$30 a month (USD) for a recruiter

Plum's older sister

How did it come to pass that I hired Cynthia Axe's sister, Plum Axe, as our chief of recruitment, on a 3 month contract for a paltry sum of thirty dollar? (Isn't that a nice word?)

It all started in our management meeting today when our CEO Stan asked us if our leadership is "regenerative"?

Stan's motive for asking this agile question was, as always, to please his cerebral wife Wifey who went to a lecture on Regenerative Leadership and had had what she called a "mental orgasm" when she heard the details.

Comrade Carl Marks said, "regenerative leadership is just another slogan, kibinimat. Just another ploy by the consulting industry, much like zenga zenga. Can you imagine what would have happened if Russia had fought the Germans in Stalingrad using regenerative leadership?" 

Comrade Carl stopped speaking without warning. He took out his new LG 3 smartphone after his diatribe and began reading an article about Internet of Things in his Russian newspaper on line.

After the management meeting, I convened a meeting of my HR team, ie, with Hugh White (the white heterosexual who runs Diversity) and Ms Axe, Head of our Early Bird Retirement Program. I presented to the team the challenges of Regenerative HR. 

The very astute Miss Axe said, "Gloria, all we do is fire people. How can we be degenerative, sorry, regenerative? Why not hire my sister, Plum Axe, for 3 months this summer to do some recruitment? That should change our image"!

Hugh White said nothing; he was dozing off in the meeting. He and his wife Ludmilla have had a week long misunderstanding, not about big data to be sure.

Plum Axe starts to work in June, and she will  pay us $30 dollars USA a month, "learning fees" during her 3 month stint. I sent her a link with my recruitment guidelines on how to review a resume, agile or not, in 6 seconds.

Fast asleep during crucial meeting

  

Leadership, zenga zenga and the blockchain

Zenga zenga-kibinimat

When I studied HR at the Secretary's Academy in Montreal, I also took a 2 minute online course about change management. So I was almost fully prepared for what happened last week.

Our chief nerd Comrade Carl Marks claimed that leadership was all about leading slowly from behind.  
However one day later, turning on a dime,  Comrade Carl Marks announced that he would quickly debug all our software within a week, hands on, "zenga zenga".

The change occurred when CEO Stan got a call from a Danish  client, who claimed that Comrade Carl's latest software release caused a 14 hour power outage all over Copenhagen. Carl's software release had 4,087,675 bugs, and the client demanded immediate action.  

Stan told Comrade Carl to "fix the god damn bugs or I shall deport you to Albania or South Africa, where YOU will live in darkness, you idiot. Now get the f—k out of my office and fix the bugs".

Immediately Comrade Carl urgently convened all his nerds and geeks (20% of whom speak English) for a "working lunch", to launch the Zenga Zenga Quality Software Campaign, or the ZZQSC.

Speaking with accent that vacillated between Russian and Egyptian, Comrade Carl started off introducing a musical video geared at increasing engagement, zenga zenga.  (I loved the music, in line with my core value of loving music).

After the engagement video, Comrade Carl gave what he called his zenga zenga pep talk in Russian-accented English, sprinkling Arabic words liberally throughout. 
The agitated nerds stopped texting and listened carefully, especially when the Comrade bellowed, "Pizdetz -eradicate all priority bugs, line by line, end to end, and zenga zenga".

Hugh White from Diversity told me that  Comrade was inspired by a famous speech in which a great (yet dead) leader vowed to hunt down rabble rousers "inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway ( زنقة زنقة ), or zenga zenga.

After his speech, Comrade Carl came into my room holding a book on blockchains, smoking a joint and said- "Christ, Gloria, I should get the Academy Award for that. By the way, HR is useless but you are the greatest slogan master ever. Help me with this zenga zenga campaign. Stan has a hormonal disorder, kibinimat".

I promised Comrade Carl that bots,  big data and AI  (our banner slogans) will be replaced with zenga zenga within 48 hours. This is in line with my core value of slogan replacement. 

I wonder what that blockchain book is all about!

Leading from behind

Leading from behind

CEO Stan asked all of us to "describe your leadership style" in our leadership team meeting. Stan was inspired by Wifey having read a new leadership magazine article and having been nagged all night by his brainy wife.

The first to speak up was Comrade Carl Marks, our chief nerd and "agile system architect" as he now calls himself. 

Comrade Carl has the tendency to speak for a long time, vacillating from an American to a Russian accent and then back, sprinkling his speech with references to internet of things and Russian swear words like kibinimat. 
After a few minutes of Carl's rambling, Stan started snoring and I began texting my sister.

However, I did pick up the essence of what Carl said.

• I see no problem that one software release has 45 different releases  for various clients. After all, the world is agile.
• Documentation does not need to be in English, especially since no one except HR and Sales speaks English. What's the problem with documentation in Hungarian, Danish, Turkish or Hebrew? Kibinimat, this is a global world.
• My style is leading from behind. My clients know where they want me to go. My nerds listen to client murmuring and they write code. I am a system architect, and I lead from behind. This is the beauty of my style.
• Zenga zenga is only for the hardware gang.

When Stan heard "leading from behind", he woke up and bellowed at Comrade Carl, "Jesus Comrade Carl, you sound like you are driving US foreign policy in the Mid East". 

Then Stan said to me, "Gloria, get Comrade Carl a new coach. Pronto." 

When I asked Hugh White (the straight white boy from Diversity) what he thought of leading from behind, he told me, "leave me out of this, Gloria"

Hugh was evasive

The death of organizational surveys-long live on line feedback.

Small data and bad news

CEO Stan texted me yesterday:

"Gloria what is the value of our upcoming organizational survey? Far too often, the results of these surveys purvey bad news about old fashioned

parameters like job satisfaction or trust. Stan"

I fired our survey vendor this morning, via WhatsApp, backing it up with a brief email. Then I put on my thinking cap and reinvented myself, from a survey point of view. Here is why and how I replace our organizational survey.

Organizational surveys "administered" by old fashioned, dinosaur-like OD consultants indeed make no sense. (My late Dad Pierre Elliot told me that in some cases, fear is more important than trust. He said that after he caught me misbehaving, as it were.)

The more nerdish HR becomes, the more sustainable value we will provide. Isn't that a great sentence? In the spirit of the nerdish HR business partner, our HR department will provide (under my auspices) an agile online feedback dashboard for all nerds, management and G&A. The dashboard, based on big data, will be updated every 3 seconds to provide positive news and feedback on 3 key 

mission-critical performance parameters.

1-Willingness to sacrifice our well-being in the short term to achieve work work work life balance

2-Willingness to use the slogan of the month daily, or twice daily (this month it is #engagement-via-synergy)

3-Respect for HR as a business partner.

The dashboard will illustrate only good news and big data.

Bad news will be conveyed to the dashboard of Ms. Cynthia Axe, who will take corrective action when the dashboard shows non wow results.

Ms. Axe heads our Early Bird Retirement Plan, which is semi voluntary.

The Head of Diversity, a certain Hugh White, the heterosexual lad whose skin has a white hue, will ensure that the dashboard has a Ukrainian and Russian interface for the use of our nerds from Malta, Poland, Denmark, Hungry (?), 

the FSU and Asia.

Under my auspices

Risk Management Model for HR

Comrade Carl and risk mitigation

In our management meeting, Comrade Carl Marks, our chief nerd, presented the 3 major risks he is facing as well as his risk mitigation plan.

    Risk One-Our clients will remain unsophisticated and not appreciate our software.

    Risk Two-Due to lack of Chinese, Russian and Hindi language skills, our  sales team may not comprehend the product specs.

    Risk Three-Our nerds may write faulty software as they text their families, complaining that their passports have been confiscated by HR to ensure engagement.

Comrade Carl, after presenting these risks, said,"I also want to present the major risks facing HR. 
First, I plan to set up a union, kibinimat. The food is crap and our beloved nerds do not like travelling to clients by bus and sleeping 3 in a room. 

Another risk is that the IT and Legal functions have made HR into an empty shell. Youb tvoui mat, Gloria, what value does HR really provide? All this talk about data-driven, agile and business partnership is nonsense. HR is in bed with the oppressors".

Comrade Carl was staring at CEO Stan, who was texting his wife, who had just read a new article on risk mitigation.

When Carl finished his diatribe, CEO Stan stopped texting and said, "Carl and Gloria, text me your risk mitigation plan before you head home today. Make your that your risks don't hit the bottom line, or I"ll ship you to Russia Comrade Carl, and Gloria can return to the cold North."

Religious holidays should not impact software delivery deadlines

Hugh White-intimidated

The hue of   Hugh White's skin (Head of Diversity) was whiter than ever when he left our CEO's office today. To quote White, "I prefer the bullying any day of my wife, Comrade Ludmilla White (nee Khrushchev), to the bullying of your poisonous boss, Ma'am". 

I may not have mentioned before that Hugh calls me Ma'am. Hugh is from Utah.

It appears that the naive Hugh updated CEO Stan about the various religious holidays negatively impacting our scheduled software deliveries. Instead of obfuscating issues with a few slogans, Hugh spoke truth to power. Armed with excessive details about North Korea's Communication Day (8/4) and Public Health Day  (5/4), as well as the Easter (universal) and Passover (Jewish) holidays, Hugh told Stan that next week is a "lost work week. But at least we are diversity compliant".

CEO Stan flew into a rage pretty which reminded me of the You Tube about  how angry Hitler became when Twitter went down. 

Stan threw Hugh out of his office, and called me to ask me if I like my company car (a Honda Insight) and my seat at the leadership table. Heavens, what a question. Is the Pope Catholic? Do the Faroe Islands belong to Denmark?  I replied in the affirmative.

Stan told me to "thin out the number religious holidays NOW, or your goose is cooked, Ramsbottom. This is not a temple, it's a system house that delivers quality software".

I walked back to my room pondering what Stan had requested. I passed by Comrade Carl Marks (our chief nerd) who was ranting and raving that "the domination of the west is over due to the spineless Americans. We should move our HQ to Tehran. Gloria, you will  need to cover your shapely legs up, because in Tehran women cover themselves and shut up".

On days like this, I wish big data had all the answers; I also wish Hugh was less "transparent" and more agile, and Carl was more normal.

Next year, in Tehran