Hey Santa, what I really want is…

 Well I haven’t completed my list yet, but I’m sure it’s not a vacuum.  Turns out though, that for some people a new vacuum was exactly what made the difference between feeling appreciated vs. taken advantage of as an employee.

Then it got me thinking.  Over the last year, I have heard several similar stories from friends, colleagues and family members suggesting that sometimes [most times] it’s the little items that really can get us down.  For some, it might be having an approved business-use PDA be rejected from higher up the expense approval chain, or maybe something as simple as having to pay for a favorite notepad used exclusively for work out of your own pocket.  Others, have noted that the removal of aspirin from the company first-aid kit rubbed them wrong and some have had to personally pay for frames for employee appreciation certificates. In most cases, it is not the cost of the item but the perceived lack of consideration for the individual, that presents the issue. 

In my own experience, I once worked for a company that was so seriously cheap that we felt compelled to bring our own office supplies from home for fear of not having things like sticky notes or paper.  In fact, it has only been this last year that I have given up on the practice of buying my own pens.  Oh and don’t get me started on the excellent decor of this startup, orange shag carpet and authentic 70’s wood paneling — sexy!

You can imagine how nice it was for me working out of the PeopleSoft HQ with its Potterybarn inspired decor, I even felt good about my interior cave of an office in such a nice facility.  Then, after the acquisition, I moved to Oracle HQ and was over the moon at the beautiful facilities.  A gym that is beyond description and a cafe with an unbelievable array of pastries and the wonderful smell of fresh bread and coffee in the morning.  Last week, and I am not making this up, there was even a holiday concerto in the lobby.  Why?  I’m not sure, and unfortunately couldn’t attend, but just the idea amazes me. 

So what is the point?  Why the post?  Some time back Jake mentioned the fact that building 300 is being remodeled.  And here is where we come back to my Christmas wish to Santa, that is about to be granted.  For me, one of the biggest things I want is some decent chairs. 

Now, my own office chair is not too bad, not anything to write home about but not an ergo or comfort issue.  Every other chair on the floors I frequent, however, are not so lucky.  The guest chairs in my office have had several near injuries of co-workers.  The conference room chairs really defy description.  I’ve come to think of the 2nd and 3rd floors of building 300 as the burial grounds of the chairs at Oracle, and I’m really looking forward to that issue being fixed. 

So, thanks Santa, for getting my letter and taking it seriously enough to schedule a refurbishment of this building, to include some decent chairs.  I truly hope that I make it until we all move back into the new floor before I take out any additional hostility on the chairs that are left.  I realize its not their fault that they died years ago and no one gave them a proper send-off. 

Here’s hoping that you and your co-workers are as well considered this holiday season because some times it really is the little things that make the big difference.

Don’t Forget, They’re Free Agents!

AppsLab is always a good source of something to get you thinking, see things in a new way, or just get a smile, nod knowingly, and say, “Exactly.” We at TalentedApps enjoy an engaging working relationship with the team.

In a recent post, Paul cited the Knol announcement, thought about how it might be a knowledge management play, got to thinking about why KM wasn’t much of a success previously, and ended up talking about how employee contribution in skills, expertise (not storing), as well as attitude was really the performance that mattered and that measuring it would be key, thus bringing it back to Knol’s potential. (And thus also showing the kind of bright, imaginative, associative-thinking minds we get to work with.) He wrapped it up inside of a philosophy that with this kind of measurement of performance available, it would tend to drive and/or enable at least certain segments to contribute more and build their brand. This kind of measurement, reputation building, and so forth would enable more of a market economy/free agency within organizations to mobilize talent.

This is a great concept, and books such as Beyond HR, and Mobilizing Minds, call out the value of organizations taking a more “talent pool” or “talent marketplace” perspective. It requires willingness by top management to break down organization silos, have a “one company governance” leadership, and measure internal performance not just on a financial basis (i.e. ROI, etc.) but also on a contribution to value basis using “return on talent.” As Mobilizing Minds puts it, internal financial measures are still good sanity checks, but since so much more of a company’s value comes from intangibles like talent, which are also in short supply, it is wise to measure that as well in order to improve it. In fact, at some levels of the company, this might be the only measure you have that actually permits a results-oriented measurement model (as opposed to being only a cost center.)

Okay, so what does that mean?

This month is also the 10th anniversary of the Dan Pink article in Fast Company, “Free Agent Nation” which later became a book. While this article focused mostly on more people moving into the self-employed ranks, the principles put forth in this article also have been applied to understanding the challenges companies face in both the kind of changing talent market they face today (generation mix, globalization, etc.) as well as the changing and expanding sets of needs and expectations of employees themselves (GSR, remoting, engagement, etc.) In other words, the “Free Agent Nation” has impacted the Employee Value Proposition companies must present. The driving factors presented in Free Agent Nation of Freedom, Authenticity, Accountability, and Self-Defined Success fit right in with the drivers of having an engaged workforce, such as Identity, Relevance, and Measurability. Both also relate a lot to contribution as opposed to hoarding.

So, to bring it all together:

Like Paul says, we should admit the fact that we’re all free agents, even the ones inside the company. Likewise, companies should not forget that their talent is mostly free agent in nature. Employees should view their value to the organization in how they contribute their skills, expertise and attitude. Organizations, through their managers (in keeping with TalentedApps consistent theme of holding management accountable), must demonstrate value to employees by enabling them to contribute their skills, expertise and attitude. This is achieved by management, as Deloitte puts it, “developing, deploying, and connecting” talent, which means not hoarding talent, for instance but rather enabling talent mobility. Use measurements that really show talent contribution and put in place mechanisms like talent and knowledge marketplaces, networks, etc. that help get that talent where it’s contribution has the highest impact on the strategic success of the company. To get there, leadership must measure management on its success at getting talent where it matters most.

From both the employee and employer perspective, the off-cited parable of the talents applies. To paraphrase: do you want to hoard a talent by burying it in the ground or turn it into into ten talents? To the employee, it asks if you really gain more by hoarding knowledge. To the employer (manager), it asks if you really gain by hoarding your talent. In today’s world, you could unbury it and find it gone.

The value of teams

Back in school (go cats), it was all the rage in the business program to have the majority of our work be team-based.  The thinking being, that in a work environment, it is really more about teams then individuals. 

Lately, I’ve been reading and thinking about teams and Talent Management.  Of course, this has taken me all over the place a bit but I’ll do my best to make a point vs. forcing you all to wonder all over the place like I have been. 

One place I ended up was this article on emotional intelligence of teams.   To summarize, its not just important for individuals to have emotional intelligence but its also useful for teams (duh!). 

This article points to the HBR study that gives three contributing factors to high functioning teams.

Trust among members

A sense of group identity

A sense of group efficacy

Ok, so teams need to trust each other, define themselves in terms of the group and they must feel, that as a team, they have the ability to actually get something done.  Again, duh!

Turns out that for some cultures (and for some people) a team dynamic is not just a nice to have.  Thanks to Mark for pointing me to this article that suggests that in Asia the team might be the biggest factor in engagement (see, I told you I’d attempt to bring this to a point).

In talking to customers about teams, there are several head scratching elements that HR groups face in trying to build teams that work well together.  Why do some teams work well and others not?  Is it one person?  How do we predict which teams will succeed? and so on. 

In my mind, it is for teams that the value of the social network can be brought to real business benefit. I would like to predict that companies that learn to leverage their social networks as both a productivity tool for teams, and as a tool for proactively identifying team members, will find a new competitive advantage for their talent.  And, if the insight into Asia is accurate, there might be exponential benefit to this strategy as well.

Finding Value in Enterprise Social Networks

There is a lot of debate whether social networks offer any value to companies, and if so, where. Some have identified its value as a marketing and/or recruiting tool externally, but internally, many have seen them only as a drag on productivity. Nick Carr recently wrote about how companies are beginning to recognize that social network software offers insight into how informal networks within the company are actually constructed and how they get things done:

“Because they seem so natural to use, the social networks end up being incredibly sensitive mechanisms for recording the real life of a human organization…Given their benefits, I think that social networks will inevitably be adapted to corporate use…Just imagine what will happen when the informal organization suddenly becomes as visible as the formal one.”

Joe McKendrick noted on FastForward how this endorsement of social networks aligns with Andrew McAfee’s assertions about the value of Enterprise 2.0 to companies. Joe also highlights the challenges to IT presented by increasing acceptance of wikis, blogs and social networks within the enterprise. To Joe, this points to “why the future of corporate computing is informal.”

In McAfee’s recent posts, he describes a four circle model to help in thinking about how the various Web 2.0 technologies provide value to the enterprise. In it, social networks contribute value in the second from the center circle, where “weak ties” to a given knowledge worker reside. This “includes people she with worked on a project with in the past, coworkers who she interacts with periodically, colleagues she knows via an introduction, and the many other varieties of ‘professional acquaintance.’ “In another post, he points out that “SNS is a powerful tool for building, learning from, and exploiting a network of people with whom you have weak ties…”

This describes enterprise social networks as more than simply a community to hang out in as sites like Facebook and MySpace are perceived to be. They are more than just the end product of a viral marketing effort to get people to add more and more of their friends. In the enterprise, the power of weak ties that are captured in the network are of great value to the company. By facilitating finding information from previously unknown sources, employees gain enriched access to diverse perspectives, fostering innovation and reducing the likelihood of people unwittingly working on redundant efforts. Whether an enterprise social network is actually based on one of these commercial platforms or something else built around OpenSocial, the result is something more valuable to the company than had previously been recognized.

The human element of the social network rebuts the argument that they aren’t an effective use of time, because in thinking-intensive work, it is the person who has access to those who have information they need who often can be most productive. Knowledge management systems did not fulfill their promise in large part because while a lot of information is stored in documents, even more is stored in the heads of people, particularly the most up to date and relevant version. Simply searching the known universe for the required information often returns too much and sometimes the search criteria is not the best choice or we ask the wrong question. The human element can correct for that. However, sending spam emails, asking questions on forums, etc. doesn’t always offer the results we are looking for either, and are often counterproductive pursuits. It is through the filtering and forwarding mechanisms that a social network supports finding people and information to get the job done more effectively. This is done by leveraging trusted connections and human judgment and knowledge, supplemented by profile information such as expertise, projects worked on, and so forth.

There is also the employee engagement benefit to companies. Social networks often provide profile functionality that helps people to present a more complete picture of themselves to others in the network. While this might be dismissed by some as irrelevant in a work environment, it is these subtle human aspects of identity and interests, shared or not, that often help in collaboration. In geographically dispersed workgroups and in environments where workgroups are constantly reforming, this information helps to compensate for the lack of time and opportunity to otherwise build a connection and build trust with the other team members. This engagement works both ways in that not only does a team member see their colleagues in a more complete way, but each individual has the opportunity to feel a greater sense of identity through their profile as well as through their contribution of knowledge through the network. Often times, this contribution can be realized simply through connecting one co-worker looking for information to another who has it.

Finally, another source of value to the company of a social network is through the analysis of the network itself, as Carr also pointed out. A recent Fortune article highlights how, using social network analysis, companies are increasing their competitiveness and improving business results by:

• Energizing sluggish cultures
• Grooming leadership
• Keeping the talent happy
• Improving collaboration

Companies utilizing social network analysis recognize that “successful managers must understand this ‘constellation of collaborations, relationships, and networks,’ particularly in times of stress and transition.” In addition, on the engagement front, “in companies where managers worked closely with informal employee networks, respondents were three times more likely to describe their job environment as positive.”

The practitioners described in the article are doing it mostly through high-cost, time-consuming surveys and rounding up the folks within the enterprise and putting them in a room with consultants. Having a social network already in place can go a long way to capturing this information, or at least supplement the surveys and interviews, as people go about their work normally on a day-by-day basis.

Some companies are starting to see social networks less as threat to productivity and more as something that if harnessed constructively, can bring many competitive benefits. A lot of progress can be made by simply trusting employees, providing the platforms and tools, and integrating values and guidelines into their productive use.

girl on a rant

Warning!  Any relationship with HR and Talent in this post is going to be accidental. 

I was complaining about something yesterday to a friend (for anonymity sake lets call him “Rich”) and he suggested that it might be time for a blog entry, entirely possible this was a “change the subject and shut her up” tactic but I decided to take him literally anyway.

As a bit of background, I should confess that I’m not a particularly good representative for the female norm.  While I do understand some stereotypically female things such as how a “charger” could relate to a table setting vs. just electronic devices, many traditional female “strengths” are lacking for me. 

For example, I have always preferred sleep over complex grooming rituals, I have never enjoyed talking on the phone, I prioritize foot comfort in shoe selection and [gasp] I do not enjoy anything about shopping. 

In addition, I really can’t complain about personal discrimination.  Any “glass ceiling” that I have experienced in my professional life has to be attributed to my gift for inserting my foot into my mouth, more then any bias against my gender.  As a general rule, working in high tech is a good place for a woman to be, maybe since there are so few of us, general expectations tend to be low… probably should think about that but don’t plan to today.

I was, however, surprised to find that the OpenWorld conference had a very strong gender bias.  I was surprised by this since, I personally saw a good attendance of females at the conference.  I know we were there because I was actively using the conference as personal fashion research (was the short skirt and tall boots a good choice?  turns out yes) and I didn’t have any trouble finding a representative sample. 

So, why was it, that the restrooms at Moscone were configured (yes it was news to me as well that there was the ability to configure the restrooms) to have a significantly smaller number of women’s stalls then men’s?  Those of us who had the misfortune to wait in line for facilities were left wondering, was this a bias based on registration numbers?  Or had those who planned the conference not heard about the Women’s Restroom Equity Bill? 

Then there was the question of the Cow Palace (the venue of the concert/appreciation party).  While standing in the line after the concert this topic came up.  One person in line suggested that since this building was old that maybe it was built before … suggesting it was built before people have been made aware of the need to have a different male-to-female ratio in facility planning.  But, my sharp colleague, who was standing next to me, asked the wise question of “what? the building was constructed before there were women?”

So, I ask the question, should I just realize that tech conferences at Oracle have a male bias?  Or, should I add this to the list of things that women need achieve in technology?  Makes me wonder if a similar restroom bias exists in SAP conferences?  Apple Conferences?  Anyone know?

Is Employee Engagement a managers job?

We’ve been talking about Employee Engagement for some time.  How do we engage people, why do we need to engage people – all that touchy/feely stuff that causes some of us to feel warm and fuzzy and others of us to hold back a gag reflex.

I’ve also been thinking about a Manager’s role in the overall Talent story for some time.  I think that to really do innovative things in Talent you not only need software and a HR vision but you really need solid line managers.  Initiatives like building, sharing and retaining talent fall down quickly with bad managers.  As the saying goes people join a company but they quit their manager.

I’ve read a few things lately that are food for thought for those of us who are managers.  Now I do not intend to suggest that we as individuals yield our own responsibility to define, nurture and grow our own careers but for those of us who are managers it can’t hurt to check in and see if we could be doing more.

Here is a quick article that talks about employee engagement and how “managing with a human touch” is a necessary ingredient for that to happen. 

I also recently read Three signs of a miserable job and found an interesting assertion on the responsibility of a manager.  This book focuses on how a manager is responsible to make the job of their employees something that they can feel positive about.  The most interesting thing that he points out is that the work is not really the most significant factor.  In other words, a movie star, a super model, a professional athlete can be less engaged in their job then a cashier a janitor or a factory worker.   His core points were that

1. People need to be recognized – he used the word Anonymity as the problem.  Managers need to engage with their teams as people first and employees second.  Yes, here is where the touchy/feely part comes in – if it makes you squirm as a manager then guess what?  Maybe you shouldn’t be in management.  People often confuse what is not legal to ask in an interview process with what they should not ask an employee.  So the question is: do you like your team?  Do you know them?  Do you care about them as people? Do you send them birthday gifts on Facebook? (ok that last part was a joke but you get the idea)
2. People need to be able to measure their work (Immeasurement)– If you can’t measure what you do or worse if you are measured on something that has no clear connection with what you do then you are probably less satisfied with your job.
3. People need to see a value in their contribution (Irrelevance)– People want/need to know that they make a difference in the lives of others with their contributions.  One very interesting point he raised is that managers are often not comfortable being clear to their teams that they need them. => So in case there is any doubt for my team – ohmygod do I need you guys 😉

HR Transformation — are we sick of it yet?

I’ve been thinking about HR Transformation for quite some time and I’m starting to wonder how we can move on from HR transformation to “Beyond HR” when we never actually transformed in the first place. 

I have some concern that maybe we are just distracting ourselves to avoid actual measurement and accountability.  Are we witnessing a real desire to change the role of HR or are we just a manifestation of Corporate ADD?

It’s an OD problem, no it’s a recruitment (excuse me talent acquisition) problem, no it’s a performance management problem, wait it’s a succession planning problem, oh no I think it’s a web.20/community problem.  And don’t even get me started on the idea that it might be an analytics problem!

The more I study this market and talk to companies attempting to truly transform their organizations I come to realize that it is, and always was, a leadership problem.  I know I risk a good ducking here, but I believe that chasing the latest software fad without real vision and leadership will fail.  Not dissimilar to how a weight loss program that doesn’t involve diet and exercise  will ultimately fail for you (it might work for someone else, but it will not work for you, trust me on this one!).

So where to start and what to do?  First and foremost you need to find leadership.  Hopefully you can find that leadership in yourself but if not there, find someone who has it first.  Once you have acquired the will to lead then you can begin to benefit from the flywheel effect and realize results. 

If you cannot find the will to lead then I suggest you stop now before you spend important resources and energies on the hard part of a transformation (the starting) and never actually receive the benefits of the work.  At the risk of stating the obvious, I also suggest you use the same philosophy for your holiday (or post holiday) diet plan. 

Quit spending your time trying to find the silver bullet out there, you know that it doesn’t exist.  Instead, first analyze your own capabilities and then look to see how you can use technology to implement your vision.