Knowing when it's time to stop asking for advice

We all probably read or saw some of the potential downsides of relying too heavily on the so-called wisdom of the crowds during the recent bombings in Boston, (and the intense few days immediately following). While the combination of smartphones, the web, and social media certainly did seem to help in spreading news and information, keeping people safe during the manhunt for the suspects, and even in helping to identify them in the first place, there were also some unfortunate negatives. Bad information, no matter its source, was spread far and wide, innocent or uninvolved people were put under suspicion, and for many, the sheer cacophony of updates, videos, tweets and the like created so much noise that the true signal was often incredibly difficult to find.

Frankly, at times it seemed like no one, especially the established experts, really knew anything, but everyone had something to say, me included.

If they want to truly disorient the suspect just pipe in the CNN feed. That ought to confuse the crap out of him. #bostonbomber

— Steve Boese (@SteveBoese) April 20, 2013

This is just how things work now, any important news or events, particularly ones that play out live on TV and on Twitter are going to generate a massive volumes of good information - along with almost equal parts of confusion, error, and utter nonsense. Perhaps the best advice on dealing with all this is to just tune out for a while and not get caught up trying to play amateur detective or journalist ourselves. 

The real reason I was thinking about this wasn't the Boston bombings and the aftermath though, (but they do make for pretty good illustration I think), it was from reading a piece recently authored by Philip Palaleev, a consultant to financial services companies, titled 'How I advise advisors to run an advisory business from my pulpit'. Get past the really odd title, and you get this - some of the best advice I've seen about the problems of asking for too much advice:

I once read about an experiment where the researches had the tonsils of 1,000 healthy kids in New York examined by doctors. In about 50% of the cases, the doctors recommended removing of the tonsils. The researchers then took the “healthy” kids to another set of doctors. Again, 50% of the kids received the tonsillitis diagnosis, even though they had already been declared healthy by another doctor (notice the rate is not even dropping). Researchers then took the remaining 250 healthy kids and took them to a third set of doctors. Lo and behold — again 50% of them received the tonsillitis recommendation.

You can see where this is going — go to enough doctors and you will eventually get your tonsils removed. Same is true with consultants — talk to enough consultants and you will eventually get your strategy revised, your compensation plans “fine-tuned” and your processes “optimized.”

If you spend enough time asking for opinions, ideas, and advice you'll eventually get so much of it you may forget what you were after in the first place, and even what you believe to be right or true or at least likely.

There is no shortage of people ready and willing to tell us what we should do. The thick is, I think, to know when to stop asking, stop listening, and just do what we think is right.

More advice is not always or necessarily better. But it is more noise, that we know for certain.

Differential advantage via technology? It's hard to find that on a shelf

One of the most widespread and influential technologies of the last 40 years that has not only improved business but actually helped create entirely new businesses is the seemingly mundane shipment tracking number.

That crazy-long string of 15 or 20 letters and numbers that somehow, as if by magic, allows you to determine the location and stage in the shipment process of all the crap essential items you order from Zappos, Amazon, or Warby Parker. If you are old enough to remember what ordering goods from catalogs or mail-order was really like before the days of tracking numbers then I think you'll agree how dramatic an improvement it is, and how it enables businesses to make commitments and consumers to make plans.

FedEx who recently celebrated their 40th anniversary, created the tracking number and invented scores of related technologies and processes that surround the tracking number which remains the core of their shipment process today. It is a fascinating story of innovation that you can read about in this recent piece on Wired.com, Tracking 40 Years of FedEx Technology.

The tracking number, and the associated network, communications, applications, and database technologies that make the number accessible and intelligent to the shipper, retailer, and consumer alike truly represents an amazing story of technological innovation. But it is a kind of innovation that sometimes we lose sight of, particularly those of us who talk about things like 'enterprise' software - systems like ERP or Supply-chain, or even HCM solutions. 

The vast majority of these enterprise systems, and the ones that people (mostly) spent time talking about, are commercial off the shelf solutions. A software company has built these solutions, usually with the insights of customers, partners, and their own internal teams of experts, and then attempts to sell what normally is the same exact system to as many customers as they can.  That's the software business, essentially, and it makes tons of sense for both the customer and the vendor. 

For the vendor, developing, marketing, maintaining, and updating one main version of the solution is simpler, more efficient, and over time, allows them to spend more time and R&D on building new features and capabilities, which potentially benefit all customers. And for the customer, having to not be in the business of creating their own custom solutions for things like Payroll, Accounts Payable, collecting job applications, and asset tracking is a huge boon as well. For only a very few specialized companies, none of these things are fundamental to their core business models.

But having these types of enterprise off the shelf systems in place, configured, and deployed can only do so much for an organization when you factor in the these two elements - that the same solutions are available to everyone in the market, including their competitors, and mostly the processes they support are not core to their differentiating value proposition. Or said differently, a dozen of your competitors probably run the same ATS as you, that looks and feels kind of the same, and candidates hate theirs as much as they hate yours. No advantage gained, (or ceded, admittedly). Yes you can do a 'better' implementation of generally available solutions, and that might make you a little faster to process an applications or more efficient at taking payment discounts than the other guys, but these kinds of advantages are mostly tangential to whatever your 'real' business is about.

So if true technological competitive advantage is hard to come by simply from commercial off the shelf software, then where can it come from?

Let's go back to the FedEx example. Here's some idea of where from the Wired.com piece:

FedEx’s 40-year history is about far more than an unimaginable number of overnight deliveries. It’s a case study in creating a service, then pushing technology forward to ensure that service actually works on a large scale. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, you need powerful technology. And sometimes you have to create it.

In its relentless pursuit of efficiency, FedEx has pioneered and developed technologies later embraced by everything from cellular industry to online retailing and distributed computing.

“On a day to day basis, shipping 10 million packages, you have to have technology,” (FedEx CIO) Carter said. Even if that means creating it yourself.

The advantage comes from technology that surrounds the essence of the business model - the fast, reliable delivery of customer shipments. The technology that enables that mission, that others can't easily duplicate, is where and how technology helps lead to real success. And all of it had to be created from nothing.

The FedEx technology story really is quite amazing and a great reminder that many of the real innovations in technology, and the differential competitive advantage that can be derived from them, usually starts from a blank sheet of paper, and almost never can be found on any vendor's shelf.

If you're reading this, it's because you caught up on email last night

Note: This post was written on Sunday and was set to publish on Monday morning at about 9:00AM ET.

From the 'no one cares but me' department, I will mention that probably 75% of the posts that run on this blog are written on the weekends. For me, the weekends are when I prefer (generally) to do the 'non-work' work - the blog, trying to figure out what to do with HR Happy Hour, (a post on that coming, maybe this week), working on HRevolution, (more on that very soon too), and of course watching my beloved Knicks in the playoffs.

This past weekend however, had a little more 'real work' than most, we spent a fair bit of time working on the agenda for the upcoming HR Technology Conference in October, (and in the spirit of shameless promotion, you really should lock in your plans to attend now, it is shaping up to be another fantastic event). As you'd expect, or maybe not, over the weekend there was a fair number of emailing going on with various presenters, sponsors, internal staff, etc. finalizing copy, double-checking titles and responsibilities, confirming things, etc.  And through all the back and forth over the last two days I was struck by the remarkable levels of responsiveness from people external to the process. In other words, it seemed like everyone we needed some information from was on their work email, pretty much at all times.  The 'sent from my iPhone' may have been in the signature for most of these exchanges, but that's no matter, the connectedness was astounding, although thinking about it more, maybe I should no longer be surprised.

Because we don't ever fully disconnect, at least not nearly like we used to, (and perhaps should). I know that is not really anything you don't know, perhaps you yourself are one of those folks that taps out emails on Saturday morning from the sidelines of the U9 soccer game, or while you are waiting in the line at Starbucks. But while the ubiquity of connection and ability to respond at any time is clearly apparent to everyone, what isn't clear at all, if it ever really gets spoken of, are the expectations around connectivity and response.

What I mean is this - the first time that you as a new employee in an organization get an email from the boss or even a more senior colleague on a Saturday morning is the expectation there that you will respond? If so, then how quickly? And with what level of ongoing commitment, i.e., how long should you be expected to stop what you're doing and more or less, 'work?', assuming the work we are talking about is normal, day-to-day stuff and not some kind of emergency, real or invented. Chances are you, or your new team members don't really know either, at least not right away. When work is always-on, always within reach, and it becomes really, really, easy for it to become a seven-day-a-week proposition, do you know anymore where the boundary or dividing line it between 'working' and 'not working?'

I still can kind of remember the time when if you needed something from someone, you had to get on them very early on Monday morning with a call or an email - before they became inundated with other things and meetings. Then that window of opportunity kind of moved to Sunday night, because it seems lots and lots of folks spend some sofa-time on Sunday nights trying to triage their Inboxes.  Now, who knows, maybe Saturday morning is the new Sunday night which used to be the old Monday morning.

Either way, I think eventually this has to catch up to us, in the way we talk to employees about expectations, about how we ensure people are getting at least some time to disconnect, and how we think about work and all the other things that are not work.

You are a smart HR person right? Have you asked your IT staff to show you an organization email usage report lately? 

How much work went on over the weekend? Besides the work you did.

Happy Monday!

The Culture Trap

Short post today - just a call out for you to take a few minutes today or over the weekend to check out a fascinating piece by Ryan on the anthropology blog Savage Minds titled 'When Culture Erases History'.

While on the surface an essay about anthropological field work in the Baja, California region, (interesting in its own right), the piece's essential question, or perhaps more accurately challenge to us is this: Are we too often  confusing 'culture', complex, long-developing, and ever-evolving, with much more practical and visible characteristics of a people or place, (and I'd argue a corporation), like politics, history, land ownership, and economic power?Jasper Johns, Spring, 1986

An excerpt from the article:

This use–or misuse–of the idea of culture is quite common, and I think it’s a clear case that calls for some more anthropological engagement.  Because culture is, after all, one of our bread and butter concepts–even if it has run a bit wild on us (all the more reason to get back into the game, no?).  In the end, I think one role for cultural anthropology–in this specific case and other related instances–is to point out when culture is a viable, meaningful explanatory factor, and, just as importantly, when it’s not.  Granted, sometimes culture can tell us a lot about human differences.  Sometimes culture is the answer.  But when culture is used to make an end run around history (and politics), well, maybe it’s time to take a closer look.

If you're interested at all the the interplay between culture and power and money and the ways that people do or do not get along in an ecosystem, then like I said check out the Savage Minds article for if not the answers to some of these problems, at least for a way to frame the questions and discussions in a useful way.

Sometimes culture is the answer, in anthropology certainly, and once in a great while, in business too,(although I'd submit in the corporate world it's far less a factor than what seems to be currently fashionable to suggest). 

But other times, and maybe most of the time, behaviors and characteristics we think might have some kind of deep-seated or inherent cultural influence turn out to be much more practical and even mundane.

If we don't get along, it could be because of some deep-seated, thousands of years to develop and almost inherent cultural difference between your people and my people. It could be that. Or it could be that you will not stop posting pictures of everything you eat on Instagram.  That probably is the reason, actually.

Hmm. Maybe too heavy for a Friday, especially after this week.

Have a great weekend!

WEBINAR: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting

You know what niche industry is really suffering right now?

Ok, that was a dumb question, there are hundreds of possible answers, (luxury electric cars, shoe shine stands, sites trying to peddle surplus Jeremy Lin 'Knicks' gear), but the one I was going for was gossip magazines.

You know the ones I mean - National Enquirer, The Star, The Weekly World News. The rags that line every supermarket checkout counter in America.

Why are these publications feeling the squeeze lately? It's not for a lack of juicy news - heck the Kardashians alone take care of providing all the content they need. It's because while people are stuck waiting in the checkout line, when they used to scan and once in a while make an impulse buy of one of these magazines, now they are heads down on their iPhones.

Texting, Tweeting, Facebooking - whatever. The attention they used to pay to the starlet of the moment on the magazine rack is now diverted to their mobile device.

Face it - our attachment to our devices is changing everything - from gossip mags to reading news to looking for a job - and yes I just made that leap. Candidates are looking for jobs, (maybe your jobs), on their mobile devices instead of reading about the latest world's largest baby. And guess what? You probably are not ready for that.

That is why your friends over at Fistful of Talent have you covered with the latest in the FOT Webinar series - The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, Wednesday April 24 at 1:00PM ET.

What will FOT's Kris Dunn and Jason Pankow cover?

Jason and Kris will lay down FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous by hitting you with the following:

A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.

Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.

The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes

The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors

How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

So what are you wating for, register here for the April installment of the FREE FOT webinar and start laying down the foundation for your mobile recruiting strategy.

As always, the FOT Webinar comes guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.