Social Business at the Economist’s Talent Management Summit

 

  On Thursday, I attended the Economist Group’s Talent Management Summit yesterday. You can see my blog posts from the sessions at Strategic HCM:

• Setting the talent agenda
• Future proofing the business (strategic workforce planning)
• Leadership behaviours for the future
• Recognising individuals: GE vs Aviva.

 

My first conversation with one of the delegates was with Tina from the US. We got talking about social media (I was just back from the Social Business Forum in Milan) and, emphasising the vital role of ‘social’, I remarked that though talent is important, I expected to find a bit of a vacuum around the potentially larger agenda of how talent is enabled to work together. How wrong I was! - I think I probably got more out of this conference from a social business perspective than I did from the day before (which emphasises why I think Enterprise 2.0 type conferences are still FAR too technology based).

Firstly, we had some good inputs from Rafael Ramirez at Said Business School at Oxford and Santiago Alvarez de Mon at IESE who talked about the need to understand the collective, rather than just the individual, future.

Two examples are:

- Barcelona’s football academy which selects your boys (Messi was there at 14) and teaches them how to play football, but more importantly, teaches them attitude, and develops a belief about playing as a team, not as individuals. Barca has a higher proportion of home grown talent than any other football club and a different culture, or attitude to work (also see this post on socialism in football).

- El Sistema – a system of orchestras in the poor parts of Venezuela which teaches kids to play instruments and which has found that children learn better when they play together than when they try to learn individually.

 

In business terms, leadership as a transformation of society – so you need to be in touch with society. Or if business is about relationships, then leadership is the quality of that relationship.

But there’s no relationship without the art of engaging people in courageous conversations, so we need to locate the point, in the organogram and in time, where courageous conversations are going to happen.

Leadership is not power. It’s trust, patience, respect, concern for the other, raising intriguing questions, and empathy: forgetting about myself and being in touch with you. But it’s impossible to be in touch with someone else if you are not in touch with yourself.

And its outcomes are trust, engagement, energy, inspiration…

Speakers provided some good business examples of collective futuring too. Eg Deborah Baker, Director for People at BSkyB (pictured) noted that leadership has become increasingly collaborative and team focused, as organisation structures have shifted to become less hierarchical, flatter, matrixed etc.

It’s about empowering others, and developing others. Reinforcing Santiago’s (or was it Rafael’s – sorry) point, Deborah noted that leaders can’t develop others unless they’re developing themselves. They need an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses to get the best out of others.

 

I love these points about there needing to be a focus on the individual before there can be one on each other.  As I’ve posted before, organisations need to be human before they can be social.  See this case study as an example.

 

More coming up from Phil Smith, CEO, Cisco UK & Ireland and Susan Peters, CLO at GE.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Rafael Ramirez,Said,Santiago Alvarez de Mon,IESE,Barcelona,football academy,El Sistema,Deborah Baker,BSkyB,social,leadership

 

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Social Business Forum

Unsocial: the Unconference

 

  And I’ve also got another unconference focusing on social media, this one organised by Mavencast and being held on 14th June at the Imagination Gallery. There are actually two parts:

-   A more traditional workshop on HR and social media:

From recruiting and learning to internal communications and managing teams, social media presents a range of opportunities for improving the effectiveness of your organization.
This workshop provides an introduction to the technologies, applications and value of social media to internal communications and HR. You will gain insights into the principles that underpin successful social media strategies as well as the potential benefits and risks.

Led by Jon Ingham, an authority on social media, consultant, author and former HR director, this is an ideal opportunity to get up to speed with the application of social media to HR.

 

-   The unconference, focusing on the social business:

By attending ‘Socialising the workplace’ you can discuss issues and share ideas with some of the best minds and leading practitioners of social media solutions, collaborating on best practice and implementation such as:

• Technology trends from workplace applications to analytics
• The principles of successful implementation
• How social computing is being applied

 

Use discount code SD-10 for 10% of the booking price for the workshop.

 

Technorati Tags: Mavencast,unsocial,social,unconference,HR,social media

 

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Social Business Forum, Milan

 

  Then on Wednesday 8th June, I’ll be presenting on HR 2.0 at the Social Business Forum in Milan – Europe’s main enterprise 2.0 / social business event:

Over the past three years the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 has been recognized as the main event on collaboration and cooperative business approaches in Europe. In 2011 the Social Business Forum will take this further by expanding the conversation to focus on the most critical organizational, economic and business challenges and opportunities social media in the business environment is creating for companies.

With the help of experts, international speakers and successful case studies, the event will show how a deeper engagement with an entire company’s ecosystem (employees, customers, partners and stakeholders), can revolutionize collaboration, marketing, services and innovation and thus provide a strategic lever for improving productivity, efficiency, responsiveness, and competitiveness.

The program will address collaboration, communication and innovation in the social media era with a strong focus on the following themes:

• Evolution of organizational, leadership and management models
• Definition of strategies which connect new ways of interaction enabled by social media
• Increasing agility and flexibility by connecting customer communities and participative initiatives with employees
• Engagement with and transformation of individuals into change agents
• Socialization of customer management, innovation and product development processes
• Sustainable approaches to the cultivation of communities and customer engagement
• Frameworks for measuring the return on investment and the vitality of communities
• Intranet evolution using collaborative tools
• Tools and methodologies for the analysis of informal exchanges and collaborative networks
• Improving the efficiency of knowledge work and knowledge sharing
• Sharing best practices and success stories
• The integration of social software within the flow of existing applications and practices

 

Among others on the stage the experiences of Nokia, Webank, Scottish Water, Toshiba and Fujitsu will be presented.

More than 25 speakers already confirmed including Sameer Patel, Keith Swenson, Stefan Lindegaard, Esteban Kolsky, Mark Tamis, Bertrand Duperrin, Andrew Gilboy, George Siemens, Mitch Lieberman, Craig Hepburn, Roberto Masiero, Fiorello Cortiana, Arrigo Andreoni, Massimo Paoli, Norman Lewis, Laurence Lock Lee, Emanuele Quintarelli, Emanuele Scotti, Rosario Sica and many others.

Register Now

 

Let me know if you’re going to be at the summit – it would be great to meet.  Or you can follow the tweets at #sbf11.

 

Technorati Tags: Social business,enterprise 2.0,summit,conference,Milan,2011

 

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Moon Shots on the MIX: Developing Communities of Passion Hackathon

 

  I’ve posted previously on Gary Hamel’s Moon Shots for Management and on my support for these.

I’m particularly interested in (and passionate about) this one:

 

Moonshot #22: Enable Communities of Passion “Passion is a multiplier of human effort, but it can’t be manufactured. It’s present only when people get the chance to work on what they truly care about.” Passion is a significant multiplier of human accomplishment, particularly when like-minded individuals converge around a worthy cause. Yet a wealth of data indicates that most employees are emotionally disengaged at work. They are unfulfilled, and consequently their organizations underperform. Companies must encourage communities of passion by structuring work and revising management processes to help people tap into a higher calling at work, by connecting employees who share similar passions, and by better aligning the organization’s objectives with the natural interests of its people.”

 

For a year I even moderated a ning-based community focused on further exploration of these moonshots - wanting to better understand the enablement of communities from a practical as well as conceptual perspective.

More recently, I’ve kept an eye on the development of Gary Hamel’s new forum for developing the future of management: the Management Innovation eXchange, or the MIX.

So when the MIX announced the formation of a Hackathon to develop hacks focused on developing communities of passion I was keen to get involved and am now working as part of a small group to develop a shared understanding about the value and attributes of these communities, the barriers in their creating and sustaining them etc.

 

Developing the Hack

  The hackathon is definitely producing some interesting outputs already – you can see these up at the MIX.

I particularly like Steve Todd’s definition of a community of passion, based upon his Wordle that I’ve included above:

“Together, an innovative new group of members share their interest and ideas, for the purpose of one common goal, and build many different, unique solutions.”

 

As well as his definition for what it means to enable a community of passion:

“Question your mind,think of others, identify talent, find knowledge.”

 

Todd suggests the key enabler for communities of passion is selflessness.  I’d certainly agree selflessness is good, which is why I think other heavy users of social media often make such good social companions.  But I think there’s more to it than this as well.

For me, the real key goes beyond selflessness, it’s togetherness.  It’s not about me, but it’s not just about you – it’s about us.  (The problem I think is that Todd took out all the words such as passion, community and people in creating his Wordle – but this means that this means the essential truth of what community is about.)

 

My input focused on the problem of limited time / priority.  People have so many other things to do that there are only a couple of communities they can ever be that active in.  This means that the strongest contributors in one community are often limited to being lurkers (legitimate peripheral participants) in others.

In organisations, this means leaders need to:

• Educate their employees that participation in community is important
• Provide their people with enough free / unallocated time to invest in community activity
• Help / allow their people to prioritise – to decide which two or three communities are most important to them (feedback from these would then provide the basis for these employees’ performance management, accepting that the employee would be a lurker in any others).

 

Developing the Community

  The other thing that has interested me is how the Hackathon group / team has itself been developing as a community (I’m not actually sure whether it has ever been designed to be a community, and in some ways falls out of the confines of a community as defined above in that the group has a very clear task focus.  However, for me, there’s a clear logic in the group becoming a community which is to provide an experiential, action learning based approach to developing the communities of passion hack.

 

It’s one of the things I’ve never liked about the MIX – it’s really a very anti-social site.  There’s no real way to discover who’s there (other than using google - site:www.managementexchange.com), or to communicate with them, other than in the context of a particular update.  And it’s also very hierarchical – with regular posts from Gary Hamel’s friends (the mavericks) – meaning it’s even less likely that effective collaboration and innovation is going to take place.

Not everyone has liked the system we’ve been using for the hackathon – Saba’s Collaboration Suite – eg there have been quite a few comments on its clunkinness.  But I actually prefer the Saba system to the MIX – it’s at least got an element of social – allowing people to connect to each other and chat more generally.

However (and I don’t know if this is a flaw with Saba’s system or just the way it’s being used), I’ve also found the hackathon process very constraining.  We’re following a design thinking approach which I think has been useful in helping us work together in a systematic way to achieve something of value, but hasn’t enabled much bonding.

I think we needed a sense of who we are and how we relate before we started to put those relationships to use.  I think doing this lies at the heart of most innovation, and communities of passion too.

 

Also see these posts:

Gary Hamel on the Future of Management:

• What’s your HCM POV?
• Management innovation: can dogs do the tango?
• Requirements for organisational innovation

Management Lab:

• MLab Management 2.0 conference
• At MLab with the Undercover Boss

Julian Birkinshaw on Reinventing Management:

• Reinventing Organisation
• Julian Birkinshaw: Reinventing Management (“There must be a better way of running large companies”)
• Management models and Social Advantage
• Julian Birkinshaw on Management Innovation

My / other hacks at the MIX:

• Is 2011 the time to stop treating people like tools
• My best hacks and stories at the MIX

 

Technorati Tags: Gary Hamel,Moon Shots,Management,Innovation,Exchange,MIX,Hackathon,Communities,Passion,Saba,Live,Collaboration,hacks

 

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Social business webinar

 

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

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

 

You can book here.

 

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

 

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John Lewis’ Co-Ownership Model and The Royal Wedding

 

  I’m a republican.  And I’ve avoided the royal wedding today by flying to Atlanta where I’m attending an unconference tomorrow.

On the flight out I’ve been reading this month’s Management Today, which includes an interview with John Lewis Partnership’s Chairman, Charlie Mayfield, and I’ve been struck by the similarities between this company’s co-ownership model, and the reasons why I’m a republican.

 

Co-Ownership

As Mayfield has explained in the Times a few years ago, co-ownership provides a good basis for long-term planning in business:

“Our success in that aftermath and our future economic growth will depend on knowledge-based companies working in new areas of business such as genetics and climate change technology. Such businesses tend to thrive when the people with the knowledge feel they have a stake in their future. Innovation will also be key to their success.

They will not grow into sustainable businesses unless they are built on a structure that encourages a long-term approach to investment and gives the people involved a stake in their success. The modern plc may not be it.”

 

He clearly sees the ownership model as one of the central planks in John Lewis’ success:

“Our constitution is most definitely not a philanthropic idea.  It’s a commercial idea.  A competitive idea.  It’s not political, it’s about engaging people.  We create a culture of ownership and people feel valued.  So they perform better.  That is a very powerful performance lever.”

 

Indeed.  (The article also suggests that:

“If you stack shelves at Waitrose or sell bed linen at Peter Jones, you regard yourself as a cut above the till jockeys at Asda or Debenhams.  You are the creme de la creme, with skin in the game.”)

 

So the suggestion is that co-ownership changes employees (‘partners’)’  perspective about their employment and employer, making them more engaged, with higher performance a result.

I think there’s a bit more too it than this.  I’d suggest the main benefit of this less hierarchical approach is enhanced co-operation - that John Lewis’ people are not just in the game but are playing in the game together.

 

Republicanism

I probably don’t really need to explain the analogy I’m making here.

But let me just emphasise that one key difference between John Lewis and other UK retailers is that Mayfield reports indirectly to his staff (through a 70-strong council of elected partner representatives), rather than simply the other way around.  It’s not too dissimilar to a Presidential political model where the populate appoints the President.

In other more traditional organisations, the boss is much more clearly on top.  He (still less often she) are the corporate equivalents of our dear old queen.  And employees don’t have the same sort of stake in the business that they do at John Lewis and they don’t get the same chance to ask questions, they simply need to do what they are told (as in the anthem: “Long to reign over us”).

So just as John Lewis gets improved performance from its enhanced engagement and co-operation, wouldn’t Britain (the United Republic?) benefit from giving its people (citizens not subjects) more of a stake as well?

 

Technorati Tags: Charlie Mayfield,John Lewis Partnership,Management Today,monarchy,royalty,royal wedding,republic

 

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Social HR / HR 2.0 webinar – slides

 

  I’m a few weeks with this, but I’ve now added the slides from my recent webinar on social HR / HR 2.0 to slideshare .  I’ve included links to all the references I discussed so you can see these in the presentation transcript (you’ll need to click through to Slideshare for this).

 

Social HR 2.0

View more presentations from Jon Ingham

 

My original notes on the webinar are here.

 

And a reminder about my next two webinars:

• Social Business webinar
• HR Innovation webinar

 

Thanks again to Citrix GoToWebinar for supporting me to deliver these.

 

Technorati Tags: HR,business,management,organisation,social,media,web,2.0,innovation,value,webinar

 

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Social Learning Conference

 

  I’ll also be chairing this social learning conference on 1st March 2012:

 

#SLCONF 2012 is aimed at connecting the learning community with global speakers and thought leaders, to share insights on Social Learning. We are pleased to have confirmed the following Keynote speakers. We will continue to update this page, so please check again soon!

Jane Hart / Founder, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

Jane Hart is the Founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT).

Jane is also the author of the Social Learning Handbook, which discusses the principles behind using social and informal approaches in the workplace, as well as provides guidance on how to use social media for working and learning smarter. More ...

Dan Pontefract / Senior Director, Head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS

As Senior Director / Head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS, Dan is responsible for the overarching learning & collaboration strategy for the company. He has driven a philosophical and cultural shift in the way TELUS views and experiences learning called “Learning 2.0”; the shift to a social, informal and formal learning and collaboration model for all 35,000+ team members, bringing TELUS to the forefront of learning leadership. More ...

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social,learning,conference,Dan Pontefract,Training Wreck,TELUS,Jane Hart,Centre,Performance,Technologies

 

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Social Workplace Conference

 

  I’ll be moderating a panel and participating in a discussion at this conference focused on the social business in London on 1st November:

 

#SWCONF will bring together Senior Executives to discuss the future of the Social Workplace. We are currently confirming speakers for this year’s event, so please check back soon.

Charlie Duff / Editor, HRZone at SiftMedia

Charlie Duff is Editor of HRzone.co.uk – UK-based online community and e-zine for HR practitioners, providing advice, news and views on employment law, employee engagement, managing people and all other things HR.  She live-blogs from conferences, edits all the content you see and loves being a part of the HR digital and real-life community. Read more ...

Elizabeth Lupfer / Social Media Geek at Verizon and The Social Workplace

Elizabeth Lupfer is a geeky-cool internet strategist who combines her self-professed social media addiction with over 14 years of technical knowledge to develop measurable strategies and tactics to humanize and market a company, both internally and externally, through the judicious use of social technologies.  Elizabeth founded The Social Workplace in 2009. Read more ...

Jon Ingham / Executive Consultant, Social Advantage

Jon Ingham is an independent strategic people management and organisation development consultant working across Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia. His main focus is on helping organisations gain competitive advantage through the creation of human and social capital supported by effective leadership, HR and management practices, OD interventions, and the use of enterprise 2.0 tools. Read more ...

Sarah Goodall / Regional Head of Social Media (EMEA) at SAP

Sarah Goodall is the Regional Head of Social Media (EMEA) at SAP. She is an international marketing communications professional with over 14 years experience in the technology B2B sector including both software and hardware. Sarah is currently focused on social media, working at all levels of the organisation to ensure social technology impacts internal productivity as well as external brand awareness. Read more ...

 

You’ll find more details at http://www.socialworkplaceconference.com/, #SWCONF on Twitter.

 

Technorati Tags: Social business,workplace,conference,Elizabeth Lupfer,Verizon,Sarah Goodall,SAP,Vic Okezie,Crexia

 

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