Social Technology is Not the Enemy of HR

Here’s the understatement of the year…we live in a digital world. This digital world connects everyone who wishes to participate. And if you’re not participating, then you’re not contributing to the progression of society.

For quite sometime, I’ve bashed my own industry for not participating. HR has been a late adopter of innovative technologies that build learning communities and create valuable connections. But it seems the tide is turning, and finally, HR is starting to build a digital prowess beyond pure compliance and benefits applications. Now, it seems, HR is finally starting to see the value of these online learning communities and integrated employee life-cycle solutions.While I commend our industry for its recent progress, we’re still so 2006. Check out this article.

For HR, the digital awareness and knowledge gap still exists and it’s significant. It seems the big digital dilemma now is in employee value vs. productivity loss brought about by social technologies. Social technologies scare HR. Why? Because since the beginning, HR operates under control and comply policy and HR loses control in these social environments. So Facebook, Twitter and other social technologies get turned off for concerned, conservative, traditional companies.

But through these social technologies HR has a tremendous opportunity to become more valuable than your PR department, your marketing team, and even your sales team by making a fundamental shift from control and comply to connect and engage. This shift will elevate HR’s impact by making it more relevant to the bottom line than ever before. Let me explain.

Today, everyone is the media. Every one of your employees has a voice, and that single voice can be carbon copied around the world within seconds – your PR department wishes it had such power. You can choose to use this to your advantage or to your detriment.

Your sales team can work relentlessly to build customer relationships. Your marketing team can spend lots of money building your brand. Your PR team can work tirelessly trying to protect your reputation. And all of their efforts can be destroyed overnight by one disgruntled employee who will share her experience with the world whether you control social technologies or not. HR’s focus should not be on trying to limit the voice of your employees (impossible), but rather, to create engaged employees who love their organization and share it with the world. Social technologies allow engaged employees to carry the company banner to everyone they are connected to.

Your employees are the one’s building brand loyalty with consumers today. Advocate groups aren’t limited to consumers anymore. Now advocate groups include producers (employees) and consumers conversing together in real time. In these social communities of producers and consumers, authentic conversations happen, feedback is quickly shared, and so are solutions. Customer service reaches an all-time high because consumers have a direct line of communication with the producers. When the direct line exists, trust exists and a competitive advantage of speed can be captured because the producer-consumer conversation is happening dynamically. Consumer-producer connections create better companies, better products.

It’s time for our industry to embrace today’s open and collaborative global business environment by enabling engaged producers to participate with consumers through social technologies. Below are a few points to consider.

1. Value: Engage your employees – connect with each employee as an individual by understanding their strengths, their dreams and their unique value.
2. Fit: Connect your employees to your mission – align the dreams and unique skills and experiences of each employee with your mission.
3. Benefit: Build a community of consumer-producer advocates – open social technology tools for engaged employees to build trust with your customers.

Onward!

Tags: community, connecting, consumers, facebook, HR, human, innovation, resources, social, stakeholders, twitter

Gravity Busting Companies

Thinking about the definition of a Champion a lot lately has continuously led me to the same question: How can a Champion truly be a Champion? Are there some characteristics that companies we effectively release champions have in common?

Organizational Champions, the upcoming book, calls these companies “gravity-busting” companies. Companies that can be grounded by the natural path of gravity, yes, but that are not necessarily bound by it. There are many examples of a company that was too bound by gravity until the market passed them by, but surely there are some common characteristics of companies that feel good about allowing their Champions to bust out of the gravity when necessary.

IBM was synonymous with typewriters. In the early 1980’s, the world stopped needing typewriters; they shifted to personal computers. IBM created the original PC that started the revolution. Fast forward to the mid-1990’s and now low-cost providers had removed all the margins from PC sales. IBM had to make a major shift in their business model again. Now, they have transformed their model into a company that provides solutions.

They have leveraged their understanding and the tools from the IT industry to provide answers to companies and people around the world. They saw the change was necessary and the leadership of IBM made the change happen. Obviously, like many other companies that shall remain nameless, IBM could have followed the path of gravity and rolled with the tide. They could have held tightly to a business model that no longer existed, made some money for the short term, but then would have inevitably met a failing business. What was it about this company, and many others, that made it a gravity-busting company?

1. Investment in Development: In the article The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies…and How to Break Them by Harvard Business Review, many former executives of once successful companies that recently failed were interviewed about why their companies had failed. Many of the findings centered on the leadership and being able to equip these leaders to successfully manage and maneuver through change. They cited development as a key for future success. For the company who doesn’t see leadership development as a direct impact of the bottom-line, they may want to hold on tight for they could face the risk of not sustaining their impact and success for long.

In our research, when we asked 360 groups of potential Champions to answer a set of questions, “seeking ways to improve him/herself on a regular basis” showed a 69% correlation with a Champions overall performance versus non-Champions. Champions are finding ways to improve their knowledge, skills, and abilities on a regular basis….and the company they are a part of heavily supports this.

Interestingly, Champions are encouraged to not only develop themselves but others around them. Remember, an essential characteristic of a champion is promoting and seeking the “win-win” for the team. “championing individuals on the team to promote their success” had a 78% correlation to their overall performance.

2. Clear Cut and Deeply-Felt Vision and Mission: Many companies are great at their business, but there is not clear reason why they are doing their business. For what? For Champions to see the possibilities, for them to relentlessly pursue the dreams that ultimately drive the company further, the people need to know what they are championing…or fighting for. I imagine Walmart doesn’t expect their people to change the face of business by not knowing why they are in business. They save money to live better. Simply put. It is known by every Associate at Walmart and known by every consumer of Walmart.

Again in our research, there was a 75% correlation for Champions and their leadership performance and how well they “demonstrated a clear vision for the organization”. They cannot demonstrate this vision without a clear and deeply felt vision and mission from the overall company.

3. Culture: Over the years, it has absolutely amazed me what a culture can do, or suppress, in leaders and champions. When a company shows true commitment from the very top person(s) around taking smart risk, reaching across and outside the organization to build relationships, tomorrow’s strategy, and properly developing leaders to be able to handle all of the above, change can happen and is much more sustainable. Getting caught in the gravity of “earning profit for stakeholders” doesn’t allow a Champion to think beyond immediate stakeholders and focus on the real stakeholders of business today: the employees, the environment, the economy, everything. Having a culture that promotes this type of thinking and leadership can allow a Champion to have the freedom to bust through the gravity when it makes sense to do so.

4. Out-front and Collaborative Leadership Practices: Collaboration and interdependence are two key ingredients to business today. Building relationships not only with people inside your department and team, but focusing on the company as a whole and the entire outside world, for that matter, is necessary.

“One of the things we found was that best practice companies – vigilant companies who see opportunities sooner – are led by people who are very networked and very curious. Because they’re inquisitive about what is really going on, they ask really good questions,” quoted by George Day, consultant to companies like IBM, GE and Marriott.

Another HBR article titled Match your Innovation Strategies to your Innovation Ecosystem highlights the necessity of connecting and engaging customers and stakeholders through collaboration, relationships and not hiding behind the technologies that enable us to work faster today. As they say, “When [innovation ecosystems] work, ecosystems allow firms to create value that no single firm could have created alone. The benefits of these systems – discussed under such labels as platform leadership, keystone strategies, open innovation, value networks, and hyperlinked organizations–are real and well publicized.” The ability for the leaders of a company to live out these practices and push this throughout the organization helps to enable others to see this value and do the same.

Research isn’t in yet for what exactly is required of a company to properly support and enable Champions to do their thing, but from best practices and our research, here are some essential building blocks for a company.

Tags: champions, change, corporate, culture, development, IBM, innovation, Leadership, management, network, organizational, practices, relationships