Real Excitement

This past Saturday as part of the trulondon Unconference event, Keith Potts and Felix Wetzel graciously hosted several of the conference attendees as their guests at an English Premier League match,  Portsmouth vs. Stoke City. Keith Potts and Steve at the match

Here is the connection between the HR and Recruiting event and the match:  Keith is one of the founders and Felix is a Director of a company called Jobsite, the largest job board in the UK and a sponsor of trulondon as well as the shirt sponsor of Portsmouth Football Club. 

If you are not terribly familiar with shirt sponsorship, I took a quick run at describing the idea here.

But the real point of the post is not simply to thank Keith and Felix for the tremendous experience, which I assuredly do, but rather to talk for a moment about the passion and excitement that we observed from both the Portsmouth supporters as well as the many Portsmouth FC staff that we encountered on our visit. 

From the start of the game to the final whistle, the majority of the Portsmouth fans sang, chanted, and banged on drums to support and exhort their team. This singing and chanting was entirely organic, and required no artificial prompting from the Public Address announcer.  There were no 'Let's Make some Noise' displays on the giant videoboard.  There were no heavy metal or hip-hop tunes blared to try are create a lively or fun atmosphere.  And there was not a hint of a 'kiss-cam'. Bottom line: there was no fake excitement.

And in total, it was by far the best sporting event I have ever attended. 

This match, and I suspect many matches in the league, substitute spectacle for authenticity, replace contrived enthusiasm with genuine passion, and connect with supporters, club employees, and the community at large in a way that at least to me was unique and remarkable.

I understand that sports, especially major-league, big time sports have little to do with how the overwhelming majority of organizations operate.  But there are, I think,  some interesting lessons and potentially some insights that can be learned from sports and in particular how teams exist and interact in a complex environment of internal and external stakeholders.

Community

The football club, and the other organizations that are part of its support network are to a large extent deeply intertwined in the local community. Match days are significant events, some sponsors like Jobsite are also significantly vested in the community, and in many ways the club, the experience, and the network help to define and shape the area.  For organizations, striving to find ways to become more vested in their locak communities can often yield extremely positive results.

Passion

Passion for a sports team is often deep, unwavering, and endures over the years.  For organizations, engendering that same kind of passion can prove difficult if not impossible.  But the passion for your products and services, your employee value proposition, and your brand are what could sustain you when times get hard, and external economics play against your.  Teams in the English league can get 'relegated' for poor performance (send down to a lower tier and status league), but the support and passion of the fans tends to remain.  The most successful organizations can find a way to generate this passion across its constituencies for the long term.

Togetherness

After the game (which sadly for Portsmouth was a 2-1 defeat) the various employees from the Director of Operations to the cooks, waiters, and bar staff at the club were all noticeably and understandably saddened and dissapointed. But in their seemingly collective pain, I really got the sense that they were still 'together' and really bound by their shared mission, desire, and hopes for the the future. While without exception every employee that I encountered at the Club did their jobs with skill and efficiency, they were also mindful of the bigger picture.  And they were seemingly invested heavily in that picture.  Do your job and support the overall goals and objectives of the organization at the same time.

The interesting thing is that attention to and care of these areas can in some ways overcome some poor results on the field (and even off the field).  Portsmouth is at the bottom of the league standings and is even in danger of the UK equivalent of bankruptcy.  And while the immediate future looks a bit harsh, I have every confidence based on the people we met, and the support and passion we witnessed that the club will make it through.

Thanks so much once again to Keith and Felix and to all the great people at Portsmouth FC.

Mind the Gap

Mind the Gap!

If I heard that once, I heard it a hundred times this week and weekend in London at the trulondon Unconference. Flickr- Marcin Wichary

The event was, I think, a tremendous success, and I could review the same list of usual reasons for that success (making real-world connections with online friends, exchanging ideas with about 100 experts and thought leaders, and the good feeling you get when surrounded with what are for the most part like-minded people). But I am sure by now many posts have been done covering that territory and I likely can't do much to add to them, save agree whole-heartedly.

Those reasons for success were certainly all present, and I expect to some extent they will continue to be present for the next batch of similar events, (truUSA, RecruitCamp, HRevolution2, etc.).  I do think at some point, probably later this year, that these events will have to move past this 'Boy it was so great to meet so-and-so' stage, as pretty soon everyone will have met so-and-so already.

But perhaps that is a point for another post.

I thought that trulondon, coming from my American perspective was really valuable for learning about and trying to understand what could be gained from thinking about differences and disagreements.  Some of these differences are more historical and process based, like how in the UK a typical organization will still utilize a third-party recruiter (or 'agency') when a vacancy needs to be filled, while their equivalent in the USA might likely turn to a national job board like Monster or Careerbuilder. Keith Robinson shared a great scenario he uses to describe this process in the UK, ask him to share it with you sometime.

But for me, some of the most interesting conversations at trulondon touched more around why the US and UK cultures and approaches to some of these workforce management and recruitment issues are divergent.  With few exceptions, the UK contingent felt that their US counterparts were much more advanced in many of the technical skills of sourcing and in the implementation and utilization of 'social recruiting' in the enterprise.  And many of us from the US, (well at least me) appreciated the way the UK experts seemed to present a series of excellent and detailed arguments, positions, and ideas. 

In some ways the UK felt the US was for lack of a better word 'smarter' while simultaneously the US folks felt the same about the UK people (admittedly for different reasons).

And I think they are both right.  And I think the fact that with an event like trulondon, that was able to some extent to be truly global, that some really significant and meaningful learning can happen.  With events that are local, regional, or even national there is going to be quite a bit of self-congratulation, perhaps less meaningful discourse, and the re-iteration of many of the same themes that many of us are perhaps tired of hearing and guilty of continually talking about.

Where we are different, where we are coming to the table with alternative perspectives is where we can learn and benefit the most.  I suppose, where there is a 'gap' in our experience and worldview there is much opportunity.

Mind the gap indeed.  And try to learn from it.

Technology Shopping List

Later this week at the trulondon Unconference in London  Sarah White, Shane McCusker , and I will be moderating a session titled 'Technology Shopping List'. Flickr - deepfruit

The session is described as:

Whatever the future holds, technology will play a major part in it. Today’s technology is already old and a day doesn’t go by when we don’t wish for something new. Join these technology experts in agreeing what you think the technology will need to do in the future, how applications will develop, the impact of cloud and what you want to see in the future.

There are really two kinds of shopping lists I think.  The one's that adults make when they go to the grocery store (milk, eggs, bread, etc.) and the ones kid's make for their Birthday or send to Santa Claus at Christmas, full of the latest toys, games, and other desires that (mostly) are not really needed, but will make them overjoyed with delight come the big day.

Aside - with all the recent major snow storms in the USA you have to notice the phenomenon of everyone rushing to the store to stock up on milk, eggs, and bread. Has French Toast been declared the staple food for when you get snowed in?

Back to the point. 

What will workforce technologies need to do in the future to support the organization, empower and engage employees, and most importantly drive increased business value? That is a big question, and I am glad that I will have Sarah and Shane along to help guide the discussion.

Here are some of the things I'll offer as part of the session:

Get simpler

Whether it is the iPad with its clean interface and tight feature set, Google Buzz (on the surface a much more basic and accessible version of Google Wave), or the push and demand for more mobile, smart-phone based capability, workforce technology has to get simpler to use.  Your employees and front-line managers are the essential keys to any Talent Management technology success.  Your candidates are the essential customers of your Recruiting systems.  Does anyone think that any of those groups are clamoring for more complex systems?  Simpler does not always have to mean less functional, but better design, more intuitive process, and 'smarter' technology that can anticipate and even recommend actions I think will be a large part of the future of workforce technology.

Get flexible

Rigid, process-oriented enterprise technology solutions of the last 25 years will have to become more flexible and adaptable if we accept the common assumption that business itself has to become more adaptable. I get that processes are how most business still gets done in many fields, and that for many organizations tight, precise replication of existing processes are essential for success and profits.  But with more and more work becoming 'creative', 'innovative', 'knowledge-based', or whatever you want to call it, the need for workforce tech to change, morph, and adapt to support whatever new directions the business needs to take I have to believe will be significantly more important in the future.  We are seeing some of this already, with more flexible SaaS-based solutions starting to dominate wide sectors of the workforce technology landscape.

Get social

Ok, not exactly a breakthrough idea at this point. But it does still seem that while there is significant discussion and realization that organizations can realize important benefits from the introduction and implementation of more 'social' or collaborative technology, many have only taken limited steps in this area.  The technologies that have long dominated the mid to large enterprise space (ERP, MS Office, corporate E-mail) have all been slow to adapt to the ideas around social.  Ironically, the forces that seem likely to spur the adoption of more social technologies, or the addition of social capability into existing technologies are more likely to be the employee's themselves, and not the corporate leaders or decision makers.

So those are some of the ideas I will offer for the Technology Shopping List - what else would you say needs to be included?

After all, it is more of a kid's Christmas list than an 'snow emergency I need to make French Toast' list.

Trulondon Track Preview - The Endangered Species List

Next week I have the great pleasure of heading over to trulondon, the dynamic Bill Boorman's true 'global mashup' that will bring together Human Resources, Recruiting, and Technology pros for two days of discussions, explorations, and certainly a bit of fun.

The event, as is becoming more and more popular, is framed as an 'Unconference', meaning no formal presentations, no Powerpoint slides, and with discussion topics finding their own way to the forefront.  Good ideas and concepts get promoted, while others that are not so interesting or compelling simply Flickr - katmeredrift off.

This week I want to highlight the sessions I have the honor of co-facilitating, as a way of providing and introduction of sorts to the session, and perhaps as a way for the co-facilitators and attendees to tell me I am way off track (or perhaps not).

First up a track called 'Endangered Species' with track Leaders: Peter Gold, Jon Ingham, Steve Boese

Track Description:

From H.R. to recruiters, we seem to hear of the imminent passing of all the trades we recognise are facing extinction from a changing world. Who is next to start pushing up the daisies? This track promises to be lively and global looking at who is on the endangered species list, why and what they need to do in the future to ensure a brighter future.

It is very easy and provocative at times to declare some traditional concept, or field of endeavor 'dead' and those that continue to cling to those old customs, behaviors, attitudes etc. as a kind of dinosaur of sorts.  In 2009, on several blogs and on a really lively edition of the HR Happy Hour show itself we even talked about all of HR being dead.

Certainly business strategies, management philosophies, and approaches to managing and engaging candidates and employees have to evolve over time.  The words is changing faster than ever (although we were saying the same thing back in the 70's and 80's), and organizations and professionals that foolishly cling to increasingly antiquated strategies and behaviors will certainly be at a competitive disadvantage in the 'new' world.

But the trick of course is deciphering which tried and true practices are truly enduring, and while perhaps needing a few tweaks here and there are still relevant and important today, and dropping the practices and ideas that are really the talent management equivalent of the dinosaurs. 

Not so easy to do I think, because unlike that massive meteorite that smashed into the Earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs (I am not sure that is really how it happened, but just go with for the argument), the changes in business and the game of Talent Management and Talent Acquisition are more subtle, more complex, and certainly not universally accepted as important and/or necessary for success. 

But since I am a track co-facilitator I figured I better have some suggestions for the endangered species list and rather than wait until trulondon to find out that I am way off base, I'll list a few of the ideas here to see if you think I am on the right track:

Endangered Species #1 - The 'Not Invented Here' attitude

How many R&D staff does your organization employ?  How many marketers, IT, or HR pros? No matter how many, they represent a tiny fraction of all the available talent in those fields.  Leveraging all possible resources for product development, engineering, and research is a concept that has begun to take hold in many large organizations (see what P&G Corporation is doing for example). But I think that HR, Recruiting, and Talent Management has been lacking a bit in this area.  When times are tight, we see stories of training and development cuts, reduction in professional conference attendance, and even at times a reactionary 'circle the wagons' attitude.  I would think that the longer and more stridently organizations continue to only look inwards, and cling to the 'not invented here' approach, that in some ways they will be sealing their fates as marginal players in the future.

Endangered Species #2 - The Company Man

Unless the title after your name reads 'CEO' or 'Owner', there is a high probability that the job your are in, and the company you work for will not be your last.  Downsizing, bankruptcies, and a relentless push by organizations to wring increased cost savings (often via outsourcing or use of temporary workers) all conspire to make the traditional long tenures many professionals used to enjoy more and more unlikely.

I know, this is not exactly breakthrough analysis. But while most individuals have come (hopefully) to this realization, I am not sure most organizations have.  Nor have they adequately prepared for the effects on the morale, engagement, and capability of the staff that remain after any downsizing or outsourcing.  Finally, I don't think many have really thought how they might strategically leverage those ex-employees in the future.

Endangered Species #3 - The Specialist (aka the 'That's Not My Job' guy)

Much like the likely career trajectory or story that most employees will undergo will likely be more fluid and dynamic, so too are the skills and capabilities that people will need to see continued success.  Unless you manage to hit on the one great idea that you can leverage for years and years, you almost certainly will need to work harder, smarter, and yes maybe even longer to stay on top of your field. Even in the interview process, smart employers are going to want to know what you do to make yourself better, and in an environment of 10% unemployment in the US, the chances are high that the organization can find someone else who won't play the 'That's not my job' card.

So what do you think?  What else is on the endangered species list? 

Besides long-winded bloggers (how did this post end up at almost 1,000 words anyway?).

London Calling

The HR Happy Hour Show that is....

Episode 27 - 'trulondon 2 Preview' - Thursday January 21, 2009 - 8PM EST

Call in 646-378-1086

The show is back live tonight with the 'Trulondon 2 Preview' show.   In case you have not heard, and if you haven't shame on you Bill Boorman, trulondon 2 is the next installment in Bill's slow march towards global domination.

Seriously, trulondon is a Recruiting, HR, and Technology 'unconference', a semi-structured gathering that will bring together experts, practitioners, and thought leaders from the UK and US for two days of sessions on a wide range of topics in the Talent space.

Bill was nice enough to invite me to co-lead a few sessions, and I am looking forward to heading over to participate in the event, do a live HR Happy Hour show, and take in my first Premier League match in person.

So check out the HR Happy Hour show tonight, find out what trulondon is all about from the event's founders and a few of the session leaders, and maybe just maybe make your plans to come to the event.  We will get you all the information you need.