The economy is improving a bit, enough that companies are doing some hiring. And, just as in the past, the same idiotic attitude is surfacing.

It starts with a reference to the need for employee engagement and that ‘experts’ say that the companies with the best long-term success rates retain and grow their human resource base from within the company to ensure it.

But when a company fulfills its human resource needs by hiring from the outside, in most cases, it’s picking up the “rejects” from other companies.

And that part sends me ballistic.

Of all the totally wrong-headed attitudes I’ve heard on the subject of hiring, there is only one that is comparable and, in fact, they go hand in hand.

During every recession I’ve seen the theme is that the only employees worth hiring are the ones who are still working.

Even now, in a recession that dwarfs the previous ones and companies have cut 50% or even more of their workforce and are still cutting, those who are laid off are tagged as “dead wood” or “difficult.”

My blood still boils when I remember the excellent people who were completely trashed by that attitude.

I do agree that growing people from within is good company policy; however, there are dozens of reasons why a company not only would, but should, hire at levels other than entry.

• No company can go through significant growth and not hire from the outside—it’s a given part of that growth. For example, most startups and high-growth companies have neither the diversification, nor the depth, of talent needed when growth kicks in, so they hire at all levels.
• Hiring strictly at entry level and promoting only from within can create a hidebound culture steeped in a not-invented-here mentality, not only for products, but for processes—as happened at both IBM and HP.

There are dozens of other reasons (think about your own experience), but the reject and the dead wood attitudes are not among them.

The dead wood/difficult premise is BS, flawed, short-sighted and plain stupid.

The common belief that “stars” are independent of their circumstances just doesn’t stand up to analysis.

Most people work to the quality of their managers and the validity of the company’s culture—if they don’t shine it’s because they aren’t engaged; give people good managers and good culture and they can all be stars.

It is beyond stupid to lay work quality issues at the door of employees with no consideration of management or culture.

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The first step in innovation

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Reputations are fragile things and company reputations are no different, but in the brave new world of YouTube, Twitter and blogs their fragility has skyrocketed.

Pity Domino’s Pizza whose Conover NC franchise employed two of the stupidest thirty-somethings available. They posted a prank video on YouTube (it’s been removed) that burned through the social media world faster than any recorded wildfire and was just as damaging.

In a 2007 post I quoted Chris Gidez, head of U.S. crisis management for the public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton, “Once it’s on the Web, it’s like taking the rods out of a reactor. Companies have to work harder to determine, ‘Do we need to worry about this?’ “Overreacting can call more attention to a rumor than it gets on its own, I’ve had clients who wanted to respond to a problem with guns blazing, and I say, ‘Hold on a second. You might be telling a larger universe of people about a problem they didn’t know existed.”

I think that Gidez may be giving different advice these days, since it’s doubtful that any rumor, prank or sin will die a natural death.

“If you think it’s not going to spread [in social media], that’s when it gets bigger,” said Scott Hoffman, the chief marketing officer of the social-media marketing firm Lotame. “We realized that when many of the comments and questions in Twitter were, ‘What is Domino’s doing about it’ ” Domino’s spokesman, Tim McIntyre said. “Well, we were doing and saying things, but they weren’t being covered in Twitter.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Domino’s had created a Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to address the comments, and it had presented its chief executive in a video on YouTube by evening.”

The real problem today isn’t the speed and transparency with which information moves, but rather it’s that the stupidity factor is just as bad, if not worse, than it ever was.

Dr. Jay Geidd, NIH: “The part of the brain that fills in last is the part involved in decision-making and controlling our impulses.”

The articles on teen brain research all indicate that the brain matures around age 25 or later, but it seems the availability of instant fame, no matter how fleeting, has pushed brain maturity way past that mark increasing the level of stupidity that people find so amusing—think YouTube and AFHV.

This weekend talk to your kids. Show them the article; tell them about the legal charges filed and the civil suite in the works. And ask them what business in it’s right mind would ever hire people whose judgment is this bad?

Image credit: John Karakatsanis on flickr

Or is this more accurate?

Image credit: flickr

In December I wrote a short post on Siemens culture of corruption where bribes were a line item in the budget.

I was ticked off that CEO Klaus Kleinfeld denied doing anything wrong and then had a very soft landing as CEO of Alcoa Aluminum.

I got angrier after reading that “KPMG exposed to top management staff of Siemens in the fall of 2003, how £4.12m in cash was brought into Nigeria by the communication division… investigators stated in their court papers that the employees identified in the report, including a Communications Division manager, which was the division that conducted business with Nigeria, “continued to pay bribes through a series of slush funds until at least November 2006,” when they were arrested at a raid on the German offices of Siemens in Munich.”

Siemens paid a $1.6 billion fine—big deal.

I have no idea what the current Justice Department would do, but at that time “the Justice Department allowed Siemens to plead to accounting violations because it cooperated with the investigation and because pleading to bribery violations would have barred Siemens from bidding on government contracts in the United States. Siemens doesn’t dispute the government’s account of its actions.”

Siemens admits the bribery, but our government doesn’t want to prevent a corporation that cheated dozens of American companies out of hundreds of millions of dollars of possible business from being able to bid on US government contracts.

Why am I bringing this up again? Because now I am raging.

It’s all of 90 days later and I’ll give you three guesses as to who’s bidding on stimulus money contracts and the first two don’t count.

“George Nolen, CEO of Siemens Corp., the U.S. subsidiary of the German giant, aims to win $75 billion of Washington’s $787 billion stimulus package.”If you’re not prepared,” says Nolen, “you will not be able to take advantage.”"

Now, I know that Siemens does many things well, but I seriously doubt that they are the ‘only company in the world’ on anything.

I don’t have an MBA and I’m not a lawyer or a big time business person, so I would greatly appreciate it if one of you would explain why, at the very least, there couldn’t have been  a 12 month moratorium on their bidding for US business.

Image credit: flickr

The CEO reputation isn’t exactly in the ascendancy these days, in fact, as a group it’s pretty well tanked. So it’s sad to see them, again as a group with exceptions, strolling down another truly stupid path—no time for talent worries. “It’s no surprise that global leaders raked financial pressures to cut costs (82.95%) and rapid market decline (54.36%) as their toughest business challenges. Unfortunately, “Loss of leaders in key areas or insufficient talent to quickly adapt to change” (5.30%) fell to the bottom of the list.” Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership spells out the details, including a link to the survey. Whoo hoo, short term thinking at it’s best.

Jim Stroup at Managing Leadership eloquently discusses the stupidity (my word) of inspiring emotional connections in ‘followers’.

“That’s what the modern individual leader wants: uncritical commitment, steadfast devotion, unquestioning obedience. There is little room in contemporary leadership theory for qualified, deliberative followership; extended, modified, or rescinded at the initiative of the follower.” Scary attitude!

Finally, to add a little levity to a day dedicated to stupidity, past and future, here’s a quick explanation of the banking crisis for those of you who still don’t understand the MAP that got us into this mess.  It’s a little story that’s making the rounds on the Net. Hat tip to KG Charles-Harris who sent it to me.

Young Stern moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day he drove up and said, ‘Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died.’
Stern replied, ‘Well, then just give me my money back.’  The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.’

Stern said, ‘OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.’

The farmer asked, ‘What a ya gonna do with him? Stern said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’

The farmer said ‘You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!’   Stern said, ‘Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’

A month later, the farmer met up with Stern and asked, ‘What happened with that dead
donkey?’

Stern said, ‘I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00.’

The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’  Stern said, ‘Just the guy who won. So I gave him back his two dollars.’

Stern now works for Goldman Sachs.

Or did until he was laid off.

There, do you feel better now that you know the truth?

Image credit: flickr

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