I have spent a lot of my time over the last few months looking for volunteers to participate in a social media experiment.
My colleagues objections and hesitance is based on some their lizard brain talking to them:
· I’m not sure I’m interesting
· Other people are better writers than me
· What would I talk about?
I’m sure, like me, you’ve heard this before. Normally from reluctant friends we have invited to join us at social engagement where they won’t know anyone. I remember taking a junior account manager to his first industry networking event at the TMA in Brighton having the same concerns. Unsurprisingly he shone that night, just as my colleagues will excel on mallowstreet.com
Operating in forums and blog sites is no different from attending a professional networking event.
I know it’s a cliché, but business to business is people to people. You wouldn’t show up to network in a corporate t-shirt carrying brochures looking for someone to broadcast to. Online, just as with any networking event, requires the simplest of approaches to be successful:
Go along, listen, chat, learn a little, share a little, be yourself and enjoy.
09 July 2010
07 July 2010
The illusion of corporate love ins
A friend of mine has been working for a large business services firm for nearly a year. A couple of months ago he attended their annual sales and marketing management love in at a top venue near Dublin.
Not usually as cynical as me, he didn’t really see the point this time. Although the business’ profits have fared well through the recession, this had been achieved through cutting investment in change projects. The spending freeze had become an excuse for doing nothing. Low cost and even zero cost projects had failed to get traction in a culture of inertia in middle management
However, he came back from Dublin a changed man. He insisted on telling me how the most intransigent of managers had committed to start change initiatives and agile project teams.
So what’s the big deal? Well, it all ground to halt within weeks. Everything’s back to business as usual. Every project has more reasons to abandon than continue.
Clearly the facilitators did the job that was asked of them. So how do we overcome the challenge of change blockers transforming off site into creators, just to return to their default state back at their desks?
I know the concept of establishing breakthrough itiatives isn’t new. There are lots of books by people far cleverer than me to tell us it makes sense; but I just haven’t seen it work.
I think we need more incrementalism.
Why not create the environment, platform processes, and culture for change to happen all the time. It’s not like we need to artificially create change is it. Change is happening to us all the time. Economic cycles, competition, disruptive technologies, game changing competition; major environmental occurrences aren’t breakthroughs we can plan for. So let’s get used to dealing with them. Let’s develop the ability of our organisations to be agile, and enable our teams to cope with every change, not just those imagined off site.
Not usually as cynical as me, he didn’t really see the point this time. Although the business’ profits have fared well through the recession, this had been achieved through cutting investment in change projects. The spending freeze had become an excuse for doing nothing. Low cost and even zero cost projects had failed to get traction in a culture of inertia in middle management
However, he came back from Dublin a changed man. He insisted on telling me how the most intransigent of managers had committed to start change initiatives and agile project teams.
So what’s the big deal? Well, it all ground to halt within weeks. Everything’s back to business as usual. Every project has more reasons to abandon than continue.
Clearly the facilitators did the job that was asked of them. So how do we overcome the challenge of change blockers transforming off site into creators, just to return to their default state back at their desks?
I know the concept of establishing breakthrough itiatives isn’t new. There are lots of books by people far cleverer than me to tell us it makes sense; but I just haven’t seen it work.
I think we need more incrementalism.
Why not create the environment, platform processes, and culture for change to happen all the time. It’s not like we need to artificially create change is it. Change is happening to us all the time. Economic cycles, competition, disruptive technologies, game changing competition; major environmental occurrences aren’t breakthroughs we can plan for. So let’s get used to dealing with them. Let’s develop the ability of our organisations to be agile, and enable our teams to cope with every change, not just those imagined off site.
05 July 2010
Fee fodder versus emotional labour
I attended a focus group last week to help one of the top five global consultancy firms develop their "Employment Value Proposition."
No matter how engaging their proposition, it is unlikely to attract me to work for them. But I was curious about the process, and as I’m naturally a bit gobby; it didn’t seem like a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
Most of the group were about to become second jobbers. A group of bright young things recruited during the milk round at their universities that have cut their teeth over the last 3 years on a graduate training programme with a large firm. A smaller group were well on their way to their third or fourth firm. They had over 10 years experience of time sheets, 60 hour weeks, utilisation targets and budget hotels in provincial towns.
Two distinct views on consultancy clients evolved.
The younger group of my fellow ‘focusers’ were passionate about the act of consulting. They described clients as the ‘key data source’ that should get out of the way when the consulting team are developing their solution. They put consultants on a par with investment bankers based on the importance of their decision making and superior knowledge, and without any sense of irony. (Sub-prime anybody?)
The ‘experienced’ group described their genuine interest in client’s domains and about building an emotional link with clients. They advocated empathy for the client’s desired outcomes and personal agendas
Very little differentiates the big consulting firms, hence the research. Each has had their public success and failures. They are derided by politicians, despite the public sector not being able to function without them. They fight for the same work in what is largly a zero sum gain market.
So why do they persist in recruiting graduates on the promise of becoming a master of the universe?
Consultants bring some subject matter expertise, but mostly they bring their own flavour of problem solving process. Both of which can be copied. Veteran ‘fee fodder’ consultants understand the emotional value of their work that adds real value to this. They are therefore personally successful, employable and more content on a day to day basis.
The first of the big 5 to embrace the ’emotional’ side of their work will attract and retain people that can build a real connection with clients from the get go. They will create better client outcomes, win more business and not need to ask old cynics like me, that would never work for them in the first place, how to brand their recruitment.
No matter how engaging their proposition, it is unlikely to attract me to work for them. But I was curious about the process, and as I’m naturally a bit gobby; it didn’t seem like a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
Most of the group were about to become second jobbers. A group of bright young things recruited during the milk round at their universities that have cut their teeth over the last 3 years on a graduate training programme with a large firm. A smaller group were well on their way to their third or fourth firm. They had over 10 years experience of time sheets, 60 hour weeks, utilisation targets and budget hotels in provincial towns.
Two distinct views on consultancy clients evolved.
The younger group of my fellow ‘focusers’ were passionate about the act of consulting. They described clients as the ‘key data source’ that should get out of the way when the consulting team are developing their solution. They put consultants on a par with investment bankers based on the importance of their decision making and superior knowledge, and without any sense of irony. (Sub-prime anybody?)
The ‘experienced’ group described their genuine interest in client’s domains and about building an emotional link with clients. They advocated empathy for the client’s desired outcomes and personal agendas
Very little differentiates the big consulting firms, hence the research. Each has had their public success and failures. They are derided by politicians, despite the public sector not being able to function without them. They fight for the same work in what is largly a zero sum gain market.
So why do they persist in recruiting graduates on the promise of becoming a master of the universe?
Consultants bring some subject matter expertise, but mostly they bring their own flavour of problem solving process. Both of which can be copied. Veteran ‘fee fodder’ consultants understand the emotional value of their work that adds real value to this. They are therefore personally successful, employable and more content on a day to day basis.
The first of the big 5 to embrace the ’emotional’ side of their work will attract and retain people that can build a real connection with clients from the get go. They will create better client outcomes, win more business and not need to ask old cynics like me, that would never work for them in the first place, how to brand their recruitment.
02 July 2010
Smoking bureaucracy...
Every organisation comes with its own bureaucracy, and with that comes form filling.
My first office job at the tender age of 19 was temping for an international bank in HR Administration. When I joined, they were still reeling from having their name changed from ‘personnel’ as it was seen as an un welcome Americanism in their eyes. We shared one networked PC with email between 12 of us, but we all had our own ash tray and adding machine on our desk.
For about 3 months, I happily processed season ticket loan applications. My proudest moment being when my boss agreed to use my design for a new form when it came to reprinting due to a brand redesign.
Today global organisations of the shape and size of that one are proud to have all these forms as digitised applications on the Intranet, linked to a monolith integrated back end Oracle type system for HR and Finance (still called accounts back in the day). But why wouldn’t you, we all have a networked PC on our desk and having anything resembling an ashtray is a firing offence, no matter how many breaks you take instead. So we submit a form and authorisation requests and permissions effortlessly fly between inboxes.
But digital form filling has created 2 problems for me:
1. Amending a form to reflect new requirements and requests is now a major change request nightmare. We don’t just change the form and print some more; databases and workflows have to updated. Most forms I seem to fill in now are not fit for purpose, and you need to be an expert in creative writing to explain what you really want in the character limited free text fields;
2. And this is the most important one, not taking the form to be signed. This used to be the opportunity to chat with the pretty girls in HR, the smart people in accounts or the curious people in IT. Most of all, it was the opportunity to interact with your boss. To chat about the holiday featured in the request for time off form and to build a relationship beyond an email.
Best of all, it was when you could to sit in their office and ponce one of their cigarettesfor a change.
My first office job at the tender age of 19 was temping for an international bank in HR Administration. When I joined, they were still reeling from having their name changed from ‘personnel’ as it was seen as an un welcome Americanism in their eyes. We shared one networked PC with email between 12 of us, but we all had our own ash tray and adding machine on our desk.
For about 3 months, I happily processed season ticket loan applications. My proudest moment being when my boss agreed to use my design for a new form when it came to reprinting due to a brand redesign.
Today global organisations of the shape and size of that one are proud to have all these forms as digitised applications on the Intranet, linked to a monolith integrated back end Oracle type system for HR and Finance (still called accounts back in the day). But why wouldn’t you, we all have a networked PC on our desk and having anything resembling an ashtray is a firing offence, no matter how many breaks you take instead. So we submit a form and authorisation requests and permissions effortlessly fly between inboxes.
But digital form filling has created 2 problems for me:
1. Amending a form to reflect new requirements and requests is now a major change request nightmare. We don’t just change the form and print some more; databases and workflows have to updated. Most forms I seem to fill in now are not fit for purpose, and you need to be an expert in creative writing to explain what you really want in the character limited free text fields;
2. And this is the most important one, not taking the form to be signed. This used to be the opportunity to chat with the pretty girls in HR, the smart people in accounts or the curious people in IT. Most of all, it was the opportunity to interact with your boss. To chat about the holiday featured in the request for time off form and to build a relationship beyond an email.
Best of all, it was when you could to sit in their office and ponce one of their cigarettesfor a change.
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