Trapped in a Box

The company organization chart.

Every company has one. There is an entire class of software applications to help companies generate them, (my favorite is OrgPublisher from Aquire), and maintaining them and making sure all the correct names are in the correct boxes and the lines are all connected properly can be a full-time job in larger organizations.

In some organizations the chart is sort of a sacred document, informing managers and employees of crucial information like who is in charge of what, how many folks do job 'XYZ', and who might be the likely successors for a given person if they were to move to a different position, or leave the organization.

But organization charts, can be limiting, and can effectively 'trap' individuals and teams by defining them in too Flickr - Stefannarrowly drawn roles. If the culture of the organization is not inherently 'open' or 'collaborative', then the chart is a tool that can also serve to maintain separation in the organization. If your position on the organization chart is Web Designer reporting to the Marketing team, then you do web design work for marketing, and may not typically get much exposure to the web designers that work on the company's internal sites or intranet, as the responsibility for those functions falls elsewhere in the organization.

With the growing popularity and increase in the easy availability of tools and technologies to facilitate collaboration and communication, it seems very likely that many medium to large organizations have multiple, and isolated activities underway to explore and deploy these kinds of tools.

A mid-sized organization that I am familiar with has at least four different wiki platforms deployed in various parts of the organization. These are all set up, maintained and administered locally, and some are successful and some are not. But even the successful ones do not really have much of a chance to impact or influence the broader organization, chiefly because of the culture and the strict adherence to the organization chart. The company does not have the ability to 'break free' from the constraints of the chart, and individual local administrators of these wikis are not allowed or encouraged to work with other parts of the organization to share information and potentially work towards developing a solution that may benefit the organization as a whole.

It is actually very ironic that the recent availability and relative ease of adoption of tools to promote collaboration are bringing to light the lack of collaboration across this organization.

The number of tools for collaboration and communication are growing everyday, but if the organization still clings to the org chart, like construction crews cling to blueprints when erecting a building, then in many cases the full potential of these tools will never be realized.

Steve's Second HR Technology Interview - Stuart Agtsteribbe

The second installment in the HR Technology interview series for my upcoming HR Technology Class was recorded last week, and I was very pleased to have as my guest Stuart Agtsteribbe from Taleo Corporation.

Stuart is a regional sales manager for Taleo, and has had prior experience with several other major HR Technology vendors.

Stuart and I briefly discussed Taleo, what some of the important considerations are for an organization that is evaluating Applicant Tracking Systems, and what some of the latest trends are in both the ATS space, and what changes and trends he is seeing in customer requirements and expectations.

We then spent some time discussing the concepts around Integrated Talent Management suites and the challenges facing organizations and vendors with Integrated Talent Management deployment. We talked a bit about SaaS and it was interesting to hear that Stuart felt that the traditional concerns with SaaS deployments are becoming less and less strident, and that SaaS is close to becoming the 'de facto' standard for HR Technology deployments.

The link to the full interview (about 35 minutes or so), is here and you can listen using the widget below:

It was a really great conversation on ATS and Talent Management and it really sheds some light on what is going on in the market and in the minds of organizations that are evaluating HR Technology solutions.

Thanks very much to Stuart for participating and agreeing to help me and my HR Technology Class, it was really good of you.

Sunday Stories - The Wine Cellar

Last Sunday I posted the ridiculous story of my very first day on my first 'professional' job, which mostly involved downing multiple beers in a gay bar. Details of the day are here.

That story is one that I have told in class a few times, and this week I started thinking that maybe I should post some of the other offbeat, and hopefully humorous stories from the past that I like to share with the students. So here is the second installment of 'Sunday Stories', a little tale of a dinner at a nice restaurant in the Eastern US, with some former colleagues and some external consultants, and a trip to the wine cellar.

The Backstory

In about 1997 or so, I was working for a major manufacturing company and was participating on an Enterprise Resource Planning software selection team.  About 10-12 of us spent 6 months or so traveling around the country, meeting vendors, reference accounts, and external consultancies all who had an interest in our business. The contract my organization would ultimately sign for the software was for about $10M, and the bill for external consulting likely ended up at another $10 - $15M on top of that. So the vendors and consulting companies that were helping to facilitate the evaluation process all had a huge vested interest in the purchase decision.

The Dinner

The evaluation process was nearing the end, we were down to two vendors and two external consultancies still in the running for the contract. One of the vendors invited us to one of their main US training centers for a few days to get a feeling for their corporate training capability, and to do some additional process modeling of some key functions that were critical to our organization, and would be a major factor in the decision process. One of the consultancies sent a few folks to work alongside us, trying to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise with the solution.

On the last night we were in town, the consulting company guys invited the few of us who were still in town to go out to a nice dinner.  The party was about 3 or so from the consultancy, including one partner, and perhaps 5 of us, none of whom were 'senior' managers or executives.  So the 8 of us headed out for dinner to a locally famous restaurant, well-known for its cuisine, and for its expansive wine list. Flickr - Sam

We arrived at the restaurant, were seated, some drinks were ordered, and the sommelier soon came by the table to offer some wine recommendations.  As no one at the table knew very much about wine, the sommelier (sensing a major score I came to believe), invited us to accompany him to the wine cellar to sample a bottle or two, and make a better choice for dinner. When no one immediately volunteered to go down to the cellar, I raised by hand, and after that another guy from my team named David agreed to come down as well.

When we got down to the huge wine cellar, the sommelier showed us around a bit, then left us to look around while he got some samples for us to taste.  We tried two or three 'dinner' wines, and two or three 'dessert' wines, made our choices of which ones we liked best, and at once the sommelier said he would take care of everything. We made our way back upstairs to the table.

The dinner was fantastic. The food was excellent, and while really no one at the table was a big wine person, the wine was so good that many, many bottles were consumed, once a bottle was empty, another one immediately took its place. All told, it was a really great meal, some business was certainly discussed, but mostly it was just a group of guys who had been working some pretty long hours unwinding and cutting loose a bit.

The Damage

When the meal was finally over, the waiter brought over the bill, and as was typical for these 'selection process' outings, the external consultants that were trying to win the project insisted on paying the tab. When the partner examined the bill, his eyes bugged out, his mouth sort of hung open, and he seemingly could not utter a word.

Turns out the dinner wine that David and I selected in the wine cellar was $750 each, and the dessert wine was $400. Yikes! Of course down in the cellar, we had never bothered to ask the prices, since we knew the consultants were paying for the dinner anyway, and we were being wined and dined all over the country by vendors and consultants trying to win this huge contract.

The total bar tab with the pre-dinner and after-dinner drinks (some of the guys ordered some really expensive single malt whiskey), and the wine was about $9,500.  With the food, tip, and taxes added in, the grand total bill for dinner for 8 people was over $12,000.

So essentially, I helped turn a nice, low-key dinner into a $12K debacle. 

The partner soon regained his composure, took out his American Express card and paid the tab. On the way out of the restaurant, he cornered me and David and in a very low key way said, 'Don't you ever do something like that again'.

Ultimately, I did not feel that bad about what happened, this consultancy eventually did win the majority of the contract to provide services on what became a massive ERP implementation, so their $12K 'invested' in this dinner certainly was not wasted.

There are lots of sweet assignments when working with enterprise technology, and being on the selection team for a multi-million dollar software purchase certainly is one of them.

Happy Sunday everyone!

HCI Webcast - Tell the Story with Technology

Later on this afternoon I have the great pleasure to co-present an Human Capital Institute Webcast - 'Tell the Story with Technology'.  The webcast is scheduled for Thursday, May 14 at 1:00 pm EDT.

My co-presenter is Jessica Wagner, a former student and now an HR Manager at Klein Steel in Greece, NY.

Jessica gave a great presentation on the innovative use of technology in recruiting by the US Army in my last HR Technology class.

The presentation was so powerful in class, that I tweeted about it the next morning and Amy Lewis from HCI saw the update and was interested, and ultimately this led to the scheduling of this webcast.

For anyone who is interested on the details of how this came about - I blogged about it here.

The Army does some incredible things with technology, and while the webcast platform will not allow us to fully demonstrate the 'coolness' of their approach, I will leave you with an example of what the Army is doing with technology here:  

So if you have a chance at 1:00 PM EDT, stop by, the Webcast is free, just a simple HCI Registration (also free) is needed to view the presentation.

Thanks again, Amy, and HCI for giving myself and Jessica the opportunity to present to your members today.

HR Technology for the Small Business - Free Web Conferencing Tools

I had a great conversation this past weekend with my Dad, all about the changes happening in American corporations; particularly notions of work/life and just why the heck does it make sense for most companies to continue to insist that the majority of their workers fight traffic, miss important family activities, and otherwise waste innumerable hours of their lives in their cars.

My Dad is as old-school as they come, but even he has come around to the idea that with today's technologies, it just makes no sense to tether knowledge workers to desks 8 or 9 hours a day.  Even for small businesses, the tools and solutions to help support remote work are more affordable and accessible than ever, and in that spirit, I offer a quick look at five free and inexpensive web conferencing solutions, that can support small businesses.

Remote work is just one of the reasons why HR organizations should be interested in Web Conferencing, certainly cost containment, efficiency, and a more effective way to connect with outside partners are all good potential uses of web conferencing. So here is a brief look at five tools in this space.

The Solutions

DimDim  - DimDim bills itself as the 'world's easiest web conferencing tool'. DimDim supports screen sharing, file sharing, web-based demonstrations, and annotated virtual whiteboards.  The session presenter can broadcast live video and audio, and meeting attendees can participate via text chat, VOIP audio, or telephone by utilizing an integrated teleconference service.

Hosting and attending meetings do not require downloading or installing any components to your computer, and the service supports PCs, Macs, and the Linux OS. Some other very useful features are the ability to embed an 'invitation' widget on a website or blog, 'live' invitations from participants in the session via IM or email, and live 'co-browsing', meaning the host can interact live with a web site and all participants screens get updated accordingly.

For the small business, perhaps the most attractive feature of DimDim is the availability of a free edition to hold web events for up to 20 participants. So a small business could easily use the Free Edition for internal meetings, prospect demonstrations, or perhaps as a support tool for customer service. Additional premium plans are also offered, for example a Pro plan for $19/month that will support events up to 50 people.

ooVoo - ooVoo offers a slightly different spin on the conferencing idea, it is mainly a service for free video chat. With ooVoo, users can connect with up to six participants in a video chat simultaneously. The ooVoofull-feature, high-quality video chat service does however require the download and install of a client side application on the computers of each video chat participant.  However ooVoo recently added the ability for a host to invite participants to a video chat right in the browser window, thus removing the requirement for all participants to have downloaded the ooVoo application.

But I think the most interesting capability of ooVoo is the ability to embed a video chat room right on your website or blog. This feature provides the small business the capability to connect with customers in a face-to-face manner, or to simply use as an internal virtual conference room.  So if the business does not need 'classic' web conferencing features like screen and document sharing, and are interested in free, multi-user video chat, then ooVoo is a good option to consider.

Yugma - Yugma offers a free web conferencing solution that allows anyone, anywhere to instantly share their desktop and ideas online with others. The expected conferencing capabilities are present, application sharing, web demonstrations, and ability to have multiple presenters are all included in the free edition. The free version can support web conferences up to 20 people,Yugma supports Windows, Mac, and Linux OS systems.

Yugma offers several editions at different price points, ranging from free use for up to 20 meeting participants, followed by 'Pro' versions ranging from $14.95/month for between 20-50 participants, to $179.95/month for up to 500 meeting participants. Of the 'free' solutions on the market, Yugma seems to be the one that tends to scale higher and to be in use by larger organizations.

Vyew - Vyew is yet another option in the free web conferencing space.  Like DimDim and Yugma, Vyew offers a free, basic option that support web conferences for up to 20 attendees. With Vyew you can conduct meetings in real time using a shared workspace, webcam, voice over IP (VoIP), free Vyewteleconferencing, text chat and desktop sharing. In addition to uploading, sharing and presenting content you can invite participants to annotate and collaborate on content during the meeting.

Vyew does not require participants to install any software, it runs completely in the user's browser.  There is a very full list of supported features, including document collaboration, built-in screen capture capability, and whiteboards and drawing tools. There are some upgraded plans available, a 'Plus' plan starting at $6.95/month for up to 25 participants, and a 'Professional' plan starting at $13.95/month for up to 45 participants. Vyew has a wide range of features, and may be worth a try for those organizations comfortable testing out these numerous capabilities.

Yuuguu - I heard about Yuuguu via Bryon Abramowitz from Knowledge Infusion and had to check them out. Yuuguu is positioned as a screen sharing and instant messaging platform, that is simple, and free to use. The host of the Yuuguu session needs to download the Yuuguu client application, but no downloads are required for attendees or viewers. Yuuguu also offers chat integration with most of the popular IM platforms like GTalk and MSN. It supports all common platforms, windows, Mac, and Linux.

Yuuguu offers two pricing plans, the free version allows screen sharing for up to five users at once. The 'Pro' version goes for $15/month and supports screen sharing for up to 30 simultaneous users. A small business or group looking for a simple, effective and easy to use screen sharing and collaboration tool might want to check out Yuuguu.

This was a quick look at five popular and free web conferencing tools, any of which might be a good solution for a small business to facilitate client presentations, internal meetings, and support for telecommuters or other remote staff and contractors.  Since all the solutions in this post offer a free version of their service, the only 'cost' is the time the organization will spend setting up and trying out these tools.

Bottom line, there is no reason why the small organization with limited expertise and budget can't experiment with, and effectively utilize web conferencing in their organizations.