Who am I? What am I hiding?

In a leading HR rag, I have spilled the beans about my past.

What makes me great

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.

A mid size portion of employee engagement, (well done)

                                                                            Downloaded to Axe (Cynthia)

CEO Stan was informed by our key client that our employees providing technical support "appear not to be engaged". Stan updated me by text; Stan views the lack of engagement as big data, (hugh f--king data, Gloria, were his exact words.)

Here is some background. Last month, as part of aligning our cost structure with 2019 growth, pizzas were eliminated for the technical support group, the location of their parking lot "aligned" with better physical fitness, and their "talent management" was reshaped to focus on auto-didactic methods.

I asked Stan whether or not he wanted HR to "engage" the employees in technical support. Stan replied: "I support a mid size portion of employee engagement, well done, Ms Gloria; there is no one better than you to engage staff in a cost-effective manner. I suggest some intrinsic motivation as well. Does HR have an intrinsic motivation package on hand? Make it happen, Gloria. And move quickly. The customer is all over me."

I left Stan's office determined to be creative. Strangely, I found this difficult. My Dad, Pierre Elliot Ramsbottom, used to tell me "Glo, mon petit chou, not everyone can be creative. You have the ambition of 5 people."

But then I remembered the engagement monkey.

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

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

Not of interest to our employees

Minor adjustments

This is a compensation-related text message sent to all managers today at 12.00 Boston/Ottawa time. However, there is no need to bring the details of this text to the attention of our employees, since the issues are minor and there is no need to distract anyone from achieving our wow stretch goals.

"As we all focus on achieving our stretch goals for Q1, please note:

1- The location of our new parking facilities have been adjusted to enable more axe-rcise.

2-Lunch menus have been adjusted to allow for all tribal tastes to be satisfied, and the new $2 a portion "Diversity Tax" is automatically deducted for all tribal meals, eaten or not. Bon apetit. (That's French)

3-Cynthia Axe announces a new Alumni Club for folks who have been downsized in her Early Bird Retirement Plan. 

The name of the Club is "Ancien élève: Jang Song-thaek" or The Uncle Jang Alumnus Club.

All employees and axed-employees to get a membership card at $4 a card, deducted from salary/pension fund.

Coaching Ms Cynthia Axe

Following the Q4 non wow results, revenues are being "adjusted" for 2017.  A certain Ms Cynthia Axe, who heads our Involuntary Early Bird Retirement plan, will have her white hands full, as we "right-size".

Hands full

In an attempt to blackmail me given her growing workload, Axe has recently complained of sore wrists, headaches and malaise. Malaise is a French word.

I  decided to preempt Ms Axe and reach out to her.

I gave Axe some coaching by text over the weekend and we solved 99% of the issues. (I am a certified coach, and I can use the letters CC after my name. Mais oui! CC is certified coach).

I shall give her a Blackberry Priv. Axe is American and it won't do her any harm to help my brothers Frank and Ernest, who work in Blackberry in Waterloo Canada. 

In line with her core value of blackmail, Ms Axe also wants to become a certified coach, so I am looking for a brief  course that will certify her in coaching, in line with my core value of co-opting her.

Here is the spec of the coaching course for Axe that I am looking for:

1-Brief (5 hours)

2-Wow

3-Discounted

4-Gives a  degree with letters to put after her family name, like MD or LLB.

5-Global and sustainable

6-prepare Axe for a PhD at a fairly unknown, but accredited, university