Making People Like Them People Like Us

 

   I’m chairing Crexia’s Social Learning Unconference today.  As part of this , I delivered this morning’s opening introduction, helping to provide some focus and context for later conversations.

Thinking last night about what I was going to say today, I focused on a couple of inputs I personally have experienced over the last couple of weeks.

The first of these was Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer which David Armano referenced in his session on social engagement as part of Social Media Week London.  The Barometer shows a continuing fall in levels of trust in traditional sources of authority (lawyers, politicians, journalists etc) and another big rise in trust in technical experts, joe employee, and particularly ‘people like me’.

Eg this is one of Edelman’s slides on this that I’ll be using in my training session on using social media that I’ll be running in Kuala Lumpur in just over another week:

 

The second input was an RSA session with Mark Pagel last week.  Mark’s the author of Wired for Culture and writes / speaks about the evolution of people vs neanderthals as social / tribal animals.

Ie we form tight tribes and to an extent sacrifice our individuality for the good of the tribal collective, eg wear odd clothes and paint our faces with the colours of our favourite team.  We’re one of the few animals, other than the social insects, that have learnt to co-operate with each other within our groups.

Outside these groups, are prime behavioural trait is that of competition vs co-operation.  Pagel shared the example of a man who punched and killed another for the simple, social though unproven crime of queue jumping.

So we co-operate with people like me, ie the in-group, but we compete with anyone we see as a people like them!, ie the out-group.

 

The impact of this on learning & development practitioners, which only really occurred to me last night, and therefore I haven’t yet really fully thought through, and also, as I said earlier – isn’t, as far as I know, supported by any research, is that for us to learn in groups, we need to find a way to transform people like them into people like us!

 

Note that I’m not suggesting we should only learn from other people like me.  As has been well tweeted this morning, this would be a real blocker on development – most new ideas are going to come from the people like them, not actually the people like me.

But I simply don’t believe we’re going to be able to learn easily from people like them – while they’re still people like them.  Trying to do so is likely to simply make us reinforce our existing positions, ie to block rather than enable learning.

 

So, somehow, before we can learn, we need to make these people like them into people like us.  We need to connect with each other, and build trustful relationships with each other, before we can learn.

Does that suggestion work for you?

 

Technorati Tags: Pagel,wired,culture,RSA,Edelman,trust,barometer,social,relationship,learning,Crexia,#slconf

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking - Training - Writing
• Strategy - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

.

Social business webinar

 

   Posting about my forthcoming social innovation webinar reminded me that I’ve not given you the links to the archive or my slides from my Social Business webinar back in the Spring.

So, here you go:

• Citrix GoToWebinar archive
• Slideshare presentation

 

Social business 2.0

View more presentations from Jon Ingham

 

And as a further reminder, here are the links to the same resources for my previous webinar on HR 2.0:

• Archive
• Presentation

 

Technorati Tags: Social business,enterprise 2.0,team,community,organisation,development,HR,social media,web 2.0,management 2.0,communityship,workplace design

 

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

  .

Social leadership at Cisco

 

  Ealier on, Phil Smith, CEO, Cisco UK & Ireland has talked about leadership and social networking at Cisco.

Globalisation, technology and the next generation workforce and changing the way that people work in organisations.  It’s a big social change, although technology has made the change much easier.

Cisco use social networking tools for communications within the company also also externally, eg in graduate recruitment for building relationships with the best students and creaming off the best before the milk round.  These relationships are sustained through onboarding etc.

As for those companies that don’t allow social networking, Phil suggests using technology within a company is a management issue – you can be on the phone all day just as much as you can be on Facebook.

Next generation working also requires an inclusive culture.  People feel they want to work in Cisco because their talents will be respected and developed.

Their programme is ‘More Together’ which does focus more on inclusiveness than diversity.  The best teams focus on everyone’s contribution rather than just on minority groups.

So for example his executive team have recently participated in a goldfish bowl exercise, sitting round a group of brave women having a facilitated conversation about some of the difficulties they were experiencing.  Executives do get shielded but in this exercise they just sat and listened.

Executives area also reverse mentored.  He has a 21 / 21 year old chap who mentors him and helps him understand how others would communicate.

All of this helps Cisco to develop social communities and quickly assemble dynamic teams.

 

Also see my other posts on Cisco:

• Enterprise 2.0: Cisco and the Human Network @ Work
• Cisco’s management experiment
• Cisco’s collaboration framework
• Cisco leading from the middle.

 

Technorati Tags: Economist,talent management,summit,#ECtalent,Phil Smith,Cisco,leadership,social networks

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Social Business Summit: IBM’s social business / jams

 

  Next up is Stuart McRae, Executive Collaboration Evangelist at IBM talking about IBM’s experience becoming a social business supporting its transformation to a globally integrated organisation.

 

Jamming

Stuart mainly talked about IBM’s Transformation Jam in the UK last year.  This jam was used because IBM wanted to transform the organisation and therefore the company decided to use social technology vs the other way around – which is sort of the right way to do it (agreed! – see my last post).

The jam process was launched in 2001 and you’ve probably heard of their values jam in 2003 but they’ve done a whole series since then, including the recent social business jam I participated in.  The jam leverages the wisdom of crowds in the organisation.

To make successful, lots of things need to happen in the background.  For example, the use other social systems to make people confident to contribute to the jam.  And the use of analytics to drive participation – ensuring different parts of the business are represented, reinforcing key message etc.

The key is what happens next – sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s not. Eg in the values jam, IBM millions of inputs were distilled down to three values.  This is particularly the case with open jams – focused on how the business can be made better – leading to lots of  diverse opinions (note you need to try to understand why people are commenting eg you get more negative than positive comments).

It helps to make it very clear what the organisation is trying to achieve!

In the UK Transformation Jam, IBM brought 100 people who were most active in the jam together in a workshop for face-to-face networking.  They then created workstreams to continue the conversation.  It’s important not to let this drop (and IBM got this wrong with the UK jam – the workstreams took up 3-6 months during which other participants didn’t hear anything).

(Ermm, yes, I was talking to a contact just last week about the fact we’re still waiting for follow-up on the Social Business Jam and how this is less than ideal.)

 

Social

One of things that came out the Transformation Jam was need for better productivity – through better collaboration tools (so this experience was about using a collaboration tool to identify the need to use more collaboration tools!).  The need was to transform the way that the average IBM employee works.

IBM’s philosophy about social media in IBM is to keep it open [relating to JP’s comments about the way organisations try to develop something in a closed way in one part of the organisation while another part of the organisation tries to engage people around it – much better just to develop the thing in a social way in the first place!].

They’re also changing the paradigm from an email model to a social media model.  And are working to make the organisational silos permeable (but note your ultimate silo is the firewall).

 

IBM measure the results of all this through usage of the technology but also mining information about what people are using it for.  And IBM’s stock price!

Becoming a social business is about understanding what business problems you’re trying to solve (eg increase the stock price, or back to my last post, taking too long to repair the buses).

 

Your employees are your differentiator – social businesses use them better – by being transparent, ensuring employees are engaged – and thus becoming more nimble.

Loyalty with a company today is about a sense of affinity with the employees you are interacting with.

 

Technorati Tags: Stuart McRae,IBM,social business,transformation,jam

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Social Business Summit: John Hagel on Cascading Change

 

  I’m at Dachis’ London Social Business Summit today.  I’ve just seen JP Rangaswami taling about social but couldn’t get on the wifi to post.  But up now is John Hagel talking about two elements of his big shift (from the Power of Pull).

 

1.   Moving from diminishing to increasing returns

So it used to be the longer you worked on something, the longer you’d have to wait for the next increment.  Now, the more you work on something, the more rapidly something improves.

 

2.   Moving from stocks to flow

The source of value used to be stocks of proprietary knowledge that you’d keep secret and leverage over a long a period as possible.  But now, knowledge stocks depreciate at an ever fast rate.  To create value in this new work, we need to participate in an ever broader flow of knowledge at an accelerating rate.  Hence the value of social software.

 

The best way to take advantage of these trends is through small moves that trigger accelerating moves over time.  This can be through:

• Bottom-up adoption often within teams to support their activities
• Top down driven change driven by an executive coming back from a conference
• A massive deployment of social software for everyone.

 

One difficult with all of these is that metrics are hard to come from – in fact in most of Hagel’s studies, there’s been no impact.  We need metrics that matter – which will differ according to the part of the business you’re in, eg financial metrics for CXOs, operational metrics for lower business leaders and performance metrics (in someone’s job) for people on the front-line.

The target at all these levels is better exception handling which takes 60-70% of management time in most organisations (?).

[This links with JP’s points on the move from the Industrial Age in which work comes in linear flow and we could predict what flow is coming through the pipe based on linear constructs and build processes around these (although they were never as repeatable as we thought).  Knowledge workers have lumpy work – peaks and troughs.  We need to understand pattern rather than process to deal with exceptions which are taking over from the previous age.  JP think this new non-linear vs linear approach is a bit like a video game.]

This sort of change pulls people to the edge rather than the core – the place where social technology can have the best early impact.  It’s not just a technology, it’s an organisational change catalyst – everything will change based upon the implementation of social software.

This applies to all businesses eg bus workers have taken to social software very rapidly because of the problems they’ve been having.

 

Comment: yes, but given the extent of change, why start with social software and the changes this will introduce?  My advice is to start with the change you want to create.

Also see my post on the different opportunities for introducing social tools: 3 modes of web 2.0 implementation.

 

Technorati Tags: Dachis,social business,summit,2011,John Hagel,cascading change,big shift,power of pull

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Big Rethink: the Social Individual

 

  I may not have got much out of the Connectivity session, but there was plenty of good stuff on this topic in the mixed presentations & panel session which followed, ‘why new ideas are needed to engage changing customers’.  But the real focus was on the importance of the individual.

And actually, although although I didn’t feel it was such a strong theme as connectivity, there had been some key references to the importance of the individual earlier on.

In particular, Julie Meyer had talked about the growing importance of what she calls individual capitalism:

 

Iqbal Quadir had also talked about the growing focus on individuals rather than government, with a corresponding move to a bottom-up vs top-down governance model.

 

And I think part of Cory Doctorow’s rant was about the growing focus on individual rather than companies.  (Someone tweeted that they expected Ayn Rand to do the next presentation!)

But in this new session, there’s been much more focus on the individual, within the connected environment I reviewed in my last post.

 

First was Arthur Potts Dawson from the People’s Supermarket.  This is a shop with a difference, based on Arthur’s belief that organisations need to have a soul and stick to their principles.  The People’s Supermarket focus is about the need for people to think more about their food – which is difficult because people find it difficult to think differently.

The way the People’s Supermarket has made this happen is by establishing a system of membership where people from the local community provide their time free to the organisation, but in return receive a share in the profits.

When Arthur asks people why they shop a the supermarket, they don’t say the usual things.  It’s not because of convenience, and it’s not because of price.  It’s because they have real people and a community.

And the thing that has really driven this sense of community has been getting people talking about themselves and understanding their personalities.  And then really listening to them – as even if they’re only sharing problems, the same people usually have the solutions too.  And getting people listening to each other too.

It’s the sense of community that’s the key to the People’s Supermarket – when individuals become collectives, they become powerful.

 

Christian Hernandez at Facebook then talked about putting people first in the digital world.

He first reminded us that people are social at the core, also suggesting that the reason Facebook has been successful while other systems have failed is that Facebook has taken the effort to ensure peoples’ profiles are based upon their true identities.  And the main change in the development of the web into the social web has been the way it enables word of mouth at scale (allowing people to find information based upon their friends’ recommendations etc).  This means that the social experiences we used to have in small environments can now be expanded out.

The key has been putting people first on the web, and using people to drive discovery.

 

So in many ways, it’s the same idea, regardless of whether we think about the social individual in a face-to-face or a digital context.  My own belief is that there are huge opportunities to do both:

-   Very, very few organisations have the same sense of humanity in their traditional,face-to-face relationships as the People’s Supermarket.

-   But very few use social media effectively either.

 

Paul Lewis from the EIU provided some evidence of this (from new research on ‘redefining corporate value for the social web’:

-   Just 22% of companies have completed a process of redefining customer value, thinking strategically about incorporating social networking and social media into the way they deal with customers.

-   A similar low 22% say that social media has changed the way they think about customers.

-   Over 50% aren’t using technology adequately – preferring to use face-to-face and telephone communication to deal with customers – and only 5% say social media is their main method of interaction with customers.

 

But we’re clearly at a stage where companies are starting to think strategically about using social media to communicate with the social individual.  Paul suggested thinking about:

-   How do you create conversations with customers using social media?

-   How do you get different departments working together, sharing and analysing data on customers?

-   How do organisations effect change given strong organisational inertia to do nothing?

 

I’d add the main point about non-digital conversation back in here as well, ie how do organisations maintain and increase the level of humanity expressed through their behaviour when communicating through social media as well as in traditional settings.

 

And the other key point from Paul was not to wait.  Most organisations don’t know what to do, partly because the tools for channelling and analysing information on customers are not properly developed.  But if you decide to wait you’ll get left behind.  So maybe just track referrals in a small area – but do something!

 

Technorati Tags: Big Rethink,social,connected,individual,Arthur Potts Dawson,the People’s Supermarket,Christian Hernandez,Facebook,Paul Lewis,EIU,Economist Intelligence Unit

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Empowered connectors and mavens

 

  I realise I didn’t do much of a review of Empowered in my last post. And there are some things in there which deserve a bit more focus.

The first is the idea of mass online influencers who help spread trends through the web. These consist of two groups (see picture) based on Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis from ‘Tipping Point’ – mass connectors who know a wide variety of other people through social networks (huge Twitter followings, lots of Facebook friends etc), and mass mavens - experts and post and comment on particular topics. [This seems to correspond in part to Chris Brogan’s differentiation of social from new media.]

Mass connectors are a small proportion of all online users but account for 80% of all ‘influence impressions’ about products and services. Mass mavens are a similarly small proportion of online users and account for 80% of all influence posts. Exactly what these proportions are depends on the product or service in question. The reason I make this point here is that I think the same analysis could be made for employees too – but not many organisations I know consider these mass connectors and mavens within their talent groups!

The second model I like is the endless marketing funnel which doesn’t end with people becoming customers but goes on to them broadcasting about their experiences, creating influence, and leading to more people entering the top of the funnel. Again, I think this applies to employees too, although here I’d point out that the actual employee, not just their influence, can re-enter the top of the funnel again (see my Strategic HCM post on career partnership).

 

Technorati Tags: Josh Bernoff,Ted Schadler,Empowered,mass,connectors,mavens,social,media,funnel,employees First

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training -  Writing
• Strategy  -  Talent  -  Engagement  -  Change and OD
• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
• jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

.

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

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Lynda Gratton and the Future of Work

 

   I was at London Business School last night for a session on the Future of Work.  Most of the session focused on the attendees’ thoughts about this future, supported by Lynda’s consortium:

• Five trends: globalisation, technology, demographics, low carbon, society (reduction in trust, increase in self-employment).
• The dark side of the default future: isolation, fragmentation, exclusion, addiction.
• The bright side of a crafted future: transparency, choice, co-creation (eg 2000 scientists at CERN collaboration together, meaning that the first 15 pages of their articles are taken up with the names of the authors).

 

Most interesting for me was Nokia’s prediction that by 2015 5 billion people will be connected across the blog, and Lynda’s question, what happens when you join up 5 billion people?

In Lynda’s view, one change is from competitive isolated individuals to connected, innovative crowds:

“The future is about relationships – the quality, extent and depth of relationships both virtual and real.”

 

Crowds can be very innovative, but for this to be the case, there needs to be diversity – you need to be connected to people very different to yourself.

We finished with these suggested actions:

• Making wise life choices
• Finding regenerative communities
• Developing carbon neutral capabilities
• Preparing for five generations at work.

 

Technorati Tags: Lynda Gratton,Future of Work,London Business School

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Lynda Gratton on Nokia and the future of work

 

    I’ve already posted at Strategic HCM on Lynda Gratton’s Future of Work blog and her recent article at HR Magazine.  But she’s also got a good article up on London Business School’s site, reviewing Nokia’s Booster Programme.

 

One of the things I’ve posted on quite frequently at this blog, is the need to combing real and virtual (or as Nokia say, analogue and digital) activities in order to best achieve certain outcomes.

In Gratton’s article, she explains how Nokia’s ‘Booster Programme’ used a blended approach including both sets of activities to engage with people throughout the world and to do so in fast and compelling ways:

 

Need: fundamental organisational change covering 5000 employees.

Analogue activities: a two-day face-to-face workshop with team leaders

Digital activities: online social network communities providing much broader involvement of the whole organisation.

“The two-day workshops were staged in locations across the world, including Beijing, White Plains (New York), Helsinki, London and Dubai. About 100 potential change leaders were part of each workshop.

When all workshops were completed, the 700 participants then returned to their teams to engage them in the ongoing process. It was at this point that the online community came to the fore. Working with specialist partners, the design team created an intranet site accessible to workshop participants and all employees of the Markets business. The online community was designed to host conversations and communications with senior managers as well as to provide information and ideas from content experts and community members.”

 

Result: daunting organisational change made fully effective within one week!

Gratton notes that:

“The capacity of social networks to create engagement and innovation is seen to be crucial to the long-term success of Nokia.”

 

But importantly, social networks didn’t achieve this on their own!  It was down to both real and virtual communication, and importantly, to Nokia’s collaborative organisation structure and culture:

“Only about 100 people assuming new jobs. For the rest of Nokia’s employees, there was no need to change jobs; the modular teams of which they were members were simply reconfigured. The discipline, philosophy and mindset of reconfiguration through standardisation and shared platforms ensured that Nokia is able to skilfully and rapidly reconfigure its human resources to meet changing customer needs.”

 

So that’s change management sorted then!

 

Photo credit: boostedfc3s

Technorati Tags: Lynda Gratton,Joel Casse,Nokia,social networking,communities,change management,Booster,programme

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

The Social Revolution – processes to networks

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Anyway, on with the post:

 

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

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

 

Processes

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

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

See this piece from my book:

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

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

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

 

(Also see this post on process design.)

 

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

 

Networks

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

• Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing
• Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change
• Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Social Media in Business interview

 

I’ve been interviewed by Benjamin Ellis in preparation for Friday’s Social Media in Business conference:

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social media in business,SMIB09,Benjamin Ellis,social capital,competitive advantage

 

Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing

Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change

Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business

jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Implementing Enterprise 2.0

 

The other book for which certain chapters have been made available online is Ross Dawson’s Implementing Enterprise 2.0.

Of particular interest to me is Chapter 11 – Social Networks in the Enterprise (and for my day job: Chapter 20 – Implications for HR, but this isn’t available without payment).

Dawson notes that:

“Social networks, while potentially extremely valuable to organisations, are possibly the most difficult of the Enterprise 2.0 suite of tools to implement successfully. The most important challenges are behavioural, though there are also notable technological challenges.”

 

In addition, there are particular challenges that need to be addressed in implementing internal social networks:

“The best focus for initial adoption of internal social networks is specific teams or groups, within which it can be fairly easy to gain majority or significant uptake in a brief period. These groups can then help seed contacts in other groups across the firm.”

 

This reminds me of some earlier posts touching on the different ways to introduce social media.

I actually think these different approaches relate to the three levels of value in the value triangle.  I’ll post further on this shortly.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Ross Dawon,Implementing Enterprise 2.0

 

Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing

Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change

Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business

jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

Social capital's impact on productivity

 

   A study conducted by SelectMinds showed the size and health of a worker’s network of contacts are also closely tied to a worker’s perception of their productivity.

• 86% of the employees surveyed say they are most productive in their jobs when surrounded by colleagues with whom they have a good relationship/rapport

 

Technorati Tags: SelectMinds,social networking,productivity

 

Consulting  - Research - Speaking  -  Training -  Writing

Strategy   -  Team development  -  Web 2.0  -  Change

Contact  me to  create  more  value  for  your  business

jon [dot] ingham [at] social [dash] advantage [dot] com

.

WELCOM to the world's leaders Facebook

 

   A few of the world's leaders (the auditorium doesn't look particularly packed) have gathered in Davos this morning to learn more about the World Economic Forum's new Sharepoint based social networking system, WELCOM.

It's been designed to help the participants connect and collaborate after the event and to help them give the world 'a fundamental reboot'.

I agree with the BT speaker that it sounds 'pretty darn exciting' and I wish I could use it... but the question has to be whether any of those gathered together in Davos will actually do so.

This article from the BBC business editor, Tim Weber, suggests probably not:

"The discussions here suggest that many companies are still struggling to move beyond having a colourful website towards really using the internet to their advantage.

And to make things worse, hardly any company knows how to cope with the rise of social media - the Facebooks, Twitters, blogs and YouTubes of the digital world."

 

Perhaps Barack Obama's influence will help here?

 

Technorati Tags: WELCOM,World Economic Forum,Davos,social network

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training - Writing
• Human Capital - Social Capital  - Organisation Capital
• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
• jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

  .

Collaboration in 2018

 

   Happy New Year.

You'll have seen many sets of predictions for the new year / following decade.  I'm not going to make any others, although I still think work will develop in the direction described by this, and my HCM blog.

However, I will reference Workforce magazine's predictions for 2018 (NASA's target date to return to the moon) which suggest that collaboration will be key by 2018.

"The top ranked prediction was that 'there will be an increased focus on infrastructures - such as social networks and wikis - to support strong relationships and collaboration'.

The second-most popular choice predicted novel work arrangements: 'the structure of work will become more adaptive, more informal and less focused on formal structure and static design solutions'.

Gurjar, of Infosys, envisions expanded use of virtual teams of employees who communicate extensively through videoconferencing, e-mail and text messaging,  Gurjar said people are learning to work well together without much, if any, face-to-face interaction.  At Infosys, workers text message despite sitting just a few feet away from each other'."

 

I don't argue against any of this, although I also think that we need to think more about what outcomes organisations are trying to achieve, before we worry too much about the infrastructures and work arrangements that will support these outcomes.

This was the focus of my survey conducted during 2008, and I'll be reporting on the outcomes of this over the next few days or so.

 

Technorati Tags: Workforce Management,HR,2018,Future View,Ed Frauenheim

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training - Writing
• Human Capital - Social Capital  - Organisation Capital
• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
• jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

  .

The dark side of networking

 

   The Demos report, Network Citizens that I referred to in my last post on Cisco notes that as well as considerable benefits (including creativity, innovation and freedom, meritocracy, openness and democracy), organisational networks can lead to certain downsides ('the dark side'), in that they can:

• Exclude and discriminate
• Enable people to hoard power for themselves
• Promote the interests of the few.

 

The problem is that networks reflect the people who constitute them. So if the interests of these people and therefore the network and the firm diverge, this can increase problems rather than opportunities:

“Virtual, online network, power is generally less visible than in the formal organisation – where organograms clearly show who has authority and accountability… In a network, the rivers of power often flow underground… Without enough attention, these challenges jeopardize the very gains we presume networks can deliver.”

 

So network managers need to ask themselves:

• "Am I excluding some people from my network for no good reason?
• Does the network extend across gender and ethnic boundaries? Should it?
• What are the unwritten rules of network exchange – and are they fair?"

 

Demos' findings relate very closely to Rob Goffee's and Gareth Jones' research on sociability, that I've been reading after hearing Gareth Jones speak recently, and which I will review in my next post.

 

Technorati Tags: Network Citizens,Peter Bradwell,Richard Reeves,Demos,dark side,social networking

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training - Writing
• Human Capital - Social Capital  - Organisation Capital
• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
• jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

  .

Cisco Leading from the Middle

 

   Earlier this month, Melcrum's blog referred to a recent report, Network Citizens, written by Peter Bradwell and my ex-Penna colleague, Richard Reeves, now at Demos, which argues that although today’s difficult business environment tends to create an instinctive reaction from management to “batten down the hatches" we actually need to steer away from traditional command and control hierarchies - where productivity is closely monitored and measured - and towards freedom and flexibility based on responsible, prosperous social networks.

The report was based upon visualisations of team networks in six organisations which found social networks to be at least as powerful as the formal organisation structure.

Melcrum comments on the findings of the report as:

"Do not separate social and professional networking. Attempts to control employees’ use of social networking software at work may damage the organization by depleting its network capital.

1. Do not separate social and professional networking. Attempts to control employees’ use of social networking software at work may damage the organization by depleting its network capital.
2. Value networking with people outside the firm. Too often, only senior staff are encouraged to build external relationships. The power of horizontal networks across organization boundaries is clear and growing.
3. Keep in touch with ex-employees. The temptation during a difficult economic climate is to hunker down, but this risks cutting off flows of network capital. Companies should consider keeping former employees in the network.
4. Do not police networks, but consider improvements. These should be a first step towards collective conversations about the networking rules of the game."

 

The report supports my earlier post, Organisation Design is dead!, as well as many others, for example, this short but powerful one by Richard Dennison at BT, arguing that social networks do something that organisation structure cannot.

I still think this is probably true, although it's interesting to compare with another approach taken by Cisco and described by CEO John Chambers on the Harvard Business Review Editors' blog.

Agreeing with Demos, Chambers argues that the need for fast execution means that an authoritarian, command and control approach is the biggest barrier to future performance:

"Still, it became increasingly impossible to for Chambers to gather information and make decisions fast enough for his massive company to act on new opportunities. Cisco must constantly adapt to new and shifting technologies and rapidly-changing global business environments, but Chambers found that it simply took too long for information and issues to filter up to him. There was no way he could make a timely decision, and then for the firm to implement plans, as quickly as needed."

 

The problem until recently, has been that Cisco leaders have known how to do command and control behaviours very well, and have struggled to let go, to lead from "the middle", rather than the top:

"He confesses that he would go into meetings and listen to a team discuss a problem for about ten minutes. 'I knew what the answer was and I'd say, 'Here's where we're going to go'.'"

 

Cisco's response was to create business networks (also agreeing with Demos, Chambers distinguishes between social and business networks which I generally think is missing the point - that business is social and social means about relationships, not something to do with leisure).

However, the really interesting point is that as opposed to Demos' advice and my post on 'organisation design is dead', the company set up these networks by redesigning its organisation as a network structure (not by creating social networks as a supplement to its existing functional organisation design):

"The company today operates as a set of cross-functional 'business networks' in which teams think through business problems and make decisions on their own in a fully-considered, yet rapid manner. As a result, Cisco is now able to simultaneously act on nearly two dozen large business initiatives, where previously the firm could only deal with one or two."

 

Technology has clearly played a role as well, with Chambers previously suggesting that in Cisco, as in other businesses:

"For the first time collaborative IT will be so intertwined with the business strategy you won’t know the difference between the two."

 

But both of Cisco's levers: the organisation structure and technology are about organisation capital not social capital.  So perhaps Chambers is right to call his business networks business, not social, after all.  Cisco have shifted from a command and control culture to one focused on collaboration and teamwork, and they've done so through organisational not social means.

The results have been very positive, although challenging to achieve:

"Shortly after Cisco's shift to a collaborative model, Chambers was surprised and delighted to find that cross-functional groups would 'come to the right conclusion on their own. And by the way, within a very short time period they usually would make as good or a better decision than I did'.

'Leading from the middle,' as Chambers calls it, has been an eye-opening experience for a man with nearly 14 years at the helm. 'It's the biggest change in the management of the company ever'."

 

It's a good reminder that not everything needs to be done through social networks.  And it perhaps suggests that most businesses undertaking cultural change will benefit from both organisation structure and social network design (as shown in the graphic from AT&T's report on the Business Impacts of Social Networking).

 

Technorati Tags: Network Citizens,Peter Bradwell,Richard Reeves,Demos,Cisco,John Chambers

 

• Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training -  Writing
• Human Capital  -  Social Capital  - Organisation Capital
• Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
• jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

  .

Leadership and Communityship

 

   Several different events I attended last week got me thinking about leadership and the increasing need for this to focus on horizontal rather than just vertical relationships in organisations.

 

Henry Mintzberg on Communityship

Firstly, David Creelman sent me a link to a video interview given by Henry Mintzberg who reckons that the more fuss that is made about leadership, the worse it often is.  A major reason for this is that organisations' approaches to leadership are often about the individual, rather than the community.

So we need to think about a something rather different, that Mintzberg calls Communityship, which is about caring and working for each other (a bit like servant leadership, but with a more 'social' perspective).

Young organisations tend to do this while they're growing and energetic.  But few large ones do.  Mintzberg gave Toyota as an example of a company that does seek to work with its employees.

 

Gareth Jones on Non-hierarchical Leadership

On Thursday, I attended a short event organised by the Human Capital Institute with Harvard Business Publishing.  Gareth Jones had a rather different perspective to Henry Mintzberg, stating that the current economic situation makes it precisely the wrong time to stop thinking about leadership.

But he did seem to agree that we need to focus on a more social approach to leadership: "Leadership is a relationship so it is illuminated as much by a sociological as a psychological perspective".

Followers want community - so leaders must be community builders.  So leaders need to display a common humility and narrow social distance, collecting and discussing information about people they work with in order to build common data.

 

Rob Cross on Leading through Networks

Then later the same today, I sat in some of Select Minds' Connect conference on the web,  Rob Cross explained how successful leaders know and work through networks (see slide).

I suspect these are all things that we would do naturally with enough common humility.  But as we're all only human, they're also all actions we should consider taking more consciously if we're going to develop a better sense of communityship in our organisations.

 

Technorati Tags: Communityship,Henry Mintzberg,Gareth Jones,Rob Cross

Tomoye / communities of practice

 

Bersin also notes that many social software providers have formed partnerships with Microsoft around its SharePoint product, allowing the two applications to compliment each other.

In some ways, Sharepoint is a competitor to these systems but the vendors have realised that Sharepoint is so ubiquitous that it makes sense to coopt it rather than compete against it.  In addition, Sharepoint is being positioned as a business productivity rather than a social application.

One of these providers that are seeking to add value to Sharepoint is is Tomoye.  I had a conversation with their Chief Executive, Eric Sauve, a few months ago.  Sauve explained that Tomoye has traditionally been focused on communities of practice which act as knowledge or intellectual capital clearing houses within a particular domain area and integrate the capabilities of wikis, discussion boards etc.  They are particularly useful for learning and development, and in connecting people across enterprises, particularly in an extended supply chain.

Sauve gave healthcare as an example - the things a doctor needs to know how to do are always changing and developing and communities of practice are being used to develop relationships between peers which doctors find are the best way of gaining advice rather than reading lots of different studies.

However, Tomoye have been developing their applications into broader social networking and believe that the addition of social aggregation tools, tags, networking, blogs and the ability to rate items etc make these more appealing to people than traditional communities of practice as they are built around peoples' personal profiles rather than thematic areas of knowledge.  So people can find things that are relevant to them and can interact with this content.

Tomoye's approach is further described in the Bersin report.  This explains that one approach to introducing social software applications into learning or talent management is to focus on a single, high priority learning programme that provides a resulting community with a broad taste of social media systems.

Bersin then explain that Tomoye offers another path:

"Instead of blending several social functions with a single program, focus on a single social function and use.  Then, create very low overhead ways for users across the enterprise to engage with that function.  This approach allows you to expose many more parts of the organization to the possibilities of networks, allowing the enterprise to answer the question of "where can such tools provide the most business impact?

Tomoye also provides one very common example use case, on which to base network-building efforts: knowledge-sharing, or question-and-answers.  Use the social platform to provide a method for employees to 'Ask the Experts' within their organization.  Leverage the discussion forums or blogging functions within a social software application, like Tomoye, to jump start communities without their even knowing it."

Bersin also provide the following graphic depicting Tomoye's 'wedge strategy':

 

I think this relates to the debate on whether social media should be introduced with a major launch or under the radar.

 

Technorati Tags: Bersin,Tomoye,communities of practice,Eric Sauve