CHART OF THE DAY: The Technology Adoption Curve

Super piece on the BlackRock Blog from a few days ago titled The Topic We Should All Be Paying Attention To (in 3 charts), that is the source of today's Chart of the Day.

BlackRock is a major player in the financial/investment banking space, so the main point of their post was that instead of the seemingly endless hand-wringing amongst many financial markets observers in the US in the last 6 months or so regarding the potential .25% increase in the Fed Funds rate, folks should be thinking about the US economy much more holistically. 

BlackRock's piece did have 3 charts to back up this point, and all are excellent, but I picked the one below, on the historical technology adoption curve for a selection of consumer technologies in the US over the last 100 years or so. I love this chart, have used a similar one in the past in some presentations I have done, and will happily steal this one in the future.

Here is the chart, then as I am compelled, some FREE commentary from me after the data:

As we can see from the data, in the last 15 years or so the technology adoption curves for some more recent tech innovations have become much, much steeper, almost vertical. It took the telephone maybe 50 years from its introduction to become almost universally adopted; more modern inventions like cell phones and PCs have taken maybe half as much time to reach similar adoption levels.

Technologies are becoming widely, almost completely adopted much faster than in the fairly recent past. And while that is noteworthy in itself, the nature of and how many of these technologies are being utilized for 'work' purposes is perhaps even more important. 

Many of the older technologies like radio, television, and microwaves were mostly about personal, in-home usage, and primarily oriented around improving the quality of leisure time. But in the last 20 years or so technologies like cell phones, the internet, and tablets, while still all offering a 'leisure' set of capabilities, have also become essential work and productivity tools and platforms for most everyone.

So not only are modern technologies becoming adopted more rapidly, they also are more likely to begin as or at least evolve into tools for work, commerce, and productivity. We never really (unless you worked directly in the industry), gained much income or market share or anything from watching more TV or listening to the radio in your car. In fact, these technologies often took you away from 'work'. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

But now whether it is your iPhone, wifi everywhere, your 'work' Twitter account you use to share job openings at your company - today's technologies are as much about getting stuff done as they are about avoiding the things we ought to be doing.

No judgment from me on that. Just an observation. I love technology. It is letting me 'work' on this post at the same time as I am watching a bunch of oversized men play a kid's game in an arena 1000 miles from here.

Have a great Wednesday!

CHART OF THE DAY: We can FINALLY stop talking about millennials

In what has to be interpreted as a signal to the tens of thousands of workplace/leadership/management professional speakers and pundits out there that it is time (finally), to update those PowerPoint decks from 2009, it looks like we need to stop or at least slow down our collective fixation with Millennials.

Take a look at today's Chart of the Day, courtesy of the fine folks at Goldman Sachs and let's together pour one out for the Millennials and raise one up for what is coming next. Here's the chart and as you have persistently demanded, some comments from me after the data:

Awesome looking chart, right? And from the looks of it, it is time to stop worrying so much about the Millennials and start thinking about Gen Z! What might this mean to the rest of us - besides all the 'Generations in the Workplace' people that need to update their slides I mean?

I have three quick takes, then like the Good Gen X-er I am have to go make the donuts...

1. Technology - this is the first 'post-internet' generation. They have never known a world without almost constant connectivity, ubiquitous wifi, and life attached to their devices. Waiting for any kind of information is something they are not used to, nor will tolerate very well. Everything has to move faster, be more easily consumable, and actionable. If you thought the Millennials were annoying, just wait until your first set of Gen Z employees comes through the doors, (very soon), and laughs at your antiquated set of systems and processes.

2. Diversity - In line with the increasing diversity in the population overall, Gen Z will be the most diverse generation in US history. According to Goldman, the majority of Gen Z will be non-white by 2020 or so. And with this diversity in composition, it seems likely that Gen Z-ers will also be the most accepting of diverse workplaces and teams. In fact, many of them will not even consciously think about 'diverstiy' in the ways that Gen X and Boomers always have, (and have needed to). To Gen Z, the team won't really seem 'diverse', it will just seem like 'the team.' I am not smart enough to know exactly what that means for corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, but I bet it will mean something.

3. Backlash - In about three minutes from now, someone will take a shot at me or at this post for 'generalizing about the generations'. This person will probably be an older Gen X-er or possibly a Boomer. These people are cranky and should be ignored. Yes, I know not every Gen Z-er is the same and not every Boomer is some kind of Luddite. EVERYONE knows this. The point of talking about generational groups and trends is not to try to explain the motiviations and actions of EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE WORLD. The point is to try and make sense on a macro-level of how the shared experiences and enviroments of people who grow up in similar cultural, societal, and economic circumstances impact how they see the world and what that means for the world. And I think having that kind of understanding, or at least having the discussion, is important and valid.

Ok, that's it from me. What say you? Do you care about Gen Z at all? Or are you happy (like I am), not to have to figure out how to spell 'Millennial' all the time?

CHART OF THE DAY: In a world of infinite choice, we choose very little

How many apps do you have installed on your smart phone? 50, 60, maybe more?

How many TV channels does your cable or satellite TV subscription offer? A couple hundred, give or take?

How many websites are there on the internet? Way, way too many to count I bet. Probably something in the order of tens of millions at least.

So after thinking about those questions, let's ask another set of questions. How many apps, websites, and TV channels do you regularly use/visit/consume? What it the number of these apps, etc. that tend to dominate your time and attention?

Take a look at the chart below, taken from a recent presentation given by business strategist Michael Wolf at a recent Wall St. Journal conference, for some insights into these questions, and then as you have come to demand, some FREE commentary from me after the data.

Interesting data, let's unpack it a little here and see what it might mean for HR/Talent/anyone trying to get attention in a busy world. 

The average person uses 27 apps in a month, but about 80% of that time is spent in only 5 apps. I will offer up my top 5 - Gmail, Twitter, Zite (a news aggregator), Feedly (an RSS feed reader), and The Score (a sports news and scores app). But whatever your Top 5 apps may be, chances are good they dominate your time on your phone to a significant extent.

This same self-selected narrowing of almost endless choices also is seen with the general internet, and with TV content. We have tons of options, almost too many, yet we end up gravitating and focusing on those very few choices we seem to enjoy and identify with the most. And again, those lists are pretty small. 

What should this data make us think about in more general terms as we try to pry precious attention and eyeballs towards our bright shiny new things?

1. We choose very little, but the 'pie' is so big, even a tiny sliver is huge. With the continued growth of market penetration of smart phones, broadband connections, and wifi everywhere - more and more time is being spent online in all of its forms. Your app or website or internet show or podcast doesn't have to break into anyone's Top 5 to still be a huge success. You just have to identify, target, and create value for that small group that will be open and ready for your message. The HR Happy Hour Show that Trish McFarlane and I do is a great example of this. We may not be 'Serial', but we have a fantastic and growing audience of HR and HR tech fans and have built a really cool thing.

2. Habits are really hard to change. You, me, everyone - we check the same 5 apps, the same 8 websites, watch the same 10 TV channels week after week after week. If you can't easily get folks to change their consumption habits then you have to find a way to better integrate with these habits. No one hates email more than me, but I still spend more time in email every day than I care to, and I still get plenty of news and information from this old habit. So it makes sense to focus at least some on getting your message better read in email or in one of the other 'Top' apps today (LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, Snapchat, etc.), instead of creating something brand new that requires users to adopt a new habit. 

3. Don't 'break' things that are working. Once you have an audience, or a set of fans/followers etc., you have to be careful not to mess around or experiment too much all at one time. It is hard enough to initially earn the attention of the audience you seek, it is even harder to have to try and earn them a second time. As your audience grows you want to be sure you are growing along with them, but not leaving them behind if that makes sense. I'd like to run 'Ranked' posts every day, but if I did I am pretty sure I would drive away just about everyone who I have spent 7 or 8 years trying to connect with. But the occasional Tom Cruise or Ranked post is fine I think.

No one has time for all the choices that are now available to us on our phones, the web, and our TVs. That doesn't mean there is not any room or any opportunity for something new to break through, it just means that the ideas that can break through are rarer than ever, and the people that can conjure up these ideas are more valuable than ever.

Ok that's it, I am out. Go back to the sites/apps you really enjoy. 

Have a great week!

Revolutionary HR Tech: Part 1 - Clean Data for All - #HRevolution

Note: For the rest of this week, (or longer if I can't manage to get it all done in time), I am going to run a short series of four posts inspired by a session at last weekend's HRevolution event in St. Louis that I facilitated along with the fantastic Mike Krupa. 

In the session, we asked four teams of attendees to imagine, envision, describe, and articulate a new (or at least new to them), kind of revolutionary HR technology solution that would improve or enhance some aspect of HR, talent management, recruiting, strategy, etc.

The teams were each given a context to work in that roughly correspond to the major sub-types of HR technology tools today: Administration, Talent Management, Culture/Brand, and finally Insight/Analytics. The teams came up with some really clever and thought-provoking ideas in a really short time, and I thought it would be fun to share them (as best as I can recall them), here and try to keep the HRevolution discussions on this topic moving forward. We will consolidate all 4 revolutionary HR tech ideas into one paper that we will post here and on the HRevolution site as well.

Ok, let's hit the first HR tech idea - from the 'Administration' team, a tool called 'Oscar.'

The idea: Every HR tech project plan starts or has near the start, a step called 'Clean up the data.' And that step is miserable. Over time and with growth, most companies possess numerous systems for HR and workforce processes and functions. And with the growth of an organization's systems footprint, the challenge to keep data not just in synch across systems, but to ensure the data is 'clean' (accurate, up to date, correctly formatted, validated, etc.), becomes daunting.

While the Admin team is aware that there are some existing HR technology solutions that help integrate HR data across systems, the team felt like simple file-transfer type information from System 'A' to System 'B' is not good enough. After all, if the Employee's date of birth is not correct in System 'A', then sending over that bad piece of data to System 'B' does nothing to help with the real issue - inaccurate employee and workplace data that can lead to a myriad of downstream problems.

So that is were 'Oscar' comes in. 

Oscar is a tool that would sit over an organization's existing HR technology solutions and would serve to monitor, audit, validate, and clean, (or at least raise exceptions as needed), the core elements of the organization's HR data set. Think employee names, dates of birth, employee ID numbers, locations, salary, hours, and many more potentially. These kinds of data elements usually exists in multiple platforms, systems, and can be acted upon in numerous ways, which often results in data getting out of alignment, or 'dirty'. Oscar would learn where to look for these conditions, and raise alerts to the needed administrators, HR analysts, managers, and employees as needed to ensure action is taken before 'bad' data gets propagated.

Think of it as a kind of an HR-based identity theft monitoring tool that instead of being on the lookout for a gang of shady credit-card spoofing thieves, instead is constantly waiting patiently and vigilantly for bad HR data to raise it's ugly head, and to take action to stamp it down.

I think this is a cool idea, and definitely one that HR pros, especially in larger organizations would love.

Would it be complicated to build? Sure.

Does it, or elements of it, probably exist in other tools already? Maybe.

But is it a 'revolutionary' idea for HR tech? Most definitely.

So that is the first idea, stay tuned in the next few days for what the Talent, Culture, and Insights teams cooked up.

Final note: Big, big thanks to our HRevolution 2015 sponsors - Globoforce, Quantum Workplace, and The Arland Group. 

CHART OF THE DAY: If you're feeling old, you're not the only one

Super simple, yet cool Chart of the Day on the graying of America courtesy of the Chmura Economics Blog - let's take a look at the chart then as you continue to demand, some FREE commentary from me...

Wow, check the growth of the 60+ age cohort from 2000 - 2030, amazing how the other segments remain (relatively) flat, while just about everyone else, (you and me too), get a heck of a lot older.

Why should we care about this? A few reasons I think.

1. These general demographic trends combine with observed and predicted workforce composition trends to point to a future where the average worker will be older, will plan on working longer, and where qualified 'new' workers will be even more in demand. If your company is not one where these in-demand younger workers will want to be, then you are going to have to get used to an older workforce than you have had before.

2. How does a relatively older workforce actually translate to HR/Talent programs? Increased need for re-training, as careers lengthen but needed skills continually change, higher reliance on benefits more likely to be used by older workers and less on those that tend to be leveraged by 20 or 30-somethings, and finally a need to be more aware and deliberate about how more widely spread age ranges can effectively work together. 

3. Deeper in the Chmura data, they break down this 'aging effect' by US state/county, (I was not able to embed the map here, but you should click through to check it out). As you might expect, the effects of the aging population/workforce composition will differ by locality. You might want to pinpoint the county(ies) that your organization has set up shop in order to get a feel for how quickly and how pronounced the aging effect is expected to be where you need to recruit and retain.

Bottom line, it is probably a good idea to be aware of the big shifts in demographics, at least until you have figured out a way to replace all of your workers with robots.

And looking at how much older we all seem to be getting, you might want to accelerate the robot recruiting sooner than later.