“At the end of the day, we are all humans working with humans,” says Jeff Andes, vice president of talent management at University of Phoenix and my guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Jeff’s is a story not only of doing the hard work to do away with traditional performance management in favor of a more progressive, far more effective approach. It’s also a tale of how a large educational institution was able to return its organizational culture to one better reflecting the company’s origins in innovation and the entrepreneurial spirt. In 2017, University of Phoenix was sold to a private equity firm and became a standalone university for the first time in several decades. The change ended up presenting the proverbial […]
Continue readingFor Insight Into Why a Company Might Be Failing, Look Beyond the Numbers
It never ceases to amaze me that when a business begins to fail, its leaders inevitably turn to the numbers. Don’t get me wrong: Numbers are certainly important. But focus too much on them, and you’ll be doomed to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Sears and other giants of yesteryear. It’s no secret that the recent pandemic and its lingering economic impacts have left their collective imprints on people and businesses far and wide. Unfortunately, the repercussions for some businesses have been incredibly detrimental, and many are grappling with a suddenly uncertain future. Now that the pandemic’s upheaval has stabilized, one would think these businesses should see a financial turnaround, and yet they continue to struggle. If it’s not the global pandemic, then […]
Continue readingThe Launch of Zuora Secure Data Share for Snowflake Is Only Logical
“Star Trek: The Next Generation” isn’t quite the original, but The Borg absolutely deserve a place in the Pantheon of Sci-Fi nemeses right beside Klingons, Tribbles, and Harcourt Fenton Mudd. It’s impossible to work with enterprise application software and not be fascinated by The Borg. Advances in automation are constantly and inexorably being assimilated back into the enterprise collective. (Resistance is futile.) General ledger achieves automated input from accounts receivable (financials). Next, AR becomes connected to sales (CRM). Eventually, sales bills directly from the catalog (procurement) and automatically feeds commissions (payroll), which pays employees (human capital management, HCM) via bank accounts (treasury), and it all eventually becomes “ERP.” Or so we’d like to think… The first rule of assimilation (sorry, that’s Deep Space 9) is […]
Continue readingWhy Use Analytics to Manage Your Sales Process?
Ask John Boyd. It was the early 50s, in the midst of the Korean War, John “40 second Boyd” arrived on the scene as an F-86 pilot. John Boyd was given this nickname because he was able to defeat any opposing pilot in an aerial dogfight in less than 40 seconds. At face value, one would attribute his success to excellent piloting skills. However, his favorite fighter jet was the F-16. In layman’s terms, the F-16 is a modest machine compared to other fighter jets such as the F-15. Specifically comparing it to the F-15, the F-16 lagged. You would think that John Boyd would be more successful utilizing a giant, faster fighter jet. This was not the case. The F-16 had a few intangibles […]
Continue readingThe Opaqueness of Corporate Culture
Hat tip to The Economist‘s Bartleby column (and its unnamed author, Philip Coggan) for continuing to shine the light on possibly the most powerful business force on the planet — “corporate culture.” In my earliest career, “corporate culture” both built, and then savagely destroyed, the two then-world-leading enterprise application software companies, McCormack & Dodge and MSA: In 1983, Dun & Bradstreet Corporation bought McCormack & Dodge for what The Wall Street Journal suggested was around $50 million bucks In 1990, the inelegantly renamed “Dun & Bradstreet Software” bought its biggest competitor, MSA, for around $330 million bucks In 1996, the whole sorry mess of incompatible corporate culture was cleaned up and taken off D&B’s red-ink-bleeding books by GEAC for a fire sale valuation of around […]
Continue readingTreat Others the Way You Want to be Treated… No, Thank You!
Treat others the way you want to be treated—the Golden Rule. Sounds good, wholesome, and righteous; yet I have concluded that this is not the best advice. That’s right, I said it. Look, I’m not trying to be contrarian or provocative here. I have spent years trying to understand how to build better relationships. This is key to having a better, more fulfilling life at home and work. I even went down the authenticity route. I was learning how to be authentic and speak my mind, “being real,” as the kids might say. Nope, that will not help you as it did not help me. Authenticity in building relationships is, shall I say, not very useful. Where did I land? For starters and brevity, I […]
Continue readingIs the Great Resignation to Blame for Corporate Shortcomings, We Think Not | Lessons Learned by JetBlue Failures
How many times have we heard that the Great Resignation is to blame for corporate shortcomings these days? Companies of all sizes, from small businesses to major multinational organizations, are struggling to keep up with demand. When they fall short, what’s behind that failure? Well, if simply repeating something makes it true, then the cause is a lack of employees. Certainly, staffing shortages can and will cause business to slow, but that shouldn’t lead to the large-scale disfunction we’re seeing in businesses today. The Great Resignation has simply become the scapegoat du jour—after all, it’s human nature to seek external sources on which to pin our failings. More often than not, though, we must look internally to find the true cause. Leaders of struggling businesses […]
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