dotShift

Trying to get all my Social Media to integrate nicely

From whence the culture cometh?

Robin Cole-Hamilton asked a question on LinkedIn about HR's role in developing corporate culture - whether it should lead or support.

"An HR department not far from me feels that it should be playing the lead role in building an organization's corporate culture. I take an opposite view, feeling that the culture should derive directly from leaders and teams, and (frankly) that when HR is in the driving seat it (the culture thing) usually becomes mechanical, impersonal, and uninspiring. Culture by numbers, in fact."

I agree with Robin, and have been thinking more about this issue of late due to developments in our business (a rapidly-growing software start-up). Particularly in the US, the HR department is about compliance and risk mitigation, not about culture and values. Regardless, if any culture is to be real and authentic rather than than theoretical, it needs to be thought of as the sum of the collective actions of the organization rather than a prescription.

As such, the leadership of the organization need to embody the culture they are trying to create, and build the organization by recruiting people who also subscribe to the same values. Ultimately it is the inspiration provided by the leaders that encourage the team to take part in and actively shape a culture. The team are then the cause of the culture being a permanent, albeit dynamic, force.

Hand-in-hand is the workplace that is created for this force to flourish - or die - in.

The rigid, controlling workplaces of the past left employees no flexibility to manage family or personal problems or the day-to-day demands of running a household. Over time, those unmet personal needs erode concentration, commitment and creativity on the job. Good workplace policies, on the other hand, enable employees to manage their larger lives, freeing them to apply more brainpower to complex Information Age jobs. Satisfied employees treat customers better, creating loyal customers. Beyond that, good policies also foster the kind of on-the-job relationships with bosses and co-workers that inspire employees to grow.

This isn't just touchy-feely rubbish; real change in the workplace leads to real satisfaction among employees leads to real money for the company.

Amid mounting anecdotal evidence of the bottom-line benefits of employee well-being, researchers have undertaken systematic attempts to show a linkage between employee engagement and above-average customer service, sales and profit. The Wall Street Journal cites several research paper and has anecdotal evidence supporting this thinking (see the online article The Rules of Engagement). In 2004, Hewitt Associates, tracked about 300 companies over five years, and found that increases in employee engagement clearly preceded improvements in financial performance. Even among companies with below-average profit, an upturn in employee attitudes tended to precede a profit turnaround.

With this understanding, we need to create a workplace conducive to the behavior we want to see, but again it comes down to the people we have in the organization. In the mid-1990s the Gallup Organization discovered that no organization - large or small - has a single culture. Instead, it has as many cultures as it has workgroups, managers, or supervisors. The locus of culture is at the local level, where 5, 10, or more people work together every day.

Although many of you may be nodding in agreement at this notion, having seen it yourselves, it is a dramatic shift in how many leaders perceived corporate culture and how to manage it. Leaders have long understood that they have very little control over the culture that exists at the local level, but this discovery made it imperative that they find the best managers and supervisors to build a high-performing culture - one employee, or one conversation, at a time. Executives cannot legislate culture with mission or vision statements or through values clarification; it must also grow organically one workgroup at a time.

Having a high-performing business culture is a competitive advantage today. Most companies expect every employee to be a builder, because every employee, through his or her actions, either makes the culture stronger or weakens it. Employees, in turn, want to be proud of their organizations and local teams. And, in many countries today, the employer needs the employee more than the other way around. As the world shifts from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy - and as employees are increasingly valued for what they know as much as for what they produce - the employer’s power has diminished or evaporated.

So how do we manage people for success and high levels of productivity in the new economy? Too many organizations build management models on the assumption that managers and leaders have the power in the company/employee relationship, but that’s no longer always the case. The answer is employee engagement or the ability to capture the heads, hearts, and souls of your employees to instill an intrinsic desire and passion for excellence. Engaged employees want their organization to succeed because they feel connected emotionally, socially, and even spiritually to its mission, vision, and purpose.

This culture by definition is real, rather than theoretical. There is some excellent discourse on this topic in the book Human Sigma; one I encourage any executive to read.

Thought of the day

You are going to be here if you like it or not, so why not enjoy your life?

Thought of the day

Treat your employees as an investment, rather than a cost; you may be surprised at the ROI generated.

Not enough net ...

Uh-oh ... looks like the could be a few speed-bumps ahead for the old information super-highway. A new report on the ability of Internet infrastructure to cope with growing demand warns that usage could outstrip network capacity worldwide as early as 2010.

Entitled “The Internet Singularity, Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web”, the research is based on a range of sources including Internet traffic statistics collected by academic organizations, user demand data, interviews with enterprise organizations, equipment vendors, service providers, IT executives and investment companies. It looks at user demand and Internet infrastructure independently so that rather than measuring current traffic patterns, it looks at how user demand would evolve if Internet capacity was not limited.

This is the first study to independently model both Internet capacity and demand,” said Johna Till Johnson, president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research. “The Internet is inherently self-protecting - you can’t push more traffic onto the ‘Net than it can handle. This means that studies which focus just on growth rates of existing traffic on the Internet miss the issue of how much more traffic could be appearing on the ‘Net - based on the measured demand by business and consumer users - if Internet capacity were sufficient to accommodate it.”

Let's just say this comes as no surprise to me. Not only is there as much content on YouTube today as there was on the entire Web in 2000, but so many services formerly provided via other media now utilize the Internet. For example, I now download movies and South Park episode via XBox-Live, watch rugby on MediaZone, keep in touch via Windows Live, figure out where I'm going on Google Maps, update people through Twitter, hold meetings on GoToMeeting, manage computers through LogMeIn, shop at Amazon, receive phone calls though Vonage ... the list goes on.

To view the Nemertes Research study visit www.internetinnovation.org or www.nemertes.com.

Thought of the day

With all of the advances we have made in science and technology, and our preference for a level playing-field, is it possible that we have started to bypass the evolutionary process (or self-select for weakness)? And if so, what are the consequences of this ... and what would my man Darwin have thought about it all? Hmmm ...

Let's Change the World

As I grow older and more irritable, I am also becoming more concerned about the world in general. Yes, I am still an asshole, but one that wants to ensure that the planet still has a place for people - and that those people have a certain standard of living.

I have been fortunate in my life, through a combination of blind luck, hard work, and the kindness and help of others. It's my turn to help. For a "Thanksgiving" gift back to the world (or rather, the people in it), I purchased a Gift Ark from one of my favorite charities, Heifer. I want to gift another Ark in the New Year, but don't have enough spare cash. As such, I am reaching out and asking others to help me reach the goal.

The Heifer Gift Ark offers hope worldwide to families who are poor and hungry. You'll help families start on a journey to fulfill a seemingly impossible dream - to secure food and a source of dependable income.

     

Each family who receives livestock will pass on one or more of the animal's offspring to other families who are in need in their community. Every gift will multiply for years to come.

Imagine how this gift could change the world. Two cows bring milk and income to a Russian village. Two sheep help families in Arizona produce wool. Two camels help families in Tanzania earn income by transporting agricultural and industrial materials. Two oxen pull plows and carts in Uganda. Two water buffalo help Cambodian families increase rice production through animal draft power. And that's just the first five sets of animals ... the ark provides 15 pairs of animals to change lives.

As someone who belives in teaching a man to fish rather then buying him some fish 'n' chips, the Ark is the way to go. As people share their animal's offspring with others - along with their knowledge, resources, and skills - an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe.

Let's spend a few dollars helping out our fellow man, even if it is for selfish reasons (e.g. a higher standard of living means more education, less unwanted children, less famine, less war, etc).

Visit http://eliweir.chipin.com/change-the-world and help change the world ...

Thought of the day

If you ever want to be both happy and successful, treat your failures as learning, not failure ...

Here come the consumers!

According to a new Forrester report released at the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 in Chicago, interactive marketing spending in the US will more than triple over the next five years, reaching $61 billion by 2012. In other words, the enterprise and the media industry are finally waking up to what the rest of the world has known for a while; there are a whole bunch of people online

Based in part on a survey of 344 interactive marketing professionals and their budget decisions affecting display ads, search, email marketing, online video, and emerging media (social, mobile, and advergaming). Forrester's breakdown of spending includes the following:

• Search marketing will triple in five years. Mainstream marketers' aggressive use of search marketing will grow the category at a CAGR of 26 percent to $25 billion by 2012 due to the increasing costs of paid search, additional spending on optimization tools and services, and international expansion
• Display advertising will reach $14 billion by 2012. Display ads will be a key factor in the interactive marketing budget by having an essential supporting role for all interactive campaigns
• Services and integration will drive email marketing growth. Spending will focus on improving email relevancy with analytics and data management, and will grow to more than $4 billion by 2012
• Online video ads will significantly increase. Growing consumer adoption of online video will result in a dramatic 72 percent increase in online video ad spending to $7.1 billion by 2012. More customer-centric online video applications will increase the medium's appeal for consumers and marketers
• Social media will drive emerging channels to $10 billion by 2012. Mainstream adoption will boost spending in emerging channels such as social media, mobile, game marketing, widgets, podcasts, and RSS. Spending on social media alone will grow to $6.9 billion.
• Mobile marketing will grow to $2.8 billion. As consumers become increasingly tied to personal computing handsets, they'll want to extend their mobile utility to accommodate transactions. This transition will drive mobile marketing to grow to $2.8 billion by 2012.

All of this is great news for me and the people like me who work with technology centered on social and consumer-generated media. For the complete release, visit here, or the US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2007 To 2012 is available from Forrester here.

Random thoughts about the tech market

I think we may be approaching 2.0 overload (I have a certain amount of disdain for the label, BTW), with executives growing weary of it before it even takes hold in the enterprise. Lack of real understanding about what consumer-generated content means for the enterprise, how it can be leveraged, and what to do about it; are all very real concerns. As a consequence, there is a lack at the enterprise-level of a 2.0 strategy. A lack of strategy means a lack of investment – or at least a lack of measurable return on investment.

Just about every tech vendor is trying to jump on the “2.0” bandwagon — whether or not their products have much to do with Web 2.0 technologies or philosophy (hence my cynicism). It’s a good thing for them that the concept remains nebulous enough to exploit in this way, but it is a bad thing for us, due to the ambiguity and confusion out there. We have BI 2.0, BPM 2.0 and SOA 2.0, among others, all clamoring for attention against Web 2.0. If we aren’t careful, the result will be a target-market who are tired of Web 2.0 before it ever really catches on.

An InformationWeek survey published back in Feburary this year shows that a number of traditional business concerns, including security and ROI, are also hampering acceptance of 2.0 technologies in the workplace (and I don't think much has changed since).

But circling around to my initial premise; I think that the biggest challenge is the lack of a cohesive 2.0 strategy, which serves to confuse users, stall adoption and make 2.0 technologies tough to manage. How helpful is it to replace overstuffed e-mail inboxes with a confusing jumble of wikis, blogs and RSS feeds … with no measurable action taking place? The same problem exists in the marketing and service arenas, with now yet another layer of complexity for the enterprise to deal with.

Enter TruCast, stage left …