We have all heard the saying, “it was the straw that broke the camel’s back” or a more shortened version, “that’s the last straw, I’ve had it.” When someone tells us “that’s the last straw!” we tend to focus on what set them off. What triggered that person’s tipping point, or what was the “last straw”. The thing is that we shouldn’t really worry about so much about the last straw but rather, try to figure out what all the other straws were. What were all those other straws, or issues, that loaded down the camel in the first place and led to the last straw breaking it’s back so to speak. Those piles of straw are the real reasons people leave a company or, in some cases, snap. In the end, the last straw is just the tipping point but clearly, they have been on the edge for a while.

So why do we focus on the last straw? Because that is the most obvious and most direct link we have. Many people stop there and don’t dig further. Why did Larry leave?

“They changed the type of pens we use.” I don’t think so. My guess is that Larry has been simmering for a while and a number of issues are to blame.

When we see someone at their tipping point, which can raise itself in a resignation, an eruption, or sometimes physically, we need to stop and investigate. Digging deeper than just the pens changing and asking questions about what was bothering Larry could help understand what caused him to reach his tipping point. What were the straws that piled up? Were they self-inflicted? Are there other issues compounding? Did we miss warning signs that the straws were piling up by choosing not to address them? Examining the straws will help to understand how someone reached their tipping point and can help to keep others from incurring a similar fate. Unfortunately, many managers can be blind to their own straw piles until it’s too late.

I once had a department head come to me upset that the company had recently made the decision to not provide lunch every day to staff. This was a software company which had some pretty awesome benefits but new owners had started making some changes in the interest of savings. The department head was upset and said that his people were feeling that the company didn’t care for them anymore and he feared that his staff would be leaving the company soon. He had just come from a venting session that his team leaders had had with him and he was visibly upset. He said that the team felt that no one was recognizing the work they did and taking away the lunches was the last straw. I looked at him calmly and said that people don’t leave over lunches and that there must be more to it. He looked at me incredulously and said that the company was to blame. I asked him a few more questions that I already knew the answers to.

• Are you still having your weekly morning department meetings? “Yes.”
• Are you attending those meetings? “Well, not every time, but my team leaders run the meetings.”
• How many meetings have you attended in the last month” “Actually I haven’t been able to get to the meetings this month.”
• What usually happens at these meetings? “Usually the team leaders talk about the latest changes in the software and cover any issues that they may be dealing with.”
• Do the staff get opportunities to talk much in these meetings? “Not really, it’s kind of information dump meetings because that’s all we have time for.”
• Do you recognize your team at these meetings? “Well no, it’s not that kind of meeting. Anyway, isn’t that the company’s responsibility?”

He had gotten a lot quieter and a little defensive after my questions. I explained that the employees rarely see the entire company as a collection of people but project what their management is doing to the company as a whole. They often see what the manager does and doesn’t do as sanctioned by the company and therefore what the company must want to happen. I told him that of the idea of “the company” starts with him. He is the communication piece to and from the employees and his actions are the company’s actions to his staff. The lunches may have been the last straw but that one action wasn’t as important as all of the straws that led to the last one.

I asked him what would happen if he started attending those meetings and running them himself. He said that it would mean a lot more work for him. I asked if that extra effort was less time consuming than replacing disgruntled staff. I challenged him to commit to attending the next four weekly meetings and actually running them himself. I asked him to take the opportunity in these meetings to recognize one or two employees that stood out in the previous week. The company had a collection of gift cards ready to recognize employees, and I encouraged him to utilize them. He had not handed out any gift cards in the last six months.

I explained that he would need to put effort into preparing for these meetings. This would mean more work for him, especially in keeping an eye on how his staff were performing and what their frustrations might be. He would need to include his team leads in on what he was doing and why. He would also need the leads to let him know when good things were happening in the department, as well as train them to look for the positives and be open to suggestions.

He reluctantly accepted my challenge and left the meeting calmer and quieter; admitting he had a lot to think about.

I had made a note to check in with the department head in a month but I didn’t need to. He came into my office three weeks after our initial meeting asking if I had time to talk about his meetings. He was upbeat and beaming. He had taken my comments to heart and had run the last several weekly meetings with a different approach. He had not only attended the meetings (which initially brought quizzical looks and comments from his staff) but begun running the meetings again. He was open and honest with his employees that he had been remiss in not attending the meetings and would be taking a different approach moving forward. They would still do updates in the meetings but he also wanted to hear from the team on what issues they saw and what successes they wanted to share. He also starting taking the time to publicly recognize at least two staff members each meeting for their work. This was met with some awkward silences at first, but by the next few meetings was followed by cheers and applause.

He took time each meeting to go around the room to see if anyone had anything to add or discuss. This again was a bit quiet but people were starting to open up once they saw he was serious and wanted feedback. A number of previously unnoticed issues with software bugs were raised and dealt with as a result of these meetings. He was elated at the idea that he was actively involved in engaging his team and saw the benefit of the work he put into running the meeting properly.

I asked him why he thought he had stopped attending the meetings in the first place, to which he replied that the meetings had become a mundane part of the routine and no one looked forward to them. He saw now that he was missing the opportunity to engage and learn from his team each week.

Before he left I further challenged him to keep this process going and to make sure that it didn’t become routine again. He had gained momentum in the short term but could easily lose it if he didn’t sustain the process. He said that he understood how it could become routine again and had planned to challenge his staff on how to keep the meetings interactive.

The department head had become blind to all the straws in the pile that were adding up and weighing down his department’s morale. All too often it is easy to blame the company for issues that are really the responsibility of the department. When the department head for the sales team approached me with a similar issue, I used the previous situation as an example. Taking it further, I challenged him to attend one of the department head’s newly revitalized meetings for inspiration in his own department. I asked him if he knew how big his straw piles had become.

In the end, we need to keep an eye out for the piles of straw that may be accumulating around us, whether it’s on our own backs or those of our staff. By keeping an eye out for the piles, we can keep the last straw from hopefully breaking someone’s back. It takes work but can be worth the effort to save a few camels.

Ah, vendors. Or as you may know them– business partners, consultants, and external subject matter experts. Call them what you will, they are somewhat of a necessary evil in any profession, providing services, expertise, or an extra pair of hands when needed. Having managed a wide range of budgets in HR, I am used to bootstrapping projects, handling things myself with little help, and also utilizing various helpful vendors to assist with projects. There is a certain balance to maintain when using vendors, and moving too far one way or the other can be short-sighted. Too independent and you end up ignoring your own limitations and taking on too much. Too dependent and you can end up lacking the ability to think or act on your own. My approach has always been to use partners sparingly and to hold the ones that I do use to high standards. If I’m going to be giving you my money, you are going to be expected to provide a quality service, and that’s all there is to it.

Having spent the last few years in a non-profit operation (read as no HR budget); I’ve grown used to saying no to most phone and email solicitations from potential partners, refusing to take pointless face to face meetings. As a result, I found myself extremely uncomfortable and out of my element when I attended the national Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) conference last month. Part of the annual conference, featuring a multitude of training meetings and guest speakers and attracting over 13,000 HR professionals, was a rather large vendor expo hall. I had reluctantly planned to visit the expo hall as I needed to put out bids for background checking work soon, which is required every three years, and also was asked to bring back information on what was new in wellness programs for one of my team.

It had been a few years since I last attended a large conference and, while I am no stranger to expo halls, standing among hundreds and hundreds of sales people felt a little daunting. The scale had changed in epic proportions, and simple signs, tables, and curtains had been traded out for towering displays of technological and structural marvels. It was like seeing Vegas for the first time again. Now, in a past life I sold software and had done my fair share of time pacing in ten by ten booths, trying to catch the eye of anyone who would want to talk about our products in exchange for a few inexpensive bobbles. Logo-ed keychain flashlights, pens and Frisbees, were distributed by the hundreds in exchange for a quick conversation, collection of a business card, or later, a scan of their conference badge. It was ironic that I stood in a similar expo hall feeling leery of walking the maze of aisles containing every conceived business that could possibly help attain my HR goals.

To get through the acres of displays, my approach was to treat the situation as I do when walking by the midway games at the state fair– ignore the barkers, don’t make eye contact, and just keep walking until you find the frog launching game that you can’t resist. The vendors that I did need to talk to were spread out among the masses, so I spent a lot of time dodging the cat calls and opening lines. No, I don’t need on-site banking services. Thanks, but we won’t be considering pet insurance this year. No, I don’t need vacation packages to Legoland for my employees. Who does that?

My approach, however, wasn’t working. I had lived in their shoes and felt bad saying no to many of them. Sure, I could just keep plodding through, searching for the vendors that I needed, but after a while, the allure of flashy post-it note holders and hipster tote bags was just too much. I thought I was above the glad-handing, but if everyone else was getting in on the cool stuff, why shouldn’t I? The question was how to get the goodies without having to converse with an annoying sales person or commit to a sales call at a later date and still feel good about myself. I had tried the non-profit tactic, saying, “Sorry, we’re a non-profit,” or, “I don’t really have a budget for such things”. This felt lousy, though, because telling a vendor that you are a non-profit can make you feel like the poor kid who never had any money when the ice cream truck came around. I had been that kid and hated it. The vendors just tend to look at you with pity, and say, “It’s ok. I worked for a non-profit once myself, here are a couple of pens.” Some can be relentless, though, citing non-profit discounts and arguing that you can’t afford not to use their service, making the quest for obtaining that nifty leather smart phone holder a herculean effort.

After 45 minutes of self-tortured angst, I resigned to simply take their stress balls and t-shirts and let them scan my badge, telling myself that I could feign interest in their products for the moment. Why not, when everyone else seemed to be doing it?  Sure, I felt bad leaving the expo hall with a bulging bag of trinkets, knowing that when all is said and done, I won’t really be returning their calls or reviewing the materials that will be sent en mass after the conference is over. The goodies will be proudly handed out to my grateful team and family, and no one but I will know the true, shameful cost of the loot. Later, I will feel like a schmuck as I cowardly dodge calls and delete emails.  To coin a much overused catchphrase; what happens in the expo hall stays in the expo hall.

When is the right time to leave a company and why is it so hard for some employees to see that it’s time (or past time) for them to leave? I’ve met employees that I knew we weren’t going to keep more than a year or two and others that are the textbook definition of deadwood; that is, wood that is been around so long that it’s no longer good for building with or even as firewood. Why is it hard for some employees to detach themselves from a company and others come and go freely? I’ve encountered many kinds over the years but the ones that perplex me the most are the long-term deadwood.

Long-term Deadwood are employees that have been with your company for a long time but stopped making any real contribution years ago. They feel that they have put their time in with the company and that, in turn, the company owes them the job. They aren’t going anywhere unless you drag them out kicking and screaming. Now I’m not being ageist in my approach. I have met many long term (read older) employees that can run circles around me both professionally and technologically. I am talking about people who have lost the understanding that they were hired to do a job and they are accountable for that work. Most times the company has forgotten this as well.

They do have their positives aspects. Since they have been around forever, these people can recount all of the history and who was here back when. They talk of the good old days with a sparkle in their eye reminiscing about the leaders and workers of the past who have retired or moved on. They may also bring the famous banana pudding at the Christmas luncheon every year and proudly hand out the recipe for to anyone who comes near it.

Usually the top management is set against moving them out. The thinking is that we haven’t done anything up to this time so why bother now? They only have a few years til retirement and the banana pudding is pretty good. Why mess with that? These people get moved around from one useless position to another until they marry up with a manager that doesn’t care or is equally useless. While they may add color to your company they have stopped contributing and that can be dangerous. Other employees see management as weak for letting Deadwood Mary come in when she pleases or for letting Deadwood Tom maintain half the workload that everyone else has while productive employees toil away and get 2 to 3 times the work accomplished. The irony is that the terminal deadwood in your company often see themselves as swamped with work and the productive get to hear about it while Deadwood Sue is getting her third cup of coffee in the break room. People start saying “Oh that’s just Sue, she’s been here forever.”

Good managers avoid deadwood employees like the nearsighted fat kid who always got picked last in 4^th grade kickball (screw you Tommy Johnson). Deadwood employee skill sets tend to be outdated, and they don’t want to learn more, and they rarely contribute to the group. Some highly skilled managers can turn around deadwood employees just as some artisans can make lovely lamps or tables out of deadwood found on the beach. Those that cannot are saddled with these employees knowing that management isn’t going to allow them to work them out of the system.  All you can hope for is to snag an opportunity to unload them onto some other unsuspecting manager or hope that they snap at some point and either stop wearing pants to work or accidentally run over someone in the parking lot . The goal is to free up the precious headcount for someone who is more productive.

A good approach is to catch these employees when they are starting to turn into deadwood and either re-motivate them or move them out of the company. Terminal deadwood can clog pipelines and too much of it can give your company a bad reputation causing good employees to bail. Look for signs that employees are starting to rot or go stale. Challenge managers when they start making excuses for employees like this. Remember that deadwood managers breed deadwood employees.

In the end the employees make up the company. The productive ones can make you look good and the deadwood can make you look outdated or irrelevant to others. Take a good look at your workforce and see if there are signs of possible deadwood lying around. Don’t worry, you won’t miss the pudding.

I am excited. It’s football season again, well it’s preseason anyway, and I like watching pro football in the fall; mainly because it’s not baseball. That and every team starts the season with a clean slate and anyone could win it all. Each team is 0-0 and the future is wide open.  There’s hope that, this year, your favorite team could possibly get out of their own way and start winning games again.  Teams can shed their labels and begin anew.
I wish there was a season starter for employees each year. It’s hard when managers or executives stamp employees with over-generic labels (lazy, not bright enough, complainer, no future) which are hard to lose especially if they reach upper management. I heard it once described as people keeping their own internal, permanent filing cabinet on employees and when they hear that person’s name they just open the file and see what’s written. It’s doesn’t take much thought. It’s easy to fall in that trap of utilizing pre-programmed notions about people or situations. You just check their file: “Yep they’re a complainer, don’t listen to them.”

Why do managers tend to label and file away their people? Well, there are a lot of reasons and let’s be frank, some employees can make it easy to do. We’ll come back to that at another time. The reason I keep coming back to is that it’s easiest for managers to just stamp them and walk away. Oh, that and the fact that constantly evaluating and developing your employees takes work– hard work. I have worked with a number of managers that really don’t understand that an important part of their job is to develop their employees. From front line supervisors to CEOs they tend to want employees to come pre-developed and get frustrated when someone has flaws. Instead of trying to figure out how to help them fix the problem, they just stamp and walk away. Not fixable and not my problem.

I once had a supervisor come to me and ask for all new employees because the ones he had were, in his words, crap. True story. His staff was all recently new hires and he really had stamped them pretty quickly. I asked him what he had done to help develop them to which he admitted “not much.” He wanted them to just show up and be great. Knowing that he was a football fan, I pointed out that, at the end of a lousy football season, the first action team owners will take is to fire the coaches not the players. The owners gave the coach a team of talented players and tasked them with shaping them into a great team. The supervisor turned a bit white at my suggestion that maybe he could be a fault and needed to be replaced instead of his team. It was remarkable how quickly he was open and willing to start working with his players.

I would be willing to bet that more managers would take developing their employees more seriously if they knew they could lose their own job if their team didn’t do well. They would receive their own stamps: bad manager, poor communicator, lousy coach. Like the fans who can’t wait to see which coaches get fired, I’m sure employees would be waiting to see which managers didn’t make the cut. It sure would make the end of year assessment and compensation process more exciting and I bet a lot more employees would look forward to the start of the season each year.

As I launch this I am posting a blog from earlier this year. I’ll catch up to real time soon.

I’m trying to optimistic. Well actually, I’m trying to hide in my office until the headache goes away. I’m on a break from our annual departmental planning meeting and I’m trying to avoid getting dragged into another impromptu meeting. The headache is my own fault. The spot on my desk reserved for the gentle banging of my forehead is getting worn out a little too early this year. It’s the beginning of the year and I was expecting a little more time before the ‘fun’ would start. A little break from the “got a few minutes” conversations that slowly steal away my precious January.