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

 

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Lies, Trust and Chocolate

 

    Human Resources magazine / Hirescores report that more than eight out of 10 (82%) of office workers lie for their manager on a daily basis, saying that their managers are on the phone or away from their desk, to avoid unwanted conversations.

Lisette Howlett, managing director of www.hirescores.com notes:

"Companies spend so much time, money and rhetoric on treating customers fairly and yet there is a high level of institutionalised dishonesty. It appears to be part of the normal fabric of doing business."

 

It's not going to do much for trust within an organisation either.

This is one of the lessons in David Thompson's new book, Trust Unwrapped.  Amongst many other facts and illustrations, this includes a story from 'Thank God it's Monday' in which a PA refuses to tell a caller his boss is out:

" 'I cant do that, you are here' came the response from the new secretary.  After a pause she continued, 'If I lie for you now, you won't know when I'm lying to you'."

 

The main story is set in a chocolate manufacturer and other businesses, and uses these to show the benefits of allowing people to set their own hours, holidays and workload (eg ROWE) and even prices to develop trust.

My favourite paragraph is this one:

"Business isn't about products and services and stuff a lot of the time.  It's all about feelings, emotions and relationships."

 

I think if more organisations understood this, there would be a lot less corporate lying than Hirescores' survey suggests there is.

 

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Carnival of Trust

 

   My post 'Social Connections and Social Intelligence' was selected as one of ten articles on trust included in the December 2008 Carnival of Trust (originally launched by Charles Green's Trust Matters) which this month was held at Idealawg.

There are some other great posts there too.  I was particularly pleased to see this comment on BrainBlogger:

"As individuals, we strive to improve our human capital, or our economic value. We earn college degrees, take continuing education courses, attempt to expand our knowledge and master our respective fields. The more we know, the more we’re worth and it makes perfect sense (and boosts our pay!).

Yet, perhaps more attention should be paid to the value of social capital."

 

Which is of course exactly what this blog is about!

 

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Sociability and Solidarity

 

   I've been reading some of Rob Goffee's and Gareth Jones' Harvard Business review articles and their book, 'Why should anyone be led by you?', following a presentation by Jones recently.

in 'What holds the modern company together?', they make the point that culture is community:

"It is an outcome of how people relate to one another... Businesses rest on patterns of social interaction that sustain them over time or are their undoing.  They are built on shared interests and mutual obligations and thrive on cooperation and friendships."

 

I like this definition - and I'm increasingly finding that social (plus human and organisational) capital provides a more useful, granular way of looking at organisations than 'culture'.

I also agree with the author's perspective that culture can therefore be examined through the 'lens of sociology, which divides community into two types of distinct human relations: sociability and solidarity".

 

Solidarity (mind)

Solidarity measures a community's ability to pursue shared objectives quickly and effectively, regardless of personal ties.  It is about relationships which are build on common tasks, mutual interests, or shared goals that will benefit all involved parties.

 

Sociability (heart)

Sociability measures sincere friendliness and non-instrumental relations (in which people don't see others simply as means of satisfying their own ends) among members of a community, associating with each other on equal terms.  It is based on shared ideas, attitudes, interests and values and is sustained through continuing face-to-face relations.

Sociability leads to enjoyable work environments, morale, teamwork, sharing of information, openness to new ideas, creativity and engagement.  However, reinforcing the recent Demos report, and like solidarity, sociability also comes with certain drawbacks:

"The prevalence of friendships may allow poor performance to be tolerated.  No one wants to rebuke or fire a friend.  It's more comfortable to accept - and excuse - subpar performance in light of an employee's personal problems.

In addition, high sociability environments are often characterised by an exaggerated concern for consensus.  That is to say, friends are often reluctant to disagree with or criticise one another...  The result: the best compromise gets applied to problems, not the best solution.

In addition, high sociability communities often develop cliques and informal, behind-the-scenes networks that can circumvent or, worse, undermine due process in an organisation...  Friendships and unofficial networks of friendships allow people to pull an end run around the hierarchy...  In other words, networks can function well if you are insider - you know the right people, hear the right gossip.  Those on the outside often feel lost in the organisation, mistreated by it, or simply unable to affect processes or products in any real way."

 

To me, these aren't so much problems with sociability, as with poor execution or sociable approaches.  I think increasingly, organisations do need to be sociable, and organisations need to find ways to avoid the drawbacks outlined by Goffee & Jones / Demos.

 

Two dimensions, four cultures

Goffee and Jones plot solidarity and sociability against each other to provide the two by two shown in the graphic.  The authors emphasise that "none of the cultures is the best" but when discussing a fragmented culture (low solidarity, low sociability), they note "Few managers would volunteer to work for or, perhaps harder still, run a fragmented organisation."

They also have a few concerns about a communal culture (high solidarity, high sociability) too:

"The communal culture may be an inappropriate and unobtainable ideal in many business contexts...

First, high levels of sociability and high solidarity are often around particular founders or leaders whose departure may weaken either or both forms of social relationship.

Second, the high-sociability half of the communal culture is often antithetical to what goes on inside and organisation during periods of growth, diversification , or internationalisation.  These massive and complex change efforts require focus, urgency and performance - the stuff of solidarity in its undiluted form.

More profoundly though, there may be a built-in tension between relationships of sociability and solidarity that makes the communal business enterprise an inherently unstable form.  The sincere geniality of sociability doesn't usually exist - it can't - with solidarity's dispassionate, sometimes ruthless focus on achievement of goals."

 

So I think what Goffee and Jones are really saying is that organisations need high solidarity and high sociability, but not both (ie that the ideal culture is either networked or mercenary).

And I'd add to this, that solidarity is becoming more difficult to achieve, and therefore sociability is becoming increasingly important.  So if you have to choose between the two, choose this (ie networked vs mercenary).

However, I still struggle to see how both solidarity or sociability, executed well, can be a bad thing.  I'd respond to Goffee's and Jones' challenges by saying that organisations need to find ways of building sustainable cultures, which can support efficient achievement of goals, and that maybe if we did this, success rates in growth, diversification and internationalisation may be a lot higher than they generally are now!

 

Building sociability

Goffee and Jones also note that to build sociability, managers can:

• Promote the sharing of ideas, interests, and emotions by recruiting compatible people - people who naturally seem likely to become friends
• Increase social interaction among employees by arranging causal gatherings inside and outside the office, such as parties, excursions - even book clubs
• Reduce formality between employees
• Limit hierarchical differences
• Act like a friend yourself, and set the example for geniality and kindness by caring for those in trouble.

 

I think there are some great suggestions here.

 

Technorati Tags: Rob Goffee,Gareth Jones,What Holds the Modern Company Together,Why Should Anyone be Led by You

 

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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.

 

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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).

 

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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

Social capital - recruitment and retention

 

   In my Knowledge Infusion webinar, I talked about the increasing importance of social capital.  In Kennedy's webinar, I talked about some activities HR can take to develop it.

For example, in recruitment, HR can

• Develop their Employee Value Proposition / Employer Brand to focus on the sort of people who value relationships
• Look for people who understand the need to build their connections and relationships, for example through their use of social networking sites to increase the size of their network etc
• Look for people who have a high level of social intelligence
• Tap friends and contacts of existing employees through the use of referral schemes
• Let team members recruit new members of the team.

 

And when thinking about retention, HR can:

• Ensure teams actually do team – personally as well as professionally (ie that they really do work as teams rather than as groups)
• Articulate the benefits of working in the team (for example, by including this in a review of how an agreed EVP has ben delivered, going beyond a statement of benefits in a Total Reward Statement) so that this becomes a basis for rational as well as emotional engagement and therefore supports intention to stay
• If relevant, use contracts / retention bonuses to retain the team
• When people do think about leaving, encourage them to move into a customer or partner organisation, which can actually enhance rather than detract from social capital.

 

And, of course, HR can also ensure that that social capital is enhanced through ongoing management activities, whether these are face-to-face, or aided by technology (particularly web 2.0).

I think that as teams and social capital become increasingly important, these activities could increasingly act as differentiators and opportunities for competitive advantage.

And I think that they are are all particularly relevant at the moment, given the present economic and business conditions.  Many organisations are now paying increased attention to retaining human capital when they undertake restructuring and downsizing but very few organisations (none of the employers of the participants on the webinar!) are yet thinking about retaining social capital when they undertake these sorts of changes.

It would be god to hear from you if your organisation IS paying attention to maintaining or even developing its social capital at the moment, or if you'd like to talk about how you might be able to do this.

 

Technorati Tags: Kennedy Information,webinar,social capital,recruitment,retention

Hype or Groundswell?

 

    I've been meaning to post on 'Groundswell' for some time.  This book, written by two analysts who were both at Forrester, provides an interesting contrast to Gartner's warnings on hype.

Li and Bernoff believe that the evolution of social computing is creating a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works, in which people use technologies to get things from each other instead of from companies.

I'm still not really sure how deep this shift will be, but I do agree with the authors that the phenomenon is actually about people "acting on their eternal desire to connect", so in order to master the groundswell, companies need to "concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies":

"Companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a podcast there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for."

 

The technologies are being adopted quickly simply because they make connections and relationships more interesting, more varied and more frequent.  Which technologies will work will depend upon the participants' 'social technographics profile' which consists of the following groups:

• Creators.  The profile tool on Forrester's website suggests that only 12% of 34-44 year olds in the UK are creators, who like me, publish a blog or own web pages.
• Critics (22% of this demographic)
• Collectors (8%)
• Joiners (19%)
• Spectators (48%)
• Inactives (43%)

 

The groundswell inside your company

Although the book focuses on dealing with customers, the points it makes apply equally to dealing with employees and three examples are provided: Best Buy's internal community site Blue Shirt Nation; Avenue A / Razorfish's wiki; and Bell Canada's idea exchange, ID-ah!; as well as Ernst & Young's graduate recruitment site on Facebook.

To make these approaches work, employees need to know that "managers will listen to their openly contributed opinions, rather than punishing dissenters".  So organisations need to "promote a listening culture from the top down, ease and encourage participation with incentives, and find and empower the rebels in your organisation".

It's about changing the way organisations work.  And management involvement and active participation is crucial:

"We recall one puzzled professional services company that approached us with a conundrum.  It had deployed blogs, wikis and social networking tools internally, specifically targeting newly hired college grads who all said they were very familiar with these tools.  Yet several months into the rollout, there was hardly any participation.  Why not?  Because the company had deployed the technologies with little management sponsorship or involvement."

However, social technologies can't be forced on organisations from the top down, "because by their definition, these technologies require the participation of your employees".

 

Developing strategy

To help focus on the relationships, the books suggests a four-step planning process (POST) to develop strategy for dealing with this area:

• People - what are your customers ready for (using the social technographics profile)?
• Objectives - what are your goals (listening, talking, energising, supporting or embracing - eg through crowdsourcing)?
• Strategy - how do you want relationships with your customers to change?
• Technology - finally, what applications should you build?

 

The authors note that this could equally be OPST (just don't start with the T!).  To me, which of the two options will work best will depend on the type of value you want to create (see the value triangle). To add value to an existing business objective, use OPST.  To create value from people, look for the opportunities inherent in your people first, hence POST.

And the only change I would suggest to the process would be using A rather than T where A stands for activity, and can include any real or virtual activity / technology.  Relationships don't always need the use of technology to be enhanced.

 

Best fit in social capital

One of the many interesting points made by the book, which echoes my own thinking about HCM, is the need to find a best fit between strategy and organisational needs:

"Each tactic must adopt the tactics that are right for its customers and its way of doing business and adapt as the technologies change.  Copying others doesn't work because your company, your customers, and your goals are not the same as anybody else's."

 

So I think that when thinking about social capital, ie the value of an organisation's connections and relationships, we need to find a best fit too.  Do you want this capital to be based upon listening, talking, energising, supporting or embracing, and what content do you want these relationships to focus on?

And I think there is an interesting dilemma / paradox here.  How do you influence the nature / content of your social capital, when you can't direct the use of social technologies from the top down?

 

Sorry this review is so behind the times (Groundswell having already ben out for several months).  But at the moment, I am using this blog to help me catch up on the social computing as well as social capital scene. So I've got some book reviews of even older books coming up. 

It's going to be a few more months before this blog starts to provide much in the way of new thinking, rather than commentating on existing thinking.  But stay with me!

 

Technorati Tags: Groundswell,Charlene Li,Josh Bernoff,hype

Kennedy Information webinar follow-up

 

So what did you think of the webinar if you attended it?  It would be great to have some comments and / or questions here...

 

Technorati Tags: Social Capital,Productivity,Rentention,Kennedy Information,webinar,Jon Ingham