Giving yourself permission not to finish frees up energy - another quilting/work intersection

Last year I took a class from a world renowned quilter for a week. It's my gift to myself each year to spend a week learning something new at the Empty Spool seminars. By the way, if you've never gone, it's a wonderful way for quilters to learn! This year though, the teacher, wasn't my kind of teacher. For me, not very affirming. I digress here a bit, but I've noticed that sometimes great artists are really not great teachers -- some are great at promoting themselves and their work rather than encouraging and teaching students. I think I've had a few bosses like that as well. I digress.

During the holidays, is my time to renew myself with family, friends, and quilting. I've noticed, however, that in my studio I have a few UFOs -- a quilter's term for "unfinished objects." I like to think of myself as not a quitter -- as someone who finishes what I start. The UFO from that class, I've decided will never be finished as originally planned at that class. And, oh my...it feels good to recognize that. I declare it totally unfinishable! Of course, I will go through some doubts: 1. Is it unfinishable because my techniques are not up to it? 2. Is it unfinishable because I didn't like the teacher and she did not help me to excel? 3. Is it unfinishable because.... You know what, I don't need to know the reason. What I do know is that by declaring that one effort unfinishable,I feel ever so much more creative! Plus, it frees up one of my favorite fabrics that I want to use in another quilt project that is to be a gift for dear friends.

So, how does this intersect with my work life? Well...getting closer to retiring, I could declare my work career at an end, but I'm not ready for that, although the lesson I will take here is that when I do it will because declaring an end to work will free up energy for other loved activities and efforts. I think the better intersection is that sometimes we are asked to do things that should not be asked. For those, we have to stand up for our beliefs and redirect our efforts. What do you think?

My predictions for 2010 (Global, Business Intelligence, and SOA)

William Tincup asked a bunch of people in our HR technology arena to make predictions for 2010 and I rose to the challenge. All the big HR technology analysts from IDC, Gartner, Forester, etc. have made predictions about the steep projected increase of adoption of cloud computing/SaaS, social networking, mobile devices being bigger than PCs, etc. etc. So, I thought I'd get a big more granular and talk about three trends I see from reviewing our CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey data -- my little corner of the world (or at least my world):

1. The trend towards “going global” with a single instance of a core HRMS and common processes will escalate rapidly. I think the past year of economic downturn has focused large global organizations on cutting costs, more than ever, by moving to a single workforce system of record and rationalizing processes. I do see that they are being much wiser in the process rationalization and realizing that some processes really do need variations by country or business unit. Processes like workforce administration, compensation and performance management which have been handled first will be followed by recruiting and learning management.

2. The trend towards adopting business intelligence and managing with metrics will take two forks as the market moves towards higher levels of adoption. One fork will be a continued adoption of BI middleware technologies such as Oracle’s OBIEE, along with packaged analytics solutions such as OBIA/HR Analytics. The other fork is one taken somewhat out of frustration in that the first fork is expensive and takes total organization commitment. This second fork is towards adopting a SaaS solution. This one leads organizations again towards packaged analytics solutions and I personally think is a temporary blip (until organizations get that they really need to institutionalize the delivery of metrics and need some heavy lifting technologies), but it will make many of the SaaS analytics providers look very good for the coming year.

3. SOA suites will take off. Given that so many large organizations have an HRMS from Oracle or SAP, these organizations have already started adopting SOA middleware. They have gotten how valuable it is to address certain processes with automated support. Pulling from the CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey for 2009: Early adopter industries such as financial services are already using SOA technologies for core banking and to integrate disparate information sources to provide business intelligence. Higher education institutions, typically a laggard industry, are using SOA to integrate students with funding sources and to hook them up with back office services. SOA, most typically used for onboarding activities, will take off with other processes such as seniority handling, terminations (if these continue), and other work-life processes not already automated with the actual packaged applications.

Giving feedback - what I've learned from quilting

I took a quilt class spread over two Sunday mornings. The first Sunday, we learned the technique, and then went home and worked on developing the pieces of the quilt. The second Sunday, we came back with our ideas for our quilts and presented our quilts to the class. For the feedback process, the instructor suggested that instead of us criticizing what WASN'T working, we should talk about what WAS working. It was interesting for me, who is a person that finds lots of faults with my own quilts to instead hear what was working. I realize if I'm critical of my own work, I'm surely critical of others. I found myself being very thoughtful in providing feedback -- perhaps more so than when my feedback is critical. Thinking more about this feedback session, I realize that, of course, sometimes we need to hear what isn't working. But it seems to me that when our work is a "work in progress" hearing about what IS working encourages us to do even better. And, it was a really nice change to not hear from my left shoulder critic and instead to hear from my right shoulder supporter. Thoughts?

Oh...and here's the quilt in progress...obviously not finished. I'll post it again when finished.

Data analysis does not breed good writing!

My husband is really brilliant and a really good guy. He has a PhD in cognitive psychology, develops human cognitive measurement software, loves computer games, and is a really nice guy too. One of the things I've noticed over the years of being married to him is that I can't talk very coherently to him after spending a day doing deep data analysis which I need to do with our CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey . It's like my brain just can't go from number crunching to being verbal. But, after a day of data crunching if I play Bejeweled. I'm really good. I've gotten my best scores (over 500,000) on those days. Anyway...back to my really nice guy husband, in a roundabout way. Today, I actually got two comments about my blog and posts....both saying...do more! Thank you.... I mentioned this to my sweetheart of a husband, and he is so brilliant....he said. "Blog when you wake up before you do the data crunching." Duh..... So, maybe that's what I'll do. Blog first thing. What do you think?

The Value of Pre-built HR Analytics

It's a beautiful fall day in the Sierra foothills. We spent yesterday picking a neighbor's grapes and while I was tired and achy yesterday, I feel great today. Maybe it's because it's our anniversary and I'm looking forward to a wonderful day with my husband of many amazing years. I started the day in my studio, working on some little Japanese panels. But in the back of my mind was a work issue. I'm writing a white paper on HCM Analytics and one piece of the white paper is on the value of HCM Analytics. Personally, I think that organizations can not long survive and thrive without managing their business, and workforce, with metrics, but I am always challenged by readers and clients to "prove it." Fortunately, the CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey can show some strong and continued links to improved financial performance. And, we're certainly starting to see lots and lots of organizations report on the value they've achieved. Wait and see the white paper for some of those stories. But what I was thinking about this morning is "why pre-built." And what better place to think about this than in my studio where I build quilts.

When I first started making quilts, like most novices, I used patterns. Irish chain was my first, followed by Log Cabin, and some Amish patterns. It's only been as I've matured as a quilter and even had some coaching from incredible art quilt teachers that I've designed my own quilts. Even now, I return to patterns, but put my own creative color choices, or even break the pattern and just use pieces of a pattern, along with my own creative design. I value pattern makers for figuring out how to integrate a particular design piece (like a diamond, star, or other geometric design) into another piece. That integration is critical for merging pieces with the exact measures...and I don't like to take the time to do that engineering calculation all the time.

I think the value of pre-built analytics, such as those from Oracle's business analytics and specifically, the HR Analytics product, is similar. Oracle has done all the integration from a recruiting dashboard into the talent management applications, into financials, and into the system of record. In the learning arena, it has integrated from learning management, to financials, etc. as well as to display a learning dashboard with metrics valuable to the training department. It is not to say that technical resources couldn't do all these integrations themselves, but why take their time? All of those integrations come ready made.

There is another subtle value of pre-built. Here I have to diverge a moment to comment on how many analysts and pundits just love to criticize HR for not being good with numbers. So what? Are these pundits good with numbers? I don't think so! So, how does HR get started? Let them use ideas from others. I say, help HR out with some pre-built functionality and from these examples they can start to branch out to identify the metrics that will matter for their own companies. But starting with pre-built KPIs, metrics, reports, and dashboards gives them a big boost to get started.

Blogging every day??

I recently heard a motivational speaker who suggested that one should blog every day! I put it on my list of "to dos" about three weeks ago and you can see that I don't keep my commitments. So, I'm going to publicly renege on that one and promise to do a blog at least ONCE A WEEK on the survey, on HCM in general, perhaps something on BI (business intelligence and analytics), and, of course, quilting. I just don't know about these daily bloggers. What kind of life do they have? For me, I find that I just can't move from data analysis (my primary job) to writing. I think my brain just isn't wired for those cross modal activities. And, I also don't seem to balance my life interests very well. My quilting has gone down the drain the past month or so as I've worked to get the annual CedarCrestone HR Survey out the door, presented at several conferences, and set up for ongoing benchmarking.

But, at long last, I got back to my quilt room this weekend and am working to complete my UFOs. I did finish a baby quilt for a baby born a bit ago. And, on my list of to be finished: a Japanese kimono triptych -- just need to bind, last year's Christmas quilt, the hers to the his and hers comforters, and then on to the new one using the Kingyo, Red Rooster fabrics. I'm going to adapt that pattern, using the panel in the middle but my own blend of fabrics from my stash. Stay tuned on that one.

And, I'll post the triptych by this weekend -- my goal for finishing it! Let's see if I can start keeping my commitments to me again!!

My first quilt show

It's been way too long since I thought about blogging and I'm not sure I really will get back into it now, but here goes. After what seems like months, I've finished the 12th annual HR Systems Survey white paper and presentations that I'll be giving over the next month or so at HR Technology, some private shows, IHRIM, and OpenWorld. Anyone reading these that's interested knows more about these shows than I. Got some good material for this year: my recommended technologies: HR help desk, absence management, compensation management, and a BI tool set, and, of course, anything to do with social networking and SOA. The formal survey goes out two weeks from today.
In the background of this work, I've been gardening and quilting for sanity. Our garden has produced a ton of food...feels like literally. I've canned tomotoes, made Barefoot Contessa's tomato soup...yummy, made our pasta puttenesca sauce. I feel like quite the country lady!
And...best of all, I'm having my first quilt show with six of my quilts at Cafe Vista, here in Meadow Vista. And, on day one, sold my first quilt! I guess that makes me a professional now. Here's one of them...yours for just $350.