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InFullBloom Archives

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Speaking Engagements

UPCOMING
Predict and Prepare sponsored by Workday 12/16

PAST BUT AVAILABLE FOR REPLAY
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #171, 2/15
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #160, 8/14
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #145, 1/14
Workday Predict and Prepare Webinar, 12/10/2013
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #134, 8/13
CXOTalk: Naomi Bloom, Nenshad Bardoliwalla, and Michael Krigsman, 3/15/2013
Drive Thru HR, 12/17/12
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #110, 8/12
Webinar Sponsored by Workday: "Follow the Yellow Brick Road to Business Value," 5/3/12 Audio/Whitepaper
Webinar Sponsored by Workday: "Predict and Prepare," 12/7/11
HR Happy Hour - Episode 118 - 'Work and the Future of Work', 9/23/11
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #87, 9/11
Keynote, Connections Ultimate Partner Forum, 3/9-12/11
"Convergence in Bloom" Webcast and accompanying white paper, sponsored by ADP, 9/21/10
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #63, 9/10
Keynote for Workforce Management's first ever virtual HR technology conference, 6/8/10
Knowledge Infusion Webinar, 6/3/10
Webinar Sponsored by Workday: "Predict and Prepare," 12/8/09
Webinar Sponsored by Workday: "Preparing to Lead the Recovery," 11/19/09 Audio/Powerpoint
"Enterprise unplugged: Riffing on failure and performance," a Michael Krigsman podcast 11/9/09
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #39, 10/09
Workday SOR Webinar, 8/25/09
The Bill Kutik Radio Show® #15, 10/08

PAST BUT NO REPLAY AVAILABLE
Keynote, HR Tech Europe, Amsterdam, 10/25-26/12
Master Panel, HR Technology, Chicago, 10/9/012
Keynote, Workforce Magazine HR Tech Week, 6/6/12
Webcast Sponsored by Workday: "Building a Solid Business Case for HR Technology Change," 5/31/12
Keynote, Saba Global Summit, Miami, 3/19-22/12
Workday Rising, Las Vegas, 10/24-27/11
HR Technology, Las Vegas 10/3-5/11
HR Florida, Orlando 8/29-31/11
Boussias Communications HR Effectiveness Forum, Athens, Greece 6/16-17/11
HR Demo Show, Las Vegas 5/24-26/11
Workday Rising, 10/11/10
HRO Summit, 10/22/09
HR Technology, Keynote and Panel, 10/2/09

Adventures of Bloom & Wallace

a work in progress

Reengineering Is Very Much Like Sex

Sex Sells!

For reasons too complicated to explain, even to myself, I’ve been doing a lot of clearing out of the “underbrush” in my office over the last couple of weeks.  Some of this was absolutely essential because the physical piles of papers that will never be read, the files of long gone clients, the insights notes whose sources are lost in the mists, and all the other detritius of a busy professional life that started way before it was possible to go all electronic were propagating.  I could no longer find quickly the really important things, and every available inch of my very generous counters were overflowing.   

But some of this clearing out was also about clearing out the “underbrush” in my too full brain to make room for new ideas, people, vendors, clients, deliverables, object model considerations, etc.  Your brain may be much younger than mine and, perhaps, less full, but I know that there’s no more room in mine unless I periodically delete and defrag.  

The best part of these periodic clean-outs are the gems I find lurking at the bottom of folders or tucked into a pile on some totally unrelated topic.  This particular gem is the set of 3×5 cards (do they still make them?) I used for a speech I gave at then HRSP’s (predecessor to IHRIM) national conference in 1992.  For those of you too young to remember the reengineering craze, just substituted the latest equivalent — tranformation!  Direct to you from across the decades are these words to live by, exactly as they are hand-written on those 3×5 cards.   

Reengineering is very much like sex:

  • Everybody’s talking about it;

  • Few are really actively engaged;

  • And very few are really best-in-class;

  • It’s hard to do well;

  • It’s so easy to find an excuse not to get started;

  • There are no performance standards and failure to perform (once you get started) is ego-threatening;

  • We start with good instincts, but they’re “discouraged” by our training;

  • So what are we to do?

PRACTICE MAKES BETTER!  There’s no substitute for experience.  But make sure you obtain informed consent up front.

Note:   Michael Hammer’s seminal 1990 article in the Harvard Business Review was the launch point for this management concept, for reengineering, and I was an early adopter for HRM and the HRM delivery system.  He was younger than me and died way too young in 2008, but I think he would have loved the use to which I put his concepts in my 1992 speech.

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