The Conference Board

I am participating and speaking at the Social Media for HR seminar at The Conference Board in New York this week.  As always, The Conference Board brings together high-level executives to share insight into how major organizations are tackling human resource and leadership issues.  This particular seminar is solely focused on social platforms and implications and is interesting for anyone who needs to learn more about implementation and strategy for your organization.

One session that stands out for me was led by Karl Sanchak, the Director of Innovation, Corporate Engineering and Technology for Lockheed Martin.  Mr Sanchak addressed the strategic use of social media in the organization.  Lockheed Martin is clearly aware that people’s actions in the online world most closely reflect how they really think.  They use the idea that Information = Intelligence in their creation of a strategy that incorporates and measures social platform use.

 What are some key components to build into a social strategy?

• Look first at social platforms that your employees are already using.
• Measure the patterns of use and frequency in order to know when the best times to post information or invite collaboration are based on the users.
• Build in subject matter experts and data experts who can work collaboratively to bring the social strategy to fruition.
• Plan how the social tools will be used.  For example, social can be quite effective for R&D and new business initiatives.
• Innovate the future! Don’t wait for your competition to pass you by.  Create your focused strategy now.

As you can see, quite a bit of great insight and I only scratched the surface of what the session covered.  Be sure to check The Conference Board website for upcoming events.

Now, over four years later, more HR and recruiting professionals are beginning to gravitate to the social platforms in order to provide better business directives to their internal and external clients.  When I started out, there were hours of trial-and-error while learning because there were no classes or conferences where you could learn how to do it effectively.  The benefit for today’s professionals getting into the space or for those who are using the platforms but want to take that use to the next level is that there are events where you can go and learn more in a day than many of us did in a month.

If YOU are someone who wants to learn more about using social media platforms for HR and recruiting, you need to mark your calendars now for The Conference Board’sSocial Media Strategies for HR Seminar.  Join me in New York City on April 17- 18, 2012 as we discuss and learn how to:

• Leverage social networks to benefit the entire organization
• Implement and manage social networks to spur innovation and knowledge sharing
• Use social media to increase employee engagement and bolster employer branding
• Manage the legal implications of social media in the workplace

I’ll be leading a session on how you can use social media to strengthen your employer brand and bolster employee engagement.  My co-presenter will be Steve Boese, Director of Talent Management Strategy for Oracle and host of the HR Happy Hour radio show.

Use discount code TM1 to get $250 off the registration cost!  You can register for one day or both.  I hope you’ll join us, you won’t be disappointed.

While most organizations focus on leadership capabilities as they develop their management team, Susan shared a story of an exercise she went through in which several HR leaders from various companies found that the leadership capabilities they used at their organizations were almost identical to each other.  With that knowledge, Rockwell decided to look beyond the capabilities they were using and determine what ultimately drove successful leaders.

Instead of focusing on just the core leadership capabilities, they added elements that focused on fit:

• Skills, knowledge, experience and education-  These are traditional core leadership capabilities you look for in any organization.  Still highly important, but you need to take it a step further.
• Information processing capability- Ability to manage the complexity of the work.  This element determines if the leader, or potential leader, can handle increasing levels of volitality, uncertainty, complexity and abiguity in their work.
• Temperament- This is the point that Rockwell began to diverge from the traditional leadership capabilities.  They use specific techniques to focus on extremes in behavior that can inhibit or derail the leader’s success.  If it is found that someone has a temperament that is not conducive to successful leadership, they work on that capability or they are not promoted to the next level.
• Commitment-  Does the leader value the work and demands associated with the role?  If you cannot answer this in the affirmative, then you will not have long-term success with this leader.

While not widely used grouped in this way, I believe that Rockwell Automation is on a path to building successful leaders.  What elements does your organization use to determine the temperament or commitment of your leaders and people on the leadership track?  Would you prevent someone from being promoted to a leadership role if they did not have the temperament to deal effectively with people?

Share your ideas, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The hotel was situated in lower Manhattan, one short block from Ground Zero and the new 9/11 Memorial.  Across the street was the Canstruction exhibit which was well worth my time.  It was also just one more block over to Zuccotti Park where Occupy Wall Street protest was in full swing.  I’ll write more about the 9/11 Memorial and Canstruction  later.  Today, my mind is on Occupy Wall Street.

You can’t turn on the news lately without hearing about the Occupy movement in various cities across our country.  Even here in St. Louis, protestors are camping out and marching to block traffic on major bridges into the city.  It is certainly starting to disrupt things.  But, seeing the NYC protest up close made it much more personal.

My curiosity was around the specifics of what the group is protesting.  I had a general understanding of the major issues around lack of jobs, the economy, the greed of banks and corporate executives and the general distrust and unhappiness with our federal government.  Those are issues that many American’s can relate to as current stressors in our lives.  I was hoping to gain a better understanding of specifically what is the group protesting.

Protest and Civil Unrest

I approached the park and was immediately struck with surprise about the sheer number of NYC police on the scene.  They  were a sea of blue and it was nearly impossible to determine how to get closer to the actual protest.  I picked my way through the crowd and followed the voices that were rising and falling in unison.  As I approached the front of the park, I could see barricades up and protestors packed tightly into the space.  There were also many lingering around the perimiter with signs against the government and against the police treatment they have been receiving. 

The Occupy leaders were using a “human megaphone” approach to verbally reach the thousands of people gathered.  (Click through to watch a video that demonstrates their tactic.)  One leader would shout out his or her thought, then a circle 3- 4 people deep would turn out to the crowd and repeat the message.  People in that circle would then turn out to the crowd and repeat the message, and so on.  This was an effective way to cascade the message like a wave through the crowd and out to the perimeter.  Some protesters were technologically savvy and had smart phones and iPads where they were checking in on FourSquare and communicating on Twitter and FaceBook.  Others clearly did not have those luxuries.

Disappointingly, I did not walk away with greater insight into their plight.  They may have passion around their cause but are not taking advantage of getting their message out in a way so that we can truly understand.  And just yesterday morning, they began blocking streets and subway exits which caused many to be arrested.  This too just clouds the message and makes them appear less like the 99% they are claiming to be.

My Take Away

I will always support free speech and the ability to state your opinions.  I can’t condone trying to step on other people’s rights though, nor do I support the way they seem to be disrupting things now that could cause harm to other people in the city who are just trying to get to work and do the job they have to do.

The question in my mind is how can you protest not having enough jobs when every HR and recruiting professional say we all have jobs to fill?  There are hundreds of thousands of jobs going unfilled and why?  Because people are not willing to do many of them because they think those jobs are beneath them.  I sympathize with people who are laid off from their job because I have been in that situation before.  So has my husband.  We worked hard to continue building our skills and searching for work and it paid off.  That is not luck.  It was work. I’d like to see more unemployed workers be willing to take jobs they might not normally do and still be able to contribute to their family and community.

So, what do you think about this?  Are you following the Occupy Wall Street movement and do you care?  Do you feel passionately one way or the other?  Share in the comments because I’d like to know how other professionals are seeing the movement and whether or not it’s impacting business decisions you, or your leaders, are making.

Archana Singh from AMD, Monique Matheson from Nike, Inc. and Brenda Dennis from Cisco Systems Inc. are all able to articulate the vision and approach for innovation in their organization, how their cultures support the innovative ideas and the type of diverse talent needed to come up with innovative ideas that are actionable.

I like the example that Cisco Systems has to drive innovative results.  Cisco no longer thinks about diversity and inclusion, they have changed the focus to inclusion and collaboration.  By doing this as a business imperative, it’s brought tighter alignment between HR and the other lines of the business.  The challenge is barriers like language differences or cultural differences.

One way they drive innovation is by hand selecting teams to work on innovative ideas.  They:

• Choose a team with diverse experiences from diverse business units.
• Put them on teams that work together for 6 weeks- 6 months.
• These team members are supposed to spend 60% of their time on the new project, although Brenda shared the reality is they spend far more time on these initiatives.
• They recognize and reward ideas that drive 90- 180 day results.

One drawback I hear though is when they are  selecting the team members, they have a fairly tight set of criteria of who can participate.  For example, you must be on the promotion track.  This eliminates a “popularity contest” in their opinion but I think it eliminates more than that.  While it is beneficial to have criteria, I see the risk of alienating some of the best ideas that may come from the staff level or from people who have deep history with Cicso but may have never been on the promotion track.