Can I get a status on that?

How many phone calls, e-mails, and meetings are devoted and dedicated to answering the question:

What's the status of (insert task, project, activity, report, proposal here) Jimbo?Flickr - Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Finding out where an important piece of work stands should not require a formal inquiry or something akin to a press conference.

But the reality is so many of these 'status updates' are deemed necessary because of the typical tools and technologies that still dominate most workplaces today.

Project plans with 'percent complete' notations are done in Microsoft Project, and kept on the project manager's PC, or maybe stored on a shared network drive.  But even on a shared drive, they don't do most team members much good, since the license for MS Project is ridiculous, and most team members don't have the software installed anyway.

Most other important documents are still developed in MS Word, and while pretty much everyone has MS Word, the important documents themselves are being passed around as e-mail attachments and it is almost impossible for 'participants' in the document creation to know they have the latest version. And for interested parties or executive sponsors, not actively involved in the actual creation of the document, well their only hope is to track down the latest version from somewhere, and you had better hope they can get the correct one.

And in many, many organizations, technical support or development requests (bugs, customizations, enhancements) are still tracked in a bizarre stew of Excel worksheets, Access databases, or in some kind of locally installed 'help desk' package that the real users can't access anyway.

Think about all the time you spend either asking or answering the question, 'Can I get a status on that?'

Make a tally of every time and in what situations that question gets asked for a month or so. The topics, processes, and context that generate the most calls for 'status updates' are ripe for the application of technology solutions to reduce these questions, increase visibility (and likely accountability), and improve productivity.

They may be new project tracking tools, wikis for document collaboration, or a web-based technical issue and help desk system, whatever the particular source of pain is in your organization.  But you know that they are needed.

Because every minute someone spends updating 'status' is a minute where the 'status' remains the same.  And in 2009, staying the same for too long could mean putting up a 'Everything Must Go' sign in the window.

Ask the Experts

News flash - I do not know everything. Flickr - Great BeyondIn fact, even in my area of expertise, HR Technology, I do not have all the answers.

So when you accept the fact that you don't know everything, but still want or need to provide answers, insight, customer service, whatever, what do you do?

You find people who do have the answers, or at least can help lead you in the direction of the answers.

So for me, for the final session of my HR Technology class, for the part of the class where the students typically look to the instructor for some final thoughts, insights, and advice for the future, I did just that. I asked the experts.  I put out a request to the Twitter community for HR and HR Technology experts willing to connect to a web conference and participate in a expert panel Q&A session with my students.

And in a show of community and support that is a hallmark of the Twitterverse multiple experts volunteered their time, and shared their knowledge, expertise, and insights with my class. I have thanked them all on twitter, but I would like to thank and acknowledge them once again here. So, here they are, the Steve's HR Technology Class Expert Panel for 2009: (in no particular order):

Diedre Honner - aka The HR Maven follow her on Twitter - thehrmaven

Lisa Rosendahl - the voice behind HR Thoughts - follow her on Twitter - lisarosendahl

Karen Mattonen - from HireCentrix - follow her on Twitter - HireCentrix

Becky Allen from Serco North America - follow her on Twitter - beckyallen

Michael Krupa from Infobox - follow him on Twitter - pdxmikek

Susan Burns from Talent Synchronicity - follow her on Twitter - TalentSynch

Mark Stelzner from Inflexion Advisors - follow him on Twitter - stelzner

Without exception, each expert brought great perspective and wisdom to the class, and I truly thank them once again, and appreciate their contribution.

Already, folks are asking me when the next chance will be to connect with my students and do it all over again, so I am sure these type of expert panels will continue.

I don't have all the answers, but more and more, I know how to find the people who do.

Wiki Lessons

The third session of my HR Technology course is winding down, and the final class 'Wiki as intranet'project is coming together really well.  The students have really embraced the technology and have created some really outstanding content, and have extended the 'core' functionality by embedding video, chat rooms, polls, and presentations.

In my experience using wikis as a class tool as well as deploying wikis in the organization for faculty use there are a few key considerations and lessons learned that are important to understand if you plan on introducing wikis to your class or organization.

1. If Wikis are new to your program or organization, chances are 90% of the students and staff will have never 'used' a Wiki, beyond reading entries on Wikipedia.

2. Even though Wikis are touted as simple, no-training-required tools, doing more than adding simple text will initially require demonstration and review for most non-technical users.

3. Wikis that make as simple as possible the steps for embedding video, slide shows, Flickr images, chat, and polls (love Zoho Polls for this), will be most effective in the classroom

4. For the best chances of adoption of the Wiki as the primary class or organization communication platform, put everything on the Wiki. for your class this means Syllabus, course overview, assignments, presentations, and any 'sign-ups' should all be Wiki pages. Encourage the class to post questions and comments everywhere. For an organization wiki, meeting agendas, minutes, project plans, status reports and announcements should all be placed on the wiki.

5. For a class, old habits are still hard to break, you may need to 'cross-post' for a time in both the Wiki and the old course management system. Certain items like the gradebook still have to reside in the CMS. Try not to make the students have to bounce back and forth between the two platforms too often. In your organization, you may still need to resort to e-mail blasts to be sure important announcements are getting seen, while you are building wiki awareness and use.  If you do resort to e-mail, be sure to 'cross-post' to the wiki and provide a link the the associated wiki page in the e-mail message.

6. Keep the wiki alive even after the class or project ends. There's lots of good information there. Figure out a way to keep it accessible for students in the future. In an organization this is less of an issue, but be mindful of 'stagnation', many wikis start out with a flurry of activity, then sort of slowly die out as the novelty wears off.

I am absolutely convinced that Wikis are an incredibly effective tool for almost all class activities, with the added bonus of giving the students exposure and experience to a technology they will see in the workplace. In fact, a current student has already implemented her own company-wide wiki for here small business, largely based on the experience and lessons learned from using the class wiki.

These tips and observations are really vendor neutral, I have implemented wikis from Socialtext, Confluence, and PbWiki, and while they all have their individual strengths and weaknesses, they all support the essentials for class or organizational use.

What are your best tips, tricks and observations from using wiki?

HR Technology for the Small Business - Communication

Storefront Corner Bakery
Originally uploaded by Atelier Teee

Every class I have two or three students who are HR Directors or HR Managers at what are typically considered 'small' businesses, that is organizations that employ less than 500 people. As the course progresses, and we cover topics ranging from 'core' HRIS systems, to Talent Management solutions, to collaboration and networking platforms, these HR pros from small business frequently indicate that their organizations are sorely lacking in the area of HR Technology solutions. This is a particularly acute problem for organizations with around 100-200 employees.

This position in the market is a really difficult one, the organization has outgrown many of their original, paper-based processes for employee tracking, performance management, and benefits administration, but they are typically either below the radar of the most popular HR Technology solution vendors, or these solutions are simply priced too high for the small business to manage.

In the area of communication tools, while all the small businesses have email, some don't even have simple intranets to manage employee communications and information.  Fortunately for the small organization, there are numerous, accessible, inexpensive tools that can facilitate employee communication and collaboration.  Here are just a few ideas for the small organization.

Microblogging

The most popular public platform for microblogging is of course Twitter, but for the small organization, the 'enterprise' version of Twitter called Yammer can be a great solution.  Note: If you are not familiar with the concept of microblogging, watch this explanatory video from Common Craft. Simply register your company's domain (your '.com', if you will), send out some e-mail invitations to your employees to join your Yammer network, and immediately folks can begin communicating with each other via short status updates. Yammer also extends the capabilities of Twitter by supporting group creation (the sales folks can have a separate Yammer group from the accounting types), and the inclusion of message attachments. The company's Yammer network is restricted to only those people having a valid email account in the company domain.  The basic Yammer service is free, there are some premium features that can be purchased, but for the small company at least initially these premium features are not necessary.

Blogging

Another free and easy way to facilitate communication is by starting a simple company blog.  Post announcements, events, and company information on the blog, and invite employees to read and comment.  There are numerous free blogging platforms that the small business can utilize to create the blog, and most like Google's Blogger platform and Wordpress, allow you to make the blog 'private', meaning only invited users can view and comment on the blog.  Starting an internal blog, particularly one where company executives contribute is a great way for the small business to open up a new communication channel.

Surveys and Polls

Another great way to have a dialogue of sorts within the organization is through the use of survey and polls.  Once again there are a multitude of options (most of them free), for creating employee surveys and polls.  For simple, yet powerful survey capability check out SurveyMonkey.  With a SurveyMonkey free account, you can create up to 10 question surveys with up to 100 responses per survey.  Once the survey is created, simply e-mail the generated link to all your intended responders, and watch the result come in. You can review the survey results online, but do need to upgrade to a paid subscription at $19.95 per month to be able to download the survey results, create longer surveys, and have unlimited respondents.  Still for most small organizations, the constraints of the free account are not that limiting.

For polling, I really like Zoho Polls. This free service (one of scores from online applications provider Zoho), is a simple tool that allows you to create simple polls, invite unlimited responses, and easily embed the poll on your intranet or blog. Your poll can be 'Rating' poll (like rating a movie with stars), or a 'Voting' poll, where participants can choose one option from a list.  The small business could use these polls to solicit feedback on a new benefits program, choosing the best option for a new ad campaign, or even where to hold the next company party.  A sample Zoho poll is here, where I invite anyone who reads this post to offer an opinion.

In a future post, I will expand on some of these concepts to get into real collaboration tools, like wikis, internal social networks, and community platforms.  While some of these may be beyond the scope of the average small business today, an enterprising small business needs to be positioned for the future.

Trying out Rypple

Heard of Rypple?

Until a few days I hadn't either until I read this post, from the HR Capitalist blog.  After reading the post, and checking out some other press and buzz on Rypple, I applied for the Beta program and thanks to David Priemer at Rypple, I was quickly invited to participate.

Why was I so intrigued?  Well, Rypple has a great concept, it enables anyone to solicit fast, meaningful, and anonymous performance feedback on literally any topic.

The process is straightforward and intuitive. Ask a question, enter three attributes or criteria to be assessed, and invite folks to provide feedback.  Responders are not required to give their name or e-mail address, so the responses are assured to be anonymous.

For my test, I decided to use Rypple for a quick, mid-course evaluation for the students to rate my performance as an Instructor.  Rypple lets you pose a topic or question for feedback and then indicate three criteria, or attributes that are to be evaluated.  You can re-use these same attributes or tags on further feedback requests, enabling you to get a view over time of your performance against a key measure like 'Creativity' or 'Leadership'.

So for my test, I asked all the class members to respond to the following question:

How do you feel the Leveraging Technology class is doing in these three areas?

The three categories or attributes I asked to be evaluated on were challenging, interesting, and relevant. Respondents can also enter free form text responses to 'What you like' and 'What can be improved'.

I sent out the request for feedback on a Sunday morning, and within 10 minutes I already had received feedback.  Within an hour or so, I hade received feedback from six students, and three or four more gave their feedback in the next day or so. Most of the feedback was really solid, and I immediately noticed a theme in the responses, something I need to improve in the second half of class.

So about ten students gave precise, informative, anonymous feedback in a day or two, and the entire process took me about 15 minutes to set up, and each student no more than three or four minutes to respond.

My other alternatives to soliciting this kind of feedback would be to use a tool like Survey Monkey (good, but certainly takes more time to create and administer), or the survey tool in my Course Management System (not that good, and I would waste time figuring it out since I've never used it).

The advantages of Rypple - ease of setup, anonymity, sheer speed of the feedback loop, cost (free).

The shortcomings of Rypple - not easy to get summary information, no ability to export feedback into another tool or system for further analysis. 

But honestly, Rypple seems designed for one thing, simple and fast performance feedback, and it does that one thing very well.

I encourage you to check it out - Rypple.