The H.R. Doctor is In - June 13, 2016

'It was Twenty Years Ago Today...'

This is the season for anniversaries.  With a little help from the Beatles, as well as my editing, I get to say: “It was 20 years ago today that the HR Doctor began to play” — at least in the NACo County News. Starting in the summer of 1996 the first of about 500 HR Doctor columns was delivered by a large stork to the office of County News Editor Bev Schlotterbeck.  How fast 20 years have passed.  “Twenty” isn’t a very big sounding number, but how about 240 months... 960 weeks... 6,720 days... 161,280 hours... 9,676,800 minutes ... scary!

NACo and I agreed long ago to highlight how inextricably linked success of county governments is with the practice of proactive and strong human resources management. Great HR was and definitely still is a “ticket to ride” the success train for every government department and government official.  Each individual manager’s success is a direct factor of their HR skills and knowledge.

That first article was about sexual harassment. There followed articles ranged from joyful news, like successful achievements by coworkers and the connection between family success and work success, as well as unfortunate events.  On the joyful side was HR Daughter Elyse’s master’s degree and subsequent management success in her local government career. Likewise has been the case with Dr. Daughter Rachel’s milestones such as graduating from medical school, creating a beautiful granddaughter, Evie, and meeting challenges such as serving as a county medical examiner, doing a rotation in a State Prison and dealing with many issues of health and community engagement.  Wonderful HR Spouse Charlotte provided material for many articles by the way she goes about her daily activities with dedication, caring and searching for better ways to do things.  As with all things in life, there are also difficult or sad events to discuss.  The death of a colleague, disaster management practices, budget problems, workplace violence, opioid abuse, unlawful discrimination and other poor behaviors by employees or citizens, or officials.  These all reflect examples of the “dark side” of the HR Force.

These HR Doctor columns have been a source of great fun, joy and honor for me to write. So have the many seminars and conference presentations I have been able to do for NACo and individual counties, cities and even other countries over the years.  My hope is that they have provided tens of thousands of County officials with reasons to smile or to shake their heads, all the while taking note of how to act on risk mitigation and ways to innovate in their personal and their official roles.

Some common threads looking over the long list of these articles are below.  They are a reflection of the importance of HR to government agency success. That importance has only grown over these 20 years as growing liabilities, challenges and fears have also grown.  Of course, there is also the rather scary fact that America has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 70 percent of the world’s lawyers. 

Among them are plaintiff attorneys complete with advertising billboards that orbit regularly around government building. They have particular interests in how public officials behave or fail to behave, and how the agencies respond to poor behavior.  Helping agencies understand how to get in front of risks before they create horror has been a mission for The HR Doctor over the years. 

Here are some persistent article themes:

 

The IMPORTANCE of local government to our country and the world tops the list.  It is local governments, which have the closest ties to what happens in our lives, the lives of our children, and the lives of generations not yet born.  The heart of America does not lie in whatever goes on in Washington D.C., but in what happens in the local communities. I have written about adventures in local government in Africa, the U.K., Ireland and Northern Ireland as well as in Iowa, California, Florida and many other places. The growing need to nurture local government capabilities is a cross-cultural imperative.

 

RESPECT is the fundamental link in a democracy to solving rather than creating problems.  We may disagree. We may feel very strongly about this or that issue.  However, without the ability to listen to one another, to fairly consider someone else’s opinions, and to compromise when appropriate, we are all in big trouble. We will look to “solutions” which may be simple, immediate — and wrong. 

In a powerful superpower, some of those solutions will inevitably involve violence.  They may involve poor decisions about use of the military, about putting off action when action is very much needed, or simply “walking by something wrong!”  They may involve the denial of the rights of others.  These are the conditions, which create great loss, grief and costs.  They make local government fail to sense opportunities and seize them.  They retard our ability to prevent trouble. This poor kind of local government decision-making is a form of malpractice, which adds to our liabilities.  HR can often be the agent to prevent this poor approach to governance, if we allow excellence to flourish.

 

SECURITY is a constant need and constant worry in our world.  Every day features the latest “breaking news” about a mass shooting, a terrorist or criminal horror, or about some other serious crime. In the ways we allow community infrastructure to decay, in the ways we allow individuals to lose hope and turn to violence or evil paths like extremism, in the ways we create “heroes” who lead by poor example, we are making the future a more difficult place to enter. Government has a strong part to play in resisting this version of the future. 

First, by acting properly itself, as a role model for respectful behavior. Then by listening to needs, opportunities, and dangers.  As individuals we can be transformers of the future for the good.  We can celebrate innovation and show the courage every day to lead with honor and a sense of service. The responsibility for security does not at all rest with law enforcement officers alone.  In that sense we are all part of the “blue team.”  Every one of us is a security agent. Our agencies, however, must be better prepared than they have been in the past to prevent, mitigate and meet head-on the threats that we face. 

Local governments are the leaders in our security.  It is the fundamental government function.  HR is becoming the “security HQ” more than ever before as it scans the behavioral horizon looking for signs of trouble in employee conduct and the physical security of offices.  Take it from a former intelligence officer; there is much that can be done to bring about security improvement and confidence. Allowing arrogance and obliviousness to danger to rule our thinking are definitely not two of them.

 

TECHNOLOGY in our work and personal lives has only increased and will continue to do

so. That can be incredibly wonderful and fun but it must be implemented with great care and concern. Technology can make our lives easier but it can drain us of basic humanity.  None of us like standing in lines when perhaps we could engage government online, but it’s often hard to substitute an error message for being able to chat in person with a concerned fellow human about a problem and get it resolved right there in the office.

A very important and disturbing trend in this author’s opinion (and experience) is a sense of declining civility in our world as well as the reduced ability of leaders to look beyond what they first see as they react to a problem. We are all much better served by dynamic leadership, which is forward-thinking, respectful and strategic. 

Maintaining a central place for civil discourse is the key to great outcomes in a democracy. 

The current presidential campaign, lasting for what seems like decades instead of weeks or months is a prime example. The decay in civility in interpersonal relationships, between candidates, in Congress, on the streets with law enforcement and citizens, between people on TV, in politics, at school… in general… is a much-underestimated threat to the viability of our country. 

Another decline in values is a loss of patriotism.  That means a loss of respect for how the sacrifices of our parents and generations of parents in working hard, fighting hard, innovating and creating have led us to all we have today.

A nation substituting personal entitlement for patriotism and a spirit of sacrifice will decline and eventually pass away. The slogan that we must “make America great again” is unfortunate.

America is, has been, and has all the potential to remain great. It is, however, a slogan that captures a sentiment, which has increased in past years that sacrifice and service to others has become less important than the personal acquisition of toys and an avoidance of responsibility.

Twenty years has been a long time to associate with people as wonderful as past NACo leaders, Larry Naake, Steve Swendiman, the late David Davenport, as well as current leaders like Matt Chase. They have been and are NACo’s positive and effective voice for county governments.

I hope to continue these articles and look forward to visiting with many of you at conferences, training seminars, or as you call for help in specific HR needs — even if in the future some of our work together may be streamed live from my assisted-living facility.