SLIDES: Digital Transformation and Talent - #Inforum2016

I had the privilege to present yesterday at Inforum 2016, the annual customer conference for Infor, a leading provider of enterprise cloud technologies - including Human Capital Management.

My topic was Digital Transformation and Disruption, and the impact that accelerating and profound technology innovation and change is having on talent and talent management. I also included and talked about the incredible Pokemon Go phenomenon, and what that suggest for HR and talent. My only regret from the talk is that I really didn't get in a solid 'Sport and HR' re-set, but I guess I can try and do better next time.

Embedded below are the slides I presented at Inforum, and after the embed, (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through), I want to expand a little on the last slide - the recommendations that accompany the pic of Maxwell Smart.

Steve Boese - Digital Transformation and the Future of Talent from HR Happy Hour

The tough challenge for HR and business leaders when faced with all this disruptive technology is just how to go about getting started, deciding on what types of technology in which to invest, and how to prioritize time, investment, and resources.

On the Maxwell Smart slide, I offer three catergories of value that you can consider when evaluating new technology. Whatever technology you consider, it needs to meet a need in at least one of these three areas - two is better - but if you can find a project that manages to provide value in all three? Then you are basking in the glory forever more.

1. Reduce or eliminate organizational barriers- these are the inefficient systems and processes that get in the way of your employees being able to do their best work. Things like convoluted approval processes, endless email chains with no one making a decision, or antiquated and disparate technology solutions that fail to integrate smoothly if at all. This is the proverbial 'low hanging fruit' that the smart HR leader looks to exploit for quick, easy, and visible wins.

2. Improve and enhance customer service - HR is at the end of the day still largely a service organization providing support and consultation to the rest of the organization. How can you provide that service better, faster, with more inherent value tomorrow than you are doing today? Where can you leverage modern tools to allow employees to get access to tools, information, and people to enable them to focus on their roles and not on your rules? Technologies in this category don't just make HR better, they make the organization overall better as well.

3. Create a differentiated and persoanlized experience - One of the themes that I touched on in the talk was the way many of these modern breakthrough technologies like Uber, Stitchfix, and even Pokemon Go succeed by creating individual and personalized experiences and do this at massive scale. Stichfix sends out thousands and thousands of 'fixes' - collections of clothes and accessories to its customers - and no two are ever the same. Most organizations send out a handful of offer letters in a month, and except for the salary, everything else about them is EXACTLY the same. The same can probably be said for benefits and perks packages, physical characteristics of the work environment, and the method and process for training, development, compensation, and evaluation. Is it easier to have uniformity in all of these processes? Sure it is. Does it make the most sense for you business? Maybe not. It would be easier for Stitchfix to send all its customers the same 5 garments each month, but would that make the customers feel special and valued? Would they keep coming back?  I doubt it.

So those were my big three points that I wanted to leave the audience with today, and what I hope you think about when making the important organizational decisions around technology investment. Make sure you are hitting the best value category for you and if you can punch 2, or even 3 of the categories then you will probably be giving the keynote at Inforum next year!

It was super exciting and fun to be a part of such a big event - many thanks to the team at Infor for having me! 

It's hard in the modern world: A DisruptHR Cleveland Preview

Next week I will have the great pleasure of attending and presenting at the DisruptHR Cleveland event to be held Thursday, February 5 at 5:30PM at the Music Box Supper Club  - (event details and registration here).

The presentations at the DisruptHR events follow the popular 'Ignite' format - each presenter has 20 slides that auto-advance at 15 seconds per slide resulting in a total of 5 minutes to tell their story. It is a fun and exciting, (if a little bit frightening) format for both speakers and the audience.

My little talk, (and it is almost complete, please relax DisruptHR Cleveland organizers, I will get it to you soon), has a working title of 'It's hard in the modern world'; or, 'A 5-minute review of humanity's relationship with technology'. 

As I said, the presentation is not 100% complete, so I won't post it here yet, but I did want to share the central theory behind the talk, and also solicit some ideas and feedback if readers are so inclined that I may consider as I finalize the slides.

Here it is:

While 'modern' advances in technology seem incredibly disruptive, the entirety of human history has been nothing but a series of (mostly), technology driven disruptions. Fire, the wheel, metallurgy, farming - these and many more tech advances were just if not more disruptive to humanity than Candy Crush Saga.

At the end there will be some profound conclusions/recommendations/wisecracks to help sum up and interpret that assertion, but that is the basic idea behind the talk.

My questions to you, dear readers, are these:

Are we really in the most technology-driven disruptive period in (at least recent) human history?

Are things really different now?

Do I have a chance of convincing the good people of Cleveland that the modern age of technology is not more disruptive than the transition to the Bronze Age from the 'Run or be eaten alive age?'

Hope to see lots of folks out in Cleveland next week!

If the entire economy can fit on one slide, then you probably have too many slides

...and this blog post title is way, way too long.

Check the below image, spotted over the weekend on Business Insider's piece titled Here's The Entire Debate About The US Economy In One Huge Slide:

The slide presents, (simply I admit), what the financial services company sees as the key assumptions and challenges for the US economy in 2014, offers up some alternative and plausible implications of these assumptions, and then presents what it feels are the most important data visualizations (that are not too hard to look at), that support both the assumptions and the conclusions.

Think about it, they are attempting to distill a subject as large and complex as the economy of the USA down into one slide. Sure there are lots of data points and subject areas that are not and can't be covered in just one slide, and sure, the presentation gurus out there will cringe at the notion that there are way too many words in way too small a font to pass muster, but the overall effect I think is outstanding.

All the important data points, the reasoning, the charts - everything that this presenter needed to lead his/her talk about the state of the economy all laid out on one page.

I know I have gotten into a really bad presenting habit over the years of simply adding more and more slides to just about every presentation that I have done. Slides are free, right? Just add another one with a cool picture and a word or two in 64-pt font. 

But I think that approach makes you a little lazy and also can easily result in ponderous presentations that end up going everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The tightness and the focus required to distill your content into its smallest container possible also forces you to consider what is truly important about the information and arguments you are presenting and to think much more about what you are going to say about that content, rather than spending umpteen hours scouring the stock photo sites for the 'right' images.

This has to be the next HRevolution contest - the 10 minute, one-slide presentation.

Have a great week all!

Senior HR Executive Conference - Social Technology and Innovation

This afternoon at the Conference Board's Senior HR Executive Conference Trish McFarlane and I presented a talk titled 'How Social Tools Can Empower a Global Organization'. The slides from the session are can be found here, and are also embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through).

How Social Tools Can Empower a Global Organization

View more presentations from steveboese

Mainly, what Trish and I tried to share are some examples, both well-known and a few lesser-known, of how organizations have and can use social media, social networking, new tools for innovation and collaboration, and probably most importantly how looking at business challenges with an eye towards how social and collaboration can help meet these challenges.

These types of short presentations are really meant to be a kind of starting point to thinking about social in different organizational contexts, and for leaders and organizations that have already begun projects and programs, perhaps offering some awareness or insight to new opportunities they have yet to explore.

The feedback to the session was great, (thanks attendees for your time and attention), and many thanks to Trish and to the Conference Board for allowing us to present today.

I'd love your comments and feedback on the presentation as well!

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.