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| Philips logo following the March 2008 Identity Update (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Still trying to get your employees to embrace the company wiki and other recent collaboration tools? Sorry, the world has moved on.
Four years since the birth of "Enterprise 2.0", many wikis have been abandoned, as companies find it takes more to enthuse staff to share than just building a platform and expecting them to come.
In theory, the wikis, blogs and instant messages were a perfect match for Web 2.0 services mushrooming outside the enterprise.
In practice, many companies assumed all they had to do was implement the technology, convince the boss to blog, send an email around to let everyone know and the rest would follow.
"It's not turning out the way they might have planned," says the research director at consulting firm Ovum, Steve Hodgkinson.
"There's a raft of wikis that have gone stale. Some ended up in just another cluttered environment, some got good reaction but weren't particularly useful, so fizzled out. It was not as easy as companies thought. It's interesting because it exposes people's collaborative tendencies or lack thereof."
Hodgkinson and his colleague, principal analyst Richard Edwards, have been studying enterprise collaboration behaviour and conclude that companies need to rethink their strategies.
They say there is hard work involved in fostering collaboration.
Companies that have gleaned the most from the technology have managed it actively through training, monitoring user behaviour and constant adjustment.
The innovation manager of Deloitte Australia, Simon Townsend, says it's important to go where users want to go.
Deloitte has 4500 staff in Australia and several internal collaboration tools, among them a wikiblog that did not pay dividends for staff and was abandoned.
Edwards says the time has come for companies to stop locking down computers and observe which social technologies are preferred and engaged by employees.
"We need to focus on the human being part of the equation," he says.
"Every corporate employee is a consumer. We need to remind IT and senior managers [of that] every day because what they enjoy using outside they'll use inside."
Q. What are your thoughts on “online learning communities,” especially when proposed as a solution?
The potential is very high to capitalize on social networking. Online learning communities formalize the informal information pipeline that goes on in an organization but I have only seen aspects of these communities in action.
For example, I have seen in companies that employees share ideas and solutions to problems by blogging, Skyping, and texting. Online training, through synchronous web meetings, provided opportunities for networking, problem-solving, and collaboration that transfer back to the workplace.
I still would like to see a plan with a vision of what an organization can become using social networking. These communication tools take time to use and for people to gain confidence in connecting. In a reactive environment, social networking becomes more of a distraction than a positive strategy.
Q. Change is definitely a process. What should corporate trainers expect in the 21st century?
Eventually, we go back to basics—what do we need to do and what do we need to know in order to make it happen. We, as learning professionals, need to develop 360-degree vision, to understand what has passed in an organization, what an organization strives to be, and what we need to do now to get there. We can have the best tools and technology possible, but their use still depend upon solid instructional design principles, learning theory, and performance management. The trick is to be so fluent in our knowledge and performance that we can provide structured design quickly to keep pace with the speed in which organizations operate.
In his new book, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance, Groysberg studies a group of professionals renowned for the portability of their talent -- Wall Street research analysts. Analysts are a hybrid of researchers and pundits; they study public companies and write recommendations about whether to buy or sell their stocks.
So what happened? Groysberg reports, "Star equity analysts who switched employers paid a high price for jumping ship. Overall, their job performance plunged sharply and continued to suffer for at least five years after moving to a new firm." Worse, switching firms doubled the chance that an analyst would fall off the rankings entirely (32% versus 16%).
So talent is not, in fact, perfectly portable, even in a job that is one of the most independent around (except for, perhaps, janitors and NFL placekickers).
What gives? Wall Streeters mistakenly see analysts as solo stars, but in reality, Groysberg found that even the best analysts depend heavily on an array of resources inside their firms. They rely on junior analysts who do their number crunching, other analysts who give them feedback, and salespeople who promote their ideas to clients. Not to mention the systems and culture within the firm.
There was one fascinating exception to these findings, a group of people who didn't suffer the lag in performance after transferring: women. Groysberg contends that the alpha-male culture on Wall Street, which never fully embraces women, forces them to compensate by beefing up their external networks, which are more portable. (Either that, or women are superior. Take your pick.)
So what do these findings mean for the world outside of Wall Street? Should we conclude that there's no such thing as different innate levels of talent? Of course not. The Baldwin brothers alone are enough to refute that. But the only way to take control of your firm's talent pool is to create it yourself. (And you should definitely get your child on the Wall Street-analyst career track. A job that entails writing persuasive essays on trucking firms must surely be the world's most preposterous route to a seven-figure salary.)
For instance, Hindustan Unilever, the Indian subsidiary of the consumer goods giant, has developed a reputation as a talent factory. How? Its senior managers are expected to spend 30% to 40% of their time grooming leaders. And executives usually change roles every two to three years so that they learn different aspects of the business. These investments may seem costly, but they have helped HUL become a $4.4 billion company, which reported 5.4% net profit growth at the end of 2009 -- and the envy of other companies worldwide.
When you own the talent factory, you've created a permanent competitive advantage. So if one of your stars leaves, you can simply wish him the best of luck on his new bus. And then grow another star to take his place.
Harvard Business School and Columbia Business School have joined a growing list of business schools that are adding courses on social media to their MBA curricula, addressing the corporate demand for social-network-savvy employees. The two schools are among at least six that have added courses in the past year that allow students to learn about Internet marketing and social media strategy, according to course syllabi and faculty associated with the classes.
With Twitter's social networking site claiming 190 million users tweeting 65 million times a day and Facebook reporting 500 million active members, companies including Sears Holdings, Panasonic, Citigroup, and AT&T have begun hiring social media directors to develop and manage marketing strategies that address the nuances of the online world. Business schools in the last three years have seen a drop in graduate placement rates—to an average of 84 percent in 2009 among Bloomberg Businessweek's top 30 full-time MBA programs, from 96 percent in 2007. Social media classes are one way of preparing students for careers in a promising field, says John Gallaugher, associate professor of information systems at Boston College's Carroll School of Management, where "Social Media & Web 2.0 for Managers" is being offered in the fall.
"In the realm of technology it's possible for us to teach our students a tool that their bosses don't have, and they can provide that added value from day one," Gallaugher says. "Social media skills are the ones that can set them apart. Those are the skills that employers are looking for."
Columbia, in New York, offers four Internet marketing courses. Two of them, "Social Media," taught by Rachel Sterne, chief executive officer of GroundReport.com, a global citizen news platform, and "Media and Technology," taught by New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, will be offered for the first time next spring, according to professor Rajeev Kohli, chair of the Columbia marketing division. At Harvard, in Boston, professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski last fall introduced a second-year elective course, "Competing with Social Networks," and 172 students enrolled—three for every available seat. "Students know these tools are too hard to ignore," Piskorski says.
Other MBA programs that have added courses that explore social media include London Business School , INSEAD, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France, and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, known as HEC Paris, according to faculty at the respective schools.
Image by fellowcreative via FlickrPrediction 1| Augmented reality learning emerges
So what could be the implications for social learning? Simulations and games could take on a whole new level of interactivity, technical training could be done virtually without expensive labs, and management conferences could become networking events designed around finding knowledge content built on a pre-event profile, just to name a few. Even in prototype, SixthSense is less than $350, so in the near future, the device could be a highly affordable supplement in the learning environment.
Prediction 2| Most learning incorporates use of a mobile device
With increased capabilities of real time search on all mobile devices, learning will truly be just in time. Ask a question, get an answer. Our world will turn into three-minute learning vignettes. When you incorporate GPS sensitivity into a learning environment, many possibilities emerge.
Similar to the GPS-sensitive program FourSquare, we could design check-in points for new hires to get to know their company and its history. Or with programs such as Serendipity (under development at MIT), set our social networking profile to alert us whenever we're near an expert in the topic of our choice. Perhaps the future role of learning is to find, organize, and enable the experts?
Prediction 3| Games and simulations are used for every content area
The Millennial generation, which will comprise the majority of the workforce in just a few years, grew up on GameBoys, World of Warcraft, and EVE Online. IBM has already studied whether participation in massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) develops leadership skills. They found that having to recruit a guild, fulfill a series of tasks, motivate, and retain a guild led to the development of leadership skills. MMORPGs can be nonviolent, virtual-world–building games as well, with experiments in teaching math and science already under way.
A management simulation provides the ability for what Michael Schrage has called "serious play"—an opportunity to innovate, take risks, and practice in a safe environment.
But games and simulations aren't just for management. New-hire games can be used even in advance of hiring to allow players to become familiar with a company's products and services. Collaboration is increasingly important at most companies, and games could take a key role in teaching collaboration skills.
Prediction 4| We will have a huge app-etite
In the words of Apple's marketing department, "there's an app for that." In the case of applications for iPhone and iPod touch, more than 130,000 have been developed to date. Morgan Stanley predicts 500,000 new applications before the end of 2010. Since people are already accustomed to the convenience and functionality of apps, a whole new breed of apps for corporate environments will emerge. Corporate HR and learning functions will get into the business of custom app development. Possible apps include
* acronym lookup
* product description and specs apps
* benefits chooser
* campus and conference room map
* room scheduler
* retirement planner
* expert locator
* virtual profile (replacing the company phone directory)
* cafeteria menus and reviews
* virtual manager.
With just a little work, you could probably brainstorm another 10 apps in the next 10 minutes. Nearly anything that is in print now can be converted into a rich, constantly updated application.
Prediction 5| Peer-to-peer learning blossoms
When people attend conferences or workshops, it's not unusual to read in the evaluations that one of the most beneficial aspects of the event was the ability to network and learn from peers. Through technology, that peer-to-peer learning has now taken on a whole new level of meaning. While baby boomer managers fret that time spent on Facebook is a time waster, Millennials can't imagine getting their work done without relying on the tribe they've collected through their online social networks.
To mediate an organization's concerns for security while balancing the need to allow people to connect, expect to see a proliferation of platforms aimed at Facebook-type applications in the organization. Furthermore, expect some of these platforms to be specifically developed in the learning field and incorporated or integrated with the LMS. Learning functions will be able to determine which content is most in demand by perusing the most popular and most viewed content, and then assembling content developed by contributors into formal learning courses.
At this point, knowledge management and training become such a seamless continuum that it becomes fruitless to try and separate them functionally. Anticipate that learning functions will become the new and improved knowledge management owners as well.
Prediction 6| Expert and credibility ratings create trusted search networks
In a study at the University of California at Berkeley, it was estimated that knowledge is doubling every 18 months. Combine that with the time it takes to become an expert, which is usually estimated at 10,000 hours of practice, or roughly 10 years. No sooner do you become an expert than your knowledge is outdated.
Now consider how you spend your days and how you learn about something quickly. For example, maybe you'd never heard the term "MMPORG" before. If you're like most people, you would be unlikely to look up a training course on MMPORG as your first stop. Instead, you go to your favorite online search engine and type in the term. The problem is that there is so much information available, you might not know which definition to trust.
As search evolves, we will be able to identify industry experts and friends whom we trust, and our search results will include in the algorithm of results those sites and resources that our trusted sources have indicated as solid content. For example, you might add Tony Bingham, the president and CEO of ASTD, as a trusted source. If Tony had endorsed a definition of MMPORG, then that definition would rise to the top of your search results. Your tribe of trusted sources will become the way for you to navigate through the proliferating mass of online information.
Prediction 7| Search bots go on the prowl for you
It's one thing to know what term or question to type into a search engine, and it's another thing entirely to know the terms you should use or the questions you should be asking. As Will Rogers once said, "It's not what you know that hurts you, it's what you know that ain't so." In other words, with all the knowledge available, it's what is out there that you don't know about that can hurt you.
Now imagine that you've completed a search profile that says you are in sales training, in a major pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey. You'd like to know about the top developments in healthcare reform, any news alerts for the major suppliers you rely on, important news feeds on products and executives in your company, and a search through any publication in the world relevant to training for pharmaceutical sales reps.
Your bot will be at your service, culling the data on the web and delivering it to your doorstep every morning. Like any good pet, it will get better with feedback and training, so you will teach it to become more accurate by indicating that you like some bits of content and not others. Your own personal information robotic concierge, at your service soon!
Prediction 8| Governments will become more involved in ensuring that its citizens have access to training and retraining
With advances in human longevity, the economic setbacks many people experienced during the last few years, and a backlash against an unfettered corporate focus on profit, governments are starting to see that the strain put on their purses due to unemployment and underemployment is out of balance. In Korea for example, the government not only provides tax benefits for training investment, but also provides co-investment dollars.
Expect to see governments provide more incentives for retraining workers. These incentives could include anything from tax incentives to authorizing personal accounts, much like 401(k) retirement savings plans in the United States. Sometimes called "Lifelong Learning Accounts (LiLAs)," California, Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Washington, and other U.S. states have introduced legislation to provide tax credits and breaks for investment in training.
Imagine a day when the learning function is not only getting funds from the corporate budgets, but individuals can elect to attend classes using their LiLA account money. Will that change the way learning functions think about the offerings they have available, and will it drive even more cooperation with universities to provide focused, relevant curriculum?
Prediction 9| The learning function's focus shifts to accreditation, with less emphasis on the learning process itself
As the amount of knowledge required to perform the job moves more and more to instant access, it will become less and less likely that people will prove their credentials by having an internal corporate training completion on their personnel records. Instead, learning functions will set the standards of performance required to achieve accreditation, install systems for enabling achievement of that accreditation, and track completion.
Prediction 10| You will be rated publicly, much like a Yelp or Amazon rating for people
Yelp is a popular social networking and review site where users rate and comment on local restaurants. The Millennial generation is accustomed to relying on user input on sites such as rateyourprofessor.com to steer everything from where to have fish tacos to which professors to avoid at college. Few people order from Amazon without looking at the cumulative rating stars of past purchasers. Sites such as glassdoor.com already provide insights regarding the culture, pay, and management quality. It is not a big leap to assume that eventually, managers will be publicly rated, followed by everyone being rated.
Will it change a manager's behavior if he knows that his tendency toward berating employees will show up in a public review the next day? Will the manager who chronically micromanages begin to adjust her behavior if multiple reviewers have commented on the same thing? It is one thing to go into the quiet of your office to review a private 360-degree report and quite another to have your children reading about your work behaviors.
This may be one of the scariest predictions so far, as you wonder about the fairness of disgruntled employees commenting publicly. On Yelp, the establishment owners are allowed to provide a rebuttal on comments, so this could be a feature of how a public people review system would work. But do anticipate that privacy has taken a whole new turn and will continue to do so as we progress.
Learning's future: champion or outcast?
One of the main reasons we like to think about the future is because we hope the learning and development field will be the first to step up to take ownership of many of the ideas we have presented here. We've been in learning functions where people have said they think social networking is a fad and micro-blogging is a waste of time. We beg to differ, and believe that the next generation of work coming into organizations will demand being able to work in ways they've already found to enable success. If the learning function does not step up to the task, some other department in the organization will, and a learning function will become irrelevant.
On the other hand, if the learning function has a vision for the future, and works patiently to inspire organizations to move into a new way of work and learning, the relevance and core criticality for business success could be unprecedented in our field's history.
Which will we choose?
Picking the right metrics is the key to creating real value from training. Most for-profit organizations have a longer list of quantitative business-performance metrics than BGCA does. A retailer pursuing better customer service and sales growth, for example, could train employees by getting its managers to provide real-time coaching and to role-model best-practice customer-engagement techniques. Rather than just measuring the managers’ time allocation or employee-engagement data—as most would do now—the retailer should measure the impact of its programs through hard business metrics, such as sales, basket sizes, and conversion rates in critical categories or departments. Similarly, a manufacturer might try to improve its operations by teaching plant supervisors lean-manufacturing and coaching skills, but rather than tracking only how many managers have been trained, it should track metrics such as downtime, the overall effectiveness of equipment, or fill rates.
In every case, companies must continually review and revise the links between skills, performance, and training programs. Typically, to determine which metrics should be improved, companies assess their current performance against industry benchmarks or their own goals. Like retailers and manufacturers, most other companies know what kinds of skills are tied to different areas of performance. So a good next step is to conduct an analysis of the relevant groups of employees to identify the most important specific skills for them (as BGCA did) and which performance-enhancing skills they currently lack. To get a clear read on the impact of a program, it’s crucial to control for the influence of external factors (for instance, the opening of new retail competitors in local markets) and of extraordinary internal factors (such as a scheduled plant shutdown for preventative maintenance). It’s also crucial to make appropriate comparisons within peer groups defined by preexisting performance bands or market types.
An avid blogger, a twitter-addict, with 1000 friends on Orkut and an enviable fan following on Facebook, Gautam is a social media and network junkie. But when asked how he’d like to categorize himself, Gautam Ghosh says, “my foremost identity is as an HR professional.” Those who know Gautam describe him as the “Face of HR blogging” in India as well as the global community. This young man has successfully connected the dots between HR, learning and social media. He believes that “learning happens by doing and sharing!”
Gautam has rich experience in the corporate world through his journey as an HR professional in organizations like DELL, Deloitte, HP, Satyam, as an independent OD and Training consultant as well as a consultant with 2020 Social. “I see everything kind of fitting into a larger umbrella of saying how do we make a more human organization,” he explains. By ‘human’ he refers to an organization that is open and transparent. Gautam believes that all his L&D work, HR professional work, HR journalist work, and his social media work belongs to the larger umbrella of building an organization that is more open, transparent and human. “While it wasn’t really obvious when I started off the journey but now when I look back, that’s one thread that has continued throughout the journey,” he adds thoughtfully.
by Ricardo Semlar. 
, which is a collection of how each of their employees experience the culture at Zappos - and now anybody can read that book.
Sometimes we get caught up in the latest fad or program and we think, "gee, won't this be fabulous!" and we forget to ask if this is actually helping the business by truly meeting the needs of the people. Yes, the activity you came up with might be "fun," but most people consider work, work and want to find their fun elsewhere.
Or we think that for a team to be effective they need to be bonded in some significant fashion. And that perhaps trusting my coworker to catch me as I fall backwards will improve performance all around. Frankly, I'd rather trust my coworker to get her part of the project done on time. That builds team cohesiveness better than anything else, in my humble opinion.
So, next time you go implementing some sort of program, stop and think about how this will really affect business performance. Is it helping or inadvertantly hurting?
To manage well requires that you recognize the subtle, but important, differences between people and that you know how to put those differences to work for your organization. Great managers thrive on helping people experience incremental growth. The dynamic creativity of figuring out how to move from the player to the plays is the real genius of a great manager.
Leadership isn’t about that at all. Leadership is about finding the words, stories, and images that bring great clarity to people. And that’s just different from being a good manager. You could have both talents, but good managers don’t necessarily make good leaders.
