#BDW14 - Quantified Self

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This theme was kicked off by an interesting session from Ruth Thomson at Cambridge Consultants.

The quantified self is about measuring yourself, and incorporating measures into your daily life in order to gain actionable information (not just data) to help make you fitter, better, whatever it is that you’re interested in.

So in the fitness area, systems can help you improve your performance or technique – measuring your steps or checking your pulse rate and whether you’re in the right exercise zone – plus the community aspects allowing you to compare your performance with someone else’s, or providing data to a coach etc.

And in wellbeing, systems can monitor your posture, sleep, chronic conditions etc.  These are supported through a range of technologies ranging from smart socks helping with posture to an intelligent pill that knows when you’ve taken it!

Technology availability is improving rapidly – there are many small, lightweight, cheap and high performing systems – wearable or around us in the environment, often on our phones – though this isn’t always ideal – eg for the bathroom or swimming pool (I wear a FitBit Flex, and link this to my digital weighing scales and iphone / ipad app). 

Therefore most consuumers already have part of the system in their pocket and quantified self systems can piggy back on this existing infrastructure (eg Nike Fuel Bands potentially being replaced by Apple’s iwatch).

Cloud storage also means consumers have somewhere to store all of this data and provide secure access to the right people at the right time.

But most often today is about single devices communicating in silos to the cloud, not really connected devices communicating intuitively with each other, gathering data about what you need and the environment and allowing smart inferences on what you want or need.

Again, we’re at the cusp of this – and we’re getting mass attention, not mass adoption.  But I do think this is something HR should be paying attention to.

In later sessions, Pravin Paratey at Affectv talked about the role that sensors and devices are playing in the growth of big data as these become incorporated into our lives.    The internet is becoming an extension of our lives, a medium for creating and interacting rather than just somewhere to find information.  And a consequence of this is that our every action is logged.  Businesses need to:

• Ask the right questions (what business challenges are you trying to solve?)
• Look at how they can augment their existing data – via internal and external sources
• Move to statistical vs rules based approaches to cut through big noise
• Accept approximate vs exact data
• Understand the difference between big and fast
• Manage data security and build trust – and consumers need to understand that our data is out there.

Splunk provided some examples of developing insights from unstructured data for e-commerce.

• Tesco – understanding what you’re doing on their website – and linking to other information eg on the weather - so they can push other products to you
• Dominoes selecting the email offers they send you
• Self service car analysis.

Big Step discussed using Splunk to extract data from social media feeds.

These are good examples but I didn’t like the suggestion that we need to change the process of collect – prepare – ask to put more focus onto ask.  In my view, we really need to move ‘ask’ right to the front of this.  The power of correlation may be replacing the value of causality but at least in strategic vs operational aspects of this we still need a level of intelligence in our analysis.

Path Intelligence talked about some of their successes in retail eg in shopping habits which is difficult to get otherwise as other data sources face difficulties in understanding whether there are multiple people or just one person coming back multiple times.  They’ve also linked these to other data sources such as labour planning to ensure workforce scheduling better meets customer demands.

It was good see an HR application of big data coming out finally.  But actually there was a big lack of business functionality throughout much of the day.  I  personally think this focus on the technology might be one reason big data is failing to take off in the way many people have predicted.

The other problem is peoples' push back against providing their data to firms - which Ernst & Young have been articulating too.

But I still think the HR version of this, the quantified organisation, using wearable technologies and other devices, will happen.  And of course, it's already happening in places, eg I think this case study on Bank of America and Sociometric Solutions is quite compelling.

But as always with technology, it's organisational culture rather than the technology that's key.   And it'll be interesting to see whether we end up with QS being used in a controlling sort of way, a bit like existing work in Amazon's warehouses, or in a more empowering style, using the information to help employees make better choices about their actions.

So once again, QS needs to be an HR strategy rather than an IT one.

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#BDW14 Internet of Things

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One of the key themes of the big data week conference is the internet of things.  We’ve had an introductory session from Dave Starling, Chief Architect at Picsolve which seemed interesting from a technical perspective but was pretty simple from a functional one – really just about combining photos and videos across different leisure attractions, like Harry Potter World,  and providing and combining fairly small amounts of data (eg 2-300 data points) and doing some fairly interesting analysis eg providing screamometer leaderboards, supported by gamification.  Not as interesting as the Disney case study though.
 

I found the session by Edward Bryan from IBM on Smart Cities more interesting – and there’s an obvious link here to the Smarter Workforce.

“The system is a teacher.  The city is gaining all sorts of insights about day-to-day operations and emergency situations that were never before possible – simply because data is now available.”

Karen Lomas from Intel suggested the challenge in smart cities isn’t just about the data but also how you change behavior – so the behavioural science behind big data is equally as important. 

One important aspect of this is tailoring the insight which is developed to many stakeholders with multiple needs.

And once again, Karen also suggested that we’re at an inflection point.

In the afternoon, we heard from Maarten Ectors at Canonical / Ubuntu that IOT will benefit all sectors - on your bodies,  your devices etc.

But we’re not there yet – we’re currently at the internet of isolated things.  Your grandmother isn’t asking for a FitBit for Christmas.  And we need more advances in technology first – IP6 so that devices can have their own addresses; Bluetooth 4 etc; higher bandwidth and more secure networks etc.  It need crowd sourcing and open source fits well in this environment.  Gamification helps as well.

But the opportunities are immense - sensors briefing your FitBit that you’re feeling a bit stressed and getting your home controller to turn down the lights etc when you get back.

James Robinson from CTO OpenSignal  spoke about the mobile as the measure of all things (vs De Vinci’s man as the measure all of things.)  Mobile sensors beat human sensors and are getting better, and in fact mobile is already better than you might think – increasingly containing GPS, camera, fingerprint scanner, heart rate sensor, pressure sensor, environmental humidity sensor etc.

People are imprecise, have low accuracy, a limited range, can’t measure magnetism, humidity etc and are really bad at logging and storing information.

Chips can now collect sensor information without waking up your phones and this efficiency will increase opportunities from mobile a thousand-fold.  And we’re finding out more about how we can put our phones’ sensors to interesting uses, eg the battery temperature sensor provided to keep phone from over heating can be repurposed to measure outside temperature; accelerometers can be used for unique identification of people etc.

Siraj Tahir from RainTech suggested that too many projects capture more data than they need to, and tend to fail.  We need to focus on objectives not on objects (yes!).

Again, speakers seemed to agree that we’re in a ‘phase of early maturation’.

And the HR applications of IOT?  Well one is to push us to move our focus, not just onto the contingent workforce but the whole new agenda around robots and devices - 'Thingymajig Resources' rather than just plain old HR?

The other is just to continue the automation of lower value jobs, but to rapidly and deeply extend this into knowledge work as well, potentially splitting the workforce between those who are designing and managing the things, and those who are supporting them.

That applies to HR, as well as to the other people in our organisations.

And it's another reason why HR needs to understand IOT.  This one may not be an HR strategy, but it's definitely something we should be talking to our IT colleagues about.

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#BDW14 Kenneth Cukier and the Criticisms of Big Data

We're starting Big Data Week’s main London conference and the Economist’s Kenneth Cukier addressing the main criticisms of big data (which he suggests is being decimated in the press currently.)

Big data helps us see more things, new things, and most importantly better and different things.

Our new ability, provided by improving technology, to deal with large datasets is important – eg Google grammar’s check and other algorithms all improve with the size of data items (1/2 milion +).

It also supports improved computer learning eg where computers have learnt to play chess by being left to play against themselves and improves their performance – inferring rather than being taught what to do.

And it helps identifying differences within averages eg voting patterns.

Kenneth took us though a few other benefits too – including the selection of apple pie – but not that much which might be obviously relevant to HR.

For him, most of the criticisms can be dismissed – eg Tim Harford’s comments on Google Flu: well, just because the weather forecast sometimes says it’s going to rain and it ends up being sunny doesn’t completely destroy the value of the weather forecast.  There’s also the issue of ground truth – who says the ‘real’ flu results were valid – Americans won’t pay for a trip to the doctors about flu unless it’s really serious.

But he agrees, a blended model is generally best.  And we’re also still at the beginning of this.  I agree – which is why I suggest most HR practitioners can still hang back from worrying about big data, and wait until their existing talent management and HR systems start to provide more functionality in this area.  Once again, I don’t think it’s that we’re afraid of the big, bad data(as the CIPD suggests), it’s that we understand this isn’t a priority – as yet.

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#BDW14 - Challenges for Big Data in HR

Tomorrow I'm attending Big Data Week's main UK event and am looking forward to finding out more about big data, and in particular how it can be used for HR.

And I do write how rather than if.  Big data analytics will have important implications for HR.  But unless you're Google, probably not yet!  Despite lots of books and blog posts etc I've still not seen many case studies of companies identifying anything new from big data analytics that they shouldn't really have been able to intuit strategically anyway.

And even in the future, we need to remember that measures don't mean anything without better management.  Comments like "The measurement of the impact on people is the Holy Grail of HR" (in a feature on data and analytics in this month's HR Magazine) are just plain daft.

These are my main concerns:

1.   Maintaining the coherence of the organisational system

Just because big data says such and such a thing provides greater benefits doesn't mean you should want to do it.  What's often most important in HR is alignment with strategy, and across HR process areas, ie we need to be thinking about benefits as being relative to strategy not in absolute terms.

2.   Accepting the complexity of the system

And anyway, just because we've got these benefits in the past doesn't mean we'll find the same benefits in the future.  The same set of activities can produce different results, and it's often difficult to know whether the first set of data were stable anyway.

3.   Understanding the negative correlation between importance and accessibility

The more important something is, the less likely it is to be included in your bigdataset.  Relying on big data can potentially optimise for efficiency but destroy effectiveness in the process.

So by all means check your strategy through the use of big data, and improve the efficiency of your HR processes as and where you can, but don't start strategy development from the analysis of your data, even if that's what the rest of your business does.  And don't pretend that what you can do is the holy grail!

And I agree with Andy Spence and Susan Popoola's tweets in the picture - what's important are your big questions, not your big data.  Put at least as much energy into developing your strategic awareness and planning activities as you do into your big data systems and analytics tools.

I'll see if I come away with any different opinions from tomorrow's event - and will let you know if so!

See also:

• Tim Harford
• Me (1) - CIPD - Talent analytics and big data
• Me (2) - #ECTalent - Big data analytics (featuring Kenneth Cukier who is going to be speaking tomorrow)

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Fleming Europe - Gamification in HR

 

On most topics in HR I'm pretty sure what I believe, and although I do sometimes shift on this slightly, my learning tends to be more about how I argue my position, and case studies, pro and con, etc. 

However there are a few other topics I find I touch a lot but don't feel as confident in my perspectives.  One of these areas is gamification.

I know that some companies do find benefits from these approaches but I know there are a lot of nonsense being promoted too.  Eg "most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels" is firstly just rather bizarre, and secondly, complete tosh.

Gamification is more than pointsification for a start.  But as to exactly what it is, I want to be more sure than I currently am.  So next week I'm off to Paris for Fleming Europe's Gamification in HR 2014 Summit.

I'm looking forward to some good debates as there's a pretty amazing list of speakers presenting, representing a broad diversity of roles:

• Mario Herger, Founder and Partner, Enterprise Gamification Austria
• Willy Christian Kriz, Chairman, SAGSAGA, Austria
• Tom Chatfield, Author of ’How to Thrive in the Digital Age', United Kingdom
• Phaedra Boinodiris, Global Serious Games and Gamification Program Manager, IBM; Founder of WomenGamers.com
• Roman Rackwitz, Deputy Chair, International Gamification, Germany
• Tim Ackermann, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition, PAREXEL International, Germany
• Déborah Lasry, COO - Services, Brand Communications and Quality, BNP Paribas, France
• Anja Andersen, Employer Branding Leader, Maersk, Denmark
• Laura Hugonnet, Competencies and Training Project Leader, Suez Environnement, France
• Fredrik Tukk, Head of Communication, Marketing and Branding, Maersk Drilling, Denmark
• Noemi Biro, Talent Attraction, Recruitment and Employer Branding Leader, PWC, Hungary
• Eric Gueronniere, Head of Competencies Development and Training, Suez Environnement, France
• Magnus Kobke, Head of the Cargo Dynasty Project, Transport Sector Educucation Trust, Denmark
• Martina Mangelsdorf, Founder and Chief Engagement Officer (formerly Head of Talent Management and Staffing at Novartis), GAIA Insights, Switzerland
• Pascal Picault, Director of Formaposte, La Poste Group, France
• John Pugh, Director for Innovation, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany
• Tuba Surucu, Vice President, Training and Development Support Services, Yapi Kredi Bank, Turkey
• Helene Michel, Senior Professor, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France
• Christian Harpelund, Learning Architect, Grundfos, Denmark
• An Coppens, Chief Game Changer and Gamification Design Expert, Gamification Nation, United Kingdom

It's a three day long event (based on three levels!) so by the end of the event I should have a clearer focus on what I think.  I'll be blogging from the event too, so please join me to comment on my posts and we can learn about this still fairly new, and potentially important, aspect of HR together.

Or if you want to join me in Paris, you can book for the event here.  I'll even throw in a couple of points for you!

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Most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels. - See more at: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1143732/game-afoot#sthash.pj2hUdc9.dpuf

Most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels. - See more at: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1143732/game-afoot#sthash.pj2hUdc9.dpuf

Economist Talent Management Summit 2014

 

Recognising its roles as one of the leading strategic HR blogs in the UK, and beyond, Strategic HCM blog has been a - in fact the sole supporting social media site (blogger / tweeter) for the Economist's Talent Management Summit for each of the last three years.

This year, it, and I, will be back once again.  And once again, the line-up of presenters suggests a stellar event.  These presenters include:

• Adrian Wooldridge, Management Editor and Schumpeter Columnist, The Economist
• Roland Decorvet, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nestlé Greater China
• Gary Elliott, Global Talent and Organisation Effectiveness Director, Diageo
• Tracy Robbins, Executive Vice-president Human Resources and Group Operations Support, InterContinental Hotels Group 
• Helmut Schuster, Executive Vice-president, Group Human Resources Director, BP
• Jean Martin, Executive Director, Human Resources Practice, CEB
• Leveraging Diversity
• Baroness Mary Goudie, Member, House of Lords
• Helena Morrissey, Chief Executive Officer, Newton Investment Management
• Hayley Tatum, Executive People Director, Asda
• Darren Childs, Chief Executive Officer, UKTV
• Immanuel Hermreck , Executive Vice-president, Human Resources, Bertelsmann
• Donna Humphreys, Vice-president, Human Resources, FedEx Corporation
• Simon Lloyd, Human Resources Director, Santander UK
• Cliff Oswick, Professor of Organisation Theory and Deputy Dean, Cass Business School, City University London 
• Maxine Williams, Global Head of Diversity, Facebook
• Kingsley Macey, Vice-president Human Resources - Business Partnerships, Leadership and Capabilities and Culture, King.com
• Ann Pickering, Human Resources Director, Telefonica UK
• Andrew Sumner, Managing Director, UK and Ireland, Monster
• Javier Zamora, Lecturer of Information Systems, IESE Business School
• Raghu Krishnamoorthy, Vice-president, Executive Development and Chief Learning Officer, GE 

If you're able to attend, you can gain a 15% discount by quoting HCM/DC.

And if not, then as I'll once again be blogging from the event, you can follow the proceedings here.

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#CipdLDshow Focus on the Learner and Learning

The CIPD's new Learning and Development survey has been launched at its new L&D Show.  There are some interesting findings, including a substantial, and rather surprising, increase in the amount of evaluation going on (particularly when you have a look at the almost complete apathy about the CIPD's Valuing Your Talent initiative  - see my post as to why).

There's also a de rigeur nod to an increase in business knowledge and commercial acumen which personally I think is the wrong focus - particularly when you compare it with having curiosity for how people learn and develop.  And it's particularly worrying when combined with the other results just below this - low knowledge of emerging L&D trends and low understanding of new learning technologies.

The good news is that there is a considerable increase in the awareness and use of various new insights on L&D from other disciplines from the 2012 survey when the CIPD basically lost its rag with the profession:

"A lot of this activity is going to require a step-up in our awareness of a new and emerging evidence base from the sciences about how people think, act and behave. L&D people use familiar models such as Myers Briggs, Kolb, and Honey and Mumford to generate insight on how people learn and develop. Perhaps these are too familiar, for the challenges we face now require different insights and a refreshed evidence base. Our survey also shows there is a low awareness of the emerging evidence base from neuroscience, cognitive research and areas like economics which could transform the way we think and plan L&TD."

The most common developments being applied in 2014 (by a quarter of respondents) include:

"Awareness of how ‘mirror neurons’ help embed learning; the correlation between physical exercise and increased learning performance; how human reasoning and logic affect how we learn; and learning states during game-based learning."

"Overall, more than half of respondents (55%) had integrated one or more of the new insights listed into practice compared with 36% in 2012. The proportion incorporating the concept of learning through deep practice, the implications of generational changes in brain function, cognitive issues around decision-making and how human reasoning and logic affect how we learn has doubled since 2012. Similarly, while small proportions incorporate concepts related to neurochemistry of learning or brain plasticity, the figures have improved since 2012. In addition, more have heard of the methods even if they don’t currently use them in their practice or don’t fully understand them. As we found in 2012, very few report they don’t see the relevance of the developments."

I'm really pleased that more L&D practitioners are developing their interest in these areas although I'm still a bit suspect how far this interest and new learning goes.  For example it's interesting to note the high proportion of evaluation approaches which still depend on the 60 year old Kirkpatrick model.  So it sounds to me as if the need for unlearning which the CIPD referred to in 2012 is still alive and well, in this area at least.

"Organisations are using more methods to assess the impact of L&D activity compared with last year – the most popular methods last year, general HR metrics and business metrics, remain the most commonly used methods of assessing L&D, but the proportion always or frequently using them has increased. The use of other methods, including return on investment and the Kirkpatrick model, has also increased.

"A quarter report they rarely use the evaluation data they collect – in contrast, nearly half use it to forecast future training needs and plan accordingly and a similar proportion to review the L&D evaluation at the end of each training cycle and update it according to the research findings."

I'm also really pleased that the CIPD seems to be recognising that its focus on business acumen can be taken too far:

"Without a good understanding of the business and the environment in which it operates and the ability to work collaboratively and influence others in the organisation, the application of more functional skills, knowledge and expertise may be misdirected or the organisational support required for implementation of new ideas or processes may be lacking. At the same time, L&D professionals must ensure that a focus on integrating with the business does not preclude up-to-date knowledge of new insights, theories and technologies, which can help advance L&D capability and credibility."

But to me, this interest in new L&D insights still isn't quite the right thing.  It's a bit like understanding a whole set of business trends from globalisation and customer focus to lean manufacturing and virtualisation.  But if a practitioner isn't interested in, doesn't understand, their business, these separate bits of knowledge don't add much value at all.

It's the same with people acumen too.  We need to understand the nuggets of insight provided by neuroscience etc but they don't mean much unless we connect them in terms of our focus on the learner.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay attention to our businesses, but if we engage people deeply in their learning, then they're going to learn about areas connected with their business objectives as a matter of course.  It's the learning not the business that are the challenges we should be focusing on.  The people are at least as important as the commercial context of the organisation.

So to me the survey suggests that we've still got a long way to go before we get to develop anything like  the potential of learning in our businesses.


Take the other result right at the bottom of the graph of survey findings as an example - the low level of understanding of new learning technologies eg MOOCs.  The tweets from the L&D Show seemed to suggest that MOOCs could work but are only being taken up by people who are already active learners.  To me this suggests that the challenge, once again, isn't alignment with the business, or even a deep understanding of MOOCs.  It's understanding how people learn and getting them interested in learning.  Do that and the rest follows.

It was interesting to see some frustration on the conference Twitter stream that there wasn't more new insight communicated during the conference.  Well the need to focus on the learner isn't new, but I think it's still the priority which needs to come out more strongly from the L&D community.

Also see:

• Where's the D in #CIPD?
• Innovating the L&D Business Partner role

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