Auditorio Nacional needs better HR

Last weekend my friend and I went to Auditorio Nacional in Madrid to see the Best of Broadway with the National Choir and Orchestra of Spain. That was my first time at the Auditorio and obviously I was very excited. The building smelled of the 80s and the decor was following suit, but that´s a side thought.

The program included some of my favorite pieces, such as Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Night and Day, I Could Have Danced All Night, Stars, etc. Naturally, my spirits and expectations were high and, unfortunately, not supported by harder spirits, pardon the pun. The soloists were great, no doubt about that. Jennifer Larmore, for instance, is a world'renowned mezzo-soprano, singing the closing song at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. However, when she was doing I Feel Pretty, I was not feeling pretty at all. I mean, I enjoyed her voice and the performance, but something was missing. I realized later what exactly. Maria is a young girl, innocent of life and plentiful of hopes. When you give that part to an opera diva, the result is not pretty.

It happens a lot: the square peg and the round hole problem. More often than you think. Great people get hired for jobs, which are not suitable for them. The philosophy is like with arranged marriages: it's gonna work. Well, it does not. It's better to have an average candidate for a suitable job that a top performer for the same job, but in which he does not fit. Normally, those employees leave maximum after a year.

Here's the rub: when you see talent, you should grab it, but what should you do if there is no suitable role for that person? We are running into the mandate to hire problem, when a recruiter is given the authority to hire a high-potential candidate on the spot or within a very short period of time like three days, but how do we approach the headache of the business HR, who now needs to stick that brilliant candidate somewhere? The jury is still out on this one...

Avoid stress!

A highly moralistic story, serving us as a reminder that excessive stress is detrimental to our health ;)
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One day a man was sitting in his office on the 19th floor of a building.

A man came running into his office and shouted, "John, your daughter, Anna just died in an accident right opposite this building"

The gentleman was in panic. Not knowing what to do, he jumped out through his office window.

While coming down, when he was near the 14th floor he remembered he didn't have a daughter named Anna.

When he was near the 7th floor, he remembered he was not married yet.

When he was about to hit the ground he remembered he was not John.

AVOID STRESS!!!!!

Dare!

A few days ago someone asked me what coaching was about. I gave an explanation through the hackneyed metaphor of the mirror that we as coaches are holding in front of the coachee, which is true and highly accurate. One aspect that it is lacking is the courage it takes to look into the mirror and face your fears.

This video is an EXCELLENT demonstration of the powerful effect coaching can have on your self-growth and motivation:

The Little Prince in the Business Context

I am not going senile or in any other way melodramatic. There is a reason why I want to talk about one of the greatest children's books of all times (the greatest is Alice in Wonderland, of course) and not merely point out the merits of this literary work, but also link its ideas to the context or present-day organizations and every-day lives.

The Little Prince used to be a book I truly loved as a kid, but I guess I did not understand it fully then. A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine brought me a collector's edition as a present and I duly read it once again. As I was reading, I saw the new possible interpretations, the deeper meaning of the metaphors, characters and words. Well, this is not Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky: the imagery and symbolism of The Little Prince are easier to grasp, and maybe this is what makes the book attractive to so many people.

I am going to give you five quotes from The Little Prince and some thoughts of mine how those phrases can be interpreted in an organizational context:

1. "Beware of baobabs": as you remember, el Principito (how they call him in Spanish) took great care of pulling out the weeds on his planet. If you don't tackle them when they are young, innocent-looking and fragile, they will soon grow into mighty baobabs and will destroy your little planet with their roots. Deviant behaviors in a company may as well crystallize into mentality sets and get entrenched in the company culture. Make sure you recognize them from the good "plants" and pull those out as early as possible.
2. "Grown-ups like numbers": yes, the bottom-line is important, but it is not the only thing that matters. Look beyond numbers and you will see the intangible elements of the business: sometimes it is better to give up some part of the profits to gain something else instead.
3. "The most important things are invisible to the eyes": have you even seen "culture"? Or maybe "motivation"? How do you convince the Board of Directors that investments into the employee satisfaction, morale and embeddedness are actually critical to the company's success? Going further, how do you measure them? The invisibility and intangibility of the matters that the HR professionals have to deal with make this job both difficult and exciting at the same time.
4. "You are responsible forever for those you have tamed": well, "forever" would be a strong word when we talk about an organizational life, but once you employ someone, start managing a person or a team, engage in a coaching/mentorship relation, you are accountable for their well-being. Abandoning or treating your employees with disrespect is like throwing your pet puppy into the street because you don't like the way it smells.
5. "People are never happy where they are": this was the signal man's phrase, who was managing the express trains carrying many people there and back, who were always on the go, not sure where they wanted to be. I am no clairvoyant, but even before you so an employee satisfaction survey at any given organization, I can tell you that the three lowest scores will be salary, training and communication. People have a natural tendency to complain about their lives even if there is nothing wrong with them. Human nature is complicated.

Finally, I would like to leave you with another quote from The Little Prince. I hope you have warm recollections of the book and will read it once again:

"Eyes are blind. You have to seek with the heart"

Business for the Greater Good

According to the video above, productivity goes up by 40% when employees have the feeling they work for something greater than financial results. This study, done by the Notre Dame University, corroborates the idea that financial motivation is sometimes not the most essential part of the package. I would argue that in the majority of cases it is not. No doubt, money is important and there are many, who are primarily driven by the financial gain: a vivid illustration to that would be the recent financial crisis, a Shell reserves overstatement scandal, Parmalat or Enron fairy tales. It is not surprising that the human greed dripping from the top surprisingly quickly permeates the very essence of the companies.

Still, according to research, financial motivation increases employee performance for the period up to 6 months. What then? Then comes the non-tangible part of the rewards package, such as the corporate culture, or access to development opportunities, or the employer image, or an ability to do something that will make this world a better place.

No matter how much money British-American Tobacco are going to put in their employer brand campaign, it will forever bear the stamp of "smoking kills" over its shiny corporate logo. I am not sure how people working for them feel, but I know for sure that I would not enjoy contributing to the success of a company that is (indirectly) responsible for lungs cancer of thousands of people. Conversely, working for a "green" company, for instance, would make me want to achieve more, make an effort, go an extra mile... Call me an incorrigible romantic or a fool, but pay goes beyond the dollar.

Get connected

The buzz around Web 2.0 starts getting unbearable. Everyone is doing it. Last week there was a presentation by Capgemini Consulting on campus, and they were proudly telling about their featured project on culture change at a manufacturing company in Finland through proliferation of Web 2.0 tools (Facebook, Wikis, messengers, etc.). Social Network, the movie, is what everyone is talking about these days. Our lives are changing, but what is more interesting - the perceptions and underlying beliefs are altering as well.

For instance, I grew up believing that bad news travel much faster than good news. Really, the grapevine has always been thriving on chaos, suffering and misery. Nowadays, primarily because of social networks, happiness spreads more robustly than unhappiness, according to Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, authors of the book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives:

Our connections affect every aspect of our daily lives. . . . How we feel, what we know, whom we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote all depend on the ties that bind us. Social networks spread happiness, generosity, and love. They are always there, exerting both subtle and dramatic influence over our choices, actions, thoughts, feelings, even our desires. And our connections do not end with the people we know. Beyond our own social horizons, friends of friends of friends can start chain reactions that eventually reach us, like waves from distant lands that wash up on our shores.

The problem with Web 2.0 at work though is that the news is not always happy for all people. Let's say someone gets promoted - some people will be lining up to attack, and guess what: if there is something negative they have to say about the person, who is getting promoted, a social network is a perfect platform.

What the social networks really bring into the organization is creativity, which can become unleashed. In a recent Gallup article we find that:

Much of creativity is just new combinations put together from different pieces of information and material. That's how networks can really amplify creativity.

Thus, it looks like social networks are winning the battle over the corporate mind, but I guess there is a limit to anything. No matter how conducive they may be for virtual collaboration, knowledge sharing, newcomer integration, etc., too much of anything is bad for you. At least this maxim, which we learnt as kids, still holds water.

Córdoba: Diversity in Action

This is a picture I took this weekend at the Cathedral of Córdoba, one of the most unusual places I have visited so far. Firstly, its very name is Mosque-Cathedral gives an indication that it is odd. It is odd, indeed. The combination of the Arab and Christian influence is so striking and simultaneously organic that I perceived it in its unity and uniqueness. In its long history (begun in the 7th century as a Christian cathedral, converted into a mosque during the Muslim invasion and re-built again into a Christian place of worship in the 13th century) is imprinted in the design and the atmosphere of the building.

Many diversity program do not succeed because their implementers in the heart of hearts do not believe that true inclusiveness is achievable, and doubt begets failure. Cathedral of Córdoba defies such concerns by the mere fact of its existence. Thus, it's about acceptance, belief and passion. Unfortunately, many companies approach the diversity issues from a totally different end. Embracing it as a fad, who gets assigned to oversee the diversity and inclusiveness initiatives? Exactly - someone who is not needed elsewhere.

I think that a field-trip to Córdoba should be included in the mandatory curriculum for all the diversity management practitioners. Aya Sofia should also be on the list. Anything else?