By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
This post was cross-posted on ecollab carnival blog, as part of a collaborative thinking about the future of the training department.
Productivity: The amount of output per unit of input (labor, equipment, and capital).
Enterprise has for long understood, and applied, that training and education are an important part of its hunt for competitive advantages. At operational level, first, training allows for better adequacy between employees, their role, and the hierarchy- and process-based ‘mechanics’ of Enterprise. At competitive level, then, acquisition of new knowledge is for companies both a way to keep best talents in house and a way to setup an innovation friendly ecosystem. In both cases, education and learning have taken a privileged position in professional environments, and is now openly recognized as an important productivity source.
It is quite striking to see how much this concept, rationalized, statutory, acquisition of formal and explicit knowledge in order to maximize individual productivity, is now spread across our whole society, bridging more and more closely business and education worlds, notably with generalization of internship requirements. This concept, however, ceases today to be legitimate.
While apparently justified by security and… productivity concerns, present trend of blocking access to main social networks rather looks like a desperate attempt in denying actual cultural and societal evolution. How could we otherwise explain such practices, as more than 40% of employees will use a mobile terminal to priority access the internet in two years from now? Whether they want it or not, companies will soon face a real organizational dilemma: to witness a drastic individual productivity dropout, for letting employees freely access the social web, or to provide them internally with an environment as much attractive as the one they can find outside. As the ideal enterprise will stay, for long, an almost unreachable ideal, other solutions have to be considered for a vast majority of companies. Finding the most relevant one? This seems quite an evidence for most of us: we have to recognize the importance of knowledge informal acquisition, and to include this activity in the general framework of individual listening and self-training task.
The growing importance of informal knowledge, and its necessary integration into professional education, doesn’t limit itself to external influence. Whether they wish it or not, companies are today involved into collaborative initiatives which question the very foundations of individual productivity. It will have to be more and more transferred to the community, one of its natural functions being training through implicit knowledge sharing.
From being considered today as a source for productivity, in our hierarchy and process-based structures, training will very logically and quickly become one of its critical components. This will ultimately modify existing relations between knowledge, innovation and production. Concretely, and naturally, social learning will pave the way for Enterprise 2.0.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
I had yesterday the privilege to be interviewed by Cindy King, on Twitter and on her blog, about cross-cultural communication. My answer to one of her questions (“Culture is…” in one word) raised a few interesting comments, and leaded me to further thinking. Culture is infrastructure.
From the fast growing literature about Enterprise 2.0, I only read few things about interaction between corporate culture and the necessary changes induced by embracing social tools behind the firewall. The relationship between governance, managerial routines and corporate culture is nevertheless far from easy to unveil, and has important implications in driving 2.0 initiatives.
Every company has a corporate culture
Even if not clearly communicated or formalized, relationships between employees, working habits and managerial style always define a set of embedded hard-to-move rules. Understanding these rules is a crucial step in determining which initiatives will or won’t be successful.
It is not always what you think it is
While CEOs and founders usually imprint their own vision as a corporate culture, reality is often a bit different, as day-to-day work usually follows its own path, independently from formal business processes. Micro-interactions are here much more important than macro-statements in determining the collaborative ability of a company.
Not all corporate cultures are suitable for E2.0
Apple is of course an obvious example of a company which successfully stays away from social media. A strong and meaningful corporate culture has by itself as much power as today’s most evolved social platforms.
Changing corporate culture is the hardest task to undertake
Changing an operating system takes time and commitment, but switching infrastructure is a radical move. Collaborative routines can easily be introduced in the most top-down company, as long as the wish to collaborate exists. Here too, look at micro-interactions between people to get a clue about potential success.
As usual, it is all about people
The fact that networks and communities must be driven by clear business goals shouldn’t obscure the key role of the Human Resources department. The larger the initiative, the stronger the HR commitment and support might be.
By Thierry de Baillon
Version française ici.
While more and more recruiters look for information about candidates on the internet, or recruit directly on social networks, every footstep we leave on these sites may turn out dangerous, or even disastrous. Numerous blogs or ebooks are now focusing on the ways to manage our e-reputation, and Frédéric Cavazza suggested me the other day we could adopt the attitude of artists, who often preserve their private life.
But how could we ask a teenager, in the age where sharing and provoking are ways of life, to resist uploading photos from a trash evening on their Facebook page? Should we, broadly speaking, go against a trend where professional and private parts of our life are merging, where interacting is often (maybe too often) a mere synonym to transparency?
E-reputation: management or dictatorship?
We are all teenagers in the fast growing universe of social media. Those who were yesterday able to preserve their private life while being overexposed, are now trapped too. During the last months, some first-class sportsmen’s career was endangered by tweeting or posting publicly some private stuff, andmy take is that Mark Cuban or Michael Phelps examples are just a beginning… If e-reputation management is now an important part of our professional life, it cannot, and shouldn’t, censor our private life. What is to be done as the frontier between both is now dissolving?
Job boards 2.0 vs Recruitment 2.0
Recruitment practices are changing on these days. Recruiters are present on main social networks, use video, favor recommended candidates… Job boards 2.0 Era has begun, but may we talk about Recruitment 2.0? Definitely not. Since recruitment in the age of the social web needs more than using new tools to change, it needs a mindset shift. Answering a job offer is enough to understand this shift didn’t happen yet.
Recruiters have still to find and setup different relationships with candidates. They will have to earn trust as real consultants, learn, and teach, what is meaningful in our digital footsteps, filter professional competencies from casual playful activities noise.
Of course, every tool is still not available for that. Imagine for instance a search engine with a chronological filter, giving results from the last x years, letting us able to focus on the significant period of our professional life. But beyond tools, what we need is a real cultural change. Recruitment 2.0 doesn’t exist. Yet.
