It’s not just big business banning social networking site access at work – Manchester United have done so too. See full story here
We think this is wasted effort and a poor substitute for decent performance management. Treat people like grown ups and most people will behave like grown ups. And what about the wasted opportunity of reaching millions of loyal fans following on twitter? I’m sure they would love to buy the odd bit of replica kit.
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I went to the book launch of “And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career” by Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger a couple of weeks ago. The book is a guide to anyone who wants to explore having two or more ‘jobs’.
Having now read the book (it’s great by the way – very practical and full of examples and stories) there were a few of things that struck me.
Firstly how technology has enabled more people than ever to have portfolio careers. Katie and Barrie are bang up to date in their exploration of this, from the practical delivery of work to marketing yourself using social media.
Secondly, that while anyone of any age can be attracted to a portfolio career, there is some evidence that younger workers (Generation Y) are more comfortable with the idea of finding ‘clients’ to sell their skills to, rather than looking for just one job. I guess this is a result of seeing work more as something to do, rather than a place to go – a hang up that Generation X and the baby boomers find harder to shake off. This combined with the changing world of work and more enlightened companies benefitting from the flexibility this provides suggests this may become far more the norm.
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We’ve been doing a lot of work with investment banks recently. A common feature within all of them, is that they all ban (or at the very least severely limit access to) facebook and other social networking sites, usually on the grounds of ‘productivity’.
The ‘banning’ of course is done by senior management, mostly Gen X or babyboomers.
Working with these groups, most would agree that an organisation has three types of ‘capital’ it can draw upon, and which help add to its ‘value’. These are:
To a Baby-boomer and, to large extent a Gen Xer like me, this network capital is represented by a contacts list or address book. It’s who you have lunch with, who you can pick up the phone up to or who you might know at a social or business function.
But for Gen Y (and increasingly Gen X through networks such as LinkedIn) this is now also represented by online social networks.
So why ban facebook when it increases social/network capital which we know has considerable, even if intangible, value to an organisation? It’s illogical and I think the true reason is poor performance management.
If organisations truly manage outcomes, then why should they care if someone uses facebook for two hours a day? You never know, your organisations next big deal/idea/strategic relationship might just come from within these networks.
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My friends and I often play a game at parties where we count the number of questions people ask us about ourselves. Maybe you are not surprised that it is really rare to meet people who ask many questions at all, let alone questions about the person they are talking to.
I remember chatting to a man at a friend’s party once – he was a very interesting chap and I asked him loads of questions about his life. We talked for ages. I laughed the next day when my friend called me and said that the chap had said what an interesting person I was. He hadn’t found out a thing about me!
In this fascinating talk by Daniel Goleman he talks about empathy and compassion and how important ‘you’ questions are in making real and genuine contact with other people. He tells a funny story of a woman who is looking for a partner and she devises a test that determines whether she will see a prospective partner again. She simply measures how long it takes for him to ask a question with the word ‘you’ in it. It’s a funny story but with a really important message. If we are to really get to know someone, to engage them and to even have a chance of understanding them, we first have to get curious and ask them questions about themselves.
There is a whole big industry developing around the topic of employee engagement. In my experience organisations sometimes over-complicate the issue. A good starting point is simply getting interested in people which is surely is a cornerstone of good management.
Sally
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There’s been lot’s in the press recently about 300,000 people in the UK graduating this year into one of the toughest job markets for a long time. (Sunday Times – Graduates face the toughest tests)
Most of the time we work with employers, but what practical help is out there for graduates?
This led us to Tanya de Grunwald and her excellent book ‘Dude, where’s my career? : A guide for baffled Graduates’.
The book focuses on helping ‘normal’ graduates (what Tanya calls ‘the baffled’) who haven’t put much (or any) thought into their career planning and certainly haven’t had a master plan to become president of the universe since they were 6 years old.
Looking back, I’d firmly put myself in that category when I graduated.
And the truth is that these normal, ‘baffled’ graduates , are the backbone of most organisations and hugely valuable, if only they can find the right career to play to their strengths and are allowed to grow and flourish.
What we really love about the book however, is the ‘emotional support’ approach Tanya takes. Most graduate careers help just focuses on the (important) nuts and bolts – like writing a great CV, but not on helping people understand what really makes them tick, how to get motivated and importantly how to deal with the inevitable knock backs. Dude gives this support in a highly practical and accessible way.
If you know one of this year’s 300,000, buy them a copy of Dude or take a look at Tanya’s blog.
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