Mindset and Cultural Fit

Mindset and cultural fit are two of the most important issues facing many of us today.  What's mindset?  How an individual thinks and what they believe (their values).  What's cultural fit?  The degree to which the individual and their mindset fit within the culture of the organization.  These two things, in conjunction with each other, are a key lens through which we can look at a variety of situations and scenarios.

Siemens Corporation

Take my position at Siemens Corporation in the early 2000's.  My mindset was creative, ambitious and entrepreneurial in the beginning and by the end my mindset was more contrite and global.  During my six-year period there, I grew and learned much more about global business initiatives and challenges of integrating, say German with Silicon Valley cultures.

The culture at Siemens was global, German, quality- and process-minded.  I, too, became very process-minded and I think was a good fit for the culture.  I was a good boy and became very good at getting things done globally by managing up to higher and higher parts of the organization.

Nordstrom

After Siemens, I had a confident mindset and went to Nordstrom, a local company that looked great at the outside.  I came to find out that their culture was cautious and somewhat bureacratic.  They were flexible and worked as a team and this was a shock for me. I wasn't there long.  Wrong mindset by me, I think, and the cultural fit looked good but ultimately was not.  I looked fat in those jeans.

Tableau

At Tableau, my mindset is contrite and humble. I am appreciative to have my job and like my coworkers.  I work with cool global accounts and am proud of my blessings.  Tableau's culture is very clear and positive although it's not perfect.  It needs work and is going through change.  It is becoming a more global company and needing to flex to play at the enterprise level, where I spend every day.  There's still a fit between me and Tableau because my mindset is flexible and its seem to be as well.

What's your mindset?  What are the cultures of which you're a part and what are they like?  How's the fit?  What can you do about it?  What can be done about it?

Cool Event: Culture Counts - Event Recap

I attended an excellent, uplifting event with my friend Hsuan-Hua Chang on Tuesday called "Culture Counts".  It was led by a very fascinating woman, XXX.  The leader was from South Africa originally and has lived in 15 countries.  She has gathered many principles and practices that she now shares with organizations to help them create environments and experiences that help people be their best and perform optimally.  It was an inspirational topic and very professionally led.

When I showed up at the place in Ballard after work, I was amazed by the impressiveness of the facility: it was someone's house that they had rented, but by no means your typical, run of the mill house at all.  The inside of the structure was large and sprawling and open and lovely.  It was in an industrial neighborhood but once you were inside you felt like you were in a womb.  The large, open structure was expertly decorated and arranged with beautiful artwork and laid out in a very interesting and intentional way.  Our hosts were kind and provided us with hot cocoa and warm greetings on entry; it was the week before Christmas indeed and a large Christmas tree greeted us as well. 

About 20 of us arrived and the session began as we sat around a large table called the culture table.  We were led and asked to write down three things on post-it notes with colored Sharpies: 1) the first word that came to our minds when we entered the space 2) the reason we were there 3) three things that spoke most to us when we walked around the room and took in the experiences.  We were asked to share our findings with peers and soon learned that each of our reactions, perceptions and beliefs were quite unique and different from those around us.  For example, Marc shared that he liked the exposed brass pipes which I had looked right past and still didn't mind.  Another person shared that they loved a jellyfish painting that did nothing for me.  I stated that I liked the kitchen, the velvet couches and the open space.  A third person, Russell, explained that he felt dwarfed when we walked into the space but my feeling was the exact opposite: it made me feel great since I am quite tall.  We learned that we were all quite different and experiencing things in very different ways; we were diverse.

The leader explained some of what was happening: she said that the soul of a building is not the artifacts or thing itself but rather what we, the people, bring into it: our senses, observations, selves and stories. 

It was a great event and we had a lot of good nuggets: culture could be the corresponding personality of a place or group.  We read stats about just how important happy workers are and the many negative consequences of unhappy workers.  We learned that culture always has a purpose or goal.  A culture is the soul of an organization or group.  A few questions came up for me: Is culture the sum total of the intangible benefits and beliefs of an org?  Is culture the compensation, benefits and value that people receive from a group that come for free, organically and naturally?  The goal of creating and influencing a good culture is to have people become the best versions of themselves and sustainably do the best work of their lives.  Some degree of bottoms-up, organic, authentic culture is required and we talked about the idea of leading from the edge.  The idea of an organization's edge is important and is a major place from which change can and does happen.  Yes, organizations do indeed have centers and tops and power structures but also, each person, on the edge may be armed with the same tools and power and ability to influence people and shine a light on opportunities and possibilities.  Taking steps can be risky and sometimes we just need to plunge in.  We can take calculated, planned, intentional  steps that have fallback plans, too.  Or we can just say screw it, go for it and see what happens.

We broke out into small groups to discuss ratings we created of the cultures in our organizations.  In my small group, there was one area where we all agreed was weak in each of our areas: managers.  And we talked about the role of managers and the org for creating a space that feels safe and inspiring. 

We watched a video about a non-profit in Seattle that helped the homeless and then met the star of the video, the founder of the non-profit and got to hear more about her story. 

In all, it was a wonderful, well-planned and executed event.  Thanks to Hsuan-Hua and all the others I met.  I look forward to getting to know the speaker more as well.

Developing and Managing Human Capital - Notes from the May 23, 2017 AppsJack Business Services Meetup in Kirkland, WA

"Human Capital" was the topic to be discussed.  It was a sunny late-May afternoon and I headed down to Big Fish Grill to have the discussion with about 10 others who had gathered.  Unlike the normal gathering, we were given a smaller table, which in the end wound up being a little better: cozier and easier to hear people.  We never broke into smaller groups and had a good dialog with a big group.

At first it was just me, leadership coach Alan Andersen and coach Susan Stringer.  I had never met Susan before and was immediately impressed by her grace, experience and knowledge.  She has a great present and is a very fun conversationalist.  Eventually, more arrived and we kicked off the discussion about "Developing and Managing Human Capital", the first support process in APQC's process classification framework.  The first thing that was made clear is we all agreed that the CAPITAL word in human capital is evil, wrong, etc.  Richard Webb suggested that thinking of people as money is no worst than thinking of them as slaves.  There was agreement on this point.

In search of a starting point, I rattled off the APQC's subtopics:

• Develop and manage HR planning, policies and strategies
• Recruit, source and select employees
• Develop and counsel employees
• Reward and retain employees
• Redeploy and retire employees
• Manage employee information

I told people that I was personally most interested in the "Manage Employee Information" area, where I had the most experience.  It's subtopics are as follows: Manage reporting processes (who reports to whom), Manage employee inquiry process (how management gets info from employees), Manage and maintain employee data, Manage human resource information systems (HRIS), Develop and manage employee metrics, Develop and manage time and attendance systems (we agreed this was an optional step for some places), Manage employee communication.

No one seemed to bite on the above high-level concepts so I started rattling off the discussion topics that we'd covered over the last year: good books we'd read about HR and people-management, alternatives to the resume and is the resume dead, how to get a great job, how to get maximum wages sustainably, what are the current trends and issues, problems in HR management, what does the modern worker like, what do they expect and need, what is the future of employment, what will technology do to HR and management with tools like LinkedIn and CrystalKnows?  Before I could get too far down the list, people locked on the resume topic and we were off on our first big topic.

The resume, truth, recruiting and qualification

Susan gave us some great and interesting facts about millennials in the workforce: that 50% of the workforce will be millennials by 2020 and 75% of the workforce by 2025.  Incredible statistics.  Susan is doing a presentation soon on millennials in the workforce that I will plan to attend.  She is a student of the topic.  I raised issues about complexity dealing with individuals vs. working with people in populations.  Working with 'classes' and things in groups is far easier than but as humans we seem very reluctant to exclusively deal with things in groups and need to give the attention that people and organizations need at an individual level.  

Richard said that the age of authenticity is what's next and was seeking a term for millennials.  I suggested that they were Generation M to keep it simple then we laughed about sequence issues.

We talked about predictive analytics and the power of organizations like Facebook and LinkedIn to predict events from data such as divorce with very high confidence.  Data is a very powerful thing.  

  

I suggested that the resume is just one signal in the collection (stack) of things necessary to understand and work with a person professionally.  Other signals include online profiles like LinkedIn, social media presence, reference checks and the interview.  We didn't believe that the resume would be going away and generrally believed that i was a gateway and door-opener to other aspects of the person.

Susan impressed us with some of her experiences doing hiring at the executive level and gave examples of people she had vetted by requesting 12 references from them: 3 supervisors, 3 peers, 3 suppliers and 3 others.  This sounded very rigorous to me but I could appreciate just how important getting this information really is for some high-risk, high-reward opportunities.

Susan shared that she asks these questions to the candidate, "How would your former managers describe you?" and to the former managers, "How would you describe your former employee?"  They are very open questions and she would listen for incongruity between the stories.  She said she had been referred to by some in the past as "the female version of Columbo", the TV show detective.  What an amazing skill to go this deeply into someone's background not make sure they are who they say they are.

Talent

We got off on a discussion about the quality of leaders and the leadership and it was stated that only A players can hire A players.  Richard told us stories about the Drugstore.com days (joint-venture between Microsoft, Walmart, and some India companies) and how complex and different those cultures were and how they used a 'bus' to communicate effectively.  Another aspect of that collaboration that worked well was to pass information through a key resource they called the seamstress (it was a man) who would bridge the gap and coordinate between the three different teams.  

Books

We talked a little about books here and there and Andrew Sengul regaled us with stories from Aaron Hurst and The Purpose Economy.  The book says that people can be broken up into three categories: those motivated by money, prestige/fame or a deep personal commitment.  The book suggests to only hire the people with deep personal commitment.  Andrew cited quite a few examples of how it is hard to manage and create organizations of these kinds of individuals.

Alan and Susan both highly recommended the book Leadership and Self-Deception.  Alan believes that everyone is a leader (at least sometimes) and they have to start by leading themselves.  

Corruption

Richard is obsessed with the idea that things and people are corrupt.  He believes and here was agreement in the group that one thing we are trying to do with all of these systems and controls in businesses is to weed out corruption, corrupt people and takers.  Richard says that there is a worthy goal to "instrument corruption" (develop systems that can measure and detect corruption at all levels).  Andrew jumped in and offered that experts at corruption really are good at it: that low-grade corruption is easy to detect and that some people really are grade A snakes.  

Steve Kubacki showed up a bit late (but I had already referenced a couple of his ideas) and we talked more about his idea of random firings to weed out corruption and sick cultures.  

Steve says that more of this needs to happen at the top of the organization than the bottom.  Susan said that, "A good leader assesses the talent and weeds out the tenured people."  So her theory is that this can be done by good people but I agree with Steve in some ways that this needs to be done by policy and not just by people (heroes).  We went into a discussion about CEO and he Board and how those two things should work together for control and regulation of the organization.  

Richard wanted to know how to test for integrity.  Everyone agreed that business and corporations really was a battle or war and that more people need to understand that situation.  We went into a discussion about the role of the HR department (few liked it) and Susan gave us examples of HR departments that provided coaching through the "HR Business Partner" who coached the manager of the group.  I have personally witnessed limitations of this model, especially when the management is not ready for coaching.  

"Balancing the bottom line and people" is a big topic that Susan thinks is a key challenge for organizations.  

We went off on a long rabbit trail tangent about sociopaths and predators (evil people) who are ladder climbers.  We tried to separate between those who are sick, ambitious and charismatic.  There is a desire by people to detect and weed these people out.

We talked about the authoritarian personality and how many people are okay with it (even seek it out) and like to live inside of authoritarian structures because they are given something from daddy.  

Conclusions and Next Steps

We had a great turnout.  It was me, leadership coach Alan Andersen, executive coach Susan Stringer, technology architect Richard Webb, professional services pro Lee Carter, delivery operations pro Dena Carter, operations manager Dominic Wong, business owner Thomas Mercer, business leader Thomas Mercer, software product developer Andrew Sengul and creative psychologist Steve Kubacki.

Please join us soon for Episode 8 of the AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast on the HR/Human Capital topic which will feature consulting business owner Aftab Farooqi, coach Rachel Alexandria, psychologist Steven Kubacki, executive and consultant Joe OKonek and professional services sales director Lee Carter.  We will record on Saturday 6/10 and the conversations will be dripped to the major podcast outlets each Sunday morning during June and early July. 

Our next topic for the meetup and podcast will be managing information technology, a topic near and dear to my heart and another key enabler to business.

Prepping for the Upcoming HR topic

A year ago, the group met and we had the following things to say about HR:

Books. At least three books were mentioned during the meetup.  Bruce sited “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” and “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us”, both by Nicholas Carr.  Richard mentioned "Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers" by Alexander Osterwalder.

What is talent? Richard, a highly entertaining and intelligent man, is known for dropping wonderful, unique, newly-coined quotes and one from the meetup this month was, “Talent is like migrating birds.”

We discussed a variety of topics: “Humans and Machines”, “Is the resume dead?  Hiring for cultural fit.”, “Bad HR policies and practices”, “Social Networks and Personal Profiles”.  

Applications of CyrstalKnows, LinkedIn and other tech. We got into specifics about the recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft and also the potential applications, scope and scale of Crystal Knows (http://crystalknows.com).  Crystal puts people through a simple personality test (DiSC profile) and then provides services to help individuals best connect with and relate to others based upon their assessed types.  Richard also said that CK has algorithms to crawl users’ social medai profiles from Facebook and other sites to determine personality.

  

We talked about the technology of Human Resources Management and specifics about Learning Management Systems and applications like Enterprise Search.

Cultural differences between USA and India. Jehan led us in a discussion where he shared about differences he has noticed between India and USA.  He sees USA kids as “gullible” and the India kids as more street smart.  India has a bigger focus on STEM and he has seen India transform substantially (from “another planet” to what it is now) over the decades.  He sees India as “dog eat dog” and the USA is as “procured”.  Jehan said, “We [in America] live in a virtual world.”

Classifications of workers, millenials. Richard, always entertaining, talked to us about thinking of people as either A) talent or B) task worker.  Others made us think of the world split between products and services. According to Richard, two properties that he sees defining millennials are that they have A) anger issues and B) a plan.  Richard has millennial children.

1099 vs. W2 models. We talked about 1099 and W2 relationships between employers and workers and were blessed to be led by PJ and Mike Lazer, both experts in the industry.  Solid contributions came from Dominic as well.  Some of the reasons that go into picking one or the other are trade secrets, risk management/mitigation (blame and culpability), as well as changes in business models.

The Seattle market and talent pool. The question was asked if Seattle the hottest market in the USA and many agreed that it may be.  Seattle has “the cloud” here (Microsoft Azure and AWS).  We are the platform.  Compare this to the bay area, for example, that has / makes many of the apps that run on the cloud.  Seattle is infrastructure and the rest of the world is the apps / things.  Where will this place Seattle in 5-10 years?

This year we are going to follow the APQC model at least for starters. Here's the cheat sheet on this area. And their L1 topics are:

1. Develop and manage HR planning, policies and strategies
2. Recruit, source and select employees
3. Develop and counsel employees
4. Reward and retain employees
5. Redeploy and retire employees
6. Manage employee information

Two questions come to my mind that I would like to discuss:

• What is the modern practice of recruiting?
• What is the best and worst onboarding experience you have had?
• What challenges does your company currently have with HR?  Retention?

June 2015 AppsJack Human Resources Meetup Held in Bellevue, WA

June 23, 2015
Lake Hills Library, Bellevue, WA

Last night at 7 PM the June AppsJack Business Services meetup was held at the Lake Hills Library in Bellevue, WA.  The event was attended by 12 guests.  Lively and interesting, entertaining, insightful conversations were had.  The topic was Human Capital Management and the subtopics were Recruiting and Retention.  The group focused some of its attention the issues of millennials.

This event represented the sixth curricula in the AppsJack Meetup calendar year.  AppsJack follows the APQC model to provide structure, value, and context to its meetups and to build knowledge and community around key business areas.  This meetup was the first of the AppsJack content areas to be in the realm of “support processes”.  The previous 5 sessions were on the operating processes from APQC.

Some attendees were repeat visitors and sum were brand new, many of whom had found the event via the AppsJack Meetup group page.  The crowd was a great mix of male and female, young and old, and across a variety of different industries and experience levels.  Among the repeat visitors were Eric Veal (host), Jehan, Hsuan-hua, Dave, and Meng.  The newbies to the group included Liat, Elena, Natsune and a handful of others.

What follows is a listing of the various topics and points covered.  Items marked in bold underline should be considered for future AppsJack meetups.  The next AppsJack meetup will be on Information Technology Management, Internet of Things (IoT) on July 28.

1. Employee education and training programs both on- and off-the-job were discussed.  The issue of training people on the job or after hiring vs. hiring the right people and having people be able to ‘hit the ground running’ from the start.
2. The benefits of diversity were covered.
3. The issue of searching organically (through network) vs. systematically was discussed.  There are pros and cons of each and culture is impacted by the choice in methods made.  Searching applies to both the recruiter and the candidate and both may share some practices.
4. Culture and its importance was discussed.  Someone shared that they wanted to find a company with “a culture”.  It was explained that all companies have a culture, whether they like it or not. Properties of culture were discussed:  was it positive or negative, what were its artifacts, rituals and ceremonies, was it strong or weak?  Learning organizations, per se, were not discussed conceptually and could be a point of subsequent conversations.  With respect to the retention, the notion of an employer’s preference to fire or lay off vs. an employee’s choice to leave was not discussed.  Work-life balance is an aspect of company culture within the context of freedoms and demands for the employee.
5. Someone who was a millennial wanted to discuss differences of the millennials.  Who they are, their traits, differences, and value were discussed.  We learned that millennials want to have a cause or purpose, may trust less in big systems and bureaucracies, expect a lot, need to have something in it for them (purpose), and enjoy life out of work with friends from work.  They want fun companies with good cultures.  “Fiefdoms” and barriers were discussed between roles, departments, levels, locations, age groups, etc.  All of this complexity makes up a corporate culture’s richness.  Age differences of all kinds were discussed.  Industrial and worker-class differences were not covered in detail but it was recognized that they existed and practices for white collar and blue collar industries or groups were thought to be different.
6. The role and importance of modern HR Information systems (HRIS) was brought up as a potential topic but was not covered in detail.  The topic of role-based systems: security, communications, and training was discussed in addition to the power of technology to enable new possibilities for people and businesses.  The importance of knowledge management systems was not discussed but is a critical part of a successful and growing, risk-avoiding organization.
7. The purpose and role of the HR department was mentioned.
8. We spoke about practices and differences between using in-house recruiters and staff vs. using outsourced services and agencies.  The issue of contractors vs. full-time employee labor was discussed but not fully explored.
9. The importance of compensation and pay was mentioned briefly by Dave.  He shared that he was having a hard time landing the right talent and believed that the cause was his employer’s low-pay policies.  Benefits, perks, and the value / prestige / reputation of the company was not really discussed other than one attendees interest in finding a company with a [good] culture.  Points were made about cultures within companies being largely dependent on a person’s immediate manager rather than the overall system and culture for the company, the local level remains very critical.
10. Differences between the HR practice of enterprises vs. those of startups (as well as those across industries and worker classes) were mentioned but not fully discussed.
11. HR business models were not discussed but should be further explored.
12. Ethics was not discussed.
13. The notion of requirements—both those for projects and products as well as those for human resources—was discussed in the context of hiring: hard requirements and soft requirements and how job seeking and landing is typically a gray area and not one that is cut and dried.  Wht also comes into play is personal relationships, biases and perceptions.  Younger professionals were encouraged to act confidently, ‘act as if’ and ‘fake it ‘til you make it’.  The ways that people are perceived as candidates and employees quantitative and qualitative methods, verbal, non-verbal and written communications.
14. Some brief discussions were had about creative hiring and interviewing practices.  This topic should be further explored.  The pros and cons of different interviewing and screening methods were discussed.
15. The importance of models such as Wexler’s 4 Faces of Capitalism and personality tests (Myers Briggs, etc.) were noted but not in detail and should be topics for further discussion.  One member shared that Microsoft leaders were selected who fit what he perceived to be extremely narrow and consistent criteria and types.
16. Other resource types such as financial, relational, reputational, and information were not discussed but could be fodder for future discussion.
17. The differences between needs and approaches to the management of individuals, small groups, and larger organizations was not discussed but should be a topic for another time.
18. Microsoft and AT&T were discussed as local employees and some of their practices were covered.  The issue of managed services vs. staff augmentation and the impact that those practices have on corporate culture and environment was discussed.
19. The question ‘what is organization development?’ was not discussed, but should be soon.
20. Labor unions, guilds, and organized labor were not discussed but could serve as a good topic for another session.
21. Conflict management was not discussed.

There is so much depth and richness to the topic of Human Resources Management it is incredible.  At the end of the event, Natsune promoted her event, which is planned for July 15th in the University District area of Seattle.  Also, Liat shared about a meetup event she is hosting as well.  Several members exchanged contact information and made promises to stay connected with one another.

The next AppsJack Meetup event will be held July 28th and will cover Information Technology Management.  The event may be sponsored by Neudesic Consulting and feature Ben Griner, their Director of Management Consulting.

AppsJack’s meetups are fun local community events that help businesses and business service professionals connect over interesting discussions and topics in comfortable environments.  The events are a great way to meet new people, share experience, and identify individuals within the community with whom you feel comfortable sharing your ideas and issues.  Each month is a different topic and the big events are typically planned for the 4th Tuesday of the month.  AppsJack’s vision is to create an organized network of meetups on business and other critical management topics for people, property and planet.  AppsJack is a knowledge management consulting company who has helped businesses such as Siemens, Microsoft and the US Forest Service manage and improve major initiatives that make communications more effective and efficient.  More info can be found at appsjack.com or by contacting Eric Veal, Founder and CEO of AppsJack Corporation.

Eric Veal, MSIS, MBA, PMP is a NW Washington Native who lives in Kirkland, WA with his wife and pets.  Eric has been consulting with companies on business, technology and growth issues since he first worked on his mom and dad’s businesses in 1996.  Eric is originally from Guemes Island, WA and attended Western Washington University and Foster School of Business, respectively, for his undergraduate and graduate degrees.  Eric received his Project Management Professional certificate in 2006 while working at Siemens Healthcare.  At Siemens, Eric was in their leadership development program and worked as a process improvement consultant and intranet architect.  His experiences at Siemens inspired him to start his own company, AppsJack, to pursue his dreams.