2 great leaders speak with me

                                                          

                                                                    Making me feel a million dollars

Today I feel very important, as I am "sought after". Two very important dignitaries dropped by to seek my business partnership.

We all like to feel important. Even I have that desire, at times. And to be frank and earnest, few of the men I have dated make me feel that way, especially after they get turned off by the fact that that I am so senior, and a thought leader in HR. Mais oui!

First, our new Sales VP, a certain Ms Juliette Caesar, meandered into my room today and suggested that we chat about the performance of Comrade Carl Marks, VP Emerging Technology.

Juliette told me that "Comrade Carl is a total weirdo; he rambles and is unfocused; the level of product maturity is lower than clarity of US foreign policy."  (Ms Caesar reads the Economist.) Ms Caesar also told me that " Comrade Carl's preference to speak with a Russian accent is a serious psychiatric problem, as any HR "rep" would know". 

Juliette asked me if she has my support to "push for Carl's re-positioning." I congratulated Juliette (Caesar)  on her HR "newspeak" and reassured her of my support. 

I forgot to share some big data with Juliette..... that Carl was appointed by the Chairman of the Board, who parents and Carl's parents both studied in Russia, when they were Communists. 

My dad, Pierre Elliot, had a soft spot for communism. "You need to stick up for the working man, Gloria". That's

why I am in HR.

Then, R&D Chief Comrade Carl Marks, never a close ally of mine, also meandered into my room, smoking a joint and singing a Russian song. Carl rambled on, trying to read my text messages, since I was texting to my sister as he talked.

"That bitch Caesar can't sell a lemonade on a hot beach, kibinimat", Carl taunted. "My product is a pearl, and that ------ wants my demise for no good reason". (I cannot repeat the word he used, but it does have a T) 

"Please back me Gloria, as I plan to push for Caesar's Waterloo." Waterloo, I reminded Comrade Carl, is in Canada, and my brothers Frank and Ernest both work there at Blackberry.

Migrating Mindfulness to Cloud Computing

Uncluttering my mind

No, I am not unaware of mindfulness. Mais non! As a matter of fact, there are very few things of which I am unaware.

Not only do I have a mindfulness coach (who works pro bono), but I also practice meditation before ordering the downsizing of a few nerds. I think I’m mindful about 40% of time, before tax. 

I admit that there are times when mindfulness is a challenge, especially when I am focused on answering my text messages on WhatsApp, Skype, BBM, WeChat and Viber. 

Whilst texting, I find my mind is cluttered with HR business partnership issues. And when I am having an altercation with Comrade Carl Marks from R&D, or that bitch from hell Sister Juliette Caesar from Sales, my state of mindfulness is non-wow. 
I always meditate before we fire employees over 55.

Mindfulness has honed and sharpened my HR business partnership, because I appear in total control yet equally calm and peaceful. 

I do hope that someone will eventually migrate HR mindfulness to cloud based technology! That will be wow-wow, and it sure would save me time, so I could spend more time texting.

Bottom line, we all need to contribute to the bottom line". Stan used the term "bottom line" twice in one sentence. And as he spoke, Stan was staring at Juliette Caesar's behind. Juliette is our new head of Sales.

I love term "bottom line"

"The time has come for all of us to stand together in the face of grave danger; there is no room for dissension".

This sentence was not muttered by a frustrated military commander or a banana republic political leader. Mais non! This was declared by Stan our CEO, as we examined the results of semi annual performance.

"Bottom line, we all need to contribute to the bottom line". Stan used the term "bottom line" twice in one sentence. And as he spoke, Stan was staring at Juliette Caesar's behind. Juliette is our new head of Sales. 

I suddenly became obsessed with maintaining my stature as an HR business partner. My late dad Pierre Elliot  always told me that obsession can be a useful pathology in the work place. Then it dawned on me!!! I can sell motivational tweets to our many department managers who are under performing. I can roll a huge profit and become more important than cloud computing, and on equal footing with big data.

I will offer 5 tweets for the price of 3, IE, 2 Euros a pop. Euro is a currency used in a few European countries, including Greece. 

To sell this idea internally, I have asked Hugh White from Diversity to be project manager. Hugh is a white boy who  is heterosexual, and married to the annoying yet sensual Comrade Ludmilla White, nee Kaganovich. 

When I entered Hugh's office to download this task, Hugh was reading an article on the Zika  virus from a diversity perspective.

Hugh accepted the task but it appeared that he was not listening, which reminded me how angry men make me feel.

                                                                 

  White and heterosexual

What are the top priorities of Internet of Things?

What a bitch

To: Stan, CEO

From: Juliette.Caesar-Sales

CC: Gloria Ramsbottom-HR; Comrade Carl Marks-R&D

My dear Stanley, 

My life coach has taught me that absolutely everything should be transparent! After a few days in the company, I want to share my insights about the firm in a spirit of openness. 

I am of the impression that you provide stellar leadership to our team, and without you, we would be up shit's creek.

After having examined the product suite, I am having trouble understanding the motives-behaviour  of a certain Comrade Carl Marks, who heads the Internet of Things/Big Data Division. 

Perfecting Ukrainian grammar tops  his priority list-and he speaks with a heavy Russian accent although he is American. These symptoms worry me, so to speak. However, he does appear rather dashing in his picture which I saw at the entrance to the  Big Data department. 

BTW, people in Internet of Things should speak some English.

Your HR gal Gloria is very tactical. She seems obsessed with sending text messages, even as we were having lunch. Her downsizing diva (Ms Axe-what a name)) dresses very seductively.

I am at a loss to why her Diversity Manager (Hugh White) is both white and heterosexual. Doesn`t this miss the point....so to speak. 

Gloria's French accent is appalling....very rural.

I look forward to upgrading our product infrastructure so as to enable us to beat Sales expectations.

Yours forever,

Caesar, Juliette

Head of Sales

Dashing and bizarre

The HR piece

Here's your pet, Juliette

I resigned once! 

Juliette Caesar, the former VP of Sales, and CEO Stan had spent most of the day in a meeting to "set up expectations" about how to "move forward" in Sales. 

Juliette  focused on product quality issues while Stan tried to push "quality growing pains" aside. 

For lunch, Stan's personal chef, K Ray Beauregard-Goldstein (who has mixed ethnicity), prepared the regular cost effective lasagna for Stan while Juliette asked for a Caesar salad, with some grilled chicken.  At 1400 (2pm) Stan texted me to join them for dessert. I love French vanilla ice cream, which was not available malheuresement, which means unfortunately.

As I sat with Stan and Juliette, I saw that Stan was smitten by her (just like he was with me, when I joined the firm as his HR business partner.)  

Stan could not take his weasel-like nasty eyes off her legs. This is natural, as it were. (In the "leg department", you take second place to no one Gloria... my gym teacher used to say)

As Stan spoke to me as he sent a series of angry text message to Wifey. "Gloria, Juliette wants to hire 5 engineers for her Sales team as well as a fully dedicated HR business partner, who can report to you "dotted line".

With ultimate cool, and with malice towards none, I resigned. This was such big data that Stan's jaw dropped. He even stopped texting Wifey.

Juliette Caesar smiled at me and said, "Oh Gloria, Stan has told me such great things about you. The HR "piece" is not critical as long as I get a proper level of support from your team".

Stan said, "I am sure you two ladies will be the best of friends". 

As I left the room, Stan started asking Juliette about "the use of cloud and big data to support the sales effort, and mitigate product quality issues."

Juliette lasted 6 months. I am still around. Mais oui!

Ms Juliette Caesar hired as Sales VP

Not a French name

Ms Juliette Caesar was hired as VP Sales. Her top priority will be to capture 30% more market share a year, until she understands that VP R&D Comrade Carl Mark's products do not function well. At which time, Ms Caesar will battle Comrade Carl and devalue his sordid reputation by 30% a month.

This appointment  was announced today by our CEO Stan, who sent an email to "all", cosigning me without my previous knowledge. I was almost involved in the selection process, as it were.

However as Stan's business partner, I swallowed my pride to some extent, in line with my core value of self preservation.

Ms Caesar replaces our former head of Sales, who died after a 5 month stay in our firm. Most of the time, he was locked in the toilet and his cell phone battery had died.

Ms Caesar will report directly into Stan, and she and I will have a working relationship. No jealousy will be involved. 

Ms Caesar had a PhD in Big Data, and an MBA in Marketing. Ms Caesar has sold toasted ice in Saudi Arabia, a textbook on secular liberalism all over the middle east, and worked in the Defence Industry, selling weapons to 3rd world states, who paid their debt in coal.

Hugh White, the white heterosexual boy who heads Diversity, hinted to me that Ms Caesar is a divorcee, straight and has had some cosmetic surgery. Hugh defines this big data as "discrete" yet public knowledge. 

Comrade Carl Marks, VP R&D, sent his warm wishes to Ms Caesar in a text message. Comrade Carl is in the Ukraine, learning some Ukrainian grammar.

Let us bow our heads and pray for Ms Caesar. For those secular folks who read this blog, please defer and pray anyway.

3 ways to influence key decisions

Stan never makes some decisions without me

Last night, I spoke at a leading community college; I addressed the "Becoming a Senior Secretary 101" course on the topic:  How can HR influence major  organizational decisions.

I closed my Blackberry Passport for most of the lecture, although I have a legal issue on my mind. 

Here are the main points of my lecture:

Far too often, psychopathic CEO's, CFOs with tunnel vision or technical goons try to make key decisions without input from the people perspective. 

As HR manager, People is your middle name, even though you are also a business partner! So factoring people into the equation is HR's job.

HR needs to insert itself gently into the decision making loop. And when the "gentle" part does not work, brute force and use of carpet bombing is necessary.

My 3 agile guidelines to aspiring HR managers are-

1-15-20 text messages per key decision need to be sent to all members of the senior management team, daily.

2-use of veiled threats (such as you may not get a new smartphone soon) are not useless.

3-creation of perceived HR value is generated by the use of the slogans like "HR business partner", 'from a business perspective", or "bottom line, we need to ensure engagement of the human capital, which is as important as big data and cloud computing".

What language did your ancestors speak?

A fair question

Most readers of this blog know that I have two brothers, Frank and Ernest, who work for Blackberry.

To be frank and earnest, I do not understand why we received a lawyer's letter, initiated by  a lady candidate whom we turned down for a job in our Service Department.

She claimed she was asked 4 unfair questions.

   1) What language did your ancestors speak?

   2) Do you agree that pregnancy interferes with high performance and achieving stretch goals?

   3) If you are married, what food do you cook your husband for supper?

   4) Are the ladies of HR true business partners?

I called our corporate lawyer (who works on a razor thin retainer) and told him that the candidate was probably inventing the entire story. The lawyer played me a tape, and indeed, I heard my own shrill voice doing the interview.

When I think back, this interview took place after a huge argument I had with Chief Nerd Comrade Carl Marks, who took me out for lunch (Au Beau Pain) to reconcile but "talks broke down".

The day of the interview, Comrade Carl brought out the worst in me, claiming that holacracy will eliminate HR. 

Nevertheless, I see no problem with the interview questions that I asked. (Dad always told me that I am very stubborn). 

To get to the top of the HR ladder, my beauty was not enough. I needed to be stubborn, understand big data, develop holacracy to the next level, and embrace cloud computing. Mais oui!

Leadership does always mean consistency.

My team is so dysfunctional

In a rare meeting of great minds this morning, R&D chief Comrade Carl Marks, Hugh White (the white heterosexual boy who heads Diversity) and I met. 

The mindless Cynthia Axe (Early Bird Retirement) is in Waterloo on "personal business" and thus did not attend. 

It appears that CEO Stan has issued some contradictory directions. Luckily for each us, we recorded Stan's orders on our smartphones. Comrade Carl uses an I-phone 6, Hugh White uses an old, decrepit Nokia, and I am a beta user of the nifty Blackberry Passport. (Beta is not a French word.)

Comrade Carl, Hugh White and I each listened to what Stan had said; this is big data, and suitable to be stored on a cloud.

Stan told Comrade Carl to "hire as many people are you need from any shit hole in the world to stabilize the god damned product".

Stan told Hugh White to "thin out the number of people with poor English from Comrade Carl's dismal team".

Stan told me to ensure that "headcount goes down by 10% a quarter from Comrade Carl's team, and ensure that Carl is taking his medication, so that he does not think he is Joseph Stalin".

At 11 am, Stan met with the three of us. We did not actually barge into his room. Stan was taking a leak when we entered his room and he appeared shocked to see us all sitting around his mahogany table when he returned.

Hugh White commented that Stan pisses twice an hour. Hugh believes this is a disability. Hugh is observant but irrelevant, as it were.

When Stan listened to the recordings of himself, he slammed his fist on the table and thrusting his finger toward us bellowing: 'strive for coherence, or you will all get the Axe".

Stan may have been referring to Cynthia Axe, who heads our Early Bird Retirement scheme.

A meeting of minds

Knock the fear of God into the engineers' thick skulls

HR needs to knock some sense into their stupid heads

I got a text from CEO Stan whilst I reading a book on spying, even though HR should almost never spy on people.

Stan's text informed me that some of our engineers have been speaking directly with clients, misinforming them that our product is a hopeless "piece of crap".

My heavens! I once told my Dad, Pierre Elliot, that the summer day camp he sent me to was a "piece of crap", and he washed out my mouth with soap. That was in the days before women were free.

I texted Stan in return that these "developments" can be explained by R&D Chief Comrade Carl Marks's erratic personality and lack of leadership, augmented (nice word) by Comrade Carl's tendency to drink Vodka with his anti-depressants.

Stan asked for help (to tow the nerds into line) from his HR business partner (c'est moi);  I signaled my agreement, in line with my core values of obedience. C'est moi is French.

Stan  asked me by the way if the engineers could build tunnels  to escape from our company. I told Stan I would check on that, although I am not sure how this is done. Yet.

Stan asked me if I can "knock the fear of God into the engineers' thick skulls", and I told Stan that this falls into HR's key competencies.

Btw, there is no reason whatsoever that employees should bad mouth our company to our clients. 

I almost never bite the hand that feeds me, as it were.

Rethinking motivation

Balanced at last

R&D chief Comrade Carl Marks returned to work today after a two week vacation in Crimea. That at least is where he claims he was; I think he was at home, having had his medications adjusted.... after feigning a Russian accent led his doctor to believe he was having a breakdown.

Comrade Carl apparently still pays no heed to the fact that our new product release has been uninstalled by key customers, and remains only partially functional for those clients who have not gone the "uninstall route". Carl believes that HR "needs to hire a service manager who can solve the so-called product issues with big data enabled by a cloud."

My Dad Pierre Eliot, used to say "there is only so much drugs can do". Dad was referring to my mother Constance who constantly popped Valium for one reason or another.

Comrade Carl came into my office in the morning hours and said that he has "rethought the motivation issue". Comrade Carl says that HR needs to put together a motivation program based on mild religious beliefs Erdogan style,  a sense of absolute truth a la Netanyahu, and "an Obama-like conviction" of "don't f--k with us".

Carl then added, "Wrap this all up in a Putin delivery mechanism, and you have the perfect motivation and engagement plan, Glo".

To my astonishment, after Carl used the term "Putin Deliver Mechanism", he started once again to drift into a Russian accent. After 2 hours of rambling, Carl blurted out- ``Yobt tvoyu mat, I`ve given up on HR.``

Who is Ed Wan

On flexibility and survival

Gym class

CEO Stan's indefatigable wife, Wifey, read a management article which said that only the flexible survive.

In my opinion as an HR thought leader, this is trite and meaningless whilst at the same time, demanding of my attention.

Wifey sent me the article along with a text, ccing her husband, "Gloria, is HR aligned with flexibility? RSVP ASAP! Wifey".

RSVP ASAP means get back to me as soon as possible, with the rsvp part being French. Mais oui!

I texted the following message to the white heterosexual boy, Hugh White (Diversity) and a certain Ms. Cynthia Axe (Early Bird Retirement and Morale) 

"In what ways are you flexible? RSVP ASAP OYAD. Gloria."

That means get back to me as soon as possible or you are dead.

White texted me that he is tending to the needs of his wife, Comrade Ludmilla White, who just gave birth to their 4th White child in as many years. Axe texted me: "Gloria, I am crushed by conflicting priorities. This afternoon I am posing for a Big Data baby pinup. I will get back to you tomorrow."

I texted Wifey that I will answer her tomorrow. Wifey texted me that I am not "flexible enough". 

In gym class, I used to be able to bring my heal behind my ear! My Dad told me: "You are like an elastic band, for Christs sake". 

Big Data Baby

A fierce level of engagement

I just love my new Honda Insight; I can get  28 miles to a gallon!  However, I cannot even find my favourite radio station! Tabernac!

The dashboard is so complex that the car comes with a 400 page manual; I have never read anything longer than a text since my days at the Secretary Academy in Montreal. 

(The word manual is not Spanish). 

I was sitting at a traffic light when a  warning light lit up on my car dashboard. In great duress, I was looking up the meaning of warning light, when Stan texted me: "Gloria, we need to embed our products' liabilities in the internet of things. I need you to generate a fierce level of engagement NOW".

Sometimes, I want to speak "truth to power" and tell Stan to shove his slogans, but immediately I remembered that I am his HR business partner. I think the Honda dashboard had unduly distracted me .

So, starting at 3 pm tomorrow, HR will launch 3 day engagement event for all Internet of things engineering staff, in alignment Comrade Carl Marks, VP Engineering, whatever the word "alignment" means. 

Comrade Carl is at home while his medication is adjusted to cure him of his feigned Russian accent.

During the 3 day engagement event, heterosexual Hugh White (the white boy who runs Diversity) will ensure that enough food is brought in to feed an army. 

My Dad told me that people in the army get as much food as they need in reward for their service. Dad was in the RCAF. That means Royal Canadian Airforce, for my American followers. My Dad said that feeding a person well causes engagement.

During the event, Cynthia Axe will bar the exit doors, and mobile phones will be confiscated to ensure the fiercest level of engagement. Folks will work 3 days  straight until the product bugs disappear.

Engagement will be measured by Ms Axe.

Hugh White will put cheese on the cheeseburgers,and dish out tribal food as per localized demand of our engineers, few of whom speak English well.

My dashboard

Follow me @GRamsbottom

Sales and Engineering want separate cafeterias

The outbreak of hostilities between Sales and Engineering is startling and non wow. 

Comrade Carl Marks and his crew of engineers has asked HR for a separate cafeteria, which will be closed off from Sales and HR.

I asked the White Boy who heads Diversity, heterosexual Hugh White, to highlight the major differences between Engineering and other population. I need big data to cover my ass when I make decisions of a strategic nature.

Hugh White, always so pedantic, pointed out that Sales and HR speak better English, talk politely, and eat normal, non-spicy food. 

Engineering staff on the other hand eat tribal food, speak Turkish, Hebrew, 30000 Indian languages, Russian, Cantonese and Chinese. Hugh White noticed that Engineering staff often talk all at the same time.

Yet another difference is that Engineering feels a limited  sense urgency; Sales folks lie a lot, even about their sex lives. HR tends to be responsive, matter of fact and business focused.

Hugh White's wife, Comrade Ludmilla who is Russian born, suggested that our cafeteria be separated into two parts, and within a month, one cafeteria can then conquer the other and "impose its will". Hugh tends to listen to Ludmilla as of late.

I vetoed the idea of 2 cafeterias; I was highly influenced by North Korean style decision making, Gangnam style.