Visa Europe: What do you want to be when you grow up?

 

  Did you get through yesterday’s rather monster ‘HR in the Social Business’ carnival?  Well, apologies, but I think this is going to be an even longer post… (it’s well worth reading though!)

 

I recently attended a great event, ‘Delivering Outstanding Performance’, organised by Michelle Lawton from Consult HR and ‘MOK’ from The Innovation Beehive.

Opening the event, MOK suggested that to contribute to their employers’ success, people need to be clear about what they want to be, who they are, and how that fits with their organisation.

We then had a presentation from Derrick Ahlfeldt, SVP HRM at Visa Europe with a case study from his organisation that demonstrated these points. In fact, Derrick’s story provided a great demonstration of much of what I’ve been blogging about here over the last couple of years too.

So I’ve gone a bit to town in describing Derrick’s presentation – and have also provided some notes / links to previous thoughts that support and occasionally challenge some of this case study:

 

Visa Europe story	My perspectives (NOT Derrick’s necessarily!)
As an association, Visa Europe is about developing the whole market (the European credit card business) through collaboration. By 2004, following a major restructuring and re-engineering, people had initiative fatigue. There was a need to re-engage people and gain additional discretionary contribution. Since then, the company has been working to become a ‘Peak Performing Organisation’.	Derrick didn’t present it like this, but I’d suggest that collaboration is Visa Europe’s mojo. External collaboration is clearly critical to the company’s success and I think they understand (implicitly at least) that because of this, internal collaboration is equally as important.
A major part of this shift has been creating an environment in which people are put at the centre of the organisation – an environment in which people don’t feel they are ‘being done to’, but are ‘doing it for themselves’ – ‘making ownership and accountability personal’.	Visa Europe has clearly been ‘putting human capital first’ – treating people as providers of critical human capital rather than simply (human) resources (my Strategic HCM blog is all about putting people and human capital first). This is absolutely appropriate for an organisation whose mojo is about collaboration as people will need to take accountability in order to trust each other in order to support collaboration (the other way of saying this is that building human capital is a pre-requisite for effective development of social capital… - see below).
Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saachi and Saachi, suggests that a ‘Peak Performing Organisation’ has a ‘sense of family’ within the team. This has been another part of Visa Europe’s recent shift.	Visa Europe has also been developing social capital around a sense of family. Again, this is absolutely appropriate for an organisation whose mojo is about collaboration (my Social Advantage blog is all about developing the right social capital to support an organisation’s mojo).
This shift has been supported by documenting: · An inspirational dream (“to be the world’s most trusted company”) · Shared spirit (“what makes Visa Europe different to other organisations?” eg competitive yet collaborative, trusted, multi-cultural family) · A common set of beliefs (eg empowering and investing in the individual, nurturing the dynamics and diversity of the Visa family) · The “Greatest Imaginable Challenge” (an extraordinary stretch target which is unique to the organisation and inspiring to its people) · Focus It took over a year to “wordsmith” this document in order to ensure that everyone was comfortable with it.	I think this process demonstrates the need to develop a solid push behind whatever a company is trying to do (whether this is articulated through a BHAG, mojo or something else) as a way of translating this intent into organisational capability. I particularly like the way that Visa Europe’s shared spirit and common beliefs blend human and social capital (competitive yet collaborative, individual and family). I presume the “Greatest Imaginable Challenge” which Derrick didn’t want to discuss is Visa Europe’s BHAG. But note that this is developed from the mojo (an inside-out approach) rather than the other way around. I also think Derrick probably under-sold the work he and his team did to socialise this document – in my experience, the process of creating a joint ‘vision’ for the organisation is more important than the document it produces. It’s about creating a shared mindset, rather than a wordsmithed document!

The ‘Peak Performing Organisation’ programme	My perspectives
The programme currently consists of two phases:
Phase 1 - Individual Visa Europe has made participation in this phase of the ongoing programme voluntary in order to create a different dynamic from the past. This phase consists of: · Plenary introduction sessions (in the first year of the programme, Visa Europe ran three events, each with 150 people, which was helpful in getting the programme started – they now run just four smaller sessions per year) · Three small group sessions (6-8 people) facilitated by an inspirational player (someone who has “been there and got the T-shirt”) · Development and communication of a personal values-story, identification of implications and creation of an action plan   The key questions that individuals consider in this values story are: · Given you are this person and these are your skills and talents, what can you bring to this organisation? · How does this link? (are you doing what you wanted to do when you grow up?) · Are you in the right job and the right organisation?   (A volunteer kindly described for us his story – including his ‘home me’ and his ‘CV me’ – explaining that once he had identified his talents from this story and discussed this with his group, his ‘CV me’ became the ‘real me’ – the distinction was removed: “I’m now more passionate and enthusiastic for everything I do in life directed to what I’m good at and would like to do anyway.”)	I think this phase of the programme provides a really nice (whoops – sorry MOK) explanation of a human capital vs a human resources approach. Ie the phase is about employees as individuals, not the business. However, there is a limit to this. Derrick was keen to stress that employee empowerment should not lead to organisational chaos – employees still need to do what the organisation needs them to: “It’s about understanding what the opportunities are and trying to do more of what they want within their existing or another role”   (Or as MOK described it, it’s about “total freedom in a gilded cage”.) I’d suggest the next stage might be to open the door of the cage and see what happens…   The phase also starts to develop social capital too (via sharing values stories within the team). There are some really good examples (eg Herman Miller) where sharing this type of information has had a very powerful team boosting effect.
Phase 2 – Team In this phase, a whole team is taken away to consider: · Alignment – the team purpose, customer dreams and nightmares: o The team as a whole considers what they want to achieve o They then get some customers in to describe what keeps them awake at night o The team discusses what it wants to achieve for its customers   · Values – realigning purpose based on customer input · Implications – barriers and challenges for action planning	Another good approach – this time to develop social capital. But could it be even more strongly based upon the existing capabilities of the team (what the team can do rather than what customers currently need)?

The results	My perspectives
People have generally been very positive about the change. However, disbelievers are tolerated as long as they do the job they are expected to do. And some people have left the organisation.	I think people are always going to leave organisations during a transformation like this. And if they’ve left with a better perspective of whom they are and where they should be, this can only be a good thing for them, and is probably a good thing for the organisation too. If they’ve left because they’ve found the whole thing a bit too ‘fluffy’ then I think that’s a shame for them. But I’m convinced that doing this sort of thing will gradually become part of everyone’s normal expectations.
Since 2004, · Survey completion rates have increased from 83% to 96% · Overall engagement has increased from 72 to 90% · External customer satisfaction has increased from 6.8 to 8.1   There are other positive statistics too, but what the Chief Executive says is also important are the stories and what he’s seeing in the organisation.	The CEO’s focus on both quantitative and qualitative evidence is totally appropriate. Not everything that’s important can be measured, and I think this applies particularly to organisational capability, ie to both human and social capital. However, clearly when something important can be measured, it makes sense to measure it. And what’s behind Visa Europe’s success? I’ve discussed the role of mojo, organisational capability / human and social capital and making a solid investment behind this. The other two aspects that I believe are particularly important are: · Alignment – between each of these different concepts and Visa Europe’s programmes and practices · Best fit – the things that Visa Europe has been doing won’t apply for all organisations, but they apply for this organisation, with its focus on trust and collaboration, superbly well.   So the message isn’t do what Visa Europe’s done. It’s applying the same level of insight and sharpness to your own organisation. And if you do this, you should gain the same levels of Human and Social Advantage too.

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Phase 3?

We didn’t talk about this at all, but I’d suggest Visa Europe’s next step is towards even greater liberation of individual employees and of teams.

Derrick explained that as a result of the first two phases, Visa Europe is now confident that every person and every decision is linked with a golden thread to the organisation vision.

That’s great, but it still sounds rather too top-down?

I agree that they do need to manage performance against the organisation’s vision and objectives (top-down) but they would also benefit from taking ever greater advantage of the potential residing in each of the company’s employees – leading performance instead of just managing it (I’ll be talking about this in Greece next week) – ie bottom-up.

At the team-level, I’d suggest that Visa Europe continue to build social capital – perhaps by emphasising links across teams (bridging capital) as well as within the teams (bonding capital).

So I’d suggest they look at different opportunities that will help them do this – recognising that these may range from organisation development to social media; social events to reward practices; and social network analysis to facilities design.

 

Note - and I’ve emphasised this quite a few times - that the ‘social business’ (if this is what Visa Europe is) isn’t just about the use of social media.

 

So, for example, Michelle described a nice example from the BBC where people have been given the opportunity to go and experience different areas of the organisation for a few weeks (“the hot shoe shuffle”).

Note also that this isn’t in any way supposed to be criticism of Visa Europe’s story. They’ve done much more than most organisations would even dream of. I’m just explaining the direction I personally feel they should go.

 

Anyone else any suggestions for Derrick?

 

Thanks to MOK and Michelle for the invite to the event, and to Derrick and his IT colleague for the story.

 

Photo credit: Joe Mabel

Technorati Tags: Derrick Ahlfeldt,Visa Europe,MOK,Innovation Beehive,Michelle Lawton,Consult HR,Kevin Roberts,Peak Performing Organisation,human capital,social capital

This post is cross-posted at Social Advantage.

 

 

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The HR in the Social Business Carnival

 

   Introduction

My previous carnivals - the super s*** one (I don’t want to offend anyone this time around!), and the Italian one, were both ‘implicitly themed’, ie I drew out the theme from the posts that were submitted to me.

However, in the last edition of the carnival, we were asked to think about an explicit theme (talent management in the improving economy), so I thought I’d be a bit more explicit here too.

And the thing that has been exercising my mind recently is ‘the social business’.  Partly because there’s been a lot of commentary on it recently (see below), and partly because it relates very closely to the focus of my new(ish), or at least less well known, blog: Social Advantage.

So, I’ve asked that contributors to this carnival might like to submit posts relating to HR’s role in the social business, or at least “posts that have a social networking aspect to them, eg anything about teams (team performance, team reward etc), HR and web 2.0, social psychology, social network analysis, etc)”.

And we’ll start with this – the meat of the carnival:

 

  HR in the Social Business

So what is the ‘social business’?  Most of the bloggers contributing to this carnival will know, but most other readers probably won’t – as discussion has been largely confined to the blogosphere so far.  If you don’t know, check out my post Views on HR News: HR’s Role in the Social Business at HR Zone (free membership required).

Jo Jordan continues the theme with Give HR a strategic stake in business with social media at Flowing Motion.

Matt Alder considers Social media and HR – arch enemies or vital partners? at Recruiting Futurology.

Anne Marie McEwan posts on Second Wave Smart Working: What Role HRM? at the Smartwork Company blog.

Gautam Ghosh posts on Tomorrow’s HR professional at Gautam Blogs.

And Jessica Miller-Merrell describes HR & the social media battlefield at Blogging 4 Jobs.

 

If you want to learn more, then yes, you can learn about social media using social media, but you can also learn from conference attendance too.

Mark Bennett discusses (social and community) Thinking at HR Technology 2009 on TalentedApps.

And Michael Vandervort shares his learnings from IZEAfest in Be a Guru, Not just a Swami! at The Human Race Horses.

 

Then we’ve got some posts looking at specific social networking sites

Sharlyn Lauby posts on Facebook games and its business applications at Restaurant City on the HR Bartender.

BP Rao posts on another social network: 43 Things at A Social Network To Achieve Goals on People at Work and Play.

Steve Boese posts on IBM’s social network, Beehive, in Work and Networks at his Technology blog.

And Stacy Chapman builds on Steve’s post, noting the use of Social Networking Data in Workforce Planning at Strategic Workforce Planning.

 

Convinced this is something HR needs to get involved with yet?  Well, check out the following posts as well:

Lance Haun writes Let’s Stop Talking About Social Media Experts at Rehaul.

John Agno considers The Way We Communicate at Coaching Tip.

Andy Headworth suggests Social media stops talk. Here are ten ways to help you build that conversation again at Sirona Says.

Susan Heathfield highlights a disturbing trend recently, asking Do You Snoop Online On Prospective Employees? at Guide to Human Resources.

And responding to the same issue, Laurie Ruettimann warns against being a chump in Question: Social Media, Employers, and Passwords at Punk Rock HR.

    

The most obvious application of social media within HR is in recruitment, and we also have a few posts on this:

Amit Bhagria asks Is Social Networking an Effective Recruitment Strategy? at the Young HR Manager.

Peter Gold describes How job boards killed job ad creativity and how Twitter brings it back (maybe) at the Social Workplace Blog.

Cathy Missildine-Martin responds to Dear Job Seeker in Human Resources at Profitability through Human Capital.

Susanna Cesar asks Will you be ready to recruit when the recession ends? – including through technology - at Recruitment 2.0.

 

But of course, the social business isn’t all about technology, and The HR Store answers a manager’s question about real (vs virtual) world teaming in Team member skips meetings regularly.

 

Ready for the mustard? (English of course – or British at least)

   Other UK HR blogs

We’ve already had quite a high proportion of social business related posts from the UK, and we’ve got these additional contributions too:

First of all, have you heard about the Times journalists rant against the HR profession recently?

Rick asks If HR is so crap, why does it continue to exist? at Flip Chart Fairy Tales.

Graham Salisbury also addresses this issue but then moves on to ask What keeps American HR Managers awake at night: the thought of bare legs at HR Case Studies.

Other stories include the one about Mike the Rooster.  Heard it?  Bay Jordan tells all in Crowing Management at Zealise blog.

MOK focuses on Innovating in the Global Recession at The Innovation Beehive.

And Nick Jefferson suggests that There's Just No Accounting For HR at Jeffersonia Unlimited.

 

Time to get the party started?

  Leadership posts

Mick Collins posts on Leaders are Expensive, but Poor Leaders Cost Exponentially More at InfoHRM blog.

Wally Bock provides The Third Grade Teacher Model of Leadership at Three Star Leadership.

Steve Roesler helps managers and HR pros to think diagnostically about Coaching? Three Choices To Consider at All Things Workplace.

Dan McCarthy describes What HR Wants From an Executive Coach at Great Leadership.

And Mary Jo Asmus responds with What Executive Coaches Want From HR at Aspire CS.

 

Strategy post the recession posts

Frank Mulligan posts on China Recruitment - All on the Up (Slowly) at Talent in China.

Amit Avasthi discusses Beyond the Recession at HR Bytes Blog.

And Gireesh Sharma notes some Post-Recession Challenges of Talent Management at Talent Junction.

 

So there’s good news in Chindia at least!

 

Measurement posts

Alice Snell posts on talent analytics in Staying, Going, Returning at Talent Management Solutions.

And Jay Jamrog and Mary Ann Downey post on the Future Trends of HR Metrics at I4CP’s Productivity Blog.

 

Reward and Engagement posts

David Zinger provides The 14 Keys of Employee Engagement.

Chris Ferdinandi discusses Sick days, flexible work, and the law of unintended consequences.

Anne Bares posts on Top Three Reward Strategies for 2009 at Compensation Force.

Paul Herbert emphasises that Reward Programs are NOT About Manipulation at Incentive Intelligence

   

Other HR stuff

Lisa Rosendahl asks Do I Look Like A Dinosaur To You? at Simply Lisa.

Mike Haberman asks Should Recruiting Get the Boot? (from HR) at HR Observations.

Chris Young encourages you to Take Ownership For Your Own Professional Development at Maximizing Possibility.

 

A few late revellers:

  People and companies posts

Melissa Prusher posts on Ten Minutes with John Sumser – Industry Expert at Devon Group’s blog.

Vishveshwar Jatain posts on Career lessons from Barney Stinson at Benifys blog

And how many times did you come across references to Zappos in these posts (there’s at least a couple)?

This is just part of a bigger trend according to Jessica Lee at Fistful of Talent who asks whether we should love Zappos (this is actually a two-part post:

First Tim Sackett discusses How Zappos Ruined HR ...

And then Kris Dunn follows up with If I Drank All the Zappos Kool-Aid, Wouldn't My Teeth Be Green?).

 

That’s it (finally!).  I hope you liked it!

You’ll have noticed that following Becky Robinson’s lead in the last leadership development carnival, I have provided contributors’ Twitter usernames above and hope you will find these useful.  And like Becky, I have also created a group so you can follow all the Twitter users who contributed to this carnival… see http://tweepml.org/HR-Carnival/.

 

Next time, the carnival calls in with Sharlyn Lauby at the HR Bartender.

 

Photo credits: M.Minderhoud, Infrogmation (1, 2 and 3) and David.

Technorati Tags: HR Carnival,Social Business

 

This post is cross-posted at Social Advantage.

 

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Social Learning (Talking HR 020)

 

   So Talking HR is finally back with a new show on Social Learning.

What’s that?  Well, in the show I started to define social learning as something more than just the use of social media to support learning.  But I’d now like to elaborate on this (I didn’t want to go on about this before or this one point could have taken over the whole show).

My main point is that learning has always been social.  So social learning can’t just be the application of social media.  But it has to be something different to what learning has been before.

This is a similar argument to the one I’ve used t suggest that HR 2.0 and management 2.0 are approaches aimed at the development of social capital.

And I’d suggest that learning 2.0 is probably about social capital as well.  But I think it’s about one form of social capital in particular – and this is ‘the learning organisation’.

I read somewhere that when the learning organisation first became popular (via Peter Senge and others), it wasn’t really achievable.  Social media has made it much more so.

But I’d suggest that there’s an important distinction between learning that uses social media, and learning that aims to create a learning organisation.

The other way of looking at this, which I also mention on the show, is that when we talk about social learning, we really should mean social learning, ie 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).

It should be about developing a common understanding, a common way of doing things, a new culture even, between people in a team.

This is the real reason that social learning is so important.

 

I also attempted to link Honey & Mumford’s learning styles with Li and Bernoff’s social technographic profiles (the ladder from Groundswell – pictured).

 

 

Listen to the podcast and read the show notes at Blogtalkradio.  You can download the podcast to your hard drive or play it streaming from the web.

Subscribe to the show at itunes.

Talking HR is hosted by Krishna De and Jon Ingham and you can contact them with your thoughts and feedback about the show at talkinghrpodcast(at)gmail.com.

 

 

This post is cross-posted at Social Advantage.

Technorati Tags: Social learning,learning organisation,Talking HR,podcast,Blogtalkradio,Jon Ingham,Krishna De

 

 

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HR Carnival at Strategic HCM

 

  The Carnival of HR is back for its third visit to Strategic HCM on Wednesday next week.

If you’ve got a blog looking at HR or related issues, I hope you’ll submit a recent post to be included.

I’m particularly interested in posts that have a social networking aspect to them (see my post below!), eg.anything about teams (team performance, team reward etc), HR and web 2.0, social psychology, social network analysis, etc., but I’m open to anything else as well.

Please send your submissions to info [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com by midnight Pacific Time on Tuesday 13th.

 

Photo credit: alan-light

Technorati Tags: HR Carnival

 

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HCM to Social Advantage

 

	If you   like him….
… You’ll love   him!

 

Check out Jon Ingham’s new* blog, Social Advantage.

RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SocialAdvantage.

 

 

* = Social Advantage includes posts held previously at two different blogs: The New Social Business, and then Competitive Strategy (which is why you’ll find a couple of years worth of posts there already).

It’s agenda fits very closely with that of Strategic HCM, but it deals with the development of social, rather than human, capital.  And management, rather than HR, 2.0.  And it supports my next book, rather than my last.  (You will find some cross-posts.)

 

Oh, and don’t worry – Strategic HCM’s not going away.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Jon Ingham,Social Advantage,social capital,management 2.0,blog

 

 

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Social Media in Business conference

 

   I’ll be presenting on ‘Using Social Media for Competitive Advantage’ at the Social Media in Business conference in London on Friday 23rd October:

 

“The conference examines how social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, are having a major impact on business practices and culture. How can these tools be utilised, how can you employ strategies within your company to increase profitability, sustain reputation and empower your employees to be brand ambassadors. Indeed should you employ internal social networks within your own organisation as a means of facilitating a sharing community amongst your employees, or should you use public open platforms?

These tools can be highly disruptive to any company and are changing the fabric of communications through PR and marketing, you can no longer sit back and watch this unfold, you need strategies in place, you need to know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it.

Conferences of this type ordinarily have a price tag of x4 or x5 the ticket price!

We are thankful to our sponsors who enable us to bring this conference to you at an affordable figure.

Register now and join the smart thinkers, stay ahead of the game!”

 

Other speakers at the conference include:

• Daren Forsyth (140characters.co.uk)
• Benjamin Ellis (Redcatco)
• Ged Carroll (RuderFinn)
• Eaon Pritchard (Geronimo)
• Charlie Osmand (FreshNetworks)
• Peter Crosby (Viadeo)
• Judith De-Cabbit (iLevel)
• Joanne Jacobs (JoanneJacobs)
• Neville Hobson (NevilleHobson)
• Will McInnes (NixonMcInnes)
• Katy Howell (Immediate Future)
• Robin Grant, (we are social)

 

The cost of attendance is just £161 and readers of this blog can benefit from an additional 15% discount if they quote the following code when booking: 15SBIZ.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social Media in Business,SMIB,Chris Hambly

 

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HR Podcasts (update)

 

We didn’t manage to do Talking HR again last night – show 20 on Social Learning will hopefully now be on Monday 12th October 2009 instead.

Anyway, with a bit more time spare, I thought it might be time to update my original HR podcasts post, given that just over one year has gone by, and that there are now a few more shows out.

This is my impression of the best HR podcast shows currently available.  Listen, download, subscribe:

 

	Bill Boorman (Ready for Lift-off) provides cross-Atlantic commentary and conversation on recruiting, social media etc.
	Knowledge infusion's fortnightly Bill Kutik Radio Show (Bill reminds me should say ‘biweekly’ for my American audience) features some great, professional and interesting thought leader interviews.
	I’m sure SuccessFactors’ newly named Business Execution Radio podcast is just as good as the previous People Performance Radio (although I must admit, I’ve not yet listened to it since SF’s repositioning).
	CIPD Podcasts provide some good analysis, discussion, interviews with CIPD staff and HR professionals.  Some of it will only be relevant to the UK or CIPD members, but much of it does have worldwide application too.
	Stephanie Lloyd hosts conversations on recruitment, career management and associated issues at Dream Job Radio
	Globoforce Podcasts provides some well argued cases for strategic recognition from Globoforce’s Andrea Dumont and Derek Irvine.
	HR.com Podcasts provides the audio from the organisation’s webcasts.  (I find it useful to listen to the podcasts on my iphone and then download the slides from HR.com if I’m sufficiently interested.)
	Steve Boese and the HR Minion’s HR Happy Hour – good content, lots of fun and loads of participation.  I may even stay up to join in live one day.
	HR Marketer’s HR Market Share Podcast is aimed at HR vendors (I think), but it always includes lots of useful information for practitioners too (you may even learn how to help your IT folk out with SEO).
	Human Resources IQ (IQPC)’s HR Today Podcast features interviews with IQPC conference speakers, authors etc.
	HR Watches the Office analyses The Office, NBC’s hit comedy (not quite as good as the original BBC version!) from an HR point of view. This includes discussions with HR pros, leaders, and specialists.
	Kenexa HR Thought Leadership is a new podcast series that’s well worth a listen.  There’s also: -    Lessons In Organisational Change -   Minds At Work -   Recruiting Strategies.
	Matt Lafata HR Technology Happy Hour Web Mingle is another HR technology podcast, and like the other happy hour above, is always good fun (learn about my favourite sci-fi show here).
	The weekly Personnel Today Audio – Friday Podcast provides discussion on recent HR news and other issues - mostly only relevant to a UK audience.
	Public Sector HR Podcast – a really interesting, well presented podcast that’s definitely worth listening to by professionals in the private sector too.
	Jim Stroud's Recruiters Lounge – HR celebrity interviews and controversial topics that daily affect the fastest growing service industry in the world.  IMHO, the best of several recruiting podcasts.
	The Recruiting Animal Show is a ”fast-paced, hardball forum of recruiting infotainment”.  Just turn the volume down!
	Chris Ferdinandi’s Renegade HR Podcast is a series of interviews with bloggers, authors and others, supporting Chris’ renegade HR manifesto.
	And of course, you know Talking HR.  Together with Krishna De, an ex-SVP HR and client, and now a leading light in the use of social media, I discuss the latest issues in HR and employee engagement in the digital economy.
	Trinet HR Minute provides fairly basic information on different topics – but you have to admire them for fitting this into a 1, well really 2-3 minute, podcasts

 

You can listen live to the Bill Kutik Radio Show, HR Happy Hour, Mat Lafata, and Talking HR.  The last three also allow (and encourage) you to join in the conversation via the phone.

 

What other HR podcasts do you think I / my readers should be listening to?

 

I’m also going to post shortly on other, broader focused podcasts that I’d suggest HR / talent management practitioners should listen to.

 

 

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Developing social capital for the ‘improving economy’

 

The next HR carnival at Blogging 4 Jobs is going to focus on talent management strategies in the improving economy.

My first response is to ask ‘what improvement’?  The US may now be technically out of recession, but the UK’s still got some way to go…  see the latest housing prices figures (and I’m having a tough day!).

Jessica Miller-Merrell at Blogging 4 Jobs notes that even in the US, the recovery is going to have a “"W” or a slow “V” shape.  And over at the Business Execution blog, Erik and Keith predict it’ll be a “U” shaped recovery.  Perhaps the appropriate letter for the UK is an “L” (see, I told you).

Jessica suggests the following very sensible proposals:

• Poll our employees
• Seek feedback
• Take action
• Follow Up
• Build a Candidate Pipeline.

 

And Erik suggests companies need to:

• Have “Execution Agility” as well as “Strategic Agility”
• Let people inform the strategy
• Make amends for cutting headcount, freezing pay, slashing benefits, decreasing hours, etc, and invest in Status and Fairness.

 

I think Erik and Jessica are right to focus on engagement. This is clearly going to be an issue for employers as (when!) the economy improves.  I thought Management Today summed it up nicely:

“More than one in five UK workers reckon that they rarely or never feel fulfilled by their jobs, according to a new survey by workplace assessment specialists SHL. This dissatisfaction (which is particularly prevalent among young people) has apparently got even worse as a result of the recession. And although workers are reluctant to act on it for the time being, it supposedly could mean a mass exodus once the job market starts functioning properly again...”

 

Rather over-optimistically perhaps, I spent quite a bit of time focusing on how companies could engage people to prepare for the recovery at the beginning of the recession (naive fool!), and these suggestions are probably more relevant now, so you might want to check out:

• Scenarios for HR’s future in the global reset
• HR’s main priority
• CIPD Managing through a Downturn Conference
• Talking HR show #10: Navigating your way out of the recession.

 

But I’d like to make one more suggestion too.  And this pick’s up on Erik’s comment that “what drives high performance is a person’s social and emotional connection to work”, and also Jessica’s that “it’s the relationship that matters”.

To me, the new priority is to develop social as well as human capital.  Yes, human capital is still going to be vital.  But if the  W/V/U/L recovery is, as many people are predicting, a relatively jobless one, then organisations are going to need to do more than just optimising the engagement and alignment of their people.

They’re going to need to optimise the way their people work together too.  I think this is going to involve much more than just the use of Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook.  Instead, it’s going to have to be about an appropriate mix of effective leadership, HR and management practices, OD interventions, and yes, web 2.0 tools as well.

More about this soon…

 

Technorati Tags: Social capital,talent management,improving economy,Jessica Miller-Merrell,blogging4jobs,HR carnival,SuccessFactors,Business Execution

 

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Values and mojo: Netflix

 

 

One of the best case studies of using values to develop mojo that I’ve come across recently is from Netflix, which I’ve also just posted on at the Moon Shots community ning.

Netflix’s culture is clearly based around their values – and I like the way that these clearly do reflect their mojo and organisational capability (even if they’ve chosen to only articulate these through their values).

For me, the company’s mojo (the type of company they are) is about being:

• Manic about high performance
• A pro-team with stunning colleagues
• Creative-inventive.

 

And I’d suggest its organisational capabilities (the things they do really well, that help them compete) are:

• Providing employees with freedom
• Avoiding complexity.

 

 

Importantly, I think, the values are expressed as the behaviours that are particularly valued in fellow employees (“values are what we value”). And they’re not dressed up as things that everyone is supposed to internalise and make part of who they are.  I just think this makes it easier to talk about them and clarify the organisation’s expectations.

And the values aren’t just nice sounding statements - they’re also central to recruitment; performance management (“the keeper test”); reward (“adequate performance gets a generous severance package”); development (“we don’t try to do it”); promotion (“if manager would promote employee to keep them if employee were thinking of leaving, manage should promote now, and not wait”); exit (“Netflix doesn’t have to be for life”) and other HR processes.  I particularly like the fact that their values are central to their recruitment processes, to ensure they only take people on if they do live the company’s values (and they don’t therefore need to ask anyone to change these).

And in addition, the values are clearly seen as important – in that people will question others if they act inconsistently with the values.

But I still think the company’s mojo and capabilities provide a better description for understanding what the company is about, and providing a basis for aligning its HR processes in the way I’ve described above.

 

 

While I’m addressing the presentation, I should also mention that I do have some issues with the company’s approach.

For example, they suggest that having 10 people interview each candidate is a ‘bad’ process – something they want to avoid to minimise complexity.

Well, maybe.  I mean, while having even 2 or 3 people interview the same candidate can be a bad process if there’s no agreed job description, communication between interviewers etc, having 10 people interview can be a good process as well – Google is a prime example.  And given that recruiting high performers is such a critical aspect of Netflix’s strategy, I would suggest that they shouldn’t dismiss the approach as easily as they seem to have done.

(Perhaps it’s because they know they can fire the wrong employees easily enough – although this is going to be expensive, and isn’t going to help them form productive teams.)

 

In addition, I can see that the company might regret its decision not to use variable pay. Providing a base which reflects and outperforms the market makes sense, but what about the person who is significantly ‘overpaid’ – what incentive do they have to perform as well as they can?

 

 

But in the main, I think it’s a fantastic example of so many things I support – particularly a really clear mojo, and the development of best fit (vs simply best practice) HR processes that support this positioning.

 

 

For more information, go over to Moon Shots and take a look there too.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Values,mojo,organisational capability,organisational capabilities,Moon Shots for Management,Netflix

 

 

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Intrinsic motivation and performance leadership

 

   I’m a bit late on this one, but it occurred to me while I was preparing my slides for the performance management event in Greece next month, and thinking back over a recent client project, that Dan Pink’s points on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, made in his recent TED session, link to the differentiation I’ve made previously between performance management and performance leadership.

This hadn’t clicked for me before, and so in my HR Zone article last week, I just referenced Pink’s perspectives, and what I thought was a very compelling rebuttal from Paul Herbert.

But of course, they’re just two very different things:

• Performance management is about doing something that an organisation needs doing; about working to SMART objectives; cascading and alignment - and motivation for this has got to come from extrinsic reward.

 

• Performance leadership is based on the individual – their dreams and aspirations; and how these can be met by doing work for the organisation.  It focuses on the creative work vs simple problems that Pink described in his presentation.  And it comes from the unique interests and motivations of the individual so performance is its own reward.

 

Technorati Tags: Dan Pink,TED,intrinsic,extrinisc,motivation,Paul Herbert,Incentive Intelligence,performance management,performance leadership

 

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