My Career Story gets interesting …

Amy Wilson: Risk-taker?

As Jason Seiden suggested long ago, I’m screwing my career path and living my story.

Today I say goodbye to TalentedApps and begin my new online life as Shiny & Useful.  In parallel, I am bidding farewell to Oracle after 13 wonderful, continuously challenging years (6 at Oracle; 7at Peoplesoft) to start my own research and advisory firm Wilson Insight and to join Constellation Research, a highly esteemed group of independent analysts.

In making this decision to take a giant career leap, I asked myself a few questions.  This being TalentedApps (a primary source of career advice for us all, let’s be honest), I thought you might be interested …

Am I risk averse?

The prospect of giving up a steady salary, a well-crafted organizational infrastructure, and the comfort of knowing how to do my job well may be considered “risky.”  I certainly thought so!  And so, my first question to myself was “am I the kind of person who takes risks?”  Chris Melching, of Power Camp fame, asked me this question awhile back.  I hedged, and said something about creating  opportunities for myself that allowed me to choose change.  I had indeed made major shifts in my career, moving product lines (Financials to HR) and moving functions (consulting to development to strategy).  But the thought of striking out as an entrepreneur on my own?  No … safe to say, I fell in the risk-averse category.

Is this risky?

Given my general risk aversion, I needed to determine just how risky this opportunity was.  As I thought about it, I realized just how much support I had – coaches, sponsors, friends, network, family.  In fact, I have huge support in taking a giant gamble – it’s sort of like playing roulette with bumpers.

All in all, not that risky – but I did need to figure out just how I felt about success and failure.

Can I imagine myself in the role?

It’s really important before you take on a new role or responsibility to imagine yourself doing the job – imagine the skills you will need, the kind of work to be done, and, of course, the feeling you’ll get from the work.  There are indeed huge gaps in my vision of what this is going to look like, but generally speaking, I had enough observational and experiential data to realize what my life would look like.  And, it felt good to imagine myself doing it.

Can I envision success?

Doing it is one thing, but being successful at it is another.  What does success look like for me?  Here, I find it important to strike a balance between specific goals and broader aspirations.  It’s almost like a Chinese menu of success possibilities.  I will feel successful if I accomplish a, b, and d or if I accomplish c, d, and e.  The important thing is to realize what a – e are, not necessarily to get my heart set on mastering every one of them.

But as Ken mentioned, success is just one side of the coin.  There is also failure.

Am I OK with failure?

If this just doesn’t work out, am I OK with that?  I realized that I was.  It is an experience from which I will develop, regardless.  I will learn; I will grow.  I will know more about myself and what I’m capable of than I did before.  I will still have opportunities and possibilities.  Ultimately, this answer was the most important.

Here is to failing spectacularly … or not (hopefully).

Cheers!

Amy

Everything you need to know about 2010 and 2011 – The HR Carnvial has it all!

Laura Schroeder of Working Girl has assembled an insightful set of posts for the new year – reflections, resolutions, predictions, and rants.  Please do check them out, let Laura know how much you like them, and make sure to share your best 2010 memory with Trish McFarlane (HR Ringleader)!

Happy New Year!

– the gang here at TalentedApps

Are you a knowledge hoarder?

Intentional or not, knowledge hoarding isn’t going to get you anywhere.

In the past, people have sought comfort (and possibly power) in their prized knowledge – dispensing it only on an as needed basis.  This worked in a world that operated on one-to-one expertise transactions.  But the world has changed, and, as John Hagel points out in his research (Power of Pull), we need to focus on knowledge flow.  Knowledge is not a specific piece of information, but rather an idea that builds momentum and evolves.  What makes things even trickier is that this knowledge is often unformed and difficult to express in the early stages. (John refers to this as tacit knowledge)

If we don’t really know what we know or how to express that knowledge, it makes it easy to hoard knowledge.  How do we share a spark of an idea, something seemingly unimportant, but could potentially change the business? From personal experience, I find this really hard.  First, I’m an introvert.  Second, I’m a contemplater.  Basically, I spend a lot of time in my head.  Meanwhile, I want to share.  I know I should share and I can appreciate the benefits that occur when I do share.  So how do I overcome the fear of sharing those unformed, ridiculous thoughts?  I build trusting relationships.  I find and build a network of people to whom I can express raw thoughts – people who will appreciate them, add to them, contradict them.  Even though I think rationally, I allow myself to connect emotionally – to open up to others.  Even so, I have to work hard and remind myself that it’s OK to share the silly thoughts, the inkling of an idea.  It’s not so scary.

I had the pleasure of attending a talk by John a couple of weeks ago at the TEDxBayAreaWomen event.  John – thank you for the great insight – I am now as big of a fan as Mark 🙂  John’s key message was that we need trust-based relationships to create knowledge flow and you can’t build trust without expressing vulnerability.  Ultimately, I believe this kind of thinking will be just as important as, say, developing a growth mindset – in terms of building successful people and organizations in the future.

Picture source: Dilbert.com

The 20 Best Leadership Blog Posts

For all you leaders out there looking for advice … check out Dan McCarthy’s fine collection of leadership blog posts from 2010.  We are proud of our own Mark Bennett who is featured along with our other favorite industry thought leaders.

Also, if you haven’t already, please check out Dan’s own blog Great Leadership.  It is the best of the best – a great source of practical leadership advice plus great insight into the workings of leadership development organizations (both good and bad!).

They’ll be back

I feel so thankful when they come back

I’ve had the fortunate experience of managing many talented people in my career.  People who surprised me with what they could do that I couldn’t.  People who got things done in the toughest of situations.  People who brightened my day with new ideas.  People whose strengths I learned and benefited from.  And then they’d move on.  Or I would.  And, we’d be a little sad.  But not for long.

Because they never really leave – those talented people you know so well.  They become collaborators in different departments.  They become advocates of a shared vision.  They make the company more successful or the industry more viable.  And because you know them so well – what they can do, what they care about, what makes them tick – they will listen when you have an opportunity to work together again.  And it will be good, because you know it will.

The people you manage may change, but the people you lead never do.  So, share your talent, let them go, and enjoy working with them again and again. 

Picture source: Welcome Back, Kotter

My Fantasy Football conversations are talent reviews

They're everywhere! They really are!

When we traveled through Europe with our 18 month old, we saw playgrounds everywhere.  We had been to Europe on previous occasions and, I have to say, I never noticed a playground before.  Ever.  But, suddenly they were there.  Everywhere.

Talent Reviews are like that for me now.  I see them everywhere.  At the office, of course.  But at home too.  Well, maybe not *home* per se, but a particular thing we do at home.

Yes, my (now) 4 year-old and I are obsessed with our Fantasy Football team.  Each week, we have multiple conversations about our line-up.  We review our pool of talent, both internal – already on our roster – and external – free agents available for pick-up.  We consider the data available to us (past performance, this week’s match-up, problematic injuries) and determine who we think will be most successful in their role and who, ultimately, will make us most successful.

Similar to a talent review, we have a long range view.  We might determine that a player is not likely to succeed in this week’s match-up, but has potential to take the spot in an upcoming week.  Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot we can do to develop the bench players – other than to yell loudly at the television, which I’m told is very effective.  I wouldn’t recommend that at the office, though.

As the weeks have progressed, we’ve identified more, differentiating attributes to consider – such as whether the kicker is playing in a dome.  This key attribute was something we discovered as we discussed the conditions that led to higher and lower-performing kickers.  This wasn’t something that was initially available in our analysis, but is now a key part of our talent review discussion.  Talent reviews grow like that, just like the people who participate in them.

What’s the difference between Talent Reviews and Succession Planning?

We’ve learned a lot from our customers over the last few years.  One of the key lessons was about Talent Reviews.

Talent Review: what's not to love?

A Talent Review is a critical interaction between a group of business leaders and their HR/Talent business partner.  The group comes together for a day or two to talk about their business priorities, the talent they have, and make decisions about the future (minimizing risk, promotions, organization changes, developmental priorities, future staffing, and succession plans).  The HR department spends week upon week preparing for the meeting and even more time turning the decisions made in the meeting into reality.

For the HR department focused on being a strategic business partner, all the hard work is worth it.  Why? It is the time when business priorities and talent decisions come together.  It is the time that business leaders talk about what really matters about their talent – what is going to bring them a competitive advantage.  And, what’s more?  This is being done today in most leading organizations.  It is a best practice for businesses and HR alike.

What’s not to love?  Very little, actually.  There is a lot of love for Talent Reviews.  The one issue we saw time and again was that there was little support for this highly strategic process from a tools perspective – and in particular, tools that made it possible to make the process more frequent and bring it deeper into the organization.  There were lots of binders, excel spreadsheets, powerpoints, and whiteboards in use.  Quite a few home grown tools were created and some were trying to jerry-rig succession planning software for this purpose.  But succession planning software was not designed for this business process.

Just like development plans, promotion decisions, and risk mitigation plans, succession plans are an outcome of the Talent Review process.  Sometimes, succession plans aren’t even discussed at all!  Even so, the talent review is a rich and worthwhile conversation with many valuable outcomes.

Succession planning – including the creation and tracking of talent pools and pipelines as well as the simulation of what-if replacement scenarios – is a process that most HR organizations are working to implement.  They see the value in getting there, but the rigor and complexity of “getting there” is hard.  Meanwhile, the Talent Review process, in some form or another, is in place in most organizations today.  The Talent Review process can bring immediate value to HR and the business, thereby facilitating the succession planning process.

Ultimately, the leading organizations we work with use both Talent Reviews and Succession Planning to get the best results for their business.

It’s happening …

Our day in the sun

After several (cough) years of smiling and waving at conferences, your friends here at TalentedApps will be speaking about things we care about.  On Monday at Oracle OpenWorld.

Here’s a run-down of where you’ll find us on Monday:

Meg and I, along with colleagues Rob Watson and Colleen Neymeyer, will be presenting Oracle Fusion Talent Management for PeopleSoft Customers at 11am in Moscone West.  Later, at 3:30pm in Moscone West, we will be presenting Oracle Fusion Talent Management for Oracle E-Business Suite Customers, along with colleague Stephen Hughes.

Ariel and Marcie, along with colleagues Hugh Zhang and Gary Look, will be presenting Building Feature-Rich Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework at 11:30am in Hotel Nikko.

Alex, Christine, Ken, Louise, and Klaus, along with many colleagues, will be demoing at pod 97 in the demo grounds.

———

In fact, there’s more.  We’ll be there all week!  And, you can’t miss the Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management Applications: Family Overview on Tuesday at 2pm in Moscone West presented by the dynamic duo Gretchen Alarcon and Clive Swan.

Come find us – we look forward to it!

———

For more session information, grab a “Focus On” document here.

You CAN teach an old dog new tricks

For all you social networking naysayers out there, I want to share a recent conversation between two of my uncles.  Amidst a family reunion filled with people of all ages, my uncle Stu (age 70) wholeheartedly convinced his older brother Warren (age 72) to join Facebook.  He was successful, too, that darn whipper-snapper!

Stu: “Warren, when are you going to join Facebook?”

My dad and his brothers - convincing and agreeable!

Warren: “Seems like a lot of work.”

Stu: “You don’t have to do anything.”

Warren: “Isn’t there a lot of junk out there?”

Stu: “Just friend who you want.  I only friend relatives – if they’re not related to me, they’re not my friend!  I hide all that farming and mafia crap.”

Warren: “Oh, I can hide that?  Well, what would I get out of it?”

Stu: “It’s the first thing I look at in the morning.  If I didn’t look at it, I wouldn’t know what’s going on with my kids and my grandkids.  I find out everything I need to know there.

Warren: “That sounds good …”

Stu: “Amy – what was that TED thing you sent around?  Those videos are great and I never would have learned any of that stuff if you hadn’t posted it.  It’s not like I’m going to go out to that YouTube and just hunt around.  Everything I want to know/learn I get from Facebook.”

A few days later, Warren joined Facebook and is now officially stalking his family and friends … like the rest of us.

Remember this conversation that next time someone says “social networking is for generation Y.”  Social networking is about connecting and learning and it is for everyone.

Upside of a global organization

Participating in a global workforce can be tough – it takes time to get into the groove of conference calls, strange working times, and cultural translations.  I learned this first-hand as I transitioned from PeopleSoft to Oracle 5 years ago.  Sure, PeopleSoft was “Global,” but it wasn’t optimized globally.  A sprinkling of virtual team members might have connected into a meeting at headquarters on occasion, their advice tapped into via email.  Their expertise was focused on their particular local area and work was rather isolated.

Not so at Oracle.  Not only are there global people, but there are global teams. Infrastructure and processes revolve around the fact that large groups of people are based throughout the world.  And so, we are optimized in two ways: 1) the ability to connect/collaborate virtually with anyone in the world at any time, and 2) the ability to leverage local working teams such that entire projects/issues/opportunities are presented and fully dealt with independent of “headquarters.”

Optimizing for 1) is fairly straightforward.  It involves good technology and reasonably flexible people.  Optimizing for 2) is much harder and takes a level of organizational maturity.  It requires that leaders consider the talent based in particular geographic regions and how best to organize them based on skills, leadership, timezone, and organizational network/connection.  It also requires that high level goals & values are communicated and understood globally.  Meg provides some great advice for managers here.

Building a global organization is not for the faint of heart, but the upside is tremendous.  I am continuously awed by how great it can be.  For example, last Thursday night as I was heading to bed, I saw an email from my manager that presented one of those issues/opportunities.  This was something that needed to be solved by the next morning; however, it was not something I could solve on my own, even if I stayed up for hours.  Instead, I contacted a colleague in India who would be able to push through the necessary channels throughout his day (my night).  The next morning I woke up and felt like the tooth fairy had left me money under my pillow – my colleagues had solved the problem and we were able to take advantage of the terrific opportunity before us.

Many thanks to Ravi and Sai for the shared goal and super teamwork!

photo source: i.telegraph.co.uk