Yes.

You’ve been waiting…

A Bad Mingled Wryness - Special Tuesday Edition.

A first.

A new tradition?

No.

But still really really really cool.

And speaking of cool, it wasn’t for me over the weekend…

It Was Hot Hot Hot

Ninety-eight degree hot.

Muggy hot.

Really muggy hot.

Ninety-two degrees at 6.20 in the morning.

Really muggy ninety-two degrees at 6.20 in the morning hot.

Hot.

I spent the last three days in New Orleans, where I conducted a four-hour pre-conference workshop titled Get Smart About Workforce Engagement:  10 Principles to Transform Supervisors into Engagement Leaders at the national Society of Human Resource Management conference, the largest gathering of human resource professionals of the year.   About 50 folks came out on a steamy Sunday morning to hear me speak for four hours.  Yea, four hours.

Some of them even knew who I was!

The presentation centered around two important concepts:

• Workforce engagement is as critical today as it has always been.  Although the issue of retention may not be as “high on the list” as it once was, the need for employees to work hard on behalf of customers is more important today because every customer is critical to the ongoing success of an organization.
• Supervisors and managers play a critical role in getting the most out of their employees  through effective talent management solutions.  Supervisors and managers are responsible for performance management, daily satisfaction, tools and technology, and rewards and recognition.  Employees quit a boss, not a company.

We also played the Employee Hold’em Card game, still popular after more than eighteen-thousand people have gone through it.  Another two-thousand or so will participate through the rest of the year.  And it’s still fun after more than 100 times of playing.

One of the nice things of conducting a pre-conference workshop is that once I was done at 1:00 on Sunday (after my book signing) I could just enjoy the city.  I’ve been there four times now, and I still admit I enjoy walking around the French Quarter and Jackson Square.  And of course, beignets and coffee from Cafe Du Monde and seafood gumbo and crawfish from Desire are hard to turn down, no matter what time of day or night.  You know how much I love traveling, mostly because I love eating.  Nasty habit.  But I figured I “walked it off” in my two-hour afternoon journey and anyway powdered sugar is fat free.

I got the opportunity to walk along the river at 6.30 in the morning, watch an incredible lighting storm roll in over the water, look at antiques and shop in the art galleries.  And of course, “people watch”.  And Bourbon Street is still one of the most fun places in the world to people watch.  It’s a combination of the sound of the music, the smell of the food, and the fact that everyone is walking around with a beer or a hurricane that makes it such an “intoxicating” place.  And it really doesn’t matter what time of day you’re on Bourbon street, however there is a certain “craziness” that happens after 11 p.m. or so.

Eating, drinking, voodoo, gambling, and debauchery.  Yea, that screams Human Resources!

We are a strange and interesting bunch, albeit at half the numbers that attended last year’s SHRM conference.   Yea, fifty percent less people at this  years conference than last years.

More to come over the next couple days about my impressions of the conference and of course, the venue.