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 Hiii, Another week, another newsletter to surprise and delight you in your inbox. I had an incredible weekend of rest and relaxation. I even got a second rewatch in of Off Campus, the new teen drama of the summer. Idk if you remember but I’ve been reading hockey romances for far too long so when one of my favorite book series became a TV show you know I was gonna be hooked!! A few other things that might hook you this week: 🤖 Cassidy Edwards and I are doing a live AI building hour. You can come watch us build and talk through use cases or build alongside us and get yourself set up! The goal of this session is to show folks how to actually do things with AI not just talk about it! 📺 HR Therapy THIS WEEK is focused on feedback across the ages. Tara Turk-Haynes and Ashlynne Valdez join me to talk about feedback across generations and how to make feedback at your org relevant AND helpful. ✨ SAFE SPACE SUMMIT: 200 HR people, 3 days of fun in the sun, and interesting keynote speakers. Did I mention… free of cost? The deets: Oct 13 - Oct 16 in Huntington Beach. Apply for a spot and if you’re accepted I’ll see you there!! You may wonder, why an application? We’re trying to curate the room with folks experiencing similar challenges so we can actually problem solve and get some inspo from peers. 🎧 This week’s fresh ep: My friend Jen Laurie is back on the pod to talk about a topic we don’t actually love: firing people. We share tales of our first time firing someone, what we learned and how we do it better today. Now onto today… The pace of this job has changed, so what now? Sponsored by Adobe Nothing says "welcome to the team" like forwarding someone 47 attachments and crossing your fingers, hoping they figure it out. 😒 Adobe Acrobat's PDF Spaces gives HR teams ONE interactive hub for every onboarding doc, policy, and checklist with a built-in, customizable AI assistant that serves as a teammate to support with any questions! Your new hire's first week shouldn't feel like a scavenger hunt through their inbox. Totally not the vibe. 😴 Adobe will make sure it isn't! HR'S ROLE The game has changed and so has the pace: Have I ever told you about how I grew up playing basketball? 7 years, many lessons learned and few jammed fingers. I loved the thrill of competition and being good at something. My 3-point shot was something special. So with that in mind, stay with me for this analogy. 🏀 In basketball, you've got a few different setups when it comes to defense. Your setup could depend on your team, the opposing team, the situation, the stakes, etc. There’s man-to-man, zone, mixed, and full court press. Zone is relatively chill because you hang back, you cover your area, the ball comes to you eventually. Full court press? You're hounding the ball and defending the entire length of the court (sometimes half court). Every second, no breaks, no rest. Think aggressive. When it comes to defense, you’re playing the same game with the same rules, just wildly different intensity. When I think about what AI did to our job, I think about basketball. I can’t help it, I know what I know! At work we’re playing the same game, but lately it’s had a wildly different intensity. Work that used to take a week now takes an afternoon. Which, okay sounds good but then all of sudden everyone expects 5X the output because the tools have gotten so much faster. The deliverables didn't shrink. The pace did. And I don't know about y'all, but my calendar hasn’t gotten emptier… Here’s the part that I think most of us are feeling but maybe not saying outloud: it feels awful. There's a low-grade panic/urgency running underneath everything. You feel constantly behind even when you're getting more done than ever. You're watching people post on LinkedIn about how they "automated their entire workflow" and wondering if you're the only one who still feels like you're drowning??? Spoiler: you're not. I’m feeling it too. People are tired, second-guessing their value and impact, and quietly wondering if the job they signed up for even exists anymore. That’s a lot to manage. ❤️ So this week I thought I’d put together a mini survival kit for this era we’re in. To help you think about how to handle the pace of this new game. It’s time to full court press our jobs. And the outcome should be some big W’s (wins). Your full court press playbook: You know why I LOVE sports movies? Because there’s always a pep talk scene. And I won’t lie… I usually BAWL LIKE A BABY during them. 📣 Our deepest fears in Coach Carter, leave no doubt from Remember the Titans, great moments from Miracle, even Coach Bombay getting the Ducks ready to fight as Team USA. I love an inspiration speech. Some inspo from those speeches but make it HR: People will say the game is too fast now. That the work is too much. That HR can't keep up. Don't listen. We were built for this. Every difficult conversation, every impossibly long and chaotic week, every time you spoke up when no one else would, that was practice. That was training. That was for this moment. So when the proverbial buzzer sounds and they ask who carried this company through the hardest era of work we've ever seen, make sure there's no doubt. Make sure they say HR. Let’s go show them what we’re capable of!! How did I do?? Was that the pep talk you needed this AM or was it too corny? 🙂 But in all seriousness, here's what I think actually helps: You have to get RUTHLESSLY clear on three things: 🎯 Priorities: What actually matters this quarter?? Not the 28 things on your running to-do list but the 3 that ACTUALLY move the business. Write them down and reference them daily. When the pace was slower, you could spread yourself across everything and kind of get away with it all. Now? Every "yes" to a low-impact task or project is a "no" to something that actually moves the business forward and matters to your key stakeholders. TBH: I'd rather you do 3 things excellently than 15 things halfway. 📅 Deadlines: Real ones. WITH DATES!! Not "whenever you get to it" ones. Not "end of quarter" when you actually mean "end of month." Ambiguity is a productivity killer and it's also a trust killer because when no one has a real deadline, everyone assumes the worst about when it'll be done. Date on the calendar. Owner on the project. Visible to the people who need to see it. 📊 Measurement: This is the one that keeps me up at night! Yes, I have HR themed nightmares. If you can't measure your work then you can't prove the value of your function. In this current environment where every team is being asked to justify headcount, that's a real problem. Every priority should have a "how will I know this worked?" attached to it. Engagement scores. Time-to-fill. Manager effectiveness. Retention in critical roles. SOMETHING. ANYTHING!! We’re in the trust but verify days. Listen, when the pace was slower, you could muddle through without being super precise about any of this. I know because that was ME. But in a full court press, ambiguity will eat you alive. It’s time to clear on what actually matters. You can do this: FWIW: You don't need to overhaul everything overnight! That’s not what I'm suggesting at all. Pick ONE thing this week, one priority, one deadline, one metric, and get clear on it. Write it down, put it in the calendar, share it with a stakeholder. Accountability is everything here. Then do it again next week. That's the work. The pace isn't slowing down (sorry), so the only move is to get sharper about where we spend our energy. Next week I’m going deeper on the measurement piece specifically, like how to actually prove the value of People work in a way that lands with your CEO and key stakeholders. 👀 It's the conversation I get asked about more than any other and I have opinions. (HUMAN) RESOURCES
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Sponsored by Spark Hire, inc Do you know what candidates are experiencing in your hiring process? SONG OF THE WEEK 🎧 Back in My Body, Maggie Rogers This is one of my top 10 fave albums of all time!!!!! Back in My Body is an incredible track. Honestly, this whole album is worth a listen. Pls take today and listen and let me know what you think! My fave producer is even on some of these tracks. <3 It's Monday, chug that coffee, you GOT THIS. Reminder: This job can suck the life out of you if you're not careful so don't forget to pour into yourself. | ||||||||||
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