Estimating the R as well as the I

Great post over at Fistful of Talent (again) by Kris Dunn. (yes, it does seem to be FOT week this week). The crux is, you can have your food fast, good, or cheap. In fact, you can get two out of three, but you won't get all three in the same meal. OK, so maybe it's strange to talk about recruiting as a food analogy. The point is a great one. Except, we can add something...

None of this really matters unless you also have a good handle on the returns you can expect from your talent investments. If you have no insight as to the value that is created or destroyed by the right and wrong hires, how can you determine if you need your food fast, or good, or just cheap?

When I am hiring someone to iron my shirts, I can afford to take some risks. Fast and cheap may work ok for this recruitment process. I can quickly detect a mistake, and one or two mistakes don't cause my life to fall apart. On the other hand, I cannot afford to do a poor job on my next research assistant. I will be stuck with this person for a while, and the difference between a good RA and an average RA can amount to significant differences in my productivity.

So my business is easy to understand. But in most organizations, the question of how recruiting leads to value creation is something that you must map out quite carefully. Where are the A-positions (value creators) and which are the dispensible positions? What do those positions do, and importantly, what is the monetary value of hiring someone who is above average, as opposed to simply average (or worse!). These are the key questions to help in deciding WHICH of those metrics (fast, cheap, or good) you need to apply to evaluating recruitment.

Do you hear chuckling when you tweet?

A great post over at Fistful Of Talent (FOT) today made me think. I was recently at a meeting of colleagues in the HR teaching/research game. We were discussing ways to build a community of practice around improving our teaching in HRM. I mentioned a couple of possible technologies, including Twitter and Ning, which may be useful in building and maintaining a social network around this focus. We use both of these for developing and maintaining our social network: www.HRMtheJournal.com

Anyway, the response was consistent with that identified by the survey by Third Age/JWT Boom and discussed by Kris Dunn at FOT: Snort... why would we be interested in that... kid's stuff... what the xxxx is Tweeter (sic)... etc etc. Some of you may recall similar responses when trying to get colleagues, family members, or god forbid bosses (!) to use email about 15 years ago. The chart tells the story:

So what's the harm? Can't we just leave it to the young-un's? Well sure, you might do that. The problem is, you will be slower, less well informed, and less capable of communicating with your future peers (as those young-uns race up the hierarchy and eventually out-pace you in promotions!).

For us Academics/Writers/Researchers/Consultants the need is no less powerful. Staying abreast of the latest tech is what separates the winners from the losers in a world of freelancing, independent, long-tail livin' knowledge peeps... Just ask the guys at FOT!

Of course, perhaps blogging about the need to be tech savvy no matter what your generation is a little like heading to Salt Lake City, Utah and recruiting for the Church of the Latter Day Saints. (disclosure: I spent 3 years living in Utah before making my escape)

Your Employees Touch Your Customers

In case you were not sure, it is official. ALL of your employees can enhance or diminish your reputation. They do this from their desk, at lunch, and as consumers (ask how many GM employees are currently buying GM cars!).

This young lady recently reached out across the globe and 'touched' a consumer (markm49uk in the UK). You see, she assembles iPhones at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen. Looks like she (or perhaps a coworker) failed to erase a test photo on a newly assembled phone. No harm done, latest reports are that she has not lost her job.

What is interesting here is the power of the
interwebs to make these stories connect. After all, only now could we possibly imagine that we could so easily identify who this was, who was affected, where the 'prank' occurred, and what the outcome is for those involved. In this case, no real harm. However, as we increasingly network and connect at all levels of life, the power of your employees and your customers to connect (bypassing official channels) is also increasing. What does it mean for your corporate reputation?

An important conclusion is that to manage your corporate reputation, you must also watch out for the relationship that you have built with your employees. Do you care about them, and value their contributions; do they know it; will they reciprocate and care for the organization and its customers? Without sufficiently strong relational bonds between the organization and employees, you cannot expect there to be mutually beneficial, supportive behaviors (and vice versa - without these mutually supportive behaviors, there will not be strong bonds!).

First place to look to see if you have good relationships? Supervisors are perhaps the most important driver.

What are you doing to monitor and manage employee-organization relationships?

Open Source Management Text

Sitting here with hundreds of my new friends and colleagues in the Managing Through Collaboration (MTC)* project meeting. Here is a revolutionary approach to writing a text. It leverages the notion of wikinomics, including multiple (1,000+) voluntary contributors, and web 2.0 tools (Facebook, Twitter, wikispaces). The idea is that we develop a truly global book about management, with an emphasis on collaboration, and that we practice what we preach...

Yes, that's right, we (academic researchers, teachers and authors) will work together as a largely virtual and global team, to produce an entire textbook (to be published by Routledge in 2010). How will this work? Can it work? In large part, this may be seen as an experiment. However, there are some precedents to this kind of organization in the 'scholarly arts'.

For example, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) program, has successfully brought together dozens, if not hundreds of scholars to measure, analyze and evaluate the progress of entrepreneurship in 42 developed and developing countries around the worlds. This collaborative project has been a tremendous contribution to our understanding of entrepreneurship and economic development in recent years. However, GEM is not producing a textbook, it is 'only' producing research and reports (no mean feat).

Is it possible to write a book using collaborative principles? We have bounced around words like 'open source', 'wikinomics', 'web 2.0', but how far can this project really take these ideas and survive (or at least be completed by deadline!). First, what are the principles?

1. Open source means just that - anyone may contribute, although their contributions must stand-up in the community, that is, they must be deemed to be of high quality by the community

2. The community will police itself - once a structure is in place to allow the contributions to be submitted, shared, edited, revised etc. then the community will actively separate the wheat from the chaff, reward the valued contributors, and sanction those who stray too far from the community goals.

3. The strength of the model lies in its egalitarian approach. You are what you contribute, regardless of geographic location, pedigree, formal education, politics or any other personal differences. Whether you are a community college professor, PhD student, Academic Dean, Emeritus Professor, Consultant, Business Leader, each has the opportunity to join the project and contribute.

4. We are our own market. If we do a good job, then we will also consume the product ourselves.

Can these principles really be upheld in the context of a textbook for undergraduate students in the field of management?

First, management texts must generally conform to some fairly standard contents or 'core knowledge'. The commonly adopted framework these days is Plan, Organize, Lead and Control. Within these four categories you will find a variety of topics/chapters on motivation, leadership, organizational structure, information systems, communications etc etc. And, within these subtopics, you will find it important to cite the most significant and well established research findings. This substantially reduces your degrees of freedom in terms of content.

Second, because the book will be produced in a text format first (followed by digital/web versions later) you have significant space and time constraints. Space constraint, because you must cram all of this information into 6-700 pages of a standard management text book sold to undergraduates (at least in the US). Time constraint, because between project conception and birth of the book will take approximately 2 years, with just 8 months for brainstorming, benchmarking and writing of content. These constraints can further restrict freedom and creativity in the name of getting the job done.

Third, while we have a wealth of technology options, sometimes this diversity in communications tools becomes overwhelming. After working with the Chapter team on the HRM topic for 4 months via email and the wikispace we are using, our first face to face meeting was spent resolving a host of fairly important but basic issues such as deadlines, content questions and so on. Even when we focus on a few of the multitude of tools (email, wiki) and ignore others (linked-in, facebook, secondlife). This problem is compounded when there are wide differences in personal capabilities, comfort level, or even access to the technologies required (e.g. secondlife).

Fourth, the overhead of developing the content, coauthoring, and policing the contributions is something that becomes less appealing, especially when there are not many tangible rewards for participation. After all, this is time that could be spent on 'real research' or other activities that may be recognized by the administration and relevant to promotions or rewards.

So what is to be gained? First, by bringing together such diverse 'voices' in the process of creation, the content, examples and presentation of otherwise 'standard knowledge' should take on a unique color and flavor. It may be a cacophony, a babel-like mess, or it may be something greater that is attractive to a new generation of students in ways which us 'old fogies' cannot imagine.

Second, we have global perspective built into the team. Each chapter is written by up to 50 individuals, frequently representing as many as 20 countries (over 90 countries are represented in the project at this point).

Third, we are creating this book about collaboration by collaborating - and this brings a shared experience to the process like no other. Will we remain friends? Will we remain academics?! Will we even keep out jobs?! Or will we find new opportunities and new friendships, not to mention new understanding of our little world?

In my opinion, in order to succeed, this project will never be a true 'wiki' or 'open-sourced' text book. It cannot be. That model does not fit the needs of any of the current stakeholders - publishers, authors, teachers or students. That is not to say that we could not produce such a work. I think a true wiki for management knowledge would be a wonderful thing. But you (and I) would have to do it for love, not money.

I would love to discuss that last idea with anyone who may have an interest...

*This project was initiated by Prof. Charles Wankel, St Johns University, New York. His creative spark has set a lot of us into motion.

Your roaming reporter heads to Disney for Academy of Management Conference

Due to summer conferences, exec education programs, a hectic summer at http://hrmthejournal.ning.com/ and did I mention summer (see http://tw0o.blogspot.com) I have not posted for a couple of weeks. However, expect this to change shortly as the annual meeting of the Academy of Management is upon us. I hope to blog about some choice new research findings in the employment domain, live from Anaheim, California...

Yes that's right mom, I'm going to Disneyland!



Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device