Enterprise hits and misses - HR executives get a reality check, software buyers look for breakthrough ideas, and AI lessons get applied

Lead story - Beyond the headlines - HR & executive realities in practice today

What if the so-called "Great Resignation" wasn't the cause of the woes for today's employer, but the result? What if we haven't learned the right lessons? That's a heck of a starting point for Brian's latest missive:

Executives didn’t really learn from the pandemic. Instead of looking at work today with an open mind, they’re quickly reverting to old methods and practices. The cost of this management nostalgia will likely be disappointing recruiting efforts for replacement talent.

Brian quotes from TIME:

CareerBuilder has discovered that employers who offer a remote or hybrid work option received seven times the number of responses from applicants than those that don’t. And those employers that simply spell out compensation information upfront receive 10 times the number of responses versus those who don’t.

It doesn't stop at hiring. Brian challenges execs: from the moment you hire someone, you should be asking: what does it take to retain them? He raises the problem of the dreaded "bad manager," a question I pressed with Oracle's Steve Miranda this week also.

HR has got to look at management (at all levels) to see which executives are running off talent and why. The ‘exit interview’ is too late and rarely all that informative.

After bullet lists of needed HR improvements, Brian questions whether "HR analytics" has led to the right insights. Do we really understand the reasons for talent and staff shortfalls? Brian warns that the shiny-new-HR-toy isn't going to solve this:

Technology will not solve many of the issues mentioned above. So, don’t expect a vendor to offer up a magic cure-all that works. These issues have people, policy, leadership and work environment components. Technology is not a major factor here so get on with the tough work on these other elements.

Agreed - my current view is that modern HR tech can help good companies perform even better, but it can't fix bad process, insular return-to-work policies or work culture. The best hope is that the gap grows - and kings of the watercooler laggards are forced to confront the change we all hoped would be well underway by now.

Diginomica picks - my top stories on diginomica this week

• Bed, Bath & Beyond (Hope) again as US retailer's omni-channel turnaround fails to deliver - I think Stuart wants to write something nice about BB&B, he really does. And yet: "The global supply chain crisis certainly hasn’t helped - the firm’s “not available to sell inventory” has racked up at 30% of late." However, Stuart sees "shreds" of positivity in decent digital sales, so it's not over yet. Plus we got this keeper quote from BB&B's CEO: "Transformations are complex and non-linear." True that. Also see: Stuart's Personalization, social marketing and a long overdue Chief Data Officer - can ASOS steady the ship in the Vaccine Economy?
• Using no code/low code tools to quickly build systems in support of Ukrainian refugees - Cath's latest should inspire anyone who wonders how tech can change lives now: "After discussing these priorities with the head of camp, the monday.com team built a refugee, driver and volunteer registration system on top of the company’s work management platform within 24 hours."

Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:

• Box CEO Aaron Levie on the digitally connected future of enterprise content management - Phil sat down (virtually) with Levie to get the Box take on what's next: "Its track record in security and compliance, where it has built out an impressive portfolio of enterprise-class offerings, bodes well for what's yet to come in capturing and sharing new forms of content, along with workflow automation." Also see Phil's news analysis, Box extends its content footprint with the launch of Canvas, a virtual whiteboard - in advance of Box's Cloud Content Summit this week.
• Software buyers aren’t selecting apps – they’re looking for breakthrough ideas - Brian used Infor's (virtual) analyst day event as a launching point for this missive on buyer needs: "Today, solutions can be made to behave in significantly different ways via chatbots, RPA (robotic process automation), workflow/exception handling, machine learning, process mining and other advanced technologies. While all of those new capabilities could be great, software buyers don’t necessarily know what really is in the realm of possibility. That’s the key selection problem today." Also see: Derek's review of Infor's analyst day news: Infor hits $1 billion in SaaS revenue - what’s next for the ERP vendor?

Atlassian Team 22 - customer use case coverage. Derek picked up a couple of worthwhile use cases from Atlassian's virtual user event last week:

• Scaling agile at Wells Fargo to deliver value for the customer
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia ensures regulatory compliance with Jira and Confluence DevOps ecosystem

A couple more vendor picks, without the quotables:

• Can employee experience move from buzzword to organizational reality? Oracle's Steve Miranda on why Oracle ME, and why now - Jon
• Latest FinancialForce release adds FP&A as the company locks onto services economy growth - Phil

Jon's grab bag - Martin put out one of the best think pieces on applying AI you'll read this year: AI's 'never-ending journey' to Super Intelligence - MIT's Max Tegmark lays out the route map. Stuart assessed Primark's stymied e-commerce play in Primark ups its digital game with website upgrade...but only up to a point. Chris takes on autonomous tech in Row, row robo-boats, gently down the data stream - a new age of autonomous shipping sets sail.

Barb compiled tips on the lost are of marketing training in The state of marketing training - getting marketing out of the organizational junk drawer. Finally, I uncorked a polished rant in B2B content has an attention problem - but the solution isn't real-time AI, it's subscriptions. Hopefully marketers will move past my rough edges, so we can rejoin the debate: "Content marketing works because buying attention doesn't. But earning attention with content is an organizational discipline - and therefore, not appealing to the shiny new toy crowd."

Best of the enterprise web

My top eight

• Pipedream Malware: Feds Uncover 'Swiss Army Knife' for Industrial System Hacking - This isn't your grandpappy's trojan: "Perhaps the most versatile tool ever made to target critical infrastructure like power grids and oil refineries."
• California suggests taking aim at AI-powered hiring software - keeping with our get-talent-right (or not) theme, with pending legislation under consideration in California.
• How to find, keep, and develop tech talent - McKinsey takes a big picture view of the problem - after polling 1,500 executives globally. "Some 87 percent say their companies are not adequately prepared to address the skill gap."
• DBMS Market Transformation 2021 - Gartner's Merv Adrian reveals DBMS market shakeups in 2021, as per their data. Hint: cloud vendors doing well.
• Levi’s Chief AI Officer Talks Raising the Bar (in Everything) with Machine Learning - Consumer Goods Technology with a use case look at Levi's AI pursuits. How 'bout this one, from Levi's machine learning boot camp: "A retail store manager in a Denver premium outlet store created a neural network that identifies the optimal way to bundle products in the best outfit."
• My data killed my cloud project! - Yes, some of the insights on these cloud data migrations border on the obvious, but the lessons remain: "The biggest culprit: messy data with inadequate security and integration."
• DALL-E, the Metaverse, and Zero Marginal Content - A bit further from the enterprise, but DALL-E's AI image generator (from text) is a tech advancement that warrants analysis.
• Twitter Adopts 'Poison Pill' Defense in Musk Takeover Bid - I realize this is a "tell me when it's over" kind of story, so I won't be posting new developments like a soap opera - only the high/low points.

Whiffs

Okay, so this was a bit too easy:

Actually, so was this:

Oh, and via reader Clive Boulton:  San Francisco police stop self-driving car – and find nobody inside, video shows. Maybe self-driving "AI" is more advanced than I thought...

This brought back some funny/not funny memories:

In the early days of hits/misses, I usually ended on an inspirational note. Then inspiration got cut for space. But I'll make an Easter exception this week:

See you next time... If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses - in a good or bad way - let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed.