Showing posts with label Connecting HR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Connecting HR. Show all posts

Monday, 25 October 2010

CHRU!

 

   Last Thursday was ‘CHRU’, the Connecting HR Unconference.  And what a great day it was!

You can learn about the views of many of the people attending the event in their blog posts:

 

To me it’s the experience of, and therefore the posts from, these and other members of our community that really count, but to the extent it matters, here are some additional perspectives as one of the two organisers of the event:

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Past

In his post, Callum suggests that the idea of the unconference dates back to a tweet by Mervyn last year about the unsuitability of traditional conferences, particularly for ones discussing social media related topics.

However, I’d suggest key event that led to the unconference was my meeting on 4 February this year with Gareth, my co-founder and organiser.  His enthusiasm, as well as the weight and sponsorship of the Courtenay HR team (including Mervyn and Callum), have been absolutely vital in making Connecting HR a success.

And prior to that, for me, the history of Connecting HR goes back to conversations with Jay Cross about all things ‘un’ (unconferences, unbooks etc), and then an increasing desire at around the time of the first HRevolution unconference in the US to do an event like that in the UK.

But behind all of these inputs, the main driver for me has been to experiment in the area of social community, which I believe is an increasingly important influence within organisations as well as within cross-organisational networks like Connecting HR (see my other blog, Social Advantage, for more on this topic).

It’s also an area that’s going to be increasingly important for HR.  As was suggested at this Summer’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, community management is the new, smart HR (or part of it at least).

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Present (the event)

It’s the above perspective that led to the overall organisation of the unconference – for example, the reason that we didn’t have speakers or sponsors (because doing this automatically sets up status distinctions between speakers and listeners, sponsors and targets etc).

This was also behind the choice of venue – an old warehouse currently undergoing renovation into a community centre.  I loved the way this space allowed everyone to separate into smaller groups while still remaining together, and even that the dust and cold got people acting in a different way than they might on an average office day.

And it’s this perspective that led to the design of the event.  One which was based upon a fairly standard open space approach (albeit developed specifically for this event, rather than sticking rigidly to other previously used formats).

Basically, we started the event with an overall theme, again reflecting the importance of social community – ie social connecting and the use of social media , but with no prescribed agenda.  We then used the first half an hour to construct and agenda using a grid.

The rest of the day, people selected the session they wanted to attend from the options on this grid.

It’s not an approach that many attendees had experienced (or indeed has been used at HRevolution or Bill Boorman’s TRU recruiting events) and it was clearly an approach some people found quite quite difficult initially.  But I also think everyone got into the process quite quickly – and I saw the chaotic conversations around the grid as a very positive manifestation of what was emerging.

And I think if you evaluate the approach by its outputs (eg the perspectives shared in peoples’ blog posts) everyone would have to accept it worked very well.

The only criticism of the process I’ve come across is that there was too much structure, and I’ll address this in my following post.

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Future

One of our sessions focused on the future of Connecting HR, and it’s clearly going to have a very exciting future.  It’s no longer an experiment but a living forum for HR people to connect, develop relationships and participate in powerful conversation.

We’ve agreed a date for our next tweet-up (Monday 31 January 2011), and a rough timescale for our next unconference (March next year).  I’m really looking forward to this, although I’m not planning on having a very active role (don’t get me wrong – I want to stay involved and participate in an organising committee – but I don’t need to be the person at the front, and don’t want to be the one that does the shopping!).  There’s now a lot of people who want to be involved in taking the community forward, and I think for the community to continue to evolve, I (and Gareth) need to let them.

And although I do think the process we used for this unconference worked well, I’m sure we can do better, and I think this requires other people to step in and take a lead.  Also, form a purely selfish point of view, I want to use the forum for connecting, and I’m afraid this time around I didn’t get much time to meet people or participate in the discussions, and I want to correct that next time!

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There are still a couple of issues I think we need to address before we move ahead with these events.

  • One key issue that we still need to address is the supplier question.  In our two tweet-ups, we kept the proportion of suppliers deliberately quite low.  We were more tolerant in the unconference, and naturally ended up with a much higher proportion of suppliers.  This didn’t seem to be an issue for anyone there, but we still know that there’s a need to ensure a balanced participation.
  • We need to find a way to include all the suppliers already involved in our community, and others who want to join us too.  And, at the same time, to grow the numbers and particularly the proportion of internal HR practitioners back to what it was in our earlier tweet-ups.
  • I also think we also need to think about the size of our footprint.  We were joined at the unconference by community members from Oslo and Geneva, which was absolutely great.  But I also suggest we keep the current focus on London, or possibly the UK, and seek relationships with other groups (eg HRevolution) to spread connection between as well as within groups, rather than trying to do too much ourselves.

 

We’re also looking at whether we move our online conversations from Yammer to a more open community site.  I think this is a key move for us.  We’ve not been able to generate the level of conversation on Yammer that we’d hoped and we need our new platform to better leverage the energy and enthusiasm of the community.  The key for me is that we don’t get too seduced by great technology, but simply find somewhere people will want to be.  After all, as was also noted at this Summer’s E2.0 conference, communities aren’t sites, they’re people.  And we need to design our community in this light.

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If you want to participate in these conversations, and the Connecting HR community, go to yammer.com/connectinghr and use a corporate email address to request an invite to join us (or get in touch once we’ve moved to where ever it is that we’re going to go!).  It’ll be great to connect with you…

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Thanks to everyone who attended the event:

  • Thomas Breach, Recruitment Manager, Thomson Reuters
  • Sarah Foster, Chief People Officer, Talis
    Website: http://www.talis.com
    Blog: www.ocelotchatelaine.blogspot.com
    Twitter handle: hrwpb
  • Martin Goodman, Director, Martin Goodman Associates Limited
  • Jess Archer, Senior Marketing Manager, World Trade Group
  • Stephen Pobjoy, Senior Producer, World Trade Group
  • Lynne Donaldson, HR & Communications Director, Currently in Transition
  • Lorne Armstrong, Consultant, Involve
    Website: http://involveuk.com
    Twitter handle: @lornearmstrong
  • Paul Massey, Managing Director, MentorWell.com
    Website: http://mentorwell.com
    Twitter handle: mentorwell
  • Etienne Besson, HR Professional, Lord Suisse
  • Alison Chisnell, HR Director, Informa Business Information
  • Dominic Wake, Director, ETS plc
    Website: http://www.etsplc.com
    Blog: www.etsplc.com/blog
    Twitter handle: DomWake
  • Kelly Dern, Executive, ETS plc
    Website: http://www.etsplc.com
    Blog: www.etsplc.com/blog
    Twitter handle: kellydern
  • Samantha Lizars, Director - Employee Engagement, One Magnolia
    Website: http://www.onemagnolia.co.uk
    Blog: www-theinsider.blogspot.com
    Twitter handle: SamLizars
  • Kevin Ball, Writer, West
    Website: http://west-writing.com
    Blog: www.west-writing/people-matters
    Twitter handle: kevinjball
  • Klothilde Ganzer, Human Resources Consultant , Goodwille Limited
    Twitter handle: @kganzer
  • Flora Marriott, Learning & Development Manager, Yell Adworks
    Twitter handle: @floramcdora

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Tuesday, 19 October 2010

Connecting HR, the Movie

 

So, we’re nearly there – the UK’s first unconference takes place on Thursday.

And then I should be able to get back to blogging…

 

If you are, or are still thinking of coming, then check out the introductory video:

 

 

 

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Tuesday, 24 August 2010

Is community chat the New pre-course questionnaire?

 

   Things have been getting busier on the Connecting HR yammer community as we start to prepare for our HR unconference on 21st October.

But I’d love to see yet more conversation taking place – see my post on the Connecting HR blog: Is Community Chat the New Pre-Course Questionnaire?

 

I also repeat it here:

 

Different people will have different objectives they want to achieve from Connecting HR.

For me, the network is all about relationships; all about connecting (as it says on the tin).  It’s about ‘social’, in the sense of this being about relationships (and not about recreation of course).

The one common factor between our tweet-ups and unconference is that they’re forums people can use to connect, without the traditional focus on content getting in the way.  So as well as being ‘social’, they’re ‘un’ as well.  You can read more about my thoughts on this in this Changeboard article: http://www.changeboard.com/resources/article/3465/building-networks-and-creating-a-community-in-hr/.

I’m interested in connecting, partly because I’m currently writing a book on this (see http://blog.social-advantage.com), and Connecting HR gives me the opportunity to experiment around a few things.

But it’s mainly because I do truly value connection.  This is something I’ve focused since well before the rise of social media, in fact, I started my first HR network, called Exchange (which Marc Weedon was also a member of) back in 1994!

My focus on, and belief in, connection is why I see participation in our community network (on Yammer) as so important.  It’s a bit like the Pre Course Questionnaire we ask people to complete before traditional training perhaps?

Interestingly (to me at least), my main focus on PCQs goes back to around 1994 when I set up Exchange.  I was working as the manager of an IIP team at a London TEC (what we had before we had the LSC before we had the SFA).  PCQs were seen as an important part of the process because they helped people clarify their own objectives for learning and future performance, and gave them something to evaluate training against.  Of course, hardly anyone ever completed them, but nearly always found the process useful when they did.

I see community participation as something a bit like this.  Particularly for something that’s social, or un.  A PCQ is no longer useful preparation.  An un or social event requires un or social preparation too.  It requires connection and conversation to have started before the actual un event.

Of course, just like the PCQ no one invests much time in it (but again, will find it very useful when they do).  This is why our community (and all communities) have lurkers.

And that’s fine, as without lurkers, the community wouldn’t exist (it’s why Jane Hart has suggested calling lurkers legitimate peripheral participants).

Apart from, to an extent at least, it’s not.  We need people to participate in our community (and on our Yammer Community).  Firstly, because Gareth and I can’t organise the unconference alone.  And secondly, to give everyone the social preparation they need to make the unconference a success for them.

Participation in our community follows a fairly traditional power law curve (see diagram for current curve).  All communities end up looking something like this.  Jon Weedon wrote an interesting article on his blog recently where he reviewed the commonly accepted segmentation of community participation (90/9/1): http://j0n1.com/2010/01/29/participation-inequality/.  But there’s no specific limits on the exact shape of the curve.

We’ll never get everyone participating, but we can get more people participating, and people who are participating doing so more.  Achieving this is important for our community, and for everyone achieving their individual objectives from attending the unconference too.

 

You can find out more about Connecting HR: the community, the unconference and our Yammer platform on our new website: http://connectinghr.org.

 

 

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Monday, 28 June 2010

Connecting HR and ‘Community’

 

   We had another great ‘Connecting HR’ tweet-up last week.

One of the issues at the back of my mind during the evening revolved around the idea of community, and Gareth Jones’ email to attendees prior to the tweet-up that mentioned the ‘Connecting HR community’.

Now, personally, I’m not sure that this group of people is a community as yet, although there are, I think, signs of one developing.  And I’m not sure I’d use the C word at this stage as I don’t think you can make a group into a community simply by calling it one.

But I do see where Gareth is coming from, and agree that it would be great if Connecting HR does develop into a community, because I do think there is a need for more social connection and meaningful relationships between practitioners in HR and talent management, and across the different disciplines within this (resourcing, development, communication, legislation etc).

So my thoughts went back to the discussions on community at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston the week before this.  I have still to complete my postings from this conference, including those on community, but you can review my current status of postings at http://bit.ly/e20conf.

But there was also this short conversation over Twitter that got me thinking about HR and community:

 

 

So, is community management the new HR?  And if it is, how many practitioners understand this?

We’re going to be talking about this issue on Talking HR at 7.30pm BST / 2.30pm ET today.  Do join us if you can.

 

 

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Thursday, 13 May 2010

Is social learning team learning?

 

Untitled-1 copy   I commented on an excellent post by Mervyn Dinnen, reflecting on social learning at HRevolution, yesterday.

Mervyn asks:

“Maybe if we are to get maximum benefit from Social Learning, especially from our unconferences, networking and crowd sourcing then…the answer may well lie in getting Social before you can get to the Learning…”

And I respond:

“Absolutely. Social learning isn’t just about sitting round with a group of people, it’s connecting with people you have a relationship with. It’s these relationships that give knowledge an added element and which makes the learning deeper than that gained from formal training. If you don’t have relationships with the other people, these need to be developed first, or together. So it’s probably easier in smaller rather than larger groups. But it can be done in larger groups too, depending on the context, ie as long as everyone understands what the objective and approach is, participates in helping to achieve this, and that’s there time to do the social relationship as well as the content learning stuff.”

 

Then last night, I was flicking through a presentation send to me by a friend and partner in India, which included the attached slide.  And I thought, is social learning team learning?

I don’t mean by this that social learning can only be done in a workplace team.  After all, unconferences like HRevolution and ConnectingHR aren’t based on teams, rather just collections of people with common interests.

But perhaps these people do need to think about being in a team – a learning team – in order to maximise the benefits they get out of their social learning?

One in which they need to progress from forming to norming (with a focus on connecting / relating itself as the ‘task’ objective) before they can proceed onto performing ie learning?  What do you think?

 

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