If you’ve stayed current on Harvard’s leadership difficulties involving President Lawrence Summers’ rocky 5 year tenure, you know that he recently conducted his last commencement. (If you haven’t stayed current, I don’t blame you. Not even a little.)

One would think that Harvard might have seen the writing on the wall around January of last year, when Summers made his feelings on women in the sciences known. That would have given them a good 18 months to start thinking about a succession plan. Alas, this seems to have been far from their minds.

A Harvard alum sent me this letter he recently received soliciting thoughts and opinions on Summers’ replacement. Innocent enough in its appearance, it reveals a fairly serious lack of planning. Have a look. Click the image to blow up a section of the letter.

It’s remarkable how many organizations of every kind don’t think about succession until they’re headless.

From Booz Allen’s strategy+business (and via recruiting.com) comes this article on “Rethinking the value of talent.” It’s a great article, but it’s a little boring, so I’m going to illustrate the point by telling a story that expounds on one in the article.

The tale of Barry and Leverne: Colliding Canapés
By Max Goldman

Barry and Leverne work together at Creative Canapés Internationale. There, they each craft delectable, treats that are a lot like hors d’oeuvres. They would call them hors d’oeuvres, but they found that because “canapés” sounds less familiar and more European, people pay more.

Anyway, the company, located in Mechanicsville, Virginia and run by one Colin Craftsbury (a gentle, witty sort of British fellow who moved to the US to be closer to his college sweetheart though sadly that didn’t work out as she was married by the time he got himself across the Atlantic), is doing fantastically well.  Their small, innovative crispy food is fit is for royalty and often delivered to people who consider themselves as such. They are widely regarded as the best premium-European-small-party-food company for miles around.

Continue reading →

I’m just kidding, but this perspective is played-out already in my opinion.  Anyway, Keith Hammonds, executive editor of Fast Company and the writer of the now infamous “ Why we hate HR” article participated in a podcast (audio program) at landed.fm.

The most interesting part for me was when he related the vacation policy at Fast Company. It says, “you should take at least three weeks of vacation a year. If you think you need more, you should take that, too.”

It’s an enlightened approach that puts the responsibility for getting things done in the hands of the employee. Everything else is secondary. Not every company can handle this kind of thing, but it supports what seems to be Hammonds’ underlying message: HR should not be a bureaucratic, rule making group. It should strive toward “less rules and more exceptions for exceptional people.” What Hammonds calls a “more thoughtful approach to Human Resources.”

It’s about 30 minutes and worth a listen if you’re a glutton for punishment interested in hearing some tips from an outsider about what HR can do to be more impactful.

Here is a link to the original rage-inducing article.

Here’s an interesting article called “Americans work more, seem to accomplish less” that prompted an equally interesting discussion on the TRDEV Yahoo discussion group. The gist? Whether the mere act of measuring performance itself has a negative impact on employee morale, and thus productivity.

A quote in the article from John Challenger of Challenger, Gray and Christmas explains the perspective: “there’s a trend among companies to measure job performance like never before. There’s a sense that no matter how much I do, it’s never enough,” he said.

To me, it brings us back to the importance of communication in the change management process. If employees understand what is expected of them and what the benefits TO THEM are, the likelihood of positive change is increased. 

What’s your reaction?

Gautam points to an article at HR Magazine discussing the next generation of HR leaders:

The upcoming generation of leaders strongly believes that HR can influence a company’s bottom line, especially in the knowledge economy, where talent is a key asset. Professionals from a wide range of backgrounds are now moving into HR, where they see exciting development potential, writes the author. Alongside business and financial skills, HR students are now learning to think strategically, he adds. Industry insiders expect future HR programs to cover globalization issues, regulation and technology.

Are you one of them?

Or, at least, so says Susan Heathfield. She also thinks HR should specifically NOT report to finance. 

Just catching up on some light reading. Before it was Dubs, but now we’re on Jason’s list of five talent management vendors to watch in 2006. 

Things are getting good. A raft of new posts over at worstreview.com. If you’re not hip to the contest, it’s a little game we’re playing to find the worst performance review ever. Prizes, fun and games. Like a carnival.

Go check it out – tell us a story or post some comments to the contest blog.

Stop kidding us, we know you’ve got a worst review story.

For my money, one of the of the most interesting blogs around is Communication Nation. It’s written by Dave Gray of XPLANE – a company that does some very cool work using visual maps. I’m sure you’ve seen their work around.

Well, Communication Nation took a poll of its readers about communication in their workplaces but what came out of it matters to you (if you’re in HR or run a company, that is). We see a lot of this kind of data come from the usual HR suspects – like the Watson Wyatts of the world – but it’s interesting to see what comes up when you look at things a bit differently – like from the perspective of an information design firm.

 Here are some of their results:

• Half of workers don’t have performance metrics.
• A surprising number of people don’t think their boss is in the loop.
• Most people don’t know what their boss’s job is.
• Many don’t know where they fit in the scheme of things.
• They don’t have much to look foward to.

Read the post at Communication Nation for the whole story. It’s not just HR consultancies and talen management vendors pointing out these problems anymore.

At the HR Tech show last week, I was confronted with a classic question. "If I want X, can your software be configured to do it, or will I need customization?"  According to Frank, our RFP Guy, “customization” has become a dirty word in RFPs, with  many companies stating upfront that they want to avoid it if possible. It’s an important consideration, and one that could save you a ton of money and some really bad headaches.

Here’s the lowdown: if something is configurable, it means the existing software can be worked (via the standard user interface) to reflect the change. If it requires customization it means software code has to be changed (added or moved around) so the software can do what you want it to. Guess which one costs more?

Changing code means sitting an engineer down at a computer to make changes that are often unique to you. This means 2 things. First, it means money. Engineers make a lot of it. So more costs upfront. Second, it may mean that your individual system is now unique – different from every other customer’s system. That can cause problems with upgrades and maintenance. Unique software means unique problems – problems that cannot easily be solved by the help desk. That can mean more money in the long run.

Every vendor deals with customization requests in different ways. It’s important to ask anyone you’re thinking of working with how they deal with them. Choose configuration vs. customization if at all possible. If you must customize, make sure you don’t get stuck with a system that can’t be upgraded and will be expensive and difficult to maintain.