^The APQC Blog

Much press attention has been given to the experiences of women working in technology companies. Patricia Salgado Ph.D., a fellow at the Institute for Social Innovation at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara California, has uniquely focused on the men working in the tech industry, conducting research into their experiences of gender diversity.

Last September I posted a blog: “What is Blockchain?” At that time, only 6 percent of people who took our poll on blockchain rated themselves as extremely familiar with it. Since then, the global conversation about this distributed ledger technology has evolved, and many organizations have begun conducting pilot projects using blockchain. In fact, almost every APQC member I talk to is engaged in some form of digital transformation, with blockchain increasingly being mentioned.

What comes to mind when you hear the name “Elon Musk”? APQC—right? Just kidding. Even though Mr. Musk has no affiliation with APQC, you could be forgiven for thinking that he does, since both he and APQC are such vociferous proponents of robotic process automation (RPA).

My colleague, Perry D. Wiggins, has recently authored another entry in CFO Magazine’s Metric of the Month column discussing Shared Services. In serving as the CFO for the APQC and in the many finance leadership roles in industry that Perry had before joining the APQC, he has seen many of these practices in action as well as the research on their benefits.

As many of the readers may be aware, APQC was foundational in the establishment of the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), and helped to develop the concept, criteria, funds, and ultimately secure Congressional approval for this award in 1985. Since that award’s establishment, more than 100 companies have won this prestigious award.

Digitalizing HR is a hot topic promising many benefits for employers and employees. In a recent email interview, Stuart Smith of Conduent, explained to me why there’s so much excitement around digitizing rewards. 

 “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

In my last blog post, I wrote about the ripple effect of Toys R Us’ bankruptcy filing and subsequent liquidation plans, reported last month. For consumers, including many of my parent friends, the question that is top of mind is which stores have the best discounts during the closeout.

We’re roughly a quarter of the way through 2018 and from what I can tell so far, this year isn’t too different from last year. Everyone is still ad

dicted to their smart phones, the weather is still crazy, and the Houston Rockets are still the best team in professional basketball. Yep…hardly anything’s changed. But don’t tell that to someone who works in process management!

Growing up, I spent a lot of time watching baseball and sports movies. One of my favorite movies was Field of Dreams and I can still remember hearing Shoeless Joe say, “If you build it, he will come.” Those of us who’ve seen the movie recall that it wasn’t an easy feat to build a baseball field in the middle of Iowa when resources were scarce and people didn’t understand why a baseball field made sense.

Knowledge management (KM) is a bit like building a baseball field in the middle of Iowa. It’s exciting and thrilling, yet filled with unknowns.