#E20S Developing social strategy 1

 

   In my last post, I raised concerns about Euan Semple’s reluctance to define a strategy for social media use.  Whilst I understand Euan’s wish to help organisations become less formal, which I support, I whilst I understand the role of emergence, I just believe social is too important to be left to chance.

My views about social are actually a lot closer to those that Rawn Shah from IBM covered at Europe’s Enterprise 2.0 Summit this morning.

Broadly,

1.   Organisations need to understand what the value creation from social technology will be (ideally, in my view, the need for value would drive the use of the technology rather than the other way around).  Eg:

• Radically innovate models markets products
• Leverage collective intelligence
• Innovate through partnerships
• Cultivate networks and communities of expertise

 

2.  Social conversations need to be structured to support this so that people know what they need to do (this is my key argument against Euan’s perspective).

In Rawn’s view, the journey is from lower to higher value (I don’t agree that there is one journey, or if there is, that these are the order to value):

• Capture unstructured data
• Collaboration and discovery
• Insight (attention, pattern recognition, semantic research)
• Transformation – which Rawn sees as embedding social within business processes (supporting process exceptions and avoiding process frustrations).

 

3.   This needs to be adapted for each line of business as these have slightly different needs (yes).  Eg HR will focus on:

• Mobilising speed and agility
• Retaining expertise within the company
• Improving recruiting and training
• Creating a culture of sharing.

 

4.   You then need to develop strategies and execute actions to support this, for example, in the area of HR / workforce optimisation:

 

 

Yves Caseau from Bouygues Telecom also came back to the point on business processes, questioning whether we still need them in the new social world and concluding that we do, at least for larger teams (1000 people) in order to support efficiency and execution.  This isn’t necessarily about lots of procedures as the real key to process management is role autonomy:

 

 

One of the speakers in a later session (apologies, can’t find my notes) suggested that perhaps processes are less important than this – users know what the business processes are – they don’t need to be told how they work – they just need the tools to be more efficient.

I’m not convinced we do need processes either – but for a different reason.  I think their role is being progressively taken on by networks and communities.  And I certainly don’t see them as being at the heart of transformation.  Processes can take you so far, but you need a supporting culture too – so that people behave a certain way when executing processes, but they behave the same way the rest of the time as well.

Still, a very insightful and entertaining start to the day…

 

(Note, I’ve got another post on adoption, and one on HR 2.0 (on Strategic HCM) coming up later.

 

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Tweeting Netiquette

 

   I’ve been reading my ‘mate’ (can I call you that, Euan?), Euan Semple’s new book, ‘Organisations don’t tweet, people do’.

There’s a lot of good stuff in here.

For example, there’s some wonderful advice on ROI:

“Consider turning the ROI question on its head.  Given that it appears inevitable that the web and social tools are going to become an even more significant part of how we do things, instead of asking me to justify the ROI of encouraging this process – justify to me the ROI of stopping it.  What is the financial benefit of continuing to do things in inefficient ways when there are more effective alternatives available?  Where is the competitive advantage in preventing staff from using these tools to build and maintain the networks that develop their knowledge and their ability to get things done?  Where is the competitive advantage in allowing your competitors to embrace these changes before you do and potentially re-inventing the industry you are so rigidly clinging to?”

 

I particularly like Euan’s discussion on social media friending:

“Even if we can learn to cope with the ‘friends’ bit, the other half of ‘real friends’ is problematic too.  What does ‘real’ mean?  Does it mean you have to meet face to face?  Is knowing someone face to face all it’s cracked up to be?  There are people I have worked with for years, working in the same office every day, who I barely know.  Some would argue it is possible to be married to someone and not really know them!  And yet there are many people I consider to be real friends on the internet who I have never met in real life.  Recently I got to meet a blogger I had have been friends with for ten years.  And I mean friends.  Over the ten years we have got to read each other’s thoughts on a whole range of topics and have experienced each other in more thoughtful way than many people in more normal circumstances.”

 

 

It’s certainly more apt advice than that published in the FT this morning, which includes:

“Social networking is another area where technology etiquette is still evolving. Tricky questions include whether employees should accept requests from the boss to be friends on Facebook, and if it is ever acceptable to ‘unfriend’ someone on a social networking site.

The answers are ‘no’ and ‘no’. The experts suggest politely declining requests from the boss with an explanation about keeping personal and professional lives separate. Letting a boss see social networking updates will only mean trouble later, if there are embarrassing photos posted by friends, or unwise remarks made about a bad day in the office.

The question of unfriending is harder. It can never be done with delicacy, the experts say, so the best solution may be to close down the account and start again if someone really must be removed a friends list. It is better to be more selective about accepting friends in the first place, than to deal with pruning them later.”

 

I can’t say I agree with either of these suggestions.  On the first point, it’d be much better to develop a personal rather than simply professional relationship with your boss (not always possible).  And on the second, right, yes, I’ll just delete my 2000 person Linkedin network so I don’t have the delete the person who’s just spammed me – I don’t think so.

However, whilst I vastly prefer Euan’s advice, I think Euan’s book, and the FT article approach the topic from the same angle.  They are about twitter netiquette (‘twetiquette’), about how to behave given the disruptive force of this new technology (and the societal changes which have supported and been reinforced by these technological ones).

Euan explains the primacy of behaviour:

“You can have an overall strategy of behaving in certain ways depending upon how your ecology develops.  It is possible to sell this as a strategy to those who need strategies.”

 

This would be my only criticism of the book.  And Euan might dismiss my criticism as overly structured and mechanical thinking (I’m sure he would do it nicely) – for him, it’s about ‘managing the mess’ and ‘needing more rubbish’, but I just think the opportunity of social media is just to great just for this.  We need to have a plan that extends beyond the ‘how’ (behaviour) into the ‘what’ (strategy) – and you’re not going to find it in this book.

That’s not to say that you won’t find lots of great advice – you absolutely will.  And you’ll be entertained from Euan’s stories from the BBC and elsewhere at the same time.  You’ll probably even find a few things you didn’t expect.  For example, I definitely recommend reading Euan’s final few words on love.  (And you can then go and vote for my proposal to talk about love at this Summer’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston!).

 

Picture credit: FT (hope they don’t mind a bit of cutting and pasting – it does give them publicity for their article!

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My Enterprise 2.0 Summit Schedule

 

       I’ll starting to really look forward to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris next week now.  I’ll be blogging and tweeting on quite a few of the sessions which you can follow via my id @joningham or by following the conference hashtag #e20s.

I thought it might help to let you know which of the sessions I’ll hopefully be attending (though I may change my mind).  Interestingly, though I’d assumed most my sessions would be in the ‘organisational excellence’, most of these are in the ‘project management’ one – perhaps because this is the area I understand least (and I may have to suggest speaking in the organisational / similar area in the summit next year).

All times CET:

 

Tuesday 7th February

09:30 - 11:00 Understanding the Social Business Excellence: Rawn Shah, IBM; Yves CaseauExecutive, Bouygues Telecom

I’ve met Rawn a couple of times in Boston and Santa Clara and I think he’s one of the most insightful people working in this area – so really look forward to this.  Expect more debate about the meaning of social business!

.

11:30 - 12:20 Social Maturity Strategies: Frédèric Charles, Lyonnaise des Eaux; Anu Elmer, Swiss Reinsurance Company; Joachim Niemeier, University of Stuttgart; Alexander Richter, Cooperation Systems Center Munich; Luis Suarez, IBM Spain

This is another key session for me – I’ve talked to Anu before, and met Luis quite a few times, including in Milan last year (and also over a projector screen from Gran Canaria).  And I think the idea of tailoring approaches to different contexts is an absolutely key one in 2.0 implementations.

.

13:40 - 14:30 Community & Engagement Management: Joanna Walczak, Lecko; Jerome Colombe, Alcatel-Lucent; Jon Mell, IBM; Björn Negelman, n:sight / Kongress Media

Should be some good ideas in this session.  I personally believe there are more important benefits of community than engagement, but the connection is a very solid one too.

.

14:40 - 15:30 Leveraging the Social Business Deployment: Johan Lybaert, Cegeka; Ludovic Dubost. xWiki; Mark Masterson, CSC Computer Sciences Limited

‘Challenges the correlation of adoption and deployment’ – No idea what this is supposed to be about, but look forward to finding out.

.

16:00 - 16:40 Realizing an Enterprise-Wide Assessment: Patrick Rumpel Abteilungsleiter, Allianz Deutschland; Michael Wegscheider, Allianz Deutschland; Lee Provoost, Dachis Group

More challenging correlations in this one.  I met Lee briefly as he was a panel member in the Social Workplace conference I chaired last year, and look forward to hearing more…

However, I might change my mind on this one and go and see Cordellia Krooss from BASF, who I saw in Milan last year, and others – speaking about the role of the Enterprise 2.0 Manager.

.

16:50 - 18:30 On the Road to the Model of the Social Enterprise: Richard Collin, Grenoble Ecole de Management; Jean-Christophe Kugler, Renault

.

Wednesday 8th February

08:50 - 09:40 Models for the Social Business Transformation, Nicolas Rolland, Danone; Jerome Colombe, Alcatel-Lucent; Luis Suarez,IBM Spain

I’ve come across Nicholas’ work quite a few times but have never met / heard him before so am really looking forward to this.

Shame though that I’ll miss two of the best speakers in 2.0: Bertrand Duperrin and Emanuele Quintarelli

.

09:50 - 10:40 Defining the Social Business Analytics: Peter Kim, Dachis Group; Guillaume, LECKO; Alexander Richter, Cooperation Systems Center Munich

A quickly changing area, so looking forward to this one too..

.

11:10 - 11:30 Dundu - The philosophy that can change a group: Fabian SeewaldDirector, Dundu-Teambuilding

DUNDU???

.

11:30 - 12:40 Interactive Roundtables: Jane McConnell, Frédéric Williquet, Fabian Seewald, Bertrand Duperrin, Jean-François Ayel, Björn Negelmann

More DUNDU

..

14:00 - 15:00 Future Roadmap of Social Business Technology: Ludovic Dubost, xWiki; Tarik Lebtahi, Dassault Systemes; Dennis O'Malley, Moxie Software; Sunny Paris, YOOLINK; Thomas Pich, blogSpirit; Stefano Pogliani, IBM France; Christophe Routhieau, blueKiwi

.

15:00 - 16:15 Next-Generation Eco-System and its key success factors: Dion Hinchcliffe, Dachis Group

I’ve seen Dion present the same presentation a couple of times, so we’ll have to see about this – I might have a look at what else is on in Paris…

..

Anyway, I hope readers of this blog will follow along with at least some of the sessions – or that I may even see you in Paris next week!

To register, visit here, and use the booking code 20ambassadorji for a 10% discount on the current registration fee.  There are still also some reduced, special prices for ‘consultants’, defined as freelancers and staff members of consulting firms with 20 employees or less.

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,social business,Europe,summit,conference

 

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Social Media Week London

 

   As well as the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, I’m also looking forward to Social Media Week this year, particularly as the theme, Empowering Change through Collaboration is right up this blog’s street.

I’ll hopefully be attending quite a few of the events but will also be presenting at Like Minds’ Social Business Immersive as well as the Future of Social Media in Business which follows it on Wednesday 15th February.

As well as (other than?) me, the very impressive full-line-up includes:

 

JP Rangaswami, Salesforce

“What is a Social Business? How did we get here and why it matters more now than ever”

Euan Semple, Consultant

“Building from the inside-out. Developing and integrating the strategies, people, processes and platforms for a social business”

Joanne Jacobs, Strategy Consultant

“Communities are now your customers. How they evolve and what to do with them – trusting them, harnessing them, developing them”

Neville Hobson, FIR

“Brand communications in a social world. The rise of open and transparent dialogue to manage your reputation and drive opportunities publicly to do business”

Delphine Remy-Boutang, IBM

“Guiding an organisation through the social media landscape. How IBM transitioned itself into a Social Business”

Lee Bryant, Dachis Group

“The future’s bright, the future’s social”

 

Maybe see you there?, but the whole event will also be available by live streaming.

 

Technorati Tags: Social,business,media,week,Like Minds,JP Rangaswami,Euan Semple,Joanne Jacobs,Neville Hobson,Delphine Remy-Boutang,Lee Bryant

 

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Enterprise 2.0 in Europe (and the Enterprise 2.0 Summit)

 

   I didn’t manage to attend either of the Enterprise 2.0 Conferences (Boston or Santa Clara) last year, though I did get to the Social Business Summit in Milan.  As I’ve posted previously, that’s partly because I think work on E2.0 here is catching up with E2.0 there, and so there’s not the same need to travel.

But this post on the forthcoming Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris did get me thinking about the differences between in E2.0 adoption between the US and Europe, and within the countries here.

In this post, Bjoern Negelmann suggests that German preference for decentralisation leads to a focus on knowledge sharing between co-workers as the basis for their enterprise 2.0 activities.  In France however, the preference is for social networking leading to a focus on relationships (“the indirect / network effects of being interconnected”).

I think there’s something to this.  Negelmann mentions Hofstede, but you can also see the impacts in the research of Laurent, Trompenaars / Hampden-Turner and the more recent GLOBE study.  For example, the greatest differences in cultural practices between Germany and France in in this, are:

In Group Collectivism Germany 4.0 – France 4.4

Assertiveness Germany 4.6 – France 4.1

• I think you can see from these differences that there will be a preference for relating to enhance collaboration in France (note GLOBE’s assertiveness score is also about confrontation and aggressiveness in relationships).

 

Uncertainty Avoidance Germany 5.2 – France 4.4

Future Orientation Germany 4.3 – France 3.5

• And here, I think you can see that there will be a preference for managing knowledge to mitigate risk in Germany.

 

Negelmann is also correct in suggesting that you can also see the indirect results of these differences, eg through the positive and negative impacts of the France cadre system.

It’s more difficult to work through how Europe differs from the US however.  The US’ scores for in group collectivism are similar to France and its assertiveness more like Germany.  Its scores for uncertainty avoidance are similar to France and its future orientation to Germany.  I’m not sure how this supports differences I’ve seen between Europe and the US, but then I’m not too sure how I’d describe these differences anyway – other than perhaps that the benefits US companies are after seem less clear, or less strategic – eg focusing on saving travel expenses.  It doesn’t help, of course, that, as the differences between France and Germany show, there’s not really any such thing as Europe anyway (leading to Euan Semple to talk about the mystical continent of Yurop at last years’ HR Technology Europe conference).

I wonder if there are more obvious factors at work here, eg the higher proportion of enterprise 2.0 case studies in the US being technology companies than in Europe.  Or compare the costs involved in firing an employee: US – 0 weeks, (UK – 22 weeks,) France – 32 weeks, Germany – 69 weeks.  How do these differences affect the uptake of enterprise 2.0?

 

I’ll have the opportunity to reflect further on these differences at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris on  - and particularly in this session on social adoption strategies.

Scheduled for: 07.02.2012 / 11:30 - 12:20 Uhr

• Adoption patterns for different scopes, maturity levels and stakeholders
• Challenges along the maturity cycle

In this session social adoption experts discuss the latest insights on successful strategies. The key idea of this session is to distinguish the different adoption patterns for different scopes, maturity levels and stakeholders of the initiative and to give implication on how to successfully realize them.

As introduction note a conclusion of the E20 Meetup on “Implications for the Adoption Strategy” will be presented.

 

I’ll be blogging live from the summit here.

 

In the meantime, you can find videos with speakers at the summit here.

To register, visit here, and use the booking code 20ambassadorji for a 10% discount on the current registration fee.  There are still also some reduced, special prices for ‘consultants’, defined as freelancers and staff members of consulting firms with 20 employees or less.

 

Picture credit: Jason Corsello

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,social business,Bjoern Negelmann,Summit,Paris,culture,adoption,France,Germany,Europe,Yurop

 

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Looking forward – Enterprise 2.0 Summit

 

   That’s pretty much it for this year – my business is already starting to wind down into Christmas.  Next year promises to be another and even bigger year for social organisations.

One of the first events I’ll be attending is the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris in February.  There’s a great list of speakers at the event, which includes:

• Jean-Luc Abelin, Product & Knowledge Manager, Lafarge Group
• Stéphane Aknin, Head of Group e-Communications, AXA
• Thierry de Baillon, Senior Social Media Strategist , 90:10 Group
• Valérie Blondeau, Directrice de la Communication, Lagardère Publicité
• Yves Caseau, Executive Vice-President, Bouygues Telecom
• Frederic Charles, IT Strategy & Governance - Enterprise 2.0 evangelist , Lyonnaise des Eaux
• Richard Collin, Professor & Director of the "Institut de l’Entreprise 2.0 Grenoble Ecole de Management" and Executive Partner, NextModernity
• Jerome Colombe, Head of Web Governance , Alcatel-Lucent
• Bertrand Duperrin, Management & Enterprise 2.0 Consultant, NextModernity, France
• Anu Elmer, Vice President Communications, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Switzerland
• Dion Hinchcliffe, Senior Vice President, Dachis Group, USA
• Cordelia Krooß, Senior Enterprise Community Manager , BASF SE
• Jean-Christophe Kugler, Senior Vice President, Light Commercial Vehicles , Renault
• Tobias Kunz, Solution Manager Enterprise Portals, Deutsche Lufthansa AG
• Karine Lazimi, Innovation and Community Manager, Allianz France
• Johan Lybaert, Business Developer Agile Software Development, Cegeka
• Jane McConnell, Intranet & Portal Strategy Consultant, NetStrategy/JMC
• Neil Morgan, Head of Global Intranet, WWF
• Jamil Ouaj, Communications Manager, Deutsche Bank
• Franck La Pinta, Web Marketing Manager / 2.0 HR / e-reputation , Société Gérérale
• Anthony Poncier, Consulting Director, Lecko, France
• Emanuele Quintarelli, Partner and Social Business Strategist, Open Knowledge
• Nicolas Rolland, Social Prospective Director , Danone
• Bobbi Augustine Sand, Creative Director, OZMA
• Isabelle Schlumberger, EVP Sales & Development , JCDecaux
• Bart Schutte, Director, Web & Architecture , Saint-Gobain
• Rawn Shah, Social Business Transformation Expert , IBM
• Luis Suarez, Social Computing evangelist, IBM Software Group, Netherland
• Stefania Todisco, Head of Group Operations and ICT Factories Community Unit, Uniredit
• Mara Tolja, Collaboration Community Manager, Deutsche Bank
• Ellen Trude, Training Consultant , Bayer Business Services GmbH, Germany

 

Although the event is only a few hundred miles away from the UK, it does seem to be affected from a common problem that any event organised in continental Europe struggles to attract many people from the British isles (and vice versa) – something that may become even more pronounced with the UK’s increased political separation.

This certainly isn’t an issue about focus on social business within the UK which is at least as strong here as it is in the rest of Europe, so if you’re doing good work on Enterprise 2.0 within the UK and you’re interested in participating in the conference, do let the organisers know.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,social business,Kongressmedia,Paris,France,conference,UK,Europe

 

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#CIPDSocial11 & Social Engagement – in the socialmedia garden

 

   I’ve had a couple of conversations with Michael Silverman, Unilever’s ex-head of engagement research, since meeting him at a Symposium event earlier this year (eg at CHRU, and the Personnel Today awards, where Michael and Unilever won the award for the best use of HR technology).

Michael uses a new research tool called Opinion Space, developed with Hybrid Wisdom Labs, which uses the new technique of ‘collaborative discovery’ to help communities suggest ideas and develop understanding about particular issues – eg engagement.

I have to say I don’t really understand the full science behind this:

(Taken from Info and Help)

 

(!!!)  But to me, the benefit of the technology is largely the same as any social media tool – 1, it allows people to collaborate together and 2, it’s visually appealing.  Add these two points together and it means that it’s fun and compelling.

As I wrote before, this is quite useful in engagement research.  I agree with Michael on this – it seems oddly dissonant that the tool most organisations use to measure engagement generally disengages people.  It’s another area that shouts out to be social medialised!

To give people a chance to experience the technology for themselves, Michael is running an open access research study.  And since it’s run using social media, we thought it would be interesting to apply it to the use of social media.

The starting point is to answer five questions about social media as well as contributing a suggestion about the main barriers for organisations adopting social media.

1. Using external social media sites at work makes people less productive.  (Yes, I think it can!)
2. I feel heavily involved in social media.  (Err, yeah!)
3. My organisation has embraced social media.  (This one was was difficult for me to answer, so I thought about my average HR client!)
4. HR is best placed to lead social media. (I think it should.)
5. Successful implementation of social media is about technology not leadership. (Absolutely not!)

 

So these were my responses:

 

“HR still hasn't woken up to the opportunities provided by social for media.  In so many organisations which do use social networks if you look at the departmental take-up, everyone is there (led by IT) but not HR.  I hope the CIPD conference and this research will help generate a bit more interest.”

 

The thing about the garden is that then the whizzy technology displays your responses as a ‘bloom’ within a garden, where surrounding blooms are the other participant responses which are most similar to yours.  Or something.  Neat, anyway.

 

And then the even more neat bit it that you can vote and comment on other people’s suggestions (which changes the size and colour of the blooms).  It’s this social experience which is the key innovation for me.

Anyway, here are some slides from Michael on the results so far:

 

If you want to try the system out, and / or contribute to the research, you’ll be able to get an access code – here – soon (by about Friday – come back to this post then).  Have fun!

 

Technorati Tags: Social,media,employee,engagement,survey,research,CIPD,HR,Michael Silverman,collaborative discovery,opinion space

 

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#CIPDSocial11 Bill Parsons (ARM): social media and why business needs to take notice

 

   The CIPD’s social media conference has kicked off with a session from Bill Parsons, EVP HR at ARM Holdings.  I met Bill at ARM in Cambridge earlier this year, so this post is a combination of his presentation, and my earlier notes.

I’ll start off by saying ARM is one of my favourite companies – and in fact it’s one of the world’s favourite companies too.  ARM’s vision is to be an effective innovative company (not just a wacky one) – a creative productive machine – and it has been consistently judged as one of the most innovative companies in the world.

However the reason I like the company is that it’s one of the very few that I know about which isn’t just using social media, but has focused on becoming a truly social organisation.  Rather than following ‘the Chelsea Model’ of simply having the very best people / access to the best human capital (‘human capital is about a group of smart people who don’t talk to each other’), ARM focuses on the best social capital – ie having the best networks, relationships and trust.  Human, social and intellectual capital (the explicit stuff which they sell) are the company’s differentiation.  Social capital has been at the centre of their HR strategy for the last decade – it’s the rocket fuel of the innovative organisation.

 

 

This starts with the company’s values which focus on things like teaming and selflessness (unusual in such a profitable company) – and are definitely not vanilla.  They were developed and evolved from the organisation’s founders and focus specifically on ARM as a unique organisation (rather than the things which every other organisation does).

Part of the reason that ARM focuses so much on social relationships is that their strategy is about connecting, collaborating and hence innovating and their model for innovation is primarily about open innovation.  They therefore need everyone to behave selflessly – for the greater good of ARM - in external as well as internal networks.  It sounds idealistic but Bill says this really works at ARM (and I think I believe him).

It’s an unusual business model – ARM sees itself as being at the centre of an ecosystem of 500 competing companies collaborating.  ARM itself only employees 2100 people – vs Intel, its main competitor, with 100,000 people.  Their model only works by having a high surface area which it achieves by having its employees talking directly to customers.  The company’s values and culture makes this easy – it’s clear what provides value.

These values are then used as the basis for HR practices eg assessing promotability, fast tracking etc.  In fact the whole HR strategy is about creating the magical ingredients supporting the development of social capital.  Eg rather than the Accenture corporate model in which people are fighting to get to the top, in ARM if anyone is seen to be overtly trying to be promoted, ARM will fire them!  Rewards come to people who do things for the greater good.

So ARM does identify high flyer potential management talent and provides them with coaching and training to help them build their legitimacy.  If you don’t have the buy-in and support of your peers and the people you’re going to manage you’ve got a problem.  ARM ensures that these individuals have good business relationships and networks.

Compensation aligns with ARM’s social strategy as well.  Ensuring justice is an essential part of a social strategy and ARM provide their staff with more equity than any other European company.  This makes employees’ feeling of ownership more meaningful too.  The corporate bonus is largely collective too (just a small proportion is individually driven).

Recognition also focuses on what people do together – they hardly ever celebrate individual success.  Eg the company celebrated its 20 year anniversary last year (its been the highest performing company in the world over this time).  But the celebration was really one of international collective being eg they gave everyone an ipad (they were founded as a child of Apple and Newton Computer).  It was a 27 hour global party revisiting their global successes – not individual stories.

Leadership selection and development is aligned with the values too.  Their CEO is probably the most understated CEO in the FTSE – the one with the highest humility.  He works full time at ARM and keeps a low profile outside.

More generally ARM seek to grow leadership internally – ensuring cultural fit, and fit into the team based environment.  Their feedback and development system also focuses on the company’s values, providing 180 degree insight about what employees think of their bosses.

Social media does have a role in all of this of course, in fact they’ve been using social media for at least ten years.  This includes Skype, Linkedin and Facebook for external use, and blogs and forums internally.  In addition, it uses:

• Internal YouTube – ARM TV
• Yammer has taken off in a big way.
• Video conferencing is the norm (rather than something which would be perceived to be not quite as good.)
• And wikis are the predominant tool for collaboration.

 

 

They also run a Exec Q&A once a year in which their exec answer any question on anything from anyone.  And it’s videod and podcasted so that everyone can see it.

Interestingly a lot of this, eg Yammer and their wikis, were started unofficially and took off from there, rather than being introduced by IT.

However, in Bill’s view, social media can become antisocial media – a barrier to effective communication. So you need to do face-to-face meetings to help people get to know each other. Arguably in advance of social media.

So in ARM, traditional communications plays a part as well eg ARM run twice the number of events (with a corresponding impact on travel budgets) than they need to – these are overtly opportunities to create social networks.  Eg they have a 80 person forum in which they invite people who don’t know each other well to get together (some of which is done unconference style) to work on a range of OD topics eg on the organisation of the future.  This ensures the organisation is constantly questioning its culture.  To get round the biggest organisational barrier of any organisation which is not having the best ideas, they often invite internal customers along, and sometimes external customers too.

It all starts with dinner and drinks in the bar, and then the next morning a discussion on the topics – but what matters is the relationships and new networks that are formed.  The same in their engineering conferences, code tests, transistor tests etc etc.

ARM have tried to measure their social capital through approaches like social network analysis, and they also measure engagement, though what they’re really concerned about is organisational citizenship behaviours – do staff understand that networking is part of their day job, and that they need to help the organisation rather than just doing their own thing.

It’s an impressive case study and it’s paid off too.  ARM’s market value is £4m per employee which Bill argues is down largely to the company’s social capital and use of social media.

 

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With Globoforce on Social Recognition

 

   I’ve just been attending an event with Globoforce and the Conference Board on social recognition.

I’ve been a long supporter of Globoforce’s work on recognition, eg this webinar we did together, and also my support for their book – see this endorsement (which I still support) printed at the start of this:

“Recognition is a hugely underused and badly misused HR and management tools.  It’s effective use isn’t helped by various myths and misunderstandings about the value of transactional recognition schemes.  Using executive and research insights, supported by a series of ‘myth busters’, Mosley and Irvine provide a clear and compelling case for a more strategic approach – the time for Strategic Recognition is here.”  Jon Ingham.

 

It’s been a natural progression for Globoforce to move beyond strategic recognition into the growing social HR space with a focus on social recognition too -  though in a sense, recognition has always been a social sort of thing.  (We didn’t really talk about this, but my perception is that Globoforce has moved progressively from enabling people to exchange thanks, to sharing points, badges, kudos etc – ie slightly more tangible ‘social recognitions’.)

Some of the most interesting points included in the presentation were:

• Recognition is key to engagement.  Globoforce’s Mood Tracker suggests that ‘only’ 38% of (N American?) employees are searching for a new job, but that 49% would move to a company offering better recognition.  (I’m still not sure about this.  I think employees like recognition because of what this is likely to lead to, rather than because it’s an engagement driver itself – see this post on this Globoforce webinar.)
• Social recognition differs from more traditional approaches by being frequent and widespread.  (Yes, although I think it’s deeper than that – it’s about meaningful recognition, and it’s meaningful because it’s from people you know, and work with, rather than just people more senior than you).
• Social recognition allows organisations to overlay their structures with employee recognition moments, creating a representation of the power players in the organisation.  You can see who is participating in the corporate values and how deep these go across the organisation.  (Yes, though this is just one representation, and other tools will enable you to draw different types of social network too.)
• Organisations are increasingly interrogating social recognition data, overlaying this on performance and compensation systems and identifying the correlations, providing a sort of multi-person review.  (I worry about this – firstly because of the point that was made that there is a spectrum of people who won’t give feedback, and secondly because once recognition is any way linked to formal performance management and particularly reward, the potential for dysfunctional outcomes is dramatically increased.  I’d just keep it for engagement, and individual and organisational development.)
• Social recognition is a powerful lever for culture (deepening or) change.  Stanford research suggests that just 5-8% of the workforce providing weekly nominations is enough to develop a self-sustaining culture and significantly increase employee engagement scores.  (Yes, but 5-8% of the workforce doing anything involving discretionary behaviour is a powerful boost for change.)
• The need for social recognition applies everywhere although the way you might encourage it varies by geography.  (Yes, although I do think some cultures would take to it much more easily than others eg African vs Asia again.  Globoforce mentioned Celestica as an organisation that had cracked social recognition in Asia Pac, but then suggested that India was particularly active – well yes, they would be.  India is a very different place to the rest of Asia – at least as far as social media is concerned eg there are probably more bloggers in India than the rest of the world combined, at least excepting the US, but there are still very few people involved in social media travelling further East.)
• Social is broader than just social media (a suggestion you might have picked up previously in my blogs).  Eg GE managers in Asia go out to dinner with their employees’ families to support retention by applying a bit of ‘social pressure’ on the parents – a very nice idea.  (But shouldn’t you do that anyway – though perhaps with older employees with partners and kids instead?  It’s a great way to ensure you see your employees as whole people rather than just as interchangeable resources.)

 

Despite my concerns, it’s great to see the development of social recognition.  I recollect Euan Semple’s remark at HR Technology Europe that all this is doing is formalising something that has (or should have been) always been happening informally.  I think that’s right, and I do think the formalisation of the informal is a good thing.  It’s just too important to be left to chance.

My only remaining worry about a system like Globoforce (and therefore also with Achievers / I Like Rewards, Rypple, Sonar 6, Small Improvements etc) is whether one of more of these areas is important enough for your company that this is where you want your social interaction to be?

Or do you want this interaction in your knowledge management, collaboration, innovation or CRM system instead?  Because if so, you’re potentially going to be reducing the impact of both systems if you split the interaction in two.

So think about which you need to prioritise.  Eg if your whole organisation is built around personal and organisational appreciation (eg using AI, strengths etc) then social recognition might fit well.  If it’s based on more balanced performance management (failures as well as successes), you may need to use one of the social performance management systems.  And if it’s about innovation, then I’d go for a social system that is built around this.

Of course, over time, all these systems will become increasingly integrated (through organic development or acquisition) in exactly the same way that best of breed HCM systems have all been joined together into a small number of integrated talent management platforms over the last five years.  But until then, my advice would be to focus clearly on what it is you want.

 

Addendum: I thought that was a good last line with which to finish off the post.  However, thinking it through, I’ve got one more: if more social appreciation isn’t what you want, then think about whether it should be (what you should want)!

Eg if you’re going to prioritise innovation, you need to be clear about which you think comes first – ie does appreciation follow innovation (you need to encourage appreciation to stimulate more innovation) or is it the other way around (that stimulating appreciation will most likely lead to more innovation taking pace)?

I think that increasingly organisations are going to have develop their people and build their cultures first (what I refer to as creating value).  If you agree with this, then recognition is a pretty good place to start.

 

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Social media in the hopeful continent

 

   I was in South Africa for a few meetings and a workshop on HR and social media last week.  It’s been a while since I’ve been to southern Africa but it was good to be back – particularly as this meant missing the news that the UK is possibly already back in recession and the announcement that austerity cuts are going to be deepened and lengthened, as well as the public sector strikes during the week (Jeremy Clarkson’s comments on the strikers were still well reported however).

In comparison, South Africa’s economy is getting along quite nicely thank you.  An article in the Economist this week suggests that Africa will grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.  Although this relates to the continent as a whole, the article touches on a lot of the key themes from my week there too.

For example:

“Africa now has a fast-growing middle class: according to the World Bank, around 60m Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100m will in 2015…

Population trends could enhance these promising developments. A bulge of better-educated young people of working age is entering the job market and birth rates are beginning to decline. As the proportion of working-age people to dependents rises, growth should get a boost. Asia enjoyed such a “demographic dividend”, which began three decades ago and is now tailing off. In Africa it is just starting…

Having a lot of young adults is good for any country if its economy is thriving, but if jobs are in short supply it can lead to frustration and violence. Whether Africa’s demography brings a dividend or disaster is largely up to its governments.”

 

This mixed opportunity and challenge was something that came up in several of my meetings.  Elijah Litheko from South Africa’s IPM suggested that the country’s dual economies is one of the major issues that HR practitioners there need to deal with, ie that they have a key role in nationalisation and economic development.

One of other things Elijah believes is different is that South Africans are more diverse and that therefore organisations have to deal with, and benefit from, more different perspectives (“everyone in Europe thinks the same way”).  I wasn’t there long enough to test this out thoroughly, but am prepared to accept the suggestion.

I think a result of this diversity, which I also discussed with people, and was demonstrated in my meetings, was that South African culture prioritises conversation, and that people are prepared to really listen to each other until they arrive at a consensus.  This willingness to participate also came through in my workshop (and our use of social media within the workshop, which, whilst not quite as much as I would have ideally liked, was more than I’ve been able to encourage in any other social media workshops I’ve run in Europe or Asia).  And I actually think this is a very positive indication of Africa’s future success as well.  (In the new world of work, organisations need their people to come forward with suggestions and contributions – I think the fact that some cultures don’t support this will limit their future development.)

 

And:

“Africa’s enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. Since roads are generally dreadful, advances in communications, with mobile banking and telephonic agro-info, have been a huge boon. Around a tenth of Africa’s land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India.”

 

We discussed this development too, building on the statistics and presentation Bill Boorman had produced for Tru South Africa a few weeks previously.  We didn’t find any HR applications for the local tween focused networking system, MixIt, but did agree that mobile was going to be key for participant’s future social media activities (eg they liked LV’s mobile focused approach to social recruiting here).

We also hypothesised about the deep take-up of social media (especially Facebook) on a personal basis, but the still limited take-up within corporates.  We thought maybe that whereas Europeans in particular tend to do a lot of their mobile social networking on, or waiting for, public transport, given that people tend to drive rather than take public transport in South Africa, and given intermittent mobile coverage and security concerns that they wouldn’t want to try using an ipad in a car, there’s less time for people to go online for company purposes.  I’m not totally convinced by this, but again, am prepared to take it forward as a working hypothesis.

 

I’ll be back in South Africa again during February…

 

Picture from The Economist article

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