I kissed an HR girl and I liked it
This is the first post to introduce my new book “Punk Rock People Management”. Before we start, here’s a classic piece of Punk Rock – New Rose by The Damned:
I had the great fortune of seeing The Damned, The Doctors of Madness, The Jam etc. many times at The Marquee Club in London. This included getting ‘extinguished’ by Captain Sensible on stage when it became so hot that the Captain decided to hose those pogo-ing on stage down with a fire extinguisher amidst electricity and live cables. This was in the pre-risk assessment era – Hooray! 
Punk Rock People Management suggests that the HR profession has become a bloated industry which delights in making things more complex than they need be. In the book I have stripped down People Management to the bare essentials. This means that each ‘chapter’ is just one page long – ideal for the busy person / Kindle reader etc. Thus you can read a chapter in less time than it takes to pogo to a Sex Pistols or Linkin Park song! On hearing about it , Tom Peters, the world’s greatest business thinker, author and speaker sent me a mail with just two words in it: “Do it!” – Now that’s what I call succinct in the normally long world of HR!
Never mind the HR Boll..cks
To whet your appetite, here are some chapter titles. The book is organised using the classic ‘Life, Sex and Death HR cycle’, i.e. Hiring, Inspiring and Firing:
HIRING
Selection – Shall I stay or shall I go?
Induction – It’s my first time
INSPIRING
Engagement – Pretty vacant
Motivation – Reasons to be cheerful
Training – Waiting for the great leap forwards
Innovation – What’s new pussycat?
FIRING
Conflict – Who killed Bambi?
Redundancy – Submission
To order your FREE copy of the book, please contact me directly by making a comment or via the Punk Rock People Management webpage. To buy the current book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll‘ contact me or find it on AMAZON.
For now, let’s treat ourselves to the great punk philosopher Billy Bragg, with his song “Waiting for the great leap forwards” – a song all about the gap between talk and action in change management / organisation and HR development. Reminds me of Red Wedge and many other great days of wide eyed optimism and passion. There still is a better way to get your point across than stealing a bottle of water from Poundland!
