Teryl @ Work

How we love to elaborate…     Both in our personal and business lives.   It is rare to find somebody who simply answers the question. In sales, it is becoming more and more critical to just say yes or no.   If you want to embroider afterwards, by all means, but tell the client you can or you can’t do it, first. That’s what they remember, the yes or the no. Being married to an engineer, I have learnt that if I don’t answer the question, he simply repeats it, until he gets a definitive answer.. As the above is extremely bad for marital relationships, I try to say yes or no first and then give the details. I thought it was just me, but I have been observing my friends and the people I work with, and it is fascinating how few one word answers are immediately available. When you are selling and a client asks you: If the widget turns blue in the dark, say yes if it does,  then  ask if that is a key part ...

If I were 22   May is my birthday month, so a time for celebrations and introspection. In interviews, I often ask our applicants to pretend they are 60, and look back on their careers.   Their dreams range from leaving a legacy to being able to retire by the age of 45. At 22, I had taken my first steps on the career ladder.   I had been promoted from being a PA and Installation Secretary (setting up PoS installations for NCR’s large retailers) to becoming a full time programmer. I had made some extremely poor academic decisions, and realised I had to make some very good career choices.   Software development was a relatively new field when I was in my early 20s, and it became an exciting and fulfilling career. Based on my history what advice would I give myself or a new graduate? It doesn’t matter what you have studied, or what your first job is. Keep looking for your passion, find what makes you happy. If it’s money, and you don’t m...

Is 2016 the year of mainstreaming Business Intelligence and Analytics? In IT circles, IoT and Analytics are mainstream!   In the real business world, there appears to be an appetite and a genuine need, but the question is “Is it really happening?” I have rather belatedly read Ajeet Singh’s article – 2016 Anti-Predictions for Analytics, and found it very interesting.   Some of the statistics mentioned were a surprise eg 99% of data still being on premise. Business technology trends do take multiple paths.   I remember when we first started selling biometric solutions at Accsys over ten years ago,  we would get in the door with biometrics, but the majority of clients still felt safer with cards.   It is the same with Employee Self Service, the take up is happening, but it is still largely at the early adopter stage in the SME market, in spite of overwhelmingly strong ROI indicators. So for the majority of businesses, Analyt...

Like any other discipline, HR has evolved, and is continuing to do so. I asked Ngoni Munetsi, head of Accsys People Partners Management for his input.   The article below is his response. Known before as Personnel Management, today we are talking of terms like Strategic Human Resources, Talent Management, and HR Intelligence among other terms. Are there any differences? Or is it just old wine in a new bottle? What are the current trends and what future predictions do we have in the evolution? The Morden view is the alignment of HR to Business, a statement very popular in the HR fraternity, but do we really understand how to do so? If HR is aligned to business, why is there a prophecy/prediction of the erosion of its relevance, because where there is alignment there is utility, not so? To stay relevant, I think HR strategies must focus on the following trends; The Strategic focus; This cannot be outsourced. If HR Professionals cannot transform into strategic busi...

KPAs, KPIs, Job Descriptions - and whatever other acronym you might be using, they all do the same thing - define the performance areas, describe the job, lay out objectives, success factors etc You know what they are, you understand the job, you are delivering according to the requirements, but you have the impression that your boss is not really that happy with you. It might just be that you don't understand your boss! During my career, I have reported into a number of people with huge variations of management style. There were the detail people, they needed to understand everything down to a granular level There were the big picture managers, just paint the situation in broad strokes, and mention any risk There were those who wanted everything in writing There were those who wanted to talk situations through in great detail, and get nothing to read  You get the picture... The critical way to success in a job is to understand what presses your...

This topic has been on my mind for the whole month of March based on the LinkedIn brief of the hottest positions in my industry. It has to be a role in Analytics and Business Intelligence. Security is a serious contender, too.  What else? Web development is still in demand. According to Robert Half, the positions with the most potential salary growth are : Big Data Engineers Mobile App Developers The one thing we know in IT is that you need to constantly keep current with trends. Are there IT jobs you should be fleeing from?  I don’t think so - there are legacy products in use keeping traditional IT skills busy - as long as you are enjoying what you are doing and keep your skill set relevant.   A career in IT is not industry specific, and companies are on the look out for IT specialists who combine deep IT skills with the ability to translate that into strategic, business development wisdom. A favourite (and I think relevant) TS Eliot Quote...

HR Intelligence What does your business know about your people? ·          Skills ·          Expertise ·          Qualities ·          Competencies Ngoni Munetsi, who heads up the Accsys People Management Partners Division  shared his thoughts on this with me. It seems to me that our systems have become data-led instead of information-led. He asks “How are we leveraging the data we have about our people to create competitive advantage?” “ Strategic information management is a basic fundamental of Strategic HR yet we continue to function as Data capturers…not as HR Strategists. We capture biographical data about employees, but then what?  HR Intelligence is all about making forward looking decisions through capitalising your HR Information depositories.  How can you make what y...