Links for this week (weekly)

• A world without bosses

  “Can your organization work without bosses? In the documentary, Ban the Boss (one hour BBC video) Paul Thomas shows that most organizations can run just fine without bosses, or at least without traditional, hierarchical bosses who tell workers what to do.”

  tags: management boss leadership semco tyranny hierarchy decisionmaking communication

  • Tyranny was the solution to what was essentially a communications problem.
  • Many bosses don’t have a clue what is actually happening at the front-end, as is clear in the BBC documentary, and as I wrote in network walking.
  • documentary that shows just how difficult it can be to change attitudes and beliefs about work. In this case, the obvious place to start a boss-purge was at the vehicle service bay, with nine skilled mechanics “supported by” eight managers.
  • Listen to Ricardo Semler explain how Semco organizes work and “staff determine when they need a leader, and then choose their own bosses in a process akin to courtship”.

• Gouvernance de l’information et entreprise 2.0 : perspectives 2012

  “La gouvernance de l’information, c’est un peu comme l’entreprise 2.0 (et ce n’est pas un hasard) : on en parle beaucoup, mais on la “réalise” peut être un peu moins !

  La gouvernance de l’information est un élément indispensable à la construction de l’entreprise de demain car elle est déterminante pour la CONFIANCE.

  Pour beaucoup, la gouvernance a été jusqu’alors une stratégie de défense, de protection et les mises en oeuvre de solutions ont été principalement faites pour répondre à des litiges !
  C’est peu dire que la gouvernance n’est pas encore directement “intégrée” dans notre quotidien !”

  tags: governance informationgovernance decisionmaking enterprise2.0 socialbusiness roles accountability responsibility quantification risk riskmanagement

  • la gouvernance de l’information doit être réfléchie principalement en tant que soutien aux affaires et non pas seulement comme une stratégie de défense décidée par les “risk managers” et les directions juridiques.

  • Dans le contexte plus concret du quotidien des organisations, cela oblige, pour autant qu’on le veuille, à un certain nombre de “nouveautés”, à savoir :

     

    • rendre la “prise de décision” plus facile et transparente,
    • définir clairement les rôles et les responsabilités,
    • décider de “règles” (guidelines) à propos des contenus partagés et générés par les “utilisateurs” (versus ceux générés au niveau des applications d’infrastructure)
    • et ,, pouvoir “quantifier” les coûts de la non conformité des informations par rapport aux “règles” métiers (usages) ce qui implique de pouvoir disposer d’indicateurs clairs et pertinents pour le “business”.

• IBM Focuses HR on Change

  “It’s rare to find a corporate human resources function that accelerates change by actively finding ways to help drive new strategies. Most HR groups sit back and wait for requests from the business for administrative people transactions. In their role of stewards of policy compliance, they can tend to be a brake on change.

  But not at IBM. Its HR function has been instrumental in the $100 billion company’s metamorphosis from a floundering computer manufacturer in the 1990s to a prosperous software and consulting services company today. HR has helped the organization absorb more than 125 acquisitions since 2000, and integrate globally, saving $6 billion since 2005.”

  tags: IBM hr change casestudies skills teamwork culture training leadership mentoring enablement analytics brand hrbranding

  • “We observed that 80% of leadership development is based on work experience. We looked to see what we could do to create a work-related development opportunity.
  • we took the top people in mature markets and assigned them to help and mentor people in the growth markets. Growth market leaders learn from major markets, and equally important, vice versa.”
  • Over the past decade we moved from a multinational organization to a globally integrated enterprise with global standard processes. For example, I have taken 8,000 HR software applications (largely focused on the HR needs of individual IBM country units) down to under 1,000.
  • We’re starting to expand ‘diversity’ to also mean ‘inclusion’ — helping people work together.”
  • Instead of grabbing available resources and authority, they waited for the boss to tell them what do; they delegated up
  • The core of a performance-based culture is more use of analytics. We needed to start in HR by becoming more analytical, using data, defining cause-and-effect relationships, and tying HR activities to business results.”
  • “We link our external branding to our internal brand,
  • IBM encourages employees to use social media — a far cry from the day when no one could communicate externally without prior approval
  • IBM is also different because it hires and develops people for the long term at all levels — not just for today’s job openings and not just senior management.

• Do People Really Want You to Be Honest

  “One of my clients, a large financial services firm, wanted to understand what differentiated successful new managers from unsuccessful ones. So they surveyed the direct reports of new managers with MBA degrees. The number one behavior that distinguished the best managers? Asking for help from their employees.”

  tags: management trust honesty

• 101 Examples of Social Business ROI

  “Now that initiatives have been in market, any reasonable business manager would expect to see program results. However, quantified results in social business and brands willing to stand behind them are difficult to find. But the truth is out there…and here are 101 examples of social business return on investment, roughly 60% revenue generation and 40% cost reduction. Each example lists brand, activity, and source + year.”

  tags: socialbusiness ROI brands costreduction communities casestudies

• Workplace Performance Services: more than just Training

  ” Since the latter half of the 20th century, we have gone through a period where training departments have been directed to control organizational learning. It was part of the Taylorist, industrial model that also compartmentalized work and ensured that only managers were allowed to make decisions. In this context, only training professionals were allowed to talk about learning.”

  But to be fair, it is not just Training Departments that think like this, there are still many people in other parts of the business that believe that “learning” has to be “organised” or “packaged up” (in the form of “training”) to be seen as a valid solution to a problem.”

  tags: training performance humanresources informallearning learning

  • So the issue seems to be twofold:

     

    (1)  that LEARNING (in whatever form) is seen as something that has to be designed and managed, to order to be valid, and

     

    (2)  that the Learning & Development department’s purpose is only seen as the provider of these “organised learning solutions” (ie training), where success is measured in terms of test scores and course completions.

  • it might involve supporting and encouraging individuals and teams to :

     

    • use the Social Web effectively, safely and responsibly to locate useful external informational and instructional resources, as well as to keep up to date with what is happening in their industry or profession
    • build a trusted Personal Knowledge Network (PKN) of (internal and external) colleagues who they can call upon for advice and support
    • set up and sustain an internal community of practice – to improve knowledge sharing within their team
    • co-create and share content within their team – to support one another’s learning and performance
  • The modern workplace is a complex adaptive system. There is no single approach that can be used all the time.”
  • , it is not about using traditional “command and control” approaches (that are  employed in most training solutions to try and force people to learn), but it is much more about encouraging people to engage in these new activities to support one another as they (learn) to do their jobs – in many cases helping them to “connect and collaborate”
  • Obviously, some L&D departments (and workplace learning professionals) will want to remain focused on providing Training Services for their organisations and be quite happy for other business functions to provide performance support services to help their people work smarter.  Other L&D departments have already expanded their services to fulfil all these activities, and more are beginning to do so too.

• “Produire Français”, un marronnier électoral à abattre d’urgence

  ” Aujourd’hui, un de ces “marronniers” de la vie politique est la “relocalisation” de l’industrie française, source de mesures supposées la favoriser, au premier rang desquelles la fameuse TVA sociale éreintée ici même il y a peu. Mais certains candidats imaginent un retour à un protectionnisme bien plus contraignant, qu’il soit européen, voire, pire encore, national. Dans la période économique difficile que nous connaissons, de telles politiques protectionnistes, qu’elles soient revendiquées ou masquées, seraient absolument suicidaires. Voyons pourquoi. “

  tags: economy service serviceinnovation value relocation addedvalue

  • la capacité d’un produit à se faire connaître, à séduire, à s’adapter au plus près des besoins du consommateur, à lui être livré, avec un service après vente et des prestations annexes de qualité, comptent autant que la fabrication du produit lui même, voire, de plus en plus souvent, beaucoup plus. 
  • En termes de comptabilité nationale, nous avons donc bien importé un iPhone « made in China Â» pour une valeur de $178,96 mais ce que cet exemple démontre, c’est que ce qui est effectivement « made in China Â», ce sont les $6,5 d’assemblage – soit 3,6% du prix d’importation.
  • la part de la production dans la VA chute régulièrement. Il ne suffit pas de fabriquer un objet pour le vendre : les fonctions “différenciantes”, la conception et le marketing, ont une valeur souvent bien plus importante de nos jours.
  • Et plutôt que de vouloir utiliser la force législative ou fiscale pour maintenir en France des emplois de production de gamme basse, dont la valeur ajoutée ne justifie plus le maintient dans un pays à forte masse salariale, mieux vaut utiliser une part de la valeur ajoutée dégagée par la délocalisation pour financer la reconversion professionnelle des personnes qui doivent changer de métier.
  • L’enjeu, pour l’Europe, n’est pas de se protéger de la perte des emplois industriels du passé, mais de rester une place dans laquelle il est possible et attractif de créer ces emplois à haut potentiel, éventuellement “néo-industriels”

• building the conversation economy

  ”

  John Battelle, the founder and executive chairman of Federated Media Publishing, explains in this interview what it means to understand content not as a constellation of sites, but as a system of conversations – and looks at the implications for marketers. “

  tags: economy conversation conversationeconomy engagement marketing socialmedia metrics kpi

  • There’s a yin and the yang of the Internet – a circulatory effect between Facebook or Twitter or Google, and the Independent Web, which has generally meant blogs or semi-professional sites.
  • At this point, marketers have pivoted: they’re not just putting their marketing next to content, but actually creating content themselves – or underwriting the creation of content. And then they encourage the sharing of that content and creating ecosystems where that content circulates. T
  • Increasingly, they’re realizing that this social media space involves an ongoing conversation. Assets never really go away. They may rotate off the front page or be moved to a different section or classified for later search, but they don’t disappear.
  • You can see these attempts to create integrated communities between offline, online, television, print and Internet. Doing that requires a different skill set than previous, more siloed approaches to media.
  • . But the clickthru rate is still a bad metric in terms of what a brand might want to optimize for, be it awareness, purchase intent, brand perception, and so on.
  • The next step is to aggregate it across all of our inventory, put it in an index, and be able to say which kind of inventory indices higher for particular social media activities, or particular types of conversations or content. Or, you could cross-hatch this information on social actions with audience data: these kinds of people like to talk about those kinds of topics, and they like to share about these kinds of topics. It’s an evolving and currently inexact science, but a very promising one.
  • once you’re engaged in an ongoing conversation with your customer, you’re just crazy if you’re not using these insights and learnings to develop better products and to answer market needs.
  • Marketers have been traditionally trained to think, “My company made this, now we’ll go sell it.” But the ones who pivot to selling by being engaged with customers 24/7 become product researchers as well as the face of the company.
  • A lot of companies are saying, “If we’re going to do social, then we’re going to build in Facebook.” They think they can just check the box and cover the majority of their social program by investing in a really good Facebook page.
  • . But if you’re going to be a brand with a publishing approach to marketing, you must have an independent taproot that isn’t controlled by anyone but you. Then put out your branches and feelers everywhere. Integrate that experience and let your content and messaging flow through it.

• The Old Solutions Have Become the New Problems – BusinessWeek

  “A former Harvard Business School professor says companies must commit to ‘I-space’ and collaboration, not financialization and administration “

  tags: collaboration financialization administration capitalism trust growth costcutting

  • we managed to produce a generation of managers and business professionals that is deeply mistrusted and despised by a majority of people in our society and around the world.
  • Some 77% of Americans say they refuse to buy products or services from a company they distrust,
  • Many companies reacted to this decline by finding new ways to cut costs.
  • Under the flag of “shareholder value,” (a concept honed by HBS faculty and glorified in many of our courses), firms also turned to “financialization,” another specialty of the curriculum. Since the 1980s, goods-producing firms have made more of their revenue and profits from finance than from selling their products.
  • Historians observe that financialization is a typical indicator of economic decline
  • As Harvard—along with many other business schools—now tries to understand what went wrong, it’s essential that everyone involved in business learns how to be the future. There are turning points in history when it’s time to salvage what is valuable from the old and put our energies into constructing a new model based on new rules

• Digital Workplace Trends 2012

  tags: intranet intranet2.0 digitalworkplace collaboration structuredcollaboration socialcollaboration mobility

• Gen Y Traits in the Workplace Unveiled

  “A new study released today takes a closer look at this generation and its employment trends—with statistics culled from the social network that defines Gen Y: Facebook.

  Millennial Branding together with Identified.com, studied 4 million Gen Y Facebook profiles to obtain better insight into how members of this generation operate professionally—a topic of increasing importance as they are projected to make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025. “

  tags: humanresources generationy hiring retention intrapreneurship culture

  • only 7 percent of Gen Y reports working for a Fortune 500 company—a statistic in line with another report that predicts that 40 percent of the Fortune 500 will no longer exist 10 years from now.
  • Fortune 500 companies are having a tough time hiring and retaining Gen Y workers right now,”
  • Gen Y looks for more flexibility like working from home, and they want to have access to social networks. Fortune 500 companies don’t usually allow this flexibility. I think we’re looking at the end of the 9-to-5
  • Gen Y typically spends just two years at their first job and has job-hopped multiple times in their careers.
  • Companies need to allow Gen-Yers to operate entrepreneurially within the corporation by giving them control over their time, activities and budgets as much as possible

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.