Do you know anyone who has been laid off?

Hi everyone:

If you know anyone who has been laid off, they might like to know about a new blog I launched just yesterday. Please help me spread the word:

www.reboundyourcareer.blogspot.com


This blog will be a destination for people who are between jobs, and who need to feel less alone and more in control of their careers and destinies. I'll be adding lots of practical advice, as well as interviews with experts on career management, professional development, finding work, what to do in the meantime, and how to get their proverbial foot in the door. I will also include lots of stories of people who were laid off and who landed happily in their next jobs.

Please help me spread the word about this blog! And I'll do the rest!!

Happy New Year to everyone who follows HR Journeys!

Rebound: Your Most Important New Year Resolution If You're Laid Off

(This is the first posting in a series based on everything I’ve been learning since I wrote Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss, which will be published in February. But you can order it now on Amazon and get a special pre-pub price.)

If you’re one of the roughly bajillion people who have seen, read, bought The Secret, you know about the Law of Attraction. Personally I’ve got mixed feelings about the Law of Attraction (even though it did seem to work pretty well for Oprah…she made out okay). Apply just a little bit of pressure on me (like, say, a gun to my head, my hand on the Bible or my face on TV), and I just can’t step forward and say “thoughts become things.” Matching vibrational intention with the universe strikes me as being a healthy helping of what I uncharitably refer to as “oogy boogy,” an attitude that makes me pretty unpopular here in New Age Santa Fe. (My neighbor, just for an instance, buried a crystal in our dirt road to ward off the evil spirits emanating from the south – which is basically where you will find Albuquerque.)

All this being said, I have to cop to a confession: When I first saw The Secret, I immediately bought at least 10 copies and sent them to all my friends (well, most of them; there was one absolutely absurd segment about a woman laughing her way through breast cancer, and I just couldn’t send the dvd to my friend who survived breast cancer with the help of a knowledgeable oncologist, a scalpel and massive doses of radiation). Why? Because the film made me happy just to look at it. And I wanted to share that feel-good with the people I love. And on top of that, there’s a fantastic five-minute video available for free through their website that is designed specifically to help you start your day with a song in your heart and wings on your spirit. I watch it as often as I can – without wearing down its inspiring effects – and it gets me every time. Makes me so glad to be a human being on this wacky, rocky, wonderful, nerve-wracked planet.

And my starting the morning with an upbeat frame of mind just stacks the odds in my favor that I’m going to have a productive, creative, innovative day with at least one or two happy surprises by the time I turn off the light at night. It’s not a metaphysical thing. It takes no leap of faith or suspension of belief. It’s just the way things are.

It’s an actual scientific fact that people who are of a positive frame of mind are most likely to find creative solutions to thorny problems, bounce back from setbacks, appeal to other positive people who actually work for great companies that treat them well and that are hiring. This isn’t about the Law of Attraction, it’s about the fact that people who are happy are generally fun to be with. And people who are fun to be with attract other people who are fun and happy. You know, it’s a birds-of-a-feather kind of thing.

When you are happy, you’re more receptive to the idea of having fun (not to mention to fact that you’re more likely to be invited to do fun stuff with other fun people). And, a Harvard study actually proved that nose-to-the-grindstone types had more difficulty finding creative solutions to a work problem than people who reported having fun the day before.

So what’s the most essential resolution for you in 2009 if you were laid off in 2008 (or if you think that you might see the dreaded pink slip in 2009)? I will build my happiness muscle and protect it at all costs.

Ugh. How can anyone expect to be happy in these times, especially when they’re out of work? Reasonable question. But by giving into the assumption that happiness is more easily had in an environment of employment stability and financial security, you’re depriving yourself of what could be your most valuable tool for resilience, possibility and success that will see you toward a brighter, more fulfilling future.

In case you find yourself giving over to the dark side, here are a few notes on happiness that might help you stay committed to the brighter side:

Happiness is free. Yeah, yeah, I know. Cliché. But you know how clichés become clichés? Because they’re true.

Happy people attract happy people. And, as I’ve said before, lots of happy people have jobs and they’re happy to share inside info on what openings there might be. Happy people are more likely to share just about everything they’ve got – even if it’s their last packet of ramen noodles – because they’re pretty sure that a very cool surprise, or lucky break, is on its way to them. Any day now.

Happy people notice those lucky breaks and then take advantage of them. A few years ago Richard Wiseman wrote the book The Luck Factor, in which he outlines four “essential principles” for being lucky. Principle Three is “Expect Good Fortune.” Just knowing that it’s on its way can’t help but lift your spirits. And when it finally comes, guess what. You’ll notice it. And it will make you happy.

Hiring managers don’t offer jobs to people who bum them out. I was a very lucky girl the day I happened to turn on Oprah and she had Randy Pausch as her main guest. (If you know The Secret, you probably also know The Last Lecture. I vote for The Last Lecture.) In their interview he said that we have a choice in life: We can be the mopey, grumpy Eyore. Or we can be Tigger, who revels in all things and finds joy everywhere. (A friend of mine has a sign on her fridge, featuring Tigger, with the words, “no bouncing before breakfast.” Makes me smile every time I think about it.)

The thing is, said Pausch, people love to hang out with Tiggers. And that includes employers. If you insist on being an Eyore and you find someone to hire you because he or she just so relates to your many melancholy moods, run as fast as you can in the other direction. Better yet, bounce.

Happy people have great stories to tell. Have you ever noticed how unhappy people tell bummer stories? I noticed that about myself a few years ago when I was indulging in a bummer litany during my daily emails with my oldest friend across the country. I was complaining about this and that, thinking that each anecdote was riveting. After all, Nora Ephron’s mother said that anything bad that happens to a writer is just material. I discovered that I was really boring myself with this brand of material. And I resolved to stop gathering that brand of material. So the minute I realize that a relationship or circumstance is about to give me material, I get out of that situation pronto. (Except for customer-service horror stories; my friend and I still love to trade those hurts-so-good tales from our cross-country lives. Actually we love to wallow in them, like long hot baths, until we get all pruny.)

The resolution to sustain a happy outlook comes bundled with a whole new set of stories that will be made available to you. Your radar is adjusted, and you start picking up signals that you might otherwise be missing. Examples, for instance, of kind people doing good things for each other. Or great deus ex machina stories of people landing amazing jobs that are perfect for them. And, back to the attraction thing, as you start telling those stories more and more, a happier breed of person will be joining your audience – while the sad sacks slink out of your life.

You’ll be setting a good example to all those who take their clues about life by watching you. If you have kids, you’re teaching them how to relate to uncertainty. Uncertainty is part of their destiny – that’s one of the few things I can tell you right now with any certainty. Handling uncertainty with confidence and optimism is a skill set that they’re going to need more than any generation before them. It’s up to you to show them how it’s done. Do you tell the dread stories of woe, horror and outrage? Or do you focus on what’s good, hopeful, positive and happy-making? To borrow from David Bowie: Let’s bounce.

If you have to wait a while for your next job or lucky break to catch up with you, you might as well have fun doing it. Punishing yourself isn’t going to shorten your sentence of languishing between jobs. You don’t earn your chance at good luck by beating yourself up or denying yourself the pleasures of each day. The days are really all we have, as Pausch, I’m sure would tell you…if he could. So love each one and love your life within those hours.

Happy New Year. By which I mean, happy New Year.

Maybe We Should Stop Caring About What Other People Think

Well, I'm back. Didn't think I'd be posting twice in one day (especially after such a long silence) but reading today's Business section of the NY Times pulled me back to the computer.

Two items hit me between the eyes (I don't even want to talk about the articles about newspapers going down the tubes, that's too upsetting). The first item is actually a series of articles about the alleged Madoff Ponzi scheme, where investors are losing up to $50 billion (maybe even more) because they trusted someone who may not have been so trustworthy. What really stood out for me was not the truly tragic stories of super-annuated Palm Beach investors who lost millions. What stood out for me was the handful of individuals who chose not to invest their money with Madoff simply because they felt that he played too close to the vest regarding his investment strategies. Despite what other people thought, they chose to listen to themselves and honor their own judgment.

The other item was in the same section, describing an elaborate University of Alberta research project involving bookstores, pens and coupons. The results of that research project? If you stand *behind* someone who uses a low-value coupon to buy a pen, other people will think you're cheap.

To which I have only one thing to say: Who the hell cares?

Clearly, someone at the NY Times business section thinks it's important for you to know that standing even in the immediate vicinity of someone who is making a frugal purchase is damaging to your own reputation.

Could other people's opinion be so important that you're willing to change your behaviors to accommodate them. To this extent?

I'm reminded of the subscription renewal notices that I get from magazines, at least 6 months before my subscription is actually due to expire. Big type on the envelope screaming, FOURTH AND FINAL NOTICE! There's something inside my little reptilian brain that tells me "oh my gosh! People are thinking I'm a deadbeat!" The people inside the circulation department of the magazine? Maybe. The postal carrier? Maybe. But obviously SOMEONE must be thinking I'm a deadbeat...look at these envelopes! I can just smell the judgment! I just don't know where the stink is coming from.

Another article in the New York Times a few weeks ago also tried to impose other people's opinion on me regarding the so-called Interview Suit. The article was accompanied by a movie still from the 50s of Hope Lange enduring scathing judgment from prospective coworkers. Was her slip showing? No. She was wearing, gasp!, the DREADED WRONG OUTFIT!

The point of this article was that, according to the experts interviewed, if you're not wearing precisely the right outfit, in precisely this year's colors, accessorized with precisely the right shoes, with precisely the right heel, you might as well kiss that job opp goodbye. Several of my friends called my attention to the article, sharing the same opinion of "oh my gosh! it's really getting brutal out there!"

But looking closely at all the experts who were quoted, it was clear that every single "expert" had a stake in making you feel inadequate and a sudden urge to go shopping. For, coincidentally enough, an up-to-date interview suit.

Now I know there are tons of elegantly dressed HR professionals out there, but I would venture a guess that no one stops to see if you're wearing a 2005 Jimmy Choo or a 2008 Jimmy Choo. Personally, my philosophy is that if there are no holes in the soles, and the heels aren't worn down so much that they resemble a door wedge, I'm good to go.

Life is complicated these days, no doubt. And sometimes we need experts to help us understand what the best ways are to use our resources. But I think that one of the reasons why we're in such a mess economically is because a lot of us turned our backs on simple math and common sense, because we figured the next guy was smarter and more knowledgeable than we. We've been caught up in a machine that runs on using OPM -- other people's (read: ours) money. And we've allowed ourselves to exchange our common sense for OPO -- other people's opinions.

I think it's time for us to remember what is truly ours, and hold on tight to it (money and opinions)regardless of which way the crowd is going. And to anyone who wants to estrange us from either, we should be asking them: Okay, what are you really selling?

But that's just my opinion.

Sorry to have been away for so long!

Hello from a snowy Santa Fe!

I'm looking out my office window and am watching a Rocky Mountain snowfall that started as a rainstorm in LA.

This is just a quick posting to explain my silence for almost six weeks! I've been writing a new book! This one is on how to manage your life, finances and career if you're thinking a layoff is in your future.

The book is called Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss. And it will be out in February!!

Click the link on the title above and read more about it on Amazon.com

Next up: Best Resolutions for HR in 2009 -- my annual posting of how to grow your HR career in 2009! Plus more exciting news about HR Journeys! So...come back next week! And I'll have more details!

It's Good to Be Bad

Actually, until last week, I thought I had this “not knowing stuff” thing down cold. The bulk of my livelihood comes from my talking to content experts and then delivering their wisdom to the rest of the world in a way that ordinary folks (like me) can understand. So I’m pretty comfortable being in strange territory. I figure that all I have to do is come with an open mind, sincere curiosity and passionate desire to learn, and I’m 90% there. It’s my job and I love it. It’s great to be paid to learn, and then to turn around and pass that learning on.

So I have to live in a perpetual state of humility, almost always being the one who’s asking the questions. But until last week, I didn’t know what real humiliation is. You see, last week I was the rock-bottom performer in a four-day bootcamp class of all rank newbies -- 40 of them. I was so bad, in fact, that I couldn’t even work up a huffiness when one of my classmates said to me in the elevator at the end of the third day: “It’s funny…you really stand out in class. Maybe it’s because you’re just so bad at this.” The fact that he was absolutely, positively, objectively, inarguably correct took any wind out an indignant reaction that I might have been able to muster up.

It didn’t feel like he was trying to be mean. He was just thinking out loud. The only thing I could say in response was, “Yeah, you’re right.” Word to wise: This is why God made thoughts silent.

So why was I putting myself through such humiliation? Professional development. Here’s the short version of the story: A couple of months ago I was wallowing in my all-time favorite place on earth (my bed), idly clicking the channels, flipping primarily from the Food Network to the Travel Channel. A commercial on the Travel Channel broke through the fog enveloping my attention span, the basic message being: Learn to be a videographer the Travel Channel way! “Learn! Shoot! Earn!”

Well. I’d been thinking that it was long past time for me to learn how to use a video camera and post footage online (I mean, if beer-soaked doofuses can do it on Youtube….). Fortunately my laptop was within reach, under a pile of old newspapers and magazines, so I hopped online and checked it out. The promise: For a hefty chunk of cash (not counting travel, lodging, equipment rental), and the commitment of four days of paying really close attention, I too can learn everything I need to know about the wonderful world of professional videography! And guess what! The course is scheduled to be held in Santa Barbara the last week of October! (Other than the dog-friendly beach in Carmel, Santa Barbara is my second favorite place on the planet.) Sign me up! I’ll figure out the money thing later.

So I show up with the mature attitude that, “I’m here to learn.” I didn’t aspire to be a National Geographic documentarist or even a Travel Channel “preditor” (producer/editor). I don’t need to shoot footage of Andrew Zimmern burping up chocolate-covered scorpions. I just want to be able to record my wonderful interviews with workplace-world thought leaders, so the material looks more like Charlie Rose or Bill Moyers than footage of some unfortunate sun-addled weekend athlete who wrecks his chances of procreation with some ridiculous stunt with his above-ground pool. See? My aspirations weren’t entirely out of the realm of reasonableness.

So we had two assignments during those four days: to shoot two 1-minute videos. The videos that my fellow students came back with were amazing: Harbor cruises with seals basking on buoys, a guitar maker, a guy who keeps kids off the streets by introducing them to the world of skateboarding, an artist, parrots at the zoo, an alpaca farm, a cupcake baker, a haul of sea urchins and a guy eating one right there on the dock (can I just say: ick), a surf fisherman. Forty students (well, 39) each did two fantastic segments.

And now we shall compare and contrast: The first of my two videos was of a picture framer staring blankly into a wall while his computerized matte cutter went round and round. Riveting stuff. (Teacher’s assessment: “Only one way to go from here, and that’s up.”) My second video: A shopkeeper scratching her nose while trying to figure out how to operate a cell phone that a customer had left behind. (Teacher’s assessment: “Well, it’s an improvement.”)

I mean, I was really sweating that second video. And was actually very proud of it until I realized that everyone else in the class had also improved hugely. Damn! So now you know why I really couldn’t get my dander up by my classmate’s frank observation. Just can’t argue with the truth.

While I was driving back to Santa Fe from Santa Barbara (12 long hours with my thoughts, about three months’ worth of NPR’s Fresh Air loaded on my Ipod, and a healthy dose of rationalization), I started asking myself what wisdom I can bring back to you guys. Here’s what I came up with:

• To get good, you have to be willing to start out bad – and maybe even stay bad for a while.
• It’s not about the grades. Now that you’re an adult, it’s about taking onboard the skills you need to fulfill your dreams and potential.
• Now that you’re an adult, candid commentary from an expert isn’t the end of the world. It can actually be a sign of respect. Maybe even good for a laugh – even if it is at your expense.
• It’s okay for others to be better than you, as long as you’re getting what you want and need out of the experience.
• You may not be as smart (or as good, or even as quick a learner) as you thought you were. But as long as you’re learning what you came to learn, that’s what counts.
• To get smart, you have to be willing to be stupid – even, like, really stupid.
• Never think out loud. The person whose feelings you inadvertently hurt may be a popular blogger with a global reach of a quarter million readers. She just might be in the mood to name names...and then hyperlink your name to your email address.

But then probably not. That would be mean. I'm not mean, I'm just baaaaaad.

Would I do the course again? In a heartbeat. I loved it! Can’t wait to start practicing! I might even find my work on the Travel Channel one day. It would be nice to show the teacher that bad can eventually become good. With practice, of course.

Don't Be a Victim in the Recession

You know what really worries me about the hard economic times? Sure, the financials are scary enough. But as an expert in employee engagement who remembers the work world of the late 1970s/early 1980s, I’m afraid that the bully bosses are going to come out of the woodwork like cockroaches in the night. It’s been a couple of decades since I have heard that disgusting phrase: “Just be glad you have a job.” And I’m really hoping that all we’ve learned about the business value of employee engagement won’t just disappear in the face of some new version of the Dark Ages.

I’m afraid it’s already beginning to happen, though. The number of emails I’ve been getting from readers who are being belittled and abused at work is increasing exponentially. While I don’t give individual career advice, I would like to offer some ideas as to how to prevail – even thrive – careerwise and emotionally during these hard times. (Believe me, I know how it feels. That’s why I got into employee engagement in the first place.)

Cultivate your options. If you have a bully boss, he or she is going to go after the weak ones first. And that could be you. If you feel like your only option is this rotten job you have, you’re going to be at higher risk for broadcasting the vibe that says, “Oh my God, please don’t fire me!” That’s like catnip to the bully boss. You may think you don’t have any options going for you right now, but start shoving aces up your sleeve anyway. Just knowing that they’re there will silent that vibe.

Network your brains out. Attend professional chapter meetings. (If you’re in HR, you must be a member of SHRM and your local chapter. No excuses allowed.) Reach out to your counterparts in other companies in your community, ask them to join you for lunch, even if it’s just yogurt by the town fountain (no need to bust the budget, everyone is counting their pennies these days). Volunteer for as many professional association and community projects and causes as you can. Do everything you can to be at the right place at the right time.

Don’t be too eager to please. When you’re too eager to please, you’re not demonstrating your professional abilities and indispensability. You’re demonstrating the willingness to be a slave in return for a paycheck. A subservient posture isn’t going to guarantee job security, it’s going to guarantee further emotional abuse. Do your job well, go above and beyond the call of duty, but carry yourself with dignity and self-respect. That might infuriate your bully boss. Tough. Your self-esteem is precious. That’s your springboard to making positive changes for your future, so protect it at all costs. Even if the price is your job.

Make sure there’s something in your life that you’re excited about. What are you proud of? Your children? Your great grades at night school? Your professional course of study that’s going to take you out of the tar pits that you’re laboring in now? The people you love in your place of worship? Your book club? The fact that you rebuild used bikes for needy children? Drawing a blank? Do something about that. You can’t control your boss’s behavior, but you can control how you show up in the world and what kinds of stories you tell about your life.

Keep your resume in circulation. I don’t need to elaborate on that do I? I didn’t think so. Except that I have to say that when you take your next job, make sure your prospective boss meets your expectations – that person is courteous, respectful and actually likes people.

If you’ve got a certifiable maniac as a supervisor, document document document. You can take some satisfaction in the knowledge that other people probably know that this person is a monster. And they’re waiting for someone to take a stand. That could be you. But you’re not being paid to be a martyr. Keep good records of what happened, when, where, in front of whom, and what your part was in the incident. You never know where they could come in handy: Your HR office or your lawyer’s office.

Don’t put up with any crap. You may have a bully boss, but your bully boss doesn’t have you. Carry that thought in your heart no matter what happens. Looking at your boss in the eye isn’t a firing offense, so keep your spine straight, your chin up and your dignity intact. Easier said than done, I know. That’s why it’s so important to have other resources in your life and work that give you support and satisfaction.

I don’t mean to overstate the importance of taking care of yourself during these hard times, but I just can’t help myself: Victors of domestic violence will tell you that domestic violence almost always begins with emotional abuse. Little rudenesses almost imperceptibly escalate into true emotional brutality. The same people who will behave that way at home could very easily behave that way at work. Or they behave that way at work so they don’t behave that way at home. Either way, there’s every reason to expect controlling, belittling, emotionally abusive behaviors to show up in the workplace. If you find yourself the victim of demeaning, confusing, disrespectful treatment, keep two essential facts front and center in your mind: You don’t deserve it. And you always have options.

So, back to Point One: Cultivate those options.

10 Ways HR Benefits Business

Hello from home base in Santa Fe! After three weeks on the road interviewing HR leaders at the top of their game for a new website I’m developing, I rolled into my driveway late last night with only one thing in mind: Spend Sunday in bed, catching up on three weeks worth of NY Times and cuddling with the cats. But then I found an email promoting another negative article about HR.

Do we really need another negative message to HR? I don’t think so. I think that charming little number that Fast Company magazine treated us to three years ago was quite sufficient, thank you very much. At the time, I wrote a response article entitled, “Why I Love HR.” (If you missed it, email me at Martha@marthafinney.com and I’ll send you a copy.) And so it seems that the time has come for me to contribute yet another positive article celebrating the potential of HR – if only to remind readers that HR is about so much more than just avoiding stupid mistakes.

So, here we go! 10 ways that HR uniquely benefits business:

HR brings humanity to enterprise: Being a people person is actually a good thing. Hold onto that thought, even as more experienced, “successful,” cynical people dismiss your passion for the peeps. Everyone around you may be chasing the numbers, so they may have recused themselves from any conversation regarding how people will benefit the business or how business decisions impact people. That’s okay, let other people do what they do best. Just remember that business is nowhere if it’s not being enlivened by the dedication, passion and talents of high-performing employees. That’s where you come in. Once you start getting cynical yourself about the people side of your business, it’s time to switch functions – if only long enough to discover afresh how much more fun the HR department is.

HR allows cooler heads to prevail. When it comes to high-emotion, high-tension situations between employees, business leaders have two choices: Ignore it and let the courts figure it out later – to great expense both financially or in the eyes of public opinion; or let HR investigate. My advice: Let HR investigate. Now.

HR touches the future. In my interviews with HR leaders over the last several weeks, I asked “Where is the true power of HR today?” One of my interviewees responded: “HR should be looking around the corner and anticipating the talent the business will be needing – not now but 2, 3, 5, 10 years down the road.” Talent management is not too different from inventory management to a visionary HR leader. When it comes to people, just-in-time inventory management is a loser’s game. And the loser will be the business that doesn’t have the necessary talent already in the pipeline (your competitors will, you can bet on that). No one else in your organization is going to be thinking about the people side of your future. That job is yours. Run your talent supply chain that can shift and change with an uncertain future and you just may be the one who saves your company.

HR is the moral compass of business. The moral compass? Bummer! “Who wants to be the scold? I want to be liked, to be respected, to belong. Who wants to be the one to tell leadership that they can’t do what they want? I didn’t sign up for that gig!” Well, actually, you did. Remember Enron? When everyone asked, “Where was HR when these decisions were being made?” That’s you! And sometimes you have to be the one to tell powerful people the truth: That big idea is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. The right company – the one that’s worthy of stellar HR – is going to welcome your feedback.

HR saves families. Families are held together when someone is bringing home a paycheck. Families are saved when a stressed employee can turn to the EAP to come up with a plan of resolution and action. Battered women and their children save their own lives when Mom has a supportive and flexible employer who will give her what she needs to find safe harbor. Whenever I say to an HR professional, “Tell me of a time when you thought, ‘this is why I’m in HR,’” the answers I get invariably move one or both of us to tears. Why? Because the times always involve an opportunity for the person to use his or her HR resources, power and caring to ease the suffering or fears of an employee and the employee’s family.

HR brings hope to communities. We usually think of HR’s impact on communities when a major local employer announces that it’s shutting down operations. That much is definitely true, I get that. And we’re probably going to see more of that in upcoming years. Still, when a new business starts up successfully in a town, or region becomes known for being the cradle of great minds, communities spring up, thrive, open museums, hire great teachers, start symphonies, pave rails-to-trails paths, make the sidewalks safe to walk at night, and my personal favorite: sustain great bookstores. All these great things happen because money is being made. And money is being made because people have jobs. When businesses thrive, communities benefit. When communities thrive, businesses benefit.

HR saves careers. I recognize that as a group HR likes to perceive of its power as being something on the strategic level. That 35,000 feet point of view where one HR decision has a multi-million dollar impact. But sometimes it’s just a one-person-at-a-time proposition. HR is often in the best position of noticing a place where passion is bleeding out of the organization, often in the form of a single employee who is at risk. In one of my all-time favorite interviews of the summer, the regional HR manager of a major retailer (you’d recognize the name) told me of a cherished employee who was announcing that she was quitting to go to nursing school. Well, okay, education is a good thing, but something just wasn’t quite right. She loved working for this company, that much he knew. So why quit? Something else was going on. Sure enough. It wasn’t nursing school that she was running to. It was a reassignment that she was running from. Her manager had made the decision to move her away from a department she loved to a department that she had absolutely zero interest in. She opted not to protest because she really liked her manager and didn’t want to get him in trouble. So she opted to quit the whole shebang instead. My HR interviewee, luckily for everyone concerned, had the boots-to-ground point of view to recognize that there was more to this story than just a resignation announcement. Long story short: Happy ending all around. (And, I’m sure, that fresh nursing school opening was filled by a student who genuinely feels called to the healing sciences.)

HR promotes innovation. Those who dismiss HR as being the in-house compliance police have overlooked the immense amount of creativity required to run the people side of great business. I’ve heard people say that HR is the place where all dreams go to die. After a little digging I discover that their experience has been in fact where all stupid dreams go to die. Or all illegal dreams go to die. So in my speeches and workshops I always recommend to my HR listeners to make their offices “destination yes,” where leaders can come with half-baked (or half-something else) ideas and collaborate with HR to find a way to achieve the desired result in a way that doesn’t have the SEC or EEO come sniffing after them. When you hear of a company that has managed to survive a downshift in the economy without a single layoff, I promise you, HR is behind that story somewhere.

HR brings balance to the boardroom. Now, this may sound blasphemous to some people, I recognize that. But maybe there’s something to be said for leaving the numbers conversation to the numbers people. There’s only one person specifically charged with the responsibility of addressing the people ramifications of business decisions, and, again, that’s you. I also recognize that few HR folks are lucky enough to have CEOs who are so evolved as to say, “Please, I need the people side from you, stick with that.” But, in your attempts to achieve boardroom legitimacy – if not supremacy – don’t throw the people baby out with the bottom-line bathwater. You’re the People Guy…that’s a good gig. Don’t check it at the door when entering a business conversation. That’s the balance – the value – that you bring to the group. If anyone else at the table wanted that job, they would have competed with you for it long ago.

HR gives talent a home. I’m not so naïve as to believe – or try to make you believe – that companies can only be innovative when they have an empowered HR team. But I think I can say with great confidence that when you have an empowered HR team, you put yourself in a far better position of being able to attract and keep high-value talent that will pioneer new products and services for you on a daily basis. A company that cares enough about its people to cultivate a spectacular HR team cares enough about its people to inspire creativity, productivity and greatness throughout its org chart.

At this point you might be thinking to yourself, “Oh yeah? Well, you don’t have to collaborate with my senior counsel on the revised employee handbook.”

And I would have to say, “You’re right.” But then I would also have to add, “You don’t deserve to be treated with disrespect in HR.” I would also say that if your major concern is avoiding stupid HR mistakes (and getting counsel to actually listen to you), as opposed to achieving your full potential in one of the most significant roles in history, then you’re robbing yourself of the potential of a deeply rewarding career.

If you work for an organization where the leadership gets pleasure keeping you hunkered over transactional HR minutiae, and you don’t like that feeling, find a company where you will be happy and treated with respect. Sticking with a company that prides itself on demeaning its people…well, that would be the stupidest HR mistake of all.

You deserve better.