HR Service Delivery
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Up In The Air – Boarding Theory
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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 the…
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Employee Portal Experience Fundamentals
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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, pagelets,…
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Real Life is Analog
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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 that…
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Burnt to a Crisp
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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). Second…
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Change Management, Collaboration, Communications, Engagement, Enterprise Solutions, Functional, Governance, HR Service Delivery, HR Strategy
Blending Food Flavors and Cross Functional Collaboration
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I usually write about cycling here, but I generally make it no secret that I’m a wannabe foodie. ((My other blog is a food blog)) Great food is sometimes about simplicity, and other times it’s about depth and flavor combinations. I was recently at Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles (( Osteria Mozza is a partnership…
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Leading Practices versus Best Practices
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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 I…
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Process Excellence – Push it forward
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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 quality…
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Change Management, HR Service Delivery, HR Strategy, HR Technology, Implementation, Service Delivery, Vendors
Support versus Change, Evolution versus Revolution
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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 speak…
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HRO is not Dead
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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, HRO…
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Change Management, Enterprise Solutions, Governance, HR Service Delivery, HR Strategy, HR Technology
M&A – Whose System Wins?
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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 decisions…
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Kaizen Bursts
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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 reflection. …
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Staffing for Global IT Models
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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 “best…
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Tri-athletes: Transitions
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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 that…
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Tri-athletes: Skills
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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 weekend:…
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String Theory and Particles
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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 those,…
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What is a Center of Expertise?
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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 not…
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The History and Future of HR Technology
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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 in…
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Bill Kutik Radio Show – The Un-Siloing of HR
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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 that…
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Why We Don’t Need HR
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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 strategy…
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Cycling Concepts and HR: Team Time Trials
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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 impact…