Harnessing the power of informal employee networks

Formalizing a company’s ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value

Personal social networks, both within and outside of companies, increase the value of collaboration by reducing the search and coordination costs of connecting parties who have related knowledge and interests. They don’t necessarily fit into the organizational chart. Consider the case of an energy company staffer we call Cole (Exhibit 1). Although he sits relatively far down in the formal company structure, he acts as the hub in an informal network because he has knowledge that others find valuable. Without him, the production group would be cut off from the rest of the organization. His boss Jones, the unit’s senior vice president, is connected in the informal network to only two people, both in exploration.

This is increasingly typical in today’s large, sprawling corporations. Informal networks, slipping through the back channels, cross the lines of geography, products, customer groups, and functions—where the action is—and even through the thick silo walls of vertically oriented organizations.

Why Millennials Matter to You

Sure, you’re going to need millennials simply to put butts in seats, but ...

...But these workers are also change agents who may force you to rethink and improve your methods of recruiting, training, and management — the lifeblood elements of your company. They’re accustomed to working away from their desks, using everything from library computers to smartphones and laptops. They got intense and individualized mentoring from teachers and coaches, and they were never told that their elders should intimidate them. “The world is a flat hierarchy to these kids,” says Peter Johnson, director of admissions at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Whether you think it’s a good or bad thing doesn’t really matter. It’s a market condition.”
Many companies have realized they need to change with the times: UPS has begun to abandon its training manuals for hands-on learning in staged neighborhoods; Deloitte empowers its middle managers to offer flexible scheduling to their team members, and Google bypasses corporate hierarchy by making its brightest new millennials managers and granting them direct access to the company’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Upgrading talent

A downturn can give smart companies a chance to upgrade their talent.

Downturns place companies’ talent strategies at risk. As deteriorating performance forces increasingly aggressive head count reductions, it’s easy to lose valuable contributors inadvertently, damage morale or the company’s external reputation among potential employees, or drop the ball on important training and staff-development programs.

But there is a better way. By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic conditions improve.

Companies can maintain their attractiveness to internal and external talent by using cost-cutting efforts as an opportunity to redesign jobs so that they become more engaging for the people undertaking them. A job’s level of responsibility, degree of autonomy, and span of control all contribute to employee satisfaction. Head count reductions provide a powerful incentive to use existing resources better by breaking down silos and increasing the span of control for challenging managerial roles—thus improving the odds of engaging key talent in the redesigned jobs.

Matthew Guthridge, John R. McPherson, and William J. Wolf The McKinsey Quarterly is the business journal of McKinsey & Company.

The Economist again.. so accurate!! :-)

Downsizing Survivors: Motivating the Employees Who Remain After Layoffs

You can't open a newspaper or visit a news website without seeing notices of corporate layoffs. And layoffs create downsizing survivors, the people who remain in your company after the downsizing.

No matter your circumstances, you all have something in common during and after downsizing - layoff survivors, those “could be,” “should be,” lucky employees who made the cut during the layoffs and downsizing.Most organizations invest their efforts in helping the downsized employees move on. This is ethical, reasonable and positive. Plus, your survivors are watching.

To truly benefit from the layoffs and downsizing, however, you need to invest even more energy in the people who remain after downsizing and layoffs. You will aid recovery; fuel productivity; boost morale, despite the loss; and minimize the damage to workplace trust.

Demonstrate That You Value the Layoff Survivors After a Downsizing

If you are a manager, it is most important to reassure the people who report to you of their value to you and the organization. You need to talk with each of them individually to let them know why and how they are valued; tell them what you feel they contribute to your effective, continuously improving work environment. No matter how reassuring you or your executive leadership have been, believe me, on some level, after layoffs, trust has been injured. Employees need reassurance about their security.

They need reassurance about why the people who were let go in the downsizing were chosen. They need reassurance about their future….

What is love?

Dec 17th 2008 From Economist.com
Google offers some insights into life's big questions

The oldest questions are still the most puzzling. According to Google's annual list of popular search terms, even in these times of economic crisis, people are most concerned with working out what love is. The nature of gout, an ailment most commonly associated with gentlemanly excess, has fallen off the list since 2007. With fewer expensive meals and bottles of wine on offer, it is likely to be less of a problem in these frugal times. Interest in the identity of the president-elect, Barack Obama, reached such a fever pitch that he has replaced God on the list. John McCain could perhaps take comfort from the fact that more interest was shown in him than in his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Time to pass the Torch...

Reading The Economist this morning...and just want to share this excellent drawing with you...Time to pass the Torch...

I will no make any comment on this one :-)

KAL's cartoon
Dec 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Happy Darwinian 2009 !

All my best wishes for 2009.
Appropriately enough, for a blog launching at the start of this year, it is the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s publication of Origin of the Species. A good reminder in these turbulent times that human life can be boiled down to a couple of basic essentials: survival and reproduction, as The Economist reminds us in its Christmas Issue.
Many companies and managers will be focusing on the first in 2009. I would suggest that history will remember those who keep their sights firmly focused on the second. There are already two reactions apparent in reaction to the crisis.
One is to hunker down, tighten all the screws, and reduce the team to the core individuals who have delivered past successes – then wait to see what happens before moving. The other is to use this opportunity to make massive, profound or innovative changes, adaptations and investments to ready for a new century, new rules and new realities.
I hope we are ambitious for more than just survival... Well speaking about me, it is a big Yes...

Happy Darwinian 2009!