In Full Bloom

Reprise: Legacy HRMS/Legacy Marriage: Sunk Costs Versus Innovation

[I wrote this post in June, 2010, just when Al and Tipper Gore had announced their separation mid-2010, at a time when true SaaS InFullBloom was in its infancy. I was spending a ton of time with a wide range of vendors, some licensees of my “Starter Kit,” working hard on the next generation of HR technology. The good news, and the reason for this reprise, is that a number of vendors, including some who weren’t influenced directly by my working with them (although I’d like to think that I had influenced indirectly some of their thought leaders — but that’s probably my ego working overtime), were cooking up some really terrific software. Internal skunkworks at established vendors, maturing startups, serendipitous acquisitions and more have brought us to today’s still small but worthy troop of ready for prime time integrated HRMS/TMs InFullBloom. Not perfect mind you, and all with more build-out to do, but the train has left the station carrying much improved object models and architectures on their way to replace the stuff you’ve got. We’re finally at a point where the pull of the next generation of HR technology is worthy of our complete attention even as we need to sidestep the obvious lipstick-on-pig brigade. So, with the HR Technology Conference coming right up, with its opportunity to do some serious tire kicking, I thought it was important to remind our HR leaders that it’s really time to take the plunge (or at least plan when to take the plunge).]

Al and Tipper Gore by Steve Mack/FilmMagic

Two completely unrelated conversations over the last week caused that ding ding thing in my brain that happens when the dots connect themselves and I have an aha moment. One of those discussions took place on a radio talk show I heard while driving to a meeting. The other was a courtesy call with the HR and IT heads of HR systems at a firm we’ll call LargeFinancialOrg. The aha is that there’s a great deal in common between the breakup of a long-standing marriage and that of a long-standing ERP/HRMS implementation, to include weighing the sunk costs and comfort with the known against the urgent need to innovate and the discomfort of the unknown.

Legacy Marital Breakups

The first conversation was part of an NPR program on which various experts were discussing their own, the media’s and the public’s reactions to the announced separation of Tipper and Al Gore. They were talking about the characteristics, back story, and broader impacts when long-standing marriages dissolve, and whether or not “till death do us part” is even an appropriate goal at a time when we’re living so much longer than when those words were first spoken. Putting aside all of the religious beliefs and moral sensitivities around marriage, not out of any lack of respect for them but just for the sake of this blog post, I was struck first by this weighing of:

sunk costs (e.g. all the shared experiences, the established financial/relationship/lifestyle interconnections); and
comfort with the known (e.g. with the known behavioral strengths/weaknesses, standard of living, perceived value and status); against the
desire for innovation (e.g. to find oneself beyond the established roles of parent/spouse/helpmate/etc., to follow a long-held lifestyle dream, to eliminate long-standing problems in the marriage which were papered over by shared responsibilities and commitments, not to mention familiarity); and
discomfort with the unknown (e.g. where will I live? how will I support myself? will my friends stick by me? what will the children think? etc.).

I was also struck by the two themes cited consistently as the major contributors to long and continually satisfying marriages. There may well have been many other points raised, but as I look forward to Ron’s and my 38th wedding anniversary later this month (you’ll have to ask him whether he’s also looking forward to this milestone — [we’ve now passed the 40 year mark]), these two major themes really resonated:

enjoying learning/doing new things together, and actually learning/doing a lot of them; and
communicating frequently and effectively, even if one of the parties is more often the initiator/facilitator (and here all the female experts on this program said — big surprise — that the female party takes on this role more often than the male).

There was also a lot of discussion about how hard it is to unravel a marriage of forty years, e.g. figuring out how to distribute and/or continue to share the joint friendships and family relationships not to mention the financial and property assets, personal momentoes and even pets. There are so many personal, financial, real property and other connections developed over a long marital lifetime that just thinking about how Ron and I would ever deal with unscrambling all those interfaces and replacing them in a new context gives me a headache. And the experts said that this burden of unscrambling, this dealing with the sunk costs, is often enough, especially in the face of great discomfort with the unknown and absent the urgent desire to innovation, to motivate long-married partners to try a little harder to reconnect, rejuvenate, and recommit to their marriage before tackling all the unscrambling and knowns that come with divorce.

But the concensus of the experts on this program was that there really does come a point in even many successful marriages where the needs of one of the partners, again often the woman (and here they pointed to hard data), for new experiences, a new sense of herself, a fuller expression of who she is apart from daughter/mother/wife roles and, yes, a little more spice in her life, makes unraveling all those connections and facing those unknowns well worth the effort. Even Sally Quinn, one of the experts on this program, who is a long-standing friend of the Gores and is herself in a long-standing marriage, couldn’t explain what lay behind the Gore separation, but she was convinced that the breakup was a good thing in spite of the heavy lifting that divorce would bring. While some were saddened by the news and saw these changes as fraught with peril, Sally was full of hope that the separation would unleash a new period of vitality, of personal fulfillment for both Al and Tipper, but especially for Tipper.

Deciding if and when to end a long-standing marriage, a legacy marriage, is not a casually made or easily implemented decision. It’s a much easier decision (and easier for everyone around the couple to understand) to end an abusive marriage, one in which one of the partners is addicted to something unpleasant, or a marriage which was doomed from the start by immaturity, a complete lack of common values or purpose, poverty, etc. But when a marriage has been a positive experience for both parties, has reaped many of the benefits of such a marriage, and has been woven over many years into the fabric of each other’s lives, many people made of lesser stuff than the Gores just continue to lead lives of quiet desperation, of agonizing unfulfillment, of mild to severe unhappiness rather than do the heavy lifting — and we’re talking HEAVY lifting — of working their way out of this unsatisfactory but well-known situation and taking a leap forward but into the great unknown. How many have the courage to make that leap? How many are able to reinvent themselves along with the disolution of their long-standing marriage? It’s still early days for the post-marital breakup evaluation of Al and Tipper Gore, but I for one admire the courage and grace they’ve shown in moving forward without forgetting the good times or devaluing their long-standing, successful marriage just because it’s not the best fit for them now. [Here’s an update on Tipper, who appears to be doing very well indeed.]

Legacy ERP/HRMS Breakups

The second discussion was a courtesy call I did with the former client of a colleague who’s retired. The firm, which we’ll call LargeFinancialOrg, like so many mid-market and larger organizations, has a huge sunk cost in a highly customized implementation of one of the major ERP/HRMSs. They’re now running on a no longer supported release and have been growing, over many years, one-off add-ons, manual workarounds, inadequate outsourcing arrangements and who knows how many shadow systems to handle all the business needs not met by their core HRMS. Let’s not talk about the costs of all this nor about the risks they’re taking that they’ll be able to handle the effects of regulatory activism on all things HRM, but at least the ongoing costs are high enough that there’s a push underway to DO SOMETHING! It’s also worth noting that they haven’t got, by their own admission, anything like the talent management or analytics capabilities that might move the dial on their business outcomes nor have they followed the Yellow Brick Road to create a strategic HRMDS plan that would give them a leg to stand on in deciding on the right direction under the mandate to DO SOMETHING!

IT at LargeFinancialOrg thinks it’s a no brainer, low risk, low cost move to simply upgrade their ERP/HRMS to the current release, bring payroll back in house (after all, if you’ve outsourced to someone who can’t handle a firm your size/complexity, then of course outsourcing is the wrong move!), and just get on with it. The two terrific HR/IT leaders with whom I spoke want very much to do something else because they see the huge costs/pain/risks of the proposed upgrade as just getting them to the current release of a legacy, no longer leading ERP/HRMS, not to mention all the unknowns around future vendor investment in that legacy ERP/HRMS as the vendor shifts focus to their shiny new next gen ERP/HRMS. Instead, the HR/IT leaders would like to move to a next gen SaaS InFullBloom HRMS from a much younger/smaller vendor, but one of impecable pedigree and a growing number of glowing client references. They’re very clear that their ongoing but legacy ERP/HRMS “marriage” has served them well over many years but that this isn’t the desired software platform for their future.

They’re also painfully aware that doing anything other than an upgrade in place means unscrambling years of interfaces, interconnections, learned customization habits and the skills to implement them, sunk hardware costs and ongoing production expenses that would now be spread across fewer applications, thus raising those costs for other legacy application users. The list of things to unscramble is long and terrifying when looked at without an understanding of the business outcomes that you’re trying to optimize, and they loom much larger in many HR/IT folks’ minds than do the potential business outcome-producing benefits of making a major leap forward. But without a strategic HRMDS plan that builds the business case for innovation and accepting some discomfort with the unknown in order to achieve that innovation, the obvious and very large sunk costs and comfort with the known are really compelling reasons to just stay on the legacy ERP/HRMS upgrade path.

Making a long-standing ERP/HRMS “marriage” continue to be successful requires, among many other factors, two of the themes that the NPR experts said contribute to the ongoing success of long-standing human marriages:

enjoying learning/doing new things together, and actually learning/doing a lot of them: in the case of the ERP/HRMS marriage, this means that the vendor provides very frequent updates that can be consumed easily and cost-effectively, with functionality opt-in and few barriers to learning/using the new capabilities, so the exact opposite of the massive, costly, every several years upgrade of our legacy licensed/on-premise ERP/HRMSs; and
communicating frequently and effectively, even if one of the parties is more often the initiator/facilitator: in the case of the ERP/HRMS marriage: this means that the vendor lays out their product roadmap several releases into the future with enough specificity that their customers can plan for the frequent releases and avoid making near-term investments in alternative solutions when they can see clearly when those capabilities will be available from their primary platform vendor, so again the exact opposite of the legacy ERP/HRMS vendors’ vague roadmaps and unwillingness to commit to specifics except when the big Kahuna upgrade release is ready.

Just as with the unraveling of a long-standing and previously successful marriage, the decision to end a long-standing ERP/HRMS “marriage” isn’t an easy one — nor should it be. And it also shouldn’t involve castigating the vendor or software that has served us well over many years. But there does come a time in many long-standing human and software marriages when the case for innovation is so strong that the discomfort of the unknown, accepting the sunk costs, and the challenges of unraveling that marriage are more than offset by the anticipated and much-needed benefits of taking the leap. With ERP/HRMS marriages, the business case for making such a dramatic leap must be grounded in achieving the business outcomes of the organization, not just in administrative cost reductions or the desire for something shiny, buzzy and new.

I obviously believe that many human marriages can be successful over the long term, but then I married The Wallace. If our legacy ERP/HRMSs and their vendors had adapted over the last forty years as well, as quickly, and with such grace to the changes in technology and human resource management, to our changing expectations of what software should do and should cost, as The Wallace has adapted to the changes in our lives and in me, then there would be no need to take the innovation leap with a new software partner.

In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t know Al or Tipper Gore although I did support him for President; we are major donors (major at least within our budget) to WGCU public radio and television, which is the local home of National Public Radio (NPR); many of the current and legacy HRMS vendors, ERP or otherwise, have been and/or are our clients; Ron and I really will be married 38 years on 6/30/2010, and he would say that boredom has NOT featured in our relationship although he might crave the odd moment of peace and quiet; and my recent Twitter exchanges with valued colleague Jim Holincheck [who recently joined Workday] made clear why this post was important to write right now.

June 14th, 2010 | Category: “Best” Practices, Business Outcomes, Enterprise Software, Follow The Yellow Brick Road, HRM Software, Ruminations, Strategic HRMDS Planning

15th Annual HR Technology Conference 2012 Attendee Tips

Having almost finished preparations for a long trip to England in September, soon I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my schedule for the 15th annual HR Technology Conference and making final preparations for the two sessions I’ll be doing there. From the time we arrive in Chicago late Saturday afternoon (yes, The Wallace will be with me), until we leave on Thursday, it will be:

non-stop vendor/industry meetings,
exhibition hall booth visiting (I make a valiant effort each year to stop at everything single booth, but the show has gotten so large that many of these visits are flybys — no disrespect intended),
session attending,
session delivery (I’m doing a general session on Tuesday morning entitled “Bringing HR Into The Cloud – Naomi’s Master Panel” and then an “ask the expert” session that afternoon),
intense but wonderful hallway exchanges,
time with valued colleagues and long-standing industry friends,
an occasional meal and more than an occasional drink,
tweetups and meetups,
our annual Brazen Hussies gathering, and more.

I’ll have just celebrated my 67th birthday (it’s 9/24 in case you want to send a little something) and will still be basking in the afterglow of another year well-lived. Living large, personally and professionally, honors those who never got this far, and the number of loved ones who didn’t grows longer with each passing year.

As I’m making my own preparations, I thought you might enjoy a few tips from my personal list. Like all good twitterstreams, this one should be read from the bottom up:

#HRTechConf bonus tip: This is where I had planned to suggest that you read my entire blog, from 11/9/2009 forward, but that seemed really pushy. Instead, just read those posts that are relevant to your purpose in Chicago. I can’t help but encourage you to focus on the posts that discuss what’s happening in HRM software just out of sight, what you should be looking for “derriere le mirroir.” What you don’t know can cost you dearly! And that starts with the $550 you won’t save on your conference registration unless you read this.

#HRTechConf tip #10: Get #HRTechConf 2013 on your calendar and in your budget now. It’s 10/7 to 10/9/2013 returning to Vegas, Baby. They really picked great dates this time, with all the Jewish holidays well behind us, no stepping on Columbus Day, and late enough for Vegas temps to be down to 90. I’ll be there, with The Wallace in tow, but will probably need to bring a big humifier so that my wrinkles don’t reveal themselves.

#HRTechConf tip #9: Talk, talk, talk and listen, listen, listen because sharing questions, ideas and experiences with colleagues is the point. Bring your list of the folks you follow most on Twitter and make it a point to meet them. Come to my “ask the expert” session on Tuesday afternoon and hit me with your questions. And do feel quite comfortable approaching almost anyone about anything reasonable; it takes a village, and that’s HR Tech all over.

#HRTechConf tip #8: Bring a swag carrier if you’re flying in or plan to carry your #Monster home in your lap. Ron can’t imagine coming home from #HRTechConf without a new monster, and who’s going to tell him that we’re overrun with them here at HQ? And if you’re a vendor doing some swag planning, we love: umbrellas (the rainy season is on right now, and you can never have too many), interesting stress reduction toys, cuddly creatures (why doesn’t anyone ever give away big stuffed alligators), shoe bags (those soft ones in which you pack your shoes when traveling), towels (all sizes appreciated), t-shirts (medium for Ron, XL for me — embarrassing but true), but please no more vendor-branded iPad covers. The risk of meeting with Vendor A with your iPad wrapped in Vendor B is too high.

#HRTechConf tip #7: Leave room in your schedule for serendipity and for nature breaks — well at least nature breaks. I’ve met some amazing women during those nature breaks; I can’t speak for what goes on in the men’s room.

#HRTechConf tip #6: Attend as many sessions as possible. I do because they’re excellent, and there’s NO sales crap allowed. Woe be it unto any vendor who tries to slip a sales pitch into their session because the Kutik has both a loud gong and one of those long sticks with the curved ends they used in vaudeville to pull bad acts off the stage.

#HRTechConf tip #5: Don’t try to attend > 3 vendor parties on Monday night. Save yourself for my amazing panel session on Tuesday morning “Bringing HR Into The Cloud – Naomi’s Master Panel.” I hate missing all those great parties and must just hope for the year that my sessions will be on the first day so that I can do a party crawl.

#HRTechConf tip #4: Go online now http://www.hrtechnologyconference.com/agenda.html and plan your conference. With what vendors do you want to schedule extended and/or private demos? Make those appointments now. With what attendees with whom you share specific issues/vendors/industry concerns/etc. do you want to meet? And if you’re all on the same true SaaS product, you won’t have to waste a minute asking each other what release you’re on! Do that outreach and arrange that meeting now. Pick your sessions and, because there are too many good ones for just one person, find a buddy with whom you can divide and conquer. Better yet, bring a whole team to Chicago and cover the ground.

#HRTechConf tip #3: Carry a water bottle and refill it every chance you get. Convention center climates are designed to dessicate, and they never have enough refreshment stations. I could suggest that you bring a flask, because there’s a known shortage of booze outlets in the Chicago convention center (but never fear, we’re going back to Vegas in 2013), but we HR people would never make such a suggestion.

#HRTechConf tip #2A: Assume that the convention center will be too cold/too hot/too drafty/too whatever, and dress accordingly. We’ll be overrun with executives from across the industry, buyers and sellers, so you may want to lose the flipflops, cutoffs, and anything that reveals parts of you that I’d rather not see. Here I’m showing my personal biases, but business casual does not translate in my book into anything lower down the sartorial scale than clean pressed jeans, a similarly clean ironed t-shirt with at least short sleeves, most of your tattoos tactfully covered, and shoes.

#HRTechConf tip #2: Wear your most comfortable walking shoes. There will be few places to sit except in sessions and long convention center distances. Yes, I know that my younger female colleagues will want to show off those Manolo platform spikes — the latest in fashionista circles — and I don’t blame you, but be sure you’ve got a suitably designed male colleague at the ready to carry you after the first hour. Having done my fair share of spike heel time, I’m convinced that there’s a direct connection to my now arthritic joints. It doesn’t matter what shoes I’ll be wearing as I flash by on my magic carpet.

#HRTechConf tip #1: For vendors of greatest interest, do your homework in advance, preparing the mental scenarios that you’d like to see, so that booth time is hands-on demo time. And be sure to spend time on the floor checking out some of the newer/smaller vendors. There’s a ton of innovation going on in our industry, and it isn’t always on offer at the flashiest booths. In spite of the heavy industry consolidation, The Kutik tells me that there will be more booths this year than last, so you’re bound to find some exciting newbies worthy of your attention.

I’ll look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

My First Word On #HRTechConf 2012 — And Your Best Discount Offer

Me And Mr. Bill!

I’m writing this as Fort Myers is experiencing a relatively mild summer (compared to the rest of the country’s astonishing heat, forest fires, and deluge of political ads) while getting enough rain to float all our boats. Lake Devonwood is almost up to our pool cage, and it’s only the very high cage door handles keeping the alligators out of our pool during high water season. [They tell snowbirds they’re to prevent children from gaining entrance, but we locals know better.]

But no lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer here (you might play the music while reading the rest of this post). A quick look at my calendar and todo list are enough to frighten anyone, but that’s what comes of trying to pack two years of living — professionally and personally — into every calendar year.

And 2012 thus far has been a doozy. Who knew that so many major HRM enterprise software vendors and outsourcing providers would be hot on the trail of bringing correct object models and Blooming architecture to their increasingly true SaaS platforms? Yes, metadata frameworks, proper multi-tenant inheritance, and systemic effective-dating are just some of what’s taking root in our collective garden. And they’ll be hot topics for discussion and “killer” scenario vendor demos in Chicago.

The 2011 HR Technology Conference in Vegas was one for the record books. I’m still tripping over some of the wacky gifts that Jason Averbook presented me with during our Great Debate, so I never expected this October to come so quickly. Now here we are getting ready for the 2012 conference and, with just a couple of more months to prepare, I’m flat out booking vendor meetings, selecting sessions to attend, finalizing travel plans, organizing the Brazen Hussies event, and so much more, all while trying to keep up with my day job and a ton more travel before we land in Chicago.

The big news for #HRTechConf 2012 is that I’ve been organizing and will be honored to moderate a general session vendor panel — the first ever for this conference — entitled “Bringing HR Into The Cloud – Naomi’s Master Panel.” We’re going to tackle the challenges and opportunities of taking HR “to the cloud,” with panelists, hand-picked by me for their smarts, candor, sense of humor, and industry gravitas, who are taking us there. Together for the first time (but hopefully not for the last time) on any one stage will be:

Steve Miranda, SVP, Applications Development, Oracle
Sanjay Poonen, President Global Solutions, SAP US
Stan Swete, CTO, Workday
Mike Capone, CIO, ADP
John Wookey, EVP, Social Applications, Salesforce.com
Adam Rogers, CTO, Ultimate Software

There’s a ton of other great sessions scheduled (you can download the entire program here ), and the exhibit hall will be crammed. I’m making as much time as possible this year to attend those sessions and, as I do every year, to do at least a flyby at every vendor booth. I won’t even try to summarize the program because our impresario, Bill Kutik, writes the best marketing copy ever for this show, and you can find all of it at the conference Web site right here. But hot topics for me this year are all things analytics, Lexy Martin’s survey results, and getting real about enabling HRM processes with collaboration (aka social tech).

Since I know that all of you are HR Technology Conference enthusiasts, there’s no need for me to do a laundry list of all the reasons why everyone who is anyone in our industry will be there with flags flying. But to make it a little easier for any of you who haven’t yet registered and made your travel plans, have I got a deal for you! Just use the Promotion Code BLOOM12 (all caps) when you register online at www.HRTechConference.com to get $550 off the rack rate of $1,795. This is the largest personal discount available from anyone (only fair since I have presented more times there than anyone) and it doesn’t expire until the conference ends on Oct. 10. That said, hotel rooms are already running out, so you have no time to lose. And with the money you’ve just saved, you should have no problem paying for a rock bottom airfare with a little left over to send me a birthday card (Sept 24th, so it’s coming right up) — or not.

The Kutik is beside himself with glee over the early registration numbers, the show floor will be bursting at the seams in spite of vendor consolidation (did you know that new HR tech companies are hatching as quickly or more so than older ones are disappearing?), and I’m sure that hotel rooms (at least the discounted ones) will be filled to overflowing. In addition to the amazing cloud panel, I’ll be hosting an “Expert Discussion Session” (always fun because it’s all about your questions — that’s the entire agenda), and The Wallace will be doing his usual swag patrol looking for more stuffed toys and stress reducers. Do say hello to Ron; we’ve got him convinced that everyone knows The Wallace.

So please do join me and everyone else in Chicago — it’s an absolute MUST. Use the discount code yourself and share it with your colleagues, but use it quickly if you have any hope of getting a hotel room.

Reflections On: Swimming

White Sands Beach, Olde Lyme CT

When I was very young, while my mother was still alive although quite ill (as she had been from before I was born), all the Blooms would rent two shared cottages for a couple of weeks each summer at White Sands Beach, Olde Lyme CT. While the men worked weekdays at Bloom’s Photo Supply in Springfield MA, a few hours away, my grandmother, mother and Bloom aunts took care of me, my sister, and Bloom cousins.

We spent those long summer days playing at the beach and spent our evenings playing card games (for the women) and board games (for us kids) on the porches while listening to what’s now called classic radio. I don’t remember my mother very well; she died when I was only five. But I’m told that she loved these family times and contributed to those weekday evenings by reading aloud to the younger children.

When the DADs (and I still think of them in capital letters, perhaps because time with them was such a treat) came down for the weekend (which might only be for Saturday night and most of Sunday because the store was open on Saturdays), the colors got brighter, the weather got better, and everything we did was more fun — or so I remember. When your mother is very ill, and you’re constantly reminded not to make too much noise, not to disturb her, to be on your best behavior, it’s no surprise that the arrival of your healthy, full of life and good humor DAD, had that effect.

Although most memories of my earliest years have been lost in the mists, some things still stand out quite clearly. One such memory is learning to swim, learning to love the water and never fear it, when I was about three. And it’s that love of the water which has served me so very well, with even this blog post written in my head during today’s swim. For me, the greatest luxury in the world, after being able to afford as many books as I want, is having my own swimming pool just outside my office door.

We little kids had to stay very close to shore when just our mothers and grandmother were in residence because none of them were great swimmers. Frankly, Jewish women of that generation didn’t do sports, although they all (except for Bubbi Bloom) got into golf a little later in life. There might have been lifeguards, but I sure don’t remember any. So we played on the beach and in the water close to shore, while nervous mothers shouted warnings.

But when the DADs came down, everything changed. There was a floating platform anchored offshore a good distance from the beach, and my DAD, Jack, was a strong swimmer who loved swimming out to that dock. I really don’t know when it happened, but at about three I apparently went from riding his back out to the dock to swimming along beside him to that wonderful place where the little kids couldn’t go.

And once I began swimming, there was no stopping me. I’ve loved the water ever since, rarely tiring even in open water (ask me about the mile ocean race I did at Club Med one time, to my husband’s astonishment), but also never acquiring any particularly correct strokes or breathing. Swimming ashore from our charter sailboat all over the Caribbean as soon as I’d set that anchor was a tradition on yearly ladies charters. Swimming is now my favorite form of exercise because it’s the one place that my arthritic joints don’t hurt. And whether doing laps or running through a formal aquatic program with “weights” etc., I do some of my best thinking and writing in my head.

As a child, there was always an adult telling me, usually many times before it took, that it was time to come out of the water. Left to my own devices, I might have appeared only when really hungry. But for me, childhood gave way to adult time pressures long before it should have done, and swimming has since then been bounded by the responsibilities of adulthood. So time in the water went from play to purpose, from just hanging out to exercise. But I am beginning to dream of a time in my life when adult pressures give way, finally, to childhood delights, and I plan to spend a good bit of that time in the water.

Prepping For A Week In Silicon Valley

San Francisco Bay Area -- #EnSW Heaven

I try to spend a week every year in Silicon Valley, meeting with vendors, catching up with colleagues, soaking up the atmosphere and drinking the very special water. On this year’s agenda are Cornerstone OnDemand (with a huge thanks for coming to the Valley), SAP and SuccessFactors, Oracle, and Workday, a major gathering of EIs (with a huge thanks to Ray for hosting us), and so much more.

Ron and I lived out there when we were first married, first in San Mateo (after a couple of months in a San Francisco boarding house — but that’s another story) and then in Sunnyvale, from mid-72 through mid-77. This is the period when the term, Silicon Valley, was first used and referred literally to all the chip and hardware manufacturers located there. As an electrical engineer, Ron’s job opportunities in the Valley were terrific; he worked happily at Varian the whole time we were there.

There was a lot to love about Silicon Valley, but the dry climate, distance from my family, and Ron’s desire to get his PhD in communications systems theory (with the best program in the country at the time at George Washington in DC) took us back to the East Coast and Northern Virgina (mid-77 until we relocated early-99 to Fort Myers). But it wasn’t long before my new employer, AMS, sent me back to the Valley.

I went to check out a couple of major HRMS vendors, Tesseract and Integral, with an eye on AMS buying our way into that market. My AMS colleagues decided that they could build something better (which they never did) than the HRMSs I reviewed, but that trip in the late 70’s (or early 80’s?) began my 30+ year friendship with and respect for one of the greats of enterprise software, Dave Duffield. Little did I suspect then that I would be meeting the software pioneer who would take our industry from the mainframe to the client server era, a change that left those vendors unable to make the leap fast enough stuck with essentially unsaleable products. That shift from mainframe to client server also provided a ton of startup energy as the cost of entry, for vendors and buyers alike, came way down.

All these years later, I continue to prepare carefully for such vendor meetings, like those I’ll be having next week. Imagine yourself in a room full of the smartest architects, developers, product strategists and more from some of the very top vendors in our industry. Wouldn’t you be just a little nervous? Just a little intimidated by the collective knowledge of the folks with whom you’ll be meeting? Very mindful that you’d better be prepared and respectful of their time. And ready to give as good as you get?

I’m very grateful that these folks give me their valuable time; the very least I can do is to be prepared to contribute some fresh thinking to the dicussions. And to push for clarity about everything from product roadmaps to architectural and object model strengths (or weaknesses) and on to the challenges they face in getting buyers to use their products well. Sometimes there’s “creative tension” in these meetings because I’m pushing an idea that doesn’t fit that vendor’s business model etc., or because they want me to accept their point of view instead of my own. When surrounded by such talented and knowledgeable people, I’m inclined to make allowances for honest differences of opinion, but everyone with whom I’m meeting knows me well enough not to let “corporate speak” enter the room.

I expect to learn a ton, contribute as much as possible, and be exhausted and with my brain exploded by the end of the week. Then it’s off to Oregon for a Wallace family reunion and on to Jackson Hole so that I can take an illustrated journaling workshop. I would so love to be able to illustrate my own blog posts, but I think that’s some ways off. I do plan on doing some blogging “from the road” about my adventures in Silicon Valley, so please stay tuned.

Reprise — Father’s Day Thoughts: Remembering Jack Samuel Bloom

[I hadn’t planned to update and reprise this post from Father’s Day 2010, but I’ve just gotten off a call with my sister, and I so wish he were still here to share with us the laughter and tears of everyday living. Ron and I have large paintings of our two fathers above a large archway in our home. They lived at opposite ends of the country and only met a couple of times in their lives, but I know they would be very happy playing pinochel with each other wherever they may be now.]

From my Dad I inherited:

his ability to tell a good story, to make a point while making you laugh;
his commitment to active friendship, the kind of friendship that does what you need even when you don’t know you need it;
his belief that any day on which you wake up is already a good day, that the gift of life is too precious to waste; and
his habits of meticulous book-keeping, calendar-keeping, and commitment-keeping.

From my Dad I also inherited his love of reading and the sheer joy of opening a new book. Later I discovered that for me, being rich meant being able to buy any book I wanted to read and never having to browse in second-hand bookshops unless I was looking for treasure. Jewish families like ours, in the early 50′s, bought their children a copy of the World Book Encyclopedia, one volume at a time on a payment plan that they could scarcely afford, so that their children would be better educated than they were. I remember my Dad reading that encyclopedia cover to cover, Aardvark to Zebra, even the boring bits (and there were many such), and perhaps that’s where I also learned that reading some books was about more than having the pleasure of meeting their words.

My Dad taught me to swim almost before I could walk by carrying me on his back as he swam from the gentle shores of White Sands Beach, CT to the floating dock in the waters of Long Island Sound. I’ve loved swiming and being in/around the water ever since. I have no fear of the ocean’s waves and can still feel his support whenever I’m over my head. But I can also remember his advice when it came to swimming in open, choppy water: “keep your mouth closed.” Words to live by in many situations.

We buried my Dad on my 50th birthday. He spent just a few days in hospital, having not been ill before his unexpected collapse just as I was about to deliver a presentation at that year’s SAPPHIRE conference in Phoenix. My Dad was a perfectly ordinary man to whose funeral came many hundreds of people we didn’t know whom he had been helped, quietly, without ever being asked. In his retirement, he had “adopted” older members of our schul who needed rides to doctors’ appointments, help paying their bills, or just an hour’s companionship. Without the financial means of major philanthopy, he found the means for active philanthropy, through the gift of his time.

By the time I launched my own business in 1987, the cost of long distance calls, so daunting when I first left home in ’63, were much more affordable, and I called him most days in the late afternoon even when I was onsite with clients (which was most of the time in those early days). Those calls always started with:

Dad: How’s business?
Naomi: Business is great.
Dad: Are your clients paying their bills on time?
Naomi: Yes, they sure are.
Dad: Are their checks clearing the bank?
Naomi: Absolutely.

When you know that those early clients were firms like Bank of America, Hewlett Packard and International Paper, something my Dad certainly knew, this ritual opening to our calls goes from being merely odd to very odd, unless you also know that being a small retailer all his life shaped forever my Dad’s view of Accounts Receivable. From there we’d go on to the events of his and my day, and to what was happening across the Bloom family and the larger Jewish community in which I grew up. I don’t remember my Dad ever calling me — long distance calls were for emergencies only among his generation — but I know he loved my calls because he reported on them to the group of men with whom he ate breakfast every day at a local deli.

I’ve always said yahrzeit for my Dad at the appropriate times in our Jewish calendar, but I’m missing him very much on this Father’s Day. If you’re lucky enough to still have your Dad, don’t wait for Father’s Day to call him. And if you are a Dad, the gift of your time is so much more important than anything you could ever buy with your money.

Naomi’s Top Ten List — Coping With Vendor Consolidation

Don't Let This Happen To You!

Last week I delivered a keynote for HR Technology Week which I hope many of you attended and/or for which you have access to the replay. I thought that the top ten preparedness list I created for this session, with many thanks to Ed Frauenheim for suggesting it, might make a good blog post. Hopefully, you’ll agree.

In a few cases, the acquired product becomes a primary part of the technology and/or product foundations for the new landlord’s next generation offering, perhaps a primary enabler for advancing the new landlord’s product portfolio. These are often the standout cases, where the acquirer is buying great technology, talent and more to support their push into new markets/functionality/technology, etc.

In many to most cases, the new landlords make ongoing investments (of course it’s usually their customers’ money that they’re investing, so this isn’t just an act of kindness) to maintain and enhance their acquired products — and to secure the revenue stream from those customers. They may attempt to retain the acquired product’s brain trust, which is one of the reasons to pay close attention to who stays and who leaves after an acquisition. They may extend the technological lifespan of the acquired products, perhaps by providing some mobile and/or social capabilities. If they’re a serial acquirer within the HRM domain, they may provide a middleware layer and common user experience to connect a range of otherwise quite separate products. However, few acquirers of aging products, regardless of how highly they value their installed base, undertake a major rearchitecture of the acquired products. Instead, they may offer other products in their portfolio as a next generation option for those customers who are ready to make a leap.

But there really are slumlords. There really are acquirers whose only interest is to squeeze as much profit as possible for their owners/investors and let the customers be damned. They may not be able to attract many new customers once the word gets out, but that takes time. And it can take years before enough customers bite the bullet and walk away from the lock-in that major HRM products produce for the slumlord to suffer any real pain. And by then the smartest of these slumlords has already sold off that diminished revenue stream.

So, with our industry still consolidating, I present my top ten list for ensuring that you’re prepared to deal with any eventuality when it comes to your own HRM delivery system.

#10 — Know Your Systems And Strategies!

Our HRM and HRM delivery system current state assessments, strategies and plans are up-to-date and very clever.
We know what we’ve got, what we want and need, and why we want and need it when it comes to HRM policies, practices, plans, business rules, processes and governance; as well as HR technology.

#9 — Know The Competitive Landscape!

Our competitive intelligence is ongoing and very clever.
We know what’s happening in technology quite broadly as well as across the HR technology vendor landscape — and not just for our current vendors.
We know the implications of vendor landscape changes for our HRMDS’ current state, strategies and plans — and for the implementation of those plans.

#8 — Know Your Products And Select Them Well!

Our scenario-based product evaluation(s) look deeply into product architecture/object models/every aspect of product robustness and cleverness as well as into functionality.
We know which of our products are keepers, for current or new owners, and which of them are not.
We?ve assessed the implications of running on products which aren’t keepers and are prepared to deal with the consequences.

#7 — Know Your Vendors!

Our vendor evaluation(s) look deeply into vendor ambitions, ownership, leadership, financing, progress-to-date and more.
We’ve done our own forecast(s) for their future ownership and/or changes in control, and for any possible disruptions.
We know for which products we’re likely to get new landlords, and we?re prepared to deal with the implications.

#6 — Get The Right Licenses/SLAs Upfront!

Our vendor license(s) and SLA(s) are written to ensure that our rights and interests are protected in case of a change of ownership or control.
We’ve ensured that we can live with these provisions.
We revisit our SLA(s), which is another benefit of SaaS, annually and at renewal time along with #8 & #7.

#5 — Partner With Your Important Vendors!

We partner actively with those vendors who matter the most to us and on whose success our own success depends.
We work hard to contribute to their success by making effective use of their products and talking about our results.
We participate actively in vendor-provided and independent forums both to influence product direction and crowd-source learning.

#4 — Create Organizational Readiness!

We organize and run a semi-annual workshop for our HR leaders and business partners on what’s happening across the HR technology competitive landscape, how our HRMDS and vendors are affected, what’s likely to happen next, and the great unknowns that could disrupt our world.
We video it for replay, and it’s a YouTube hit.

#3 — Stay Up-to-Date With Vendors!

In view of the level of ongoing consolidation, we now update our competitive intelligence assessments twice a year, and present our findings at #4.
Everyone is impressed with our command of the relevant tools and what effective use we’re making of social tech, professional networking, and scenario-testing to understand what’s happening.

#2 — Don?t Panic, Do Swing Into Action!

When we get wind of a potential change in landlord, we swing into action.
We use our up-to-date checklist to revisit the implications of such a change, assign responsibilities and tasks, and execute our plans for dealing with the possible outcomes.
We communicate about the likely change and how we’re addressing it.
We do NOT panic.

#1 — Stay Calm And Carry On!

By the time the press release or official announcement is made, we’re well into our action plans because such changes are usually anticipated.
Our action plans and internal communications go into high gear.
It’s business mostly as usual while everyone else is running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Competitive Intelligence Resources

Suggested immediate reading www.InFullBloom.us including:
https://infullbloom.us/?p=2989 the different views of customers and investors on HR technology
https://infullbloom.us/?p=2998 vendor consolidation fairy tales
Use Twitter — follow every vendor that’s relevant to you, all the “talking heads” who contribute something useful (and here you may want to check out those I follow as a starting point), and your vendor contacts.
Use LinkedIn — get alerts for relevant talent movement, vendor developments, vendor hiring.
Use LinkedIn — connect with the relevant folks at your key vendors and pay close attention to any changes in their professional lives.
Use Google (or other) News — get alerts for relevant topics, people and vendors.
Attend relevant conferences — most important are those of your major vendors, the HR Technology Conference in Chicago (2012), the newer and independent Euro HR Technology Conference in Amsterdam (2012).
Build and nurture your own network of “informants” and “influencers.” These are the folks who are in the know because it’s their job to be such. As I’ve said before, it takes a village.

Are You The Very Model Of A Modern HR Leader?

I have always loved “The Pirates of Penzance,” and especially the monologue-like song of the modern Major General. Every time I think about the KSAOC profile for a position or job, about the KSAOCs of someone with whom I’m working or interviewing, or even about the KSAOCs I do or don’t possess, I’m reminded of just how much you need to know and be able to do to meet the spec in this song for the job of Major General — and then I laugh my head off yet again.

But the KSAOC profile for a modern Major General has nothing on the same for a modern HR leader. And that’s a topic on which I’ve been working quite a bit lately because it keeps coming up. Just as there’s a generational shift occurring in other C-suite positions, it’s happening with increasing frequency in HR. And what we need from HR leaders for today and tomorrow is VERY different from what worked yesterday. So, without further ado, here’s my “starter kit” KSAOC profile for a modern HR leader:

Excellent, fast and compelling writing;
Excellent, fluent and compelling speaking;
Commitment to lifelong learning;
Attention to details and ability to see, create and communicate the big picture;
Quick thinking, then speaking, on your feet;
Command presence and leadership persona;
Current, global perspective on business and geopolitics;
Current knowledge of your industry, organization, and cultural environment;
Foundation in the liberal arts for geopolitical context, critical thinking, hypothesis formulation and testing, and more;
Foundation in business for the basics of finance, accounting, commercial law, production management, sales, marketing, information technology, vendor management, and more;
Foundation in STEM for statistics, data analysis, and the “scientific method” and more;
Foundation in HRM and appreciation of its breadth, complexity, geographical variations, regulatory overlay, and strategic interconnections;
Considerable mathematical literacy, including visualization, classification, generalization, abstraction, enumeration and more;
Strategic planning expertise — for your organization, for HRM, for the HR function, and for the HRM delivery system;
Considerable knowledge of technology-enabled HRM and the HRMDS, to include how the latest developments in mobile, social, analytics and true SaaS are changing the fundamentals of HR technology decisions and providing transformation opportunities for HRM;
Project management — nearly everything you will do is a project;
Personal and organizational brand management — and that includes reasonable fluency with the social tools of brand management; and
Well-developed emotional intelligence and political astuteness.

The good news is that I’ve met a few young HR professionals, moving quickly into or already in leadership roles, who are well on their way to achieving this KSAOC profile. The bad news is that they are few and far between. But what’s really interesting about this profile is that, with judicious changes to reflect the subject matter of marketing or finance or sales or IT, it could be the profile of a modern leader of any business discipline. So if that’s your ambition, there’s likely to be some areas in which you’ll need to double down on your life-long learning efforts.

Reflections On A Long Career — Part IV — Summing Up

The Message Is Clear!

In the first three posts of this series, here, here and here, I reflected on various aspects of building and sustaining a long and successful career. Now it’s time to sum up the lessons of my own career, a long professional run for which I’m truly grateful.

There’s been a huge portion of good luck at work here, of mazel left and right, but there’s also been and continues to be a lot of hard work. Having just spent a few days with my amazing 96+ Uncle Paul, talking about the past and the future, I’m in the mood to do the same here. Here’s what I believe it takes, beyond having good luck, to build and sustain a long and successful career.

Stay in shape — mentally and physically.

Everyone must adapt to aging, must learn to work differently as they age. But the burden of figuring out how to stay relevant, how to accommodate the inevitable loss of physical prowess that comes with age, how to cope with health issues and more, resides with us and not with our employer. If you’re fortunate enough to have an EAP program at the ready, say thank you and use it. If you’re entitled to adaptive technology, to public programs in support of your health issues, by all means use them. But with or without that support, the figuring out part lies solely with us.

How do you think an aging performer or athlete feels when they realize that everyone in their profession is young enough to be their child? How do you think a long-standing manager feels when his/her boss is a generation younger? How do you think I feel when I face a new group of clients who studied many of the major technology developments of my life in their computing history classes? Well, you either get over it and show them what you can do or you’re done.

For me, staying in shape physically, in spite of serious mobility challenges, is a real challenge. It was the impetus for our relocation to Florida in 1999, where I swim as much a possible and live in the least uncomfortable (for me) climate. Weight training, adventurous travel, flying upgraded and the support of The Wallace all help. But some of you have seen me zooming along in my electric cart at HR Tech because the distances are otherwise too great for me to traverse quickly. Getting up every morning and forcing myself to move even though it hurts is the price of admission to the wonderful world in which I’ve worked so long and lived so fully — and it’s been well worth the price.

Staying in shape mentally is much easier for me. I read a ton, business and pleasure, select clients/projects which will challenge me (so not just doing the same old same old no matter how easy it would be), and avoid mass market so-called entertainment (truly the opiate of the masses). Professional or personal life, I find myself in project manager mode for almost any undertaking, finding emotional comfort in those structures. But I also push myself to learn new things, to get outside my comfort zone, to stretch those mental and emotional muscles. This summer I’m taking a two-day illustrated watercolor journaling workshop in Jackson Hole, WY, and next winter I’ll be taking a Power Squadron class in marine systems. I have no talent or expertise in either of these areas, and I’m scared shitless I’ll make a fool of myself, but that too is a price worth paying for stretching one’s mental muscles.

Stay au courant — via lifelong learning.

The good news is that there are more resources than you’ll ever be able to use; the bad news is that there are more resources than you’ll ever be able to use. What we need to know, what’s happening that’s relevant, what we must be able to do is exploding, and it’s just not possible to keep up with everything. But it is possible — and it’s really critical — to have a personal development plan that isn’t tied unduly to any one employer or position.

Staying strong in your relevant strengths and toughening up your relevant weaknesses should be the focus of any professional development plan, but deciding what’s relevant at each juncture takes not only clear-eyed self-appraisal but also a real understanding of what’s coming at you and not just what you can see in your rear view mirror. One of the best uses for social technology, especially if you’re discerning about whom you follow on Twitter or in which discussion groups you participate on LinkedIn, is the value of curation, of people/organizations you respect pointing you to great articles, blog posts, books, conferences and more.

But, no amount of ongoing professional development is a substitute for the more focused educational foundations that great academic preparation delivers. So, whatever else you’re doing in learning, make sure that your foundations are strong enough to hold up over time. And be inspired by a close friend of mine who, never having had the chance to get a college education, is going nights now, in her early forties, to fill that gap even as she holds down a very responsible, professional position.

Stay flexible — adapting and adopting.

Just in my working career, we’ve gone from discussing who should have a telephone (without any qualifier because there was only one color/flavor/vendor/carrier/etc.) and creating HRM policies for when gloves and hats are appropriate to coping with Bring Your Own Device tablets and smartphones with more computing power than the computers that supported NASA when we put a man on the moon and creating HRM policies on tattoos and body piercing. We’ve gone from employer as parent offering lifelong employment in exchange for becoming a “company man” to an era of free agency and employers competing to be “employers of choice.” We’ve gone from one size fits all HRM plans and practices to no size fits anyone, and now we’re all being challenged to work globally, socially, mobily and more.

It’s no wonder that most of us are suffering from mental if not physical whiplash. At the speed of change we’re all experiencing, and which speed will only increase and never again decrease, if you can’t adapt to changing times and adopt new ways of thinking, your career, really your whole life, is in serious jeopardy. But it is absolutely possible to adapt rapidly to needed changes and to adopt new ways of working and thinking when the incentives are right — and here the incentive is professional survival, the strongest one of all.

Stay employable — you’re only as valuable as what you can accomplish tomorrow.

When your entire income is at risk, all the time, you gain a certain perspective on the importance of saying desirable. And when you work with bright, young software and business professionals — like those I’ve worked with across our industry — there’s little to no credit given for what you accomplished ten years ago. What matters is what you can contribute now, and that assessment is made every time a client gets their monthly invoice as well as with each deliverable and work session. The bottom line is that each of us is a business of one, a sole proprietor over our own careers even if we have chosen corporate employment.

I’ll talk a lot more in a future post about the KSAOC aspects of ensuring your professional value tomorrow, but one important and rarely-discussed topic is how well we fit culturally across a wide spectrum of opportunities. Are we able to work comfortably across diverse cultures, socioeconomic group, and organizational differences? Are we likely to be “picked first” for the team or reluctantly included? Does what we do make a bottom line difference in our organizations or to our clients, a difference which is very clear and easily communicated? What I do is pretty hard to describe, except to insiders, and I certainly can’t run a major marketing operation. So I’m dependent on word of mouth, on the people who are most likely to retain me passing along the word that Naomi adds value well beyond her outrageous rates.

Stay visible and connected — building, sustaining your brand and your posse.

It always was and always will be about the power of the network. It really does take a village, the mutual support we derive from friends, family and colleagues, not only to raise our children but also to help us every step of the way through life. We owe so much to those from whom we learned (and continue to learn) our craft, to those who inspired us, and to those to whom we pass along those lessons. And professionally, nothing worth doing in my world has been an entirely solo accomplishment.

Long before anyone had thought of applying information technology to developing and sustaining, as well as tapping into and deploying, one’s network, there were some of us who were just naturals at understanding and unleashing the multiplier effects of a networked professional life and many more who weren’t. And when that network lived only in the minds of its owners, or in entirely personal, manual records, we understood completely the very personal nature of, the entirely KSAOC nature of, both your network and your networking ability.

In our present world of nearly ubiquitous, easily searchable, online rolodexes, not to mention the activity streams we use to keep each other updated on nearly everything, its easy to connect with everyone you ever knew and many about whom you haven’t a clue. But the career amplification network effect isn’t about having a zillion connections (unless you’re a professional recruiter/marketeer/similar) but rather about the quality and usefulness of those connections. Are you connected to the people who matter in your industry/profession is an meaningful way? Do they reach out to you with their questions, industry/professional news, career opportunities and suggestions, further connections, etc? Do you respond in an equally valuable way? Can you reach into that network on short notice to get help with a client, project, professional dilemma, etc.? Is that help prompt and on point? It’s not quantity here that matters, its quality.

I’ve been blessed in my career in many ways, but my network is perhaps my greatest professional asset. And it takes work, it takes rising to the occasion, it takes honesty and reliability to create and sustain a high quality network, regardless of the technology used. And I continue to believe that we are truly judged by the company we keep.

Work your ass off.

What else is there to say? We’re all competing globally for professional opportunities, and we’re competing across many generations. Folks like me are having a terrific time extending our careers rather than spending hours in our bunny slippers with the morning papers. New grads are having the hardest time ever in finding their first opportunities. There’s so much to learn, to know, to do every day, and that’s before we even get to our “day jobs.” And our tablets and smartphones, along with the growth of mobile enterprise (often led by HRM) applications, are allowing us to work anywhere, anytime and under almost any circumstances. There just aren’t any clear lines anymore between work and not work, so we might as well get used to approving leave requests while watching our daughter’s soccer game and screening a video new hire application in the bathroom.

I’ve always held vacations to be sacred, but I’ll never have clean closets or seasonally adjusted floral displays. Our holiday letters have been known to go out in July for the prior year, and I’ll never have a snappy wardrobe. I’ve been working essentially full-time since high school and right through college, and have been overwhelmed by my todo list nearly every day. There may be exceptional people who are able to excel in their personal and professional lives without straining themselves, but I am not one of them. For most of us, what Thomas Edison said is true: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

Objects To The Left Of Us, Objects To The Right Of Us

Pattern Recognition With The Cookie Monster

[This post is dedicated to Marc Maloy, SVP Worldwide Sales at HireRight, just because he asked for it. It’s the story of objects from a decidedly human resource management (HRM) perspective. For you object modeling mavens, rest assured that my knowledge of this topic as it is applied to software engineering is a little more complete and sophisticated than the approach I’m using here to present these concepts to a broader audience — and forgive me my trespasses.]

I Am An Object

I am an object. I am a single instance of the PERSON object. Right now, our planet holds about 7 billion instances of the PERSON object, each of whom is uniquely identifiable, most reliably by specific biometric attributes. If you’re LinkedIn or Facebook, you’re really like to capture data on all 7 billion of these PERSONs, but from the HRM perspective for a specific organization, what we’re really interested in are those PERSONs, and those roles of PERSON (more below), which are related to doing the work of our organization.

When we model the HRM domain in objects with an eye on automating that domain (and there’s both art and science in doing this well and at the right level of granularity), there are large numbers of small objects. But the big, fat, important objects, the highest level objects which shape the domain and our view of it, are called object classes, and they include WORK UNIT, JOB, POSITION, WORK LOCATION, TOTAL COMPENSATION PLAN, KSAOC (my personal favorite) and about fifty more. I’m capitalizing these object names and using their official names from my licensed domain model, that licensees of my work will recognize them. But what matters isn’t their names but their definitions, characteristics, relationships and behaviors.

Objects Have Attributes

I have one to many attributes (i.e. characteristics or properties), as do all object instances. For PERSON, these might include date of birth (all gifts appreciated), height and weight (entirely my own business) , name (which becomes its own lower level object related to PERSON and, of course, we must think globally here, really everywhere when we’re modeling PERSON, so no anglo saxon first name/middle name/last name allowed), and ethnicity (this too becomes its own lower level object related to PERSON and, again thinking globally, this certainly won’t be governed by the US’s EEO possibilities). The correct set of attributes to model with the object class PERSON (versus one of the lower level objects in the PERSON object hierarchy) are those which are truly about me and not about the various roles I have played, am playing or might play with respect to any specific organization. Not surprisingly, many PERSON objects may have attributes and even attribute values in common, e.g. two PERSONs sharing a birthday date or name, which is why these types of attribute values make lousy unique identifiers. But these common patterns do present opportunities when we’re trying to automate PERSON objects.

Objects Have Methods

I also have one to many methods (i.e. behaviors or things I can do). I can express my date of birth in various formats, complain about my weight, change my name for various reasons, including pure whimsy, and deny my ethnicity. The methods associated with PERSON are those which apply to the attributes which are truly about me and not about the various roles I play with respect to any specific organization. Bringing together conceptually the attributes and their related methods into objects changes fundamentally how we now develop models of any subject matter domain or real world environment as the foundation for automation. No longer do we think about data as something separate from the methods, e.g. the business rules and real world actions, which capture, shape, validate, present, etc. that data, and without which that data is a useless lump.

Objects Have Relationships

Objects also have relationships. The Ron Wallace instance of the PERSON object and the Naomi Bloom instance of the PERSON object, assuming that both of us were of interest to a specific organization for some reason, are related by another, clearly lower level, object we’ll call MARITAL RELATIONSHIP. And that relationship object may also have one to many attributes (e.g. date of marriage, country under whose laws the marriage is governed, existence of a prenuptual agreement and so on) and one to many methods (e.g. like all other dates, date of marriage needs to know how to present itself in various formats, and the country under whose laws the marriage is governed — we’re talking here about the attribute and not the actual country — needs to know how to validate the combination of country and existence of a prenuptual agreement because some of these combinations may not be supported in governing law).

Are you with me so far? Because here’s where it really gets interesting. A single instance of the PERSON, i.e. a single physical person, may have multiple relationships to a specific organization at the same time. Some PERSONs may be PERSON DESIGNEEs, that is PERSONs who are eligible for something of value under the terms of a specific TOTAL COMPENSATION PLAN in which an enrolled EMPLOYEE (bear with me, and I’ll get to EMPLOYEE) has so designated them. Examples of person designee include your life insurance beneficiaries, your ex-wife’s claims under COBRA, and your designation of your 401K’s secondary beneficiary as your son (or you could leave it to your alma mater, so here we’re really talking about EXTERNAL ORG DESIGNEE, aka legal person).

At the same time, that particular instance of PERSON, i.e. that specific physical person, could be of interest to a specific organization because they have done work for them in the past, are doing work for them now, or might do work for them in the future. So, a single instance of PERSON, the Naomi instance, could be both a PERSON DESIGNEE (when you so designate me to get your life insurance) and be doing work for your firm (when you retain me as a VENDOR EMPLOYEE or hire me as an EMPLOYEE) at precisely the same time or serially. There’s a lot more to the PERSON object hierarchy, but for that you’ll have to cross my palms with silver.

Objects Have Life Cycles

Every object has a life cycle, which is really the life cycle of a typical instance of that object. With the PERSON objects (and there are a number of these, even more than are noted above), their life cycle is not under the organization’s control. All we can do is to dip into that lifecycle where it is relevant to the organization. Birth, educational experiences, marriage, medical adventures, and so many more PERSON lifecycle events only become known to the organization as that PERSON’s relationship to the organization makes them relevant. So we’re likely to know a lot more about EMPLOYEEs than we would about VENDOR EMPLOYEEs and even less about PERSON DESIGNEEs. All those lifecycle events occur, but we only recognize and address that ones that are relevant to the organization (which could be simply because of specific regulatory requirements).

But there are some objects, like JOB, POSITION, KSAOC and WORK UNIT, whose definition, attributes, methods, and lifecycle events are much more directly under the control of the organization. There may be relevant regulatory or contractual (and here I’m referring to labor contracts) constraints on how we define objects or on their lifecycles, but much of what goes on here relies on what the organization chooses to do. And there are considerable similarities in the lifecycles of these constructed objects: the organization conceives of the need for a new JOB, it determines the attribute values and methods for that JOB, it opens up that JOB for use by particular parts of the organization, and so on. When modeling the HRM domain, it becomes clear that the highest level object classes and many lower level objects fall into distinct groups — including person, external organization, constructed, event — whose object lifecycles are patterned by group. Knowing these patterns is one key to being able to automate these objects in more of a definitional than procedual way.

Objects Have Applicability

Now I know this is only supposed to be a brief introduction to the notion of objects, but I just wouldn’t be Naomi if I didn’t point out a few more of their important characteristics, especially those which have a profound impact on our attempts to automate them. First up, applicability. An object may have applicability to (i.e. may be relevant to or appropriate for) all the tenants in a multi-tenant environment (e.g. the object of geographic WORK LOCATIONs for the instances that begin with planet earth and work their way down to specific countries), to the activity of all tenants within a specific geography (e.g. the object of US Federal tax tables), to just the activity of a single tenant (e.g. the specific configuration that changes the terminology of employee to cast member for Walt Disney Company tenant, to just the activity of a single tenant defined by a particular JOB (e.g. a specific TOTAL COMPENSATION PLAN that belongs to the Walt Disney Company and which has been defined as only being applicable to the JOB of Mickey), and so forth. Thus, objects, whatever their internal attributes and methods, as well as whatever their relationships, must also be “wrapped” with their applicability rules. Please note that this is my personal term for encapsulating objects with their applicability and is absolutely not the correct technical term for this characteristics but which gives me a very clear mental picture of what’s happening). By the way, these applicability rules for objects are what govern their inheritance across and within tenants, but that’s a topic for another post.

Objects, With Their Applicability, Have Effective Dates

I wouldn’t be Naomi if I didn’t bring one of my favorite enterprise software architecture topics, effective-dating, into this post on objects. But then it’s so applicable. Objects change over time in terms of their overall structure, so not just changes in the data content of the attributes for a specific instance (which also change, but that’s much easier to handle). Their attributes themselves change as do their methods, e.g. when we rethink our concept of JOB to allow for a new grouping/family to support cross-organizational KSAOC analysis or when we change is some profound way (from say years of service to an accomplishment threshold) the eligibility criteria for a specific TOTAL COMPENSATION PLAN. Even more complex to automate, and even as their structures can change, so can the applicability rules for a given object. Following the “wrapper” mental image above, objects containing their attributes and methods, must first be wrapped with their applicability and then be given an outer wrapper with their beginning and ending (but it could be open-ended) effective dates.

Final Thoughts

I’ve barely scratched the surface of thinking about HRM in objects, but it’s a start. A much better introduction to the relevant concepts (and I so wish I knew this author, having “sold” so many of his books over the last 20 years) is “Object Technology: A Manager’s Guide” by Steven Taylor. But before you decide that none of this matters to you, please be advised that modern (so not all current but all modern) systems analysis is based on object thinking as are modern practices in software engineering. The best of HRM enterprise software is built, from the ground up, with at least logical models as an expression of the domain and, increasing, is built from the models themselves. So, if you plan to work with, help design or manage, evaluate or implement modern HRM enterprise software, then object models are you. The very good news is that object modeling is all about pattern recognition, and that’s an easily recognizable KSAOC to which the formality of object modeling can added. The bad news is that if you really don’t have the pattern recognition gene, you really can’t do this well.

Now back to work on my HRM object model musical to the music of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore: “I am the very model of a modern major general.”

About

Post Chronology

InFullBloom Archives

Categories

Selected Publications

Speaking Engagements

Adventures of Bloom & Wallace

Admin

Blogroll