b brief

Keep it brief

After our 4 hour management weekly, Stan texted me to come to his room.

When I arrived, he was sweating like a pig and shaking like a leaf. "Gloria, our senior executives need to keep things brief. These goddamned filibusters need to end. Brevity is a people issue, Rambottom", fix it."

Stan was reacting to an "event" from the management meeting.

Comrade Carl Marks gave a 2 hour presentation about the "opportunities of internet-of-things", as a platform to bury our product's shortcomings. 

Here is one illustrative comment Comrade Carl made: "as we see convergence between shifting customer expectations into a coherent market-driven need, the crystallization of our feature set into a coherent solution must be both stychic and sophisticated, and an integral part of the internet of things". 

Then Carl spoke for another  90 minutes ending his ppt with "what is the true value of HR?"

I also may have contributed for Stan's "push for brevity". Hugh White (the white heterosexual who runs Diversity) hired a lad named Lek who speaks "limited" English, to drive ERP HR implementation. 

Lek is Thai and studied IT/HRIS in Japan, so his accent is "unique".  I asked Lek to present at the senior management meeting. Lek detailed the 40,000,932 outstanding issues in ERP HR implementation. Let's agree that Lek was "less than coherent" in a positive way. 

I made the point-ERP issues do not belong in the senior management meeting. When Lek finished, Stan (who was white as a sheet) asked to "shift down the priority of ERP HR; this does not need to come the senior management team, for Christ sake".

The brevity guidelines I am developing will appear in the next post. Mais oui!

Lek gave us the details.

Succession Planning--My leadership "pipeline"

An I am in hot water?

There have been better days than today. The implementation of ERP (HR module) has been nearly wow. At present, there are 6,767,523,875 outstanding issues, most of them have been "rien de tout", which is a French term.

We have 2 "semi minor" problems.

• the re-deployment of pay day
• there is still a "missing" component, ie, the names of all our employees, who were all fired when "someone" in HR pressed "delete" instead of "enter", which can happen to anyone.

I keep wondering if my career is near an end.  I was about to head home when I received a text this evening asking me "to detail organizational succession plans and leadership pipeline for all of our firm, including HR."

My answer:

My dear Stan,

You appear to be irreplaceable. No one can give the type of leadership that you provide. There is almost no one who cannot replace R&D Chief Comrade Carl Marks. Few of Comrade Carl's potential replacements can speak English.

As far as HR is concerned, my plan is to promote both Ms Cynthia Axe (Early Bird Retirement) and that heterosexual white boy Hugh White (who runs Diversity)  to be my deputies.

Ms Axe needs to work on her popularity, intelligence and moral fibre. Hugh White needs to develop his skills with more normative people, and stop looking into people's sex life. 

Once Axe and White show progress, a major obstacle will have been removed for a leadership pipeline in HR. By 2032, I will have a replacement.

As far as succession for the Head of Sales in concerned, our present Head of Sales is hiding in the Faroe Islands, so I do not have an accurate assessment who can replace him. (His Blackberry Passport  battery has totally drained).

A votre service, (that's French)

Gloria Ramsbottom-Lemieux

PS Please do not pronounce Lemieux as LE-MYUUU. Listen to the file I sent you on Skype for the correct pronunciation.

A working lunch that resolved nothing

After Emerging Technologies Chief Nerd Comrade Carl Marks lashed out at HR in our senior leadership team yesterday, I invited Carl to "break bread" with me at Au Beau Pain.  That is a restaurant with a French name, if you did not notice. 

Comrade Carl, always the contrarian, said "Glo, let's go to a Russian restaurant; you'll love it". He feigned a Russian accent, as he does quite often!

 Did I ever tell you all that Comrade Carl Marks is an American, for heaven sake? He was born in  the USA, and his family sent him to Russia to study Internet of Things and Big Data. 

His parents were socialists! Now, I am a Canadian so that is not so shocking. As a matter of fact, my father Pierre Elliot Ramsbottom, used to tell me "Glo, the commies are not wrong about everything".

Personally, politics do not interest me, but since I am an HR manager, organizational politics interests me almost as much as people!

At lunch, Carl talked for two hours, rambling endlessly about CEO Stan's erratic nature, the oppression of the working class, the beauty of Cynthia Axe's cleavage, and his negative and non-wow view of HR. Comrade Carl used the term "non value adding free lunchers" twice.

Comrade Carl drank 3 glasses of vodka and two beers. I did not put in a word, almost. 

To end the conversation, Comrade Carl told me, "you are a great gal, Ramsbottom, and you have great stems. Too bad you're not "aligned" with the working class; you need to be a socialist, Gloria; after all, you are a Canadian". Then he mumbled a few words as he looked at the bill. "Yop tvoyu mat, I drank too much!" 

I wish I knew what that explicative means!

You can follow me @GRamsbottom

PhD in Law and IT

Our management meeting on Friday night was a political food fight; I can describe it as "almost non wow". 

Who needs HR?

Comrade Carl Marks, R&D Chief raised an issue which was not on the agenda. In rambling and non-focused way, Comrade Carl derailed the management onto a side issue: let's decide what we want from HR!

Comrade Carl spoke for an hour. During his rambling talk, Stan was texting and chatting by Whats-app, Line, BBM and Google Talk. Chairman Ed was more attentive to Comrade Carl, yet appeared to nod off to sleep at times. The Head of Sales was hiding in the toilet and other team members were doing emails and texts on their Blackberry Privs.

Comrade Carl said that IT and Legal will "dismember" HR in a few years and then, "all we will need are a few secretaries to press "enter".

Comrade Carl said that ERP HR should be "migrated" to IT immediately, whilst HR legal issues should be outsourced to a cost effective vendor in the Canary Islands.

Comrade Carl then suggested that managers should hire and fire as per budget with no HR involvement.

Finally Carl added: when all this happens, who the f--k needs HR yob tvouy mat.  Carl often uses this explicative, and no one understands him except a few Russians. (We have 7800 Russian engineers in our company)

CEO Stan, who was supposed to have focused the meeting on budget restraint, summed it up saying: "Glo, what do you have to say here. Comrade Carl has quite a different "take" on HR than you do. Please address his issues next week."

My political strategy is clear. This week, I will do a morale survey by text and bombard our management team with bigdata about how Comrade Carl's team in falling apart.

This week, I will do a morale survey in R&D


You can follow me @GRamsbottom

I have 30,000 unread texts on my Blackberry Priv

Non wow

Following the non non non wowish "roll out" of the ERP HR module, and the failure of my HR team to "rise to the occasion" and manage this "issue" on their own, I now have 30,000 unread texts on my Blackberry Priv. I will need 2 hours to answer all of them.

I will share a few of these texts, just to prove how stupid people can be. 

(My Dad, Pierre Elliot Ramsbottom, tried never to deal with change people for this very reason. Dad sold insurance. I used to ask him what he did for a living, and he said, "Glo baby, I have a license to steal".)

Look at these 5 stupid and distracting texts which catch my skilled and devious eye.

1) From Cynthia Axe (downsizing) to Comrade Carl Marks (R&D):-

Is Georges one person or two?

2) From Cynthia to me.

Do Scots speak American English or British English?

3) From Comrade Carl Mark to me.

Why are my people not getting paid, you incompetent twirp? Is this due to your failure with ERP, girl?

4) From Hugh White (Diversity) to me.

When I enter "Ukraine", entry is denied and I get a Russian flag. And when I enter Sweden, I get a map of the Gaza Strip.

5) From Comrade Carl Marks (R&D) to CEO Stan and Chairman Ed

That Canadian farm girl Gloria is way over her head with ERP HR. Now you see that she is an elevated secretary at best, who happens to know a few words in French, which is no big f---ing deal. Why not replace her with a pro?

Carl

Kol kelb biji yomo

New variant causes CEO to panic about coughing at work

Panic 

The emotional stress due to pressure of the banks, Mister Herr Krebb's  non wow revenue projection along with the brand new South African variant of the so-called  corona-virus has led to a bout of coughing in our organization.

In today's management meeting, CEO Stan texted me that Comrade Carl Marks' smokers' cough as well as  my clearing of my throat are "appalling". I understood the clue. Stan is a visionary leader who has an idealized version on how to cough.

However, I took the comment seriously, in line with my core value of maintaining my job in tough times. The white heterosexual whom I hired to run Diversity, Hugh White, was instructed to prepare a white paper on coughing in the work place as well as some concrete recommendations.

For a start, Hugh White read the book by Kaufman and Tousser "Coughing at Work". White also did some research about coughing in our firm. I instructed young white Hugh to distinguish between coughing due to post nasal drip, and pure coughing. Hugh, as always, was semi-obedient.

Having finished his white paper, White asked for a meeting with me to discuss the findings, but I asked him to first text me the his findings.

From reading White's detailed text of 300 words:

• I discovered that straight and gay, white and non-white, are equally impacted by the present coughing bug. 
• One senior lady has a minor cough due to post nasal drip.
• Mr Herr Krebbs coughs in an orderly fashion.
• The French nerds cough sounds intellectual, the British cough "properly", the Americans think they cough the right way while the Hebrews complain the most about coughing. The Australian cough sounds remote whilst the Japanese all cough together. The Danes enjoy coughing and the Spaniards don't cough during their prolonged afternoon nap.

I found Hugh White's report to be totally trite and nonsense; I was about to call White to a meeting when I heard that White had gone home, ill. He was suffering from anxiety.

I need to cut this post short because Chairman Ed just texted me that his son-in-law, Samuel Snake, is about to do an internship in HRIS; the young Mr Snake wants to work on our ERP HR implementation, which is going non non wow.

תפסיקו להשתעל

Follow me @GRamsbottom

Some non-wow "non minor" issues with ERP HR implementation

Implementation of ERP HR is worse than a migraine

To: Gloria, SVP HR

From: Hugh White, Diversity

Gloria,

How do I do data entry for Thiri, our employee with one name? 

If we don't find a way, we cannot pay him/her. YOU will find yourself in court. As a Canadian, you can be deported.

Hugh

.....

To: Gloria, SVP HR

From: CEO Stan

CC: Chairman Ed

Gloria,

Speed up ERP HR implementation. Why are you dragging your feet, young lady? Just get it done.

Stan

.....

To: Carl Marks, VP R&D

From: Cynthia Axe, Early Bird Retirement

CC: Gloria Ramsbottom, EVP HR

CC: CEO Stan

Comrade Carl,

1)Does Anatoli spell his name with an I or a Y.

2) Is Jie a male or a female? Is this name with or without an E. I can see a Ji and Jie. Same person?

3) Is Scotland in Europe?

4) Is Yves a male? 

5) How do I enter the accents on some of the European names?

6) Is Claude a female?

7) How do I enter Ania from Warsaw into the data base; her last name has 48 letters? (You told me once that Warsaw is in Europe)

8) Maria from Spain has 8 last names. Which one do i use? She demands we use all names, and she is supported by that weirdo Hugh White from Diversity, (who appears to have the hots for Chairman Ed's new secretary.)

C Axe

.....

To: Gloria, EVP HR

From: Cynthia Axe, Early Bird Retirement

Gloria,

I have so many "fields" to fill out that I can only fire one person a day. Yesterday, I thought I had fired two people, but when I pressed "enter", they were promoted to VP, and each got a new Blackberry Q 30.

C Axe

.....

To: Gloria, EVP HR

From: Winston Wu (external)

CC: Stan, Chairman Ed, all directors
Ms Ramsbottom-Lemieux,

You are failing in ERP HR implementation. Do you want me to "lend you a helping hand"?

Dr. Winston Wu

ERP Coordinator

Wu & Sons

.....

To: Winston Wu

From: Gloria SVP HR

CC: all +directors

My Dear Winston Wu,

Thanks for your patience. A certain Ms Cynthia Axe and (heterosexual Diversity chief) Hugh White are a bit negligent. I will put them on corrective action.

All will be "even better" in 24 hours.

Gloria

Implementing ERP (HR Module); some "unexpecteds"

ERP was supposed to be simple. Mais non!

ERP project coordinator Winston Wu convened a meeting with me today to discuss the ERP HR module, and some challenges we are all encountering. 

I do not like when Wu uses the royal "We". 

I do not like Wu in general.

"Gloria, there are issues of process clarity which need to be 'cleared up" in order to implement the HR module. 

Let's take an example: If R&D Chief Comrade Carl Marks and Cynthia Axe (Early Bird Retirement) decide to fire an employee, who is a Chinese, gay, Jewish and an expat, who "signs off" on this? 

Is it Comrade Carl, Ms Axe, or Hugh White (the straight white boy who runs Diversity)?  Please clear this mess up for me."-said Wu with a smirk on his face.

As Wu spoke, I was texting CEO Stan on a business partnership issue, so I was not all that attentive.

I countered, "Winnie, this is a technical matter. The answer is, "it all depends. In the end, just get your staff to adapt the IT process to the flexible nature of our HR business partnership module. Winnie, HR folks are like brain surgeons, and we cannot be bounded by protocol". 

Follow me at @GRamsbottom

3 easy steps to ERP implementation-HR Module

Winston and I will work hand in hand-simple as pie!

Mais oui.

Chairman Ed Montpetit-Maplewood has pushed very hard to have ERP software introduced this year.  Ed explained: "I wanna know what the f--k is going on! I want a sky high mountain of big data."

CEO Stan, still struggling to use his Blackberry Passport, was less enthusiastic about introducing ERP. 

Chairman Ed insisted telling Stan to "choose which ever vendor you are comfortable with". 

Stan acquiesced; Winston Wu was hired as the implementation contractor.

Veteran readers may know that the venerable Mr Winston Wu was the Head of IT at our company, and Wu's relationship with HR manager Gloria Ramsbottom was stormy due to ownership issues of Big Data. 

Wu resigned 7 months ago due to a scuffle with EVP HR, c'est mois, and now, he is "back in town". Malheureusement-that's French.

In his ERP for HR presentation to my HR team, Wu described the HR ERP modules in a 90 minute presentation. Wu enjoyed "some" participant engagement. However,

1. I had an urgent issue to deal with so I was texting Stan's wife. 
2. Down-sizer Cynthia Axe has had a fallout on financial issues with her father (the Reverend Oliver Axe) and was "less than focused". 
3. Hugh White, from Diversity, was reading a book on his Blackberry called "Coughing at Work".

The right honourable Winston Wu promised "near seamless" integration of the HR software, providing that someone assumes ownership.

Wu asked me who will be the HR program manager for ERP and I asked what was entailed. 

When I heard the details, I gave the role to Hugh White, from Diversity, who turned it down and threatened to quit. White also started coughing nervously. 

Ms Axe was not emotionally available....so I told Wu that that HR will implement "self management" of the HR ERP process. 

Wu then texted  Chairman Ed who texted me and... I have decided to lead the HR ERP process. Mais oui! This will be an opportunity to exhibit my leadership skills.

I texted the right Honourable Winston Wu cc'ing Ed and Stan.

"Winnie-make it swift and  easy, SVP.  You be the man.  Gloria"

SVP is French for please. 

You can follow me @GRamsbottom

Weird job description

Nerds should manage recruitment

To: Stan, CEO; 

From: Comrade Carl Marks, Chief Nerd

Stan,

Recruitment is slow, overly administrative and unprofessional. + they have an attitude problem. We can't continue this way. I need Recruitment to "report into" me. Please fix this with Gloria.

Comrade Carl

                    .....                    .....                    .....

To: Gloria (HR)

From: Stan CEO

CC: Comrade Carl Marks

Gloria,

Fix it. Meet with Carl and end this fiasco.

Stan

                        .....                         .....                     .....

With Stan having set the context, Comrade Carl Marks, the chief nerd, and I met this morning to discuss recruitment issues.

Carl had some Russian music blasting from his I-phone 5.

I took my earphone out so I could be fully attuned to Comrade Carl's needs. Comrade Carl, it appeared, felt a need to stare at my legs as if he was in heat.

Carl rambled on in an unfocused semi associative manner about the job description. 

Carl explained that "on one hand we have rich feature suite and yet, we need a level of account-savvy system architects who can drive clients' expectations in the right direction whilst driving even more coherency in our feature set towards a robust product."

In Pearson High School (in Moose Jaw) and in the "Académie pour l'administration" (Administration Academy) in Montreal, I did not come in at the top of my class. Yet, my teachers always described me as an "street-smart alley cat". Nevertheless, I did not fully understand the requirements that Comrade Carl Marks was describing.

If my Dad were alive, he would tell me to say: "Carl, what the f--k are you talking about"? But I am in HR now, which is a very dignified role, so I cannot talk like that.

I put on my thinking cap and solved Carl's problem. Here is what I said:

" Carl, can you turn down the foreign music for a second? Merci. My dear Comrade Carl, I think you need a dedicated HR project manager for to recruit this position for you. I will take Hugh White off Diversity until you get what you want. You are my client. I want to please you, Comrade Carl. Hugh will manage your account in my name".

As I finished appeasing Carl, Moshe, Sanjay, Igor and Svetlana burst into the room. Igor and Svetlana were talking in Russian, Sanjay was reading the Joseph George Daily Newspaper, and Moshe was texting on 4 phones.

Carl said, "OK Gloria, whatever. Just don't micromanage him. You do not trust anyone, kibinimat. But let's give it try! Spasiba."

I took out my earphone

One year of Gloria

CEO Stan eating cost effective lasagna prepared by chef Beauregard-Goldstein

A certain Ms Cynthia Axe, early Bird Retirement, standing next to Hugh White

The lecher Comrade Carl Marks, R&D Chief

The right honourable Gloria Ramsbottom-Lemieux, EVP HR

Mais oui! That's me!

Gloria has been around for one year! Mais oui.

On year ago, Gloria was conceived whilst I was taking part in on-line OD discussion-list in which I felt participants were detached from reality; I  created Gloria to try to get folks to get real. 

I failed and Gloria was attacked as "pessimistic and unreal". I left that list on my own will, and took Gloria as well as my realism with me. 

In the meantime, Gloria has been expelled from some LinkedIn groups for "giving lip", and I have been accused of using Gloria to self promote (you gotta be crazy to believe that Gloria PROMOTES my OD consulting business).

A shocking aspect about Gloria's blog is how many people do not realize she is fictional. Gloria once looked for an OD vendor to solve product immaturity and cash flow issues in "a 15 minute contract", and  "she" received 12 serious OD proposals. When Gloria asked for a 90 second webinar on Japanese culture, she got 2 proposals.

In one year, Gloria has gone from 17 hits a day to 400 hits a day. The goal is 1000 daily hits by the end of 2014. Then, the book.

And thank you for following her. I hope Gloria makes your day as happy as she makes mine. Gloria is a work of frustration, admiration,  love and self pity!

AS

One tattoo visible; 2 more hidden

Mais oui!

My new coaching module: texting and driving seamlessly

Lost my quarterly  bonus-j'men calice

 I shall be moonlighting over the next few days- I will be doing end to end, specialized and speed coaching for HR managers in the following areas:-

1. Sycophant Enhancement for HR managers who are too dedicated to "people".
2. Creative  Downsizing for HR managers who need to fire people en masse (French) and maintain a wow wow wow work environment. (3 wows)
3. Texting whilst Driving for HR managers who want to improve their own work work work work life balance.
4. Firing by Text and via Skype for HR managers who want to enhance their use of technology to creative a high tech environs, which is also a French word.
5. Thought leadership in HR for those HR managers who want to promulgate my ideas. I learnt the P word in Senior Secretary Academy in Montreal.
6. Use of legs to get attention for those HR managers interested in Influence Peddling.

You can follow me on Twitter: @GRamsbottom

Head of HR and Head of Engineering have an "image exchange"

Comrade Carl: I have some positive feedback for HR manager Gloria Lemieux.

Comrade Carl Marks, the VP of R&D upon whom we all rely to ensure that 2019 is a wow year, has yet to "spec" our new wow product. To me, Carl appears impractical; he dithers, stalls, hems and haws.  Unlike HR, in R&D nothing seems to move forward, yet Comrade Carl is ever so positive about the future. 

Comrade Marks did however succeed in accomplishing one thing this last quarter: to impregnate Carla, the daughter of our CEO Stan, who is now living with Carl. (This fact is classified as big data.)

And that lecher, Comrade Carl Marks, does have the respect of Chairman of the Board Ed Maplewood-Montpetit due to a reason I am unable to ascertain. It may have to do that Carl and Ed's wife studied Engineering and Marxism in Moscow. (Carl was born in North Dakota).

The comrade does have a strong informal network, of which I am not a member because I do not drink, as I am a control freak.

To show you how power Carl's network is, I am sharing an email  that Carl sent me, in alignment with my core value of "feigned transparency".

Dear Gloria,

I sat at the bar with some of my staff (Igor, Igor, Igor, Igor, Moshe and Sanjay), Chairman Ed, a few blokes from Supply Chain, Stan's Chef K Ray Beauregard-Goldstein and Cynthia Axe, your lovely down-sizer, who joined us to keep abreast about what is really going on.

We were all in a jocund mood; do you know what that j  word means, girl?

After a few drinks, there was end to end agreement that HR is one of the "weaker links" in our company. The root cause of this weakness appears to be a lack of leadership on your part and excessive hero worship of Stan. This makes HR into a "mindless cheerleader".

Even Stan's daughter Carla tells me "Dad is not the man that sycophant Canadian girl Gloria thinks he is". 

So take this as well intentioned 360 degree feedback, and in the spirit of improving teamwork between us.

Yours,

Comrade Carl 

Customer Experience Advocates

All in a name

Mais oui!

A front page article in a well read weekend magazine ranked the service provided by our firm as "worse than an American airline". Now that is non wow.

CEO Stan texted the article to me on Whats-app, BBM, and Google talk, and demanded corrective action "by the time we open for business on Monday". (I am surprised that Stan did not text the article to Comrade Carl Marks, the chief nerd who "owns the product")

At the time I got Stan's text, I was having a foot massage and pedicure. Lucky for me, the (pink) polish had already dried, and I texted Stan that the "service" problem was "water under the (Jacques Cartier) bridge". 

Here is the text that I sent to all customer service agents, presently serving our half cooked and undocumented product.

1) All customer service agents are called from today "customer experience advocates".

2) Upon servicing a call, answer: Hi, I'm (your name) from Immature Products. I will be your customer experience advocate today. How can I help you? (Emphasize the word "to-day", so they will feel in safe hands).

3) All calls must be answered within 30 seconds and all calls must last no longer than 2 minutes. If the client has a thick accent, there is an extra 30 seconds for clarifications. (Russian and Thai accents get another 5 minutes per call.)

4) Down-sizer Ms Cynthia Axe will be spending 4 hours a day in the service department, as a matter of routine, supervising the  implementation of this new procedure, "whilst" recruiting for our Early Bird Retirement Plan. Fear not. Cynthia is there to help you, today.

5) Thank you, it has been a pleasure texting you today.

I then texted a separate message to our yet-to-be-hired Talent Manager ordering her to do training in motivation for all customer advocates via a brief webinar during lunch break.

Stan texted me "Gr8, Glo".

תודה לסלקום עבור ההשראה