REPRISE: On the display of the spoils of victory

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

Spending a couple of hours combing through the 2013 archives to find the ones to re-run these last two weeks made something incredibly clear to me - I was obsessed with robots. So for the last REPRISE post I had to find something that was not about automation or scary robots or our increasingly frightening future. The below post was one that I liked a lot, and it was NOT ABOUT ROBOTS. This was a look at where and how we choose to display things like trophies or awards says about us, our workplaces, and what we value. The piece originally ran in September 2013.

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On the display of the spolis of victory

Last night I attended the back to school open house and curriculum review event held at the middle school that my son attends. It was altogether an interesting and well-run event, the school is one of the finest in all of New York State, the teachers were energetic and engaged, and the administrators are committed to high academic standards and to creating an environment of respect, inclusion, and student success.

Actually in the several years my son has attended schools in this district I have been continually impressed with the quality of instruction and the emphasis on achievement.  And by that I mean academic achievement. Sure, the school has all the requisite sports teams that most other schools do, but I never get the feeling that the sports teams are all that important, and certainly not nearly as important to the overall school and local community as they can be in other parts of the country.

The tour around the school progressed and at a point late in the program we reached a large, windowless  classroom located sort of in the way, way back of the school that is the home to for lack of a better term, the 'gifted' or 'extra special' classes. You know the kinds of classes where students that are doing well in their regular courses get to extend and stretch into new and different kinds of assignments and activities. Some of the projects the kids take on involve exploring in greater detail aspects of their more formal course work, while others are completely new endeavors like movie making or creating school and community service projects.

One of the activities associated with this 'extra' instruction class is the classic Academic Challenge Competition, that I remember from back in the day as the 'College Bowl'.  You know, this was the contest that pits teams of students against other schools in a Jeopardy! like setting to see which schools team has the most, (and fastest), knowledge of math, science, history, geography, and so on. As the teacher was describing the Academic Challenge team and telling us parents about how the team competes in various competitions, she remarked how our school's team had been pretty successful over the years, winning or placing in many top-level competitions. 

As evidence of this success, she pointed to a large shelf on one side of the long room that was the home of two or three rows of similarly sized and shaped trophies, and said something like 'And you can see a few of the trophies our teams have won over the years over there."

I thought, as I looked at the dozen or so trophies that were won for academic successes and were being kept in a room way in the far back corner of the school, that it was kind of funny that even in a school not known for and all that focused on sports that the similar prizes won for winning the odd volleyball or lacrosse or soccer title over the years were prominently displayed in a custom and large glass covered trophy case in the school's lobby, within the sight lines of everyone entering the school.

I suppose it matters, at least some, how we present, display, and commemorate our successes. 

Note: That is it for REPRISE WEEK(s), thanks for checking out some of these older posts and I will be back with fresh, juicy content next week. I hope you have a fantastic 2014!

REPRISE: The State of the Future

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

Since it is New Year's Day, and I am purposefully avoiding writing an inane 'predictions' post  (Wow, do you really think mobile will be big in 2014?), I found the closest thing to the same kind of piece in the 2013 archive. The below post took a look at what people who make a living attempting to see the future, i.e. Futurists, talk about when they get together to talk about the Future. The piece originally ran in July 2013.

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The State of the Future

Pretty much every HR/workplace/talent blog or blogger has at one time or another taken a stab at defining or predicting the 'Workplace of the future' or tried to opine on 'The future of work.' Speculating on the future is kind of fun for a blogger, I know I have done a bunch of pieces like that over the years. Those kind of posts are also fun due to the complete lack of accountability towards the accuracy of any of the predictions. I could post that intelligent and full articulated robots like Atlas, (aside - Atlas is super cool, and I have to post about him/her/it separately), will replace all HR/Talent functions in the organization by 2020 and pretty much feel confident even if I am wrong, no one is going to call me out about it seven years from now.

But there is another category of folks that spend even more time waxing philosophic about the future - actual futurists. People who spend pretty much all their time trying to spot new trends, consider what new technologies may emerge, (and how existing ones will change the world), and often try to help companies and governments with long, and even really long-term planning.  

And when futurists get together, they talk about the future - duh!. And just like in the HR space when after a big event like SHRM or HR Tech there are articles posted that reflect not just on the event itself, but also on the industry overall. And often these 'state of the industry/discipline' pieces are more interesting than specific or detailed event reports. A really good industry thinker is concerned more with and attempts to make these larger connections and conclusions by piecing together, comparing, and connecting lots of smaller data points.

So why did I start this post talking about futurists?

Because over the weekend I read this really interesting piece titled Dispatch From the Futures: Thoughts on WorldFuture2013, about a recent conference for futurists, and the overall state of that discipline - a kind of 'State of the Future' if that makes sense. 

In the piece, the author breaks down what he/she, sees as some of the challenges facing the folks who get paid to see into the future, and while I encourage you to check out the entire piece, I'm going to drop a couple of the issues raised here, as I think they do resonate with folks in the HR/Talent space.

From the Futurist:

Radar or Canvass?  Is foresight and the work of futurists primarily focused on scanning for dangerous futures (radar) or building new ones (canvass)?  Again, this is a false dichotomy, but an important one.  My sense is that governments and larger corporations focus on radar, while innovative companies focus on the canvass.  And this thought experiment leads me to one of the more interesting questions posed at WorldFuture. 

HR takeaway?

When faced with something new - like the emergence of social media, or of wearable technology, or of changing demands of a new generation of workers - how much time do you spend thinking and preparing for the worst, or at least thinking about things through a lens of risk mitigation? What percent of your time is spent developing ways to positively leverage these changes?

From the Futurist:

New Novelties vs. Megatrends: There is a tension between learning about entirely new future scenarios on one hand and exploring the evolution of already identified megatrends.  Take 3D printing.  Most of my friends at WorldFuture were already well aware of 3D printing and its impacts on the futures.  But, despite the fact that most futurists were all over 3D printing several years ago, this tech is still in its infancy and could revolutionize manufacturing and commerce.  It’s a huge and important trend worthy of study regardless of how long it’s been on your radar.

HR takeaway?

It is really easy to want to jump two or three steps ahead of the organization and push for adoption of the very latest and coolest new thing. But are you getting the most benefit out of the 'old' tools and technologies you already possess? Chances are there is a lot of untapped potential in things that seem old, but really are new to you and your teams. You don't always need to be first to adopt something in order to seem cool.

From the Futurist:

Resilience:  Although very few sessions covered this topic, many of my discussions were on resilience.  If the industrial era was about efficiency, perhaps the near future will be most about resilience, as people and societies develop hedging strategies as a means of coping with dramatic change.  How might we classify these resilience strategies? 

HR takeaway?

Are you assessing candidates for something like resilience? Are you coaching managers and leaders to instill this trait in their teams? Do you even consider yourself and your HR shop to be resilient? If the futurists are right about this one, it seems like you should be thinking just a little about how or not your organization stacks up here.

Like I mentioned you should take a few minutes and check out the entire piece here and I will let it go at that.

You might think that the Futurists are kind of the modern-day snake oil hucksters, but one thing is for certain - the future is coming for you and your organization whether you are prepared for it or not.

REPRISE: By 2015, you'd better be a content creator

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

I wrote almost incessantly about robots and automation in 2013. Sorry. Once in a while I tried to be constructive and offer some advice and ideas as to how to manage in the new world of work, one where 'the man' will conspire with 'big robot' to destroy everything you love. The below post was one example of that - a look at how technology equipment patterns affect usage and what that means for out careers. The piece originally ran in June 2013.

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By 2015, you'd better be a content creator

I peeled my eyes away long enough from the ongoing drama at Rutgers University (by the way, catch a special HR Happy Hour Show on all things Rutgers here), to catch the news that market research and analyst firm IDC is predicting that by 2015 global shipments of tablet devices are expected to overtake shipments of PCs.

Here are the specifics of what IDC is forecasting for tablets and PCs as reported by Bloomberg:

Tablet shipments are projected to grow 45 percent from this year to reach 332.4 million in 2015, compared with an estimated 322.7 million for PCs, according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC. PC shipments may decline 7.8 percent this year, the worst annual drop on record, the researcher said, a revision from its prior projection for a 1.3 percent decrease.

Pretty interesting if not terribly surprising I suppose. Just think about how much personal computing (taken generally) has changed since the introduction of the first iPad just a few years ago. Chances are you or someone in your family, or maybe everyone in your family, had jumped into the tablet craze. And why not? Tables are fantastic for watching movies on the plane, checking up on your social networks, playing games, and sure, tapping out that odd email or two when you are on the road or on a plane.

Pretty obvious right? But worth repeating and thinking about what this means. Hers is more from the Bloomberg piece:

More portable, affordable and backed by hundreds of thousands of applications, tablets are replacing PCs as consumers’ main tool for checking e-mail, browsing websites and accessing music and movies.

Read it again and think about what, so far, you and pretty much everyone else does with a tablet. You sit back. You relax maybe. You have the TV on while you are messing with your iPad. You consume. Movies, books, your friend's updates on Facebook. Sure you might send the odd email or two, but you probably read 10 more for every one you actually create and send.

If the trends in the growth of tablet shipments that IDC predicts are accurate, then in just a couple of years more personal devices that are primarily oriented on consuming content will hit the market than ones whose primary purpose is creating content. All the content that you and me and most working stiffs create, even boring content like spreadsheets and slide decks, (that pay the bills for lots of us), are created on PCs. Even 'creative' stuff like blog posts (other blogs I mean), and graphics and podcast and video editing - all done on PCs or more powerful machines.

To date, hardly anything is created on tablets. That doesn't mean they aren't amazing tools and certainly the growth and trends indicate the market values the form factor and capability. But mostly, and probably for a while, they will exist for personal and business use cases as consumption devices.

And by 2015 and beyond, with more and more of these consumption devices out in the world it seems to me the place you want to be isn't sitting back on the couch consuming right along with everyone else. It seems to me the place you want to be is on the content creation side.

I think you want to be the person pushing content and value (and hopefully getting paid for it), to these millions and millions of consumption devices.

But that is just my opinion.

Written on a PC.

REPRISE: Human Resources when there are fewer humans around

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

The below post is another take, one a little more 'HR-centric' of the topic I talked about the most in 2013 - the continual and increasing encroachment and pressure that technology and automation is having on the workplace - rendering more and more of us if not obsolete, at least significantly less relevant. The piece originally ran in May 2013.
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Human Resources when there are fewer humans around 

The below chart (or a version of it) has been making the rounds plenty in the last year or so as the American economy rebounds and seemingly continues to strengthen coming out of the financial crisis and ensuing recession of the late aughts.

It shows how despite corporate profits, expressed as a percentage of GDP, continuing to set records, that those record profits have not (taken in aggregate), translated into lots of new jobs, as the labor participation rate shows.

Source - FRED 

As the chart pretty clearly shows, aggregate corporate profits (the red line), after plunging to a low at about the middle of the recession, late 2008, have rebounded considerably, and now are at all-time record levels as a percentage of GDP.

The employment rate however, after taking an equally dramatic fall throughout the entire recession, finally stabilized at a far lower level than pre-recession, and despite, (or some might argue what has been the primary driver of), rising corporate profits is showing no signs of regaining its former levels of around 62%.

Profits are up, way up even, yet corporations are achieving these profits with far fewer workers than before, (and paying them less, generally. We could also factor in wage growth or lack thereof to make that point at well).

There are lots of reasons for this - technological progress, increased automation, continuing reliance on relatively cheaper foreign labor, diminishing influence of labor unions, the aging of the workforce, etc. but the bottom line seems to be an ever-growing bottom line with fewer and fewer actual people needed to make that happen.

No doubt if you are one of the workers in the 'right' kind of job, you are probably doing pretty well or are on the way to doing pretty well. But if you are one of the people that might be in a field that has simply figured out to continue to drive profits without as many people, then things could be looking kind of grim.

Where does all this leave you as an HR/Talent pro?

A lot depend on the company/industry you are in. But in aggregate, certainly, when there are fewer and fewer 'humans' in the workforce, then corporations will figure out they need fewer and fewer Human Resources people to help look after them all. I have talked with a few HR leaders lately that are seeing both the size of their labor forces hold steady and their HR/EE ratios holding an extremely high levels.

Advice?

Make sure you are spending a decent chunk of your time and energy on things that are truly additive - technology that will help employees generate new ideas and innovations, marketing and recruiting strategies that will let you land more than your share of the best talent at the expense of your competitors, and even in an 'addition-by-subtraction' way, elimination of silly rules, policies, or processes that in any way get in the way of employee performance.

And you could spend some time figuring out what kinds of planning, services, training, development, and team building activities that 'resources' like our pal Baxter needs and you might ride this out a little longer.

Have a great week!

REPRISE: At least the creative jobs can't be taken over by robots. Wait, what?

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

The below post was just one example of the topic I talked about the most in 2013 - the continual and increasing encroachment and pressure that technology and automation is having on the workplace - rendering more and more of us if not obsolete, at least significantly less relevant. The piece originally ran in April 2013.

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At least the creative jobs can't be taken over by robots. Wait, what?

I know I have beaten the 'robots are coming to take our jobs' angle pretty much to death here over the last few years, and I really want to move on to other things like what we can learn about leadership from Kobe Bryant and the Mamba Mentality, and why Jasper Johns is America's greatest artist, something about the automation of formerly human jobs keeps sucking me back in.

Check this excerpt from a recent piece on Business Insider titled How Facebook Is Replacing Ad Agencies With Robots, about some of the behind-the-scenes machinations that result in those often eerily smart advertisements you see on your Facebook timeline and newsfeed:

Facebook is working furiously to find more ways to make ads work better inside its ecosystem. Many of those ads, however, are untouched by ad agency art directors or "creative" staffers of any kind. And a vast number, from Facebook's larger e-commerce advertisers — think Amazon or Fab.com — are generated automatically by computers. 

If you're an e-commerce site selling shoes, you want to serve ads that target people who have previously displayed an interest in, say, red high-heels. Rather than serve an ad for your brand — "Buy shoes here!" — it's better to serve an ad featuring a pair of red heels specifically like the one the user was browsing for.

The ads are monitored for performance, so any subjective notions of "taste" or "beauty" or "style" or whatever go out the window — the client just wants the best-performing ads. There's no need for a guy with trendy glasses who lives in a loft in Williamsburg, N.Y., to mull over the concepts for hours before the ad is served.

It might be easy to miss in that description, but the key to the entire 'no humans necessary' ad creation and display process is a technology that is called 're-targeting' - Facebook (via some partners it works with), knows what products and services you have shown interest in out on the web, and then the algorithms try to 'match' your browsing trail with what the advertiser hopes will be a relevant ad. Since the volume of people and data and browsing history is so immense that a person or people couldn't actually create all the possible ads the process might need, the algorithms do all the work. 

So if you stopped at that Rasheed Wallace 'Ball Don't Lie' shirt on the online T-shirt site this morning, don't be surprised if you see an ad for similar on your Facebook feed tonight. 

Not a big deal you might be thinking, it's the web after all, and algorithms and machines run it all anyway. 

The big deal if you are a creative type person in advertising or media planning is this - if these kinds of re-targeted and machine generated ads show some solid ROI, more and more of the ad budget for big brands will follow. Budget that could be used for TV spots, print campaigns, or even more innovative games and contests on social networks, (that still, for now, have to be hatched and launched by actual humans). If machine-generated ads drive more revenue, (or drive revenue more efficiently), than traditional and expensive creative, then we'll see that impact in staffing. 

Traditional ads often run in media where it can be notoriously difficult to determine success - how valuable and how much revenue for a brand like Budweiser can be attributed to an obscenely expensive Super Bowl ad?

But these computer generated Facebook ads? The system can see in real-time how they are performing, which versions of a given campaign are more effective, and they can learn and adapt in reaction to this data. They are smart, so to speak. Almost everything about them from an ad standpoint is 'better' than the creative ad in a magazine or on TV.

Except for the fact that hardly any people are needed to create them. Depending on your point of view of course.

Be nice to the robots.