Here's the social media video you'll see 1,418 times in 2013

There is no doubt we love, love, love the 'Social Media Revolution' series of videos created by Erik Qualman.

If you have been to any kind of conference, event, presentation, webinar, etc. that had even the remotest tie-back to social media, social networking, or mobile technology in the last 5 years or so, then you have definitely sat through 4 minutes of increasingly incredible social media statistics fly in and out of the frame, while tapping your toes to the pulsating soundtrack courtesy of Fatboy Slim's 'Right Here, Right Now.'

Well the latest version, titled 'Social Media Revolution 4' was released a couple of weeks ago, (embedded below, email and RSS subscribers will have to click through to get your Slim on), and in keeping with the structure, format, and presentation of the first three videos in the series, this latest installment presents numerous facts and statistics about the state and growth of social media and networking.

Take a look below and then come back to read my sincere request of you about this video in 2013. 

Great stuff, right?

Facebook is really big.  Lots of folks sign up for LinkedIn every day. People like to read online product reviews and check out recommendations about restaurants from strangers on the internet. Fatboy Slim (sort of) holds up in late 2012.

So here is my request for 2013 - don't include this video in any presentation you may give, webcast you present, or informal talk you might have with your colleagues. If you find yourself in attendance at an event/presentation, and the speaker cracks out this little beauty in an attempt to convince the audience by virtue of the statistics and volume of our pal Slim that 'social media is a really big deal' then you need to walk out and send a strongly worded letter, (that will teach them), to the event organizers that you expect better from speakers in 2013.

We just can't keep trotting this one out, and we can't keep trying to 'impress' people with it either.

We can't, trust me on this. Someone's head will explode at SHRM13 and with all those HR people in the room the workmen's comp discussions will be epic. Actually, that might be kind of fun.

There is nothing wrong or bad about this video, (or the ones that came before it in the series), but we have, all of us, heard and seen it all before.

Especially the 'Right Here, Right Now' bit, which by the way was released back in 1999.

I think the song is about the Y2K bug.

Cause, correlation, and chemistry

I am willing to be you have probably read, heard, or even repeated the following admonition in the last few weeks:

Correlation is not causation.

Here's why I think this assertion need to be retired, or at least pushed off to the side and filed away for a while with your Vanilla Ice CDs, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe figures, and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans.You have the power.

First, on the inability of correlation, i.e. lining up two sets of data that seem to track in the same direction and making a claim that one event or activity 'causes' the other, well sure, I think everyone understands that trap.

After seeing everyone at the State Fair rocking their bad tattoos, and therefore thinking that getting a bad tattoo will make one attend the State Fair is not a conclusion most rational observers would reach.

But the problem with the 'Correlation is not Causation' admonition is that it has the effect or shutting down the debate and stifling the potential discovery of useful information. A strong correlation between two related and relevant data series may not imply or prove causation, but it probably implies something. And that something might just be really important for us to understand - say the correlation between the course of study our last dozen newly promoted employees took, or the relationship between managers that successfully completed the latest leadership development program and the 12-18 month success of their team members.

In HR and Talent Management I am not sure the goal should be to try and 'prove' any one thing can actually cause another thing to happen anyway. We are dealing with people, not robots, (not yet anyway), and attempting to make sense out of interpersonal relationships, motivations, rewards, and capabilities. It is, in many ways, much harder than sitting in a chemistry lab tracking how agents react to one another. 

If I remember my high school chem lab accurately, loading up a beaker with a few solids and enough unstable acids and stopping up the top caused it to explode every time.  People, while often predicable, are not always that consistent.

The last warning I will raise is that team 'Correlation is not Causation' like to use this conclusion as a fake scientific argument against any proposals or ideas that they disagree with, or did not come up with themselves.

Here's a simple example:

'Hey, I noticed last week when his car was in the shop, Jake got a tremendous amount of work accomplished working from home - maybe we should explore letting some of the other developers do some teleworking?'

Can we know for certain that working from home was the reason for the spike in Jake's productivity?

Of course not. 

Might there have been a dozen other factors that might have been more responsible for the increase in output?

Sure.

Does your organization have the time or capacity to set up highly controlled experiments to try and figure it out - assuming that is even possible?

No way.

In science, proving causation might be the goal, the desired end state, but in Talent, we are much better served finding the correlations, using our understanding of work, people, and the world, and seizing on the ones that make sense for our business and our teams.

What do you think? Do you ever drop the 'Correlation' bomb around the office?

What technical talent thinks about your job descriptions

I wanted to point out a super piece last week on the Smashing Magazine blog, (a site about and for Web Designers), titled 'The Difference Between Good and Bad Job Requirements', that provides a great look into what technical, (and often hard to find) talent thinks about the typical job descriptions they encounter online.

Long story short - it is clear that the Web Designer that authored the post, and almost all of the 50+ commenters, don't have very many positive things to say about how most design job descriptions are presented.  Their chief complaints - most job postings contain a ridiculously long laundry list of technical skills and acronyms that are just not relevant for the job being posted, and are almost impossible for a single individual to possess with any level of mastery.  Additionally, most job ads focused to a large degree, (if not exclusively), about what things a candidate should have already done, not what things they will actually do on the new job, and how they might grow and develop professionally. Lastly, the piece takes a few shots at job ads that in trying to paint a realistic picture of their workplace culture, perhaps go too far with statements like, 'Candidate will need to perform effectively in a demanding environment and show resiliency to stress.'  

Wow, where can I sign up?

There are several excellent pieces of advice for writing more effective technical job ads from the author as well as from many of the commenters, but the best line from the piece, and one that has applicability to recruting advertising for any field is this comment, when assessing a job ad that was much more positive and effective:

What they do is so much more than just telling you what you should have already done by now. They’re telling you what you could become working for them.

That is a key point, one I think we overlook all the time.  It continues to assume it is an employer's market, and while that may be true in some regions and fields, it certainly is not true in others, certainly for any roles you are having a hard time in filling.

Some final words of advice from the piece that I think are worth remembering in our continuing quest to attract the best talent for our organizations: 

We all understand it’ll be hard work and that we’re supposed to be good at it. So try not to tell us what your ideal employee is. Try to tell us what a great designer we could become should we want to join your team.

It's not always about you, the employer.  Sometimes, and maybe more often than you think, it is about them.

Have a great week everyone!

Can there be a middle class if there are no middle class jobs?

If there was one term we heard more than any other here in the USA during the recent Presidential election contest it had to be 'middle class.'  

The 'middle class', sometimes depending on what group is doing the defining, consists of that large swath of average, normal, or 'regular' people - neither rich nor in poverty, and that have typically worked in a wide range of jobs that provided solid but not spectacular earnings, some potential for growth, were fairly stable, and crucially, were generally accessible to just about everyone who was willing to put in the effort.

In the election both sides talked a lot about the middle class, mostly coupled with words like 'save', 'strengthen', or 'protect'. While the opposition parties advanced different proposals and philosophies that they felt would be in the best interests of the middle class, there was at least consensus across the board that the welfare of the middle class is of significant importance to the health of the nation overall.

But no matter what political philosophy you take up with, one emerging reality about the overall job market seems to be this - that the recovery from the 2009 recession, (such as it is), has not extended to many of these 'middle class' type jobs. 

The below chart showing how 'routine' job levels have been impacted by recent economic recessions is from a piece by Economics professors Henry Siu and Nir Jaimovich titled 'Jobless recoveries and the disappearance of routine occupations' that paints a really grim future for the middle class and many of the professions that have typically been held by middle class workers.

Take a look at the data, with some additional comments/analysis to follow.

From the author's analysis of the data in the above chart:

Figure 1 highlights our simple point; it plots per capita employment in routine occupations (in log levels) from 1967 to the end of 2011. Since about 1990, there is an obvious 28 log point decline in routine employment.

What is equally clear is that this fall has not happened gradually over time but that the decline is concentrated in economic downturns. 92% of the 28 log point fall occurred within a 12 month window of NBER-dated recessions

Equally important to identifying the dramatic loss of these historically middle class 'routine' jobs is the researcher's conclusion that once lost, these jobs do not ever come back - as firms elect to offshore, automate, or increase technology investments to maintain overall output using a reduced number of employees.

Jobs on the 'high end' like software engineers, analysts, and economists, (lucky for the authors, I guess), as well as ones on the lower income levels like in retail and hospitality, have shown to be resilient, and nearly recession-proof. But the 'middle' and by extension the middle class - well not so much.

Last, I will leave with this conclusion from the piece, about where long-term job growth has occurred, and where it hasn't:

Thus, all of the per capita employment growth of the past 30 years has either been in ‘non-routine’ occupations located at the high-end of the wage distribution, such as software engineers and economists, or in low-paying jobs, such as service occupations like restaurant waiters and janitors. For this last set of occupations, this has been especially true in the past decade. 

A conclusion, if indeed accurate, (and it seems to be), that makes the recent blustering and posturing in the election about 'saving' the middle class, which mainly consisted of arguments over a point or two difference in marginal tax rates and simply calling the other guy 'wrong', a demonstration of a deep lack of understanding, or willful ignorance of the realities in the job market and the economy.

Saving the middle class is going to be a much more complex and difficult task, no matter which side wins elections.

And yes, this a kind of downer post for a Friday - you have to cut me some slack, I may have just eaten my last Twinkie.

Have a great weekend! 

Paul Revere is Terrible and the Unintended Consequences of Games

I am not really a gamer, but even I took notice of the trailers and TV spots for the latest release in the popular Assassin's Creed video game series.  Titled simply 'Assassin's Creed III', the basic premise has the game's hero/protagonist 'Connor' operating and fighting in the Revolutionary War-era American Colonies, with the fictional Assassin's Creed characters and plotlines interwoven with real historical figures from that era like Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams, and George Washington.

So a couple of weeks ago I picked up the game for my son who proceeded to enthusiastically dive in to the story, and by extension, into the Assassin's Creed view of the Colonial world and some of the most famous people and heroes of that age. Then, in what can either be described as trusting and empowering parenting, or simply 'bad' parenting, I sort of tuned out while he spent some time over several days playing the game, and navigating through the stylized and idealized versions of Colonial Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.

When I asked him about the game, and specifically how did he like interacting with the historical characters like Franklin and Washington, the conversation went something like this:

Me: How was it playing the game and mixing it up with famous people from American History?

P: They were all cool, with one exception.

Me: Who was that?

P: Paul Revere.

Me: What was bad about Paul Revere?

P: Paul Revere is terrible. He kept yelling at me to get back on my horse. When we had to fight the Redcoats he was worthless, all he did was wave his arms around and ride in a circle. He almost got me killed about five times.

I have to admit it cracked me up, the idea of American Icon and legend Paul Revere reduced to a flailing, ineffective liability out in the field when naturally we think of him as a heroic and legendary figure. After I stopped laughing I did attempt to stick up for Revere and remind P of his place as a true patriot and essential player in our nation's formation. I didn't really think that Assassin's Creed would be an accurate and historically correct take on American History, (nor should it be), but I also did not want to see P walk away with a really incorrect impression of Revere.

Thinking about the conversation further, I could not help but wonder if Assassin's Creed story is one we should take caution from, as we continue to think about and introduce gaming elements and game mechanics to more parts of work, education, and life in general.

In Assassin's Creed, any potential relevant learning and understanding of historical events and figures is only an afterthought to the game itself - its purpose is to entertain and engage the player to accomplish the various missions, none of which are 'Understand the historical significance of Paul Revere'.

I totally get that - running around Boston, scaling walls, dispatching spies and Redcoats with a well-placed musket shot is tremendous fun -  thinking about how onerous taxes levied on colonial merchants and how that led to protest and rebellion is kind of boring - particularly to an 12 year old.

But that is exactly the reason why I think we have to be really careful making everything into some kind of game - it can get really easy to make the game itself so compelling and interesting that we forget why we are even playing in the first place. And it can get even easier to see 'success' as winning the game, with the true goals or purpose - completing some real work or learning something important, becoming only ancillary benefits.

And I checked - Paul Revere is terrible, (at least at Assassin's Creed).