Last week, Victorio Milian ran a series on the future of HR from the perspective of those just graduating.  He graciously asked for me to guest post from the perspective of the academic watching these excited men and women enter the workplace.  In my post, "Learned Helplessness," I took a more Debbie Downer approach, arguing that the economy had taken an economic and psychological toll on the expectations of these Linksters.  While I tried to end on an optimistic note, in the words of the Joker in "The Dark Knight, "Why so serious?!!?"

Perhaps it's because I've spent the last several Sundays watching "Girls" on HBO.  Created by, and starring, 26-year-old wunderkind Lena Dunham, "Girls" comedically examines the lives of Hannah Horvath (Dunham) and her three friends as they struggle to find themselves after college.  So, what insight can be drawn by a 44-year-old white male living in Northeast Wisconsin about 22-26 year old women?  And what generalities can be drawn from a specific group of young white female twentysomethings living in New York City about the greater world and their cohort?  You be the judge.  However, despite its likely skewed cultural perspective, it is one of the few shows on TV exploring the work world at that age.

Episode 1
While the show is quite humorous (I usually laugh out loud at least twice per episode), Dunham paints a very interesting portrait of the work world.  When we are first introduced to Hannah, she is at dinner with her parents where economic support from her parents is unexpectedly cut off.  Hannah laments, "Do you know how crazy the economy is right now? I mean, all of my friends get help from their parents."  She subsequently gets fired from her year-long unpaid internship to work on her sure to be successful memoirs, and refuses to take a job at McDonald's despite the pay and free fries.  "When you get hungry enough, you'll figure it out," Hannah's boss tells her after he fires her. "Do you mean physically hungry or hungry enough for the job?" she asks.  She confronts her parents and asks for $1,100 a month for support until she finishes her memoirs, which her parents blow off.

Episode 2
Now jobless, Hannah finds herself interviewing at a trade publication.  The interview is going swimmingly well, with a lot of flirty repartee...it appears that she is going to land it and then....

Hannah: I read a statistic that said  Syracuse has the highest incidents of date rape of any university
Interviewer: .......wow......
Hannah: ...which weirdly went way down the year that you graduated
Interviewer:
Interviewer:
Interviewer:
Hannah: That was a joke because I was saying that there was no more date rape because they figured out who was doing it and it was you
Interviewer:
Interviewer: 
Interviewer: maybe you're not used to office environments like this but jokes about rape or rape and incest or any of that stuff, it's not office-okay...and so....I don't think this is gonna work out right now, but call us back 6 or 8 months down the road.  We'll stay in touch.

Episode 4
Since Episode 2, Hannah apparently finds a job at a law office.  Unfortunately, her boss sexually harasses her.  When she talks to her co-workers, it turns out they condone his inappropriate "massages," ("you'll get used to it") as it means job security, and an iPod Nano on one's birthday.

Meanwhile, Hannah's friend Jessa has a job as a nanny (a common job amongst many of the students I teach).  She takes the kids to a park, gets involved in a conversation with other nannies, and loses the kids (only to find them a few minutes later...the show is not that cruel).

Episode 5
Hannah decides the best way to confront the situation at work is to offer to sleep with her boss (in part, for a story for her memoirs).  When he refuses, she replies, "I could sue you, you know."  The boss laughs at her veiled threats, and despite her protestations, he still wants her to stay.  Hannah subsequently quits.

Episode 6
Hannah returns home to East Lansing, MI (my hometown).  Her mom asked her to pick up something at the drugstore, and she meets a former classmate, who has a stable job as a pharmacist.  She also meets up with a classmate who wants to move to L.A. to be a dancer.  When she tells the story to the pharmacist, Hannah notes, "Heather is moving to California to become a professional dancer, so that should all make us feel pretty sad and weird ... And nobody is telling her. She's going to go to L.A., and live in some shitty apartment, and she's going to feel scared and sad and lonely and weird all of the time." Ironically, she would like Heather's life. "Maybe I should move here. I wouldn't have to worry about rent all of the time, so that I can finally work on my book."
though when we see her routine, 

To recap:
From her perspective, work appears to be a scary place.  There doesn't appear to be much competence for her cohorts to emulate.  Meanwhile, 7 episodes in,  we haven't seen her produce anything from her writing, and it doesn't appear her and her friends have any real aspirations.  There's no desire portrayed to be successful at work, or even rich.  Its all stasis.

Yes, its television, and, yes, it is a comedy.  Competence doesn't produce drama or laughs.  In the first episode Hannah states, “I think I’m the voice of my generation,”and then self-consciously recants.  “At least I am a voice.  Of a generation.”   Again, we are hearing Dunham's voice, but it its one of the only ones in this media-saturated environment that is looking at the lives of post-college adulthood.  I only wish there was a little more to cheer for.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I had the time and opportunity to read Warren Littlefield's new missive "Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV."  As the title suggests, it details through interviews with many of the major players, the phenomenal success NBC had on Thursday nights with such TV shows as Friends, Frasier, ER, Cheers, Will & Grace, Mad About You, & Seinfeld.

Reading it, William Goldman's famous rule about Hollywood came to mind - NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. 

KISMET
A telling quote in the book was from John Wells, executive producer and showrunner for ER, about the show:

The camera caught the camaraderie and the sense that they were in the trenches together.  There's a lot of kismet that happens in these things. The cast just jelled. (emphasis mine).

Kismet is right.  Littlefield highlights many decisions that would have radically changed the trajectory of the shows America came to love.  For example, look at casting:

• Imagine Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy, or William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn, instead of Ted Danson and Shelly, playing Sam and Diane on Cheers
• Imagine Steve Vinovich as Kramer, Larry Miller as George, and Megan Mullally as Elaine, instead of Michael Richards, Jason Alexander, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld
• Imagine Teri Hatcher instead of Helen Hunt on Mad About You
• Imagine Lisa Kudrow as Roz instead of Peri Gilpin on Frasier
• Imagine Eric McCormack as Ross instead of David Schwimmer on Friends
• Imagine Nicollette Sheridan as Grace instead of Debra Messing on Will & Grace

Similarly, would you have watched a show called Six of One, instead of Friends? How about The Paul Reiser Show instead of Mad About You?

Littlefield often called Thursday night, "the Night of Bests."  The phrase "Must See TV" was coined at random from a guy who worked at NBC named Dan Holm.  No research.  No focus groups.


Over 100 artists were invited to create a version of the NBC peacock.  John Miller, advertising and promotion czar of NBC, opined, "You have to end with the correct peacock.  How you get there, we don't care."  Similarly, he changed the credit format from full-frame to the side to not block the action on the screen.

Lots of decisions that could have had disastrous consequences if they went in a different direction.

ALCHEMY
John Wells was also quoted as saying, "There's an alchemy to TV, like anything else."  Three examples from ER, Friends, & Will & Grace  highlight the magic that happens when the right group of people are brought together.

ER
Anthony Edwards notes,

Because the material was so good, we had to keep our game up.  All of us.  The writers, the actors, the art department, all of us. 

 Similar, Noah Wyle said

I got spoiled on ER.  I think all of us have gone in our careers and walked onto sets and said, "This is grossly inefficient, or this is very unprofessional, or I can't believe nobody has the esprit de corps like we had on ER," but the world doesn't work that way.

From the top on down, the crews don't really hustle like they did on ER, the writers don;t push the envelope, and they don't have the support from the executives and the network to take those risks and those chances anymore.

Friends
David Schwimmer on the miracle of casting:

Having been on the other side of it now in terms of directing and producing, to find one magical actor who is just right for the role is difficult enough, but to find six and then to have them actually have chemistry with each other is just kind of a miracle.  I think we were just lucky.  I looked at the five of them (the rest of the cast of Friends), I watched their work, and I thought, "Everyone is just so talented and perfect for their character."  And they grew into their characters and enriched them and deepened them.

Will & Grace
Debra Messing recalls:

I remember the cast going over to Max (Mutchnick)'s house to do the very first reading of the script, and we were crying we were laughing so hard.  I remember just looking around the table, looking at this Sean Hayes.  It was like, "Who is this Sean Hayes guy?  He is a genius."

To this day, I think Sean might be the most talented person I have ever worked with in my entire career.  He is really touched with magic.  And then Megan (Mullally).  She literally can't say anything without making me laugh.  Then the warmth between Eric (McCormack) and me.  It felt like this best friendship had been in place for years.  We didn't have to put any effort into it.

 HR IMPLICATIONS
We may write the best job descriptions, put together the best recruiting ad, and place it in the best locales, but nobody knows anything.  Our recruiting pool is subject to the whims of those who see it and apply.  The choice we make at the end of who to hire is a crapshoot.  We hope to get Debra Messing and not Nicollette Sheridan or Ted Danson instead of Fred Dryer.  We hope that the hire(s) we make can find he chemistry to those felt by the casts of ER, Friends, & Will & Grace.

Nobody Knows Anything!
 
 

In the last part of the 1990s, and early part of the 2000s, like much of America, I was a regular viewer of "Everybody Loves Raymond."  Peter Boyle always was good for a laugh or two every episode.  But, is its humor translatable across cultures?  This is the challenge of "Exporting Raymond," a 2010 comedy by the co-creator of "Everybody Loves Raymond," Phil Rosenthal.

Wanting to maximize the success of the sitcom, Russian TV came calling to do their own version of the show, called "Everybody Loves Kostya."  However, Rosenthal meets resistance at every turn:
*A dark, dank studio ("is this where they filmed "Saw?" a nervous Rosenthal asks
*The Russians see Raymond as too wimpy
*The costume designer wants the cast to wear hip clothes, even when doing the cleaning.
*Comic setups, such as leaving one's luggage on the steps for weeks on end that turn into a power struggle among husband and wife (who will be the one to succumb and move it), fall on deaf ears.
*The actor desired for the lead can't get out of contract with the major theater company
* Writers toiling on multiple shows and can't dedicate their full-time effort on this sitcom

While a bit broad, Rosenthal provides a lighthearted look at cultural differences, a bevy of workplace issues, and the transcendence of comedy.

A new feature on True Faith HR for 2011: Your Pop Culture HR Friday moment.  Each Friday, I will find something of interest from recent books, TV, music, or movies and discuss the HR implications.

The well-reviewed and worth your time reading 2011 book, The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach tells the story of one Henry Skrimshander, a high school shortstop in a small Illinois town.  While mediocre as a hitter, Henry is a prodigy on defense, striking the interest of Mike Schwartz, the catcher at a small Northeastern Wisconsin liberal arts college (hmmm....sounds vaguely familiar) called Westish, who recruits him to play Division III baseball.

Henry ascribes much of his success to his beat up copy of Hall of Fame shortshop Aparicio Rodriguez's The Art of Fielding, a collection of aphorisms that are just as much a guide to life, as it is to being a good baseball player.  Such aphorisms include:

26.  The shortstop is a source of stillness at the center of the defense.  He projects this stillness and his teammates respond.
59.  To field a ground ball must be considered a generous act and an act of comprehension.  One moves not against the ball but with it.  Bad fielders stab at the ball like an enemy.  This is antagonism.  The true fielder lets the path of the ball becomes his own path, thereby comprehending the ball and dissipating the self, which is the source of all suffering and poor defense.
3.  There are three stages: Thoughtless being.  Thought.  Return to thoughtless being.
33.  Do not confuse the first and third stages.  Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few.
213.  Death is the sanction of all that the athlete does.
99.  To reach a ball he has never reached before, to extend himself to the very limits of his range, and then a step farther: this is the shortstop's dream.
121.  The shortstop has worked to hard for so long that he no longer thinks.  Nor does he act.  By this I mean that he does not generate action.  He only reacts, the way a mirror reacts when you wave your hand before it.

Once at Westish, Henry rises from benchwarmer to star shortshop, attracting major league scouts to the ballpark to watch him play.  Soon, he is threatening to break the record of 52 straight errorless games owned by Rodriguez himself.   On the 53rd game, Henry makes an errant throw that strikes his roommate in the face.  Like his predecessors -  Steve Blass, a Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher in the 1970s who, inexplicably, finds himself unable to throw the ball over the plate, and Mackey Sasser, the Mets catcher who developed a paralyzing fear of throwing the ball back to the pitcher, Steve Sax, Chuck Knoblauch - Henry soon fines he is no longer able to throw the ball to first.

Implications for HR
1.  Like #26, is the HR manager a source of stillness at the center of the business?  Does he or she project this stillness and the employees respond?
2.  How often do you encounter performance anxiety at work, and how do you handle those employee problems?  Do you have a book of aphorisms to fall back on like Henry does?
3.  Like #99, can you get your employees to go beyond their limits.  Do employees see this better performance as their dream?
4.  One of the most telling quotes of the book is when Harbach writes about how to make a ball player; how does one get brute efficiency out of natural genius:

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine.  It didn't matter how beautifully you performed sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made.   You weren't a painter or writer - you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't  just your masterpieces that counted.  What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability.  Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error.   The scouts cared little for Henry's superhuman grace; insofar as they cared they suckered-in aesthetes and shitty scouts.  Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun?  Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred?  If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine.

How often do we expect our employees to be robots?  Do we look for the art in what they do?  Are there mistakes made public for all to see?  "What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?"

It is winter break where I work, which as given me a little time off, and an opportunity to catch up on a little TV and pop culture.


The latter half of 2011 was dominated by #occupywallstreet and its various spinoffs throughout the U.S.  Anger as a result of stagnating wages, growing income inequality, and an uneven playing field resulted in many rising up in protest.  However, those under attack have had enough.  A fascinating piece by Max Abelson in Bloomberg highlights the perspective of the more economically fortunate:


Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus says “Who gives a crap about some imbecile?”  “Are you kidding me?”

Working at a liberal arts college, it is hard not to escape discussion of the liberal arts or Western canon.  Also sometimes described as Great Books, Mortimer Adler put together three criteria for a tome to be part of the group:

1.  The book must have contemporary significance - is it relevant to today's times
2.  The book is inexhaustible - one could always pick it up and derive new meaning and benefits from it
3.  The book is relevant is to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for a significant period of time.

With that in mind, is there a "Human Resource Canon"comprised of great writings that all HR professionals should read or have read.  What HR book is significant, inexhaustible, and relevant to a large number of the great HR issues that PHRs grapple with on a daily basis?  Or, is the HR field simply too young or too ephemeral to contain such a library?

Is the HR Capitalist, the HRRingleader, or The Cynical Girl the best we have?

In a scant two months, the fourth iteration of HREvolution will take place in Las Vegas, and I know what you're thinking....the fourth of anything stinks, right?  Movie producers are trying to capitalize and cash in on the public's good will toward the actors and series.

Just look at the following fourquels, and try not to cringe:
"Lethal Weapon 4"
"Terminator Salvation"
"Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
"The Next Karate Kid"
"Star Wars - The Phantom Menace" (don't try to fool me by titling it "Episode One")
"Batman & Robin"
Any fourquel in a horror series (Omen IV, Halloween IV, Nightmare on Elm Street IV, Saw IV, etc.)

So, what makes the fourth edition of HREvolution more "The Unforgettable Fire" or "Led Zeppelin IV" than "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace?"

1.  Look at our cast of characters below:
Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt present their Talent Anarchy Hacklab
Kevin Grossman and Meghan Biro on Talent Communities
Craig Fisher and William Tincup on Tool and Technologies
Dr. Daniel Crosby and Dr. Colleen Sutherland on Change Leadership
Lance Haun goes Beyond Blogging
China Gorman and Dwane Lay on Technology that sets your HR Team Apart.
...and more

Scorcese and Spielberg couldn't hire a better array of talent.

2.  There is no 3D money grab.  The price of a ticket still remains at matinee levels. 
3.  Like any movie premiere, you need glitz and glamour, and what says glitz more than Las Vegas.
4.  In older times, going to the movies meant a cartoon, a news reel and a double feature.   HREvolution hearkens back to those days gone by by piggybacking off the HR Technology Conference.  Plus, as an added bonus, by registering for HREvolution, you will get a significant discount to attend HR Tech.

Of course, the best fourth is the Fourth of July.  So celebrate Independence Day early by registering for the fourth edition of HREvolution here

One of my favorite books about the film is Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman.  In it, the screenwriter of such films as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and The Princess Bride, writes:

"The "go" decision is the ultimate importance of the studio executive.  They are responsible for what gets up there on the silver screen.  Compounding their problem of no job security in the decision-making process is the single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire industry:

NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING."

*Every studio except Paramount turned down Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The studio wanted Tom Selleck to play Indiana Jones instead of Harrison Ford, but Selleck couldn't get out of his Magnum P.I. contract.


*Universal turned down Star Wars
*Columbia passed on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

We see the same thing happen in the sports arena.   Scouts in the NFL battle over whether to draft Ryan Leaf or Peyton Manning as the 1st pick.  Tom Brady gets drafted in the 6th round.  Michael Jordan was not the first pick in the draft when he came out of college.

Physics has the Law of Gravity
Chemistry has Boyle's Law and the Laws of Thermodynamics
Even Economics, the dismal science, has the Law of Supply and Demand

But, does human resources have any laws or universal truths that all abide by?  If so, what are they?  Or, like their Hollywood and sports counterparts, NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.
 

Today, I have a guest post at XpertHR where I take a light-hearted, truly Coperican take on the question "If I could change one thing about HR...."

Check it out here

As mentioned before, Laurie Ruettimann and I presented on "Pop Culture, Politics, and HR" at last weekend's HREvolution Conference.

One of the questions that we posed to the audience was, "what would you do if you learned your employee is a birther?"  The tilt of the question was to see whether political, let alone radical, views would affect your perception of the employee's ability to get things done.  Would you trust him or her to handle a crucial negotiation or sale based on this initial fact?  The general consensus by the audience was that if the employee demonstrated an ability to defend a position with reason, and they have shown a history of good judgment otherwise, they would trust him or her to handle their business.   Also impacting the decision was an employee's sales record.

So, with that as prologue, is there a fact you could learn about an employee or colleague that would cause you to pull a 180 on your perception of him or her?  Member of the John Birch Society?  KKK?  Loves the song "Cotton Eyed Joe" or Rick Astley?

What have you?

As mentioned, Laurie Ruettimann and I presented on "Pop Culture, Politics, and HR" this past weekend at HREvolution.   I imagine that the presentation would have been vastly different if the Obama news came out Friday night instead of Sunday night (in fact, Laurie's blog this morning would have most likely been a centerpoint of the discussion).  In any case, given that there were so many good sessions competing with our own, here are the questions we were prepared to ask the audience in our session (of which, many were brought up):

1. What do you want your workplace to be like?
2. What do I want from work and the workplace besides money?  
3. Is it simply a paycheck?
4. What do I want/need from my supervisors/employers/colleagues?
5. Is there a social component?
6. Why do we worry about survivors during a layoff, if work is not social?  
7. Why does morale go down during a layoff?  
8. Ulrich indicates in "The Why of Work," that we seek a sense of purpose, meaning, value, and contribution.  What contributes to that sense of purpose?
9. Does pop culture help contribute to that sense of meaning or purpose?
10. What relationships do or should exist between the workplace and the rest of my life/family/religion/community/nation?
11. Is it a personal and/or social "good" to be a "workaholic?"
12. How would I know if I was a workaholic?
13. How do examples from and familiarity with popular culture illuminate and contribute to answering the above questions?
14. What is the vocation of HR?
15. What is HR's calling?
16. What do we want our role to be in human resources?
17. Is HR corporate lackeys merely enforcing the organization's restrictive and punitive rules?
18. Is HR creating a workplace where workers can share ideas and feel welcoming?  
19. Does making workers feel welcoming matter?
20. What is pop culture?
21. Is it a failure of American society that many of us default to pop culture because we have no other basis to form a community upon?
22. Are politics considered pop culture?
23. Are sports considered pop culture?
24. What about Obama's youth movement and Shepard Fairey posters? 
25. Is it art?
26. Should those posters be allowed in the office?
27. What is the relationship between pop culture, HR, and the workplace?
28. Do we believe that the outside world of life/entertainment/art has a place at work?
29. Do we need external topics to talk about at work because our actual jobs are so suffocating?
30. Who is participating in the discussion of pop culture items?
31. Is it the engaged?
32. The disengaged?
33. Those that are outright sabotaging the workplace (and is pop culture the manifestation of it)?
34. What role does pop culture play in the socialization process?
35. Does pop culture bind us together or separate us?
36. Does pop culture serve to exclude some as well?
37. Do employees feel left out if they didn't watch the latest episode of "Desperate Housewives" or "American Idol?"
38. What are the expectations, if any, of employees with regard to pop culture understanding?
39. Do I feel compelled to read a particular book (i.e., Bridges of Madison County) or watch a TV show to fit in?
40. Does pop culture begin to feel like homework?
41. Is there peer pressure to participate (like learning the electric slide for a company function)?
42. What if I don't care about the Royal Wedding?
43. Is pop culture ephemeral?
44. Can we even create a common bond with one another with friends, at work, or at home?
45. What is the impact of community at work?
46. Does work no longer fulfill that need for purpose, meaning, value, and contribution if I am able to find my niche or subculture online?
47. Do I need to come to work to discuss the latest twists and turns on "The Killing" or "Fringe" when I can go to online message boards to get an immediate reaction?
48. Is there a stigma associated with popular culture?
49. How does one react when you hear someone went to ComicCon? Positive? Negative?
50. Is being a fan of the Grateful Dead or Phish something to be embraced, or are you viewed as a directionless, drug-addled nomad with no link to reality?
51. Do you read comic books?
52. Do you listen to country music?
53. Do you read People?
54. Do you read US Weekly?
55. Do you read comic books? 
56. Do you read Romance novels?
57. What is the divided line between those cult classics and guilty pleasures, and those items to truly be avoided?
58. Can you dress up as Dr. Frank N Furter for the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on weekends and still become CEO?
59. Is pop culture just high class gossip?
60. How many check out TMZ.com?
61. How many check out Perez Hilton?
62. How many check out Egotastic?
63. How many spent at least some time in the past month talking about Charlie Sheen?
64. Do we view the gossiper in the organization positively or negatively?
65. Do we view the gossiper as having power in the organization, given the info he/she possesses?
66. Do we view gossip as small or petty?
67. Does pop culture carry the same weight in the organization as gossip?
68. Do we view the pop culture "expert" with respect or disdain?
69. Are we impressed when he or she can rattle off inane facts, or obscure quotes from movies?
70. Does it signal the person as "unserious" and unworthy of being promoted within the organization?