The Elephant Powder Test and HR

A guy is walking down the road and he comes across an old man sprinkling white powder on the road. He walks up to the old man and the conversation goes something like this What are you doing? I'm sprinkling elephant dust What does that do? It keeps away elephants But there aren't any elephants around …

7 Lessons from The Newsroom

I've been thoroughly enjoying Aaron Sorkin's 'The Newsroom', despite the fact it is deeply flawed. Maybe I'm drawn to sporadic moments of genius, they seem more fun than the mundane nature of constant genius. Here are 7 simple lessons drawn from some of the show's inspired dialogue. Lesson 1 You don't need to criticise good …

Feedback, Gullibility and The Barnum Statements problem

A new colleague told me last week that the first time that we met I was a complete jerk. They obviously didn't use the word 'jerk', but I sounded 'jerkish'. It hurt . Aside from the obvious professional concerns some of the things they were describing were things I would hate to have associated with me as …

The #HR April Fool Test

At some point I'm going to release a book of organisational tests. But not quite yet. To tide people over until that momentous event here is the April Fools Day Test for HR. 1. Sit down and work out the silliest email that your HR Department could send to the business that people might believe …

The Death of L&D: A Post Mortem

I remember 2015 like it was yesterday, it was such a hopeful time to be around Learning and Development professionals, we stood on the verge of a brave new world, full of change and opportunity. 10 years on and it seems bizarre that we hadn't seen it coming, that the death of our profession had …

HR – where it stops and starts

A few weeks ago the kind folks at NZlead invited me to publish a post on collaborative HR. That post can be found here. As part of the post I invited people to contribute to a list of things that HR should start and stop doing in order to keep getting better. This post is where …

HR and Britpop

Before Christmas I wrote a blog specifically on The Wonderstuff that turned out to be quite popular. That was unexpected. I'm a lover of good lyrics and still have that slightly 'teenage' habit of listening for 'meaning' in lyrics. Sofor this blog I've run a Genius Playlist on my iPod and picked out some lyrics …

This time it’s personnel – for all HR authors

Happy New Year and I hope you all had a great Christmas. I deliberately left you alone and went quiet for a bit - but the relentless, trundling communication will now return in earnest. This post is an update for any authors - or potential authors - wishing to contribute to the follow up to …

Did you find what you were looking for?

Superquick NYE blog. I only started blogging back in May and it's been a fun ride. I named the blog '101 Half Connected Things' to allow me freedom to write about whatever popped into my head or I saw that day. It isn't an HR/business blog in a literal sense - it is normally about …

Gamification – the early years

It was my daughter's birthday at the weekend. Two things happened which made me reflect on the nature of playing games. The first was that Kate Griffiths-Lambeth gave my daughter a game, it was actually a Christmas present, but I wanted my daughter to open it early. The game was one that I've never seen …