Overcoming the Fear of Social Media

Monday, September 10, 2012

Here’s a crazy confession. In 1999, I started a social media company.

I’m not kidding.

I was working for a high-tech
company in Oregon at the time, and I developed a relationship with a brilliant
software developer in Vancouver, BC. Ten
years earlier, this developer successfully launched a payroll software company
and had some extra time to dedicate toward side projects. One of those projects was called “Community
Circles.”

Community Circles was the software
backbone for a new online social network, but it needed to be applied to a compelling problem. At
the time, that problem was employee retention at large companies.

As you may remember, this was the
height of the “dot-com” bubble.
Traditional companies were having a very difficult time retaining their
best employees. Many were running off
to new, exciting startups that were offering lucrative stock options and crazy
benefits.

How could a boring old traditional
company compete with such enticing options? Part of the answer to this problem
(in our opinion) was….close personal relationships inside the company. The rationale was that if an employee had
close relationships within their existing company, it would be painful for them to
leave.

What better way to foster these
relationships than a private online social network? Since social networks were not available
outside the company (ex. Facebook), an employee would be cut off from the social
network if they left the company.

By the time we launched pilot
programs the next year, we were marketing the social networks as
“PlateSpinner.” The focus was on Gen X
employees who were having a difficult time balancing their work and personal
lives.

Long story short—not long after we
got up and running with our pilots, the "dot-com crash"
occurred. We quickly saw our
“compelling problem” evaporate because unemployment was rising and those
traditional companies were now having no problem with retention. Not long after the employment tide changed,
PlateSpinner died.

This is a classic entrepreneurial
story of having a great idea…at the wrong time.
In hindsight, the technology was not yet available to support the concept
of an online social network. The main
problem was that high-speed internet connections were not common enough yet,
and much of what makes a social network interesting requires larger bandwidths.

By now, you might be wondering why
I’m telling you this story. The purpose
is to provide you some background information, leading up to an important interaction
that occurred while we were introducing large companies to the Platespinner
social network back in the spring of 2000…

The interaction happened in a
meeting with one of the executives at Costco.
As you may know, Costco is headquartered in Seattle and was trying, at
the time, to keep talented employees from joining crazy little retailing
startups, like Amazon.com and HomeGrocer.com.
Costco had the need for a product like Platespinner.

As we explained the concept of an
online social network to this executive (he was in his mid-sixties), he stopped
the presentation about halfway through and asked this question:

“Would using this product require that employees have access to a computer and the internet?”

“Yes, it does,” I answered.

“If that’s the case,” he
responded, “I don’t think we would be interested in giving our employees access
to such a technology. A couple of years
ago, we gave them access to email, and it has been nearly impossible to
control. All they do is talk to each
other now—no one seems to do any work!”

At that point in time, what
emotion was that executive experiencing?

Fear.

He was fearful of unleashing a
technology in his company that would spiral out of control and cause his
employees to lose focus and waste time.

Looking back, I’m surprised at his
insight. Back in the year 2000, this
executive was able to quickly get his arms around a new technology that would
not become mainstream in the business world for another decade. And, as he thought through the implications
of such an innovation, he understood the apprehension that he and other
business leaders would experience if online social networking was made
available to employees.

Now…fast forward to 2012. While online social networks are now near
ubiquitous in society and very common in businesses, the number one emotion
that business leaders experience when talking about social networks is still
fear.

Over the next couple of
discussions, we’ll delve into some research that Harvard Business Review has
published on this topic and learn how progressive organizations are overcoming
the fear of embracing social networking technologies. The promised benefits of the social
networking revolution are on the other side of this chasm.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Recruiting Through Collaboration – Part 2

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

In
the last edition, I included the following findings:

"…The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds that twice as much potential value lies in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge, sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. MGI's estimates suggest that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers– high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals– by 20 to 25 percent."

I then asked the following questions:

Question one: What type of agent do you want to build your organization around? If you answer that you "don't care," then there is little need to read the remainder of this article.

Answer: Most companies want agents who enjoy collaborating and sharing with the rest of the organization. They typically will put up with lone rangers, but much prefer community-minded individuals, who are willing to give back and share. The reason is simple: Lasting communities are built by people who contribute to the whole rather than by those who are parasitic to the whole.

Question two: What would attract agents who would want to collaborate and share?

Answer: Organizations that visibly collaborate and share will attract those who will collaborate and share.

Question three: How do you build a collaborative community through social media that is visible to outside agents and provides collaboration as the first open door toward recruiting?

Here
is my 30,000 foot view of what I am implying: You potentially have two complimentary goals: (1) Recruiting collaborative agents and (2) Encouraging the
practice of collaboration. Up until the last decade, very few methods existed to
support or fuse these two, much less measure either one. But now the groundwork is
being laid for this to happen. That's right…you guessed it…from the the Social
Media platform.

In
their Forbes article titled "From Social Networks to Collaboration Networks: The
Next Evolution of Social Media for Business," Karl Moore and Peter Neely write
that the smartest companies have realized the power of asking "customers
and followers to participate in brainstorming with them so they can learn how
to be a better company, offer better products and services, or support the
values and issues of the community…They understand that
ideas can come from anyone, anywhere and at any time."

They
site several examples of this. Below are two very interesting examples:

Toronto-based Goldcorp, a gold mining firm,
sought a new approach to finding gold deposits on their 55,000-acre Red Lake, Ontario property. With analysts believing that the fifty-year old property had been emptied, high
production costs, labor strikes, and lingering debt…the firm was desperate to
find new life. Without options, CEO Rob McEwan created the “Goldcorp Challenge,”
whereby he placed every piece of information about the property on the web for
all participants to download, study, and submit recommendations. More than 1,000
participants from over 50 countries signed up to solve Goldcorp’s problem. Submissions came from a diverse group of participants, many not trained in
geology. This open-source innovation network proved to be invaluable, identifying 110 targets worth more than three billion dollars. By opening the information
to a wider network, the company benefited from collaboration of internal and
external knowledge banks.
The second example uses the idea of social and
collaborative networking within the four walls of the organization. In mid-2007 IBM created Beehive, an internal social network to
connect employees worldwide. The network gained momentum and currently supports 30,000+ employees. Each employee can add a bio page, photos and connect with employees
from other IBM offices around the world. What’s interesting about Beehive is how
the employees use the internal network. There are three distinct categories of
use: The first is to connect with employees they meet at conferences or when
working on inter-departmental or inter-divisional projects. The network provides
a mechanism to stay connected and get to know other employees and their area of
expertise. The second use is to gain project support and brainstorm with others
on how best to complete a project. The connections provide a collaboration
channel to promote the project to others and gather ideas from other people at
different levels. The third use of Beehive is the opportunity to connect with
people at higher levels of the organization that are not accessible via
traditional channels. Employees use connections to these executives as a method
to share ideas and get career advice with the hope of advancement. IBM Beehive
is a great example of leveraging an internal social network to cultivate
communication, interaction, and collaboration within the widely distributed
company.

With
stories like this, it's no wonder that Oracle bought Involver, Microsoft bought
Yammers, and Sales Force bought Buddy Media.

You
are probably asking should we build something on Facebook to begin this
process? Probably not. Facebook is far too general in scope to use for
something like the above and gain any traction within your office or company. But, what if you had your own community site…sort of a virtual office where
outsiders could peak in and see how you think….where your agents could collaborate
and problem solve. What if outside agents could join in the discussion and
contribute to ideas and vice-versa?

Are
you seeing where I'm going with this?

We at Tidemark, are interested enough in the power of this direction, that we began thinking hard and developing strategies in alignment with this movement. More on this sometime in
the near future….

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Recruiting Through Collaboration

Monday, September 03, 2012

As
you know, we are devoting the next several editions of WorkPuzzle to the exploration of
recruiting experienced agents through the tools of social media. Let me first
be clear: In many ways, I abhor social media. I am bored easily with it,
and frankly most of it seems like a waste of time. But, then again, I am a baby
boomer, and probably as a result could be labeled as a late adaptor to much of
the last 15 years of innovation. But, I have to admit…through the last month of
reading and researching this topic, I have come to clearly believe that the vital need to confront this topic has never been more paramount.

I am finding that the same "real time" and global scale
access to social interactions used for political upheaval and consumer research is currently being harnessed by the best and brightest companies for a wide
variety of solutions. Why? There is reason to believe that the organizations
who can figure out how to harness these interactions will lead the next wave of
innovation. But how do you harness these social interactions in a way that makes sense?

Lee
has already presented a convincing argument that directly selling anything to anyone
rarely, if ever, really works..and especially through social media; This includes selling your company to an experienced agent through some cheesy pitch. The best people just won't bite on a blatant pitch of "come join our
company." But what will they respond to?

Allow
me to develop a possibility.

Many
smart-minded people are taking the time to research and write about the
untapped potential of collaboration through social media.

McKinsey
Global Institute writes:

"While 72 percent of companies use social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit. In fact, the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped. Companies will go on developing ways to reach consumers through social technologies and gathering insights for product development, marketing, and customer service. Yet the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds that twice as much potential value lies in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge, sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. MGI's estimates suggest that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers– high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals– by 20 to 25 percent."

So, you ask: "What does this have to do with recruiting experienced agents?" And in return, I
ask you to ponder the following three topics over the next few
days:

Question one: What type of agent do you want to build your
organization around? If you answer that you "don't care,"
then there is little need to read the remainder of this article.

Answer: Most companies want agents who enjoy collaborating and
sharing with the rest of the organization. They typically will put up with lone
rangers, but much prefer community-minded individuals, who are
willing to give back and share. The reason is simple: Lasting communities are
built by people who contribute to the whole rather than by those who are
parasitic to the whole.

Question two: What would attract agents who would want to
collaborate and share?

Answer: Organizations that visibly collaborate and share will
attract those who will collaborate and share.

Question three: How do you build a collaborative community
through social media that is visible to outside agents and provides
collaboration as the first open door toward recruiting?

Answer: Stay tuned….This is a little more complex — I'll offer a possible
answer in the next edition…

Overfishing: Why Your Experienced Recruiting Tactics Will Continue to Produce Diminished Returns

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

In the Northwest, many of us love to fish.
At times, it's too many. For me, nothing is more frustrating
than investing a bunch of time and effort into a fishing expedition, only to find out
that everyone else had the exact same idea.

This happened to two of my sons recently, who went salmon fishing with a neighbor on Lake Wenatchee in central Washington.
At this particular spot, it is common to have to wait more than an hour
to launch your boat at 4:30am and then join hundreds of other boats who are all
competing to stake a claim in the lake's most productive fishing spots.

And all these anglers are not just fishing for
the same fish, they are there at the same time, using the same fishing gear and
deploying the same techniques to attempt to catch the salmon that have migrated
into the lake. To make things even more frustrating, the salmon are at a point
in their reproductive cycle where they are no longer eating.

To get them to "bite," specialized
gear (flashy metal plates attached to down-riggers) is used to annoy the salmon and entice them to react. Think of someone waving something in
your face and instead of batting it away with your hands (salmon don't have
hands), they bite the annoying object in an attempt to get it to leave.
No bait or lures are used in the process, just a bare hook.

I know this all sounds a bit crazy if you've
never been exposed to this type of fishing. But, there is a core underlying
principle that makes this whole process work. Any idea what is it?

Large numbers of fish congregate in one place.

In Lake Wenatchee this year, there are about
60,000 sockeye salmon that enter the lake on their way upstream to spawn.
About 10,000 will be caught while passing through the lake.
The fish and wildlife scientists estimate that 25,000 salmon need to make
it through the lake in order to produce a healthy spawn. Since about 50,000
will swim through the lake and continue up rivers and creeks to spawn, there will be fish in future years to continue the process.

What does all this have to do with recruiting? The same principle that causes salmon fishing to be successful in Lake
Wenatchee causes your experienced agent recruiting efforts to be successful in your office:

You need to find where the candidates are
congregating and make sure you're there.

Many hiring managers in the real estate industry are fishing in places where less and less candidates are congregating. For example, the number of experienced agents who are willing to receive, read, and respond to drip email campaigns is very small. And yet many hiring managers still expect this methodolgy to produce results. If everyone is fishing for the small number of these candidates, this "recuiting water" becomes overfished. Even if your techniques and exectuion are flawless, it will not produce a consisent flow of hires.

So, if the candidates you're after are not sitting in front of their email waiting for your drip email campaign, what are they doing? They are spending time on social networks. John Sumser, the founder and editor of HRExaminer Online
Magazine, puts it this way in one of his recent blog postings:

"The
essence of great recruiting is to fish where the fish are. As times
change, the ‘recruiting waters’ get overfished. This is what makes the
profession so highly flexible. Over the course of a decade, the success
of one technique creates the demand for the next.

More
than any other corporate function, recruiting involves adaptation to rapidly
changing markets. Companies that shift their methods with the times, thrive. Companies
that don’t, wither.

In
2012, that means learning how to use social media as a part of your recruiting
effort. In a few short years, the center of the Internet moved from
static sites to the more vibrant and interactive universe of online networks. Job
boards give way to social media as users migrate to the new world.

Here
are a few stats that put the story in perspective:

23% of all hours spent online are spent on a social media
site

80% of all Internet users are members of at least one social network

66% of all Americans use a social network

25% of all American internet traffic is on Facebook alone"

If you haven't done so already, it's probably
time to seriously consider making social media techniques part of your
recruiting strategy. The candidates are starting to pool in such
significant numbers that it only makes sense to put some of your recruiting
effort in this area.

But, how do you become effective in this new
recruiting arena? That's what we'll be discussing over the next month or
so in WorkPuzzle. The good news is that your industry (and many other
industries) are early in the process of figuring all this out. There are
some boats starting to show up on the water, but everyone is still struggling
to discover the techniques that produce results. Hopefully, we can get you pointed in the right direction.

The last picture is of Camden, my 15-year old son, who landed this big sockeye salmon. Living in the Northwest in a wonderful thing!

Figuring Out Social Media

Monday, August 27, 2012

To use social media
or not to use social media…this seems to be an ever present question among
business professionals. Rarely can I
research business-related topics and not come across some article touting the
importance of social networking and/or the misuse of it.

Most business
executives understand that there is an untapped benefit to using social media
to promote their business, but they do not know how to effectively harness
it. So, what does effective social
networking look like? In one word,
“engagement.”

Engagement isn’t
about “likes” or how many “followers” you have.
That is fleeting at best, a one-time click. Effective engagement comes from you (the
seller/recruiter) connecting with your target audience on their playing
field. Trying to get people to listen to
you or look at your pages is futile if you do not first reach out and engage
them where they are.

Author
and consultant, Tom Searcy, concisely discusses four strategic principles in using social media
in the sales process. Once again, I can
easily draw parallels to the recruiting arena.

“1. Getting more 'followers' is not a goal.

There is an implied causal link between
'followers' or 'likes' and real sales activity. However,
that link has low correlational accuracy. Most people are talking about
themselves and hoping you're listening. Coupons, special offers, and event
postings may get some strong responses from people who are already
transactional customers. But if the goal is to get qualified prospects, then
you need different metrics for judging the success of your social selling.

2. Connection is not engagement.

Social selling is about engagement, and that comes
from effective interaction. Posting material in any form and simply waiting for
your connections to respond is not engagement. What are they posting that you
are responding to? Learn from those interactions. You can't sell if you're just
pushing messages and your expertise.

3. Buyers signal by declaring problems.

Listen for the buying signals from the social Web. If you use a
third-party tool, such as HootSuite, to compose your messages and read what your
followers are writing, make full use of its search capabilities. Look for
certain key words as a way to listen for people who have a problem you can
solve. If you sell routers or servers, you can flag the word router or
server failure, giving you a way to watch across all open platforms
for anyone who uses the word. You can even segment the search to a number of
miles from your office location.

4. You are not in control.

Many sales folks believe this is the way the process
works: Get followers, and then provoke them to want what you sell through your
posts. The truth is, it rarely happens that way. The reason is simple: If you
tweet, blog, or post about a solution, idea, or product that a person does not
have, they won't necessarily connect with you. If you are listening to the
social Web and hear someone declare a problem that you can solve or a question
that you can answer, giving you an opportunity to send a relevant response,
then you are truly engaging.”

Value added content is still important and should be
included in your Social Web strategy. But, focusing on content alone, without the
meaningful intention of engagement, will stifle your social media progress. This is a broad topic and one we will
continue to discuss in the coming weeks…

Editor's Note: Lee Gray is the Senior Account Manager at Tidemark Inc. Lee is a guest contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Employment Brand: What Do Young Candidates Really Think of Your Organization?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Real estate companies spend a lot
of time, effort, and resources managing their consumer brands…and rightfully so. If someone is going to buy or sell a home,
the perception the individual has of your company’s brand will play a major
role in their choice of an agent.

Think of the emotions you’d like a
consumer to experience when they think of your company. Maybe these are some of the things your brand stands for: well-established,
trusted, experienced, competent, dependable, innovative, phenomenal customer
service, etc.

While all these are great
attributes and characteristics that most any consumer would desire in a real estate
company handling a transaction, they may cloud the water when it comes to
representing yourself to potential candidates…especially when it comes to younger candidates.

Many well-established companies
are struggling with this issue. Not
everyone can be Zappos (a progressive online retailer based in Las Vegas),
Kixeye (an edgy game developer that makes Entertainment Arts and Zynga look like
fuddy-duds), or even Zillow. In fact,
many companies need to be seen as dependable, but still desirable places to work
for the younger generations.

Much has been written on this
topic, and there are some companies that have spent fortunes trying to reconcile this
dichotomy. One of the most successful
case studies is this effort is Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Started in 1957, Enterprise now has more than
5,000 offices in North America. Enterprise is not exactly an exciting new startup company, and yet is consistently named
one of the top companies in the United States for launching a career. Take a look at the Enterprise Career site and see how masterful they’ve become at solving this problem.

But, what if you don’t have the
resources to build a far-reaching branding campaign to make such a distinction
between your consumer brand and your employment brand? There is still much you can do to make this
a reality—especially if your cognizant that a distinction needs to be made.

The most natural place for a
hiring manager to start transforming
your employment brand is during the interviews you’re conducting with younger
candidates. This approach is low cost
and can have a profound impact on your office as you bring in new hires who are
the flesh and blood realities of your employment brand.

To interview younger candidates
more successfully, you’ll need a better understanding of what they see as
interesting and engaging in a potential employer.

To help in this effort, I’d like
to point you to some insight provided by Gary Hamel, best-selling author and
professor at the London Business School.
Last March, Dr. Hamel published What Matters Now, an insightful book on
change, competition, and innovation. And recently, he followed-up with an ERE article, connecting the principles
in his book to the topic of hiring the next generation of top performers.

More specifically, Dr. Hamel
addresses the mindset that young candidates consistently display in evaluating
whether an established company is “with it” or “past it.”

The article highlights 12 of these
mindsets, but I’ve selected the five that I find most insightful:

1.
Contribution counts for more than
credentials. When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went
to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether or not you have a
journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees — none of the usual
status differentiators carry much weight online. [In progressive companies],
what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.

2.
Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
The internet is an opt-in economy. Whether contributing to a blog, working on
an open source project, or sharing advice in a forum, people choose to work on
the things that interest them. Everyone is an independent contractor and
everyone scratches his own itch.
Progressive companies encourage work to be done in this way as well.

3.
Power comes from sharing, not hoarding. The Web is also a gift economy. To gain influence and status, you have to give
away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t,
someone else will beat you to the punch and garner the credit that might have
been yours. [In progressive companies], there are lots of incentives to share
and few to hoard.

4.
Mediocrity gets exposed. Online rating systems have become ubiquitous — for hotels, books, local
businesses, and products of every sort. Though not every review is useful, in
the aggregate they provide a good guide to what’s remarkable and what’s rubbish. In traditional organizations, employees don’t get to rate much of anything. As
a result, one often finds a ‘‘conspiracy of the mediocre’’ — ‘‘I won’t question
your decisions or your effectiveness, if you don’t question mine.’’ There are
no such cabals [in progressive companies]. If you’re inadequate, you’ll be found
out.

5.
Leaders serve rather than
preside. [Among progressive
companies], every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command
or sanction. Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise, and selfless behavior
are the only levers for getting things done. Forget this [in your
organization], and your followers will soon desert you.

If you’re interested in the other
seven mindsets, read the rest of Dr. Hamel’s article. If you’re more strategic and want to change
how your company operates, you may want to pick up his book.

Here is the bottom line: These mindsets will resonate with the younger
candidates that you’re interviewing. Also, many of these principles dovetail nicely into the business processes and culture that most hiring managers are trying to create and maintain. There is a win-win in this
connection and something that can differentiate you from those stodgy
competitors who are in an increasingly weak position to lure your candidates
away.