As we all know when we go to conferences we have several questions that surface as we attend presentations. To facilitate getting answers to those questions APQC introduced its inaugural Voice of Conference. Throughout the conference attendees were encouraged to place questions on whiteboards and rate the ones they found particularly meaningful. APQC’s staff then answered the most popular questions submitted.  During this podcast APQC’s Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland and Jeff Varney answer all of the questions that were not addressed at the conference on a range of process management topics (e.g., cross-functional processes, governance, and buy-in).  Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

APQC CEO, Dr. Carla O'Dell, recently interviewed Chip Heath, and asked Chip about confirmation bias and his newest book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. Chip is a professor at Stanford University, and along with his brother Dan Heath, is a master at taking complex ideas based on cognitive science research and translating them into actionable advice. The Heath Brothers have had best sellers with Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

APQC CEO, Dr. Carla O'Dell, recently interviewed Larry Prusak, co-author of Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, as part of APQC’s Big Thinkers, Big Ideas series to discuss the concept of wisdom and how leaders get it.

APQC’s Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland, process and performance management research program manager, Jeff Varney, senior adviser, and Lauren Trees, knowledge management research program manager answer questions received from the attendees of the November process and performance management webinar, Innovative techniques for Process Improvement. Listen as they cover topics including the benefits and best practices of Communities of Practice, crowd sourcing and hack events within organizations. Holly also shares examples from an APQC case study on Liberty Bank and how they achieved success using inventive methods.

No single role in HR suffers from a crisis of identity more than the HR Business Partner (HRBP). While many are calling for HR to serve a more strategic role, there are others who say HR’s job is to function as a hub dedicated to the administrative tasks that keep employees shuffling along. Amid these diametrically opposed concepts comes the HRBP– a role designed to serve as a conduit between the tactical and the strategic functions of both HR and the business. So what’s holding back HRBPs? Is it the skills gap associated with training generalists to become strategists? Is it a lack of organizational enablement or recognition of the strategic power of the role? Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

APQC’s Ron Webb, executive director of Open Standards Benchmarking, stats hub, and information systems, and Christy Aroopala, senior research statistician explore APQC’s methodology for driving decision making using process performance and benchmarking data. They discuss how to use basic statistical methods to identify meaningful findings and improve your business processes and will use real-life examples from process improvement projects on cycle time and customer satisfaction to illustrate the methodology. They will also share:  Applying business process analytics for substantive process improvements  Identifying relevant process data to support decision making  Taking your benchmarking projects to the next level. Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

APQC’s Human Capital Management Research Program Manager, Elissa Tucker, and Talent Analytics, Corp.’s CEO, Greta Roberts, will talk about: staffing and structuring a workforce analytics capability, dealing with data adversity, choosing analytics projects and methods, sharing quantitative results with data-shy clients, and promoting a data-driven approach to talent decision making. Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

APQC's Andrea Stroud talks to author and business consultant Kate Vitasek about a fresh perspective and a new lens for thinking about supplier relationships Key takeaways include: Why some of the worlds’ most popular sourcing strategies are incomplete for today’s modern procurement challenges Why and when it is essential to make the shift from “buying” to “architecting” supplier relationships How systems thinking can optimize supplier relationships  How to apply Sourcing Business Model theory for any spend category  Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

Join APQC's Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland, process and performance management research program manager, and Sarina Paul, former group general manager of quality and operational excellence for Transfield Services and former executive director of advisory services for APQC, as they discuss Sarina's experience using APQC's Process Classification Framework® at Transfield Services. During this podcast Sarina and Holly discuss the biggest challenges in organization-wide process management, tactics for employee engagement, and how Transfield integrated process, quality, and knowledge management to optimize its process journey. Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!

APQC CEO Dr. Carla O'Dell interviewed Ed Hoffman, Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA. Their conversation took unexpected turns: it ranged from why fear is needed if you want big change to what a CKO does in NASA (and how to discover the critical 5% of knowledge that matters) to what happens when the cowboy culture of Elon Musk’s SpaceX collides with a perfectionist culture like NASA’s. Remember to follow us on Twitter @apqc!