Saying Goodbye I started blogging for 2 reasons. Firstly, it would act as an aide memoir – helping to capture the learning from a diverse range of experiences. Secondly, it would be a form of marketing – directly answering the question: “Is that bloke still alive?” To get people to read the blogs, my sense was that they needed to be (a) short (b) simple (c) memorable (sometimes people remember the jokes more than the content). So, why stop now?  When this process kicked off in 2010, my dysfunctional teenage kids provided endless fodder for reflection ..read more

“Without the spur of a crisis or a period of great stress, most organisations — like most people — are incapable of changing” John F. McDonnell In a recent project, we worked with an executive team to develop a range of ‘future options’ for their manufacturing business.  There were a number of constraints… Simple Roadmap: The project had both organisation and HR elements, including strategy creation, revising the structure, recruitment impacts and so on. The roadmap chosen to explain the change process had to be comprehensive yet simple to understand. Overly complex approaches ri ..read more

Chances are that the topic of ‘discovering your passion in life’ is not new to you.  It’s a common phrase that people toss about. The connotation is that this will be unveiled to us in some way. Like that apple which hit Isaac Newton just before he articulated the laws of gravity, our passion will ‘hit us on the head’ sometime when we least expect it.  I’m not convinced. Not Passive: Dave Isay, founder of a company called StoryCorps, also takes issue with the idea that ‘finding your calling’ is passive: “When people have found their calling, they’ve made tough decision ..read more

About a Zillion years ago, there was an old radio programme called ‘What’s My Line?’ Participants would introduce themselves and the panel would have to guess their job. It was good fun. People with unusual jobs would be invited onto the programme.  The trick was for the listeners to guess the person’s job before the panel did. New Game: A reverse version of this game is now played out in almost all senior level appointments. In the current mode, people who are applying for jobs have to guess exactly what the job is about and convince a panel of interviewers they are o ..read more

Get ready for the Christmas Break Should you use your holidays for a well-earned break or use the opportunity for continuous improvement? For me the question poses a false dichotomy as the two ideas combine perfectly. Getting Bored: I don’t know about you, but I can only take so much downtime. Pinot Grigot coupled with grilled sardines is a solid lunchtime combination – up to a point. But, alongside this, I normally feel the need to keep sharpening the saw. In the words of one client: “I like to earn my lazy.” New Ideas? Last year, I packed 3 ‘heavier’ books, alongside the usual mi ..read more

It will happen. Figure out your ‘stance’ on this in advance You may already know this, but there are approximately 2.3 million cattle in the Irish beef herd and about 1.7 million dairy cows.  So, if you live in Ireland, there’s a really good chance that you will (at some point in your life) have seen a cow. No big deal. Based on my experience – I would argue that there’s an even better chance that you will have experienced a workplace romance. And, this is a big deal. Not New: When Ruth Meehan completed a Masters in DCU, she choose an interesting topic – workplace romances. I had t ..read more

The cost of a ‘wrong hire’ can be enormous Each time you hire a new employee you potentially spend several million Euro. For example, a candidate currently earning €100,000 per year will cost your company about 6 million Euro over a 30 year working career when fully loaded employment costs and inflation are rolled up.   In constructing a Capital Acquisitions Request for a piece of equipment that cost say €50,000, you’d spend a considerable amount of time completing a cost: benefit analysis.  Yet when it comes to candidate selection, many managers are ill prepared to make a dec ..read more

Consider re-writing your success software “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”  W. C. Fields The flight to Faro was particularly bumpy. High above the Bay of Biscay we were bouncing around like a table tennis ball in a Jacuzzi. At one point I was tempted to email the Bacardi factory in Cuba and ask them to put on a 3rdshift. By the time this plane landed, the worldwide stock of rum would be well down! Flash Cards: To take my mind off dying, I was busily reading flash cards – trying to master Portuguese phrases b ..read more

Ensuring HR adds real Value Back in my GE days, the Finance Director was skeptical about the merits of the HR function which he labeled the‘Health and Happiness Department.’ He honestly didn’t believe that HR added any value. It was part of his worldview that social science was basically bullshit, totally un-provable. It was a great put down.  Despite his misapprehensions about the function, I liked the guy and subsequently came to be more confident about HR’s role in building High-Performance Organizations. Phone Call: We were recently involved in an interesting project in Ga ..read more

Non-Union comes of Age Way back in ancient history (1980’s) I was a student in Trinity College. At the time the ‘hot topic’ in Human Resources was negotiations and I wanted to understand that area.  Under the tutalage of Dr. Charles McCarthy – who has since passed away – the advice given was that I should  ignore negotiations and concentrate on the development of the Non-Union sector in Ireland that was emerging in Ireland.  Five years later that advice (along with huge support from Dr Ferdinand Von Prondzynski) morphed into a doctorate and a controversial book called Union-Fr ..read more