Why I'm not Live Tweeting #HRevolution

Lately, it seems like a theme that keeps coming up in my conversations with people is our collectively declining attention span and focus.  In our hyper-connected world; emails, calendars and social media tools travel with us everywhere we go.

As a result of our connectedness, we check emails constantly, tweet, scan Facebook updates and check in whenever we have a break in the action (and even sometimes when we don't).  It's becoming more and more common for people to be checking their device of choice during meetings and conversations.  We have an addiction to real time information--even if it's not terribly profound.

Tomorrow morning, I board a plane to head to Atlanta to join in on the experience of HRevolution.  For those who don't know about HRevolution, it's an HR unconference that's in it's third iteration.  In short, it's a day of conversations about important topics in the world of HR with some really passionate HR pros and consultants from around the world.  It's an awesome experience to engage with peers to really talk and think through some important stuff.

The idea of an unconference is that is has less structure and formality of a tradition conference so that the participants of the conference shape the experience to their needs.  In my experience, this model only works if the people in attendance are participating in full contact dialogue--hearing others, thinking about what's being said, adding your perspective, and jointly arriving at an improved understanding of the issue at hand.  Dialogue is intense and it requires a lot of the participants.

Another thing about HRevolution is that most, if not all, of the participants are social media savvy pros who blog and use twitter quite a lot.  This means that there will be a lot of people tweeting during the event.  I'm going to risk becoming really unpopular for the weekend here and admit that I hate live tweeting during a session that is supposed to be about dialogue and the exchange of ideas.  Here's why.

Picture being in a deep conversation with a friend about an important topic.  While you are pouring out your feelings and thoughts to that person, they pull out their phone and start typing.  You stop talking and look that them.  They look up and say, "Don't worry, I'm listening.  It's just that something you said was really good so I wanted to tweet it out."  How would you feel?  Is the person still listening to you as their tweeting?  I mean really listening?  The flow of the exchange is gone and the conversation is broken down.

The really great conversations you have with people, the ones that last for hours and have the possibility to live in your thoughts for months to follow are those where all parties involved are fully present in the conversation: mind, body and soul.  The participants aren't listening for "twitter gold," they are listening for understanding and hidden meaning.  They was eagerly anticipating the moment when the spark of insight is born and all parties in the conversation are changed forever.

So, I will not be live tweeting during HRevolution.  I will be too busy trying to learn, engage and grow with the others who make the journey to Atlanta.  I will likely write some blog posts after the event to share the insights and ideas creating during the experience but that will come later.  The opportunity is too important to me to jeopardize by trying to share out of context soundbites with the Twitterverse.

I owe it to the others in the room to be fully present for them.  I hope that some of them feel the same way towards me.

HR is in Trouble

Since I have the pleasure of facilitating a session at HRevolution 2011 with Steve Browne, it seemed like a good idea to start the dialogue on our blogs before getting to Atlanta in hopes that we'll be able to add more depth to our discussion there.  The title of our session is "If HR is so bad, what are YOU going to do about it?"

Steve,

Thanks for the thoughts related to the State of the HR Union.  You and several others who I respect a great deal have weighed in on the topic and it seems to me that in summary, HR is in trouble.  The descriptions of where HR stands today could be summarized as transforming, in flux, precarious, better, and losing the battle.  There seems to be an idealistic sense that we've gotten better, but that seems like a pretty low bar to clear.  With as much effort as we spend dissecting ourselves, having conferences, writing about it, we had better be better.  There also seems to be some cautious optimism and anticipation of the future.  But I would guess that pundits from a decade ago probably would have said much the same things about HR at that time as we are saying today.  So, are we really making progress as a whole?

One this is crystal clear to me, we have a lot of work to do.  I doesn't matter where we've come from or how we got here.  All that matters is the path forward.  Personally, while I think it's important that HR focus on becoming better and more effective, it might be time to take a giant step back and reconsider why HR exists in the first place and then smash that model to pieces.  If we are truly honest, here's what I think our mission statement would be for HR:

HR exists to try to compensate for and minimize the effect of poor management and a lack of organizational leadership.  

This is the hard reality that we face each day.  And when you spend your days and nights living this mission, there's not much time left to address bigger issues like, "How can we make work more meaningful?"  The dirty secret behind our entire discussion is that strategic and transformational HR cannot exist in an organization with a leadership vacuum.  Organizational culture flows from the top and it does not change simply because HR is passionate.

So, that brings me to the question you posed for me in your last post: 

Have we buried passion for HR in systems and methodology in order to appear to be relevant in the business world?

I am not sure that we've buried our passion under systems and methodologies.  I think that our passion is getting choked out by bad management and absent leadership.  HR cannot transform organizations on our own.  All the passion, talent and skill in the world cannot compensate for a lack of leadership at key spots within the organization.  You show me a successful HR leader or team and I'll show you an organization with a strong CEO or executive team.  They don't exist independently.

Poor leaders favor the simplicity of systems and technology over the messiness of humanity.  So I think it's natural that HR, in our quest to be accepted by and welcomed to a "table" surrounded by executives with missing leadership capabilities who secretly wish people would more like machines, tries to build systems that promise to take some of the unpredictability out of managing humans.  Shame on us for falling into this trap, but it is fairly predictable and hard to resist.

So, what's the solution?  For one, we have to stop enabling bad management.  Our entire systems are set up to let bad managers off the hook, that has to change.  We also have to seek out great leaders and commit ourselves to helping those leaders build amazing organizations where human potential can be set free.

Your ball, Steve.  What do you think on this topic?

What is the State of the HR Union?

Since I have the pleasure of facilitating a session at HRevolution 2011 with Steve Browne, it seemed like a good idea to start the dialogue on our blogs before getting to Atlanta in hopes that we'll be able to add more depth to our discussion there.  The title of our session is "If HR is so bad, what are YOU going to do about it?"  You can find Steve's blog at www.sbrowneHR.com.

Steve,

I love the title of your post, plotting Anarchy by the light of a Lava lamp sounds pretty cool.  And thanks for the questions from your post.  I will respond to those shortly, but first I want to pose a question to you and to the greater world that I think gives the back drop to what we are hoping to discuss in Atlanta the end of this month.

There was a time, when I worked on the outside of HR, that I could have described clearly to you what was wrong with HR.  But, then I jumped into the fray.  As a member of the HR community, I don't feel like I can see the big picture the way I used to.  I have become a part of the system and thus the system has become harder to see.

HR has always taken some hard criticism that culminated in the August 2005 Fast Company article, "Why we Hate HR."  Since then, it has seemed to me that there has been a lot of talk about how HR must improve and evolve, but are we making progress?  I'm not sure.  So, I'd pose this question to you and others who care enough to join this discussion:

What is the state of HR today?  (Could the same Fast Company article be written about us today or have we progressed in the past 6 years?)

We need some really honest conversation on this topic because my fear is that we've done a lot of talking and not a lot of changing.  I think the answer to this question helps us to determine the importance of action on the part of those who live in and lead in HR daily.

Now to your questions of me:

1) Being that you, and others like you, are my “future” in HR – why stick with a field that others rip apart?

This is a great question.  For me, it's because I love the type of work that HR does.  My work is increasingly about helping people to manifest their talent and HR provides a great place to do this work.  I'd like to say that other's perceptions and opinions of HR don't bother me, but they do.  That challenge fuels me to keep up the fight and to prove what a great HR team is truly capable of.

2) What attracts you to stretching the boundaries of our field?

I'd like to say that it's the challenge of HR, but in this case, I think it's just how I'm wired.  I try to stretch the boundaries of everything I'm involved in and the work of HR happens to lie at the intersection of many of my passions.

3) Why should people even care about this session?

They should at least be glad that two HR leaders are willing to step forward and lead a conversation about personal accountability of the leader within HR.  Beyond that, the value of the session won't come from us, it will come from the courageous souls who step into the conversation with us to create an experience together that gives us the motivation to keep up the fight and to live the solution.