^The APQC Blog

I was recently asked to ruminate on the warning signs of a failing community of practice and it occurred to me that maybe a better topic to start would be the de(signs) of CoPs to keep them from failing in the first place. After all, if you do these things first, you won’t have to worry as much about the failure of your CoPs in the future. Besides, I can always pontificate on the signs of failure later (for those who didn’t heed this advice). So with that in mind, here’s a list of our Top 10 ways to design in success.

All CoPs should have:

I recently asked Samuel Dergel, author of Guide to CFO Success: Leadership Strategies for Corporate Financial Professionals, three critical questions for CFOs. This prompted a discussion about interest in STEM talent in finance, relationship maps, and practical wisdom for business decision makers.

Why is it we are now hearing that finance is under pressure to give wisdom to business decision makers?

In today’s volatile business environment, new trends can come up quickly and the HR function must effectively tackle the issues that shape their workplace. Because HR is made up of several different practice areas, it’s important to measure their performance across each area to ensure good performance across the entire function.

APQC’s recent study on the value of benchmarking was designed to examine how benchmarking provides value to core business activities like process improvement, strategic planning, and setting performance targets. This infographic looks at why organizations in the professional services industry conduct benchmarking, what they are benchmarking, and what value it adds to their business.

Today I'd like to launch a new feature here at APQC: the PCF mailbag. Like many other mailbag kind of sessions, this one will be driven by questions submitted by our members, PCF users, and other who are interested in the PCF. I'll answer the questions to the best of my ability and maybe even pull in a guest or two to help out when I can't answer them on my own.

The deadline for filing your company’s Specialized Disclosure Report (or Form SD) and Conflict Minerals Report is looming (effectively June 2nd). The theory behind exposing human rights violations in corporate supply chains is important, but the mix of social consciousness and SEC filings is a new kind of animal for finance and compliance leadership.

Does your recruiting function use data and analytics to guide its decisions? Recent research suggests that recruiting functions that use data may be more effective compared to those that do not. According to an analysis of data from a recent APQC survey of recruiting professionals, recruiting functions that use data to make recruiting decisions report fewer recruiting challenges and unrealistic hiring manager expectations.

Many industries contend with shortages of scientific, technical, engineering, and math (STEM) experts. Especially here in Houston, we hear a lot about public and private efforts to promote STEM education to bring future experts into the pipeline.

Okay, truth be told, this blog is really about big data analytics and the Cleveland Browns. However, if you’ve read even this far, then you’re probably either a Browns fan or a Browns hater. It really doesn’t matter to me which though, so long as you keep reading because it really is an interesting intersection of the two. Moreover, the rest of the story is more about the use of knowledge anyway (or in this case data).

Avi Kedem, Chief Knowledge officer with Israel Aerospace Industries, talks about knowledge continuity and how Israel Aerospace created a structured process to preserve critical knowledge from retiring workers.

If you would like to see more conference highlights, you can go to our 2014 Knowledge Management Conference Recap page.