How Organizational Culture is the key to social business success #socbiz

English: Diagram of Schein's Organizational Behavior Model (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Often you'll hear Social Business (or Enterprise 2.0) enthusiasts say - like we said in the days of KM - "The key to success is people, process and technology"

And then followed by the statement - "Success is dependent 80/90 percent on people"

And yet Wall Street and industry analysts cheer the technology mergers and acquisitions. (see a list Alan maintains)

I believe that "people" issues have a whole lot of other issues that get hidden behind that word that companies might miss. I have mentioned "culture" in the title of the post which is itself like "people" a composite of many other things.

Here are some:

1. Vision : Leaders and employees need to know why social technologies are being deployed and how do they link to the existing vision of the company. 
2. Role Modeling: Leaders need to exemplify the sharing and collaboration behavior on social tools that they expect employees to display.
3. Rewards and Recognition: Social tools have to be in the "flow of work" - but traditional reward systems that do not recognize and reward new behaviors would be a hindrance to widespread adoption.
4. Linkage with goals: The team focusing on implementation needs to learn with each and every group in the organization to map how social technologies can help them achieve their goals - in a faster and better way. Without articulating that, the support of crucial group leaders and middle managers would be a pipedream.
5. Finding and empowering employee advocates: Let's admit it. In most large workplaces the majority of the employees are disengaged. Expecting them to adopt new tools without being clear of future value is going to be difficult at best. Organizations must map the actively engaged employees who are active creators and sharers of content and showcase how the platforms have helped them achieve their goals.
6. Organizational values: These are the big ways in which shape the behavior of employees. Is dissent encouraged? What happens when people make mistakes? Can leaders be questioned and criticised openly? How do they respond to such questions? These are the "norms of behavior" which operate on the ground. Answers to such questions determine whether social, openness and transparency would thrive in the organization.
7. Education and Training: I won't say much about it but to share Charlene Li's excellent presentation on the topic:
   Training for Social Media Success from Charlene Li

Workshop on Social Business and Employee Engagement for HR

I would be taking a workshop along with the National HRD Network on Using Social tools to build Employee Engagement, in Delhi on 24th June. You can take a look at the event here and register by sending an email to the email address mentioned on the site

What will the workshop cover?

• Importance of social media and its impact on society and businesses

( Looking at how the larger trends of how social technologies are impacting society, media, politics and businesses. Focusing on how businesses are using social networks to market, support and co-create with customers)

•     The Millenial generation and their expectations from organizations

(The new generation which is entering the workplace is the first which has exposure to social applications before they join organizations. How does that impact their expectations about sharing and connecting in organizations?)

•     The imperatives for Organizations to embrace Open Collaborative nature

(We shape our tools, and then our tools also shape us. It was true in the prehistoric age and it is true in today’s age. How does the new workplace and social tools impact organizational culture)

•     Use of Social Technologies by HR

(How social technologies can be used by HR to : increase employee communication, better employee communication , build innovation and learning)


Who should attend :
The program is open to HR Practitioners with any level of work experience. Managers from any other function would also benefit from this workshop.

So will I see you there?

Innovation and HR

Image via Wikipedia

A senior HR professional mailed me, saying that he's going to be part of a panel discussion on Innovation and what are the areas I think HR can impact innovation. Here's what I wrote back to him:

1. If the culture of an organization is not geared to innovation, then a “skunkworks” approach to innovation is best. That is, a place and structure and group of people separated from the parent company – to form a separate group without the systems and processes of the parent group to reduce innovation.

2. On a personal level, innovation is the way to see reality from a different point of view – hence HR needs to stress on systems and processes that drive diversity in thought and execution.

3. Performance management needs to be tweaked so that risks are rewarded and inaction is penalized. The more risks are taken, the better the chances of innovation. That would also mean that managers need to change the way they view failures.

4. Move focus away from saying No to saying Yes. When an employee approaches a manager with a new idea or innovation in doing the work, the manager should be able to say yes easily, and when he/she says no, he/she should write a business case on why the idea won’t work. This process would incentivize saying Yes instead of No

Quoted in Mint story on Co-CEO Organizational Structure

Was recently quoted in a story on how a Co-CEO model is difficult to pull off - as is the case recently in Wipro.

Amplify’d from epaper.livemint.com

Gautam Ghosh, a human re- source (HR) consultant, said in a two-head structure it is nec- essary for the rest of the firm to know they represent different functions, and so the nomen- clature needs to be different. “So while a CEO and COO (chief operating officer) would really be equivalent, the CEO would be external-facing and the COO could be the internal head,“ he said. “In Wipro's case, this doesn't seem to have happened.“ Read more at epaper.livemint.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bndx0

Why HR needs to leverage Enterprise 2.0

When someone asks me how HR can become more strategic (y'know - the same conversation we have been having since the 1990s) these days more and more I find myself thinking that HR should be joining and indeed leading the Enterprise 2.0 conversations.

I believed the same in the early 2000s when the KM conversation was going on - and found HR folks unwilling to engage and own that conversation - with the result that IT departments used a tool-centric approach and vendors marketed hyped up products in the guise of KM and most of the time it failed, with everyone having egg on their faces.

And as I believe Enterprise 2.0 (or social business) is going down the same path for most organizations.

Here are the reasons why I think HR should be a critical member - and lead the Enterprise 2.0 agenda:

1. HR (in the sphere of OD) - has the critical skill to make such changes less painful and with a higher rate of success. Let's face it, change management seen from a tool vendor's point of view is just a "training program" and about process changes. Other business functions really don't have the change management understanding that OD practitioners have. That understanding can be channelised to make "social business" a reality - by thinking about the structural, process, emotional and personal aspects of change.
2. Enterprise 2.0 is both about engaging people with other people (employees, partners, customers) as well as embedding that in the business processes. Typically, HR professionals don't get a chance to influence what happens in the business - but with E2.0 they can - and build their strategic impact. Holy grail, anyone?
3. Enterprise 2.0 will soon be the platform of learning and people to people engagement in the organization and as such will have impact on all aspects of HR work - Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Learning and Development and unless HR leads the conversation it will find itself more and more redundant like IT departments are finding themselves.

So are you a HR leader and are you owning social ?