The State of the Future

Pretty much every HR/workplace/talent blog or blogger has at one time or another taken a stab at defining or predicting the 'Workplace of the future' or tried to opine on 'The future of work.' Speculating on the future is kind of fun for a blogger, I know I have done a bunch of pieces like that over the years. Those kind of posts are also fun due to the complete lack of accountability towards the accuracy of any of the predictions. I could post that intelligent and full articulated robots like Atlas, (aside - Atlas is super cool, and I have to post about him/her/it separately), will replace all HR/Talent functions in the organization by 2020 and pretty much feel confident even if I am wrong, no one is going to call me out about it seven years from now.

But there is another category of folks that spend even more time waxing philosophic about the future - actual futurists. People who spend pretty much all their time trying to spot new trends, consider what new technologies may emerge, (and how existing ones will change the world), and often try to help companies and governments with long, and even really long-term planning.  

And when futurists get together, they talk about the future - duh!. And just like in the HR space when after a big event like SHRM or HR Tech there are articles posted that reflect not just on the event itself, but also on the industry overall. And often these 'state of the industry/discipline' pieces are more interesting than specific or detailed event reports. A really good industry thinker is concerned more with and attempts to make these larger connections and conclusions by piecing together, comparing, and connecting lots of smaller data points.

So why did I start this post talking about futurists?

Because over the weekend I read this really interesting piece titled Dispatch From the Futures: Thoughts on WorldFuture2013, about a recent conference for futurists, and the overall state of that discipline - a kind of 'State of the Future' if that makes sense. 

In the piece, the author breaks down what he/she, sees as some of the challenges facing the folks who get paid to see into the future, and while I encourage you to check out the entire piece, I'm going to drop a couple of the issues raised here, as I think they do resonate with folks in the HR/Talent space.

From the Futurist:

Radar or Canvass?  Is foresight and the work of futurists primarily focused on scanning for dangerous futures (radar) or building new ones (canvass)?  Again, this is a false dichotomy, but an important one.  My sense is that governments and larger corporations focus on radar, while innovative companies focus on the canvass.  And this thought experiment leads me to one of the more interesting questions posed at WorldFuture. 

HR takeaway?

When faced with something new - like the emergence of social media, or of wearable technology, or of changing demands of a new generation of workers - how much time do you spend thinking and preparing for the worst, or at least thinking about things through a lens of risk mitigation? What percent of your time is spent developing ways to positively leverage these changes?

From the Futurist:

New Novelties vs. Megatrends: There is a tension between learning about entirely new future scenarios on one hand and exploring the evolution of already identified megatrends.  Take 3D printing.  Most of my friends at WorldFuture were already well aware of 3D printing and its impacts on the futures.  But, despite the fact that most futurists were all over 3D printing several years ago, this tech is still in its infancy and could revolutionize manufacturing and commerce.  It’s a huge and important trend worthy of study regardless of how long it’s been on your radar.

HR takeaway?

It is really easy to want to jump two or three steps ahead of the organization and push for adoption of the very latest and coolest new thing. But are you getting the most benefit out of the 'old' tools and technologies you already possess? Chances are there is a lot of untapped potential in things that seem old, but really are new to you and your teams. You don't always need to be first to adopt something in order to seem cool.

From the Futurist:

Resilience:  Although very few sessions covered this topic, many of my discussions were on resilience.  If the industrial era was about efficiency, perhaps the near future will be most about resilience, as people and societies develop hedging strategies as a means of coping with dramatic change.  How might we classify these resilience strategies? 

HR takeaway?

Are you assessing candidates for something like resilience? Are you coaching managers and leaders to instill this trait in their teams? Do you even consider yourself and your HR shop to be resilient? If the futurists are right about this one, it seems like you should be thinking just a little about how or not your organization stacks up here.

Like I mentioned you should take a few minutes and check out the entire piece here and I will let it go at that.

You might think that the Futurists are kind of the modern-day snake oil hucksters, but one thing is for certain - the future is coming for you and your organization whether you are prepared for it or not.

Ford is desperate for talent - what should they do?

There has been plenty of interesting news about venerable auto manufacturer Ford this week. In the same week as the company reported an outstanding quarterly earnings report, ($38B in revenue and more than $1B in profit), it also indicated its plans to hire as many as 3,000 new engineers and other professionals this year.

You might think that for a well-known company like Ford, one that is currently enjoying a run of improving business prospects and results, and in a time where there is still comparatively high overall unemployment and low labor force participation rates in the US, that filling these 3,000 positions would not be terribly challenging. But at least according to comments from some Ford execs, you would be wrong. Check out what they had to say about their hiring challenges:

“It’s much more difficult getting the right people” than it was in decades past, laments Felicia Fields, group vice president of Human Resources for Ford, reflecting a shift in “the type of people” the automaker needs in an era when high technology systems have become as much a part of today’s vehicles as traditional, mechanical devices.

“It’s more difficult, more complex,” she says, and not just because of the different skills workers may need in today’s auto industry. The problem is that Ford is no longer just competing for talent against the likes of GM, or even Volkswagen or Toyota, but also against consumer electronics firms ranging from Apple to Google to Dell.

Ford has to convince some skeptical prospects that the auto industry can offer as much of a challenge as Silicon Valley, while also trying to promote Detroit as an appealing home base – something that can be particularly challenging at a time when the Motor City is in the midst of the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

It sure is a bit of a recruiting quandary that Ford is facing. At the same time when growth, a rebound from the lows of the recession, and an aggressive and optimistic strategy calls for expansion, (and more talent to power these plans), they are also faced with competing for talent against foes they are not familiar with, and for many of these positions, having to lure people into a geographic area (greater Detroit), that is less than enticing, (to be charitable).

Yep, having to mix it up with Google and Apple, convincing people that the auto industry is cool, and selling Detroit at the same time? That is a challenge for sure.

So faced with this situation what should be the play for Ford?

Play up the auto industry rebound and a chance to be at the start of that?

Sell the lower cost of living, lifestyle, and I don't know - the Pistons (who are going to be better this year), to the technical talent that would normally head to Silicon Valley or New York?

Raise the comp and ben and perks packages to get them closer to what the talent can demand, (and likely expects) in order to level the playing field with the Valley tech companies?

Something else?

Why is this interesting or relevant to the average HR/Talent pro?

Because today this talent challenge is Ford's problem to solve - tomorrow it may be yours too. 

So what should Ford do?

Getting reacquainted with the nightmare that is commuting

I have to admit in the last few years I have become incredibly spoiled. Since 2010 or so, for the most part I have been a 'work at home' person, (when not on the road at really tough duty places like Las Vegas, Chicago, or the San Francisco area). I have not had to deal (much) with what the below chart shows, that about 95% of the rest of the American working population put up each day with the commute to and from their workplaces.

Here's the chart I am talking about (hat tip to the NPR Planet Money blog), and I'll have some comments after the break...

Source - US Census Bureau

Notable in the Census Bureau stats on commuting is the decline over the last 50 or so years in the percentage of workers that work at home and the percentage that are using public transportation. The Census folks think that the  'work at home' dip over that time horizon is mostly due to the dramatic decrease in family farmers, (who mostly worked and lived on their own farms). The drop in public transport is chalked up to the rise of the suburban lifestyle which combined to put people farther away from the traditional pockets of employment in the city centers, and are simply not served with as many, or any, public transport options.

Regardless of where you reside across the spectrum of commuting options, it seems to me that one thing is almost universally true - most of us loathe, dread, and hate our commutes.

I thought to post about this today for two reasons, one, I had seen the NPR piece yesterday and found it interesting, and two, I've had to leave my cushy basement home office each of the last three mornings to take my son to a summer camp/program this week.  So instead of my usual groggy stumble down one flight of stairs to the coffee pot, followed by a slightly less groggy stumble down a second set of stairs to the office, I've had to join the other 84% or so of folks out on the road each morning, dealing with traffic, (admittedly not much), traffic lights, and everyone who is not as accomplished a driver as me, (everyone).

And I have been reminded how horrible commuting is, even when it is 'good' by national standards, (the camp location is about 9 miles away, probably 20-25 minutes each way).

What's the point of all this? 

I guess to share the stats in the chart above as they were kind of interesting and surprising. Sometimes we 'work at home' folks socialize and collaborate with so many other work at home folks that we get deluded into thinking way more people also work at home than actually do. If you are working at home, even in 2013, you're the outlier.

And second, to think about some ways we can make life a little better for the 84% in their cars, alone each day. Whether it's flexible starting/ending times to get people out of rush hour a little more, the chance to skip the road all together once a week or so and join us weirdos that work at home, or even some kind of little perk like onsite car washes, oil changes, tire rotations - that kind of thing. It seems to me that 84% of your workforce is likely starting the workday ticked off about something that happened on the road on the way in. That can't be good for those 8:00AM staff meetings.

Commuting is horrible, even when it is easy, and even when you don't have to do it all that often.

I could not imagine going back to that grind every day. 

What can/are you doing to make your commute a little more bearable? Hit me up in the comments.

Observations from the NBA Summer League 2013

I spent this past weekend in Las Vegas, (either my favorite city in the world, or one I'd like to see nuked, more on that in a moment), with my 8 Man Rotation bros Kris Dunn and Matt 'The Professor' Stollak, taking in two full days of NBA Summer League action.

Regular readers of the blog, and of the rest of the 8 Man gang, know that we think sports is an incredibly great and transparent laboratory where talent management, recruiting, coaching, and team building, (all the things that sound really 'HR-ish'), play out live, in real-time, and in public. 

And the NBA Summer League is a fantastic place to see lots of these angles live, up close, and in a setting that for big-time pro sports, is almost impossible for regular fans to replicate normally. Summer league is about young talent fighting to show what they can do, for aspiring coaches and team execs to get some in-game experience, and for everyone else to play 'NBA General Manager' for a few days and sort out who will be the next star, or harder, the next 10th man on the bench for a mediocre club. 

But nuggets of insight abound, so in no particular order, here are some observations or takeaways or lessons that we will probably never truly learn from the weekend's action: 

1. German Rondo. One of the two individual players our crew spent the most time discussing was Atlanta Hawk first round draft pick Dennis Schroeder. Schroeder, out of Germany, resembles in body type, mannerisms, and in style of play, current NBA star Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics. Thus, our crew dubbed Schroeder the 'German Rondo.' Schroeder even displayed a little of the quirkiness of Rondo, who is let's just say a 'different' kind of dude when he, after discovering his shoe was untied, purposefully fouled the man he was guarding so that play would stop and he could re-tie the kick. While German Rondo was working on the double knot, the Hawks summer coach, Quin Snyder, (I really should write about that guy too one day), unceremoniously pulled GR from the game, being none too pleased with the young player's decision to foul in that spot.German Rondo

The HR/Talent point? With the real Rondo, and it seems like with German Rondo too, sometimes, maybe most of the time, super talented performers are going to act, think, do and say things you wish they wouldn't. But that is often the price of admission. 

2. Data and the ability to use it will separate the winners and losers in almost every field. Matty the Professor was the only member of the crew interested much in actually gambling in Vegas, KD and I being mostly kind of uninterested/boring.  But the real point to me was the Stollak 'system' at blackjack that Matt tried to explain to me that I really can't understand, but seems to work for him. The point? It is a new world my friends - the folks that can figure out how to analyze data, think about problems through a lens of information and likely outcomes - they are the ones that will be telling us all what to do in a few years. The geeks took over the world in the last decade, the next one will belong to the quants.

3. Every job is creative. I probably dropped in on three different casinos on the trip and of the hundreds of interesting observations one can glean from the combination of gambling, alcohol, lights, sounds, and despair - how about this one - that creativity matters in every job. Every casino had scores of video slot machines, each one having its own theme or 'creative' behind it to try and interest and entertain the player, (so they will lose more coin). The best one I saw was a Van Helsing machine, (pic on right). For whatever reason I found it incredibly interesting that somewhere there was a meeting in the video slot making company where someone said 'I know, what about Van Helsing?', and some decision maker type shouted 'Yes!'You want to feed this machine a $20 spot, right?

4. Context is everything. How you stack up depends on who else is in the pool. And if you are having trouble standing out, you either need to get better, (hard), or broaden the scope of who you're being compared to in order to look better, (also hard, but probably less overall work). Or said differently, if you want to feel a little better about your life choices, (as shaky as they may have been), take a stroll through a Las Vegas hotel lobby anytime between 4AM and 6AM. Not a lot of 'high achievers' out and about I would bet.

5. Not all progress is good. A recent trend that I think is pretty ridiculous is the increase in hyphenated last names. You've seen more of them in the last 10 years I bet than in the prior 50. The Summer League poster child for this affliction was Chris Douglas-Roberts, playing for the Los Angeles Lakers. CDR (what we called him since saying 'Douglas-Roberts' all the time is just a hassle), has had a checkered career. Lots of talent, great athleticism, but a seeming disdain for most of the parts of the NBA game that seem too much like 'work', (help side defense, rebounding, general hustle). I can't blame CDR's apparent squandering of all that talent on his silly last name, but it certainly doesn't help.  New Moms and Dads to be? Do us all a favor and don't drop a 'hyphen' on your kids. They will thank you for it someday. 

6. Your most important leaders need to think about talent all the time. If you're business rises and falls based on the talent level of your team, then your leaders better put in the time to evaluate that talent. While the Summer League rosters are made up of rookies, draft picks, and guys trying to claw their way back into the league, and very few recognizable players are actually on the court, the stands are chock full of elite NBA coaches and executives. We spotted head coaches like Eric Spoelstra, Tom Thibodeau, Mike D'Antoni, and Mark Jackson in the crowd at different times. These NBA head coaches were there to watch players that mostly won't even get training camp invitations, much less playing time when the real season starts. But the 11th man on the bench matters to a great NBA team, heck, even the 12th man on the bench matters, and if you really care about talent in your organization you don't stop caring after the starting five.  And your leaders are the ones that need to set that tone.

7. Development means everyone. That, is if you are really committed to raising the talent bar in the organization. The Summer League is not just about finding which rookies and draft picks can actually play in the NBA, it's a bigger industry talent play. Announcers, halftime entertainment, anthem singers, even the guys selling T-shirts - it's all about building a pipeline and figuring out who is ready to step-up. Sure, some of the 'performances' were a little rocky, but that is why you work out the new talent on a smaller scale, in a setting that is close enough to the real thing, but one where there is opportunity to learn, and not a lot of downside if you fail. Mess up the national anthem at the NBA All-Star game? You will be a YouTube sensation within five minutes. Make the same fool of yourself in front of 1200 fans in Summer League? You will have a laugh and the ability to bounce back much more easily. Young and inexperienced talent almost always benefits from these smaller stakes kinds of plays.

8. Your city (might be) gone.  At dinner one night the 8 Man crew, joined by special guest and longtime 8 Man friend Jennifer McClure, engaged in a pretty spirited discussion about our least favorite American cities, i.e. which one would you take out with a tactical nuclear strike if you were forced to pick one. There were a wide range of opinions and options slung around the table, (someone does not like New Orleans for example), but the oddest choice to me was when Jen dropped 'Las Vegas' as her pick for total annihilation. Odd in that we were having that discussion in Las Vegas. What city would you most want to take out if given the opportunity? Hit me up in the comments.

9. There's power in numbers. KD nailed this on his Summer League recap post as well. Next year the 8 Man Rotation Summer League trip back to Las Vegas is already on, and we want to go big. So that means you are invited. Yes, I mean you. Bros, gals, HR nerds - everyone.  Hit me up for details, or let me know you want to join our super-exciting NBA Summer League Facebook group where we will be sharing all the information to get ready for next summer.

Ok, at just over 1,500 words I am out. But just remember one last nugget from Sin City - there, and I suppose everywhere - you always want just the right amount of wrong, if you catch my meaning.

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 167 - 'HR Tech 2013 Preview'

The latest HR Happy Hour Show, 'The HR Tech Conference 2013 Preview'  is up over at the HR Happy Hour show page.

On this show, HR Happy Hour Show co-host Trish McFarlane took over hosting duties solo to interview both myself and Bill Kutik, two of the HR Tech Conference's Co-Chairs, about the upcoming event to be held October 7-9, 2013 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Bill and I shared some of the highlights and new features on the program this year, why the event, (and HR technology in general), have become so essential for HR leaders and practitioners today, and finally talked about some of the important developments and emerging trends impacting HR tech today.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, by using the embedded player below, and as always, the HR Happy Hour Show is available as a free download in Apple iTunes, (just search for 'HR Happy Hour' in the podcast section), and for Android users, you can find the show using another free app called Stitcher Radio.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

 

To learn more about what I've been up to on the real job, check out the HR Technology Conference website here, the 2013 agenda page here, and for more details and access to a great event discount code, sign up for the HR Tech Conference LinkedIn Group here. Note - If you are new to the LinkedIn Group, just be sure to join, and then hit me up and I will hook you up with the code you need to get the discount.

Thanks to Trish for driving the show this week, and thanks to Bill for joining us as well.