For thirty years, I sat in rooms where careers quietly changed direction
You spend your career living the outcomes.
I lived the conversations that created them.
Unfortunately my origin story does not involve a spacecraft that crash landed on a farm in rural Kansas. I started as a recruiter — admittedly a job I'd fallen into. I went to school to be a pilot, but that's a story for another day. I was good at it. I enjoyed being a positive part of the next step of someone's career.
Then like all origin stories, something changed. No, this isn't the part where I tell you I fell into a vat of chemicals. I got a new gig in employee relations, which opened my eyes to a whole other side of human resources I'd never even imagined existed.
The next nearly thirty years can be summed up by: "just when I thought I'd seen and heard it all, someone yelled 'hold my beer.'"
// origin story
"If you don't have something nice to say, come sit by me."
That iconic line delivered flawlessly by the late Olympia Dukakis pretty much sums up what it's like in talent discussions, succession planning meetings, people planning — or whatever they're calling it these days.
Over and over again, on a seemingly infinite loop, these meetings played out. People's entire careers got reduced to a few sound bites. The popular ones got a dissertation — delivered with the gravitas of President Bartlett on The West Wing. Others were credited as a barely noteworthy walk-on role.
A leader would say something — good or bad — and just like clockwork the heads around the table would resemble bobblehead night at a Mariners game. In that moment, careers were accelerated and decelerated in the blink of an eye. The people whose ears were burning were blissfully unaware of what those meetings foretold about their future.
I couldn't help but wonder — what if they did know? What if they could know? How could they influence the outcome?
// bobblehead night
Perhaps I was delusional. Perhaps it was too much wine the night before. But I actually thought all HR people lived by the same code — in brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall — no no no, that's Green Lantern.
I actually thought all HR people had two core functions: be a strategic advisor to the business, and be an employee advocate. That's what I thought, and that's how I rolled. I assumed all HR people rolled that way too — well, you know what they say about people who assume.
I didn't fully understand the level of distrust people had for HR until it happened to me — and even more so as an outsider looking in. Turns out a lot of employees had been burned by a version of HR that protects the company first, and the person never.
// in brightest day
I was PISSED. There, I said it. Sorry not sorry.
Southwest Airlines was twenty-plus years in my rearview mirror, yet the news of their layoffs hit like it was yesterday. Not that they did layoffs — I get it. It was the how. A complete betrayal of the values that made Southwest different, with treating people with respect chief among them.
That started me down a path — with a camera and something I couldn't stay quiet about.
I've been in the rooms. Now I'm going to tell you all sorts of SHIT you didn't know you needed to know.
// i've had it
