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I know I’m hard on you, I honestly don’t mean to be.  I just really tired of hearing, time and again, that the only way that HR has any influence on the company is when new leadership is brought in to lead.  I just know you can do better.  This is why I have to to put you “on notice” now.   I don’t want you to suggest that I didn’t warn you.  It is time to lead and if you won’t someone else will.

You must take a role in leading an internal social strategy in your organization.  Your company is currently deciding what their strategy is for social media and if you are not in loop now you might never be.  So why is it so critical for HR to be in the loop?

This is not just about the currently available pieces of enterprise 2.0, it is about the changing face of managing human capital and I can tell you with confidence, that if I see it coming it’s not far away. 

I am starting to notice that people are not defining talent as exclusively goal achievement and outstanding performance reviews.  They are beginning to see the world of talent in terms of

•  
  • Knowledge producers
  • Knowledge sharers
  • Connectors
  • Workforce potential
  • Innovation
  • Agility

In other words, what human assets do you have that give you an unfair competitive advantage in your business?  In tight economic times this is going to be even more important.  If you cannot talk confidently about your workforce in these terms, then you are not giving the value to the business that they need. 

So I ask you this, what do you really know about your workforce?   Do you have a solid strategy to begin capturing this kind of information?  What about a strategy to leverage the knowledge against challenges facing the business?

OK, so now you know just how big this shift is going to be.  I suggest you find a way to plant yourself at the center of the solution quickly, or I expect I’ll be hearing another story about how hard it is and how nothing ever gets done. 

The game is changing people, how badly do you want to win?

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With thanks to OnNotice generator

We all have seen excellence in neckwear, we’ve seen no neckwear but what about neckwear disasters? 

Well thanks to the Happy Employee we are now about to see the horror for ourselves.   Of course, I am not participating, I’m judging.   

So head on over to find out all the details, the key thing is that you have to have photo evidence and you have to have actually worn the tie in a professional setting.    You know you can win this, show us what you got!

 Wanted to post some thoughts, while they were still fresh, about my experiences at Openworld this year.  This was a year for listening, being the first in awhile where i was not speaking (or so I thought).  Here are some of the random observations and experiences I had in my short visit to Mascone.

• This was my first year observing and participating OOW on Twitter.  Overall I found that a total hoot, a bit like passing notes in class.  I even attempted to “live tweet” the Fusion sessions which scared me, not only for the opportunity to be taken out of context, but also for the fact that my iPhone “word recognition” often makes what I type even more nonsensical then normal.

• There is such energy talking to customers and partners.  Not the manufactured kind of discussion you do internally when you attempt to develop composite examples, the real world kind, where truth is far stranger then fiction.  The stories ground me and sustain me.  I was reminded again, that while technology innovation is important, helping customers create a business case is even more critical.  Without a business case, innovation cannot be realized.

• Once again, I came back with great stories of how having a plan at a conference can go terribly wrong.  At least this year I was armed with a GPS which was a huge relief.  My fun discovery that there are two different Intercontinential hotels in San Francisco, did a lot to expand my appreciation for the city and grow my self-esteem.  My cluelessness sometimes even amazes me.

• I learned first hand, that walking from Nob hill to Mascone is not really fun, especially in boots that are past their useful life.  I think that I should consider a business of selling shoe inserts and blister tape at conferences and trade shows.  I would have gladly paid a huge markup for easy access to such products.

•  Got an opportunity to speak on a panel.  My role was to stand in for Josh Bersin, who had a last minute change in plans.  It was a great opportunity to talk about trends in Learning.  I did my best Josh, to represent your views on the trends of Cost Reduction and Corporate Universities.  I am sure I was picked for this panel due to my vast experience in the subject matter and not at all for the fact I happened to be available.

• Read a lot of theories and thoughts about Fusion.  These spanned a very broad range of tenors and emotions.  After recovering from my own personal emotional reaction, I decided to remember that in the end it’s about doing the right thing.  Building the best products we can to provide value to our customers.  This is the only part I personally can participate in, the rest will have to work itself out in time.

• Managed to get ditched at a party by my good friend Amy.  In fairness, we were leaving the party so why should she wait while I was getting her coat?  In the end the pricess text message of “I accidentially ended up in a cab” is going to provide years of fun for me and I do look great in the coat, so I got that going for me (which is nice).

• Missed an opportunity to meet Mr. ORCLvillein person.  This was a huge error on my part.  It wasn’t that I accidentially ended up in a cab, just didn’t want to rush the stage after Steve’s session as I figured I would be in the way.

Of course, I also managed to see a lot of friends and colleagues (past and present), and do a little dancing too.  Had a good lead on a pass for the concert but didn’t sufficiently follow up, when an early night somehow sounded like a better plan. 

And so ends another year at OOW, I am already kicking around ideas for next year.  Now off to some R&R before I return to my day job.

I’m a bit of an “old soul”.  In fact, I’m a lot younger today then I was at 17.   Social networking has been an interesting experiement for me in that while I am a very open person, and generally a geek, I am not an early-adopter type.  I understand that this makes me a conundrum, I can’t help you there, all the above are true.

I’ve been planning to write about my own personal “Twitter experiement” for awhile, but every time I start to think about it, my story changes.    Here is my attempt to put into words what Twitter has become to me and how that happened.

Step one: Peer Pressure

I learned something new about myself and that is I am not as strong as I thought I was.  Turns out, if I am asked to join something several hundred times over a three month period, eventually I’ll cave.  You want me to sell your Amway products or join your cult, I guess the answer is to be persistant (helps if I like you).  I was dragged into Twitter from my friends Mark, Jake and Gretchen with their subtle and not-so-subtle mentions, blog posts, emails, etc. 

Of course, I had the typical response of being already overloaded by my Google Reader and my email Inbox and “isn’t that just a waste of time?“.  My biggest objection was first time and second “why?”.  I was actually more open minded about the why (part of a bigger attempt to try new things) but the time thing was a big challenge for me.

Step two: I’m in

Of course, when I did cave into pressure, I was going to be in all the way.  If I was going to waste time with Twitter, it would be quality time.  So I jumped right in, found some people to follow and began sending out random status updates and links that I hoped would be at least slightly ammusing, if not actually helpful.  Unlike those who tend to blog about Twitter, I found the getting started phase a bit challenging.  My first observations were as follows:

1. Wow, this is just like starting a new school, you can pretty quickly identify the “cool crowd” but it’s not clear how to get involved yourself.
2. Asking questions via Twitter is only really useful if you have a good following (i.e., not well suited for the newbie and isn’t that the benefit you were promised when you agreed to join?).
3. Some people who dragged you into Twitter, might not actually post status of their own anyway.  In otherwords, there are a lot of people who follow and don’t contribute

To be honest, I found the whole thing a bit puzzling but I am not a quitter, so I kept on. 

And then something changed

Each day I’d watch the tweets of others and see who they were talking to.  I then started added to the list of people I followed, attempting to broaden the range and type of discussions I could observe.  This helped a lot.  I am now following more then 170 people and the conversations somehow make more sense.   I have also learned that the intention is not to read every tweet but to participate when you are there.  What works for me is setting aside a few points in the day to “check in” with Twitter to see what’s going on.  I now jump in, contribute and then jump out again.  Here are the changes that I have found since hitting my twitter stride

1. I really do feel a connection with people I don’t actually know.  Yes, this can be “chatroom scary” but somehow it isn’t.  Probably due to the fact that I choose who I am following.  So if someone starts to creep me out, I can quit following them or block them if necessary.  This allows me to fine tune the noise in a very helpful way.  Also, due to the asyncronyous nature, it’s easier to ignore people if that becomes necessary.
2. I am now aware of some things in a way I wouldn’t be otherwise.  A great example is in sports.  I don’t watch sports or read about them in the papers but somehow I know when there are major sporting events going on from people that care.  This is cool.  I like the enthusiasm of sports and it’s nice to get that from others.
3. I no longer miss major world events because I’m too lazy to read the news while at work.  Big events are somehow covered, in a very real way.  I now know when foodbanks are in trouble due to recent natural disasters — this is something I wouldn’t find in the news.  At least not as quickly.  The list of examples in this category is endless.
4. I find out great things about conferences, in fact conferences (and conventions) are places where Twitter really shines.  I don’t have to attend a conference to get a sense of what happened, and since I know the person giving the comments, I get a more well rounded sense of the feedback.  A bit like reading a movie review in a newspaper vs. getting one from a friend.  The review from the friend is so much richer since you know more about the person giving it.
5. and here is the most strange transformation of all, I now note events that happen to me with an intent to share them.  I actually have thoughts about “oh, I need to twitter that” during my day.  I just observed (or did) something funny, interesting, insightful or dumb, this might benefit someone else.

So in a very real way Twitter has changed me.  I now “get it”.  I don’t know when that change happened and I wouldn’t have expected it but I now consider Twitter one of the best parts of life’s banquet.  It is certainly not for everyone, but if you think it might be for you, I recommend you give it the time it disserves to start to make sense.  The transformation does take time but for me, it was worth it.

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PS I was intending to talk about OraTweet as well, but I think that is disserving of another post so stay tuned.