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HR News brought to you by the Northeast Indiana Human Resource Association (NIHRA).
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HR Troublemaker
Are you ready to revolutionize the way you view HR? Join us as we engage in enlightening conversations with Elizabeth Hoffman, Workforce Readiness Director for NIHRA, retired HR professional Brent Roth, and Jill Kopanis, Vice President of Human Resources for Dynamic Dies Inc. Together, we'll explore the evolution of human resources, the importance of community involvement, and the necessary shift from a kindergarten learning mentality to a more innovative and risk-taking approach.
Get ready to redefine strategic HR as we discuss employee engagement, leadership, and the power of embracing our mistakes. Learn from Jill's personal experiences on breaking down corporate walls and leading with engagement instead of merely managing it. Moreover, we'll explore how focusing on team efforts can bridge the gap in employee engagement and spark creativity in the workplace.
Don't miss this opportunity to gain invaluable advice from seasoned HR professionals who have been in your shoes and successfully navigated the ever-changing landscape of human resources. Tune in now to transform your career and the world of HR!
Well, I'm here with Elizabeth Hoffman, Workforce Readiness Director for NIRA. Elizabeth, I just wanted to ask you to tell us about your role with the organization and what you hope for NIRA to achieve.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I am the Director of Workforce Readiness, So we focus on creating a talent pipeline for HR professionals in Northeast Indiana as well as making sure that we have pipelines for all the different types of employees at. Nira helps employees, So where I want to see NIHRA go is more community involvement really getting involved in training and education opportunities for not only HR professionals but also the wide variety of people we hire. Nira has the widest spread throughout Northeast Indiana of recruiters and people looking for manufacturing jobs or very specific niche training opportunities, And so having everybody together and out there in the community helping people get jobs, keep jobs and train them for new jobs Excellent.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for your time today.
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Speaker 1:Today we'd like to welcome a retired HR professional, Brent Roth. Brent was my boss a number of years ago and someone I would consider to be a mentor throughout the years. Brent, tell us about yourself and how you got your start in HR and career progression Sure.
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, mike, I'd like to thank you today for inviting me and giving me an opportunity to maybe to share my story a little bit, as far as my career path and human resources might be a little, a lot different than what people today would even think of doing. When I graduated from college many years ago, there really was no field of human resources. I had an interest in that sort of thing, which was really at that time called personnel. Personnel has actually developed or migrated into the field of human resources. So when I got out of college I really didn't have a lot of the direction.
Speaker 4:I'd actually applied for personnel type positions and found I had no experience but was able to get into a manufacturing environment and actually spent my whole career with a large, multi-billion dollar international company that specialized in electronics and electrical applications and solutions. I held many different positions in that time of my career. I came up through the operations management side of things, including industrial engineer and, as I said, operations management. I got into the human resources function and expanded into various roles and different plants in our company and then actually became our labor relations manager for the United States and worked in many different corporate functions. So I've kind of worked all the way from the I'll say, a local manufacturing environment all the way to our corporate environments that we had.
Speaker 1:What insights do you want to share with existing, as well as up and coming, hr folks?
Speaker 4:I don't know about how much insight I really have, but my observations over the last through my career was how human resources has evolved and significantly involved.
Speaker 4:I watched it go from, as I said, a personnel type of a function which in my words I always called the keeper of the records I mean it was administrative type things but it's developed into a true team management type of an aspect, with I'm seeing specialization and my own specialization and I'm sure it's still there in talent management and recruiting, employee engagement, organizational development, the accession planning, the labor relations, even in compensation and rewards, and you just didn't see this sort of thing and the specialties that have developed and they've almost become in some cases their own functions within themselves. So I guess my insight would be is that there's many different fields in human resources. Pick an area that you are truly interested or passionate about and it's maybe difficult to be a jack of all trades today, as maybe it once was or expected in human resources, and I think what I see is the trend is more towards the specialization in functions and going in that direction. So I guess that's my biggest insight that I can offer at this point.
Speaker 1:So Well, I want to thank you for your time today, Brent.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you for having me again. It's always interesting to share your experiences and wish the best for all those out in the field today as they work through the maze of career opportunities. So again, thank you, mike, thanks Brent.
Speaker 6:I would like to introduce our speaker, jill Caponis. Jill is the Vice President of Human Resources for Dynamic Dyes Inc. Based in Toledo, ohio, where she leads human resources initiatives for manufacturing and sales locations nationwide. Mr Caponis has been involved in the field of human resources for over 20 years, working with Fortune 500 and international companies. She was nominated for the Excellence in HR Management Award and was the finalist of the 2007 Benny Awards, awarded for outstanding benefit initiatives. She's served in a variety of SHIRM leadership roles, both at the state and local levels, including Chapter President and State Director of Certifications. She'll hold a master's degree in organizational leadership and earn both a BHR and SBHR certification. A speaker on several human resource topics, she's spoken at numerous national conferences, enlightening her audiences and receiving top audience ratings, along with a monthly HR column for a national magazine. If you could, please help me and welcome me, jill Caponis.
Speaker 7:I'm excited to be here. I love turning a bunch of HR professionals into troublemakers. I think that's always a cool profession to have right. And I'm even more excited because I grew up. I'm a Hoosier. I grew up even though I live in Toledo, Ohio now. I grew up in Elkhart, Indiana. I've made a couple of Elkhart South Bend connections already. Who in here is a Notre Dame fan? All right, go Irish. I get to say that at every conference, so I have you to do it now. But I'm excited to be here and teach you a little bit about being a troublemaker. So look at this little guy, Isn't he so cute? We're going around, right, This little guy. He's so cute. Look at his smile, That neat little tie, His books all stacked up so neatly. He looks so adorable, All until those two little fingers come up over his head. Troublemaker. You know I can relate to this little guy.
Speaker 7:When I was about three years old there was an entry in my baby book And by the way, this isn't me, she's cute And then I was. When I was baby I stole it off the internet. But when I was about three there was an entry in my baby book And it seems I got up on the wrong side of that And I decided to just be a troublemaker all day long. So I got up and I went into the kitchen and I went into the utensil drawer And I got one of those old fashioned handheld canopeters You know the long, pointy kind and long, thin ones with point at the end. And I took that can opener and went over to my mom's rubber tree plants And I proceeded to put holes in all of the leaves And then I wasn't done.
Speaker 7:I looked at the floor and I wasn't decided. My mom needed a new floor. So I went over to the linoleum floor and weighed at them. They were squares of linoleum And so I decided to start digging up the hips in my mom's kitchen floor. Well, obviously I got in trouble. By then. I got sent a time out. But it doesn't stop there, because that baby book goes on to say that when I got out of time out, i took my crayons and I tried to start coloring in all the damage I had done on the floor.
Speaker 7:And then I spotted it Over. In the sunroom there was this white raw iron chair. It had an open back and in that open back with this vine design of leaves. These raw iron leaves were white. I had my trusty crayons. I decided they needed color. That day, my poor mother there was three of us girls at the time, We lived at the leg She was probably out there somewhere trying to make sure my sisters didn't do anything like jump in the lake And all the while I'm inside causing trouble.
Speaker 7:You know, the problem with troublemakers is we got it all wrong. They usually get a bad connotation to them, right? We're going to change that thought. Today. We're going to be defining troublemaker as one who refuses status quo and challenges the system to make it better. Think about that again. One who refuses the way it's always been done and starts finding a better way to do it. That's how we're redefining troublemaker And that's what we're all going to become. Professional HR troublemakers You know? CEOs they run the business. Cfos We all know about CFOs. Right, they watch the money. Coo is a oversee the operation, but COTMs chief operating troublemakers. They make a difference. Now I'm not saying a CFO, a CFO or a COO can't be a troublemaker. Anybody can be a troublemaker. It doesn't matter if you're an assistant HR or vice president. It's not about your title. It's about wanting to make a difference.
Speaker 7:It's about daring to stand out. It's about being willing to do something to make a difference, because HRD is time for us to book you, be outstanding or get involved somewhere else. We all know people who are retiring their work. Well, technically they're still showing up every day at your job, but they have not made a difference in the last 10 years. Don't let that be you and HR. Get ready to book you, because you know what? If you're not a leader, you're just a repeater And nobody remembers the repeaters. You can play it, say You can do it the way it's always been done, but you're not going to make a difference. You're just going to be a repeater And no one remembers repeaters. And to prove this point, i have a question Now.
Speaker 7:We all know George Washington was the first president in the United States. For us, the question HR Honor System. Do not start googling. Ok, who was the 13th president of the United States? Abraham, by a few elections. Who was the 13th president of the United States? Who knew that? What did you do? major in history and not HR? No one ever knows that answer. Bill Moore was the 13th president of the United States. I am impressed, all right, i want to know if she does this one now.
Speaker 7:Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon. Who was the 7th? David Scott. The point I'm trying to make is you know, whether you're the president of the United States or the first person, any person, to ever walk on the moon, that is a prestigious position to be in that very, very, very few will ever attain to. Yet we just remember the first, but all the rest that didn't follow we didn't remember. Don't be a repeater. Nobody remembers repeaters. It's time for us to choose, it's time for us to challenge, and it's time for us to change, to choose to be a troublemaker, to challenge the system and change it, to make a difference. When I talk about challenging systems, i'm going to get your mind off us going just by looking at some of the things like who still has a policy that says three or more days off sick and requires adapters now to return to work? Or those awful handbooks that read like some military drill surgeon process disciplining by getting more time off to still have that? How about those dreaded rules that exist?
Speaker 7:in our handbook Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And how about leadership training? Are you still holding in those boring conference rooms? I see head shaking. We need to change it up. We need to do a different makeup. We need to start making a difference, because HR, we are not rule following heartless people who just go about imposing things on our workplace And we are not, definitely not overhead, and that doesn't add value to the bottom line.
Speaker 7:And for those who remember the Catbird comic, as cute as Catbird is, we are not the evil HR director. It's time to do some good trouble. It is time to choose challenge and change. So, in the time that we have today to choose challenge and change, to make troublemakers, we're going to do three things. First of all, we're going to redefine strategic by tearing down those corporate walls. In other words, we're going to stop following the crowd. The other thing we're going to do is we're going to look at it, bringing engagement by shifting it from just managing it to actually leading it, and to do that, we're going to talk about getting creative and actually taking risks in HR. And finally, we are going to infuse innovation by destroying this kindergarten learning mentality that we all have. In other words, we're going to learn to take those blinders off and start seeing things differently. So let's start with stop following the crowd.
Speaker 7:The latest buzzword hits the business world And we all jump on that buzzword, like it's going to make us strategic, and start implementing it in our companies. Let me tell you this There's always a new buzzword out there And if you're chasing every buzzword trying to implement it, you are not going to be strategic. You're simply going to look like a flavor of the month person And there's nothing strategic about that. Several years ago, i was asked to speak at a university symposium on talent management And at the end of that symposium there was a question and answer period with the audience, and somebody in the audience asked this. They said we don't currently use 360 assessments in our company, but all the other companies around us do. And I'm wondering am I not being strategic by not introducing 360 assessments in my company, by not doing what everybody else around me is doing? And I answered it this way 360 assessments are just one of many tools, resources, buzzwords out there, and you have to decide does it fit. Indeed the purpose, the mission, the value of your company. If it does, great, consider it. But if it doesn't, don't do it just because everyone else has been doing it. You know the number one buzzword that just will die and go away see at the table.
Speaker 7:I remember when this word first came about. It was 2007. We were at the Sherm National Conference in Las Vegas. It was the opening session. There were 15,000 HR professionals in the room. There was an HR leader up on the podium And he was talking about it's time for HR to be strategic, it's time for HR to demand a seat at the table. And then he started pounding his fist on the podium as he repeated it It's time for HR to demand a seat at the table. And with that, a crowd of 15,000 HR professionals erupted into applause And the buzzword was going. I remember that day because I remember sitting there thinking I'm not getting
Speaker 7:this? Why are we applauding being a piece of the furniture? Why are we applauding that demanding something is going to so magically make HR strategic? Please believe this, because it's something I've always believed You are only going to be strategic when you are the ones giving out the invitation, when you're the ones calling the meeting, when you're the ones leading the meeting, when you're the ones coming up with the strategy and rolling that strategy out to make a difference in your companies. 25 years ago, when I first joined the company they are still on I remember thinking, hey, this is going to be fun, because they told me all this great stuff that HR could do.
Speaker 7:Well, you know how interviews go, you know how reality goes I surely after I got there I discovered that, well, what HR is is make everybody happy, Make sure everybody has a paycheck, Throw the company picnic department And I was like that's not me. And I had two choices.
Speaker 7:I could either freshen up my resume and run to the hill, or I could stay and show them what a true strategy person was in HR to the company. That was the beginning of being a troublemaker, challenging status quo to make a difference. I will admit to you that the first year was like a bowl in a china shop. I just struggled to get them to see how HR could be of more value to them, to the point where, even though my role at the time was corporate director of HR, it was just a title Because, guess what? HR was not part of any leadership meetings and any strategy meetings. So about a year after I joined the company, they decided to take one of our divisions, our graphic division, and expand it into this full specialty division. And to do that, not only were they going to expand the operations, but they had to address talent management, what kind of skill level they needed. And one of the specific skill level they needed, that major, was taught at Princeton University in their graphics area. So they were going to plan a whole recruiting trip there.
Speaker 7:I wasn't in that meeting. I found out about that meeting afterwards. If HR should have been in any meeting, they should have been in that meeting, but it wasn't the norm for that company to include HR. Instead, what they used to do is make all these big decisions And if it affected HR, they would then walk down to HR and tell us the decision and tell us what we need to get busy doing. When I first heard about this meeting after it was over with I was living I was ready to march down to the president's office and demand a seat at the table. But we just talked about. Demanding a seat at the table does not make us strategic. What makes us strategic is to give out the invitations, to roll out the strategy. So I came up with the strategy.
Speaker 7:I called up Clinton University and asked about the whole recruiting trip. They said, aside from the recruiting day, you really want to be here the day before because people in the social event with the students may be very informal, but it's a chance to get all the students And if you really like particular students, assign them a time to come to your area to actually interview with you the next day. That way you can have the good students right away. So I said, fine, sign this up for both. Then I started thinking this is a long-term process. If we're just now getting into this division, we're going to be growing in. So we need next year students and the students after that to continue to graduate. So we needed to know the professors. So I asked her who was the dean of the college. She gave me the name and number. I called up the dean and I said this is who we are, this is what we're going to do And we're going to be there. We'd love to be here. We'd love to come learn more about your school as well as we wanted them to learn about us. So when students said hey, i'm interviewing with this company, the professors could say, oh, i know that company, good company, you should interview with them. And then I went one step further. So it's all over the place.
Speaker 7:I lost my buck eyes already. Crunchy buck eyes. How are they up there? So now that you guys are right next to us in Ohio, here in Indiana, you know what a buck eye is, right? See, i usually go to some place and everybody looks at me like what's a buck eye? So a buck eye is one of these little nuts and it's mostly brown everywhere, but on the front center side it's a lighter brown. Now, do you know about the buck eye candy? Okay, this is so easy to do in Indiana I'm gonna put your finger just right next door And where Clemson was, in South Carolina, they had never heard of a buck eye candy, didn't know it was.
Speaker 7:So what I did as I called up a local supplier and I said, hey, when we go up to Clemson University, i mean like 1,000, 2,000, maybe 3,000 of these individually wrapped, and I'm gonna need you to freeze your eye and get them, like overnight, to Clemson so they don't melt. Because for those that don't know what a buck eye is, it's like a re-CPC ball, it's a ball of peanut butter dipped in chocolate. So my concept was we're gonna fly it out there, have it put in bowls in the student union area for this particular college, with a sign that says compliments of our company, because they never heard of it before. Right, Suddenly they know who our company was, just your brand.
Speaker 7:So I put all this together. Then I walked down to the president's office and I said I understand there was a meeting related to this whole division in growth and talent management of it And I really think HR could be a strategic partner in this process. So I'd like to tell you what I put together. I rolled out the whole plan to him. He's like this is great. I didn't know HR could do all this for us. So they don't fault my predecessor for me, because what happened? this was a very young company and she'd grown up. She'd been the bookkeeper and then the office manager. Then they grow so big. They brought in an accountant and she became HR and nobody ever mentored her, so she didn't even know how to show what HR could be to them. I said, well, i'd like to be a part of the next meeting. He said, absolutely. I went to the next meeting, rolled it out. Everybody agreed, we implemented, we had a very successful recruit, we got some top talent out of the college and HR had been invited to every meeting since then for the last 24 years.
Speaker 7:You have to do something that actually makes HR stand out. Don't demand the right to be recognized as part of the leadership. Do something. Be a different maker, difference maker. Do something that stands out in your company. So back to our challenge system. Here's some of the things you can think about challenging.
Speaker 7:If you still have a policy that says three or more days off of sick, we need a doctor's note, here we have it. First of all, you should already have a policy that addresses how you're gonna handle excessive attendance, but even more so. For the last 20 years, we have been fighting to control healthcare costs And we've been asking our employees to help us control healthcare costs too. Right, i don't know a doctor in this world who can cure the common cold, but if my employees sick enough they need to be home three days with the cold, then so be it. But to send them to the doctors to get a note to return to work, i'm just wasting our healthcare money and I've just defeated a message I've been trying to tell my employees Look at your systems. if they're still outdated, change them. The same thing with our discipline issues. If you still have a policy that says, by your final write up you're gonna get a three day suspension without pay, here we have it. You already have an employee who's missed way too much time and that means missed production time. So you go through the verbal, then the written, then three days off with suspension, and then you're gonna get terminated. Here's what happens. You just gave them three more days off. That's three more days. Production is gonna be short or you're gonna have to payroll That's three more days. You have to pay for time and a half. We're hurting our home companies by not being innovative and getting rid of all our policies. Challenge the system to make it different. Stop following the crowd. So the next thing we're gonna do is gonna talk about driving engagement by shifting from being creative and taking a risk.
Speaker 7:When it comes to employee engagement, we have accidentally created a great divide in our companies. We have practices where we say things like this meeting's for management only, we'll communicate it to the employees. Later, our president's calls a meeting and it's for management only. Or a divisional manager says make sure you communicate this to your employees management, employee, management, employee. We've created this thought process where, when we think about employee engagement, it sees people over here, the way, the file, the hourly, the office worker. When research after research has proven to us the only way we're gonna affect employee engagement is if we start at the top. If we don't start focusing what we're doing at the top with our leadership when it comes to engagement, our employees are gonna be going in the opposite direction. We have to quit fighting what we're doing on employee engagement because it's not working.
Speaker 7:And another one of those things related to employee engagement that just is like nails on a chalkboard employee engagement surveys. Do you know that we have made no statistical significant difference with employee engagement for 20 years? Think of all the effort you put in. Think of all the training you've gone to on employee engagement. Think of all the training you've done in your company on employee engagement. Think of the efforts you've gone through. You have events, you have recognition programs, you have reward programs, you have challenges. You've put in all these efforts over the years. Think about the budget you put together. And now you're looking at data like this there's been no significant difference Because we're so busy focusing on what we do as the employee, we're not focusing up on the top. But it truly is a team effort And we have to figure that out. So here's a perfect example why it doesn't work.
Speaker 7:There is a bank, a bank added to Lido. It's also in Indiana, it's also in Florida. It's a pretty major bank And, as they've been growing over the years, several years ago they decided to start and decided they needed to brand all the branches by having the same look. So they started all this construction process. And I'm really big on building relationships, so, even though we direct deposit a word, i make sure that I always have some reason every once in a while to go on the bank, and I've known the bank branch manager for a long time and the tellers, so I go in there occasionally and I'm talked to him and I've watched this conversion happen. And when it was all done, the bank looked beautiful And I went up to one of the tellers and I said oh my gosh, kelly, this looks gorgeous, do you?
Speaker 7:love it And she's like, no, we hate it. I was kind of taking it back and I'm like, holy, how can you hate this? This is gorgeous. He says you know what? Because everybody else decided they were gonna redesign our workspace. No one talked to us. And see, before we used to do this process left to right, top to bottom. Now we have to do the process right to left, bottom to top. We shoot our own quick because we keep doing things the old way And we don't stop to reinvent the wheel and find a better way to do it.
Speaker 7:When it comes to engagement, i was once at a training line employee engagement. The speaker was up at the front and they had a PowerPoint to look something like this. They had a hopscotch board up there. Well, my ADD kicked in, i'll be the first to admit, and when my ADD kicks in, my creative brain kicks in. And so suddenly I was zoning out on what the speaker says to the stand, when you know what they said. But I started thinking, hopscotch, what can we do with that? So we have this long cement walkway into the building when the employees entered to lock in and all that, and I was like, huh, i can make this hopscotch board. They could whoever chooses to you could jump their way into work and they'd end up with a smile And at least somebody would enter the building smiling right. My next thought was had the men in somebody trips, i got a workers comp client Forget that idea, jill, you're not gonna work. So then I started thinking, well, instead of doing that, maybe I could write motivational sayings and the bricks. And I was like, yeah, we're gonna think. Don't keep the idea, jill, so don't do that. But while the speaker kept talking, i kept thinking And this is where creativity. You gotta just kind of break the mold and find ways to be more creative. That hopscotch board became this. It became a reward system for employees.
Speaker 7:I went to the graphic start department and I said I need a long sheet of paper, big white sheet of paper, and across the top I needed to say they'll be in a better company, one brick at a time. Then, as you can see, the bricks below the bricks were just a piece of paper. We created these bricks and different colors off the copy machine. If you say you don't have a budget to do things, you have a budget to do things for employee engagement. All of us was a piece of paper. Anybody in the company could recognize anybody in the company or whatever they did, as long as who has built a better company for us. So, for example, you'll see Pam Johnson was recognized for managing the bond agent, the art department.
Speaker 7:There were all sorts of recognitions that went on, whether they improved the process, went the extra mile to help a customer, did something that made a process more lean, whatever. If you helped grow the company in any way, shape or form, you were getting a brick. And let me tell you we did this for three months And so the one hallway went down was probably as long as this room And we ran out of space. So we started down the hallway to production, which is probably another 25 feet, ran out of room, so we came across the other wall. When we ran out of room we finished going back down the first wall.
Speaker 7:The employees were loving it, the managers were loving it and it was just a piece of paper, but to them it wasn't, it was recognition for doing something. And if you think that wasn't making a difference, let me tell you that one time our vice president of sales had a new customer in and that customer was doing a tour And when he got to this hallway he said what is that? The VP of sales explained to him one of what. Well, just then, somebody from shipping or receiving came around the corner and the customer turned her and said you ever break down this wall? And she said well, yes, i do. She worked way up and she walked clear down the hallway to point out her brick. It was a piece of paper, but what a difference it made to engage the whole company. They loved it. So a couple of years later we rolled it out again with a new thing And this time you could earn company bucks.
Speaker 7:Every time you get a brick, you got a buck. Now, when we first did this I'm gonna be really honest they thought you know what's gonna happen. You can be a brick, you can be a brick, i'll give you a brick and we'll have all this company money we can turn in. Never happened, in fact. There was a team of three people from one of the departments and the one guy goes give so-and-so a brick for fixing the printer. The third guy on the team said are you kidding me? He turned it off and turned it back on. That's not brick-worthy, they crafted themselves. But here's what happened. That I never expected to happen. They could turn in those when they got 20 or $25. They could turn it in for a gift card and we would go buy the gift card from them.
Speaker 7:One day, one of the departments put together their 20 bucks and they said we all put our money together. We turned it in to order a pizza for the team. I was like heck, yeah. So the word got out and they all discovered as a team they could collect their money, put it together. So one of the bigger departments says we hate going all the way up to the break room to get our cold water and cold pop. So we want to put ours together to buy a mini refrigerator so we can just put it all in there. And slowly but surely, the teams started figuring out how they could put their money together to actually reward themselves as a team. And that was nothing I ever expected out of this. The point is, when you get creative, you will be amazed at the transition that will happen within your companies And I am huge on never reinventing the wheel.
Speaker 7:We all need to help each other out. So if you want the base of this, the originals, I will email them to you. They're just Word documents. I'll email them to you with the instructions and you can roll that same thing out in your companies My email's at the end. I'll share that with you at the very end. But along with that, we have to think about how to start taking risks, And I can think of no greater risk taker to introduce you to than Coach Trisha Cutlow. Coach Cutlow is a women's basketball coach at the University of Toledo. She joined us 20 years ago.
Speaker 7:She was a brand new coach never coached a team before. She'd always been the assistant coach. She came at the end of the player recruiting season. She quickly assessed her team and discovered she needed a top point guard. Now, the first thing she did with her team when she came on board, as she said if you promise to give your all as a team, i will promise to do my all. Give you whatever resource you need to be a winning team. That was her commitment. So she started looking for a top point guard. There were none left in the United States. All the good ones had been recruited. At the end of the player season.
Speaker 7:There were two that were recommended to her, one from Australia and one from Israel. She watched both of the players tapes and decided, while both of them were really good, the player from Israel was the player her team needed. She promised them the best. She was gonna give them the best. Well, hours to be started discouraging her making that decision. They're like you really should go with the player from Australia. She goes why I don't need that player, i need the player from Israel. And they said well, because of cultural and religious reasons, she can't always play. She'll have to start to practice time. And the coach says I have student teachers, i have players who are doing rounds in hospitals for their nursing degree. I work around practice times all the time. One player or four is gonna hurt. So she said I'm sound, let's give you another one. They said well, coach, because of cultural and religious reasons, she has to coach your food and you've traveled. You can't guarantee that. So she marched over to the dietary department, said here's my problem, let's fix it. They found a solution and they were gonna always make the food ahead of time and be able to get it to where she was ever going. Problem solved. Give me another problem, says coach. And they're like coach, because of culture and religious reasons, she cannot be in a motorized vehicle Friday to Sunday and coach your team travels. She goes, i'll figure it out. That's the player we need. This is a brand new coach, first time ever coach, going against pretty high up people, athletic directors and all the different advisors saying no, no, no, because I promised I'm gonna give my team the best they needed. She took the risk. So Nama came on board. The team practiced together. They melted beautifully.
Speaker 7:Then along came the first game to play, and it wasn't until in Ohio. It was in Hawaii over the weekend. Coach said not a problem. She said Nama and an assistant coach out on an airplane on Thursday the rest of the team followed. On Friday They got to the hotel then they went over to practice where they were gonna play. The practice place was in my only half, approximately away from the hotel. Nama could not be in my seat here, so you know what happened. Coach and Nama walked all the way together to the practice and back to the hotel.
Speaker 7:After the practice They got to the hotel it was time to eat. They were hungry for practice. All the players went down to the restaurant. Menus came. Coach gave Nama's food to the waiter. It said I need this heated up.
Speaker 7:I have a player who has a dietary restriction, no problem, took him back to the back. I'll come as a manager. We have a problem. We can't serve food in the restaurant that hasn't been made in our restaurant, in our kitchen. She said well, are you prepared to make kosher food? She goes I'm a player who needs kosher food. I have a player who needs to eat. I have the food right here. We need to solve this problem. So they finally looked up things. They discovered while they couldn't serve it in the restaurant. There wasn't nothing allowing her to take it out of the restaurant, so they took care of it. All the food all came out And then when the Nama's food came out, she very respectfully, quietly, just stood up to walk out of the restaurant without anyone saying anything.
Speaker 7:All the players stood up, very respectful of the patrons in the restaurant, but stood up, grabbed their plates and walked together out of the restaurant to eat outside. And as they walked out, the coach kept hearing the players say something and she didn't recognize it. So she tapped one of the players on the shoulder and said what are you saying? And she said coach Nama taught us that word. It means team in her native language, and coach, by all the risks you've taken for us, you've taught us how to be a team. It's time for us at HR to decide what are those risks we are going to take.
Speaker 7:Who in here has a fear of heights? And you can relate to this. I mean, if guys stood on anything higher than that chair, i would scream like a church mouse. Well, our family took a cruise to in the Caribbean. it was on Royal Caribbean. So if you're on Royal Caribbean, you have a private island called Lammity And on that private island there is a zipline 500 foot mountain. You jump up.
Speaker 7:Yeah, y'all know if I'm fear of heights, i'm not gonna do that right, my kids decided we were gonna do it. I'm like, oh no, you're not. Oh, yes, we are. Oh, no, you're not. Oh, yes, we are. We docked. They're walking down the dock And no one. I'm like you guys are not doing that. I'm like, yes, we are.
Speaker 7:I have to tell you that I did for over 18 at the time And I couldn't even say, well, i'm not paying for it, because I had their own money. So they were taken off to jump off a 500 foot mountain while there was perfectly good sand on our feet And I was like, okay, seriously, if something happened to my kids and I was standing on that beach, i'd never forgive myself. So I mustered every ounce of courage I possibly had. I went up with them, i jumped off that 500 foot mountain And I'll tell you what it was gonna happen again. So our video taped it all the way down And once we landed, i took that video on my phone and I locked that baby because I wanted to brag that I did it, but I was never gonna do it again.
Speaker 7:Well, somehow, someway into this day, i don't know, but somehow that video came off my phone and I really wanted that video. Couple of years later, we took a cruise that I took us back to this island And the whole time we're cruising there I'm thinking, oh, i really want that video. I want a video of me going down the zip line. There's no way, i'm stupid enough to do this twice, but I really wanted the video. We finally got off the ship And I remember looking up at the zip line straight across the island and I was like it was like the zip line was going near you want that you want that.
Speaker 7:So did it one more time. But this time I got smart. I took the strap off my camera. I have to put this down a little. I took the strap off my camera so that while I'm hanging on to one rope, if anything happened at all and I had to grab the other rope, i wouldn't lose my camera and I'd have that video.
Speaker 7:So we got off, we landed safely, i double locked that video and then I made a copy of it because I wasn't going to be stupid enough to do it three times. But, as you see, the strap, all these years later, is still on my phone. And there's one reason I decided to leave that on my phone to remind me that when I really really want something, i have to be willing to take a risk. What do you really want? What do you want in your career? What do you want for yourself? What do you want to do to make a difference in your company so you look like a leader and not just to be Peter? Are you willing to take that risk? Lastly, we're going to look at infusing innovation by destroying kindergarten learning mentality. In other words, we're going to learn to finally get a new set of eyes to see things with. Take the blinders off. Let's look at our last challenge leadership training in the boring conference room.
Speaker 7:So I had a challenge several years ago. I had two topics I wanted to work with leadership on. One was innovation and one was working more cohesively as a team instead of focusing on your isolating components, and I started taking one of my worst challenges I have to teach this in a conference room. How am I going to teach innovation in a conference room. It's the same conference room they always go to and if your companies are anything like my company, without any name tags anywhere, everyone always goes to one seat when they go to that conference room At least they do in our company, and I'm going to teach this group that going to the same conference room to sit in the same seat how to be innovative, this is not going to work. And I also decided for teamwork, i was not going to get out that training manual that was at 101 team building ideas. So I started thinking and I started thinking and this is what we ended up doing. I took them out on a pontoon boat that was now our conference room.
Speaker 7:We went up the Mami River. As we were going up the Mami River, i had all these smaller training sessions, but they didn't realize they were being trained yet. We do something related to innovation and then we do something related to team building, and then we do something related to innovation and then we do something related to team building. They weren't quite connecting the dots yet, but it was basically brainwashing. So we get up to a certain point in the river and I already arranged with the driver of the pontoon boat And somebody I knew. I said look, when I get to the certain point I'm going to give the instructions. Just follow the instructions. We got to a certain point And I said, driver, please turn off the engine and put the keys in your pocket.
Speaker 7:Well, leadership teams started looking at me like oh gosh, it turns up to it again. But I looked at them. I said, okay, here's the problem. We need to get back up the river to where we started, safely docked where we started. Only the tools that you find on this pontoon boat. You can't jump in the water and start pushing it. Everyone stays on the pontoon boat. Well, i can tell you they looked at me with the look like the only thing going on with this pontoon boat is that the water is going to be you in about 30 seconds jump.
Speaker 7:But then they realized I was dead serious. So they started looking around and the innovation started to sink in. I had one guy who found a fishing net and then he took a plastic bag and brought snacks for him and, like a CES plastic bag, he took that plastic bag, he put it over the fishing net, then he went into the toolbox, got on electrical tape, taped it tight to the handle so none of the water could get through the fishing net. And suddenly he had a many row. So the other guys looked at the table in the front of the pontoon boat and figured out, if they unscrewed the stand of the table and left the table on, they would have a handle and the tabletop would become their new many row. And one by one they all started figuring out something that would make an ore. For them. To start doing this, the innovation came in. But here's the problem The pontoon boat was moving, but it was more like moving in a circle. I'm like, okay, they got the innovation part, when is the teamwork part going to kick in? But suddenly somebody says, guys, look what we're doing, we're not working together as a team. I was like, yes, the light bulb went off. So they all instructed themselves to line up across from each other all the way up the pontoon boat and the person at the front would go row, row, row, row, and pretty soon that pontoon boat started moving and went faster and faster and faster. And all of a sudden we were just sailing down the Potom, the Miami River, back to where we started at.
Speaker 7:That is a training that they have not forgotten to this day because we took it out of conference room. We made it different. Pick up your blinders and get creative with your team. You know I do a training presentation. I've done it at SHIRM, national and a couple of state conferences called SHZAM Energizing HR, and at those sessions I will hand out a piece of paper that looks like this and a grant for everyone And I'll simply say color the page. And as I give people time to color the page, i'll walk around And every time I walk around a room, inevitably 80 to 90% of them look like this. They might get creative and highly color them, but they all color inside the lines. Only about 10% of the room ever colors in like this, coloring outside the lines.
Speaker 7:I have a theory that's called the kindergarten theory and where you are all affected by it. You know, little Johnny or little Susie birds start getting their first coloring button crayons and they scribble all over the page. And what do we do? We get excited and we take it out, we put it on the refrigerator, we put it up with magnets and we think that's really great. But then you're ready to start going to Bird Kindergarten and what do we do? We start telling them to color inside the lines. We get to kindergarten and we're talking coloring inside the lines it's good, coloring outside the lines not so good. We go to first and second and third grade and we're giving A's for coloring inside the line and not so good grades for coloring outside the line.
Speaker 7:And what has happened is we've gone through an educational system that has taught us that as long as we stay within those lines we will be rewarded. And then suddenly we graduate and we're still working inside the lines, we're still in our comfort zones. There are many theorists and trainers who will tell you that to get out of your comfort zone you have to create a bigger zone and really push out. And I tell you, i honestly believe we're already one big circle Capable of anything we want to accomplish. The problem is there's a sub-an imaginary line through our circle and it's called the whole hum light of life. And we see there, because it's safe, it's comfortable, warm, it's fuzzy, we know what's going to happen If we do this. This will happen.
Speaker 7:But if you're ever going to make a difference for yourself or your career, you have to push yourself above the whole hum light of life. That means take a risk. Stop following the crowd. Do things that are differently. That's when you're going to actually become a troublemaker. So, as we wrap up, i challenge you to choose challenge and change. The first thing is don't follow the crowd. Stop doing what everyone else is doing.
Speaker 7:Back and 20 years ago now, we've been fighting controlling healthcare costs for 20 years. 20 years ago I kept saying, man, every idea we're getting is cost shifting. It's that cost controlling. So I came up with an idea of what we can do within our company and I approached our broker, who I very honestly respect, and I said look, what about this? He said that's career suicide. Don't do it. He's like do what everyone else is doing. You're going to have to start doing some cost shift. Well, i didn't listen to him. I implemented it instead. The following 10 years, we saved and accumulated $8 million without raising costs to the employees, all because I didn't stop following the crowd.
Speaker 7:Get creative. What are you going to do for your next training? I'll give you one more new idea. In two weeks, i'm taking my entire sales team out to play with forces for their annual sales meeting. Every year, the VP of Sales, jill, and I get the conference room at the Country Club. I was like so you could do the same script, just change the annual numbers and maybe the customer. They will change on the customer problem list. You're going to do the same thing again, aren't you? He goes you got any ideas? You mean I can take over the sales meeting?
Speaker 7:In Toledo there is an equine training farm. They do training with veterans who have PTSD. I know the person who runs it and I watched her do this before and I was like this could translate to some leadership training. We sat down together and we put together an agenda translating what she does with our vets to how it can relate to our managers. In two weeks our guys are all going to come on board thinking we're going to take them to the same old board conference room. They're going to go play with the forces for the day. You think they'll remember that thing. Get creative.
Speaker 7:Lastly, see things with a different set of eyes. When you go back and look at your handbook and say, if I was average Joe Schmoe, would I even want to read this thing. If you've never heard of Zappos Corporation, which is now owned by Amazon, they have the most awesome handbook Google Zappos Employee Handbook. It's been designed like a comic book. It's very respectful, so you're not treating your policies as a joke, but it's so creative that it actually makes employees want to read the handbook. Challenge status quo. Stop doing what everybody's been doing in HR for 20 years. You're a creator. Take risks. Jump off that 500 foot boundary and take off your blinders. I thank you all for the opportunity to give you some ideas how to be a troublemaker in HR. If anybody wants any of these tools to do some engagement, you see that the email's up there. You can use an email at Shazamtraininggmailcom or Jill underscore at Dynamic Dyes. I'll be more than happy to share that with you. So thank you very, very much.
Speaker 5:Join us for our next networking breakfast on July 20th, from 8 to 9 AM at PHP on Magnavox Way.
Speaker 5:Once again, we are planning a time of intentional connection and networking over a delicious breakfast. This time, the networking event is going to be held at PHP, our sponsor for the event. Breakfast and networking will start at 8 AM. There will be a short share from our sponsor three to five minutes and our Naira chapter president will review some meetings and membership information. Three to five minutes and the remaining time is simply time for you to connect with your peers and share what is happening in your world. At 9 AM there will be an optional tour for PHP for those that would like to stay and participate. This is a free event and please use the networking time as a time to invite connections that you have that are not yet a member of Naira. This is a great way for them to learn more about our chapter, connect with great people and hear about the many benefits that both can provide. Please register today for networking breakfast on July 20th, from 8 to 9 AM at PHP on Magnavox Way.
Speaker 2:Your resume says that you are a perfectionist.
Speaker 1:Yes, I enjoy it when I do everything perfectly.
Speaker 2:You spelled perfectionist wrong.
Speaker 7:La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la la.
Speaker 1:I'd like to thank all of our guests that we had today. Yeah, that's all the time we have. See you next time on Mic'd.