Jim Newman - Making Talent Management Technology Work

Steve

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio, and our interview this week was with Jim Newman from HRizons, and he's the President of HRizons, which is an organization focusing in talent management, really around talent management technology, and Jim shared some very interesting insights around deployment of talent management technology, he works with a lot of companies to implement technology, once they've decided to go forward with it, and had some great observations about what companies can do to make those deployments go more successful, as well as things that they need to manage, or else the deployments can go awry. So take a listen, it's a very interesting conversation, if you are using or are planning to use talent management technology, so let's hear from Jim Newman.

Hi, welcome to People Performance Radio. Today we're talking with Jim Newman, who's the President of HRizons, which is actually spent H-R-izons, that's kind of a clever play on words. Jim, thank you so much for appearing on People Performance Radio.

Jim

Well, thanks for having me Steve, good to be here.

Steve

Thanks, so Jim, you've been working in the HR talent management space for a long time with HRizons, if you could talk a little bit about what you guys do, and really how it relates to technology, because I know that's a big focus for you.

Jim

Yeah, sure, absolutely Steve. So, HRizons was actually founded a couple of years ago, and my background is in HR and OD, I spent many years on the practitioner side, and really saw how technology was evolving, especially in the talent management space, so I founded the firm on the basis that there is, and certainly on the experience as well, that companies needed help to close the gap between what technology could offer, and what they would actually execute within their company and aligning within their business, so the company was founded on that principle and that basis, and we've since developed into three core practice areas, we have a talent acquisition practice, talent to management and talent development, and then we certainly work closely with technology in that space.

Steve

So when you talk about closing that gap, when a company sees some cool talent management technology, and they say, "Yes, we want to do that", what is it that prevents them from just turning it on? What sort of expertise do you need to successfully deploy talent management technology?

Jim

That's a great question, and there certainly is some terrific technology these days when I compare it back to going, even as little as five years ago, the advances are tremendous, so there's a lot of what we call ‘sex appeal' to the technology these days, but ideal state and reality are usually very different, so what we tend to find is that there's a couple of key components to be successful: number one is, you need to know what it is that your business needs, and a strategy to support that, and we often find that that's either ill defined or not defined at all; and secondly, you also need well-defined processes and the processes in talent management, as you know, span anything from goals and performance to succession and compensation for variable pay, all these things, and the real difference in today's processes is that, with technology, there's the ability to integrate, and if you were to go to most organizations even today, you'll find that their processes are not well integrated and designed to be integrated, because they didn't have to do that in the past, technology didn't support it.

Then, in order to be successful after that, you have to have a deployment strategy, effective change management within your organization, and certainly executive support doesn't hurt, and then when it comes to actual training and ongoing maintenance and support, there's many other different factors as simple as making sure that new employees that come in and new managers in the organization actually get some form of training and onboarding process, so that they're leveraging the technology that's already there, or been implemented, so things like system admin and maintenance of systems, so there's many components.

Steve

So if I can come back, it really sounds like, you've talked about four major there: first, you need to be very focused, you have to know exactly what's the business reason that we're implementing this; you need to take it from an integrated approach, which I think is a good observation about, with technology now we can integrate the different parts of talent management, which historically, for example, like staffing and development were two different departments, even though you're developing the people that you hire, these two should be integrated, thinking about how different components of HR integrate.

So focused, integrated, the third I heard is really thinking about deployment, don't just think you can roll it out and everyone can use it immediately, I used to work in human factors, and there is no such thing as a truly intuitive interface, the iPhone aside, never underestimate the level of incompetence of your end-user population. That's a cruel way of putting it actually, never overestimate the ability of your engineers to design effective systems, because there's always somebody that can't figure it out.

And the last thing was maintenance, so focused, integrated, deployment effective, and then maintenance, to remember that this has got to be maintained over time. Of those, did I actually capture these four categories, does that make sense?

Jim

Yes, I think the one thing, Steve, that I didn't cover was really evolving, I mean companies mature and processes and needs mature, and so you have to evolve with that as well.

Steve

So you have to evolve over time, which kind of is related to maintenance, but it's guided evolution, as opposed to just letting things take their course probably.

Jim

Exactly, yep.

Steve

So if we go back to focus, because you hear that a lot, you need to start with the business needs —I don't know if you can do this, could you group, when you look at people investing in HR technology or talent management technology —what are the major business needs they're trying to hit? And what are the implications of these different needs?

Jim

Sure, well there certainly are many, but I'll give you an example. One that often comes to mind and is brought up in conversation is, companies want to do more with less, as you and I talked about prior to this call, and in order to do so they need to make the most effective use of the resources that they do have, and so creating true alignment within an organization to execute is always a challenge for companies, and large companies are decentralized, global, even if they're on the smaller or mid size, and maybe have a slightly more complex business model, they have multiple locations. Getting people to be in alignment, to really understand what it is that their role is, and how that impacts the business strategy, even if they understand what the strategy is, is a challenge, and certainly technology can play a role to support that, if it's done well.

I'll give you an example, we worked with a company, a client of ours, that had actually implemented some leading edge technology in talent management, and they just weren't getting the bang for the buck, and what it came down to is that their executive team did not know really how the software worked, and they didn't know why it was important. It was probably, when I look at it in hindsight, they could have done a better job on the change from change management perspective, and really getting that executive team on board and supporting it, so in any event, long story short, what we did is we actually worked with the CEO and his direct reports to better understand why this was so important, and how it could be leveraged, not from a HR process perspective, but to more effectively manage the business, and some eyes really opened up in that workshop, and the amount that that technology is leveraged in that company in comparison to, prior to those workshops and prior to helping them understand that, is literally night and day.

Steve

So a lot of it is awareness-building, taking people who may have looked at technologies, "Oh, that's just HR technology, it's not really relevant to my day-to-day business", and they don't realize how relevant it is, so I always think this way about goal setting technology, that people think about goal setting and performance management as a once a year HR event, and they're like, "Well, what's more important than managing the performance of your people —why wouldn't you use that more frequently?"

Jim

Right, and it also gives you a lot more access, better access to information than the P & L, because P & Ls are reactive, or you're looking backwards, and this gives you the ability to get some insight into what people are doing that might have an impact on your P & L in the future, so people that use it strategically, and here's a key though —organizational discipline and commitment, as you know a lot of these system, SuccessFactors are certainly an example, it's only as good as the data that's in the system, so if you don't have organizational discipline around maintaining the status of those goals, the reporting and the data's going to be useless, so there's a lot to it, to leverage it, and it can't be underestimated, but if it is leveraged, it's very powerful.

Steve

I think that's a good example of what the data integrity is, I've heard the analogy made saying, "You need to take your talent data as seriously as you take your budget forecasting data", and people sometimes go, "Well, these performance ratings are subjective", and I'm like, "Well, what about your budget forecasts?" —there's a pretty heavy dose of subjectivity in most of those too; you still need to try to do it as rigorously as you can.

When you look at this, about making people outside of HR take the whole talent management processes and technology more seriously, as long as I have been in this field people have been saying, "We need to get outside of HR and talk to line leaders" —that's always what talent management vendors, whether they're consultants or technology people have been saying, I think we're making more inroads that way. What do you think resonates with people outside of HR, when you get in front of a non-HR person with one of your clients —what are the things you focus on?

Jim

That's a great question. At the end of the day, it's "What's in it for me? —I'm responsible for running this department, or I'm responsible for managing this business unit, or I'm running this function in support of a business unit" —they're looking to achieve results and goals that are important to them; they see HR processes and tools as often times a necessary evil, so the way to overcome that is to show a return, a value —what is the value proposition you're offering to them, and in order to show that you've got to show how it benefits them, and that's not always easy to do, but the first thing that's absolutely critical is understand what it is that they need to achieve —how often do HR people go, and talent managers, and go and speak to line leaders and say, "What are your goals and objectives here —how does this impact the business?" and then come back and say, "Here's some things that we can to do help you be more effective and achieve those goals." If you can do that, you're going to get their attention.

Steve

At that amazes me, because it seems like it's the logical place to start, every consulting engagement I've done in my career, the first question you say is, "What are you trying to achieve?" Why do you think HR people haven't done that, or is it that they've tried and business leaders haven't answered?

Jim

That's a tough one, because it certainly depends on the organization, and certainly depends on the degree of credibility the HR department has established. If HR is able to have a business conversation with a business person, they're going to have the credibility, and they're going to get time with that business leader to ask those questions. If they have not, that business leader may not even give them the time to ask the questions, so there's certainly a challenge, and there's a barrier there that needs to first be overcome from a credibility standpoint. Once that happens, I don't know, that's a good question to ask them and say, "Why haven't you done that? Is it time? Is it resource? Is it priorities?" And I think often times as HR, we tend to get sucked into reacting to the day-to-day, and not stepping back and looking at what's truly important, and that's a challenge for every HR leader.

Steve

Yeah, I think that's especially true in smaller HR organizations where you get people reacting to the employee crisis of the moment.

When you look at the use of technology, one thing you've really touched on is the importance of understanding the business drivers behind the technology —where are the other places, when you've worked with clients, where you have seen them either really struggle for failing to think something through about technology; or conversely do something that really just made the technology implementation just phenomenally successful?

Jim

Well, where it wasn't successful, underestimating all the key elements required to make the project successful, almost thinking that, well the vendor's going to come in and do all this stuff, right? —and as soon as they realize that that's not the case, and there's a big onus on them to make decisions to adequately resource the project, to manage the timelines, to take responsibility for the results, to not think that the technology's the solution, but that the technology's the enabler, if they haven't done those things, and then built the appropriate strategy and plan, they are at a disadvantage, and depending on the size of the gap can dictate whether or not it's a disaster, or just moderately successful. The clients that have tackled it, they do that proactively, they go in, eyes wide open, they do their due diligence and whether they do that on their own, or they access a consulting firm to help them through that, they have a "state of readiness", as we call it, where they've thought through all of those key elements, and when they involve the technology, they know what's left to do, and they haven't disadvantaged themselves, I don't know how else to put it.

Steve

So I think part of that you're touching on is, making sure you're aware of all the details and decisions that are going to go into implementing any large scale technology, and the analogy that comes to mind is, you were talking about that, is it's like if you decide to build a house, if you've ever built a house, you suddenly realize, are you ready for all the decisions that go into building a house, beyond just saying, "I want to have a house with this many bedrooms", and you're going to have people show up asking you, "What kind of doorknobs do you want? Where do you want the refrigerator put? What type of toilet? What color paint?" —all of these millions of different decisions, there are so many, it's almost overwhelming, and at the end of the day though you've got to live in this house, so some of those decisions may seem trivial along the way, but could really come back to haunt you down the road, so having somebody like the equivalent of an interior designer and general contractor to help you with an HR technology project, and it sounds like what many companies need, is that a good characterization of it?

Jim

That's a good analogy, and I've built a house, not personally with my own hands, but working with a contractor, and so it's a great analogy, and when you think about that, someone that oversees and project manages it effectively, but also has been there and done that before, has a huge advantage, because they know what to expect, they can foresee what's coming, they can look for the pitfalls and bring that to your attention, and if you have a good experience, they've done a good job of that, and when they don't, you don't, so it's, I think, effectively project managing it, but project management alone I think, this is probably a good area where I've seen some mistakes happen, we work with some very large organizations who have put together teams of project managers in some cases, and because they don't know what they don't know, they're not able to provide that course correction or that guidance that we're talking about, and so that is often a missing piece, and that's often times where we come and add most of our good piece of the value that we bring to the table.

Steve

Sort of like, when the project managers are very good, I love working with good project managers, because they're so good at identifying the tasks and keeping it on track, but you have to remember that each of those steps in that Gantt chart involves some actual decisions that rely on expertise that project managers probably don't have, unless they're talent management experts as well.

Jim

Right, exactly, so even in the smaller companies that we work with, because we do work from small and mid size to large enterprise, it's the same types of issues, it's just scope and scale, and that's probably the other component I want to add in here, Steve, is that the scope of the project and the amount of time allocated and really defining what success looks like and phasing it appropriately based on the culture, the ability for the organization to support the change, those things are key factors that need to be thought through in advance, and that's part of the strategy, so if you do a good job of fleshing that out early, again you probably have a better chance, and some organizations that are in a really good state of readiness, that tackle a fairly large scope project, can be successful, but again it's not underestimating the tasks at hand.

Steve

OK, I have one last question I think, you can't do a podcast on talent management now and not ask questions about the down economy, and my question is, I could imagine somebody listening to this interview and going, "You know, that makes a lot of sense to me: one, the technology makes a lot of sense as far as increasing efficiency and effectiveness, I understand the needs of the business; but the deployment part —wow, you're right, it would be good to have some sort of general contractor that would help out with this, but I am being told to do more with less, my budget's being cut, it's going to be hard enough to get money for the technology, getting money for an additional expertise to help implement it —boy, that's going to be really really hard, I don't really see how I can make that case to my business leaders" —now, I have to think in your career you've had to help clients make that case —can you share some things that would help people in talent management really, not necessarily grow their budget, but at least save what budget they have, as they're constantly being asked to squeeze more and more out of their workforces?

Jim

That's a great question, and actually one of the things that we're seeing in the marketplace is, it's not like everyone's a brand new customer any more, we've got a lot of customers that don't have talent management technology in place for almost two years now, so there's a certain maturity to the market, and what's happening as a result is, business leaders and talent management leaders, HR leaders, are asking, "Are we really getting a return on investment? What are we actually getting, other than automation?" And sometimes they're going, "You know what? —I don't know if we can answer that", so what we're finding is that that is a critical question: "What are we getting out of this, other than automation" —because automation is great, and that's an efficiency, but if you're going to transform your business, if you're going to showcase back to the organization, this is why the investment in technology and the processes that we employ add value, you've got to be able to translate that into business speak, and so that could be taking a look at what it costs to replace some key talent that you may have lost, if you weren't adequately tracking it and developing your key talent, could have something to do with just the cost of sourcing and bringing in new talent that as a result, there could certainly be a case made that, as it relates to managing performance and adequately understanding who your high performers are, and who's getting the merit increase that you do have available, and who's getting access to the variable compensation that may be available, and who isn't —how do you differentiate? And then, what is the cost of not differentiating, and not even understanding who your higher performers are? —because business leaders, when you talk to someone running a business that doesn't have any HR background, guaranteed they know who their top performers are, guaranteed they know who it is that's adding value to the bottom line, or is critical to their customer base, but if the systems, the organizational systems in place, don't support that, and don't enable those line managers to effectively retain and develop those people, then they're going to see that as a barrier, and the technology has to be seen as an enabler, so if your systems and technologies aren't doing that, then you need to step back and look at what are you doing wrong and what could you be doing to improve it, and I think that's the next step.

Steve

I think that makes a lot of sense, and I think one of the things on that is, if you can find examples of where the company really made some major messed ups for lack of insight into their talent, that can be a powerful story, especially when you look at things now, like the downsizing and the restructuring, I remember the last period this went through, going back to the early ‘90s, and there was a lot of stories and examples of companies where in fact people didn't have good insight into their top performers, where they let go people with critical skills and knowledge, and actually had to hire them back, and it was because they hadn't built an infrastructure of insight into that, so I think examples, what you're saying I think would resonate is, look for examples where, "Boy, if we'd done a better job of this, we would have really saved a lot of money, and we can't afford to make those mistakes going forward." It might be a good way, the more concrete they can be, the more powerful they tend to be.

Well Jim, I'm always sensitive to the time in these podcasts, we don't want to talk longer than we have time for —were there any last comments or thoughts or things that you'd like to share with our audience as they start thinking about the end of this year and moving into the New Year?

Jim

Yeah, sure, everyone knows that we're going into a tough 2009, and people are worried about budget, worried about revenue, and I think it's really important to take a look at what you do have, and leverage what's there, maximize that investment, and look for those little opportunities, this is one of those times where you don't necessarily have to worry about the big monster project that's been approved that you need to tackle; now you can really fine-tune and hone in and maybe get more feedback from your users and your managers, and what it is that's missing, and then use this year as an opportunity to fine-tune and tweak, and then maybe, I'm being a little bit optimistic here, and hope that as with 2009 starts to roll on, that 2010's going to be much better, that we're in a great position to make case for that next step.

Steve

So really what I hear is, don't do nothing, do what you can, keep moving forward, and we will come out of this, I think that's the important thing, you need to keep moving forward.

Well Jim, thank you so much, I really enjoyed the conversation, some great thoughts and tips about using HR technology and deploying it, and again we've been speaking with Jim Newman, who's the President of H-R-izons, or HRizons, and thank you very much for appearing on People Performance Radio.

Jim

Great, thanks Steve, I appreciate it as well.

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