What the pitch says about the technology

You are the CEO, CFO, or CHRO of a medium to large size organization and receive this pitch to deploy some new technology from your CIO or Director of IT: Flickr- Marshall Astor

We’re going to deploy some expensive technology that makes it extremely cumbersome for anyone to share information throughout the company. We anticipate that people will use it to enter transactions, run reports, process workflows, and complain to their colleagues about the new system, how they were not trained adequately, and how they long for the old system.

We’ll recruit an initial set of users, drawn from both high and low places in the company, and including very few formal and informal leaders.

We will create and issue detailed guidelines and policy statements, we’re not going to trust our employees and it will be easy to make mistakes, but hard to correct them. We’ll monitor usage, and if anyone misuses the technology we’ll eventually figure it out, and take corrective action.

We’re going to run this pilot for a year or more, at the end of which we’ll report back to you with lessons learned and benefits received.

Crazy right?  Would you as the decision maker buy-in to this project?  Wouldn't you be wondering just who in their right mind would bring you such hopeless pitch? 

Expensive, highly inflexible, will take forever to deploy, and most of the users will hate it?  Sounds like the kind of project that will get you fired.

How about if the pitch was changed just a bit - and you heard this coming from the mouth of the CIO?

We’re going to deploy some cheap technology that makes it extremely easy for anyone to share information throughout the company. We anticipate that people will use it to post insights, point to good content, ask questions, and tell their colleagues what they’re working on, what they’re seeing, and what they’re learning.

We’ll recruit an initial set of regular contributors, drawn from both high and low places in the company, and including both formal and informal leaders.

Rather than coming up with and issuing detailed guidelines and policy statements, we’re instead going to trust our employees and make it easy to correct mistakes instead of hard to make them. We’ll monitor contributions, and if anyone misuses the technology we’ll learn about it quickly and take corrective action.

We’re going to run this pilot for x months, at the end of which we’ll report back to you with lessons learned and benefits received.

Last week on Andrew McAfee's blog, McAfee offered the preceding as a low-key 'Enterprise 2.0' technology sales pitch.  The pitch at the very start of this post is my (hopefully) creative modification of McAfee's pitch for a traditional, big enterprise technology.

The key to the Enterprise 2.0 pitch, and to the underlying types of technology that are being pitched is simplicity, flexibility, and usefulness to BOTH the individual and to the organization.

Big, classic enterprise software projects like ERP or Supply Chain Management are by definition expensive, time consuming, and incredibly inflexible. Drop $5M on a large ERP suite and you are living with it for a long time.  Heck, in big organizations just keeping the restrooms stocked with TP is a big, complicated undertaking.

But the difference in the tone of the two fake pitches is, I think, telling.  People and organizations are desperate for more technologies that the Enterprise 2.0 pitch promises, while continually being drawn back into the familiar and painful clutches of Enterprise 1.0.

Guest Post - Why Business Intelligence is Failing HR Managers

Note: This guest post comes from Tom Malone, CEO of Accero.

In the past few years it seems like business intelligence has been all the rage. Vendors promise a tool that will help HR managers pull a seat up to the table with strategic insight gained through predictive analysis of the company’s own data.

However, according to analysts, most companies never achieve the results they expect with these tools. Why is it that business intelligence fails to live up to expectations? The answer can be found in time and resources.

Somewhere between the sales pitch for BI and the initial implementation of the product comes the realization that instead of a solution that serves up insightful analytics, they have a tool that, while powerful in potential, requires a ton of work before it can provide any useful insight.

Once a BI product has been purchased someone within the organization (usually HR & IT) must determine what key metrics they want, and what data they need to support those metrics.  Then they must couple the BI tool with other technologies such as a database and ETL tool (extraction, transformation and loading) to build a data-mart that manages and stores complex workforce data, automate a process to load data into the data mart, design each key metric as a chart, scorecard  or dashboard, build all the charts and dashboards, store them in a way that makes finding the right metric easy, tie each metric to a role-based security model and finally train their users in using the BI tool to slice and dice through the resulting metrics. 

As you can imagine, doing all of the above takes a lot of time, a lot of IT talent and a lot of money.  It is the number one reason why BI is failing HR managers and their organizations.

Do we need analytics solutions to help provide insight in the space? Absolutely. HR Managers are the best conduits for information into how an organization can encourage and reward employees, comply with laws, reduce labor costs and increase productivity and eliminate compliance risk. Are we there yet with easy-to-use tools and pre-defined solutions?   For most HR departments, the answer is no.

I’d be interested in your thoughts and personal experiences with this topic. Is BI working for you and within your organization or has it failed to live up to its promise?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Malone is CEO of Accero (formerly Cyborg) a Payroll, Human Resources and Human Capital Management software and service provider. Tom has over 25 years of experience in the software, computer services, and telecommunications industries.



Telling Stories with Technology

Or perhaps rather letting people share their story when interacting with technology.

I recently read this post, 'Mad Libs Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%', on the LukeW Ideation and Design blog.

The main point of the post, which is short and an easy read, is that by altering a typical 'Request for Information' web form asking for Name, email, address, subject of inquiry, etc., to a 'Mad Libs' style form that frames the information in a kind of simple story, and allows the respondent to fill-in-the-blanks of the story with their personal and relevant information.

An example of the before and after versions of a typical 'information request' web form is here:

Usage tests on both versions of the form above (and similar forms on other sites), revealed increases in conversion, i.e. that percentage of visitors to the site that completed the form, anywhere from 25% to 40%.

While the designers don't know for sure what to attribute the increased conversion rate to, something in the more narrative style of the revised form was successful in capturing more information.

I think that workforce technologies could also likely benefit from a similar approach. Think of some of the typical programs that an organization rolls out, like paycheck direct deposit, enrollment in 401(k) retirement plans, or participation in company-sponsored wellness programs, that to the administrators seem like they should be no-brainers for employees to sign up for. But maybe for some reason the participation rate continues to fall short of expectations.

Some organizations might react by simply requiring participation, (at lease for direct deposit), or sweetening the incentives, (free pedometers!), but I wonder of simply making some subtle adjustments to the actual process of registering could help.

Consider taking a bland form (whether on paper or online) for direct deposit that asks for name, address, bank name, bank routing number (come on, you know lots of people have no idea what that is), and so on and replacing it with something like this:

Hi, my name is ___________, and I work in the _____________ Department.  I like the idea of getting my pay faster and not having the hassle of going to the bank every two weeks.  Please sign me up for paycheck direct deposit.  My bank is named ________________ and the little 9-digit number printed on the bottom of my checks is _________. In two weeks the deposits will have started, and I will be able to check my paysubs online and with my bank.

I know it isn't perfect, I am not a professional communicator, but to me it humanizes the process a little, and connects the employee just a little bit more to the process and to the outcomes. The same impersonal field-by-field forms that they have seen a million times can't do any of that.  It also re-inforces the key messages as to the benefits of the process right as the employee is signing up.

Could you alter the 401(k) registration materials in such a way to let the employees (if they care to) share more about their retirement goals and hopes? 

How about the process where an employee adds a new child to their medical coverage, perhaps providing a place to share their excitement and even a picture of their new addition?

What do you think?  Would framing these type of employee calls to action in this way actually be successful?

The people that actually use the technology

Last week amid much hype, Apple unveiled their long-awaited tablet computer, dubbed the iPad.

Pause for a moment while the 'feminine hygiene' product jokes mill about for a second in your head.  Are you ready now? Good.

Almost immediately after the details of the product were revealed, a seemingly collective shriek was emitted from various technology news sites, pundits, and longtime fans of Apple.  Most of this outcry was centered on the perceived shortcomings of the iPad.

No camera?  No ability to multi-task?  No USB ports?  And on and on.

One clever post compares the iPad to a rock, with the iPad only coming out ahead by the slimmest of margins.

These criticisms are nearly entirely focused on a cohort of individuals that want the iPad to be a more complicated device.  One that would require a more skilled operator, that would likely fail more frequently, and one that would be more difficult for inexperienced or disinterested users to fully leverage.

And yes, to some (maybe more that I want to admit) users these the absence of these more advanced and complex capabilities render the iPad superfluous and unnecessary. Let's call these people 'power users'.

But for many, the ease of use, anticipated fast web browsing experience, and the simplicity with which their desired tasks can be completed on the iPad will offer a compelling value proposition. Calling up a web site, checking e-mail promise to be faster, easy, and dirt simple. Let's call these people 'casual users'.

So we have on one hand the vocal but relatively few 'power users' clamoring for more and better everything, and what is likely a far wider (and quieter) population of 'casual users' who will likely find the iPad a pretty amazing little device.  The iPad will likely sell millions of units despite these criticisms,(remember many of these same power users thumbed their noses at the first iPod).

I think there are some lessons in all this that enterprise Human Resources technology creators and implementers can learn from the iPad and from consumer technology, popular consumer web sites, and public social networks in general.

For me, the lesson is this:

In the enterprise of say 10,000 people that are the planned users of workforce technology (e.g. a performance management system), maybe 100 or so people could be placed in the category of 'power users'. They need the most advanced functionality, can adapt to a less than intuitive design, and often are willing to spend long periods of time learning how to use the technology.

The other 9,900 or so people are 'casual users'.  Ease of use, simplicity, clear workflows and speed in which tasks can be completed are of primary importance. Use of workforce technologies are almost never their 'job', they are meant to be compliments to help them perform their jobs better.  They technologies can't be seen as a burden, time suck, and require lengthy and frequent pauses to ask for assistance in their use.  And the power users probably can't help all of them anyway, there are simply too many of them to effectively serve.

When an organization deploys workforce technologies to ALL 10,000 employees, the needs, concerns, capabilities, and attitudes of the casual users are of utmost importance.  But it is almost exclusively the power users, and their management that participate in the vendor evaluations, make the purchase and design decisions, and (often) are influenced by which solution has the most of everything.

But for the casual users of most workforce technologies having the most capability does not matter, only the right capability does.  For the vast majority of these users, their real jobs are creating, fixing, selling, answering, not interacting with the latest features in the performance management tool.

The iPad, as has been pointed out everywhere, does not have the most capability, but for a large population of casual users it may have the right ones, and while critics, pundits, and technology experts are all taking turns bashing the iPad, it may very well be that Apple knows what it is doing and is hitting the perfect balance of features, usability, and design that these casual users want.

Workforce technologies should always keep that balance in mind.

Predicting the Future (may involve rogue asteroids)

Predicting the future out to the next 40 years or so across the broad spectrum of politics, technology, arts, and the workplace is no easy feat.  And furthermore creating a map of sorts that attempts to understand future trends and how they may intersect, is really tricky.  And last, designing such a visual, and have it look like a massive city subway guide is just about impossible.

But the folks at the Now and Next blog did just that, by creating their '2010 Trends : A Map for the Future'. Here is just a tiny snippet of the map, showing a few of the predictions for the 'Work and Business' line.

The full map can be opened and downloaded here.

Some of the other lines on the map are Society & Culture, The Economy, and Transport.  Sadly there was no prediction offered for the development of flying cars.

While the map is really meant to be fun, (one of the 'risks' mentioned is a 'Rogue Asteroid'), there are a few items on the Work & Business line that I thought were interesting and perhaps more likely to pan out than the 'Self-repairing roads' prediction on the Transport line.

1. 25% of company HQ's now virtual - This prediction seems like it both makes sense, could really happen, and will also be very difficult to measure.  Still, the movement towards more flexible and in many case virtual work is undeniable.  It only makes sense that more companies will go entirely virtual, 'meeting' only in a mix up coffee shops, co-working locations, virtual worlds, with teleprescence, and in fast-food restaurants.

2. Generational conflict in the workplace - Well aren't we already seeing at least a little of that?  With millions unemployed, and a higher percentage looking for work among the younger generations, and more and more experienced workers both living and working longer, the seeds for more conflict are certainly in place. I still think the effective management, and balancing of the four generations in the workplace is going to be a significant challenge and opportunity in the near future.

3. Widespread use of brain scans in job interviews - While this specific prediction is certainly pretty far out there, (although this article is fairly bullish on the idea), I think a better way to think about this is around how the assessment and interview process can be improved.  Can other, less invasive assessment processes be developed to serve as better, and more consistent predictors of job fit and likelihood of success in a given company in a given role?  Particularly in a more fast-moving and changing environment, making the 'right' hire the first time is even more critical. Can brain scans accomplish this? We will see.

If you have a few minutes, have a look at the entire map and let us know what you think. 

In the next 40 years are we more likely to see brain scan interviewing or the rogue asteroid?