Successful Deployments

Jim

Welcome back to People Performance Radio, this is your host Jim.

Steve

And Steve.

Jim

Steve, we've got a couple of things we want to get out of the way before we jump into today's show, which is about successful deployments and that is we're looking for feedback. There's a few ways you can give us feedback, the first one is give us a call, 650—425—7474, and leave us a voicemail, question or comment, whatever it is, we'll get it played on the air, hopefully as long as there's no profanity, or you can give us an email at podcast@successfactors.com. We want your review in the iTunes music store, so jump in there, give us reviews, and you can also follow us on Twitter at Twitter.com/ppradio.

Steve

PP Radio, I don't know if that's the best terminology that we want for our show but we do definitely want feedback. One thing that, when we talked earlier, we can't learn, develop or improve without feedback so we welcome any feedback you might have. So what are we talking about today Jim?

Jim

We're talking about successful deployment, when people are thinking, "Hey, I know what I want but I'm not exactly sure how I'm actually going to get this", this thing deployed. One of the reasons is we did a good interview at SuccessConnect with one of SuccessFactors partners, but on top of that I was recently reading in the news that in terms of ERP solutions about 70% of them are a failure. So, I don't know, I think I agree with that. They basically list four reasons why.

Steve

What are the four?

Jim

The four are, it doesn't meet the requirements, it doesn't meet the budget, doesn't meet deadline/time requirements, and the fourth one which is it might not be used.

Steve

Yeah, I think of those four I mean the fourth one is the biggest one, especially when it comes to HR technology. You know, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with technology. On one hand I'm a huge believer in it and I wouldn't have had the career I have if it wasn't for technology, I think technology allows us to get knowledge and useful information in the hands of lots of people that would never have otherwise, and really advance the field of talent management.

On the other hand I've been in this field long enough to know that technology is often about false expectations, so on one hand I believe in the power of technology but I totally don't believe in a lot of the technology marketing hype, and I think that for HR technology to work you're really requiring people to change their behaviours. A lot of people, the higher unmanaged people aren't using technology at all and you're saying, "We've got this technology to make you more effective, but you have to adapt how you act to use our technology", which can be hard. It can be hard to get people to say, "I want to use this." I think there's huge differences too Jim, what do you think, in terms of people's willingness to try new technology?

Jim

I definitely think there's probably somewhat of a generational gap or what people are familiar or comfortable with. I love technology, I love my iPhone and my new laptops and our new podcasting equipment, and I love to get involved with that stuff. I love getting involved with new sort of websites and things out there, softwares as a service and all that, so, for me it's a no brainer, but I don't know for other folks, how they react.

Steve

Yeah, I think one of the things is, I don't think it's a generational issue, I think it's an individual difference across people because I have, in my own peer group, all from the same generation, if I look down at my nephews or the younger generation, there's some people that just like technology for technology's sake, and there's other people, and I probably fall in this category, that I appreciate technology as it allows me to do other things, but just because something is a new form of technology does not at all make it interesting to me. One of the things that I find very frustrating is having to constantly learn new technology just so I can do something that I was already doing, so like having to get a new phone and having to learn a new phone so I can make a phone call, and it's like, "Hey, I just want to make a phone call" — I don't care what size my phone is as long as it's reasonably small.

Jim

Right yeah, I guess I could see that. I mean how hard is it to learn how to use a phone though?

Steve

It's just another thing you have to learn. It's like there are constantly …

Jim

It sounds like you have a tough life!

Steve

Well I don't have a tough life, I have a busy life, I have a full life. I want to learn stuff that allows me to do things that are new, I don't want to learn new ways to do old things.

Jim

I buy that. So you're not down with using Skype and all that, even though it's free calls, all those things?

Steve

No, I like Skype because it's a free call and stuff like that, but Skype is remarkably easy to use, and I guess that maybe gets to the point here that, when you look at usability, you either have to have something that's designed that it's so simple and intuitive to use, and I used to do human factor design, that's actually hard to do, it takes a lot of thought to create something that's really intuitive, and there must be some real compelling reason to use it.

I think that's actually interesting in this interview, when we switch over, because we have good fortune at Success Connect to talk to somebody who deploys HR technology for a living, and is not a person who builds the technology, but is a person who works for the companies to actually get successful deployment of the technology and is very aware of, it's neat to talk to her because she's someone who appreciates the value of technology but is not a person who loves technology in and of itself.

Jim

Right okay, well let's go ahead and jump into the interview with Kristin from Birchbark.

Steve and I are here with Kristin Frykman, the Managing Director at Birchbark Consulting, are you ready to rock?

Kristin

Here I am, rock me like a hurricane!

Jim

Nice!

Steve

I love that attitude, that ready to ramp—up performance view of things, not afraid to quote The Scorpions!

Jim

Nice!

Kristin

No fear!

Steve

No fear! So before we jump into this, why don't you tell us a little background about Birchbark, is it Birchbark Consulting, what you do uniquely for clients?

Kristin

Well, what I have done for several enterprise clients is provide a single point of contact to vendors, to external vendors, most notably SuccessFactors, where I'm the one who will shepherd processes through, help them transform their old paper—based performance management system to an electronic system, where they don't have to rifle through files any more and all that, and being a single point of contact takes a lot of the burden off of them. You don't have a bunch of managers reaching out, you have one conduit, straight to the vendor.

Steve

So how did you get into this? What's the background? How does one become a, what would you technically call your role, "single point of contact"?

Kristin

Well I'm a project management professional really, I do project management but I have a broad background in operations and HR, and I really believe in the fundamental value of good talent management, and think that it's one of the real pillars of a good organization so I'm just drawn to it. It's all about people, it's about trust, helping them feel better about what happens to them when they're at work.

Steve

So when would an organization want to talk to somebody like you? When would they say, "We need this"?

Kristin

I was actually brought in at the implementation stage because they said, "OK, we know we're kind of in the weeds here. Performance management has gotten away from us, we need something more powerful", but they looked around their internal resources and said, "We don't have anybody." Everybody was saying, "Don't look at me, I'm not doing that, I'm not implementing that, forget it".

Steve

"Let's get Kristin, she'll do anything".

Kristin

Yeah exactly, I'm like Mikey, the live cereal commercial, I'll do anything, sure! Yeah, I'm often called by the GVP of HR, I'm called his border collie, so it's "Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof"!

Steve

You don't have that on your card, I notice.

Kristin

Maybe I should! Border collie for hire! It takes that kind of nature where you're constantly, constantly surveying the horizon, looking for potential, "Ah look, there's a wolf coming over the rise there, I'd better get these sheep over here".

Steve

And you're eternally optimistic and happy?

Kristin

Absolutely, I'm just a cock—eyed optimist.

Steve

I think that's actually an important part of change management though, that you can never be negative about it.

Kristin

No.

Steve

So what are some of the things, if a company's saying, "Well, we're thinking of automating our performance management processes, we know we can do it better, there's this technology out there", what are some of the things that you should think, this is what you should be thinking about as you're getting ready to undertake this journey?

Kristin

That's a good question. I think that one of the important things to think about at the beginning, and the middle and always, is setting expectations, because honestly, whether something succeeds or fails in based on whether people's expectations are met, so if you remember that you're in charge of setting those expectations, make them realistic, make them doable, make them optimistic, but don't over—promise and under—deliver. Say, "This is going to be tough, this is going to be complicated, but you know what? — we're going to get through it together, it'll be kind of fun too," and set your SLAs early on, make sure that your service level agreements are realistic, communicate, communicate, communicate. Give them a lot of feedback.

Steve

Do you think the realistic, does that have to come mainly from clients having unrealistic expectations about vendors, or vendors having unrealistic expectations about clients, or is it going both ways?

Kristin

Both, yeah, pretty much both.

Steve

What's the typical, most unrealistic expectation you see in these engagements?

Kristin

That the client, the person who's implementing, imagines that a change can happen today. It's kind of that old lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part thing, where they think, "I should have done this, and so I need it now, and therefore you're going to make it happen now, right?" And we try, and honestly we've had some phenomenal success in that way, by pushing a little and by getting creative, we can find a quick solution, but you don't want to start out saying, "I will always solve your crises in a day", you don't want to set that expectation. When it happens it should be surprise and delight, not business as usual.

Steve

I think we were talking Jim, once about, in one of our earlier podcasts about sort of a culture in the United States actually now, it's a culture of busyness, I'm way too busy and important to actually plan ahead, it's just very reactive all the time, and we end up getting caught up in this circle of crazy reactivity because we don't just stop and say, "Maybe I should organize my life better".

Kristin

Yeah, and if you don't plan ahead, you have no idea how busy you're going to be in the future, you can't even imagine how busy you're going to be if you don't anticipate, especially an end of year process. How many managers are so cranky about having to do that because they didn't just take notes during the year, they didn't do it a little bit at a time?

Steve

Is that something technology really helps with, allowing managers to do that?

Kristin

It makes a huge difference if they use it, they have to use it, and that's a part of setting expectations. We expect you to go in at least quarterly and use the notes section of your PM form to just check in with yourself about this direct report — did they disappoint me in this quarter? Did they really delight me? Did they knock my socks off? Make a note about it, so that way when you get to the end of the year you can say, "Oh yeah".

Steve

Do clients actually use the technology to monitor it, whether or not people actually doing that, going in and monitoring?

Kristin

Absolutely. Well and that's not only with performance management but with competency assessment as well. Most of my clients take full advantage of the competency tools, so you can directly assess them, and then you've got an ROI that's crystal clear. If somebody has a gap in a competency, and they go off and take a course, and they come back next year and the gap has disappeared, then there's your ROI.

Steve

I see it as an example of it, yeah. I think that's one of the things about technology, sort of comes out and people don't realize, is that it allows you to measure more things, the classic, what gets measured gets managed, I think one of the reasons why talent management historically has gotten so ignored is we had no way to really measure it, and suddenly now you can turn the spotlight onto the managers developing people now. Some of the clients I've talked to have said that sometimes that spotlight reveals things that ….

Kristin

Aren't too pretty, yeah.

Steve

Aren't too pretty, right.

Kristin

Exactly, well, and the reporting you can get, you can come up with trending information that was never possible before.

Steve

What's some of the most interesting, sort of unexpected advantages or accomplishments that you've seen in implementing this technology?

Kristin

Well I know, that for some business units, particularly when you're dealing with say consultants, consultants — that's thorny. You've got hours data, you've got utilization statistics, you've got all this yeurgh gruesome detail, but suddenly you can create an online form where you upload all that information, it's right there, it just flows right into everybody's individual form, the leadership of the consulting division was overwhelmed by how much more sophisticated the process became once everybody's form was personalized. It had their metrics in it, does that make sense?

Steve

Yeah, that does. I've worked for consulting companies, and I know one of the things we always hated was having to write down on these little sheets our hours and all of that and tracking that, you'd always wonder how did they actually use it.

Kristin

Oh, it's used, oh yes, it's talked about. Consulting groups often do a round table, there is a round table form that we've created this year that's very robust, and it involves some peer review, but the manager is the one at the end of the day who makes the decision about the final grading.

Steve

How did the end users, the people like the individual consultants, react to this? I mean did they see it as data coming back? How was it used to make their life better?

Kristin

Well, their life is better because there's an ironclad trail behind them, it's not fuzzy, it's not like, "Oh no, I lost that piece of paper". They can look, now we've got four years of data in the system, they can pull up their review form from 2003 any time they're not sure. They can look at their own progress, that's kind of exciting, because how many places have you ever worked where you can, just in a keystroke, have access to that? Could you find that form from 2003? — probably not, so you can see, and it can inform your conversation with your manager, say, "Hey look, you know what? — I've just been looking over my last four years of performance forms and how about if we take this to the next level. I'd like to talk to you about what I'm ready for, my next assignment".

Steve

So you've rated me as high performer for three years in a row, now deliver on that rating sort of thing.

Kristin

Exactly.

Steve

So four years, that's a long time. I mean in this space, because if you go back ten years ago it didn't even exist, what are some of the sort of the evolution, as you've worked with the client for over four years, and I imagine initially it was just, "Wow, we've automated this, cool", and then as they start getting data and start getting more meaningful trends, what are some of the things that you've seen in terms of the evolution of how the company manages people?

Kristin

Well initially, it was a little bit like, "Groan, we've implement this. Oh no, what is this? It's something else I have to learn." They were like kindergarteners, "I don't want a nap!", but once they get used to it, which is quick actually, it's much quicker than anyone expected, it's very intuitive, people are smart about user interface now, they're not going to make something that takes a PhD to use, they create something that's intuitive and elegant and clean, and they just would whip right through processes that used to take forever.

Steve

As a person that has a PhD actually, I think it goes the opposite way around, create technology with a PhD is able to use.

Kristin

I see.

Steve

We're able to make mistakes at a much higher level. We have higher levels of incompetence than your typical non—PhD.

So you say is, one of the things is, it's much easier to use, they get it using, and then people start using it over time — has it changed the way the company thinks about people?

Kristin

Let me think about that for a minute. It has definitely changed the way the company thinks about people, because the company is forced to think about them in a deeper way. When you formalize a process like this, when it's automated and made electronic and is this trackable by anybody, whave HR partners who are responsible for business units, and they can go in and look, there's just a much—enhanced level of accountability on all sides, which means there's more trust, and I can't say enough about how much that changes things. When managers can relax a little more, because they know that the process is humming in the background while they're working, it's not going to slip away from them, it's not going to slip, it's transformed managers' relationships with their associates. They're more in touch with them, these processes, they're pinged on a regular basis, "It's time to go in, log and make your comments", for example.

Steve

So it almost seems like, when I look at this automation, you're saying well one, there's the automation that saves you time and take the paperwork, but it also reminds people to have conversations and gives them something to have conversations about.

Kristin

Right, it organizes the conversations.

Steve

It organizes the conversations, that's a good way of putting it.

Any other sort of thoughts that you would have for people out there in terms of looking at this, so somebody who is – at this point I'd say you're probably the most experienced actually, at implementing performance management technology out there, you're probably a world—leading expert!

Kristin

I am an SME.

Steve

Yes, you are an SME! What advice would you give? I mean so many companies are coming into this, and seeing the value of it, say, as you're going into this, one, you've mentioned already the importance of planning, but what are the reasons that a CEO should say, "Look, this isn't just a HR/admin thing, this is something that should be a core part of our business plan".

Kristin

Well, if it's the kind of company as many are nowadays, for whom performance management is a key priority, you have to think that most growing, thriving companies have that in their top five corporate objectives, is we're going to have excellence in performance management, then you have to have excellent tools. You can't claim, I don't think, claim to want excellence in performance management, and then go with an old, paper—based system, it's just silly, it doesn't say the right thing. I think you want to say to your associates, "I'm investing in you. I care about your future at this company, I want you to have the right opportunities for growth, I want you to feel that you're mentored and coached and observed, that we notice when you get things right." How many people feel so miserable in their job because they don't know if anybody's paying any attention? "Did you notice that I just did this fabulous thing?" That employee can also go into their objectives and make a note themselves, they can say, "Hey, guess what I did this week, I just blew past a sales goal," or something.

Steve

So it allows people to have more visibility, feel more part of something. I think it's interesting that we're talking to you about using world—class tools for this, that the same thing has happened in applicant tracking systems and recruiting, it used to be that everything was paper, but now, especially with the younger generation, it used to be in our mind that if they applied to our company and it was "We want a paper version of your resume," like "What? What sort of troglodyte organization are you?"

Kristin

Exactly.

Steve

It sounds like the same thing is happening in performance management, or if you bring in somebody who has done everything on the web, we think software as a service, remote, and then all of a sudden the come in and hear this green screen system, if you like.

Kristin

"Wah, wah, wah."

Steve

It sounds like I've joined a cutting edge future organization, right here, where are the vacuum tubes?

Kristin

If the company engages the associates, there is a story here about the company that ran a contest, you could win an iPod if you go in and complete your live profile — those profiles are phenomenal tools because somebody not only makes sure that their basic information is correct, their background information is correct, here's my resume, but they get to fill out all that great stuff about, "Where do I want to be next year, five years, ten years? What assignment do I think I'm ready for now?" How many managers actually know that about all their associates —"Here's what I'm ready for now, by the way, since you asked".

Steve

I think that's great, I think even getting people to think about it. I don't think employees very often stop and think that question, and for those in our listening audience who are not familiar with what a live profile is, it's a component of the SuccessFactors system which, Jim, I sort of liken it to a corporate version of Facebook, I don't know if that's a good description or not.

Jim

Yeah definitely, I think we're definitely heading in that direction, we've been making a lot of improvements to the live profile. It's a great way to jump in and connect with colleagues within the company, especially larger companies where maybe you don't know everybody yet.

Steve

Exactly. Well, any other questions Jim?

Jim

No, I think that's it. We've been speaking with Kristin Frykman from Birchbark Consulting. If you'd like to get hold of her, you can check out her website at birchbarkconsulting.com or we'll have some links in the show notes, thanks for joining us.

Kristin

My pleasure.

Steve

Thank you very much.

Speaker

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