Foundation

As a parent of an 11 year old I have had the fun of building helping to build quite a few Lego sets over the years. Sets ranging from a few dozen pieces for the simplest small projects, to at least one set that consisted of over 2,000 pieces, and that I think took me about a month, working in small batches toLego Taj Mahal complete. A quick Google search masquerading as exhaustive research of the company history indicates the largest Lego set in terms of individual pieces to be the 2008 Taj Mahal set, an amazing likeness of the iconic building checking in at over 5,900 total pieces.

Certainly for anyone that has spent time constructing and playing with Lego building sets over the years would attest to just how more evolved, detailed, and fantastic they have become, (insert the requisite 'Back in my day, we only had plain blocks and could build square houses' lament here). By continuously innovating and expanding the possibilities of what could be re-created and re-imagined with plastic blocks, Lego has carved a unique place in the toy industry, and by some accounts is now the 4th-largest toy manufacturer in the world. 

But the really cool thing about Lego I think is not solely or even primarily the amazing sets like the Taj Mahal, the Tower Bridge, or the almost 4,000 piece Star Wars Death Star. It's the way that the company still recognizes and embraces the elegance and importance of the simple, classic, and foundational Lego brick. You know the one I am talking about right? A simple rectangular building brick, a little Lego version of the real world builder's 2x4, the simplest and yet most fundamental brick of them all. The kind of brick that form the basis for walls, towers, and really for anything that can be imagined by the builder.

On the right is the image of the 1958 patent drawing for the Lego brick, (click on the image for a larger size), and while you might be thinking that the humble brick in the drawing has nothing at all to do with wonders like the Taj Mahal set, I think you might be wrong. Rather than me trying to explain why, let's get the Lego company's take on it - the following is directly from the Lego.com 'History' web page: Lego patent drawing - 1958

The LEGO brick is our most important product. This is why we are proud to have been named twice – “Toy of the Century”. Our products have undergone extensive development over the years – but the foundation remains the traditional LEGO brick.

The brick in its present form was launched in 1958. The interlocking principle with its tubes makes it unique, and offers unlimited building possibilities. It's just a matter of getting the imagination going – and letting a wealth of creative ideas emerge through play.

The folks at Lego have realized that no matter how far they can push the creativity and design that goes into new building sets, the foundation that is the simple brick from 1958 is the source of it all. It makes Death Stars and Taj Mahals possible, but it also does more that that. The 5,900 piece Taj Mahal set is essentially designed to do one thing - to become a miniaturized, detailed, and accurate version of the actual Taj Mahal.

But a pile of simple bricks, the foundation elements that Lego still sees as the most important part of their portfolio, well these are designed to become anything that the builder can imagine. And that is probably why over 60 years later, the 'system' no matter how much it has advanced, still works on a fundamental level. 

When the core of a system is simple, essential, and 'right', well, almost anything is possible from there.

Measuring Happiness at Work - A Drop in the Bucket?

This week while in conversation with a colleague about how organizations attempt to quantify and track measures like employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and even employee happiness I was reminded and shared with the group this little story from the Chief Happiness Officer blog about how one organization was taking a check or a read on employee happiness in the simplest way I have ever heard.

For benefit of those of you who did not follow the link to read the account, it describes a process that a UK Social Media Agency had 'deployed' that was insanely simple. At the end of each day as staff left the office they encountered a display of three large buckets. One bucket was full of tennis balls. The other two buckets were marked 'H' for 'Happy', and 'U' for 'Unhappy', respectively.

As staff exited for the evening, they grabbed a tennis ball from the full bucket and placed it into either the 'Happy' bucket or the 'Unhappy' bucket. The next morning a member of staff tallied the previous days' results, posted them on the company intranet, and re-set the bucket voting system for the new day.

The organization tracked the results and trends over time, and were able to take the temperature of the organization to some extent each day. While the tennis ball happiness voting system is a crude and kind of imprecise measurement of what has come to be known as a more complex and nuanced concept, it did provide a near real-time feedback loop for company leaders to get a feel for the mood of the team.

In a small, self-contained company, this kind of low-tech system can be successful. In larger and more geographically spread organizations it would be a bit more of a challenge. But with the advent of powerful mobile technologies, this kind of happiness voting system could easily be created as a Web App or iPhone App that all staff in the organization could access no matter where they lived and worked.

What do you think? Does the simple, tennis ball 'Happy or Unhappy' poll provide meaningful information for an organization? Could you see yourself setting up three buckets like this in your office? What do you think the results would be?

How would you vote today? 

Have a great weekend!

More than a picture

While the number of technologies designed for connecting an organization's people to each other, to better facilitate the sharing of knowledge, and to foster an environment of creativity and collaboration seems to increase every week - many organizations and certainly many if not most Human Resources professionals are still struggling to navigate this new, and often unfamiliar territory.

With larger technology players like IBM and Cisco joining the literally hundreds of simiar sounding solutions on the market for microblogging, blogging, wikis, activity streaming, idea generation, and on and on, I can see an HR professional getting at best frustrated and confused, and at worst completely overwhelmed and defeated.

You know as an HR pro and a leader that there is inherent value and benefit in the increased connectedness of the workpforce and of the augmented ability to share and create information. But you are at a loss at how to deploy technology to better enable those outcomes.

Perhaps instead of just trying one new technology after another and running the risk of succumbing to 'shiny object syndrome' or subjecting your team to a lengthy series of too similar exercises, or remaining frozen in place, effectively stuck by the presence of simply too many choices, there are strategies that can be leveraged to try to drive the kinds of behaviors that you know have benefits, while using tools already at your disposal.

How about the doing something with the ubiquitous and almost certainly boring company profile/corporate identification card picture?  You know the one that you make sure is as close to DMV or Passport Office level uninspiring and instantly forgettable.

Quick - take a look at the badge of our friend 'Simon' there on the right - I bet that the badge layout, design, and generally 'I have just been booked for wire fraud' look on his face resembles the corporate IDs that many of you are wearing on a chain around your necks right now (or more jauntily on your hip strapped over your belts).

But what if instead of insisting on the mug shot style photo that has always served the organization so well, you mixed it up a bit. perhaps by letting, or rather encouraging everyone to get a bit more creative in the 'official' portraits for the company directory and ID badges. 

I recently came across a piece on the Junkculture blog that highlighted photographer Jason Travis' ongoing Persona series or photographs that 'documents hipster Atlantans along with the contents of their Flickr- J.Travismessenger bags, backpacks and clutches to determine "what they deem important in their lives."

When you take a look at the images, you get some insight into the person beyond just their physical appearance. The inclusion of the ordinary yet important objects they are carrying offers a bit of a glimpse into their interests, hobbies, even their skills and capabilities. The things that people carry with them can shed lght on not only where they are going (or want to go), but also where they have been.  In an organizational context this certainly could translate to projects they worked on in the past, as well as future career goals and aspirations.

It seems to me this is exactly the kind of information that the modern collaboration technologies or 'internal social networking' platforms are also trying to collect and capture.  Employee interests, skills, past history, friends, and goals and desires for future assignments and learning opportunities. But you as an HR leader have to spend the time, effort, and resources to sort though these many hundred of technologies. 

In the meantime, perhaps getting more creative with the company directory photo and the official ID badge might just be a good place to start. Instead of the mugshot - think different, whether it lets employees share their favorite sports teams, hobbies, pets, whatever.  Any thing would be an improvement from old Simon, and maybe more employees would actually wear the badges more proudly and not 'forget' them at home so often.