Fun With Spreadsheets

Last night on the HR Happy Hour show I said something along the lines of 'Reading books is hard'.

And sometimes that is true.  Some books are ponderous, way too long, or need to be spiced up with much more liberal doses of car chases, zombies, or game-winning baskets.

You know what else is hard? Math. 

And calculations. And statistics (right akaBruno?)

For many 'non-math' or non-financial types, the bane of their existence is Microsoft Excel. That devious tool that forces one to put figures in little boxes, one after the other, row upon row, column upon column.

Ages and ages spent staring at tiny little numbers, hoping to decipher the mysteries behind such bizarre sounding constructs as VLOOKUP and 'Pivot Table Data Items'.

I'll bet, if you are like many HR or Talent pros, the urge to blow up the spreadsheet that you have been working on all week, that is full of source of hire, performance ranking distributions, or next year's salary planning data may have reached a full on boil by the end of the week.

While blowing up your worksheet, while fun, is ultimately ill-advised, as you'd just have to rebuild it all over again, and with an almost certainty that it would be impossible to replicate in the slapdash, barely decipherable manner in which it was originally created. 

No, keep plugging away on the spreadsheet, it's Friday and you are almost done, ready to ship the file off to accounting, or to operations, or to whomever actually looks forward to receiving that kind of data.

Meanwhile - take a 30 second break and dream about a world where you really could destroy that spreadsheet, and what that world might look like:

Spreadsheet Invasion from Amy Thornley on Vimeo.

Have a great, number-light, idea-heavy weekend!

Emmitt Smith or the Tequila?

At this stage, there is almost nothing or more vapid than another tired, played-out missive with the ‘you had better watch what you say on social media’ angle.

Everyone gets it by now. If you put anything out there, whether it be a blog, a social network, or even a seemingly private Favrian text message, you have to prepare for the potential exposure (no pun intended Brett), of whatever ostensibly private information you are sharing.Michael Irvin likes this.

And even that is kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it?  I mean the phrase ‘sharing’ private information.  Once information is ‘shared’ it can’t really be considered private anymore anyway. Whether or not you buy in to Mark Zuckerberg’s vision that the age of privacy is over, it seems likely that the gradual erosion of the traditional notions of privacy online will continue. Everyone you know (okay, almost everyone), is sharing content of some kind online; most of this content is not embarrassing, does not present a risk to one’s current and future employment prospects, and quite frankly, is only interesting to a select few people, (if anyone).

Worried about the ‘privacy’ of your latest Facebook picture of your cat in a Halloween costume? Well quit worrying, no one gives two shakes about it.

But if eventually Facebook’s and Zuckerberg’s argument that society is changing to adopt a more open, public, and transparent attitude towards personal data and privacy gains more widespread acceptance (or is accepted by default by the millions of people that can’t figure out Facebook’s byzantine privacy settings), the implications will continue to impact individuals and organizations.

For the individual, the implications are pretty clear, and quite honestly haven’t changed all that much. Assume all electronic versions of anything, (email, Tweets, Facebook pics, texts, etc.) will eventually find their interested audience. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the ultimate interested audience is indeed the original target -  Aunt Sally, your friends from 4th grade, or the 17 readers of your blog.  As I said the rest of the world doesn’t really care, we have our own boring pictures to upload and 'what I’m eating for lunch' Tweets to craft.

For the organization, the implications are a little less clear, but no less real. Whether it is your silly 44-page dress code becoming the butt of countless internet barbs or the occasional online banding together of employees to ravage your paying customers, more and more enterprises will have to come to terms with their own erosion of privacy as well. And I think more and more, the organizations that embrace this new privacy paradigm will be the ones that attract the candidates that best fit their culture, (some bankers may have actually supported that dress code, so why hide it), connect with customers more directly and significantly, and finally position themselves as more enlightened and responsive, as they adapt and evolve along with the Facebook’s of the world (and their 600 million users).

In fact, I wonder if in a couple of years companies will give up on developing and deploying private social networking capability, and will simply figure out how to leverage the existing public networks for their purposes. Why build a private network that will never have the reach, familiarity, and ubiquity of Facebook?

If you have made it this far, many thanks, and I guess it’s time to explain the title of the post. I made my daily Facebook drop-in this morning, and in the right sidebar there was an ad that consisted of a weirdly grinning head shot of former NFL player Emmitt Smith, along with some promotional content for a new Tequila.  Just below the image of Emmitt and the tequila ad copy, Facebook informed me that one of my Facebook friends, a highly respected and influential HR professional, ‘liked’ this.  What I was left to wonder was what did my friend actually like - Emmitt Smith or the tequila?

Be careful out there.

The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy - Part IV

It has been a while, and certainly not for a lack of watching the NBA on ESPN on my part, but after a fairly long break, the latest installment of the ‘Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy’ series is back. JVG The Wise

As a reminder, Jeff Van Gundy (JVG), is a current analyst on ESPN’s NBA broadcast coverage, a former head coach of the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets, and a provider of consistently insightful observations and commentary on leadership, teamwork, and talent management.

Earlier installments of the JVG series can be found here - (Part I, Part II, Part III).

For this installment, I submit for your consideration an observation JVG made during a recent game telecast on the importance of star players to the overall (potential) success of the team -

If you want to be great, you have to have guys that are irreplaceable

JVG was talking about a basketball team, but I think the message and idea is broadly applicable to most workplace teams, whether they are creating systems, designing processes, or developing new and innovative products and services. ‘Irreplaceable’ is certainly relative, and in the workplace almost definitely transitory, as most groups do in fact carry on when star employees leave. But the essential idea that the team, in order to be truly great, (in basketball terms defined simply and clearly as winning championships), must have at least some superstar talent, and not just a collection of good, serviceable, and reliable players.

What are some of the implications of having irreplaceable talent?

Commitment - you have to be fully committed to acquiring, supporting, and quite frankly recognizing and rewarding top talent.  You have to, at times, demonstrate to these irreplaceable stars that you are willing to create an environment where they can showcase their talents and actually achieve great things.  You may have to bend or even break the rules sometime, as truly irreplaceable talent can take their talents to many willing and competing organizations. Finally, top talent often wants to go where other irreplaceable talent can be found. Just paying them may not be enough, (see James, LeBron).

Overall Talent Level - In sports, irreplaceable talent is often credited with raising the performance of the supporting cast.  In basketball this can be attributed to superior talent, e.g. making better passes that create easy shots for teammates, drawing more attention from opposing defenses, and inspiring other players to work harder and perform better to live up to the star’s standards and expectations. Making the rest of the team better is a trait ascribed to the very best basketball players, and I bet is also seen as a positive attribute of the best employees on any team. Whether its dealing with the toughest customers, solving the most complex issues, or skillfully navigating the company politics, irreplaceable talent creates a kind of vacuum effect that creates more opportunity for others to raise their games as well.

Confidence - As a basketball player when you walk into the locker room and you see a Magic Johnson or a Michael Jordan lacing up the sneakers, you are suddenly filled with confidence, enthusiasm, and belief that you are not only on a good team, but a great team that has the legitimate chance to win titles. Really successful workplace teams and organizations have the kind of talent, that one person that everyone can look to and (sometimes quietly), think ‘We got this, we have some superstar players on this team. Let’s get after it’.  When you have those kinds of situations, you had better treasure them, because one they are gone, and the ‘irreplaceable’ talent moves on, it can be a cruel shock.  As one-time Celtics coach Rick Pitino famously remarked after the departures of irreplaceable talent -  ‘Larry Bird is not walking through that door’.

It is often remarked and observed that organizations need solid workers, ones that come in every day, get the assigned work done on time and in an acceptable manner, don’t cause any trouble in the office, and go home. And that is certainly true. But an entire team, or organization, made up of these kind of role players is unlikely to be great, the kind of greatness that becomes transformative, enduring, and even legendary.  

If you want to be great, you have to have guys that are irreplaceable.

One last thing, JVG was clear to stress the ‘want’ part of the equation, simply having irreplaceable talent guarantees nothing, just a shot at greatness.

And that my friends, is the Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy.

Robots Selling Cookies

According to a recent article in Business Week, the next wave of robot technology is aimed directly at the office market - robots that can file papers, deliver mail, and fetch a coffee for their human bosses.

These robots, according to Noriyuki Kanehira, a systems manager at robot manufacturer Kawada, will soon be able to take on a 'secretarial role' in offices. Joe Bosworth, the CEO of a firm called Smart Robots envisions these office robots as being able to 'take mail down to the mailroom and then travel across the street to pick up a latte.'

The price for this robot convenience for mail delivery and latte fetching is not cheap - prices on the current wave of office assistant type robots can run as high as $400,000 for a model called the PR2. Thankfully the PR2 comes with an associated web app called 'Beer Me' that allows the robot to be programmed to fetch and deliver beer from the fridge.

As with any new workplace automation or productivity technology, there will be some that will sound the alarm that the coming of these 'smart' robots will be the doom of more actual human workers.  Despite the high price, and (for now) somewhat limited application in the office environment the robots have many advantages over the humans they might replace.  Again from the Business Week article the robots 'doesn't goof around on Facebook, spend hours tweaking its fantasy football roster, or require a lunch break.'

When presented with that kind of a cost-benefit analysis, I imagine some executives might see the value in replacing some clerical and administrative employees with robot counterparts.  'Let me see, $300K for an employee that is never late, never gets sick, never complains about Judy's music in the next cube, and won't be hassling me to buy Girl Scout cookies every year?'.  Sounds like a good deal.

But for these leaders that might eventually make those kinds of decisions, there is another, more intriguing element to the 'robots in the office' angle. At Georgia Tech, researchers claim to be making progress on robot intelligence that will allow them one day 'to build robots that can not only interact with humans but are also capable of representing, reasoning, and developing relationships with others." They developed an algorithm that, they claim, allows robots, just like CEOs, "to look at a situation and determine whether [it] requires deception, providing false information, to benefit itself.'

Nice, not only will future robots be able to sort the mail, they will be able to be programmed to have Enron-style ethics and behaviors. Sweet.

Will we see the day in the foreseeable future where robots are as common around the office as pot-luck lunches, pedometer giveaways, and fluorescent lighting?  Perhaps.  But one thing seems likely to be discovered from the development of robot intelligence designed to replace and automate common workplace functions - that the line of irreplaceable human skills and intelligence is probably much higher up the managerial food chain than we like to think.

If what you are spending your time on today can be replicated by a robot, you are already in trouble. And if you think your contribution is on a high enough level where it can't be truly automated, think about it this way - if all the people that you support and direct were actually replaced by robots, then what would you do?

For laughs on a Monday - another take on the distant future of robot domination (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through)

Drive Thru Technology

No - it's not a post about the technical magic that happens from the time you give your order into the clown's mouth and you stuff your face with that McRib - it's a post to talk about the Drive Thru HR show on BlogTalkRadio.Want fries with that? Sir? Sir?

This afternoon, (1:00 PM ET, 12 Noon Central, Mountain and Pacific figure it out on your own), I am a guest on the Drive Thru HR show on Blog Talk Radio.  Drive Thru HR is a daily (insanely hard to produce) talk show ably hosted by Bryan Wempen and William Tincup.  Two smart, interesting, and classy gentlemen.  It will be easy for you to tell me apart from them, I assure you. You can listen live on the show page here.

I appreciate the invitation to appear, especially in light of the fact that with the HR Happy Hour show, this blog, and occasional contributions on Fistful of Talent that the listeners of Drive Thru HR have to be this close to becoming completely tired of me. Perhaps many are already.  But if you do listen, and I hope you will at least to hear Bryan and William, here are some of the ideas I plan to talk about on the show.

Consumerization of Enterprise Technology

This is not new, at least conceptually, since many enterprise web applications have made strides to design interfaces that are more user-friendly, more intuitive, and certainly easier to adopt by casual users in the enterprise.  But while interfaces and design have adapted to the expectations of the internet and Web 2.0 age, very little else in ‘big technology’ has. Lengthy deployment and upgrade cycles, little transparency in price and deployment costs, and an appalling lack of unbiased information on technology options for the small and mid-market customer.

Finding, evaluating, purchasing, and deploying HR technology is about as painful a process as a root canal.  Think about the very best companies that you deal with as a consumer, I’m not talking about the UI on the web or their ‘quirky but approachable’ Twitter account, but the best ones in terms of the entire buying and owning experience.  Easy to find the initial information on my own, without handing over contact information or being badgered on the phone. Multiple ways to interact with the organization depending on my preference and style.  A simple, transparent, and clean sales process, that doesn’t require a Dream Team of lawyers to vet.  Works when you need it to, and when it doesn't obtaining support is fast, simple, and effective. Enterprise Tech doesn’t need to just look like the best consumer tech, it needs to act more like it too.

Keeping Secrets

So many technology decisions operate from a basic position of fear.  Fear ‘company secrets’ will get leaked, fear employees can’t be trusted to create passwords that aren’t hackable, fear that if anyone outside the organization had a glimpse of what really goes on around here that the company would lose the plot and ideas would be breached, great employees would flee, and dirty little secrets would no longer be secret.  So we hide behind firewalls, pretend our ideas and processes are sacred and special, and pretend not to notice the speed of change and progress being made by smaller, adaptable, and organizations that are simply not afraid of honesty, openness, collaboration, and co-creation.  I’ll bet 90% of what most companies sell is also sold, in almost exactly the same way, in the same package, using the same processes as their competitors. Just what in the heck needs to be ‘secret’ about any of that?

Miscellany

What do people mean when they say - ‘It’s not about the technology’
Why does it seem that vendors building bigger and more integrated HR Technology suites looks a lot like the old, massive, monolithic ERP suites everyone know hates?
Why do so many great HR pros still appear to not give a hoot about technology?
Are my eyes really brown?

I think that’s it. Actually it is way too much content for a half-hour show.  Maybe if I don’t bomb Bryan and William can come on the HR Happy Hour to continue the conversation.