Notes from the Road #24 - The things you see/hear during 8 hours in the Sky Club

The details don't matter, but let's set this up that due to a flight delay and some inflexible travel plans, I spent about 8 hours or so in the Delta Sky Club in Detroit yesterday.

The Sky Club is awesome, by the way. If you travel more than once a month, I think the expense is worth it. Nice place to sit and work. Food and snacks options are getting better. Decent selection of complimentary booze (we will come back to that one in a minute). So making the disclaimer that the rest of this is not a knock on the Club or Delta (who I love). It is more a commentary on what happens in these kind of environments where people seem to drift in this weird, 'I am working but not working' pattern combined with 'I may or may not be drinking Jack Daniels while I sit on this 1PM conference call.'

So presented to you in more or less chronological order - the things I saw and heard after spending essentially an entire workday in the Sky Club.

11:00 AM - Not technically in the Sky Club, but just outside the door to the Club, is a currency exchange counter. The person on line in front of me requested almost $10,000 worth of Philippine Pesos. The exchange rate is about 54 pesos/USD. So $10K is a lot of pesos. So much so that the currency exchange counter tapped out at about $2800 worth of pesos. The dude basically walked out of that counter with every peso in Detroit. Kind of a bummer for the next person on the 5:30PM flight to Manila who is going to be out of luck trying to score a couple of pesos.

11:30AM - This particular Sky Club as a self-service bar area. You walk up, pour yourself a beer, or a glass of wine, or something a little stronger from the collection of booze. The self-service Coke machine is in the same spot too, so as I was waiting to fix myself a nice Diet Coke, an older gentlemen in a suit was pouring himself a scotch on the rocks. He then took a sip of said scotch, said something like 'Smooooooth', and proceeded to try and convince the woman behind him in the drink line to have a sip of the drink as well. He was for real trying to convince a total stranger to sip off of his scotch at 11:30 in the morning. For the record, she declined.

1:00PM - Airline clubs are getting more and more crowded these last few years. Maybe it's the booming economy. Maybe corporate travel budgets are expanding. Who knows. But on a weekday the Sky Club in Detroit is packed. I was sitting/working, (I promise), at one of the few desk/office chair setups in the back part of the Club. Nice and quiet, comfortable spot to work. Near the self-service bar too. A prime spot. Only four desks here and all are taken. So what happened? Two or three guys were literally lined up near the space waiting to pounce at the sight of someone packing up their stuff and exiting the space. For one person, the wait was getting too long and he tapped me on the shoulder and asked me how much longer I was going to be, like the desk was a treadmill at a too-crowded hotel fitness center. How much longer? I am going to be here all night, pal. I'm moving in. I am putting up new wallpaper I am so moved in.

2:00PM - Phone job interview! Not for me, but the person right behind me was doing a phone interview with a candidate. So tell me about yourself? Why did you decide to go to MIT? What else do you like to do for fun? (Are we even allowed to ask that?). Interviews are the worst. I bet he/she went to MIT to get an awesome job with great perks like a corporate Sky Club membership.

2:30PM - Guy sitting near me has been on a conference call for about 15 minutes. He has said the word 'Omnichannel' five times. I am pretty sure no one knows what that word means. Including him.

3:00PM - Just remembered to set up my 'Out of the Office' email auto-reply. FYI - I am out of the office. I am in the Sky Club. I may be here a long time. Thankfully, the supply of carrots, celery, and ranch dip seems unlimited.

3:15PM - My fitness tracker app on my phone just buzzed me to let me know I have not been active in the last three hours and it is probably time to get up and stretch. Probably a good idea. Nothing like sitting in the Sky Club for 8 hours before getting on a 7 hour flight. I wonder how many steps it is to the self-serve bar?

3:18PM - It's 47 steps to the self-serve bar.

3:30PM - Getting up to walk about the Club a bit. Leaving my laptop open to the BLS 'Jolts' report page just because.

4:00PM - It is right about the time when many of the Sky Club road warrior types stop even pretending they are working. Guy near me has solitaire going on his laptop, some kind of a movie or video on an iPAd, and is talking to one of his buddies on the phone. Yes I agree, Aspen will be EPIC this winter.

4:10PM - Nothing to do with the Sky Club, but this trend of people doing 'selfie' LinkedIn videos has to stop. These are horrible. You are actually making LinkedIn even worse, which is not easy to do. 

4:45PM - Admittedly, I have wound things down a bit and have fired up a replay of the Milwaukee Bucks v. Charlotte Hornets game from the other night. Got what looked like an evil eye from yet another Club member who wanted to take over my prime seat/desk location. How do you know I'm not working? I could be a sports writer or something. Yeah, that's it.

4:48PM - The 'Ford Keys to the Game' for the Hornets were 'Control your emotions' and 'Don't freak out'. Decent advice. Probably more generally applicable beyond the Hornets game.

5:00PM - The food and beverage area has two large TVs mounted to the wall about 20 feet apart. One TV is playing Fox News while the other is tuned to CNN. I think that is a smart move by Delta. Like Michael Jordan once said, (I am paraphrasing a little) - 'Both Democrats and Republicans buy sneakers.' And airplane tickets.

5:05PM - I like Brook Lopez on the Bucks. One of my favorite players. Giannis for MVP this season. Lock it in.

5:15PM - BANDWITH CRISIS! So many people pounding the Sky Club wifi that people are having a hard time getting connected. Hell hath no fury like a Regional Assistant Director Manager who is not able to access the Penske file. if I were a better person I would stop streaming games from NBA.com. If only.

5:45PM - Have to admit, I am getting a little punchy. Maybe I should have scheduled some kind of phone interview or a call where I got to say 'Omnichannel' a few times. But if all goes well, I am nearing the end of this stint in the Club. One more 47 step walk to the bar and maybe a few more cubes of cheddar and a couple of carrot sticks and I will be good to go. It's a marathon, not a sprint. A marathon with a self-serve open bar. Which, if they had that in more marathons, would spike the popularity of the sport.

6:00PM - Observation: 74% of people in the Sky Club like to call someone they know and tell them they are, in fact, in the Sky Club. I can't really think of many other places that drive people to alert someone else of their current whereabouts.

6:15PM - Finally leaving the Sky Club to head to the gate. Not quite 8 hours in the Club, more like 7 and a half. Felt like longer. a lot longer. Hopefully there lays ahead a nice flight, maybe one movie, and sweet, sweet sleep. Let's hope.

Have a great weekend!

Notes from the road #23 - Where do I start edition?

Quick shot from my favorite place to write these late night missives - The Delta Sky Club.

Here's 5 things I think I think in the run up to next week's HR Technology Conference.

5. HR Tech is in Las Vegas next week and rest assured the Conference is working with local organizations and causes to make sure that the event and our HR community support the victims, families, and anyone impacted by last Sunday's tragedy. Follow @HRTechConf on Twitter for updates.

4. I am not a political person. I am squarely in the middle of the road on most issues. But no matter what side of the political spectrum you identify with, it is just about impossible to conclude that we as a country have it right when it comes to availability of ridiculously powerful weaponry and the potential for that weaponry to fall into the hands of folks who will cause massive damage. I don't have a solution, but I am not dumb enough to realize there is not a problem.

3. If you are young or inexperienced enough, there is no such thing as 'legacy' enterprise software applications. Sometimes I feel like the ratings or evaluations or placements on made up quadrants or scales have more to do with author's remembrances of things past and less to do with the present or the future. Successful companies over time do not stand still. They evolve. They loosen their grip on the past. They figure out how today is different. The famous Italian race car champion once said, after having ripped the rear view mirror from his windshield, 'What's behind you, is not there.'

2. I took a couple of 'regular' taxi rides on my trip this week. While each was perfectly fine, I couldn't help thinking I was being overcharged and inconvenienced by having to work through a complex and dumb payment process at the end of the ride. You may not like Uber and it's culture or competitiveness, but their user experience beats the alternative just about every single time.

1. Never, ever, ever convince yourself the red eye flight from the West Coast back east is a good idea. And this is from someone who is about to get on a plane at 11:15PM PT. If you see me in person on Thursday, ask me to give you $100. I will be so punchy I will probably say ok.

Until the next trip...

Notes from the road #22 - A long, strange trip it's been edition

Writing this (brief) dispatch from the Delta Sky Club (again), as I wait for the final leg on the trip back from what has been a long, interesting, challenging, and incredibly rewarding two-week trip Phoenix - Shanghai - Tokyo - (back to) Phoenix - and then finally home.

In Phoenix, I attended the Virgin Pulse Thrive Summit, which was a really fantastic event. In case you have missed them, you can listen to two HR Happy Hour Shows that Trish McFarlane and I recorded from the event here and here. Virgin Pulse is the leader in employee wellbeing, and unlike some other solution providers in the space, Virgin Pulse is making real strides on showing (with data), the connection between wellbeing and improved business results. Thanks as always to them for having myself and Trish out at the event, and for supporting the HR Happy Hour Show.

Looking forward to a great #thrivesummit with my friends from Virgin Pulse #HRHappyHour

A post shared by Steve Boese (@steveboese) on May 30, 2017 at 3:09pm PDT

From there, we headed to Shanghai for the 2nd Annual HR Tech China Conference. The 2nd event was even bigger and better than the first. And I am convinced Shanghai is my new favorite city. You can read some of my thoughts about the event here, and later this week Trish and I will share even more from and about the event on an HR Happy Hour Show we will record later this week. All I can say to my Chinese friends, old and new, is "xiexie" - Thank You!

@trish_mcfarlane and I Heading in to present at #HRTechChina

A post shared by Steve Boese (@steveboese) on Jun 5, 2017 at 5:42pm PDT

From there, I headed to Tokyo for some business as well as some time to do some touring and sightseeing. Another amazingly interesting and fun place, great and welcoming people, and lots of opportunity to do more in the future. I liked it so much I may have to go back again soon!

#tokyo

A post shared by Steve Boese (@steveboese) on Jun 9, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

It has been the longest business trip I have been on in ages, and while I sit here in the MSP Sky Club anxious to get home, I also anticipate the next trip back to Asia - it truly has been, professionally and personally, the most incredibly rewarding trip I have taken in years.

And to everyone who is waiting to hear back from me about something or other - I promise to dig in to the backlog of emails and texts and get back to you soon.

That is if I actually get home tonight. If I get stuck here in MSP, then all bets are off.

NOTE: In the time it has taken me to post this, I am delayed another hour...

Notes From the Road #21 - Friendly Skies Edition

I was waiting for an early morning flight today (on Delta, the best airline in the world), and heard a gate announcement from across the terminal for a United flight that was also soon to depart. The United gate agent was seeking volunteers to give up their seats on the 6AM flight to Chicago and take a later flight. With everything that has been in the news about the recent problems United has had with overbooking and removing passengers from flights, I couldn't help but wince a little as I heard the announcement. And I wasn't even on the flight. Nor that airline. Just the stench of what has been going on at United wafted across to my Delta gate. Aside - my Delta flight also was seeking folks to volunteer their seats as well. Must have been a big day to get out of Rochester today.

But the announcements this morning, and the United follies of late made me think I hadn't done a 'Notes' post in a while, and since I KNOW you must have been waiting, on edge, for me to share my thoughts on the United stuff and air travel in general, here are my frequent flyer informed Top 10 observations/comments on the current state of the friendly skies...

1. On the United stuff - pretty much everyone was at least partially in the wrong there. United operations should have a better plan to get its employees where they need to be. United gate staff and on-site managers should have had more leeway to increase the compensation on offer in order to coax the desired number of passengers from the flight. Airport/aviation security should have found some other way to accomplish the de-planing of the passenger that did not involve concussions and a busted up face. And finally, despite the unfairness of it all, the passenger in question, once three airport security staff boarded the plane and requested he de-plane, had to comply. He should have been mad. He probably should have dropped a F-bomb or two. But he should have left the plane and taken up his case back at the gate. On board an aircraft trapped with 100 other folks in close quarters who have nothing to do with this incident is no place to decide to hold your own sit-in protest. 

2. I think an underrated element of the air travel experience is the newness of the aircraft itself. The plane I am on now is really, really new seeming. It almost has that new plane smell still. Creates such a positive feeling right from boarding when the plane is new(ish), and not one of those dreary, run-down, relics from 1987. 

3. I know this is easy to forget, but another thing that would make the overall experience better is for everyone to realize that you are not the only person on this flight, and unless you are the pilot, you are also not the most important person on this flight. You know what? We all have connections to make! We all sat through the turbulence over Colorado. We all had to endure the four hours to LAX with the terrible wifi. Treat everyone nicely, we are all in this misery together.

4. But given that we are all miserable, we can't take that out on the individual employees of the airline - gate agents, flight attendants, customer service folks - any of them. Ninety-five percent of the airline staff are giving their best effort to get us where we want to go - safely, on-time, and as comfortably as conditions, (which none of them created) allow. Sure, can an airline worker have a bad day? Be rude? Of course. But so can the guy at the gas station, the clerk at the DMV, and the passenger in Seat 17C who keeps hitting the call button to ask for another ginger ale. 

5. Air travel is a volume business. Delta, American, Southwest, and United, (the Big 4), might carry 125 million passengers each year. If they are lucky, they will make $6 of profit on each passenger (it is often less). So even if you think your $1700 fare to SFO was really expensive, the airline barely makes enough to cover the costs of getting you there. So like your local grocery store, volume and thin margins is how airlines make money. I think some of the disconnect in the air travel experience is we see our fares as big-ticket purchases, but the airline sees us all as contributors of $6 to the bottom line.

6. It is never a good idea to argue with the TSA. See point #4 - the person manning the scanner or waving the magic wand or doing the patdowns did not make the rules. The process is often ridiculous, but the time and place to make your stand is not at 5:30AM with 72 people in line behind you who just want to make their flights. Write your Congressperson if you don't like what goes on at airport security.

7. No matter what scheme an airline uses to manage the boarding process, (line up with numbers, line up in groups, high status first/lower status next, etc.), boarding will be probably the worst aspect of the flying experience. This is mostly our, (the collective we) fault. We lug too many things on the plane, we can't count rows, we have to position phones, tablets, e-readers, magazines, boxes of Good n' Plenty just so at our seats before we sit down. Just please, for the love of all that is holy, stash your bag under the seat, don't try to stuff the roller bag where it clearly will not fit, and just sit down. There is nothing more likely to make you weep for humanity than to watch 120 of us attempt to board a plane.

8. You do not, under any circumstances, need to make a phone call telling someone 'We just landed' the SECOND after the wheels touch down. I promise you that call can wait 7 minutes until we are at the gate and getting off the plane. Trust me.

9. Your bags will almost certainly not get 'lost' or even delayed. In 2015 the USA rate of lost luggage was about 3 per 1,000 passengers, a 10% reduction from 2014. Delta (and American I think) now allows you to track the movement of your checked bags via it's smartphone app. I get a little notification when my bag gets placed on the plane, when it is switched to my connecting flight, and when it is unloaded at the claim area. Will you be one of the 3 out of 1,000 who has an issue with your bag? There's a 99.7% chance you will not. So get over that one time in Indianapolis nine years ago when your bag went missing and it had to be delivered to the Fairfield Inn a couple of hours later. You were fine.

10. There are going to be times where you miss your flight, when weather or mechanical issues cancel the flight, when you are stuck in a middle seat between two guys who are the size of a WWE tag team, or when there's a crying baby, no wifi, or the plane has run out of red wine. That is just how it is. But remember none of those things are happening to you, they are happening to all of us too.

And it could be worse. Remember that 27 hour drive to DisneyWorld when you were a kid? And Dad threatened to turn the car around about 19 times? And your brother got car sick on your Keds?

Think about that compared to that crowded, stuffy, 2 hour 32 minute flight where you watched Moana and had some honey roasted peanuts and a Sprite.

That's it, I am out. Safe travels out there.

Notes from the road #20 - Spring event roundup edition

A big part of how I spend my Spring each year is making the rounds of as many HR technology solution provider events (customer conferences and.or analyst meetings), as I can, all while planning for and developing the program for the 19th Annual HR Technology Conference and Expo to be held October 4 - 7, 2016 in Chicago, IL.

These customer events are a great way for me to stay in touch with the industry - the technology trends, the challenges that customers are talking about and seeking solutions for, and the big workplace issues that are top of mind. Additionally, these events help me to take the pulse and temperature of the market - information I need as I work on HR Tech.  

Since the Spring event season is just about over, (I think I have one more to attend, the always interesting HireVue event in a couple of weeks), I wanted to share at least a small part of what I saw, heard, and learned at a few of these events from early 2016. Hopefully, there is something in what I saw that might help you as you think about your HR technology plans for the remainder of the year.

Greenhouse - This was the most recent event I have attended, so it is very fresh in my mind. Greenhouse is a newer provider of recruitment technology solutions primarily serving the SMB market, (don’t call it an ATS), that has grown rapidly in the last few years, primarily in the Bay Area technology ecosystem. Greenhouse takes a fresh approach to HR tech, at least a different one I think, in that they really think about solving the challenge of recruiting for organizations who wish to become “great” at recruiting first, rather than simply chasing down specific features and functions. It is an approach that is hard to describe in a few words, but if you want to learn more about Greenhouse and what they are about, check an interview I was able to do with CEO Dan Chait on the HR Happy Hour podcast here.

Globoforce - The recent Globoforce customer conference, called WorkHuman, stands out from the group in that it is a very different kind of user event in that it does not (primarily) focus on the the actual products that Globoforce develops. Rather, WorkHuman focuses on making work and workplaces “better’, and showcases content and activities designed to help HR leaders better engage their workforces and that ultimately will elevate the nature of work. The solution set that Globoforce provides is positioned more as a complementary collection of tools that HR and organizational leaders can leverage in their efforts to simply make work “better” and more human. For more on this event, and how working more “human” translates to organizations, see this excellent piece from Trish McFarlane on the HR Ringleader blog.

Oracle - Oracle’s HCM World event has rapidly grown to become one of the largest HR technology user events of its type. The most recent HCM World held in early April, was a reflection of the growth of Oracle’s HCM Cloud solutions, and the success they are having in the market. There was tons to see and hear at the event, but if I could pick out just one thing that stood out for me was the continued development and refreshing approach Oracle is taking with its new Learning technology in the cloud. The new learning tools are meant to be mobile-first, collaborative, personalized, and video heavy - a key to me as the trends in video consumption are only on the increase across all kinds of platforms. It is  great example of how an enterprise technology provider is adapting to trends in the consumer space to develop and deliver technologies with which users will want to engage. For more on what Oracle is working in HCM, listen to this recent HR Happy Hour podcast featuring Oracle’s Bertrand Dussert.

Ultimate - Just like the other events listed above, Ultimate Software’s annual user conference is a reflection of the company itself - its culture, values, and philosophy. Ultimate's tagline has been “People First” for some time, but unlike most empty corporate slogans, Ultimate really does believe in putting its employees, customers, and community “first”. They are committed to their own employees and their family’s welfare and well-being, as evidenced by the generous and progressive approaches they take to engagement and development. But from a product capability standpoint, probably the most interesting area in which Ultimate is innovating is in the field of predictive analytics. These are modern approaches to give insight to leaders to be able to anticipate voluntary (and often undesirable) turnover, and to predict the likelihood of a candidate succeeding in a new role. But Ultimate is moving beyond just “predicting” events, it is trying to provide more meaningful and actionable recommendations and interventions to help leaders and managers better deal with these events. You can learn more about this approach on this by checking out another recent HR Happy Hour podcast with Cecile Alper-Leroux from Ultimate.

That’s a quick look at four of the events I was able to attend in the last few months. And while each one was different of course, when I think back upon them, and the others that I was not able to list here, I am reminded that the challenges and opportunities facing HR leaders and their organizations remain pretty common and consistent. Finding the best talent, engaging the workforce, developing and retaining the best people, while all the time ensuring compliance and accuracy in all HR administrative processes. Thankfully, modern and innovative technologies like the ones being developed by the five providers above continue to rise to these challenges, and are able to help HR leaders reach their goals. And of course, you can see these providers, and hundreds more, at the upcoming HR Technology Conference in October.