Book Review: Talk, Inc.

Trust is an essential element of leadership, but how exactly do we build that trust as leaders? Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind propose just that in their book, Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders use Conversation to Power their Organizations. It’s one of the best books I have read on “how” to embark on the journey of trust-building in organizations. It doesn’t settle for wordy but useless statements like “leaders should generate trust in their followers”. Rather, it provides numerous examples–from a number of cultures and industries–of what leaders are doing to embrace conversations in their organizations. These authentic conversations help to build the trust needed for organizations to thrive.

The authors present numerous ideas from mostly non-mainstream companies–many of which I hadn’t heard of before. I found this refreshing as they didn’t recycle the same old ideas (do we really ever need another commentary on GE’s work-out program?).. They interviewed leaders of a few Indian companies as well, presenting an intriguing cultural perspective that is important for us to understand as our organizations continue to globalize.

Groysberg and Slind argue that there has been a significant shift in organizations in recent years. Leaders simply cannot delegate communications to professional communicators. They must adopt organizational communication as their responsibility, not someone else’s. This shift has occurred for five main reasons (see page 7):
1. Economic Change – As workplaces become more knowledge-based, organizations must find more sophisticated ways to communicate.
2. Organizational Change – As organizations become flatter, all directions of communication (lateral, bottom-up etc.) are as important as top-down communication.
3. Global Change – Workforces are becoming more culturally diverse, and this is forcing organizations to adapt their communication amidst these cultural dynamics.
4. Generational Change – Millenials are infiltrating leadership positions and are expecting leaders to communicate directly with them.
5. Technological Change - Various technologies (including social media) are allowing direct access to the source, and enabling leaders to communicate in different ways to employees.

I have reached similar conclusions in my own research and still believe HR Leaders need to take on the social aspects of their organization. I believe that corporate communications functions in most organizations will become integrated into HR Departments (if they haven’t already), as organizations learn to understand and value the power of the collective voice of their employees. Talk, Inc. gives us numerous examples of “How” organizations are doing this, and I highly recommend it for any leader pondering a change effort in his/her organization. I also recommend it for any leader taking an a new leadership challenge. This book will give you the tools needed to better understand the intricate social and communication fabric of your organization.

Note: I purchased this book myself and have no affiliation with the authors or the publisher.

Google & HR Analytics

Just read a fascinating article at TLNT entitled How Google is Using people Analytics to Completely Reinvent HR.

We (HR Professionals) are definitely very guilty of using “just because” as a rationale for implementing our ideas. We should pay these people more “just because” they deserve to be. We should add this benefit “just because” it would be nice for our employees to have. We should offer this course “just because” we think employees would want it. Very seldom to be provide any rationale or metrics to prove our arguments. I still remember the sheepish looks I got from some of the heads of HR I interviewed for my Doctoral research. When I asked them about HR metrics, most sheepishly relied “yah Tim, we should probably be doing a better job of evaluating what we do…but we don’t…it’s on our list this year though.” It was funny to hear that repeated but I suspect most HR departments are similar.

The problem is, some of the “soft” aspects of our organizations are difficult to quantify. I work in healthcare, and it’s really difficult to measure the performance and ROI of a healthcare professional’s work. That’s not an excuse, it’s just a reality of people industries. Healthcare is not Google, but we can probably learn a lot from Google still.

HR and Teams in Global Organizations

Toby is in HR, which technically means he works for Corporate. So he’s really not a part of our family.
- Michael Scott (“The Office”)

Teams are complicated in domestic environments, and are even more complicated in global organizations when multiple languages and cultures are involved, spread across large distances. Jay Galbraith writes that “the long-term human resources role is to build social capital by creating richly connected interpersonal networks across the organization” (2000, p.119). Is this asking too much? Perhaps. HR often sees itself as the enforcers of the organization; the unbendable glue that protects it from litigation and unscrupulous employees. But shouldn’t HR be a strategic partner in everything the organization does? Galbraith also argues that HR needs to see their role as one of building and valuing personal networks. Galbraith is probably correct, but how does the average employee go about doing this? I have previously written about the “cocktail party” design of organizations that values and incorporates social networking into its design, but an intentional social networking structure still requires training. How do organizations train their employees to navigate this complex web? This is where HR has an open-ended opportunity to provide essential strategic training to employees on how to work and network cross-culturally, and how to work effectively on cross-cultural teams.

HR is a necessary aspect of any large organization, especially global ones. Understanding labour laws and protecting management from management decisions is important, but only if HR is fully integrated into the organization’s strategy. A “silo” methodology of HR will hinder global growth for organizations. An intentionally integrated methodology, that finds and prepares the current and future workforces, will help bolster growth and provide substantial contributions to the organization. This methodology should include a strategic focus on increasing global leadership competencies through travel, teams, training and transfers. HR departments that do this will be perfectly situated to become that strategic global partner in the 21st Century. This focus will also help make HR more a part of the family, and limit the number of “Toby’s” in global organizations.

Galbraith, J.R. (2000). Designing the global corporation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Vanderpyl, T.H. (2010, December). Cocktail parties and organizational design in the 21st century. WeLEAD Online Magazine. Download here.

Art of HR – Presentation Notes from HRIA/HRMAL Meeting (Feb 12th)

I presented excerpts of my Doctoral research tonight at the Human Resource Management Association of Lethbridge. For those in attendance, here’s a copy of the slides I used in the presentation. Email me directly if you want more detail or the full copy of my project.

You can download my presentation in .pdf format here.

Now I’m really looking forward to the 2013 HRIA Conference, where I’ll do a longer version of this presentation and present more detail on ‘how’ to carry out some of my recommendations. Feel free to sign-up for my session if you are attending.

Art of HR: Forecasting Talent Trends

What will the workforce look like in ten years? 20th Century HR practices were designed for hierarchical companies in stable markets, and from a limited resources paradigm of view. 21st Century HR Departments must be designed for unstable markets, and from an unlimited resources point of view. Marketplaces have few geographical limits now, and companies require globally minded knowledge workers to capitalize on those markets, wherever they might be. One large organizations I studied in my Doctoral research has offices around the world and they maintain a high-potential list of their top performers. In 2009, 15% of the high-performers on this list spoke a second language or had significant international experience. In 2010, 38% did. In 2011, 51% did. This HR leader expected that number to continue to grow as his organization continued to expand into global markets, and he has adapted their recruitment initiatives to the information he obtains by studying their top performers.

Effective HR departments use all kinds of information to better their organizations. This information gathering is somewhat like intelligence operatives in far-off locations. They gather tidbits of information that when compiled with dozens or hundreds of other tidbits from other operatives, help to prevent catastrophes from happening. I am not advocating for Recruiters to become CIA agents, but they do need to understand their role in gathering information that will help the organization advance its mission. For example, while meeting with a candidate, they might learn that he or she has had ten different Recruiters call her in the past month about working in a different industry. That one tidbit may not tell the Recruiter anything, but if she hears a similar story from a few more candidates, it might be an indication that the industry mentioned is preparing to ramp up staffing for potential expansions. That in turn may mean that industry will begin actively headhunting certain professionals very soon. If this information is confirmed, the organization can then begin planning to head off these headhunters, perhaps by increasing compensation for the sought after professionals or by finding other ways to retain them. Rather than reacting to losing ten hard-to-find professionals, the HR Department can develop specific strategies to prevent losing those ten employees to bidding wars in the first place. The HR Department could also propose over-hiring those professionals now before a bidding war drives the market value of their salaries upwards.

Forecasting talent trends is complex, but it starts with gathering useful intelligence, something Recruiters are in the perfect place to do. I suspect this intelligence gathering, if used effectively, could also help the organization thrive in many other ways as well, as we adapt to the ever-changing environment global around us. And HR leaders who find a way to understand the mass of information around them, organize it, and turn it into something useful for the organization to benefit from…may be the most sought-after HR Professionals in the future.

This post is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, “The Art of HR”. For my final Doctoral project, I researched how Top Employers provide effective HR services to their organizations. I compiled my results into this book. Please email me directly if you would like a copy.

Are Employees Really Sick?

Source: careerbuilder.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

Org. Design and Social Networks

Hierarchies rely on job titles to command the attention of others. Social networks thrive on the social ingenuity and influence of the individual people in the network. Intuitive 21st Century organizational designs will allow this inevitable influence to happen and reward those who thrive on it, not punish them. In many organizations, bypassing structures to sell an idea to someone higher up is taboo, and may get the person fired. Designs must intentionally create and support bypasses to structure in a utilitarian approach to the structure. It does not suggest structure is not needed, but rather, that structure is a fluid concept that is constantly evolving. Galbraith (2000) calls this the “reconfigurable organization” and argues that this type of organization involves three capabilities:

(1) The organization is reconfigured by forming teams and networks across organizational departments.
(2) The organization uses internal prices, markets, and marketlike devices to coordinate the complexity of multiple teams.
(3) The organization forms partnerships to secure capabilities it does not have.

Proficient social networkers are perfectly poised to thrive in this reconfigurable organization. The portfolio life has become more and more viable now, because people have an immediate captive audience of friends and friends of friends. This is analogous to a return to the pre-industrial cottage industry life. A person can market him or herself to their immediate network, and those people can then recommend that person when they know someone who might need their services. (credit for sparking this idea in my research goes to Dan Friesen).

Organizations, like marketers, are confronting the reality of the power of social connections. This is not just an Information Technology (IT) issue. It is a complex issue that affects all aspects of an organization.

The explosion of the use of social networking sites has coincided with a need for organizations to recruit and retain avid social networkers in their organizations. Goleman argues that emotional intelligence is a primary indicator of the success of a leader. Adept social networkers will have that needed high emotional intelligence and will thrive in 21st Century organizations. This also means that some employees may be bypassed for promotions and projects because of their inability to navigate the complexities of the fluid and global organization. Adept social networkers have already thrived in complex social networks, and are perfectly poised to thrive just when organizations need them to. I’m just not sure organizations are ready for them yet.

Galbraith, J. (2000). Designing the global corporation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2002). Primal Leadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.