HR Elevated

"It's Your Ship" Over ten years ago, just a few years after its initial publication, I heard about the book, "It’s Your Ship" by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. In the spirit of full disclosure, I judged the book by its cover and its title. I thought to myself, “What does leading a crew have to do with the brutal realities of leading an organization operating within the world of business?" Fast forward to about five years ago. I’ve made plans to attend a learning and development conference. However, in addition to the general and breakout sessions, I’ve been invited to participate in a pre-conference session dedicated to those with more senior titles in the field. I’m intrigued and decide to participate. Most of the day is going to be facilitated discussion sessions on key topics in the field. The closing keynote speaker will then be none other than Captain D. Michael Abrashoff (USN, Retired). It was during his presentation and the following Q...

Increasing Value: Four Steps to Sustainable Relevance A short time after awakening to the fact that people are an organization’s only increasing asset, it also dawned on me that it was up to me to continue increasing my value if I wanted to remain relevant for any organization to which I belonged. This meant that I would have to regularly ask myself the question, “What am I doing to increase my value for [insert the name of the organization]?” Additionally, I would need to ask the same question for each organization in which I was a member, be it my family, employer, a community group, etc. As I reflected on this question with some of my peers, we stumbled upon four steps that we would need to be constantly and consistently working through to increase our value and remain relevant. The first step is to continuously seek feedback from personal stakeholders—direct leader, peers, direct reports, indirect leader, indirect reports and key customers—internal and external. O...

People: An Organization’s Only Increasing Asset Almost 30 years ago, I was working as a night security guard at a food distribution company. Being at the bottom of the tenure list, it fell upon me to work Christmas Eve night alone. Never before had I seen so many thousands of square feet so empty or so still. It was then that I realized the central role of people in this and any organization. Despite the millions of dollars in buildings, equipment and inventory, none of it had any real value without the people who demanded the product, the people who would get it to them, or the people who grew and processed it. Call me slow, but I finally realized that PEOPLE were at the center of it all. Fast forward a number of years, and I’m sitting in a micro-MBA program for developing leaders. We are going through the finance and accounting modules of the program and talking about depreciation of assets. Then out of the blue it hits me. PEOPLE are the only asset in an organization th...