Using the Talent Pool without having to hire them

 

Suppose there was a way by which you could assess the technical competence of a candidate even without putting them in an interview?

 

Suppose further, that by this method, you could also get the person to contribute to projects in your organisation without getting paid – on their own time?

 

Suppose that this tool also allowed you to actively stay in touch with your alumni, with the possibility of rewarding them for continuing to be associated with your brand?

 

You are most likely to say that is impossible. And for the most part, it is. Which is what makes this tool so awesome.

 

The Magic..

The tool is a discussion board, open to internal and external folks, enrolment purely voluntary, and all participation rewarded with points.

The points can be converted to monetary and non monetary rewards. Monetary rewards are gift cards from selected vendors. Non monetary rewards are invitations to employee only events (for non employees), membership to industry bodies sponsored by the organisation, and so on.  

 

When you face a business or technical challenge, put it up. Let people respond. All participation rewarded, and all productive answers rewarded extra.

 

Let it be everyone’s playground – from the junior to the senior most person, let everyone talk about strategy to maintenance, from diversity to facility management.

 

The Numbers

Crowdsourcing of ideas is not new. But here is what this model has in addition to ideas:

1. Rewarding Engagement – internal and external, in tangible ways.

2. Pre selecting talent on the basis of their actual contribution and not just on the basis of their interview performance.

3. An opportunity to notice skills/ideas of employees that they are not able to demonstrate in course of their normal work.

 

On the cost side of the equation is the cost of building and running such a platform. Or buying one. On the benefit side are intangible benefits that quite simply are not available elsewhere.

 

The maths makes the most sense for a mid – large sized company in niche skill areas like audit, acturial, IT, Energy, Infra, Manufacturing, community building, city planning, e governance.  

 

The maths does not make sense for generic skill organisations or organisations that depend largely on cottage industry inputs for sustenance. It also does not make sense for talent communities with low penetration of computers.

The Whack a Mole Model of Innovation and the Innovation Cubbyhole

 

Children have a game called Whack A Mole. In this game, a random mole comes out of a random hole and you have to push it back in.

 

Most organisations do the same to their internal innovators.

 

Playing Whack a Mole with your innovators

When an employee gets an idea, they have to take it to their manager for approval. Usually, the manager stands to gain little if the idea works, and lose much if the idea fails. Or perhaps,  its simple fear of change and they discard the idea (or promise to work on it but never get around to that).

 

Then, a few days later, another employee in another department comes up with an idea. Again, it is taken to the manager, and then his manager, until, at some level, it is properly evaluated and put down. Nothing personal, of course.  

 

And that is how organisations play whack a mole with their innovators. What happens is that the organisation ends up not seeing any noticeable innovation for years. And we all know the result of that.

 

There are 2 ways to stop playing Whack a Mole.

The first, and the more difficult, is to create a culture of innovation. That will take time.

 

So you can take a short cut. The beauty of this short cut is that its proven, and it will help  you get to a culture of innovation too.

 

The Innovation Cubbyhole

There is nothing new about the idea. The only point of this post is that you can use the Innovation Cubbyhole to circumvent the Whack a Mole culture while you are fighting it.

 

1. All employees can take a certain percetage of their time in the Innovation cubbyhole. No questions asked.

 

2. All employees have access to some company resources. Whatever is available in the cubbyhole is yours to use. If you need anything extra, read Rule 3.

 

3. All employees have a limited, preapproved budget in the cubbyhole. Once you sign into the cubbyhole, you get pocket moneys (aka the preapproved budget) to spend on your project. Its not a lot, but its theirs.

 

4. If a project fails, all you have to submit is the failed equipment, and a detailed lessons learnt document, incl. what you did, how you think it can be done better etc. Its all squared. No blame game, no questions asked.

 

5. Got a bright idea but lost interest / got transferred / dont have time? no problem. Sign into the cubbyhole, put the idea up, and leave. Someone can come to the “Wall of Abandoned Babies” and pick up an idea. Just like that. Leave all literature of work done so far in the Cubbyhole, neatly archived and all that, so that your colleagues can take it up from where you left.

 

6. Once you are ready, make a more formal presentation to the people who might benefit from the project. Explain and sell the idea to them. If they agree, it will be taken for mainstream adoption.

 

7. If you save your pocket money, you can either return it, or carry it forward to another, bigger project of yours. In short, you are rewarded for being frugal in your success.

 

The advantage of this approach is that small innovators can work to create a pilot proof of concept. it is much easier to convince people with a working model in hand.

 

The second, and the bigger advantage is that, if no approvals are necessary, it becomes a little more difficult to whack the mole. The “approval” is the hammer in the hands of the player. You cant play whack a mole without the hammer.

 

There is one key requirement, however. One must hire an absolutely insane person to head the cubby hole. Someone who truly believes that anything can be done. ANYTHING. And the person doing the hiring should have the same insane belief.

 

Endnote:

Look around you. When was the last time you saw a real employee led innovation in your organisation? Was it in the last 12 months?

Steps for creating an ERP PMO

 1. Scope : At what level do you define “Project” – at the module level, submodule level, or the entire implementation is one project? A lot of people use module, but it’s really a function of what a PM should be able to handle. Before you create what will be handled by a PMO, you have to be clear about what the PMO will NOT handle and should be handled by the individual PMs at their own level.

2. Span of Operations: Remember that a PMO is only ONE step above the PM. If you need program management, create a Program Management Office. If you are working on something even bigger, don’t hesitate to create a portfolio management team. Determine the complexity and the experience of a team, and then arrive at a considered decision.

3. Workflows: Determine workflows for decisions, escalations and status updates. At the very least.

4. Information Sharing: Determine what information will be shared with the PMO, by whom and at what frequency.

5. Rules and Authority to Decide: Who has the authority to decide? What is the quorum? For instance, can a decision about a module be taken if the module lead was not in the meeting? Can a release be approved without the change manager?

These should cover the fundamental setup of a PMO.

Lifecycle of the Innovating Organisation

 

We have all heard that story before – a brilliant idea, led to the creation and growth of a market leader. Then, something went wrong, and within a century, or less, the pathbreaking organisation was on its way out.

Usually, the meteor that hits the organisation is , ironically, flab and lack of innovation.

 

We all know, also, about the innovation life cycle.

 

Image Courtesy: http://www.jplcreative.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/26/marketing-strategies-for-innovation/

 

But here, I am talking about the Lifecycle of the Innovative Organisation.

 

An innovative organisation is an organisation that continues to innovate – not for business success, not to get more territory, not to do things better, but just as a matter of course. As a way of BEING. Its in their DNA. All of the business benefits – quality improvement, newer products, better markets, are side effects of that way of BEING. As are product failures, millions of lost dollars, some lawsuits et al.  

 

This distinction is important – In an innovating organisation, innovation is not a means to an end – nor an end in itself. It is, quite simply, be who they are.

 

3M is the obvious example that pops up when we talk about innovative organisations. There are, of course, others. General Electric. I will not put Apple in the list. Because honestly, we have no idea what the culture is INSIDE Apple.

 

What makes these organisations Innovative Organisations? What can other organisations do to remain (or become) innovative?

 

This article here has some very sound models for organisations asking “What can we do to become innovative?” (Blackberry and Nokia come to mind) . My post is about what MAKES these organisations innovative? What keeps innovation in their DNA?

 

And the hypothesis is this: Leadership does. 

 

Impact of Leadership on Innovation Culture in an organisation

 

The previous post spoke about the hypothesis that the key thing that makes innovating organisations become what they are , is leadership.

 

While practices and organsiational models et al are positive contributors to the innovation process, if an organisation has to stay innovative – complete with the side effects of that state of mind, the most important factor is that the leadership must continue to believe – generation after generation, in innovation.

 

Here is how this works –

Organisational behavior is shaped, at the primary level, by the rewards system. When a type of behavior is rewarded, we start to value that behavior more, because it leads to a positive outcome. this relationship is a function of the thinking mind – i do this, i am appreciated/ rewarded – the cognitive level.

 

Over a period, the repetition of this reward system leads to us developing a positive attitude towards that behavior. We automatically associate that behavior with positive response. – the conative response.

 

Over time we internalise the positive attitude and start to respond with positive emotions to the behavior itself – at this level, the affective level , the behavior is internalised. Then we become “innovators” simply because of who we have become. Its the same process that works when we enter a university a fresher and exit as an alumnus. Our mental associations change to be congruent with the associations of the university.

 

This is how the innovative culture is built – but by bit – moving from the behavior-reward (cognitive) to conative to affective (internalised and emotional)

 

So, to sum up, the foundation of culture change is in the rewards and punishment factors – the rewards may be tangible and institutionalised, or it may be intangible and simple like positive feedback or even just permission to work on research during office time.

 

And who decides, in the most significant way, what this reward structure in the organisation will be? The leader. Even if the tangible organisational models and employee appreciation criteria are not immediately touched, the intangibles like positive feedback trickle down really fast and without doing anything documented or formal, leaders are able to kill the innovation culture relatively fast.

Why Social Media is a Great Way to Do Organisational Change in Cross Cultural Change Scenarios

 

By now, everyone who has studied communication in any form is aware of the 55/38/7 rule of communication – your communication is 55% body language, 38% your tone of voice, and only 7% words.

While there is caution in the use of these numbers without qualification, it cannot be denied that a large part of our communication is non verbal.
 

The complexity of Cross Cultural Change Management

I have often observed that in closed eye experiments where we listen to Oriental and Western tones, the Oriental tone typically appears sing song and the Western tone appears aggressive to the non Westerner. What this means in plainspeak is that the interpretation of the tone is very dependent on our cultural context.

Likewise for body language. Challenges of cross cultural interactions based on interpretation of body language are well documented. For instance, Tibetans greet each other by sticking their tongue out. That is the gesture used by most of us to tease.
 

And it gets better…

To make things more interesting, the figure of 93% applies most to the expression of emotions. In plainspeak, that means that team members are most likely to be misunderstood by other cultures when they are trying to communicate their deepest part – emotions.

So, why do I feel that social media, which ordinarily seeks to make communication more complex, will in fact be an advantage in cross cultural change management?

Watch this space to find out. 

Why Social Media is a Great Way to Do Organisational Change in Cross Cultural Change Scenarios- II

 The last post spoke about the challenges in cross cultural communication.

When doing change management, we take the normal change management challenges (resistance to change, high or low context culture, personality types and motivations, et al.) and apply a multification factor to that. Ergo, it’s a complex thing.

So why is social media likely to facilitate change, especially in a cross cultural scenario.

This post lists 5 reasons why Social Media is a great Change Management tool for cross cultural groups (even if they are not co-located)
 

Words

When put this way, it appears obvious. 93% of communication about emotions happens non verbally. It is more likely to be misunderstood across cultures. So we take that away and replace it with words. Only words. With that, we have taken away factors that cause over 90% ambiguity.

The communication is not “rich” but it’s unambiguous to a large degree.
 

ONLY positive feedback

Ever noticed that no social media platform has a dislike button? If you don’t like something, you either take the trouble to write a negative comment, or you keep quiet. When you take the trouble to write, you also have to “explain” your criticism. But liking is free. This may appear to be a small thing, but it’s a big factor in reducing negativity in teams, especially teams that are not co-located.
 

Written Communication

The thing with written communication is that even in the most informal avatar, it has to be structured, at the very least. Writing forces the brain to think and place sentences in a logical order. This means that when we share ideas, they have gone through one round of internal sanity check – not always possible in oral communication.
 

“At your convenience” communication

While “at your convenience” is a standard benefit of social media, across time zones, it becomes a key differentiator. A person might post a question, and within 24 hours, colleagues from across the world will have had a chance to look at it and respond, within their work day. This way, we can engage teams from all over the world on the same thread of discussion.

When doing change management, sometimes, the difference in release times becomes a bone of contention. This way, everyone can be onboarded on the same thread.

For instance, when should we plan solution validation with key end users? In an email world, the email will be sent to Change Management leads in all countries, answers compiled, and an excel sheet prepared at the corporate office. Using Social media, everyone’s answers will be visible to everyone else, everyone can see when someone is planning a session and will automatically propose dates to avoid a clash. Everyone can see the direction of travel and pick up dates that are congruent with that direction. Then, the specialist can travel to and cover all locations in a single leg.
 

Time to get used to each other

How many friends do you have on Facebook, whom you knew only slightly in the real world, and have got to know better since you saw their posts, political opinion, pics with kids? I have a lot of them.

That’s the beauty of social media – blogs, discussion threads, yammer, et al. You get to really know people – slowly, by and by.

Perhaps this is the best part of using Social Media for cross cultural change – the engagement doesn’t have to end with the project. You can stay in touch, and build a network of change managers who can help in more than one project or program. Over time, this group will get to trust each other and also create cross location cohesion. In a multi country environment, cross country cohesion at all levels is very necessary.

Conclusion: Can one go wrong in using Social media as a Change Management tool? Oh yes! The benefits up here are not automatic. Like all tools, success is a function of the user’s skill and the tool’s inherent excellence. Have fun using social media at work!