As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission), as part of my Analyst Cam series.
This time it is Jason Corsello who presents on his fund Acadian Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in "future of work" - the talent/HCM part of that rapidly changing world especially after the turmoil of 2020.
I have known Jason for years both as an industry analyst, and then in his role as an executive at Cornerstone OnDemand.
He is very well connected in HCM world and it shows in the portfolio he has already invested in, and in the limited partners/advisory board he has put together.
In the 42nd episode of the series we have Raju Vegesna of Zoho Software.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. We had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai. Next, we had Tammie Hilend, CIO at the space tech company, Maxar who discussed how she has done her demanding job on the road in her RV
Zoho has long had a very different approach to talent - they build it versus buying it from other companies or prestigious universities. They have long located themselves in secondary cities in Japan, Netherlands, Mexico, the US. The CEO, Sridhar Vembu has long had a passion for Rural Revival - see my interview with him last year after he relocated from Silicon Valley to rural India.
Raju describes their move from Pleasanton, CA to Austin, TX. Quality of life and cost of living for employees are far more important to him than universities and airports are to other companies. Now, with Austin attracting so many other companies, he describes how they are shifting focus to even smaller towns in Texas and even more so in India.
In keeping with the rural revival theme, even the Austin location has become more of an organic, employee-nurtured farm.
He compares this distributed talent model to the move we have seen in computing - from a centralized, mainframe to a network model.
It is a fascinating conversation. He readily admits they don't have all the answers or that it will work for others, but post-pandemic, if we all don't explore such models and changes in lifestyle shame on us.
Coding + Farming just may be a winning combination!
In the 41st episode of the series we have Tammie Hilend, CIO of Maxar Technologies
While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons. Couple of weeks ago, we had Mark Brooks who has been working and living for ages across the world - Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai.
This time is Tammie Hilend who has been working from her RV as she travels around the US. Her company, Maxar is in space technology. Her COO, Jeff Robertson had presented at the start of the pandemic last year about the complex protocols they had to consider during the lockdowns especially when it comes to some of their sensitive, classified work.
Tammie describes her personal experience managing her demanding job from the road. With Starlink and many of Maxar's telecom customers generating excitement about satellite internet, it is timely to hear about her bandwidth around the road. As she says, managing around extreme weather has been more of challenge.
She also describes how in her other role managing facilities they are reimagining their "future of work" including work locations and hybrid formats.
It is a fascinating conversation. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We can ALL be digital nomads.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and related WFH protocols have turned many of us into recluses, the big realization is you can WFA - as in Anywhere. We have seen an significant acceleration in relocations - for tax, weather, safety, many other reasons.
Mark Brooks has been working and living for ages across the world - in Shanghai, Bali, Malta, now Dubai. He explains his checklist on how he decides on places to call office and home for his family. He also describes the creative way he does virtual schooling for his daughters with tutors from around the world.
He also spends some time on his specialty - advising dating sites and how technology keeps helping that sector continue to grow at a nice pace and how those technologies will affect the future of work for all of us
It is a fascinating conversation. And one for employers and politicians everywhere to factor. People do vote with their feet. And their choices keep expanding around the world
In the 36th (yesterday) and 37th (today) episode of the series we have Dr. Robin Gaster, President, Incumetrics Inc. and Visiting Scholar, George Washington University Institute of Public Policy. We discuss various aspects of Amazon's growing empire from his new book, Behemoth, Amazon Rising.
In part 2 below we talk more about Amazon and other automation trends which accelerated during the pandemic. Throughout both episodes, we cover Amazon's amazing growth and its impact on retail, book publishing, data centers, ecommerce and many other industry sectors. The discussion is part admiration especially from a consumer pov, part concern from a societal pov about Amazon's ruthless efficiency.
As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series.
Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner at Sapient Insights Group presented highlights from their "2020–2021 HR Systems Survey White Paper, 23rd Annual Edition” As she says, there is a lot of conjecture about how HR groups have reacted during the pandemic, so it's nice to have results from a huge sample polling 1,900 organizations in 64 countries, representing 27 million employees.
Stacey provided more background on the survey: "The survey stands alone as a global view of the current and future plans for HR Technology adoption, crucial practices, and emerging technology trends from. The research covers organizations in all ranges of size, industry, and location and is focused on capturing the Voice of the Customer - reaching beyond over sampled early adopters and global brands; to gather realistic data from HR and HRIT leaders working every day, often in anonymity, to achieve outcomes for their organizations .This is a valuable resource for anyone making critical decisions about HR Technology and its value to organizational outcomes and the future of HR Tech."
The research shows lots of shifts in HR systems spend and direction in a year dominated by COVID-19 and WFH in a year where the world turned upside down. One example: "15% of organizations are planning on decreasing traditional HR Technology Spend in 2021, by an average of 23% of their current budgets. In contrast 28% of organizations are planning to increase spending in non-traditional HR Technology areas like infrastructure and remote working tools."
As we discuss, HR may not still not be considered strategic by many, but nobody will argue with the point that it has become Essential with a capital E. We cover a lot of ground - how talent management tech has paid off during the crisis, automation trends, moving from WFH to blended models,
Watch the video below, and also download the full report here. The report is about 100 pages, but skimming the graphics - almost one to a page - is just as rewarding. You will find it is one of the most realistic looks at the day in the life of the new, dramatically changed HR function.
As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series.
David Somers, GM, Talent Optimization at Workday (and co-founder of Rallyteam that Workday acquired) presented and demoed to me about their Talent Marketplace. It connects jobs and job seekers—giving you a place where can you mix project and gig employees into your talent strategy, and put the right skills on the right projects.
He kicks it off with their skills ontology - the Skills Cloud which they launched in 2018 has clearly come a long way. I had expected an explosion in skills as more customers added their own definitions but the ontology and machine learning is allowing for crisper definitions, and a focus on more relevant ones as skills rapidly evolve.
The initial use case for the marketplace is internal to Workday customers. To me, the real excitement would be to allow cross-customer sharing of talent. During the pandemic, we are seeing a bifurcated economy where some employers cannot find enough talent to hire alongside significant unemployment.
Even more ambitious would be something I had written about in one of my books. Singapore's Workforce Development Agency had an initiative over a decade ago called "Individual Learning Portfolio". It allowed citizens career planning tools and resources and in turn benefitted employers by providing visibility to talent sources and skills preferences workers were showcasing.
I have no doubt Workday customers will use its Talent Marketplace for innovative, even more challenging scenarios.
David covers a lot a ground in under 20 minutes. Very nicely done.
As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series.
The weekly Burning Platform with Brian Sommer is taking a break, so it was timely that I invited Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research to walk me through results of his CIO 2021 survey.
We have a lot of back and forth around his wide ranging survey which includes impact on IT budgets, WFH trends, a significant spike in interest in automation, trends in security and data privacy, digital transformation with a major shift - much quicker projects and a focus on workplaces and customer experiences and thoughts on coming organizational changes.
A fuller report is available for download here courtesy of WalkMe, which offers a Digital Adoption Platform.
Most companies did a remarkable job moving tens of thousands of employees to WFH settings. In episode 4 of the Burning Platform series, Brian Sommer and I discuss what we have learned in the last few months about productivity, security, infrastructure improvements, likely upcoming hybrid models. BTW, this WSJ survey of CEOs shows not all are thrilled with this "living in your office" format. Like it or not, they have adjusted to it, but we will likely end up with interesting hybrid models, hoteling, collaborative workspaces.
As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. The key word is "excerpt" - no more than 15-20% of what is presented during the session, to keep the video length more easily consumable for readers.
Workfront focuses on enterprise work management. I have been impressed how they bring structure to a number of previously unstructured processes in media, product design and other areas. These are increasingly digitized but tend to have a complex web of projects, and most have a high degree of quality and compliance activities to worry about. It's not an area where most large transaction process vendors have paid much attention.
More broadly, their focus is hugely important these days as the "future of work" has become the "present of work" with brand new COVID-19 driven WFH formats, the need for new measurement and management skills, new re-opening protocols, planning for multiple and rapidly changing scenarios etc.
The agenda included 10 speakers and a fairly long Q&A session, so the 4 segments I excerpted are meant to highlight Workfront's nuanced perspective on many topics that come up these days as executives review the state of work.
Kicking off my excerpts is Erica Gunn discussing the productivity change curve they have seen in the during the recent crisis. At 3.42, Aleks Bass presents on growing interest in outcome based work management, away from task based formats (I am seeing plenty of interest in this in the outsourcing world as travel challenges force them to work largely from remote locations). At 12:24, Darin Patterson presents an Automation Maturity Model for knowledge work. At 17.57, Alex Shootman, CEO responds to questions about WFH productivity during the crisis and other WFH issues such as 'surveillance' of workers and the need for new leadership skills in enterprises and a related discussion in the room about outcome based work.
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