Talent | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Personal branding is not about self promotion but collective intelligence

September 17, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

It’s incredible to see how the subject became fashionable in a few months (anyway in France) and how many experts suddenly emerged on the subjec. As Vincent Berthelot [fr] I was rather taken aback about what it was all about but, at the end, I came to a quick conclusion:

- if everyone is transparent and shows what he/she really is, it can be a good thing.

- in the same way, personal branding must come with an ongoing improvement approach : “how to improve in order to be what I want to show”. By the way, it’s the same for any corporate/product branding logic.

- if we want the system to work, everyone has to respect the rules, what means admit than X or Y is better than me and should receive more attention than me. I don’t think it’s possible, for the only reason that human are human and the human nature is what it is…most of all when a job or a contract are at stake.

- hence the unavoidable drift toward a classical self-marketing approach, driven by the bottom but that “honnest” people will have to follow not be had by less competent but more crafty people.

- and, as a conclusion, as said in this famous slideshow, “If your product sucks, social media won’t fix it”. It also applies to people.

That’s how I sup up my neophytic thoughts on the subject. But, thanks to a long talk with Olivier Zara [fr] a few month ago I understand there’s a huge potential here, provided people can make the difference between gimmick practices that will discredit the concept and the “good practices” that will be collectively beneficial. I’m not only talking about the general public web but also about things that may take place within organizations.

In fact, it’s, one more time, a matter of switching from a push logic to a pull one.

Even in downturns, human capital has to be protected

February 19, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 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.

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Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: crisis, downturn, expertises, growth, human-capital, kpmg, lay offs, network, talent

Talent is the bottom-up side of competence

December 24, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

A friend of mine was making fun of the use of the word “talent” since he didn’t see in which way it was different from “ressource”, even if human. He was only seeing one more employer brand trick, a promise that only engages the one who hear it.

It’s true that HR marketing, as general marketing, likes to use new terms to value the people it talks to even if that doesn’t mean anything really changed in the workplace. But if we look into the subject, there is sometimes a true reflection behind all that and we can guess this will spread in the upcomming times.

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Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: competences, empowerment, Human resources, talent, talent management

CE0 concerns : network driven business models

December 16, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

What are CxOs real concerns ? How do they undertsand current issues ? Lots of people are talking about the need for companies to change in order to evolve in the context that is theirs now but it supposes the “information” has reached the highest decision makers and that they really understand what it’s about if we want things to slowly happen.

It would be very usefull for all the people who are “pushing” ideas and evangelizing to know the gap (if any) between their ideas and what CEOs really think.

Fortunately the work was done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in its 11th “CEO Survey”, titled : “Compete and Collaborate : What is Success in a Connected World”.

One year after predicting that three main trends will impact enterprises (Globalization, connectivity, communities), PWC follows the same way and focuses on the way business models will evolve and, most of all, on the way to create value with employees but also with competitors. With an underlying question : is building business networks a prerequisite to create value in today’s economy ?

Said in practical terms, companies are torn between two forces : collaboraton and collective actions in the one hand, competition and individualism in the other hand. The whole while considering the impact of a strengthened collaboration on power diffusion and control loss by management.

The report being freely downloadable, I’ll only focus on a few points.

1°) Current context

• New growth levers will be agility, talent and technology

• The downturn will bring many opportunities for mergers.

• An interconnected world is more exposed to risk but also offers much more opportunities

2°) Impact on business models

• Companies say their people are more important than ever but they still don’t translate it in concrete facts.

• Middle and junior management weakness is a real barrier to change

• In order to face this block, companies have to involve employees in the change process, build connected organization, develop people continuously, make people accountable at every level and make change become the norm.

• The HR function will have to work in front line, besides top management in order to drive change and not only being a support.

• Companies know of to collaborate on an opportunistic basis. But they still can’t “industrialize” that and learn from their experience. Opportunistic collaboration does not have to be an exception anymore but an organizational principle.

• Higer productivity will only be reached through new communication technologies, global networks and innovative management.

• Networks that were only use to transfer knowledge in a small perimeter will have to be deployed to deal with wider strategic issues; both internally (employess) and externally (partners,cliens…)

3°) Conclusion

• Growth must be responsible

• Defining the conditions for a long term success with clients is essentials. Short term objectives are not enough anymore.

• To make collaboration efficient, the objectives, the operating modes must be redefined, involving all the stakeholders?

PS : not a word on enterprise 2.0 : the evidence that the work around the concept has ended and the time of implementation has come. Lucky we are, it’s on CEOs agendas !

Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: business networks, busness model, collaboration, growth, Human resources, management, networks, organization, pricewaterhousecoopers, productivity, pwc, social networks, social responsability, strategy, sustainable development, talent, talent management

Organization’s networking potential will drive talents

May 29, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 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 ?