Never mind the mainstream

With more and more organizations attempting to internally leverage now widely known and in a way sort of similar Web 2.0 concepts and technologies (Enterprise 2.0), with varying internal goals like increasing employee collaboration, making it easier to locate and connect with widely distributed colleagues, or improving the organizations ability to generate and execute on new ideas for products and services, one can start to get a little numb or even jaded by the technologies and recommendations for the application of Web 2.0 tools at work. How many times have you heard these kinds of statements:

Why not start an internal wiki for company policies?

Set up a Yammer network for internal microblogging!

Let's get the CEO to put the quarterly newsletter on a blog!

While these may be great ideas for the organization, and certainly despite what many of us more active in these technologies would care to admit, would still represent massive leaps forward in openness and communication for many organizations, on the surface the tools and the simple, beginning approaches can seem a little repetitive.

There are lots of Enterprise 2.0 tools on the market, but at some level they all seem kind of the same.  I know that isn't really true, but still, the sense at least to me is that while in many of these kinds of projects selecting the right kind of technology to solve the specific and pressing need is important, the specific solution selected is probably less important. And for me, a technology person, that can be a little tough to admit.  Or at least we are at a point where the secondary or below the top level distinctions between competing solutions now matter, and will likely be the differentiation criteria for selection. When the base technology, say a wiki or an internal blog, is so technically simple, what matters more are things like customer service, integration with existing solutions, longer term product vision, and vendor and solution viability.

It seems not that different to the reasoning that is frequently cited around a more traditional HR Technology solutions say for Performance Management or Succession Planning.  Many of the leading solutions are really quite similar once you get a bit below the surface, and often success or failure of these projects is more about whether or not your managers really understand the importance of the process, are trained and rewarded to have regular and ongoing performance conversations and coaching with staff, and finally that they see the value is using a new set of tools to support these processes. If you have those fundamentals right, the specific solution is relatively less important.

Recently the inventor of the term Enterprise 2.0, and one of the leading authorities in the application of technologies to solve business problems,  Andrew McAfee observed that for many larger organizations the recognition and the inclination to apply E2.0 technologies and strategies has become mainstream. From even a casual observation of the volume and breadth of articles, white papers, conferences, blogs, and other non-traditional coverage of the E2.0 movement it seems apparent that there is no shortage of attention being spent, technology solutions to choose from, and set of experts both individual and well-established to turn to for help in the E2.0 space. 

So if Prof. McAfee is right, and E2.0 is really becoming mainstream that begs a few questions.

1. What's next?

2. More importantly, if you missed the mainstream (the equivalent, I suppose of clinging to your CDs in an iPod world), is it too late?

The worry also about the 'mainstreaming' of a set of technologies is that they will continue on the path towards homogenization, be individually non-distinctive, and leave the typical buyer discounting their importance since 'they are pretty much all the same'. What made the iPod so great was that it was not just a better version of something else (it was), but that it changed the game of buying and consuming music entirely.  

So, what's on your iPod this morning?  

Situational Awareness

Your environment, the activities in which you are engaging, and the people that you are with, impacts and influences your ability and desire to respond to and interact with the constant demands for your time and attention. This is becoming increasingly important as the number and diversity of communication avenues increase,No, not that kind of Situation and how in the smartphone generation, the tendency to be always connected to these tethers has become common and expected.

That was a really long winded way of saying essentially this:

1. There are loads of ways (email, phone, SMS, social networks), in which we interact with our colleagues, friends, and family (and the public)
2. These various mechanisms differ widely in how we respond to them, (an urgent text message from a family member gets an immediate response)
3. Different and sometimes overlapping social circles utilize these mechanisms in varying ways, (work colleagues email us on one account, while almost anyone on Twitter can send an '@' message directed to us)
4. We constantly assess and adjust our ability and preferences for receiving and responding to these messages based on our situation, (we turn off our phones when in a parent-teacher conference, or we may only respond to LinkedIn invites once a week)

Some directives and adjustments are simple -  silencing our phones in a movie theater. While others are more complex and subtle -attending a conference presentation but wanting to remain available for urgent messages from the office or from family members, while ignoring personal email or messaging from various social networks. In all cases, managing the multitude of communication channels and our ability to respond gets more complex all the time.

Recently mobile communications supplier Nokia released a prototype application named 'Situations', designed to help Nokia smartphone users attempt to manage these channels and contexts more effectively, and after some initial configuration, automatically. 'Situations' allows the user the configure various contexts like 'In a meeting', or 'Concert', and set up corresponding phone behaviors like setting the phone to vibrate only, allowing only selected contact group calls to ring through, or auto-responding to text messages with a 'situationally appropriate' response. 

Nokia 'Situations' screen images below:

 

While the current capability of Nokia 'Situations' is basically limited to 'core' phone functions like ringer behavior, text messaging, and basic calendaring, it probably is not too far-fetched to see an application that takes this functionality one better and integrates with personal and corporate email, enterprise and public social networks, and whatever new mechanisms for connection and communication emerge over time. Today, we configure messaging and notification rules for these channels one by one, and no technology I am aware of lets us consolidate these rules and overlay context and situational awareness to refine the rules.

There is much talk about information overload, and while in the aggregate that might be true what seems to be more important to address the overload is the ability to segment, sort, and intelligently respond to the incoming stream of messages based on the situational context of type of message, relationship to the message sender, and augmented by our physical surroundings. 

For smartphones to be truly smart, they should be able to do more than continuously beep, ring, vibrate, and poke us with incoming message after message, they ought to be able (with a little coaching), to do some initial screening for us.

Don Draper has a secretary sitting outside his office doing the screening for him.  The rest of us need some help, and the idea behind the Nokia 'Situations' app I think represents the next evolution in this process.

Delivering Talent

Note: Tonight at 8PM ET on the HR Happy Hour show, we will be joined by Jamie Naughton from Zappos, to talk about some of the HR and Talent Management practices employed at Zappos.

Everyone knows at least something about the Zappos story.  Small, specialty online retailer survives some rough early years to become a $1B plus juggernaut just a few short years later. This growth is fueled by a relentless focus on providing legendary customer service; understanding, documenting, communicating, and living by their famous company culture and values; and by building sustainable processes for finding, developing, and rewarding the best people to live the culture and that can deliver on the customer promise for tremendous service.

In 'Delivering Happiness', Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's, book about the origins, rise, and philosophies behind Zappos, Hsieh expounds upon many of the talent management strategies that are employed to ensure that the company can continue to live up to its high standards for customer service, ensure that the most important organizational values are supported and strengthened, and that there will be a steady and ready supply of future leaders to drive the constant and rapid growth.

From Zappos practice of interviewing specifically for cultural fit, to offering brand new employees cash bonuses to leave, to the focus on building active and deep pipelines of talent for positions across and through the organization, the examples of effective and even innovative talent management strategies and execution abound in Delivering Happiness, and other writings, speeches etc.

When the entire business strategy and opportunities for success hinge almost completely on the talent, commitment, and execution of people, (face it, you can buy shoes from about a thousand different places), then the challenge, pressure, and opportunity on those folks mainly responsible for the hiring, development, and compensation of these people becomes marked.  I'd submit you can't have a world-class roster of fantastically engaged, aligned, and successful employees without a corresponding world-class HR and Talent Management group helping to deliver on the customer and employee promises.

Sure you know the Zappos story from the book, or from the blogs, or from the thousands of blog posts about the company.  But tonight on the HR Happy Hour show you will get a chance to hear from one of the leaders of the Zappos talent management team, Cruise Ship Captain Jamie Naughton.

The fun starts tonight at 8PM ET.  Join us by listening on the show page here, by calling in to the listener line on 646-378-1086, or using the player below:

It should be a fun and interesting show, and I hope you can join us.

Visualizing Performance

The excellent blog Hoopism manages to successfully combine two of my favorite subjects, basketball and data into an interesting and unique blend of hoops nerd detailed analysis and engaging visualizations.Image - hoopism.com

Recently on the site the folks at Hoopism created a set of NBA player statistical data visualizations, that were developed by mapping player statistics to physical attributes of simple, cartoon, caricatures (more blocks equals longer arms, more rebounds results in longer legs etc.) 

An example of one of the NBA player data visualizations is at right.

The simple representative player caricatures can be evaluated visually, (long arms on the figure indicate a high number of blocked shots), and in comparatively, (the larger the mouth on the figure, indicates relatively more technical fouls assessed against the player). 

While the actual statistics taken into account on the player data visualizations do not offer what could be considered a total view of statistical performance, or complete insight into what makes for successful and more importantly winning players, the approach the visualizations themselves take offer a couple of important lessons for anyone in the game of understanding and evaluating individual and comparative performance.

1. Context and Dimension

These visualizations provide some insight to a player's individual contributions (how big is the player's head), and the relative position of the player compared to his teammates, peers, or competitors. A quick glance at the image above informs the viewer that David Lee scores at a high rate, but compared to Marcus Camby, blocks a relatively low number of opponents' shots.  Understanding and assessing performance for individuals, and in the context of the departmental and organizational units in which they reside is often an important and challenging task in traditional employee performance management. The simple characterizations of the NBA players in the visualizations make a better attempt at this than most workforce systems I have seen.

2. Eliminates Irrelevance

While certainly not perfect, or complete, the crude data visualizations do an excellent job at eliminating irrelevant or largely less important information.  Facts like where the player went to college, the number of neck tattoos, or the really subjective 'look' of the player are not included.  If in this case what 'matters' is the actual statistical performance on the court, then anything that is not directly related, and possibly subject to bias (Big 10 players are slow), is left out of the analysis. Again, there are many, many factors to consider in evaluating NBA performance, but I submit that often we allow unimportant factors to cloud our assessments.  In the workplace it is probably no different.  Do we sometimes, almost unconsciously factor in the number of crazy cat pictures that a colleague has in her cube to influence how we evaluate her work and contribution?

3. Fun

I simply like how the data visualizations introduce a novel and fun way to look at very traditional and typically flat data. By creating the caricatures and linking the familiar stick figure forms with the player statistical information, the creators make this performance data much more accessible.  You don't have to know too much about basketball to be able to quickly grasp the performance information, and begin to gain an understanding of individual and relative player strengths and weaknesses.  And finally, it is simply cool to look at this data in a new way.

We have loads of data in the organization.  Truly, there is no shortage of financial, operational, and employee data.  The challenge is finding ways to make the data meaningful, relevant, accessible, and perhaps even fun.  The ideas from some simple NBA player data caricatures I think offer some clues as to how we may approach these challenges.

Culture, Wellness, and the Soda Machine

I like to believe that in the workplace almost every form of communication, design, and subtle messaging has the potential to offer some kind of insight or clues to the organization's true culture and values.  

I mainly like to believe this because it provides the justification for an almost endless string of 'What your company (insert any object, policy, statement, product, etc.) says about your culture/values/mission' kind of blog posts. This is especially important on the Monday following a long holiday weekend, and my only other idea for today's post was going to be titled 'What your company can learn from the Knicks gutty, double overtime win over the Pistons this past Sunday', which for some reason is my strongest memory forcing its way through a 72-hour turkey haze.

It was the lingering effects of the tryptophan coma that led to a mid-morning trip to the office soda machine, to fuel up for the next round of meetings. Meetings that while important, had the potential to take the mind back to Danilo Gallinari's back-to-back 3-point bombs in the second overtime that sealed the Knick win.  (You really should check the replay on NBA.com).

At right, is a picture of the aforementioned soda machine.  A very solid and concise headline 'Cold Drinks', followed by two rows of assorted beverages.  The top row, the diet versions of Coke, Mountain Dew, and Pepsi.  Bottom (and less desirable from a product placement point of view), full sugared and caffeinated Coke, Ginger Ale (does anyone at work crave a Ginger Ale?), orange juice, and finally bottled water.

Nine choices in all, with DC and the Diet Dew getting the coveted prime slots on the top row, (and hogging up two spots each).  Out of the nine total choices (seven really), only two would be considered healthy options, with the majority of the selections falling in to the 'wake up, crank out some work, but keep the weight off, fatty' category.

Is there really a message in the drink or snacks that fill up the vending machines? Does the organization subtly or even overtly signal what is really and truly important by the food and drinks it makes readily available to the employees? Am I reading way too much into this, and the real truth is that an outside company services and re-stocks the machines and simply supplies them with what people want, and what sells? Is there really a market for vending machine ginger ale?

Lots of questions for the sluggish Monday following a long holiday weekend.  However, I have just one more - 

Should I have just punted and posted about the Knick game?