February 6, 2012
by Lance Haun
1 Comment

As culture continues to be a hot topic for human resources pros, I have a hard time grappling and explaining one of the most important parts of culture that aren’t defined by any one person in the company: unwritten workplace rules.

I worked at one place where nobody left company premises for lunch. This wasn’t in the handbook and there were a slew of restaurants within a mile of work (even a couple within easy walking distance). Other people have told me about places they’ve worked where nobody leaves before the boss leaves. You get the idea.

We often leave this out of the discussion when we talk about culture but it is a huge part of that and of other parts of our lives too (like taboo subjects to bring up during family get-togethers or air travel with smelly food). Or in this case, sports fandom.

If you’re a sports fan, you’ve inevitably met a certain type of fan. They’ve lived their entire lives in a place (often in a big enough city with 3-4 of the major sports) but they root for the Lakers, Yankees, Patriots, Red Wings and, worst of all, Duke basketball. No real connection to any of the teams. But if you ask the more traditional fan about this type of fan, it won’t elicit the most positive response.

Now to be clear, it isn’t against the law to just pick the best teams to root for out of thin air. But it is against some very sacred, unwritten rules of sports fandom.

People unaccustomed to sports fandom might be surprised that you can’t just pick the best team every year and just root for them to win, greatly increasing the chances that the team you root for will be successful. Enter the guy at your Superbowl party this weekend who was confused as to why you care about the outcome of the game if you aren’t a fan of either team. “It’s so illogical.”

Illogical? Perhaps. But they are as much a part of the game as hot wings, little smokies and at least one guy drinking a little too much. And go against those unwritten rules and you’ll face the wrath of your peers (like the one lady my mom’s age who decided to switch which team she was rooting for because the team she picked was doing poorly a couple of years ago).

Same thing is true of these unwritten rules at work. Walking out of work that first day to grab a bite to eat seems more logical than sitting and eating the light snack I brought and being hungry for the rest of the day. Looking back, it feels even more stupid now. But unwritten workplace rules that helps you navigate everything from getting decisions made, running through the bureaucracy of work or not getting on the bad side of the boss can make a big difference in your career. And when you’re the new jack in town, you cling to the first couple of co-workers who help translate those unwritten rules to you.

It seems silly that it’s even necessary. As silly as rooting for the same team for 30 years that has gotten close but hasn’t won the big game in your lifetime. No matter how silly it is though, these unwritten rules tie people and your workplace together and if you don’t understand them (and its impact on your culture), you’ll be in the dark. If you care about your business and the people there, you owe it to them to understand the hidden language that moves your organization.

February 2, 2012
by Lance Haun
0 comments

I think a lot about trust. And maybe more importantly, I think about how mistrust happens. Specifically when it comes to writers, columnists, bloggers, and journalists.

Often, when people talk about disclosure, they are usually talking about money. And if you’re a blogger or writer and money is changing hands, I think you should always be on the side of clear, full disclosure. And just for the record, I’ve been called out about disclosure. More on that in a second, though. First, let’s talk about money.

$ $ $

Money is powerful. I think about the work I do with ERE and how I take our work there (and especially the parts I’m intimately involved with) very personally. But I should, because ERE doing well means I do well and there’s a trigger there in my brain. That’s why I disclose when I talk about our events or publications, usually right in line with the text so you can’t miss it.

I also think about the relationships I developed with the folks at Crimcheck, Halogen Software, Rypple or Vault.com (who paid me for the first time, not as an advertiser, but as a writer). Or when I worked on MeritBuilder or for some of the other companies I’ve been lucky enough to be at, it makes sense that I became vested.

That’s not easy an easy reality when you’re solo and trying to put your best pieces out there without conflict of interest. We have a stellar sales team at ERE and they take care of all of the deal making. It is so much easier when there is that separation. When it is just you, it is a struggle. And I’ve seen a lot of bloggers and writers go down that path and take some wrong turns.

Even though it is difficult to know when or where to disclose, I think there is a clear line: when money (or something of value) changes hands, that’s when you look for opportunities to disclose. And the part about looking for opportunities to disclose is the distinction there, and I think it is the right and appropriate choice. Do it often, with clarity and bake it in with a one-time visitor in mind (if someone comes in off a Google search knowing nothing about you or your publication and reads a piece with a conflict of interest, do they know money changed hands?).

Beyond Money: Honesty

So if you disclose money relationships, shouldn’t that be enough? Well consider what I did above: I linked to an article critical of my ability to disclose. Now obviously, I wasn’t paid by Workforce to include that link. While I didn’t think it was very fair at the time, I do think it is fair to point out that some may have questioned my approach in the past. You should have the opportunity to see that.

Similarly, I may disclose the fact that ERE is my employer, but if I blow smoke up your ass about the company, spin the truth or you get the feeling like I’m not giving you the full story, I become less credible. At least as far as writing is concerned, being honest about both successes and struggles of what we’re doing means people take me mostly at my word, even with the knowledge that I’m an employee.

That’s why disclosing about money is simply not enough. The best way to gain and maintain trust is by abandoning (as best as possible) the built-in bias that the relationship creates and speak the plain truth. And you have to do both, consistently, over a period of time to gain trust.

The Changing Rules Of New Media? Not So Fast

Two and a half years ago, I said at a conference that bloggers were not, in and of themselves, journalists. That’s still true today. I struggle with the term myself but I don’t lose sleep over it, either.

The principles of the old ways, of that idealistic view of journalism as the respected fourth estate, is still within reach, even in this digital, anon-blogging, rumor-monging, money-changing-hands-under-the-table environment that the new media works in these days.

What’s easy to forget is that there was a time when the most prominent people evaluating technology didn’t just pick a side and arrogantly and mindlessly defend it until the bitter end. Or that trading money for half-hearted disclosures and favorable coverage was harder to come by. Or that concepts like black hat SEO, astroturfing and throwing anonymous commenters at a situation could influence the discovery and perception of information.

We’re not talking about a zine or underground newspaper with significant costs and logistical hurdles to get it beyond a few dozen miles of its origin. We’re talking about the same web that you used to get to this very low cost blog today can get you to other sources with millions of dollars staked into their sites.

The biggest misconception is that old media rules are outdated and unneeded. In reality, the key thing that happened is that not playing by those rules was finally a choice for nearly anyone who wished to publish something with almost unlimited (and low-cost) distribution.

That’s a great thing for information flow. But if you want to be trusted wholesale as a writer, blogger, or whatever you want to call yourself, you’ll quickly learn that these journalist quacks may have been on to something with their silly rules. They knew it was about trust. Even if you had to get ink on your fingers to read about it.

January 23, 2012
by Lance Haun
3 Comments

Normal business attire for Sackett. Click to enlarge.

Ever since Laurie Ruettimann suggested a Tim Sackett day, I’ve been stoked.

Not because I think Tim deserves any sort of recognition, especially on any of those influencer or top blogger lists. Because, really? It’s entertaining as hell when he doesn’t get picked.

I played kickball when I was a kid in school and there was this little kid named Ricky who was kind of an annoying little wise ass. And while he was good at kickball, he always got picked for our teams way too late. He’d be picked in the fourth round and he would just be livid about it because, in reality, he was definitely first or second round material.

So one day, the kids who picked teams decided that neither one of them was going to pick him, just to see what would happen. And so his face got more and more red as each successive round passed. He finally got picked: dead last.

Everybody figured he was finally going to lose it. Little Ricky was going to blow a gasket. But instead, he played the most aggressive game of kickball anyone has ever seen. It’s all fun and games until a red playground ball comes flying at your head.

I’m not quite sure why that story is relevant but it made me think of Timmy. I can see him sitting in his office, somewhere between here and the east coast, pounding out a dozen phone calls, making a placement and writing a post that was still better than mine. It only hurts when I think about it for too long.

It is also great talking basketball with him and the other guys in the 8 man rotation. I’m not exactly sure how well Sackett fits in when he goes to the Palace at Auburn Hills but his short whiteness would look good in Portland. Just in case he is thinking about where to retire early.

In all seriousness, Tim is a good guy, getting things done and making things happen. He’s always open with his talents and has been tremendous to the success of TLNT, the place that signs my checks. And when I helped him get his blog up and going, he sent me a Michigan State T-shirt. Then I got to see him jump off a perfectly fine tower in Vegas (and nail the landing).

If you don’t know Tim, you need to check him out at:

• The Tim Sackett Project
• Fistful of Talent
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with him, know him. He’s a smart guy, even if he’ll never ever make a list.

January 16, 2012
by Lance Haun
0 comments

On the last post, I had a commenter ask if I thought my 2000 word post was well received. It’s a good question and one question I often get is about the length of blog posts. Some people say 400 words should be your goal. Some people say no more than 600 to 800 words. Supposedly, nobody reads anything over 800 words online.

Generally speaking, I keep my posts on TLNT below 800 words. I’ve dipped into 1,200 word territory on occasion but that’s pretty rare. Now, I would be interested in doing a long form series for TLNT but what has been better for online publications, at least as far as I know, has been a series approach. So let’s say I want to drop somewhere between 5,000-10,000 words on a specific subject. Instead of putting that all into a single online piece, you create a series of it for the week and, in so many words, milk the long form subject the way you put your biggest story in the back half of a magazine.

It keeps the content brief for people who want to jump in and out of the story but good for the folks who love to read longer stories.

For this blog though, there is no formal word limit. I’ve gone over 1,000 words numerous times. Especially when my blog was more popular, longer posts were the norm. When this blog sucked, sometimes the posts wouldn’t go beyond this point (you’re at the 235 word mark by the way).

The big failure in evangelizing blogging as a platform is the reduction of the discussion of blogs as the sum of their technical attributes. How long should it be? How do I SEO optimize it? Should I tag or categorize? What platform should I use? Should I allow comments? How many visitors am I getting? How much money am I making per pageview?

This is where I’m supposed to say this stuff is important but I’m not going to say that.

What people don’t spend enough time on is thinking about their writing. When you focus in on word counts rather than telling a good story, you’re destined to fail. If you focus and write a compelling story but it is too long, you have a lot of options. If you write a crappy story within your pre-destined word count, the only way to fix it is with a rewrite.

There are a lot of technically competent blogs out there. Folks who did their homework and have the technical situation down. But, let’s be real: the content can daft on some of the most fantastically constructed blogs. Because they couldn’t imagine going over 600 words, they never cover issues with any sort of weight or breadth that have a few more words allows you to do. Or that their link baited titles are so SEO optimized to the hilt that it feels formulaic, just like their self-linking in the post content itself.

There’s a legitimate alternative out there. Think a ton about what you’re writing about, read multiple takes on the subject, think about who is interested in it, think about why you’re interested in it, write something interesting, edit (for clarity, simplicity and completeness), and hit publish.

For some folks, that will be 200 words. For me, sometimes it is almost 2,000. Or 200 words. (Okay, it’s never 200 words)

January 12, 2012
by Lance Haun
7 Comments

Last week, I wrote a blog post that was almost 2,000 words long. That’s not that exceptional. What’s surprising is that I sat down and wrote the entire piece in about 90 minutes.

The fact of the matter is, I spent a ton of time on that post. Reading (and re-reading) material about the subject, thinking about it, thinking about my approach and then thinking about the key points I wanted to cover.

I’m not the quickest thinker in the world. It means I’m not the greatest conversationalist in the world, nor am I prone to amaze you in a casual conversation. And please, I’m not fishing for compliments or having a fit of false modesty. I’m not above being egotistical here but even I know my personal limits.

Luckily this piece isn’t going to be 2,000 words, though. The advice I have today is pretty simple:

It’s easily panned advice, akin to “act naturally.”

But the process of making that leap was actually fairly important for me because it meant I spent a lot less time trying to translate what I was thinking to what I was writing. If you give me a topic that I know well, or can research well enough, and ask me to write something about it, I can do it in fairly quick time. It’s not automatic but the process is smoother. If I know what I want to write, I sit down and do it in a sitting. Usually less than an hour or two.

That’s not to say that if your natural style is littered with typos and grammar errors, you should be content with that. I’ve tried hard to eliminate spelling and grammar issues, though I have my own personal challenges. That’s also not to say that your writing style can’t improve (albeit, slowly, especially in the beginning). The important part was stripping my writing down to its foundations, finding what’s working for me and what wasn’t and starting to make incremental improvements on my style and mechanics from there.

The problem, at least for me, was that it took me basically taking everything I learned in formal writing for business and killing it word by word. And for people who have spent their entire career writing in a specific way to a specific audience, that becomes the barrier to you finding your own voice.

If there is a shortcut, I wish you would have told me that five years ago. I don’t think there is though. You wrote your way into those habits, you’re going to have to write yourself out of them.

January 5, 2012
by Lance Haun
9 Comments

I’ve read a lot of articles about brain picking (1, 2, 3, 4 to name a few). You know about brain pickers, right? These suckers who think they can just glom a bunch of free information off of you and run into the wind like they’ve stolen something valuable from you?

Man, who are these people? Eff them! If you want this information in my brain, you need to pay me some cashola! Otherwise, you’re locked out. Sorry, but I don’t care if you’re my dear old Dad or a former boss who has stuck his neck out for me, either.

Except, that attitude is completely and utterly wrong.

The Knowledge/Idea Trap

Here’s the deal: your expertise is valuable but if you have a problem with brain picking, you’re valuing the wrong thing and managing the wrong problem.

I think it is safe to say that most of us think we have unique and interesting ideas about a few things in our area of subject matter expertise. I know I feel that way.

The trap is that we feel invested in our ideas and expertise (because, we likely have invested in it) so we feel that if we are giving some of that away, then we should be compensated for our investment.

There’s a problem with that line of thinking. Unless you plan on patenting an idea you have (good luck and let me know how your bank account looks at the end of that), your idea’s market worth on its own is next to nil. And to keep whatever low value market worth an idea does have, you have to stay ahead of almost everyone else in your field perpetually because nobody pays for ideas that are older than a few years (or months, or weeks, or days, depending on your industry).

Pruning Roses Via The Internet

Doesn’t education count for something? Doesn’t expertise mean anything? Of course it does. And not in some sarcastic way either. Education, both formal and informal, help prepare you and keep you at the forefront of your industry. It helps you develop in a way no other function can. When it comes to deep expertise, there is no better option.

Here’s the interesting part: a certain aspect of education and expertise has become so commoditized that it makes the idea in and of itself have low value.

Last year, I inherited some sad looking rose bushes at my rental house. My mom has cared for roses for a long time so I thought to ask her first but instead, I checked to see if YouTube had anything on there about how to care for roses (I’ve used YouTube before for this purpose). They did. I learned more by sitting through three or four five minute videos and then doing it than I remembered from my mom. I knew exactly where and how to cut, when to do it and what it should look like.

Shouldn’t master gardeners be terrified of this?

Following The Blue Collar Example

I come from a blue collar family so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that a new class and generation of workers is suddenly freaking out about this. I’ve heard hours of expert advice handed out for free with all of these people, too. Oh, the humanity! They are giving away their ideas for free!

Only, their ideas are rarely free. There is always some sort of cost involved in executing an idea. Whether it be the cost of time, actual material or the cost of expertise to help you execute it the way you need, the idea of a free idea is categorically insane. If I ask a web expert what I need to do to improve my website, they could probably list off a couple of things. The cheapest part about that whole process will definitely be identifying the problems with my website. The more expensive part, whether I do it myself or hire someone to do it will be the actual fixing of it.

In short, most blue collar experts don’t care about giving out advice or having people pick their brain. They make money on delivering and executing on them better than, cheaper than and/or faster than you can do yourself. And they’ve figured out they can charge a helluva lot more for that.

So Then, What’s The Problem With The “Pick Your Brain” Question?

If you’re the best plumber, the best recruiter, the best lawyer or the best whatever in your field, you will be judged on delivery, not of ideas, but of work and results. Any plumber can give you an idea as to why your sink might be leaking, a great one will fix the leak right the first time, quickly and easily. Any lawyer can tell you what your problem is, a great one will help you take care of whatever problems you had while minimizing your risk. People and companies routinely pay for the latter of those, gladly.

So if we reduce the value of ideas (which, by themselves, are worth very little to begin with and slope quickly towards nothing), then what’s to stop us from just wasting our time with brain picking questions all day?

I mentioned earlier that the vocal opposition to brain picking was valuing the wrong thing (that is, valuing ideas over doing the real, valuable work, that you don’t have to constantly defend and pitch as being valuable). But instead of managing who you’re giving your ideas out to in order to protect them (by charging for them, like they are valuable), you should instead focus on managing your time better or finding a better way to spread your ideas.

Managing Your Brain Being Picked (Without Being Insulting)

To give you an example, I’ll meet almost anyone for lunch. I have to eat anyway (time lost) and I don’t particularly like eating alone (personal benefit, even if it kinda makes me a loser). And if it is a brain picker who wants to buy me lunch, I make sure it is close to my home and is food I like to eat.

So I take the approach that my conversation over lunch is worth very little. It usually is as I invest zero time in it outside of the time I would have spent eating anyway. If it is someone who has an HR product, we talk about it. I talk about what I’ve seen (that I can remember). If it is someone with a WordPress issue, we can talk about what I’ve done and what they feel comfortable doing on their own. And usually, we talk about more than just shop which is good.

Sometimes they are happy with just that and I never hear from them again but that’s literally the worst thing that can ever happen. I get lunch with someone new, that I didn’t pay for and I didn’t lose anything for it. The ideas I gave them or the instructions I told them to Google are going to cost them way more in time, money and effort than whatever silly charge I could have constructed for our meeting.

Most of the time, I hear from them again. Sometimes it is for something more in-depth, which they are happy to pay for because I started our relationship in good faith and they know what I know (and what I don’t know). Sometimes, I get to refer one of my friends or perhaps even one of my company’s events or publications to the people I talked to which is good. It’s a low risk gamble that I’ll make a connection that helps me out in the long run, with the longer term goal in mind.

Selling Expertise Alone Has A Short Shelf Life

There will always be people and companies that want to abuse boundaries. Like the company that wanted me to draft them a social media policy based on a discussion. Or the person that wants me to re-do their blog for them for a credit link at the bottom (gee, thanks). But that isn’t brain picking, that’s work. And I don’t know about anybody else but it is super easy to say no to gratis work.

If you are in a position to sell your services, you should know that people don’t pay for expertise alone most of the time unless you have an extremely long relationship with them, you have something spellbindingly unique to offer (1% of you) or you’ve found a person or company who will pay you until you’ve run out of ideas (or their ideas catch up with you).

All of the consultants I know work their ass off on deliverables, on creating processes that help them do their job better and on mastering the art of communicating with people effectively. Dozens of painstakingly written documents, Excel spreadsheets that can’t be sent over e-mail because they are too big and reading hundreds of pages of BS and summarizing it so that a company can make a decision point and you can get to work on implementing it with the internal team. Because when Johnny CFO comes knocking on the managing director’s door asking why you just dropped 100g’s on a consulting firm last year, they’re gonna have something to show for it, not a bunch of ideas.

Whatever silly idea you have about selling brain picking sessions, creating a rate card for lunches and coffees, or keeping strangers from wasting your time because you haven’t figured this one out yet, it’s time to reconsider what exactly you’re trying to protect (your time, your sanity) and what you’re not trying to protect (your ideas alone).

If you truly have unique information, you probably shouldn’t be selling it in a one off way, anyway. You should be looking at scaling it beyond coffee shop and lunch conversations if you really think they have that much value. There are some pretty traditional ways to get your idea out there (write a book, get published) and some non-traditional ways (do a paid newsletter, offer paid videos).

Where Do You Stand?

In short, it is about three things:

1. Realizing what is important when it comes to expertise - The ability to out-execute, or be the best in either cost, speed or quality (or some combination of the three) will always be more sustainable than dolling out piece meal ideas or excessively worrying about brain picking.
2. You deserve to be paid for adding value - Ideas on their own don’t add significant value but if someone is asking you to work, you deserve to be paid. Knowing (and selling) things that are valuable and acknowledging (and not selling) things that are not will help you get paid.
3. Real brain picking boundaries are about time management, not idea management - If someone can talk to you on the phone for fifteen minutes and it isn’t a bother, then what’s the problem? If you normally eat lunch but can eat lunch with someone who may be a good connection down the road and it isn’t an inconvenience, share what you know.

Me personally? I’m always happy to have my brain picked, especially by people I’ve made past connections with and as long as it isn’t inconvenient for either one of us. And I’m always happy to tell you exactly when brain picking turns into work (and, it never happens at lunch). As long as you’re cool with that, you can come over and we can go grab lunch when the schedule permits.

Where do you stand on this?

December 20, 2011
by Ben Eubanks
3 Comments

What are your tips for creating and communicating a clear career path as a retention tool?

I saw this question posted recently on an HR site and thought it was worth exploring. And then recently I read this post by Deidre Honner, the HR Maven. It’s a classic example of how not to do the above. Here’s a snippet.

Someone doing it wrong

I was contacted by someone who works outside my organization, asking for some career advice… I asked her about her current employer.  They are a large area employer with several locations. Seems there would be lots of opportunity and availability to move up the ladder.  Or at least try another ladder.

Before looking externally, I suggested that she look internally. And I asked her about opportunities for promotion.  What she said stunned me.  She didn’t know.

I thought my hearing failed me. Not only did she not know what opportunities there were within the company, she wasn’t ALLOWED to know because she wasn’t a manager or a salaried employee.

Wow. I’m just as shocked as Deirdre. If you are a large organization with various types of operations, it is in your best interest to identify the solid performers and do what you can to keep them on board. If it means transferring them to another job that they want to do, then do it. Moving a talented performer around might cause some extra paperwork, but if the alternative is them leaving the organization for another employer, then you really don’t have a choice, right?

Someone doing it right

My best friend works closely with a company called Bechtel. They are known for finding their A players internally and moving them around every 2-3 years. This keeps the people engaged and knowledgeable about multiple areas of the business and it helps the leadership know that they are filling internal positions with quality people. One of their biggest draws for candidates is the opportunity to grow professionally and to have exciting assignments in different areas of the country (or the world, if they choose to go international). They use the idea of a varied career path as a retention tool, and they do it well.

It’s a mindset issue

Instead of looking at employees as resources to be hoarded, look at them as resources to be shared. Find other areas that they are interested in and look for ways to get them there. Look for their areas of strength and give them more opportunities to use them. You don’t own the people, so don’t try to hold them back from doing what they love.

Anyone else work for a company that values career progression internally? What about a company that doesn’t? How do you think their corporate cultures compare?

This is a guest post by Ben Eubanks of upstartHR. Ben spends his days writing, speaking, and working as an HR generalist in Huntsville, AL. He recently published a new guide titled Rock Your Corporate Culture, and it looks at ways leaders can define and leverage their internal culture for business success.

December 15, 2011
by Guest Writer
3 Comments

Editor’s Note: This guest post was provided by Erin Palmer on behalf of Villanova University’s online certificate programs, such as PMP certification prep courses and Business Intelligence training. Enjoy -LH

“When I have the time…”  These words are often spoken wistfully by employees attempting to balance a busy wo