Blog Posts

The County of Santa Barbara is the newest addition to the Knowledge Infusion family. Located 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles and 300 miles south of San Francisco, it occupies 2,774 square miles, one-third of which is located in the Los Padres National Forest. Bordered on the West and South by the Pacific Ocean, the County has 110 miles of beaches. The County is home to over 425,000 people who enjoy its mild climate, picturesque coastline, scenic mountains, and numerous parks and beaches.

Welcome County of Santa Barbara; YOU are KI!

http://www.countyofsb.org/

This week started for me at SuccessFactors' SuccessConnect event in Chicago, and it was a great way to start a week.  SuccessFactors is releasing some interesting new talent management functionality (crossing into the social colloaboration space, finally), there was a great group of current and potential SuccessFactors customers, and the sessions were informative.  The most welcome part of the conference, for me, was finally hearing Lars Dalgaard and other SuccessFactors executives talk about helping customers with their strategies around the technology, and how to think about talent management more holistically, rather than just focusing on the technology and feature functionality.

What, or who, was missing?  Those most likely to develop and champion talent and talent management strategies were missing.  The majority of the attendees were HR specialists in performance management, compensation, succession, etc., who are responsible for executing a strategy, not organizational leaders (HR or otherwise) responsible for developing those strategies.  Sessions on talent management strategy, including a session presented by Knowledge Infusion, were well attended and received (the most common comment I heard was "great presentation - you gave me a lot to think about"), I departed the conference wondering whether the messages about talent management strategy left participants truly inspired or just wondering how on earth they would ever be able to engage a strategic conversation with their organizations.

And this worries me, primarily because talent management efforts are not living up to executive expectations.  A study conducted by Business Intelligence and summarized by Personnel Today explains "Despite the lip service given to the talent imperative, corporate practice looks way off the mark", and lack of strategy is one of the key reasons why.

"First, more than two-thirds of companies do not have a talent strategy. This is a major obstacle. Until a company has assessed the talent implications of its business plans, it will be operating in the dark. In many cases, the default strategy is to take care of senior management succession. While meeting this goal is certainly important, it is not an answer to the big questions."

One of the reasons organizations lack talent strategies is that responsibility for and ownership of said talent strategies is still unclear.

"The answer is that it has to be a collaborative responsibility, although the ultimate owners must be operational managers because they are answerable for performance. Senior managers need to be actively involved in specifying the competencies and capabilities needed for key roles, as well as assessing performance, supporting talent development and creating the operational environment that enables talent to flourish.

HR and talent specialists must ensure that the optimum processes and practices are in place. They invariably have a leading part to play in facilitating steering groups involved in defining the talent agenda and identifying the ways in which competencies can be reliably assessed and developed. Further down the line, they need to be part of the regular talent review process."

The need for talent and talent management strategies is something that Knowledge Infusion has been saying since the firm's inception, and identifying who has responsibility for developing those strategies is something we work through in every single Knowledge Infusion talent management strategy engagement.  It was very exciting to hear a talent management software vendor CEO talk about strategy in the same keynote as technology.  Now, if only those responsible for developing talent and talent management strategies - business leaders and senior HR executives - would attend these conferences so they can hear, learn and share as well.

Knowledge Infusion proudly announces the launch of our company-wide philanthropy program:  KI Volunteers and the KI Foundation.

While the culture of KI has always included strong participation in local events and national charities, we are excited to formally launch employee programs that support the active participation in volunteer activities in our local communities.

The first KI Volunteers program is in the initial planning stage right now!  Regional groups of employees are forming  and choosing the activity they will support.  Look for more details here on each regional team, their charity, and how you can get involved!

The KI Foundation is already planning its first fundraising event that will take place in November at the Big Sur Half Marathon. Employees are making commitments now on their plans to run the 13.3 miles.  Look for additional updates here on the KI Team and how your organization can get involved and support the KI Foundation.

Fifteen years ago, I worked for Qualcomm Incorporated in San Diego. It was 1994, we had about 1,800 employees and were expecting to hire an additional 2,000 employees that year. Basically, we were doubling in size in one year and subsequently kept that pace of recruiting at the organization for an additional 5 years, until 1999.

As I remember it, we had some interesting things going on back then including:

1. An aggressive recruiting model - we had on average 100 resources centralized in staffing/recruiting all focused on talent acquisition.
2. Less than a 2% regrettable turn over - in essence people we hired stuck like glue (stock was good back then).
3. A fearless leader of staffing that drove recruiting like a business - we had goals and were measured on results. We as a team were empowered to ask forgiveness not permission.
4. A centralized organizational model for recruiting - recruiters were dedicated to specific disciplines/and divisions, and shared work, candidates, assistants, interviews, whatever it took to manage the volume.
5. A centralized recruiting operations team (which I lead) that focused on processing resumes, running reports and maintaining the online career site.

At this point you're wondering what does this have to do with an undefined economy...I'm getting there.  With all of this amazing structure and resources we still had some serious challenges in recruiting 'back in the day'. Two great forces were against us:

1. Our location - I know you’re thinking I'm crazy - who wouldn't want to move to San Diego
2. The Bay Area (San Francisco) Boom.  A large challenge to Qualcomm in 2004 was building the confidence of the applicants we were pursuing to the location.

San Diego was only considered a vacation community. High technology wasn't fast to build a presence in San Diego and General Dynamics was closing their locations. Between being a military town and resort destination, convincing seasoned engineers that there is a promise for them at Qualcomm, and particularly in San Diego, was difficult. Add into that mix the cost of living, compared to other places (not San Francisco) we had an uphill battle to convince applicants to relocate their families.

As we surveyed the applicants that turned us down, we quickly understood the risk applicants were not willing to take. It boiled down to the risk of if the position didn't work out at Qualcomm, there was no other company to fall back on apply too. We quickly set out to change that impression and a team established a consortium of high technology companies recruiting in San Diego. The San Diego Tech Force was established and a joint advertising, marketing and branding campaign was launched to demonstrate that San Diego could be and was a high technology hotbed of companies.

This effort took some brainstorming and some agreements with our competitors. Basically we had to partner with the competition to dispel the myth that San Diego didn't have high technology company roots. Those partnerships included a consolidated branding/marketing website, resume submissions that went to all companies, and some light agreements on not poaching in the relocation process.  I don’t have to explain how effective this was because in 1998 Qualcomm grew to over 12,000 (1000% growth) in just 4 years. Granted all of this growth was not tied to the San Diego Tech Force strategy and plan but it sure helped get those first few years going…

Economic instability based on the 'buzz' of another location San Francisco Bay area was exploding back in those days. Companies were tripping over themselves to make the highest - craziest offer to applicants to join their organizations. New cars, six-figure sign-on bonuses, stock grants that would have NASDAQ rippled with delight…not to mention the promise of independence in work environment, autonomy in schedules, and plenty of other activities to do because it was California after all.  The largest push was with the college recruiting models in those days. Students were given offers before they finished their Junior year, with very little restrictions. Poaching from one company to another was a fashion… and an art form. For the recruiting bench at Qualcomm, there was plenty of anxiety around the offer declines we had with our college programs. It was the sore spot of some of our recruiting efforts, and we became very aggressive at understanding what was going on. We quickly figured out through tracking 'true' decline reasons that the bulk of the college students were focused on the promised land of San Francisco.

We decided to try something unconventional and came up with the strategy to re-extend the same offers to many of those college applicants 11 months after their start date with the 'companies of their dreams' in SF. Our strategy/hope was that the fantasy factor had worn off, the freedom to working when you want was replaced with constant meetings, the commitment of independence in work environment was met with tripling up in a 8 X 8 cube because there was no office space.

Our strategy worked! We had over 70% of those re-recruited (now one year business smart) new grads accept the same offer. The one thing we did change was in many cases the relocation. We offered a flat amount to move from SF to SD - and their start date was contingent on them having been at their current employer a year (because then no one had to pay back their relocation the first time). We saved money moving them 10 hours south,, vs. cross country. And I can say back then we delivered on the promise. Plenty of time to hit the surf over lunch, sand volleyball courts 5 minutes from the office door, amazing health benefits, and a 10 x10 office or cube - not shared.

While neither of these stories have much to do with today’s economy, I would challenge anyone who is thinking only about today and how to 'deal with things' to start thinking about tomorrow and plan for better times. What goes up must come down and will go back up…we're smarter now. The automation we have today to apply the acceleration and deceleration of our recruiting processes is fantastic, compared to what I had to work with back then. And if you don’t believe me here is something to ponder; in 1995 Qualcomm processed over 1,000 resumes a day… process back then truly meant open the mail, sort the resumes, code the resumes, prep the resumes, scan the resumes, verify the resume extraction, print the response card label, apply the card label to the card, send to post office. On average I had a staff of 6 temps working full time just to do these tasks… and that was just the tactical aspect of things. We had a commitment to our applicants that they would receive a response card within 5 days of when we received the resume, so USPS got 3 days of that, so we had to process every resume in under 24 hours.

We have all come so far…. but we can go farther.  We can respond to applicants in a consistent manner, we can be creative with how to partner with our competitors to ride out this economy storm, and we can always leverage the information we have to understand what the real issue is and try something new. 2009 - is a great year to try something new with your recruiting technology.

A Knowledge Infusion client asked me a question last night and I thought I would get the communities thought on the question.

Do you think that Oracle HR Fusion will transform the HR technology space over the next two years?

Respond to poll below

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to poll

This is a question that I get on a daily basis including last night on the plane by a very influential CEO from outside of the space.

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments below?

Who do you think and why in the Fortune 1000 space...Did I miss someone who you think will take the crown?

To all vendors...these are in no particular order

Oracle/Oracle

Oracle/PeopleSoft

Workday

Ultimate Software

Ceridian

ADP

Lawson

SAP

NuView

Spectrum HR

SuccessFactors (if you think they will have one)

Taleo (if you think they will have one)

Look forward to seeing your thoughts.

Another infusion of knowledge...

The KI Friday Factoid has been a regular feature at KI since the inception of the company

Many of you may recall my recent blog post that explored the fact that the leaders of the failed companies at the center of our economic meltdown reads like a rogues gallery of graduates from our best business schools.  Harvard Business School is particularly well represented in this dubious group.

Well, in typical knee jerk fashion, there has been an explosion of interest at business schools in ethics courses and in student activities like clubs, lectures, conferences — about personal and corporate responsibility and on how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community.  A recent New York Times article gives the following examples

"Nearly 20 percent of the Harvard graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others."

At Columbia Business School, all students must pledge to an honor code: “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Hmmm....in the post Madoff, AIG, and Enron era, business schools are going back to basics:  Borrowing ethics from the Boy Scouts.

Food for thought....

Have a Great Wekend Everyone!

Illumina www.illumina.com is a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of next-generation life-science tools and integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. To continue to grow and develop the best products, they realized they needed a new HRMS system to support their organization.  Being on the cutting edge of biotechnology, they wanted to ensure they were making the right technology decision for their new HRMS, and taking all of the right things into consideration.

Illumina partnered with Knowledge Infusion to understand their business needs and select an HRMS system that would support them into the future. In addition, Knowledge Infusion created the deployment and change management plan that would get their users excited about the new solution.

Download the Illumina Case Study and get the full story.

“Knowledge Infusion helped us with our current pressing needs and guided us with future thinking about next generation technology and processes that Illumina should be considering."

Illumina, we are proud to have you as part of the KI Family:  YOU are KI!

Last week as part of my role at Knowledge Infusion,  I had the opportunity to present during 3 different webinars that had “live” attendance of over 700 people collectively.  When you get the rare opportunity to speak to that many people in a given week; live or via “today’s live” it is a true treat.  A few things I wanted to call out about these specific events.

• The webinar that I was lucky enough to be able to present in collaboration with HR Executive Magazine had the added benefit of helping the audience understand the power and significance of Twitter.  As part of the event, there are at least 100 new Twitter users that are following me on the tool.  If each week each of us could impact 100 people in that manner, wouldn’t the world be a better place.  For those that want to follow me on Twitter, CLICK HERE and then click the FOLLOW button.

• Jason Corsello and I had the opportunity as part of the Knowledge Infusion Optimize series to present to an audience via webinar the topic of User Experience and Adoption in today’s world.  As a result of that webinar, we have received an overwhelming number of discussion topics related to how HR can better help the workforce USE the tools that are being made available and better MARKET them for use by the masses.

• Lastly, I had the opportunity to present to a large HR technology class on Friday afternoon.  This is a class of undergraduate students moving into the HR world and as part of one of the Knowledge Infusion values of “partnership” and growing the future of the space, we discussed the ever-changing role and what they can do to ensure that when they enter the workforce, they are prepared for the changes coming in the future of work as well as the expectations that will be put on these future leaders as “business leaders” and not just “HR leaders”

Check our website often and register for these events when they are made available.  In a time when travel budgets are tough and the cycle speed of the world is changing faster than ever, webinars are a great way to continue your learning and understand the world we work in today.

I would love to hear what “topics” you would like to see presented at future webinars and what “topics” your executives would be most interested in learning about.

Another infusion of knowledge….

Please leave your comments/suggestions below..

Did you catch Sunday's episode of Extreme Makeover, Home Edition?

                                                   

Our own Kim Heger and family were volunteers on the Indianapolis project that brought a new home to a well deserving family that has been giving of themselves for years to bring support and educational resources to the community.  In addition, due to the generosity of almost 200 companies and over 5,000 volunteers, they built a new library, planted 1200 trees, re-roofed 2 homes, repaired 22 homes, redressed 5 miles of alleys, repaired siding on 1 church, built 1 wheelchair ramp, procured 1 school to serve as a community center, built free wireless internet access for 450 homes, and donated 100 computers for use in the neighborhood. This was much more than a home make-over, but an extreme community make-over.

Together, the Indianapolis community came together to do the impossible-- complete all of this work in less than a week--and be a catalyst for future neighborhood transformation. Learn more about the project and volunteers that made this all possible.

Kim was on-site keeping everyone on task including directing traffic, ensuring all of the vendors and contractors knew where they were supposed to be going, and keeping a positive attitude for all.

Kim, we applaud you for taking time out to support your community and those in need. You are extremely KI!

The KI Friday Factoid has been a regular feature at Knowledge Infusion since the inception of the company.

The Friday Factoid staff has begun dabbling with Twitter recently.  No conclusions so far, but suffice to say it is not for everyone.  One Factoid staff member equates the 140 character message length limit to trying to have a conversation with someone while riding past them one a bicycle.  Tweets can be useless, cryptic, and bothersome, but once in a while you may get surprisingly useful information.  The goal of most Twitter users seems to be to get as many followers as possible as a way to build their brand or sell you something.  Nevertheless, Twitter is worth checking out if you haven't yet since it is all the rage - for the moment.

CIO.com recently put together these Five Dos and Don'ts for Twitter (paraphrased below) to help you get started.  They also have a complete Twitter Bible if you want to go deep.

1. How to Follow and Un-Follow People

Followers are the people on Twitter who subscribe to your tweets. Some people believe that if someone follows you, it's impolite not to follow that person back.  But especially if you're just starting off on Twitter, you shouldn't feel obligated to follow all people back, even if you worry they'll think it's rude of you. Instead, you should follow people who share your interests or whose tweets you find meaningful or compelling.

2. Be Up Front About Your Twitter Aspirations

There are a large number of sales and marketing types on Twitter.  As such, you might want to make it clear who you represent and why you're on Twitter. You can put a disclaimer in your  Twitter background noting that the opinions expressed in your tweets don't necessarily reflect those of your employers. You also might provide a link that explains with greater detail why you're on Twitter. While this can allow you some leeway, it doesn't necessarily mean your employer or your followers won't call you out on some tweets.  In the end, the more up front you are in your profile description about who you represent and what you plan to talk about, the more you'll allow yourself some cover.

3. Be Personal (to a point)

While you should heed the advice of the aforementioned section, you also shouldn't be afraid to be personal in your Twitter account. Most people wouldn't join Twitter to be spun by your corporate boilerplate statement or marketed to in traditional fashions. For individuals, Twitter can be a very personal medium, and that's not a bad thing for business people.  Twitter can humanize you in the eyes of your followers (who might want to do business with you in the future as a result of that human interaction).   Your personal tweets should have meaning to your audience. Tweet about issues that are fairly universal to your list of followers and that will make them feel welcome to reply to with their own comments.

People's Twitter streams are uninteresting if they're just declarative sentences like 'I'm going to the movies' or 'it's gray outside.  It's better if it's something that people might feel interested in replying to.

4. Reciprocate Gracefully

Advice on using social media outlets is often served up with a slew of jargony slogans like "engage with the community" or "build your social capital." But sometimes what that means can be unclear, especially on a service like Twitter, which is still relatively young.  So how do you become respected by the community and benefit from the give-and-take that happens between users on Twitter?  It's not all that complicated.

"Be honest, interesting and unselfish," says Laura Fitton, @pistachio), who runs Pistachio Consulting, which advices businesses on how to utilize Twitter.  That means not just tweeting links to your own company or website. It also means when you tweet other people's work or news, you shouldn't make it look like a chore. Add some feeling or commentary, or people will see through you.

5. Use The Direct Message Correctly

Although Twitter generally operates as a one-to-many medium, the direct message allows you to reach out to a follower privately. (In order to direct message someone, they must follow you.). But direct messages can be misused, too.  Direct messages, in their best form, should be used as a Web-based version of the text message. Message someone private information such as when you plan to meet up for an appointment or share your cell phone number. You can use this option for any message that doesn't concern the rest of your followers.

Hmmm.....Food for thought...

Have a Great Weekend Everyone!!

Here’s the scenario: a progressive, HR-friendly CEO brings on board a progressive, strategic-thinking Chief HR Officer. Together, these two agree that the organization needs a talent management strategy – it will include leadership development, competency models, talent mobility models, new technology – the works! The Chief HR Officer then hires or designates a couple of trusted staff members to implement the strategy.  The work gets going, and everything seems to be going swimmingly.

Until IT isn’t.

Business leaders are frustrated. They’ve been promised great HR support for talent management, but they don’t see it happening for them. Instead, they say they are getting the same old HR support they’ve always gotten. Employees are frustrated – they’ve heard rumors about new talent management programs – development opportunities, career planning, new collaboration tools. But there has been nothing beyond “hearing about it”. When is it going to happen for them? And what is IT, anyway?

Last fall, the McKinsey Quarterly Newsletter published “Realigning the HR function to manage talent”, an article that was featured in a Knowledge Infusion Consultant's Corner blog on Sept. 8  and the HR Capitalist on Sept. 15. I feature it again here, to highlight the importance of informing, involving, and building the capability of HR to support a talent management strategy. And this means informing, involving and elevating the entire HR function, from the specialists in Centers of Excellence to the generalists supporting the business. Is it helpful to have a few key players driving strategy implementation? Sure. Is it sufficient to successfully implement and realize true business results from talent transformation? Not even close.

The most successful Knowledge Infusion clients that we’ve worked are those that fully grasp, and grapple with, the fundamental changes to the HR function itself that are required to truly design, develop, and implement transformative talent management processes. This often requires HR to walk its own walk – the same principles driving world-class recruiting, performance management, pipeline and mobility management and development that HR is implementing for the business must be implemented for HR as well, preferably before being implemented for the business.   In this way, HR becomes completely familiar with, and fully invested in, being that true strategic talent management adviser that the business so desperately wants and needs.

Being a progressive HR thinker and adviser / consigliore to the CEO isn't enough - transformative CHROs have to lead their own function, too.

It should be an interesting week as Jason Averbook travels to Bucharest, Romania to present on Web 2.0 Strategies at the HR 2.0 Conference, and Heidi Spirgi is floating around New York harbor with hundreds of HR leaders at The HR Forum on the Norwegian Dawn.

You can get updates and follow Jason and his adventures to Romania on Twitter at @jasonaverbook.

The last update from Heidi was that they were requiring hand sanitation to protect from the Swine Flu and she was just about to do the mandatory safety test, putting on lifejackets prior to setting sail.  With extremely limited internet and phone connection, we don't expect to hear much more from Heidi until she gets back to dry land later this week.

Jason and Heidi:  Thank you for traveling across the globe, spending the week on a boat, and leading Knowledge Infusion and the transformation of HR across the world.  YOU are KI!