 Welcome back to Think Tech. Here we are in Honolulu doing community matters on a given Thursday and we have a special guest from California. He is a human resources guru if you don't mind me saying that. That's Rex Connor. Welcome to the show Rex. Thank you James glad to be here. Yeah I'd like to talk about your book today. I'd like to talk about human resources. I'd like to talk about the Millennials in the workplace and how to create a workplace that engages people and gives them gratification and you know it makes maximum productivity. So let's start first about your book. Tell us about your book. The book's called What if Common Sense was Common Practice in Business and I tried to make it an easy read. There are Dilbert comics in it because Dilbert points out the fact if you're familiar with those comics that we just violate common sense all of the time in the workplace. And so my hope with the book is that people will feel validated that you know this this really is messed up and I wanted to give them hope that I can do something about it. Yeah that would be great. And I think a lot of people don't know they just cruise through it and try to go by the seat of their pants without thinking of the basic principles. So let's talk about how the workplace has changed in the last 10 years. Because 10 years ago there were no Millennials but now we have Millennials and maybe in some ways they are the most important people in the workplace. They are the ones you want to hold on to at the same time they want to leave. They always wanted to go from gig to gig. So you know what's the workplace like. Let's let's address that first. Well statistically they are they do like to change jobs. I don't think they're different creatures from from the rest of the humanoids on the planet. What they want isn't a lot different than what all this one. They're just more likely to seeing take this job and shove it and move on take their talents elsewhere than maybe their older counterparts. My generation grew up trying to stay with a company for a long time. They don't have that same same value. That certainly doesn't make them any less valuable. We certainly want to retain the people that have the skills to do the job. And a lot of times that's a couple Millennials working for me. But doesn't that reflect the notion that you know the move on philosophy the move on approach and then reflect the notion of a lack of loyalty. You know in earlier generations maybe mine yours for one reason or another. Maybe it was sometimes more than spiritual more than philosophical. But at least in those days it seems like to me there was a great amount of loyalty. Maybe is loyalty changed now. Maybe what has changed is the Millennials look at us their parents and they say you know what loyalty goes both ways. The company needs to be loyal to the to the employee as well as the other way around. And you see changes in things like retirement plans where back in the day a lot of retirement plans were well if you stick with us for 20 years will pay you a certain amount of money. And now we've gone to the fixed from fixed benefit to just OK well if you contribute to it when you leave you can take the money with you. That's a subtle shift. But it's an example of maybe that maybe Millennials are looking at saying well companies aren't loyal to me. Why do I owe them owe them loyalty if they aren't loyal to me. So that can go both ways. Yeah. Well so when you have a millennial and I want to distinguish them in all capacities but you would have what do you what do you do to treat them special. What do you do to treat them you know in a way so that they you can achieve this mutual loyalty you're just talking about. Well I don't. That's where I think Millennials aren't completely different in what they're looking for. All of us want to feel like we're contributing to the job. All of us feel like want to feel like we're being valued. And where that falls short in the job not just for Millennials but for all of us is when I'm I'm part of a subjective process when my evaluations are subjective. You know they're open to interpretation and I interpret them differently than the boss. You know the boss is going to win. And so regardless of what generation you're in you don't like that that subjectivity in the work processes. So if you can take the subjectivity out of the work processes so everyone knows for example how you're going to be evaluated exactly what the job supposed to be exactly what the outcome should be how I'm going to get paid how I qualify for pay raises. That's going to go a long way to retaining not only Millennials but all of us. Yeah to make it objective instead of subjective. You know it comes to mind when when you talk about that I had a case actually reporting job in which involved a naval investigation of an accident at sea and it was a nuclear submarine involved and one of the issues was whether the captain of the submarine had created a work environment in the control room of the submarine that was appropriate and it was not likely to result in accidents. In this case it was a horrendous accident and one of the points that the board of investigation took upon when they investigated this and what they found in the result of their investigation was that the captain had not achieved a climate a collaborative climate. And that means that the individuals in the control room should be listened to should be heard and that the captain should have been asking them for their opinion should have been taking their advice or at least considering their advice. And he didn't do that. It was a you know it was a vertical a vertical kind of arrangement instead of a horizontal one. And you can't afford that in a mission critical control room. And I wonder if that kind of thing is relevant to what you're talking about. You know Jay I think it really is. I think that's of course an extreme example when you're talking about a nuclear submarine and people's lives that are under water that that's a job that a lot of us wouldn't wouldn't relish. And of course the results of errors there are much more dramatic than they are in my workplace. But the concept like you're saying is is the same. Everyone needs to be able to communicate clearly especially in their area of expertise. And I run a small company. I don't have expertise in all the areas of my company. And so I have people that are a lot smarter than me in a lot of different areas. And even if I've done that job before even if I have expertise in that area someone that's current in it I need to listen to them. Most importantly the communication needs to be clear enough where they can feel safe in clarifying my fuzzy direction my fuzzy terminology. Terminology. My subjective. Well that's exactly what happened in the nuclear submarine. The individuals the crew members in the command in the control room were not. I mean in fact by virtue of a third party investigation they were not they did not feel free to communicate their concern about this that the other thing. And as a result the captain was was doing his own thinking alone. And of course you know what it suggests is you've got to communicate to your crew that they're free in fact more than free they to save everyone's life they have an obligation to talk to you to tell you that you may be wrong to tell you that you may want to consider other factors. And I think that probably goes in a lot of businesses. It's not that they don't want to it's that you have to affirmatively encourage them to do that. You have to teach them to do that. And this goes to I know a part of your book is about training. So how do you train people to speak up to provide their input to make to watch your back for you to watch your back. That's what happened here. They didn't watch his back. I'm not sure that's a training issue as much as it's a trust issue. And I don't know that you can that you need to train that that's a trusting is a skill we all have when we choose to to award it to someone. So it's really a matter of clarifying what everyone's roles are and what the communication is. And it's really creating the environment. And you're right Jay this is a top down requirement. It's creating an environment where it's safe to clarify communication. And that's what people need. They just need to know that when something is open to interpretation. I need I am safe to ask for clarification. There is a process you can use to do that. But part of it is you have to be safe to do it. I know I've I've had situations where I tried to clarify with my boss some directive they've given me in those conversations to not end well. In this case it didn't end well either. There was loss of life involved. But you know I just wonder then. OK so it may not be involved in a specific training. But how important is the training. I understand you've got to have a language a language of communication. And from the top down you've got to talk in certain terms and certainly go so that there's no ambiguity. You know you want it to be very clear what you mean and how you feel about them and how you want them to feel about you. But how does that wrap around in the training aspect. Well training is is just one part of the equation but the bottom line principles are the same. In training you need to take out all the subjectivity. That's been done in the training realm very effectively by the pioneers of the performance based training that is so prevalent today. And I happen to represent the products and the work of one of those pioneers Dr. Robert Meagher. And the real secret sauce in his methodology is to take all of that ambiguity all that subjectivity out of training and to make sure it's completely clear that language you're talking about Jay we call it common performance language where everyone talks about the way humans perform. They talk about it in very clear observable performances. They don't use what he calls fuzzies or fuzzy language like you need to be a team player. You need to take some initiative. You need to have business accurate. Those are all fuzzies and you can translate. There's a way to translate those fuzzies into observable performances. That same language can spread from training to the recruiting process to the business. Business processes especially the evaluations on the business. Well may I ask you for some examples of that. Because you know there are a lot of standard phrases that people use. I recognize that and they feel that these phrases you know the the boss feels that these phrases can note you know the right principles. But I agree you've got to be you got to have examples you've got to be detailed. You got to find a way to actually communicate what's on your mind. So that the other fellow understands what you're really thinking. So give us some examples of how you would you know how you would flesh out the notion of you got to be a team player. What would you say. Let me give you a very personal example. But I hope what's happening during this is all your viewers are saying oh I've been in that situation and they're they're reviewing their own example. But the aforementioned conversation with the boss that didn't go well was when the boss brought me in for my annual evaluation. And I was expecting to you know have phrases heaped on me because of what I was doing is saving me millions of dollars. He said I'm giving you the minimum raise I can because you just aren't a team player. I said how am I not a team player. I recruited the team. I train the team. I you know implement. I work with the team. How am I not a team player. He said well that's my team now. I said well of course it's your team. You're the boss. But how am I not a team player. And then I then I realized in this process I mentioned to translate fuzzy communication. I said fair enough boss. But when I'm being a team player what are you observing me do. And this conversation started out pretty well. He said well first of all you're coming to team meetings on time. I said fair enough second of all you aren't rolling your eyes when your team members speak. So OK yeah fair enough. What else boss. And at this point he started getting defensive like I'm trying to pin him down and argue against him. And that's why this process while it's a simple and a good process it still takes tack timing diplomacy that maybe I didn't have at the time. And he just kind of dismissed me with well that's enough you should know when you're a team player or not. And so that particular instance maybe I shouldn't use a bad example. But that one didn't end well. But the idea is at the end of your job. Basically it was I was forced out of that job. That was the beginning of the. Sorry to use a bad example but as a clear example. I never found out what being a team player meant to the boss. And that's why I was I was making the point earlier in the summer in example. That conversation you have to be safe to have that conversation. It needs to be allowed. It needs to be part of the culture. So a boss cannot feel threatened. They can say oh yeah you're right I need to communicate this more clearly. Let me give you some more observable performances. To describe what I'm talking about. Yeah let me let me take that a step further and say suppose the individual not you but somebody in your shoes in that circumstance actually didn't like the boss. Actually was a negative person. Actually was a terrible employee. And you know and you know there are those around. That's always going to be the human condition. So you know you can you can say I want you to tell me I want you to show me I want you to you know talk talk back to me I want that. And then that can be that can lead to a problem but another kind can it. Certainly certainly there in the human experience there are all sorts of mine fields especially in this area of trying to clarify communication with people that aren't used to it. Or people that don't want to. But I actually did and it helped for a little while in this case is I went to a co-worker. Who the boss really liked they spoke the same language I spoke a different language. And I use this co-worker as a translator between me and the boss I said you know the boss says I'm not a team player what's the boss saying. What should I be doing this observable. And she straightened me out quite a bit. While you do this this and this he hates that kind of stuff. I didn't recognize I was doing it it was part of me and so. It helps sometimes to have a translator. In the work. Yeah sure. But at the end of the day you want to have a personal relationship with everyone you know I remember there was one CEO here in Honolulu. He knew that the name of every employee in the company and it was a big company. He knew the name of every wife of every employee and furthermore he prided himself on naming the name of the dog of each employee if there was one or the children. Notice I mentioned dogs first. But how important is it to have a familiarity type relationship. With the people involved. Jay don't we all know as a common sense that business is all about people. It's all about relationships. That is common sense that's why we all scratch our heads when we work for a dictator. Or we work for someone that doesn't care about people. Or those people get promoted to people positions. I'm not saying those people are bad there are a lot of people that don't want to deal with people. Let them deal with what they enjoy dealing with. I have a person in my own company that does not want to deal with customer service. Because she doesn't like it and she knows she's terrible at it. And she says don't put me in a customer service don't put me in a role where I have to pacify a customer. I will not do it. So let's get the people in the position but going back to your point. It is all about relationships. Yeah. But what strikes me from what you say is that sometimes. It's around pegging a square hole. In other words the person was hired and gauged to do one job but we all find out going down the path that maybe that's not the best job for that person. In terms of skill or aptitude in terms of taste what have you there's no accounting for taste. And then you're in a moment of trying to figure out how to improve that situation. And I suppose you can change the job. Or I suppose you can change the person with some other person. You know in a small company you've got to get the job done somehow. What do you do when you run into an employee who's a square or a contractor who's a square pegging a round hole. How do you alleviate that problem and still get the job done. Well Jane that's so critical for small companies because you don't have a lot of time you don't have a lot of resources. I faced that in my small company recently I had you know a man blesses are very talented in the field he was in and I thought that translated by job title to the position I put him in my company. And it did by job title it did not translate by skill. And we spent a lot of time and frankly that was a lot of money trying to find the right skill set that he had that could contribute to the business. And eventually he opted out and I use him as a contractor now for very specific skills that he has. But he's no longer in the position that he was in that's just the reality of business. It ties in real well I appreciate the segue to the subtitle in my book. Don't expect fish to climb trees. Don't hire someone to do a job. And I never knew. That comes from that quote that we all love Albert Einstein quotes and his quote was everybody's a genius. But when you evaluate a fish on its ability to climb a tree it's going to live its whole life thinking that it's stupid. And so my book has a whole chapter on how do you fit a the job requirements with a person skill set and how do you avoid mismatching those because we've all seen the results of mismatching just like my example. And I wrote the book and made that mistake of not not matching the skill in my hurry and a small business get someone in here the job title sounds the same. That was all the violation of chapter two of my book. Let's talk about job titles. You mentioned that job titles are very important for you know everybody understanding what the name of the game is and maybe gratification to it's a it's a stroke for sure or maybe the other side. It's a problem if you use the wrong job title. So we've got any advice about how to select a job title and interestingly enough how to change a job title. Since I run the business I the purview of changing which I do liberally and I use job titles just the way you said Jay sometimes the person that's important to them and the person I hired recently to take the place of the baby boomer that I mentioned she's a millennial and she was all about the job title. I said well what job title do you want. And she gave me one you know her highness of something and I said well let's choose one that will communicate to our clients what you do. So it's really a negotiation between I think between first of all I don't limit myself to the traditional job structures or titles. But I want the right combination that honors the skills that that the person has while communicating to my clients to my target population not the entire world just to my clients. What they can expect from that job position from that person that has that position. So really it's a negotiation. Yeah very interesting that you know some of these tech companies the entrepreneurial companies they come up with job titles you never heard before chief chief thinker or something like that. It's very personal. Say it is and might you know I had the title lead partner. I own the company. I co-founded it but the other person isn't an active member of the company. You know a lot of people call that position CEO or president. Whatever I like lead partner because that's what I want everyone in my organization to feel like I want them all to feel like partners. And I encourage them to have partner in their title to whatever it is. Not all of them do. But I like it to be descriptive. Yeah it's part of the culture. I like creativity. Well creativity is a great culture to have because creativity goes down a path toward engaging people and engaging people means they're more productive. You know I wanted to talk about productivity. We've had a lot of talk here in Honolulu we've had a number of programs and events lately about not necessarily about the millennials or limited to the millennials but about the you know the senior crowd and there are people in the community and in fact in positions of official power who would like to see more elders hired after retirement brought back into the workforce. And I wonder if you have any advice on how to deal with them. It's a good idea. Do you have to deal with them differently. How do you compare dealing with a millennial and dealing with an elder senior person. Yes I do have some advice and may not be what you're looking for or popular for. In my business and this is why I recommend to others. I don't care if they're young old black white male female their sexual preference. I don't hire activists for their particular situation. I think we should do the hiring by skills and matching the skills that the job requires with the skills of the person in the middle and long term that works out best. And senior people have a tremendous amount of skills. Especially if you look at the entirety of a job. You know we say that well millennials have the technology background. They'll learn the technology quickly. Very true. And we need we need those skills too. But let's not forget all the soft skills all the people skills because we just said Jay that business is about relationships. It's about people. Good heavens there are a lot of senior people that have some very rich experience in relationships that millennials don't have. I wish I could remember the name of the movie. I'm sorry I can't. But recently I think it was the intern with anyway an older guy goes in the workplace with all these millennials. You know at first no one wants to work with him because he's old he doesn't have the same skill set. But he has so much experience so much wisdom with people pretty soon everyone wants him wants his advice. So let's let's just broaden our expectations to include soft skills and people skills and then get the right person in that job that has the right combination. Yeah I certainly agree. And I I practiced law for a long time and to tell you right in the law firm I was involved we found that somebody with life experience was valuable if for no other reason than the life experience. It's that sense of judgment that sense of dealing with dealing with situations. But let me ask you this you know training and training is an underscore here because you you you like skills but but many times you can't find someone with the exact skill you want. So you have to put that in focus with training. You have to bring whoever it is into the specific you know skill that you need for your company. And I wonder what role training plays how you organize it how how you how you put it in the daily schedule and how you treat the notion of cross training training a little broader than you might you know so somebody is doing job A somebody doing job B but you give training that actually teaches B about what A is doing. Do you do that? What's the what's the benefit what's the detriment of training and how much I know this is multiple compound question. How much training do you want to give how much time do you want to spend on training when you still have the job to do. That is a good way to ask the question how much training when you still have a job to do. And in what I'm recommend I'm recommending you don't isolate training you don't isolate recruiting and you don't isolate employee development. It's all the same subject it should be part of one seamless people performance system built on the same skills that you identified when you built a performance based job description. And so training is near and dear to my heart but you can't if you keep it isolated in the stove pipes of recruiting training development you will never get the full impact you'll never answer the question you're asking about how much training do you do. You do exactly what's required by your people performance system. And part of that is developing people for new jobs it's career mapping it's succession plan. It's all the same subject if you start out by identifying what a confident performer does in the workplace for each job and you build performance objectives around all of that for all the job descriptions you have a map that's available to everyone to say what skills each position needs. So if you're interested in a new position or grooming someone for a new position you know exactly what skills they need to develop and can include that in their development. But you've hired the right person for a job for those skills you train the exact skills you need for that job you identify and you evaluate based on those skills it's all one system. Well you know sometimes you know in my experience you bring someone from the outside in and you you hire an official trainer and you have this trainer stand at the head of the class with a power point and a blackboard and train as if you were in school back in school. Sometimes and in my law firm this was really you know what we did most of time if not all the time we had somebody in the group some lawyer some staff person some administrative person would would stand up in-house in-house training and share what that person was doing with everyone else. So everyone knew what that person was doing everyone learned the lessons that person had learned even if they were hard lessons and that person had the chance to express himself or herself and feel good about it. So it was all a win win win win win. But I'm wondering you know what where you make that choice at least in your view whether to train in-house or hire somebody to come from outside and train. Well people I've been around the the training industry now for more than 20 years and what you describe is a subject matter expert running the training and the acronym of course is SME or SME that's a common common phrase and what you describe is subjected to SME disease where the SME gets up gives a lot of information but I recommend is what my mentor Dr. Robert Mayer that I mentioned before his focus in this whole people human performance arena his focus is on performance based training and that is based on training in Maygerville where he resides training means a new skill it doesn't mean information and so there is a scientific way Mayger was a scientist he came into the corporate training realm and looked around and said you people are messed up you're trying to do training like they do in school where you dump a lot of information on someone and hope that somewhere someday they'll be able to apply it he said that's not how the human brain works that's not science the scientific way to do this is to go out on the job evaluate what a confident performer does and build backwards like reverse engineering and make sure in the training environment they're developing those specific skills and that they are demonstrating those skills before they leave training so when they get on the job they can perform on day one and I'll tell you Jay being in more than 50 companies in the last couple of decades that's not common practice I hope when I said it sounds like common sense but it's not common practice but there's a method they're doing they're doing it when you do it the results are spectacular they aren't good they aren't better than average the results are spectacular good advice I'm a proponent of this performance-based training good advice Rex Connor a human resources guru written a book and has given us some good advice today thank you so much Rex for appearing on Think Tech on Community Matters we hope to talk to you again soon and as you said it's all about common sense Aloha thank you