You don’t need to read a blog from me this week. But you do need to read many HR blogs this week.

For the best-of-the-best and for some of the most heartwarming stories, here is an HR Carnival (a collection of blogs around the HR industry or by HR Professionals). This HR Carnival collection was created by Mike VanDervort at The Human Race Horses, and the reading is the best time you can have this week while still getting yourself thinking about many diverse yet timely and interesting human resource topics.

Just go to the HR Carnival of Global Giving.

You should also set your RSS reader to keep you up-to-date on posts from these great authors.

Cheers,
Lois

Are we giving enough to those who need us? Do we make it easy for our employees to give? And I’m not referring to money. What if we all gave just TWO days a year of our time and or expertise to a source in need?

I read an amazing statistic on the web. “If everyone of the 126,685,145 people who voted in the presidential election, regardless of party affiliation, devoted just one day of service to their community, it would equal over a billion man hours in a highly concentrated timeframe. The scope of this kind of participation is unprecedented and could bring solutions to thousands of communities in need.”

What an incredible way to think about giving. I believe we can all contribute in many ways. Typically, I give time to my community in smaller increments of dedicated time. I like to contribute where I know I am actually using my expertise, as opposed to throwing brute force or hours at a problem. Would I have more impact if I put all of the hours together?

I have great inspirations in the area of donating, such as Dave Stone of First Rate Investment Systems, one of the most giving people I have ever met in this world. The evidence of his giving spirit can be read in one of his earlier First Rate newsletters. He not only gives himself but inspires his employees to give and congratulates their efforts.

Need help deciding what method best suits your company or you as an individual? The Volunteer Family site provides a framework to select what best fits your interests and capabilities. The SERVE.GOV site enables you to search for a volunteer opportunity, shares additional source links, as well as provides toolkits to get started with your volunteer program.

I applaud my friends, employees, family members, interns, and all who dedicate time to their community to help make it a better place. I challenge all of us to extend our hands just a little further to help wherever our hearts tells us we can. We should all give in the ways that are best suited to us. Giving of yourself can only lead to living a richer life. I will pledge to do more with my blessed life to help others do more with theirs.

Cheers,
Lois

Even with sharply decreased travel budgets you can still meet so many talented people in the human resources industry. They are from all walks of life and experiences, and it is almost a given that you will learn from them. There are still many ways to connect with these people.

For instance, I learn so much about HR issues from meeting with our customers, such as:

• creative ways to do a rapid succession plan
• unique and common prospectives to reorganizing staff for alignment with business strategies
• data integrity problems that can make you pull your hair out, if you can’t find a way to fix them (that’s where Aquire comes in)
• and so many other great discussions

Then there is my network of non-customers in the human resource space. Some are vendors to the HR profession and others are actual HR professionals. Some  are just really interesting people who are interested in other people. I use my travels, tradeshows, LinkedIn, and now Twitter, to meet, greet, learn from, and, hopefully, contribute to this wonderful network of professionals who make supporting the world’s employee base a better career.

One of the truly amazing networks I’ve encountered and am largely expanding into, is the world of human resource bloggers. One particular blog isn’t really a single blog, it’s called “Carnival of HR.” Every few weeks this roving blog entry, comprised of a collaboration of links to some of the best, brightest, and most entertaining bloggers in the industry, is posted by a different industry blogger – thus sharing the web traffic love. Some entrants are in every Carnival and others come in and out. You have GOT to meet these people.

Check out this week’s Carnival of HR hosted by Inflexion Point, the blog page for Inflexion Advisors, and coordinated by the HR Minion (aka Shauna Moerke). I didn’t get an entry into this carnival, but I occasionally drop by, too. You can also check out the accompanying  Blogrolls, a list of other recommended bloggers posted on a blogger’s site. (I now have one on my blog – and will be enhancing it soon with more great resources.)

We can learn so much from each other and be entertained as well. By the way, if you are not reading blogs yet, or are not LinkedIn or connecting with Twitter, you are really missing something, and it just might bite you one day. Because, oh, the people you’ll meet…

Cheers,
Lois

Are you fast becoming a master at channel surfing or at delivering customer service that exceeds expectations? Are you setting an environment for your kids, students, employees or yourself to master the art of questioning or the art of learning?

In his book, Outliers, The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell provides a great deal of evidence that the best (if not only) way to master something is to dedicate approximately 10,000 hours to it. For perspective, that is 1,250, 8 hour days. An “outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience; in this instance, people who have achieved over and above what is expected. Gladwell’s examples include chess masters, the Beatles, golfers, Mozart, and others. He stresses through many examples that a combination of people, circumstances, and tenacity of practice is what leads to greatness, not just innate talents. According to Gladwell, outliers are the beneficiaries of many helping hands.

Excellence takes time. One of the encouraging points of Outliers is that you can reach excellence in most things if you can persist in the right dedicated practice of your art, whatever it might be. Be purposeful about how you spend your time. If your goals involve mastering a set of skills, make sure your daily routine allows you to dedicate consistent time toward developing the habits and skills you need to achieve your goals.

P.S. Anyone who is a mentor, teacher, parent, leader, coach, or a life learner will enjoy this book. If we can’t all be outliers, we can certainly contribute to the development an outlier.

Cheers,
Lois

Being at IHRIM last week gave me such a wonderful feedback loop. I have always known that filling Aquire’s organizational chart with the best people possible is the most valuable skill I can cultivate.

I was greatly rewarded when my customers and people of the HR Technology community came up to me during the conference and repeatedly said things like:

• I love your employees.
• They are so great.
• They are very helpful.
• They obviously like their jobs because they do them well and take care of us.

It happened so many times. I was beaming with pride.

I thank my employees for being so wonderful to the community and I thank the community for acknowledging them.

Cheers,
Lois