Management 2.0 developing social capital: Strategy

Monday, 4 May 2009

HR 2.0 strategy

Sunghwa Moon asked in his recent comment on this blog about what would be a ‘consulting methodology’ for HR 2.0. This is what I use, although I’d describe it as a process rather than a methodology, as I’d only ever use it as a guide and would be unlikely to ever follow this exact flow. And I’d see it as something that an organisation can use itself, rather than needing a consultant to support (albeit I believe that the right consultant would be extremely useful in advising and supporting on this).

The process starts with identifying the required organisational capability, ie what sort of social, as well as human and organisational capital, is the business (or public sector organisation) trying to create? Based upon this required state, and a gap analysis of the current state, a strategy can be developed. This also needs to be aligned with (informed by, but also informing ie both adding and creating value) the business strategy. And because web 2.0 is likely to play a significant role in supporting the HR 2.0 strategy, I include the IT strategy here too.

Because the HR 2.0 strategy is all about people, and people are different, I include a step here to think about the different talent groups or other segmentations that exist and need to be treated differently.

At this point, a strategy map and scorecard can be developed to support the strategy, outlining the strategy’s objectives and measures, and how these relate across activity, outcome (ie social capital) and business results. Various measurement tools, for example social network analysis, may be required to support this stage as well.

Onto implementation. Here, I identify six main areas of focus:

People. I believe any HR strategy needs to touch on the key people in an organisation, not just on the processes that support them. And I also advise that HR should have a hands-on role, not just a back-office one. I think these two points are particularly important under a HR 2.0 approach, and therefore suggest that the strategy identify the key people (perhaps those who are key to social connecting in the organisation, eg brokers, mavens etc) and what actions are going to be taken to provide direct support to these individuals?
Organisation. What design changes in terms of structure, process etc would support the development of social capital in this organisation. Also, particularly importantly, what OD interventions can be made to directly impact on the way people are connecting with and building relationships with each other?
HR and management processes. What changes need to be made to support a more open, collaborative approach?
Web 2.0 and other technology. How should these processes be best enabled? What sort of tools would fit best?
HR function capability and transformation. What internal changes within the HR (and learning, communication etc) function need to be made to ensure HR is able to effectively implement and support the new strategy?
Role of the manager. This is often the biggest piece of this sort of project. How can management itself be redesigned to operate in a completely new and empowering way?

Note that web 2.0 plays only a very small part of this process. I absolutely agree that this can be a huge enabler to the sort of changes that HR 2.0 will bring, but I believe HR 2.0 is much bigger than this as well.

Comments?

Previous posts on HR 2.0:

Technorati Tags: HR 2.0,social capital,process,methodology

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
.

Wednesday, 29 April 2009

HR 2.0 – a more strategic approach to HR (update from Bucharest HR 2.0 conference)

In my last post, I suggested that we should think about HR 2.0 as a change in management approach, rather than simply the use of web 2.0 technology.

I want to justify this perspective in this post.

A fundamental principle behind strategic HR is that we need to focus on outcomes, not activities. Web 2.0 is about activity. It refers to what we do, how we do things, and the technology we use to enable this. It doesn’t deal with the effects of using this technology. Therefore, in my view, it’s not a basis for strategic HR.

(I’m slightly over-stating the case here – there are occasions on which simply improving the use of technology without any further change will result in competitive advantage. But I think these occasions are fairly rare.)

I think this is what we found with e-learning. A major part of the reason why e-learning has failed to live up to the benefits that were initially anticipated is that we focused on e-learning as an activity (requiring us to introduce new e-learning courses) rather than the outcome of having learnt, including electronically, which would have taken us more quickly towards a blended learning approach.

I’ve made the same point in connection to HCM as well. HCM isn’t a more strategic approach than HRM because it involves a different way of operating (although it does). It’s different because it focuses on a new outcome – human capital – which HRM doesn’t include. HCM is therefore qualitatively different to HRM.

I think HR 2.0 needs to be qualitatively different to HRM too. This is what the ‘2.0’ tag is about. If we were talking about a slight shift, an incremental improvement on HRM, we’d be talking about HR 1.1 not 2.0. Or at least some people might be talking about it – I probably wouldn’t bother. I am talking (today, at the Bucharest HR 2.0 conference), and writing (here) about HR 2.0, because I think it is a fundamentally different approach to HRM. And I think this offers new and sizeable opportunities for HR to have more impact on their organisations, and provide a direct impact on competitive success.

(If your want some good arguments to support this case, consult Gary Hamel’s ‘The Future of Management’ in which he shows how management 2.0 is fundamentally different to traditional management still in operation in most of our organisations today.)

This is also why I recently updated the web name of my blog (the name in the top bar of your internet browser: ‘HR to HR 2.0 and human capital (HCM)’, and why I’ve included HR 2.0 in my elevator pitch.

The outcome of HR 2.0, is, I think, social capital. I’ll write further about this link and explain a little more about social capital in my next post.

Technorati Tags: HR 2.0. outcomes,social capital,competitive advantage