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

What my mom thinks of the HR management role

Je me souviens-I remember

"Gloria, you have the memory of an elephant; that won't help you when you are married", cautioned my late Dad, Pierre Elliot. 

My memory has served me well, like a big data warehouse, hosted on a cloud, whatever that means.

My boss Stan sends me about 200 actionable texts a day, and I delegate these tasks to the empowered Cynthia Axe (Early Bird Retirement) and to the white heterosexual Hugh White (Diversity). 

I follow up on each task every fifteen minutes, by text, Whatsapp, Viber, BBM, and a phone call when absolutely necessary. 

I learnt these advanced HR management techniques from a 60 second webinar, and my people management skills are augmented by my memory. Mais oui-that's French.

I never let anything slip. Jamais. That means never, also in French.

However memory issues are causing me concern, as it were.

My mother, a certain Constance Ramsbottom, has started to lose her memory. She is 82. Mama closed her dancing studio 14 years ago and since then, she has been reading (magazines) and gardening. 

(Now to be frank and earnest, Mama and I have had a non wow relationship. I was always what she called "Pierre Elliot's favourite".)

Mama has started calling me daily for the few months and asks the same questions, over and over and over. That's 3 overs.

"Gloria, how long do think you have to find a husband"?

"Gloria, did you know I just closed my dance studio?"

"Gloria, are you still a Manpower Manager down in the States? Don't you want to do something creative?"

I must have told Mama 20 times that Human Resources Management is not Manpower Management, for heaven sake.

And now she's lost her memory, so I will need keep reminding her....and Stan and Comrade Carl Marks. Ostie!

Follow me @GRamsbottom 

2021 Focus of Our Leadership Academy

Leadership

In my 2021 goals, I committed to setting up a Leadership Academy for middle management.

I also committed to 0 costs for consultants, trainers, coaches and other snake oil vendors.

In order to meet these two goals, I will launch our new Leadership Academy! Mais oui! 

The academy's mission statement is: If we meet the bottom line, we'll all be fine.

Our lecturers are our own senior managers, who provide weekly lectures during lunch, in our conference room and piped in by loudspeaker to the toilets as a public service.

Today, the first lecture was given by Comrade Carl Marks, our Chief Nerd.

Attending the lecture were all our middle managers, policed by Cynthia Axe who made sure people were not texting or engaged in subversive activity. Comrade Carl spoke in English with a Russian accent, making the lecture even more challenging to understand. Most middle managers speak little to no English. (I hold these employees' passports for safekeeping). 

One of our middle managers, old Wilhelm de Villiers from South Africa, does speak English, but he was dozing off, dreaming of the velt.

Comrade Carl's lecture focused on:

1) Reinforcing the fact that our present product is a "pearl", despite plunging sales.

2) The Sales force are incompetent twats, yet "I encourage teamwork between the comrades in Sales and Engineering".

3) HR is useless, "although Gloria is a great gal, with great legs. I am against sexism of most kinds, but boys will be boys". Comrade Carl added that "HR is like a circumcision ceremony-they screw the little guy while fat guests eat more and more, kibinimat".

4) "A union is not a bad thing. Unions take care of proletariat better than the ladies of HR". 

5) Finally Comrade Carl mentioned, "I am not sure we all like to work here, but life is a bitch". Carl stated that "motivation is of the essence."

The audience applauded Comrade Carl and hissed at Cynthia Axe. 

Before he got off the stage, Comrade Carl handed out to all staff a photo of "General Zhukov, the greatest leader in history."

Greatest leader in history

.

Miss Axe

Ever since Axe listened to a 90 second webinar on 'self-empowerment", she has been hallucinating.

Ms Axe caused me to pop an Advil

Ms Cynthia Axe heads our Early Bird Retirement Plan. Axe has fired 3000 staff in 4 years, whilst increasing morale.
Yet, Ms Axe is also the least popular employee for 14 consecutive quarters.

I have "issues" with the generally compliant Ms Axe. This started when our CEO's wife, Wifey, had asked all of us to read The Land of the Green Plums, and Ms Axe put down the book after 2 pages, claiming she cannot understand a word. 
Ever since then, Cynthia has not been the same Axe that I have known for years. 
Today things came to a head, as it were. I like the term "as it were".

Into my office strutted Ms Axe, at 2 pm, without knocking on the door. I was busy texting Comrade Carl Marks  on an HR business partnership issue, and I asked Ms Axe to wait patiently outside my office. Ms Axe blurted out "Gloria, I just signed up for an MA in the university and I wanted you to know that I will leaving work early on Mondays and Wednesdays at 3 pm."

In line with my core values of thought-leadership, people-come-first, and anger management, I asked Axe if this is a request or a fact.

"It is what it is, Gloria. Take it any way you want. If you wish, I can tender my resignation". 

I like the term "tender". To be honest, Ms Axe has her value, as she allows me to focus on the "people" side of things, supported up by big data, whatever that means.

I asked Axe what she was planning to study, in line with my core value of people-come-first. Axe told me that she is going to study Big Data and Senior  HR Management.
 "One day, Gloria, I want a job like yours. hopefully with a better boss than Stan and his nagging Wifey who drives us all crazy."

I have 2 brother, Frank and Ernest. 
And I want to be frank and earnest with my readers. Ever since Axe listened to a 90 second webinar on 'self-empowerment", she has been hallucinating. I plan to give her some positive and constructive feedback at the appropriate time.

In the meantime, I oked her studies, gave her a new Blackberry Passport, and I plan to enrich the role of her peer, Mr Hugh White, so that Ms Axe feels that studying has its wow rewards, and non-wow downside, as it were.

Motivating Ms Axe

My Spineless Staff

I never used the Disney Land metaphor

Comrade Carl Marks, acting CEO, mailed out a link to all our staff about a CEO who has just "resigned "because she wanted to create a Disneyland type culture, at the same time as her organization was going "belly up", as my late Dad Pierre Elliot used to say.

Comrade Carl noted that the aforementioned CEO has an HR background: 

"Isn't this pattern all too familiar to us", wrote Comrade Carl, "HR fiddles and fuddles with sloganeering, hiding its impotence behind grotesque verbiage? What value does Gloria and her mediocre crew bring us? Should we not smash the HR organization into smithereens, kibinimat? Our new product is a pearl and HR has not drummed up enough support of our innovation at the client base."

Ms Cynthia Axe rushed into my room with the email: 

"Gloria, Comrade Carl may have alluded to HR in a non wow manner". 

Ms Axe is a drama queen, with no stomach for politics. 

Almost at the very same moment, the white heterosexual Diversity Chief, Hugh White,

forwarded me Comrade Carl's email, with his comments: "Gloria, what does this email of CCM mean from a Diversity perspective? Should we panic? Hugh

CCM stands for Comrade Carl Marks (GR)

Unlike my spineless staff, I stayed cool under fire. Comrade Carl is a non-person, in my book. And my book is not written by Herta Muller.

Since Carl is acting CEO only till October 8th, my reply to him was crisp and clear.

My dear and precious Comrade Carl, 

Thank you for contacting me. I appreciate your email and I will make it a top priority to get back to you with an answer based on big data and intuition.

I am presently in an intensive program to learn to understand English with a  Russian accent, so I will be answering you around Oct 8th.

By the way, have you read the tedious and punishing book The Land of the Green Plums by a certain Herta Muller, that Wifey asked that we all read it in order to become more esoteric and obtuse. 

I do not understand one word of that "maudit" book, nor does Ms Axe or Hugh White, who is quite the intellectual.

Give me your mission-critical and wise input on this Nobel winning author, which appears to be harder to grasp than our struggling yet highly innovative product.

You are my man, Comrade Carl. (Valid till Oct 8th, 6pm)

Gloria