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When honesty is not the best policy

There is an UK TV programme called Come Dine With Me.  Over the course of a week 4 people who have never met before cook a meal for each other and the guests score each meal with  £1000 up for grabs for the person with the highest score.  As with all “reality” shows the group of people are picked for entertainment value as well as their ability to cook. Often the “entertainment” comes where there is  some disagreement amongst the participants.

Once, in the introductions one participant said that they were a very “honest” person and that meant that they would have to tell the host if they were not enjoying dinner.

Now it is clear that they are playing a game and they may not be like that in real life but what if they are? Can you think of circumstances where you would tell your host that you were not enjoying their hospitality with the justification for doing that being that you are an “honest” person. Does a guest have an obligation to accept what is offered by the host graciously and if there really is a need to mention something that did not work for you might there be a sensitive and helpful way of ...

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HR and Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration

Morten Hansen Collaboration New HR AgendaI’ve already posted briefly on one session at the Enterprise 2.0 virtual event this week, but want to write even more briefly about another.

This is Morten Hansen’s opening session on collaboration.  I’ve already reviewed Hansen’s book, Collaboration, on Talking HR, so I’m not going to go through his whole presentation.  But there were a couple of additions in this session.  One of these was a discussion on enterprise 2.0 technology which was a glaring omission in the book (leading me to shout out ‘hello! – wiki!!!’ on the show).  And I thought you’d be interested in the other addition which is shown on this slide: the ‘new HR agenda’.

Why?  Well, according to Hansen, there’s going to be a paradigm shift around (disciplined) collaboration – as this is the future of work.

To develop effective collaboration, organisations need to recognise that the motivation barrier is as great as the need to ensure it has the right technological tools.  This isn’t so much about 2.0 as these tools don’t fundamentally address the motivation barrier (duh!).  It’s much more about HR.

So one way of addressing the motivation barrier is through the development of ...

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Getting in Touch With Your Inner Entrepreneur

Why doesn’t everyone take their ideas to market?

Friday evening I sat in a conference room among students at Misericordia University attending the 8th Annual Entrepreneurship Institute. Prof. Jeff Babin, Wharton School, Univ. of Pennsylvania said, “If you ask yourself if you should start a business the answer is no, you are not ready yet”. Entrepreneurs have a compelling burning desire to do what they do and their business happens as a result of the innovation, relationships, energy and vision they have and can’t help.

The fact is the most recent published research from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2008 National Entrepreneurial Assessment for the United States of America reported 8.7% of adults 18-99 years of age were entrepreneurs. Certainly since the study was published, the economic downturn is said to have spurred increased entrepreneurship. But, if less than 1 in 10 owns a business, where does that leave the rest of us?

It leaves us to find what I call our inner entrepreneur.

Does everyone have an inner entrepreneur? How do we know?  Though I personally know many people without one iota of entrepreneurial spirit, many people have ...

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HR101-The Series

Because you asked for it.

HR 101-The Series
This e-book was a result of the generosity provided by the following contributors:

HR 101-The Authors

I thank them for the time, energy, and effort they put into this work. For the readers: feel free to give them the praise they deserve. If you value what they accomplished, please share this work with others!

I also want to thank the readers for their ongoing interest in this work. Your comments, tweets, and other forms of encouragement kept the discussion going. Thank you!


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Cyberslacking and the Psychological Contract

HR departments have been working overtime this last few years to carve out a policy on internet use at work, from zero tolerance to pop ups (reminding the employee how long they had been on line) to blocking certain sites, to setting up cyberslacking space with time-controlled access, etc etc. Employment lawyers have been having a field day too with what you can and can’t do within the employment contract. The essence seems to be that you must have a policy, you must promulgate it fully and it must be clear what the consequences are for being naughty.

The interesting thing for me is what employees do about the policy because there are so many ways of being naughty. But I don’t want to go there, not just now anyway. The answer anyway is that what employees do will lie somewhere between what they think they can get away with and how much in their heart of hearts they believe they owe their employer/their colleagues. Not that different from you and me then, in case any reader was feeling virtuous. It’s the same with duvet (“think I’ll turn over and go back to sleep”) days. How come the number of days in Company A will be much higher than in Company B, ...

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Is your Organisational Culture Sleepy Hollow, Rambo, or Driving Miss Daisy?

What type of culture does your organisation have? If your CEO came from sales, doubtless you’ll say you have a sales culture. If he/she emerged from HR – do HR people get a seat at the top table anymore? – you might give a very different answer – you might even need to go away and think. Fact is though, most people wouldn’t know what their organisation’s culture was. “You mean do they let us play Beethoven while we work, or have a pool table in the back like Google?” Erm, no.

Is your Organisational Culture Driving Miss Daisy? Culture is the way you make sense of your workplace through values, norms, beliefs and expectations; the way you interpret how you fit in, and what’s needed of you to get ahead, and what you can get away with. Some organisations have cultures that emphasise teamwork, security, and respect for individual members (aspects that usually foster loyalty and long-term commitment to the organisation). May not be too dynamic in business terms – we’ll call it Sleepy Hollow.  Others have cultures that emphasise initiative and individual rewards for accomplishing specific objectives (which often foster an entrepreneurial norm whereby employees are not committed to the organisation and the ...

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Want to be a good Leader? Meet Commitments. Build Trust. Say No.

Who do you trust?

Trust-me Probably those who you determine are reliable. So, those who don't keep their promises quickly lose the trust of their friends and colleagues.

Before you commit to a new project or obligation, be sure you can fulfill it. If you really aren't certain, then say so. It's better to simply disappoint someone now than show up empty-handed on the day of your big promise. If, despite your best effort, you think you'll miss a deadline or milestone, then contact the other person and explain what has happened. We've all been in similar situations and again: disappointment is a lot different than "I can' trust you."

5 Ways To Become Reliable

1. Before you agree to a new obligation, check that you have enough time--then keep your promise. 

2. Say "no" to demands that may stretch you past your capacity. This means being honest with yourself, about yourself, first.

3. Be honest and realistic about the scope of work and related deadlines.

4. Quickly alert people when you know there will be a delay.

5. Meet deadlines and create trust.

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Speaking of reliablity: How about a reliable source for those of you who are ...

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What is a curator of digital microcontent? Or, what we can learn from the big stuffed animals at Wal-Mart.

Microlearning as a term reflects the emerging reality of the ever-increasing fragmentation [emphasis mine] of both information sources and information units used for learning, especially in fast-moving areas which see rapid development and a constantly high degree of change. (Langreiter & Bolka, 2006)

I see the micro thing (small units of rapidly changing user-generated content, consumed by others in a short time period) becoming more fragmented especially within some of the sillier websites out there (one of which I’ll share in a moment). Lucky you!

Maybe *you* already see it everywhere. It started coming together for me in early 2009 in the land of the bizarre thing we know as the Internet.

When I contrast the “micro thing” with what we often do with e-learning – create and cover everything- I see a missed opportunity. I mean *really* if I had a nickel for every “intro” section I’ve seen in a course (some my own) I’d have a shitload of nickels.

Let me try to put this “micro thing” together in a way that’s (hopefully) helpful to you but that won’t make me more than a #4 on your #1-10 insanity evaluation scale.

Example: The People of Wal-Mart

The People of ...

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The Future of Computer Use is Not Dominated by Geeks

Mike Monteiro illustrates the shift in computer use from domination by geeks to domination by a much greater number of people who do not consider themselves geeks, and are more inclined to buy a product they can understand than one they can tinker with:

As many others have noted, the release of the iPad might be the cannonball into the consumer device pool the iPhone dipped its toes in. It’s also been referred to as a thing that sits between that iPhone and your laptop. I see it as more of a fork in the road. It’s the thing many people will get INSTEAD of a laptop.

Commenter Koen van Hees noted the high degree of civility in the comments on Mike’s article:

What the? A blog that writes about the most hyped product of all times, an Apple product at that, and all the comments are intelligent and nicely worded.

It’s good to see civilized discourse in the comments. Vitriolic commenting has gotten out of hand, especially in technology-related discussions. Earlier this week, tech website Engadget disabled comments to stem a rising tide of overly negative, attacking, and off-topic comments.


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The Business Lesson in Scott Brown's Facebook Strategy

Management can learn a few lessons why they need to move quickly and adeptly at integrating social media into their everyday communication strategy by reviewing current events.

Just a few weeks ago, little-known Scott Brown beat heavily-favored Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts race for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, held by Democrats for 47 years. While the recession and Obama politics contributed to Brown’s win, they don’t account fully for his meteoric rise to Washington.

Social networking has catapulted word-of-mouth marketing into another strata. Obama got it in the spring of 2008 when he had nearly 93,000 followers on Twitter to Hillary Clinton’s paltry 5,000. Even more telling is the story that comes from how many people Obama and Clinton were following. Obama, 96,000; Clinton, 0. At the time, John McCain barely had a presence on social networking sites. Need I say more about the outcome?

Coakley, like many business executives, must have felt social media was just for kids…or just a fad…or too intrusive. On the Twitter scoreboard, Brown again trounced Coakley — 19,000-plus to 4,000 followers. But this time the story wasn’t about Twitter: 2009 was ...

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Leadership Lessons from the Dog Whisperer

I love to watch Caesar Millan’s “The Dog Whisperer” program on TV. I am a dog lover and currently share an office and home with Edgar the Leadership Pug, who is wise beyond his pug-ness about how to lead his human pack. My husband and I have learned a thing or two from Edgar and Caesar’s show in order to take pack leadership back into our hands, where it belongs.

Caesar’s skill is not only the work he does with the dogs. His true gifts are in teaching the dog’s owners that well behaved canines are really about the owner’s willingness and ability to step up to being a (pack) leader. The lessons he teaches are insightful for any leader.

Note: I don’t intend this post to compare leaders and employees to dogs, but rather to emphasize that the lessons of leadership can be learned in a variety of ways. If you are a dog lover (and maybe even if you aren’t) you can learn a lot from Caesar.

Some of the leadership lessons Caesar teaches us humans:

In order to lead your dog well, you must understand how they want to be treated: Caesar shows that the best trained dogs are treated as – well, a dog would want to be treated if they were part of a pack. As an organizational leader, it ...

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Wired Work: Complexity, the Web and Business

Wirearchy may be a neologism, but I’ve found it to be a most descriptive term for discussing what happens when you connect everyone via electronic networks. To paraphrase Jon Husband:

It is generally accepted that we live and work in an increasingly ‘wired’ world.

There are emerging patterns and dynamics related to interconnected people and interlinked information flows, which are bypassing established traditional structures and services.

This presentation covers my interpretation of wirearchy and is a continuation of my presentation on Net Work: learning to work anew. Once again, it is in MP4 format and runs less than 5 minutes.

Wired Work: complexity, the web and business:

2 way flow

wired work (MP4)


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