Using social media at CIPD09

 

My favourite session yesterday was Nick Shackleton-Jones (@shackletonjones) on the use of social media supporting online learning at the BBC.  I was going to blog on this, but Rob Moss from Personnel Today got their first, so see his summary on this.

Instead, I thought I’d write about the use of social media at the CIPD conference itself.

There have been quite a few of us blogging and tweeting, and in many ways, this has led to the development of a small community, sharing experiences and learning with everyone else through social media, but also face-to-face between ourselves.   At times, it’s felt like a conference within a conference.

So, thanks for a great conference everybody!

Martin Couzins (@martincouzins) and Rob Moss (@robmoss) plus Kat Baker and Louisa Peacock from Personnel Today / XpertHR (@PersonnelToday  / @XpertHR / @HRSpace), all busy in the Press Office:

 

Charlie Duff (@charlie_elise) from HR Zone (@HRZone) :

Adrienne Fox (@foxlondon)writing for HR Magazine (US):

Jennifer Liston-Smith (@listonsmith) writing for the BPS:

 

Mike Morrison from RapidBI (@rapidbi) on the right, also with Nick Spindler from Nationwide:

(Check our Mike’s notes from the conference at cipd2008.blogspot.com)

Steve Bridger (@stevebridger) from CIPD Communities (@CIPDcommunities):

 

Last night, we met up at the CIPD’s tweet-up.

Julia (Twitter username pending!):

Mike (@rapidbi) with Klothilde (@kganzer):

Steve and David (sharing @RightwayCWS) with Irsa (username pending)

 

The CIPD’s Natalia (@NAlexandrou or @CIPD_Events) with Charlie (@charlie_elise or @HRZone) and Steve (@stevebridger or @CIPDcommunities):

 

Well done to the CIPD for raising the role of social media this year.  There’s still a way to go, but it’s been a very good start.

 

A few other non-Twitter peeps (I won’t say ‘muggles’ again!).

Perry Timms from the BIG Lottery Fund before his session ‘Communicating with Impact’:

Former colleague, Alison Crossley:

The Elsevier stand – my book’s just about visible on the back shelf:

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social media,social networking,web 2.0,HR,learning,CIPD,Manchester,Nick Shackleton-Jones,BBC

Cross-posted from my Strategic HCM blog.

 

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HR & social media workshops

 

   I’m doing quite a few workshops on HR’s use of social media over the next few months.

One session I’ve just agreed on is going to be with the HR Society (not till March though).

I’m going to be looking at the 3 parts of the agenda I believe are important:

• The Social business – what this is, and why it’s a great opportunity for HR
• Social HR – how HR can use social media tools to support recruitment, learning etc.
• Social media practice – an experiential session ensuring all participants have some personal understanding of how they might use the tools themselves.

 

If you’re a member, do ensure you’ll come along, and if not join! – or ask me to do a session just for you and your organisation etc.

 

Technorati Tags: Social media,web 2.0,social networking,social business,enterprise 2.0,workshop,training,development,HR,HR 2.0,HR Society

 

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Enterprise 2.0 conference: Connecting the Dots

 

   In his comment to my last but one post, reviewing Andrew McAfee’s book and his presentation at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Mike Ricard, Enterprise 2.0 Community Manager at Reed Elsevier responds to my view that Enterprise 2.0 needs to be much broader than IT by stating:

“Those tools are social enablers. The alternative I have seen HR suggest are people networking 'get togethers'. That's OK if you are in the same country and you can manage to coordinate your schedules, but what if you are not and you can't? And often it is the same A-types who dominate the proceedings.”

 

I have responded that:

“I don't mean to trash web 2.0. I agree it an absolutely key social enabler. But I think there are more... and that HR can do much more than organise get-togethers too.”

 

I hope to take this argument to the next Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston next Summer.  I’ve submitted my proposal (the first one on the site) and you’ll have the opportunity to vote for it from early next year.

Here’s the text:

 

Connecting the Dots to Competitive Advantage

Session Description

Enterprise 2.0 can increase efficiencies and help meet business objectives but it can also generate competitive advantage. To create higher levels of value, the use of social technologies needs to be linked to other organizational enablers, eg HR practices, OD interventions, facilities design etc. This session will show how.

 

Professional Biography

Jon Ingham consults with organizations to help them develop human and social capital as a key source of competitive advantage.

He generally works with employers that already have sound management approaches and helps them extend their agendas to gain further improvements in the capabilities and engagement of their people, and the effectiveness of their organizations. He is based in the UK but works on a global basis.

Jon also works as a researcher, speaker, trainer and writer. He has recently spoken in the US, Europe,Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He has also lectured in strategic management, change management and human resources on executive MBA courses in both West and East Europe.

Jon started his career in Engineering, then spent six years working in IT before moving into Change Management where he has spent most of his career. He has also worked internationally as an HR Director.

Jon has a BA in Psychology, a Masters in Engineering and an MBA. He is a Certified Management Consultant, a member of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and its occupational psychology division, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).

 

Company Background

Strategic Dynamics Consultancy Services Ltd is a human capital and change management consultancy with a difference. What makes us unique are our beliefs that:

• People are a key source of innovation and competitive advantage - we use this insight to help transform people and organisational capability
• People are the focus of effective change – we work with, not against, the quirks of human spirit and the dynamics of human behaviour
• People work best in open, challenging, collaborative relationships – our consultancy services are based on this approach.

 

The consultancy is led by Jon Ingham, an experienced business manager and consultant, and is supported by a small team of employed and associate consultants.

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,conference,Boston Consulting Group,2010

 

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Andrew McAfee on measuring social media (and ROI)

 

   The other section of his book that I think McAfee has written very well is the one on measurement.

I haven’t always been a fan of his approach on measurement which, like his general conceptualisation of Enterprise 2.0, seems to me to focus too much on activities (use of web 2.0 tools) and business benefits with very little focus on the intermediary stage of outcomes (social capital) which I consider to be the most important aspect of this field.  See for example this quote from one of his blog posts:

“Why not measure instead what we’re really interested in –  innovativeness, productivity, service levels, etc.?  For one thing, they can be hard to measure… So I advocate measuring and evaluating people based on their contributions to E2.0, and have some faith that E2.0 helps with innovation, productivity, service, etc..”

 

However I do like the way that, in the book, McAfee suggests organisations should measure progress, not ROI:

“It’s possible to quantify many things about an Enterprise 2.0 initiative: the number of blog posts and comments; the number of wiki edits, editors and new pages; the population of tags created; the volume of trades and traders in prediction markets; the number of members in a technology-facilitated social network and the volume of updates they share with one another; the popularity of all these ESSPs as measured by the number of times they’re viewed; and so on.

It’s also both possible and smart to collect case studies; anecdotes, and examples over the course of the effort to demonstrate the values of ESSPs.

I do not, however, advocate that decision makers should ask for quantitative ROI analyses, either before approving an Enterprise 2.0 effort or to assess its progress.”

 

To support this view, McAfee includes a quote from Kaplan and Norton that I also include in my own book (p145) to explain the same point:

“Improvements in intangible assets affect financial outcomes through chains of cause-and-effect relationships.”

 

These relationships mean that valuing benefits is always going to incur “estimates, at worst pure speculation”, particularly in separating impacts from “contemporaneous individual-and organisation-level changes”.

McAfee recommends that instead, Enterprise 2.0 advocates put together a business case that has three main elements:

Stages in my value chain	McAfee elements
Input	“Cost and time lines: The cost portion of the cost-benefit analysis.”
Activity	“Technology footprint: A technology’s footprint is its geographic, divisional, and / or functional reach.”
Outcome Impact	“Benefits expected: When describing benefits, it’s often useful to include short case studies or examples of the results of other ESSP deployments.”

 

McAfee concludes:

“A discussion of whether it’s worthwhile to pursue Enterprise 2.0 should revolve around whether these benefits are worth the cost, not whether the ROI figure for the project clears some hurdle rate.  I have never spoken with a leader or participant in a health Enterprise 2.0 initiative who wishes that she had calculated an ROI figure, whereas I have spoken with many people who have described their ROI exercises as unproductive uses of time and effort.”

 

I agree 100% with the conclusion, although I retain my concerns about not splitting out Outcomes and Business Impacts to make these benefits clearer still.

 

Photo credit: At.morey.tota

Technorati Tags: Andrew McAfee,Enterprise 2.0,measurement,ROI

 

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Andrew McAfee: Enterprise 2.0 (beta)

 

  I’ve been following proceedings at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week (and wishing I was there – or actually anywhere but here given the weather at the moment).

And I’ve also been reading the rest of Andrew McAfee’s book on Enterprise 2.0 (McAfee’s presentation at the conference is available on E2TV).

 

What I like about the book:

The technology

I really like McAfee’s explanation of the technology and its uses.  As a regular reader of his blog, there’s a not a lot new here for me, but it’s still interesting stuff.

And that’s it on that - I’m going to move on because McAfee’s views on the technology aren’t something I’d want to criticise either positively or negatively as he clearly knows an awful lot more about all of this than me.

 

Adoption of the technology

And in any case, my favourite sections of the book are those chapters (6,7 and 8) at the end of the book dealing with adoption of web 2.0 tools (ESSPs: emergent social software platforms):

“I’ve noticed that concerns around Enterprise 2.0 fall into two broad categories: fears that people won’t use the newly available ESSPs , and fear that they will.  The latter, which stem from the lack of upfront control common to ESSPs, tend to crop up first.  When first exposed to these technologies, business decision makers voice concerns about what happens when direct control is surrendered and many people can freely contribute to information platforms.  The scenario of broad participation in these platforms behind the firewall gives rise to a consistent set of worrying questions:

• What if employees use their internal blogs to post hate speech or pornography, or to harass a coworker?
• What if blogs are used to denigrate the company itself, air dirty laundry, or talk about how misguided its leadership and strategy are?"
• etc (it’s a good, and quite a long list!)

 

However, McAfee notes that whilst he deliberately looks for horror stories, he has yet to find any that make him question whether the risks associated with web 2.0 tools outweigh the benefits.

The risks are normally mitigated by:

• Comments being attributable
• Self-policing
• Role modelling and intervention by formal leaders
• Most people knowing how to act professionally, including when they’re online.

 

Behavioural problems in adoption

The second of McAfee’s concerns seem more appropriate.  Take-up of web 2.0 tools is not always fast and spontaneous:

“It’s easy to be impressed by the large, dynamic, and vibrant Web 2.0 communities on the Internet and so to overlook the fact that they’re actually quite tiny when expressed as a percentage of all Internet users.  A key challenge, then, for all Enterprise 2.0 advocates is… to understand why the ‘ ambient percentage’ of contributors to organizational ESSPs isn’t higher.

• Are the technologies themselves too primitive, or are they difficult to learn and use?
• Do some managers in an organization actually act to block Enterprise 2.0, because they don’t want information to flow more freely?
• Or are the real roadblocks internal, rooted somewhere in the heads of individuals [users]?”

 

McAfee reports that the main barrier isn’t technology.  And it’s not managers (other than as another category of user) – something that surprised him (and me).  It is getting people to change the way they work, and “their choices, biases and endowments”.  This is hard, and therefore:

“Many organizations, especially larger ones, have found that ESSPs remain a niche technology even well after their introduction, used by only a relatively small portion of the workforce, and lagging far behind the universal deployment of older channel technologies like e-mail.”

 

What I like less

The starting point

The first thing I’m less positive about is McAfee’s answer to the key question that organisations ask: “how should we start?”.

“I respond by asking them to talk a bit more about what they mean by Enterprise 2.0 and by introducing the concepts of the tie strength bull’s-eye and the set of possible benefits.  I have found that these frameworks help focus the discussion about ESSPs for the enterprise in productive ways.”

 

Now, I do like McAfee’s discussion of social ties, but I don’t like the way he allocates different web 2.0 technologies, and his case studies, with the different types of tie.

The choice of application is about purpose (connecting / collecting) not context (tie strength)

(The main difference between the VistaPrint and Serena Software examples isn’t one of tie strength.  To me, the difference is between connecting (people) and collecting (knowledge).  Wikis are for collecting (Vistaprint) and social networks are for connecting (Serena).)

Purpose becomes clear if organisations answer their question using my model instead of McAfee’s (see this post or the slides from my recent Social Media in Business presentation).

 

It’s not not about being social

I’m cheating here, as this comment is about McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 conference presentation rather than the book, but I do disagree with him that there is danger in the word ‘social’.

I’ve already dealt with this, so check out this post for my thoughts on this.

 

It’s not not not (not?) about technology

But my biggest concern is that I still think McAfee’s focus on technology in Enterprise 2.0’s is too heavy (particularly given his comments on the limited take-up in many organisations).

MacAfee seems to recognise this, explaining that Enterprise 2.0 is not primarily a technological phenomenon. 

But then he still says that Enterprise 2.0 is the phenomenon that occurs when organisations adopt the tools and approaches of Web 2.0.  If that’s not putting IT at the heart of his definition, I don’t know what is!

 

And this leads us to the central problem with Enterprise 2.0 which is that it’s still IT which is making all the running in this field.

Why is it that it’s someone from IT’s who has written the standard text on something that’s basically about behavioural change.

Why isn’t someone from HR writing this.  Oh wait, they are!  And I hope to start sharing some drafts of it with you in a couple of month’s time.

 

Also see:

• Andrew McAfee’s blog
• Andrew McAfee: Enterprise 2.0 (the alpha version of this post)
• Enterprise 2.0 crock?   Depends how you define it…
• Enterprise 2.0 / the Kumbaya zone

 

Photo credit: Alex Dunne

Technorati Tags: Andrew McAfee,Enterprise 2.0,book,conferences,#e20conf

 

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Looking back to November 2008

 

  You may also be interested in these posts from the end of last year:

• Cisco Leading from the Middle
• Leadership and Communityship

 

Or even the year before?

• Examples of intangible capability
• One definition of social capital
• Social capital
• Organisation capital
• Human capital
• What's this Social Business thing about?

 

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From human to social capital

 

I’ve got an article, ‘Building Human into Social Capital’ in the new issue of Strategic HR Review.

This is an excerpt:

 

Building social capital

But what about social capital? This is another outcome and refers to the connections, relationships and conversations between people working in an organization. The differences between this and both human and organizational capital are important, as each need developing in different ways.

Social capital is developed by paying attention to how people are relating to each other – to the spaces between people on the organization chart. However, social capital is highly intangible and the links between it and the activities that develop it are complex and distant in time and space. It is not something that is easy to measure or develop and, because of this, it tends to get ignored.

However, the point of performance in most organizations is the team, not the individual. So it is social capital, rather than human capital, that is the greatest enabler for competitive success. Consider these two examples to illustrate its role:

1. Developing a culture of innovation. Changing culture depends on having a big idea and aligning everyone in an organization around it. However, this is not just about behavioral and attitudinal change. Encouraging people to be more innovative is also about helping them create new types of meaning about their work – and meaning is established through conversations with other people. So if you change the conversations (part of the social capital), you change the meanings and, therefore, the culture too.
2. Knowledge management. Many businesses have tried to manage the explicit knowledge residing in their databases but a lot of these organizations are now realizing that much more important is the tacit knowledge in their peoples’ heads. Knowledge management in this paradigm is about connecting the right people and enabling them to participate in effective conversations (social capital again) to share and build on the knowledge that exists.

 

See the journal for more from the article (or keep tuned to this blog for more of the same).

 

Technorati Tags: Social capital,Strategic HR Review,article,Jon Ingham

 

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My Social Media in Business presentation

 

Social media: First Violin (not the whole Orchestra!)

This is the presentation I gave at the Social Media in Business conference earlier today.

Jon Ingham Smib Presentation

View more documents from Jon Ingham.

 

The key points are that:

• Organisations create value (and drive competitiveness) through social media by focusing on capability, particularly social and relational / customer capital
  • Not by focusing on the technology
  • Not by focusing on business results
    • Saying “we need to think about the behaviours resulting from the technology” is still focusing on the technology!

 

• We need to be able to articulate the type of capability we want to create (ie what are the groups, connections, relationships, behaviours, conversations etc)
• Once we have done this, we should be able to look forwards in the strategy map / value chain to estimate the business impacts of having this capability
• And look backwards to identify the organisational processes that can be used to create the required capability (and which may, sometimes, be supported by social media).

 

Although the afternoon sessions was designed to to focus on measurement, I didn’t get time to do talk about this – or I think really, I forgot – it would have only take another few seconds to have said:

“Measurement is easy – it’s setting objectives (articulating the type of capability and identifying the most appropriate processes, tools and interventions) that’s hard”!

 

And ROI is just a calculation based on the Investment and Impact stages of the value chain.

 

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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

 

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Visa Europe: What do you want to be when you grow up?

 

  Did you get through yesterday’s rather monster ‘HR in the Social Business’ carnival?  Well, apologies, but I think this is going to be an even longer post… (it’s well worth reading though!)

 

I recently attended a great event, ‘Delivering Outstanding Performance’, organised by Michelle Lawton from Consult HR and ‘MOK’ from The Innovation Beehive.

Opening the event, MOK suggested that to contribute to their employers’ success, people need to be clear about what they want to be, who they are, and how that fits with their organisation.

We then had a presentation from Derrick Ahlfeldt, SVP HRM at Visa Europe with a case study from his organisation that demonstrated these points. In fact, Derrick’s story provided a great demonstration of much of what I’ve been blogging about here over the last couple of years too.

So I’ve gone a bit to town in describing Derrick’s presentation – and have also provided some notes / links to previous thoughts that support and occasionally challenge some of this case study:

 

Visa Europe story	My perspectives (NOT Derrick’s necessarily!)
As an association, Visa Europe is about developing the whole market (the European credit card business) through collaboration. By 2004, following a major restructuring and re-engineering, people had initiative fatigue. There was a need to re-engage people and gain additional discretionary contribution. Since then, the company has been working to become a ‘Peak Performing Organisation’.	Derrick didn’t present it like this, but I’d suggest that collaboration is Visa Europe’s mojo. External collaboration is clearly critical to the company’s success and I think they understand (implicitly at least) that because of this, internal collaboration is equally as important.
A major part of this shift has been creating an environment in which people are put at the centre of the organisation – an environment in which people don’t feel they are ‘being done to’, but are ‘doing it for themselves’ – ‘making ownership and accountability personal’.	Visa Europe has clearly been ‘putting human capital first’ – treating people as providers of critical human capital rather than simply (human) resources (my Strategic HCM blog is all about putting people and human capital first). This is absolutely appropriate for an organisation whose mojo is about collaboration as people will need to take accountability in order to trust each other in order to support collaboration (the other way of saying this is that building human capital is a pre-requisite for effective development of social capital… - see below).
Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saachi and Saachi, suggests that a ‘Peak Performing Organisation’ has a ‘sense of family’ within the team. This has been another part of Visa Europe’s recent shift.	Visa Europe has also been developing social capital around a sense of family. Again, this is absolutely appropriate for an organisation whose mojo is about collaboration (my Social Advantage blog is all about developing the right social capital to support an organisation’s mojo).
This shift has been supported by documenting: · An inspirational dream (“to be the world’s most trusted company”) · Shared spirit (“what makes Visa Europe different to other organisations?” eg competitive yet collaborative, trusted, multi-cultural family) · A common set of beliefs (eg empowering and investing in the individual, nurturing the dynamics and diversity of the Visa family) · The “Greatest Imaginable Challenge” (an extraordinary stretch target which is unique to the organisation and inspiring to its people) · Focus It took over a year to “wordsmith” this document in order to ensure that everyone was comfortable with it.	I think this process demonstrates the need to develop a solid push behind whatever a company is trying to do (whether this is articulated through a BHAG, mojo or something else) as a way of translating this intent into organisational capability. I particularly like the way that Visa Europe’s shared spirit and common beliefs blend human and social capital (competitive yet collaborative, individual and family). I presume the “Greatest Imaginable Challenge” which Derrick didn’t want to discuss is Visa Europe’s BHAG. But note that this is developed from the mojo (an inside-out approach) rather than the other way around. I also think Derrick probably under-sold the work he and his team did to socialise this document – in my experience, the process of creating a joint ‘vision’ for the organisation is more important than the document it produces. It’s about creating a shared mindset, rather than a wordsmithed document!

The ‘Peak Performing Organisation’ programme	My perspectives
The programme currently consists of two phases:
Phase 1 - Individual Visa Europe has made participation in this phase of the ongoing programme voluntary in order to create a different dynamic from the past. This phase consists of: · Plenary introduction sessions (in the first year of the programme, Visa Europe ran three events, each with 150 people, which was helpful in getting the programme started – they now run just four smaller sessions per year) · Three small group sessions (6-8 people) facilitated by an inspirational player (someone who has “been there and got the T-shirt”) · Development and communication of a personal values-story, identification of implications and creation of an action plan   The key questions that individuals consider in this values story are: · Given you are this person and these are your skills and talents, what can you bring to this organisation? · How does this link? (are you doing what you wanted to do when you grow up?) · Are you in the right job and the right organisation?   (A volunteer kindly described for us his story – including his ‘home me’ and his ‘CV me’ – explaining that once he had identified his talents from this story and discussed this with his group, his ‘CV me’ became the ‘real me’ – the distinction was removed: “I’m now more passionate and enthusiastic for everything I do in life directed to what I’m good at and would like to do anyway.”)	I think this phase of the programme provides a really nice (whoops – sorry MOK) explanation of a human capital vs a human resources approach. Ie the phase is about employees as individuals, not the business. However, there is a limit to this. Derrick was keen to stress that employee empowerment should not lead to organisational chaos – employees still need to do what the organisation needs them to: “It’s about understanding what the opportunities are and trying to do more of what they want within their existing or another role”   (Or as MOK described it, it’s about “total freedom in a gilded cage”.) I’d suggest the next stage might be to open the door of the cage and see what happens…   The phase also starts to develop social capital too (via sharing values stories within the team). There are some really good examples (eg Herman Miller) where sharing this type of information has had a very powerful team boosting effect.
Phase 2 – Team In this phase, a whole team is taken away to consider: · Alignment – the team purpose, customer dreams and nightmares: o The team as a whole considers what they want to achieve o They then get some customers in to describe what keeps them awake at night o The team discusses what it wants to achieve for its customers   · Values – realigning purpose based on customer input · Implications – barriers and challenges for action planning	Another good approach – this time to develop social capital. But could it be even more strongly based upon the existing capabilities of the team (what the team can do rather than what customers currently need)?

The results	My perspectives
People have generally been very positive about the change. However, disbelievers are tolerated as long as they do the job they are expected to do. And some people have left the organisation.	I think people are always going to leave organisations during a transformation like this. And if they’ve left with a better perspective of whom they are and where they should be, this can only be a good thing for them, and is probably a good thing for the organisation too. If they’ve left because they’ve found the whole thing a bit too ‘fluffy’ then I think that’s a shame for them. But I’m convinced that doing this sort of thing will gradually become part of everyone’s normal expectations.
Since 2004, · Survey completion rates have increased from 83% to 96% · Overall engagement has increased from 72 to 90% · External customer satisfaction has increased from 6.8 to 8.1   There are other positive statistics too, but what the Chief Executive says is also important are the stories and what he’s seeing in the organisation.	The CEO’s focus on both quantitative and qualitative evidence is totally appropriate. Not everything that’s important can be measured, and I think this applies particularly to organisational capability, ie to both human and social capital. However, clearly when something important can be measured, it makes sense to measure it. And what’s behind Visa Europe’s success? I’ve discussed the role of mojo, organisational capability / human and social capital and making a solid investment behind this. The other two aspects that I believe are particularly important are: · Alignment – between each of these different concepts and Visa Europe’s programmes and practices · Best fit – the things that Visa Europe has been doing won’t apply for all organisations, but they apply for this organisation, with its focus on trust and collaboration, superbly well.   So the message isn’t do what Visa Europe’s done. It’s applying the same level of insight and sharpness to your own organisation. And if you do this, you should gain the same levels of Human and Social Advantage too.

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Phase 3?

We didn’t talk about this at all, but I’d suggest Visa Europe’s next step is towards even greater liberation of individual employees and of teams.

Derrick explained that as a result of the first two phases, Visa Europe is now confident that every person and every decision is linked with a golden thread to the organisation vision.

That’s great, but it still sounds rather too top-down?

I agree that they do need to manage performance against the organisation’s vision and objectives (top-down) but they would also benefit from taking ever greater advantage of the potential residing in each of the company’s employees – leading performance instead of just managing it (I’ll be talking about this in Greece next week) – ie bottom-up.

At the team-level, I’d suggest that Visa Europe continue to build social capital – perhaps by emphasising links across teams (bridging capital) as well as within the teams (bonding capital).

So I’d suggest they look at different opportunities that will help them do this – recognising that these may range from organisation development to social media; social events to reward practices; and social network analysis to facilities design.

 

Note - and I’ve emphasised this quite a few times - that the ‘social business’ (if this is what Visa Europe is) isn’t just about the use of social media.

 

So, for example, Michelle described a nice example from the BBC where people have been given the opportunity to go and experience different areas of the organisation for a few weeks (“the hot shoe shuffle”).

Note also that this isn’t in any way supposed to be criticism of Visa Europe’s story. They’ve done much more than most organisations would even dream of. I’m just explaining the direction I personally feel they should go.

 

Anyone else any suggestions for Derrick?

 

Thanks to MOK and Michelle for the invite to the event, and to Derrick and his IT colleague for the story.

 

Photo credit: Joe Mabel

Technorati Tags: Derrick Ahlfeldt,Visa Europe,MOK,Innovation Beehive,Michelle Lawton,Consult HR,Kevin Roberts,Peak Performing Organisation,human capital,social capital

This post is cross-posted at Strategic HCM.

 

 

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