Industrial action impacts high tech companies too

Thinking of strikes, it is easy to imagine coal miners, railway workers and automobile assemblers with shop stewards quoting Trotsky, Gramsci and Marcuse, and brandishing a well worn copy of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. This is a naive and foolish stereotype. As this example from Yahoo! shows,  industrial action is alive and well in the high tech industry. Valleywag reported on a strike at Yahoo in France.

(watch the video here if you dont see the embedded player)

Carol Bartz’s lacerating eccentricity may captivate Silicon Valley, where she’s cutting costs left and right. Not so in Europe: When Yahoo tried to shut down operations in France, workers made this surreal, defiant video. And went on strike, naturally.Their point: Yahoo made about 1 million euros per worker from Yahoo France alone last year, and used to hype how “it’s important to have [locally] concentrated engineering activities… to innovate” in France, where it would base “one of [its] most important centers in Europe.” Yahoo France’s engineers will now stop working until Yahoo agrees that they shouldn’t have to stop working. At least they’re fact checking the internet company’s hype along the way.

(thanks Valleywag).

There is a  lesson for all “global” high tech companies. HR practices that work in the US don’t necessarily travel well. I have quite a bit of research in the pipeline on a related topic. I have seen global HR projects derailed because of worker and union opposition, forcing system redesigns and huge delays.

I’ll predict that the software industry will face increasing collective and industrial action. Social software makes it easier to organize and motivate around an issue, and create a strong collective even without the presence of a union. It makes it easy to reach the broader public too.  We have seen the power of the disgruntled customer using social media to mobilise support and opinion. Employees have access to the same tools and media. Executives of global software companies will need to get a lot more savvy about global HR issues. Gosh, that degree I did in Industrial Relations might actually be useful one day.

 

More Shakespeare. This time on the software sales pitch.

 

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

Sonnet 123

thanks again to the sonnet a day.

 

Shakespeare groks in memory databases

I’ve been trying to get to grips with in-memory databases. Seems the bard beat me to it.

(image via wikipedia, thanks)

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Sonnet 122.

Thanks to the sonnet a day site.

 

Digital native.

 

4 year old builds his own computer, showing Top Gear on YouTube.

 

Flowers and HCM systems architecture.

I’ve tried this metaphor on several client calls recently, so let me inflict it on you too.

Cactus

via Flickr, the cc licence of Rodolfo Cartas thanks.

In this architecture, everything is from one vendor, and integration with third party applications is rather difficult. Typical ERP /HRMS pitch of the mid-nineties. Why do you need other software? We can do everything.

Sunflower

via Flickr,  the cc licence of C.S. 2.0 Thanks

Big core system, running most of the processes, with a series of smaller, tactical solutions interfaced around the edges.  Typical HR IT architecture of many ERP-Centric organizations today.  ERP runs the core transactions, with bits of SaaS tacked on around on the edges.

Daisy

via Flickr,  the cc licence of law_keven Thanks

Small core system on premise, but most of the action takes place in the systems around the edges. Increasingly common as SaaS vendors continue to deliver richer functionality. Some challenges with integration, as there are many applications trying to connect to the core. 

Rose

via  Flickr, the cc licence of Gertrud K. Thanks

No significant core system, SaaS petals dominate.  Still very rare, but we expect to see more of these, challenging the traditional core and peripheral model. 

What sort of flower does your architecture represent?

 

Linking performance to pay. The G20 and HCM software.

(photo CC 2.o attribution, thanks to g-hat!)

World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh to discuss banking reform and other pressing matters. According to the Guardian,  the discussions are likely to be rocky.

European leaders appeared to be on a collision course tonight with Barack Obama and Gordon Brown after Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned that the G20 summit must not be diverted from clamping down on bankers’ bonuses and hedge funds.

The article continues.

Sarkozy has suggested that bankers’ pay should be capped at a certain percentage of their institution’s assets or revenue.

Fredrick Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister and current president of the European council, promised a “specific discussion” on bonuses including proposals for individual caps on bankers’ bonuses, that bonuses would be linked to achievement and not given if there were losses, and that there would be transparency on precise decisions taken by boards. “We from the EU will ask to be very clear on that” he said.

Putting aside the ethical and political debate, if Fredrick and Nicolas have their way, this would particularly riveting for anyone in the business of HCM software.

It looks to me this is a demand for an integrated employee goals / performance management, compensation and incentive compensation system that also integrates into a corporate performance and risk management system, combined with a significant dose of compliance reporting. 

 

Shakespeare on fixing writer’s block

  So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,
And found such fair assistance in my verse
As every alien pen hath got my use
And under thee their poesy disperse.
Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
Have added feathers to the learned’s wing
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:
In others’ works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
But thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance.

 

Thanks to the fabulous Sonnet a day, and to my Muse.

http://www.web-l.com/shakespeare/poetry/sonnets/

 

A Flock of Seagulls

Don’t ever give your heart to a stranger
Don’t tell your secrets to a friend
Don’t put your heart in mortal danger -
They all desert you in the end.
The more you live
the more you love.
Or so they say: The more you love
the more you throw it away.
They say that nothing lasts forever

(photo mine use under cc with attribution)

In 1985, while on hockey tour from South Africa, I visited my cousin in Nottingham. He had an excellent music collection, and he introduced me to all sorts of bands I’d not really heard much of back home in South Africa. I copied several albums with his rather fancy double cassette deck system, including the Flock of Seagulls’ albums. I clearly remember using brand new TDK D-90 cassettes, and carefully copying out the track names. Telecommunication, The More You Live, The More You Love, Remember David, Wishing. Using a new cassette was a sign of respect back then. 

A decade or so later I replaced the tapes by buying AFOS on CD, and I have since bought a few tracks online too.

Last night, in Weinheim, I saw them live in a cosy venue called Cafe Central. I paid 18 euros at the door. The place wasn’t packed, but  a number of folks turned out dressed in 80’s garb, hair and all. There were even a couple of punks. The band looked older, as we all do, and the famous hairdo was pinned back under a baseball cap. The sound was a bit more guitar, base and drums than it was in the 1980’s, but it was fun. Some of the line up had changed, but for about 90 minutes the place rocked. They played the hits and a couple of newer tracks, it was a fine evening. I would have even bought the t-shirt if they’d had one for sale.

(photo mine use under cc with attribution)

I’m sure that many of us have similar experiences with music, so as parliamentarians in various countries consider draconian 3 strikes and you are out type legislation for file sharing, perhaps they should look at their own musical collections. You could argue that I should have bought the AFOS albums in 1985, but if I remember correctly I had already spent my pocket money on Howard Jones’s Dream into Action. 

I’m wishing that the parliamentarians would read JP’s post.

Most people are law-abiding. Most people want to make sure that artists are rewarded. Sometimes laws are out of date and need changing. Sometimes business models are out of date and need changing.

I ‘ll leave you with a stanza from Telecommunication, AFOS’ hit song from 1981.

Video screen,
Silver page,
With a new calibration
For the nuclear age.

 

Scrabble and HR

Photo via the cc of sgt. PepperedJane. thanks!

To score well at Scrabble, you need to look at the score, not the just word. Long words across the board might look good, but unless they land on double or triples, you simply waste letters and open up the board for the others to score. Literary types like to think that they are good at Scrabble because they know lots of words and are well read, but Qi or QANAT aren’t something that even the most literary of souls come across in literature. To win at Scrabble you need to look at the numbers and the odds, know what letters have gone already, and have a mental database of short nasty words like ZO and XU. Sure, a love of words helps with Scrabble, but to score well, you need to engage the numeric side of your brain.

It may be stretching it a bit, but I think HR has a similar challenge.

To be a top HR professional, you do need to have empathy for people. It is probably what attracted you to the job in the first place. But if you are going to succeed you need to be analytical too. HR professionals that can see patterns beyond the incident, abstract the problems from the personal, and make the best move given the constraints  they have been dealt with, will have a real impact on shaping the business and their careers.

We are doing a lot of work at the moment on pattern based strategy here at Gartner (clients see this). I’m going to be exploring this is in an HR context later this year.  Extracting and analysing patterns out of the mass of data sources and conflicting signals. HR is going to get a lot more analytical.

 

HR IT project musings.

I spoke with an organization the other day, they are re-implementing a core HR administrative system, because the implementation they did several years ago hasn’t had the take up from the HR department users. This puzzled me a bit. How come HR users can decide whether to use the corporate system or not?  Administrative Finance people don’t come into the office and say, “Today I’m not going to use the general ledger to process these journal entries, I’m going to use this access database that my cousin Mike built last weekend, because it has a much nicer UI and it has some cool fields I want.”

My regular readers will know that I’m doing lots of research into the impact of social software and user driven applications in an HR context, but there are some core applications and processes that need to be non-negotiable. Senior HR management need to put the discipline and governance in place to drive standard system usage. It doesn’t happen by magic.

It may well be that the earlier implementation of the standard HR system didn’t meet user needs, and the decision to re-implement makes sense. They have an experienced partner this time around, who has a pre-configured solution that has a good industry fit. The standard software’s latest release is improved.  They will use a proper formal project methodology. All goodness.

But I heard a couple of things in the discussion about the re-implementation that worried me in particular.

1. HR are too busy to dedicate resource to the project.

  If the user community for the application can’t dedicate resource, then don’t do the project.

2. The key user can only spend one day a week on the project.

One day a week on a project means you have a spectator at best.  Take the key people and put them full time on the project. Make their careers, bonuses and corporate happiness dependent on the success of the project. You need committed, not involved.

3. The key user is really technical. He can build the most amazing stuff in Access and Excel. It is great that you can find someone in HR that is interested in technology, but if he/she is the one who has built their empire in excel, you have some significant work to do to make them the champion of a standard application.

It sounds so obvious, but if this the system that will be supporting day to day HR activities for the next decade or two, then HR need to get their best and most motivated people on the project. Otherwise, IT should be spending their time elsewhere.