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Friday Fury – Lord Voldemort

Here in the UK we get eight public holidays every year. Now I don’t know about you but I look forward to these holidays. They are a chance to recharge, to meet up with friends, spend relaxing time with family. Apart from the folks who have to work on public holidays to keep essential services running (sincere thanks to you), these holidays are ours to spend how we choose.

I also like the fact that they fall on certain days, the fact that a lot of people will be taking time off on a certain determined day lends a kind of mega-community feel to the public holiday. Public holidays are a part of our social fabric and I believe people return to work from them feeling generally better about themselves, and in a good frame of mind to do good work.

Which is why I’m delighted that I don’t work for the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). This week the CEBR published a piece of total crap suggesting that UK public holidays ‘cost the economy £2.3 billion’ and in addition they ask ‘Do we really need so many?’ The article is littered with numbers and percentages and as you read through it you feel the deathly hand of the economist on your shoulder. It reminds me of Harry Potter and co as they struggle to fend off the soul sucking misery of Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

I stuck a link to this article on our Facebook page yesterday and Marco Faimali got in touch saying, ‘Everything seems to be about costs to ‘the economy’. Whatever happened to the costs to society or gross national happiness?’ Chris followed up with the excellent ‘As Bobby Kennedy said “GDP measures everything except what makes life worthwhile”.

Right at the death, the CEBR says, ‘This is more a social than an economic judgement. Money is not the only thing and a healthy lifestyle needs time off to reflect and relax.’ But by then it is too late. All that is left of the reader is a dry husk, a lost soul ready to be blown away on the breeze. Oscar Wilde’s quote ‘The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’ is often turned into a joke about economists. It’s a crap joke and I ain’t laughing. Now get back to work willya, GDP just dropped another millionth of a percent.

Acknowledge

Laurie Ruettimann
Laurie Ruettimann

Good ideas are all around us. We miss most of them, and a few stick. 2012 is transformational for me because I spotted an idea in 2011 and I acted on it.  The idea was a reminder, a reminder of the importance of practice. It came from Laurie Ruettimann (pictured above) in a blog post she wrote called Public Speaking Tips. You can read the whole piece here, and the part that really struck home for me was:

I practice like crazy. Other speakers advise me not to over-prepare and I tell them, “Mind your own business.” Malcolm Gladwell tells us that we need 10,000 of practice before we become rockstars. Maybe you don’t have to practice because you’re awesome. That’s great. Good for you. But we don’t let our children get behind the wheel of a car without extensive practice. Why would I stand before a group of busy, smart, talented people without extensive preparation? My audience deserves a strongly executed performance. I want to deliver. You should, too.

Laurie’s post was written on September 21st 2011 and just a couple of weeks beforehand I had accepted an invitation to speak at the CIPD Social Media in HR conference in December 2011. I musta read Laurie’s post about a hundred times, over and over and over. And then I applied that same level of interest and practice to the talk I was going to give. I built the talk, I destroyed the talk, I rebuilt it. I bashed it crashed it, mashed it, bashed it. Practice, practice, practice. Hell I even practiced leaving a couple of pieces to free flow, because you never know how your audience is going to react and if you’ve tied down the whole thing then you’ve kinda got nowhere to go.

The day came. I was nervous. I’m always nervous, and I always tell folks this. See, I did it again just there. After lunch I stood up and did my thing. I nailed it, and others felt I nailed it too. People like Neil Morrison, Alison Chisnell and Natasha Stallard. People I respect because I know they are authentic. And if they think I’m doing a good job, well that will do for me.

Wind the clock forward to today and I am humbled and excited by the speaking opportunities and possibilities that are presenting themselves since the day I nailed it. You can see some of them, including my September trip to Ohio (pinch myself) emerging here. And I’m currently doing exciting work with some great people at Careergro, helping them bring their product to market here in the UK. Last December, one of the Directors of Careergro was in the audience at the conference and heard the talk I gave. How cool is that!

So what?

First I want to thank the CIPD for inviting me and in particular I want to acknowledge Laurie’s part in my recent success. Not only did she write a fabulous, timely blog post, but she has also reached out to me a few times since and given generous support. Thank you Laurie, and if ever I can do something for you, just ask and I’ll do it (so long as it doesn’t involve looking after Scrubby. I’m not big on cats – sorry).

Second, if I can spot these things and act on them, so can you. I encourage you to think for a few minutes. An idea will have caught your eye recently. Have you grabbed it? Are you acting on it?

Third. When you act on it and achieve what you wanted, please don’t forget to acknowledge the person who gave you the idea. Always remember, what goes around, comes around.

Career Development – Are We Getting It Right?

How people create opportunities for career development, and growth through learning has aways fascinated me. I’ve previously undertaken research into the subject which has yielded some disappointing results.

For example, at a major UK charity I worked with, over half (53%) of 800 respondents said they did not have a development plan outlining agreed training and development needs for the coming year, and almost half (49%) said they did not meet regularly with their manager to discuss progress.

I also found that out of 1800 respondents working for a local authority, only 33% felt their career development aspirations are being met, and from a team of 400 graduates in a global company, only 35% felt they got regular, useful feedback from their manager.

These statistics are pretty uninspiring I think you’d agree, but so what?

Companies are always talking about the importance of attracting, retaining and engaging the best people, but these numbers show that these experiences are not always well delivered.

And employees are looking for personal involvement and more self determination in their work and career choices, yet these numbers show me that neither the company or the employee is well served by the processes currently in place.

What do you think?

How representative is the research I have? For sure the sample sizes are reasonable but is the approach to career and development planning really this bad across the board?

I’m currently doing some work with a company called Careergro, and we want to improve and share a broader understanding of how companies and employees perceive career development.

So we would like you to help us with this research and in order to do this, we’ve published two very short surveys, one for employers, and one for employees. Each survey takes only around three minutes to complete and will give us useful data which we will freely share.

The first cut of data will be available at the forthcoming CIPD learning and development event in London on 25th and 26th April, and we will also be sharing the results and reporting back here and on HRZone too.

Here is the link to the employer survey, and here is the link to the employee survey.

We would really appreciate your help in completing this and if you can share it with your colleagues too that would be great. Thanks in advance for your help and I look forward to sharing the results with you soon.

photo c/o heath_bar