L'Institut Boostzone est un carrefour d'échanges construit autour des réseaux professionnels vivants et de ses implications sur le management

Trainings for intra company collaboration: two programs from the Boostzone Institute

Can people be trained for collaboration inside the company? We had many times requests for training. We thought that yes, people can be trained, but we did not want to come up with any traditional training program.

So, we spent several months working on the potential teaching engineering and we came up with two programs. The brochures are in French but the programs can be delivered in French or English since the Boostzone Institute is deliberately working in two languages.

The two first programs to be offered are very different. The first one is a one-day sensitization program, called Papillon or Butterfly, as an allusion to the chaos theory where a simple butterfly’s wing movement can change the world climate. So is in our view the start of any real sharing within a corporation: it can change the culture and the organization. This program is more for those who want to understand what the organization, strategic and operational issues and opportunities are. It can be delivered on an inter company or an intra company mode.

The second is called Nenuphar or Water-Lily. This time, it is an allusion to the way you can change the nature of a pond by covering it with Water-lilies and allowing a whole new ecosystem to develop. But no one can grow an entire pond by fiat. A self-generated dynamic is required. This program is an intense collaboration effort for a limited number of small teams (Water-lily teams), within a short time frame, under a very close coaching, and aiming at showing that collaboration can bring very powerful, immediately usable results, as well as identifying what the barriers to a generalization (for the pound) could be. This program is necessarily delivered as an intra-company program.

These programs requiring some heavy training for the trainers, only a few sessions will be available at first. We will increase the number of sessions as we can certify more trainers.

You can find the brochures at:

Papillon / Butterfly

http://www.boostzone.fr/wp-content/uploads/boostzone_papillon_fev10.pdf

Nenuphar/ Water-Lily

http://www.boostzone.fr/wp-content/uploads/boostzone_nenuphar_fev10.pdf

All comments are welcome. Inquiries should go to Maryline.gerlach@boostzone.fr,

Written by Dominique Turcq Uncategorized No Comments »

Social networks do offer the best networking possible; but, where is the catch?

Networking is the one key to the knowledge economy.  If it all started with the web 1.0 of information posting, the web 2.0 of interconnections has leveraged the sharing opportunities to no limit, just a question of organizing your work so that you do not get overwhelmed.  On top of that, it has broken barriers to entry into socializing, as the founder of FaceBook shows so clearly himself; it gives opportunity to enter circles that you would never have dreamed you could break in, and for all people, socialites as well as social reclusive kinds, to organize easily your networking.  Remember times where you had to rely on the “doubling strategy” (each contact gives two) to move forward, you suddenly get the full web society in a pinch!

The world is not enough; go beyond friends, colleagues and clients to competition!  Social networks allows not only to address search that were impossible before: finding someone you lost touch with, getting information on a person you are going to meet that day, completing some work on any topic (as long as you keep your critical mind aligned…), finding financial support from venture capitalists and shareholder associations; further, you can now openly share innovation and creativity through “coopetition”, an acronym created with the web and associating competition and cooperation.  Yes, you can deploy all of your knowledge through the web and manage to take a quantum leap, thanks to that little piece of information you were missing and you got easy.  No need to keep cloistered into your own abode when the world is out there to open you up; from social to business, it is a world of opportunity!

But too much information kills information… unless you are focused…

            Time is of the essence, be short and sweet.

            Clarity of messages is paramount, ensure immediate reading.

            Organisation of search and answers has to prevail, stay within reachable limits.

            On the recipient side, clean up your spasms; it is worth than junk mail!

            Mail chains are the worst; at least paper chains were expensive…

All these can be counter-examples of web productivity; the labyrinth can easily haunt you as you progress through the web; a spider is there to eat you alive as you get entangled in the far reaches of its own creation.  Thus you always have to think about the strategy to deploy before you throw yourself in it; companies know how destructive it is to have employees spend 30% on the web as they go from app to app and never manage to extricate themselves!

Beware of the IT paranoia… If George Orwell depicted Big Brother masterfully in his novel “1984″, it is funny that the plot was set in the one country where, twenty-five years later than the title indicates, you are being watched most in World Capitals; someone wrote that you get filmed 400 times in any one day… better smile if you wish to leave a good image of yourself!  Anyway, no one can escape the constant overlook of “Big Brother”, call it “security systems” of all sorts.  Our physical steps are overly scanned, our words are decrypted in huge search engines, our exchanges are seen all over the globe but go back to the second paragraph and think about staying simple.  If I can understand the IT paranoia of the past, I loath the IT impediment of the present and call for the IT openness of the future!  IT departments are often themselves overwhelmed with the web 2.0 technology and need proper forward thinking to help executives at the helm make the right decisions and enter the future without fear.

No question that we are lucky to have such a powerful tool at our disposal; it is all a matter of moderation.  This is why a new technology born out of speed of information could benefit from proper training at the base: what, where, when, what, why, how and with what means?  That is the old Latin rhetoric (Quintilian’s) method to any good analysis; apply it to web 2.0.

Written by Martin de Waziers Uncategorized No Comments »

Manpower Inc.’s CEO in Davos on why Social Networks are important for CEOs

Manpower Inc. ’s CEO Jeff Joerres presented at Davos a paper on why social networks are important for CEOs of large companies for their management.
In itself this paper does not bring a lot of news to the members of the Boostzone Institute but its significance is somewhere else.
Thanks to this announcement it is not anymore only a privilege for the CEOs of large IT companies like Cisco or IBM to talk about social networks (and to foster their own business), it has become a real concern for all CEOs and Jeff Joerres demonstrates it here.

Press release

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 27, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX News Network/ — Jeff Joerres, Chairman and CEO of Manpower Inc. will contribute to a private session at the World Economic Forum today titled: Social Networks vs. the CEO - is the CEO Prepared? Below is an executive summary of research by Manpower Inc. and its subsidiary, Right Management, which provides the basis for those remarks. A full copy of the Manpower white paper: Social Networks vs. Management? Harness the Power of Social Media is now available at http://www.manpower.com/research/research.cfm.

“In a time of salary and bonus freezes, organizations that can harness social media to help employees feel truly connected to the organization, positive about their employer and therefore more supportive of measures to help ensure the survival of the business, will reap the benefits.” - Manpower Inc. Chairman and CEO Jeff Joerres.

Many well-known organizations are leveraging the connective power of social media to enhance employee engagement, productivity, collaboration, innovation and reputation. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning, Plaxo, Hi5 and Second Life let individuals connect, communicate and share information with revolutionary ease and power, yet there are many complexities yet to be explored:

No Social Media Policy for Three Fourths of Workers

Manpower Inc. data reveals that 75 percent of employees say their organizations do not have a formal policy regarding the use of social networking sites at work. Where a policy does exist, it may focus on risk management, rather than how organizations can make the most of social networking for the benefit of their employees and their business. This “wait and see” approach is of particular concern in today’s market in which there are high levels of discontent among employees which may drive attrition. Paradoxically, this movement in the labor market may not necessarily result in an availability of talent; there is still a mismatch between where talent is needed and where it’s located.

One Fourth of Workers are Updating Their Resumes

Employee discontent is borne out by the findings of a recent survey(1) by Manpower subsidiary Right Management, which revealed that many workers are unhappy with their present jobs; 60 percent intend to leave and an additional one in four are networking and updating their resumes. More than ever, employers must harness the power of social networks to manage their employer brand to help attract new candidates and keep existing employees aligned and engaged.

Nearly a Third of Workers Use Social Media to Research Job Culture

A subsequent survey(2) by Right Management confirmed that social networks are a place where workers go to assess prospective employees. 31 percent of respondents said they use social media to find out if prospective employers value and respect their employees. The growing use of these networks does raise challenges for reputation management for organizations and will likely require them to relinquish some control, but if organizations are prepared to embrace social media there can be considerable benefits. The survey also revealed that 30 percent of respondents use social media to find out about career development opportunities. This provides a great opportunity for organizations embracing social media, since career development was listed by 40 percent of respondents of an additional survey(3) to be the most important factor when considering a new employer.

Manpower Inc. recommends that companies consider taking the following steps to promote the constructive use of social networking:

• Challenge employees to innovate. Promote the positive use of social media by encouraging employees to come up with ways to use these tools to do their jobs better. People love to discuss their successes, so get employees to describe how they’ve used social media tools in new ways, for example, to generate leads or serve customers better. You can focus these efforts by function or interest, as needed. Follow the lead of so many innovative organizations and run a contest for the best new ideas.
• Tap internal experts. Teach by example by encouraging employees who regularly use social networking in their jobs to discuss and demonstrate how it’s done. Keep track of the new ideas that flow from this kind of mentoring exchange and share the ideas and best practices.
• Let employees “own” the governance. The foundation of any healthy social network is an engaged community. Let your employees help develop and enforce your company’s guidelines. This approach will certainly appeal to those employees most likely to use social media, promoting trust in the goals of the guidelines that ultimately are instituted.

The Savvy CEO Will Use Social Media to Inspire Contemporary Working

Social networks offer an important opportunity to build a winning organization. For the workforce at large, social media can help keep employees intellectually and emotionally engaged. Social networks are particularly suited for communications intended to keep employees connected to an organization’s mission and vision. The Manpower Paper: Social Networks vs. Management? Harness the Power of Social Media offers specific ways social media can help employees do their jobs better, including ways that it can boost productivity, encourage collaboration, manage knowledge, recruit workers and build a winning brand.

Written by Dominique Turcq Uncategorized No Comments »

The XXIst Century is becoming a teenager, are we too?

The name of the coming decade, between now and 2020, has not yet appeared on the screens of the “namemakers” and it may take a few years before it does.

However, one thing is certain, whatever else happens in this decade, and the best or the worst could (the last teenage decade, 1910-1920 was one of the worst in human history), this decade will be a major milestone in the way humanity gets connected. I would suggest to call this decade “Birth Of The Total Connect”. Individuals will connect to individuals without knowing them and with very little introduction ceremony; individuals will connect to several types of work in a complex mix of virtual and real interactions; individuals will connect to the most important database of knowledge mankind ever produced; equipments and machines will connect with their masters i.e. us (including our fridges or home air conditioners via the Internet); they will also connect with each other — without us knowing about it — when they will need a refill or maintenance or “just” when they will be used to collect, store and message data about us in a systematic way, the current private data usage by Google for advertising is just a joke versus what is coming next.

This total connect decade has started. We need to better understand how it will affect our networks, our standard of living, our professional and private lives, our relation to work and to colleagues; how the relationship between corporations and their connected employees all over the world, their suppliers etc. will change and to what shape of the world of work it will lead.

This total connect will be one of the many elements of the chaos theory put in practice. The butterfly effect will show its reality within this decade and it will be true in fields as diverse as climate change, social networks, geopolitical issues, finance, migrations, human health, etc. A twitter stream could lead to the fall of a government, a rumor could ruin a corporate reputation, an other one an individual’s standing, etc.

The problem with total connect is that it connects to, both, the good and the bad, the truth and the rumor, the scientific database and the hoax. Yes, these are also the problems of teenagers who have to learn to discern and it is not easy for them.

What will be most needed for this decade is a “common” sense for managing our “commons” (what belongs to all of us in a way or another and for which we are responsible) in what is now clearly an unavoidable world of “commun”ities.

I wish us all a good teenager decade, the opportunity to become adults, to separate the wheat from the shaft, to become better actors of our world, to understand that it is changing faster than we can grasp, that all what we learned and considered right might be wrong within a fortnight.

It already happened, it was called the century of the lights, the Renaissance.

Our world is changing, let’s enjoy and be responsible.

Written by Dominique Turcq future edito No Comments »

de l’huile dans les rouages de la collaboration

La collaboration en entreprise n’est ni naturelle, ni habituellement amusante, ni spontanée. Comment utiliser l’art et le “fun” pour la dynamiser?
Au cours d’un atelier de travail nous avons étudié les méthodes employées chez Danone ainsi que les techniques de créativité -inspirées du monde artistique- du cabinet Innovia.

Vous trouverez dans ce film un aperçu de la networking attitude avec la mise en place de market places de bonnes pratiques qui “sérieuses dans le fond et enjouées dans la forme” mettent à jour de véritables filons de compétences à l’intérieur de la société.  Parfaitement complémentaire, la démarche des expéditions “mind opener” permet aux salariés de découvrir les points d’excellence d’autres organisations.

Le lien ci après reprend la présentation sur la méthode Créativart d’innovia: les artistes détectent les signaux faibles, métissent les cultures, voient les choses sous un angle original… En ce sens ils peuvent nous inspirer pour “booster” la créativité:

La présentation de la méthode Creativart développée par innovia

Nous remercions vivement nos invités pour le partage de ces informations et pour leur présentation enrichie en couleur et bonne humeur:

Benedikt Benenatti, Directeur  des  événements et de l’animation du réseau de communication interne  chez  Danone
Isabelle Napolitano d’Innovia
Nicolas Rolland, Directeur du Développement des Organisations chez Danone

Written by Maryline Gerlach Uncategorized No Comments »