This is 1 of 12 engagement questions Gallup asks to predict business performance. It’s the quirkiest of all the questions and it also tends to be the most polarizing. HR and Business Leaders alike ask: “What does this have to do with anything?” “Are we in middle school?”

According to the February 2008 Gallup Management Journal:

Gallup itself would have dropped the statement if not for one stubborn fact: it predicts performance. Something about a deep sense of affiliation with the people in an employee’s team drives him to do positive things for the business he otherwise would not do.

The use of the word “best” often trips people up. Why not just ask about friends? Interestingly, the simple word “best” conveys an underlying meaning of trust and support. Anyone can be a friend, but only those that you care for and rely on will provide a sense of belonging and drive.

Personally speaking, I heartily agree. I have always had best friends at work. And, considering I’ve only left one employer (and that was to go to a company with “people” in the title), I’d say it’s a pretty good indicator of retention. Over my career, best friends have given me a reason to go to work in the morning, provided a safe environment in which to bounce ideas, and indulged me with both personal and big picture encouragement.

How about you – do you have best friends at work?

picture source: sanguine-art.com

You hear me bragging a lot about the great people I work with.  I’ve done it in blog posts, I’ve done it as Twitter and OraTweet statuses and I say it regularly in email and in person.

You probably already know that the people I work with area  big part of my job satisfaction.  I love working with smart people. 

They encourage me, they inspire me and they challenge me.

Today I am expressing supreme gratitude for having an outstanding strategic partner in the Quality Assurance group.

Those of you who have experience in creating software know, that completing a quality product is a complex task. 

Those of you who have worked in Quality departments know, that it never quite works as advertised when you first get software delivered from development.  This can make for a stressful working relationship on the best of days.

I’ve worked with lots of great QA partners over the years, but somehow I hit the jackpot on this project.  My current QA partner is not only a smart person, she is a strategic problem solver.  So it’s never about blame, it’s always about finding a path to success.

I cannot tell you what a difference it can make when you pair up with a strategic talent in the quality function.  And the great news is,  not only does this make my job satisfaction better, it directly translates to a better end result for our customers.

If you have a chance to find a strategic person to help you with a complex project, I recommend it every time.  You will find it  less frustrating and the results will be much greater when you avoid problems before they happen.

Photo Credit: Angela Doyle

EffortlessHR has posted the Carnival of HR for July, with 20 informative posts from a wide variety of excellent blogs.

This provides you a great opportunity to first, focus your time on what the bloggers have themselves thought were good posts to read and second, sample blogs that you did not know about before.

Our own blog is represented by this post on being careful to not unwittingly alienate those participants in your enterprise social network who might not use it to as high a degree as others.

Photo by joiseyshowaa

The TalentedApps team is proud to again be a part of the Fistful of Talent Power Rankings and this time we didn’t have to beg everyone to vote for us either!

Those of you who are not familiar with FOT they are the cream of the crop in the world of Talent blogging, a collection of real pros.

Which makes the power rankings  sort of the SAG awards in our book.

Go check out the other winners and runners up and add a few more HR Pros to your blogroll, you’ll be glad you did.

No, I’m not a professional officer in the Roman army but I do happen to now have authored 100 blog posts and the ring idea was already spoken for.

I know, I can’t really believe it either.  I only got on this whole blogging idea as a result of a conversation with Mark where I concluded that he was bringing up a lot of great discussion topics that should be shared by more people than just the two of us.   We quickly recruited Amy to our plan, and, inspired by David’s why development should blog series, we started to look into what blogging was all about.

I still remember vividly, the horror I felt when Jake told us that, to do a serious blog, we needed to commit to having four posts a week of content.  That was just not going to work out with only three new bloggers, who also had day jobs.  Not to be defeated, we went into overdrive to recruit people to help take the pressure off. 

I also made a personal commitment to try to post a blog entry each week.

My first blog attempts, were often restating Mark’s ideas, as I understood them, but soon I started to get my own topics, voice and rhythm.

I have found blogging is something I really enjoy.  I have learned a lot, met a bunch of great people and had a focus for my thinking that I didn’t have before. 

My blog personality is just like me, opinionated, outspoken, open and contemplative (thanks Laura!) but with slightly less profanity and slightly more verve.

So thanks to everyone who has participated in this adventure with me.  From those reluctant bloggers who felt forced to join, to those related to me who felt obligated to read [and vote for] them, to those who contributed to the conversation.

I would even like to thank those who wrote less than flattering comments about me, who helped me, not only thicken my skin, but learn to be brave enough to not censor you (editors note - we have been consistent at TalentedApps in only censoring those who are clearly selling something or have been ruled objectively offensive.  The clueless and the mean are let through).

Like most bloggers who are not writers, I am surprised at how quickly I have learned to love to blog.  If you are not a blogger today, I  encourage you to consider giving it a try.  If you are not sure, drop me an email and I’ll give you more reasons why you should and some practical pointers on how to get started.

Dan has posted the new, July Leadership Development Carnival. It’s a terrific collection of over 30 posts submitted by various excellent blogs. The links to each post come with a brief description, giving you an idea of what the post will be about. They are all high quality posts and will give you a diverse perspective on topics such as leadership development, succession planning, and so forth.

Included in the carnival is Meg’s post about Leadership Pipeline vs. Succession Planning. With so many different sources, it’s likely you’ll discover a very useful and interesting blog you didn’t know about before. So go check out the carnival!

Photo by ajagendorf25

This weekend marks the anniversary of the birth of a nation whose motto is about unity of purpose while acknowledging the differences in those who contribute to that purpose. That’s a very interesting duality that effective networks share; each person in the network has unique capabilities and individual goals, and different ways in which they contribute, but the network is unified in purpose.

As social networking tools gain acceptance in the enterprise, folks are recognizing that first, networks have always existed inside companies and second, that these network tools are more about making the networks more visible and more easily acted upon and utilized. As a result, when properly used, these tools accelerate productivity, innovation and engagement. However, like any tools, used improperly, these tools can damage those objectives as well.

Previously, we discussed how networks are inherently “opt-in” since they are usually not formal organizational structures. This means social factors such as trust play a large role in whether people will participate and make the network effective. But even after you achieve participation, the potential to wreck the network still exists in subtle and insidious ways.

One way is in the very structure of networks themselves. We know that the more connections that exist in a network, the higher the likelihood of information finding its way to the right person. Of course, everybody knows you can’t have ridiculously high levels of connections (although whether the number in 150+ or 1,500+ is debated) but is it right to assume that people in the network who have a significantly lower number of connections than others are somehow not as effective (or vice-versa?) As Steve Boese commented on a previous post, simply measuring the number (or extent) of connections doesn’t really tell you whether or not it’s working; it depends on the role or the person’s objectives. It can go beyond that as well; in some roles, some individuals might simply be more effective having only a tight set of connections with just a few of which reach outside their close circle of colleagues. Now, imagine a manager who simply measures effective use of the network by number and extent of connections dinging that individual for not having a high enough “social score.” Why risk their departure or reduced participation if the individual was an expert in a particularly strategic area and had contributed perfectly well through a “bridge” connection into the network?

What’s a better way? Managers need to look at the big picture and understand first what the purpose of the various networks are that their employees are members of. In that context, the manager can than understand what role an employee has in that network and then coach the employee if it seems that either the network is not getting what it needs, or even more effectively, if the employee is feeling they aren’t getting the most use from the network.

The most energetic proponents of network tools in the enterprise are not surprisingly heavy users of these tools. As such, they can easily fall into the perfectly natural human behavior of thinking other participants should be just as active, or more subtlety, not pay effective attention to those who aren’t as active. They can unwittingly alienate the very kind of employee that otherwise might not have had as much voice or impact on the success of the company from using the very tool that would have overcome the obstacle of organization structure, etc. Especially during the delicate initial phase of encouraging the use of network tools, it’s a good idea to look out for the non-productive effects of social pressure. As the culture becomes more familiar with their use, social norms will start to take effect and help people understand the different ways everyone contributes. Gradually, job and role requirements can then be added where appropriate in order to more clearly communicate expectations and guide career development.

Photo by: pursuethepassion

I am coming up on the one year anniversary of a personal goal to smile more.  This specific goal came from some coaching I received that suggested I should.

Well, to be more clear, I got this feedback years ago from my husband, but of course, I ignored it, as often happens, with personal feedback from family members. 

To be fair, his suggestion was don’t frown so much, which somehow sounded critical where the coach said, you have a great smile, you should smile more which somehow sounded enlightening.  Note to self — coaching works better with positive spin.

In general, I’m a pretty happy person, so it was a bit of a shock to hear that I do so much frowning.  The truth is, I’m in my head a lot and when I do that my facial expression is a bit dour.  The other bi-product of being in my head, is that I walk around a lot not noticing people around me.   

For the last year, I have focused on two primary things — looking people in the eye and smiling at them. 

Today, I noticed that people regularly smile at me unprompted.  It really was a great feeling to know that people naturally expected I would smile at them and occasionally beat me to it.  

I decided to congratulate myself on this publicly, to give others a chance to consider if they might be perceived better by trying to smile more.

One interesting benefit, is that when you make a conscious decision to smile, you often tip the scales from a normal day to a happy one, and since happiness is contagious there is a follow on effect that benefits everyone.  So you see I really wasn’t taking this goal on for me, I was doing it for you. 

Now how is that for positive spin?

Have you identified your team?  Not the team you work with, the team who is going to help you achieve your goals?  I actually have several “Team Meg’s” who I consider extremely critical to my success.  

I hand pick those on the team based on what kind of help and support I need.  Do I need someone to help motivate me?  Teach me something?  Keep me focused?  Hold me accountable? 

My team makes that happen.  For example, I might realize that I don’t have the best grasp on (or respect for) grammar, and yet I love to blog.  No problem, my team has my back. 

You see, like most things in life, accomplishing your goal is easier with help.  Sharing your goals with others will focus your energy and keep you accountable, whether this is a performance goal, a fitness goal or a career goal, leveraging your friends and your network increases your chance of success.

Learning to share your goals first requires you to see the bigger picture and realize that you can have a much bigger impact and make much more progress when you learn to collaborate.  You might suggest I’m cheating, taking things that are hard and getting a lot of help to make them easy and I would say, exactly. 

No one said that you couldn’t get help, so why wouldn’t you give yourself that edge?

One of the biggest tricks to getting the right “team you” is to have a good sense of what you are good at and what you are not.  You might be surprised to find out that there are people you know who are good at what you lack. 

So I ask you, have you assembled the right team?  Are you sharing your goals with them so that they can help you?

Warning!  This post contains outright bragging and shameless pride.  Read at your own risk.

As many of you know we’ve been working on the project that must not be named over here at ORCL for quite a long time.  So long, that it has been easy to lose sight of just how big it is. 

Of course, we’ve had a lot of support, and that helps.  For example, our good friend Naomi Bloom called our products the second coming, clearly a sign of her deep religious belief (and faith) in our plans.  I totally understand too, why wouldn’t people get excited about a project that is entirely secret and vague.  Frankly, there are days when I’ve wondered myself if it was real and I’m being paid to help build it.

I am not new to the idea of re-architecting large-scale products.  In fact this is my fifth time redesigning a major product for technical and functional architecture improvements.  Of course, not every time was actually successful.  The time, effort and commitment to do a project of this scale makes it risky at best.  Let’s just say, if I were Stephen Colbert I’d know exactly how to describe what it takes to make something like this happen, but since this is a family blog, I will use the word brave.

So, while I am still not giving you any details on the what, when or how of this product, I am telling you today how amazed and honored I am to be working on a product that requires such commitment and bravery.  This is a project that could have failed many ways, but only succeeded with tenacity and vision. 

This Fusion project is one I will be proud of forever, and I fully expect it to cause people to stand up and take notice.

So, to everyone who has been working on making Fusion a reality, at every level, I would like to take a moment and tell you that this has truly been one amazing and exciting ride.