It's hard to build teams when we secretly hate each other

Quick observation for what seems like another 'No one is working so no one will read this post' kind of day. 

First, two pieces related to teamwork and group dynamics that caught my attention, then some thoughts from me follow:

One - Yup, Your Girlfriends are Purposely Posting Those Ugly Pictures of You on Facebook - the title sort of explains it all, essentially, we like making each other look bad on Facebook

Two - Microsoft's Downfall: Inside the Executive Emails and Cannibalistic Culture that Felled a Tech Giant, the big point here, 'Stack Ranking', a performance management process that forces managers to rate employees into high, average, and low performance buckets, with set percentages of each, effectively crippled Microsoft's ability to innovate, as staff became obsessed with the rankings themselves, and competing with each other, instead of the company's real external competitors.

----------------------------------------

Over and over again we read, think, and explore ways to make our organizational teams work with each other more effectively, efficiently, and simply better. It seems to be a common assumption that working well in teams, and the ability for organizations to harness and mobilize teams of disparate and often dispersed and virtual team members to meet the needs of a fast-changing business environment is one of the keys to long-term, sustained organizational success.

I suppose I believe that is true. Certainly in larger organizations, in order for individuals to progress their ideas, to make important contributions, and to impact on a major scale the organization's efforts and direction will usually entail and require that individual to operate in a team concept. In large organizations, and even in smaller ones usually, significant projects don't advance much past the 'idea' stage without a pretty high level of team-based work.

But the trouble with all this team-based work, and at least one of the reasons, (at least I am submitting this as a possible reason), why it can be so hard to keep the momentum from one person's great idea alive as the singular idea transitions to a collective or team goal?

It's because we all secretly hate each other. Well, perhaps that is too strong. If not hate, then for many of us there exists a quiet, below the surface, but undeniable realization that business and life are often seen as a zero-sum game, or said differently, when you look good, I on the other hand, look a little bit worse. We know that credit, accolades, rewards, esteem - all the good stuff that comes from achievement, are usually not spread around equally. Even if we are on the same team, working towards the same goals, that for many of us we are certain that the honors will be parsed out individually.

It's not an easy game for leaders, getting to the right balance of team players, who are happy to see the team succeed and hope the rising tide will lift them up as well,  and superstars, who think the team only wins because of them.

It's easy in sports where we see this all the time, each team a mix of superstars and role players. It tends to work there because everyone knows who the stars are, or at least who are supposed to perform like stars.

At your workplace I imagine it is a little bit harder. Maybe everyone there is a star. Or everyone wants to be a star and naturally sees the guy in the next chair as competition. And programs like stack ranking just ensure the organization is seen as sanctioning the internal competition.

Good luck sorting that out.

I know you're bored. Me too.

If you are a USA-based reader and actually reading this post the morning it was published, Tuesday July 3, 2012, then that means one of two things. One, you got stuck working the day before the 4th of July holiday while the rest of the office is busy getting their BBQ on; or, you are actually off from work today, are still messing about online, and apparently the action over on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest or wherever you like to waste time do research was not getting it done this morning.Which are you?

Either way, whether you are here by choice, by accident, or by habit - chances are, on a warm, summer day-before-the-holiday morning, you might be just a little bored. Or maybe just a tiny bit tired or burned out and ready for a break.  Or perhaps if you are a regular reader of this and other HR blogs you are DONE with #SHRM12 reports, reviews, reflections, and retrospectives. I mean COME ON, how many more of those can you read? 

If you happened to miss one of the SHRM posts, don't fret, they were all, (including the ones I wrote), pretty much the same - SHRM was/is incredibly big, Malcolm Galdwell was cool, Seinfeld was funny, social media will some day be a big deal to normal HR people. I get it. We all get it. 

So going with the assumption if you found your way here on July 3 you have to be at least the tiniest bit bored with whatever else you have have happening, I wanted to offer up a little distraction, something I stumbled upon over the weekend while I was processing all my learnings from SHRM trying to remember if I did anything embarassing at one of the parties.

So I offer up a link to a really cool set of images titled '100 Posterworks', by Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen, and as you can see from the image on the right hand side of this post, includes at least one about, you guessed it, boredom. Seemed both fitting and cool as the images themselves, if you do take a few minutes to scroll through them, are anything but boring. According to the artists, "Through the posters we address philosophical questions, comment on political or artistic issues, quote, complain, poke fun and indirectly document our lives. They can be read as a kind of cumulative (and often contradictory) artist statement".

I am not sure about all that, but I thought they were pretty cool to look at anyway.

I hope folks in the USA have a fantastic 4th of July holiday, and to anyone reading in the UK, hey, no hard feelings?

I'll be back when I have something more interesting to write about than SHRM or whatever the latest buzz is on TechCrunch.

How did you get this number?

The Next Web ran a short piece a few days ago about the results from a survey of mobile and smartphone usage in the UK, commissioned by the UK mobile operator O2, that revealed some interesting data about how people are actually using their smartphones.Mojave phone booth

The hook line from the piece, and what is interesting about the data, (taken from a survey of about 2,000 users), is that making actual phones calls, i.e., talking to other people, (or at least attempting to), rated as only the fifth most popular activity for these smartphone users.

According to the 'All About You' survey data, here's where people spend their time on each day with their phones:

Browsing the internet - 25 minutes

Checking Social Networking sites - 17.5 minutes

Listening to music - 15.5 minutes

Playing games - 14.5 minutes

Making actual phone calls (not including conversations with SIRI), - 12 minutes

If you read the rest of the Next Web piece on the survey data, it talks about how the mobile phone has become an indispensable part of modern life, has replaced for many users the need for other 'single-function' gadgets like alarm clocks and watches, and continues to utterly transform the way that we interact with the world, with information, and certainly, each other. And of course that is the kind of positive spin that O2, a mobile phone provider would want to attach to this kind of data.

But the cynical take on this, and perhaps backed up with we see more and more in our professional and personal lives, is that, increasingly, we don't want to actually talk to each other, at least not as often as we want to check LOL Cats, hang out on Facebook, and drop the latest Adele track.

It's not really new news that people do lots of really cool things on their phones, and I suppose it's not really news anymore that actually talking to people has become a much less common and much bigger intrusion on our time that we ever used to think. Sherry Turkle has already covered that ground better than I ever could.

But I guess I'll leave it to you to consider - the little device you are carrying right now lets you connect with the entire world, almost everyone in it, and more information than was ever dreamed would be accessible even just a few years ago. 

With that power, potential, and promise, why would you want to spend any time dedicated to talking with just one person?

We love, (especially the professional networkers out there), to say that meeting people, talking to them, interacting one-on-one is the ultimate way to connect, and is necessary to forge true and meaningful relationships. But the data keeps showing what we say we believe and what we actually do continue to diverge.

What do you think? How much less do you actually talk to people since you got your iPhone?

And you can call me to let me know what you think if you like, but I probably won't pick up. Maybe.

French fried and who takes the heat when you reach for talent

Last night I stayed up way too late for a tired body still recovering from #SHRM12 to watch the NBA 2012 player draft up until the point where my beloved New York Knicks made their one and only selection, with the 48th overall pick.

And in classic Knick fashion, they managed to enrage the small but vocal contingent of fans on hand at the draft, as well as a fair number of active fans in the Twitterverse, with the selection of the mostly unknown Kostas Papanikolaou, from Greece, whose main claim to fame, (aside from being short an 'e' from having every vowel in his last name), was ONE good game in the recent Euroleague finals.  Immediately after the selection of Papanikolaou, and amid the fans' shouts of 'Who the heck is that?', some of the commentators on the draft broadcast talked about the Greek's game, and that he has potential, some good skills, needs some further development, yadda-yadda-yadda. Truth is, hardly anyone knows anything about this player and his game, and whether or not he will become a productive NBA player someday is anyone's guess. The dunk of death

As a Knicks fan, the draft always brings back memories of the 1999 draft, where the Knicks selecting with the 15th overall pick in the event, selected a similarly unknown, (but admittedly with a better body of work to that point), Fredric Weis, a 7'2" center from the basketball hotbed of France. Long story short, Weis never played in the NBA, and despite having a decent career in a few European leagues and representing France is several international competitions, is really only remembered for one thing - being jumped over and dunked upon by NBA star Vince Carter in the 2000 Olympics, in a play known as "Le dunk de la mort'', ('The dunk of death'). 

As I mentioned, Weis never made it to the NBA, and certainly it will take a few years to know if Papanikolaou will meet the same fate. There are just too many variables, and a long history of guys you've never heard of before, (Nowitzki, Ginobili, Sackett), having fantastic careers to completely discount the Greek's chances. 

But here is the interesting thing for the talent evaluator and professional in these kinds of 'reach' scenarios - if Weis would have turned out to be a star, or even a solid, reliable contributor on the NBA level, a ton of the credit would have gone to the person(s) gutsy enough to risk their professional reputation and jobs and pick an unknown guy out of France over a more established player from a US college that the fans and public would have at least known about. The risk, at least a disproportionate amount of selecting an unknown quantity, from a talent pool not known for producing great hires, who you have to explain for half an hour just exactly who he is, is almost all on the talent pro.

If a guy like Weis, and Papanikolaou as well, ends up as a success, most of the accolades and credit will go to them. If they fail, it isn't really their fault, no one expects unknowns from Europe to become big NBA stars, (less so today, certainly that was the case in 1999). 

The safe bet of course, for the NBA talent evaluator, and for you the corporate talent pro, is to make the 'safe' pick, choose the talent from a known source, one that your fans, colleagues, and hiring managers recognize. Make the 'defensible' choice. 

Because if the the blue-chip guy from the Big 10 school that has been on TV 47 time in the last 3 years fails - well then that's the player's fault, not yours.

If you as a talent pro reach for a guy like Weis and he fails?

Well that's your fault. And that's no fun.

Have a Great Weekend!

#SHRM12 Social Recruiting session wrap: Don't be quick to judge

The last dispatch from me from #SHRM12, aka, the SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition which wrapped up yesterday from Atlanta.

Aside: which major industry event will be the first one to actually adopt as its 'official' name the event hashtag? It would be kind of cool to see SHRM or some other organization to just drop the tired and formal sounding 'Conference and Exposition' part and just go with #SHRM12 as the event name.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, wrapping up the final day at #SHRM12 which for me was highlighted by the panel discussion I was fortunate to be asked to moderate, titled 'Is Social Recruiting Really Working?', and that featured industry leaders and experts Robert Hohman, CEO of Glassdoor.com, industry analyst and legend John Sumser, and Jeremy Langhans, who leads Global Brand and Talent Attraction for Expedia.

The panel discussion was, I think, pretty lively from the start, it took about three minutes before the panelists were (respectfully) disagreeing with each other, which I've always felt is one sign of an interesting panel discussion. As the panelists stepped through and discussed some of the common perceptions and assumptions surrounding social media for recruiting several common themes and best practices did start to emerge - the need for organizations to be more open and committed to engaging with candidates on social platforms, that trusting your employees to fairly portray the brand message is paramount, and that HR and Recruiting can and should work closely with their internal social media experts in Marketing and PR to help define, tune, and communicate the brand message.

It was, I thought, a really good discussion overall, with some insights, shared experiences, and even a few laughs - particularly when Jeremy was getting talking points texted to him during the session!

But for me, the biggest personal take-away happened after the session, and in the conversations with the folks that came up to the stage to chat with the panelists. During the session, an audience member asked about the value of Pinterest as a recruiting tool.  As I recall, Jeremy indicated that he had not personally seen much usefulness there, and I made a (lame) joke about needing to delete my Pinterest account. But essentially our panel did not have much positive to say about Pinterest in the recruiting context.

But after the session an audience member, someone in Talent Acquisition from a major retail brand that you have absolutely heard of, told us that for them, Pinterest was, in her words, 'gold'. The kinds of people that the brand would want to find and connect with were all over Pinterest, were really engaged, and definitely wanted more interaction and communication with the brand. So while for us guys on the panel, laughing off Pinterest might have made sense from our limited world view, but for this major organization, the platform is starting to represent an increasingly important source for recruiting.

The bigger point? 

Every organization's experience, approach, and results in social recruiting is going to be unique. While there are some general guiding principles and leading practices that are emerging, (and we talked about many of them on the panel), there are no true and repeatable recipes for success that will be successful in all situations. One size does not fit all. In fact, it hardly fits anyone.

It was a good lesson to learn, and I am thankful for the attendee who shared her view with us after the session.

Thanks again to the panel members, and to the team at Glassdoor.com for making the panel possible, and for including me in the event.

And I promise, no more on #SHRM12 from me!