Jason Seiden Named Honorary Talent Anarchist

Joe,

I know that it was with great admiration and respect you nominated Jason Seiden as an honorary Talent Anarchist. Clearly, this is a designation that we take very seriously since we have not until now even considered bestowing that designation on anyone. However, having read your nomination and considering what I know about Jason, I concur with your nomination.

On behalf of Talent Anarchy, in recognition of his excellent work in promoting disorder and exciting revolt to achieve the unleashing of talent, I'd like to name Jason Seiden as honorary Talent Anarchist. For those not initiated into his work, I would simply offer of his blog and the fact that he has written these two books, How to Self-Destruct and Super Staying Power as evidence that he exhibits true Talent Anarchist characteristics.

And, since he's now within the family, should he choose to accept this designation, I will begin our new relationship by disagreeing a little bit with the argument put forth in his blog post regarding Gen X that you mentioned in your nomination. I agree with the premise of the post and even the recommendations, but I felt as though Jason was suggesting that Gen X'ers don't make friends with anyone at work, and we know that not to be true. We, in Gen X, began a long tradition of tribalism when we were at home by ourselves after school in our early years. This has translated to work and we should embrace it. Even today, we are welcoming Jason in our own Talent Anarchy tribe as a leader. What I think is more correct to say about Gen X is that we don't humor fools well and we don't generally see the point in making friends with people we don't respect. To me, that's the real challenge for Gen X. Can we put aside our skepticism to find common ground so that we can form the relationships outside of our tribe that we need to be successful?

Congratulations to Jason Seiden, honorary Talent Anarchist!

Jason

Social Capital - HR's Secret Weapon - Part 3

Joe,

Good guidance on places to start in the creation of social capital for the HR Leader in your last post. However, I think that I'd challenge that you first bullet should be expanded beyond connecting with only internal peers to connecting with "my organization." Granted, peers is a broad term, but I would argue that there's great value in being networked with individuals at all levels within the organization, even if you wouldn't necessarily consider them "peers."

As we think about who to network with internally, it's good to identify people who are strategically valuable and important in terms of supporting our work of human resources within the organization. Malcolm Gladwell identifies some types of people in his book The Tipping Point (a book that should be required reading for every practicioner of HR) who are important to know for those in the business of making change happen.

First, there are the Mavens. The Mavens will be the people who possess the deep knowledge about the organization and where to go for certain things. They may have knowledge about what's been tried and what's worked throughout the history of the organization. They may be the experts in where to go to find certain information internally. The Mavens are important to know because they hold the key to a lot of information that could make or break your projects.

Second are the Connectors. Connectors are easy to identify because they have large established networks internally. When you are asking the question "who should I call for X," you will hear the connector's names come up as "people who probably know who you should call." These people are the people who are both well connected internally, but also willing to help you get connected to others as well. Plugging in with connectors will help your own networking efforts because they can more quickly introduce you to the other people who you are most interested in connecting to.

Gladwell's last group is the Salespeople. Salespeople are those who champion causes internally and get others on board. They might be the individuals who get selected to lead the United Way campaign on the year after a down year because it's known that they can rally support. Obviously, identifying and connecting with Salespeople is important because they can help you garner support for new HR initiatives or plans. Get the salespeople on board and much of the rest of the organization will follow.

These three groups of people are particularly important in transformational HR work where you are leading the organization to places it may not have gone before because of their powerful influence on those around them. These are the people who will help you make change happen throughout the organization.

The connections you need to shape and influence decision making are a bit different. These connections are much more linked to the political decision making structure within the organization. I'll tackle these in a future post.

Go forth and connect.

Jason

It is "social" networking....

Jason-

I do agree, with one exception. I do think it is important to post a picture, but I do not think that it needs to be a picture of yourself. There are a handful of people that I follow on Twitter that use other images and they happen to be images that "fit" with that persons persona. I do use pictures of myself, but I believe you can go the other route and still have a credible presence. In a society that places far too much emphasis on appearance, I think that there is actually something to be said for not using your picture.

Having said that, I think your fifth suggestion is maybe the most important. If you are going to get any real value of social networking, you have to be all about the social aspect of it. LinkedIn is a really good example. I have been on LI longer than I have been on any other community and there have been times when I have not felt like it was a very valuable place to be. That was primarily because I was not proactive in engaging others there. I do that a lot more now, and LI has made it a lot easier to be interactive with updates, groups, questions, applications, etc.

One of the biggest differences between the 1.0 world and the 2.0 world is the transition from monological communication to dialogical communication. There is a lot of value to be found on LinkedIn, the Ning networks, Facebook, Twitter and other places but you have got to take a dialogical approach...you have to be reaching out to engage people and you have got to listening to them. The people (and companies) that do a good job of this are getting a return on their investment.

-joe

Network Your @ss Off

Joe,

As we railed against companies who block access to social networking sites, it reminded me of the people on the other side of the equation--those who have access to these tools and don't bother to use them. What a wasted opportunity. I have even gotten to the point where I have a bias against those who aren't on LinkedIn because the value seems to obvious to me that I can't comprehend why you wouldn't be out there.

Lately, with all the layoffs, I think there are a lot of people who are suddenly finding out how important it is to have a strong network of personal and professinoal connections. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for some many people to see, but it has always seemed obvious to me that the more people you know, the more resources you have available to you. The hard truth that some people are learning right now is that it's much easier to network when you don't need something from someone (like a job).

And, it's easier to build a network now than ever in history thanks to tools like LinkedIn and Ning. Every person knows people and these online tools allow you to connect to them and to keep in touch with them. If there was one lesson that I could share with people that I think would have the greatest impact in their life, it would be that "who you know makes all the difference."

While I empathize with the people out there looking for a job right now who just realized the importance of networking, they are already behind the eight ball. It's the people sitting around watching this happen that need to get in gear and start networking like their life depended on it. Those connections that they make now might just be the source to their next job and livelihood if their job were to go away tomorrow.

Jason