Social business webinar

 

   My next webinar on the social business, and will be on Tuesday 3rd May.

“The social business is often defined as one that uses social media or Enterprise 2.0 technology.  However, it's much more useful to define it by outcome rather than activity.  So Jon Ingham's definition of it is an organisation in which social relationships between employees and with others are valued and accumulated.  In this webinar, Jon will describe the range of tools, technologies and other activities - face-to-face and virtual, which are available to organisations to develop their peoples' relationships.”

 

You can book here.

 

Technorati Tags: Social,business,enterprise,2.0,HR,webinar

 

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Social Future: the Connected Organisation

 

    I’ve been interviewed by Matt Alder on his new site, Social Future:

“Social Future is blog the looks at the way companies communicate and how the manner and indeed the concept of communication itself is rapidly changing.

The aim of the blog is to explore the emerging power of “Connected Organizations”. The content is a series of exclusive interviews with practitioners and thought leaders in this emerging field.”

 

Listen here.

 

Technorati Tags: Matt Alder,Recruiting,Social,Future,connected,organisation

 

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HCL Technologies - collaborative organisation structures

 

   I met up yesterday with Vineet Nayar, CEO at HCL Technologies who has just written a book, Employee First Customers Second.

Although most of the book deals with this EFCS approach (human capital management, in my language), the book does touch on the importance of social connection too.

For example, Vineet writes about the power of fusion:

“Once we transfer the ownership of our collective problems for the supposedly all-powerful CEO to the employees, people… suddenly see the company as their own enterprise.  They start thinking like entrepreneurs.  Their energy quotient leaps up.  And when that happens with a critical mass of employees (usually, 5 or 10 percent is all you need) throughout the company, it creates a kind of fusion – a coming together of the human particles in the corporate molecule that releases a massive amount of energy.”

He explains that he is also attracted by the idea of a Starfish organisation – one which is decentralised, with every major organ replicated across each arm.

 

Vineet’s book describes some of the activities HCLT have already been undertaking to unleash this fusion:

• A social network called U&I that employees can use to ask questions to Vineet and has since been extended with My Problems – an opportunity for him to share his concerns with HCLT employees.
• An updated 360 degree review system which allowed anyone to give feedback on a manager and to then see the results of that manager’s 360, replacing zones of control with spans of influence
• Communities called Employee First Councils around health and hygiene, art, music, corporate social responsibility and dozens of other issues including business related passions such as a particular technology or a vertical domain area, which allow people to enhance their personas at work, brining the whole person, as well as the person’s families, into the culture of the company.
• My Blueprint, another social networking system allowing managers to share plans for their specific business areas and get feedback from another 8000 HCLT managers, including people above and below them in the hierarchy.

 

I asked Vineet if there were any other actions HCLT is taking or has planned to further develop its peoples’ connectivity:

 

Stars and Spheres

Vineet described three organisation structures.

The first is the traditional pyramid with its apex at the top.  This is the sort of organisation developed armies when the Commander realised he was only 1 soldier in 500 soldiers so began enabling people down there at the bottom of the pyramid. It was also the organisation structure in the HCL Technologies organisation – they forgot that organisations needs commitment to work and created an HR organisation.

The second model is an inverted pyramid which reflects the value of work that’s undertaken. There is value in both of these two pyramids eg there’s still value in hierarchy.  You need a control structure – it’s when this assumes control over things you can't control that you get a problem).   So you put the two pyramids together and end up with a star in which a manager is accountable to their employees and the employees to the organisation.

In the third model (pictured), the organisation starts engaging every employee in the star organisation – in which employees are involved in 8 or 9 activities related to their own interests so you have these concentric circles around employees.

In the future, if we were to have this conversation again in another 5 years, Vineet suspects he will be drawing a sphere in which these communities have assumed more importance than either of the pyramids.

 

Social change

We talked a little about Social Advantage too.  Vineet suggested that my thinking around the value in connections, not the individual alone, but about collaboration of employees creating value, is absolutely right.

But he also suggested a need to turn theoretical idea to practical issue happening now.

For him, this is about the growth of emerging markets and therefore changes in the demographic pool of customers – becoming younger, based in emerging economies, with girls doing better than boys.  Everything is changing.

Peoples’ influence zones are changing – because of things like Facebook.  Advertising no longer influence what, how or where consumers buy.

Communities are now behind buying decisions.  It’s a very important change.  People are only just finding out how to engage communities to come and buy products.  How do you influence people to take things back into communities of value?

50% of the world are now under 25 years old.  This means we need to learn to create value through collaboration, through communities like Facebook.  In the future, this will be the only way that business will be able to grow.

 

 

Also see my post on HCLT’s employees first approach at Strategic HCM.

And you can read Vineet’s blog posts at vineetnayar.com or blogs.hbr.org.  You can follow him on Twitter at @vineetnayar.

 

Technorati Tags: Vineet Nayar,CEO,HCL Technologies,Employees First,Customers Second,book,collaboration,social,networking,spider,starfish,fusion,U&I,360,Employee First Councils,My Blueprint,organisation

 

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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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Directors pay and Social Advantage

 

    The Guardian has published an interesting survey of FTSE 100 Directors pay.

It’s interesting firstly because of the ongoing debate about executive reward at the moment.

But what I wanted to focus on here, particularly given my recent post on Whole Foods, is the differential in pay between CEOs and average employees.

In general, the differential is quite a bit less that that described by John Mackey in his presentation on Conscious Capitalism – I presume because we’re looking at the UK rather than the US where the differential is presumably higher?  It’s still a lot higher than Mackey’s recommendation of 19x though.

And the highest differential – for Bart Becht, CEO at Reckitt Benckiser - is 1374! (ie Becht gets paid 1374 times the amount (£37m) paid to Reckitt Beckiser’s average employee - £27k).

This clearly isn’t a great basis for effective up and down collaboration.

 

Mind you, Cisco CEO, John Chambers’, recent $2m under-performance bonus doesn’t seem to be affecting the way it’s becoming more collaborative.

I guess this is only one part of the equation…

 

Technorati Tags: Guardian,FTSE,Director,Chief Executive,CEO,pay,Bart Becht,Reckitt Benckiser,John Chambers,Cisco,John Mackey,Whole Foods

 

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Management models and Social Advantage

 

    In the latest issue of the MLab’s Labnotes, Julian Birkinshaw suggests that organisations need to think as much about their management models (the choices firms make about what happens inside their organisations) as they do their business models (choices about their sources of revenue, their cost structure etc).

These choices include:

• Choices about the nature of the objectives the firm pursues (ranging from alignment to obliquity)
• Choices about how individuals are motivated to pursue these objectives (extrinsic to intrinsic)
• Choices about how activities are co-ordinated in the firm (bureaucracy to emergence)
• Choices about how decisions are made in the firm (hierarchy or collective wisdom).

 

I think this is a useful, new input to management thinking.

However, I’m not sure about the four dimensions of Birkinshaw’s framework (the four choices above).  Where does the Social Advantage approach fit into it this for example?

 

Social Advantage as collective wisdom

Although it doesn’t fit the framework that neatly, I’d have to say that Social Advantage fits best with the last two choices: managing across (emergence vs bureaucracy) and especially managing down (collective wisdom vs hierarchy).  But then these are ‘means’, and  think Social Advantage is very much about ‘ends’.

And I think some other dimensions are probably at least as important to Social Advantage as those presented in the model.  For example, what the organisation focuses on – outcomes or business impacts, And how importantly the organisation sees people working together in teams, or just sharing information between themselves.

 

Collective wisdom AND hierarchy

Also, although Social Advantage is probably best supported by a flat structure, I don’t see that it requires the end of hierarchy.  To me, the dimensions of the model are probably paradoxes (this and that) rather than polar opposites (this or that).

Anyway, polar opposites aren’t really in the spirit of the Moon Shots – particularly M20:

“ Better optimise trade-offs.  Management systems tend to force either-or choices.  What’s needed are hybrid systems that subtly optimise key trade-offs.”

 

So, I don’t feel very positive about the framework, but I suppose if it encourages organisational leaders to think about their management model, and perhaps what dimensions will be important to them, then I guess it will do its job.

As Birkinshaw himself notes,

“There is no one best management model…  Rather, there are choices to be made, and the appropriate choice depends on a host of circumstantial and competitive factors.  Firms who generate competitive advantage out of their management model are the ones that make conscious and distinctive choices about what principles to follow.”

 

Also see:

• The social advantage
• Moon shots for social advantage
• Social Advantage after the downturn
• Management innovation: Can dogs do the tango?
• Moon Shots (ning).

 

Technorati Tags: Julian Birkinshaw,Management Lab,MLab,management model

 

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Social Advantage after the downturn

 

   This is why I think Social Advantage is particularly important at the moment:

“A new survey from The Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated suggests that the layoffs experienced by many organizations in the recent economic downturn have had a more adverse impact on productivity than employers may have thought.  The ‘Productivity Drain’ survey finds that 40 percent of employees at organizations affected by layoffs would classify productivity as having been negatively impacted. Furthermore, of those 40 percent, two-thirds of them state that morale is suffering and that employees are less motivated than before. This is in large part due to the level of work that employees are dealing with. Sixty-four percent of respondents felt that there was too much work and not enough employees to do it, and with employees frustrated with the additional workload, half of those surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with their employers’ effort to maintain morale. Perhaps more concerning is that 36 percent of respondents believe that when the economy picks up, as an organization, they would not be prepared to meet the increased demand.”

 

How do you deal with more work with less people? – manage the relationships between the people, as well as the people themselves.

 

For more information on the survey, see The Workforce Institute (at Kronos^® Incorporated).

For more information on Social Advantage, see:

• Social Advantage
• Moon Shots for Social Advantage

 

Technorati Tags: Workforce Institute,Kronos,downturn,productivity,social advantage

 

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Gaining Social Advantage

 

  

 

I’ve been posting about Social Advantage for some time now.

Social Advantage expresses a combination of Social Capital and Competitive Advantage – which is what this blog is about.

I had thought about calling this blog ‘Social Advantage’ too, but couldn’t get the right url.  However, I now have it, so this blog will shortly be moving to http://blog.social-advantage.com.

I still like the name ‘Competitive Society’ as an alternative description of the ‘New Social Business’ or even ‘Enterprise 2.0’, but I don’t think it would be the right title for my book.

Mind you, even ‘Social Advantage’ has other connotations:

• ‘My social advantage’ which appears to be a rather dodgy promotion scheme.  I wouldn’t say it is / was a pyramid scheme, but other people certainly have.
• The principle of maximum aggregate welfare - a fundamental principle of public finance. This principle states that public finance leads to economic welfare when public expenditure and taxation are carried to that point where the benefit derived from the MU (marginal utility) of expenditure is equal to the marginal disutility of sacrifice imposed by taxation. In other words, maximum social advantage or aggregate welfare is the result of two contradictory and opposite forces. One, which tries to increase it… (you get the idea).

 

I guess there’s always going to be some drawbacks no matter what the name!

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social Advantage,Competitive Society,Social Business,Enterprise 2.0

 

 

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The Competitive Society

 

   I’m looking at changing the name of this blog to ‘Competitive Society’ (and also moving it to http://www.competitive-society.com).

I’m still not comfortable that, given its other connotations, Social Business (even the New Social Business) is the right name for what I’m writing about, ie an organisation that invests in social capital.

Perhaps it needs a completely new name?

So how about the Competitive Society???

 

I like the name because:

• It’s reminiscent of Michael Porter’s ‘Competitive Strategy’: 
  • “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.”  Michael E Porter.
• And I think this is fitting, because developing social capital IS a way to gain competitive advantage (see my HCM post on competing through Organisational Capability rather than Strategic Positioning).

 

• I like the word ‘society’.  People normally associate ‘community’ with social media etc, but I think society is more apt:
  • People tend not to be just in one community, but many communities.  The most appropriate unit to analyse the social business is therefore the individual – or the organisation as a whole, not its constituent communities.  Society expresses the idea of a cluster of communities, and so I think it nicely expresses the social aspect of an organisation.

 

• Competitive Society therefore suggests the possibility of gaining competitive advantage by investing in the social aspects of the organisation.  Spot on!

 

Unfortunately, a competitive society also sounds a bit like Thatcher’s Britain on steroids.  Which isn’t quite what I want.

Let me know what you think…

 

Technorati Tags: Social business,Social Advantage,Competitive Society,Michael Porter,competitive advantage

 

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Jiving with the Social Business

 

   I posted recently on the reasons why I’ve changed the name and address of this blog from Social Business to Social Advantage.

One firm that still seems to feel ‘social business’ is an apt description for an organisation that invests in social capital is Jive Software.  It’s new Social Business Manifesto describes the need to lead organisations proactively into the age of the Social Business:

“The Social Business allows and rewards open conversation between colleagues... It relies on the power of social connections to shape new products and services, and to propel new revenue and earnings growth. It embraces Web 2.0 technology in the form of Social Business Software to enable this critical change.”

 

See the video for more explanation on this:

 

 

Although the white paper discusses the role of social capital, it doesn’t make it clear how the social business depends upon social capital.  To me it is clear: a (New) Social Business is one which invests in developing social capital.

 

Welcome to the Social Business revolution

I really like the way that Jive positions the social business:

”The biggest change in the way businesses work in more than a decade.”

“Now, more than ever before, success depends on your ability to realize the transformative value of your people, ideas and relationships.”

 

I agree with Jive that the social business connects the global workforce and improves generational workforce performance.  I’m less sure about empowering individual productivity.   Organisational productivity yes, but there is sometimes going to be a trade-off in terms of making individual employees LESS productive (eg taking time to share knowledge with other people) to increase the productivity of the whole.

I think this is what Umair Haque is describing in his Harvard Business / Edge Economy post, the Smart Growth Manifesto (referenced in the Jive report):

“Creativity, not productivity. Uh-oh: Creativity is an economic four-letter word. Why? Because it's hard to measure, manage, and model. So economists focus on productivity instead -- and the result is dumb growth. Smart growth focuses on economic creativity - because creativity is what let us know that competition is creating new value, instead of just shifting old value around. What is economic creativity? How many new industries, markets, categories, and segments an economy can consistently create. Think China's gonna save the world? Think again: it's economically productive, but it's far from economically creative. Smart growth is creative -- not merely productive”

 

Social Business Software.  The Application for Everyone.

I also like, in general, Jive’s explanation of the role of social business software in driving the social business, although I wouldn’t include it in the definition in the way they do (I don’t think a social business needs to embrace web 2.0):

“A class of enterprise technology that supports natural, human, peer-to-peer connections and the group contributions and conversations that are required to drive success in the future.

Social business software builds on the best principles and applications of Web 2.0.  It combines the power of social networks, where individuals share ideas, criticisms and information that benefit the collective, and makes the most of emerging forms of communication, including wikis, video dispatches and blogs.  Social business software is… inherently social, creating an environment where listening is a virtue and cooperation is understood.  It can be applied… internally, to support teamwork that reaches across org charts and time zones to produce truly transformative results.”

“It provides a platform for capturing and sharing conversations and insights around a variety of subjects, and it can become a foundation for creating communities of interest that link companies with their customers and business partners. Yes, Social Business Software facilitates collaboration and teamwork. But it doesn’t get hung up on formalities, such as the functional roles of participants or complex workflow processes that could get in the way of sharing ideas and information quickly.”

“Across all of the strategic areas of your enterprise, Social Business Software is the most important technology investment you will make moving forward because it is the only software that truly unlocks the value of your Social Capital.”

 

Social capital, the new competitive advantage

However, I’m not so keen on Jive’s descriptions of social capital:

“Social Capital harnesses the value of the knowledge, relationships and interactions of people in and around your company.”

 

Yes, absolutely.  But:

“When your best people work on your best ideas in an open, transparent, collaborative way, they create a completely new kind of asset called Social Capital.”

• I don’t think this is what it’s about.  When the best people with the best ideas work together, they create an output – an impact on the business.  Social capital is the input to the action – it’s what enables them to work together in this way.

 

“Social Capital is created when the connections between employee, partner and customers are combined with business intelligence.”

• Business intelligence is one thing than can enable the connections between employees.  But then so can a nice staff restaurant.

 

“Social Capital is what your company gains when its best people with the best ideas can take the right actions, actions that speed all sorts of time-to-business outcomes—from reducing costs to driving new product innovation and increasing sales and marketing effectiveness.”

• It’s got to be about more than just the best people with the best ideas taking the right actions – what’s social about that?

 

“The faster the best ideas are translated into decisions and actions, the more Social Capital you have.”

• No, the more decisions and actions you’ll have (potentially)!

 

“Every time any employee walks out the door, years of Social Capital walk out of the door with him or her.”

• Sort of.  Social capital can definitely deteriorate (assuming we’re not talking about a lone operator) but the employee doesn’t take it away with them (in the way they do their human capital), it simply disappears (unless it’s recreated by the people who stay).

- 

Here’s my first attempt at a definition.

Social capital is the intangible capability that is produced by people working together with each other in an organisation.  It’s development is supported by effective leadership, sound HR and management practices, organisation development, facilities management and the use of web 2.0 / social media tools.

 

How’s that?

 

See also:

• The social business
• What’s this social business thing about?

 

Technorati Tags: Jive,software,Social Business,social capital

 

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Moon shots for Social Advantage

 

    The management thinking which relates most closely to my own viewpoint, and which I’m describing on Social Advantage, is Gary Hamel’s perspectives on management 2.0.

This was originally described in Gary Hamel’s book, ‘The Future of Management'.  Hamel argues that management will evolve to look a lot like web 2.0, and will therefore be more adaptable, innovative and engaging. He lists the key criteria of both web 2.0 and management 2.0 as:

• Everyone has a voice
• The tools of creativity are widely distributed
• Its easy and cheap to experiment
• Capability counts for more than credentials and titles
• Commitment is voluntary
• Power is granted from below
• Authority is fluid and contingent on value-added
• The only hierarchies are "natural" hierarchies
• Communities are self-defining
• Individuals are richly empowered with information
• Just about everything is decentralized
• Ideas compete on an equal footing
• It's easy for buyers and sellers to find each other
• Resources are free to follow opportunities
• Decisions are peer-based.

 

These characteristics underpin the new list of 25 moon shots which is included in this month’s Harvard Business Review.

There are clearly some links between these and Social Advantage.  Just as web 2.0 is also called the social web, management 2.0 is about a more social type of management.

But there are some differences too.  Here’s why I believe Social Advantage provides a more powerful way of looking at opportunities for social innovation within your organisation:

 

1.   A purer focus on social ways of managing

‘The future of management’, and the ‘25 moon shots’ are actually more about the need to innovate management practice than they are about social management (Hamel just guesses that the result of this innovation will be management 2.0).

For example, in the ‘moon shots’ article, Hamel suggests that to move on from management 1.0, organisations need to deal with a number of critical problems:

“How in an age of rapid change do you create organizations that are as adaptable and resilient as they are focused and efficient? How in a world where the winds of creative destruction blow at gale force can a company innovate quickly and boldly enough to stay relevant and profitable? How in a creative economy where entrepreneurial genius is the secret to success do you inspire employees to bring the gifts of initiative, imagination, and passion to work every day? How at a time when the once hidden costs of industrialization have become distressingly apparent do you encourage executives to fulfill their responsibilities to all stakeholders?”

 

I think Hamel’s thinking on management 2.0 gets coloured by some of these additional problems.

I’m not saying that management shouldn’t deal with these problems, or that organisations can’t innovate management in ways that aren’t associated with social capital.

But if you’re looking for ideas about managing the social aspects of your organisation, you’re more likely to find it here than in Hamel’s writings on management 2.0.

 

2.   A focus on outcomes rather than activities

Hamel’s lists of web / management 2.0 characteristics, and the moon shots for management are about ways of managing.  They’re approaches or activities, things that we can do:

• Ensure management serves a higher purpose
• Embed the ideas of community and citizenship within management systems
• Use natural as well as formal hierarchies
• Reduce fear and increase trust
• etc …

 

While these are all good things, they’re not actually going to be that useful unless they produce results.  And in general, it’s a god idea to focus on the results not the activity.

Social capital is the outcome or result of management 2.0 / a more socially oriented way of managing.  It makes sense to focus on this and then work out what activities are needed to produce it.

 

3.   Not so tightly prescribed

As I said above, the moon shots for management are all good things.  In general terms.  But they’re unlikely to all work equally well for all organisations.

Social Advantage provides a framework for organisations to choose the type of social capital that will be most relevant for them, and to then identify the activities that will be most appropriate for the particular organisations, its context, challenges and capabilities.

 

More shortly…

 

Technorati Tags: Gary Hamel,management innovation,Future of Management,Moon Shots for Management,Social Capital,Social Advantage

Photo credit: Astronaut David R. Scott, Apollo 15 commander

 

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Social Advantage

 

    I thought I’d describe a couple of the key insights behind my new Social Advantage book.

Firstly though, what do I actually mean by Social Advantage?

 

Competitive advantage through social capital

The book is really about social capital – the value of the connections, relationships and conversations between people working in, or otherwise associated with, an organisation.  The focus is internal - we should use the term relationship capital, not social capital, for the relationships spanning outside an organisation – eg to customers etc.

And because social capital is capital, not just a resource, it goes beyond simply helping achieve existing goals that much better or more easily.  It actually provides a direct basis for competitive advantage – ie having the right sort of social capital enables an organisation to do new things, to set new or more stretching business goals.

And as it gets more difficult to compete through a novel strategic positioning, or a particular set of core competencies, the opportunities for social advantage are becoming more and more important.

 

Key insights

• Social advantage depends on identifying one or more capabilities that will act as an organisation’s mojo – providing the focus for the development of the right type of connections, relationships and conversations.
• It can be developed via a broad range of activities, from effective leadership (communityship), HR and management actions, OD (organisation development) interventions and web 2.0 tools (note, despite much prevailing thinking, use of social media is not the only way to develop social capital).
• It is developed by focusing on the right connections, relationships and conversations, rather than on business results, or the particular activities that have been chosen to develop it (knowing that in the right social environment, improved business results will naturally follow).
• Social advantage can’t be driven by any one function (IT, HR, Communications etc) in isolation, but needs a broad commitment from across the organisation for it to develop.

 

More soon…

 

Technorati Tags: Social capital,social advantage,competitive advantage,communityship,OD,web 2.0,social media

Photo credit: Wendorf; Wlocka

 

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