Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

Some thoughts on Veteran’s Day.

I have become a huge peace freak in my old age, but I am still thankful for the four years that I spent in the Marine Corps and I am still very humbled by the sacrifices made by the men and women in the Armed Forces.  I wish they were not in harms way today, I wish that we were not in multiple complex conflicts today but we are.  I appreciate those that serve and that have served from all walks of life and from every corner of our nation. 

In some ways the Marine Corps spoiled me.

I got to work with some really great people, I observed some incredible leadership, and I learned about what really matters.  I think part of the reason that most of the work done in Human Resources and most of the conversation about Human Resources today seems out of focus and out of place to me is due to my experience in the Marine Corps.

What really matters is people.

It is all about people, their relationships with each other and their shared purpose.  That is how you accomplish incredible things.  Not money or fancy titles or the perfect laboratory designed metric or the biggest office building.  People, doing what they believe in, together…that is how magic happens.  The Marine Corps gets that.  Business does not.  There are a lot of business leaders that say they get it, but we all know that 99% of them are without a clue.        

The Marine Corps excels at unleashing upon the world people that love what they do, why they do it and who they do it with.

Business (and education and government and healthcare, etc.) does more to get in the way of this than it does to promote it and support it.  While business desperately needs the unique contributions of those in the workforce it is still oriented towards conformity, command and control and the tyranny of the tangible.  The workforce is on a leash.  Cubicles.  Absurd policy.  Leaders disconnected from reality.  The human resources function suffering an identity crisis.  Games.  Politics. Lack of trust.  And on and on ‘til the break of dawn.

We need freedom fighters.

It is human beings being human that will save business.  Management will not and cannot facilitate that change, it does not even comprehend it.  Finance will not and cannot do it.  The same goes for IT, Marketing, Communications and the other usual suspects.  There is one organizational platform with the potential to drive and fuel this transformation and it is human resources.

There is a transformative opportunity at hand if the human resources discipline is up to the challenge.  Human resources can contribute to the same tradition that the great poets, warriors, revolutionaries and saints have contributed to…the tradition of truth-telling and of liberation. 

Human resources must become an aspirational and activist craft. 

Human resources must become the keeper of the flame, the teller of the story and the steward of the organizations soul. 

Human resources must become the voice for what really matters.

This is very different than the role being played by most of human resources today.  It will require more than finding other like minded folks and patting each other on the back.  It will require us to say something new and to do something different.  It will require risk and sacrifice and it will involve pain.  Mistakes will be made and some of us will suffer along the way.  Real change, liberation and the diffusion of power do not come easily, they have never come easily. 

The workforce must be let off the leash and as badly as business needs that to happen, it will fight against every single step in that direction.  Not only will management fight this effort, so will the majority of our peers.  Such is the nature of real change.

Be good to each other.