Just when you thought it was safe to turn on the TV and avoid the Baby Boomer financial planning advertisements (cf., Easy Rider selling Ameriprise), along comes the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. I was a baby when this occurred— and I have never met anyone who was there— so my only knowledge of it comes from movies, newspaper articles, and other media that have documented the event.

Fortunately, my work responsibilities don't require me to have an expert understanding of Woodstock. But what if this wasn’t the case? What if I needed this knowledge to perform the tasks expected of me?

“Lean in, back off, but don’t do nothing.”

I just finished reading Seth Godin’s book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, and, of all the thought provoking statements he makes, that phrase is the one sticking with me. I like to think of it as the equivalent of a car’s accelerator pedal. You can push down and go faster, or let up and coast, but under no circumstance should you touch the brake.

One of the most interesting conversations I had at the HR Houston Gulf Coast Symposium conference last week centered on the fragmented nature of personnel files. While HR programs have made tremendous strides towards electronic management of these record sets, HR organizations continue to struggle with inefficiencies caused by multiple physical and electronic repositories.