Empty your cup

There is a famous Zen story or Koan called 'Empty your cup' that reads: Flickr - kazukichi

Nan-in, a Japanese master received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

The point is a telling one, that preconceived notions and pre-drawn conclusions effectively limit one's ability to accept new ideas, consider new approaches, and see things in a new light.

Since I am a professor of sorts, this koan is one I think about often.  As teachers, it can be incredibly easy to walk into class with a 'full cup', comfortable in the knowledge that your views, your experience, and your insights are the only important ones, and that since you are the 'teacher' it is the student's that carry the empty cups, relying on you for wisdom and guidance.

But truly, that is an extremely short-sighted, and selfish point of view.

Each time I have taught, I have become more and more convinced that I learn as much from the class as they learn from me.  In many ways I am simply a facilitator or experienced guide, but the real learning only can come from their interactions with each other, and with the larger community.

I have tried to introduce more 'community' into my class, by encouraging the students to use Twitter and read and comment on blogs, and in the last session of my most recent class by holding a really exciting 'virtual' Expert Panel discussion.

Going forward, I plan to emphasize these elements more, and try to de-emphasize my role as the 'sole source of truth'.

After all, when class begins the next time, I will walk in with an empty cup.

Who do you call?

Dali or Gauguin, whichever you like
Dali
Originally uploaded by steveboese

This Wednesday, February 25 I have the great honor of presenting a Webcast for HR.com on Workforce and Succession Planning, titled 'Understand your workforce today, so you can plan for tomorrow'

In part, the presentation will cover the more or less traditional, or generally accepted steps in designing and implementing a Succession Planning process. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, it is altogether fitting and good that I cover these  concepts in the webcast.

But as I did the research and preparations for the webcast, I came across some really interesting research that has the potential to alter the idea of 'best practices' for Succession Planning programs.

Namely, the idea that 'who you know' may be as significant as 'what you know' when making a determination of which employees
are likely to demonstrate success and high achievement in a new role.

The common sense reasoning behind this is likely very familiar to most, in the classic example say a Senior Manager position is vacant, and the 'best' performer from among the Manager's direct reports is promoted into the role.

The promotion may be 'deserved' on the basis of past performance in the former job role or based on seniority. The new Senior Manager may even have demonstrated most of the key competencies the organization has determined are necessary to perform at a high level.

But one essential element is missing from typical succession planning, namely the identification and analysis of the former managers key personal network, those colleagues, mentors, friends that he or she has relied upon for aid in decision making, determining strategy, navigating new responsibilities and gaining deep organizational knowledge.

Let's call the departing Senior Manager Jane. Jane, over the years, developed a deep personal network that she drew on to support her in the successful performance of her duties. Specifically, she relied upon different components of her network to support different aspects of her role. For example, the people and resources she relied upon for budgeting and forecasting help, were not the same people she called upon for employee relations and motivation concerns.

This distinction in personal network segregation or specialization is an important one. So often when junior employees are promoted into more senior roles, or placed in managerial roles for the first time, they bring with them very developed practical and technical skills and networks that while still important to their new managerial role, are not always the most critical in predicting success in the new, more complex role. It is quite likely the new manager's skills and perhaps more importantly their current personal networks are centered around those 'old' skills and capabilities.

Let's call the newly promoted manager Jake. Jake was the top engineer and formerly a good designer. The first time the Jake is called on to participate in a complex strategic planning exercise with his new peers, will he perform below his potential at least partly due to the lack of a mature valuable personal network in which to support him in that function? If Jake keeps trying to draw on his 'old' network of designers and engineers, most of whom are not involved in strategic planning, he is in a position to struggle.

How can the HR leader identify and address these situations?

One method is to develop a process to identify the key or top performer's personal networks and the roles those network actors perform. So for Jane, have Jane identify the three or four most important skills or competencies that she needs for success, then identify the key individuals she relies on for support, advice, and guidance. This categorized personal network can then be compared to Jakes', and it is quite probable it will reveal that Jake has not yet developed relationships with many of the KEY players that he will need to count on to be a success in the new role.

Plans can then be put in place to ensure personal introductions and/or meetings are arranged with Jake and these new individuals that he will need to start building his relationships with. This kind of intervention can be a key factor in how quickly Jake adapts to his new role, and quite possibly if he ultimately succeeds at all.

A by-product of this kind of personal network analysis is that in can reveal much about the 'hidden' stars or key cogs in an organization. If analysis of the personal networks of your staff of senior managers reveals that all or most of them call upon a key individual or two somewhere down the hierarchy for advice and counsel, the organization would be well served to to make sure those key influencers are happy, and that adequate succession plans exist for them, even if they are considered on paper to not be critical or 'high-potential'.

Who employees turn to for help and information is a incredibly valuable piece of organizational intelligence.

Who do you call?

No soup for you in 2009

'Do you have budgeted funds available to attend HR conferences in 2009?'

Last week Jason Averbook of Knowledge Infusion took an informal survey of HR professionals on Twitter asking that simple question.

The results were astoundingly one-sided, 18 respondents said 'No', 2 said 'Depends', and only 1 said 'Yes'. Looks like there could be many conference meeting rooms going empty this year.

Last month the Gartner Group announced the cancellation of several IT conferences, including its 'flagship' event, the Spring Symposium/IT Expo in Las Vegas.

Many confererences will still go on of course, but with greatly reduced attendance, and more vendors and consultants chasing fewer and fewer potential customers. 

What if anything should replace these opportunities for HR professionals, and the vendors or consultants that attempt to leverage the events to generate leads and close deals? One option for the HR pro and student are the numerous webcasts offered by HR.com, the Human Capital Institute, and maFlickr - Jim Frazierny of the vendors and consultancies as well.  These webcasts are usually free, they cover a wide range of HR-related topics, and run so frequently, that pretty much every day of the business week you can find one to attend. 

In fact, I will be presenting two webcast in the next few months, one on February 25 with HR.com titled 'Understand your workforce today, so you can plan for tomorrow' - details here; and one on May 14 with HCI titled, 'Tell the Hiring Story with Technology' - information here.

But webcasts are not the same as conferences, the ability to connect and network is missing, the ability to get immersed for a few days with like-minded folks, and easy access to experts and leaders in the field can't easily be replicated over the web.

I think there is some opportunity to develop a more informal, grass-roots style alternative to traditional conferences which no one can afford to attend, and webcasts that are really one dimensional and have limited utility.  I have been kicking around some ideas with some Twitter friends on this, and hope to try some of these ideas very soon.

What ideas do you suggest to replace the gap created by the lack of conference attendance in 2009?

Enterprise Knowledge vs. Individual Job Security

There is lots of energy and interest in implementing 'social' collaboration systems inside the Enterprise.  Flickr - steve took itThese systems have many goals, chiefly the facilitation of employee collaboration, development of a corporate knowledge base, and to provide a platform to speed new hire productivity.

For any of these 'social' systems to be effective, they must engender enthusiastic support and adoption by the organization's ranks.  Employees must see the benefit in contributing and participating in these systems. They must be comfortable sharing information and sometimes explicitly documenting the 'how' of their work processes.

But in a climate where it seems like corporate America sheds thousands or workers every day, does it make sense that many employees will be reluctant to openly share and document this tacit knowledge?

If an employee feels like the safeguarding (in their heads), of this critical information is their best defense against a possible layoff, are they likely to enthusiastically participate in social systems, that rely on making such 'internal' knowledge transparent.

Is it possible that the implementation of corporate social systems can benefit the enterprise, but harm the individual employee?

What do you think?

Do you need a Corporate Social Network?

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have seen dramatic growth in the last year.  The chances are extremely high that your employees are already engaged on one or more of these networks.  And the chances are also high that your employees are interacting and engaging with each other on these platforms, during the 'normal' work day.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.Flickr - Zach Klein

In fact you could make the argument that staff engaging each other on these networks is really no different than them e-mailing each other, or talking on the phone. But there is a difference.  Corporate e-mail and phone networks are essentially 'private', no one outside the organization can get in, the data and networks are secured and likely archived.  Companies don't usually have to worry about inappropriate content or embarrassing revelations on the internal e-mail network.  Contrast that with stories like this one - Virgin Atlantic Facebook scandal.

But the truth is that many (if not most) of your employees are going to continue to engage on social networks.  As a company you have a few options available to address this situation:

1. Don't do anything, treat employees like adults, and manage performance and performance alone.

Whatever mechanism and tools employees use don't really matter, only results matter. Whatever information, learnings, and discourse take place on external social networks remains 'in the ether' so to speak.

2. Block employees from accessing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like from the office

Estimates vary on the number of companies that block social networking sites.  Last year the firm Challenger Gray & Christmas released a study claiming 25% of companies were blocking Facebook. Blocking these sites addresses your immediate concerns (time wasting, inappropriate content, etc.), but may spawn a new set of problems (employee dissatisfaction, Gen Y employees leaving, disconnecting staff from their networks that actually help them with their job duties).  But if you feel like you have a problem that blocking these sites will solve, chances are you have more serious employee relations and performance issues.

3. Allow access to external social networks, but set and enforce guidelines as to their appropriate use

So you realize that staff are on these networks, and while you may not be ok with that, you understand it, and define and enforce guidelines for their use. Many organizations are going down this route, it is a more pragmatic approach that attempts to balance corporate and legal concerns with employee satisfaction.  There are lots of examples in this area, a good one from the Higher Ed space is from DePaul University.

4. Develop or deploy a Corporate or Internal Social Network for your employees

This option recognizes the utility and attractiveness of social networking to your employees and attempts to harness that power and energy to drive increased productivity, knowledge management, and community building.  If you are not familiar with corporate social networks, the simplest way to explain one would be 'Facebook for just your employees'. But that kind of description is certainly incomplete and possibly misleading. 

Most corporate social network platforms start with the employee profile, a way for the employee to indicate personal and professional information about themselves. This profile information enables staff to 'find' each other, based on tags or keywords.  This facilitates making connections with the right people for supporting a new project or initiative where specific skills are needed.

In addition to the profile, these platforms usually possess some type of collaboration tools, like blogs, forums and wikis to promote information sharing, discussions, and the development of a sustainable corporate knowledge repository. There typically is the ability for employees to upload and share content such as documents, images, and video. Also, chat and integrated IM may be included.

These platforms can be developed from widely available open source platforms, be licensed from one of many vendors in the spaces and deployed as a subscription-based service, or licensed and installed on the company's own servers and then deployed to employees.

This market is crowded, so I will hold off to another post getting into the details and vendor profiles, but I will say that it is an emerging market and one that deserves attention. But for a company that really wants to capture the value and promise of social networking to drive business results, the internal social network may just be the way to go.