Corporate Eye

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Ideas and Trends

Why Business Needs The Arts

Yes that’s right, while the Arts need Business sponsorships, Business also needs the Arts in organizational practices.

Business practices, the workplace, skill requirements have changed so much that the business world seems that it has turned upside down – Leadership styles are morphing – command and control is out, organizations are getting flatter, the competitive landscape is chaotic, people are looking for meaningful work, customers are in control.
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Spin, Fads and Taxes: CSR in the 21st Century

Is corporate social responsibility really just spin, an expensive corporate fad and a tax on shareholders’ profits?

Sonia at Remarkable Communication recently wrote a helpful article about corporate social responsibility (CSR) for small business – how small businesses should set up and use a CSR programme. As she says, what works for giant companies will work for small lean businesses too.

But she raises some interesting questions:

1. Sonia refers to CSR as 90% spin, and as a corporate fad.

CSR has been around for a long time, just under a different name. Probably ‘philanthropy’ would have covered it back in the 18th/19th centuries …
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What are you doing about Knowledge Management?

In Foresight 2020, a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit on Corporate trends, Knowledge Management was singled out as a critical corporate issue.

Knowledge management. Running an efficient organisation is no easy task but it is unlikely on its own to offer lasting competitive advantage. Products are too easily commoditised; automation of simple processes is increasingly widespread. Instead, the focus of management attention will be on the areas of the business, from innovation to customer service, where personal chemistry or creative insight matter more than rules and processes. Improving the productivity of knowledge workers through technology, training and organisational change will be the major boardroom challenge of the next 15 years.

So what is Knowledge Management (KM). Simply put, there are two types of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is often known as “expert knowledge”, (this is what is stored in our brains), which is often difficult to explain and intangible. Then there is “explicit knowledge,” which is tangible and can be codified in books, manuals and specifications. Tacit knowledge is vital to the success of any organization. Knowledge Management is the process of capturing, organizing and distributing this knowledge from many stakeholders in a manner that yields competitive advantage and value for the organization.

KM has a major business issue in the past few years as millions of baby boomers are planning to retire over the coming decade. Millions of baby boomers turned 60 in 2005, those who haven’t already retired are certainly planning to do so soon. When they leave, the knowledge they acquired over the course of their long careers leaves with them – unless companies take the initiative to capture the knowledge stored in their brains.

Here’s what some organizations are doing —

COMPANY

INITIATIVE

Procter & Gamble and Eli LillyFormed YourEncore, creating a pool of retired employees that each company could call upon for temporary help
John DeereRegularly hires back retirees to teach, lead projects and participate in product development.
Quest InternationalTo transfer knowledge to younger employees, senior experts are given responsibility for two or three junior application specialists. Quest uses this “buddy approach” to make sure veteran specialists guide younger colleagues and help them gain experience
Northrop Grumman, Aerotek, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Consulting and Integration JapanHave integrated communities of practice (CoPs) into their knowledge management repertoire. These CoPs meet regularly in person and on-line. Older and younger workers share current information, best practices, and personal stories of success and failure. And they ensure the survival of tacit knowledge – knowledge that cannot be codified but is based on years of experience on the job and can be transmitted only from person to person.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)Uses storytelling for a different type of knowledge retention. Since early 1999, monthly storytelling sessions have been held in JPL’s library. These sessions, which usually are videotaped, often bring NASA veterans back to recount what it was like being part of old missions. This effort is intended to help socialize newer employees into the JPL culture and to connect them with the lab’s history and mission of “doing what no one has done before.”

Adapted from “The Boomer Exodus: Ready to Pass the Torch?”, Alice Graves

While these forward looking companies both recognize the coming knowledge loss and are taking action, they are too many who are not.

Many U.S. organizations are failing to capture critical workforce knowledge and experience from older employees facing retirement, and few organizations are transferring that knowledge to newer employees, according to the results of a survey released by Accenture.

The survey of more than 500 full-time U.S. workers between 40 and 50 years of age found that nearly half (45 percent) of respondents’ organizations do not have formal workforce planning processes and/or tools in place to capture their workplace knowledge.

For those companies in the 45% … it is time to get those geezers and millennials collaborating.

Do you know that I’m talking about you?

Who is blogging about you?And not just me, either.

No doubt there are several bloggers and other commentators discussing you, your website and your services out there. Probably more of us if you deal with the retail customer, but nevertheless there are both positive and negative comments available for everyone to see.

I expect you know that if you search on ‘landrover discovery’ the number two site is a blog maintained by a disgruntled (ex-)customer of Landrover, and that there are several anti-Tesco blogs, blogs complaining about telecoms companies, oil companies …

But these companies are not alone. What are people saying about you?
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Are you looking in the right place for recruits?

David Wilson at Social Media Optimisation points to a very interesting article in the India Times. In this article, HCL Technologies estimate that over the next two years, two thirds of their recruits will come from social media.

2/3 of recruits will come from social media

We all know that these days recruiters are quite likely to Google recruits … and that this could come up with their dodgy Facebook profile, or the inappropriate comments that they made on a forum. A few companies set up areas in Second Life to help with recruiting; others establish forums and live chat on their own sites.
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Stories are Serious Business

Stories and storytelling cut across all types of industries and all business functions. The diagram below is only a narrow snapshot of where and how stories are used. You need a super wide angle lens to capture the corporate storytelling landscape. Note also that stories transcend organization size.

Stories are not limited to lofty corporate wide applications. I’ve seen more “mundane” uses such as a start-up using a story in its business plan presentation to investors, a six sigma consulting company using stories to help their clients and government vendors using stories in their proposal applications.

There have been a few articles on storytelling published in the Harvard Business Review and other publications. But it hasn’t yet hit the Business Top Ten List.
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