Who's who in the Gloria Blog

Immature Products is the name of the company where the stories on blog take place. No one (except the author) knows what their product is, except that it has plenty of bugs which impact their clients’ revenue negatively. Slimy agents are needed to sell the product in the third world.

The first lady of HR

Gloria Ramsbottom-Lemieux is VP HR of Immature Products.  Gloria studied to be a secretary, then a buyer, and then “naturally,” she moved into the HR space. 
No one really knew about Gloria until five years ago, yet today it is widely recognized that she is the First Lady of HR. She is also a coach and change manager. She earns $150,000 net, yet "money can almost never buy my loyalty".
Gloria admits however that pregnancy interferes with stretch goals and she has busted unionization "in line with my core value of survival".
Gloria grew up in Canada, the daughter of the late Pierre Elliot and Constance Ramsbottom.  She has two brothers (Frank and Earnest) as well as a sister Claire Ramsbottom de la Montagne. .
Constance is a ballet teacher. She is 144 years old. She believes that Gloria "works in Manpower down in the States and needs to do something more creative".
Gloria speaks English and French; she is acquiring a British accent to be more posh. She owns 3 blockchains, one of them is made in Germany.
Gloria's style is not overly cerebral; she is practical, brief, responsive, and sprinkles her conversation with French, in line with her core value of "global". Gloria is learning German grammar from a Viennese tutor.
Nothing is known of Gloria's intimate life except that she gets one  "mental orgasm" from the term "big data", and several from "internetofthings". 
As of late, Gloria uses the term “as it were”. 
Gloria reads text messages only.

Lose morals

Cynthia Axe is the Head of Involuntary Early Bird Retirement. She has fired 45,000 people in her 5 years at Immature Products. She has had 15 life partners in the past 3 years. Her father is the Reverend Oliver Axe. Cynthia speaks English only. One sad fact needs to be added: Ms Axe has been chosen the least popular staff member for 12 straight quarters. She presently has a reputation coach. Ms Axe tried to read the Land of Green Plums, but threw it away after 2 pages.

Soft on my gut

Stan the CEO has no family name. He is white, privileged , travels business class, has a high level view of the firm, loses his temper, and sleeps with Ms Axe on very rare occasions. He resents Gloria forcing him to use a Blackberry, which he calls “a piece of Canadian crap”. Stan sees HR as proof positive that if you pay someone enough and give them a seat at the table, they will tow the party line. Stan thinks that Kim Jong Un has a few leadership traits which need to be emulated. Stan wants HR to ensure everyone is nice.

Wifey is Stan’s brainy wife. She reads management articles and forwards them to Gloria, demanding action. Wifey believes that these articles can save Stan, whom she sees as a failure. Wifey’s real name is unknown, although Selma may be a possibility.  Wifey is currently reading The Land of the Green Plums, and does not understand one word, but has recommended the book to all her cronies.

K Ray Beauregard-Goldstein is Stan’s private chef. He has mixed ethnicity, French and Hebrew. He cooks “cost effective lasagna”  for Stan. However, recently Stan has suffered from hemorrhoids and Stan has asked for food which is “softer on my gut”. K Ray has slept with Ms Axe on more than one occasion. K Ray reads La Presse.

Almost semi irrelevant

Hugh White is the Head of Diversity. Like Ms Axe, he reports into Gloria. Hugh annoys everyone because of his irrelevant comments about diversity. Hugh is White as a lily and heterosexual. He is married to Comrade Ludmilla White (nee Khrushchev) and their marriage has “room for improvement”. Hugh gets beaten up from time to time.  Hugh is currently reading The Land of the Green Plums, and does not understand one word yet believes that books which make no sense have a dimension of diversity.

CCM

R&D chief, Comrade Carl Marks, was born and bred in the USA. No one knows where Carl got his PhD in Engineering. His parents were communists and sent him to USSR where he studied for 4 years. Carl speaks English with a Russian accent, although this is feigned. Carl sprinkles his speech with Russian swear words, rambles, lacks focus and believes that his new product is a “pearl”, although sales are weak and customers curse him. Comrade Carl believes that HR and Sales are the source of all evil. Comrade Carl reads books only about the Battle of Stalingrad.

Juliette Caesar was the Head of Sales. She quit. She had a stellar record until she came to Immature Products. She even sold books on secular liberalism in Teheran, Jerusalem and Jeddah.

Old de Villiers is an engineer  who hails from Bloemfontein and speaks some English. He sleeps during round tables. He is the cloud computing czar. Old de Villiers has been asleep for 4 years.

Mister Herr Krebbs is the CFO. He is German and he loves details. He often ends each sentence with "Ja". As well, when he finishes speaking, he says, "I have finished speaking". Herr Krebbs does not like the fact that Stan calls him Mister Herr Krebbs. Stan thinks that Herr is Krebb's first name.

This blog is read world wide by about 800 people a day, daily.The author claims that the blog is not all that removed from reality, although this may be a stretch of the imagination. 

The author’s grandparents on his mother’s side were British, as it were.

Performance appraisal, Gungnam Style

Our CEO Stan invited me and Comrade Carl Marks to a meeting at 0900 am.  We sat around the beloved management mahogany table and Stan`s private chef served bagels and cream cheese. My Lord, I live for moments like this. Neither of us is Jewish, but I did enjoy the food. (I did have a Jewish classmate, Sharon Bernstein).

Stan appeared in a jocund mood and he asked us both, ``let`s have an open and candid talk about the performance of your colleague,Juliette Caesar, the Head of Sales.`` This is Stan`s version of performance appraisal.

Comrade Carl Marks spoke up first: ``That bitch Juliette could not sell cold lemonade on a hot beach in August, kibinimat. The product is a pearl, and I know how much popular demand there for our technology. Yet that useless and self serving `suka`` is always pursuing the wrong leads. Stan, you should have checked a big data base before you hired her.``

(I have learnt the meaning of that  word ``suka``.)

Comrade Carl continued: ``Why do we have an HR function in our organization, kibinimat? Why….Gloria has instincts like an alley cat! Her instincts are better than big data.  So why don`t we get input from the first lady of HR, Ms Gloria Ramsbottom, who I have come to adore, and not because of her legs``.

I have two brothers, Frank and Earnest. To be frank and earnest, I did like the title Carl gave me. 

Quoting myself verbatim, as it were, here is what I told Stan and Comrade Carl. Italics show where I used my new British accent.

`Now look heyah (here). We have three choices, as it wehr (were). 

1) I can have Juliette write a mission statement with my coach;

2)  I can have a one on one with her to `sohrt (sort) her out` ;

3) I can arrange a meeting between Ms Cynthia Axe and Juliette within 2 seconds, and she will vanish from the face of the earth in one fell swoop. After which I assume Juliette will sell "internet-of-things".

Stan and Carl ask me what I ``recommend``.I remember what my Dad Pierre Elliot Ramsbottom used to tell me, `Gloria but careful what you cook because sometimes you need to eat it`.

This week I have a ``one on one`` with Juliette.

I love the term ``one on one``. 

When do managers need a coach

HR as platform for creativity

Our Friday management meeting was semi wow. 

Comrade Carl Marks, R&D chief had been asked to make a presentation vis a vis (French) the "road map to product stability".Our new product has 400,087 known bugs, most of them impact client revenue. As a result, even though we have big data, we have insufficient sales.

Comrade Carl started with his presentation with the claim: "Youb tvou mat, the product is pearl, Stan. The question is why are we not selling it, kibinimat." 

I have picked up some Russian and that expression means that Comrade Carl and Stan's late mother engaged, as it were, in some hanky panky.

Then Comrade Carl lashed out at Sales Chief Juliette Caesar: "Suka, you cannot sell an iced lemonade on the beach during a hot day".

The word "suka" refers to a female dog, as it were. I have no background Russian, but Comrade Carl's insistence in swearing on Russian has me adapting, as it were. (I am Canadian, 3/4 English and 1/4 French)

Then Comrade Carl took at a 23 slide power point slide show about "How HR blocks creativity". He mentioned that "I love Gloria as a person and she has great legs, but nevertheless..."

Comrade Carl, obviously inebriated, said that "HR has done everything it can to block creativity. All the wrong people are in the wrong roles, except in R&D."

Comrade Carl ended his speech with, "We need a union to protect our staff from more senseless downsizing; we need IT to take over HR and mechanize HR on a cloud-and we need to be a people company".

His final slide was: Vote Comrade Carl Marks. There was a picture on the slide of Comrade Carl shaking hands with some people in Bangalore.

"Comrade Carl is heading downhill, "said CEO Stan. "Get him a coach".

Key note speaker: The Future of HR Business Partnership

My keynote address

Dear readers,

Last week I told you about our new and spiffy cost effective Leadership Academy, where all the lectures are given by our staff.

This week, I gave a the key note lecture of The future of HR business partnership.

Attendance was full. I had mentioned to Cynthia Axe that if I see one empty seat in the auditorium, it may influence her compensation road map, as it were.

When my lecture started, I was in a semi wow mood. I had just finished a call with my mother who is losing her memory. Mama asked my the same question 5 times. "Gloria, have you read Anna Caltabiano's new book The Seventh Miss Hatfield?" Then Mama added, "Gloria you should read more and text me less. Please stop using Whatsapp; just pick your phone and call me like you used to call Papa". She said that 7 times. Anyway, let's put that aside.

In the first row sat Ms Cynthia Axe and Hugh White (the white heterosexual who runs Diversity). My staff applauded me like I was Kim Jong-un (one), and I did not even encourage them to do so.

In row two sat Comrade Carl Marks who leads R&D and Juliette Caesar, the b-tch whom CEO Stan hired to run Sales. 

Stan introduced me as: "our lovely and energetic HR manager Gloria, who we all know and love will give a talk today." Then Stan sat down, and perhaps closed his eyes.

I had 3 talking points, in line with my key value of brevity.

1) HR's business acumen brings to the table transactional excellence. Don't make one move without an HR business partner. (I said that in a British accent).

Wow! Did that ever go over well! Even Stan opened his eyes.

2) While not erotic in nature, HR loves people. This is the essence of the world of HR reputation management.

3) There is no HR without big data, rumours, gossip and AI. This is the new frontier. And then I read a slide with a lot of technical terms from the internet of things domain , and all the engineers were aghast, although none of them really speak English.

During the lecture, an engineer named Helmut from Germany looked at my legs, as it were. However Hugh White informed me that Helmut is gay, as it were. I love the term, "as it were".

At the the end of the lecture, Juliette Caesar raised her dainty hand and thanked me for a "wonderful informative lecture". She wore a smirk on her disingenuous face. (nice word)

Comrade Carl Marks, our chief nerd, raised his hand and said, "Yob tvoyy mat, Gloria. Why don't you fire all your staff and give all HR to IT and Legal? Get aligned with the future, kibinimat". 

Anti HR

OD is brain dead

Glo, Cynthia and Hugh White (too White to be seen)

drive vendor less OD

We ladies of HR are in a new age of liberation from OD oppression. OD is dead, Mai oui! And having worked with many OD consultants, from the best to the worst, I am titillated that OD is totally dead. Here is some data driven "proof of death".

1) My favourite HR site (which provides agile and sustainable thought leadership to all its stakeholders) sent me a great text message about the importance of formulating a weekly strategy. 

Within one week, all our company employees (supported by Cynthia Axe) had formulated a sustainable weekly strategy, without any OD consultant.

2) One year ago, this very same site that sent me a critical life-changing text which advised me to use the term "in a timely fashion" 5 times a week, and to be generous with the  use of the term "global and sustainable". Furthermore the site issued a text about the importance of the daily use of the term "in line with our core values. "  

All of the above was implemented without OD meddling, or coaching, or change management.

What has replaced OD?

1) Webinars

2) Agile, sustainable, evidence driven, professional HR business partnership.

3) Cooking courses

4) Outdoor axe-periences

5) Cost effective coaching done by plumbers and electricians, who rewire the brain and release "thought blockages".

Follow me @GRamsbottom