Be Curious

On Wednesday I had the great honor to present at the WTPF of Washington, DC's annual professional development event.

While my presentation was good (I think) I was really moved by the morning keynote speech given by Michele Toth of Northrop Grumman.

Her topic was 'HR in Transition' and in her speech she articulated a few key principles for HR professionals to help effect the transformation from administrative and reactive to strategic and proactive.

Be Curious - Understand what you don't know, and do your homework to educate yourself on the key issues that affect the organization.  If you are a technology company, understand how your technology actually solves customer problems.  Think like a business manager, not as an HR manager.

Be Persistent - You know the right things to do don't you? So do them.  And if you run in to obstacles keep going. Have conviction and confidence.

Be Tenacious - Don't wait to get invited to the key strategic planning meeting, or major executive pow-wow.  Show up and participate.  But you better be able to to bring it and that means doing your homework.

Be Courageous - HR needs to be the moral compass of the organization, even when it is not popular, even if it means turning in the boss. Courage may also require making unpopular decisions, but HR needs to have the courage to do the right thing, always.

It was a fantastic speech, and definitely inspirational for the attendees of the session. Check out the Twitter hashtag #WTPF to get the sense of the speech and the event overall.

Thanks again to the folks at WTPF for inviting me to speak, I had a fantastic day.

New Technology for Human Resources

Later today I am heading to Washington DC to attend and give a brief presentation on HR Technology to the WTPF - The Business Forum for Washington area Human Resources Professionals,  at their annual SOARS day.

I am really excited and appreciative for the opportunity to present, the only downer is that the WTPF event is also the start of the HR Technology Conference in Chicago.  (Anyone looking for me in Chicago, I promise I will get there on Wednesday night).

The subject of my talk at WTPF is of course HR Technology, and rather than bore the audience with tales of delivery models, maintenance fees, and competency modeling across talent processes, I thought I would talk about some interesting, new, and yes fun technologies that HR professionals might use in their own departments, and broader organizations.

Some of the technologies I will touch on during the session:

Sociacast - an activity streams tool for the enterprise, similar to FriendFeed but not as nerdy sounding

Socialtext - wiki-based platform that has expanded into micro-messaging

Shareflow -  a Google Wave-like tool for aggregating and collaboration

UserVoice - A classic customer and employee feedback tool that is easily embedded on websites

Rypple - tool for getting and receiving feedback, built around the idea of improving individual performance

VanillaForums - simple forum solution to capture ideas and comments from employees with a minimum of complexity

Ideascale - harness the ideas and innovations from your employees, allow the 'best' ideas to surface

And of course what 'new Tech' presentation for an HR group would be completed without mentioning social networking, so I will give the requisite 'Twitter is fantastic' bit.

If you are at the WTPF event, be sure to say hello. Many thanks to the WTPF for having me, the last time I was asked to speak at such a classy event it was my brother's wedding, and let's just say that speech did not go over too well.