Talent Management and Knowledge management - what's the link

Yesterday I was invited by a Delhi based MBA college, IILM, to deliver a talk to the students on Talent Management and Knowledge Management.

My first response was "What's the connection? They are fundamentally different approaches, Talent Management is figuring out who your top performers are and how to empower and grow them. Knowledge Management in the traditional sense is "extractive" in nature. It wants to find out what your people know and attempts to "capture" that." (note: When I say KM, I focused on the first generation of KM)

So here are the key points I shared with the students:

• Talent Management is not really about managing people's talents - but about assessing, finding, developing your top performers. 
• Traditional HR is silo driven , and Talent Management calls for a structural change in the way HR processes are delivered to these top employees.
• An over-focus on Talent Management might make the average and good players disengaged.
• In some way, Talent Management becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You choose a group of people, tell them they are better than the rest, and give them differentiated inputs. 
• The concept of "Talent" originated from sports, however in organizations, performance is contextual to the business, processes, team and industry. 
• Talent Analytics is one of the fastest growing aspects as organizations want to understand with data which people are going to perform and who is not when put into a role.
• I suspect Talent Management approach will replace HR, as organizations will say "if we can do this for high performers why can't we focus on all employees" - and that would be driven by technology.

When the turn came to focus on Knowledge Management

• The "extractive" nature of KM 1.0 ensured it didn't succeed. People didn't see meaning and sense in it.
• The focus to KM 2.0 is by using enterprise social tools to enable employees to connect with and engage each other to create collective knowledge. 
• KM2.0 will succeed when it adds value to the employees as well as the organization, when more than the usual creators are involved.

HR people need to care about learning not just training

So I met a HR head of a large firm today and told him that while I have been a Training professional most of my life, my real passion is to help people learn.

On hearing that one eyebrow of his shot up and he asked "What's the difference?"

I answered that training is the thing that the organization does to the employee. But learning is what the employee carries with him/her.

Sometimes, if things go well the circles of training and learning overlap to a large extent. However, most often than not, the overlap is not high. And sometimes there is no overlap. (if you're a HR person and are shaking your head, here's a small exercise for you.. go and ask 20 people their biggest learning and where they learnt it. Only 1 or 2 people will say it was in a classroom training)

Learning is impacted by many things outside the HR professional's control. Like whether the correct people are nominated to the training, and whether they can experiment and make mistakes when applying learnings.

The biggest aspect to learning is social interaction between learners. And between experts and learners

Connecting people who are journeying their own discoveries of learning is the best way for a person to learn.

The community so formed is non-judgemental and supportive.

Mostly organizations didn't have the technology to keep a learning community like this alive, but now with social tools they don't have that excuse any longer.

So if you're a HR person, think more than "training" and think about how to facilitate people's learning.

Create a B2B Social Media Marketing Plan

In association with NASSCOM, 2020 Social is presenting a one day workshop on How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan on April 23rd 2010.

Take a look :-)

Here's what it would cover:

• What is social media
• What are the specific social media channels
• How social media impacts marketing and business
• How certain case studies will help in understanding the use of social media in marketing
• The importance of social media listening and measurement
• How to create your own framework for a social media based marketing program by focusing on:

• Understanding your business objectives
• Understanding your audience
• Defining your strategy and selecting specific social channels
• Creating your tactical plan
• Setting up a listening program
• Successfully presenting your plan and implementing it.

So go here and apply to register.

Workshops on Social Media for Organizations

My colleague Gaurav Mishra is doing a workshop for NASSCOM Foundation on how non-profits can utilize social media. As he details in his blog - the workshop would have the following sessions :

10:00 – 11:00 Introduction to social media for non-profits
11:00 -11:30 Tea/ coffee break
11:30 – 12:30 Strategy, tactics, measurement
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch
1:30 – 2:30 Social media tools
2:30 – 3:00 Tea/ coffee break
3:00 – 4:00 Tying it together, using social media for raising awareness, fundraising and driving advocacy

In the workshop, I’ll build upon these simple three steps and help the attendees build a step-by-step guide to igniting and scaling the passion of their supporters in their chosen domain.

If you are a non-profits, register for the workshop or ask for more information at +91 11 40755722/23/24/32 or komal@nasscomfoundation.org.

What we realize is that even corporations are looking at workshops on how businesses can leverage social media. So here's a draft workshop design that would focus on educating CXOs on how to leverage the social tools and technologies.

Take a look at our thoughts on Decoding Social

2020 Social Decoding Social Workshop March 2010

View more presentations from 2020 Social.

Workshop 1: Workshop for CXO’s


A. Social Media Basics (60 minutes)


1. What are Social Media and Social Technologies?

• Various forms and functionalities of Social technologies
• How ‘Social’ as a behavior is leveraged by these social technologies

2. Why is Social Media becoming so important?

• Impact of Social Media on people
• Impact of Social Media on society
• Impact of Social Media on Media
• Impact of Social Media on Businesses

B. Social Media for Business (60 Minutes)


1. Why do businesses need to become social?

• Connecting business needs to social business strategy solutions
• Social Media scope and benefits for B2C businesses
• Social Media scope and benefits for B2B businesses

2. How have other businesses become social?


Best Social Media practices and case studies
i. Business to Consumer businesses
ii. Business to Business businesses
iii. Enterprise collaboration


C. Social Media for CXOs (90 Minutes)


a. Why CXOs need to understand Social Media?


i. Underlying strategic dynamics CXOs need to know
ii. Linkage with business objectives


b. How can CXOs champion Social Media?


i. Governance implications
ii. Cross-department implications
iii. Cross-stakeholder implications


D. Social Media for [specific] businesses (90 Minutes)

• How can your business leverage social media?
• Best practices and case studies
• Opportunity for your company/business unit/group
•  How can a B2C businesses leverage social media?
• Best practices and case studies
• Opportunity for specific business
• How can B2B businesses leverage social media?
• Best practices and case studies
• Opportunity for specific groups

Workshop 2: Workshop for Marketing, Brand, HR Managers


A. Understanding social media (60 Minutes)

• 1. What are Social Media and Social Technologies?
• Various forms and functionalities of Social technologies
• How ‘Social’ as a behavior is leveraged by these social technologies
• 2. Why is Social Media becoming so important?
• Impact of Social Media on people
• Impact of Social Media on society
• Impact of Social Media on Media
• Impact of Social Media on Businesses

B. Understanding social media for businesses (90 Minutes)

• Establishing a presence on social web

• Social Media channels
• Why should the brand participate?

• Scope and benefits of Social Media

• Business objectives that can be achieved
• Best practices and case studies for B2C businesses
• Best practices and case studies for B2B businesses
• Best practices and case studies of internal collaboration and employee community

Scope for Specific Business

• Best practices in businesses related to organization/ group
• Role for marketing managers
• Role for HR managers

C. Social Media for marketing (90 Minutes)

• How should a brand market itself on social web:
• Understanding consumer behavior; the 5 Cs of social media

• Consumer Generated content
• Conversations
• Collaboration
• Community
• Collective intelligence

• Choosing the right behavior and the right channel

2. Social Media monitoring


D. Leveraging social media in your business (60 Minutes)

• Building a social media plan for Business
• Building Communities (of Employees, Customers, Partners)

Do share your thoughts on what else do you think a workshop like this should contain...

Trainers Need to Build Their Skills Too

Most people get into corporate training accidentally - after being a subject matter expert in various areas like sales, customer service, HR.

With the result that many Training (or Learning, if you will!) professionals are either self taught in the process of training - or have modeled themselves after a particular trainer whom they have been an apprentice under.

Even when someone like me - who chose to get into training as a personal choice after my MBA - works in the training function (which is becoming more and more distinct from the HR function - at least in large organizations) a large part of the initial years is spent in managing the function along with learning the ropes of training.

However, a decent training of trainers is rare - and most of the time becomes a hybrid between presentation skills and public speaking. The skills of facilitation are taught as an afterthought - and these skills are rarely ever taught:

1. Needs analysis to segregate skill related needs with other factors interfering with learning - so that one doesn't really look at every business need with a 'training' lens
   
2. Linking learning gaps directly to business needs
3. Understanding Adult learning principles and models like Kolb's theory, Bloom's Taxonomy, Donna Walker's cycle so that one can design a learning intervention with a high level of impact
4. Knowing how to use various developmental methods (like case studies, role plays, self reflection instruments, videos) to build specific skills

Taking Learning out of the classroom

We've always known that informal learning/ on the job learning/ real time learning - whatever you choose to call it, is always more valuable than formal classroom learning.

Now a survey by Bersin & Associates (and tweeted by Josh Bersin) shows that 64% of Learning Executives believe informal learning approaches have higher impact, more than two-thirds of corporate training budgets are spent on traditional formal training.

Why should that be?

1. Well to begin with - social and informal learning happens in the real time work environment. It's a space where learning executives are not present
2. Spending budgetary dollars would necessitate the need to set up control systems - to find out if they are well spent - and that would actually stifle learning
3. Current learning leaders are people who have learned primarily how to impart skills using classroom and e-learning - they understand that world - with its imperfections and shortages. Getting them to think about alternate method of ensuring learning is scary for them

What can organizations do?

1. Clearly formalising informal learning would lead to counter productive results - but firms have to provide infrastructure to aid the process
2. Getting people to agree to be observed - and conducting a ethnographic research - to actually find out how this learning actually takes place.
3. Collaborate with Knowledge Management professionals - this is overlapping area for both groups in the organization to achieve results
   

Alignment of HR with Business

Jon Ingham posts a reply to a reader who asks how they can ensure alignment of senior HR folks. Jon as usual adds very deep and insightful comments:

the first, most obvious option has to be to use your existing performance management system to ensure that your senior HR people are set performance objectives that align with and cascade from your business objectives. my experience suggests that identifying HR measures is never actually that hard.  When it is, it is because the objectives that you’re trying to measure still aren’t clear.  You need to ensure that you are – that you fully understand what you mean by alignment, and why this is important to you.

The biggest thing that HR folks need to do is to spend time with business folks, observing them as they go about their work. The HR head should do that with the CEO. The HR Business Partner with the Business Leader. And so on and so forth. Spending time with your client, and understanding what is important to him/her is the best way to contribute to the business.

As a HR person do you know the strategic and competitive advantage of your business? Is it to ensure that products turn on the shelves, or is to ensure that customer service is impeccable or it is to come out with ground breaking products?

If as a HR person you know what that is - and what your clients have to do to meet that objective, I am sure that HR objectives would be amply clear. Sure they have their own expectations of HR, but your raison d'etre should be to add value to the larger organization.