If you're thinking about crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, while not a new phenomenon, continues to appear in new and different places all of the time. Just the other day the TV network NBC announced a new project to attempt to crowdsource new ideas for comedy shows. This NBC program, like most crowdsourcing efforts, is a nod to the (obvious) reality that no matter how many writers or producers or directors the network can employ, that there exists outside NBC thousands and thousands of talented people, and some of them probably have great ideas for comedy shows.

The same logical argument could be made for almost any company trying to tackle any problem. Need some fresh ideas for branding campaign or to design a new logo? Ask the crowd. 

Trying to decide what new features to add to an existing product or service offering? Ask all of your customers - a more targeted type of crowdsourcing.

Heck, I have even seen bloggers from time to time pull off their (sad) version of crowdsourcing by asking readers, "What topics would you like me to write about?". Aside: Nothing says 'I have no ideas any more' than asking readers what they would like you to write about. A good blogger (or artist or designer or product developer) should not care too much about what 'the crowd' thinks.

But regardless, crowdsourcing is here to stay and in reading about the NBC comedy contest I came across this excellent piece by Jeffrey Philips writing on the Innovate on Purpose blog that points out some specific potential problems with the NBC approach that also provide insights into the dangers with any crowdsourcing program.

Here is a bit from the piece, (but you should definitely click over and read the entire thing)

When companies that rarely innovate attempt "open innovation"  I often wonder:  is this a sign that they finally understand the number and range of excellent ideas in the broader world, or is this a desperate sign that they've recognized the idea well is dry internally, and are left with nothing but an external search for ideas.

What NBC is doing is a high wire exercise, and I wonder if they are prepared for the results.  While they are asking for ideas from their audience, I doubt that they've done much to change how they evaluate ideas or the internal culture of the network.  If you read the article you'll see that the judge panel they are using to evaluate ideas and pilots consists of a range of comedic talent that they've featured in other shows, some successful and some that failed.  If NBC really wanted to understand what people want, they'd go further, allowing crowdsourced ideas to be evaluated and ranked by the crowd.  One wonders if they know who their audience is and what they want.

Some great takes there and things to think about if you are chasing the crowdsourcing carrot. Are you genuinely seeking some new or fresh approaches to round out or to validate your existing thinking? Or are you flat out tapped out of ideas in total (in that case you probably have an internal talent and management issue that runs deeper than, "What color should this button be?' questions).

And then once you get all of these crowdsourced ideas are you actually prepared to deal with them? Maybe your problem isn't a lack of ideas, it is an inability to evaluate, interpret, select, and implement the ideas that you already have. I mean how hard is it to come up with an idea? I came up with the idea for this post in about 2 minutes.

Anyway, check out Innovate on Purpose and make sure if you are jumping in to the crowdsourcing pool you have at least some idea why.

Happy Thursday.

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 169 - The Crowdsourced Performance Review

HR Happy Hour 169 - 'The Crowdsourced Performance Review'

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, hosts Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane welcomed Eric Mosley, who co­founded Globoforce in 1999 with the goal of reinventing the employee recognition industry for the global, multicultural, multigenerational organizations of the 21st century.

As CEO he has led Globoforce to its place as a leading provider of social recognition solutions, redefining how companies understand, manage, and motivate employees. 

Eric is also the author of the recent book, The Crowdsourced Performance Review, a resource for HR and Business leaders that want to transform their traditional, annual, and ineffective performance management processes to a more enlightened, modern, social, and collaborative way of engaging the organization, and improving outcomes.

We talked with Eric about how the traditional process for performance management is outdated and almost universally hated, how modern technologies like social networking and mobile access are impacting modern employee needs and expectations, and how thinking about performance management as an ongoing, real-time, and in the moment process can help organizations make the leap from the 'old' way of managing performance to something much better.

We also (of course) reminded folks to make sure you make plans now to attend the upcoming HRevolution event taking place in Las Vegas on October 6, 2013, and the HR Technology Conference immediately after, on October 7-9, 2013.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, using the widget player below:

New Business Podcasts with Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

Thanks to Eric for the time and the insight about performance management can and should change for the better - enabled by techology, and supported by the wisdom of peers, colleagues, and even customers and partners to create a better and more impactful process.

It was a really fun and interesting show and I hope you check it out.  

And, and you can register for HRevolution 2013 here: 

Giving it all away. Sort of.

The sudden surge in popularity of the Q&A site Quora, and perhaps to a lesser extent the online community of experts being developed at Focus have once again led many to evaluate and assess the value and future of open, public, and community powered knowledge repositories.

Where other attempts have been made with varying degrees of success, (Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn Answers), these new entrants, in particular Quora seem to have captured, at least for the moment, the interest and support of an influential subset of participants (most apparent in the technology space).

From many accounts, the quality of contributors and information found on Quora is unusually high, and in comparison to prior attempts at more broad Q & A sites like Yahoo!, the recent adoption and activity on Quora seem to have captured the attention of a well-connected and active user community.

Participation in open and public forums like Quora and LinkedIn Answers is often a recommendation made to job seekers, as their subject matter knowledge, reasoning ability, and the opportunity to be noticed and to forge connections with other industry or domain experts can all be seen as beneficial to a job search, or to the establishment of a professional identity or brand.

No doubt for many, the built in audience and reach of sites like Quora or LinkedIn offer individuals the chance to be seen and heard by large numbers of relevant people, much more so than can be reached by the launch of a new personal blog, or even by simply posting an online resume or professional profile. 

But for others, in particular for established professionals in a given field, the motivation to participate and contribute to public knowledge portals seems quite a bit different. Some may feel obliged and happy to simply share their insights openly, and willingly; driven simply by the satisfaction derived from adding value to the larger community in which they operate.  Some others might see these platforms in a kind of competitive manner; seeking to leverage them to establish their place in a virtual pecking order of sorts, a process made more acute and apparent when their specific contributions can be compared and contrasted against other well and lesser-known experts.

Most online professional community and networking effort is either directly ('please hire me', 'buy my company's stuff', or 'book me for a speaking gig'); or indirectly ('check out my new post on leadership', 'here's a great piece on productivity apps'), aimed at convincing or at least influencing the intended audience to do or feel something positive towards the contributor. And that makes perfect sense.  We all need to get paid, whether or not that payment is in hard dollars, or in the more amorphous currency of reputation and influence. Either way, the check always comes.

And I suppose that is the problem I get with sites like Quora or even on LinkedIn. I find it hard to read the individual contributions without thinking about the 'sell side' motivations, (or potential motivations) of the contributors.  Maybe that is just a weakness in my ability to distinguish the 'sell' from the content, but either way, these sites can easily degrade into the geek version of the high school homecoming queen contest.  A few popular, good looking, and well connected people trying to convince the rest of us how fantastic they are.  

I suppose at the end of the day, if you really want to contribute to the body of knowledge, you'd write or contribute to a Wikipedia page.  Everyone reads those, and no one knows who writes them.