – Twitter enabled Amber to get connected to people in industries that interested her, and in turn it provided a network of potential clients that she would have otherwise never met.  She talked “about everything from work to cooking to horseback riding to beer and cars and pets and books.”  She was in the relationship before the sale.

So I am diving in – building community, learning, sharing information, and developing relationships.  I’m making friends.  I am not even thinking about sales, but I know that when the time comes and someone needs a good project manager or HR consultant, maybe they’ll think of me and give me an opportunity.  And you?  Well, you might be working the phone or hanging out at the oh-so-predictable business mixer with a stack of business cards.  Or you can join me, try it out – build a network – cultivate leads and watch relationships grow.  Then the next time that someone questions you about twitter you can proudly say – That’s right I tweet…. and you should too!

That’s Right I Tweet… And You Should Too! is a post from: HR Think Tank

I love making lists.  I’m OCD like that – to-do lists, music play-lists, best-of-whatever lists, lists about things that suck that should stay in 2009, and yes, Christmas lists (notice the obvious omission of grocery lists – that’s one list I don’t do!).  This year is no different, and I have my business Christmas list here ready to share!  It’s Christmas Eve – I have a bad sweater on, spiked eggnog in hand, and am hoping that Santa brings me these things in the business world for 2010:

1. Better Demos from Vendors – Seriously.  I spent a great deal of 2009 in software demos on behalf of my clients, most of which completely missed the mark. It’s not that hard: show up on time, connect, demo to the clients needs, be cognizant of your audience (and especially your buyer!) and PLEASE don’t start talking about shortcomings in this release that are fixed in the x.xx release that is going GA in 9 months from now.  Capiche?  Michael Krupa shared similar sentiment in his blog post Psst Vendors – Some Software Demo Tips For You.

2. Transparency in Corporate Communications – The economy is taking a nose-dive.  Lay-offs are coming.  You (HR leadership/Management) think it’s a big secret, but everyone else knows it’s coming, and guess what – they are talking about it!  I saw this a lot in 2009 – companies unable to come out with some true candor in their communications around staff reductions.  The rumor mill becomes reality, and your best employees might just get scared and jump ship.  In 2010, there will likely be more opportunities for them to do just that, which brings me to my next point…

3. Employee Engagement Initiatives - Companies need to continue to find both ways to be competitive, and ways to retain top talent.  Strategically investing in improving (and effectively measuring) employee engagement can help you with both.  The problem?  This is hard to do, and it’s hard to measure.  Lance hits on this on his blog Rehaul with his post My Christmas Wish: Employee Engagement.  I’m with Lance on this, let’s get this on the agenda for 2010.

4. More focus on Adoption for Technology Projects – Project managers and Business Sponsors are defining user adoption too narrowly.  Most projects are at least trying to manage adoption for their true end-user.  The neglected aspect, in my experience, seems to be managing a wider view of stakeholder adoption within the organization.  I have seen A TON of this in 2009.  HRIS upgrade goes live – we throw a big party – Employees and Managers know what’s coming for ESS/MSS, and global operations teams trained on all of the changes to run operations, but my new data model smacks finance in the mouth and breaks their executive reporting.  It also breaks Comp’s total comp process because all of their files leveraged bank titles, job codes, and the organization hierarchy, which has all changed – their expectations haven’t been managed on the changes and they are involved far too late.  Massive #FAIL.  In 2010, lets see Project Managers and Business Sponsors manage all stakeholders – and make sure your definition of “user” is wide enough to cover the employee, manager, administrators, and anyone who depends on that data downstream.

5. Accountability – 2009 was a bit of a mess in this area wouldn’t ya say?  Economic meltdown.  Bear Stearns – gone.  Lehman Bros – gone.  American Home Mortgage – gone.  AIG – should have been gone but was saved by taxpayers.  Executive compensation was never discussed with such furor.  People wanted accountability for greed and corruption on Wall Street, and for the much slimmer 401K’s and new retirement time lines.  In 2010, standards have to be higher.  We need to hold companies, and individuals accountable.

What things do you want “under your tree”?  Comment it up!  Let’s get this party started early!

Dear Santa… is a post from: HR Think Tank