Social Capital

How will they connect?

Jason-

We are very much in agreement regarding the power of social media…and you raise a wonderful question regarding the future implications of the rapid integration of these tools into our personal and professional lives.

I think that, truth be told, we do no fully understand the current impact of these tools on us , let alone the impact on our children, but here are some thoughts, and I think that these are also relevant to HR and the evolving organization.

Increased significance of weak ties: I can still only manage a relatively small number of close relationships or strong ties, but social media allows me to develop, maintain and manage many more weak ties than before. Twitter and Facebook are great examples of this. Not only are these tools valuable in creating and/or maintaining those weak ties, it also makes it easier for me to benefit from those weak ties…because those weak ties are consistently sharing information. So, the size of my weak ties network has grown drastically and the role that the weak ties play in my life has also grown drastically.

Professional asset: For some folks and some professions this is nothing new, but on a broader scale social capital is increasingly becoming viewed as a significant professional asset. You are a good example of this. It is going become more important to their professional success that our children are able to build and maintain a vibrant network, and that they are able to demonstrate the value of that network to prospective employers or collaborators.

Specialized tools: Our children will be able to be much more intentional about seeking out specific new components to add to their network…when they want to find specific people or specific kinds of people to start relationships with they will easily be able to find them and we already have made progress in this direction.

More self directed personal/professional opportunity outside of organizations: I think that we will continue to see individuals able to do more things, find more things and create more things without the involvement of traditional organizations. Not sure that organizations are going to go away, but their role will continue to change and I think we will see a gradual increase in the number of us that are self-employed and involved in a variety of projects with a variety of other people.

What else do you see changing?

-joe

Why Ignoring Social Media is Stupid

Joe,

You nicely summed up what I feel is at the core of the discussion about how social media is changing how people interact. So, to take it further, how exactly do these social media tools impact relationships and ultimately, the creation of social capital. Here's a few of the most important ways I've experienced:

• Social media is a tool that facilitates the creation and maintenance of relationships, it is not the relationship itself. It's when people mistake their social media connections as relationships that we start getting into trouble.
• Social media facilitates connections. By my definition, a connection is someone who you have come into contact with in some meaningful way. Once we are connected to someone, we know how to reach them and we would have at least enough knowledge about the other person to facilitate the beginning of a more substantial relationship. Connections in other words are loose acquaintances.
• We know from the work of Mark Granovetter and others that acquaintances are our source of social influence and power. Because our acquaintances (or weak ties) represent access to information and resources that we wouldn't know about through our closest relationships, the more acquaintances we have, the more powerful our social capital. Social media makes it easier than ever before to stay connected with these weak ties, thus making it easier to build our social capital and influence.
• Social media makes it easier to maintain relationships with larger numbers of connections. While Dunbar's number suggests that we can only maintain relationships with 150 people at any given time, the tools of social media make that process easier than in the past. While it seems that social media may not make Dunbar's number any larger, I would argue that it does make it possible to seamlessly change which people we have in our 150 over time. Social media gives us the ability to stay connected to people so that we know where to find them when we need them, even if we haven't actively maintained a more substantial relationship with them in the meantime. Social media keeps the connection in tact.

So, while social media can't BE the relationship, I think that it represents incredibly powerful tools for planting, growing and harvesting social capital. By ignoring these tools, you are choosing to be less influential, less powerful and less relevant. I assume we are in agreement on this point.

So, how is social media going to impact our children in terms of how they will connect with and build relationships with others as they come of age?

-Jason

Social Technology: Best/Worst Thing Ever?

Jason, I hope that you are enjoying the shift in weather. Spring is a favorite season of mine, it always feels like a fresh start on things…especially after this winter.

On to the business at hand.

Thanks for your post teeing up social technology…there is so much noise about this issue out there. I guess I have a paradoxical view regarding social technology, I think that social technology is very underrated and very overrated. That works for me, because as you like to remind me, I am a consultant and I do not have to make sense!

Getting on LinkedIn is not going to build social capital for you. But you can use LinkedIn to more effectively build social capital. Getting on Twitter is not going to build social capital for you. But you can use Twitter to more effectively build social capital. Having 17,374,981 “friends” on Facebook does not mean that you actually have any social capital. I guess I view the rapidly evolving world of social technology as similar in nature to steroids. Steroids alone will not make you a great athlete. You still have to be a really talented to play professional sports, but steroids can make you even better (although there is clearly a number of bad aspects to using steroids, so not a perfect analogy).

I think that new social technologies are absolutely changing the way that we interact, and some of those changes are good and some of them are bad. You and I as friends, as collaborators and as business partners communicate with each other in a variety of ways. But the vast majority of our really important and serious conversations still happen face to face. We use texting, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and this blog to complement an already very real relationship. That is a wonderful thing. But when social technology is used to replace, avoid or simply create the perception of a real relationship it is bad news…whether we are talking about a 1:1 relationship or the relationship between an organization and its workforce or its customers.

So, I think that the most important question that is not being asked is what kind of relationships do we want to have? As employees, as employers, as HR leaders, as business leaders, as citizens, parents, friends, neighbors, consumers…what do we want those relationships to be like?

I look forward to digging into this further.

-joe

Is technology killing social capital?

Joe,

I have found myself recently chatting with several people who seem to be making the argument that social networks, text/instant messaging, and the internet in general are diminishing the relationships between people. To be fair, the people making the argument are generally Gen X or older and are people who pride themselves in networking the old-fashioned way, face to face and eyeball to eyeball. So, they could just be resisting change or maybe they are on to something.

While I think it's very short-sighted to suggest that technology is ruining relationships, I do think it's an interesting topic to consider how it is changing the relationships and connectedness between people. So, I'd like to propose that we discuss this issue in our next several posts. Here are some of the questions that I'm interested in discussing:

• How has the advent of social networks, email, and texting changed the way we connect and interact with others?
• What are the differences between being connected and having a relationship?
• How is technology impacting the way children and young adults are connecting to one another and what is the long term impact of that?
• How does the difference between connection and relationship play into the creation of social capital?

Clearly, a major shift is underway in how we interact with one another. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on exactly what's going on and how we can both make sense of it and embrace it.

-Jason

Avoiding the disconnect...

Jason-

Nice post on HR finger pointing and good examples…though I have recently made a vow to avoid and / or ignore all conversations involving the phrase “seat at the table.”

…but other than that, its all good.

I wonder if this does not link back around to our conversations about social capital. I think that finger pointing happens a lot less when people (or teams or departments) are actually in relationship and view each other as partners or collaborators.

When we are disconnected from someone and something is not working out the way we would like it too, I think it is almost a natural reflex to assume that “they” are the problem.

Are there some things that the HR manager or emerging HR leader can do to reach out and develop those relationships in a proactive way? ...even if those non-HR folks are terribly interested in doing so?

-joe

Get out of your office.

Yo VIP lets kick it.

Jason-

In your last post you mention a lot of good stuff, and one of the things that caught my attention was that you touched on the importance of building internal relationships a couple of times, and I think that this is sometimes overlooked. How HR is viewed within the organization has a great deal to do with the nature of the relationship that HR has with the organization…as a function and as individuals.

I think that we can look to some ancient wisdom for guidance on this one.

The poet-philosopher Vanilla Ice encouraged us to “Stop. Collaborate and listen.” Powerful stuff. Powerful stuff indeed, and I do not claim to entirely understand what the prophet had in mind with this line, but it might be advice worth considering.

Part of what makes HR work hard is what everyone else thinks they know about HR.

The less the rest of the organization knows about you (as an individual and as a function) the more they are going to make up their own story, based on what they think they know about HR and the most recent episode of The Office.

I think that it is vitally important for HR professionals to be students of the organization, to be students of the people within the organization and to be always on the look out for an opportunity to add value.

Get out of your office. (now)

Ask questions and listen.

Know the business.

Know the people.

Find a way to add value.

Be in partnership.

We all want to rock the mic like a vandal…and the lack of internal relationships or the wrong kind of internal relationships can easily stand in our way.

Getting HR Connected

Joe,

We've been talking about a lot of important issues around Social Capital in HR over our last severals posts. One of the questions you asked as we began this discussion was: How do you get your HR team connected?" Since this is a topic I work with daily, I'll share some thoughts I have on it.

The most important thing that needs to happen to get your HR team connected and investing in social capital is to make it a part of the job. For far too long, too many HR folks have spent their days sitting in their offices, waiting for the phone to ring with the next issue to handle. HR leaders need to very specifically set expectations for their teams about getting out and being around people both within and outside the company.

Here are some ways that HR leaders can get their teams connected:

• Be the example. As the leader, you have to visibly demonstrate that you are committed to building your own social capital. Your team will key off of what you do. If you aren't walking the talk, the rest of these ideas are meaningless.
• Train the team on relationship skills. Have the team read and discuss "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Pair up new HR members with those who do this well so that they have a role model to learn from. Teach them how to use outlook to capture information about contacts and schedule follow ups.
• Establish requirements in their performance objectives related to internal and external networking. Goals can range from taking an internal contact to lunch once per month to attending other department meetings weekly. Relationships can't happen unless people are out interacting with one another.
• Require each team member to find a project or effort to get involved in internally. There are always projects, committees, task forces, etc. taking place. These groups are powerful ways to gain connections to others in the company who you might not otherwise meet. Note: team members may need help finding and getting invited to join these depending on your organization.
• Expect your team members to be involved in local HR networking groups like SHRM, CEBS, etc. People get busy and unless you establish an expectation that they are attending these meetings, they won't go. When they go, establish a goal that they come back to the office with at least 3 business cards from new people they met at the meeting.
• Require people to have an active LinkedIn profile and to grow it. Not only is LinkedIn a great networking tool for people, it's a nice way for individuals to feel the progress of building their network of connections because they can see the numbers.
• Train your team on social media. By teaching your team what it is and how to use it, it makes jumping in a lot easier. If you, as the HR leader, facilitate the training and use examples of how you are using it, the team will follow.
• Give performance feedback on how connected each individual is and the efforts they are making towards getting connected. By involving this in formal performance feedback like performance appraisals, you will ensure that it's viewed as important.

There are a lot more ways to do this, but these area few important places to start.

-Jason

Find the People that are Saying Something Different

Good list man. I think that there is one thing that I would add one thing...

Seek out and collect oddballs.

Be curious and relentless in bringing different and new perspectives, experiences, etc. into your network of relationships. This can greatly increase your social capital and it does not happen on its own, whether you are developing relationships on-line or off-line.

We have a tendency to seek out and feel comfortable with people that are similar to us in someway and maybe share many of the same perspectives, priorities, etc. There is a great deal of comfort there. Human nature.

The more people that we bring into our world that do the same thing we do and think the same way we do the more that our network can get stale and stagnant. To some extent everyone is unique and brings something new, but we can very easily build a community of very like minded folks that are not necessarily challenging us, confusing us and frustrating from time to time. And we need some of that.

Social media can be helpful in seeking out experiential, professional, cognitive and other types of diversity if you are intentional about it. Social media can also be a bit misleading in this area, as there are a lot of clusters and pools of popularity out there that you can tap into and meet a lot of new people, but they are often people that are talking about the same things (sometimes each other), going to the same events, and holding on to a lot of the same perspectives.

You are a V.P. of Human Resources and you pay attention to what is going on in the world of HR. You can pretty easily get on-line and find the people who are talking the loudest about HR stuff. So can everyone else. And there is some value in staying plugged into that conversation. It is an easy place to meet people and share information and resources and ask questions as there is a common language and framework there. It is especially valuable for those that are earlier in their career and want to learn from and connect to peers.

But it is the people from other professions and interest areas that can most likely provide you with a new and unique and potentially valuable perspective.

Oddballs.

Oddballs are the secret ingredient for building a killer network.

So, from time to time it is important to take a look at your network and see if there are any oddballs to be found...

• are you connected to people that are talking about things nobody else is talking about?
• are you connected to people that do not agree with what everyone else is saying?
• are you connected to people from a variety of geographies, professions, cultures, ages, etc.?
• are you connected to people that are conducting their own research?
• are you connected to people that do not make sense to you?

The people that occupy the popularity pools provide safety, comfort, reassurance and can help you think about what is going on today. Tradition, the idea of expertise and the status-quo live here in the middle.

The people that are on the edges offer challenge, confusion, discomfort and an opportunity to understand tomorrow. Learning, exploration and innovation live on the edge.

-joe