If you’re correctly applying humor at work, one of the groups you’ll be talking to is HR. Not because they’ll be scolding you for taking a break at 3pm to run down a Slip N Slide in the company’s front lawn, but because they’ll be yearning to learn more about the amazing benefits of humor.
With that in mind, I have the pleasure of hosting this week’s Carnival of HR–a gathering of awesome HR-related posts from around the web. Check out the below links for topics ranging from leadership to teambuilding to chickens (sorta). And be sure to follow these folks on Twitter or RSS–they have some amazing blogs and are just the kind of people you’ll need to know when you have to explain to HR why pulling an office prank on your CEO is totally a good idea.
- 10 Engagement-Building Behaviors for the Boss – Who’s the Boss? Here’s what you and Tony Danza can do to get better results from your team.
- Accidents Will Happen – As is the case with improv, depending on how you handle accidents afterwards, they are no longer accidents.
- Are Men In HR Going the Way of the Dinosaur? – Interesting question to consider about HR. 80% women attendees? I knew I should have majored in HR instead of Computer Science.
- The Art of Saying No – Why “Just Say No” isn’t just for D.A.R.E.
- Be Bodacious: Put Life in Your Leadership book review – Thoughts on how a book that includes chicken catching and chicken eating is great for leadership.
- Become Unnoticeable to Be Noticed – Getting noticed in the corporate world means doing the “non-sexy” work exceptionally well.
- Connecting, Building Relationships and Team Success – Just like good improv, good companies and projects focus on relationships.
- Creating Online Content and #socialrecruiting – Why creating online content is good, even if it’s LOLcats.
- Don’t Pick My Pocket Just Because I’m Female – Wo(ah)man, that’s not right–even in female dominated professions men are still paid disproportionately more money.
- Everyone has their own Trevor – Why “your cat not letting you do your work” is no longer a good excuse.
- Five Ways to Disarm an Angry Mob – AKA delivering not-necessarily-happy news. Does not cover how to create the angry mob.
- Getting the Most Out of International Assignments – Improving the value of international assignments regardless of currency, except Monopoly money.
- HR Technology Conference – It’s Just Around The Corner. Are You Ready? – HR Technology Conference reminder, be there or be without awesome HR technology.
- Infinite Choice – The “Analog vs Digital” argument for decision-making.
- Leadership Development: Executive Self-Assessment – Pop quiz, hot shot! An informative assessment on leadership development.
- M&A Observations: StepStone Solutions Acquires MrTed — Who’s Next – Thoughts on happenings in the talent management software market.
- The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem – Further exploration as to why you shouldn’t shoot the messenger, even if it is ICQ.
- Seven Ways to Build Rapport Anytime – Rap-port isn’t just a dock for hip hop music. Here’s how to build the other kind of rapport.
- Teamwork or Talent? – Why Teamwork and Talent are both important and why I don’t want to hang out with Oz.
- Three Reasons Why Small Companies Do Not Use Pre Employment Hiring Assessments – The title says it all.
- Top 10 Reasons Why HR Professionals Should Use Metrics – I, too, am all for the metric system (both in terms of measuring results and the system of measurement).
- Training Series: Calling Yourself a “Trainer” doesn’t make you one – Some good thoughts on training, kind of like the corporate version or “a house is not a home.”
- Uncle Joe’s Employee Engagement Funda – Kick Once Kiss Thrice – What you can learn about leadership from a interesting, old, Indian shopkeeper.
- Understanding Employee Turnover – The costs of turnover. Apple turnover is $1.99.
- Voluntary vs Involuntary – Not about turnover this time – Avoid coworkers screaming “TMI! TMI!” after a story about your weekend by thinking about if they are a voluntary or involuntary friend.
- Well Duckie, we’re only as lucky as the next net job. – No it’s not about the rules of “Duck Duck Goose” but rather a compelling look at the job market.
- What’s Your IQ? – Discussion on some of the misconceptions of innovation, such as the fact that INN-ovation is not about enthusiastic responses about hotels…
- Where I rant about Immigration Laws… – “I-9.” “Bingo!” — An HR perspective on Immigration Law.
That’s it for this week’s edition of the Carnival of HR. Round of applause for the authors, well done.
This year’s Applied Improvisation Network Conference was an incredible experience filled with some amazing ideas.
Below are some excerpts that stuck out to me from the workshops I attended:
From This Is Your Brain on Improv (Rich Cox & Janet Crawford):
Laughter is one of the brain’s natural responses to get back in sync with someone.
From The Deeper, Funner Facilitation Cookbook (Julie Huffaker & Gary Hirsch):
You have to know what a person cares about first before you can influence them. The best way to find out what they care about is to ask them.
From Creating a Playback Theater Performance (Christopher Ellinger, Zhaleh Almaee, Anne Ellinger)
Listening is so important. To show understanding, it’s important to playback what it is you heard them saying.
From Touching the Heart: Exploring Core Values through Personal Storytelling (Nick Owen)
Being fearless doesn’t mean to deny fear, but to face it.
and
Form, action and innovation lies within the tension between structure and chaos.
From Improvisation and Biomimicry (Belina Raffy):
Nature is sustainable and we can learn from it. Nature: recycles everything, rewards cooperation, demands local expertise, and curbs excesses from within.
From Adventures in Micro-fiction (Denzil Meyers)
To spur writing, the design is to give you as little stimulus as possible, and let the mind fill in the gaps.
From Open Space Rules (lead by Chris Corrigan):
The Law of Two Feet: if you are somewhere and you aren’t learning, then use your two feet to get to somewhere you can be.
From Wiley Vets (Bard Braende, Sue Walden, Alieke van der Wijk)
Never make it about the sale, make it about the relationship.
From Talking to the CEO (Bard Braende, Maxine Shapiro)
The maximum capacity for a “tribe” is 150 people. After that it becomes too large to manage and should be split into two separate groups.
There were far too many great nuggets of knowledge to list them all here, but to read more about the entire event, check out the AIN Portland Conference 09 Wrap-up.
Looking to innovate holistically, quickly, and in a way that actually pleases your customers? Take a bit from stand-up comedy and keep getting on stage (in front of your customer) to refine your act (product).
Stand-Up Innovation
Many great comedians have said that the best (and perhaps only) way to get better as a stand-up comic is to get as much stage time as possible, to get out and perform as often as you can. When Jerry Seinfeld first started, he was doing as many as 4 shows in a single night, bouncing from open mic to open mic, working on his material.
There are two main reasons for this:
- The more you perform, the more you get comfortable on stage, and the more you learn about yourself, your material, and your audiences.
- It allows you to make small changes to your set and receive instant feedback (in the form of howls of laughter, excruciatingly painful silence, or somewhere in between).
What’s all of this have to do with breakthrough innovation? More on that in a minute. But first…
Pleasing Customers
Some of you might be wondering, but Drew, “If you’re creating a product or service for a customer, can’t you just ask the consumers what they want once and then go make it?” Nope. That doesn’t work for the same reason I can’t just ask the audience what will make them laugh and then say it.
The customers and audience don’t actually know what they want. They might have an idea, but they don’t really know, just like you wouldn’t really know how to answer “What makes you laugh?” You might say things like observational humor, or jokes about penguins, or a solid, almost unbearable pun–but that doesn’t tell me what I should actually say to get you to guffaw.
Pleasing customers is about listening to what they say they want, but also seeing what they actually need, whether or not they know they need it. The only reason why jokes even work is because they set an expectation and the surprise and delight the audience by breaking that expectation. Audiences don’t laugh at jokes they can guess the punchline to. Similarly companies that deliver breakthrough innovation don’t deliver exactly what their customers asked for–they give them something better.
If you can listen to what a customer says, and observe what they actually do, you can deliver a product or service that actually meets their needs. But how do you deliver something that combines what the customer is asking for with what it doesn’t even know it needs?
Rapid Prototyping
Enter the corporate equivalent of getting on stage 4 times in one night: what is more commonly known as “Rapid Prototyping” *ba don na na* (that trumpet sound is hard to phonetically spell). One of the most efficient and rewarding ways to innovate is to use rapid prototyping (this is especially true in the IT world where systems and applications abound).
Rapid prototyping means: you talk to your customer, find out what it is that they think they want, go and mock it up, and take it back to them to make changes. This allows the consumer to decide what they do and don’t like, and gives you instant feedback to create a product that they will truly enjoy. And just like every time a comedian gets on stage, every iteration gets you closer to delivering that perfect punchline (product) that has your customers rolling in the aisles (paying you large sums of money that you can roll around in).
Big Company Mistake
If you’re thinking think “Well maybe the customers don’t know what they want, but considering our history of success at [insert company name here], we already know what will sell,” you’ll do better than the average Joe Schmoe, but you’ll also experience failure. Just as the great comedians don’t always know if a new joke will “kill” or “die” (“killing” in comedy is good, “dying” is bad), big companies can never know for sure that an idea will be successful–look at the “New Coca-Cola” blunder of the 1980′s.
Performing Carnegie Hall
So what can you do? You can get out on the road and “perform” in front of your audience, make them laugh, and improve your set. That’s what rapid prototyping is all about, and that’s breakthrough innovation.
