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Steve Forbes, Al Gore, & Marcus Buckingham

Guest post by: Betsey Nash

Article Overview: HR Conventions are a great place to keep your finger on the pulse of current & future events. Betsey shares a little information about what she learned recently.

Steve Forbes, Al Gore, & Marcus Buckingham

When I got to the door it was an hour before the presentation and I knew I wouldn't be the first in line. In fact, a colleague had told me the night before that she might sleep by the doors rather than go back to her hotel room. Sure enough, Collette was there, chatting away, excitedly discussing the philosophy and the man we were there to hear. In the previous 3 days at this national HR convention in San Diego we heard from the editor of Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes. I don't know if anyone slept in front of the doors the night before he spoke: I had no trouble walking in and finding a seat up front. Forbes promised us all would be well, told us how key the human resources professionals are going to be to the recovery, the US monetary policy will be one of the best indicators for that recovery, and, oh, by the way, a flat tax would really help. Wearing a neck brace, he said, "The end of the world will only happen once, and this is not it." That got a cheer.

We 11,000 attendees had heard from former Vice President, Al Gore, too. He had our rapt attention as he urged us to take the long view on current HR challenges and advocate for long-term solutions, rather than quick fixes. Gore addressed the long-term benefits of diversity and inclusion, development of employee competencies, a flexible workforce, and he told us that human resources professionals were key to business success.

There was also a panel of HR execs from Google, Kaiser, Northrop Grumman, & Deutsche Bank moderated by the editor of the Harvard Business Review, and their message was one word: flexibility. But I slept in that morning so I don't know what they meant.

I didn't sleep in the morning of Marcus Buckingham's presentation, though. I didn't spend the night on the floor in front of the doors, but once the door opened, Collette and I speed-walked to the front, congratulated ourselves on the great seats, and shared what we thought about this guru of the "strengths movement". We've discussed strengths-based hiring in this column: Jim Collins called it getting the right people on the bus, and in the right seats, in his book, Good to Great. Don't ask a person who needs direction after every task to tackle a long-term project; don't hire me to be a bookkeeper - I can do it but you will spend a lot of time & resources getting me up to speed. Hire someone who loves numbers and let me work on my strengths: the payoffs will be greater.

Well, like returning from Y camp - it takes awhile for the hyper-positive energy of a conference like this to level off, and I returned so pumped up and full of ideas that I had to warn my boss that I might be a bit over enthusiastic for awhile. "No such thing", said my boss, "besides, HR is the key to our success". (I made that last part up, but wouldn't it have been the perfect response?)

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Article Tags: al gore, conventions, finger on the pulse, future events, marcus buckingham, steve forbes



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Re: Citizen Journalism: There's no such thing - This clearly shows that if Steve Jobs sneezes the price of the stock will drop. Since Apple is a great company why do they have to link the rise and fall of the stock to one man? So eventually when Steve passes on what is going to happen to Apples stock?
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn't Returned To Apple In 1997? - Thanks for sharing with us Yinko. Steve Jobs is definitely a visionary. Not only his products are innovative in a technological sense, but he's managed to turn a tech-company's products into a lifestyle.... a lifestyle!! [quote:zfqoq43n]Fast Forward to today. Apple has the sexiest products in the business: iMacs, Macbooks, iPhones, iPods and more.[/quote:zfqoq43n] I think not only tech would be different (music players and phones), but ways we can think of marketing and branding. What Steve Jobs did was of course no easy task for the smaller businesses, but he did start somewhere. What I did not know was that Apple is worth about as much as Google. How do you think Apple accomplish what they did? In terms of strategy wise? If you could advice Steve on one thing, what would it be?
Re: Quote of the Day - ?"Everything happens for a reason and a p - Thanks for the quote and the link. I just watched the Tony Robbins video where he high-5s Al Gore. Good stuff! "Effective leaders have the ability to consistently move themselves and others to action because they understand the "invisible forces" that shape us." Also, "Biography is not destiny... decision is."
Re: Citizen Journalism: There's no such thing - [quote="ideasuniversity":2zpdpyk9]This clearly shows that if Steve Jobs sneezes the price of the stock will drop. Since Apple is a great company why do they have to link the rise and fall of the stock to one man? So eventually when Steve passes on what is going to happen to Apples stock?[/quote:2zpdpyk9] That's a very good point. He needs to appoint a successor now or in some way affirm that the company will exist even if he goes under!
Home Depot Training - Hi Louis, From December's Inc. Magazine Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus devoted 10% of their time to training. They did it at the beginning and kept doing it as the company grew. "The most important thing to remember is that you must be actively involved in all of the training that goes on in your company. The fire of the entrepreneur is very difficult to translate down the line."


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