People Performance Radio - 2008 Year in Review

Steve

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. This is our end of the season, end of the year, podcast, and I'm here with my sometimes co-host and colleague and producer and general man-about-town, Jim Matheson, or "mad dog", as we like to call him. Jim, how are you doing?

Jim

Yeah, that's my old nickname, I haven't heard that one in a while. Did you know that we've actuallly done 17 thought leader podcasts when we switched the format over?

Steve

Wow, I can believe it, what we thought we'd at this end of the year, for those of you in our listening audience is, have Jim actually interview me about the podcasts, because we've really done 17 thought leader podcasts, we've learned a lot, and talk a little bit about what we've learned since we launched People Performance Radio, and where we're going, and as always invite the listeners to send us ideas of where they think we should go, as long as it's not rude.

Jim

Yeah definitely, it is a good time to remind everybody that they can email us at podcast@successfactors.com, or Skype/, give us a call at 650-425-7474, and if anybody out there listening is interested in actually getting interviewed for the podcast, in 2009 get in touch with us, and hopefully we can get that scheduled.

Steve

Absolutely. So Jim, what's your first question about the podcast?

Jim

My first question is, what was your top three favorite interviews of the season?

Steve

That's a terrible one to ask, because I really enjoyed every single one, it's like asking a parent who their favorite child is.

Jim

You ask lots of tough questions of all these guys, and now you're trying to back out of yours.

Steve

Absolutely. Actually, top three —it's interesting, because I don't think I would put in a top three, I think what's been really great about these podcasts is the variety of people we've talked to, it's not really possible to compare. We did one podcast talking about the importance of health and leadership, physical health and leadership, we did another one about why you don't want to have assholes in your organization, we've done other ones about employee attitudes and surveys, we've done ones on how to effectively deploy technology, we've done ones on why you shouldn't smoke pot in parking lots, well that was part of one .

They've really covered such a wide range, I think one of the things that I have enjoyed the most about these podcasts is, you know every week it's going to have something to do about managing people in an organization, and how to maximize workforce productivity. You kind of know this is going to be a conversation about, how can we really fully engage people, maximize their performance and develop them, but that's about as far as you know. How do to that, what to focus on, it's different every week, and one of the things too is knowledge is different every week, all these podcasts have focused with people that have massive amounts of experience, have devoted in some cases 30+ years just really studying different aspects of workforce performance productivity, and it's a privilege and an honor and fantastic learning experience to talk to everyone that I've talked to this year.

Yes, it is weaselly, I can't really give you a top three, I'd just say the top three that's made the grade, it's just the quality and intelligence of the people we've interviewed, the huge variety of the things that they've focused on, yet the constant theme, it's all about increasing workforce productivity, and really helping people to be as successful as they can in jobs, which is a big things, there's few things that have a bigger impact on your happiness in life than your satisfaction with your career. There are things that are more important, but it's certainly in the top five.

Jim

Definitely. Well would you say, what's your take on this whole economy and how that's changing the workforce, and either folks that are available, high quality A players that are available to be picked up, and a lot of companies are letting go people —how do you think that's all playing out?

Steve

Well, at first it's always hard, because you always feel bad for people that really have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, they were really fantastic performers, and they really just rode an economy that was being taken in the wrong direction, and that's a huge conversation in itself. But I think some of the fundamental things to look at is, one, even though you make all these comparisons to the Great Depression, and I don't personally think that we aren't going to the Great Depression, hopefully I won't be proven wrong on that, but even then, while it was hard, most people were still working. The unemployment rate, granted, got up to I think 25% at the highest, which is extremely high, but still that means three out of four people were still working, and you continue to work, you continue to focus on it, and not dwell on what could happen and focus on controlling what you can, I think that's a really important theme.

The other thing is, and there's an economist from Princeton talking about this, that our economy is still fundamentally sound; the problem is that, it's not a small problem, but he said, "Look, it's like you've got a very healthy body, all the muscles, all the parts are working, except for the heart has stopped pumping blood", but once we get that blood moving again, all of the parts are still fundamentally sound, I think we're going to see some restructuring and some changes, because companies are being forced to be more efficient, effective, but it's not like the end of the world here, it really is a blip, we will get over it, and if we don't? —heck, we'll all be bartering and trying to learn how to raise crops and vegetables, and we'll have bigger issues to worry about.

The other thing, well there really is an opportunity here, there's opportunity to, one, if you are a company that's really been, hey, we've been doing the right things all along, this is going to be the chance where you're going to shine, I think. As Warren Buffet put it, you don't learn who's not wearing a swimsuit till the tide goes out —well the tide is going out, the companies that have been riding this wave but haven't really been practising effective people management are the ones that are really going to struggle.

The other thing as far as unemployment, and this is a real important thing people don't realize, there are still extremely low levels of unemployment for people with specialized skills in certain areas, and the skill shortage is not going away, because it's much larger things that are driving that, that are demographic in nature, and fundamental advancing of technology in nature, that if you look at unemployment statistics, yes, overall unemployment may be going up, but if you start to segment it by people with different skills in certain areas of the country, unemployment may still be very very low in certain areas. I saw a statistic, and I can't remember the exact number, but it was basically saying, I think it was in October or November, the unemployment rate for people with just a high school education was up around 17, 18%, the unemployment rate for people with a college education was still 5% or lower, and that's one of those things, if you've lost your job but you have a specialized skill set, that you know, this is valuable for the economy, I've maintained my skill set, there is a job out there for you in. Now, the sad reality is, it may not be where you're living, it may be in another part of the country, but on the positive side one of the things that's definitely changed since the last major recession we went through is now, it's very possible to say, I'm a highly skilled computer programer, I've lost my job here, there's a lot of other unemployed computer programers here, but you know, I can work remotely, it's more possible, and while you have to make sacrifices for that, yeah, that could happen.

And then having a bunch of people that are very motivated, very bright, that suddenly have lost their jobs and find themselves with free time can lead to a lot of fantastic creativity and innovation, you suddenly have a lot of people with like, OK, I'm not focused on what I was doing, but I'm still very, I want to get stuff done and I'm really smart, and I think we may see some really interesting innovation and entrepreneurial adventures coming out of this downturn as a positive thing.

Jim

Yeah, I can definitely see that. So I guess, in the last question I have is, this is episode # 34 of People Performance Radio, we started it back, I can't even remember when, I think back in April of 2008, so what are your thoughts on the podcasts in 2009? Which direction do you want to take it, and what do you think we can accomplish there?

Steve

Well definitely continuing with the interviewing of different thought leaders, and not just thought leaders and with people that do formal presentations, but people that are active in talent management, and have interesting things to say, which I hope to be getting more SuccessFactors' clients to, and that's always a challenge, because sometimes they have legal issues about not wanting to be shown as marketing a vendor, but having a chance to ask people more that are in the trenches, that are within organizations, what they're doing with talent management, we'll probably re-connect with some of the thought leaders we talked to this year, just really continuing those conversations, and finding people that think a lot about, how do we maximize workforce productivity, think about it in different ways and having those discussions. We may also look to do some podcasts along different themes, like one, I think which sadly is relevant, but people need to learn about it, is how do you do effective restructuring? A lot of people that listen to this podcast are probably going to be asked, if they haven't already, over the next six months, their CFO's going to come in and say, "We have to reduce our workforce costs by 10% or 15%, simply to survive as a company". Well, if you're posed with that question, what's the right way to answer it? —if you're a talent management professional, that's part of your job is to say, "How can we do this in a way that is going to both minimize the damage to the company financially, but also minimize the trauma to the employees", and those two things if you listen to some of our earlier podcasts are connected, if you have stressed out employees, you don't have high performing employees, so some themes like that.

Another theme, and again certainly we'd welcome listener comments about things they'd like to hear us talk about, I think as this podcast grows, it's getting easier and easier to connect with people, and say, hey, this is a good place to have a good conversation about things that we care about related to talent management

Jim

Great, well we're definitely looking forward to 2009, and this is going to be our last episode of the podcast for 2008, so we're hoping everybody has a great holiday season and New Years and all of that stuff, and we will see you guys in January.

Steve

Absolutely, happy holidays everyone, and happy holidays to you, Jim, this has been a very fun thing, and thank you for making this happen, you were very instrumental in giving me the chance to have all these conversations, so I really appreciate that, so have a wonderful holiday and a great New Year.

Jim

You too Steve.

Speaker

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