Who Leads Workplace Collaboration?

Last week a cancellation in my calendar afforded me the opportunity to attend the Chief Learning Officer webinar titled, Enterprise Collaboration: Can You Connect Social Learning and Business Performance? As with most lunchtime webinars, I approached this one with tempered expectations. I go into these things with the hope that I might pick up at least a gem of an idea, or something that sparks my thinking. This session delivered both. Presenters Eric Bruner and Butler Newman of RWD alternated taking the lead on describing the culture shift taking place (or that should be taking place!) in learning and organizations related to the use of social media for business performance.

After walking us through a slide reminding us of Josh Bersin's Evolution of Corporate Learning, from the 1990's through today, they uncovered the gem of the day as they began describing what a collaborative performance workplace looks like. The description contained three key components:

Process Centered Collaboration (PCC) - characterized as taking place directly in the workflow, where workers can get persistent, formal and informal help, in context, to create transparent knowledge - but, in which participation is optional.

Communities of Practice (CoP) - described as being business-driven groups, formed across organizational boundaries that have a common focus, performing measureable, process-related work.

Communities of Interest (CoI) - described as interest-based groups, formed around an area of common focus for the benefit of the individuals or the community - again, in which participation is optional.

So if you wanted to draw this up as a formula, you could say:

Collaborative Culture = PCC + CoP + CoI

As the session continued Eric and Butler went on to talk about key roles in the collaborative work environment. The two obvious ones are community manager and technology steward. Then they followed up the gem, with the spark: They began talking about the leadership needed to sustain performance in the collaborative work environment. They stated that the CLO is in the best position to think about social media integration and therefore has to be the vanguard leader for collaboration in the business. I thought that was interesting. I had always thought someone in Marketing or IT would be best suited to take the lead in the social media arena, but after they said it, it immediately made sense. Who could be better than a learning person to grasp the necessary organizational context, process performance, and people readiness needed to launch and sustain a collaborative work environment?

As the webinar wound down, the presenters shared how the CLO would fulfill that role. It would be done by:

• providing strong communication
• becoming the community builder
• embracing user-generated content (still a tough one in many organizations)
• managing top-down; engaging all stakeholders along the way
• making sure that process-centered collaboration is in the work flow; not appended on to it.

For those of us who work in corporate learning organizations, it certainly does throw a challenge our way.

What Makes Us Tick?

Today I downloaded the Career Factbook for HR and Learning Professionals published by Bersin & Associates in June 2009. Essentially, it provides the results of a study conducted in the Spring about what drives success, motivation, job satisfaction, etc. in the HR and Learning industry. Below are the key findings from the study, with my two cents added as commentary.

1. The HR and L&D Profession Is Largely Comprised of People Who Enjoy and Value Serving Others, Training and Coaching, and Engaging in the “People Side” of Business.

No surprise here. These values are core to the job.

2. There Is a Distinct Break in the Development Needs, Desires and Key Skills of Practitioners, and That of HR Directors and Executives.

The study shows that people who go onto higher level roles in HR and L&D (Directors & VPs) generally have some line experience at some point in their career, and usually develop a deep level of expertise in one or more functional areas within HR along the way.

3. HR and L&D Professionals Are Most Frustrated in Their Careers by Two Factors – Lack of Resources and Lack of Executive Engagement.

Tell me about it. Our skills and good intentions as learning professionals are not enough by themselves. I have always said that the single biggest success factor in any of my major projects has been executive sponsorship.

4. HR and L&D Professionals Are Not Highly Motivated by Compensation.

There you have it. We’re not in this for the money. Although a little more never hurts!

5. The HR Profession Has Highly Specialized Disciplines – And, within Each of These Disciplines, Individuals Take Great Pride in Their Expertise, Experience and Understanding of Solutions.

Hence the reason we are often willing to do this for less money than we really deserve.

6. While the Various HR Disciplines and Domains Require Different Unique Skills and Knowledge, People Regularly Migrate between HR Disciplines.

This is true for me. I have had roles in training, organizational development, talent management, instructional design and leadership development throughout my career – and I have dabbled in other areas of HR through project work along the way.

7. Career Satisfaction Grows with Age and Tenure.

This is good news. There must really be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

8. HR Professionals Are Highly Educated, with More Than 80 Percent Obtaining College Degrees and More Than One-Half with Advanced Degrees (participants in this study).

I possess a Master of Science in Industrial Labor Relations and I’m currently working towards a second Masters in Instructional Systems. And I still can't figure out how to use all the new learning technologies that are available today.

9. HR and L&D Professionals Greatly Value and Appreciate Education, Research, Collaboration and Formal Training for Their Own Careers.

Well, we are a development-oriented bunch. We take advantage of the opportunities we offer others. Why not? Its good stuff!

10. HR Professionals Today Are under Tremendous Stress.

Is that so? The economy, compliance, downsizing, cost reduction, performance management, corrective action, onboarding, compensation, retirement, severance, health care costs, succession planning, filling open jobs, filling training seats, e-learning, distance learning, blended learning, mobile learning, Employee Free Choice Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, EEOC, OFCCP, AB1825, H1N1…