Making a Half Million Dollar Ask? Maybe a Little Prep Makes Sense

You have to love the openness and transparency in (most) of the public sector. As my friend Mark Stelzner so accurately pointed out a few weeks back, the Freedom of Information Act and other local regulations often require that meetings, documents, contracts, and proceedings of various governmental bodies are regularly made available to the public and/or posted online for all to see.I'd like $500K please.

Case in point - a recent article describing a meeting of the San Antonio, Texas based Alamo Community College District, a collection of Texas Community Colleges having about 6,000 total employees, where the Vice Chancellor of Human Resources pitched a close to $500,000 purchase of some new HR software to the college system's Board of Trustees. Making the pitch as an HR leader to the ultimate decision makers for a big outlay for HR software is never easy, but as the article in the Ranger online aptly demonstrates, making said pitch without ready and defensible answers to some of the obvious questions that responsible budget holders are bound to ask is a recipe for failure, (and a little embarrassment).

Some highlights in case you don't read the entire Ranger piece: (questions and answers edited a bit for clarity)

Trustee Question #1 - Why are we doing this, i.e. why do we need to drop half a million on HR software?

HR Leader Answer: "We just really don't know a lot about how we're developing or if we're developing the talent we have out there waiting for us."

Eek. While that is likely true, when presented in that context it does not really inspire much confidence in the HR function. Make the case be about what the new tools will enable HR to do in order to help the organization meet its goals and develop talent sure, just don't state, 'We really have no idea what is doing on with our people and we need help.'

Trustee Question #2 - Are there any other similar customers using this solution, specifically, any other community colleges?

HR Leader Answer: "I don't know."

Ack. I don't completely blame the HR pro on this one. Not totally. Any vendor rep that had a clue what they were doing would have prepped the HR professional for this question and provided her with a list of references. But budget authorities the world over are not typically known for their willingness to embrace risk. Not having an answer to the question just makes HR seem more out of touch with business risk and reality.

Trustee Question #3 - What happens if we don't buy this software now?

HR Leader Answer: "Nothing really. If we wait until after December, then we will have to pay a higher price. 

Trustee follow up - How much more?

HR Leader Answer : I am not sure.

You get the idea by now I am sure. Walking into the room, making the big money ask, and not anticipating an preparing for the obvious questions related to the software, the benefits, and the simple risk mitigation strategies associated with large software implementation projects just makes you look unprofessional, and ill-prepared to handle a costly, complex project.

The answers to these questions are not always easy, but the questions are easy to anticipate. If you can't answer them, then maybe you're not ready to sit at the grown-up table.

Consumerization, Technology, and HR

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour Show, (a weekly live internet radio show and podcast that I have been hosting since 2009), the conversation is going to be about Consumerization - specifically how the demands on Human Resources and HR Technology professionals are changing, largely influenced by developments in the consumer and personal technology markets.

Thinking about consumer technology and trends naturally forces one to consider the larger world in which our organizations reside, and how things like globalization, changing demographics, and even political and social unrest all contribute to and impact the workplace. The employees that work for us also live in the real world as well, and as the lines between work and personal time continue to move, shift, and cross; thinking a little more deeply about these environmental forces and how they shape workplaces is not only fascinating, but critical.

And when thinking about 'Consumerization' in the workplace, some other questions come to mind:

Who hasn't felt at times that the tools and technologies that are available at work are in many ways less appealing and effective than what we use in our personal lives?

How many folks carry around multiple mobile devices, one for 'work' that tends to be more basic and utilitarian, (and controlled by IT); and an iPhone or Droid to for 'fun' only to conclude the 'fun' device and its collection of carefully and personally selected applications create an incredibly powerful mobile computing powerhouse.

Finally, what consumer trends can be safely ignored, (for now), by HR professionals, and which ones should you make sure you don't miss?

Our guest on the Happy Hour tonight to talk about these ideas will be Yvette Cameron from Constellation Research. Yvette brings a wealth of experience and perspective as a business, technology, and Human Resources leader and will be sure to inform, challenge, and hopefully inspire.

The show will be live tonight, December 8, 2011 from 8PM - 9PM ET. You can listen live on the show page here - or using the widget player below:

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

Also, if you'd like to participate more actively with the show, you are invited to call in live on 646-378-1086, and follow the backchannel conversation on Twitter - just track the hastag #HRHappyHour.

It will be a fun and interesting conversation and I hope you will join us!

When the Roomba Grows Up

You've heard of the Roomba, right? That cute little robot vacuum that you can set up in your family room or bedroom, hit the button, and watch it smoothly and quietly scurry about the room vacuuming up your potato chip crumbs and the excess from Fido's winter coat while you can rest on the sofa, perhaps snuggled up with a good book and wearing your Forever Lazy.The Droid can help you with your hibiscus

The Roomba, at least the idea of the Roomba is awesome, right? I mean who would not want to trade the tedious chore of vacuuming for just about any of the alternative activities you could choose from if you were freed from the weekly waltz with the trusty Hoover or Dyson? Set up the Roomba, then kick back. Or work. Or talk to one of your kids. Or more likely, post a status update on Facebook that says something like, 'Man, the Roomba is awesome.' Which all your friends will interpret as, 'I can't believe that moron is Facebooking about his Roomba again.' Or, 'What a dork. I bet he's sitting on the sofa in a Forever Lazy.'

Jokes aside, we'd all probably agree that technologies like the Roomba have clear and obvious benefit - they save us time, effort, and automate an incredibly dull and low-skill type of effort, that allow us to engage in more interesting and productive things. And as a plus, there is a whole ecosystem that has to design, build, ship, sell, support, and maintain these devices. This creates jobs, (although in fairness at some cost of the loss of similar in the 'traditional' vacuum industry), but overall it would hard to feel worried or threatened if suddenly there was a Roomba in every home.

The parallels to the domesticated Roomba were obvious when I read this Wired.com piece: 'These May Be the Droids Farmers Are Looking For'. The story, about the testing of a more advanced, more capable Roomba-like robot that can help nursery owners organize, sort, and transport large numbers of plants and trees was interesting to me not so much for the pure technological angle, but rather for the economic impetus driving the grower's needs for this kind of technology. From the piece on Wired:

Massachusetts startup Harvest Automation is beta testing a small mobile robot that it’s pitching to nurseries as the solution to their most pressing problem: a volatile labor market.

In today’s human-tended nurseries, immature potted trees and shrubs arrive at nurseries by truck and are offloaded onto the ground. Teams of migrant workers — undocumented for the most part — spread the plants out one by one following markers outlining a grid. When the plants are ready to be shipped out later in the season, workers reverse the process to group the plants for loading onto trucks. “We’ve recognized the need for robotics in the nursery industry for moving pots because it’s one of our highest concentrations of labor use,” said Tom Demaline, president of Willoway Nurseries, Inc. in Avon, Ohio

So what you might be thinking. The history of the industrial revolution, heck the past 200 years of capitalism is essentially a story of technological invention and advancement, often resulting in the displacement of workers that are found to be either too expensive, less productive, and more of a pain in the neck to manage, (or some combination thereof), than their robot replacements.

But the farm robot story is I think because of the larger economical and political factors at play that are serving to catalyze and drive further development. The farming jobs that this new family of robots usurps were typically ones held by immigrants, often undocumented ones. With increasing enforcement of existing immigration laws, and the enacting of new, even stricter ones like in Alabama, many farmers and farm related businesses find themselves in a crunch. Their previous supply of labor has left or has been frightened away, local and legal replacements seem not to be available or willing, leaving this new robotic future as one potential way out of their bind.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a job that has to be done. The labor market (for whatever reason), can't fulfill the need, so a new technology develops to close the gap. But the problem is, for all the 'Farmer Roomba' design, development, and manufacturing jobs, (which probably will be outsourced), they will never amount to the many hundreds and thousands of farm laborer jobs that are going to disappear. The technology will eventually allow the same amount of work to be done, faster, cheaper, with less errors, and with far, far less human effort, labor, and of course wages.

This equation works fantastically well for the vacuum example, like I said before, the trade-off usually involves you lounging on the sofa while the Roomba works. I have my doubts that any of the farm workers replaced by the 'Droids' are chilling in their Forever Lazy's right now.

Don't send that Email!

Some months back I posted about the Technology Services company Atos Origin's plan to eliminate the use of internal email as a tool for communication for its $10B plus organization. Well yesterday additional news about the 'Email Elimination' plan were released, a good summary of the news can be found on this piece from Yahoo!News.Email Jail

From the Yahoo! piece on Atos', (really Atos CEO Thierry Breton's), take on how Email is throttling internal productivity, the ability to find information, and to actually be effective at its main purpose - communicating.

Breton,  the French finance minister from 2005 to 2007, told the Wall Street Journal he has not sent an email in the three years since he became chairman and CEO of Atos in November 2008.

“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” he said in a statement when first announcing the policy in Feburary. “At [Atos] we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.”

The company says by 2013, more than half of all new digital content will be the result of updates to, and editing of existing information. Middle managers spend more than 25 percent of their time searching for information, according to the company.

While the details of the plan have not seemed to change much since I first posted about this in February of this year, what is notable is that nine months later Breton and Atos still seem as committed to the 'no internal email' policy as ever.

And as I asked readers back in February, I will ask again today, (a question that might be particularly pointed for USA readers still digging out from email jail after a long holiday):

Could you actually work without (internal) email?

Could a company of any scale and size at all successfully manage information, workflow, communication, and so on without sending ANY internal email?

How many of you are thinking it might be nice to work for Atos right about now?

Notes From the Road #3 - Technology Can Make Us Stupid

Note: This is the latest installment in an occasional series of quick dispatches from the trail - things I pick up from airports, hotels, cabs, meetings - anywhere really, in hopes that at least some of the observations will be interesting and even worthwhile. And also, since being out on the road for work usually throws off the schedule and gives me less time to worry about the little blog here, these Notes from the Road pieces have a internal timer set at 15 minutes. Whatever ideas, no matter how half-baked or thinly developed, get the 'Publish' treatment at the 15-minute mark.  Remember the good old days?

Ready, set, go. Fifteen minutes starts now.

Late last night, (so late it was technically this morning), I picked up another one in a long chain of non-descript rental cars from the San Francisco airport. The kind of small, uninspiring, utterly forgettable kinds of cars that seem to survive solely on fleet sales to the Hertzes and Avises of the world. So what?Not a big deal really. With these kinds of weekly business rentals what companies and travelers are mostly interested is reliable, safe transport at the lowest cost possible. And my typical ChevroFordNisOyota boxes generally fit that description.

As I loaded up the blue/gray/white, (actually I sort of don't remember what color it is), and headed for the exit all I was really thinking about was finding the hotel and crashing after what had been an extremely long day of last day of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend travel. When I pulled up to the rental car exit to show the attendant my driver's license and answer 'No' to the endless series of upsell questions, ('Do you want to take out insurance in case you and the rental car are kidnapped  and shipped to the Crimea?'), I suddenly and surprisingly froze, as I was unable to find the button or switch that would lower the driver's side window so I could hand over my paperwork.

Where the heck was the button? Why can't I find the button? I am sitting here like a idiot that can't sort out how the rental car works. The guy behind me just started honking. What the hell?

Then it hit me, (finally, although it probably only took a few seconds, it seemed like a lot more), the car had manual windows. And the window handle was kind of small, and positioned pretty low on the inside of the door. That, the unfamiliar car, the darkness in the rental car garage, the late hour, and an extremely tired Steve conspired to render me unable to operate one of the most basic and primitive user interfaces ever invented - a little handle that simply needs to be turned a few times to lower the window.

I can't remember the last time I was in a car that did not have automatic windows, power locks, intermittent wipers - really all of the once amazing technological advances that have made driving easier, more fun, and more sophisticated. But becoming accustomed to all these things, I think, has made many of us kind of technologically dependant, and has reduced our ability and even our curiosity about the tools and technology we have come to expect that will take care of us to some extent.

Modern technology is truly amazing, wondrous, insert your favorite adjective here. But relying on it too much, and never having to operate in more primitive environments, can also allow the technology to own us in a way.

And one day, when the machines rise up against us...