Title Inflation in Organizations - When the Mailroom Guy Has a VP Title...

Ever see the scene in Office Space where the two Bobs (OD consultants) are trying to figure out what people do at Innotech?  They would have loved to tackle the topic of Title Inflation (Bob #1 - "What would you say your title means here?").

There's a solid article from 2007 at Knowledge at Wharton focusing on the topic of title inflation in the C-suite, noting that companies have expanded C-Level titles from CEO, COO and CFO to include the less standard CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), CPO (Chief Privacy Officer) and CTO (Chief Talent Officer).  The article correctly points out that a primary reason for the inclusion of more C-level titles is the desire on the part of the organizations in question to show a functional area's importance and clout in an organization.

Of course, HR Pros know that title inflation has long been an issue underneath the C-suite in companies big and small.  Over the years, it seems like the most pressure in an organization (big and small) from a title perspective revolves around the designations of manager, director and vice-president.  With these titles in mind, here are my top reasons why your managers occasionally want to "beef up" the title of an associate:

1.  Limited funds exist for an aggressive Merit Increase - If the funds aren't there to be super aggressive on the merit side for a high performer, throwing in a beefier title seems like a good way to reward an employee.

2.  Retention Concerns - A manager may believe that a high performer values title and prestige over money, and thus feels pressured to deliver a paper title to a high performer - although their role won't change via the promotion.

3.  Customer Clout - A title occasionally is bestowed on a high performer based on the rationalization that the employee holds a position that is key in dealing with (often negotiating) customers.  In this space, the title is rationalized as being helpful in giving the employee the authority he/she needs with customers. 

4.  Internal Equity - Managers may feel pressure from certain high performers to promote them aggressively in title, due to the titles that others in the organization have for their respective roles.  This factor is intensified when the employee feels like they are on uneven ground with the other direct reports of the manager in question. 

Left to the chaos of a non-standardized organization (especially with a decentralized HR function), everyone does their own thing (which is to give out titles without much structure or consistency).   Then someone in the org runs a report, and discovers the mailroom services guy is an AVP (Associate Vice President for all you non-title inflators out there).

You know the drill, especially if you have spent time in a larger company.  What follows the AVP of Mailroom Services discovery is a title standardization campaign leaving many (and I mean many) employee relations issues (hard feelings) as titles are stripped away and replaced by more realistic tags describing what the employees actually do (or as close as they can get).

Been through some of that - it's always much better to provide a little resistance up front and make sure all in the org are on board before handing out inflated titles.  Best place to start?  No manager titles if the person doesn't manage direct reports, and no Director or VP titles if the person doesn't manage managers who have direct reports (multiple layers in their organization). 

After all, you don't want the two Bobs asking YOU about the titles...   

The Key to Employee Engagement - Don't Hire Clock Watchers

I've been accused by others of being a workaholic.  Need proof?  Check out the comments to my past post on the wisdom of using an Out-Of-Office reply, where I was taken to task by those appalled that I dared to work on my blackberry while standing in a 60-minute line at Disney.   Trust me, peeps, standing in line at Disney isn't quality time with the nuclear family.  It's a taxing whinefest we would all be well advised to ignore through advanced technology.

More important to the question of my work habits, and yours, is the question of engagment.  Seth Godin penned a piece a few days ago that I thought was brilliant.   The thesis is that being a workaholic isn't defined by hours, but rather by attitude:

"A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation... because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it's a lot more fun than watching TV.

It was hard to imagine someone being passionate about mining coal or scrubbing dishes. But the new face of work, at least for some people, opens up the possibility that work is the thing (much of the time) that you'd most like to do. Designing jobs like that is obviously smart. Finding one is brilliant."

We should all be fortunate enough to be so engaged in our jobs/careers that we actively seek opportunties to learn, regardless of time/location. 

This blog is a good example of working with curiosity.  Do I have to do it?  Nope.  Do I want to do it?  Absolutely, especially when I get reactions and thoughts from others I can learn from as a result.  That's where the power of engagement really comes into play.  It makes you want to work on the craft, and go back for more.

I know people who naturally bring that passion to their work.  I know another group of people who are rigid about the hours they work.  The interesting thing is that few of the individuals who are rigid about their hours are passionate about their work. 

Can people who watch the clock be engaged employees?  Or is engagement an intrinsic quality that some people have and others don't?

My take?  The naturally curious are always more apt to dream and be engaged, regardless of the job.  The rest of the crowd better work OT to find a job that matches their strengths, because if not placed in a perfect situation, they'll become clock watchers.

And once that happens, there's little that the employer can do to change engagement levels.

Look inward, clock watchers of America. 

"A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation... because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it's a lot more fun than watching TV.

It was hard to imagine someone being passionate about mining coal or scrubbing dishes. But the new face of work, at least for some people, opens up the possibility that work is the thing (much of the time) that you'd most like to do. Designing jobs like that is obviously smart. Finding one is brilliant."

Ugly Stats on the Impact of Bad Diversity Training...

Want to hear some ugly stats?

A recent study found the impact of most diversity training efforts to be counter-productive, according to a comprehensive analysis of 31 years of data from over 800 medium and large US workplaces.

See a review of the full study results at the Washington Post.

Here are numbers - The kind of diversity training offered by most companies was followed by a 7.5% drop in the number of women in management, a 10% drop in the number of black women in management, and a 12% drop in the number of black men in management.   The study cites Asians and Latinos as suffering similar fates, even while pointing to the good intentions of companies embracing diversity training as a way to make their workplaces more inclusive and to cater to a more diverse workforce and customer base.

The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that mandatory programs -- often undertaken mainly with an eye to avoiding liability in discrimination lawsuits -- were the problem. When diversity training is voluntary and undertaken to advance a company's business goals, it was associated with increased diversity in management.   That's good to know, but hard to explain to the OFCCP when they want a list of your good faith efforts in conjunction with your Affirmative Action Plan...

So the next time you're doing Diversity training, you might want to roll out the demographics of your customer base as a part of the package...and <gasp> make it voluntary?

The Limitations of Succession Planning - Nirvana and the Foo Fighters....

I'm in a rock and roll kind of mood today.  As a card-carrying member of GenX, I grew up buying flannel shirts for nights out, which means the whole "grunge" scene was driving my fashion sense in college.   Looking back, all I was missing was a thick beard and I could have been a double on the set of Grizzly Adams.  Good times, but it was hard to look like you were having fun with all the angst in those grunge lyrics.

Over the weekend, I had two rock experiences.  First, we finally broke out Guitar Hero for the Xbox, which was a Christmas gift for my sons.   After handling Barracuda on "easy" mode, my wife and I headed to the arena for the Jimmy Eat World/Foo Fighters show, which was a blast.  From a wellness perspective, it was cool to see that holding up your lighter has been replaced almost entirely by holding up the LED screen of the wireless device of your choice. 

One connection to my GenX/grunge days from the night out was Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl.  Grohl hit the rock/grunge scene in 1991 as the drummer for Nirvana, the band that has remained as icon for everything related to grunge.  At the time Nirvana was popular, Grohl was an afterthought, dramatically overshadowed by lead singer Kurt Cobain, and his crazy wife, Courtney Love. 

Like a big corporation with a famous CEO, Nirvana rocked on and changed the music scene for a couple of years, until the equivalent of the Nirvana CEO, Cobain, committed suicide amidst a struggle with depression and dependency.  The band dissolved, minus the leader who had defined them as an organization.  Grohl and the other surviving member of the band, Chris Novoselic (bass), went their separate ways.  No succession plan there...

Over time, Novoselic and Grohl started bands organizations on their own.  Novoselic's fizzled, but Grohl's project caught fire, with the Foo Fighters ultimately releasing 6 CD's since 1995 and being widely regarded as one of the best rock bands/brands active today.

My point - and there is one - is that Grohl was widely regarded as an afterthought in the initial flagship he contributed to (Nirvana).  Overshadowed in life and death by Cobain, Grohl used his skills to reshape his post-Nirvana career and develop an organization/brand deeper, more diversified and ultimately more successful than Nirvana. 

So the moral of the story is this - you have a Dave Grohl in your organization right now, a talent deeper and more creative than what's currently in the spotlight.  How do you find them and ensure they maximize their potential without having to leave your company?  Wouldn't it be cool if you could spot the high potential in your company and do something different with that talent? 

Of course, once you find a Dave Grohl, the problem is being brave enough to do something different with the talent.  Development of individuals in succession plans is difficult, mainly because as soon as you treat someone differently, you're putting them and everyone else on notice they are on the fast track.  That causes hard feelings and politics...

Most organizations don't fight that battle.  It's just easier to have everyone wear the same flannel shirt......

(subscribers reading via email or specific readers may need to click through for Foo Fighters clip below)

Why HR Managers Need to Be Immigrants and Quants...

Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion and blogger at the aptly-named Knowledge Infuser, is winding it down for 2007 and recently summarized a year's worth of observations regarding the Changing Role of HR.   

I loved the post, in part, because Jason's firm works with some cool companies, and I am always interested in the KI perspective, and also because his list (a top 10 type of list) isn't the usual "why HR sucks" or "why isn't HR getting any respect" monotony. 

Here's a sampling of what makes Jason's list different (see the entire list here):

"2.  HR leaders today are split into two camps; those that have been in HR forever and new entrants into HR. Lets call them HR Natives vs. HR Immigrants. The HR Natives are struggling to get out of old school, transactional HR while the HR Immigrants don't want anything to do with that. This caused quite a chasm in HR organizations in 2007 and we expect this to continue in 2008.

3.  Continued entrance of "The Quants". HR leaders are either equipped or hiring individuals with quantitative backgrounds to focus on measurement. This is changing the demands on the rest of HR as far as the type and style of information that they need to have at their fingertips.   (note from the Capitalist - you can be a new style quant - you don't have to look like the guys in the picture above)

4.  HR is focusing on marketing internally more than ever. Creation of employment brand is important, but more HR organizations are marketing themselves to the press to prove they are creating value in their workplace. The Knowledge Infusion Deployment Excellence practice actually does this for clients and in 2007, the demand was greater then ever."

Pretty cool observations.  I can't tell you how many HR peers I've seen who get run over by Finance regarding spreadsheet structure and command of the numbers.  I think that's one of the factors in the Natives vs. Immigrants battle (brillant terms, BTW), but there are others things that drive the Immigrant vs. Native divide in HR, like this one - a willingness and desire to recruit. 

Finally, Jason hits a home run with his observations on marketing.  How many HR people think about their internal materials as exercises in branding?  Not enough...

Check out the rest of Jason's list here.  Evolve or be outsourced...

When You've Just Been Promoted to "Manager of" from "Manager"...

A friend of mine (I'll call him Johnny) emailed me last week and told me he had been promoted to "Manager of Customer Service" from "Customer Service Manager".

Ah yes, nothing says "I've arrived" more than an in-line promotion that tweaks your title a little bit but really changes nothing else.... Why do companies do this?  Sometimes real considerations drive the process, other times it's just the usual organizational madness...

I once worked for an organization that had "Manager of" titles and "Manager" titles.   Some of you are now questioning my aptitude to host an HR-related site.  The rest of you have worked on a Death Star before, and kind of understand that the compensation folks can come up with some crazy schemes to back up the whim of any organization.  By the way, Darth Vadar was a "Operations Manager" until The Empire Strikes Back, at which point he got the in-line promotion to "Manager of Operations" at Empire Industries... Even though things weren't going great, the Sith understood he might have a retention issue and wanted to lock him in for at least the remainder of the fiscal year.  You get the vibe...

Example of how it works:  In the past company I worked at, the "Manager" title was the lessor of the two designations, with the "Manager of" being preferred.  So, you had "Customer Service Managers" running around call centers, with the "Manager of Customer Service" being the senior designation of choice.  How did one promote to the "Manager of" title?  Good question.  There were some loose designations about Call Center size impacting eligibility, but over time the Directors of the centers kind of used it at their discretion, and it became impossible to manage or explain.

So Johnny, here's to you and your promotion.  Take a look at the clip from The Office below (hat tip to Michael at Career Revolution where I found the clip) and by all means, order new business cards instead of "fixing" your existing ones with white-out....

Will Your Company Be Using Facebook to Manage Talent in the Next Year?

Don't look now, but Facebook, that social networking site that has long been the avenue for college kids to share those crazy pictures from last weekend's party - is growing up.

What's that mean for you?  Maybe nothing.  But if you are a part of a Fortune 500 company looking to build internal knowledge networks or training applications, assist employees in finding the internal subject matter expertise they need, or looking to drive shared services traffic to the lowest cost channel, odds are you'll be dealing with Facebook or something like it in the next couple of years.

There's a great article in the June 11 edition of Fortune outlining how Facebook is planning to hook up the world.  From the David Kirkpatrick article:

"Last fall, Facebook announced two changes that are critical to its new strategy. First, it introduced  News Feed, an automated flow of information into your Facebook home page that told you which friends had new friends and what groups they joined, among other things.

Days later, Facebook made an even bigger announcement. Henceforth, membership would be open to everyone. New members of any age could join regional networks solely based on where they lived. (High school members had been allowed since 2005. Today there are three million.) There was grumbling among the college kids that Facebook would no longer be cool. Similarly, my 14-year-old daughter is appalled that I am a member of Facebook, and refuses to let me friend her, lest her other friends find out via News Feed. No matter, says Matt Cohler, the vice president for strategy who joined the company as employee number five in June 2004: "One of the first things I ever heard Mark say is 'We don't strive to keep it cool. We strive to keep it useful.'"

Opening up the rolls gave an immediate boost to membership. Facebook is growing spectacularly in places like Canada, the U.K., Australia, South Africa, Norway, Lebanon, and Egypt. Work networks are exploding, with 14,000 at IBM (Charts, Fortune 500), 10,000 at Ernst & Young, 8,100 at the BBC, and 6,300 at General Electric (Charts, Fortune 500). The U.S. Army network has 43,000 members."

Applications like Facebook will be real social networking plays for large companies, both for employees and prospects.  The numbers of employees already signed up and identifying themselves as employees of the companies above make Facebook a ripe play for the HR shops of those companies.  Why not set up your top HR people with accounts and let them interact?  Just another means of distribution in my eyes.  It's also easy to see online delivery of training activities migrating to the environment where employees are most comfortable and spending their time.  Protection of Intellectual Property would be my biggest concern, but let's face it - simply emailing IP is probably the biggest threat ever developed regarding IP.

This make sooooo much more sense to me then the hype about recruiting in Second Life.  Someone please make the articles on having an Avatar in Second Life stop.  Every time I see another media outlet pick up this story, I want to scream, "Why would we want to replace the phone screen with an interaction with an avatar if our goal is to find the best candidate?".

Facebook yes.  Text messaging candidates, yes.  Avatars?  Please....

When Cutting Pay Doesn't Hurt - UAW/Delphi/GM

Like Doctor Evil, I get confused when talking about millions and billions - it's like I've been frozen for 30 years....

A week or so back I profiled the hand wringing at Ford related to their upcoming labor talks with the UAW,  noting Ford would seek to cut hourly labor costs by 30 percent, from about $71 to around $50, including wages, pension and health care - in an attempt to compete with the foreign automakers in the states who have annualized total comp cost of $85,000 per FTE vs. $148,000 for Ford.  (not a typo).

The optimists at Ford might have thought they would get a little help from the current round of talks between Delphi and the UAW, but it appears not to be.  The Wall Street Journal reports that while the tentative agreement reached by Delphi and the UAW has slashed wages on the surface, GM has agreed to bankroll the difference in lump sum payments to veteran workers to make it all go and help the company emerge from Chapter 11.  From the Journal:

"Specifics details of the labor deal weren't disclosed on Friday.  But the agreement is expected in include payments by GM  (a total of $300 to $400 million annually) to higher seniority workers to offset cuts in wages and benefits paid by Delphi.  Delphi could pay workers as little as $14 per hour in wages compared to the previous average of about $27 per hour."

The reason for the supplement to pay by GM?  GM has previously said its financial exposure to Delphi equals $7 Billion.  With that in mind, it seems reasonable to throw some money in the kitty to make the deal work.  Average wages come down, but the UAW can sell the deal to veterans by ensuring their current total comp (or something close to it) via the annual payments from GM.

Of course, that won't help Ford, who has banked all of its assets on the latest turnaround plan.  They desperately need to reduce their cost structure, and they won't have someone behind them writing checks.  Should be interesting to follow over the summer and fall.

Even with the supplemental payment, I would imagine any deal endorsed by the UAW that cuts the Delphi check of a long time employeee from $30 to $20 would be a tough sell.....

Title Inflation in Organizations - When the Mailroom Guy Has a Strategic Title...

Ever see the scene in Office Space where the two Bobs (OD consultants) are trying to figure out what people do at Innotech?  They would have loved to tackle the topic of Title Inflation (Bob #1 - "What would you say your title means here?").

There's a solid article this week at Knowledge at Wharton focusing on the topic of title inflation in the C-suite, noting that companies have expanded C-Level titles from CEO, COO and CFO to include the less standard CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), CPO (Chief Privacy Officer) and CTO (Chief Talent Officer).  The article correctly points out that a primary reason for the inclusion of more C-level titles is the desire on the part of the organizations in question to show a functional area's importance and clout in an organization.

Of course, HR Pros know that title inflation has long been an issue underneath the C-suite in companies big and small.  Over the years, it seems like the most pressure in an organization (big and small) from a title perspective revolves around the designations of manager, director and vice-president.  With these titles in mind, here are my top reasons why your managers occasionally want to "beef up" the title of an associate:

1.  Limited funds exist for an aggressive Merit Increase - If the funds aren't there to be super aggressive on the merit side for a high performer, throwing in a beefier title seems like a good way to reward an employee.

2.  Retention Concerns - A manager may believe that a high performer values title and prestige over money, and thus feels pressured to deliver a paper title to a high performer - although their role won't change via the promotion.

3.  Customer Clout - A title occasionally is bestowed on a high performer based on the rationalization that employee holds a position that is key in dealing with (often negotiating) with customers.  In this space, the title is rationalized as being helpful in giving the employee the authority he/she needs with customers 

4.  Internal Equity - Managers may feel pressure from certain high performers to promote them aggressively in title due to the titles that others in the organization have for their respective roles.  This factor is intensified when the employees feels like they are on uneven ground with the other direct reports of the manager in question.

Left to the chaos of an non-standardized organization (especially with a decentralized HR function), everyone does their own thing (which is to give out titles without much structure or consistency).   Then someone in the org runs a report, and discovers the mailroom services guy is a AVP (Associate Vice President for all you non-title inflators out there).

You know the drill, especially if you have spent time in a larger company.  What follows the AVP of Mailroom Services discovery is a title standardization campaign leaving many (and I mean many) employee relations issues (hard feelings) as titles are stripped away and replaced by more realistic tags describing what the employees actually do (or as close as they can get).

Been through some of that - it's always much better to provide a little resistance up front and make sure all in the org are on board before handing out inflated titles.  Best place to start?  No manager titles if the person doesn't manage direct reports, and no Director or VP titles if the person doesn't manage managers who have direct reports (multiple layers in their organization). 

After all, you don't want the two Bobs asking you about the titles...   

Wikis and Org Charts - I Smell Headhunters

In a widely reported launch (too widely reported to tip the hat to any one source), CogMap has launched its business plan - a site serving as a Wiki for Org Charts.  My first spin around the site indicates that participants are mapping large organizations (Microsoft) and small organizations (Church at Bethany) alike.  A secondary observation is that the very small organizations are likely using this as their primary Org Chart software, while the large organizations are simply being riffed aka Vault (where anonomous users can spin their experience within a company).

For those of you without the 411 on Wikis, a Wiki is a collaborative type of web app allowing end users to create and update content, generating a online community responsible for improving the quality and accuracy of content over time.  The big value is that the end users are the ones in the know, and they are best suited to develop and edit content - the network effect at it's best.  Wikipedia is the most widely used version of a Wiki you have probably run into to date.

At first glance, I really like stuff like this, and then I remember I would be a fool to share org charts in an open forum - can headhunters ready to raid your organization be far behind?  I mean, I am careful about adding recruiters to my LinkedIn account (of which I have full control), is their any doubt having org charts in the public domain can lead to bad things? 

No Need to Show Up In the Office - Just Perform...

Was looking at the stack of mail this week and the cover of Business Week immediately caught my eye- previewing an article detailing an lofty experiment Best Buy HQ is conducting in their workplace - encouraging their workers that office hours and "face time" don't matter as long as the work gets done.  Here's a except from the story -

At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.

Hence workers pulling into the company's amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren't considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It's O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid.

Could this experiment work in your workplace?  For most, the answer is a resounding "NO".   The BW article is a good read, but it seems to focus on the barriers that the "old school" managers put up - secretly  wanting to scrap the program and looking for opportunities to derail it - so they can get back to things the way they used to be.  That means meetings where everyone is there, walking around and seeing all the peeps, etc.   While these barriers to such a program are real and can't be understated, the article really doesn't focus enough on what is need to make it work - a super-solid performance management system that enables managers to feel like they can measure performance regardless of where the employee is located or at in a given hour/day/month/year....

From an HR perspective, if you want to experiment with something like this, Performance Management is your first stop - making sure your system focuses on true objectives that are measurable and force accountability across the organization.  If you are an employee and want to get away for a little quiet time where you can actually get some work done, start by asking to take it off site one project at a time, then deliver results and above all else - make sure your manager knows you delivered and the off-site time was key.   And of course - answer the phone every time it rings and hit email's at least once an hour....  The quickest way to lose the priviledge is to not be responsive when it matters most - when your boss is calling...