I went to the conference looking for movement toward (what to me seems to be an obvious opportunity) the integrating of social computing into HR Systems. I did see some progress in this direction, but those cases seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. At booth after booth, I asked the same question, “Are you looking at social computing as an opportunity for competitive advantage?” The results of my totally unscientific survey indicated a lack of innovation among most HR System vendors. Reflecting back, Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma comes to mind. (If you are not familiar with this book, it is absolutely worth reading.) I think many of the HR Systems vendors are suffering from this condition.

I will be the first to admit that social computing in not the magic bullet to move HR Systems to the next level, but a little dose of it couldn’t hurt. I think the focus really belongs to dealing with business objectives. I do believe that for the most part the HR System vendors are better at this rhetoric than the Collaboration System industry, who spend most of their time selling features. But when you really look under the hood at most HR Systems the talk of supporting the business looks superficial, as most of what is being done is simple process mechanics. There is little in these systems that promote development of new knowledge and supporting better decision making.

What this means is that I am now in the market for a “regular” job.

My target positions are:

• Consultant with a larger firm.
• Collaboration expert with software tool vendor (E 2.0, HR Systems, etc.) doing
  • product development
  • sales support
  • professional services
• Collaboration practitioner within a company looking to improve their internal processes.

I am looking for opportunities that do not require relocation, so that means I am looking for companies with offices in the Raleigh/Durham area; or companies that will allow me to work virtually from my home office. I am willing to travel up to 50%. I am looking for opportunities that are either full-time (W-2) or long-term contract (1099, at least 6 month term).

My resume is here:

http://bit.ly/leewhite

Please pass this information along to anyone that you think might be interested in talking with me.

If you are not quite sure what I do, maybe this presentation will help.

I hope to use the results of this effort to help advance the cause of enterprise collaboration.

But through these social technologies HR has a tremendous opportunity to become more valuable than your PR department, your marketing team, and even your sales team by making a fundamental shift from control and comply to connect and engage.

This is from a post by Mike Thompson on his blog The Organizational Champion. Mike is focusing in on the same issues I am with Decision 3D, mainly that your internal culture, behaviors and processes will be reflected in how you are perceived externally. Moving in the direction of trusting employees will make better employees and strengthen your external image. Giving employees the freedom to interact with their peers without the rules and regulations typically imposed by HR governance is a clear expression of that trust.

Organizational Communities can be a source of insight and competitive advantage for organizations that are willing to listen. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, decision makers should connect with these communities, treating the connection as a partnership.

Decision 3D helps organizations develop community partnerships.

Decision 3D will work with your organization to design, develop and deploy a Partnership Infrastructure that improves communication and information flow between an organization’s decision makers and its communities. Decision 3D uses a processes called Decision Due Diligence to facilitate Partnership Infrastructure development.

Definitions:

• Community – A group of people that share a common interest or objective
• Organizational Community – A community whose shared interest or objective is related to the operations and/or outcomes of an organization; members may be inside or outside the official boundaries of the organization
• Partnership Infrastructure – The tools, processes and desired behaviors that facilitate effective communication and information flow between parties
• Decision Due Diligence – A proprietary process developed by Decision 3D to assist in community partnership development. Click here to find more detail about the process.

Examples:

• Project Community – Members share interest in the outcome of a specific organizational project; members may be internal or external to the formal organization, depending on the scope of the project
• Brand Community – Members share interest in a particular brand of the organization; members are typically internal and external
• Geographic Community – Members share geographic proximity, though may work for different divisions or functions; members are typically employees
• Divisional Community – Are part of the same formal organizational structure, though may work in different locations; members are typically employees
• Functional Community – Members share skills and developmental interests; members are typically employees
  
  

From the R/W/W post, the five key points in BAH’s success were:

• Empower Evangelists - “when many people think of an evangelist, they think of an individual or two that take up the mantle of enterprise 2.0 on an ad-hoc basis. But Booz Allen went about it in a much more directed way by bringing together a cross-functional team to develop and deploy the software.”
• Draw on Past Experience – “The fact that they drew on past attempts to understand just how they should move forward was a essential factor in the outcome…”
• Know Thyself - “…the real trick is having enough self-awareness as an organization to know when to discard the given wisdom.”
• Create a One-Stop-Shop – “…constructing more silos out of multiple enterprise 2.0 platforms creates more problems than you ever had with just email and filesharing.”
• Just Solve Problems for People – “…an unwavering focus on solving real problems for people within the firm, not aiming at the vague goal of boosting collaboration and openness.”

If you notice, none of these key success factors are really about technology, but instead they are all focused on organizationa behavior and business objectives.

As people embrace social media in their private lives, they naturally expect to use similar tools within the enterprise.

This is one of the findings of a research report conducted by Jakbo Nielsen of the Nieslen Norman Group. The report tracks 14 companies in 6 countries and addresses how social technology is being used on their internal networks (intranets). Nielsen provides a summary of the report in this blog post. The full report can be purchased from the Nielsen Norman Group site for $298.

Most of the findings are in line with the operating principles behind Decision 3D.

Some of the key findings include:

• Slow adoption of social technology will risk losing workers who expect innovation in the outside world to reflect directly on how they communicate at work.
• The majority of social technology implementations began life as grassroots initiatives.
• Initiatives that were deemed successful and continue to provide value were predominately built to meet business objectives  and not just for the sake of technology.
• Social systems tend to be “self-policing” from within the community itself, and requires little “management control”; in fact too much management control tends to reduce the effectiveness of these systems.

My thanks to Bill Ives of the FASTForward blog for the pointer.

Community, Hierachry: Cognitive Dissonance

There seems to be a trend toward companies jumping on the social media bandwagon for marketing and promotional purposes. As much as I love social media and the promise it delivers, I believe that most of these efforts are going to crash and burn. The reason; non-alignment between internal cultural norms and the desired external perception.

Most organizations that are now starting to find the religion of “customer engagement” operate internally as authoritarian hierarchies. This causes cognitive dissonance among the people that are trying to implement the social media strategy. How can you expect someone, that operates day in and day out getting approvals, wondering what the boss wants, and asking permission, to understand and be able to implement an viable external community environment?

If organizations really want to engage with customers and become part of the conversation, they need to start by holding up the mirror and seeing themselves. Only those organizations that are willing to loosen the reins and allow an internal community culture to take root, will be able to successfully engage their external stakeholders as a community.

Each of these are issues every organization faces.

Decision 3D helps clients address these issues by extending the existing communication capability, of the organization, with social technology. The effective depolyment and integration of social technology enables employees to make better decisions and be more productive.