The office is closed today. London awaits, and an evening with Rush beckons. I know many people who have never heard of Rush and many people who have, and wish they hadn’t. They are different. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea and that’s great – difference makes the world go round. By way of something else a little different, a little crazy, I just thought I’d share with you a few of the search terms that have led people to the blog this week.

‘Zombie HR’ – a personal fave

‘What a Load of Rubbish’ – Thanks for your feedback. Or does this relate to Rush, who knows…?

‘What is love?’ – the eternal question

‘Why losing is good for you’ – I wish I knew!

‘Rocket from a bottle’ – Hmmmm, Xtc?

‘Is fun a corporate value?’ – No, no it bloody isn’t!

‘Tell your own story’ – Absolutely.

Not a bad little list eh? Proof, if it were needed, that we’re heading in a good direction. Have a great bank holiday weekend folks.

As you know – I’ve just curated the Carnival of HR for the second time. The response from all quarters was very encouraging thank you, and the blog had its busiest day so far this month. I appreciate the support – and before the Carnival packs up and heads on to the next destination I wanted to share three things I learned from the curation process.

Deadline

Despite marking time in my diary to bring the Carnival together, I struggled to get going because I got hung up on the submission deadline. This meant I waited until everyone had contributed before I began to plan and write up the curation. I also accepted late submissions, though I didn’t try to factor them into the Carnival theme. The next time I do something like this I will seek an earlier deadline so that I can begin the curation process sooner.

Time

It takes a lot of time to curate a Carnival. Each post needs to be read and considered. Does it fit the theme? What is it about each post that I should reference in the curation summary? It took me over six hours to pull everything together and whilst I appreciate that I am inexperienced in this field, I expect even a seasoned curator like Michael Carty or Martin Couzins would echo that the process of curation is a time consuming one. And reflecting on the feedback I’ve received – I think that investment is necessary, otherwise you are effectively just listing a bunch of stuff, and I don’t perceive much value in that for the reader.

Mistakes

I goofed, a little. First – I incorrectly copied the link to Mark Catchlove’s blog post into the Carnival, so when you clicked on him, you ended up in the ether. Sukh Pabial was kind enough to contact me with the news and courtesy of the WordPress app, I was able to fix this error on the train back from Reading yesterday. Second – I made an omission. Susan Heathfield submitted a contribution titled ‘Never Tell HR These 10 Things’ and although it was past the deadline, I forgot to include it. Sorry Susan. I think these errors arose as a result of the amount of time it took me to get the whole thing done so I think that by tending to the deadline dilemma above, then time, and possible mistakes may be easier to work with and iron out.

I hope this reflection helps you in your blogging endeavours. Thanks again to the contributors and readers, see you at the next Carnival town.

photo credit

Slow down.

Take your time

What’s the rush?

Good day dear reader. Normally I would not urge you to sit back and relax. I know you’re, busy and who am I to tell you to put the brakes on just to read my blog? Except today, it’s very much our blog. Y’see, while you were sleeping, The Carnival of HR has rolled into town. We’ve put up the big top, the dodgems are lined up and the candy floss (cotton candy if you will) is whizzed up and ready to stick to your face, clothes, anything in fact.

The Carnival theme today is ‘Beginnings’, with a side order of ‘Other Crap we Can’t be Bothered to Categorise’. We have some great regular contributors and some new folks too. and this transatlantic mashup is looking great from where I’m sitting right now. So why not grab yourself a coffee, and take the time to explore and enjoy some familiar carnival rides, and some less well known to you too. Please don’t feel any need to hurry.

Beginnings

I knew this curation job was going to be fun when Paul Hebert was among the first to be in touch. Paul and I have yet to meet but his smartness radiates across the pond, keeping my brain nice and warm. In Hot House Employees, Paul offers us a sideways look at beginnings from a parent’s…no wait, an employer’s perspective. I love the way Paul has taken learning from the world of psychology and neatly mixed it into work. A lovely blend to start us off.

I’m privileged to have met Neil Usher many times. He is a very generous collaborator and many of you will have heard and read his work, be it poetry, story telling or, occasional song writing with me. In Head Over Heels, Neil writes about the need to turn the clock, to swing the pendulum towards the workplace needs of women. Fussball and slides don’t cut it; a radical new beginning is needed.

The first I knew of Julie Winkle Giulioni was when she dropped me a line for the Carnival. Her post, titled ‘Where’s Your Bubble?’ is an interesting read about how you move from getting stuck thinking about doing something, to beginning to do it. I really appreciate the creative, hands on angle from Julie.

Back as the 1600s, Blaise Pascal coined the phrase ‘I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.’ Mark Catchlove has opted for brevity in his post titled ‘I’ve started so I will finish…eventually’. A neat, punchy piece on interruptions.

I’m pleased that Kate Griffiths-Lambeth got in touch too. She is busy with her colleagues figuring out what next year’s reward package looks like for the employees. In ‘The Sound of”’Flyin’ High’, Kate talks about the importance, before we begin anything, of planning. She applies her thinking to reward and more, with the help of some musical accompaniment from the Von Trapp family and Nina Simone. Go and have a rewarding look and a listen.

As I was opening the Carnival mail, I spied a note embossed with the seal of The President of The United States of HR, aka Steve Browne. I’ll try not to turn this into a bromance – but you know how geeked I am that the King of the Geeks (and a world class jouster) himself has pitched in with a contribution. In ‘Remember When’, Steve talks about a new beginning for his company and his excitement in helping recruit a new team needed to help grow the business. And of course – there’s a musical finish to his post too.

I first met Adrian McNeece after being asked to sing the closing piece for the 2011 Workplace Trends conference. Since then, he and I have kept in touch and I remember his enthusiastic participation at one of our Stop Doing Dumb Things events very well. More recently, I’ve come to appreciate what a thought provoking blogger Adrian is. In ‘Zoom! What was that?, Adrian takes a philosophical approach to beginnings, which I really enjoyed reading. The Fawlty Towers touch at the end is spot on.

Another perspective on beginnings is provided by Gemma Reucroft. Handily for us, Gemma is but six weeks into a new job and so for her, beginnings and ‘Foundations’ are everywhere. Lots of good thinking here on self, team and trust.

Simon Heath draws a mean cartoon, and writes a good blog too. In ‘The Dawn of Creation’, Simon gets personal about his life in work so far and an exciting new beginning for him, and his clients and supporters too. A good story and a reminder that new beginnings can be simply there for the taking.

And if you wanted to begin an Employee Awards programme, but didn’t know how, well you do now, courtesy of ’8 Steps to Creating an Employee Awards Programme’, by Andrew Tarvin.

Other Crap We Can’t Be Bothered to Categorise

Some bloggers may be offended by this category, but last time I used it, it got a good reaction and so I figured I’d run with it again as a place to put stuff people are keen to share. You score bonus points for volunteering to be in this special club.

Mike Haberman gets first class honours for being the first to put his hand up for inclusion in this smorgasbord of blog goodness. In ‘Two Ways To Enhance Your Power in HR’ Mike goes all superhero on us and encourages people to be competent and aware of your body language. If only I could still fit into that Spidey suit…

And on the subject of SpiderMan and co., next up is ‘How to be an HR Superhero’ by Michael Jacobson over at XpertHR. Don’t be fooled by the photo, despite Spidey’s beer can crushing abilities and Captain America’s thoroughly inappropriate lycra pants, there’s some good stuff in here on upping your HR Game.

Chris Young from the Rainmaker Group got in touch wanting to share ‘Hunter or Farmer : What Kind of Sales Person do you Really Need?’ - this post is worth a look on the strength of the photo alone, great stuff!

Ian Welsh suggests that ‘HR Needs More Real Time Analysts – With a Smile?’ in order to create future value through being more integrated with the rest of the company. In his post Ian says HR needs to get better at using and manipulating data, and become less reliant on old ways of doing things, just because they’ve been around for years.

My friend Broc Edwards is out on the road a lot at the moment, USA folks keep an eye out for the chance to see his enthusiasm and passion shining through on stage. Because he is dashing about he didn’t have time to do a bespoke piece so instead, Broc sent me a helpful post titled ‘It’s not about social media – but it is about HR’.

And the good people at TribeHR got in touch with the question, ‘Should HR Insist on BYOD?’. I mistakenly assumed this was some off the wall HR relocation proposal to the Welsh village of Byod, but no – it is in fact a poser about the growing trend of Bringing Your Own Device to work.

Latecomers

And that, dear reader, pretty much draws things to a close. Except….there were a few entries which arrived after the deadline. Now, I’m a nice guy (some might say too nice), and I decided to let these latecomers through the door. I haven’t had time to read these entries so I’m just going to list them:

Jon Mertz sent in this guest post by Kyle Willkom titled ‘What’s Different? Timeless Principles for Any Generation’

Naomi Bloom sent in ‘HRM Analytics – Dashboards, Cockpits and Mission Control’

Alex Raymond sent in ‘Strategic alignment is all about the carrot approach’ by Chris Wells

And Now For Something Completely Different

OK – that’s your lot. Thanks to all the contributors, particularly everyone who either took the time to help me link to the theme, or had the good humour to vote themselves into the other crap box. I’m going to leave you with a joke from Alex Lifeson, guitarist with Rush. The band are on tour just now and one night, Geddy Lee’s keyboard briefly stopped working, so Alex stepped in to tell a funny. Maybe he has a new beginning ahead as a comedian – what do you think?