So if you are a sports journalist of any kind, you have to cover it. A bunch. Even if everyone else is writing about it, you still have to write it. You get to find different angles, explore different points of view. That’s part of the gig.

But what if you’re beat writer for a local paper? Or a tech blogger? Or a writer for a HR trade publication? How big does something have to be before you buy into the hype and incorporate something about a current event into a column?

That’s the question I struggled with as I wrote my pieces this week for TLNT. I’m a natural basketball fan so his first big night was on my radar immediately. And as his performance (and legend) grew, the temptation to write about it–or even just mention it–was strong.

So why didn’t I?

I had what I thought were better stories, more poignant to what I thought HR people needed to hear this week. I read some really great pieces about Lin, I thought about some different angles and didn’t think it was a good fit.

Maybe something will come up later that might make a good story that relates to Lin. But this time, the hype didn’t fit.

I worked at one place where nobody left company premises for lunch. This wasn’t in the handbook and there were a slew of restaurants within a mile of work (even a couple within easy walking distance). Other people have told me about places they’ve worked where nobody leaves before the boss leaves. You get the idea.

We often leave this out of the discussion when we talk about culture but it is a huge part of that and of other parts of our lives too (like taboo subjects to bring up during family get-togethers or air travel with smelly food). Or in this case, sports fandom.

If you’re a sports fan, you’ve inevitably met a certain type of fan. They’ve lived their entire lives in a place (often in a big enough city with 3-4 of the major sports) but they root for the Lakers, Yankees, Patriots, Red Wings and, worst of all, Duke basketball. No real connection to any of the teams. But if you ask the more traditional fan about this type of fan, it won’t elicit the most positive response.

Now to be clear, it isn’t against the law to just pick the best teams to root for out of thin air. But it is against some very sacred, unwritten rules of sports fandom.

People unaccustomed to sports fandom might be surprised that you can’t just pick the best team every year and just root for them to win, greatly increasing the chances that the team you root for will be successful. Enter the guy at your Superbowl party this weekend who was confused as to why you care about the outcome of the game if you aren’t a fan of either team. “It’s so illogical.”

Illogical? Perhaps. But they are as much a part of the game as hot wings, little smokies and at least one guy drinking a little too much. And go against those unwritten rules and you’ll face the wrath of your peers (like the one lady my mom’s age who decided to switch which team she was rooting for because the team she picked was doing poorly a couple of years ago).

Same thing is true of these unwritten rules at work. Walking out of work that first day to grab a bite to eat seems more logical than sitting and eating the light snack I brought and being hungry for the rest of the day. Looking back, it feels even more stupid now. But unwritten workplace rules that helps you navigate everything from getting decisions made, running through the bureaucracy of work or not getting on the bad side of the boss can make a big difference in your career. And when you’re the new jack in town, you cling to the first couple of co-workers who help translate those unwritten rules to you.

It seems silly that it’s even necessary. As silly as rooting for the same team for 30 years that has gotten close but hasn’t won the big game in your lifetime. No matter how silly it is though, these unwritten rules tie people and your workplace together and if you don’t understand them (and its impact on your culture), you’ll be in the dark. If you care about your business and the people there, you owe it to them to understand the hidden language that moves your organization.

Man, who are these people? Eff them! If you want this information in my brain, you need to pay me some cashola! Otherwise, you’re locked out. Sorry, but I don’t care if you’re my dear old Dad or a former boss who has stuck his neck out for me, either.

Except, that attitude is completely and utterly wrong.

The Knowledge/Idea Trap

Here’s the deal: your expertise is valuable but if you have a problem with brain picking, you’re valuing the wrong thing and managing the wrong problem.

I think it is safe to say that most of us think we have unique and interesting ideas about a few things in our area of subject matter expertise. I know I feel that way.

The trap is that we feel invested in our ideas and expertise (because, we likely have invested in it) so we feel that if we are giving some of that away, then we should be compensated for our investment.

There’s a problem with that line of thinking. Unless you plan on patenting an idea you have (good luck and let me know how your bank account looks at the end of that), your idea’s market worth on its own is next to nil. And to keep whatever low value market worth an idea does have, you have to stay ahead of almost everyone else in your field perpetually because nobody pays for ideas that are older than a few years (or months, or weeks, or days, depending on your industry).

Pruning Roses Via The Internet

Doesn’t education count for something? Doesn’t expertise mean anything? Of course it does. And not in some sarcastic way either. Education, both formal and informal, help prepare you and keep you at the forefront of your industry. It helps you develop in a way no other function can. When it comes to deep expertise, there is no better option.

Here’s the interesting part: a certain aspect of education and expertise has become so commoditized that it makes the idea in and of itself have low value.

Last year, I inherited some sad looking rose bushes at my rental house. My mom has cared for roses for a long time so I thought to ask her first but instead, I checked to see if YouTube had anything on there about how to care for roses (I’ve used YouTube before for this purpose). They did. I learned more by sitting through three or four five minute videos and then doing it than I remembered from my mom. I knew exactly where and how to cut, when to do it and what it should look like.

Shouldn’t master gardeners be terrified of this?

Following The Blue Collar Example

I come from a blue collar family so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that a new class and generation of workers is suddenly freaking out about this. I’ve heard hours of expert advice handed out for free with all of these people, too. Oh, the humanity! They are giving away their ideas for free!

Only, their ideas are rarely free. There is always some sort of cost involved in executing an idea. Whether it be the cost of time, actual material or the cost of expertise to help you execute it the way you need, the idea of a free idea is categorically insane. If I ask a web expert what I need to do to improve my website, they could probably list off a couple of things. The cheapest part about that whole process will definitely be identifying the problems with my website. The more expensive part, whether I do it myself or hire someone to do it will be the actual fixing of it.

In short, most blue collar experts don’t care about giving out advice or having people pick their brain. They make money on delivering and executing on them better than, cheaper than and/or faster than you can do yourself. And they’ve figured out they can charge a helluva lot more for that.

So Then, What’s The Problem With The “Pick Your Brain” Question?

If you’re the best plumber, the best recruiter, the best lawyer or the best whatever in your field, you will be judged on delivery, not of ideas, but of work and results. Any plumber can give you an idea as to why your sink might be leaking, a great one will fix the leak right the first time, quickly and easily. Any lawyer can tell you what your problem is, a great one will help you take care of whatever problems you had while minimizing your risk. People and companies routinely pay for the latter of those, gladly.

So if we reduce the value of ideas (which, by themselves, are worth very little to begin with and slope quickly towards nothing), then what’s to stop us from just wasting our time with brain picking questions all day?

I mentioned earlier that the vocal opposition to brain picking was valuing the wrong thing (that is, valuing ideas over doing the real, valuable work, that you don’t have to constantly defend and pitch as being valuable). But instead of managing who you’re giving your ideas out to in order to protect them (by charging for them, like they are valuable), you should instead focus on managing your time better or finding a better way to spread your ideas.

Managing Your Brain Being Picked (Without Being Insulting)

To give you an example, I’ll meet almost anyone for lunch. I have to eat anyway (time lost) and I don’t particularly like eating alone (personal benefit, even if it kinda makes me a loser). And if it is a brain picker who wants to buy me lunch, I make sure it is close to my home and is food I like to eat.

So I take the approach that my conversation over lunch is worth very little. It usually is as I invest zero time in it outside of the time I would have spent eating anyway. If it is someone who has an HR product, we talk about it. I talk about what I’ve seen (that I can remember). If it is someone with a WordPress issue, we can talk about what I’ve done and what they feel comfortable doing on their own. And usually, we talk about more than just shop which is good.

Sometimes they are happy with just that and I never hear from them again but that’s literally the worst thing that can ever happen. I get lunch with someone new, that I didn’t pay for and I didn’t lose anything for it. The ideas I gave them or the instructions I told them to Google are going to cost them way more in time, money and effort than whatever silly charge I could have constructed for our meeting.

Most of the time, I hear from them again. Sometimes it is for something more in-depth, which they are happy to pay for because I started our relationship in good faith and they know what I know (and what I don’t know). Sometimes, I get to refer one of my friends or perhaps even one of my company’s events or publications to the people I talked to which is good. It’s a low risk gamble that I’ll make a connection that helps me out in the long run, with the longer term goal in mind.

Selling Expertise Alone Has A Short Shelf Life

There will always be people and companies that want to abuse boundaries. Like the company that wanted me to draft them a social media policy based on a discussion. Or the person that wants me to re-do their blog for them for a credit link at the bottom (gee, thanks). But that isn’t brain picking, that’s work. And I don’t know about anybody else but it is super easy to say no to gratis work.

If you are in a position to sell your services, you should know that people don’t pay for expertise alone most of the time unless you have an extremely long relationship with them, you have something spellbindingly unique to offer (1% of you) or you’ve found a person or company who will pay you until you’ve run out of ideas (or their ideas catch up with you).

All of the consultants I know work their ass off on deliverables, on creating processes that help them do their job better and on mastering the art of communicating with people effectively. Dozens of painstakingly written documents, Excel spreadsheets that can’t be sent over e-mail because they are too big and reading hundreds of pages of BS and summarizing it so that a company can make a decision point and you can get to work on implementing it with the internal team. Because when Johnny CFO comes knocking on the managing director’s door asking why you just dropped 100g’s on a consulting firm last year, they’re gonna have something to show for it, not a bunch of ideas.

Whatever silly idea you have about selling brain picking sessions, creating a rate card for lunches and coffees, or keeping strangers from wasting your time because you haven’t figured this one out yet, it’s time to reconsider what exactly you’re trying to protect (your time, your sanity) and what you’re not trying to protect (your ideas alone).

If you truly have unique information, you probably shouldn’t be selling it in a one off way, anyway. You should be looking at scaling it beyond coffee shop and lunch conversations if you really think they have that much value. There are some pretty traditional ways to get your idea out there (write a book, get published) and some non-traditional ways (do a paid newsletter, offer paid videos).

Where Do You Stand?

In short, it is about three things:

1. Realizing what is important when it comes to expertise - The ability to out-execute, or be the best in either cost, speed or quality (or some combination of the three) will always be more sustainable than dolling out piece meal ideas or excessively worrying about brain picking.
2. You deserve to be paid for adding value - Ideas on their own don’t add significant value but if someone is asking you to work, you deserve to be paid. Knowing (and selling) things that are valuable and acknowledging (and not selling) things that are not will help you get paid.
3. Real brain picking boundaries are about time management, not idea management - If someone can talk to you on the phone for fifteen minutes and it isn’t a bother, then what’s the problem? If you normally eat lunch but can eat lunch with someone who may be a good connection down the road and it isn’t an inconvenience, share what you know.

Me personally? I’m always happy to have my brain picked, especially by people I’ve made past connections with and as long as it isn’t inconvenient for either one of us. And I’m always happy to tell you exactly when brain picking turns into work (and, it never happens at lunch). As long as you’re cool with that, you can come over and we can go grab lunch when the schedule permits.

Where do you stand on this?

What are your tips for creating and communicating a clear career path as a retention tool?

I saw this question posted recently on an HR site and thought it was worth exploring. And then recently I read this post by Deidre Honner, the HR Maven. It’s a classic example of how not to do the above. Here’s a snippet.

Someone doing it wrong

I was contacted by someone who works outside my organization, asking for some career advice… I asked her about her current employer.  They are a large area employer with several locations. Seems there would be lots of opportunity and availability to move up the ladder.  Or at least try another ladder.

Before looking externally, I suggested that she look internally. And I asked her about opportunities for promotion.  What she said stunned me.  She didn’t know.

I thought my hearing failed me. Not only did she not know what opportunities there were within the company, she wasn’t ALLOWED to know because she wasn’t a manager or a salaried employee.

Wow. I’m just as shocked as Deirdre. If you are a large organization with various types of operations, it is in your best interest to identify the solid performers and do what you can to keep them on board. If it means transferring them to another job that they want to do, then do it. Moving a talented performer around might cause some extra paperwork, but if the alternative is them leaving the organization for another employer, then you really don’t have a choice, right?

Someone doing it right

My best friend works closely with a company called Bechtel. They are known for finding their A players internally and moving them around every 2-3 years. This keeps the people engaged and knowledgeable about multiple areas of the business and it helps the leadership know that they are filling internal positions with quality people. One of their biggest draws for candidates is the opportunity to grow professionally and to have exciting assignments in different areas of the country (or the world, if they choose to go international). They use the idea of a varied career path as a retention tool, and they do it well.

It’s a mindset issue

Instead of looking at employees as resources to be hoarded, look at them as resources to be shared. Find other areas that they are interested in and look for ways to get them there. Look for their areas of strength and give them more opportunities to use them. You don’t own the people, so don’t try to hold them back from doing what they love.

Anyone else work for a company that values career progression internally? What about a company that doesn’t? How do you think their corporate cultures compare?

This is a guest post by Ben Eubanks of upstartHR. Ben spends his days writing, speaking, and working as an HR generalist in Huntsville, AL. He recently published a new guide titled Rock Your Corporate Culture, and it looks at ways leaders can define and leverage their internal culture for business success.

And sometimes we disagree on a political issue. It happens. And we go back and forth on it and there are often misunderstandings. Or jokes. Or a salient point that can’t be expressed easily without at least a paragraph of supporting text.

Now, Jeremy and I have known each other for about 20 years. 20. Years. We went to the same schools all of the way through college. We were roommates, at least for a while.

Yet we still have misunderstandings when we’re chatting away on the internet about tough political issues. I may come off as an evil bastard or he may come off as an unrealistic psycho (but we know it is mostly not true).

* * * * *

Rewind a few years and I was in deep as a maintainer of an online community of a large group of conservatives on LiveJournal. To say the place was lively would be an understatement. During my involvement with the community, I cleared somewhere between 3-5,000 comments a year. That’s 10-15 comments a day, every day, including weekends and holidays.

I can tell you what I added with all of that effort: jack. squat.

People on the internet can come off as insane when in reality, they are just really, really bad at expressing themselves. And unfortunately the opposite is true too: the seemingly sane can come unglued in an instance.

I’ve fired a lot of angry people in my day but I can tell you that some dude from the internet makes me fear ever staying in or broadcasting the fact that I am near Pocatello, Idaho (not that I have plans to visit any time soon).

* * * * *

The point is simple: the internet is a crappy place to discuss politics. Any substantial political issue is going to have some fairly deep points of discussion. For example, is social security failing and if it is, what should we do about it? Or, what do you think of the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Tea Partiers? What are the implications of groups like this to the 2012 election and beyond? These are actually incredibly complex issues with multiple ideas, possible outcomes and philosophies surrounding the,.

That’s why most political posts are over-simplified pieces of garbage. And that’s why the comments associated with them get crazy too. And why smarmy or condescending Twitter and Facebook status updates are even worse than an over-simplified blog post.

It’s a perfect traffic ploy if you’re running a website that depends on traffic to drive advertising revenue though. Just put something up there about the President’s birth certificate or a certain former Alaskan governor’s new eyeglasses and you’ll have people coming back for weeks.

* * * * *

I’ve had disagreements with people in-person about politics (and misunderstandings too) but not to the extent that can happen on the internet. When you’re talking to someone in person, you can tell pretty quickly how serious they are about issues, how much they know and, dare I say, how crazy they may be. You’ll know whether you’re talking to a gal who has run her own business for five years or the crazy guy on the bus wearing tin foil on his head. And I think you also talk to people in a more compassionate way. Words said by a person in front of you come off as less black and white and more like something someone with some intelligence said but that you may disagree with.

What does this have to do with work? Well, it is one of the reasons I don’t mind people having political discussions at work. As long as they both mutually agree to discussion, it doesn’t seem to be a problem with me. But HR folks seem to be prickly about it which is fine, I suppose. It just concerns me that we can’t seem to work well with people whom we may disagree with. I prefer competency, proficiency and skills over agreement on political issues and I think most people feel that way if you framed it that way.

* * * * *

I don’t feel compelled to write about political issues outside of ones that directly impact the workplace. It doesn’t mean I’m not interested or not informed about it, either. But wasting a post about the political issue of the day or shooting out passive aggressive tweets? You’re probably going to execute it poorly. And this is from someone who has spent thousands of hours doing (and observing) just that. Trust me.

If you want to talk politics or world events for real, give me a call sometime and we can chat. If you want any more than a pithy or sarcastic comment this election cycle, that’s the best you’ll get from me. And you can thank me later for not having to spend 45 minutes writing out a response to my stupid political post.

During the NCAA National Championship game, we saw Butler put on the most impressive displays of missing baskets in the history of the game. And to take nothing away from Connecticut’s stellar interior defense, Butler missed a lot of wide open looks. I counted over a dozen open looks at the basket missed by Butler, easily within the margin of victory that night.

The next night, I watched the Portland Trail Blazers put on a similar spectacle in the second half of their game against Golden State. Seeing two of our best shooters off the bench go a combined 3 for 20 from the field (including 0-7 from the three-point line) was disappointing. And considering many of those shots were unchallenged or lightly challenged, it was rough.

For both teams, there were some supporting excuses. Butler was outsized so they played outside of the paint almost the entire game. The rims seemed incredibly tight (leading to less baskets overall) and playing the most important college basketball game in a football arena is still one of the worst ideas ever. For the Blazers, they had just learned they clinched the playoffs and were going against a team much more motivated to win than they were.

But to a certain extent, those excuses didn’t matter. Both teams had the opportunity to make shots, makable shots, shots that could have switched the game around, and just didn’t do it.

Sometimes you just miss.

You spend years honing a skill like shooting a basketball and you miss. And no matter how good you are at your skill set, you’re going to grow cold at some point. As a writer, it’s happened to me. As an HR professional, it’s happened to me. Even my typically poor basketball shooting has been hurt by cold streaks.

Fixing it is sometimes as simple as waking up on the right side of the bed one morning. Or shooting a couple hundred more shots. Whatever it takes to get your grove back.

What is similar among all of these people is the one’s who get back their mojo get up the next day and work harder at it. That doesn’t mean Brandon Roy won’t have another 2-11 shooting night or that Matt Howard won’t record just a single three pointer in a game ever again. It just means they are going to try to put some distance between those two lows.

The workplace lesson is simple: for your best employees, stop looking for excuses for occasional poor performance and help them create distance (major distance) between low points. Get them back up, encourage them to perform and move on.

The funny thing about some employees is that sometimes they sit on their misery. They keep it to themselves, complaining to friends, family and Facebook about the reasons they hate their job. They may even gossip together as co-workers bemoaning management, workloads or even the brand of coffee the company buys. But nothing stays a secret forever; sooner or later a boss is bound to over hear a break room diatribe. And when that happens, they may wonder, “How is this the first time I’ve heard this complaint?”  The truth is, quiet employees aren’t always satisfied employees, and sometimes their silence is just the well trained practice of long-term tongue biting. So why don’t more people speak up? Well there are plenty of reasons, and many of them are roadblocks any boss can address.

Fear

The biggest reasons an employee will take their lumps in silence is straight up fear. Many people fear for their job safety on a daily basis, and reasonably so. We are still in an economic downturn in spite of rhetoric to the contrary. Times are hard, cuts need to be made. So even though in business the squeaky wheel gets the grease, often people feel that in the case of employee dissatisfaction, the squeaky wheel gets the axe.

Some of you more evil overlords out there may wonder what’s wrong with a healthy dose of fear. Well, granted too much security can lead to laziness and distraction, but too much fear leads to an unhealthy level of paranoia. When you keep employees living under an umbrella of fear you may quell complaining, but you may also find yourself stifling your own growth. An employee that is afraid to voice their criticisms is also most likely terrified to offer up new ideas. And that is just a shame. In any business, the best solutions to problems and even innovations often come from the front lines. The guys who are in the trenches every day, and if those people feel like they could be fired for looking at management the wrong way, they will never feel comfortable bringing the full force of their creativity to the table.

That’s why leaders need to cultivate an environment with a minimal fear factor. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with insisting on structure, professionalism and a strong work ethic. But beyond that employees shouldn’t have to afraid of being fired for speaking up in the appropriate forum. Sometimes it’s important for bosses to come down from their ivory towers and mingle with the masses. One on one discussion, words of encouragement and a little employee appreciation can go a long way toward dispelling fear and opening the lines of communication.

Lack of a Process

In a lot of cases employee complaints and feedback get lost in the shuffle because there is no real way to complain, or offer an idea in a constructive way. One of the reasons that fear can breed so easily in an office is because there is a lack of channels for employees to communicate with those who are above them. A lot of offices have things called an “open door policy” or a “suggestion box” but are these really facilitators of discussion or are they simply for show? If the door is never actually open, if the anonymous suggestion box is in the general manager’s office then those aren’t real outlets. If a supervisor is continually saying “Good idea Bob, I’ll take that to my boss and get back to you” and it’s never spoken of again, well that’s not conducive to communication either.  Even when there is a large human resources department dedicated to receiving employee’s issues, there’s often red tape, over-complication and a lack of an internal process to follow through on the complaint.

Employers don’t have the time or resources to endure every minute employee gripe. The fact that Tim eats an apple every day and Joan hates the noise it makes is not something anyone should be wasting time on. But if tools that employees need on a daily basis are constantly breaking that’s a major issue. If there is no good way to register this complaint, if there is no organized process for receiving criticism, then employees are more likely to find ways around the problem. Which is fine in the short term, but in the long-term what was originally a small fixable matter can turn into a major crisis. But when you provide outlets for employees to raise issues, and deal with them in a friendly, timely and constructive way, small problems can be dealt with quickly and smoothly preventing future meltdowns.

Complacency

Another reason many employees give up the good fight is simple complacency. For a lot of us it’s enough to just get a paycheck every week. Sure, we see the problems, we have ideas but it’s just so much easier to keep our head down and our mouths shut. We fall into a routine; we sublimate our ambitions and find that “comfortably numb” place where everything is fine. Except that nothing is fine. Complacent employees aren’t necessarily bad employees; in fact some of them may be performing very well. But they are the ones that will never show you everything they’ve got. They aren’t challenged, they aren’t excited or passionate. They may not complain but they also won’t contribute in a revolutionary way. Just because someone has accepted “the way things are” doesn’t mean they are happy, and their silence shouldn’t be confused with satisfaction.

In spite of the fact that it makes for easy days, it’s not a good thing if a stream of disappointments and failed battles have beaten employees into submission. This kind of acceptance isn’t conducive to great work or great success. Even when a complacent employee does their job well, imagine how great they could be if they were actually fulfilled? We often accept people’s lack of enthusiasm as a side affect of the day to day grind. We appreciate the lack of negativity and decide to leave well enough alone. But just because an employee isn’t saying anything critical about the company doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it, they’ve just been programmed to believe that raising issues is futile and therefore they are better off just staying under the radar in every way.

As a manager it’s important to be able to recognize this condition when you see it. If the an employees hasn’t had an idea, or a suggestion in a long time, perhaps it’s time to go out of your way to speak to them when a problem arises, get their input make them feel significant and try to help them re-discover meaning in their job. It’s not expensive and it’s not hard, but it may dust off the light bulb over their heads and re-invigorate the light in their eyes.

There are plenty of reasons that employees choose not to rock the boat. But if it’s because of fear, lack of a process or complacency those are things that leaders can change. Nobody wants a horde of whiney employees bugging them about every little thing. But if they can’t say anything negative and see the problems fixed, they will also stop going above and beyond in a positive way too. The question for leaders is simply this; is it better to have employees that don’t complain, but also don’t contribute? Or is it better to give them the security, motivation and process to help make the company better and stronger? If you ask me the right answer is the one that leads to collaboration and prosperity for everyone, but, that’s just me.

Lindsay is a Corporate Journalist for i-Sight. They are the developers of a specialized Incident Reporting Software program. Lindsay got her Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. She has worked as a marketer for several years and is now in charge of for blogger outreach and managing the corporate blog for I-sight.

• Steve Browne
• Rebecca Slosberg
• Victorio Milian
• Ben Eubanks
• Charlie Judy
• Steve Boese
• Paul Smith
• Trish McFarlane
• Matthew Stollak
• John Jorgensen
• Jason Lauritsen
• Lisa Rosendahl

That’s a list of a lot of great people but what did I get from doing it? A couple of things:

1. HR Stars Come From Many Backgrounds – Different geographies and paths led them to HR. Some come from different economic, social, and cultural areas. Others come from different career backgrounds. Some started in HR right away, some didn’t. In any case, no matter where you are in your HR career (or if you haven’t started yet), you can still make a real impact on the industry.
2. HR Stars Give Their Time – There isn’t a single person on this list that doesn’t put in a lot of time on something that’s not part of their day job. Some of them may earns some coin for it but for most, it is a labor of love. If you want to be an HR star, you have to be willing to give a significant fraction of your free time away. Especially initially. The reward comes later.
3. HR Stars Are One Piece of The Pie – A very important piece of the pie I might add but a piece none the less. These people execute HR and organize people at the very core of HR’s mission statement. Personally, I don’t think any of what these people do will go out of style but it might be called something different in the future.

I also made the conscious decision to touch HR stars nominated who are still practicing HR or very, very close to practicing HR. I also didn’t nominate anyone myself. In that way, I missed a whole slew of great people:

• People like Laurie Ruettimann, Kris Dunn, Frank Roche and Sharlyn Lauby. Without their HR inspired writing, I don’t know if I would have continued doing my thing here.
• Smart people who write for publications and run conferences like Bill Kutik or my colleagues at ERE Media Todd Raphael, John Hollon, Amybeth Hale and David Manaster.
• Personal friends like Chris Ferdinandi who I should have put on the list anyway.
• Former SHRM folks like Sue Meisinger and China Gorman who remind me the society had vision and can have it again.
• Marketers like William Tincup and the people who run some of the great HR vendors (including Rypple, the series sponsor)
• The hundreds of people (literally) I’ve met the past two years in HR who show up, do the work and aren’t ever satisfied with the status quo.

These are all people and organizations that deserve highlighting but weren’t included. And I know I left out buckets and buckets of people too.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, it shows that this list is just as flawed as any list on the internet these days. There’s subjectivity and bias in them all and factors left out.

What is most important to me though is that the people highlighted can hold their own in discussions about people who make a real impact on HR. There are lists of other people but I really enjoyed being able to highlight this group of individuals.

I count him among one of the top minds among HR practitioners. Even though he works as a Vice President of HR for a bank, he is able to think outside of the box and see the bigger picture (something we constantly rely on consultants to illuminate for us). A person that can see the forest and the trees is certainly a valuable resource for us all.

Getting Started in HR

It all got started for Lauritsen like many of the folks I’ve interviewed: not in HR. He graduated with a degree in biology and philosophy. After college though, he went in a different direction. “I was mainly concerned about making money which led me into sales jobs,” he said. “I was good at sales and my selling skills eventually led me to a job in contingency search recruiting sales people for technology companies.” And that’s how he got his start in the talent game. After starting a couple different companies on his own, he found his passion in understanding the ways people and organizations interact.

That got him started in the first of several HR centric roles. There is one really striking thing that keeps him motivated and moving forward in HR. “I’m passionate about the strategic power of HR to not only align all of the functional areas of HR to attract and grow talent, but also to really fuel the progress of an organization,” said Lauritsen. If you’re a top HR leader and you don’t live and breathe that every day, it’s time to reevaluate your role in HR.

Wellness and HR Reinvention

His passion has led him to do some cool things inside and outside of his organization. For one, he is working on a project that incorporates more wellness initiatives into his workplace. While they have incorporated wellness into initiatives for the last decade, what they really want to do is focus down on program design and figure out what works and what doesn’t. “We have announced that we will be moving to plan next year where employee’s health premiums will be based upon their results on some key health outcomes that we measure through biometric screenings,” he said. And they’ll be providing coaching and support for those who wish to change with them.

Another program he has put together recently with a group of local Omaha HR leaders was the HR Reinvention Experiment. He hand picked a group of local HR leaders along with a group of both nationwide and local speakers and put together an event that was more unconference than conference. What was so interesting to me was that many of these HR professionals, who like many have never been widely exposed to social media, embraced the concept of the event and many of the progressive ideas presented.

It made me wonder if some of these ideals that progressive HR folks hold so dear are really that “out there” or if they are quietly acknowledged by most of the HR community but not implemented in their organizations.

Lauritsen said that his goal is to see the concept spread to other cities. When we talked about the event in October, he said if it could be done in Omaha, it could be done in 50 other cities across the country too. It took a committed group of people but the payoff was worth it.

Writing, Speaking and Social Media

He has also written a book with fellow Talent Anarchist Joe Gerstandt that will hopefully be released in the spring. “The book is about how the ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know that matters’ principle works,” he said. “The book will help people be more intentional about finding and cultivating the relationships they need in their lives to be more successful.” He also maintains an occasional speaker schedule (as much as you can when you’re also a full-time, in the trenches pro) and I’ve heard that he is very good.

He also is a pretty consistent writer including writing on his own blog, Talent Anarchy (a blog he shares with Gerstandt) and an occasional contributor on other sites such as ERE (disclaimer: I work for ERE, likes when he posts there and hope this will encourage him to do more). He is also on Twitter so you can follow him on there if he isn’t riding his bike across entire states. And I’m talking about you Rhode Island or Deleware, I think even I could handle that. Though luckily, I hear Iowa is fairly flat.

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It was my friend Chad Kreutz. We’ve known each other for five and a half years, been good friends for most of that time and he recently moved down to Portland to take a job. We started working at the same company, QualitySmith (then RBS Interactive), within a couple of days of each other back in 2005.

I had just dropped off my wife at work and was heading back home. I had messaged him about some Blazers tickets earlier that week so I had suspected it might be about that.

“I have some sad news out of Walla Walla today. Are you sitting down?”

Am I sitting down? This call wasn’t about Blazer tickets.

“Rob passed away yesterday.”

* * * * *

I had known about Walla Walla for most of my life. My dad and step-mom were both born and raised there. My grandparents were from there too. My dad relocated to the Portland area in high school but after my parents divorce in the late 80′s, he went back to Walla Walla in 1993.

The place was a hick town in my teenage estimation and forced summers there in triple digit heat didn’t help that at all. After a few years though, I figured that my Dad wasn’t going to be coming back to Portland and learned to appreciate the town for what it was: fine for a visit or even an extended stay, but not more.

After high school, I chose to go to college about two hours from there in another small hick town with far too much snow and summer for my Portland blood. When I moved back to Portland after graduation, I had a retail management position that was very unfulfilling.

After the busy holidays, I started looking around for HR positions and saw that a company out of Walla Walla was hiring a recruiter. I had never heard of RBS Interactive and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to live in Walla Walla (much less my fiancee). I applied though, got a call, drove the 254 miles to Walla Walla, and got hired.

* * * * *

“I’m tired of walking.”

The words escaped my lips and we both kind of laughed. It was my fourth month on the job and Rob Schmidt, the President of RBS Interactive, and I had just completed what had to be dozens of laps around the building over the last 90 minutes. We had talked, argued and gotten animated about who knows what. I finally convinced him that we needed to go get some coffee otherwise I was going to crash at my desk this afternoon.

Rob got it. Who knows how much money he spent at the Starbucks that was a brisk one minute walk from his desk to the counter but it was enough that everyone knew him there and knew what he wanted.

I knew entrepreneurs had different personalities but Rob’s energy was as exhilarating as it was exhausting, even for a guy that considers himself pretty good at this stuff.

His boundless energy, competitiveness and curiosity caused numerous “problems”: tangential meetings, interviews gone horribly wrong, poor feedback to employees and ever shifting priorities depending on where his mind was wandering that day. But those problems also caused him to take risks in a critical area to me: staffing. Walla Walla wasn’t the most desirable place to attract candidates so he signed off on risky hires in order to make it work.

And risky they were. My own hire was risky (my experience level wasn’t there) but I had other things going for me (ties to the area and the willingness and ability to put in major time). It fit with how I thought HR and recruiting could be run: flexible, risk taking and ultimately rewarding.

* * * * *

We were opening gifts at my Dad’s house on Christmas morning and I kept thinking how weird it was that we were up there. We decided to stay home for Christmas because the fall was brutal work wise. Jen had worked her first harvest at a local winery and it was busy at QualitySmith (RBS Interactive changed their name halfway through my tenure). Home was now officially Walla Walla. I was closer to my Dad than ever before, I had made new friends and I was enjoying work. I had learned to love a place I previously doubted I could stand a week.

Was Rob directly responsible for any of this? Both directly and indirectly. We had a great working relationship and he was fun (and challenging) to work for but the people he put into place and the ideas he dreamed up changed my life. We worked hard for him when we believed in his vision and we worked hard for him when we didn’t quite see it because you always wanted to give your best for him and you always thought you’d warm up to it. Countless days after everyone had gone home, I sat in Rhonda Donnelly’s office (our VP of Operations) and we would just half laugh, half shake our heads at some of the crazy ideas he would come up with.

Ultimately though, his team would put together a plan to try to bring his ideas to fruition. That gamble in staffing paid off at times and led to some amazing things. Other times, we had mud on our face and we got a bad beat. That was reality. I can’t tell you the number of times I said sorry to him. He wouldn’t allow it though. There wasn’t enough time to Monday Morning Quarterback.

When he called my cell phone at nights and on weekends, I paced with him. I tried to keep up with his frantic vocal pace. Somewhere along the line, I would figure out I was the third or fourth person he was calling about a particular idea. It was my turn to poke at it with my stick and see if I could find any holes.

I wouldn’t have changed it though. Not the location nor the people I was working with. And even when I go back to see my dumpy little rental house on 822 St. John Street or the offices we moved out of on Main Street, I feel nostalgic. This was home. At least for a while.

* * * * *

My phone rang and I saw the picture of my wife come up on the caller ID.

“I got the job in Portland.”

My wife had interviewed for a job in Portland. She was also looking for a job locally too and had only interviewed for one job in Portland. She got it and she wanted it. Saying no wasn’t an option.

People at work understood. Rob understood. They even worked with me and let me work my HR job remotely for six months. The company grew quite a bit while I was there (from 32 people when I started to over 160 at one point) but it wasn’t all fun and games. When we had our second sets of layoffs, I was working remotely. It would have made sense to cut me (Rhonda had most of my skill set, just limited time). I flew up there though and assisted with that. We closed two remote offices as well while I was working for them.

It wasn’t tougher on anyone more than Rob. It would have been crass at the time to mention to the people being laid off how much personal money he invested to give them another couple of months hoping for some business turn around. He’d pace, he’d stress and he’d ask for who we’re looking at again to dismiss.

When it finally came time for me to leave, it was tough. But every time I came to visit, he always had time to talk. He wanted to talk about QualitySmith, flying, farming and his family. He wanted to know how I was doing and would always ask me when I was moving back to Walla Walla. It wasn’t ever “if” I was going to move back, it was “when.”

* * * * *

A couple days after Chad called me to tell me Rob died, my step-mom e-mailed me an article from the local paper. His death had been ruled a suicide. That was the first time I cried about it. The shock had warn off and I was now just beyond sad about the whole situation.

I think a natural instinct is to ask yourself what you could have done differently. I just wish it were as simple as that. I had stayed in semi-regular contact with him. When I left QualitySmith, we had a great talk about how much I admired him and was thankful for everything.

Then I remembered that Rob didn’t allow us to spend too much time discussing hindsight observations. So I started thinking about the legacy Rob will leave. I was overwhelmed with how big of a swath of influence he left behind. Then I remembered a post I received on my Facebook wall a few months ago:

“Hey Lance, just wanted to say THANK YOU for hiring me 5 years ago.  Today is my 5th anniversary at QualitySmith ”

It was one of my first risky hires. In a less risky environment, one without him setting the pace, I don’t know that we would have hired her. We took a chance though and it made a difference for her, her family and us.

We always think about legacies after people retire or die. The final lesson Rob Schmidt taught me is that when you involve your life with people, your legacy is right now. When you’re in the employment game, you make business decisions with very personal consequences. His impact on me was immediate, cumulative and will last for the rest of my life. He had an impact on hundreds of lives directly and thousands of lives indirectly because he put his money where is mouth was consistently when it came to business. He made those decisions one by one and he’s one of the few people that understood the gravity of every situation.

Whenever I start to get involved in debates about interviewing techniques, risk assessments, performance review calendars or benefits brokers, a little voice inside me whispers me back to reality. Focus on the people and take the business personally.

Thanks for the reminder, Rob. Always.