I fell into the blogosphere as I made a recent career change. I read alot and it was natural for me to start to read some of the great philosophies out there by sites like HRCapitalist, PunkRockHR, and many others. I have to say that there is no hate in my relationship with the HR profession. Although there are many people who will say they "love to hate it". I have found nothing but pleasure in my recent HR studies (finishing up a masters degree) even though I recieved my bachelor's degree in Political Science. I like HR because we are the people who are supposed to bring ethics into the corporate world. I also like HR because it is a broad enough field where one can find a niche or not according to personal preferences. I also have to admit I tend to like being an "expert" and HR professionals are expected to be those experts whether they have the chops for it or not. I enjoy having a "plan" and a communications strategy...and not just because someone told me that it is a good idea. But, above all I am entirely fascinated with the idea of organizational culture and how to change it.
One of my current pet peeves and tirades has been on the idea of a push verses pull culture in regards to communication. A push communication culture requires information to be given to you by random overseers who dole out information in their expertise as they see fit. They are the masters that decide who should know what and how much. If you do not know this person (or department) or are not a person considered in the "need to know", you will never get a single piece of information. More importantly once you know that this person has information that you need, you must ask this person to give (push) this information to you which may take some sort of process as he 1. Tries to figure out who you are and 2. Decides if you are worthy of his effort and time.A pull culture is the opposite of the above. Through the use of open source information, company intranet, etc one can create a communications culture where everything is available "on demand". If I need the sales figures from last month I search on the intranet for the data and retrieve it. I do not have to ask for access or request it to be sent to me, I simply grab it and use it.This applies to any large organization that has semi-decentralized operation. Odds are you reinvent the wheel alot. As a leader, do you really expect your employees to struggle to solve problems that other people have already figured out? By sharing information on basic business processes that are similar across the company, the time and effort spent doing the simple stuff will be minimized so that your employees can focus on the specific problems facing your organization. HR people talk alot about a learning culture (hold on one second, I threw up in my mouth a bit)................................................................................................................................... However, I think too often we expect people to just learn what we want them to. By allowing full (to a reasonable point of course) access to all aspects of an operation you are allowing your employees to better utilize their point of view to possibly make connections that you wouldn't have made. I don't want a bunch of people like me working for me (for one, I am lazy). I want different perspectives that force me to conclusions I would not have made on my own. In order to facilitate this, I cannot control the information they choose to use to reach their conclusions.This is a pet project of mine and I welcome comments :) Not very "Blue Collar" to start out but so you know where I am coming from.
2 comments:
Hooray! You have officially arrived. I'll put you on my blogroll.
:) Sweet
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