Lessons from Google

I was uploading a document on my gmail and I clicked send. Only to get a pop up window from google that said “you have put int the words find attached in your email, but there is no attachment on this email, would you still want to send this?” (or something to that effect. That absolutely thrilled and impressed me. Not just the fact that google just saved me from making a right monkey of myself (I was applying for a job and the missing attachment was my cv!); it demonstrated the clever things you can do with the tools that a company already has. Like the article I read tge other day of a hairdresser, getting a jewellery maker to move into her shop during the down turn because she was forced to shut down on some days when she could not afford to keep the shop open as there were no customers. Not only did she end up splitting the rent and bills, she inadvertently generated additional traffic for her store and her “tenant” (wouldn’t you love a new necklace with that new do?).

As simple as this sound I know that it is not in reality, the possibilities of what we already posses is not always that obvious to us. There is a saying in my home land “common sense is not common”. It makes perfect business sense for google to configure its widely successful search capacities to provide helpful reminders to emailers on what they should have added onto their mail , using the presence of key words or phrases.

In the same way HR should lookl into itself and the wealth of tools, models, skills and experiences and look for ways to use “the obvious” in more creative and thrilling ways.

…. A series of unfortunate events…

 I haven’t been blogging for quite a while. It has been a bit like the perfect storm personally and I have found myself challenged with being able to manage my life and not letting it implode with the challenges. Now everyone goes through a challenge that is part of life that is why it is important to understand that from a managerial point of view and not believe that “what happens at home stays at home”. In the earlier decades, everyone went to work and the more one stayed on in work, you learned how to keep personal problems separate from work problems, but in this knowledge economy, that is not so easy anymore.

HR magazine reported this morning that in a survey of 1000 home workers (home workers here defined as small businesses, freelancers and entrepreneurs) 81% believed they worked more than they would have if they worked in a traditional office as against working from home and 56% of that figure claim they find it harder to separate their home lives from working lives, even though they want that split. When blackberry’s were first introduced, there was a lot of worry about how business people would ever be able to switch off from work to get any “down time” if they continued having access to their office matters. The picture has changed with eh advent of smart phones, 24hour work culture; remote working technology and the drop in pricing for getting wired and online. This accessibility to a non-stop stream of information has multiplied and that is information from all forms inclusive of personal lives. I believe that this has added to the pressure people have and limited the amount of personal space available to individual workers. And that loss of personal space and time to deal with life matters will inevitably lead to it coming more and more into work. I think a lot more empathy will be demanded from managers, and a lot more attention will have to be paid to work life balance to make sure that employees can stay in work and give their best AND have time to give their best in their private lives. Otherwise a series of seemingly unfortunate little events, that should be unrelated, can lead to a perfect storm that no-one saw coming.

I predict a riot!!!

first off i am not a feminist. not to say i dont believe in my sex, i just don't think i need a lable to say i am pro-female. After all i am female, how much pro can that be!!

but reading headlines like this "Italian firm's women-only job cull inflames gender controversy" makes me want to burn all my bras (although i am highly attached to them .... they are an essential part of my wardrobe.... plus they cost a pretty penny too..... hmm.... rethinking the bra burning bit now. probably burn candles instead!). Well, burn something at least!!!

this is the sort of thinking that makes any "red bloodded" female's blood boil!!! where do you come to such backward, pre-historic thinking?????!!!!!!!

and how do you get away with saying this ""We are firing the women so they can stay at home and look after the children. In any case, what they bring in is a second income."........!!!! The concern i have is not just for these poor women, the concern i have is the double standards women have to continually fight against. most women have come to the conclusion that they cannot have it a 100% both ways. you either have to give a a lot of attention to family and less to work or vice versa.... but those standards are to held up to men. and worst of all if you choose a career or job........ suddenly your not being a woman .... but a wanna be man  or a b@^%£h!!


However long it takes, this thinking and behaviour needs to change. i just wonder if i will live long enough to see that.

Thursday the 30th...........An aside

The PM has made a plea to teachers not to go on strike for the good of the country. A part of me wonders if he really thought that plea would achieve any good? After all, at the end of the day, the teachers are striking for personal reasons and this action is targeted at stating unequivocally,their opinion about the present governments ideas regarding their pensions. Whether the ideas are right or wrong, sustainable or unsustainable (to be fair) is open to debate. Simply because ones point of view will beclouded by which side of the fence you are on. Its the same with the NHS, 58% of doctors voted against the current revamped bill and they urged their union to fight it..... more bad news. Already the government is having to defend itself from taunts of a complete turnaround by their opponents.

They are having to sell there changes as part of the results of the listening excerpter, but that I think is what baffles me the most.... given that the NHS, public service, essential services etc are not the Private sector, where the owners; majority shareholders; board members etc can come to what they feel are business beneficial decisions and then take unilateral decisions regarding their companies without consulting their employees. Given that the public sector to some extent is or should be powered by altruistic feelings of patriotism and service.... did the government forget all this and put the cart before the horse, by making decisions and then seeking advice on them?????

Granted a study or two was done, but a study is just that.... someone looking into things and trying to come up with theories to explain the fact and formulas to define the future. It is not a dialogue. and sadly I think this government underestimated the amount of frustration and tiredness people in the public service feel. They have bills and lives to maintain, so altruism might be a luxury here. To be even more realistic no-one wants to feel like they have been "had" especially by their employers: " if you are going to get rid of me make it worth my while!" - the reasoning behind redundancy payouts. I can imagine teachers etc probably are thinking along he lines off - "don't tell me that the pot of gold at the end of my long years of service is going to be changed for tin and then try to tell me that it is in my best interests, be patriotic and that in comparison to everyone else i still have it good. keep your promise!!!!! the one i signed up for at the start of my employment!! the one that makes me wake up in the morning and go to work!!!"

The concept of the psychological contract rears its head here. obviously the relationship between the largest employer in the UK - govt and its employees have broken down; trust eroded and promises discarded...... I wish I could study the changes in the psych contract over the next year......it will be an interesting time and will have valuable lessons for all.... but the parent in me, is dreading Thursday the 30th. that is the new Friday the 13th for me.

It starts from the first kiss..............

My best friend and I used to say that (the line above...) a lot in secondary school. It served as a reminder of what happens when you go down the road of romance. it was our code for avoiding dodgy guys!

Its the same principle as the saying "it starts from the first step". sometimes, until you take the first step, you will never get to where you need to be. Take me for instance, I am contemplating starting my own business and petrified I will fail. People who know me would probably laugh if they hear this, I am supposed to be the embodiment of confidence!!! But I just credit that to good acting!

The problem with fear is that it paralyses you. I am reading "Wake up and change your life" by Duncan Bannantyne. Now on my bedside cabinet i have a ton of books piled up, but this is one of the few that i have read recently, which has me hooked (another brilliant read is "you can if you think you can" by Norman Vincent Peale. The language is dated, but the concepts the same! you can get a copy on amazon). In his first chapter he lists the top five things people are afraid of in business and guess what made it on the list.... Failure.

I like his argument " .... if you don't give it a go you'll never fail, but if you don't accept the possibility of failure, you'll never get the chance to succeed". Now i have been pondering in my head why go down this route - starting a business. then i realised something, I have been down this route before - 3 times!!!

The first time was in second year in university. I was broke and a cousin decided the best way she could help out was to give me shirts to sell. These were simple cotton shirts, bright fantastic colours and at a reasonable price too............... that ran their colours and shrank after the first wash. From this experience i learned my first business lesson:

"Know what you know/ sell/ or offer (in this case the shirts).... and its after care..... and have advice for customers ready when things go pear shaped! Know it inside and out"

Needless to say that folded and I went back to being broke and stressed out on how to pay school bills. Now my church at school stumped up part of the money and some kind family friends, but everyday living expenses  I didn't have. Until i realised something, if i didn't do something quick, I would end up having to drop out of school before my finals! I came up with a business and in the process learned "my" second principle of business:

"Use what you have/ know to get what you want. It may not be much, but it will be enough"

I knew music  and i knew the kind of music that students liked. I didn't have a deck, i didn't have tapes or CD's but i knew people that had those things and they were willing to let me stay over at their rooms till 3/4am (at times) mixing tapes. I also knew where to get blank tapes at a discount and i knew (from painful 1st hand experience) what the best quality tapes were..................... and i had enough money to buy a dozen blank, 90 minute cassette tapes. So I started a mix tape business and for that 1-2 years, I not only was able to take care of myself, but also support some other students in the same boat as me!!! I was making (dependent what make of cassette tape I used) 50 - 100% profit per tape!

Now when I left school it took me a couple of months to get a job. in between I needed (again!) to pay bills, get myself to interviews and take care of myself. so i decided to start a cupcake business. this was in 2001 and the last time I baked was in 1989! I was under no illusions of my ability to bake (I am happy to say that NOW I can whip up a mean batch of cup cakes or any cake in fact - within reason for an amateur that is!). But, that didn't stop me, because in trying to get around this drawback i learned "my" 3rd rule of business:

"if you don't know it or don't have it - buy it!"


I found someone who was a genius at baking and we went into a 50/50 split. he baked I packed them up and sold them. we got boxes and split them into sizes - packs of 6, 9, 12 etc and offered ad hoc services at a fee e.g. add flowers or a hand made card or personal delivery or a message in icing etc. it sold like wildfire! at the time we were novel and different and our pricing was friendly. We eventually went our separate ways amicably when i started working as a management consultant the following year. But it before I had learned a valuable 4th lesson (that was further validated at the consultancy where I was hired):

"Don't be afraid to work with/ hire a genius; they may be intimidating, but they make the work a whole easier and if you are their manager/ team mate/ colleague, you'll look good too! "


So after ruminating i figure i have nothing to loose! i have done this before, i failed at one of them, but i learned from that and i have been working since. if i let fear paralyse, then i may look back at this time and think "what if" and i don't want to be that person. So i think i wll give that "first kiss" and start something. And if this is a "dodgy boy" and i do fail at it, well at least i have a lesson about that too, taught to me by the Practice manager of the consultancy firm. he always said to me:

"if you must fail, then fail fast; fail short; brush yourself off and move on!"

I want to go where everybody knows my name ......

I have worked for different sized organisations, from the multinational/ transnational to the small/ start up and every time, I have had to readjust myself and my approach and expectations in each of these firms. But, having worked in these dofferemt sized organisations I can tell you that in terms of the oppurtunity to engage motivate and gaon committed employees, the small to medium sized business is placed in a strong position to build the kind of relationship that taps into the deep rooted need of all persons everywhere -  the need to be needed.

Not just wanted - needed.

I know a number of talented people that left large organizations without a qualm mostly to smaller sized orgs or to start their own businesses (both times with only a wing and a prayer)simply because they got bored with their roles as it felt like that role was too routine, undemanding and they ended up feeling undervalued,  underused - not needed!

If you are a small biz owner coming from working with large businesses, reading this, this is probably your story. And even though it might be argued that it is impossible to have jobs that are always interesting and demanding , it is nevertheless equally dangerous not to have a business environment that does not demand the best from people because it is an environment in itself that draws out that best performance. It is an environment that makes people feel wanted AND needed.

The size of a small business enables as well as discourages the growth of this. discourages because, building an enabling environment demands dedication from bottom all the way to the top, but it is the right environment to get this right, because its small size allows for implementation and monitoring in detail. the challenge with running your own business is that it is easy to get caught up with just trying to survive that one thinks that is all that matters. But paying attention to what your business environment and your values and behaviors are telling your employees is a survival strategy too. If you are telling them that there is a place for them in the present and future of the business, that they are wanted and needed; of your environment is telling them that, then there is a possibility that whether you are thre or not, that business will continue and isn't that what owners want - people to help?

Come to work, leave brain at home.

If you are a small business owner or a previous sole proprietor taking on your first set of employees -  this may sound like more rhetoric to add to your already over worked plate. but what employee engagement is really about - is making sure that when your employees come to work, thy don't leave their brains at home!

I read an interesting article in March about the UK PM giving his support to a task force taking a look at employee engagement in the UK. I literally did a double take - not just because the of topic the committee was looking at (with all the threats of strikes and unions up in arms, i would think the PM would be more interested in looking into "surviving the next 2 years!!"); but also because of the fact that the state of the psychological contract in the public service is in tatters and given the decisions of the present government, one would assume that how employees are feeling in terms of engagement and commitment was a non issue with them!

David MaCleod continues his work on employee engagement from 2009 (along with Nita Clarke), whose finding were that engaged employees (Defined in the report as An engaged employee is aware of the business context, and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization) is a must have to succeed in the business world.

The best employment pitch I ever heard was from the HR Director at PWC - Nigeria office. When asked what PWC was in the business off he answered "we sell heads". Basically, we sell what knowledge and wisdom our people have stored in their heads. The problem is that we tend to hire people for specific jobs and tasks and that is, employee engagement practices are simple a bunch of things YOU do to get your employees to think more about what and HOW they do their job so as to help the business make its goals or targets or bottom lines. It could be you make and sell cup cakes and you have grown so much that you are able to hire someone exclusively to build the package boxes and pack the cakes. An engaged employee will do more than that......... they will let you know that the boxes look a  bit bland and might offer suggestions to improve their look; they may have been trained in calligraphy (yes, yes i know a looooong shot - no-one is trained in calligraphy these days :-)!) and offer to write your cards for you; they might choose to call your customers and ask how they found the cakes and come back and tell you what they found out. Basically - an engaged employee would go beyond their job description and actually do more than earn their pay - THEY WILL HELP YOU!. And if you really think about it, isn't that exactly why you hired them in the first place?

P.S
Have been down with a virus and that has taken some getting over! I have been tardy about this and I need to forge ahead. I made it a goal to publish 2 blogs per week (yup, I do have a bit to say) for starters. Lets see how that goes with me Performance Managing myself ;-)! I bet I will be a great boss of me!!!