Tactics and Technology

The climax of the American Civil War Battle of Gettysburg that took place in July 1863 was a Confederate Army attack that has come to be well-known as 'Pickett's Charge', named after General George Pickett,General George Pickett one of the Confederate leaders on the field that day.

Pickett's Charge was essentially a direct frontal assault by the Confederates, across an open field, uphill, against an entrenched Union Army enemy force that was supported by artillery on even higher ground.

Part of The Conference Board's Leadership Experience program at Gettysburg has the participants walk the same path across the field and up the hill that Pickett's (and many others) men traversed that day. The well-documented history of the battle tells us that the Confederates suffered horrific casualties, were unsuccessful in breaking the Union Army lines, and were forced to withdraw and retreat.  Twenty-one months later the war ended, with the Union Army victorious.

As the leadership experience attendees traced the path of Pickett's Charge, it was seemingly obvious that attempting such an attack, covering almost a mile of open terrain, with the enemy dug in and holding the superior position, was absolute insanity. As we marched up the path towards the high ridge where the Union Army was aligned, one of the class questioned the 'march in a straight line in the open and approach the enemy' attack formation, that in 1863 was still the most common attacking tactic. This was troubling, since advances in technology and weaponry had improved the range, accuracy, and deadly force of the various artillery pieces, rifles, pistols, and ammunition.

The technology of war had dramatically improved to such an extent that it began to render the traditional tactics, if not essentially ineffective, certainly more costly in terms of casualties.  And the crazy part is that one of the event facilitators indicated that the basic attack strategies continued all the way until World War I.  But even then it required another technological breakthrough, (the tank), to significantly alter the accepted tactics.

I know the corporate world is not the same as the 'real' battlefield, and getting too comfortable with military metaphors risks oversimplification of what are usually complex issues. But in this case I think the comparison is appropriate. 

New and better technologies are being created, improved, and being brought to bear with increasing frequency in a wide range of traditional human capital functions.  Whether it is in recruiting, performance management, learning and development, or internal collaboration, the rate of advancement in capability and potential is accelerating.

But advances in technology, without an appropriate and complementary shift in the strategy and tactics to better leverage the new and more powerful technologies will only result in partial victory at best, and a significant loss at worst. Your competitors are likely to have the same access to these technologies as you go, simply 'owning' them will not be enough, being smarter and even bolder in their deployment will be the difference.

If you deploy fantastic new tools and technologies, but continue to execute in a 'march in a straight line across the field' manner, then history may be as unkind to you as it has been to General Pickett.

Guest Post - Why Business Intelligence is Failing HR Managers

Note: This guest post comes from Tom Malone, CEO of Accero.

In the past few years it seems like business intelligence has been all the rage. Vendors promise a tool that will help HR managers pull a seat up to the table with strategic insight gained through predictive analysis of the company’s own data.

However, according to analysts, most companies never achieve the results they expect with these tools. Why is it that business intelligence fails to live up to expectations? The answer can be found in time and resources.

Somewhere between the sales pitch for BI and the initial implementation of the product comes the realization that instead of a solution that serves up insightful analytics, they have a tool that, while powerful in potential, requires a ton of work before it can provide any useful insight.

Once a BI product has been purchased someone within the organization (usually HR & IT) must determine what key metrics they want, and what data they need to support those metrics.  Then they must couple the BI tool with other technologies such as a database and ETL tool (extraction, transformation and loading) to build a data-mart that manages and stores complex workforce data, automate a process to load data into the data mart, design each key metric as a chart, scorecard  or dashboard, build all the charts and dashboards, store them in a way that makes finding the right metric easy, tie each metric to a role-based security model and finally train their users in using the BI tool to slice and dice through the resulting metrics. 

As you can imagine, doing all of the above takes a lot of time, a lot of IT talent and a lot of money.  It is the number one reason why BI is failing HR managers and their organizations.

Do we need analytics solutions to help provide insight in the space? Absolutely. HR Managers are the best conduits for information into how an organization can encourage and reward employees, comply with laws, reduce labor costs and increase productivity and eliminate compliance risk. Are we there yet with easy-to-use tools and pre-defined solutions?   For most HR departments, the answer is no.

I’d be interested in your thoughts and personal experiences with this topic. Is BI working for you and within your organization or has it failed to live up to its promise?

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Tom Malone is CEO of Accero (formerly Cyborg) a Payroll, Human Resources and Human Capital Management software and service provider. Tom has over 25 years of experience in the software, computer services, and telecommunications industries.



Technology Shopping List

Later this week at the trulondon Unconference in London  Sarah White, Shane McCusker , and I will be moderating a session titled 'Technology Shopping List'. Flickr - deepfruit

The session is described as:

Whatever the future holds, technology will play a major part in it. Today’s technology is already old and a day doesn’t go by when we don’t wish for something new. Join these technology experts in agreeing what you think the technology will need to do in the future, how applications will develop, the impact of cloud and what you want to see in the future.

There are really two kinds of shopping lists I think.  The one's that adults make when they go to the grocery store (milk, eggs, bread, etc.) and the ones kid's make for their Birthday or send to Santa Claus at Christmas, full of the latest toys, games, and other desires that (mostly) are not really needed, but will make them overjoyed with delight come the big day.

Aside - with all the recent major snow storms in the USA you have to notice the phenomenon of everyone rushing to the store to stock up on milk, eggs, and bread. Has French Toast been declared the staple food for when you get snowed in?

Back to the point. 

What will workforce technologies need to do in the future to support the organization, empower and engage employees, and most importantly drive increased business value? That is a big question, and I am glad that I will have Sarah and Shane along to help guide the discussion.

Here are some of the things I'll offer as part of the session:

Get simpler

Whether it is the iPad with its clean interface and tight feature set, Google Buzz (on the surface a much more basic and accessible version of Google Wave), or the push and demand for more mobile, smart-phone based capability, workforce technology has to get simpler to use.  Your employees and front-line managers are the essential keys to any Talent Management technology success.  Your candidates are the essential customers of your Recruiting systems.  Does anyone think that any of those groups are clamoring for more complex systems?  Simpler does not always have to mean less functional, but better design, more intuitive process, and 'smarter' technology that can anticipate and even recommend actions I think will be a large part of the future of workforce technology.

Get flexible

Rigid, process-oriented enterprise technology solutions of the last 25 years will have to become more flexible and adaptable if we accept the common assumption that business itself has to become more adaptable. I get that processes are how most business still gets done in many fields, and that for many organizations tight, precise replication of existing processes are essential for success and profits.  But with more and more work becoming 'creative', 'innovative', 'knowledge-based', or whatever you want to call it, the need for workforce tech to change, morph, and adapt to support whatever new directions the business needs to take I have to believe will be significantly more important in the future.  We are seeing some of this already, with more flexible SaaS-based solutions starting to dominate wide sectors of the workforce technology landscape.

Get social

Ok, not exactly a breakthrough idea at this point. But it does still seem that while there is significant discussion and realization that organizations can realize important benefits from the introduction and implementation of more 'social' or collaborative technology, many have only taken limited steps in this area.  The technologies that have long dominated the mid to large enterprise space (ERP, MS Office, corporate E-mail) have all been slow to adapt to the ideas around social.  Ironically, the forces that seem likely to spur the adoption of more social technologies, or the addition of social capability into existing technologies are more likely to be the employee's themselves, and not the corporate leaders or decision makers.

So those are some of the ideas I will offer for the Technology Shopping List - what else would you say needs to be included?

After all, it is more of a kid's Christmas list than an 'snow emergency I need to make French Toast' list.

The people that actually use the technology

Last week amid much hype, Apple unveiled their long-awaited tablet computer, dubbed the iPad.

Pause for a moment while the 'feminine hygiene' product jokes mill about for a second in your head.  Are you ready now? Good.

Almost immediately after the details of the product were revealed, a seemingly collective shriek was emitted from various technology news sites, pundits, and longtime fans of Apple.  Most of this outcry was centered on the perceived shortcomings of the iPad.

No camera?  No ability to multi-task?  No USB ports?  And on and on.

One clever post compares the iPad to a rock, with the iPad only coming out ahead by the slimmest of margins.

These criticisms are nearly entirely focused on a cohort of individuals that want the iPad to be a more complicated device.  One that would require a more skilled operator, that would likely fail more frequently, and one that would be more difficult for inexperienced or disinterested users to fully leverage.

And yes, to some (maybe more that I want to admit) users these the absence of these more advanced and complex capabilities render the iPad superfluous and unnecessary. Let's call these people 'power users'.

But for many, the ease of use, anticipated fast web browsing experience, and the simplicity with which their desired tasks can be completed on the iPad will offer a compelling value proposition. Calling up a web site, checking e-mail promise to be faster, easy, and dirt simple. Let's call these people 'casual users'.

So we have on one hand the vocal but relatively few 'power users' clamoring for more and better everything, and what is likely a far wider (and quieter) population of 'casual users' who will likely find the iPad a pretty amazing little device.  The iPad will likely sell millions of units despite these criticisms,(remember many of these same power users thumbed their noses at the first iPod).

I think there are some lessons in all this that enterprise Human Resources technology creators and implementers can learn from the iPad and from consumer technology, popular consumer web sites, and public social networks in general.

For me, the lesson is this:

In the enterprise of say 10,000 people that are the planned users of workforce technology (e.g. a performance management system), maybe 100 or so people could be placed in the category of 'power users'. They need the most advanced functionality, can adapt to a less than intuitive design, and often are willing to spend long periods of time learning how to use the technology.

The other 9,900 or so people are 'casual users'.  Ease of use, simplicity, clear workflows and speed in which tasks can be completed are of primary importance. Use of workforce technologies are almost never their 'job', they are meant to be compliments to help them perform their jobs better.  They technologies can't be seen as a burden, time suck, and require lengthy and frequent pauses to ask for assistance in their use.  And the power users probably can't help all of them anyway, there are simply too many of them to effectively serve.

When an organization deploys workforce technologies to ALL 10,000 employees, the needs, concerns, capabilities, and attitudes of the casual users are of utmost importance.  But it is almost exclusively the power users, and their management that participate in the vendor evaluations, make the purchase and design decisions, and (often) are influenced by which solution has the most of everything.

But for the casual users of most workforce technologies having the most capability does not matter, only the right capability does.  For the vast majority of these users, their real jobs are creating, fixing, selling, answering, not interacting with the latest features in the performance management tool.

The iPad, as has been pointed out everywhere, does not have the most capability, but for a large population of casual users it may have the right ones, and while critics, pundits, and technology experts are all taking turns bashing the iPad, it may very well be that Apple knows what it is doing and is hitting the perfect balance of features, usability, and design that these casual users want.

Workforce technologies should always keep that balance in mind.

The HR 101 Series

The King of NYC Victorio Milian, at his Creative Chaos blog has organized and published an ongoing series titled 'HR 101'.

The goal of the series of articles: to provide introductions and insights on many of the seemingly 'non-HR' subjects (Finance, Statistics, Law, etc.) to the many HR professionals that read his blog.

There are some fantastic pieces in the 'HR 101' series, and I was honored to be asked to participate with an article on HR Technology.

I highly recommend you check out the 'HR 101' project, you will find wonderful pieces from Jason Seiden on 'Statistics', Joan Ginsberg on 'Law', and Fran Melmed on 'Internal Communication' (and many more).

Thanks very much Victorio for allowing me to participate in the project!