Saturday, July 11, 2009

Quilting and HCM

It's been way too long since I've written. I've been busy and distracted, but with good stuff. I've actually been quilting up a storm...made a quilt for our bed, redid one I made 20 years ago for Jess, made a baby quilt, and have started a triptych of wall hangings. But this morning, I need to work and given that I'd rather be in the garden or quilting, it got me thinking about my work and quilting and I've decided to explore the intersection of the two. Do you know if you google HCM and quilting that the link you get is to the Horry County Museum:) Those two phrases don't go together. If you google human capital management and quilting, it gets slightly more interesting. There's a link to a Business Week article on the "crazy quilt of rules" and another with similar title on Workforce Management referring to an SAP site that has an article on the "crazy quilt of wage laws"... HCM and crazy quilt...hmmm This could be on the right track. For some reason, Wikipedia is not available this morning, but on the Free Dictionary, the definition of a crazy quilt is: 1. A patchwork quilt of pieces of cloth of various shapes, colors, and sizes, sewn together in an irregular pattern. Seems appropriate for HCM as does the next definition: 2. A disorderly mixture; a hodgepodge: But, both our strategy work with HCM and our quilting turns both the concept and the art form into a thing of beauty, eh? Ah...finally, wikipedia is "up" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_quilting. Look at that amazing old crazy quilt. These are not my cup of tea, but many value these wonderful quilts. I can see some similarities between quilting and pulling talent together in an HCM talent management strategy, stitching it together with processes and technology, but most importantly, the seams of change management, create both a thing of symetry and of beauty.

2 comments:

jmaroney said...

Lexy -
I love this post. I blog for Kronos at www.workforceinstitute.org - and I quilt. So we share that interest in HCM and quilting. Another commonality between implementing HCM systems and quilting is that no matter how much you plan for your desired outcome, the end point is always a little different than you imagined due to the lessons you learn and challenges you need to adapt to during the process.

test said...

That sure is the truth on both fronts. hmmmm....may have to say something about the need for change management ... always on the HCM implementation front so that all parties get what they want, and on the quilting front...well, training and feedback always help too!