Here are a couple of recent tweetstreams perhaps worth your time and attention …
BRAND YOU MISUNDERSTOOD
Many get the “Brand You” idea ass-backwards; they see it as selfish/solo/ego-driven. But effective brand you is skill and network driven; that is, it is by and large selfless.
An effective Brand You learns constantly and delivers stellar projects via teamwork excellence.
An effective Brand You gets better and better projects. How? Via peer reputation for having been an ardent learner and terrific teammate.
Fast-changing world. Re-tool or die (professionally).
NEVER forget: Brand You is 100% about COMMUNITY. You are as good—or bad—as your reputation with your peer network!
“Entrepreneurship” is not some weird, mystical thing. Nobel prize winner and father of micro-lending Muhammad Yunus says we are all entrepreneurs; it was the nature of work in the past—e.g., self-employment.
EVERY job, in companies of every size, provides growth/”entrepreneurial” opportunities—if your head is screwed on right!
Lauri Jutila: “Forget Human Resources Managers, introduce the idea of Human Being Developers.”
“Good” old days/1960: Security = Sucking UP; boss-driven. “Bad” days/2014: Security = Sucking SIDEWAYS; network/peer reputation-driven.
Brand you: I acknowledge the enormous challenges of making it on your own circa 2014. But the notion that it’s hell not to be cosseted for life by big-brother mega-corps is questionable.
For those decrying the loss of standard “careers”: Was it really unmitigated joy to spend 40 years in one place sucking up to a series of numbnuts bosses?
EVALUATING PEOPLE
Evaluations: Forced ranking systems utter unspeakable unmitigated bullshit. Planetary #1 de-motivators.
Labeling people as losers is likely to induce a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than a renaissance.
Twitter commentator: “Significant evidence shows that ratings by managers serve exactly the opposite purpose from what was intended. I.e., demotivates and leads to attrition.”
The fabled Dr. Edwards Deming thought evaluations were the #1 bane of organizational life and productivity destroyer.
Twitter commentator: “See people as intelligent, treat them as intelligent & they will respond with intelligence.”
Twitter commentator: “Purpose of ‘ranking’ should be evaluation of one’s learning based on a well designed benchmark.”
Any ranking is phony precision.
Twitter commentator: “The bell curve fails to ring the bell when it comes to fostering intrinsic motivation of people.”
Twitter commentator: “Forced ranking allows us to be comfortable with not investing time with people as we should.”
Twitter commentator: “Forced ranking seems still so entrenched. Are all alternative arguments so weak?”
I don’t think alternative arguments are weak. I think it’s mainly an unwillingness [on the part of managers] to invest the substantial time required to do it right!
Very serious people spent enormous amounts of time on evaluation of people at McKinsey. Evaluation is an art, not science.
My 1st managerial job circa 1966: Eight people working for me, spent half hour mindlessly filling out the evaluation forms—and havoc ensued.
If you truly understood the enormity of the impact of evaluations on people, you’d spend 10X more time on it.
Remember, clerk or middle manager, when you do an evaluation you are f-ing w/ the core of another’s existence.
Jane Leonard: “I recommend that [see immediately above] be written at the top of each evaluation sheet. Then a similar line be included in the sign-off.”
And the evaluator must initial the two (top & bottom) statements!!
[Available also as a PDF.]