New Leeson Life

As part of my work over the past few years I've spent a lot of time in project meetings relating to HR Systems implementations - first UK wide, now global. I'm not a systems guru, or an IT geek (in fact the thought of me tinkering around with tech would make my brother - our family's actual IT guru - cry with laughter) but I love a problem to solve and the utopia of reliable, accessible, agile data that drives all the transformational activity we as a business want to achieve is one I've been determined to reach. Consequently, solving that problem landed with me.  It's not glamourous. In fact if you want to send most HR and operational people into a mild coma, you could do worse than start talking about data fields and user profiles and interfaces. The challenge with HR and systems is that HR people LOVE the front end. They are crazy about shiny techy toys, about getting stuff online, about social and intuitive and all that jazz. But they don't want to lift th...

I have done a very silly thing. With just 13 months to go until my 40th birthday I have signed myself up to be in a dance show. It all began rather innocently when I found out about this brilliant dance studio, run by ex-West End and Royal Ballet dancers that offer classes for all ages and abilities. I danced in my teens and early twenties and it was my first love, before even Jason Donovan. I wasn't bad at it either. So when I found this place I wanted to recapture some of the pure joy that dancing first gave me. And it was cool because, along with the very bendy glamourous young things, and the cutest toddlers in tutus you've ever seen, there are enough other 'old birds with day jobs' to make me feel safe. And, oh, its brilliant. I adore it.  Except this week something happened. With just 5 weeks to go until this show (that seemed like a great idea at a distance) reality has hit us. You see, we aren't dancers. We don't do this every day. We are a bit s...

I love writing. I enjoy the way it organises my thoughts. The way it allows me to think a thing through to a conclusion of kinds without interruption. But I haven't done much of it recently. Partly because of, you know, life. Partly because the last but one time I wrote a post - on what HR isn't - some charmer felt the need to respond with a comment along the lines of "I think the lady doth protest too much". Which I took to mean "Yeah, yeah, HR is whatever I say it is so stop pretending to be something you're not and take some notes in my disciplinary woman". Ironically I think he was trying to sell me his services. Not ironically, I think he had a point.  HR is what other people think it is. And lots of people think it's something akin to a note-taking, argument-refereeing, employment-tribunal-avoiding, counselling service. I sat in a seminar the other week, surrounded by senior HR types, with a panel discussion on  how organisations with clear ...

So, it's exam time. Which means that around about now thousands of knackered excitable university students are getting ready to launch themselves onto the job market. My own graduation was fifteen years ago. I like saying that because the fact that I took two years to decide what to do about university now makes it seem like I'm two years younger than I actually am. Top tip, handy hint there for A Level students - take a few years out, pretend you're younger than you are later in life. OK, maybe not the best top tip, handy hint I'll offer in this post, but you need to start somewhere. I've interviewed quite a few fresh faced graduates over the past 15 years or so. I've even employed a few. So I thought it may be useful to share some of my advice and the stuff I wish someone had told me as I readied myself to enter the world of work. Get over yourself That degree that you've just spent the past three or four years sweating blood and vodka for? The o...

Odd blog title. Thought it may be worth explaining it here.  According to someone* I met recently, we are 80% water. We as in human beings. All of us. That probably explains the water cooler business, Evian's profit margin and why I almost always need a pee in the middle of the night. Or maybe that's age. Anyway, the point is, if we are all 80% water then we really aren't all that different are we? You, me, the boss, the boss's boss. We're all human. We all need to drink, we all need to pee. And if you boil it down to 80% water we really shouldn't be that scared of each other. Or deal with each other as if we're all that different. And yet we often are, we often do. People very often approach other people as if they are a completely alien race. Managers do it with teams, employees do it with management. Shareholders do it. Bad marketing departments do it with customers. But we're not a different race. 80% of us is water. So at least 80% of us...

I work in HR. Human Resources. Just let that phrase roll around in your head for a while. What comes up? Rules? Policies? Paperwork? Getting told off? Getting fired? Doesn't sound like the stuff of inspiration or joy or wonder, does it? What about the ladies who work there? It's always ladies, isn't it? "The lady in HR said I must...". (Or girls; "the girl in HR got my holiday dates wrong"). Ladies in bobbly cardigans with glasses on rope and chiffon scarves. Ladies with boxes of tissues kept neatly next to their myriad of forms. Ladies who look motherly but will fire you with a sympathetic head tilt. I once worked with a Marketing Director who would breeze out of the office via our department, trilling as he went; "Goodnight Human Remains!" Oh, what a card he was. Hark at his punning - see what he did there? Human Remains - like dead stuff. Such fun! Do I sound bitter? Maybe I am a little. I love my job and I really don't like injus...