What challenges for HR in 2012 ?

November 17, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : At the dawn of a year that’s expected to be rather difficult, businesses face conflictual choices. On the one hand there are the traditional formula to get prepared for the impact, on the other hand there’s the feeling that anticipating the shock won’t be enough and preparing to get beyond may be a better solution. Withe the same causes producing the same effects, keeping the same structures and functioning models while cycles are getting shorter and the need to adapt to fast transitions may be a dangerous option and rethinking the organizational whole a tempting one. What options will CHROs chose in 2012 ? A recent survey shows that indecision and even contradictory choices prevail. But, beyond the words, vital choices will have to be made. Jack Welsh once said :”When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight”. Will he be heard ?

Businesses are facing a paradoxical and challenging equation for 2012. On the one hand the crisis make them wonder about the future and how to have as little exposure as possible to what looks like a major threat. This usually make them freeze their projects and get rid of anything that may load them down when the shock will happen. But, in the other hand, there’s the feeling that this time things will be different. That the old formulas won’t work anymore. That if they content themselves with absorbing the shock, saying to themselves they’ll restart and recover after…they may not restart at all. That, beyond the economic crisis, there’s a crisis of management and organization models that caused the eratic behaviors that lead us to the point we’re now.

So there’s at the same time the reflex of keeping quiet, still and the feeling that a new way to recovery has to be found. Even the idea that there may be other ways to anticipate the shock. So the question is to know how businesses in general and HR in particular will manage this apparent contradiction. I found some pieces of answer in a survey made by TNS-Sofres for CSC in 8 countries.

Four main points

• Attracting and retaining talents is less important than one year ago (76% vs 80%)

• Training and education budgets will be downsized by 34% respondents

• Organization transformation is the new priority (80%)

• Less hirings and more downsizing.

In addition, 78% of CHROs think that CEOs expect them to focus on management effectiveness, 59% on the role of middle managers. The importance of a good social context and strengthening connections between people is mentioned by 64% of respondents.

So, what does it mean ?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your community manager should be a professional. But in which field ?

September 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary :with a profile that’s still hard to define, community managers look like rare birds. The only certainty is that they should be true professionals. But in which field ? Knowing social environments, the way they work and their rules seem to be a prerequisite. But, having a closer took to what people really expect online, a good knowledge of the industry and real front-end experience may look at least as essential for a good community manager. Is it sensible for any organization willing to go beyond insubstantial chatter and have a real logic of service toward their customers to rely on people who never met a customer and are unable to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and understand what they feel ? Obviously not.

A couples of week ago a job offer for a community manager position showed up in my twitter timeline. It grabbed my attention and raised a questioning on what skills should a community manager have.

The offer details the skills the community manager should have and, among them, “Knowledge of the travel industry (a trump)”. I stopped on this item. If one think that the role of a community manager is to push messages that have been written by others, say “hello, we’re there” in twitter and facebook, chat with the audience as long as the topic is not too sensitive, it’s true that mastering social tools is enough. But if community management is supposed to be a part of a service driven approach, I’m doubtful.

We know, since the issuing of an IBM report earlier this year that enterprises are wrong about what they think their online audience expects. While they think customers (in fact nothing proves they are only customers…) need more closeness, to be a part of a community, the audience only wants information, discounts and services when they have an issue with what they bought. The social channel is a shared one and customer service is not its least use. In short, instead of communities, love stories and idle chatter, community managers should expect to be sent to the coal mine. It’s even more obvious in the travel industry as this survey shows.

“Airline companies are sending a lot of tweets. They sent over 25,000 in July alone, but users only tweet at these companies for a few reasons. Largely, users want customer service — 86.2 percent of users follow airlines for that reason. Only .02 percent want a social conversation and only 1.6 percent tweet about airline food and entertainment.”

Any customer who once ended up in troubles because of an airline or hotel issue is in fact in a crisis situation. People often mention Zappos as a successful example of a company able to do anything to solve customer problems and sell happiness. That’s true they’re awesome at that. But as I often say, not everybody as the luck of selling shoes. There’s few things in common between a late shipping or the wrong size being delivered and a cancelled/delayed flight, ruined vacations. The customer is not in the same situation, the problem is more difficult to fix, helping costs much more etc… This reasoning applies to many industries that are much more critical than books or clothing selling…

So, let’s come back to the “knowledge of the industry would a trump” point. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Is Facebook the future of call-centers ? The Air France KLM Switzerland case

November 8, 2010 By 2 Comments

Summary : Facebook is usually considered as a communication and marketing tool. But it’s becoming more and more obvious that it’s becoming a customer relationship tool what has an important impact on the design of the community management system and the role of the community manager that’s becoming the central point of a service and internal networking system. Facebook is becoming a call center and the community manager a problem solver and a connector like the Air France – KLM Switzerland case shows.

I recently found this long and interesting video in which  Alain Pezzoni from Air France KLM Switzerland talks about their social media strategy. The video is in french but here are some points I’d like to highlight from this case.

1°) Favor local initiatives

This is Air France KLM Switzerland, not Air France KLM global and this fact is important. In large international organizations, linguistic and cultoral factors make that, both at the customer and organization level, having a global strategy is very complex. Depending on the countries, what can be done and the way to do it may be radically different and building a strategy may be hard and take a lot of time. Since it’s a new field where businesses are starting from scratch, having local initiatives from which the whole organization will learn what can be reused elsewhere and what will stay local may be a good option.

Talking about Air France KLM Switzerland, it’s about 2 brands and three languages what makes 6 communities to address…and as many fan pages. So a local anchorage is essential.

2°) Communication is service

Even if, at the beginning, pages have to be filled with content to feed the fans and get their attention, the flow slowly reverses and the organization starts answering to customers’ requests. As I’ve previously mentioned, the scalabity of the model allows, as Alain Pezzoni says, to deal with call-centers overload. The social channel, even if owned by the communication department, is shared by many processus (customer service, quality…) this department does not own but facilitate. What implies to prepare things beforehand. The community manager is only the front of the system and has to work with many people from many departments across the organization and mobilize them. So he or she has to have the required legitimacy. Moreover, that’s not a job for an intern or a junior, rather a senior who knows the organization quite well. According to Pezzoni, this person must know whom to ask questions and have a strong internal network.

That’s a frequent observation. Many organizations that are good at external communitu management face, one day, the difficulty of identifying the right internal expertises. The limiting factor of external networking is often, once a critical mass and complexity is reached, the lack of internal networking.

3°) The value of transparency

Being good at customer relationship management is key for any business. But when it’s delivered through social media, the work is done “in public” what makes things visible. Being exemplary on twitter or facebook is like having a free communication campaign while serving customers.

4°) Community managers are not here to attract fans

As noticed by one of the participants, the role of the community manager is not to attract more fans or followers but improve the quality of customer relationship. I remember a good friend of mine who was asked to attract a given number of followers (number scientifically explainable regarding to the organization’s capacity in terms of delivery). He refused the job and, in my opinion, was right. In my opinion, the best way to measure a community manager is through the indicators of the processes he facilitates (quality, service, innovation), the measured image of the company but not by counting followers or fans. The numbebr of fans is the consequence of a good service, not its cause.

In fact, it’s interesting to see that the discussion that was about e-acquisition quickly moved to customer e-services.

[Read more...]

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Community management and processes by the example

July 12, 2010 By 2 Comments

Some weeks ago I promised to illustrate my “community management and processus” post with a fictitious but credible example. So, here it comes…

Jack and John are community managers (or, at least, in charge on figuring things out on social media on behalf of their employer). Both are working for an airline (what was a trendy and volcanic topic at the time I thought about the case). Jack is working at AirShy and Paul at AirSocial.

AirShy knows things have to be done one on Twitter, Facebook and all these new medias but is not comfortable with that. The company is used to keeping everything under control, to avoid any kind of risk. On the other hand, people at AirSocial think that if they don’t dive into the pool they have no chance to learn how to swim.

So AirShy decided to occupy the field in the only purpose to have a presence. They asked to someone who likes these new media to deal with this work : Jack. he reports to the communication department but could have reported to any department that would have taken the leadership on this subject.

At AirSocial, people wondered what these medias could be used for. Half of the answer was in que question : things are worth when they allow to serve the customer in a better way. So how could they serve their customers better with new medias ? Deliver information to eveyone, but also to people with individual concerns. That means the company should engage in conversations…about what, with what tone, to what extent ? And what should not be tackled ? Confidential issues of course ! But also what people don’t want to read in such channels. The communication department is in charge but they quickly realized that they had in their hands a pipe that can be used by anyone in the company. Even if it’s still quite vague they decided to start and learn from their own experience. John is told to deal with these media, on the operational side.

At first sight, Jack has less constraints than John. There’s no doubt he’ll achieve better results. Not that sure…

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Moving toward business models of a new kind : the example of “Danone Supporting Life”

May 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

One thing is sure : the “after the crisis world” will be very different from what it was before. It may seem obvious, but if we have a closer look at what happened in the past, we have to admit many upturns consisted of the rebuilding of what used to exist as it was. This time it seems that both economy and society learned things.

• growth is not and endless spiral. Especially if you want it to be strong.

• whoever creates value for onself while destroying value for the others will be impacted by the economical consequences of his behaviors one day or the orther.

• Companies are parts of an ecosystem (customers, suppliers, employess…). If a part of this ecosystem collapses, the company will soon follow because when value is destroyed at its periphery, it destroyes its own potential markets.

• Growing by developping new markets is healthier than using financial lever to balance the fact its current markets are finite.

• People, at the same time employees, clients, and member of the society, now want to fully play their part and judge corporate behaviors according to these lessons.

All this things are worth because management and work models will be impacted by these societal facts and, in the same way, being successful in this new context will imply new internal practices. This teaches us, once again, that the current crisis is not as economic as it may seem.

This can lead to predict the advent of business models of a new kind, close to Umair Haque’s smart Growth Manifesto d’Umair Haque. But many people wonder when it will happen and how it may look like. A first example is coming from France with “Danone Supporting Life”.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Society Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Even in downturns, human capital has to be protected

February 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Because they didn’t have the time (or the will) to make the structural decisions that would help to face a downturn, companies often react by acting on the easiest adjustment variables :

• Cuts in bugets

• investments putt offs

• employees lay offs.

It makes it possible to attend to the most urgent things first even if I think it only defers what’s unavoidable. The focus is on cost and not on revenue, and  costs can’t be endlessly cut except if you want to turn a company into an emplty shell. Any cut expenditure won’t be able to be cut again the next quarter or the next year because it won’t exist anymore.

I’m one on those who think that the goal of any enterprise is to make money and that thinking only in terms of expenses only makes it possible for directors to act like firemen. But it’s easier to cut costs instead of trying to find an innovative way to drive incomes.

Whatever, this kind of policy also have dramatically bad effects for the future.

[Read more...]

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Investment or consumption : sounds like “déjà vu”

February 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

In many countries there is an intense debate to know if governments should stimulate economy by boosting investment or consumption.

It’s about two clearly different approaches : in one case you try to limit the effects of the crisis and their impact on household (and so on enterprises as a side effect), in the other you try to build the foundations for a perenial restart, helping enterprises to build the futures.

Logically, when people and enterprises suffer what’s needed is to calm the pain down. But it prevents from dealing with the deep causes. If the causes are targeted, it helps to build better tomorrows but the effects will came later and in the meanwhile it hurts.

There is no miracle solutions. In an ideal world, people would prepare the future when everything’s all right and keep resources to kill the pain when it will come. In the real world, nothing is done when things are right (of course…since there’s nothing wrong so why change), people refuse to see the limits of the current situation et when things collapse so much resources are needed to fight the pain that nothing is left to deal with the deep causes and think long term;

That’s not without making me think of what happens to enterprises. An obsession for short term that makes them focus on local miracles when a global approach would be needed. By not looking further than the end of their noses, enterprises can only be affected without being able to anticipate. Nursing without really fighting the disease.

Criticizing people is a too easy thing ; if they act this way it’s becasue it’s what they’re asked to make them focus on what’s immediate instead of the core of things. So when something unforeseen happens (and unpredictability is the very nature of today’s economy, one of the key characteristics of knowledge economy) they can only react because anticipation is not in the management DNA.  And the resources that are used to react are not available anymore to anticipate when things become more calm. Endless recuring process.

This propensity to be permanently off-beat is one of the causes of wild fluctuation economics and enterprises experience regularly. It’s called cycles. The good news is that a negative cycle always ends one day. The bad news is that so do positive cycles.

consommation, court terme, crise, investissement, long terme, relance

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Boards in the mist

February 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Boards have to be mobilized in order to make the right decisions to survive the crisis. Nothing new. But according to this essay from McKinsey, it’s far from being that simple.

Three reasons are put forward

• Boards follow unchanging procedures and ritualss. Defines shedules on a yearly basis, documents  and agendas fixed many weekds ago.

It may seem absurd that people who make strategic decisions are traped into such straitjackets but this is facts. With all the consequences we can imagine on adaptability.

• Interaction modes that are not constents with the purpose. Boards are the place for consensual discussions, members only validate what has been done in preliminary works. It’s in no way a place for brainstorming and reflection from which anything innovative will emerge.

It seems that the only conflictuous point in a board meeting may be power. Not strategic issues.

• Many board members are not in touch with what’s going on in the economy. They are more comfortable with “preservation” strategies, waiting for things to solve themselves rather than with trying to take the initiative.

As a result, they will find themselves struggling to withstand tough conditions and badly positioned in the new environment.

Conclusion : board have to get rid of received ideas, to learn to think differently in order to find the means for strategies heading to the future instead of to become ossified on the present. Unlike halves-strategies.

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A crisis that’s not that economic

December 17, 2008 By 2 Comments

Many people agree to admit the time has come to built a kind of new economic order, the drifts of the current system having lead to the situation we all know. But, saying that, people often neglect what I consider being a management failure. As for the hen and the egg it’s hard to say who was responsible but we have to admit both successfully helped one another.

Weeks ago I wrote that logic without good sens leads to catastroph and worried about companies who only had halve strategies, that’s to say that focus on exploiting the present without thinking of allocating part of their ressources in order to prepare the future. Said differently, it’s like promising a linear performance when they only give themselves enough assets to follow a curve limited at its top.

Recently I was backed up by a note by Jon Husband who pointed at an  interview of Henry Mintzberg who was saying it was more a management crisis than an economic one. An opinion I share. A few points I bring out from this interview [Read more...]

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The change that could not happen…

November 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Economy is experiencing minor troubles, bringing about few bankruptcies, leading many players to feel lost into emptyness.

But what really happend ?

• Lawful practices of which it was possible to guess they would lead to a major crisis if taken to their paroxysm. “But dont worry, we master the system and know when to stop”.

• Always more. Why being satisfied with 7 when you can get 10 ? Because the 3 you’ll take will make it impossible for you to get 7 next year. “Tomorrow is another day, I have targets for today sir”. “And what if you reach it ?” “I’ll be asked to do more tomorrow”. “Do you find this logical, Perhaps one day it will be impossible to do more”. “That’s the way things hae always been…”. “Of course…and it always ended the same way”.

• Transfering risk. I optilize my ‘local maximum’ without taking care of macr equilbrium. I pass the “hot potatoe” to someone else, I reach my targets and the others just have to do the same. But one day the “hot potatoe” becomes a bom that explodes in someone else’s hands and I realize that my success is conditioned by the other’s, and that when my partners or even my competitors fail it makes me fail too.

• Many warning signs. Nothing was discovered those last weeks and people were pointing at the system’s weaknesses for years…but people in charge decided to wait untill it’s too late. “You’re true, it’s impossible to run a 100m race in zero seconds and a regular and sustainable growth is better than jerking forward and distroying in one day what took years to build. But things are like that and there’s no reason to change, there’s no other model”.

• Doomsters can’t be right. “Because the current system is the only one we know, it’s always been like that and will always be. It’s undestroyable. Do you imagine the major banks collapsing ? Wall street on its knees ? The state being forced to buy it all ? Stop dreaming, it’s impossible. And since it’s impossible, your reasonning is wrong, so there’s no need to change a thing”. “You remember Titanic ?”. “But Titanic was only a movie…”.

Everybody knows what happends. It couldn’t happen….

Does it remind you of something ? Something that is very close to us in our every day job ?

As Umair Aque says, we have to reinvent the way we do business, which will not be without impact on the way we work. New goals, new realities to take into account….

That is not a matter of business model, strategy,processes, it’s about a paradigm shift. As Aque says, we need to put sense back into business. Not only in day to day job but something collective, something that makes people being something more than a productive ressource in a chain. If not history will repeat again and again.

Learning to live in a world of interdependance where both success and failure will be collective and built the organization that fits this reality.

So the very enterprise DNA has to be reinvented. As Hamel wrote in  “The Future of Management“, businesses will have to deeply change but, sinc change is not a part of the corporate DNA, some companies will need a major crisis to change. Hoping they’ll be able to survive..

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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