Archive for July, 2009
« Previous EntriesDo It Like Drexler
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Mickey Drexler is a retail icon. He is currently the CEO of the J. Crew Group. Before J. Crew, he took The Gap from $400 million to $14.5 billion in revenue.
When he arrived at J. Crew, Mickey quickly moved out of the CEO’s office to the middle of the action. He didn’t want any barriers between he [...]
One Business That Is Growing
Thursday, July 30th, 2009A firm that supplies Temporary Executives in Los Angeles has grown 47% this year. They have about 1500 execs in their talent pool who are available to help companies out. I love this idea - Instead of replacing high-priced bigshots with new high-priced bigshots, companies can gain more flexibility and save their shareholders a bundle of money [...]
Johnny Still Can’t Read
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009According to the Conference Board, the American Workforce is “woefully ill-prepared.” They recently stated that,”new hires were unable to write effective business communication, read analytically or solve problems.” So, what else is new? I’ve been concerned about this problem for years. One article I read claimed that a lot of the offshore movement was and [...]
They Still Hate HR
Sunday, July 26th, 2009“You’re an HR guy? I despised Human Resources!” exclaimed my new acquaintance, Ed. He had ran a big laboratory within IBM for over 30 years. He continued his rant, “I always hated doing performance reviews. I also remember when HR wouldn’t let me do things, like fire this worthless twit who worked for me. I had written-up mounds of [...]
Hire Happy People
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Awhile back, I had 7 students in my Human Resources class. Of the seven, one was unemployed, five were unhappily employed and one was very successful in his career. What separated out that one person from the others?
Well…he knew the Vision, Mission and Values of his company. He was also passionate about what he was [...]
Why We Get The Big Bucks
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009Maybe we don’t always get the big bucks in Human Resources, but I know that we earn it when we exhibit courage – the courage to stand up for certain values.
Or, we can choose to roll-over when the Line Manager…
…wants to hire his shiftless son-in-law or someone who the company fired 6 months ago or [...]
Throw Away Your Management Books
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009Throw away your management books. Yes, toss them out. They’re just the same thing said sideways; repackaged from earlier stuff. New words have been coined and old theories re-spun in different ways.
My wife goes to a personal trainer named Santi in our small town. Santi owns his own business and is doing extremely well even in [...]
How To Succeed In Business Without A P—-
Monday, July 20th, 2009You fill in the blank. Yep, that’s the name of a new managment book by Karen Salmansohn aimed at helping women play the game in the world of business. Since I couldn’t find a publisher for my management book, maybe I need a provocative title like that one. I thought that mine was pretty catchy, “Dick and [...]
More Dumb Stuff From The Airlines
Sunday, July 19th, 2009First of all, I want to make sure that my readers understand why I think these stories are important to us folks in Human Resources. Every thing we do is customer-focused. We don’t produce anything except customer service. Sometimes our customers don’t like what we serve just like the vegetables we give to our children; but [...]
The Cover Letter We Would Love To Send
Thursday, July 16th, 2009I have many friends who are unemployed and are growing weary of applying to ads on the Internet boards – Monster, et al. The weary part is that very few companies respond back. In their aggravated state, my buddies composed a cover letter which they would love to send:
Dear Mystery Recruiter,
I don’t know you and you don’t know [...]