New jobs description for Enterprise 2.0 ? Try the Enterprise 2.0 job profiler

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Every day I notice that many companies, conscious that their move toward Enterprise 2.0 -like dynamics is a major issue, are beginning to hire people for new kinds of jobs. It’s both about aligning people-centric activities with corporate purposes, identify new opportunities, energize cross-organiszaiton dynamics, favor new practices and new tools adoption, re-align tools on practices.

A complex role that needs a mix between new knowledges and traditionnal competences. It’s generally devoted to internal people who discover this new complexity and have to be in two places ar once. As these organizations become more and more mature, they begin to build specific job description and hire a new kind of professionnals to manage these new activities as full-time jobs and rationalize what’s not an experimentation anymore but a new way to operate.

Wiser from their exprience in 2.0 tools implementation for HR and talent management projects, my friends from Talentys worked hard on this topic in order to formalize some job descriptions and key competences for these new issues. They propose

A « Community Manager » (CM

An« IT 2.0 expert » (ITE)

A « Chief Networking Officer » (CNO)

Feel free to download it and provide us with your feedback in order to improve it. And use it for your own needs if you need to hire someone… (Humm… this is a quick nighlty translation from the original doc but I think we did it well…)

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Danone explorers : In Real Life recruitment 2.0 for Y Gens

November 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I was invited by Danone to attend their Danone Explorers event, a moment when the company and students who are looking for an internship can meet.

I already wrote many things about Danone on my French blog but nothing here. I think there are a few things you have to know before reading further.

• The biggest point about Danone is their “dual project”, both business and societal. Every business decision has to take into account its societal effects. The purpose is not to balance business decisions by societal programs but to make decisions that deal with both at the same time. It’s a very important component of the corporate’s culture and management, and someone business focused without any societal awareness has many chances not be hired or not feel comfortable for long working at Danone. For Danone, the way people do business is at least as important as business itself.

• Danone has an informal culture. Of course, plants and factory need very strong processes. But for the rest, “the rule is the exception” or “exception is the rule”. As one of their VPs once told me, “we will always be smaller than most of our competitors, so we need to be smarter, run faster”. Initiatives are welcome and people are encourage to share ideas and best practices together by themselves.

• A survey showed their clients and partners valued a lot this culture, this “Danone Way”. It proved that it was identified as a key factor of performance, inside but also outside the company. A few years ago it made Danone’s people realize that their culture, one of the most intangible business assets, was a key performance lever.

• Many things to add…this company is worth being known and studied. Really outstanding !

What’s interesting in Danone explorers, is that Danone tries to seduce members of the famous Generaton Y and, as a consequence uses all the levers that are supposed to be efficient with tehm : proximity, discussions, exchanges, personalized dialogues, transparency, games, adult to adult conversations intead of parent to child.

Of course, in these times, we can expect a “full 2.0″ approach to tool such a logic. Not at all.

[Read more...]

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

Organization’s networking potential will drive talents

May 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’ve just read with a real interest this post, about the power of people networks. Top make it short it says that people will be increasingly attracted by regions who offer a strong potential of networking and interactions because it allows them to exploit more their talents and maximise its economic reward.

The author concludes this way ;

I would submit a hypothesis: The capacity of a region for innovation can be measured by the number of formal and informal networking organizations that create “bridging” opportunities across the broadest possible spectrum of society. The richer and denser the skein of bridging networks, the more easily ideas can be communicated through a region, the more spontaneously creative ideas will erupt, and the more speedily people can convert novel notions into business opportunities.

Of course it’s about local development but I think we can transpose it to the enterprise world. That would mean that talents will be more likely to join companies who offer, internally and in the way they interact with their ecosystem, this ability to work as networks, to quickly create value through exchanges and to move quickly from ideas to effective projects.

What say you ?

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

Tools won’t seduce digital natives. Culture will.

April 16, 2008 By 1 Comment

Recruiting Digital Natives make companies ask lots of questions. Some of their concerns are not justfied, and we can also read many nonsenses.

“They have their habits, their own way to do things, with their own tools…we only have to adopt those tools to seduce them”. Wrong ! They don’t juge by appearances (or as we say in french, “a cowl doesn’t make a monk”. That’s not the way to attract them. Even if they come, they’ll leave soon.

What matters isn’t tools but culture. A certain culture implies a certain way of working, a certain kind of organization, and at the end, the relevant tools to support it. Tools are only the proof that alignment was made. Put wikis, blogs, social networks, IM, make it available oustide the firewall, make people and information accessible without changing anything else and you’ll fail. They won’t come, leave quickly or will be very disapointed, whith the feeling of having been tricked. Claim you are what you are not and you won’t be believed for long. The difference between marketing and reality is aligment.

Then the first thing to think about is “what are our future stakes” and “do we need to change the way we operate”. The operating modes will soon need new tools to support them. And at this time things will be coherent.

And what about culture ? It’s an objective, not a starting point, you can’t decree it (unless you already have the needed one). It will evolve because of both new internal practices and recruitment of people who are like you or like what you want to become. A self-feeding phenomenon.

Believing that tools will make your enterprise trendy is mistaking question for its answer : he point is not about attracting digital natives but attracting those who’ll serve your goals and being able to take the most of their potential. Provided their skills match your needs….

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

Managing Complexity : Danone Tries to Spread its Values through a Business Game

April 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment

“Managing Complexity” or “Managing in complexity” is a very common word at this time. This only means people have to take into account more and more changing factors before making a decision. It may seem obvious but it’s still useful to remind some people of that as we can see too many managers acting as if everything was still binary, predictable.

Complexity also depends on the company, its values. There is what is strictly necessary (figures, reporting) what is often considered as accessory (context, non structured information) and the icing on the cake : values which respect is adding and added complexity. Let’s also add the necessity of taking into account elements from outside the company. I’ll soon make a post about that but I’m often appaled when I see that so many people don’t pay any attention to what’s happening outside the organization’s walls : no intelligence, no weak signals detection, no benchmark. They live looking at each other and become victiom of the NIH and MCID syndroms (Not Invented Here and My Company Is Different), which is an organizational form of consanguinity.

In short, some companies are culturally more likely to take “others” into account when it comes to make decisions. By “the others” I mean employees but also all the ecosystem, the social reality the enterprise lives in.

This introduces two projects from Danone I’d like to talk you about : Danone Way Ahead and Trust by Danone

Ce qui m’amène à vous parler de deux initiatives mises en œuvre chez Danone : le programme Danone Way Ahead et Trust by Danone. [Read more...]

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