{"id":2614,"date":"2015-01-13T09:23:23","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T17:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=2614"},"modified":"2014-12-05T09:31:47","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T17:31:47","slug":"applying-the-cheat-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=2614","title":{"rendered":"Applying the Cheat Code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m pretty hopeless in most games. \u00a0There are always levels, other people to compete against, and too many tasks to get done. \u00a0Inevitably, I run out of patience before I reach the top state, or I realize I\u2019m not very good at the game and I just give up due to incompetence. \u00a0The wonderful thing about many games is the \u201ccheat code.\u201d \u00a0The cheat code often gives a specified commodity that might be useful in helping a player reach that top state. \u00a0The cheat code might come in the form of unlimited gold to but things, extra power for killing things, or even the ability to jump levels. \u00a0My only hope is the cheat code, the lame player\u2019s way to the top.<\/p>\n<p>Wouldn\u2019t it be wonderful if we could apply a cheat code in our work lives? \u00a0If there was one, it can\u2019t possibly be as simple as a game where you just google to see if a cheat code exists. \u00a0In real life, cheat codes are incredibly hard to find, but perhaps they do exist somewhere. \u00a0In the world of technology deployments, we certainly know what are NOT cheat codes.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lift and shift deployments. \u00a0Let\u2019s say you have a user experience problem and you want to implement a new core HR system and have much better cloud systems that employees interact with. \u00a0The reality is that you will end up with a much better UX, but when your employees log into the new system, they are not going to be any happier with the experience if you did a lift and shift implementation. \u00a0Simply going in and changing the technology without any of the other foundational factors really does not help you. \u00a0It turns out that other factors like your process design, your portal and content management, and your approval chains are still an obstacle. \u00a0Let\u2019s say for example an employee has moved homes. \u00a0The fact that they still can\u2019t find documentation in the portal that tells them an address change is only the first step, and payroll\/state tax changes might need to happen, or how benefit pans are impacted is still a problem. \u00a0Sure, getting into a more beautiful system might give them incremental happiness, but it\u2019s not enough to overcome the significant shortcomings in your overall program.<\/li>\n<li>Radical technology transformations only. \u00a0In addition to #1, many organizations do radical technology transformations and completely forget the amount of change management they will need, or they defund the change management work stream after the first change order comes in. \u00a0It\u2019s always sad to see an organization that has spent millions of dollars implementing technology that users don\u2019t adopt because there was a poor change strategy. \u00a0Often there is nothing wrong with the technology, or the processes. \u00a0But when a user finds something hard the first time because they were not coached on the new process, the repeat user is hard to come by.<\/li>\n<li>Saving costs by changing your processes only. \u00a0At the end of the day, you do have to realize that your users really are dissatisfied with your technology too. \u00a0Yes, they do hate the process because it takes too long and involves too many people that don\u2019t matter to the outcome, but the interface is terrible and hard to navigate. \u00a0I\u2019ve seen company after company implement new processes on top of really old technology and then wonder why the end users still complain.<br \/>\nThe moral of the story here is that people (change), process and technology all matter, and it\u2019s hard to have huge successes if you don\u2019t transform all of these three components together.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The good news is that there actually are some valid cheat codes.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cloud. \u00a0Wait, didn\u2019t we just say that you can\u2019t just do technology alone? \u00a0Yes we did, but the facts are that today\u2019s best cloud technologies allow organizations not only to shift cost and headcount resources in a highly efficient manner by removing in-house technology management, but process design is simply so much easier than it was with legacy platforms. \u00a0We\u2019ll still need to remember to have good change management, but cloud really also makes adoption easier since the UX is so significantly better than older platforms. \u00a0Compared to legacy on-premise software, cloud platforms accelerate people, process and technology components and serve as a game changing cheat code.<\/li>\n<li>Crowd. \u00a0I\u2019m not seeing crowdsourcing in HR yet, but I think it\u2019s a major cheat code for whoever can figure it out first. \u00a0We have build such huge and costly infrastructures around shared services, but today\u2019s social technologies combined with metadata\/tagging structures have the ability to let end users manage their own inquiries with the corporate cloud. \u00a0Imagine the employee who moves homes and asks the corporate crowd what to do, and receives multiple answers from the crowds with links to the address change function in HR, payroll tax forms, and benefits enrollment. \u00a0HR now plays the content curator role rather than the source of all content.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The thing to remember is that these cheat codes only are available for a short period of time. \u00a0At some point, everyone else figures what the cheat code is and everyone has the advantage. \u00a0The early adopters can leverage an advantage for a few years, while laggers suffer higher costs, lower adoption, poorer UX, and slower processes for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m pretty hopeless in most games. \u00a0There are always levels, other people to compete against, and too many tasks to get done. \u00a0Inevitably, I run out of patience before I reach the top state, or I realize I\u2019m not very&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[399,2,34],"tags":[431,347,377,430,278],"class_list":["post-2614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hr-technology","category-hr-technology","category-implementation","tag-cheat-code","tag-cloud","tag-crowd","tag-crowdsourcing","tag-deployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2615,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions\/2615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}