Strategic approach to HR in the recession

The recession is an opportunity for HR professionals to step and contribute strategically.  In the classical strategy paradigm, we begin by looking at the macro economic environment.  Then we look at the micro-environment - what affects us and our competitors.  Next, we establish which strategic factors HR influences directly. Finally, we drop down to our tactics.

Reach out beyond HR - think economics

HR Managers in large firms in today's business climate have to start at the very top of the strategic process.   We are on the cusp of the most dramatic shakeup in business conditions in 70 or 80 years.  And, unfortunately, we will be lucky if it is only a recession.

I picked up a very good video this morning explaining how the credit crunch came about.  It uses the example of a pyramid of champagne glasses.  One of the first practical things you can do, is keep this link to help people in your company understand why the credit crunch happened, and why it is so serious.

Think beyond defence.  Lead.

As I write, I feel like one of the gloom-and-doom merchants we are hearing in the media.  I don't feel the gloom-and-doom, as my previous posts on positive psychology and the best of Britain in this blog will show.

It does seem that business, and not just the banks, may have been dealing in classical pyramid schemes, and that major institutions, like the rating agencies, were utterly out of their depth.

But, we have another foundation to our society which is far more important than they.  I look to the creativity, the wit, the curiosity, and the plain initiative of the ordinary people of our country, and I look particularly to the spectactularly self-driven and honest Gen Y who are just coming into junior management positions.

Boomers and older Gen Xers should be showing clear leadership but I am not seeing a phalanx of senior executives coming together and providing a united front.  I am not hearing a clear cut strategy from politicians.  What I am seeing, or perhaps hearing as someone put it on the BBC, is a loud raspberry being blown at the bailout. The Icelandic prime minister talked of "each man for himself".

I think our role, as HR managers, is to reverse this attitude, and facilitate clear leadership in each and every one of our organizations.

So how do we support leadership in this climate?

This is what I would be doing.

a) Be in on the strategic meetings and facilitate full discussion.  Our job is to stop groupthink, and to keep the conversations grounded and positive.  Negative thought leads to tunnel vision.  Postive thought about collective action generates creativity and sustains morale.

b) Ask for clear commitments of what the company can guarantee employees in the worst case scenario.  People need a firm bedrock to push off against.

c) With or without these commitments, ask employees to engage in scenario planning on their own account.

I can hear the panic - employees think and talk?  Yes, this is the right time for employees to think and talk.

I would set up a closed social network on a platform like Ning, and open it up for employees to post videos and discuss ideas directly with each other.

By using a social media platform, the discussion is out in the open, and executives are able to monitor morale, and pick up ideas from the very smart Gen Yers who will use the network most.

Our role again is to facilitate:

Get Gen Y to teach Gen X and Boomers networking skills.

And moderate any uncouth language.

Net etiquette is pretty strong and some diplomatic coaching will smooth away any rough talk very quickly.

Is this too pink when we need strong task leadership?

Why will these actions help fill the leadership gap?  In a phrase, collective efficacy.  Self-efficacy predicts the staying power of individuals.  Collective efficacy predicts the capacity of a group to overcome adversity.

Collective efficacy is simply our belief in each other's competence.  Social networks reveal the strengths of individuals across the organization.  We get to know each other, beyond our immediate workgroup, and we begin to appreciate the depth of talent around us.  Experts begin to explain complex ideas.  Non-experts listen, and display talents in their own areas.  Dumbing up, I like to call it.

Above all, we tend to get that jaw-dropping experience of "I didn't know we are this good".  Such insight generates the energy for the extra mile, the extra idea, the extra five minutes of patience, and ultimately the thriving that we hadn't thought possible.

So how do we set up Ning?

It is easy (and free).  If you are unsure, or have never facilitated an online community before, there are experienced social media users the length and breadth of the UK.  For starters, contact SocialMediaMafia and ask them to direct you to a social media expert near you.  They will be happy to help.  This is the age and medium of the generous, the helpful, the connected.

And P.S.

If you are worried about talking about the economy and HR's role, please do feel free to talk to me too.  This is the worst economic crisis in UK in the last 70, years but other countries have been through this depth of shake-up on a local basis.  I've been here before.

Collective efficacy is possible, and we in HR, are the people to fill the leadership vacuum, both online and offline.

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اخیراً Ning که یک پلت فرم دیگر است اعلام کرده که از اپن سوشال پشتیبانی خواهد کرد. گوگل برای رقابت با فیس بوک و مای سپیس نیاز به پشتیبانی بوسیله ایجاد برنامه های تحت این پلت فرم است.

Tegelikkuses on asi ikka veidi keerulisem, kuna tarkvara on ikka võimalus, mitte lahendus. Sotsiaalse võrgustiku loob sisu. Kui sul midagi öelda ei ole, siis pole mõtet inimesi kokku kutsuda. Paljud vastavad, et aga sotsiaalses võrgustikus hakkavad inimesed ju ise sisu tootma! Võib-olla hakkavad, kuid siis ei pruugi see olla see sisu, mida sa seal näha tahaks. Ikka ise peab ka teemad, mõtted ja lahendused välja pakkuma.

Ma ei targuta siin ilma asjata. Asusin just oma esimest sotsiaalset võrgustikku looma. See on eksperiment, et kas ma saan hakkama. Kas suudan pakkuda nii palju sisu, et kasutajad inspireeruvad, hakkavad ise ka sisu tootma ja peavad sisu veel nii heaks, et tulevad keskkonda tagasi ning kutsuvad sõprugi. Saame näha.

http://turundus.ning.com/ on aadress, kutsun sinna turundusvaldkonna inimesi ning kes kutset soovib palun mailigu mulle või kirjutagu siia commentitesse. See kommjuuniti jääbki avalikkusele kinniseks, vaid kutsetega kohaks, kuna turundusinimesed on väga egotsentrilised ja tahavad omaette olla. Ma arvan.

PS. Hakkasin isegi kasutajaliidest eile servast tõlkima. Onju "Publish" on meie keeles "Tudish"? :)

The very first post I made to this blog was about my old friend Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace. We were in a band together in college and I really admire all that he’s been able to accomplish with his social network. He’s taking it into new territory and putting music at the forefront, which is his true passion as a veritable walking encyclopedia of arcane musical trivia (Ringo – throw me a banana!). Don’t ask.

So that’s why I’m concerned about MySpace and Facebook. Are they losing their cache? In a recent PC World article on the “10 Most Overrated Products” Facebook loses to Multiply.com and reporter Darren Gladstone quips that Facebook has “free applications of dubious value, plus scores of plug-ins and games that draw you deeper into the Facebook rabbit hole until you're spending hours a day befriending complete strangers with whom you have nothing in common beyond a shared love of Raisin Bran.”

And Mediaweek recently rated the Digital Hot List 2008, and MySpace wasn’t even listed. What’s going on? Is social media tanking? I don’t think so. What I think is happening is that more people are trying sites like Ning.com to build their own social media sites where they can grow their own communities on the Internet.

Haven’t heard of Ning? I read a brilliant article on Ning in Fast Company earlier this year and I began using the site. Basically, it enables anyone with minimal knowledge of website design to create an online social network. That network can be open to everyone or closed and open to members by invitation only. The level of customization is awesome. Post videos and still images, blog, chat in real time, or create forums – most of what you can do with Facebook or MySpace is available, but you are essentially creating your own Facebook or MySpace with Ning serving as the backbone.

Marketers who have tried and failed to leverage social networking sites should pay attention to Ning because it provides the tools (at free or very low cost) to create a community with shared interests online. And it’s very cool. If Tom can create an empire like MySpace, you can create YourSpace with Ning. Let me know if you've played around with Ning and how it's working for you.

Ma senza spingerci così oltre, proviamo a immaginarci come dovrebbe essere il social network ideale: se ce ne fosse uno soltanto, come lo vorremmo??

Per quel che mi riguarda il social network ideale sarebbe molto simile a una fusione di FACEBOOK e NING, cui aggiungerei poi un po' di caratteristiche: credo che facebook sia infatti un social network molto buono, ma che pecchi davvero tanto nella gestione dei gruppi, che sono una sua componente importante. Ognuno di noi è iscritto infatti a numerosi gruppi, ma quanto questi vengono seguiti??mi capita a volte di scrivere nella bacheca di un gruppo e ricevere risposta, chissà, due mesi dopo. Una gestione dei gruppi à la ning consentirebbe un uso intelligente di questo strumento e la possibilità di creare gruppi davvero interessanti, oltre che di ricevere una mail quando nuovi contenuti vengono aggiunti al gruppo, o di abbonarsi al feed!
Vista dal punto di vista di ning direi che la gestione delle community è davvero buona, ma sarebbe molto interessante poter interagire tra tutti gli utenti di ning attraverso un metaning, un social network principale.
Ed ecco che da questa fusione otterremmo secondo me un prodotto interessante: NINGBOOK?? mah, forse il nome è da rivedere :-)

Ma non basta: al mio social network ideale eliminerei le applicazioni, giochetti e test, o perlomeno lascerei la possibilità di scegliere se ricevere o meno inviti di questo tipo, e soprattutto darei la possibilità di personalizzare maggiormente il profilo, magari con delle caselle in cui consentire l'html, o con una scelta dei temi, e perché no con la possibilità di implementare al proprio profilo un blog. Inoltre aggiungerei la possibilità di iscriversi al feed, non soltanto dei gruppi ma anche di persone: feed per il proprio aggregatore ma anche integrabili nel proprio profilo. E' vero che già c'è in facebook il feed generale nella propria home e anche la possibilità di selezionare quali utenti si desidera seguire maggiormente e quali meno, ma è inevitabile perdersi degli aggiornamenti a meno che non si visitino periodicamente i profili cui si è più interessanti: tra l'altro facebook non è neppure integrabile in friendfeed, mentre il contrario è possibile.

Ecco dunque la mia idea di social network: qualcuno ha idee diverse??

p.s. vi consiglio di leggere un post davvero interessante sulla tassonomia degli utenti di social networks!

3% of Nings customers actually pay for premium services...

This is a good data point for all start-ups (including mine) that are contemplating the "Freemium" pricing model.  This pricing model is certainly the most popular on the web and allows a company to get a large customer base of free users to monetize with ads along with some subscription revenue from the power users.  I have heard some entrepreneurs state they plan to get 10-20% of their user base to pay for the premium features...but that is probably not going to happen.  Obviously this percentage depends on a lot of factors such as pricing, features, market and others, but I think the 3%  figure that Ning is reporting seems to be the ballpark for the premium component of the Freemium pricing model.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ning_500000_networks.php

500,000 networks is a big number...what is even more impressive is the fact that 65% of them are active.

Ormai il termine "web2.0" é diventato comune a molti internauti, se non a tutti. Anche i Social Network - Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, solo per citare i più celebri - sono entrati a far parte della vita di tutti i giorni. Ora, grazie ad un nuovo servizio, abbiamo la possibilità di creare il nostro Social Network personale. SocialGO, questo il nome, si pone quindi come concorrente di Ning. Che aspettate dunque: create la vostra community personale!

Via Maestroalberto

What does this say about the nature of technological development and its relationship to the economy? That technological developments breed innovation, and that innovation can produce economic benefits with demonstrable impacts on the bottom line. No one knows what the next Google will be, but if it is not being built now, then someone will probably start working on it in the near future. Don’t stop working on side projects and ideas that interest you, because those ideas not only might turn into brilliant products or services but also might turn into the economic catalyst that spurs our economy onward.

[video] The Seed by Gaschka on vimeo.com

EPICponyz growz! Thanks to a lot of emails asking for us to open up more to the public, we have done just that. Starting TODAY we have opened the "Interactive Department" of EPICponyz. Granted it doesn't seem like much now, but as EPICponyz branches out, it will get a lot bigger. So now your asking, what can you do in this "Interactive Department"? Well, all the answers to your questions are below.

Submit Pictures

With this new addition, you can now submit your very own pictures for EPICponyz.
All they have to be are pictures of Ponyz, and the font MUST BE IMPACT.
If your a little iffy and don't necessarily have a caption to put on the picture,
still, you can simply upload it to the Photos Section.
From there we will add one and give you credit.

Submit News to EPICponyz

Also now you can submit NEWS to EPICponyz. For example, we recently started the "Video of the Day" post.
If you have seen one that you think is worthy, simply go to the Forums Section and post it.
And if you have any content you want to show us, go for it. We're always on the lookout.

So there you have it, you asked for it, and now we bring it to you! Enjoy, and thank you for your continued support of EPICponyz.

http://particularbaptist.ning.com/

My name, picture and profile were out for the world to see (pre-privacy settings, of course) yet I separated my virtual identity from my “true” identity.

Interestingly enough, I wasn't the only one who felt this way. At that time, most of my peers believed in the social taboo, too---not because they didn’t have their own online profiles but because being a member of an online community was still something new for my generation.

I admit that many of us still carried the notion that online communities were for geeks and lowlifes who couldn’t establish real-life relationships.

But the funny thing is, we’re all geeks now.

MySpace and Facebook have long turned into everyday words and I’ve realized that hearing people mention these social network sites in real-life conversations no longer bother me. Why? Because everyone belongs to—or has the option to create—an online community nowadays.

Well, mostly everyone. There are still a select few (two? three?) people who haven’t conformed to the digital norm.

But that’s fine with me, just as long as I’m in the majority.

Visit http://ilovemybangladesh.ning.com for bangladeshi lovers social network created by me.

Marc Andreessen has joined eBay’s board of directors, effective immediately.

Andreessen is most noted for co-founding Opsware and Netscape, and served as AOL’s CTO immediately following its acquisition of Netscape. His current venture is Ning, a new consumer Internet company founded in 2004 that is focused on building a next-gen platform for social networking. Rather than having its users join one all-encompassing social network, Ning encourages and allows users to create their own social networks for anything they’re passionate about. In four years, more than 480,000 social networks have been created by users on Ning.

I had a chance to meet Marc briefly as part of the OpenSocial launch @ Google last year.  There is no question in my mind that eBay will benefit from having his perspective on the board given their current challenges.

Some interesting facts & links:

• Marc has one of the best blogs out there, bar none.  If you don't read it, you should.
• Marc has a fairly strong LinkedIn profile.
• Mac is the Co-Founder & Chairman of Ning, which is the wide-open, community platform for building social networks.

In particular, I'm going to flag a post I wrote over a year ago about how eBay missed its opportunity to buy Ning cheaply, and why that acquisition would have made sense.  I caught some flack for that last summer... feeling at least partially vindicated here.

For example, I am a member of New Zealand Recruitment 2.0 which is for New Zealanders who want to discuss innovations in Recruitment.

Today I found a clever and easy way to of using Ning as a specialist Job Board combined with a Social Network Wirelessjobs

There is a blog, events listing, industry news, links to LinkedIn and Facebook. Having used Ning (and I am not a developer), I know that a Ning network could be easily set up by somebody with no programming skills.

On the Wireless Jobs site there is also a job board that is powered by StandOutJobs. Standout Jobs is free HR software for building your own career web site, marketing jobs and managing candidates through the hiring process. As far as I am concerned, if Kevin Wheeler is endorsing it, this is a good thing.

"One of the best of the tools [for building recruiting websites] is provided by Standout Jobs." Kevin Wheeler

It looks perfect for New Zealand companies. Here are a few examples.

Freshbooks

Curve Dental

Technorati

And here is one from an Australian community organisation

TRCare

SocialLight is featured as a Case Study on Stand OutJobs.

Does this sound like your company?

"a technology startup with less than 10 employees. The company has an exciting workplace, but limited resources for hiring and staffing programs or recruiters.

Since its creation, Socialight used a variety of tools to find employees, including personal and professional networking, Craigslist, targeted technology forums, and university career sites.

These options varied in terms of the number and quality of job candidates they could reach. But across the board, they failed to effectively brand Socialight as a desirable employer, and empower the company with the tools and flexibility to stand out in a competitive recruiting environment.

Socialight recognized that it needed a more effective way to develop its employer brand, attract job candidates, including “passive” job seekers exploring their options, promote a positive candidate experience, and manage applicants more efficiently through the hiring process. Rather than wait until conditions permitted the company to design its own career portal, Socialight started using StandoutJobs, which enabled it to showcase its culture and team, advertise open positions, and input job applicants into the hiring process.

According to Socialight CEO Dan Melinger, the career site was easy to create: “Just a couple of hours’ work and we were presentable to the world. It was important to us that we could launch the career site quickly, but also make sure that we were doing a great job of representing Socialight as the fantastic and exciting work environment it is. Standing out in a crowded job market isn’t easy, but we’re empowered more than ever now with Standout Jobs"

Does your company hire people in a specialist area that would benefit from a professional group/job board?

I would love to hear from you if you are interested in working with these products for your company in New Zealand

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Well then. What happened to that initial burst? Reality set in--that's what happened. I was lacking something--something to ingnite those fires of passion that the most dedicated bloggers have in order to maintain their regular presnce on the web. I discovered through reading the books of Michael Fullanthat there were some necessary preconditions that I needed to go through. One of those was defining purpose--what is my purpose for maintaining a regular blog. Is it to rant and rave, to inform others, to begin a commentary on observations, to seek further engagemnent with others in the hope that I will inspire discussion and much more? 

I am a little clearer on my purpose. For this blog I want to share my observations of the recent Learning 2.008in  Shanghai. Last year's Web 2.0 conference was a stunner. I was really challenged to think about my assumptions, my levels of comfort with technology, to define my values and more importantly to further understand my pedagogical approach to teaching. I left in awe and with a sense of urgency--I needed a wake up call and needed to kick my complacent attitude about technology in the classroom into touch.

So it was with a high level of expectation that I approached this conference again. I built myself up and my teaching colleagues. What i wanted was next steps--after my initial burst of enthusiasm I wanted to know what was next, where's it all heading--I needed that wow factor again. I was disappointed. From the opening Thursday meet and greet and introduction of the presenters to the bad choice of workshops that I went to-I left feeling let down. It was the same old tools, the same old way in which to apply them, the same old dichotomy. I just didn't connect with any of it.

So back to the drawing board. What was it that I could take from this conference? It would be a shame that with the world wide web at my disposal that I need to find inspiration and purpose only from this conference. My reflections on the confernce have helped me to shape further direction in order to engage with the web. But it was the conversations that I also had with people new to the range of tools that were on offer and were being explained that made me realise that I could assist others in the journey of discovery in using technology in the classroom. These colleagues were overwhelmed at the range of tools and applications on offer. The life of a teacher is a very busy one and one in which we do not devote enough time or discourse in defining purpose, offering clarity and a sense that if all that one does is dip their toe into the technology pool, then at least they have embarked on a journey and that is one that needs to be celebrated.

So as I come to the end of my blog, I have decided to start off again in engaging with clearer purpose, defining my presence on the web with more purpose and a clearer understanding that change is a long process and one that renews culture in classrooms in the way that we seek to make sense of technology, how it is applied and adopted and how momentum can be maintained.  I am going to build a wiki and a ning that I will call the Adoption Curve.

So if anything came out of the learning 2.008 confernce in Shanghai it was this: needing to be inspired and needing my purpose defined by others will always leave me making excuses about not being able to adopt technology and to keep up with the ver changing world that our children engage with and are in on a daily basis.

I heard about this at PSLA last year, but hadn't explored it since.  It just got pushed back into the back of my mind as one of those "I'll get to it someday" things to do.  This school year, however, I've been getting into grant-writing a lot more.  I've written an LSTA grant proposal, as well as an "in-house" proposal for my district's education foundation.  All in all, I'm thinking this site is PERFECT for a beginning grant-writer like myself.  It's easy enough to set up my account, and it's almost painless to write a proposal.  The downside is for me is that DonorsChoose.org posts my district's poverty rate, which is very low (not complaining, mind you).  If I'm competing for someone's donation with a school with a higher poverty rate, I doubt I stand a chance.  Of course, that school probably needs the money more than I do, but still...makes funding a project in a "wealthy" district that much more difficult.

On a related note, how cool would it be for a "wealthier" district to sponsor another district's project that is in need of a little more financial help...maybe a good PTO project to suggest.

TeacherLibrarian Ning

I've been a member of this Ning for over a year now, and when it's not blocked,  I can usually find good information and discussions about relevant topics.  The only caveat for me is keeping up.  I don't sign in very often, and I know I should.  Still...the sheer volume of participants is fantastic!  What a wonderful variety of opinions, ideas, and thoughts!

Travel IQ

IQ = 92, or 174,134 points up to Level 6.  This is so much fun!!!  I'm not bad, except the African and Middle Eastern countries always get me.