HR Service Delivery

Up In The Air – Boarding Theory

3
July 6, 2010
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Many of the people I know have watched a film called “Up in the Air.”  Indeed, I suppose it was a popular file garnering several Oscar nominations.  (I have no idea if it won anything as I don’t watch the Oscars.)  Several people have told me how personal the film was, and other than...
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Employee Portal Experience Fundamentals

1
June 20, 2010
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Portal redesign is fun these days.  Creating widgets from our talent management systems and plugging in cool looking, drillable analytics from the business intelligence engine (also widgetized) is pretty cool.  The technology advances in the last few years that allow you to take a standard portal and natively configure and insert your widgets (portlets,...
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Real Life is Analog

1
June 7, 2010
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Not Digital. We all love digital.  It makes our lives easier and faster.  But I’m not sure we all have an appropriate understanding of what digital and analog really mean.  The fact of the matter is that we don’t live in a digital world.  Our world is purely analog.  We just have digital processes...
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Burnt to a Crisp

0
April 21, 2010
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I have a friend who happens to have a particular way of ordering steaks. This is interesting for a number of reasons. First, I’m not sure how many Indian guys order steaks. Perhaps Gautam can shed some light on this for me. (I think my friend lives in Goa if that makes a difference)....
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Blending Food Flavors and Cross Functional Collaboration

0
March 17, 2010

I usually write about cycling here, but I generally make it no secret that I’m a wannabe foodie. 1  Great food is sometimes about simplicity, and other times it’s about depth and flavor combinations.  I was recently at Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles2 where I had a squid ink pasta with Dungeness crab, sea urchin,...
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Leading Practices versus Best Practices

2
March 10, 2010

Lexy Martin tweeted a link a few months back around using the term “leading practices” and banishing the term “best practices” from our vocabularies.  I’ve been trying to use the words leading practices for about 4 years now, although I admit I comply irregularly.  I first learned it from a consulting partner whose name...
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Process Excellence – Push it forward

1
March 3, 2010

What defines process excellence?  There are probably (at least) two parts of the equation.  Efficiency is the most obvious, as people reengineer processes to make them faster and cheaper.  The second part is equally important though, and achieving high quality must also be achieved or the efficiency is meaningless. When we talk about high...
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Support versus Change, Evolution versus Revolution

1
February 11, 2010

Jacob Morgan wrote a piece about adoption a while back, and he had a pretty interesting concept around supporting business process as opposed to change management.  This is really quite new to me, as we’ve always talked about change management and behavioral change as opposed to a softer concept of “support.” You need to...
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HRO is not Dead

2
January 11, 2010

HRO has seemed dead for at least a couple of years now.  A couple years ago it was almost all I was writing about, and there were mega deals to be had every other month.  All consultants were talking about to their clients was deciding if they should outsource or not.  At the time,...
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M&A – Whose System Wins?

4
December 14, 2009

I must say that sometimes M&A transitions are a pain in the *** for HR and HRIT practitioners.  It’s quite rare in my experience that a merger will be a pure 50/50%, more often than not one of the merger partners is getting a tiny fraction more than 50% and so can govern the...
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Kaizen Bursts

2
December 7, 2009

I’ve been through a lot of process mapping sessions in my life.  I’ve had the good opportunity to lead many, and also the opportunity to sit in and observe.  It always surprises me how often the current state processes are mapped, and then people go straight into the future state process mapping without real...
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Staffing for Global IT Models

1
August 31, 2009

I often get the question about how to deploy HR technology services.  People still seem to be in love with discovering the “best practices” in the industry, not realizing that they are general guidelines of what seems to be working for a decent population of companies in the current historical moment.  In fact, the...
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Tri-athletes: Transitions

0
May 6, 2009

Tri-athletes spend a lot of time working on their transitions.  How many seconds does it take to get out of the water and into cycling shoes, and then onto the bike.  How many seconds does it take to get off the bike and into running shoes.  What can you prepare ahead of time so...
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Tri-athletes: Skills

3
May 4, 2009

It is not real secret that cyclists the world over hold tri-athletes in general contempt.  The general consensus is that when a tri-athlete is on the bike, their bike skills are so poor, they are a general menace to other cyclists and to themselves.  I’ll give you an example from my own experience this...
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String Theory and Particles

2
September 24, 2008

As long as I’m writing about the Hadron Collider, I might as well write about string theory.  I’m not sure how to simplify this for non-scientists (I’m not one either obviously) but here goes:  String theory basically states that within the molecule, there are atoms, within the atoms, electrons, protons, and within each of...
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What is a Center of Expertise?

1
September 22, 2008

In our traditional 3-circle HR service delivery models (Ulrich model really), one of the major components is the center of excellence or center of expertise (COE).  The COE has never really evolved over time, but perhaps it’s ripe to do so now.  Traditional COE’s have always been benefits, compensation, recruiting, etc…  However, this may...
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The History and Future of HR Technology

2
September 16, 2008

The history of HR technologies has for many years been about functionality.  We have been increasing functionality levels for a couple of decades now.  Even the recent robust growth of talent management applications has been about functionality.  Vendors are fighting in a competition to have a “complete talent management suite” and adding functional components...
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Bill Kutik Radio Show – The Un-Siloing of HR

0
September 10, 2008

Bill Kutik’s excellent interview of HP had quite a few excellent insights.  (sorry Bill, I’m a bit behind on listening to my iPod)  One of the insights that I picked up on was the integration and matrixing of the HR organization to better provide a unified face to the HR customer and create programs...
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Why We Don’t Need HR

3
September 9, 2008

Simon Baker wrote a piece that was not as inflammatory as the well known “Why We Hate HR” article a couple years ago.  I found it quite entertaining and thought it deserved a response.  Simon has a couple of good points, but also it’s discouraging to see his opinions from both a management and...
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Cycling Concepts and HR: Team Time Trials

0
August 18, 2008

In the team time trial, a group of cyclists (usually 4) will ride as a single unit using the technology of their bikes and ever possible advantage of drafting they can get.  Like a well oiled machine, a single rider will be at the front of the group, taking the majority of wind slowing...
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