Zapaterismo

Sameness is boringness

I've been extremely quiet lately, a trend that you've likely observed from me over the last 3-6 months.  I'm still around and still very much involved in the world of talent management technology.  But I'm finding the latest and greatest in the HCM to be a bit of a yawn (particularly, perhaps, when compared with two very worthwhile distractions- the U.S. presidential election and the financial/economic crisis).

Specifically, here's my grief.

Vendors:  Much like other bloggers in this space (here, here, and here) , I'm disappointed to see the amount of "me-too" going on out there.  Sameness in functionality might be helpful from the standpoint of standards development, but it can certainly leave people feeling underwhelmed when they think about the future of talent management.  I don't believe the economic outlook is going to help this situation.

Users: Again, like other bloggers, I'm saddened by the amount of automation-only thinking. Slowly we're seeing more and more HR users "realize" (or maybe internalize) that automation doesn't equal strategic. But that leaves HR people in the same place they found themselves half a decade ago, before HCM technology really took off... wondering, "How do I, as an HR practitioner, enable the business?" This is a hump we don't seem to have gotten over as a profession.  

But somebody please prove me wrong!!  What are you seeing out there in the world of HR that inspires you and gives you hope in the future.  What companies are really setting the standard?

PLEASE!  HELP!

Accounting for Human Capital

I've been reading a great deal about financial accounting and reporting recently, in no small part because of a class that I've been taking on the subject.

Those who have read the book Beyond HR know that Boudreau and Ramstad compare accounting to human resources by emphasising accounting's transition from a profession oriented toward processing transactions, to a decision science called finance.  They suggest that HR is bound to face a similar transition.  Thus, a comparison between the accounting and HR shouldn't seem at all original.

However, I'm coming to believe that Beyond HR misses some of the most critical and telling points of comparison between the disciplines. Not only that, but the book encourages readers to pursue strategic HCM and analytics before our organizations are really ready.

First of all, professional accounting and financial reporting practices are universally organized around a number of principles (think GAAP and FASB). One in particular states that, to be useful, all financial information should share the following qualitative characteristics:

• Relevant - useful in making decisions
  • Predictive value  
  • Feedback value   
  • Timely 
• Reliable
  • Verifiable - can be verified independently  
  • Representative of reality
  • Neutral (unbiased) 
• Comparable (across companies)  
• Consistent (over time)  

(See here and here for more)  

It strikes me that the accounting profession has traditionally and continues to place such great emphasis on the quality of information as a prerequisite to reporting, while HR appears over-eager to jump headlong into analytics without the data they rely on meeting any of the above criteria.

Certainly, we have a long way to go before we can actually account for human capital in a way that allows us to add such assets to a balance sheet in a manner that lends itself to comparability and consistency.  

However, and this is a huge HOWEVER, HR needs to start looking more carefully at the relevancy and reliability of its talent data now.  Very few companies implement talent management technologies and programs with this in mind - a fatal flaw in my humble opinion.

Along those lines, another accounting principle addressing "cost benefit" holds that the benefits to users of financial information should outweigh the costs of providing it.

If the business, and not HR, are considered primary users of human capital information (they should be), then I'd say this is one more area where HR has yet to match the practices of its nerdy cousin profession.  And if getting HR right must precede an HR decision science, then I'd say we've got a long way to go.

The value of a sincere apology

I caught this article on Steve Jobs' "leaked" apology regarding MobileMe, which has apparently been struggling. 

I thought it worth sharing, as the positive reviews it has received from the ever-skeptical blogosphere show how much people generally appreciate sincere apologies from companies that screw up. 

Too bad in this case it had to be done through a supposedly "leaked" email. Oh, Apple.

CEO Comp and Corporate Governance

I came across an interesting blog post the other day citing a study of CEO compensation practices in the UK post-2002.  Go here - Truth on the Market Blog 

Importantly, the study notes that levels of executive comp and growth rates in executive comp have not significantly changed since 2002, despite new legislation submitting executive comp to (non-binding) shareholder approval.

HOWEVER, the study did find that executive comp had become more sensitive to whether or a not a company posted a negative operating performance.

Tolstoy on Organizations

I'm slowly but surely working my way through War and Peace and read through a passage recently that struck me as unusually pertinent to the conversations that take place in this blog.  I won't offer any commentary, but simply want to put it out there and see what people make of it. 

The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.

Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.

Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.