© Rex Features / Chaz Gerretsen

It was with great sadness that I read this week about the passing of Ray Harryhausen, one of the icons of my youth. 

If the name is not familiar to you, you might at least be familiar with his special effects work in such films as Mighty Joe Young, It Came From the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Mysterious Island, One Million Years BC, and Clash of the Titans.  My personal favorites that I cherished as a youth were Jason & the Argonauts and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. 

And what makes him the most engaged employee ever?  He was a pioneer of stop-motion filmmaking.  Unlike the CGI work today, stop-motion filmmaking was a painstaking process requiring you to stage a scene and take a picture.  Then, you move an arm, and/or a leg, and/or a sword, and take another picture.  Repeat.  Given that the typical film speed is 24 frames per second, the ability to turn those micromovements into the illusion of motion is extremely time-consuming.

Take, for example, his work in the aforementioned Jason & the Argonauts.  To create the battle with the skeleton army, it took Harryhausen nearly four months, working seven days a week, mostly alone, to create the scenes.  Some days, he was only able to get 13 entire frames, less than a second of film, completed.


So, the next time an employee is complaining about the difficulty of their job.  Point him or her to the work of Mr. Harryhausen, and see if he/she will continue to be upset about his or her work.

Rest in peace.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Carnival of HR.  There is a veritable cavalcade of HR knowledge provided from a bevy of HR Subject Matter Experts ready for your perusal.  Cue the Deer.

Some Questions

Mervyn Dinnen at T Recs wonders "Is Success Overrated?"  Check out the link to find out his perspective.

Chris Young at the Rainmaker Group asks "Employee Engagement: Just How Screwed Up Is Your Team?" 

Ian Welsh at Toolbox.com wonders "Could We Improve Recruiting Quality By Recording Interviews?"

Our own HR Minion, Shauna Moerke, examines career transitions and queries "Who Do You Want To be Tomorrow?"

At Lean HR, Dwane Lay asks "The Santa Claus Question."

Some Answers

At Envisia Learning, Wally Bock gives us "Two Simple Ways to Help Managers"
  
At the HR Schoolhouse, Robin Schooling gives us the skinny on "What the 'HR Community' is REALLY Talking About."

At the HR reMix, Melissa Fairman provides some life lessons in "Everyone Should Get Laid Off Once."

At Insight, Nancy Saperstone looks at "Office Politics that Work - Improve Employee Productivity."

With the 2012 American football season in full swing, Tim Gardner, in his The HR Introvert blog, looks at "One Employee's Passion is Another's Loss of Inclusion."

At Upstart HR, Ben Eubanks examines the "Benefits of Team Building."

At Julie WG, Julie Winkle Giuloni gives us the lowdown on "Creative Crossings: Where Employee Development and Career Development Converge."

At Canadian HR Reporter, Stuart Rudner warns us to "Beware the Dangers of Templates."

At Everyday People, the Godfather Steve Browne tells us to ditch the labels and "Go Tagless!!"

At Great Leadership, Dan McCarthy gives us some history in "Managing Remote Employees: Lessons from Ancient Rome and Today."

At the Curious Cat blog, John Hunter wants us to "Manage Better By Managing Less."

At Mentoring Mullarkey, Patrick Mullarkey gleans some good HR info from the Police Academy movies in "Carey Mahoney: The L&D Professional That We All Want To Be."

Some Numbers

At her self-titled blog, Jesse Stoner gives us "The Five Steps of CRISP Decision-Making."

At Thin Difference, Jon Mertz examines "How to Navigate Life in Work - Six Considerations."


At the Inflexion Advisors blog, Mark Stelzner provides us with "7 Steps to Surviving HR Vendor Consolidation."

At Tribe HR, Paul Baribeau demonstrates no triskaidekaphobia with "13 Ways to Get Your Employees To Tune Out."

At People Equation, Jennifer Miller goes from A to Z in "26 Ways To Be A Better Boss."

******

Don't forget - there is a special Carnival of HR next Wednesday, September 19.  It is being hosted by Ann Bares at the Compensation Cafe.  So tune in next week....same time, different channel.

Been Galluped to death on engagement?  Think you are committed to your work and organization?

Meet Marina Abramović, the first performance artist to have her work featured at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

On July 2, HBO premiered "Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present," a documentary about her 2010 show at MoMA along with a retrospective, and "re-creation" of some of her performance art.

As a proponent of "ordealism,"much of her earlier work focused on pain and self-abuse:

• In Rhythm 10, using twenty knives and a tape recorder, she played the Russian knife game (featured in Aliens) where rhythmic jabs are made between splayed fingers.  When she cuts herself, she picks up a new knife and begins again.  When she has gone through all 20 knives, she listens to the tape recorder and tries to recreate the experience again.
• In Rhythm 0,  she placed 72 objects (such as a rose, scissors, or a whip) that the audience was allowed to apply on her body.  The show lasted 6 hours, and the audience soon fell into two categories - aggressors and protectors
• In Imponderabilia, she, and her collaborator Ulay, stood nude face-to-face in a doorway, and audience members must squeeze between them deciding which way to face.

The documentary closes on her major performance piece at MoMA, The Artist is Present, where, "all day, every day, from early March until the end of May, 2010, she will sit at a table in the museum's atrium, in what she describes as a "square of light." Members of the audience will be invited to join her, one at a time, at the opposite end of the table. There will be no talking, no touching, no overt communication of any kind. Her objective is to achieve a luminous state of being and then transmit it­­––to engage in what she calls "an energy dialogue" with the audience."

For 77 days, 8+ hours a day, she sat impassively on a hard wooden chair, wearing a red, white, or blue gown, and stared at each person for as long as the person was willing to sit there, whether for a few seconds, or all day.  At first there was a table between Marina and the audience member; later, the table was removed.   Reactions ranged from bemusement to sadness to laughter (as well as a great Tumblr account - Marina Abramović Made Me Cry).  MoMA put together an album on Flicker that has portraits of each person who sat across from her (though the documentary is much more moving).

So, you might think you are committed to your work, but, you are likely no Marina Abramović

Benjamin McCall has put together an invaluable guide to training and development with the release of his e-book, "What We Teach/How We Learn."

The e-book contains:

• 32 pages of articles around engagement, presentation tips, encouraging and empowering individuals to learn and in the workplace approaches to learning.
• Approaches and tips on increasing the way we deliver and facilitate to our employees.
• Reaction sheets after each article for the reader to "react" to what you wrote and jot down some ideas on how they can use it and act.
  

To provide this information, he went out, scoured the country, and found a number of great contributors (myself excluded):

• Erin Schreyer, President of Sagestone Partners, Founder of Authentic Leadership Cincinnati, Twitter: @eschreyer
• Jennifer V. Miller, People-Equation.com, Managing Partner at SkillSource, Twitter: @jennifervmiller
• Steve Boese, HR Technology Blog, HR Technology Instructor, Rochester Institute of Technology, Twitter: @steveboese
• Sharlyn Lauby, SPHR, CPLP, She is the HRBartender.com, President of Internal Talent Management (ITM) Group, Twitter: @sharlyn_lauby
• Matthew J. Stollak, Ph.D., True Faith HR, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, St Norbert Collage, Twitter: @akaBruno
• Ben Eubanks , UpStartHR.com, Runs his SHRM chapter’s RocketHR blog, HR pro at Volunteers of America, Twitter: @beneubanks
• Chris Ferdinandi, RenegadeHR.net, Author of CultureConvo, Employee Development & Social Media Specialist at EMC, Twitter: @chrisferdinandi
• Lance Haun, ReHaul.com, Community Director for ERE Media, Twitter: @thelance
• Steve Browne, Executive Director of HR for Larosa’s Pizza, Facilitator, HR Net, Twitter: @sbrownehr
• Benjamin McCall, Leadership Performance Consultant, Editor, ReThinkHR.org, Twitter: @BenjaminMcCall

Check it out now.