Second Life for HR

At every conference, there should be 1 session that blows your mind. Most conference sessions are geared toward providing new information on something you already know. You already know that there's a shortage of nurses, but you didn't know that the constraint is in college classes. Interesting, you've just added to your body of knowledge. But the session that blows your mind, that introduces new technology, or shows you a completely new way to work, is the session you'll be talking about in 6 months. It's the session that justifies your attendance at the conference.

The mind-blowing session at HRPS was the plenary session: Second Life: The Business Case for HR in the Virtual World. The abstract included a well-constucted audience tease.

You will be transported into the virtual world of Second Life, where the future is now. Explore the impact of the new economy, the emerging virtual workforce and the workplace of the not so distant future. Your Avatar moderator and tour guide will show you what millions of people and dozens of leading companies are doing NOW in a virtual world and economy.

Hmm.... there's an Avatar moderator? How's that going to work? Will there be someone live as well? Are they actually going to present in Second Life? I was intrigued.

The presenter (in person, standing behind the podium, bummer!) started by asking how many in the audience had an avatar, in any application. (maybe 5-10% of the audience.) He then offered a definition of Second Life as "the unholy offspring of The Matrix, MySpace and eBay". That was followed by some suprising demographic stats. 43% of Second Life users are female. Average age: 32. 55% of users are outside North America. He was also very careful to distinguish Second Life from World of Warcraft. (WoW: it's a game, and you live within its rules and narrative. Second Life: focus on commerce and creativity.)

And then the fun started. The moderator brought up his Second Life instance, and in the guise of his Avatar ("Ace Carson") proceeded to give a guided tour, including interacting with 2 other avatars who co-presented. The demo paid particular attention to how IBM has invested in Second Life as a way to better interact with their workforce. Chuck Hamilton, from IBM @ Play walked through their Onboarding Island, complete with detailed documentation for IBM's processes and services. They also are using Second Life for virtual conference participation, saying that the Avatars give more of a presence indicator than just participating in web conferences. The IBM team has built out spaces to support this stronger presences as well. For example, when Sam Palmisano was speaking in China earlier this year, he was also speaking in "China" in Second Life. Another area when they have found Second Life useful is in mentoring. The use of Avatars helps employees feel more comfortable asking questions, or interacting than they might in real life, and they don't have to rely purely on text, or audio communication. After moving their onboarding and mentoring to Second Life, they have found that employees are building more connections, faster. One reason given is that the Avatar-based relationships feel more "real" than pure instant messaging or email-mediated communication. The results, according to Chuck are better relationships, less travel, and a very active virtual world. There are currently 15,000 IBM Avatars.

The audience reaction was just what you would hope. Lots of questions, lots of interest, lots of people thinking about how to apply the technology. There was a fair amount of skepticism as well. ("It's all well and good for IBM with the resources they have. How would this work in a company of less than 5,000 employees? Who has the time or money to invest in this?") But most importantly, this was a topic that reached out well beyond the time allocated for the session. At lunch on Day 3, people were still talking about Second Life, drawing connections between other tools, and thinking about how this might change the game. Will it happen overnight? No. But this is exactly what you hope to take away from a conference: new ideas, new conversations, and new solutions that you want to go explore.

HRPS: Marcus Buckingham on Strengths

Marcus Buckingham rallied the Day One HRPS crowd by talking about Strengths and how to leverage them. He’s a great speaker – engaging, humorous, lots of examples based on his data over the past 3 years. Most of his focus for this presentation was on how to invest time in your Strengths. First, to clarify his definition, Strengths are not just what you do best. A Strength is something you do well which you look forward to doing, enjoy while doing, and are energized after doing. It’s an interesting definition, that helps focus on a small number of items, rather than a long list of competencies.

According to Buckingham, using this definition of Strengths helps people identify how to shape their jobs. For example, if you ask people how much time they spend at work doing what they are most good at, the numbers are decreasing (17% in 2005 to 12% in 2007). But if you ask if they are engaged in their work once a week, or hit that state of flow where you lose track of time once a week, 80% of respondents say yes. So the question is, how do you increase that engagement to more than once a week.

Buckingham’s argument is that over time, you can shape your job to better fit your strengths. He's careful to note that this is a gradual process, not something that can happen overnight. But it's worth the investment: as the correlation between your job and your strengths increases, your engagement level goes up, and your job satisfaction will increase as well.

So, here’s the challenge: What are your strengths, and how can you leverage them in your current role? What is one change you can make today to increase the fit?

To learn more: visit his site, or buy his book.

Photo credit: Mrs. Maze

Initial Thoughts from the HR Planning Society Conference

I wanted to look into some new conferences this year. Nothing against HR Technology or IHRIM, but I’ve been attending those for a while, and wanted to see what another group might offer. I’ve been to some of the HRPS affiliate meetings in San Francisco, and had heard good things about their annual conference. I was quite interested in the focus themes for this year: global work, talent management and sustainability – all issues I hear about from our customers. The audience for HRPS is not the typical audience I speak with at OpenWorld, or meet at HR Technology. They are primarily HR Leaders in Organizational Design, Executive Development or Talent Management. So the conference was an opportunity for me to see how the key themes we are hearing from customers are being presented to people who might be end users of our technology.

There were several surprises along the way. First, was the response of attendees when I told them I was from Oracle. Actual quotes from people at the cocktail hour:
“Doesn’t your CEO have a big boat?”
“I know the name, but I don’t know what you do.”
“You’re the guys who took over my PeopleSoft”
Key messages: Oracle is not a known vendor for these people. If they do know what we do, there’s a negative connotation tied to PeopleSoft. Announcing that I was a PeopleSoft employee during the acquisition garnered instant support from those who knew of or use PeopleSoft or Oracle applications, and empathy from other people who have been through acquisitions.

Another surprise: the level of interaction in breakout sessions. My usual conference experience is that the speaker presents for 45 of their allotted 50 minutes, takes 1-2 questions at the end, and then gets bombarded by people after the talk. The breakouts at this conference were interactive from the first slides. In almost every case, it was more like the presenter was facilitating a conversation, with some slides to point the way. Even in a “full session” – about 100 people in the room – people were still asking questions, clarifying, re-clarifying and commenting as much on others’ questions as on the presentation. A new experience for me in a conference, and I think I got more out of the sessions by hearing other people question and comment on the content.

This interactive approach continued throughout the conference, and addressed one of the potential risks of the conference: most of the 400 attendees were there on their own. Even companies that sent multiple attendees hadn’t sent more than 2-3. As a result, the conference could have been very isolating; it can be hard for people to show up alone at dinner or drinks. So the organizers drafted “facilitators” to start conversations, engage with people over breaks, and otherwise help attendees feel part of the conference community. They also reminded us at the end of each session that the dialog could continue at break, or lunch, or cocktails. After one keynote, the leader mentioned that you should be getting as much out of the breaks as you are from the sessions. This is often true at conferences, but I don’t remember attending another conference where they so deliberately addressed this need to connect and engage with other attendees. I walked away having had good conversations with quite a few people, and am looking forward to continuing the dialog online.

One more great idea from the conference, and this was from a vendor. Most of the vendors on sight were talent management consulting. The exception was Borders Books of Costa Mesa. They were on site with copies of every book ever written by the speakers at the conference, and they were encouraging all speakers to autograph books. Then, they offered my favorite service of the week – shipping books anywhere in the US for $5.00. “Oh, so I don’t have to lug books home in my overcrowded suitcase? In that case, I’d like to have 4-5 books instead of 1-2.” Great sales strategy Borders! I bet they doubled their on-site sales with this idea. Timely action too – the books arrived this afternoon!

A good conference, and great interactions. Oh, you want to hear about content? Next post please…