RealTime Leadership

A wiki is an open-source application that allows any user to submit and edit content.  The most popular and famous wiki to date is Wikipedia, an open-source web-based encyclopedia written entirely by volunteer contributors.  Wikipedia has grown rapidly to become the largest reference work ever published in the history of mankind.

The popularity of wikis has not gone unnoticed by the business community.  Companies are beginning to recognize the transformative nature of wikis and are using them to share knowledge and enhance collaboration in all kinds of disciplines.   BearingPoint is using a wiki as a Talent Management Tool.  P&G is using wikis to foster collaboration among its work-groups.  Many other companies are putting wikis to work.

A recent survey by the Massie Center polling over 1,000 learning professionals revealed that wikis and blogs are used more often (at 47% and 45% of the time) than Learning Management Systems (at 42% of the time). 

It’s only a matter of time until the LMS is gone, completely replaced by wikis and other collaboration tools.  At RealTime Performance we’re collaborating with our clients to build a next generation learning tool we call Leadershipedia, a wiki connecting employees to knowledge, information, ideas, people and learning activities.  

To understand why the LMS is a dinosaur, see the recently published McKinsey Quarterly article on the “Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work.”  Based on their research, for a wiki to truly grow and thrive it must, among other things, be in the workflow.   “What’s in the workflow is what gets used.”  The report cites Google and Pixar as companies that have successfully incorporated wikis into the production workflow of their products, thereby ensuring wide acceptance.

A major defect of the LMS has always been that it stands removed from the workflow.  One of the central ideas behind Leadershipedia, and all wikis, is that they deliver information at the point-of-need. 

Imagine you are a new manager preparing for your first performance review coming up in 2 hours.  You suddenly feel a great urgency to learn more about how to conduct a successful performance review.  What most people want at this point is quick access to a list of best practices, a few examples of what to do and what not to do, and perhaps a brief coaching session from their boss or an expert at conducting performance reviews using their company’s process.  Leadershipedia, and other wikis, can offer this kind of on-demand guidance and learning.  We call this learning at the point-of-need.  What a typical LMS offers, more often than not, is a 2 hour e-learning PowerPoint presentation written by someone who knows nothing about your company culture.

Furthermore, if the same manager finds a new resource or suggestions to be helpful, they simply update Leadershipedia.   Now Leadershipedia has become more valuable to the next person…and so on…and so on.

How are you using wikis for learning and leadership development?

 In February 2008, the National Academy of Engineering proposed 14 grand engineering challenges that represent the biggest opportunity for human improvement in the next 100 years.

Well, if the engineers can do it, why can’t we in management and leadership determine the greatest opportunities for human advancement through the profession of management?

In May of 2008, a group of business leaders and academics met in Half Moon Bay, CA to do just that — identify the biggest challenges facing the profession of management .  (See Harvard Business Review February 2009 “Moon Shots for Management.”)

While the list of management challenges doesn’t quite stir the imagination like the engineering list (Reverse Engineer the Brain, Provide Energy from Fusion), they nonetheless will have a profound effect on mankind assuming we can conquer them.

The full list runs to 25 and I encourage you to read them all; however the top 10 were singled out as especially important:

1. Ensure that the work of management serves a higher purpose.
2. Fully embed the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems.
3. Reconstruct management’s philosophical foundations.
4. Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy.
5. Reduce fear and increase trust.
6. Reinvent the means of control.
7. Redefine the work of leadership.
8. Expand and exploit diversity.
9. Reinvent strategy making as an emergent process.
10. De-structure and disaggregate the organization.

To me, #1 really jumps out.  We have all been given this tremendous opportunity to live on earth in community with others.  It is so important that we apply the gift of leadership to achieve noble goals and contribute to causes beyond our self. 

The great management achievements of this past century (think Fredrick Taylor, Henry Ford, Toyota and Peter Drucker) have been about improving efficiency.  The next big achievement in management will be about fostering new ways of innovation and collaboration in order to solve big problems, like the 14 grand engineering challenges.

In this way, I think the two lists compliment each other.  We will need advances in management if we are to truly conquer the advances in engineering.

In fact, one of the engineering challenges crosses over completely and can just as easily find a home on the management list:  “Advance Personalized Learning.”

A few weeks ago I reluctantly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and claimed the address: @seanpmurray.  For the un-initiated, Twitter is a communication and networking tool, similar to blogs, that allows you to broadcast short (140 characters or less) messages to followers.  The technology puts a premium on being both concise and witty.

My initial impression (like just about everyone else) was to view Twitter as another annoying technology bent on disrupting my day and reducing my productivity.  After a slow start I’m beginning to see the business value.   Journalist Julia Angwin has a great article in the WSJ about her conversion to Twitter.

Perhaps the most important quality of Twitter is that it does not demand or even ask for a response.  The communication is designed to go one way.  Although there is a “reply” function, the medium itself is very different than email where most messages demand a response.  It is this quality that actually saves Twitter from itself.  You can passively stay attuned to the thoughts and perspectives of others without exerting a lot of effort.  This can be extremely valuable in some professions like journalism and politics. 

As an experiment, I’ve asked all of my employees to sign up for Twitter and post at least once per day on what they are working on (I do the same).  From a leadership perspective, I’ve found the information to be very valuable.   Although “Completed Emerson Project” and “Testing Admin Tool” may not sounds exciting to you, I find I’m much more attuned to what’s happening around the office.  When you work in an information business, it’s sometimes difficult to see the work in progress.  And because there are multiple tools for posting to Twitter from your phone, I’ve been able to keep my team updated on what’s happening with clients while I’m on the road. 

I think the more powerful use of Twitter is as a marketing tool.  Perhaps the most popular CEO to use Twitter in this way is Tony Hseih @zappos.   Tony sees Twitter as an opportunity to build personal relationships with people.  But he also wrote recently about how Twitter has changed his life and made him a better person.

Like any tool, you need to figure out what you want from it, and develop a strategy for using it.  I don’t think anyone knows for sure how Twitter will evolve, but overall, I see Twitter as yet another technology that is transforming leadership.

One of the more interesting companies to debut on the 100 Best Companies to Work For list in 2009 is Zappos, coming in at 23.  That makes Zappos the highest ranked new comer to the list this year.  What makes Zappos, an e-commerce retailer, so unique, especially among start-ups, is an early commitment to defining a culture, and then designing systems and processes that support that culture.  Take one of their Core Values, “Deliver Wow through Service.”  This is an extremely customer-focused value, and it all starts with employees. It is the Zappos call center employees who have the direct interaction with customers and therefore have the largest opportunity to deliver Wow.  Often the Wow is delivered through off-beat and colorful ways that you wouldn’t expect from a call center.

Because having the right employees with the right attitude is so important for Zappos to deliver on its Core Value of “Delivering Wow,” the company invests considerable time and money in selecting and training people who will fit into the culture.  In fact, as new recruits go through four weeks of intensive training, Zappos offers them up to $2,000 in cash to leave.  The cash payment is designed to entice employees who are on-the-fence about Zappos’ intense culture to cut their losses early and move on to something else.  This saves the company in the long-run.

In an interview at HBR’s Idea Cast, Bill Taylor talks about the effectiveness of this strategy:

The idea is to allow some number of people who are probably sitting in that room saying, “my goodness, I kind of like it here, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I’m not ready for the intensity and energy that Zappos is expecting;” and it gives people a low stress, low risk and actually rewarding way to opt out at that point.  About 10% of new recruits to the call centers take them up on that deal and Zappos thinks that’s money well spent.

And it is money well spent because Zappos is trying to fill the organization with people who will truly thrive in their unique culture, and it is much less expensive to entice a recruit to leave one or two weeks into the training program than it is after four or six months on the job.

In another example of Zappos innovative employee engagement strategy, the company publishes an annual handbook written entirely by Zappos employees.  What a great way to send the message that Zappos employees own the culture.