Rogier Noort, Author at Rogier Noort

Bridging Talent and Business

At IBM Connect, in the Netherlands, I had the change to listen to a presentation by IBM’s Laurent Boes. He should have gotten more time, but that’s just my opinion. His topic; Smarter Workforce. One slide, or more a summary, just made so much sense that I want to share it with you.

HR, front and centre

If we accept that unleashing your workforce is pivotal to the success of a Social Business, than we have to accept that HR plays a big part in this. This, however, is not about recruiting, but about assessing what we have (top employees) and how we can have their performance rub off on other employees.

And yes, arguments can be made whether HR is still a valid department.

AMC Theaters

A short example. As a case Laurent uses AMC Theaters and their interpretation of the information below. AMC found that the most valuable employee, the human who contributed the most to the net profit of the company, was the popcorn seller. By identifying and acknowledging this, they were able to train other popcorn sellers and new popcorn sellers and raise their revenue by 1.2% per customer.

Just imagine what effect that has on profit when added up over their 378 venues. Here’s a hint: millions.

The list, or workflow, then:

What job role has the biggest impact on the business

Depending on the size of your company, this might be quite a task. Of course, there are some roles easily eliminated, but you really should consider all.
It just might happen the mail intern does such a marvellous job that the impact on the company is confounding.

Be thorough in finding this role.

Why are great people great

When you’ve found the role, there’ll be people who do it better than others. This is not to discredit anybody, it’s just that some are more highly motivated than others, and thus, better at their job. Find out what makes them tick, what, exactly, differentiates them from the other.

Make some effort to get to the bottom of this.

Recruit, train and develop to that standard

Once you’ve established, or quantified, the standard, you can replicate it. Really, you can. For starters, you can adjust the hiring criteria to match the standard. Then, with the correct training, your new recruits will fit in better to the standard you’ve established.

The current employees can be trained and their assessments should, over time, reflect the new standard.

From liking to leading

The most successful employees within a company do more than just like their job. In a natural way, they tend to lead by example, simply because they do the job as well as possible.

That’s where you want to end up.

Innovate, transform, create

The consequence of this all is that employees are trained into a certain mindset. This mindset was unobtainable before it was quantified. This helps with changing the mindset and the philosophy of the whole company.

Over time, the newly hired, together with your champions, will act as trojan mice and will “infect” those employees who are difficult to change.

Time

As with everything, this process takes time. Especially when the goal is to change the whole company. But, with smaller steps, the return can be greater. Focussing on the 20% that make the biggest difference in the company, may provide the biggest yield.

The other 80% will come around.., in time.

Open Business, there’s light at the end of the tunnel

In the grant scheme of things we are merely pawns.

Most of us try to change the world, only a handful actually do. However, when it comes to social business, or rather society, things are slightly different. Here, numbers count. The more people involved with, lets call it “the movement”, the more chance it has of succeeding. Sounds logical, don’t it?

One of things I wrote about earlier, and I hope is inevitable, is the convergence of two different “movements” with the same name. There is a third, with a slightly different name, but with a very complimentary set of standards.

Open Business

Last week someone mentioned Open Business, I just had to check that out.

The definition according to Wikipedia:

Open business is an approach to enterprise that draws on ideas from openness movements like free software, open source, open content and open tools and standards.

So, yes, there is a difference between Social Business and Open Business, mainly the openness. Hence the term.

I do agree we have a long way to go, for any form of social or open business to establish itself firmly in our society.
Open business makes it a bit less abstract, meaning it might help us in clearing the air a bit around the enigma that is Social Business.

Social Business

Open business is NOT social business. It’s no the same thing. At most, it can be seen as part of the whole.
The way I see, it is neatly placed between the two existing definitions of social business.

The ideal situation would be combining the three into one, a very progressive way of doing business. Although not entirely unobtainable, it seems more routed in a Star Trekian philosophy than in the real world.

Below are the main ideas of concept of Open Business. You be the judge on how ‘real’ this is.

Open learning/sharing — a fundamental tenet is open collaboration at all levels in all locations
Open participation — open invitation to join the organization (similar to SourceForge, Blender community, where individual/team input within the community framework [for special services, consulting, training, adaptions, courses, camps, symposiums, books] can help to build individual income)
Individual rights — each person is supported and encouraged to identify and optimise their personal development, i.e. technical, personal, spiritual, etc.
Community focus — productivity activities are seen as part of a range of normal human activities e.g. family life, community life, religious commitments, etc.
Institution free — the organization is not based on any existing institution – state, religious or otherwise. Members can hold whatever views or affiliations they like.
Open knowledge — the free exchange of knowledge by making use -as much as possible- of open standards, open source and open content principles.
Open member details — including open access to the contact details of all other members in a convenient form (i.e. once the range and depth of those details have been approved for release by that particular member)
Open financials—all accounting information including the compensation of others

Some of these ideas are in tune with social business, others not so much. And some are outright difficult to achieve.

Awerness

In communicating these ideas, these values, combined with The Ten Tenets of Social Business, there is potential for some great implementations. Especially for fledging companies.

If any entrepreneur is starting a new company, it would be relatively easy to base its philosophy on these ideas. Anybody who wants to work for or with the company must abide to this philosophy.
Building it up like that gives you the very best chance of succeeding.

Changing an existing company takes more effort and time (but is not impossible).

Available Information

The good thing about all this is that all the information you need to change your business and have a positive effect on society is right available to you. The almighty and all knowing Internet provides enough reasons to become a social business.., or even an open business.

The choice is always up to you, whatever part you play within a company, anybody can start this. Having the support and involvement of top management makes everything a lot easier, but not having it, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

However, help can be found. There are more and more professionals turning their attention towards social business. People with different backgrounds, like HR or Change Management, but with a common interest and a joint passion. The first step to a successful change is understanding Why this is important. It’s the first step on your journey towards the future.

Challenges for the Adoption & Change Management Stage

Last Friday, at an acceptable European time, I really enjoyed the first #E20S Expert talk. The topic is one that ought to keep the practitioners, or those directly responsible for change and adoption quite busy.

The experienced and smart panel was led by Björn Negelmann into a discussion with some surprises for me, and a lot of good advice. There was plenty covered in this hour, so I’ll get to it.

Time

This gets mentioned more and more. An inevitable realisation that comes with the years. Even though I practised various forms of social business throughout my career, I never did it under the umbrella of “Social Business”, or “Enterprise 2.0”, or “Office 2.0”. Nor did I do my work at one company, it is the nature of an IT Consultant. Besides all that, I never did see much progress.

A lot of ideas past the revue, and some got implemented, most died slowly in obscurity.

David Terrar expressed his concern about the time it takes to change an enterprise into a social business. Already going at it in 2006, he states “if you’d told me we would have made this little progress by 2013 I would have been deeply depressed”.

Luckily, David is an optimist and things are moving a bit faster than they did 7 years ago. We are are slowly hitting the mainstream.

For those of us who are relative new to SocBiz, we have to tip our hats to those who’ve been laying the foundations so vigorously.

The Trough of Disillusionment

However, there are signs we’re heading towards the Slope of Enlightenment. Knowledge and expertise is accumulated more rapidly, the trade is becoming more recognized and the necessity to change more accepted.

With companies like IBM leading the charge, others are waking up to the reality that we are passing into a new age of business.

Open Business

Another term that sneaked through the ether was a potential replacement for Social Business.

Mind you, like stated above, this would mean we’ve moved from Office 2.0, to Enterprise 2.0, to Social Business and ending up with Open Business.

Now, I have agree that this might be a better description. And it also might differentiate ‘Social Business’ better. One issue I come across a lot is people instantly associating Social Business with Social Media. And that’s far to simplistic a way to look at it.

Open Business might just trigger better questions and more enthusiasm.

On The Right Track

Despite ‘it’ taking a long time, and despite the challenges we face with adoption and change management.., we are on the right track. We are moving forward, faster and faster, stronger and stronger.

If you, or your business isn’t looking into adapting to these changes, you probably soon will.

During this Expert Talk a couple of problems (i.e. Challenges) are identified and solutions for finding more traction are given.

There is simply to much to write down in this article, a transcript would be nice to have.

However, I’ll give you a couple of bullet points of advice given to advance the adoption and change (in random order, without credit and paraphrased):

Let people realize things can be done differently
Go to the top, you cannot be effective from 3rd level management
Connect with like minded people. Ideas come easier that way
Redesign the workplace, allow for serendipity
Get physical, teach networking and sharing with real live events (not just virtual)
Use broader communication streams, do not limit yourself to the Digital Village
Experiment, it’s OK to fail and let things get out of control
Find support, there is safety in numbers
Give credit to the company, openly, this encourages executive support
Let employees figure out how they can best use the tools provided
Trust employees
Do not focus on ROI alone
Dare to change the plan and the outcome

Well, I nice list I would say, there is a lot more to listen to so, I encourage you to watch the video below and join Björn Negelmann, Celine Schillinger, Joachim Stroh, Thierry de Baillon, David Terrar and Simon Dueckert in what I believe is a very rich hour.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhwAnsHo4C8?rel=0]