I often find myself torn between two distinct approaches:

1. Goals should be things that you need to accomplish to be successful in your job.
2. Goals should be things that are above and beyond the normal duties of your job.

The first approach looks at bonus money as part of a total compensation plan. The focus is on doing things that make you great at your job.

The second approach looks at bonus money as something you earn for exceedingly great performance

Which of the two is the best approach? I don’t know, and I’d really like to hear your thoughts on it.

Yesterday, Fistful of Talent released the results of their fourth Talent Management Blog Power Ranking. Renegade HR placed seventh!

There are a lot of great blogs in the Top 25 (and in the honorable mentions), so be sure to head over and check out the full list. Special thanks to the Fistful team for doing this.

The Full List

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About Ashley

Ashley Acker, Ph.D. is an entrepreneur, business coach and consultant, and owner of WorkStyle Design, where she helps people think bigger about what’s possible for work by pushing the boundaries of how, when, and where work gets done. As her clients embrace workplace flexibility as their core business strategy, they become more productive, profitable, and passionate about the work they do.

Ashley earned her B.S. in Psychology from Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth, TX, her M.S. in Industrial Organizational Psychology and her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from The University of Texas at Arlington. She is also a graduate of Coach U, the leading global provider of coach training.

Podcast Highlights

Ideas really happen any time and any place. They don’t just happen in a cubicle.

When we talk about culture, we’re really talking about building common ground so that people can identify with the company on a shared level. What does it mean to work here? What does it mean to be on this team and do this job?

I like to think of it in terms of a college environment. In college, you’re free to do virtually whatever you want. Your professor trusts that you’re going to act ethically. And if you do happen to act unethically there are consequences.

Worrying about social media is like a rocking chair. It will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere. (Credit: Van Wilder)

There are a lot of things HR pros worry about when it comes to social media:

• What if someone discloses confidential information?
• What if someone says something bad about the organization?
• What if we lose productivity because people are wasting time on Facebook and Twitter?
• What if an employee threatens someone or says something offensive?

These are the same issues HR peeps deal with in the real world. The only things that’s changed is the space where they happen.

Do you have a strategy for dealing with these problems in the real world? If not, worrying about social media is a waste time. If you do, worrying about social media is still a waste of time - you already have a strategy in place.

Instead, focus your energy on using social media to help your organization thrive.

(Also, check out this awesome social media policy by Kris Dunn)

To make an improvement, you must start with measuring what you have. To truly know the impact of a change, you must evaluate pre and post. But to make the best decisions, you must discover the seemingly unknowable. It’s not impossible, it just requires that you gather lots and lots of data. This is where analytics comes in.

The concept of business intelligence and evaluation is not new. Data-driven decision making has cut down on operational expenses throughout organizations. For example, data is needed to answer the question, “What is the price point that maximizes both profit margin and volume of sales, while taking into consideration customer characteristics?” But can data help companies gain a competitive advantage? And can it be used in a “soft” area like human resources?

The peer-reviewed research that ends up in Harvard Business Review or your University library is great. It gives us credible information and generalized conclusions that can help us make better decisions in our organizations. But those conclusions heavily depend on the situation. Often, you read it and say… yeah I’d like to try that but how would that interact with the fact that our department is five times the size of the one used in this study?

Do your own research. Your organizational culture is unique. Your collection of programs is unique. The only way to know what you are doing is right is to measure everything you possibly can. With technology, preferably.

Three Basic Analytic Styles

Thoughtful. Think. Collect Data. Do.
This is what the scientists do. It is, generally speaking, the best way — but you need time and resources. You need to be able to think of the interesting questions and devise a plan on how to get to the answer.

Decisive. Do. Collect Data. Think.
Sometimes, the situation calls for making a decision and evaluating it later. It is the quick way and the substandard way. But it is the ideal way when the consequences of failure are not as bad as the consequences of failing to act. Just don’t do this with selection tests.

Exploratory. Collect Data. Think. Do.
When your problem has not been clearly defined and your solution is even more nebulous, it can be difficult to know what to do. This is the method to use when you have no idea what is going on. More information helps in this case.

None of these ever lead to a final conclusion, so you can also add “Repeat.” Research is an ongoing process. The variables involved always change eventually, changing the nature of your conclusions. And arriving at new information almost always leads to new questions.

The competitive advantage comes when you take it all to the next level. When you go above and beyond tallying frequencies (how many PTO days did John take this year?) and computing means (how many PTO days did employees take this year?) and start using predictive modeling to get the answers to the questions you really want to know (does imposing a maximum on PTO increase the amount of time employees spend away from their work?).

Analytics is much more than measurement and evaluation. It is much more than a process or a task. It is a state of mind in individuals and it is a culture in organizations. Consider it a way of decision-making.

Employees hired for their expertise with numbers or trained to recognize their importance are armed with the best evidence and the best quantitative tools. As a result, they make the best decisions: big and small, every day, over and over and over.

- Harvard Business Review, Competing on Analytics

The analytic mindset is rooted in a deep desire to know the results of your actions, systems, and processes - no matter whether that message is positive or negative. It requires a willful attempt to figure out how to tweak what when to get to the outcome you desire. It’s much more proactive than an afterthought, post-implementation. It is the first thing you think to do, every step of the way.

About the Author: Eva Rykr is an Organizational Psychologist and the Director of Learning at EQmentor. She has a passion for applying insights from the world of psychology to make work better, which includes measuring everything. As the author of iOrgPsych, Eva provides a psychological perspective on business, asking the questions, “Why do we do what we do?” and “How can we do it better?”

This article is part of the Renegade Manifesto Series.

Too often, HR is mediocre.

We don’t want to upset the wrong people, so we color in the lines. We follow the rules. We play nice.

Renegade HR is a revolution. It’s time to step on a few toes and kick some ass!

Be a rockstar. Do amazing things.

There have been countless articles, seminars and books on how to keep Generation Y (aka the Millennials) engaged, and how to help Baby Boomers and Gen-X employees work with them more effectively. I think that’s all a big waste of time.

I don’t do things because I’m Gen-Y

The big theory around multigenerational workforces is that shared experiences during a generation’s formative years creates a set of shared values that guide their behavior. Gen-Y is allegedly very influenced by 9/11, helicopter parents and exponential growth in technology.

I’ll admit that technology is something my generation is, generally speaking, very comfortable with. But I have friends who aren’t on Facebook, and I know plenty of Boomers who text and email far more than they pick up a phone.

There’s as much diversity within generations as there is between them. Given that, doesn’t it makes sense to stop focusing on differences between generations, and start looking at differences between individuals?

The Individual Workforce

The real goal of the multigenerational workforce movement is to help everyone in your organization work together effectively. Focusing on generations is divisive. It requires you to lump people into categories and teaches managers to treat everyone within that category the same. Doesn’t it make more sense to teach managers how to deal with individual work preferences?

I think organizations could manage a diverse workforce much more effectively if they took all of the “stuff” that gets taught during multigenerational seminars and ripped away the generational labels.

Teach managers why some people prefer to text or email instead of call. Teach them to have discussions with their employees about how they prefer to work, and to get out of the way and let their people do amazing things.

I envision a training that’s a lot more like Myers-Briggs training for new work teams, where people learn more about their individual work styles and how to interact more effectively. And when the training is over, everyone can get back to what really matters: doing amazing things that drive your business.

This article is part of the Renegade Manifesto Series.

In order to create HR programs that inspire people to do great things that drive your business, you need great data. Of course, not all data is created equal.

If you want to develop better programs, use your employees as guinea pigs.

The problem with benchmarks

HR pros have a benchmark problem. The first thing most of us do when designing a new program is benchmark what other organizations have done.

I’m not suggesting you reinvent the wheel every time you create a program. But I am saying that benchmarks have many limitations, and aren’t necessarily the best place to start (or end) when designing a strategic HR program.

Benchmarks will tell you what other companies do, but not if what they do is successful. They don’t look at cause-effect relationships.

For example, a benchmark will tell you that an organization uses stock options to retain key employees. What it won’t tell you is that when options vest there is a mass exodus of people. If you’re designing a retention program around stock option grants, that’s pretty important to know!

Benchmarks also hinder the development of innovative HR programs. When you start copying what others have already done, you can only be just as good as your competition - never better.

Benchmarks definitely have their place in HR - strategic compensation, for example - but program design isn’t it.

The Guinea Pig Method

When designing strategic HR programs, you should act like a scientist. Conduct research, develop an experiment, observe the results and collect data.

Instead of benchmarking, look for empirical research. These are studies that explore cause-effect relationships. They often include information about how the study was conducted, what the specific variables were, and what the outcome was.

This is the information you really want to know:

1. What did they do?
2. How did they do it?
3. Did it work?
4. Why or why not?

Finding a few articles like this will give you far more useful information than any number of benchmarks will. Develop a program based on your research.

Your program is your experiment. Here’s where many HR pros get it wrong. They develop a program, and then roll it out to everyone. Instead, start with one team, one department or one location. They’re your guinea pigs.

See what happens. Collect lots of data, both before the experiment and after. Measure things that drive your business. Even though you’ve done your research, programs may work differently in your culture.

If it goes well, congrats! You can roll the program out organization-wide. And if it fails, you can tweak it (or scrap it altogether) without screwing up the whole organization.

Human resources is all about people, and today I’m asking you to help save a life.

Houku Katagiri (Hou-chan) is a 2-year boy who lives in Mitaka, Tokyo. His father works for my employer, EMC Corporation.

In October 2008, he had sudden heart failure and was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy - an incurable disease that takes the lives of 50 percent of those afflicted within one year.

Hou-chan’s condition is serious, and a heart transplant is the only way to save his life.

Heart transplants for children are not permitted in Japan, where by law organ donors must be at least 15 years old. Hou-chan’s condition is deteriorating and he is currently hospitalized at Kyorin University Hospital. He needs a transplant operation as soon as possible.

Loma Linda University Hospital (located in the United States) will perform the life-saving surgery, but first Hou-chan’s family must secure the $1 million USD required to cover his estimated medical costs.

Learn what you can to help, and please help spread the word!

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Links from the Podcast

• Back-to-Basics in HR
• HR Bobbleheads
• Pitch-a-Policy Day
• The Daily Performance Review

About Frank

Frank is the managing partner at iFractal, a Philadelphia-based HR communication consultancy. With over 20 years of organizational communication experience, he consults on communication strategies related to executive compensation, corporate performance, and changing employee behavior. He has won numerous awards for his communication work with clients.

Frank has both an M.A. and B.A. in journalism and mass communications from the University of South Carolina in addition to a degree in chemistry. He’s been a professional dog handler, a polymer physicist, and a poet. Along with several colleagues at iFractal, he is the author of the blog KnowHR.

Podcast Highlights

I have a sense there’s a couple of different types of people that get into HR. One group tends to really like people, tends to really know about human motivation, and really wants to do things to help people. I do think there is a certain cadre of people in HR that are really just grown-up hall monitors.

We don’t tend to spend a lot of time training new managers. We in fact teach them to be avoiders.

I don’t object to the idea that we have to help people’s performance. What I object to is that we treat them like children, we only remember the exceptions.