Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Have you noticed? - Issue 2

I was catching up on things over at the Mind Unbound business blog and found a thought-provoking post on "Not-so-human Resources." The post deals with the mechanization of the Human Resources function in a lot of companies, in the name of efficiency.

This rings true for me. In my past, I spent a lot of time working with HR as I built my teams. Getting their input, helping them "grok" what I wanted my team to feel like, and so forth. The HR folks provided lots of value in hiring and coaching. They also helped talk me through difficult situations. I'm lucky enough to work in a small company now, where I get a lot of this kind of assistance, but in large companies that is harder and harder to come by.

In my last "big" company experience, our company grew to the point where HR was one local person who basically dealt with coordinating insurance forms, paperwork associated with hiring and firing, and proofreading personnel reviews. They didn't feel like a partner any more - just an information desk.

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If I had 100 Bloggers...

Is the 100 Bloggers project on your radar yet? 100 Bloggers is a group effort of a bunch of bloggers I admire, and they even let me have a key to the posting booth.

I just dropped by with some thoughts for managers in a post called "Flair up?" If you have a couple of moments, click on over and look around.

And, if you're so inclined, you can join the fray and become one of the contributing bloggers. Despite the name, if the number exceeds 100, that's not a bad thing.

Don't have a blog of your own? That's no hill for a stepper. If you've got something to say in the spirit of helpful advice on business and personal development, you're welcome.

This is all about dialog and sharing - and your voice is welcome. You can go here for more information.

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Fear the Weasel

Laugh, learn, cringe. Seldom does a book evoke such a combination of reactions. But that's what I got from the book "Warriors, Workers, Whiners, & Weasels: Understanding and Using The Four Personality Types To Your Advantage," by Tim O'Leary. I also came away with a better understanding of Weasels.

The book is an easy and fun read -- O'Leary's style is very comfortable and entertaining. The book is also loaded with great stories and examples.

What's your "W"?

The gist of this book is that each of us fits in one type within the "circle of life." In O'Leary's model, they're all defined by a "W" word. Here is how I paraphrase each of these types in the book:

  • Warriors - People who drive people to do things (and get results themselves). High ego, high integrity, highly competitive.
  • Workers - The people who respond well to the warriors to get things done. Point-and-go, get things done people - supporting cast that help the movie stars do what they do.
  • Whiners - People who have lots of excuses for not getting things done, and it's never their fault. Organizational cancer.
  • Weasels - Sneaky, two-faced people who never take responsibility for their immoral / amoral ways. High ego, low integrity - wolves in sheep's clothing, often deluded into thinking they are Warriors.

The book helps you determine your type (I'm a Worker), and has some guidance on how to deal with other types and maximize the value of your type - assuming you are a Warrior or a Weasel, at least.

Well Worth the Read

This is a fun read, particularly if (like me) you've worked with or for Weasels and don't quite know how to deal with them (for Warriors, I think this is easier - but not for us Workers, who tend to be more on the 'keep the peace' end of the scale). O'Leary's office is a few blocks from mine in Portland, Oregon and I wonder if we happen to know some of the same weasels.

Some of my favorite sections:

  • "The Way of the Weasel: Four of My Favorite Weasel Stories" (this alone is worth the price of the book!)
  • "Get Over It! Five Rules to Live By to Avoid Being a Whiner"
  • "The Weasel Tax: The High Price We All Pay for Rodent Infestation"

And, if you have your own weasel story to share, you can do so at "www.exposeyourweasel.com" - an irreverent companion blog.

O'Leary's own blog is a more reverent resource, if that's more your style - check out his recent post on "The Whining Effect" for a taste.

Related items:

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[Review] Focus Like a Laser Beam

On a recent flight across the country, I devoured a terrific book. The book was "Focus Like a Laser Beam : 10 Ways to Do What Matters Most," by Lisa Haneberg. As you'd expect from a book with a title like that, the book itself is very focused and un-fluffy, though it contains a lot of poignant stories about the advantages of focus, and the disadvantages of unfocused activity.

In the 90's, I was involved in an organizational change initiative in which there was a lot of discussion about "getting all the wood behind the arrow" as a metaphor for focus and alignment. Lisa takes us a giant leap forward in her book, using laser light's focused, aligned, and congruent particles as mental model to remind us to focus our goals, thoughts, and actions on specific goals to accelerate our success.

Part One: Excite and Energize

The first section of the book begins with methods to assess your individual focus, as well as how to assess your organization's level of focus toward a unified set of goals, then discusses how you can create a stronger connection with your employees and peers by tapping into the power of emotion and openness in your communication.

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We can tackle the Big with a lot of Small

OK, let me start by saying I'm not trying to bring everybody down with this topic. That said, today I heard a thought-provoking discussion around Gartner's Research advisory, "G00136943: Prepare Now for a Coming Avian Flu Pandemic" (this is a free research note, and Gartner is planning a series of such advisories go to the Gartner web site and search for "pandemic" to find them, along with more detailed for-fee research).

The core warning of the note is that companies should look beyond their current, traditional disaster recovery / business continuity plans, and start developing pandemic response plans. And, we should all be doing this now. Excellent (if disconcerting) advice. Why?

We have not yet experienced a pandemic in the high tech era

Yes, we have disasters all the time - hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, fires, earthquakes, etc. These kinds of disasters only affect a localized geographic area. Even the devastating disasters like huge tsunami of 2004, the earthquakes in 2005, and Hurricane Katrina caused localized sorts of problems. They also tend to have short-lived periods of destruction (i.e. the part that causes damage goes away pretty quickly). All of this means that surrounding global communities who are not affected are able to mobilize fairly quickly and begin providing aid.

In contrast, a "pandemic," (a global epidemic) will affect a large portion of the world in a very short period of time, and could continue for weeks or months. The Gartner note cites a U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report projecting the likely effect that a pandemic of the avian influenza virus H5N1 would have on the U.S. economy, if it were to begin spreading to humans:

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