A very interesting analysis with a lot of contents to digest and think upon. Thank you for sharing
But : you don’t need to denigrate the customers who will support the project by saying „they don’t have the guts for …“ Because long time after you will have left, they will be the ones going to executive committee and explaining all the promises that were not kept by the implementation team because of all those wonderfull glitches between consulting partners and their own implementation managers.
And yes, even if you don’t like, your promises will not all come true (even if a lot of them will) and you may be asked to have the guts to accept it as well …
Such a great tool as SF and a great analysis like the one you did should’nt be debased by lack of simple consideration …
Sven Ringling
Dear Fabrice,
first of all, allow me to apologise, if my wording caused offence. I like to call a spade a spade, but maybe thsi spade needs a ribbon wrapped around to be easier to digest.
However, I will not go away from my basic statement: management and more so leadership require an element of courage in decision making. I’ve learned in my first year at university that management (they called leading teams management back in the days) is decision making under uncertainty. Why? If we only made decisions under certainty, a spread sheet could do our job.
Or to say it with the words of Tom de Marco, whom I admire, „If there is no risk in a project, you can almost be sure there is no value in it either“. This is not about being reckless, but about following a strategy that is consistent and well founded, but always carries a risk it’s not working as expected.
Back to our case:
when making a business case for projects and you always go for the safest route, where you can mathematically prove that you get 103,56 EUR back for 100 EUR invested, because of the infrastructure cost and processing time saved, your organisation will slowly fall behind those, who take risks to make larger leaps, even when there is the occasional drawback. So, yes, it’s not a risk, it’s certainty. It’s slow, but certain death.
These are the Siemenses, who optimised there ugly mobile phones by another percent and missed the designer phone trend to be beaten by Nokia; the Nokias and Blackberries, who made their keyboards ever more user friendly and here beaten by Apple’s touch screens. The British Navy, who made the guns of their battleshios another inch bigger, to be beaten by the age of the aircraft carrier…
When we talk about Human Resource Management or Talent Management software, we need to look at creating value at it’s core: supporting Talent Management in new, better ways, not ignoring that completely and be focussed on process efficiency and IT cost ONLY.
Therefore, someone responsible for HR system decisions shying away from even considering improvements of what should be the software’s core capability, is simply not doing their job. Sorry – it’s still a spade.
And I believe that as consultants (as opposed to freelance contractors, who just want to stay as long as possible in a full timem role and do as told; as opposed to the mix of sales reps, analysts and developers large SIs deploy full time with clients with the objective of maximising change requests) we have duty of pointing these things out very clearly and sometimes with the little shock, change requires.
Maybe „not having the guts“, whilst meant to provoke, sounds more offensive to a non-native speaker or to teh more civilised French ears as opposed to us germanic tribes ;-) I will try to find less offensive language, if it still makes the point.
However, I also want to point out that it would not be the first time for me to personally suggest to a client that we need more guts to progress and they usually appreciate some openness (difficut enough to find people telling you the truth in this age of corporate CYA games). Fine diplomatic language has it’s occasions, as has a more provocative one.
And finally, allow me to reply to your suggestion that I am a hit-and-run consultant, who either leaves clients with a decision and doesn’t care about the technical implementation or leaves them with an implementation and doesn’t care about business benefits relalisation. As this goes against everything I believe in, I definitely can’t let this statement sit there and if it is based on any firts hand experience with my work, I’d invite you to have a conversation in orivate so I can understand where it comes from – I have to admit I can’t recall having worked with you.
We usually work with our clients over a long period of time. We take them, if they which so, from initial design to implementation to post implementation continuous improvement, and if we cock up, it would quite likely us hit by the result. We work with clients again and again. Sometimes with years in between, where they don’t need help of decide other partners are better for a particular task, but they would always have teh opportunity to get hold of the individual, who did a project with them, to discuss, if objectives are not met. if one day, I can’t find an environment to work like that any more and you see me still working in this profession, then you can call me cheat.
A very interesting analysis with a lot of contents to digest and think upon. Thank you for sharing
But : you don’t need to denigrate the customers who will support the project by saying „they don’t have the guts for …“ Because long time after you will have left, they will be the ones going to executive committee and explaining all the promises that were not kept by the implementation team because of all those wonderfull glitches between consulting partners and their own implementation managers.
And yes, even if you don’t like, your promises will not all come true (even if a lot of them will) and you may be asked to have the guts to accept it as well …
Such a great tool as SF and a great analysis like the one you did should’nt be debased by lack of simple consideration …
Dear Fabrice,
first of all, allow me to apologise, if my wording caused offence. I like to call a spade a spade, but maybe thsi spade needs a ribbon wrapped around to be easier to digest.
However, I will not go away from my basic statement: management and more so leadership require an element of courage in decision making. I’ve learned in my first year at university that management (they called leading teams management back in the days) is decision making under uncertainty. Why? If we only made decisions under certainty, a spread sheet could do our job.
Or to say it with the words of Tom de Marco, whom I admire, „If there is no risk in a project, you can almost be sure there is no value in it either“. This is not about being reckless, but about following a strategy that is consistent and well founded, but always carries a risk it’s not working as expected.
Back to our case:
when making a business case for projects and you always go for the safest route, where you can mathematically prove that you get 103,56 EUR back for 100 EUR invested, because of the infrastructure cost and processing time saved, your organisation will slowly fall behind those, who take risks to make larger leaps, even when there is the occasional drawback. So, yes, it’s not a risk, it’s certainty. It’s slow, but certain death.
These are the Siemenses, who optimised there ugly mobile phones by another percent and missed the designer phone trend to be beaten by Nokia; the Nokias and Blackberries, who made their keyboards ever more user friendly and here beaten by Apple’s touch screens. The British Navy, who made the guns of their battleshios another inch bigger, to be beaten by the age of the aircraft carrier…
When we talk about Human Resource Management or Talent Management software, we need to look at creating value at it’s core: supporting Talent Management in new, better ways, not ignoring that completely and be focussed on process efficiency and IT cost ONLY.
Therefore, someone responsible for HR system decisions shying away from even considering improvements of what should be the software’s core capability, is simply not doing their job. Sorry – it’s still a spade.
And I believe that as consultants (as opposed to freelance contractors, who just want to stay as long as possible in a full timem role and do as told; as opposed to the mix of sales reps, analysts and developers large SIs deploy full time with clients with the objective of maximising change requests) we have duty of pointing these things out very clearly and sometimes with the little shock, change requires.
Maybe „not having the guts“, whilst meant to provoke, sounds more offensive to a non-native speaker or to teh more civilised French ears as opposed to us germanic tribes ;-) I will try to find less offensive language, if it still makes the point.
However, I also want to point out that it would not be the first time for me to personally suggest to a client that we need more guts to progress and they usually appreciate some openness (difficut enough to find people telling you the truth in this age of corporate CYA games). Fine diplomatic language has it’s occasions, as has a more provocative one.
And finally, allow me to reply to your suggestion that I am a hit-and-run consultant, who either leaves clients with a decision and doesn’t care about the technical implementation or leaves them with an implementation and doesn’t care about business benefits relalisation. As this goes against everything I believe in, I definitely can’t let this statement sit there and if it is based on any firts hand experience with my work, I’d invite you to have a conversation in orivate so I can understand where it comes from – I have to admit I can’t recall having worked with you.
We usually work with our clients over a long period of time. We take them, if they which so, from initial design to implementation to post implementation continuous improvement, and if we cock up, it would quite likely us hit by the result. We work with clients again and again. Sometimes with years in between, where they don’t need help of decide other partners are better for a particular task, but they would always have teh opportunity to get hold of the individual, who did a project with them, to discuss, if objectives are not met. if one day, I can’t find an environment to work like that any more and you see me still working in this profession, then you can call me cheat.