I've got some suggestions for your screenplay

Not really, and unless you are up to something on the side, you probably don't even have a screenplay (or a short story or a book for that matter). But what you might have, still, is that problem of folks in the HR and even IT game have been lamenting just about forever - no 'real' business people take you all that seriously.

For whatever reason the people in the organization that get to decide the 'what' of what people do are more important and 'strategic' than the people that (largely) are responsible for finding and hiring those people in the first place (HR), and identifying, procuring, deploying, and maintaining all the technologies that the people rely on every day (IT). That is probably true in most organizations and it's also true that it's unlikely to change unless HR and IT start to think a little differently about the problem.

I was thinking about this over the weekend when I read this piece in the New York Times, Solving the Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data, about a new method or process where Hollywood film scripts are evaluated, and suggestions for improvement given, based on data-driven analysis. How does the process work? From the NYT piece:

Netflix tells customers what to rent based on algorithms that analyze previous selections, Pandora does the same with music, and studios have started using Facebook “likes” and online trailer views to mold advertising and even films.

Now, the slicing and dicing is seeping into one of the last corners of Hollywood where creativity and old-fashioned instinct still hold sway: the screenplay

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

Pretty interesting and still in this age of data trumping everything kind of unusual. Although even as I recently wrote about here, data and algorithms and machine learning approaches encroaching on formerly 'creative' endeavors are starting to pop up more and more.

Applying intelligence, Big Data, and more powerful technologies for improving movie screenplays does more than just fix up the dramatic scene in Act III, it allows a guy like Vinny Bruzzese, who as far as we can tell had no 'real' movie experience, to become an influential participant in the movie-making process.

His data, team of analysts, and statistically-backed conclusions and suggestions, now put him more and more 'at the table' (sorry), where formerly only writers and movie producers used to meet. It doesn't really matter that he didn't go to film school or he didn't spend the 80s directing episodes of Full House, his data-driven solutions make him a Hollywood player.

Influence in business seems to be becoming more about who can gather, assess, and make data actionable, than who has the 'right' degree or experience. And the background of the people who can do that might be a lot different than who normally used to have that kind of influence. 

HR map of the day - time to widen your circle

The map below, initially posted by Reddit user valeriepieris, made the internet rounds last week, so perhaps you've seen it. Or perhaps not, as we seem often in the HR online space (me included), debating about cultural fit and performance reviews and the difference between SaaS and hosted applications, and other such nonsense, when chances are at least more likely information like in the map below will have a more profound and significant impact on our businesses in the next decade.

So here is the map, and then we can discuss what, if anything this should mean to those of us in the Talent game.

So for the US-based Talent pro, this might be kind of surprising, I know it was surprising to me. We know that the world is supposed to be shrinking, but in a way this map doesn't really bear that out. Rather it shows pretty simply that the center of population is on the other side of the world, and packed into a relatively small area. 

So what might this mean, or what might you need to be thinking about with this map in mind?

If you are an older, established company that is having a hard time finding opportunities for growth in your domestic market, then if you are not looking to play inside the circle in some way - then you are effectively cutting out half of the world's population and potential customers.

If you are a newer Talent pro, then chances are sometime in your career you will either need to understand the talent pools inside the circle, or perhaps even have to spend some time working inside the circle yourself. Maybe not today or tomorrow, especially if your shop is in some kind of truly local business. But do you really think you will be working there forever? No time like the present to start preparing for both of those possibilities. 

Last, if you are a parent, or perhaps plan to be a parent one day, this map is just another representation of the fact that the world our children will inherit and have to make their way in will be substantially different than it was even one generation ago. That has probably been true of all generations, but that doesn't give you a pass to ignore what is happening in the world today and to think about how best all of us should be preparing those rock and roll loving young whippersnappers.

So take a look at the map, think about (at least for a few minutes), what it might mean for you. Then, if you must, resume tweeting about how companies need to be more social and how employee engagement is good. 

Somehow, I think all that stuff will mean very little when compared to some of the really big changes happening in the world.

Note: If you need or care about the rough population estimates that back up this conclusion here they are:

World pop: 7+B, so the circle must have more than 3.5B people in.

China pop: 1.33B

India pop: 1.25B

Indonesia pop: 0.25B

Japan pop: 0.13B

Thailand pop: 0.07B

Bangladesh pop: 0.14B

Pakistan pop: 0.19B

Malaysia pop: 0.03B

Philippines pop: 0.095B

South Korea pop: 0.04B

Total from above: 3.524B

#HRHappyHour 160 PODCAST - 'Data, Technology, and Insight'

Earlier this week myself along with HR Happy Hour Show co-host Trish McFarlane pre-recorded a special HR Happy Hour Show with Dann Adams, the President of Equifax Workforce Solutions, a division of the large data and services company Equifax, that you might know from their work with credit scores.

You can listen or download the show from the show page here, on iTunes, (just search the iTunes store for 'HR Happy Hour'), and from the replay widget below. But if you MUST have that 'live' HR Happy Hour Show experience, the show will automatically replay at 8:00PM ET tonight on the replay show page here.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

It was a great and really interesting conversation with Dann about how data, and in particular employment data, (the kind that Equifax Workforce Solutions specializes in), can be harnessed by organizations to make better decisions, to actually help employees and their well-being, and gain insights into organizational talent strategies. 

We talked about a lot of subjects you might not think 'fit' into an HR conversation - about the genesis, purpose, and limited (at times) value of credit scores, about how the growing mountain of student loan debt is influencing hiring and retention strategies, how getting financing for a car is going to start changing soon, and how data privacy continues to be top of mind for individuals and organizations.

If you're interested in Big Data in HR and in learning some ways in which a better understanding of that data - combined with a new and emerging set of analytics and visualization tools to make that data accessible and relatable, then you should definitely check out the show/podcast.

HR Happy Thursday!

The true goals of HR Big Data projects

Buried near the end of this fairly standard but still pretty interesting piece on how software giant SAP is deploying Human Capital workforce analytics solutions in their internal organization from their recently acquired SuccessFactors product suite is perhaps one of the most clear, coherent, and instructive observations about the goals (or what should be the goals), of any HR organization embarking on an analytics or (buzz work blog police look the other way) 'Big Data' project.

Here's the quote from SAP's Helen Poitevin:

We see this (the implementation of modern workforce analytics solutions) as a transformation for us first, moving from being specialists in extracting data from our systems, to being specialists in answering workforce related business questions.

I know that this seems like a kind of overly simple and somewhat of an obvious point of emphasis, but I think it is one that serves to remind those of us that like to talk, read, or prognosticate about how Big Data will have a truly transformative impact on HR professionals, workforce planning, and human capital management need to remain mindful that collecting more data, and even making the extraction and presentation of that data simpler and even more beautiful, is only the first step in the journey to realizing better business outcomes.

The goal of these analytics and Big Data projects, as the SAP article makes plain, is not just the ability to organize, describe, extract, and present workforce data (which in truth are necessary and important steps), but to leverage that data, to have the data lead to the asking of the right questions, to illuminate a path towards answering these questions, and to help the organization understand and relate the story that their human capital data wants to tell.

Again, the SAP piece makes it clear what their goals are, and what has to be the end-state for HR analytics and data projects:

(the analytics projects) represents a transformation for our business, by virtue of leveraging data-based insights and analysis about our workforce to make better, more sustainable decisions

Again, you probably already know this. Probably.

But it is a telling reminder just in case you've let your goals slip a little, or if you want to (or feel like you have to) claim victory with the initial successes in your analytics programs. 'Look we have reports!'

You're not really there, (and hardly anyone is yet), until the workforce data becomes an essential part of how your business makes decisions, and is not just a set of cool dashboards or a slick set of charts on an iPad app.

Have a great week all!

Off Topic: Infographics of the 1870s

If you are a data/design/visualization mark like I am, then I apologize in advance for the half hour or so you are about to waste on the amazingly cool A Handsome Atlas site.

The clever folks at Handsome Atlas have taken several old government and census documents from the late nineteenth-century, (primarily The Statistical Analysis of the United States, published from about 1870 - 1920), and breathed new life into them, by creating a user-friendly tool for viewing the old works close-up, and in high resolution.New York, 1870

Don't really get why this is cool?

Then spend a few minutes looking at this beautiful chart/infographic titled 'Gainful Occupations and also as Attending School' , a look at employment and education across the states taken from the 1870 census data, (a small snippet of this graphic appears on the right of this post).

The Handsome Atlas site is full of amazingly interesting and detailed data tables, charts, graphics, and visual analyses of demographic, statistical, and economic data that was compiled in the census and published in The Statistical Analysis of the United States. With a big assist to the technology and presentation developed at Handsome Atlas, this data serves to remind us that the current fad and fascination with infographics and data visualization have their roots in the past.

Infographics and other visualizations help us, mostly, to make more sense of the world - breathing life and creating dimension, contrast, comparison, and most importantly, interest in data sets. 

We want to better understand the world around us certainly, and that longing and need for understanding is definitely not only a modern phenomenon.

If you take a few minutes to play around on the Handsome Atlas site, please let me know what you think.

Have a great weekend!