Social media and employee engagement

 

   Next month (19th March, 2010), I’ll be moderating one of the sessions at Justmeans’ Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement conference in London:

Empowering Employees

Social media can inspire employees and generate new ideas when it is used as a collaboration tool.  Communication is no longer limited to a one-way delivery of information; organisations are participating in two-way dialogues and using social media to engage employees in innovative ways. How do you engage employees, create a shared vision, increase productivity and derive benefits from increased employee engagement? Many companies are increasingly concerned about the risks of social media and are reluctant to introduce it into their organisations.  How do you introduce and embrace the utilization of social media with proper planning and guidelines to ensure success and employee advocates?

 

Speakers for the session will include Tim Johns, VP Corporate Communications at Unilever and Ed Gillespie, Co-Founder of Futerra.

Should be fun!  Come along if you can.  You can book here or for more information, please contact Serina Mufti at smufti@justmeans.com or +44 (0) 203 238 2121.

And let me know if you’ll be there, or at least ensure you come over and say hello!

 

Technorati Tags: Justmeans,social media,stakeholder,engagement,employee,communication,conference,London

 

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HR and Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration

 

   I’ve already posted briefly on one session at the Enterprise 2.0 virtual event this week, but want to write even more briefly about another.

This is Morten Hansen’s opening session on collaboration.  I’ve already reviewed Hansen’s book, Collaboration, on Talking HR, so I’m not going to go through his whole presentation.  But there were a couple of additions in this session.  One of these was a discussion on enterprise 2.0 technology which was a glaring omission in the book (leading me to shout out ‘hello! – wiki!!!’ on the show).  And I thought you’d be interested in the other addition which is shown on this slide: the ‘new HR agenda’.

Why?  Well, according to Hansen, there’s going to be a paradigm shift around (disciplined) collaboration – as this is the future of work.

To develop effective collaboration, organisations need to recognise that the motivation barrier is as great as the need to ensure it has the right technological tools.  This isn’t so much about 2.0 as these tools don’t fundamentally address the motivation barrier (duh!).  It’s much more about HR.

So one way of addressing the motivation barrier is through the development of T-shaped people, which Tim Brown, CEO at IDEO refers to as ‘a depth of skills and a disposition for collaboration across’  and which he believes is the backbone of IDEO’s collaborative culture.

And T-shaped people are developed by changing HR systems to focus on both individual work and collaborative work – so where is the right balance in the dimensions shown in the slide for your organisation?

 

I’m still hoping to explore this subject further with the Enterprise 2.0 crowd at the E2.0 conference in Boston this Summer.  And will definitely continue to do so in my Social Advantage blog and forthcoming book…

 

Technorati Tags: Enterpirse 2.0,E2.0,E2conf,Morten Hansen,Collaboration,HR,T-shaped,people

 

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Social recruiting and conferencing part 2 (TRU)

 

   One of the conversations I had on Thursday night (at the recruiting tweet-up, RTU) was about Mervyn Dinnen’s tweet last year, at Mike Taylor’s Social Recruiting conference, about there having to be a better (more social) way of exploring social topics than traditional conferences.

If I’ve got this right, Trish McFarlane responded with a tweet about last year’s HRevolution un-conference in (which I missed as I thought the travel time would be a bit excessive given that I had a lot of client work to do), leading indirectly to the first of Bill Boorman’s TRU un-conferences last year (which I missed because I was at the CIPD conference in Manchester).

According to Bill:

“An unconference is an event that has no fixed structure and only two rules, no power point and no presentations. The day is split into sessions during which a series of ‘tracks’ run on a theme with a track leader hosting the discussion, debate and learning. The discussion takes a life of it’s own with attendees bringing their own views, questions and opinions as well as debate. This takes many directions and concludes with real learning and opinion forming. The track leaders are carefully chosen for their areas of experience and knowledge and for the value they can bring to the “track.” They have been drawn from across the globe giving the unconference a genuine global view. We will be adding to the list of track leaders right up to the day of the event (and even during it.)”

 

Well, I think Mervyn, Trish and Bill are right.  Traditional conferences are increasingly out of synch with today’s more informal and social life and work styles.  And unconferencing is an approach that I’ve wanted to get involved with since speaking about it with Jay Cross (see Jay’s definition of an unconference) when we did some work together a few years back.

So I’m very excited to be attending, and track leading, at Bill’s second TRU (The Recruiting Unconference) event, TRU London 2 in just two weeks time.

I’ll be co-unleading (?) sessions on:

Employer branding v Employee branding

Track Leaders: Nick Price, Sarah White, Michelle Fischer, Jon Ingham

Following on from the popular Recruiter Cast debate “Is the Employer Brand dead?”, this track looks at the issue of employer branding. How to stand out as an employer and how recruiters can use employer branding. Has employer branding is turning in to employee branding as a result of the social media explosion and the growth of the personal brand. Branding experts Nick Price, Michelle Fischer and Sarah White from the U.S. will be debating all the issues in this key area.

 

Endangered Species

Track Leaders: Peter Gold, John Ingham, Steve Boese

From HR to recruiters, we seem to hear of the imminent passing of all the trades we recognise are facing extinction from a changing world. Who is next to start pushing up the daisies? This track promises to be lively and global looking at who is on the endangered species list, why and what they need to do in the future to ensure a brighter future.

 

The talent wars

Track Leaders: Trish Mcfarlane, Michelle Fischer, Peter Gold, Jon Ingham

We will fight them on the job boards, we will fight them in Facebook. We will never surrender! The battle to attract the best talent for current and future hires. is there such a thing as a passive candidate? How to track and engage with potential future hires. How can you pipeline and maintain contact in preparation of your next placement or hire?

 

Culture Clash

Track Leaders: Jon Ingham, Laurie Ruettimann, Geoff Webb, Alan Whitford

The world is shrinking and networks are going global. #trulondon is a testament to the narrowing of borders combining the leading brains in our sector from the U.K, the U.S. & Canada. What are the shared views of the community and where do cultures clash between the continents? What do you need to keep and what do you need to be open to when networking or trading cross borders.

 

H.R. Gen Z

Track Leaders: Laurie Ruettimann, Trish Mcfarlane, Jon Ingham

Never mind Gen Y,their here now. What will HR look like to Gen Z? Will HR exist in it’s current format? How could the HR role evolve and what will make it the career destination of choice to the bright young things? What do we want from HR now & in the future from a corporate & employee viewpoint? Are these the same things or something different? How can HR please all? How can HR prepare for the future while functioning effectively now?

 

Future Strategy

All track leaders

At the close of each day all tracks will spend 45 minutes consolidating the learning & thinking of all the attendees in open discussion in order to focus the mind on the next step.

 

 

As you might be able to tell from the names above, Bill’s brought together many of the biggest and brightest names from the recruiting, HR and social media worlds (including most of the people that I met on Thursday night), and it should be a really good event.

So look out for plenty of blogging, tweeting, podcasting, waving and other social media stuff coming to you on 18th and 19th February.

And if you’re not attending the unconference in person, you’ll still have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation through Paul Harrison’s live lab:

“The room splits in to tracks and each has a track secretary and a micro-blogger. The questions for the tracks, and opinions come from the twitter stream using the hashtag #lab. This could be huge and a great opportunity to involve many more than those in the room. Hats off to Paul for taking this on, and for twitter job search for providing a venue where we can project on the side of the building!”

 

Oh, and if Bill’s OK to have me back, I’ll also be unleading at TRU USA in Madison on April 20th and 21st - note I’m prioritising it above the CIPD (HRD) conference this time around!

 

 

Photo credit: Sara Headworth

Technorati Tags: Bill Boorman,Mervyn Dinnen,Trish McFarlane,Paul Harrison,recruiting,unconference,TRU,London,Madison,USA

 

 

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Social recruiting and conferencing part 1 (RTU)

 

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I was at a recruiting tweet-up (RTU) ie Twitter meet-up that was part of Social Media Week London last night and was delighted to meet lots of new people and some old friends including Mervyn Dinnen, Gareth Jones, Wendy Jacob and Bill Boorman (pictured) – plus Paul Harrison after I’d put my camera away.

Before that, there was a presentation / discussion on social recruiting which focused around what this is / isn’t, including some examples of good case studies (Microsoft, Cisco, Sodexho, Deloitte NZ).

Matt Alder (see here and here) kicked the presentations off by explaining what social media isn’t, ie advertising.  And I think the final definition that was suggested(a bit hard to be certain above the noise of the clinking glasses) was people having a conversation on-line.

But I liked Wendy’s suggestion: “talking to people, that’s all it is – getting to know the real you”.  I like the ‘real you’ piece – SR’s not a conversation about a job, it’s about the person.  And I like the absence of the ‘online’ bit.

To me, SR is something we’ve always done, but which is now substantially easier because people are online, and particularly because they’re on 2.0 too.

So as Matt said, it’s different to non-social recruiting in that it’s not just about advertising jobs.  And it’s not just about receiving applications.  It’s linking the organisation and an individual together through conversations and by developing a relationship.  So something like an employee referral scheme would come within the definition of SR for me.

But there is another bit here too though.  I’ve previously suggested that social learning should mean learning of the social unit (the team or the organisation as a whole) and not just learning socially (generating, co-creating and sharing content, collaborating etc).  And I think this should apply to recruitment too.  So I’d suggest that SR isn’t just about using relationships to recruit, it needs to be about developing and then maintaining relationships because these are going to be critical to engagement, retention, collaboration etc after a person joins.

 

The presentations then moved on to the benefits of SR and the suggestion was that it is good for recruiting young people cheaply.

As you might guess from my definition of the concept, I think this benefit is a bit weak.  SR isn’t (shouldn’t be) just about young people, and it’s not just about efficiency.  The opportunity is to use SR to get people you’ve never been able to tap before, and to provide your organisation with more / better people with better relationships between then too (higher levels of human and social capital).

SR provides an opportunity to transform what your organisation is capable of doing.  If all you focus on is activity (doing things on line) and efficiency (doing HR more cheaply) don’t be surprised when you find it hard to engage the business in this!

 

Technorati Tags: Recruitment,tweet-up,RTU,Mervyn Dinnen,Gareth Jones,Wendy Jacob,Paul Harrison,Matt Alder,social,recruiting,media,2.0

 

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Lynda Gratton on the Future of Work

 

   I’ve been reading Lynda Gratton’s newish blog on the Future of Work over the last couple of days.

It’s a blog that a definitely recommend to you, full of the deep insight that you’d expect from Lynda Gratton, and particularly valuable as it’s based on her Future of Work consortium and therefore the inputs of 200 executives from some of the world’s smartest 20 companies.

So for example, the consortium has identified five themes which will most influence the future of work – demography, globalisation, societal change, low carbon and technology.

In her latest post, Gratton lets rip at executive reward and its negative impact on collaboration

“For decades, there has been a belief that the talents to be a CEO are very rare and the impact they make on corporate performance is very strong. That’s why, the argument goes, CEO’s are paid on average 531 times the blue collar workers pay (up from 42 times in 1980). However, if we reflect on the five future forces – globalisation for example is uncovering talent pools around the word, which no longer makes these executive competencies rare. At the same time, social technology has enabled ‘wise crowds’ to make the decisions only CEO’s could have made in the past. Plus of course increasing market turbulence will impact on the control the top team actually have on profitability. All these factors suggest that senior executive pay needs to change.”

 

Also, in a recent article on HR Magazine, Gratton suggests

"Talent management needs to completely change its way of building top leaders. The role of Top leaders will fundamentally change. In the future they will need to learn how to ignite communities of people. The company will no longer be the hub of loyalty and affiliation - instead value will come from various communities and ecosystems , and engaging such communities requires very different skills from today's leader.”

"The questions to ask are why is there such a huge discrepancy between what companies think they need to pay their top leaders, and if a collaborative, team-based approach will prevail in the future, do we need to pay our top leaders so much

 

Gratton goes on basically to suggest that the situation is only sustained by widespread collusion to support the status quo.  She suggests however that “very few HR teams, or consultants, or CEO’s are prepared to talk about this”.

Her advice to tackle this and other contested areas is as follows:

• First, take a dispassionate view of the subject
• Next, begin a conversation, create a task force, create a buzz, which surfaces the ‘undiscussables’
• Third: make a stand.

 

I think this is really important advice, and taking a stand, in particular, which I’d suggest is a vital part of our role (eg in being one of Ulrich’s ‘credible activists’) is something we don’t see HR doing enough of.  (As I note in my comment on Lynda’s article at HR Magazine, “we've seen very little progress on new reward frameworks in the banks for example, despite a fiercely burning platform to change here”.)

On a personal note, you can certainly criticise me for not being dispassionate – but then passionate opinion is what blogging is about – but I hope you won’t feel that I don’t make a stand.  I think regular readers will all already understand my own views on executive & bankers’ reward, for example.

If not, see:

• Stephen Hester’s diary
• How to fit executive pay
• Fairness and differentiation
• HR’s spineless response
• Risks and rewards in banking (continued)
• The revolution within – risks and rewards in banking
• HR in the spotlight: bankers’ bonuses
• Banking bonuses
• Doom and gloom (I bet John Lacey is regretting his comment to Personnel Today now!)
• Unjust rewards
• Unjust rewards (different post on Social Advantage)
• Whole Foods – Conscious capitalism
• Directors pay and Social Advantage.

 

Enough “being prepared to talk about it” for you Lynda?!

 

 

Technorati Tags: Lynda Gratton,Future of Work,executive reward

 

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The UK’s top HR blog – it’s official (sort of)

 

   Fistful of Talent have just published their 6th round of power rankings, and this blog comes in at #15 of 160 blogs in the talent management space (thanks guys!).

Not bad at at all, and I’m particularly pleased to see that Strategic HCM is placed as the top blog from the UK (in fact I think it’s the only blog in top 25 that’s from the UK – but I still need to check on this).

Still, it’s probably not quite enough to claim to be the UK’s top HR blog / blogger.

However, I have also just been put in top slot in Hub Cap Digital’s list of the top 10 HR bloggers in the UK (thanks to Michael, Stuart et al).

Add to this that I came in as the top, and again the only, UK based blogger in John Sumser’s list of digital HR influencers, and that this blog comes in as the UK’s top career related blog in RiseSmart’s Career 100, and I think that just about wraps it up.

Not bad considering I’ve had a bit of a bloggers’ block over the last week or so – I’ll have to stop blogging more often!

 

 

Technorati Tags: Fistful of Talent,Michael Reddy,HPA,Group Hub Cap Digital,John Sumser,top,power,online,digital,Hr,talent,career,management,blogger,influencer,list,rankings

 

 

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Did you miss? (on Social Advantage during January)

 

   Check out these recent posts from my other blog if you’ve not already seen them:

• Social capital and Organisational capabilities
• Social media at conferences
• Carnival of Trust, January 2010
• The January 3rd Leadership Development Carnival: B...
• Looking back to January 2009

 

Technorati Tags: Social,business,capital,media,trust,leadership

 

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The Social Revolution – processes to networks

 

   I posted a couple of times fairly recently (1, 2) on the social revolution discussed by Andrew McAfee in one of his Enterprise 2.0 posts.

In my last post, I probably went a bit too far, arguing that there doesn’t need to be a move from hierarchical organisational structures to networks.  But in some ways, there does.

Hierarchies and structures in general receive too much attention.  As I wrote in my last post, leaders and managers tend to think about hierarchies when they’re redesigning organisations and teams, but it really isn’t the most important aspect of an organisation, and certainly isn’t the only one.

So structures do deserve less attention, and networks don’t receive enough.

As I also noted in my last post, I didn’t use to think about the network aspect of organisation design at all, but I certainly wasn’t the only one – and I suspect most people designing organisations today still don’t.

We do need to put more emphasis on networks and I’ll describe why shortly.

First though, to perhaps explain the point from my last post a little bit differently, I accept, and reinforce, that the social revolution requires more focus on networks.  I just don’t believe it’s about replacement of one with the other.  They both have their place within organisation design.

 

See also this recent post from CV Harquail on Authentic Organisations.  I’ve not read Barley & Kunda, so I’ve no idea whether I’m interpreting their remarks correctly, and whether their views support or conflict with mine, but I do like the quote:

“Hierarchy is a property of a network’s structure, not something that a network replaces.”

 

Anne Marie McEwan’s comments on the same blog post resonate with me as well.

Anyway, on with the post:

 

3.   If networks are replacing anything (and they aren’t), it isn’t corporate hierarchies, it’s business processes

I’d argue that the real change we need to make in organisation design (rather than how well organisation design is done) is a move from processes to networks.

 

Processes

Processes are traditionally the building blocks of organisations.  They specify how work needs to get done and accountabilities for doing this.

And although I’m saying we need to move towards networks, I don’t think we should move away from processes.  I think this is an area of organisation design that HR, and organisations in general, could be a lot more skilled in than they are.

See this piece from my book:

“One of the other examples of creating value HCM approaches I quite often use, particularly where I’m developing HR teams, is creating organisation capital through business process design.  It’s a good example for a number of reasons: it’s a key area of organization design that many companies forget about; often no other functions have responsibility for it; and it calls on many of the skills that HR professionals already have.

However, it’s also an area that provides HR with a wonderful opportunity to mark out their new role. Often the first time an HR business partner offers to support a business client to redesign their business processes, they get told to go away and come back once the manager has done the redesign, and they know how many redundancies they need. It gives HR a great opportunity to respond back that no, this is not what they mean.

They have a methodology and particular skills to help facilitate the development of better processes. It gives them an opportunity to point out that there is a separate administration
centre that handles the redundancies – this is not their job.’”

 

(Also see this post on process design.)

 

However, processes only work well for repetitive and especially production oriented work.  They apply less well to work that is complex, changeable, knowledge based, creative, people focused and so on – ie to a rapidly increasing proportion of the work that people do today.

 

Networks

What governs this type of work is the network.  It’s who people talk to in order to get input, support or get things done.  And it’s messy – it can’t be laid out in process terms.

This is the main reason that networks are becoming a more, if not the most, important element of organisation design.

So the shift isn’t from structures (hierarchies) to networks, it’s from processes to networks.  Hierarchies can carry on pretty much as they have done before.  But networks are different to processes – they can be designed in the same sort of logical way (see slide).

I’m going to come back to post more about the analysis and design of networks shortly.  Stay tuned for more….

 

 

Technorati Tags: Organisation design,process design,organisation strructure,structure design,social network,network design

 

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Josh Bersin on informal and social learning

 

   After a couple of years of phone and email communications (and a guest post), today I finally met up with Josh Bersin (and his colleague Allen Keetch).

Josh is in town for the Learning Technologies conference on Wednesday and Thursday, where he’ll be talking about informal learning.  Josh very kindly gave me a summary of his key points.

 

Transforming to a modern learning environment

The recession of 2000 catapulted e-learning forward as organisations rationalised their training and moved more on-line.  The current recession has kicked off informal learning.  At the same time, we have access to new social technologies.  These two factors have collided giving rise to a revolution in informal learning (Josh sees this as consisting of on-demand, social and embedded learning.

Trainers and instructional designers have always known that informal and social learning is the way people learn, but they’ve not spent any time on it.  They’ve tended to see their job as the formal stuff.  They now need to take on new disciplines, move to a new design paradigm and change their instructional design models – putting elements of social media into every development programme.

Social learning is a good thing for the learning / training industry, but it’s forcing practitioners to rethink – they’re past talking about what it is – but they’re still working out how they’re going to apply it – what’s their job – and whether they will have a job.

But it’s a bit like the rise of e-learning again.  L&D practitioners who ignored e-learning tended not to get involved.  It’ll be the same with social learning – practitioners need to get with it or they’ll become more irrelevant.

 

But why would someone read a blog?

After meeting Josh, I had another meeting and talked about this blog.  My contact responded that he’d read a blog once, but obviously wasn’t sure why he had, as he then asked “so why would someone read a blog?”.

Now, admittedly this person’s not in L&D, but he is a fairly high profile figure in the UK HRM and D world, and I don’t think his reaction was that different from that of many HR and L&D practitioners that I meet.

Perhaps this a difference between the US and UK, but whatever the reason, I don’t feel as positive about L&D’s sponsorship of social learning as Josh (or other speakers at the conference like Jane Hart).

And I think lack of understanding and involvement in social media is part of the problem with this.  So ’d encourage L&D (and HR) practitioners who want to get on top of social learning (and social HR) to get involved in using social media for themselves – it’s by far the best way to learn (mind you, I suppose the people this point applies to won’t be reading this anyway!).

 

Deepening cultural change

In Bersin’s recent report, ‘Enterprise Learning and Talent Management 2010’, Josh and his colleagues discourage L&D practitioners from acting on their own.  Social learning systems need to link with, align with and be integrated with those systems chosen by IT.

I think there’s a bigger issue than this too.  Social learning needs to link with other changes in the organisation.  It’s part of a more social way of behaving, of thinking, or working.  Learning – HR – Management – Enterprise 2.0.

So my advise would be not to start with learning – but with the need to be more social (nb meaning to focus more on relationships, not spend more time in the pub!).  See my Social Advantage blog for more thoughts on this.

 

Resources:

• Jane Hart’s top 100 tools for learning
• Jane Hart’s list of 100 learning professionals to follow on Twitter
• Top 99 e-learning blogs

 

Also see my post on social learning (vs learning socially – and why it involves more than just using social media)

Learning & Skills Group members can also view my Learning Technologies presentation from a couple of years ago at http://www.learningandskillsgroup.com/iptv.cfm – see under LT 2008 track 3.

 

Technorati Tags: Josh Bersin,Learning Technologies,conference Board,2010,informal,social,learning,media

 

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Being your idea generator

 

   Actually, there’s just one more thing resulting from the HRD Business Summit that I want to write about.

This is Ulrich’s breakdown of the roles that need to be involved in transforming HR:

• Line managers (board of directors, executive team, all managers): Owners
• Chief HR officer: Architect
• HR for HR: Foreman
• Employees: Self-reliance
• Advisors: Idea generation

 

I think this (‘idea generation’) is absolutely the right role that advisors (consultants) should play.  And I’ve been reflecting further on my call for more insight in HR, and also my recent post on my own role and I want to write more about how I can act as your advisor to help you generate ideas.

This is likely to turn into a bit of an advertorial I’m afraid, but there are two reasons why you should stick with me.

The first reason is that although I increasingly receive revenues from writing, training, lecturing, speaking etc, advising (consulting) is still the main part of my portfolio.  Blogging, on the other hands, generates almost nothing (although if you’re interested in sponsoring this blog, click here).

So if you like this blog, it’d be worth scanning through the rest of this post, and thinking about the opportunities for consulting on strategic HR (creating and updating HR strategies, developing the strategic capabilities of your HR team, support on strategic programmes – in talent management , organisation development etc) within your organisation, or within your network.  More consulting = more blog posts, simple as that!

The second reason, which I guess may feel more important to you, relates to the type of ideas I can generate:

 

Ideas on HCM and HR2.0

I have what I think are some fairly well developed ideas about HCM and HR / management 2.0 – about how organisations can develop human and social capital for competitive advantage.

And I happen to think that these are some of the best, new ideas around.

You can read about these ideas, and about case studies of organisations that are starting to put them into practice, on this blog.

But in a consulting or training environment, I can provide that much more.  And please note that this doesn’t mean that I would try to do strategic HCM to you.  It simply means that we could have a look at the aspects of HCM or HR 2.0 which could add value to your organisation, and work on the activities that would bring benefits to you.

This might be looking at your capabilities, or your management model, identifying the practices that will create human capital, developing a strategy map or measurement scorecard, training your HR team (eg in the HCI HCS programme), or a number of other things.

 

Ideas about other peoples’ ideas

But I can help you understand other peoples’ thinking and approaches too.

I attend and present at conferences and webcasts, I travel and talk to people from different countries, I read and write books, I read and contribute to journals and magazines, I write and read blogs, I listen to and produce podcasts, I train HR teams, and I consult on strategic HR with leading organisations around the world.  I do all this so I can give you the broader insights that I think you need.

So in my last post, for example, I provided a list of thought leaders that I’ve reviewed previously on this blog.  My understanding of these ideas means that I can bring these into the generation process too.

This is something I don’t think many idea generators will do.  If you bring in Ulrich, he’s going to do Ulrich, you know the sort of thing.  He’s not going to do Cappelli, if he thinks that’s more what you need. 

I will do this for you.

 

Ideas on your opportunities

But of course, all of the above is just background.  It’s what you need to do that counts.

The real value you get from me isn’t HCM, and it’s not other’s peoples’ ideas, however appropriately provided.  It’s ideas about how you could develop your agenda in a way that’s unique to you – depending upon your objectives, context etc.  Your needs.

This is what I most love working on, and I can’t do it through a blog.

So if you really want to maximise the value you get from me, call me in.  And let’s get generating.

 

Picture credit (Cockcroft–Walton generator): Geni

Technorati Tags: Consulting,advising,ideas,thinking,innovation

 

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Insight and pragmatism

 

   The last area I want to discuss in my summary of the HR Directors Business Summit is the need for new insights in HR.

One of the key themes that seemed to me to be coming through from the presentations (despite Julian Birkinshaw’s input) was that HR is simple and that we don’t need any new ideas.  This theme seemed particularly strong in the panel session on the Tuesday afternoon, and in Martin Tiplady’s presentation on Wednesday morning looking at HR at the London Met Police and elsewhere:

“HR’s not rocket science – it requires speed and pragmatism.”

 

(Tiplady also seemed to question some of our existing ideas - “What was ever the point of competency frameworks?”.  It’s not a question I’m going to attempt to answer because I do struggle to get excited about competency frameworks myself, but this isn’t to suggest that they don’t – or at least can’t - provide a very sound basis for a company’s overall HR architecture.)

 

I think this push back against new ideas is a bit sad actually (I could see Tiplady’s 19th century policemen resisting progress in the same way – and look how far we’ve come in that profession).

 

HR isn’t just about good management

I completely support Ulrich’s point that HR is provided through line management, and that our people’s experience of HR is mostly down to to the way their manager line manages.  But even if we could do something to get every line manager to spend time with, be interested in, support and grow their people, there’d still be a need for more.

 

We need good HR strategies

Even with the best line managers in the world, there’d still be a need for HR professionals to develop strategies, tailoring these approaches in the right way according to their own business (their own capabilities, their own management models etc).  If you’ve got the wrong strategic approach (and let’s face it, in this area at least, most organisations don’t have much that’s right) then the best, most pragmatic execution in the world, isn’t going to get you very far (at least down the road you want to go).

 

You need some new ideas

On this blog, you’ll find new ideas from Dave Ulrich on leadership brand and HR transformation, John Boudreau on talentship / beyond HR, Henry Mintzberg on communityship, Lynda Gratton on hot spots and glow, Gurnek Bains on meaning, Gary Hamel on management innovation, Peter Cheese on talent powered organisation, CK Prahalad on innovation at the bottom of the pyramid, Peter Cappelli on talent on demand, Jac Fitz-Enz on HCM: 21 measurement, John Kotter on a sense of urgency, Ed Lawe on talent-centricity, Dicky Beatty on differentiated workforce, Tony Buzan on mind mapping, Andrew Mayo on HCM measurement, Nick Baylis on happiness, Emmanuel Gobillot on leadership, Jim Collins on greatness, David Guest on HR measurement and many more besides.

Some of these ideas I agree with and some I don’t.  Some of them agree with other ideas but most of them don’t agree with all.  Ed Lawler’s and Peter Cappelli’s ideas on talent for example, are very different things.

This is important.  If you’re going to optimise the strategy you develop for your business, you need to understand these ideas, and know which ones best fit your particular organisation’s needs.

And you need to be on the look out for new ideas which can help give you additional competitive edge.

It’s time for new thinking.  It’s time to take note of new ideas.

 

Talking of time, I’ve now run out of time to post on anything else from the HR Directors Business Summit!  But thanks to Tim Taylor from TUI, Allison Campbell from Bacardi, Stefan Tonnon from Progress Software and Jacqui Summons from Intec for your time, and for sharing your own ideas and experiences with me.  It’s much appreciated and I hope I can return the favour some day.

 

Picture credit: Met archives

Technorati Tags: New,insight,ideas,innovation,HR,talent,human,resource,capital,management

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Human Capital Strategist (HCS) Certification

 

I’ve posted previously to let you know that I’m now delivering the Human Capital Institute’s Human Capital Strategist certification course in UK and Europe.  There’s some great new information about this programme on HCI’s new website, http://www.hci.org, and I’ve copied this down here:

 

 

Overview

Master the new business science of strategic talent management, and prove your expertise with HCI's Human Capital Strategist (HCS) Certification. HCS is the recognized credential for strategic knowledge in the Human Capital field and is an important career achievement for Human Resources, Organizational Development, Recruitment, Corporate Learning and Line executives.

Talent is the only sustainable advantage in a global knowledge economy, and integrated talent management strategy and practices are now central to business results. HCS provides the foundational framework, practical application and tools to move the needle in your organization and career.

 

HCS Corporate Training

Human Capital Strategist (HCS) Certification and Master HCS Designation programs are available for teams of up to 20 participants onsite at your facility. Curriculum and content are tailored to your organizational objectives, and training is delivered at a significant discount to the cost of public classes.

 

HCS Outcomes

Transform The Way You Think About Talent
Managers and organizations are accustomed to thinking about people in industrial economy terms, and within the bureacracy of organizational silos. HCS graduates understand the knowledge economy paradigm of integrating talent management leadership and practices across the enterprise.

Broaden Your Human Capital Expertise
Strategic Human Capital and Talent Management span recruitment, HR, OD/Learning and the Line. HCS graduates understand each practice across the talent lifecycle, and have the context to think strategically beyond the confines of their own traditional discipline.

Become a Strategic Business Partner
Human Resources and related disciplines must learn to communicate in the language of business. HCS graduates understand the vocabulary of business strategy, how human capital drives business success, and how to create value through their knowledge of strategic talent management.

Execute and Measure Results
The business science of Strategic Talent Management has moved out of the theoretical stage and into the field. HCS graduates go back into their organizations with proven best practices, new ideas and the tools to implement and measure them.

Advance Your Career
Administrative HR and related functions are being commoditized, outsourced and offshored. The future belongs to professionals who can demonstrate strategic capabilities and value to their organizations. There has never been a better time to change the game in your career, by taking a leadership role in this critical new discipline.

Transform Your Organization
Talent is the most powerful competitive lever in a new economy characterized by rapid change, accelerating product cycles, decelerating prices and worldwide disintermediation. HCS graduates are at the cutting-edge of this inflection point, and are leading the transformation to talent-driven business execution inside their organizations.

Get Certified!
HCS is a rigorous course of study, recognized by business and government organizations worldwide as the standard certification for Strategic Talent Management. HCS graduates are the first wave of leaders that understand, and can apply the principles of this new science to drive business results.

Stay Current
Rapid change requires continuous learning. HCS graduates are plugged into an ongoing stream of news, information, research and collaborative opportunities through alumni groups and HCI's Center for Human Capital Excellence.

 

Master Human Capital Strategist (MHCS) Designation

HCS graduates are eligible to pursue HCI's Master Human Capital Strategist (MHCS) Designation, a distinguished achievement recognizing practical application of Strategic Talent Management principles. HCS candidates can now purchase the HCS and MHCS programs together and save over $200 on the bundle.

 

Contact

If you're in UK / Europe and you’d like more information on this programme, or other support to develop the strategic capabilities of your HR team, please contact me at jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com.

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Julian Birkinshaw on Management Innovation

 

   A summary of Julian Birkinshaw’s presentation at the HRD Business Summit:

Things have changed.  Knowledge rather than financial capital is now the scarce resource and this means we need to focus on creativity and innovation rather than replicability.  But management hasn’t changed – we need to innovate it.

A company’s management model (as opposed to its business model) may be the best place to innovate.  There’s lots of opportunity here, because most organisations don’t think about whether their management models are appropriate.  So Lehman’s management model and practices for example incentivised the employee population there to do exactly the wrong things.  They lapsed into things that didn’t work.  We need to be clearer about what our management models are and change our concepts about the way large industrial companies are organised.

We also need to pay more attention to management.  Julian calls the initiative he runs with Gary Hamel at London Business School the Management Lab (MLab) rather than the Leadership Lab for this reason.  Many organisations today are over-led but under-managed - a point Christopher McLaverty made in relation to BP’s transformation post Lord John Brown:

 

 

But management is still associated with the concept of management in a hierarchial corporation.  We need to sever this link.

Some new ideas:

• Break away from the traditional view of alignment
• Understand that obliquity – going round something – may be the best way to get there
• Harnessing the wisdom of crowds
• Building ethics and honesty back into business
• Pursuing happiness
• Removing clutter (eg when organisations strip out performance management systems most people figure out what they should be doing).

 

 

In Birkinshaw’s (and my) perspective, HR Directors are the people best placed to enact management innovation.  What are you going to do about it?

 

Some resources:

• MLab
• Moon Shots (a community of management innovators hosted by yours truly)
• My post on Gary Hamel and Management Innovation
• My earlier post on Julian Birkinshaw’s Management Model

 

I’m going to be interviewing Julian about his new book, Management Experimentation, in mid-March, so watch out for a post on this too.

 

 

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A bit more on Capabilities from Thomas Stewart, New Balance, White & Case and KFC

 

   I had a chat with Thomas Stewart after his keynote at the HRD Business Summit on Tuesday.

We first discussed how his organisational capabilities relate to David Ulrich’s.

I explained that, to me, his capabilities seem quite like Gary Hamel’s and CK Prahalad’s core competencies.  For him, the two ideas are different because his have more focus (‘they talk about 20 to 30 core competencies’ – and ‘they don’t think in terms of systems’).

However, Stewart did agree that his capabilities are different to Ulrich’s, and this is because his own definition includes people and other things – although he also thinks Ulrich’s work on Leadership Brand comes closer to his own approach.

Mmm.  Maybe.  But I still think the analysis I provided in my last post is correct.

 

Secondly, we talked about examples of organisations’ capabilities which focus specifically around relationships between their people, ie social capital, and I’ve posted on this part of the discussion on my Social Advantage blog.

 

The other thing I wanted to do here is mention briefly some of the capabilities that some of the speakers seemed to be developing in their organisations (not that they were necessarily thinking or talking about it in these terms):

 

 

New Balance

Paul Kennedy from New Balance described the capabilities of this UK based manufacturing firm as its external relationships with customers (as well as sports people, the military and so on) which allow it to directly replenish stocks and customise orders etc.  To develop these deep relationships externally the company needs good internal relationships with its people too.

So it has invested in learning and teaming, for example:

• Introducing online learning resource centres linked to NVQs to open up peoples’ minds to learning
• Providing skills to work across jobs in the factory
• Closing the factory and taking all staff on two offsites to discuss their issues and ask for their ideas (they suggested reducing teams from 6 to 4 people) – empowering them to create their own future history and giving them confidence to take action
• Building cross-functional groups.

 

 

White & Case

Kate Griffiths-Lambeth White & Case described the capability of White & Case as specialism in international legal issues supported by experience in multijurisdictional issues in numerous legal systems.

This specialism makes recruitment more difficult, as does the company’s fast growth taking it to 600 lawyers in London.  So this has meant more focus in this area – looking for more people with the specialist skillsets required.  And also specific actions in other areas too, for example one of their award winning benefits is health screening – given the risk of skin cancer for those people who have been working in places that get a bit more sun than here!

 

 

KFC

Misty Reich from KFC described Stewart as a ‘kindred mind’ and her own company’s strategy as well aligned with his thinking on capabilities.  Her point in particular is that HR strategy needs to match the stage of growth your company is in.

KFC UK has 22,000 mostly hourly employees (it is part of Yum Brands with over 1m employees) and has 782 restaraunts which is growing by 30 to 40 restaraunts per year.  This means its main capability is being great at recruitment (or, since this is an activity, not an outcome, something about having the people available enabling it to grow).

Expectations are changing –“Gen X / Gen Y doesn’t know who to interact expect through technology”.  And it will get to a point that it will be awkward to turn off technology when wanting to explore employment.

But companies don’t currently make good use of this.  We’ve been recruiting online for 15 years and 78% of Uk employers now use corporate websites and 29% use commercial job boards for candidate attraction (but mainly just for perusal not online application ie there’s no power behind this).  And only 7% use social media for candidate attracting and networking – people don’t know what to do about social media.

So this has provided KFC with an opportunity to gain a competitive edge.  They have brought recruitment back in-house and made people experts in recruitment, supported by technology.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Paul Kenndy,New Balance,Kate Griffiths-Lambeth,White & Case,Misty Reich,KFC,capabilities,HR Directors Business Summit,2010

 

 

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First names or second?

 

    One of the other things Tommy Weir talked about was the need to be sensitive to status issues. That in the Middle East he allows his bags to be carried by someone for example, so as not to be seen as inferring that he’s unworthy to have his bags carried for him.  And I also thought it was interesting that he was referred to in the agenda as simple Tommy Weir, whereas in the UAE, I’ve only ever come across him addressed as Doctor Tommy.

This got me thinking further, particularly when I wanted to refer to him again later in my post – ‘Tommy suggested’?  ‘Weir suggested’?  ‘Dr TW’?

I quite often struggle with this one in my posts.  And I’ve noticed that I’ve tended towards first names for people that I’ve met (face to face or by 2.0), and second names for who I’ve not.  But then there’s a whole heap of other factors that influence this too.  Even after my meeting with him, Thomas Stewart still seems like a Stewart than a Thomas because he’s a bit older than me, and has published more, and more successful, books.

In general, I prefer first names (I still feel uncomfortable when recalling my American boss who called me Ingham to my face) but then this may just be me.

Do you have any guidance here?  Which do you prefer?  Do you care?  Let me know if so.

 

 

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• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
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