HR

The mutuality of networks

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Relationships have to be two-way to be meaningful, otherwise they aren’t a relationship. We need to both give and receive for the connection to be real, for the connection to be purposeful. I’m wary of posting anything that might sound like a diatribe on social media, there other people better qualified in diatribes than I am, but there seems to me to be a disconnect developing between the online and offline approaches to people’s networks.

I’m very lucky to have a close group of neighbours and if one of us is away, another will step in to check the mail, feed an animal or just make sure that everything is ok.  But it is a shared commitment that we all have, unspoken, unrequested, bit critically important to the living breathing community that we have become.  If one neighbour were to constantly be asking for help, but never providing then unless they had some specific reason I’m certain that after a period of time it would become awkward.

Likewise, the business  people who I know in and out of my business also have this mutuality of commitment at the base of their relationships with me.  If I need something, I can call on my network and they will, if they can, come to my assistance.  And of course, I will come to their’s too if it is within my power.  The phrase “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is often seen in a dim light, but in reality this is at the basis of everything that we do.  It doesn’t have to be now, it doesn’t have to be tomorrow but I’d like to believe that people are there for me.

I had a conversation with Jon Ingham last week about a subject not a million miles away from this.  We don’t hold the same views on influence and connectivity, but we share a lot of overlapping thoughts, opinions and beliefs.  In an online world it is easy to confuse “connections” with connection.  We can have a gazillion followers, or a bazillion “friends” (ok so I made that word up) but the quality of this interface is something that is a lot harder to get at, to measure, to understand. I’m quite happy to connect on LinkedIn with people who I know, know of, or have met.  Likewise I am happy to recommend people who I genuinely WOULD recommend.  Less so those people who wish to do so because I work in HR and they feel that there might be some benefit for them.

But isn’t that a bit…..selfish? If I can help someone, then shouldn’t I try to do so?

Well yes, and no.  I’d like to think that over time, I’ve been helpful to people who I’ve met online. Can I write this? Can I speak at that? Would I have a look at this and tell them what I think? Of course.  The difference is that these people have interacted with me beforehand and I have a belief that if I were to need something in the future, they would reciprocate.  I haven’t “got” anything from them, other than the time of day and a bit of a chat about XY and Z, but the intention in approaching wasn’t about what they could get, that came later.

But giving can be more than acts, it can be content and thought, it can be support and advice.  I’m open to friend requests on Facebook or follower on Twitter (haven’t quite got my head around Google+ yet which seems a bit of a free for all) but at the same time as I hope I contribute to a conversation, I look to others to do so too.  If you follow 11 people and have a thousand followers, you are going to be in transmit mode constantly (I saw a senior Head of Resourcing with this sort of profile the other day and thought…no thank you).

I guess where I’m getting to, what I’m starting to think is that there needs to be some level of value. And value isn’t a number, but more a sense, a feeling an emotion. It isn’t about frequency, I have some great friends and contacts that I speak to only time to time, but I know that should I ever need anything, they would be there.  Networks, relationships, communities are all about mutuality, not just of purpose, but of contribution.

Offline and online should be no different in that respect.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple

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With all the explosive power of a damp squib, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee came and went.  Of course there was a lot of attention and a lot of talk and a lot of commentary, but the morning after are we really any better off or more informed? Are we really any closer to understanding what happened at the News of the World?

The reason that the committee was interviewing Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks is because of the serious actions that seemingly took place at the News of the World and a need and desire to understand what went wrong.  Yet from a lot of the online commentary yesterday you would be forgiven for thinking that this was more about trying to get one over and humiliate an individual media mogul, than any exploration of truth.  If you haven’t seen the witch’s scene (below) from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – it was pretty reminiscent.

In the end, what we got was a relative plausible story from the Murdoch family about how their business was run (personally I think Brooks was less convincing).  I know saying this won’t make me the most popular with many, but anyone who has actually worked in a large multi national conglomerate will know that there is an absolute requirement to devolve power and responsibility to people within the organisational structure. It is also worth pausing for thought here at the number of HR commentators that talk about devolution of responsibility and empowerment as being positive attributes – until it involves someone who they politically or morally dislike when it becomes a character flaw.

What we didn’t get was any further insight into the events that took place or indeed any revelations that would help us to better understand.  Apart from one shameful incident with an intruder and a foam pie, there was little to talk about. And in truth they were the only one to land a blow and the foam had more substance than anything else to come out of the MPs’ questioning (sorry all you Tom Watson fanboys – but he didn’t get anywhere).

As I’ve said many times before, organisations are complex and intricate.  If we genuinely want to understand the reasons behind the issues at the News of the World – to then help us understand what is also probably going on at other newspapers too and how to prevent it – then we need to take off the blinkers of preconception and start to think about how large organisations work, how cultures develop and the balance between control and leadership.  As a profession HR is perhaps best placed to lead some of this thinking.  We should be talking about the issues that really matter and considering how the insight that we have from working in businesses, might shed some light on the goings on at the News of the World.

It might be helpful, it might be developmental  and it would certainly be more productive than a peasant mass screaming for a hanging.

Unconscious immunity

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I can remember at some point in my childhood, my brother and I were having a pointless argument over a pointless topic in only the way that loving siblings can. I can’t remember the specifics, there were far too many brotherly tiffs to record them all, but I know that he was teasing me over something that I had tried to do and failed badly at. And my mother said,

“Those who never try, never fail”

Those who never try….never fail.  Ok so this was said as a rebuke to a 9-year-old evil tempered older brother. But some 30 years or so later I was sat in the US thinking about the future of HR and why we seem incapable as a profession of shaking off the shackles of mainstream perception and the words start to take on a separate but equally  valid meaning.

So many of us out there in the profession are seeking some sort of unconscious immunity.  If we say nothing outside of “the box”, then there is no chance that we will be ridiculed.  If we keep our counsel on subjects that are out of the strictly defined “people agenda” then we will never look stupid. If we don’t talk and stay silent, then we might not look stupid and might raise our credibility.

Of course, when you read this – like me – you’ll think this is a nonsense.  It makes no sense right?  Why would not saying something be more likely to improve your credibility than saying something? But then you are reading this from a rational objective and not an emotional one. And the way that we interact in business and express our views is, in my opinion, more based on the latter than the former.

Saying nothing is a seemingly sure bet.  If you say nothing, you will seldom be wrong. The view on the monthly financial report, the question on the marketing plan, the point on the supply chain strategy that just doesn’t sit right.  Raising them…..well you could be totally wrong and make yourself a laughing-stock. But not raising them………?

Don’t get me wrong, I can be guilty of this myself. Sitting in a meeting and thinking “that doesn’t make sense” but saying absolutely nothing. Not always, but sometimes. And I need to challenge myself to break this habit.  You don’t change anything by staying silent, you change by speaking out.

Very little grows in the shadows, it grows in the glare of the midday sun.  You put yourself out there and of course there is the risk that you may just get something wrong. But let he who is without asking a daft question, throw the first stone.  And you never know, once in a while, you might say something that really changes the game.

Recruiters: Stop playing God

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Sometimes it is the small things that remind you of a bigger issue.  I was in my hotel room in Berlin on Wednesday night when I saw a tweet from Katie McNab, Recruiter for PepsiCo about women who use their partner’s email addresses on job applications. In her words,

“It makes them look like children who can’t be trusted with their own comms”

We had a bit of back and forth over the subject and I think it is fair to say that there was little or no common ground (you can see some of the conversation here).  Katie was firm to her view that this was “inappropriate” and given that she is a recruiter, speaks at conferences and well regarded, I guess I have to bow to her superior knowledge – again in her words,

“placing judgment on people is part of the job”

and according to Katie, I was in the minority (although looking through the timeline there was only one person who agreed and one who didn’t – which is a kind of soviet democracy!).

But it has been niggling away at me. I did a little interview with DriveThru HR where we talked about the skills gaps that we are facing in the global economy.  Manpower, BCG and the CIPD have recently reported that managers were finding it more difficult to attract the right talent.  Good candidates are staying put and have a world of opportunities at their feet should they wish to move. Put simply, recruiting “talent” is going to get harder.

If you listened to the twittersphere and blogosphere you’d understandably be mistaken for believing that the answer is to “go social” and of course that is an element of changing attraction strategies.  But it seems to me we also need to challenge some of the institutional slothfulness of in-house recruiters. Katie is right, we all make assumptions about people, that is human, but we need to be challenging these and minimising them – not celebrating them in public.

Recruitment isn’t about judging people, it is about discovering people.

And recruiters need to stop playing God.

As well as being quasi-discriminatory (although I am sure not in intent) diminishing an application because of a candidate’s CHOSEN means of communication is either naïve, arrogant or idiotic in the extreme – I really can’t decide which.  There is absolutely no legal, morale, organisational or rational argument behind doing so. There could be a million reasons that an individual chooses to include a partner’s email on an application but that is their choice.

Increasingly we will need to be searching for talent, lifting up rocks, thinking creatively about how we bring people in, how we train them, how we help them to meet the requirements of the job and leave our own prejudices and judgments at the door.  The good companies and recruiters will get this and make a name or career for themselves. The bad ones? Well they’ll keep talking the talk in public, but failing to walk the walk where it really matters.

Which, let’s be honest, is no bad thing really.

It just makes it easier for the rest of us.