The quote is from a story related by Tim Toterhi of Quintiles during a webinar we held yesteday. Read to the bottom for the answer.

I generally hesitate to plug our own marketing efforts, but I think the webinar marcomm put togther yesterday with The Yankee Group and customer Quintiles is actually worth watching - even if you’ve only got a few minutes. To start it off, Jason Corsello from Yankee gave an excellent overview of the space. He covered a range of topics from specifics like technology delivery methods (on-demand vs. on-site) to high level analysis of the overall value of workforce performance management.

The most interesting bit: the discussion of Integrated Human Capital Management (Minute 11:30)

Tim Totehri from Quintiles (a customer) talked about his own process in evaluating and implementing a performance management solution (Minute 31:00). His 6 steps to getting a system rolled out:

1. Confront the Brutal Facts
2. Understand Employee Engagement
3. Build the Business Case
4. Choose a Partner
5. Get Internal Buy-In
6. Implementation

And the answer to the question of what to do when the airplane door opens:

Close It! 

Sometimes things only look like big problems. Getting a performance management system up and running is challenging, but doable. (Further context and explanation at minute 31)

Watch the Webinar | Get the Yankee Slides | Get the SuccessFactors Slides | Get the Quintiles Slides