I had lunch recently with a colleague who coaches HR professionals on how to become more strategic. Ah yes, that elusive destination called “the seat” at the corporate strategy table. Whoever said “it’s the journey not the destination that matters” might be living in what ought to be the cobwebbed halls of human resources. Let’s […]

In our recent HR Executive Forum, a peer coaching community built by Suzanne Elshult of HRNow, some 20 or so of my peers and I explored “OD.” Two driving questions guided our discussions:     What are the prevailing schools of thought around OD. Why should business leaders care about it? I learned a lot […]

A couple of weeks ago two dozen+ of my HR Executive Peer Group members met to discuss the shift from “wellness” to “well-being” strategies. The latter is a more comprehensive and holistic approach to defining organizational success than our traditional wellness initiatives. Wellbeing strategies often include physical, emotional, social, career and financial components. I walked away from this discussion with a […]

Once a year my HR executive peer group  has a freeform session (instead of our typical format which tends to anchor the conversation in a theme). It is always exciting to not know what issues will pop up. This year we covered a number of interesting areas, but two in particular caught my interest. One […]

Can crying at meetings be a measure of high engagement? I guess it depends. At my recent Hr Executive peer coaching group session on the topic of engagement one client organization shared that you will not infrequently find someone crying at one of their meetings. BUT, it is not crying out of sadness, but crying […]

Many executives still think about workforce planning as a “project or bolt-on event” or perhaps a “mad scramble every Friday morning to put together headcount numbers” and deal with short-term planning; basically managing the tactics of ebb and tide. Historically workforce planning was something that was working fine when business was humming along. The challenges […]

Last week both my marketing and HR executive peer groups engaged with Catherine Captain and others from Cantadora around the power of storytelling. The topic made for great Fall kick-off sessions that definitely got us all engaged in thinking not only about our company stories, but our personal stories as well. Here are some nuggets the […]

How do internal branding initiatives benefit companies, employees and customers? What is HR’s role in internal branding?  Here are a couple of points I took note of in my HR executive peer group discussion a couple of weeks ago: 1. Internal branding can reinforce a strong recruitment and retention strategy. Prospective and current employees want […]

Over the past several weeks I have been engaging with about fifty executives on the topic of how they manage their careers. It’s been an eye-opening journey. The landscape is definitely changing and you are running the risk of being left in the dust unless you keep up. I will try to distill my key […]

I confess to feeling a bit “humdrum” about planning our December HR executive peer group meeting. The agenda was titled “2014 HR Executive Dashboards”, but the focus of the discussion was intended to be on the legislative and compliance environment, not the aspects of HR hat appeal to me personally:  organizational learning, leadership development, culture […]