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Konosuke Matushita on putting people first

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 by Franklin Bros

I’ve just come out of a meeting with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, in which we discussed his new book, ‘Employees First, Customers Second’ (I’ll be reviewing this here and at Personnel Today).

I will just say that I’ve very much enjoyed the book which is well aligned with my own thinking around HCM. I just hope it sells much better than the one on Profits First (which basically suggested that whilst customers might be second, employees should be placed very much at the back of the queue).

However, the main thought that’s been in my head as I’ve been reading Vineet’s book, and talking to him today, is why is it that, other than in HCL and a few other companies (including a couple of my own clients), this perspective still sounds so revolutionary? After all, it’s really not that new…

I’d like to share with you some of ‘People Before Products’ written by Konosuke Matushita (pictured) and originally published as ‘Jinjimangekyo’ [‘My Approach to Personnel Management’] in 1977 (and thanks to Danny Kalman for this book and tour around Panasonic recently):

An enterprise is only as great as the employees who work for it. The growth of a business centres around people, and success or failure hands on whether suitable employees can be found to undertake the tasks it needs done.

No matter how fine a tradition it boasts or how excellent its technology or services, a business that cannot find people capable of sustaining these advantages will gradually go into decline. For that reason, every business takes the matter of cultivating human resources very seriously. I believe that the more successful a company is in these endeavours, the more its performance and fortunes will flourish.

When you make use of a machine, all you have to do it turn on the switch and it will perform as it is designed or programmed to do; no more, no less. But people will reveal unexpected abilities – and willingly put them to work for you – if you adopt the right approach and the right attitude. Indeed, there lies the great challenge of training people and using their talents to optimal advantage.

Wonderful stuff. I also loved these comments on the limitations of measurement:

Human beings are complex and sensitive creatures. They’re sometimes difficult to understand, and often uncooperative. Every individual is different, changing from moment to moment – a veritable kaleidoscope of variety. One plus one may equal two in ordinary arithmetic, but with people the equation is not so simple. In the proper combination, the working potential of two people may equal three or even five; in a bad pairing, the same two can equal zero or even less. In this sense, nothing can be more unpredictable, unfathomable, and difficult to del with than human beings.

Of course, some of the book does show the sign of age. Take these comments on early computerisation:

Technology is changing at an unprecedented pace, presenting us with ever-newer and more complex innovations and concepts. Business as well as management has been completely transformed by the advent of computers and computer systems capable of performing complicated analyses and calculations in the blink of an eye.”

Even here though, the general tone of the comments could apply just easily to web 2.0 today as web 0.0 back then.

Technology’s moved on a pace, but I’m not sure management has - even if Matsushita showed us the way 33 years ago. Let’s hope there’ll be more progress between now and 2043!

In the meantime, I’ll be posting some of Vineet Nayar’s thoughts on management later on today.

Technorati Tags: Vineet Nayar,HCL Technologies,Konosuke Matsushita,Panasonic,Employees First,People Before Products,Jinjimangekyo

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Posted in: Book review, People management strategy | 0 comments | |

Developing HCM Strategy

by Franklin Bros

Despite my focus on HR 2.0 during the past month, I’ve been continuing to work on HCM as well (consulting and writing).

My writing includes this article on developing HCM strategy in Croner’s ‘Developing HR Strategy’. It’s not available online, but here’s a short extract (contact me if you want the rest):

Strategic HCM delivers increases in human capital by putting people first. So, rather than considering how people can deliver given business results, it looks at what can be achieved from a given group of people and their human capital. This human capital centric approach is also the core theme in Ed Lawler’s recent book, Talent (2009). According to Lawler:

“Companies that are truly competing on the performance of their people need to adopt a human capital or HC-centric approach to organising — simply doing better talent management is not sufficient. Rather, special attention needs to be given to implementing organisational structures, processes and systems that will help manage and support the performance of an organisation’s human capital.”

Some examples of talent- or human capital-centric processes, which are all being used in one or more organisations, include:

 Talent shoring — basing a company where talent is rather than where customers are, or costs are less.

 Communityship — for example, placing project-based staff in communities and moving them across projects to provide broadly based performance feedback and to support career advancement.

 Head farming — proactively searching for talent and building relationships in advance of recruitment (v head hunting).

 Job sculpting — creating jobs to fit talent, rather than the other way around.

 Dream making — discussing the individual’s dreams and how these can be achieved at work, rather than just looking at how the individual can help achieve the organisation’s plans (as in traditional objective setting).

 Deal management — broadening out performance management to review the organisation’s engagement of the employee, as well as how the employee is performing for the organisation.

 Career partnership — providing an employee with the opportunity to work over several discrete periods, gaining experience with other organisations in between these times.

Putting people first does not imply a return to the “pink and fluffy”, “tea and sympathy” world of personnel, but it does require a step back from the business focus of HRM. The reason I suggest this is that human capital does not just support the achievement of existing business objectives — it provides value in its own right. So, while the use of human resources is a secondary activity supporting an organisation’s traditional value chain, HCM is a primary activity in a
completely different value chain — the creation of human capital.

This means that, although HR does provide value as part of the business leadership team, focusing on the traditional value chain, the function provides much more impact by focusing on the HCM value chain and the creation of the right form(s) of human capital leading to competitive advantage.

This shift in focus suggests that the future of HR, or at least the function responsible for people management (which Lawler suggests should be called the Organisational Effectiveness unit), is not to be yet another business function (as in the current call to be a business function first, HR function second) but for HR to pride itself in its focus on, and its abilities to develop human capital.

There’ll be more on this point about putting people (employees) first very shortly…

Technorati Tags: Technorati Tags: Linda Holbeche,CIPD,Croner,Developing HR Strategy,HCM,putting people first,talent,shoring,communityship,Head farming,Job sculpting,Dream making,Deal management,Career partnership

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HCM Newsletter

by Franklin Bros

If you didn’t receive it from me, the first edition of the Strategic HCM newsletter is available here.

Visit here if you’d like to subscribe to future editions of the newsletter.

Technorati Tags: Jon Ingham,Strategic,Dynamics,HCM,news,letter

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Did you miss (on Social Advantage during June)

by Franklin Bros

Check out these recent posts from my other blog if you’ve not already seen them. All, apart from the top one, on the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston:

I’ll be catching up with more posts from the conference during early July.

And of course these are also posts from the two HR 2.0 sessions at the conference on Strategic HCM as well:

You’ll have probably noticed that there were a lot more posts on HR 2.0 and Social learning last month too!

Technorati Tags: Enterprise,HR,2.0,conference,Boston

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Social learning – why it’s important and how we can use it

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 by Franklin Bros

This is a continuation on my thoughts following last week’s Social Learning Zone webinar (see part 1).

Why is it important?

This is about low cost and high capability development, given the need for emotional / social context, and organisational as well as individual learning (shared mental models etc).

As I explained, I think the word and idea behind the work, ‘social’ are important, and I think organisations need to be comfortable to use this (see this post – don’t get made sick by the social).

I liked the tweet from Martin Couzins referring to Dave Weinnberger’s quote which explains the ‘why’ of social learning: ‘knowledge isn’t in our heads, it is between us’.

I do agree with Abi Signorelli and Jenni Wheller that other changes like remote working and Gen Y are enablers, but I don’ think they're the main drivers / benefits of this.

The Gen Y point reminds me of Fons Trompenaars international cultures work where he suggests that if you take any particular trait, the difference within one group is always going to be greater than the difference between groups. Ie there’s probably more or as much variation within the Gen Y population than there is between the average usages of Gen Y vs other generations.

How can we use it?

My suggestions were those from the slide above.

But I also liked Abi’s suggestions to create social spaces in every office whether people can socialise and learn using offline and online methods; and also of internet cafes – shareable PCs set up as a social learning zone (sort of what I think SHRM are doing at their annual conference with a Social Media Room).

What does this mean for HR / L&D?

We had to skip over this quite fast. The point I wanted to make is that I think social learning requires a move towards L&D being a strategic partner vs a designer and deliverer of learning. I thought Dhruv Devasher summed it up quite well – the role involves facilitating and supporting the exchanges, maintaining the tools, capturing, codifying and disseminating pockets of shared knowledge / technical knowledge too.

Of course, that’s been the direction of travel for some time, but most organisations haven’t made much progress. Social learning is going to reinforce the need to make this journey, and to quicken progress.

Read Dan Pontefract’s remarks on my recent live blog from last week’s social learning session in Boston, and also Dan’s follow-up about the need to bring together HR and IT.

Implementation

This wasn’t something I addressed specifically, but came through as an important focus for people from many of the tweets.

Because, given everything I described and have reviewed above, and as Julian Summerhayes noted: if there’s so much power with social media, and with the £ crisis, you wonder why more people are not using it to deliver training (and enable learning). Good point.

One problem is very practical- eg Alana Inness asked how do we get round the challenge of staff who don’t have internet access in their work place – eg bank cashiers, call centres? And another question from Michelle Kaye was how do you get round companies block on games / virtual worlds?

To me, this is about focus and ambition. Do you want to do social or not. If you do, you’re not going to ban access to games, and you’re going to find a way to give your cashiers access (like how McDonald’s put a PC in every restaurant, or ASDA in every store).

Ken Moir raised another good challenge to social learning: How to address audience expectations of a ‘sage on a stage’? Upending the passive content intake model can generate active resistance.

I think this one is more about culture than strategy, but a lot of it depends on the same thing – on an understanding and commitment to social. Helping people understand that this is valid and important.

And there was another interesting exchange between Ken and Dhruv:

Ken: Is free & open sharing a realistic expectation of real, emotional human beings interacting in stressful / competitive environments?

and: Lack of trust is a universal obstacle to social media use. In fairness, the odd loose cannon can do ‘massive’ damage.

Dhruv: Should an organisation exert control to prevent loose cannons and does that hurt the platform?

In my view, keeping things too tight will will hurt the platform. You don’t want to make people question using the technology (apart from clearly inappropriate comments).

I was asked a similar question at my Kenexa presentation recently. I responded to this by thinking back to a discussion at Informatology where someone made the point that we trust people when we recruit them (or we wouldn’t do so – hopefully), so why can’t we treat them as adults after they join? I talked about BT and AXA and how these companies have found they’ve needed to take very little disciplinary action around the use of social media. However, I was reminded afterwards that the point I should have as well was that most effective communities are self correcting – that the community will respond to loose cannons. The organisation / community manager won’t normally need to be the one to do this (also see my recent Social Advantage post on Community).

And Ken raised yet another good point – that formal training’s easier to administer, control and measure than social learning – that’s why HR likes it. I mentioned this one in the webinar. I think it’s sad. But true.

I also liked Alana Inness’s question: will we lose skills required for face2face interaction (eg negotiation, differences resolution etc) with more reliance on 2.0 tools)?

My view – I don’t think we will. Partly because I think 2.0 interaction leads to increased f2f interaction, rather than the reverse ( a point I’ve made on Abi’s post about Introversion / Extroversion in 2.0). And secondly, because of a point made by JP Rangaswami from BT Design at last week’s E2.0 conference: that while increased use of social media my reduce individual skills (make people dumber), it increases the skills of the organisation as a whole. (Abi, sorry I didn’t come back to you on this again – I’m not sure about the original research.)

There were other points too. Culture was raised a lot. Strategy too (Julian: don’t we need to consider what the strategy is before just worrying about the tools?). Yes. But these are separate webinar subjects I think!

That’s your lot. But thanks very much for all the tweets (and comments on Citrix I still haven’t seen – other than those Verity read out). They’re all highly valued – by me and by others too (eg Debbie McNamara’s tweet: Can’t be on the webinar but getting lots of good information from the feeds! Isn’t that working the talk!).

And it would be good to hear your further thoughts – do comment below.

Technorati Tags: Social learning,webinar,Training Zone,twitter,tweets

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Posted in: Events, Learning, Social learning | 0 comments | |

HR and Communities (Talking HR 029)

Monday, June 28, 2010 by Franklin Bros

Yes there was a reason why I suddenly did those two Social Advantage posts on communities (1, 2): so that I could refer to them in tonight’s podcast on the role of communities, their importance, their management (or facilitation!), and also on the HR function’s role in supporting them (see this post at Strategic HCM).

For this show, Krishna and I were joined by Claire Boyles from Management Matters. Thanks a lot, Claire, it was great speaking with you.

You can listen to the archive here.

Picture: Community Maturity Model from the Community Roundtable

Technorati Tags: Communityship,Enterprise,2.0,Talking,HR,podcasts,Krishna De,Claire Boyles

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Posted in: Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Events, Podcasting, Social media, Teams | 0 comments | |

Connecting HR and ‘Community’

by Franklin Bros

We had another great ‘Connecting HR’ tweet-up last week.

One of the issues at the back of my mind during the evening revolved around the idea of community, and Gareth Jones’ email to attendees prior to the tweet-up that mentioned the ‘Connecting HR community’.

Now, personally, I’m not sure that this group of people is a community as yet, although there are, I think, signs of one developing. And I’m not sure I’d use the C word at this stage as I don’t think you can make a group into a community simply by calling it one.

But I do see where Gareth is coming from, and agree that it would be great if Connecting HR does develop into a community, because I do think there is a need for more social connection and meaningful relationships between practitioners in HR and talent management, and across the different disciplines within this (resourcing, development, communication, legislation etc).

So my thoughts went back to the discussions on community at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston the week before this. I have still to complete my postings from this conference, including those on community, but you can review my current status of postings at http://bit.ly/e20conf.

But there was also this short conversation over Twitter that got me thinking about HR and community:

So, is community management the new HR? And if it is, how many practitioners understand this?

We’re going to be talking about this issue on Talking HR at 7.30pm BST / 2.30pm ET today. Do join us if you can.

Technorati Tags: Connecting,community,HR,Enterprise,2.0,tweet-up

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Posted in: Connecting HR, Enterprise 2.0, Events, HR role, Podcasting, Social networks | 0 comments | |

Human Capital Institute webinar today

Friday, June 25, 2010 by Franklin Bros

HCI Webinar OK, time to start thinking about today’s webinar with the Human Capital Institute…

This is at 2.00pm BST (9.00 am ET) and you can still book here.

You’ll also find my guest blog post on employer branding, technology and enterprise 2.0 (linking back to last week’s conference in Boston) at HCI.org.

Technorati Tags: HCI,Human Capital Institute,Europe,employer brand,technology,enterprise 2.0,social,business,webcast

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Posted in: Employer brand, Events, Global HR, HCM technology, Social media | 0 comments | |

Social branding

Thursday, June 24, 2010 by Franklin Bros

One of the things I want to talk briefly about on tomorrow’s Employer Branding webcast is my idea of ‘social branding’.

I still need to do more thinking around this before tomorrow, but I’m going to suggest that as well as an EVP and employer brand, companies need to think about their ‘Social Value Proposition’ (SVP) and ‘social brand’.

Why? Because more and more of what we do at work is about our relationships with other people. It’s why I’ve included ‘people’ as a major element in my EVP model for so long, and why I’ve argued that people and relationships need to be a major focus of engagement surveys.

But it’s more than this. It’s not just about how organisations treat their people. It’s how people treat each other. What’s our offer to our colleagues and others we work with?

And this is different to an EVP because it’s not about what’s done to us, it’s about what we do with each other.

And I suspect it’s going to be an increasingly important enabler for engagement as well as collaboration and productivity.

Of course, I realise this is probably just going to result in increased confusion. Those who have come across social branding before will link it to either and ethical focus or the simple use of social media. But hey, there’s nothing I can do about that.

What do you think? Any ideas for the factors that should be included in a SVP?

Or is this idea just nuts (it’s probably not too late to take out the slide!).

Technorati Tags: social,employee,employer,employment,value proposition,offer,brand,HCI,webcast

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HCI Webcast: Telling the European Employer Brand Story

by Franklin Bros

Just a reminder that I’ll be presenting this inaugral webcast in HCI’s new European programme at 2.00pm BST (9.00am ET) tomorrow, Friday 25 June.

Telling the European Employer Brand Story

Track: Talent Strategy in Europe
WEBCAST: Webcast Airs: June 25, 2010

We often hear about the need to continually attract, motivate and retain our employees. Many of us tie these issues to our employee brand and continually strive to become an employer of choice. But are we missing out on opportunities to utilize technology to improve our brand and solidify our place in the global market? Technologies that are already being utilized by your company can assist you in maintaining brand integrity and driving employee engagement.

This webcast will look at multiple technology platform that can work with your existing brand-- and provide big results at a small investment level. We'll look at corporate social networking as a tool to create "employee ambassadors" and see how creating relationship brands and leveraging the social web can promote grass roots brand engagement. We'll also examine best practices from companies who have leveraged their technology systems-- and find out what pitfalls to avoid.

For our European audience, please join us at 2PM BST.

The webcast fits neatly with my current focus on HR 2.0 and I might even be mentioning Social Learning yet again!

Technorati Tags: HCI,Human Capital Institute summit,Employer Brand,Europe,UK,Technology,Social media,Web 2.0,Taleo,webcast,webinar

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Posted in: Employer brand, Events, Global HR, HCM technology, Social media, Strategic Dynamics | 0 comments | |

Personnel Today - Social HR and Learning 2.0

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 by Franklin Bros

PT mouse I interrupt this short-term focus on social learning / learning 2.0 (and my Social Learning Zone webinar) to broaden the focus back out to social HR / HR 2.0, and my previous focus on and around the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

Actually, this isn’t that much of a shift as the presentations on HR 2.0 in Boston largely focused on Learning 2.0 as well - maybe because the presenting companies were mainly Saba customers.

This article in Personnel Today explains more.

Technorati Tags: How,HR,using,social media,advantage,HR 2.0,Enterprise 2.0,conference,boston,Personnel today

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Social Learning Zone follow-up

by Franklin Bros

Here’s some reflections on the tweets from yesterday’s webinar (I’ve not yet had a chance to review the comments made over Citrix Online).

What is social learning?

There were some great suggestions on this:

Michelle Kaye: learning from others
Abi Signorelli: all about collaboration, building on learning from each other
J Keith Dunbar: the merging of individual knowledge and skill into a holistic body of knowledge in real or near-real time
Julian Summerhayes: not monologue but dialogue (Brian Solis)
Charlie Elise: learning by accident (I learned a lot at #trulondon and other events just by meeting others)
Andrew Watkins: this is an example.

I suggested it’s the water cooler conversation, plus use of social media, and describe the (and my) use of blogging / microblogging, audio / video podcasting, web conferencing, social networking, social bookmarking, gaming and virtual worlds etc.

It’s the mix of these two things to me – real and virtual, analogue and digital. I liked the way Arie Moyal put together peer to peer coaching and wikis. And Abi and Suraj Sodha are spot on – it’s not about tools – it’s all about behaviours and social interaction. I also liked Kate Graham‘s summary of this bit: when talking social learning in your organisation, don’t sell social media – it’s not how people learn that matters, but if they learn.

Re the tools, Julian suggested the additional use of Foursquare and Gowalla. Umm. I don’t use these myself* and while I understand their role in facilitating connection, am unsure how they’d be used for social learning. May be one for me to study.

Dhruv Devasher asked whether video podcast (as an example) is a one way conversation or a multiple voice dialogue. Good question. Podcasting is often seen as part of new vs social media. Its new media because it’s part of this group of new, easy to use technologies that encourages participation and employee voice. But it’s not really social media, as it is generally one-way. You can comment, but only really using a different mode – writing vs video, which I think reduces the likelihood, and impact, of these. But I’d still say it’s social (even if not social media), in the same way as I described web conferencing can be social. If lot’s of people are using it, it results in a conversation, in social dialogue, even if you can’t track the threads of the conversation that easily.

There were a couple of comments about wikis. Michelle noted correctly that wikis only work if people join in – a point that applies to all social tools. And Abi questioned my view that wiki’s aren’t very social. I guess it depends on what we mean by this. I agree that wikis are social vs new media, as they’re not just about the use of new, easy to use technology, they are fundamentally about people sharing and working together. But they’re about collection of information, not connection between people. That’s what I meant by my point.

And I will moderate this. Social connection still helps wiki usage too. But the focus, on large wikis at least, is building a shared view and output about something. I think the emotional and social context behind the information people are adding and the updates they are making is less important than in other (more) social tools.

Nicola Strong asked when I think virtual worlds are a practical environment for social learning. Yes I do, and increasingly so. I’d also respond to Tony Bhambra‘s note that it’s not very easy to identify emotions in virtual worlds by noting that this is also changing – technologies are getting much better and displaying facial and physiological features which will help this considerably. And there is already some research to suggest that some people at least can develop more meaningful relationships online than they do in real life. It seems the cues we take from peoples’ faces and body languages are replaced with others from the virtual media.

And in response to Kate, no, I don’t think chat rooms are passe – they still have an important role to play.

Ishmael Burdeau noted that a lot can be done with mobile devices eg ipod, mobile. Absolutely. I meant to mention this but think it was one of the many points I had to drop. As an example, Michelle suggests she finds finding time to listen to podcasts is a problem for her. The way I do it is by using itunes on my iphone. Same for RSS (which Julian also notes is his best way of sharing – getting bigger every day). A train journey, a tube journey, between meetings – I, and I think most of us, have so much down time, that RSS feeds and podcasts can usefully and entertainingly occupy – through the use of mobile devices.

And I thought Martin Couzins made a good point – it has to be a mix and you learn what works best for different groups. And I’d again agree with Abi – you need to offer a blend of social and non-social (non social media I think you mean?) approaches so that people have a choice.

* I believe I have some valuable insights in social collaboration, learning etc – I don’t seek to pass myself off as an expert in social tools.

I’m going to look at your comments to my other 3 questions in a later post. Sorry – other (proper) work to do!

Technorati Tags: social learning,Go To,webinar,twitter,tweets,comments,Training Zone,Citrix Online