PHOTO: Never Put Your CEO In Line to Be Embarrassed Publicly By a Wildcard...

Look at this photo.  This is a CEO being embarrassed in a very public way by a loose cannon that could have been avoided, if only the CEO's handlers had cared enough to determine the probability (hint - it was waaay too high) that the person in question would try to show up the CEO.  Which in this case is the President of the United States.

The picture shows Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona, wagging the finger at President Obama.  Here's the details from the New York Times:

"President Obama’s visit to Phoenix got off to a rough start on Wednesday afternoon when Air Force One was met by  Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona — she of the book “Scorpions for Breakfast,” in which she accuses the Obama administration of turning a blind eye to illegal immigration because migrants will help Mr. Obama register more Democratic votes.

Mr. Obama stepped off the plane and was greeted by Ms. Brewer, who handed him a handwritten letter in an envelope that she later said was an invitation to discuss the “Arizona comeback.” The two had an intense exchange for several minutes; at one point Ms. Brewer pointed her finger at Mr. Obama.

Afterward, she told reporters that Mr. Obama “was a little disturbed about my book.”

OK, let's do the math.  She wrote a book that's critical of the president.  The title of the book underscores her "scrappiness" and willingness to take on the big issues, regardless of risk.  She's willing to discuss their conversation on the record after the photo opp of her wagging her finger at the president.  She had a prop that she could talk about to the press after the meeting.  The CEO in question, confronted with the randomness and aggressiveness, tried to shake her and get her off his pants leg.  Which just gave her more ammo.

At what point did the president's handlers not understand that if this meet-up could not be avoided, they should just change the schedule and come to the state under the cover of darkness, in a private way based on security concerns, etc?  What possibly made them think that this wouldn't happen?

I'm on the record as a moderate Republican.  With that in mind, the odds are long that my vote goes Democrat in November.  But seriously - this is what it has come to?  Grandstanding and co-opting our president into your PR campaign? 

If it was corporate America, someone would be fired for allowing the CEO to ever get in this situation.  Protect your leader from BS that is beneath him in your role as an HR leader, folks.  It's a great way to make yourself indispensible to your CEO.

And it's obviously needed, even at the highest levels.

Another Installment of DO YOU FIRE THIS GUY?

That's right - It's time for another installment of "Do you fire this guy?"

The topic this time is an easy target - the FedEx guy who throws a computer monitor over a gate during the holidays.

Hello...McFly....Those that can afford gates usually have sweet video systems watching the gate... Whoops...

Would you fire him?  Hit me in the comments, and as an added bonus below the video, I'm going to give you the top 5 reasons you wouldn't fire this guy (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through for the video).

Here's the top 5 reasons some of you would not fire that guy:

1.  The union contract is sticky related to due process for this type of thing.

2.  He's high risk from an EEOC standpoint.  You don't want the noise.

3.  He's shared some personal stuff with your team.  He's going through a rough patch.  You hate not to show support now.

4.  He claimed in the interview when you presented this video to him that his boss told him it was OK to pitch electronics over the fence to meet his production goals - after all, that s#*# is insured.

5.  His boss and team have proactively waged a campaign that while it's inexcusable, everyone deserves a second chance - even if they starred in a video that generated 8 Million views that damaged the brand on YouTube.

Actually, I'll give you 6 - Everyone does it.

You know you'd hear some of these.  Enough not to fire?

What's the Difference Between a Manifesto and a Mission Statement?

Easy:  A mission statement is usually boring and completed as a corporate project, complete with consultants and other things that ultimately water the whole thing down.

A manifesto is usually completed by an individual and looks to throw fastballs at the head of the establishment.  Manifestos can't make it through a group editing process because they're too renegade. 

Mission statements are the opiate of the masses.  Marx thought it was religion - it's not - mission statements are the crackpipe of the corporate masses.

Jerry McGuire called what he did a mission statement.  It was actually a manifesto.  He got fired as a result (I'm here to fire you Jerry.  Could you stop thinking about yourself all the time?).  The manifesto was too big for "the man".

Reference - this post on manifestos over at The Cynical Girl, with specific reference to the comment by "Jackie".

Why I Love the Salesforce Acquisition of Rypple...

One word:  Yammer.

(note: Yammer is a twitter like product for companies to use, but the outside world can't access the stream)

You know what the problem with Yammer is?  Yammer suffers from a chronic adoption problem. Everybody thinks Yammer is great for a week, then 99% of your company stops using it.  It's a great product, but it's not a destination in your company.  That means people won't go there after a week. I've witnessed 5 or 6 quick deaths to Yammer in corporations.

That's why the Salesforce acquisition of Rypple makes so much sense.

I wrote a while back that Rypple had to build out more traditional performance management flow to really get traction.  That was true as a standalone product.  That's no longer true with Rypple embedded in Salesforce.

Salesforce is the cloud CRM backbone of choice for thousands, if not tens of thousands of companies.  It's in the cloud.  Once Salesforce is in a company, it's pretty strong in gaining contracts and adoption for customer service, marketing and other departments in addition to its original promise as a Sales CRM.   They've taking advantage of that cross-departmental CRM feel by launching a product called Chatter, which is a CRM flavor of twitter.  Max interaction and collaboration through Chatter, the sales promise goes...

Does Chatter have greater adoption and staying power than Yammer?  Of course.  Chatter has to have much greater adoption than Yammer because, let's face it, your employees have to use Salesforce.

Which is why the acquisition of Rypple makes so much sense.  Rypple is about feedback loops on how you're doing as a part of a team.  Salesforce can plug the functionality of Rypple into Chatter and the core product in a bunch of ways.  Adoption is a given.  The beatings will continue until morale improves.  Rypple can remain cutting edge and not worry about traditional performance management to pay the bills.  

Salesforce paid exponentially less (than SAP paid for SuccessFactors) and got exactly what they needed. Rypple made a good choice.  They obviously got paid.  Everybody wins.

What's it mean for you as an HR Pro?  If your company uses Salesforce, you need to track the Rypple integration and offering into Salesforce.  HR always says they want to be embedded in the business. This is a pretty good chance to do that.  It's Salesforce, people.  If your company uses it, trust me - that's where the action is.

Congrads to Rypple.  

"BARs" (Big Audacious Rewards) in the Social Media Age....

"Nancy!  Get payroll on the line.  I want to cut some $5,000 spot bonus checks for my senior team so I can hand them out tonight at our Christmas dinner..."

Used to be you could do that and have it be your little moment with your team.  That's no longer the case in the digital era.  Consider this AOL story from Business Insider:

"AOL hosts a "global operating meeting" twice a year.  It's holding one right this very moment in New York to firm up the company's plans for 2012.

A couple sources tell us that Tim Armstrong just opened the meeting by giving everyone in attendance – about 150 execs – a $10,000 bonus on the spot.

"About $1.5 million just for showing up!" says our incredulous source.

An AOL PR rep declined to comment."

Ugh.  Your little moment in the digital era can be tipped to an industry insider whose job it is to create 20 posts a day on anything - and I mean anything - that's going on in your industry.    This story was tipped as the checks were handed out.  How's the rank and file feel about this one?

Layoffs, schmaoffs.  Things are good at the top.

My suggestion?  Give your team a note that says a donation has been made in their name to the "Human Fund".  Money for people...

LEADERSHIP & DAMAGE CONTROL: How to Communicate When Something Goes Terribly Wrong...

If the Penn State and Syracuse scandals have taught us anything about leading in a crisis, it's that you need to get out of the denial business and show you're accountable in any damage control situation.

In case you missed it, there was a big old jailbreak of a brawl in college basketball on Saturday night (Cincinnati at Xavier) including sucker punches, stomping of downed players after said sucker punches and a host of other crazy stuff.  Remember the Ron Artest malay?  College basketball is pretty lucky this one didn't spill over into the stands.

How do you communicate when it all goes to hell at your company as a leader?  Do this for me - watch the video of the fight below, then we'll talk after the jump about how the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University communicated after the game.  Lots of lessons in leadership and communicating after a negative event in this one.

First the fight (email subscribers click through for all videos):

Now, for the reaction.  First up?  Xavier University, who put their players in front of the media after this brawl and got the results they deserved - the players claiming to be gangster and telling everyone if you challenge them, this is what you are going to get.

Next up, the University of Cincinnati put head coach Mick Cronin up in front of the media, and got the results they deserved.  A leader of a program saying that he and the program he represents is accountable, and that he told all the members of a team that he would decide who's still a part of the program after the full review:

Wow.  See any contrast?   Who's the rocket scientist at Xavier who let the kids who were in the middle of craziness express their thoughts?  

Leadership - fail.  Wow, that was weak.

Cronin, on the other hand, did well.  "I took everyone's jersey".  "We'll decide who's still part of the program".  "I took some of the jerseys off some of the kids myself". 

When it doubt related to communicating in a crisis, go for accountability.  Oh, and don't let the employees who helped create an epic situation be the ones who communicate for your company.

It's called leadership.  Get someone in front of the cameras or print reporters who can handle it.  The last thing you need is an inflammatory quote that damages the brand even further.

5 Things Your Exclamation Point (!!!) In Email Means to Me...

You know who you are.  You love to use the exclamation point in emails and writing!

Yes!!!

You're a peppy son of a gun.  We're watching your enthusiasm for life and/or your sense of urgency.  The thing is, you use the exclamation point so much that we're not sure if if all that enthusiasm and/or urgency is real.

Let's start with the definition of the exclamation point (!) from about.com:

A punctuation mark (!) used after a sentence that expresses a strong emotion. See also:

• Exclamation
• Exclamatory Sentence
• Interjection
• Interrobang
• Multiple Exclamation Points

So, it's strong emotion that goads us into using the exclamation point.  With that in mind, here's the 5 ways I see the !! being used these days:

1.  I'm Happy.  Usually reserved to frame up a single word at the end of an email like "cool!".

2.  I'm Intense.  Same time of usage, but after a word like "right!" or "You got it!"

3.  Get off your *SS.  "Get me the report ASAP!".  Usually only used when someone has missed a deadline and you can get away with it.  See also, "I need it by 10am!"

4.  I'm Happy and/or intense all the time, which means it's the default for my communication, which means after I get 5 emails from you, I don't even see the exclamation point any more.  You put it in everything you send me, early and often.  What's your name again?  I've started tuning you out!!  Danger!

5.  I'm a caricature of what I think my company wants me to be.  It's a part of your autosignature in Outlook to say "Thanks!"  Guess what?  Since you decided to include it in the 100 emails you send me a month, I'm actually deducting points every time I see it.  

Do me a favor.  Save the "!" for when you mean it.  If you use it more than twice a day in an email, it has no effect on the corporate ecosystem in which you live.  Don't include it in your autosignature. Actually type it in when you feel it, dog.  There are a bunch of jaded cynics that are generating negative energy towards you from your overuse of the exclamation point..

For real!!!!!

GM and Google Apps: This Is What It Looks Like When Work Changes Forever...

You know the type of shift I'm talking about.  Everyone's talking about how some thing's going to change the way we do things at work, and sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not.  Examples:  Email and wireless - changed the way we do things forever.

Video - nice, but not currently changing the way we work. Cool watching Eastbound and Down videos at work.   Maybe it will change everything later, but not now...

So with those examples in mind, I've got one for you to decide on.  Topic - Apps in the cloud.  Real or phony?  We didn't really know, now we do. More from the Wall Street Journal:

"Google Inc. has signed a deal to provide email and online-collaboration software to more than 100,000 employees at General Motors Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.

The contract, however, requires Google to meet certain requirements before GM makes a final decision to deploy the software, these people added.

A GM spokeswoman declined to comment on the Google contract but said the company has "not made a decision to deploy Google Apps. We're always looking for leading-edge technologies, and our [information technology] department is open to various developers."

Assuming Google wins final approval, the deal could be a watershed."

Boom goes the dynamite.  100,000 licenses from a Fortune 100 means it's going to happen for everyone, and Microsoft isn't just going to stand around and watch the Office franchise get chisled away.  They're already on the cloud movement; you just haven't seen it yet.

Everything goes to the cloud when you can no longer tell the difference between the cloud and your Windows Explorer functionality.  You may have drank the Kool-Aid on the cloud a long time ago, but the GM deal and Google taking a deal from Microsoft means it just officially happened.

Please turn in your hard copy of MS Office.  You'll get a virtual copy or Google Apps. BTW, why don't you just start providing your own tech since all apps are on the cloud?  We'll give you $1,000 for all tech every year.  You figure it out.  

Just wait.

Measuring the Social Influence of Your Employees - 2 Examples of Why It's Hard to Do...

By now, a lot of your have heard about Klout, which is an online tool that measures your social influence, or the ability to drive action via social tools.  It's a cool tool, but let's face it, this is still very much a work in progress.

Here's are 2 examples of why tools like Klout still have a long way to go, both taking a look at people I know and respect in the HR and business world.  My Klout score is a 50, which is fine.  I write daily and do a fair amount on twitter, but really don't do anything at all on Facebook.  Here's two comparisons to my 50 that seem to be completely broken:

1.  Laurie Ruettimann (www.thecynicalgirl.com and @lruettimann on Twitter).  Laurie's been blogging daily for about 5-6 years.  Without even looking at anything else, I can tell you that she routinely gets 50 of her followers to comment on her blog, which is harder than climbing Mt Everest in tight runner's shorts, and worth a Klout score of 80 by itself.  No one in the HR world can match her at this.  Her Klout score is a 54, and to her credit, I'm sure she doesn't care.  But that's broken, and probably proof that Klout only measures a portion of the total line of influence that exits.  She's a content creator, which puts her in a <1% category by itself.

2. Joni Doolan (www.peoplereport.com and @luckypenny).  If you believe this tool (and there's no obvious reason not to) Joni's in the top 1% of all Twitter users related to the number of "retweets" she gets.  She's got as many followers as I do and tweets a lot more frequently.  She's currently at a 46.  Her retweet level alone feels like a 60-70 to me.

Great people that I love to follow.  Generating activity to a great degree.  Undervalued by the tool of the day.

Just goes to show you that as we start to look at social influence related to the candidates we consider for certain roles, one number won't do.  Look around, use multiple tools.  All influence can't be measured by a single number.

This Big HR Mistake Has Your Name On It. Pray It Doesn't End Your Career....

You know the drill.  If you've been in the HR game for more than 5 years in a position of authority, it's happened to you.  You're trying to build consensus on really nasty issues behind the scenes, and it requires emailing spreadsheets of confidential information around.  And you've made some type of mistake related to who you sent it to.

When you make the mistake, you can only hope that it's a small one, not a huge one.

This is a huge one.  Godspeed to this person, because her job really sucks right now.  People are questioning her credibiity and intelligence, but it happens to everyone at some point.  It's just that hers was about as big as this common mistake comes.  More from TechCrunch:

"The suspense on the day of the layoffs was a continuation of a pattern at BuyWithMe. Employees were often kept in the dark about changes affecting the entire livelihood of the company. Most assumed the company was healthy. In September, our new Chief Marketing Officer was talking about Superbowl ads, and shares in the company were meted out to employees. Just three weeks ago, a new copywriter was hired, leaving a job in publishing. Though there were signs that BuyWithMe was not as competitive in the group-buying “deal space” as it would have liked, the company emphasized that it maintained a strong position—claiming the number three position behind Groupon and LivingSocial.

But the scale tipped suddenly two Mondays ago. An email, accidentally delivered to a team of developers instead of the executive team, leaked a spreadsheet with names, titles, and proposed termination dates, as well as individual salaries, of a large number of employees within the company. Rumors gathered momentum in between the leak and the announcement of layoffs, but the company waited an entire day to say anything officially."

Oh Sh##.  There's no way to recover.  This is why you sit at the computer looking at the email addresses you're sending this spreadsheet to like you're proofing a document that will be seen by 1,000 of the most influential people in the world.

And still, we're human, so we screw it up.

There's a mistake like this out there with your name on it if you're in HR.  Let's hope you email out everyone's heath insurance enrollment (just single coverage?  Is Shirley finally divorced?  I heard she was sleeping with her tennis instructor on the side.  I knew that relationship was doomed) rather than a RIF list with salaries.

Godspeed to you, HR pros.