Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed today - hashtag - #cynic.  OK, so I'm taking a page and even some content from this post at cracked.com (h/t to reader Matt L) and breaking down some brutal HR truths.

To quote Milli Vanilli - Girl: You Know it's True.  Let's do this.

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Let's lay out a harsh truth for the business of HR.

Half of your company/team is made up of people who are *******.  What's that stand for?  You fill in the stars.  I'll go low impact and say its stands for whiners.

You need performance and results.  We're generally prone to being nice with our workforces, which is a good idea most the time.  However, there's always a time when straight talk and a kick in the butt is overdue.  At that point, someone has to deliver a harsh message to all - performers and non-performers - because let's face it, we're too scared to round up all the non performers and do the straight talk to that group alone.

When the harsh message is delivered, you'll find out all you need to know about your people.  

For example - here's the crazy 7 minute clip of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross (FYI - this is extremely NSFW, so watch it with earbuds or on the mobile out of the office - seriously):

OK, so you watched a bit of it or you already have seen it.  The point isn't in what Baldwin says, it's the reaction of the team to lecture.  There's whining.  There's excuses. There's people trying to disrespect Baldwin during the message by getting coffee.  

Here's an interesting reaction to the clip from cracked.com:

"It's brutal, rude and borderline sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate expression of what the world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing."

#true. Think about that - take the language out of the equation and focus on this - "we've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing."  The interesting thing about this clip is how high performers, or people who want to be high performers, view it.  More from the investigative team (ha) at cracked.com:

That scene changed my life. I'd program my alarm clock to play it for me every morning if I knew how. Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that movie and that's the only scene he's in. As smarter people have pointed out, the genius of that speech is that half of the people who watch it think that the point of the scene is "Wow, what must it be like to have such an a**hole boss?" and the other half think, "F*** yes, let's go out and sell some g*dd*mned real estate!"

Or, as the Last Psychiatrist blog put it:

"If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach's cursing at you, 'this guy is awesome!'; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no right to talk to me like that, or -- the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted with a greater power -- quietly seethe and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying."

The harsh truth is that because we don't want to offend, we've actually stopped telling people they're doing poorly.  Because half, or more than half, can't take it.  Which means we're trying to get our companies to perform with one hand tied behind our back.

Now get out there and sell some ***-****** HR real estate.