Category: Uncategorized

To Blog To Serve

 

 

 

 

In my last blog I listed the five posts from 2011 that were read the most. There were no particular similarity or common theme between them, and looking back it struck me how often the ones that prove most popular are the ones I least expect.

I was keen to find out what other bloggers’ most read posts were…so I asked them!

And here they are…the most read blogs of 2011 from some of our most read bloggers! (Apologies if you’re not included – there was nothing scientific in my methods, I just asked whoever was active in my timeline at the time I had the idea!)

Rob Jones – The One with a Rant about Business Partners

Rob questions the role and evolution, looking at how it has been arrived at and whether there is a disconnect between what it should be and what we think it should be.

Doug Shaw – Kung Fu Panda – The Illusion Of Control

Doug is inspired by the movie and it reminds him of an older post on the illusion of control…having Oogway as your HRD ‘you just need to believe’.

Sukh Pabial – The Nonsense of Not Hiring the Over-qualified

Sukh talks about a big bugbear of mine…why not hire someone very capable of doing the role you have? Why not look for capability and motivation? Continue reading “To Blog To Serve” →

My Year In Lists

 

 

 

 

 

I love a list. Just call me Rob Fleming – chief character from the book High Fidelity, played by John Cusack in the movie – the likeness is in our obsessive measuring of our lives in Top 5 moments, not in bearing a resemblance to John Cusack you understand!

Much as I tried to rationalise the need to measure things in my last blog – I can’t deny the fascination with seeing my life through these statistical shapes and patterns. Sometimes they can give an accurate snapshot, other times they can be misleading.

Technology now enables more aspects of my life to be more measured so here I’m using it to bring you my State of Mervyn 2011!

What have I listened to?

Those nice developers at Apple now make it quite easy to find out what I play the most so my 5 most listened to 2011 released albums are:

  • Radiohead – The King of Limbs
  • The Horrors – Skying
  • Bon Iver – Bon Iver
  • Wilco – Mighty Love
  • Kurt Vile – Smoke Rings for My Halo

Clearly the ones that I’ve owned the longest have usually been played more…bubbling under were more recently acquired albums from Ryan Adams, PJ Harvey, Tim Hecker, Jonathan Wilson and SBTRKT.

So 2011 has seen me listening to my usual mix of americana, psych folk and leftfield electronica with Radiohead, Wilco and Ryan Adams – three of my favourite bands – all releasing albums I’ve liked. The list is based on what I listened to…sometimes my favourite albums are not always the ones I listen to the most. If it was most liked then the 5 would be as above but with PJ Harvey and SBTRKT replacing Bon Iver and Kurt Vile in the list.

Where have I been?

As a regular Foursquare user it’s quite easy for me to work out where I go the most…providing I remember to check-in! I don’t consider myself obsessive – I don’t have my home set up as a location, nor do I check-in to work locations every day – and I try to limit check-ins to those where there is a message or comment to add.

My top 5 categories of check-ins were:

  • Pubs
  • Train stations
  • Coffee Shops
  • Cafes
  • Hotels

Not sure the distinction between coffee shops and cafes so probably best to put them together and knock pubs off the top…the recent unlocking of the Wino 2 badge was not my proudest Foursquare achievement of the year!

Not sure this will tell anyone anything about me they didn’t already know…though the classifying of restaurants into different cuisines probably kept them off the list.

Who did I go there with?

There is little doubt that my social media activity has increased my social circles and created more opportunities for meeting people…many people that I have met through social networking have now become real life friends. December is proving to be a very active month socially – by the time I bring in 2012 I would have had arrangements (including family days at Xmas) on 19 of the 31 days of December – so who have I been seeing?

  • Traditional social friends – 7
  • Online social friends – 5
  • Family – 4
  • Colleagues – 3

Traditional, social, in-real-life friends still win, probably because it’s Xmas time, and haven’t (yet) been overtaken by those that I’ve met through social connectivity, though these latter friendships are very real and increasingly important to me.

I’m seeing all friends…I’m the winner; my liver is the loser (think there’s a new year’s resolution in there somewhere!)

What have I written?

Lastly I’ve been looking at the blogs on T Recs. This has been a strange year as I now blog very regularly as a major part of the day job so the personal blog has suffered by comparison…something I will attempt to address in 2012. Looking back at 2010, my most popular posts tended to be rants about the recruitment industry, something which has been tempered slightly.

The discipline of blogging 3/4 times a week as part of a social job hunt led to me to write more personal pieces and this is something that I have kept up during the year.

To get my Top 5 list I’ve looked at the most read, which were:

All very different blogs, some sharing good news, some sharing bad, and some posing questions…I will be sharing some of the most reads of other bloggers in my next post as I try to look for the themes that we like to read about.

So that’s me in 2011. Let me know about your year, what you’ve listened to, where you’ve been and what you’ve read….

 

 

Lies, Damned Lies, Klout Scores and Vanity Metrics

‘Just because everything can be measured, doesn’t mean that you should measure everything’

During the summer the football club I support (Arsenal) offloaded one of their squad players, a young Brazilian player called Denilson. This was a move that resonated well with most supporters who had grown tired of his inability to exert any influence on a match. He played in a central midfield role, essentially as a defensive midfielder, but most of his passes proved ineffective for an essentially attacking team.

Despite that, his OPTA stats scored quite highly. (For those non-football (soccer) fan readers, OPTA are the number one organisation measuring and compiling data and analytics around sports.) In fact, a couple of years ago he was the highest ranked defensive midfield player in the Premiership…according to the stats…yet his ability to influence the outcome of a game was almost zero. The actions that contributed to his score – blocks, interceptions, passes etc – were many, yet they had little overall impact.

If he was a social media user his Klout score would have been very high – yet most people connected to him would say he had little influence.

Continuing with the football theme, the other week I watched the live game between Fulham and Tottenham. The match stats show that Fulham had the majority share of possession, that they had 26 goal attempts against only 8 by Tottenham, and 11 corners against only 1. From those stats you may assume that Fulham won the game. But they didn’t. Tottenham scored from 3 of their 8 chances whilst Fulham scored from only 1 of their 26.

If soccer teams had Klout scores then Fulham would have had a much higher score that day.

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The quote at the start of this blog was taken from a presentation by Tom Farrell of Paddy Power that was given at a conference – Future Digital Strategies – that I chaired last week. Unlike my usual manor of recruitment and HR this was a chance to mix with digital marketers working for companies ranging from Expedia to Disney, Virgin Atlantic to Facebook. As chairman I was able to ask questions, and I asked most of the speakers about influence…how they identify influencers.

For commercial businesses the key influencers mainly used to be journalists and editors – trade press, local and national press and broadcast media – but in the new social media landscape the position is less clear. Everyone I asked was looking to identify bloggers and tweeters who had reach and impact…and they all seemed to use measures such as Klout and Peerindex as a starting point. Not as the final decision maker but as an indicator of who to investigate further. Continue reading “Lies, Damned Lies, Klout Scores and Vanity Metrics” →

Blogging and Learning at #CIPD11

Last week I was at the CIPD Conference in Manchester with an access all areas press pass, a presentation on social media monitoring to deliver and an open mind ready to absorb new ideas. Most of the conferences/unconferences that I attend these days are recruitment oriented ones, with the talking points centred on how the staffing sector can make the most of new technologies, so I was hoping for a new angle, a chance to see things differently.

This was my first visit to CIPD for many years – not since the print media were rewarding their recruitment/HR advertisers with copious amounts of alcohol anyway! (Yes younger readers, once upon a time they did! They even had casino themed parties!)

It was great to be part of the blogging team – kudos to everyone at CIPD who have embraced social media, and with it the many ways that an event, its spirit and learnings, can now be bought to those who can’t make it and those who do but can’t be everywhere at once!

I suppose I was wearing two blogging hats. Firstly the day job one – for my key takeaways and learning points on Trust and Future Work you should follow the Jobsite Insider blog – and the other hat was for here.

So what impressed me?

Firstly, the appetite for social media. Not just the fact that there were people there who were tweeting and blogging as the event unfolded, but the enthusiastic participation in the Twitterversity sessions, the attendance for sessions involving new technology platforms, and the interest shown in the presentation that I delivered. During my two days there (how I wish I could have stretched to the three) I had many approaches to chat about social media…how companies could use it, what guidelines to put in place and how to leverage the potential reach and opportunities for internal communications. Continue reading “Blogging and Learning at #CIPD11” →

Hands Across The Water

During my visit to HREvolution in Atlanta earlier this year I was able to spend some time with Bonni Titgemeyer – you may know her as @BonniToronto on Twitter. She is great company – intelligent and passionate about HR – and has enjoyed a varied career as practitioner, consultant, blogger, instructor and communicator. She has also created The Employment Opportunities List, a site that helps publicise jobs and blogs within the Toronto HR community or as she puts it making the hidden job market in HR less hidden.

Now Bonni is on a mission to bring social networking to the broader HR community in her area and has initiated The Engagement Project.

By reaching out and engaging with the HR community on twitter, and using the hashtag #TEPHR for all her interactions, she is looking to showcase the power of social media to connect, engage share and learn – and hopes that for the naysayers and deniers seeing is believing!

Great sentiments…and ones that many in the UK HR community can identify with.

Her experiment follows hot on the heels of last week’s 3rd ConnectingHR Unconference and provides the perfect opportunity for the growing UK HR community to reach out to our Canadian cousins and help them to see the benefits of what we have been experiencing for the last 18 months.

So read up on Bonni’s aims and methods…

Connect with her…

Follow the conversation…

And let’s spread the word for HR in a Social World!

HR and the New World of Work – ConnectingHR 3

A few weeks ago I followed a link on Twitter to an article entitled ‘Are Jobs Obsolete?’ which appeared on the CNN news site. You can read it here. It was an opinion piece, so open to interpretation and analysis, but it certainly resonated with me, articulating many of the things that had concerned me about the future of work.

I shared the article with my network and discussed it with those whom I was helping in the planning and organising of the forthcoming ConnectingHR Unconference. After a few beers at the Square Pig (where else?!) the core theme for #CHRU3 was born…

HR and the New World of Work

Particularly looking at:

  • Are existing organisation models sustainable in a new economic future?
  • What is the future model of ’employment’?

The original article poses some strong questions of its own, as in:

‘The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment?’

And Continue reading “HR and the New World of Work – ConnectingHR 3” →

Band of All Talents

I love the alternative US rock band Wilco. I first came a across them about 14 years ago, around the time they released their second album Being There. It was a great collection of alt country songs from the doleful to the exhilarating…a mixture of the simple and the surreal. I bought it on the strength of reviews but one fact really endeared them to me – the album was a double but they wanted it priced as a single album so as not to deter new fans. The record label agreed only if Jeff Tweedy (band leader and writer of all their songs) cut most of his royalties…and he agreed!

I really admired such confidence, such dogged self-belief in his/their ability and the strength of his songs! He lost about $600,000 but was satisfied as he released an album that was critically acclaimed by the music press and won them many new fans.

And five years later Tweedy and the band even trumped this when their record label (Reprise) rejected the master tapes for their 4th album on the grounds that it wasn’t commercial enough. They refused to write new songs and were promptly dropped from the label…ending up having to pay to get their master tapes back. Without a deal they streamed the music on their website. Such was the positive response from fans and critics that they found themselves promptly snapped up by another label, Nonesuch. And the sweet irony was… Nonesuch were a sister label to Reprise!! And it’s their biggest selling album to date!

Again you couldn’t fail to admire the single minded belief and determination in their abilities.

Studio album number 8 was released this week and the band is still going strong. Having beaten an addiction to prescription painkillers, and gone through various changes in personnel, their leader Jeff Tweedy has assembled a band of all talents. Within the confines of a rock group he has managed to put together a collective of talented musicians. On lead guitar (Nels Cline) and drums (Glen Kotche) he has two of America’s most admired leftfield, improvisational musicians, each much in demand for guest appearances and side projects, and each with a solo career running parallel.

Not an easy trick to pull off, particularly in an industry with big egos, creative differences and sometimes relentless single-mindedness. Yet it works, and they combine to make music that is stylistically diverse, by turns interesting, challenging and hummable.

More by luck than judgement Wilco may actually show us interesting business parallels.

Relentless self-belief in your ability and offering eventually gets it reward…OK, they aren’t in the major league but they get by!

It’s possible to build and blend a team with diversely talented performers…maybe giving your better performers some flexibility and the freedom to indulge their passions and pursue side projects can keep them on message for the day job.

 

Things I Learned From My Dad

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three years ago today my father passed away. At the time it wasn’t a great shock; he had been suffering from a degenerative heart condition and spent his last few months in a care home. I visited him every weekend when he was in the home, though as often happens at these times sadly the only weekend that I was unable to make proved to be his last.

I often wanted to ask him what he thought of me, of how I had turned out, what had been his hopes or expectations and whether I had met them or had disappointed. I had never really known what he had wanted for me, but I suppose those kinds of conversations rarely happen…parental responsibilities don’t come with a performance review plan.

I’m not sure if any of us ever have that kind of conversation with our parents, or how honest the answers would be.

I was talking to a friend recently about things that we learn from our fathers. Certainly I’m sure my love of football (well Arsenal!) music and politics come from him as these were passions of his. He took me to my first live football match when I was four, and we still went to some games together until the start of his illness.

It goes without saying that our parent’s hobbies and obsessions are often picked up by us, but what about personality traits and attitudes?

What things did I learn from my dad? Continue reading “Things I Learned From My Dad” →

Easy Like Monday Morning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the recent TruLondon event the comment ‘Recruiters are Lazy ‘caused a real stir. Almost immediately recruiters were talking about the hours they work, the early starts and late evenings. Certainly blog references to the comment have also tended to defend the dedication and long hours.

I think they are all missing the point though. When we talk about someone being lazy I don’t think we necessarily mean the hours they put in, the application and dedication…I think it’s more about the way their time is utilised, the methods they use and the outcomes.

With office jobs it’s easy to draw the distinction between clock watchers and those that work long hours. Yet I’m not sure the 8 to 8 person necessarily always achieves more than someone who puts in a shorter shift. So I turned to an industry where everyone works the same hours – an airline crew. Continue reading “Easy Like Monday Morning” →

Skills to Pay the Bills

Late August always seems to bring education angst to the chattering classes. A-level and GCSE results always raise the questions:

  • Are exams too easy?
  • Are students studying too many ‘soft’ subjects?

Then we get the inevitable

  • The education system isn’t providing the future workforce with the skills they need
  • Why do so many need to go to university, why don’t they go straight into work

This year I had more than a passing interest in the annual kvetching– my son got his GCSE results and is studying a couple of ‘soft subjects’ for A levels.

I certainly don’t think that the exams are getting easier and find the comparisons of results before the merging of O Levels and CSEs into GCSEs with those since pointless. Results are now partly based on coursework and controlled assessments…surely a much better was to assess someone’s grasp of a subject and work ethic than relying solely on a three hour cram-a-thon jumble of facts and figures shorn of much context and relevance.

The shift from quota based marking to criteria based…away from having set numbers achieving each grade to recognising the attainment of a level of achievement…has also clearly helped to create the impression that grades are more easily achieved.

So what of the soft subjects? Well Drama has given my son confidence, an ability to express and project himself, and experience of teamwork – many of the things supposedly lacking in today’s workforce. Additionally he has had the opportunity to be part of a group creating a production from scratch, which was assessed as a whole, with each group member getting the same grade. Real project experience with teamwork and interdependency…great experience for the workplace. Continue reading “Skills to Pay the Bills” →