New Technology and Staying Relevant

Technology, whether its in the workplace or in our personal lives, advances relentlessly, and it can be really daunting and perhaps frustrating for some to keep up. And of course there's the question of should you even try to stay on top of the latest developments in things like augmented reality or whether you need to sign up for an account on the newest social/reputation/gaming/location/baconated viral community?

Here's some unsolicited advice that might help you decide whether or not a new shiny object is worth the investment of some of your most valuable resource - your time, and by asking and evaluating your answers to a few basic questions hopefully you'll be better able to make an informed decision.

1. Do I have any idea what this new 'thing' is?

If the new tool or technology is 100% foreign to you, never heard the name before, don't recognize any of the people that might be talking about it, and as yet, can't find anyone with a Twitter bio professing to be a 'ninja' or 'rockstar' with said new technology - then it is safe to take a pass for now. Let some other folks with more time on their hands sort out the relevance and potential use cases for you.

2. Who is reporting about this technology right now?

There is a kind of progression and hierarchy in the popular tech blogs and aggregators, and mainstream media about new technology.  This progression can be roughly used as a layman's guide about when to take a closer look at a new technology or gadget.

Killer Startups.com - Still safe to ignore. 

TechCrunch - Still generally ok to wait it out. I'll keep an eye out for you and let you know if anything that pops there is relevant.  

Mashable - Probably still ok to ignore, but at this point you might need to feign interest as all of your online friends will have read the same information you did and you don't want to seem out of touch.

The New York Times - Now it's time to take a look for sure. In fact it may already be too late.By now the rest of the world now knows about the new technology too. So you won't be 'cool' for talking about it with the Twitter crowd, but inside your own organization you still might be able to pull off some early adopter cred.

Does this technology have anything to do with my job/business/industry?

The directly relevant technologies to your business or industry are generally easy to spot.  They usually have a tagline of 'The Pandora for ABC' or 'The Foursquare of XYZ'. If ABC or XYZ are things your company does or provides, it might be worth your time to take a closer look. That is assuming of course you know what Pandora and Foursquare are. If you don't then, chasing their imitators might be a waste of energy.

Is this technology/tool/gadget/service the answer to a real problem that anyone that has any influence over my success and happiness needs to have solved?

Your boss. Your customers. Your spouse. What you really want from your investment of time, resources, and possibly money out of a new technology is a way to solve problems. But not really your problems, rather someone else's problems.

Be careful of adopting too many tools or toys that really seem to only benefit you. Sure they can be fun for a while. But you run the risk of ending up like the guy who has spent his life collecting Star Wars figures or PEZ dispensers. You might get some acclaim and (limited) reward from those communities, but do you really want to be known for that? As we'd say in the sports world - that is not tremendous upside potential.

So that's it, a some short guidelines to try and help you to assess that fancy new technology all the cool kids are talking about.

What's your take? How do you decide when to spend time on a new toy?

Metric of the Day - $10M in Revenue per Employee

Ten million in revenue per employee? How can you possibly get there? You're thinking revenue per employee comes in at around $150,000 maybe $200,000 in a good year.

One of the ways you approach $10M in revenue per employee is by outsourcing relentlessly everything that you consider non-essential to your business, thus significantly reducing the number of people you directly employ, and allowing you to focus more fully on those critical differentiators for your business.

The details behind this story are taken from a piece on Bloomberg Business Week about privately-held electronics manufacturer Vizio and their purposeful strategy of outsourcing most every function that they perceive to be not core to the design of their high tech products and to the customer experience they are trying to deliver. Vizio controls product design and customer support in-house, and just about every other function in the manufacturing and distribution process is contracted out to a large network of partners and suppliers across the globe.

By shifting the employment relationship from in-house to contracted out, Vizio has managed to rack up close to $3B in annual sales while directly employing only about 300 people. Sure, there are tens of thousands of workers scattered across the partner ecosystem, and Vizio has to skillfully manage and coordinate this partner network to ensure production standards and shipping obligations are met. But I wonder if supply chain and vendor management for a few dozen, (or even a few hundred), key partners is in the long run a more manageable and profitable task than trying to directly recruit, employ, compensate, manage, develop, and do all the other 'people management' tasks that are often so hard to pull off well.

Sure someone else, in this case the partner and supplier organizations still have to do all those pesky 'people' chores, but for a company set up like Vizio, it has to be seen as an entire set of challenges and problems that are not worth undertaking. They can maintain a really small but focused core team, can concentrate on the design and support processes they see as fundamental to their success, and can likely move and respond more rapidly to changing market conditions over time.

And they probably have a lot less drama than naturally occurs when trying to get 50,000 people to all row in the same direction, play nice in the cube farms, and not leave a big mess in the break room microwave.

What do you think? Are these kinds of 'networked' organizations the way of the future? Would it work in your business?

Have a great weekend! 

We're all in this together. Unless your Business Unit stinks...

I'm sure you have heard something in the news about the current strike at Verizon Communications, notable for not only the sheer numbers of workers involved (about 45,000), the seemingly irrational timing of calling a stike in this economic climate, but also for the nature and nuances behind the dispute.

The striking Verizon workers represent and support Verizon's landline business, a business that according to the company is in decline. Whether it is due to more consumers choosing to simply forego a fixed home landline in this age of mobile telephony, or the simplicity and low cost of services like Skype, the facts seem to be clear that the landline business is not where growth and increased profitability for the company will lie.

Most of us these days when we think of Verizon, see it only as a wireless/mobile company, with a national presence, constant broadcast advertising, (Can you hear me now?), and retail locations popping up all over the nation. In fact my local Krispy Kreme establishment was closed recently and now has re-opened as a Verizon Wireless store.  Sadly, the conveyor belt that used to carry the tasty donuts for their sugary glaze coating is gone as well.

But the 45,000 striking workers from the landline side of the business point to the overall growth and success of Verizon Communications (the consolidated landline and wireless sides), to argue against management's insistence on concessions and increased contributions to health care and retirement plans. Why should we, they argue, have to 'give back' when the organization overall is performing so well?

I don't really know enough about the details of the contracts and the proposals to come down on the side of either the striking workers or Verizon management as to the specifics of the dispute, but to me the interesting angle is the internal division at play here.  While most of us have not been caught up in a strike like this one, I bet we have all been part of organizations with variations in performance (and contribution to profits and growth), across lines of business, regions, product lines - whatever.

Once the enterprise achieves a bit of scale there are bound to be some parts of the organization that simply perform better than others. And while sometimes individual contribution to the success of these better performing business units is recognized (unit specific bonuses or awards), often it really isn't singled out, particularly when for many organizations it can be difficult to fairly and accurately allocate shared corporate overhead costs to product lines or business units.

So while compensation might be tied to business unit success, things like benefit plans, retirement programs, PTO policies and the like are almost never variable inside and across competing business units within a larger organization. Whether or not you are a high-flying sales rep in a growing product line, or a administrative support person in a declining business, most companies treat you the same way with respect to benefits. After all we're all in this together, right?

The Verizon situation is certainly complicated by the fact that the declining landline business is unionized, and the growing and more exciting wireless business is not, but the larger issue that seems to position one side of the business against another is certainly fascinating.

I am sure we have all had different times in our careers when we looked at a business line in our organizations and thought - 'Man those guys are killing us'. But I doubt we ever as HR or Talent pros advocated for whacking their benefits or PTO because of it. Seems kind of a tough position to defend.

What's your take - should non-compensation related items vary inside organizations according to contribution to success?

Relax, your 401(k) bounced back - time to make plans for Las Vegas in October

This post was more or less completed over this past weekend, and I fully intended it to run yesterday. But after the bloodbath across global equity markets on Monday, it seemed a bit ridiculous to run a piece on Tuesday morning with a pitch to attend not one, but two events in Las Vegas this October. Sure, they are both fantastic, can't miss type events, and yes, I can offer you a really attractive discount to attend one or both of these events, but let's be honest - was anyone on Tuesday going to think seriously about approaching the boss for some travel budget, or consider a little additional personal investment in their professional development on such a disastrous financial day?

But then, perhaps shockingly, the markets rebounded yesterday, and while certainly the uncertainty surrounding US and global economic conditions are likely to persist for the time being, the sting of Monday's sell off has been assuaged at least somewhat, and I figured I'd better make my case quickly this morning, since who knows what might happen when the bell rings a couple of hours from now.

So here are the facts, and once I lay them out it will be clear what the only logical conclusion will be for you, the Human Resources or HR Technology professional at which to arrive:

1. The 14th Annual HR Technology Conference is set for October 3-5, 2011 and will be held in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Resort. This event continues to be the pre-eminent event in the world of HR Technology, and in fact, rivals (and likely surpasses), any mainstream Human Resources conference for its sheer number and depth of exceedingly outstanding sessions, the scope and breadth of the solution providers that exhibit in the Expo hall, and the opportunity to rub elbows, break bread, and engage with the sharpest and savviest thinkers in the world of Human Capital Management.  

2. If you skip this event, you will lament your decision for the remainder of 2011, and will almost certainly begin scheming planning to attend in 2012. Why put yourself through a year of regret?

3. At no other event can you attend presentations from executives from the most important, innnovative, and exciting technology providers in the space, see case studies from innovative organizations like Facebook and Groupon, and even get the opportunity to hear from me, your dedicated servant not once, but twice during the course of the event, as I have the privilege to co-present a session with the HR Ringleader, Trish McFarlane, as well as participate on a HR and Social Media panel moderated by the HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn.

4. If you move fast, (or really before September 19th), you can use the discount code STEVE11, (all caps), to receive a $500 discount off the published registration price. Again, the conference information and registration details can be found here. And you should really take advantage of this opportunity. Truly.

But wait!  There's more!

If you act now you can double your learning experience in Las Vegas this October!

Here's how:

The 4th HRevolution conference for Human Resources and talent professionals will be held on October 2, 2011, one day before the HR Technology Conference kicks off. HRevolution has partnered with the HR Technology Conference to present the latest in what has become well known in the HR community as a challenging, engaging, informal, and boundary stretching program of facilitated conversations that is sure to enhance and support your HR Technology experience. With sessions from leaders from Zappos and Glassdoor, as well as some of the leading voices in HR and social media today, the HRevolution - Las Vegas is the perfect way to get your HR Technology Conference experience started. And thanks to the partnership with HR Tech, all attendees of HRevolution will receive a special, top-secret discount code (even better than STEVE11), that will give you the best value for HR Technology that you can find.

So here is what I really think you ought to do:

1. Register for the HRevolution event on October 2nd. You can get your tickets here.

2. Then take your HRevolution discount code and register for the HR Technology Conference here.

3. Book your room at Mandalay Bay or at any one of the dozen nearby Vegas hotels offering rooms at half the price.

4. Get ready for the best learning and networking experience you will ever have.

Take my word for it, or better yet, ask anyone that has attended HR Technology or HRevolution, you won't regret it! 

Don't try to be original...

Browsing through the Google Reader early this morning and came across this piece on the CoDesign blog highlighting a sweet infographic on typography.  Sure I know that infographics are really close to Jumping the Shark right now, but at least this one is actually focused on graphics and typefaces, and not just an elaborate and link-baiting way to show some simple statistics or bar charts that I thought it was worth featuring.

For many, the selection of fonts or typefaces is kind of a random act - we know we shouldn't choose Comic Sans under any circumstances (you do know that right?), but after that if we occasionally wander from the default Times New Roman font it is usually a crapshoot what choice we land on.  Arial? Verdana? Something something serif?

Who knows? And does it matter, really?

Well typefaces can influence your message - and these handy infographics might help you to better understand what effect your choices about type could have upon your content, (these images were pretty big, click the thumbnails below to view the full-size versions).

 

What I like about the charts is how the designer managed to simply connect a style of type, say 'Modern Serif', with a feeling or expression of the connotation that style suggests, in this case 'Glamour'. 

In addition to these relational connotations between typefaces and content, the charts also offer some simple suggestions on the design and layout of documents and displays of text and graphical information.

But besides all that, and the real reason I decided to post about these charts here, was the closing statement that wraps up the second infographic. I'll repeat it here in case the infographics don't render fully for email and RSS subscribers.

'DON'T TRY TO BE ORIGINAL, JUST TRY TO BE GOOD.'

Sort of a different way of saying, don't overthink your choices in design and typography, and it suggests there could be some danger in trying too hard to create something so new and never before seen that a designer or communicator could ultimately detract from the message.  I think it is good advice for more than just font choices - it can be really easy to obsess on 'original' or 'ground breaking' at the expense of 'good'. I know I have fallen into that trap sometimes when designing presentations, getting caught up for hours on the images and the text alignment and fonts. Ultimately if what you have to say or communicate is good, really good, the design stuff probably matters less. 

If the message and writing connect with your audience in a meaningful way, then it probably doesn't matter too much if the font is geometric or serif or extra chunky. 

Just as long as you don't choose Comic Sans - no way you are overcoming that.