Game, Set, Match

What kind of match is this anyway? Not one made in heaven was the sentiment of many, many of whom likened it to “The Odd Couple.” The argument here is that corporate brands are constructed out of goals and gains (some may even say games). Employment brands on the other hand, are organically co-created as the lovechild of attraction and engagement.

Do they still work together? That depends: Are they in collusion, working together under separate cover, but with shared elements, goals and vision? Or are they on a collision course, unfolding separate agendas without regard to one another? There’s nothing James Bondish about authentic branding, where leadership gives shape to the organization through an identity based on values that are rooted in collaboration and nurtured with human care. There’s that word again that keeps popping up — human, branding’s oxygen supply. It’s because employees breathe and give breath to a culture that collectively owns reality rather than resigning to its manufacturer’s suggested “re: tale” price. People, connected as a community, not corporate entities, tell the story. And the best stories are ones that everyone can relate to.

When Two Roads Don’t Diverge as One

What happens when a corporate brand and employment brand go their separate ways? We get the hamster wheel: The company runs in place and makes no significant tracks; the spectators all leave, at the end of the day. It’s a novel, but futile, exercise. You can’t build a solid enterprise on a “brandfill.” You need substance, a solid foundation that starts with meaningful engagement by employees and service to something beyond the borders of the bullpen. You don’t need to send a pair of shoes to Africa. Just find a pair that fits and walk the talk in them.

All’s Fair in Love and War

Did you miss the preview? It was a great chat this week moderated by special guest Cyndy Trivella (@CyndyTrivella), a #TChat community rock star and professional who always puts the human before the resources. Check out the slide show below of Wednesday’s choicest tweets. And don’t bet on a quick annulment on this one. It looks like reconcilable differences are at play between this power couple.

image credit: Lola in Wooden Shoe, Vicci Ann

#TChat INSIGHTS: When Business Vision and Brand
Unite

Storified by TalentCulture · Fri, May 25 2012 15:40:32

I don’t think so "@marksalke: A2: Is it an accident that ‘Best Companies to
Work For’ are often very successful businesses? #tchat"Claire Crossley

A4: Culture is an evolving thing, it can’t be owned. Like a person’s spirit. Or
#tchat spirit! #tchatPlatinum Resource

A4: Everyone! The employees and… Oh no
Leaders. #TChatMeghan M. Biro

Yes @gingerconsult: A5: The
engagement in these activities has to be with purpose, not just to follow a trend or for appearances.
#TChatMeghan M. Biro

Agreed! Like TOMS Shoes @DaveTheHRCzar: A5 Yes All Companies should
donate shoes to Africa #TChatMeghan M. Biro

Thank you, Michael Jackson, for your timeless lyrics; your title song lines are the theme of this week’s Top Trends in the World of Work.

“Wanna Be Startin’ Something, You Got to be Startin’ Something”

Last week’s big trend was Facebook’s initial public offering. We speculated on its share value and said our pieces on whether or not to purchase. At the end of the day, both literally and figuratively, it turned out to more of an IP“Oh”. While there was marginal movement in stock price, what is truly “share” worthy (no pun intended of course) are the movements that Facebook’s existence have created in the way we function as a global society. This HBR article captures these shifts from what I like to call 2.0 to YOU.0^tm  – the human potential paradigm. Individuals are evolving from consumer to co-creator. Media’s movement is from audience to community and leadership is releasing control in favor of empowerment.

Brand issues have been a hot button topic for us at The World of Work as of late. Employee brand has given way to employer brand – many companies find that their on-staff brand ambassadors have built huge personal brands and followings, but have failed to transfer that value to their employers. Personal branding has lost some of its shine, as pundits from the HR camp point out that personal brand cannot be allowed to trump employer brand when the force of an individual’s personal brand outweighs the messages and values of the company brand.

So, after a couple of years of tentative introduction, it’s time for brand humanization to take center stage as a new tool to link business vision and brand, with the goal of attracting and retaining talent.

This development leads us to this question: are talent acquisition/management and employer branding in conflict? While it’s been pointed out they have at least one common goal – making companies more successful by ensuring talent is attracted, brought on board, and retained – unless they are aligned at the executive, business-vision level, you might have a train wreck in progress.

I’ve been doing some social listening, and I’ve been encountering a lot of fingernails-on-a-chalkboard examples of train wrecks. Those conducting the trains must have the ability to steer effectively; at the same time, conductors must be made aware of the paths they are supposed to follow.  Effective communication between employee and employer could, in effect, stop a runaway train faster than a Westinghouse air brake.

I think there’s a lot of brand dissonance around. Consumer brands seem to navigate the shifts between business vision and talent management with more agility. This is due in part to their facility with the tools of social media and their willingness to experiment (and occasionally fail). More traditional businesses – manufacturing, tech, and what we used to call ‘industry’ – appear to have less nuanced approaches to uniting brand with business vision. While there are lots of social media companies, agencies and HR tech platforms which can solve for part of the problem, we haven’t seen a category-killer solution emerge to unite business vision, with its direct link to the bottom line, and brand, with its more tenuous and debated calculus.

So, in the time-honored tradition of #TChat World of Work, we’re going to ask you some questions about how, or if, it’s possible to unite brand and business leadership vision.

We’ll be discussing and debating the following questions:

Q1: How does business leadership’s vision translate into internal and external brand?

Q2: What’s the difference between employment branding and corporate branding? And should there be one?

Q3: Workplace culture drives employment branding. Why or why not?

Q4: Who owns employment branding, corporate branding, and the bridge between?

Q5: Does a company have to go green or donate shoes to Africa to have an attractive employment brand? Why or why not?

So wear your brand advocate hat, don your talent management spurs, and join us at #TChat Wednesday night, May 23 from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT). Join myself, @MeghanMBiro, along with @socialmediasean, @brentskinner, @KevinWGrossman, and @SocialSalima.  We are also excited to be joined by our special guest moderator, @cyndytrivella.  Wherever you are, be sure to tune in!

We’ll dissect the relationships – and deltas – between business vision and brand, and with your help we’ll begin to chart a path where the two imperatives achieve synergy. Be there for the big words.  We’re looking forward to hearing all of your ideas on Wednesday!

image credit: Stand Out, by VinothChandar

That’s because the amazing SocialHRCamp attendees in Vancouver BC and the fantastical #TChat contributors collaborated together during the #TChat hour on the topic of Social HR: Engage the Humans for Social HR Leadership.

No rifts, but we most certainly did riff and make sweet rock and roll insight together. The folks who gathered on site of our generous hosts Talent Technology were made up of progressive HR and recruiting professionals ready to learn, share and take the lead in all things social and the world of work. Many still struggled with convincing their leadership the value of social recruiting and social marketing and blogging and even using LinkedIn to source from, for goodness sake (which is the most embraced mainstream professional social network these days, although there were those of us who argued if it was truly social or not, but I digress).

Yes, the collective did indeed riff in one session after the other, and it all crescendoed during #TChat. Although at first there was hesitation, a groupthink holding of breath, the very fabric of time stretching at the seams, we all watched the livestream of the online #TChat stream away.

I then broke free and moderated away, and what ensued was a delightfully smart, provocative at times and sometimes heated exchange about how much of the personal and professional should we combine in our personal and professional lives. Should there be boundaries?

What we discovered is that we do all have our own boundaries of varying degrees, but when we get together live at events like this, ad hoc communities within communities form, and we do combine our personal and professional lives, solving our world of work ills from the inside out.

We’ve been spending so much arguing inside our companies of whether or not business leadership, including HR and recruiting, and including everyone down to the front line employees, should be using social media to do anything, when all along the argument should be whether the why not.

Am I right?

Click here if you missed this week’s preview, and check out the slide show below of prime-cut tweets from Wednesday’s chat. We can’t wait for next week’s conversation. Stay tuned for the preview.

image credit: Suzaku Catches Retreat of a Black Hole's Disk, by  NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

There’s a fun event today, Wed May 16th – A Live Social HR Camp being hosted from Vancouver, BC Canada and six other locales spread across four countries. It’s the first-ever SocialHRCamp, an un-conference aimed at  helping HR professionals collaborate to determine what it takes to leverage and integrate social media within the workplace. Pretty cool stuff. Also, check out Hashcaster for the live tweets and of course your favorite Twitter client.

I’m also excited to play hostess, speaker for our Boston, MA event that will take place the first week of December here at Google Cambridge — Please stay tuned for more information on this event. This will be big fun and a hands-on social learning experience for all.

You can imagine, given my heart for social workplace and all things Canada (No, I’m not Canadian but sometimes I’m mistaken for – cue laughter), how much I’m looking forward to the event. Many of our community players will be here live. So many friends in fact that we’re integrating it into this week’s World of Work #TChat. As we Chat, we will be pulling in attendees from #SocialHRCamp from the cozy confines of Cambridge and around the globe. I won’t have to bring a sleeping bag or worry about spiders or outside showers, but I will be a happy camper, chatting about our philosophy:  Leaders need to be more active and hands-on in social media engagement and strategies. Regardless of your industries, roles, or belief systems, it’s critical, as leaders and HR professionals to be active in social media. Building trust with employees, customers and prospects through your brand, using social tools, is now a core competency. Together, we’ll also explore how (or maybe when) to combine personal and professional social as it relates to workplace and career to strike a fine balance, based on common sense and your own beliefs regarding brand humanization.

The theme for this week’s #TChat World of Work will be ‘Social HR: Engage the Humans for Social HR Leadership’

We’ll ask, and debate, the following questions:

Q1:  How should HR play authenticity and transparency when stepping into social for the first time? What tools should we use?

Q2:  How does social recruiting differ with Gen Y than other generations? Why or why not?

Q3:  Is LinkedIn just a job board pretending to be a social network? Why or why not? And should HR care?

Q4:  Should business leadership be blogging, tweeting and sharing on social? Why or why not?

Q5:  Should we combine the personal and professional in social? Should there be boundaries? Why or why not?

So grab your canteen and join us Wednesday on Twitter for #TChat. This is happening May 16th on Twitter from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT).  Please tune in from wherever you may be. I’ll be your moderator on Twitter @MeghanMBiro along with @socialmediasean and @brentskinner - We will be aided by our live Vancouver panel moderators @KevinWGrossman @SocialSalima and other community friends.

Think it’s almost summertime. Think camp. Think about how to use social media to engage as a leader or employee in your workplace or career role. Talk to you Wednesday!

1. Dotted Line

We’re always referencing the “fine line” between things. It’s never really fine, is it? I see it more as a dotted line — which is really a line with some leeway. Those small spaces between are silent permission for the negative to pollute the possibilities. Lines, especially when carelessly crossed, are adversaries to greatness (and happiness) according to this Forbes post, which came with powerful pictorials. They might as well be cave drawings — there’s centuries of wisdom in not leading between these lines.

The Trend: The lines that box you in are not always straight. Stop growing in circles.

2. On the Dot

Now that “The Oprah Show” is over, there are two shows that bring me to my emotional knees: “Extreme Makeover — Home Edition” and “Undercover Boss.” They tell the story of human potential; in the case of the latter, however, it’s not a true story.

If you need a disguise to learn the truth about your company, you’re doing something wrong.

#Schooled by Inc.com — it might as well be “Extreme Makeover — Workplace Edition”! Stories that matter don’t wear a mask and arrive late to the ball.

The Trend: Leaders tell the story; they don’t merely star in it. Real leaders show up on time.

3. Dot Dot Dash

At the end of my spelling-bee style made-to-order bliss some years ago, the barista asked if I worked for Starbucks. Uh…no — but it was great to know I had this star quality. Actually, all of us Starbucks patrons do. It’s by design that we speak in retail tongues — a result of a Starbucks customer boot camp. Now we’re walking, talking brand ambassadors that spread the word, all because we don’t like getting called out. This HBR video will fill you in on the magic of treating your customers like employees (there’s that fine line again). I’m looking forward to a White Mocha Caramel Coconut Frappuccino at half price today between 3pm and 5pm. Life is Grandé.

The Trend: The Tall Order – stop speaking in code and create ease in customer engagement.

Without connection we’re just a bunch of dots seeking meaning in the bigger picture of life. That’s what I say. …

image credit: Connect The Dots, by queefette

Attract quickly, hire slowly.

That sentiment comes from Dave McClure, venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, an Internet start-up seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, Calif. He was part of a panel discussion on recruiting at the War for Talent event this week, in San Francisco.

For me, that phrase epitomizes how company brands are built and maintained, and how reciprocal the ebb and flow of concept to founding team to scaling a company truly are. What’s interesting is that most new jobs are created by start-ups, but most of the employed work for larger companies. So if a startup makes it and grows, they become a multifaceted brand. Facebook is just one exciting example: They’re about to go public, but just look at LinkedIn, as well as many others.

At whatever point in the growth stage of a company, each person added to the team, whether full-time, part-time or contract, incrementally changes the persona of the company, the internal and external brands, which are what make the company a multifaceted brand. The goal is to encourage hopefully happy folks’ individual brands to shine through and share the larger brand love — which in turn drives further visibility and growth.

Hence, we have McClure’s “attract quickly, hire slowly” formula. Even if we applied that maxim primarily to start-ups, I’d argue that successful larger companies apply it, as well. Whether you believe hiring for cultural fit is a reality or not — and I bet many of you believe it is — the great diverse yet loosely unified collective is what makes the brand shine inside and out.

And a really big marketing and ad budget, too — at least to shine outward, because management, marketing and recruiting still own the “expression” of the unified external brand. The figurative “half-life” of that depends on how unified the internal brand is. It is important to note, however, that more than ever — before that internal brand solidifies — many on the company team are loyal to the work, not necessarily the brand. Keeping your teams excited about the work helps productivity go up; revenue increases, and the brand equity increases, too.

And then you can have a bigger marketing and ad budget, as well as the organic brand equity, to attract new customers (employees and buyers) quickly, create more exciting work quickly, and let the brand simmer to a slow boil.

We enjoyed all your tweeting wisdom yesterday. Following is a slide show of this week’s #TChat’s choicest tweets. If you missed the preview, just click here.

image credit: The Tortoise and the Hare, by sajulo

It’s a strategy not without risk: Some individuals have strong personal brands, which may dilute the employer’s brand. Yet, since most employees have ready access to social media, the strategy has the feel of inevitability. So employers need to be on the front foot by ensuring company culture, brand and employee experience are aligned or, at least, focused on common themes. It’s time for leaders to adopt social media or fall behind the curve.

The code word here is Brand Humanization, which requires employers to ensure that corporate culture is robust enough to sustain the goodwill of employees, your brand ambassadors.

Who has seen Klouchebag? It’s a tool for measuring how annoying people are on Twitter — definitely a sign of the times and a strong message to those who are not being thoughtful about their brands online. Before you tweet, blog or otherwise update, think about what you want to share with the world.

Not all employee messages will be consistent with brand messages, of course, so planning to unleash employee voices to support a brand demands careful consideration, diligence and a strong commitment from leaders and teams to be social. The key, as with so much else, is building and maintaining a strong workplace culture — one where you trust your staff and they trust you, and one in which customers also have trust. All of that extends into social media, of course.

For this week’s World of Work #TChat, please join us for a discussion on the intersection of employer and employee brands. That would be today, Wednesday, May 9, from 7-8 pm ET (6-7 pm CT, 4-5 pm PT, or wherever you are). We’ll be asking the following questions, and we look forward to your many tweets, in response.

Q1:  How can leaders harness the voices of their employees to shape, amplify & humanize the employer’s brand?

Q2:  Should a company express its employer brand as its employees’ many personal brands?

Q3:  How, why & when can or should your personal brand merge with your employer’s brand?

Q4:  How can employees’ unleashed online personal brands affect an employer brand when leaders neglect culture?

Q5:  What’s the present reality & future of our personal vs. professional brands’ dance with employers’ brands?

Join us on the Twitter stream! See you there.

image credit: Harmony Day, by DIAC images

1. POWER PLAY

In late February this year, Inc posted an article on qualities that make an employee remarkable. To date, it’s been shared 17k times on LinkedIn and generated 16k likes on Facebook. Pretty impressive right? I thought so, especially since I contributed in part to this data. Last week Inc really outdid itself with its post on 8 Signs That You Have an Extraordinary Boss. It’s one for the walls of the classroom, the bull-pen and Pinterest pin-boards alike with 13k LinkedIn shares and 27k Facebook likes in just 4 days and counting. Good, you’re listening. Let’s get to it. If you’re not leading the way, you’re not leading today. It’s about engaging with eccentricity in an ecosystem, serving for success, partnering for potential, and playing for performance as a community.

Extraordinary bosses… inspire people to see a better future and how they’ll be a part of it…see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose.

Sit with this. Then do something about it.

The Trend: Extraordinary leads different. The #LeadExtraordinary movement starts today.

2. PLAY IT UP

The Terms “Adulescents” and “Choicists” have recently emerged to be synonymous with the term Gen Y. Perhaps because the 20s has become known as an era of personal search, where younger people take time off to “find themselves.” Does this still hold true? In a recent Forbes article, Meg Jay, a Ph.D. clinical Psychologist specializing in adult development, tells us why this laissez-faire approach to life in the 20s doesn’t fly:

These 20-somethings think they are keeping their options open, but they are actually closing doors.

Sounds like taking the decade off may actually lead to finding yourself having a lot more time while you look for employment. If you’re employing Gen “Whys” in your organization and are nodding, motivated by an “I knew it” or aha moment, you’re not off the hook. Says Dan Schwabel of Millenial Branding in this article:

Gen Yers would rather work for smaller companies, and they want flexibility and to do work that has an impact.

Employers, you are still responsible for fostering the next generation of fearless leaders. For organizations and individuals, the moral of this story is to play it smart and fertilize your freedom by choosing to use it for good rather than ego. If you’re waiting for an open door, this is it.

The Trend: The 20s really matter in the World of Work, big time.

3. PRESS PLAY

My most recent ultimate light-bulb moment was when I realized that I am the “aha” — yes, me. Well not me, per se, but the self — you. You are the big idea, and recently Harvard Business Review gave voice to this notion with an article on making your job more meaningful:

…people with callings are different. They see their work as a positive end in itself. They feel good about what they’re doing. They give more to their work. They get more from it.

Jobs are tasks you complete that leave you thirsting for more, the next best thing, and the next big idea. When you discover your calling, your search becomes focused on new ways of igniting your strengths and of being more of who you already are. You shift from careerist to creator of your best life. People with callings have a different way of being in the workplace. They cultivate career craftsmanship. They sculpt their success by producing nothing short of excellence. They serve, and not just in the workplace, but in places where leadership is in greater abundance than money. People with callings are rooted in their values, purpose and lead with a truth that is more powerful than the penny:

Identifying your own outlook toward work can help you define what you need — or want — in your professional life.

I want to empower authentic leadership in business, the workplace and beyond. Maybe that’s my calling. What’s yours?

The Trend: Find YOUR double meaning – experiencing real success means finding fulfillment beyond the dollar sign. Consider this your wake-up call.

4. PLAY IT SAFE

So you’re an introvert. You’re the person who would rather be at home reading a book than the last leaving the company party. You see more than you speak. Your way of leading is by listening, but you may not get noticed for this critical contribution. You show up when it matters, and it matters that you show up — a lot. The notion of introverted leaders is a trend, and it’s gaining visibility. Recently, I was drawn to an article on Networking for Introverts where Lisa Petrilli adds to the discourse on the idea of quiet leadership. Perhaps the emergence of this subject matter is fueled by the rise of the era of the entrepreneur, a term generally associated with extroversion and networking. So you’re an introvert and an entrepreneur, and you have to network. Now what? You can take up space with your presence instead of your voice. Chances are you’re a great listener, so show up and take note of what others may be too social to see. Plan your engagements instead of doing the impromptu thing. This will help you stay grounded in what you know you can influence with your quiet power of perspective. Better safe than sorry, so if you’re more effective one-on-one, then find a favorite place to meet for coffee or a drink. There’s a gold nugget in here for extroverted leaders, too: there may be a high potential waiting in the wings. Whether you’re an I or an E, listen out loud.

The Trend: You have to work it, to make it work. Embrace your innerpreneur and say hello to success by using your strengths.

5. PLAY FOR KEEPS

Welcome to “Talent Ed.” Today’s lesson is on developing high-potentials – advanced. And it’s a wake-up call of sorts, one that is resonating with leaders in this article on The Paradox of High Potentials:

To retain high-potential employees, the conventional wisdom is deceptively simple: Identify, develop, and nurture them.

The challenge is connecting the dots between talk and true talent incubation. The article suggests that the source of the struggle organizations face with high-potentials is discomfort. In a world that’s focused on pluralism and diversity, how do you single someone out without guilt? We’ve all experienced this – creating focus without favoritism. The other discomfort is around the complexity of dialogue:

… senior executives need to focus not just on the high-potential programs, but the underlying anxieties of managers who have to execute them.

It takes a village to propel high-potential talent – a community of leaders who can intervene with precision to stretch, challenge and coach their talent to the top.

The Trend: Leaders are servants of high potential. High is only mighty when it’s managed effectively.

image credit: Press Play, by Dylan Cantwell

Yet leadership is an elusive trait for many people. Not everyone is a born leader, and some leaders make their teams weaker, not better, stronger or faster. You can learn leadership skills, you can read books, and you can work with coaches. Some people who aren’t natural-born leaders are fortunate and find the coach, the book, the point of view that helps them make the transition. This can work for people who are open to learning and creating behaviors that nurture this kind of career path and calling. The rest of us struggle and, occasionally, shine. Leadership is a daily walk and no two days are alike.

Of course the team is just as important. Some teams are electric; everything works. Some teams are an effort; everything is work. And some teams never click. Culture and people dynamics are flawed, inspiration is absent, management comes in too close or is absent, or (and?) matrix management fails yet again.

Oh, and we have the technology, yes. These are great tools unevenly implemented and realized, and they might not always help with team building and leadership. Let’s be honest: Most HR technology ostensibly for leaders is optimized for candidate-hunting and sourcing talent, not necessarily team building and employee engagement. That has got to change. We are getting there.

So, in an effort to address the questions we continually field from you, our community, this week’s World of Work #TChat takes on two tough subjects — teams and leadership. Please join us on Wednesday, May 2, from 7-8 pm ET (6-7 pm CT, 4-5 pm PT, or wherever you are). KC Donovan will be our moderator as Kevin W. Grossman, Brent Skinner and I (@meghanmbiro) work the back channel from Washington, D.C., where this week we’re attending the exciting HRO Today Forum and participating in the event’s iTalent Competition. Also on the back channel will be Sean Charles and Salima Nathoo. Following are Wednesday’s questions. We look forward to your tweets!

Q1: Teams that are great on paper might still fail in reality. How do you hire a successful team?

Q2: How do leaders remain their teams’ leaders even as they work with and in those teams?

Q3: How do leaders know what to inspire in their team members and what to leave alone?

Q4: Tech can help teams, but what are team technologies’ blind spots? How does tech slow teams down?

Q5: What are the team dynamics that repel top talent? How can orgs retain talented teams?

image credit: Six Million Dollar Man 41, by tohoscope