WorldWideWaterCooler

The company I work for is in the HR/Recruiting industry, so I find myself floating around a number of online HR forums.

I found this absolute gem this afternoon (via The Business Insider) – if you have any interest in HR or workplace cultures, give it a look:

The company I used to work for was well on its way to fostering a culture like that. Focus on results. Foster innovation. Hire superstars. As far as I know, they are still walking that path. They didn’t always succeed and there were bumps in the road for sure – it’s not easy to maintain that culture of trust and innovation when there is a failing economy raining crap down on everyone’s heads everyday. But they tried. They try.

And I can speak firsthand to what an incredible experience it is working for a company like that. I had trust and freedom from my manager. I was encouraged to innovate. We all worked incredibly hard to get things done, but it never felt (at least to me) like a chore. If the joy in accomplishment and excitement for future projects was any indication, I don’t think anyone felt like it was much of a chore. Of course there were also bad days – it’s not a job if they don’t need to pay you to show up – but the culture as a whole was designed to foster success. I learned more and accomplished more in a little under 2 years there than in the 5 years previous.

The company I work for now is one of the procedure-driven risk-averse companies mentioned in the slide-deck. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not incredible. Innovation and excellence are more difficult. I manage. And I’m incredibly glad to have had the experience I did. Knowing the importance of not settling into mediocrity keeps me going.

And I hope that these examples of success are what keep driving corporate culture into the future. Every employee should have an experience like that.

I often note that, from a business trends perspective, HR (specifically recruiting) is today where marketing and marketing automation were three years ago.

In marketing & PR the message these days is to not be so afraid of giving up the “command and control” style of push marketing. Because you don’t actually have control anyhow. Giving up control and instead building trust and engagement will be the keys to excellence and success gaining customers.

I hope HR departments and executive boardrooms get the message soon that the same tactics will work for winning excellence & success from employees.

I rarely blog about work, but this was too good not to share.

I work for a company that sells HR/Recruiting software. This is what came back as a response to one of our outreach campaigns:

We are not as technical at [huge US company] with our recruiting process as you would think. since we hire anybody who fogs a mirror we use the standard Monster, local papers and yahoo jobs tools to find talent to interview. …[E]ach each district office handles it’s own recruiting which are as unique as thumbprints for some areas. [Huge US company] headquarters provides no real help towards recruiting besides radios adds every now and then, which hits the wrong audience we are looking for.

Sounds like somebody has a serious case of the Mondays!

I always know when I’ve been negligent in my blogging when my mom calls to ask if everything’s ok, because I haven’t posted in a while.

Sorry Mom.

But! to make up for the fact that some of you are refreshing this page day after day, or staring woefully at your RSS readers, wondering when they will alert you to the fact that I’ve gifted you with a new way to waste 15 minutes at work (I’m a superstar in my own mind), I give you:

The Cranky Product Manager!

Specifically, The Cranky Marketer’s Guest Post!

If you were ever in doubt as to what I do all day (besides read the Cranky PM – thankfully, she doesn’t update that often, so I do get some work done), this should give you a pretty good idea.

Oh, and for the record, I am a cranky marketer. I’d love to be a cranky pm, but decided to get a fluffy arts degree, because engineering is hard and stuff.

Enjoy!

Note that it’s very important to remember that the universe doesn’t always do it in that particular order!

As you already know, on Monday I was laid off.

And on Friday, five short, busy days later I had a great offer of employment on my desk.

How did it all happen? With a happy dose of great timing, the fact that I’m awesome, and the power of the internets.

On Monday I tweeted about being laid off from Company A.

A friend who used to work with me at Company A and got laid off in the first round back in October, and now works at Company B (who we already had a relationship with at Company A – we used each other’s products) pinged me to send him my resume, as Company B was hiring for a position in my area of expertise.

Turns out my resume got in to Company B quite late in the process, but thanks to the relationship between Companies A and B, there were a few people at Company B who know I am highly proficient in using Company B’s product.

At the same time my resume was circulating at Company B, their product manager was talking to new clients at Company C, who were talking about replacing their existing Graphic Designer & Company B product point person with a marketing generalist. Hopefully a generalist who either was, or was willing to become an expert on Company B’s product.

So Company B’s product manager (who I’ve worked with in the context of using Company B’s product at Company A) thought of me and asked me if I minded if he passed my resume on to Company C. I of course said okay.

Clear as mud, right?

Anyhow, that all happened on Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon I got the phone call from Company C to come in for an interview on Wednesday. I instantly clicked with the person who’d be my new boss, and had great interviews with the three others I met with. It’s still in high tech, and exactly the kind of environment and role I thrive in. I had another interview on Friday morning, and Friday afternoon I had the offer in hand.

My first day is Wednesday.

I can not believe the good fortune that came out of all this. I’d seen the writing on the wall about the problems with Company A. I was already thinking about what my next move would be, but didn’t want to leave because of the amazing relationship I had with my boss there. I figured I’d ride things out. I even knew about the position with Company B that my resume was originally requested for, but had decided not to pursue it, because I didn’t want to quit my boss.

Then the decision was made for me, at exactly the right time for things to fall into place.

So to celebrate, I bought a new MacBook!

I’m going to be working overtop of my severance, so instead of a sudden belt-tightening, we’re in the fortunate situation of actually receiving a bit of a windfall. Since my existing home computer’s newest component is about 8 years old, it’s something that’s been long overdue. I was resigned to waiting until our debt’s paid off, but now I can afford a new computer, and even give our line of credit a bit of an extra kick with what’s left.

I quite obviously owe the universe a great debt of gratitude, so I’ll be looking to re-align the karmic balance PDQ. If you need any favours from me at this point, now’s the time to ask!

Last week was a tough one around chez watercooler.

Generally I’d been a mostly curious observer of the financial crisis. Oh sure, our investment accounts are taking a hit right now, but our fund manager has been great (recommended pulling out of AIG about 6 months before the crisis began) and I’m confident our accounts have plenty of time to recover before we even think of retiring anyhow.

Also, with our variable rate mortgage & loans, the dropping prime lending rate has been nothing but good for us.

But the magnitude of what’s going on hit a bit closer to home last week. Because of the current financial outlook there was some necessary restructuring at work, and a number of my colleagues on Tuesday ceased to be colleagues as of Wednesday. And it sucked. Still does. I’ve been on both sides of “restructuring” before, and it’s a crap situation either way.

There’s a big part of me that gets a huge charge out of the tumultuous nature of these things when they happen in startups – when some unexpected chaos hits and everyone needs to change focus on a dime and pull together and everything gets kindof rough and wavy and frightening and exciting for a while. I do love it.

But then there’s the bit that realizes what it means for those who are no longer in the lifeboat and puts a bit of a damper on the whole thing.

And while (for various reasons that make sense, that I’m not at liberty to discuss here) I’m not nervous about being laid off in the immediate future, I’m not naieve enough to think that with the current global fiscal situation, things couldn’t rapidly swing again – expected or not. So I’m a bit personally financially paranoid, getting slush funds and some padding in order that we’ve been a bit lax on building up, and putting some other projects on hold while we do it.

I’m still not entirely convinced that the world is a scary place, but it’s getting a lot less comfortable these days.

So that’s where I’m at right now. I have a job, that I still love, that’s awfully exciting right now – especially since an incredibly shitty week is finally over. But I no longer consider myself not-quite-affected by the current financial crisis.

How about you?

As a marketing professional, I try to be responsible and pay attention to other people’s marketing efforts.

And I’m often stymied by what passes as good marketing these days. I just have to vent about a couple examples of prime marketing stupidity from two companies that I really thought knew better:

Example One: Lululemon

I was picking up some new gym clothes at Lululemon a while back, and along with my $100+ in items, I was given one of their ubiquitous bags to schlep my purchases home in. It’s nice and all, because I happen to like reusable bags, and I’m pleased the company is giving them away (instead of charging a buck or two, like just about everyone else).

But then they went and ruined it all for me. The enthusiastic checkout person gleefully informed me that if I brought back the bag for my next purchase, I’d get FIFTY WHOLE CENTS off!

$0.50

Right.

The cheapest item I’ve seen at Lulu is an $8 headband. In my experience, the average item runs at about $50 (basic shirts, sports bras, shorts) and many items retail in the $75-$100 range (jackets, fancy pants).

If I’m shopping at Lululemon at all, $0.50 is NOT going to incent me to remember my bag. If I’m a regular Lululemon shopper, I might lose more than $0.50/week in dropped change. Not to mention that if I forget my bag, I now get another one for the low, low price of not receiving my $0.50 discount.

Why not say that for every time I remember my bag, you’ll donate $0.50 to an environmental charity? Keep a running tally of how many shoppers have contributed to that particular endeavor by remembering their bags. Then kick it up a notch at the end of whatever year you’re following by matching all those “shopper contributions” – now forgetting my bag costs the charity $1 (and costs me a bit of shame in front of my fellow Lulu shoppers as I check out).

But a lousy $0.50 off for me? Keep it. Use it to hire a better marketing team.

Example Two: Apple

I just just (like 10 seconds ago) got an email from Apple. This is not new. I get emails from Apple all the time. Product updates, iTunes receipts, ads, whatever. I subscribe to them and expect it.

What I don’t expect is blanket “dumb” marketing from a company who’s built a business on being elegant and savvy to a generation of media and tech-savvy consumers.

I got an email inviting me to download the BIG! FAST! NEW! FANCY! iTunes 8! WITH GENIUS!

Great. I did that over a week ago, THE DAY IT CAME OUT.

Not only that, but Apple already knows I did it! I had to sign in to iTunes (with that email address) to upgrade to version 8. I had to sign in to iTunes (with that email address) to purchase the album my Genius playlist recommended.

Apple, you act like you don’t even know me! Sending an email to introduce me to a product you already know I have and have used, that’s like having a one-night-stand, passing that person on the street a week later and not even recognizing them! It hurts!

Why not email me about features with iTunes 8 I haven’t used yet? Why not suggest a billion more artists and playlists I might like based on the Genius data you’ve already collected from me? Why not just act like my interactions with you register somewhere (other than with your accounts receivable department).

In both cases, my boss would rake me over the coals if I so much as suggested ideas as asinine as the ones I encountered. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if those ideas actually made it out of my office to annoy and irritate our customers. (In actuality, my boss is a very nice person who’d diplomatically reject those dumbass ideas – while surely wondering what was wrong in my brain – and suggest better ways of doing things. But you get what I’m saying).

So Lululemon, Apple, sack up and pay attention! I expect better, a LOT better, from you both.

To the women in the office across the hall who use the bathroom on this floor.

In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a fairly respectable office space in downtown Vancouver. This is not the squatter in a lean-to behind some Thai Cat-House.

So please adhere to the following so we can all have a pleasant experience:

Toilet Paper, in North America, goes in the TOILET. It can be flushed here – it’s okay. You do not need to wrap it up in another seventeen yards of paper and throw it in the tiny and already overflowing sanitary napkin disposal can in the stall. Incidentally, the overflow wouldn’t be an issue at all if you’d just FLUSH IT.

Also, in regards to the “fairly respectable space” bit – this is an office, there are cleaners. They come in and wash the facilities nightly. Probably more often than your special throne at home even. So there’s no need to use most of a roll of paper wiping down the entire stall before you deign to park your dainty arse and do your thing. And there is especially no need to then throw all that paper on the floor. If you really feel you need protection from the cooties, use the seat covers.

(To that one woman who won’t touch the doorknob, and uses a piece of paper-towel to open it – quit throwing that paper towel in the plant in the elevator lobby! It’s gross. If you’re that paranoid about germs, carry it all the way back to your office – what makes you think that doorknob is any cleaner?)

I’m not sure what kind of sweatshop they’re running across the hall there, but it seems like you’re not actually allowed to speak or socialize anywhere but the bathroom. Or at least that’s what I suspect, the way you head to the bathroom in a herd and conduct some sort of symposium around the sink.

And far be it from me to take away that bit of clearly unbridled joy in your day – but I do have a small request around that particular activity: there are only two stalls, when you’re making use of them, shut the hell up, focus on the business at hand, then get the hell out. My bladder and I do not have 15 minutes to wait while you finish your conversation between grunts and wipes. Especially when there are 5 people ahead of us waiting.

In closing, please just be tidy and speedy, and I won’t have to give you death glares (or put a stink-bomb under your office door).

Love and Kisses,
-Jen (and the six other women who work in my office and must suffer your bathroom abuse)

In the past couple months, I’ve reached critical mass of “things” in my life. There are a lot of balls in the air (without sign of lessening that load any time soon – more likely increasing it), and I am at serious risk of dropping even more of them.

Since we came back from the wedding, I’d been driving myself absolutely batty, freaking out about uncharacteristically losing a few things.

I’d managed to misplace the secondary set of wedding rings we bought and wore on our honeymoon (and planned on wearing on vacations where we were apt to lose the real ones, or where they’d draw undue attention), along with a wedding card from a distant relative with a not-insignificant sum of cash inside. More recently I’d completely misplaced my Nexus card and, though I hadn’t looked for them, realized on my last trip I had no idea what I’d done with my noise-canceling headphones since the trip before that.

This is VERY unlike me. I do not lose things. Not even insignificant things, nevermind expensive ones.

I also knew I was getting to a dangerous point with bills. Not like I’d forget to pay anything, because most of it autopays out of my bank account – but there were months of statements I’d not gotten around to opening between trips. I really had no idea what the state of any of my accounts were.

I was feeling the same crunch at work. My normally manageable and well-filtered email inbox had hundreds of messages in it. I was firefighting to solve as many problems I’d created with my own scattered brain as had just arisen as problems are wont to do. I’m certainly not paid enough at this point to take on the kind of responsibility that would have me making decisions or missing actions that would sink ships – but I was certainly on my way to wholly preventable fuckups my boss and her bosses would notice.

It was beyond time to do something.

So I looked in to using David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.

I tackled it first at home: dealt with the stacks and scads of paper and crap that have been amassing in random piles all over the place, got an inbasket and made a bunch of files as I went. It’s not perfect yet, and it’s not done, but it feels SO GOOD to have started.

I plan on taking the day on July 1 to fully implement the system at work. The office should be mostly empty, so it’s a perfect opportunity to deal with things before I go away again, and be able to deal with the pileup once I return.

And considering with the little bit I’ve already done, I managed to find the rings, the greeting card, my Nexus card, my headphones, and a few other things I’d forgotten that I’d forgotten about – I have high hopes for a more organized, more productive future.

Have any of you implemented GTD or another productivity system in your lives? Want to? Tricks to share?

So, my co-workers are totally better than your co-workers.

They’ve been scheming for a week now, completely behind my back, to put together a surprise wedding shower. They even got Neil involved, and had him come to the office for the festivities.

I’d been having a completely insane day, between the regular insanity of getting ready to be off the grid (at least as far as work’s concerned) for a little over three weeks, as well as a project that got bumped up by two weeks today.

So when one of my colleagues suggested a trip down to Starbucks at about 3:00, I was game. He even had us go down to his car in the parkade afterward because he “forgot something” in it.

It was all a complete scam.

I came back up, and Richard (the Starbucks decoy) said “hey, lets go into the boardroom and hammer out that storyboard.” Off we go, and I walked into a room full of people and balloons and Neil.

There was wine, and cheese, and presents, and a plastic tiara with a toilet-paper veil on it.

And how well do these people pay attention? They gifted us with the Cuisinart Grind ‘n’ Brew Thermal 10-Cup Automatic Maker, a bunch of different coffees, and some Tazo Refresh and organic Chai teas (my go-to hot drinks when the caffeine jitters are finally too overwhelming).

Yah, I work with a pretty kickass group of people.

For the past 30 minutes, there have been flashes going off pretty much non-stop outside my office windows. From 6 floors up, it could really be a number of things: tourists taking photos, one of the bajillion international students in the area taking photos, welding… who knows.

Then the music started. Christmas carols blaring. So I got off my arse and took a good look out the window at what was going on down there.

I suppose now is a good time to mention that I work across the street from the new Agent Provocateur store (link not particularly safe for work).

There is currently a cube-van with glass walls and a faux office-scene inside it parked out front (after all, this is the core of the business district), containing 3 lingerie models clad in store product and not much else.

I also thought there was a minor earthquake, but it was just all the men in the building dashing downstairs to gawk from a better vantage point. That, and get photocopies.

Yes, I said photocopies. One of the girls is busy sitting on a photocopier, and the other two are handing out copies of her ass (I borrowed one from a co-worker and scanned it, just for you!) to the gawkers.

Sometimes, B2C marketing is way more fun.

Here’s one for my colleagues in the marketing industry: I know with Web 2.0 everyone’s drinking the dynamic web kool-aid. (Frankly, the success of the business I work for depends on it.) We all want fancy sites with live demos and streaming this and interactive that. But for the love of pete, please don’t kill your brochure site components entirely!

There’s still a place for the Static Web

I’m currently hunting for some vendors for a number of products and services for work and am noticing a distinct lack of plain old “this is who we are and what we do” content. There are lots of headlines, and “teaser” segments enticing me to “sign up for a live demo” or “sit in on our webinar” or “interact with a specialist (aka salesperson)” – but no actual content I can read to gauge in 3-6 minutes whether or not it’s worth 30-60 minutes of my time to do so.

All I’m asking is a page or two, clearly marked and dedicated to answering the 5 W’s. And hey, then when I do sign up for your dynamic advertising “value-added content”, your salespeople will have some clue that I’m actually qualified. That way they aren’t wasting their time and mine calling me because you left me no choice but to enter my information just to find out what exactly it is that you do.

How awesome is my boss? So awesome that after the whirlwind of work travel, she gave me (in addition to a nice cash bonus) new running gloves and socks, as some incentive to get back into my running routine, since it was interrupted and had basically died.

I test-drove the gloves and socks on Monday morning when I ventured out in the cold for my first run in about a month.

The gloves are awesome – kept my hands nice and warm, without being sweaty at all. Now I just need a similar product for my ears (perhaps the matching hat!), because holy hell it’s frickin’ freezing at 6:00am!

The socks were great too – thin, comfy, dry-fit wicking material, unique left-right specific padding, and “the Nike Swift technology provides advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag and help you run more efficiently.”

That’s right. Ankle drag. That’s what makes me so slow. Not doughnuts, ankle drag.

Incentive and excuses! It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

Oh, hi there. I kindof disappeared for a bit didn’t I? Rest assured, I was not mugged, nor did I get lost. I was, however, hassled by the mob.

It’s fairly well known ’round these parts that the Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre labor department is pretty much run by the mafia. And I’m not even joking. It’s not wiseguys walking around in Armani suits or anything – but these guys are definitely connected. You do not mess with them, or the system.

They are the exclusive (and I mean exclusive) supplier of shipping, handling, construction and electrical labor in the building. You play by their rules.

You do not touch anything. You do not “take away” their jobs. This includes repairing shoddy workmanship and plugging in your own lights/tv’s (again, not kidding).

For the most part it’s ok – you sit around your pile of half-assembled structure and crates and wait a lot for things to be done. It’s pretty standard that any one of a number of laborers will show up with a work order, look at it, look at your stuff say “I gotta go get a tool/part” and disappear for 2 hours.

But, with a huge heaping helping of patience, I persevered and our booth was constructed relatively competently and in plenty of time for us to get ready for the show opening. Another company with a setup near us wasn’t so lucky – they had shipping troubles, and when their booth arrived late, they tried to expedite things by starting construction themselves. They were then blacklisted by the labor who refused to put up their booth and also wouldn’t let them (these guys are masters of intimidation) do it themselves.

Eventually, after the foremen decided the offending exhibitor had suffered enough, they constructed the booth in just the nick of time. The exhibitor was finally firing up their laptops (one of the few things you can do yourself) when the show floor opened.

Anyhow, we figured we were out of the woods, and had our booth ready to go. Then our video guys showed up to capture some footage of our in-booth demos. And they pulled out some extension cords and got ready to plug in their floodlights.

And that’s when fucking Tony Soprano shows up. “Whoaaahh you? Whadduyuh think ya dooin’? WHOOSE YO’ BAWSSS?”

HOLY SHIT

We unplugged and put away the lights posthaste and apologized profusely. And that was pretty much the end of that. If we’d wanted the lights, it was made abundantly clear that we’d have to order a contractor to plug in the extension cords. They didn’t say what would happen if we’d refused to take things down – but none of us were interested in finding out.

So we shot our video on battery, sans extra lighting.

And ever since, I’ve had an unshakeable urge to watch the Godfather.

So I’m in New York City! The big apple! The city that never sleeps!

I’m bored.

I’m sitting in a conference centre (Javits) in a dirty, industrial part of town, supervising our trade show booth setup and catching up on some work. Thank god for free wifi.

But it hasn’t been all bad.

Even though I had to get up at sparrow’s fart to get to the airport for my 06:20 flight, I had a fantastic surprise when I got there. The co-worker I was flying with used his status points to upgrade us both to first class for the Vancouver-Chicago leg of the flight.

Or at least he thought he did. Turns out the upgrade didn’t go through for both of us, and I was the one who ended up in first class while he got priority boarding and a bulkhead seat (first class was full by the time we checked in). But I got the bigger seat, and breakfast! With real dishes! It was still airplane food, but I’m not complaining. (Thanks again, Rich!) Our bags also got priority tags, so they made our 40-minute connection at O’Hare.

All in all, yesterday was awesome. Our flights left on time and arrived early. The hotel is pretty and swanky (W Times Square) and with the tiny exception of the insane lineups to get up the Empire State building (which had very nice views once we were up there) everything went as smoothly as possible (including the glasses of scotch we downed in the evening).

Today – less smooth.

The booth is going up veeeeeery slowly (Thanks NY Union Labour!), a major piece of hardware is stuck in customs, the flying has caught up with me and my stomach is hateful, my computer (specifically outlook) keeps crashing.

It’s only 2:00pm here, and I feel like I’ve been up for hours. Oh wait – that’s because I have! After a fitful night of mostly not sleeping, I got up at 6:00am to go meet all the vendors, who’d decided they’d hedge their bets on the Union Electricians not finishing their part on time (which they actually did), and showed up an hour later than they’d scheduled last week. Thanks. I didn’t need that extra hour of sleep.

So now I wait, and watch. And hope that this day ends soon and tomorrow everything’s better.

I’m leaving for New York City tomorrow morning at ass o’clock – so I’m finishing up some last-minute laundry and packing.

I have the sneaking suspicion I’m forgetting something. Of course I have no idea what. My list seems complete, and I have all the items on it ready to go.

Perhaps you can think of something I haven’t?

And if not, leave me a comment with something fun to see or do in NYC. I’m staying in Times Square, and will get my share of good eats. My evenings will probably be busy with parties and schmoozing (with work people – so not quite as glamorous as it sounds), but I’ll have some weekday daytimes free to sightsee and shop. I plan on using at least one of those to go for a run in Central Park (yep – still doing that running thing).

What are your top must-see’s?