#SMWLdn Like Minds and Social Business

 

   It’s social media week this week, and I’m presenting at two events with Like Minds on social business today.

I’ve attended a few other events already and social business has already had a significant focus.  For example, yesterday I was at Edelman where Euan Semple was talking about enabling people and changing culture to be able to say (and tweet) what they think.

David Armano from Edelman was then speaking about the importance of the employee within a social business (building upon the results of their recent Trust Barometer, that whereas trust in CEOs has fallen, trust in technical experts, regular employees, and particularly ‘people like me’ has been maintained).  However, I agreed with whoever asked a question, suggesting that despite this mention, the agenda was very much focused on marketing and PR.

I’ve tried to re-tilt the balance at the event today.

I was second, after JP Rangaswami from Salesforce who suggested that companies are sometimes antisocial because they have a level of fear in being open with their customers.  There’s also a deepening connection between employees and customers.  Eg Cluetrain made a case that there were different external and internal conversations.  Nowadays, these are both and across.  People are used to connecting with each other and having conversations with each other inside and outside of their firms.  This is going to mean a change in the nature of the firm.  Absolutely – though I still think organisations can focus social first - and I think the same point applies to internal antisocialness too.

In my session, I talked about five things:

• How HR activities are changing (social recruiting, social learning etc – but other areas too eg social performance management using Rypple / Success Force from Salesforce).  This provides benefits for efficiency, effectiveness and transformation but needs a high level of trust.
• Transformational benefits depend on focusing on outcomes rather than activities.  These can include human capital, eg engagement, but social (internal) and relationship (external) capital too.  I talked about the Visa case study you’ll find here as an example of a social / 2.0 organisation which doesn’t use social media at all (though a guy from Detica in the audience suggests that they are now moving this way).
• Out of these forms of capital, it’s social capital which is most important.  Eg see Hamel’s / Birkinshaw’s stuff on management / organisation (internal) vs leadership / business (external).
• Because of this, each organisation’s journey in social business will be different – as we discussed in the Enterprise 2.0 Summit last week, there are no best practices.  An organisation focusing on social innovation will need to take different actions to one focusing on social execution, including in their use of social media tools.
• However, the other enablers need to be tailored to the relevant outcomes as well.  These can include social leadership; social approaches eg open space / unconferencing; social facilitation / community management; social HR practices – and also social values.  I talked about the need for ‘love’ (in Euan’s book), or a high level of mutual regard, again here.

 

Later sessions reinforced some of the same points, eg:

• Euan talked about the way the language of business has been desanitised and depersonalised and that we need to talk more normally, ie be more human.
• Joanne Jacobs talked about community, suggesting the people can flock together but won’t want to be part of a borg collective.  They’re still a group of individuals, just working together.
• Neville Hobson also talked about how social business is a bigger agenda than social media, though mainly from an external communication perspective, and demands trust.
• Delphine Remy-Boutang talked about IBM’s social business journey, which has been about leadership, technology and process (but people are the most important) and started internally with things like Beehive (IBM’s internal Facebook) before they allowed it to take place externally too.  Last year, new developments included:
• Social Business @ IBM tool providing guidance on using social media and including Foursquare type badges
• The formation of their Social Business Management Council
• A Social Business Jam.
• Lee Provoost also emphasises the need for social to solve business problems (or boost opportunities?).

 

Of course there were a few disagreements too, which will hopefully become clearer in this afternoon’s panel (I think people learn best by considering disagreements between people rather than listening to everyone violently but maybe superficially agreeing).

For example I suspect I see a need for greater teaming than Joanne. Love may be the wrong word but for me, a social business has to have a strong sense of social identity.  And whereas Lee emphasised the need to understand individual people’s selfish behaviour which may not fit into a company’s plan, I’d suggest what’s even more important is encouraging selflessness.  I’m not a believer in a unitary agenda between organisation and employees, but I do believe that social depends largely on a strong consensus about what’s really important, and a shared commitment to making this work.

 

Also see Live Minds’ live blog.

 

Technorati Tags: Like Minds,social business,social media,week,London,2012,smwldn

 

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A Friday Rantorama… Responsible Capitalism and the £££££ Culture

 

   ‘Responsible capitalism’ seems to be generating more widespread support across the UK.  For example although Ed Miliband, who I think was the first to initially popularise the idea, was initially criticised for suggesting things need to change (I supported him), similar ideas are now being brought forward across the political spectrum.  And this isn’t about politicians acting in a leadership role, it’s just a sign of them catching up with the mood of the nation.

So I completely understand the rise of initiatives like the Move Your Money campaign promoting consumer activism against Barclays’ bonus payments today (and of the the broader Occupy movement too).  Bankers’ bonuses are currently at odds with the idea of a fairer and more just society, which is what responsible capitalism is all about, and they need to be reformed.  Unfortunately, politicians are still playing catch-up on this one too.

And despite everything that has happened over the last couple of years, bankers still don’t seem to understand how much things still need to change.  You can see the extent of this in Stephen Hester’s reflections on having to turn down his £1m bonus last week.  Whilst Hester deserves a large amount of credit and respect for taking this decision, his actions were somewhat tarnished by his later comments that RBS executives do still deserve multi-million pound bonuses.  After all, he said, they have been doing a “jolly good job”.  I suspect that the general population, many of whom consider themselves to be doing a pretty good job as well, will feel largely unimpressed.

It’s now over a year since Bob Diamond suggested that the age of contrition needed to come to an end.  Unfortunately I don’t think that’s going to happen until bankers’ behaviour – and attitudes – change as well.

But for me, the issue isn’t absolute levels of pay.  I can understand and have some sympathy for the general reaction to the RBS and Barclays bonuses but be less fussed when Goldman Sachs announce their next round of bonuses, as from what I understand, at least these are more widely shared – eg a secretary at Goldmans does quite well from these payouts as well.  That doesn’t apply to Barclays or RBS cashiers.  There’s still an issue from a societal perspective, but from a pure organisational / HR viewpoint, there’s nothing wrong in what they do.

And I don’t begrudge new start-ups earning enhanced returns (though isn’t it about time that Google is treated as a global utility company and is globally-nationalised? hmm, back to the point…).

But for mature organisations paying people on near the national minimum wage, I don’t personally believe its helpful to provide people at the top with such vastly differentiated pay.  Why?  Because it demotivates 90% of the people in the organisation and doesn’t actually even motivate the 1% at the top.  Result: the organisation fails.

You can see evidence for this in England’s football team (yes, you know where I’m going with this).  Despite paying vast salaries for our last two international coaches (£6m a year for Fabio Capello with a potential £1.5m reward for failure bonus on top), England still lies well outside the premier league of international teams.

What’s happened here?  The extra payment hasn’t motivated extra performance (eg learning the language or culture) and the appointment of a manager who clearly doesn’t have rapport with the team he is supposedly leading has meant that he’s been largely unable to lead.

What’s important in all these cases isn’t the appointment of individualistic masters of the universe but people who are able to inspire the people in their teams.  Vast reward differentials don’t help the social connection which is needed to support this type of rapport.

You see exactly the same thing more generally in business too.  The new mood is about achievement and contribution to society not just fattening up shareholder returns.  And this is even less compelling for many people when the shareholders who benefit most are those they perceive as the super privileged cadre of ‘fat cats’ at the top.

It’s why, that whilst Vince Cable remains my favourite politician, I’m disappointed that the coalition decided not to accept the conclusions of the High Pay Commission and tackle pay differentials in their recent review.

And why I’d like to see more action from the CIPD too.  I wasn’t being completely serious in my recent post on the new CEO for the CIPD, but I would like to see the institute appoint someone who understands the new pay agenda (and gets paid a fair bit less themselves as well).

Sorry for the rant!  Now, about this young couple who have just won £45m….

 

More on the same theme.

Photo credit: Move Your Money

Technorati Tags: Vince Cable,Ed Miliband,Bob Diamond,Stephen Hester,Fabio Capello,high pay,commission,Move Your Money,RBS,Barclays,responsible,popular,capitalism

 

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More HR 2.0 at HR Technology Europe

 

   My next big HR conference which will include a big focus on social technology will be HR Technology Europe in Amsterdam on 25th and 26th October.

As last year, I will be chairing the conference and will be blogging about it here too.

However, the conference now also has a blog, of which I am one of several contributors (along with Naomi Bloom, William Tincup and others).

You might want to check my first two posts there too:

• HR Technology & Culture Change
• Why don’t we use Technology? (about the Enterprise 2.0 Summit taking place the last two days).

 

Technorati Tags: HR,technology,social,media,enterprise,2.0,conference,Europe,Paris,Amsterdam,blog

 

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Bizarre Blogging: the Bahamas and the Billionaire

 

   Blogging does get your name into some strange places at times, but this must count for my most bizarre name check yet:

From the Caribbean News Now:

NASSAU, Bahamas -- According to Human Capital Management expert Jon Ingham’s survey, the following were the key business challenges for 2011: Dealing with the recession, revenue growth, profitability, understanding customer needs, ensuring performance, dealing with the uncertain economy, dealing with market turmoil and globalization.

With this thought in mind, The Phoenix Institute will be presenting a dynamic business success seminar called An Evening with Billionaire Michael V. Roberts of St Louis…

 

I think I can call myself a ‘most influential’ in relative safety now – there can’t be many HR people who have influenced a billionaire!  (Heads of HR at RBS, Barclays etc excepted of course).

 

Technorati Tags: Bahamas,Caribbean,Michael Roberts,influence,social media,blogging,HR,HCM

 

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#E20S: Shouldn’t we talk about HR 2.0 instead of Enterprise 2.0?

 

   I’m at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris today – you can see my posts on the conference at Social Advantage, these include, so far:

• #E20S Developing social strategy 2
• #E20S Developing social strategy 1

 

I’ve been attending some of the most technically oriented sessions rather than the organisational ones, so initially missed one called ‘Maximising Social Work Mindset’.  However, I started to see lots of tweets about HR 2.0, and as I hadn’t been tweeting from my own session (a good sign that I’m not getting much out of it) I decided to move.

Actually, I didn’t find the session itself that exciting, but the twitter stream was particularly good, and included the tweet in the above picture: “shouldn’t we talk about HR 2.0 rather than Enterprise 2.0”.  The basis for this was that if we’re talking about people then HR should have prominence in the move to the social business – obviously something which resonates for me.

Nevertheless, I don’t agree that these are the same thing.  I’ve shown the following slide on here before, taken from a webinar I ran last year:

 

 

The diagram attempts to show that there are a number of things we do in an organisation (activities) around managing people, facilitating connection, and developing an enabling organisation – including use of Enterprise 2.0 technology.

From this perspective, HR 2.0 (the use of social media in HR – for recruiting, learning, performance management etc) and Enterprise 2.0 don’t have much to do with each other – other than they use basically the same technologies and approaches (eg the role of communities) and so doing one makes it easier and more appropriate to do the other too.

 

But there are also three critical capabilities we need to create in an organisation, namely human, social and organisational capital.  Each of these can be supported by the three groups of activities identified above.

Eg I write here mainly about human capital, and although HR – including HR 2.0 - approaches will be the main part of a strategy to create human capital (hence HCM), social and organisational activities will also play a role (eg through creating communities of practice to share knowledge and build capability, or by creating organisational structures which make it easier to contribute and hence raise engagement).

But our focus here is on social capital, or the social business / enterprise (the theme of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit is ‘Designing and the Social Business Excellence’.

Social capital / the social business can also be developed through HR activities (eg managing team performance or introducing pay transparency) and organisational ones (eg creating structures which break down silos and get people collaborating).  So HR and ‘enterprise’ activities are certainly both key parts of a social business strategy.

Both HR 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches can also be used to build social capital / the social business, so again, from this angle there is an additional overlap.

However, the most critical enabler for social business are just social activities, whether these are:

• Face to face – eg just getting people talking to each other, or playing with DUNDU dolls which we’ve just been doing here, or

 

 

• Virtual – eg using a social networking system to support management of a community.

 

So perhaps, rather than HR 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0, we should talk about Social 2.0 instead?  But I’d prefer us just to focus on the social business / enterprise (outcomes vs activities).

(Actually I think social organisation is the best name for this, but again, that’s another whole other blog post, and I suspect you’ve probably had enough!).

 

Technorati Tags: Definition,social,media,business,enterprise,organisation,HR,2.0,DUNDU

 

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HR Metrics and Business Partnering in South Africa

 

   I’ve just booked my flights back to South Africa where I’ll be delivering a session on HR metrics in a couple of weeks time (22nd & 23rd February).

I’m also back in Johannesberg to to do a repeat session on 23rd and 24th April, then a session on HR business partnering on 25th and 26th April.

If you’re in South Africa, I promise these will be great sessions so why not come along? – or let me know if you’d like to meet up.

And I’ve got another blog post on metrics coming out shortly (hopefully tomorrow!).

 

Technorati Tags: HR,metrics,analytics,measurement,reporting,Johannesburg,South Africa,course,workshop

 

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Peter Howes, SuccessFactors on Career Management

 

   I (virtually) attended HCI’s Talent Strategy and Workforce Planning conference this week and will be posting on some of the WFP and data stuff from there over the next few days.

However the most interesting piece for me was Peter Howes’ session which included some insightful inputs on WFP but particularly this slide on career management.

Peter notes that upwards promotion can’t be an effective focus for career management.  So in the data his group at SuccessFactors (previously InfoHRM/Inform) has collected, 50-60% of employees are never promoted and about another 30% will only have a maximum of another two promotions.

We therefore need to think more laterally about careers, including progression horizontally into other roles, but also including projects and placements.  There’s nothing that new about this (see for example Deloitte’s book on Mass Career Customisation, and it was also a key feature of Josh Bersin’s presentation I saw recently) but I did think Peter’s conclusion was very interesting – that the goal for many companies should be four transfers for every promotion (a career path ration of 0.25).

I don’t have the data Peter has but I have to say that this feels about right. 

 

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Who should be the CIPD’s new CEO?

 

   So the CIPD are searching for a replacement for Jackie Orme.  Or rather a recruitment consultancy are doing the search for them, which seems a rather redundant exercise give that the successful candidate has to (or certainly should) already have a prominent role in the HR community in order to act as a figure head for the profession.  Therefore we already know who they are, or at least we know who the candidates should be.

This is my suggestion for the top 10 (in the order I thought of them):

 

	Duncan Brown.  One of the most insightful people to have passed through the CIPD, with more recent experience at IES, PwC and Hewitt.  Sensibly intelligent and articulate, with a great understanding of the new reward agenda.  Time for the CIPD to take on bankers’ bonuses?  Too right!
	John Philpott. If the CIPD wants to fill the role with an internal candidates, and they should really shouldn’t they, then John Philpott, the CIPD’s Chief Economist is the clear front runner.  Loads of informed insight, respect across the HR community and clout with government.  What’s not to like?
	Peter Cheese.  Highly experience and credible consultant, ex Accenture now kicking his heels at the ILM.  Author of a couple of fairly sensible books on strategic HR management and measurement including the Talent Powered Organisation.  Would measuring HR’s contribution get the profession into shape?
	Ann Almeida.  Prefer a practitioner to a consultant?  Yes, probably.  There are a number of senior HR leaders who good do the job – probably from the FTSE100 as they’d carry respect in smaller organisations whilst the reverse isn’t always true (often unfairly).  However, my nomination would be for Ann Almeida at HSBC - probably the deepest thinking HR practitioner I’ve met.
	Neil Morrison.  I’m only half joking here – maybe not even that – what about Neil Morrison?  Board level HR Director at Random House, social media superstar and greatly talented wit.  Not overly into the CIPD which I think is a good thing.  But of course, a big supporter of Connecting HR, which is better still.
	Lembit Opik. A real joker in the pack would be Liberal Democrat politican and general celebrity Lembit Opik.  Ex HR, ex MP with the capability to bring a cheeky grin to all HR professionals.
	Julian Birkinshaw. Moving into academia, I’ve needed to have a think.  My favourite UK academic for a long-time has been Lynda Gratton at London Business School, but I’m less into her newer stuff, despite the fact that it’s increasingly closer to my main agenda these days.  So my nomination goes to a non-HR professor who I think speaks the greatest sense about HR: Julian Birkinshaw, also at LBS.  Time to reinvent HR!
	Ruth Spellman. What have we got left?  I guess HR types with experience of running other professional institutes must be a good bet. What about poaching Ruth Spellman, ex CEO of CMI and IIP UK before she joins WEA next month?
	China Gorman. Or what about China Gorman, ex SHRM hard hitter, heavily engaged in social media too. The American take-over might not go down well with some, but better this than a full take-over of the institute by SHRM!
	Gwyn Burr. Errm, I’m running out of ideas now, but, well, I suppose the final opportunity would be a business person who is known as a progressive talent manager.  I’m not a particular fan of the businessisation of HR, but it could go down well across the profession.  A compromise might be someone doing both HR and a business job eg Gwyn Burr, Customer Service and Colleague Director at Sainsbury’s, or possibly Lucy Adams, Business Operations Director (and former Director of People) at the BBC. Actually, I do like this idea, so there you go: Gwyn Burr is my recommendation for the job.

Who else would you suggest?

 

A few reflections:

• I’ve not worried about the job these people are currently doing, or how much they’re currently being paid etc.  Such is the freedom of the blogger vs the recruitment agent!
• It’s not a very diverse list, and hopefully that’s something that the recruitment agency can improve on.
• I’ve been a bit ambivalent about HR Magazine’s list of Most Influentials in the past (though obviously a bit less so now that I’m on it!) but based upon the above they do seem to have hit the spot – I had a look through their lists (1,2,3,4) when I got a bit stuck with my #10 and it’s interesting to see most of the people I’ve listed are on their lists already.
• But no, I’m not putting myself forward – though I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fun – see my next post on this!

 

And a PS: I’ve never exchanged more than a couple of words with Jackie, and I don’t agree with all her views on HR, or all of what she’s done at the CIPD, but it’s horrible to hear about anyone, particularly someone still relatively early in their career, having cancer, and I wish her the very best for a full and speedy recovery.

 

Technorati Tags: Jackie Orme,CIPD,Chief Executive,CEO,HR,search,recruitment,Duncan Brown,John Philpott,Peter Cheese,Ann Almeida,Neil Morrison,Julian Birkinshaw,Ruth Spellman,China Gorman,Gwyn Burr

 

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More HR and social media in Asia

 

   I’ll also be discussing some of these points about social business / enterprise 2.0, but more specifically social HR, and very practically, the social media tools involved in these approaches, within an Asian context during March:

• Kuala Lumpur 16 & 17 March
• Singapore 29 & 20 March

 

I’m sure it’ll be another interesting session, particularly given that the use of social media in Asia is so different to the the UK (I’ve posted on this previously, and also note the differences in social media week – all about change and collaboration in the UK, all about finding love on Facebook in Singapore!).

Anyway, if you’re in Asia I’ll hope you’ll to join me (or at least follow the twitter stream during the four days).

You can find out more from Long Trends Tel: 65-91912218; Fax: 65-64048964; Email: enquiry@long-trends.com.

 

Technorati Tags: Social media,HR,Facebook,Linkedin,twitter,Asia,Malaysia,Sinagpore,course,training,workshop

 

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Enterprise 2.0 Summit / Social Business Immersive

 

   I’m attending / blogging from / presenting at some great conferences over the next few months.  Next week, I’ll be an ‘ambassador’ for the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris and will be posting on some of the sessions there, mainly over at Social Advantage.

The social technology theme continues the following week with Social Media Week - London where I’ll be presenting on social business with Like Minds:

“Taking care of your people is taking care of business. Developing and managing a ‘social’ workforce is critical for your future success.”

 

Hope to see you at one of these events, and if not, do follow their progress here.

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise,2.0,social,media,business,events,conference,week,2012

 

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