Hack:
Going Foursquare! Gamification of talent management

By Luis Alberola - Partner at Talent Club

June 15, 2011 at 1:01pm

corporate social networks

recognition

talent management

talent

Leader

Leadership

Moonshots

Retool management for an open and borderless world

Expand the scope of employee autonomy

Develop holistic performance measures

Summary

Move from a static, administration-heavy, compentency & performance based talent management system to a dynamic, innovation oriented, cool-sounding talent locator and accelerator, by rethinking recognition, reward and evaluation practices. As Foursquared has pioneered in the social network arena, invent your own company badge system !

Problem

Talent Management Systems have been developed in classic, hierarchical organizations. They are most often based on heavy frameworks (competency framework, performance framework, key positions framework, ...) that have proved their value in slow-changing organizations (themselves buried in slow-changing environments).

These systems are great options to develop leaders and managers supposed to fill the shoes of their elders, and continue with the same type of leadership and management models. Such systems have been extremely efficient in industrial-age corporations such as General Electric, Danaher, Valeo, ...

These systems have two important shortcomings : they are selective and static. Simply put, they lead to choose between two leaders or managers and they certainly do not foster innovation (innovative skills, behaviours, gems - see this hack).

In an ever accelerating organizational evolution and a deeply socialized world (through social technologies), these systems represent a major hindrance for organization evolution. They often result in HR teams having to work "around the system". They also result in dissenters and alternative talents leaving the organization.

Solution

The talent locator and accelerator is built following three phases : analysis of existing social networks that have a proximity with the corporation; defintion of a dynamic system (the talent locator and accelerator); new system adoption driving

HR teams should analyze the recognition & engagement systems in social networks, that are specific to each social network focus (professional, conversational, friending, ...). Such systems have been able, at the same time, to engage an ever increasing number of members while being able to make each individual stand out in regard of her/his particular abilities, friends, opinions, postings, ...

This analysis will help HR teams define new recognition systems in terms of :

What needs to be recognized (basis for engagement) : is it participation, contribution, belonging, raw talent, innovative talent, particular abilities, exceptional performance, ... ?
How to identify / measure the items that need to be recognized ? If, say, participation or contribution can be measured in terms of quantity and quality, measuring an innovative skill is almost impossible. In this particular case (and similar ones), HR teams will need to innovate themselves and devise new means for identifying particular abilities or innovative talent. For instance, a marketing expert that gets an unusual high number of "likes" (or its corporate equivalent) has probably a new idea or a particular ability. HR teams should be able to poll the "fans or followers" (or their corporate equivalent) of the marketing expert and identify the new talent or ability;
Who will be responsible for recognition : leaders & managers ? peers ? the whole organization through a specific social intellegence tool ? a given community members ? Working on measurement and responsibility for recognition is probably a huge opportunity for impact of HR on strategy development
When (if ever) is formal evaluation needed ?
What type of reward will be tied to a particular type of recognition : financial ? reputation ? influence ? professional development ? social engagement ?
How will recognition translate into the existing corporate social network ? Badges, recomendations, other symbols ?

Adoption of such a system should start where new social technologies and usage is high, but also in parts of the organization that are in dire need of innovation. Adoption of such a system is not a simple, unidirectional project. It is a continuous feed-back loop, in which new dimensions are added to the recognition system as new business, functions, geographies adopt the system.

In the end, recognition of talent, abilities, performance, participation, must become a solid part of the corporate culture and of individual activity

Practical Impact

Impacts will be felt in HR teams and throughout the entire organization

For the HR teams, the main impact will be to effectively participate in the organization agility and evolution, through talent management innovation. It seems reasonnable that HR teams should gain influence in social and people centric organizations !

More generally, all the organization associates should feel more concerned with fellow associate development & recognition. This is a movement towards a slightly more democratic organization, a talent-based democracy that is.

From a very practical point of view, after initial software development has been conducted, administration costs of HR development systems should go down and people development would progressively integrate every associate daily activity (even routine).

First Steps

We live in a beta world ! So the first step is to experiment with a limited number of people (function, community, business unit, ...). CSN initiatives seem like the perfect place to start

Credits

Most of this work and ideas have been or are tested with some of my clients. They deserve recognition for their ability to innovate and take on new risks !

A hack by Ellen Weber pushed me to organize my thoughts and publish my fist hack.

Images

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July 9, 2011 at 3:55am

Ellen Weber

Thanks for your post, Luis and thanks also for adding ideas that could serve to improve rating systems to simplify so that people understand ways to grow, diversify so that the culture at work is respected in the culture in promoted positions, and so that rating tools begin to double as growth tools.

Just yesterday I was invited to a lunch where top medical researchers showed me specific ways that medical science in that “well –respected” institute rates unfairly so that people who speak out, invite change, or suggest innovation are rated out to save the moneyed positions that rate what's most like themselves. If money and power have corrupted rating systems – and people cling to unchecked conventions in response, how will your innovation help?

Am encouraged and curious to see more about how you’d suggest folks take that first step you listed here. I'd love to see a bit more of how it would simplify, diversify, and increase genuine innovation. How would your hack, for instance, this impact what I heard yes, that adds to corruption, ignores innovation from a wider talent pool, and appears unaware of any problems in rating systems which hold back improvements?

July 10, 2011 at 9:48pm

Luis Alberola

Ellen,

Thanks for your comment and questions. The basic idea, as far as taking the first step is concerned, is to include recognition as one of the building blocks of anyt "corporate social network" or "collaboration" project. Most corporations are today adopting these networks, and therefore the new working ways and new management models that come with them; and still, they most often do not include recognition or compensation in these project.

A social network has the ability to cross existing organizations in new ways, resulting in people identifying others and collaborating with them based on their own criteria. Here is one of your opportunities to start identifying new behaviours, skills, that are valuable for the company's associate and yet not recognized by the company.

Best way is to start small (experimenting), and have a team of explorers build their own recognition system. Here, you need someone who can push these explorers further and explain what is feasible beyond existing HR practices. As you see, it is very technical.

Finally, as to how this system would impact the example you give ... you need to involve some C-level members and have them understand the potential there is in these HR innovations. My experience is that C-level people find it difficult to understand that HR can innovate at all ... But HR is a key control system, so it's mostly imposible to have a real impact without their sponsorship

July 17, 2011 at 4:29pm

Jon Ingham

Gaming is definitely something we need to look at seriously. But surely one solution to rewarding management behaviours is to make the existing forms of control work - ie using existing forms of recognition, rewarding on competencies, outputs etc. Gaming could result in as many if not more problems than these existing forms of incentivisation. The best argument I've seen for this is here: http://www.ht2.co.uk/ben/?p=355. How would you ensure that gamification of management performance evaluation is intrinsic to the activity, and fun?

July 18, 2011 at 7:19am

Jon Ingham

Sorry Luis, the comments below were designed for Ross' hack on gaming rather than your own. Though they do apply here too.

Can I also add that I simply don't see the problems you do in today's talent management systems. They're absolutely not static or heavy and not built on competencies unless you want them to be. And I don't see why you don't think they foster innovation. Surely including behaviours, competencies and / or outcomes focused on innovation does just that? Why should badges or recommendations be any better than this?

I do agree of course that further improvement is available. For example I love Google's internal system G Whiz which covers much of the requirement from a 'new recognition system' you describe. See: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-collaboration.html. It's still not gaming though...

July 18, 2011 at 9:09am

Luis Alberola

Jon, thanks for your comments and thoughts.

My idea when I say that it is difficult to foster innovation in existing systems is of course limited to my experience. The rationale behind it is the following : how can you define in advance the behaviours or competencies that will really result in innovation ? It's actually the other way round : it's the behaviours that have proved innovative that could go into a competency framework (even though I do not advise that). I agree that G Whiz can do something similar : it's people tagging, based on what they consider important, as I understand it.

Regarding how these systems are static : HR systems are based on existing competency frameworks, positions, career paths, ... that are seen as the fixed points of the system. My understanding is that you need to build a stronger evolution capacity on those fixed points to keep with the pace of change (technological, social, business).

Badges are just an aspect of a "talent locator", but they can be easily be adopted because there is a growing acceptance of this kind of social recognition

I'll be following your blog from now on ...