Above and Beyond KM

Enterprise 2.0 finally has a fight song.

While reading Andrew McAfee’s discussion of the key criteria by which to judge whether a collaboration software deployment meets the requirements of E2.0 and Alexander van Elsa’s post on how old-fashioned business models are holding back Web 2.0,  I found myself thinking about the importance of user independence, as well as the related importance of management, IT, and knowledge management trusting their users, removing the safety wheels, and letting their colleagues work with minimal constraints.  And that’s when I remembered a song that really should be the E2.0 fight song:  “If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free.”

For those of us who manage employees and systems in risk-focused businesses, this level of freedom can be downright terrifying.  Over time, many managers have come to believe that unless employees are severely constrained, they will be a danger to themselves and the organization.  If that really is true, don’t we need to take a closer look at our recruiting practices and internal training methods?  Clearly, they are deficient.

You can find an interesting analogy in child-rearing.  There are few of us who would let a toddler play with matches.   However, there comes a day when you do need to teach a young person how to use matches safely.  And then, you leave them to it.  There may be the occasional burn, but most of us do master this task.  And so it is with social media tools.  We definitely do need to provide training on responsible use and reasonable expectations, but after that, leave users free to explore and create.  It’s only when you lift the stifling weight of anxiety and control that you discover just how creative your colleagues can be.  And that’s when the power of social media tools finally becomes evident to all.

If you’d like to see a video of a great live performance of the E2.0 Fight Song, here’s your link: Sting: If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free

[Photo Credit:  Creativity + Timothy K Hamilton, Creative Commons license]

Do you know where you’re going to?* That’s the critical question Mark Gould asks in his recent post on social media, in which he makes the fair point that there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all social media strategy. Each person and each organization has to figure it out for themselves. And it all begins with knowing what you’re trying to achieve. Then you choose the tools that will get you to your goal.

That said, I know folks are always looking for the silver bullet, the one sure-fire way of achieving success. Putting to one side the fact that I don’t know how you define success, let me make a suggestion: Go where the conversation is. In the brief time I’ve been using social media tools, I’ve been struck by how well they facilitate conversations that cut across status, age and geography. Above all, I’ve been impressed by the richness of those conversations. But don’t be fooled by the fact that they can be brief, casual and, on occasion, banal. The reality is that these online conversations build relationships, and those relationships enrich your life. In fact, they can even be profitable in your professional life.

There was a time when the critical business conversations happened on the golf course or in particular private clubs. Increasingly, they are happening online. So if you want to participate, find a social media tool that works for you** and then use it to go where the conversation is.

[*When I first saw the blog title, "Do You Know Where You're Going To?" I thought Mark was joining me in my series of blog posts based on popular songs. Unfortunately, it was not the case. However, for those of you who don't mind a trip down memory lane, here's the song I had in mind.]

[**And, for those of you who have read this far, here's a small bit of advice: try using Twitter for three weeks and then let me know what you think. There are great conversations to be enjoyed there. If you wish, you can find me on Twitter using the tag @VMaryAbraham.]

For those of my readers who were secretly hoping that I’d lose interest over the weekend in my current fascination with popular music and management, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I was getting ready to stop and then I discovered that Billy Joel is not only a philosopher, but a pragmatic one. His song, Just the Way You Are, is viewed by the more romantic among us as an extraordinary statement of the complete acceptance many hope to find in a relationship. For those of us more pragmatically minded, we realize that he is just stating the obvious: it’s really hard to get a person to change — so you might as well get along with what you’ve got.

While optimism and a deep belief in the perfectibility of humankind are an important part of the culture of the United States, it would be foolish to base a knowledge management department or KM program solely on the hope that folks will change. There are some fundamental elements of human nature that simply can’t be undone, although they may be tweaked around the edges. For law firm knowledge managers, understanding the basic personality type of lawyers is an important prerequisite to organizing a law firm knowledge management program that has a prayer of succeeding. For all knowledge managers, understanding the patterns of behavior in your employees and users will allow you to be much more effective.

So, let’s return to the prior discussions about the importance of recruiting the right people to your team, really knowing the people who work with you (their values, strengths and weaknesses), and then deploying them strategically so that they achieve their highest and best. If we take Billy Joel’s song to heart, getting the recruiting right is critical. By hiring people who have the right values for your team and demonstrate the ability to think critically, work creatively, learn and grow, you free yourself to pursue an ambitious knowledge management program without having to waste precious time in the nearly futile task of trying to change their fundamentals.

Understand early who they are and then take them “just the way they are.”

I really didn’t intend to write a series on management skills and popular songs but, after yesterday’s reference to “Love the One You’re With“ by Crosby, Stills & Nash, here we are today with staffing issues again and Paul Simon’s classic “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”*

Two stories this week from senior managers I know made me think again about the responsibilities of managers with respect to their staff. In the first case, the manager was a senior executive in a financial firm. He said he was struggling with what to do with certain members of his staff who “would never meet their career objectives.” The problem was that while he might have fired them in better economic times, secure in the knowledge that they could most likely find work in a less challenging firm, he was equally sure that these folks would not be able to find work easily given current economic conditions. Add to that the fact that his firm has a strong culture that emphasizes the “firm as family” and you have a difficult managerial challenge.

The second story comes from a manager who felt that his staff was stretched, exhausted and needed assistance. However, when he made his request for additional staffing, he was told that his company was in a cost-cutting mode and there could not be any additions to headcount in his department.

What’s a manager to do?

When assessing how well your staff members are performing and whether they are able to operate at their highest and best level, consider your role as manager. Two qualities that set an excellent manager apart from the herd are (i) the ability to understand what talents and abilities each member of staff has and (ii) the ability to provide a framework that allows that staff member to utilize those talents and abilities to the utmost degree to the benefit of the firm. Adherents of the strengths-based approach to staffing and management will tell you that encouraging folks to build on their strengths and successes rather than focusing primarily on their shortfalls inevitably results in higher performance for the group overall.

In the case of the manager with the under performing staff member, consider whether they are not meeting expectations because you’ve set the wrong expectations. In other words, is their under performance because they haven’t been given the opportunity to set goals and work in an area in which they have demonstrated talents and abilities? (E.g., I can practice 8 hours each day with all the determination in the world, but because I don’t have the necessary innate ability, I will never play baseball as well as Derek Jeter. If recruited to the Yankees, I would never “meet my career goals.”) In the case of the second manager with the exhausted staff, consider how much effort your existing staff members must expend to get things done. Are they working in their areas of strength or struggling in areas for which they are ill-equipped. Asking your staff to do things for which they don’t have natural talents or abilities requires them to spend additional time and energy to get up to speed and overcome their own hard-wiring. Sure they can do it, but at what cost? Contrast that with the speed and ease with which people are able to do the things for which they are hard-wired. (E.g., with enough training and perseverance, any educated person should be able to read an actuarial formula — but never as easily as someone who is naturally highly numerate and enjoys that strange language actuaries speak.) With a reasonably diligent staff, they will try hard to get the job done, but it will take longer and be more painful than if they had the necessary talents and abilities. As a result, they will be perpetually over-stretched, unable to complete all the work, and your department as a whole will under perform.

So what’s the take away from all of this? In these hard economic times managers have a greater responsibility to ensure that they are deploying their staff in a way that takes the best possible advantage of the unique talents and skills these folks bring to work. This approach maximizes the probability of high performance and high morale. Don’t waste time thinking about how you could replace these employees. Except in special circumstances, you won’t be allowed to spend the necessary funds to recruit and train someone new — assuming, of course, you’re even allowed to hire.

So, in the words of Crosby, Stills & Nash, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

[Here's a link to hear a recording of the entire song: Love the One You're With, Crosby, Stills & Nash]