Revealing Complexity

Probably the most significant barrier to user adoption of new workplace technology is that users don't see the personal benefit of adopting these technologies. This is the classic 'What's in it for me?' conundrum. While that subject is important and worthy of exploration, I won't be hitting that specific problem today. Instead, let's talk about what is likely the second-most important barrier to employee adoption of workplace technology, namely, that most enterprise technologies have provided (relatively) poor user experience and/or are just too complex for them to use intuitively.

While enterprise technology companies have talked about, and some have actually delivered, better, more compelling, more consumer-like technology user experiences, even the most modern, best-designed applications eventually run into a common problem in that enterprise tools often require LOTS of data be input into them.

It could be a new sales prospect being recorded in a CRM, a new supplier that needs to be set up in Procurement, or even a relatively simple matter of entering a new hire in the HRIS, all of these use cases while impacting disparate systems and organizational departments, have much more in common than we usually think. Each of these transactions requires (usually), a whole bunch of data fields to be populated with a whole bunch of data. And even in 2015, for many organizations the bulk of these myriad data elements have to be manually typed into the respective system form fields the old fashioned way - manually.

And so since the makers of CRM and Supply Chain and HR technologies understand this reality, and like to be able to sell to customers the things they need to run their business operations, even the most modern, slick, mobile responsive, and really amazing looking enterprise solutions often and still have these kind of busy, kind of ugly, kind of tired looking data input forms in order to support these kinds of transactions. And while we might be tempted to look at these kinds of forms, (and the processes that make these 37 field data input forms necessary), as relics from an older, less awesome age, they still have a place in most organizations and in most modern technology solutions.

Not every interaction with an enterprise technology can (or should) be reduced to a graphic or chart on a tablet, or a glanceable notification on your new Apple Watch. Sometimes, the hard and necessary work of getting relevant data (and lots of it) about customers, vendors, and employees into the enterprise tools that organizations rely upon is, still, kind of boring, kind of repetitive, and even kind of monotonous.

But that is entirely ok, and should not be considered some kind of an indictment of the technology solution provider that has not figured out a way to make inputting 32 fields about a customer into some kind of a gorgeous 'swipe left' and 'swipe right' kind of user experience.  

User Experience and what is good User Experience is highly variable and highly personal. And what usually constitutes great User Experience for the sales exec who wants to look at the Q3 funnel on her tablet is much, much different than what makes up great UX for a payroll entry clerk. We can't confuse them with each other.

The best designed enterprise systems, of course, support both UX's and both kinds of users. The key is, I think, to have the system only reveal its fundamental complexity, and the form with 37 input fields, only to those people who really need them, and care about them, and help them see the 'What's in it for me?' as well as treating them and their role with respect.

Adapt or die, or at best become irrelevant (NBA edition)

Of course you are following th human drama that is the NBA playoffs as closely as I am. That is a given. The playoffs are where the best teams rise to the top, the stars (and future stars) get their opportunity to shine, and is the case with many sports, more casual fans tune in to watch, as the games are now more important.

If you are one of those casual NBA fans you might not be aware of one of the aspects of how NBA basketball has changed in recent years - namely the increasing volume and importance of 3-point shooting in the modern NBA game. In the past, most teams were designed (and attacked) from the 'inside-out', i.e. with dominant big men like Kareem, Hakeem, and Shaq dominating the play as their teams tried to feed them the ball close to the basket in order to take easy shots. 

But in the modern NBA most of the better teams have taken a different approach to offensive basketball, one that still values close to the basket attempts as in the past, but increasingly relies upon and values taking and making the 3 point shot. Take a look at the chart below that shows how each NBA team stacked up this year with 3 point shot efficiency, then some (not all sports-related) comments from me after the data:

One thing more hard-core NBA fans will notice is that the most proficient 3-point shooting teams, (Golden State and Atlanta), were also the teams with the best records in the league this season. And all of the top 10 or so 3-point shooting teams qualified for the playoffs, with several of them being considered real contenders for the title. Conversely, most of the teams on the far right of the chart, (the worst 3-point shooting teams), were in the conversation all year for 'worst teams in the league'. 

So enough basketball, let's talk why this might matter more broadly and in non-NBA contexts. There are at least three lessons from how the modern NBA has (almost) completely changed its collective attitude towards the 3-point shot that are relevant for normal folks with responsibility to make their organizations better.

1. There remains, despite easily and broadly available evidence of how increased proficiency at the 3-point shot leads to better team success, a still fairly significant set of team executives, coaches, and even pundits, who bemoan the growing importance of the long-range shot and long for the days of the 70s and 80s where more 'traditional' basketball was played. Teams that continue to leave these kinds of thinkers in positions of leadership and influence, (Lakers, Knicks), are simply going to continue to struggle to compete with more progressive and adaptive teams.

Lesson - leaders who don't or can't adapt will take down the entire organization with them.

2. The adoption of the 3-point shot as a primary strategic choice by the more successful teams is largely and compellingly backed by data. On the obvious level, it does not take a math wizard to know that a made 3-point shot is 50% more valuable than a traditional 2-point basket. And it is easy to calculate that making only 33% of 3-point shots produces the same number of total points as making 50% of traditional 2-point shots (with 50% being the normal barometer for 'good shooting'). But despite the data being that simple to digest and understand, as we saw in point one above, lots of folks remained unconvinced for way too long. 

Lesson - 'Proving' your thesis with data to folks that are likely to be skeptical needs to be distilled into terms and concepts they will understand. In the NBA example talk about Winning, not 'True shooting percentage'. In your example, talk about sales, profits, market share, concepts your leaders will naturally embrace.

3. Basketball has been played for 100+ years. The NBA has been around since the 40s and the 3-point shot was introduced to the NBA game in the 70s. But it has taken about 40 years for the leading thinkers in the game to more fully embrace the shot as the strategic weapon it has become in the modern game. The simple math I alluded to above has not changed in all that time. Why did it take so long to take hold? Hard to say.

Lesson - Even the most mature industries and companies can still innovate and be disruptive (and disruptive). Even a simple idea like 'What is the best way to play basketball?' is subject to improvement re-imagining. It is never too late. Until it is too late that is.

Do not fail to heed the lessons of the 3-point shot....

I am on record as saying you can learn everything you need to know about work, the workplace, people, and business from careful study of the NBA. I remain correct in this belief.

Happy Thursday.

Whatever you do, don't stare at his eye

Yesterday I had the increasingly rare experience of meeting a professional acquaintance for the very first time in person who despite having corresponded with this person over email and having one or two calls, I had no idea what they actually looked like. While we were connected on LinkedIn, and I think following each other on Twitter, this person had no profile pic up on either site. I had also never come across any pictures of them from other events or conferences. I 'knew' this person a little, but would not have been able to pick them out of a crowd (unless the crowd were all wearing name tags, which thankfully for me, they were).

Why bring this up? Because it seems to me in the modern world, this kind of thing almost never happens anymore. Every professional, or so it seems, is on LinkedIn. And every single piece of LinkedIn 'advice' tells people to post a profile picture, and probably most do. Add in Twitter, and if you are really a little bit stalker/creepy, Facebook, and with a little bit of sleuthing you can find a picture online of just about anybody. So meeting a professional contact that you have had a fair bit of interaction with and having no clue what they looked like just doesn't seem to happen much anymore, at least not with me.

The episode reminded me of the first 'real' job I ever had, way back in the day. It was an entirely normal, professional office job, but since these were the days pre-LinkedIn and social media of any kind, (yes, the Dark Ages), I did not know what anyone looked like at my new workplace. Which was not a big deal back then, as we expected to know almost nothing about people we were meeting for the first time. As I look back, it is actually kind of refreshing to think we didn't start every business relationship with a bunch of pre-determined conclusions we've made from spending 15 minutes checking out the other person's social networking profiles. We took people more at face value, and judged based on how they behaved.  

But anyway, back to the new job. When I started the person who would be my direct manager was on vacation, and would not be back for a couple of days. In his absence the alternate 'onboarding' person ('Your desk is here, the bathroom is over there'), said 'Bob (my manager), is a really great guy. You will like him. Just one thing you need to remember when you meet him. Whatever you do, don't stare at his eye.' Ok, I thought, I will try not to stare at Bob's eye. Can't be that hard, right? 

Fast forward a couple of days when Bob returned from vacation and we met for the first time. And Bob was, in fact, a really nice guy. Exceedingly nice. Honestly even to this day one of the very best managers I've ever had. But there was one shall we say, unusual element in Bob's appearance. His left eye was prosthetic, a glass eye. And the fact that I had been warned in advance not to stare at the eye made it all the harder to not stare at the eye, if you know what I mean. It would have been better, I think, if no one had mentioned it at all to me prior to the meeting. I would have noticed it sure, but hopefully, would have not sort of fixated on it as much as the notion of 'Don't stare at his eye' had been bouncing around my head for days.

Need to wrap up this nonsense here. Don't be so creepy stalking people online before you meet them. It's ok to be surprised sometimes. It's even ok to not know everything there is to know about a person before you even talk to them once. 

And don't stare at their eyes.

One day in blogging, a partial list of pitches

Blogging has been pretty good to me over the years. So has doing the HR Happy Hour Show/Podcast. Both of these things have opened up plenty of doors, created some interesting opportunities, and enabled me to meet some great people along the way. One other thing about doing this is (and back when I started I had no idea was even a thing), is that once you have been blogging or podcasting for a while, you get on the radar of lots of news folks, PR firms, and other organizations that would like you to know about and potentially help publicize their news, product launches, their client's new book, or some event they are promoting.Jasper Johns, White Flag (which is what I am waving towards my Inbox)

Most of these outreach messages are perfectly professional, offer up some kind of interesting content or news that in theory might be interesting to me (or readers and listeners), and I honestly don't mind getting them one bit. I don't/can't respond to all of these PR pitches, (there can be lots of them in any given day), but I still appreciate them. Even after all this time doing this it is still sometimes surprising that (some) folks are interested in what I think, have to say, and want to connect with the audience. 

Why blog about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on with blogging, even a small, niche blog like this one?

I don't know, it just seemed interesting to me today. Which continues to be the primary reason I blog about anything (note for any PR folks who might read this). But just in the last hour or so as I was checking some email, planning out the day, I received four or five of the aforementioned 'pitch' emails, in quick succession. That seemed kind of unusual, and so I checked back at the last 24 hours or so of my received emails and I thought that, wow, I have gotten a ton of PR pitches already this week. So since I brought up the topic, and I am too far down the path of this post to start over with some other, better idea, I wanted to share a partial list of the PR pitches (mostly Email subject lines only) that have arrived in my Inbox in the last 24 hours or so. 

Submitted without comment, judgement, or endorsement...

1. Disturbing: Workplace Suicide the New Trend

2. Volcano Calbuca Erupts! Are you Prepared?

3. Innovating Service Summit Webinar Will Feature Internationally Customer Service Experts

4. Lee Hecht Harrison Poll Finds Most Workers Losing Sleep Due to Work-Related Stress

5. Gain Insight to Independent Workers to Build the Best Teams

6. Nepal Earthquake Rocks the World!

7. WiFi Will Run Future Wearables

8. 8th Annual Mobile Excellence Awards Coming Soon!

9. Special Invitation: HR Secrets You Need to Hear

10. The Lavender Graduating Class of 2015 Lacks Legal Protection Moving Into the Workplace

There's a bunch more, but you get the idea. If there is an idea.

Blogging is kind of a weird thing sometimes.

Have a great day!

VIDEO: The project is called 'Replacing humans with robots'

Directing you to a super-interesting short (about 5 minutes or so) video produced by the New York Times as the first installment of a series they call 'Robotica'. In the video, we see more about the growth, challenges, and worker impact of the surge in adoption of industrial robots in Chinese manufacturing. Take a few minutes to watch the piece, (embedded below, Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through), and then some comments from me after the clip.

Really interesting stuff I think, and for me, very instructive as in 5 minutes it hits many of the big picture issues associated with the increasing automation of work and the impacts this will have on human workers.

1. At least in this Chinese province, the goals of this program are extremely clear - 'Replacing human workers with robots.' While the motivations for this stated goal might be specific to this region, I think it would be foolish to think that this phenomenon and executive attitude isn't much more common, and not just in China. CEOs everywhere are going to be intrigued and in pursuit of what increased automation promises - lower costs, increased consistency and quality, and a predictable labor supply.

2. The video does a nice job of showing the likely mixed or divergent impact of increased automation on the front-line workers that are usually most effected. While one (hand-picked by the factory leaders) employee waxes happily about how the robots are making his job easier and happier, another talks frankly about his (and other's) inability to easily transition from manual, repetitive work that is replaced by robot workers, to higher value added or creative and 'human' work. Whether in China or in Indianapolis, no low skilled worker can suddenly become a high-skilled or creative worker overnight. 

3. The video alludes to the potential, one day, for robots to actually manufacture the robots themselves, even if that is not yet happening today. This notion, that automated technologies will largely build more of themselves is one of the key differences from modern, robotic-type automation than in previous technological breakthroughs. Henry Ford's Model A didn't drive itself, (or build itself). Telephones didn't make calls for you. Personal computers needed LOTS of people entering data into them in order to get anything useful back out from them. But robots building more robots to replace more people? That sounds a little scary.

I will sign off here, take a look at the video if you can spare a few minutes today and let me know what you think in the comments below. Or have your robot assistant watch it for you.

Have a great week!