The law of the few?

Today, I spent the afternoon writing a letter of recommendation for a long-time friend and colleague. One of her greatest strengths is her ability to network with people. She is the most connected person I've ever met. This skill, which I've been amazed to witness over the years, is very difficult to effectively articulate in a reference. As I was thinking about it, I began considering the relative differences between old-fashioned networking, and the on-line veresion now occurring through facebook, linked-in, and twitter.

In the book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the key elements necessary for social change. Tipping points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable". One of the key elements is the involvement of certain types of people with unique social skills who keep the momentum going. He references "the law of the few" - where 80% of the effort will be done by 20% of the participants. These "few" he describes in three categories as:

Connectors - people who "link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together. " Gladwell attributes the social success of Connectors to something intrinsic to their personality. My friend is most definitely a Connector.

Mavens- "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information." According to Gladwell, Mavens start "word-of-mouth epidemics" due to their knowledge, social skills, and ability to communicate.

Salesmen - those charismatic few with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them.

Since these days I primarily think of social networking within the context of my HRIS class, I imagine that Gladwell's "few" are the driving force behind advances in social collaboration and HRM. They are the ones to naturally be in the forefront of use, knowledge, and persuasion.

This leads me to wonder.....Are the people actively engaged in on-line social networks those who tend to be socially connected out in the world anyway? Or, does the new technology allow people who aren't natural networkers to be more active that they would otherwise? I know that we are changing the nature of interactions, but are people changing too? I don't have any answers, but I'm intrigued by the questions. I'd be interested to learn what others think about this.

Twitterpated

I experienced my first tweet chat last night and it was an interesting experience for me. I definitely felt like the shy kid in the back of the classroom again! I'm still getting used to the lingo used in twitter so I didn't always get it, but it was interesting to lurk. I am going to go back and check out some of the links that other people provided; looked like some interesting information to investigate. Bravo to my many classmates who jumped right in and participated!

I got stuck at work late yesterday afternoon so I had to be "in class" at the office. It was really distracting for me (people kept interrupting me). I misread a couple of the quiz questions (so much for multi-tasking!) which bummed me out. But, I learned something interesting about my co-workers.....As people noticed that I was on twitter, I got a lot of negative feedback. I was very surprised that every college student that wandered through was not active in the Twitter world. I thought everyone was doing it! It helped me better understand the resistance I've gotten to the idea of using yammer as an alternative to e-mail. I honestly thought it would be an easy sell. People seem to think that facebook, e-mail & IM are enough right now. But I'll keep working on my colleagues. We are hiring a new communications coordinator next week, so hopefully s/he will be excited by the idea of expanding our collaborative capabilities. We'll see.

Strategic Planning.....Tour de France

I'm proud to report that I was on the relative forefront of social networking technology during the brainstorming sessions of my organization's annual strategic planning retreat last Thursday. We were discussing ways in which to expand recruitment efforts to increase the diversity of our student population and to better orient new members into the residential communities as soon as possible. While admittedly we are dealing with our client base of college students, some of the networking strategies that we've talked about to better connect and communicate with employees can also be utilized here. Let's look at modeling some of aspects of new member orientation from employee on-boarding strategies (productive members? productive employees? similar). Let's use the web as a means of getting our current members to connect with potential new members (u-tube, blogs). Want to increase feedback mechanisms from our current membership? (Rypple, blogs). My younger colleagues were impressed that I was willing to make these suggestions. Of course, the next step for me is to be help actually implement these things. At least I see them as viable options.

On a "what do you do in your free time" note, I'm not a big July 4th celebrant; my favorite parts of July are my daughter's birthday (21 in a week!!) and the annual Tour de France, which began on Saturday. When I was immersing myself in Tour details, I came across an article about how the riders use Web 2.0 technology. There are web-based coaching tools (such as Ridefast.com) that allow an athlete to track their training progress and communicate with their coaches. The writer noted that Lance Armstrong trains primarily in Europe or in Texas, but his coach lives and works in Colorado. They do most of their communication through Web & e-mail. They can both use the web-based training program at different locations in order to share instant feedback. I also read that a couple of stages of the Tour are to be done this year without the normal communication devices which allow the rider to communicate with their teams while out on the road (going retro). It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference in riders' tactics. Of course, I'm happy the web provides so much information about the race and the riders throughout the two-week event. Maybe some day I'll be able to go to France and watch it first-hand.....Until then, at least I have tivo and the web.

System of Record

I am suffering from serious information overload this week. There have been so many interesting posts and links related to #hrst that it's hard to know what to focus on. In the interest of attempting coherence in this post, I'm going to just write a quick blog about Naomi Bloom's white paper, System of Record.

Ms. Bloom raised what has long been a question to me: how to clearly differentiate strategic HR from administrative HR processes. It always sounds like it should be easy, but it isn't always that clear cut in my mind. In my experience, the administrative components are the building blocks that allow for the higher-level management processes to take place. I appreciated her definition of strategic HRM as specific data, processes and business rules that increase the degree to which the organization's mission is accomplished by improving the performance of individuals and groups. When presented in this manner, it makes that effectively leveraging the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and other characteristics (KSOACs) should be the center of strategic HRM.

The concept of integrated IT systems that support both the administrative and strategic functions will undoubtedly be the wave of the future, once developed and launched. I imagine that these will be SaaS-delivered systems, as Ms. Bloom suggests, because this seems to be the way things are moving in general with technology. The benefit I see in SaaS systems is what I think of as "passive improvements" on the part of the user. If the system is constantly upgraded for all users whenever upgrades are made in the system by the service provider, then your organization never falls behind technologically (or at least with the software). I understand from other articles that not all systems that are billed as SaaS actually perform in this manner. But, I think it is something people will come to expect and rely upon. But that's another post for another day.

Musings on Projects

I've been giving a lot of thought to potential processes I could use as the core of my final project for class. I definitely appreciated Jun's comment about needing to clearly identify the problem before considering technology as the solution. There have been more instances than I can count where whiz-kid college students (our member base) have volunteered in our office doing a function that they decided they could computerize for us. In some instances, the projects have been spectacular failures, while others were well-executed successes. I have learned that the key ingredient to a successful process has been a programmer who truly listens to the needs of the customer. Where projects have failed, the programmer has made critically flawed assumptions about the business needs that drive the process. They thought that what they saw on the surface was all there was to it. Where projects have succeeded, the programmer has been willing to commit significant lead-time into asking questions about the underlying processes.

As Jun was describing the project management steps in class last week, I was relieved to learn that I generally perform those steps when working on a project, even though I've never really thought of the process in such a systematic way before. I've just been winging it, but in a way that was common sense to me -- think things through, create something meaningful, "sell it" to the decision-makers, and implement it successfully.

So, how does this affect my thinking about my project? I'm hoping to generate a project concept that will improve a business process I already perform on the job. As I've mentioned previously (probably several times at this point), my organization's HR functions are not supported by HRIS. This means I have many business processes that could benefit from some IT solutions. I have a couple of ideas in mind currently: systematizing our current employee/volunteer application process; integrating record-keeping related to wages & bonuses; or creating a wiki-type HR resource for employees. Improving any one of these processes will not only save me time, but will also make information more accessible to all employees.

Community Building and The Machine

I've been on vacation the past two weeks, well, just because.... I've spent a lot of time taking care of family business, visiting friends I haven't hung out with in awhile, and I've actually felt pretty busy. Today was the day I gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted. Mandatory downtime, so to speak. And how did I spend it? Surfing the web. For class. Voluntarily.

I am still absolutely blown away by the "cyber-revolution" as CNN calls the current situation in Iran. It's not just what's going on to protest the election; it's the manner in which the information coming out of the country has gone viral. It is an awesome (in the true meaning of the word) spectacle to behold. Go Twitter!

I watched the YouTube video, "The machine is us/ing us" and was fascinated by it. I searched for its creator, Mike Wesch, and found an hour-long presentation he did that discusses the aftermath of the video and the digital ethnography work he's doing at Kansas State onYouTube. Here is the link if anyone else is interested: http://mediatedcultures.net/youtube.htm

I was a social psychology major in college, and I'm specifically interested in group dynamics. My interests align with cultural anthropology, and I often enjoy digging deeper into the "why" of "why do people do these things?" His presentation helped me better understand the "why" of the YouTube phenomenon.

Wesch says he views media as mediating human relations, and that changes in media reflect changes in human relations. YouTube, and I would suggest other methods of networking on-line as well, are ways to connect in a world where community is otherwise in decline. He states that our way of life has become individualized, independent, and commercialized, but that we actually desire the inverse: community, relationships, and authenticity. He calls this a cultural inversion.

I realize that these are broader context issues and aren't HR specific. But, I think how we work reflects broader social issues. If HR folks pay attention to how culture is shifting around us, we can stay ahead of the curve where human/employee relations are concerned. People truly do want to feel connected and want to feel they are part of a community. This is where I get back on topic and try to relate this to Human Resources. If HRIS can use technology to further enhance the sense of work communities, then it will be a very beneficial enhancement. I'm excited about what I've learned about Web 2.0 technology and its potential to bring people together. I can see the HRIS potential conceptually (remember we have no HRIS where I work) and I'm interested in learning more about the reality as our class progresses.

Oh, and I put everyone's blogs on Google Reader today (great job, everyone; fun to read!)

Class discussions create great conversation starters!

An immediate benefit from this HRIS class is that I feel slightly more comfortable discussing social networking than I did a month ago.

I had lunch with a former co-worker (and friend, of course) yesterday who now works for Google in Mountain View. (I proudly wore my Google guest badge all day. It felt as though I'd entered the DisneyWorld of IT, but that's another story.) I was able to at least spice up my contributions to the IT portion of our conversation with snippets about Twitter, Yammer (which he hadn't heard of), and blogs. I'm really fascinated with Yammer as a potential communication channel for my organization, which houses 1250 college students in 20 different locations around campus. We currently grapple with ways of getting important bits of information out to our house level managers in a timely manner. We all have company e-mail addresses, so Yammer could be a way to send out protected info in short bursts that students might actually read.

I did a little research on Yammer last night after I got home. As we talked about in class, Yammer aims to bring the types of technologies that are popular with consumers into the workplace. "People get to use great consumer internet sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Geni , to communicate in their personal lives. Then, when they get to the office, all the software is antiquated and hard to use -- that doesn't make sense. We want to do something about that," said Yammer founder, David Sacks. Yammer claims it can increase communication while reducing email. Sounds just like what we need at work.

Last time we got together, my friend introduced me to the concept of "The Cloud", a term I'd never heard before. Basically, the Cloud refers to the way new technology allows us all to store, access and share information through the web, instead of on our hard drives. So, whenever I check my e-mail on Google, or you post photos on Facebook , we're using the cloud. To quote Google, "Everyone has their own space in the cloud." He asked me if we'd talked about it in class yet. We haven't, but I bet we will...

Anyone familiar with the newly developing Google Wave? It reminded me of our discussion in class about how social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter may eclipse e-mail. The Wave sounds like a way to create the ultimate one stop site for all your on-line social (and even business?) communication. I wonder how it might be useful in business and/or HR?

Here's a link that provides some details about Google Wave, if you are interested:
http://tinyurl.com/mmmtmv.

Our class discussions have made some great next day conversations for me. All of my friends and co-workers laugh when I tell them I'm blogging and tweeting as class assignments. Even my kids (ages 16 & 20) don't use twitter (yet), so for once I'm not behind the times. It make me think, OK, at least I can sort of keep up. Thanks, Jun (and class) for teaching this old dog some new tricks!