Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Are You Ready for Industry 4.0?

Industry 4.0 is the brainchild of the German government and describes the next phase in manufacturing, known as the post information revolution. I came across a great primer from Boston Consulting Group that neatly describes the nine pillars of technological advancement that underpin Industry 4.0, all of which IT professionals must understand in order to effectively compete in the next 10-20 years.

Big Data and Analytics

In manufacturing, analytics optimizes production quality, saves energy, and improves equipment service. According to BSG, in an Industry 4.0 context, the collection and comprehensive evaluation of data from many different sources—production equipment and systems as well as enterprise- and customer-management systems—will become standard to support real-time decision making.

Autonomous Robots

Robots in manufacturing are evolving for even greater utility, becoming more autonomous, flexible, and cooperative. Eventually, says BSG, they will interact with one another and work safely side by side with humans. These robots will cost less and have a greater range of capabilities than those used in manufacturing today.

Simulation

3D simulations of products, materials, and production processes are already used in the engineering phase of manufacturing, but in the future, simulations will be used in plant operations as well. These simulations will leverage real-time data to mirror the physical world in a virtual model. Operators will be able to test and optimize machine settings in the virtual world before the physical changeover, driving down machine setup times and increasing quality.

For more where this came from, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Are You Hurting Your Productivity By Being Conscientious?

When I take work personality tests, I’m off the charts on conscientiousness. Conscientious people tend to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement. We display planned rather than spontaneous behavior and are generally organized and dependable.

This all sounds great, of course. But conscientiousness and productivity are not the same, and I’ve found that some conscientious habits can interfere with productivity. I share them with you here so you can be on the lookout.

Choosing assignments based on your strengths

Business guru Marcus Buckingham says to play to your strengths, and he’s not completely wrong. People who focus on tasks they’re good at will be more productive, usually. The trouble is, when you are naturally talented in an area, you may become complacent and believe there’s nothing more to learn or insights to derive. This can lead to sloppiness and overconfidence in your work, at which point productivity goes downhill.

Following directions

Conscientious people are terrific rule followers. In the workplace, it’s essential that you understand how to submit to sensible authority. The key, though, is the word “sensible.” Conscientious people will often blindly follow their boss’ will whether or not it’s the right path. If you know more about an issue than your manager, you owe it to your team and your productivity to diplomatically address how that issue can best be handled.

Doing online research

I tell myself that spending hours perusing Google Scholar and Wikipedia is a legitimate use of my time when I’m entering uncharted, work-related territory. But is it really? Not always, because in addition to being conscientious, I’m also curious. This means that I might start out looking up recruitment segmentation and, through a chain of spontaneous clicks, find my way to an article on the scientific explanation for ghost sightings. If you’re not careful, online research can turn into the mother of all time sucks.

Going into the office when you don’t have to

Conscientious employees wear their office face time like a badge of honor. However, going in just for the sake of going in is often not as productive as taking time at home where you are free of a commute, distractions, and chatty colleagues. There are some companies – and some managers – who really do equate face time with results. But these are becoming less common, and if you aren’t under the influence of one, consider what spending 50 hours a week trapped in your cubicle actually buys you.

Check out the rest of the article at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

5 Reasons to Encourage Citizen Development

Many IT leaders and even CIOs today are missing an opportunity. Their teams spend all day catering to business needs when in fact the business managers can and should be empowered to solve problems themselves.

There is an old saying that goes: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” IT leaders who facilitate low code rapid application development knowledge in employees outside IT greatly improve IT’s efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, they don’t do it nearly enough and spend a great deal of their time rushing around putting out fires with the few resources they have leaving little time for more strategic initiatives.

According to Gartner’s IT Glossary, a citizen developer is a user who creates new business applications using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT.

Citizen development is possible because end users now have the ability to build a variety of enterprise applications through model-driven platforms and cloud computing services. As long as users understand the principles behind application design and development, they do not have to learn the programming languages that were necessary in the past.

Here are five reasons IT leaders may want to re-consider sanctioning and even encouraging citizen development.

IT Demands Have Gotten Out of Hand

Most enterprise IT departments do not have enough resources to handle every request that comes in and must therefore prioritize by value to the overall business. This means that often, individual groups like accounting and marketing will have important requests put on the back burner while a short-staffed and overwhelmed IT group struggles to keep up. In fact, though, IT might not even be essential in developing solutions for these requests and is simply acting as a bottleneck.

IT Might Not “Get It” Anyway

Even if IT was to take on the request, who’s to say that the IT professional who accepts the project fully understands the requirements necessary to develop the most appropriate technology solution? A citizen developer who has deep subject matter expertise could use a low code platform for rapid application development to more quickly arrive at a solution that meets the department’s needs.

See more at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

HR Needs to Look in the Mirror

Last year, a colleague emailed me a report by McKinsey and the Conference Board. Called False Summit: Why the Human Capital Function Still Has Far To Go, the paper eschewed the notion that companies and their leadership teams have achieved the holistic and systematic view of human capital strategy that is required in today’s business world.

Using research conducted across three methods: a global survey, a literature review, and domestic and international focus groups, McKinsey and the Conference Board identified a few specific challenges that have held HR back in its effort to make more important contributions to the organization and its operations.

The Challenges

Basic capability was cited as the first problem. HR leaders, said the researchers, aren’t able to confidently and assertively solve business issues with line leaders and define the subsequent human capital implications.

The second issue? Mindset. HR professionals view themselves as responsible for a support function. They have a low tolerance for risk and a limited sense of strategic authorship.

Finally, HR is unable to communicate the ROI or business impact of the function. HR professionals have a reputation for being somewhat illiterate when it comes to general business acumen, and even if an organization is typically supportive of innovation, the most intriguing propositions and initiatives aren’t coming from the HR camp.

The Opportunities

This research was published almost three years ago, but I still hear from a lot of frustrated HR practitioners who feel that their organizations don’t take them seriously. They complain that they can’t get budget for their projects and they live in constant fear that half the department will be laid off next week.

The strategic imperative of effective policies involving recruitment, retention, succession and workforce planning, employee engagement, and skill acquisition has never been more significant, and HR-related technology and social media developments have never been more exciting. Yet HR itself struggles to change.

It’s time for HR to look in the mirror and stop blaming the executive team, the Board, other departments, or the field’s negative perception (or all of the above) for the c-suite’s closed door policy. Perhaps, if HR professionals were more willing to expand outside their comfort zones, take risks, and consider long-term gains over short-term expenses, they could inch closer to that golden chair at the CEO’s table. Maybe if they took the extra step of educating themselves about the business beyond their immediate roles and responsibilities, they would open minds about the value of a true partnership.

For more content like this, check out the SilkRoad blog.

3 Steps to Effective Social Media Recruitment

Social media can be a terrific recruiting tool, but only if you understand your audience and the laws that formally and informally govern networks. Most organizations have figured out by now that blasting generic job postings over Twitter doesn’t generate much targeted interest. The better approach requires a bit more legwork but is certainly worth it in the end.

Locate where your targets already hang out

Most organizations go directly to LinkedIn because that’s what everyone else is doing. But depending on the segment you’re trying to attract, LinkedIn may or may not be the best option. There’s also Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, as well as hundreds of industry-specific social networks. In an article for the Cornerstone on Demand blog, Andy Headworth suggested employing Google X-ray searches to find potential candidates across networks by using relevant keywords with job titles, skills and interests. Here’s the command:

• Site: linkedIn.com inurl:pub <“insert job title”>
• Site: twitter.com <“insert job title”> OR <“insert job title synonym”>
• Site: plus.google.com inurl: about “lives in <insert location>” <“insert job title”>

As you do more searches, you’ll notice a pattern of certain types of candidates appearing in specific places on specific networks. That’s how you’ll know where to focus your recruiting efforts.

Create audience-specific content

When using social media, it’s a best practice to engage substantially with each community before posting too much of your own content. This means commenting on others’ posts and offering feedback and ideas 5-10 times for every 1 time you submit an article or link from your company.

Your own content should present a strong and consistent employer brand. It should also be novel and relevant to the topic and/or audience. Curating interesting content from other expert sources is a smart way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and using different types of content – from quotes and questions to videos and Slideshares – will prevent things from getting stale.

Here’s another important piece of advice: don’t just set and forget. Even if you have an automated system (Hootsuite, etc.) that allows you to send social media posts live at a particular time, it’s your responsibility to monitor comments and likes and engage frequently with feedback. Only then can you accurately assess if the content is fulfilling recruitment objectives.

For the last tip, check out the full post on the SilkRoad blog.

Variables Impacting Recruitment Strategy

Segmentation is nothing new to our colleagues down the hall in marketing, but when it comes to recruiting, it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Just a few years ago, recruiting messages were “one-size-fits-all.” We agreed on company verbiage we wanted to share publicly and then shouted those words to anyone who would listen. Then, of course, we’d be stuck going through thousands of resumes, many of which were completely unsuitable for our open positions.

Technology, particularly social media, has made it possible to communicate easily with different groups of potential hires. We also have the ability to research candidates, and learn not just about their education and skills but also about their career goals, interests, personal motivations, and cultural references. In turn, we can create relevant recruiting messages accordingly.

In their book Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management through Customization, Accenture talent executives Susan Cantrell and David Smith suggested that organizations can achieve significant business benefits by treating each individual as a workforce of one – in other words, by offering each would-be employee a customized recruitment experience.

Cantrell and Smith recently wrote an article for Monster.com that revealed how organizations can segment potential employees by any number of variables. Here are a few of their examples:

Talent Source

P&G delivers targeted recruiting messages to potential MBA candidates when they are most receptive – at Christmas vacation, for instance, when students are less busy with academic work and starting to think about the January intern season.

Life Stage or Generation

Companies like Deloitte often reach out to different generations in an age-appropriate format. To reach millennials, for example, they encourage job candidates to speak freely with company employees on Facebook.

For more tips, have a look at the full post on the SilkRoad blog.

4 Ways to Encourage Intrapreneurship

I’ve long been a fan of intrapreneurship, or the practice of entrepreneurial strategies within the context of, and leveraging the resources of, an established organization. I wanted to come up with some good intrepreneurship programs pioneered by HR for this piece, but it was more difficult than I expected.

Beyond the open allocation topic, which we discussed earlier this year and which is mostly limited to the startup community, a Google search revealed very little. I’m realizing that while intrapreneurship may be growing in popularity, the majority of initiatives have nothing whatsoever to do with HR.

Forbes contributor Adam Hartung shared a story about a consulting meeting he had with a company that makes nails and screws and was getting clobbered by adhesive manufacturers in Asia. “The company had become myopic, and did not even realize it. The people were so much alike that they could finish each other’s sentences,” Hartung related. “The HR head was very proud of his ability to keep the company so harmonious.”

“Only, it was about to go bankrupt. Because it wasn’t diverse at all, the company couldn’t see see beyond its locked-in business model. And there sure wasn’t anyone who would rock the boat by admitting competitors were outflanking them, or bringing up wild ideas for new markets or products.”

Hartung’s main point was that some HR best practices actually kill innovation – both inside and outside the department. HR professionals who want to be perceived as strategic contributors must adapt to change and put forth ideas that will help their businesses remain competitive. To that end, here are four ways to foster intrapreneurship in your organization.

Hire Different

Often, HR is the gatekeeper for ensuring that recruits fit within the established culture of the organization. But this often means that diversity is sacrificed and we bring in employees like ourselves, people with the same experiences and perspectives. So, if you’re a brick and mortar electronics behemoth based in the Midwest, hire a startup queen from one of the coasts who has no desire to conform. It’ll be scary, but I guarantee you’ll see a difference.

Listen to Your Junior People

Younger professionals, or members of the millennial generation, routinely look for the most efficient and effective way of doing something rather than adhering blindly to the status quo. Keep an open door and an open mind when your employees share their ideas for transforming the HR function.

For the rest of the post, head on over to the SilkRoad blog.

Negotiation Tactics for a Game-Changing Deal

The prospect of negotiation can be frightening. You may be accustomed to treating your goods and services as commodities, where the set price is the set price. Or you may have close relationships with your loyal customers and be reluctant to disturb them. And sometimes the process might feel unnatural and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, negotiation is a part of life in most types of businesses, and your long-view success can depend upon putting these five tactics to work during the sales process.

1. Understand What’s Really Important

In his book Give and Take, Wharton faculty member Adam Grant suggests an approach called rank ordering. Grant’s negotiation research illustrated that participants achieved stronger outcomes when they ranked all their issues in order of importance. The idea is to share your rankings with the other party and compare them so each party walks away with the items that are most critical to them. This process usually involves trade-offs—for instance, a shorter warranty for a reduced cost.

As a small-business owner, the prospect of negotiation can be frightening. You may be accustomed to treating your goods and services as commodities, where the set price is the set price. Or you may have close relationships with your loyal customers and be reluctant to disturb them. And sometimes the process might feel unnatural and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, negotiation is a part of life in most types of businesses, and your long-view success can depend upon putting these five tactics to work during the sales process.

1. Understand What’s Really Important

In his book Give and Take, Wharton faculty member Adam Grant suggests an approach called rank ordering. Grant’s negotiation research illustrated that participants achieved stronger outcomes when they ranked all their issues in order of importance. The idea is to share your rankings with the other party and compare them so each party walks away with the items that are most critical to them. This process usually involves trade-offs—for instance, a shorter warranty for a reduced cost.

 

2. Hear Your Customer

William Ury, the author of the negotiation books Getting to Yes and Getting Past No, recommends listening carefully to your customer, acknowledging their needs and agreeing whenever possible. Should the customer ask for something extra, probe sincerely. Why is this necessary? Instead of pushing your agenda, imagine that you are a mediator. Come back with an alternative arrangement (Ury calls this the golden bridge) that incorporates their ideas and shows that you understand their position.

3. Throw Out Your Dream Price

If a customer asks you how much a deal will cost, consider starting high. Why? If your customer balks, it can be easier to negotiate down than to negotiate up. In her book The Heart and Mind of the Negotiator, Northwestern professor Leigh Thompson calls this the anchoring effect. Essentially, the first offer is an anchor that establishes a set point for the rest of the negotiation. The number that you ultimately settle on will likely be somewhere within the anchor’s general vicinity.

For more where this came from, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.