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"When you find yourself in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging"

Warren Buffet, needless to add anything...

The Strenght of Weak Ties

POST ROSSO - CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Anche questo post tratta del tema del networking e dei brokers, si tratta idealmente della terza parte di un trittico che comprende "Mrs Lois Weisberg & asmallworld.net" e "Six Degrees Of Separation" e che vorrebbe un po' tirare le conclusioni spiegandone l'utilità spicciola, in questo senso il titolo del libro da cui citiamo "Getting a Job" (di Mark Granovetter) è eloquente...

Granovetter interviewed hundreds professionals about their employment history. 56% had found their jobs through a personal connection, 20% had used formal means (advertisements, headhunters), and another 20% had applied directly. This much is not surprising: the best way to get in the door is through a personal contact.

But the majority of those personal connections did not involve close friends. They were what he called "weak ties": people were getting their jobs through acquaintances. When it comes to finding out about new jobs - gaining new information, looking for new ideas - weak ties tend to be more important than strong ties.

I nostri amici o colleghi dopo tutto frequentano gli stessi nostri ambienti, conoscono più o meno le stesse persone che conosciamo noi. L'amico di un vostro amico di solito conosce i vostri amici: provate a vedere i network dei vostri link su Asmallworld, Linkedin, AUPAT e scoprirete che la maggior parte dei loro amici sono già linkati con voi...
Quindi, se i nostri amici più stretti frequentano i nostri stessi giri come potrebbero conoscere informazioni che noi non conosciamo già?

To capture this apparent paradox, Granovetter coined a marvellous phrase: "the strength of weak ties": the most important people in your life might be the people who aren't closest to you.

Granovetter then looked at what he called "chain lengths": the number of people who had to pass along the news before it got to you. The people who got their jobs from a zero chain were the most satisfied, made the most money, and were unemployed for the shortest amount of time between jobs. People with a chain of one stood second and so on.

The old-boy network is always going to be just for the old boys. By contrast, what matters in getting ahead is not the quality of your relationships but the quantity - not how close you are to those you know but, paradoxically, how many people you know whom you aren't particularly close to.

Minority-admissions programs work not because they give black students access to the same superior educational resources as white students, they work by giving black students access to the same white students as white students shortening the chain lengths between them and the best jobs. Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation.

Penso quindi, alla fine della terza parte di questo trittico, di essere riuscito a convincervi ad invitare al Blog il maggior numero di persone che potete... non vi resta che preparare una mail con l'indirizzo di questo blog (http://ifyouwanttoleadblog.blogspot.com/), metterci due righe di vostro pugno e spedirla a tutti i vostri amici... pardon, conoscenti!

Straight From The Gut

POST VERDE - "ACHIEVING OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES"

Prendo a testo il titolo di un interessantissimo libro di Jack Welch ma - per ora - non vi parlerò di Jack Welch... Vorrei invece stimolare le vostre riflessioni sul tema della presa di decisioni che per esperienza diretta ed indiretta penso di poter individuare come una (La?) capacità chiave dei grandi managers.

Decidere è sempre difficile perchè significa dover scegliere, e dover scegliere significa dover rinunciare a tutti gli scenari possibili per concentrarsi su uno solo: quello prescelto, appunto.
E allora, per raggiungere una decisione più "razionale" o forse, in maggior misura, per trovare un placebo che possa alleviare il peso psicologico di "dover decidere": analisi di redditività, ricerche di mercato, misurazione statistica del rischio, modellistica di regressione multivariata. E i sovrani della "paralysis by analysis": gli "ulteriori approfondimenti".

E' ovvio che questo mio post è provocatorio, è ovvio che mi aspetto le vostre reazioni... ma provate a collegare i tre eventi qui sotto, lontani uno dall'altro praticamente tutta la storia del genere umano e poi sappiatemi rispondere:

333BC: Alexander the Great slices through the Gordian knot with his sword demonstrating how difficult problems can be solved with bold strokes.

1960s: Learned, Christensen, Andrews & others developed the SWOT - Strenght Weaknesses Opportunities Threats - model of analysis useful for making decisions when time is short and circumstances complex.

2005: In "Blink" Malcolm Gladwell explores the notion that our istantaneous decisions are sometimes better than those based on lenghty, rational analysis.

La parola alla giuria dunque...
Su questi temi vi posso consigliare un bel libro di Peter Bernstein - ormai un classico: "Again the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk"

Six Degrees Of Separation

POST ROSSO - "CAREER OPPORTUNITIES"

Sapete come è nato il detto "Sei Gradi Di Separazione" (che peraltro ha ispirato un bel film di Fred Schepisi che mi sento di consigliare a tutti)? Ce lo racconta Malcolm Gladwell nell'articolo citato nel post precedente, e ci racconta anche di più: un post per comprendere ancora meglio l'importanza dei "brokers".

In the late sixties a Harvard social psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find an answer to what is known as the small-world problem: how are human beings connected? Do we belong to separate worlds or are we all bound up together in a grand, interlocking web?

Milgram tested this question with a chain letter, he got the names of people at random in Omaha, Nebraska and he mailed each of them a packet with the address of a stockbroker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his name on a roster and send it on to someone who would get it closer to the stockbroker.

Milgram found that most of the letters reached the stockbroker in five or six steps: it is from this experiment that we got the concept of six degrees of separation.
But that phrase is now so familiar that it is easy to lose sight of how surprising Milgram's finding was.

In another well-known study two psychologists asked people living in uptown Manhattan about their closest friend: almost ninety per cent of the friends lived in the same building, and half lived on the same floor. Proximity overpowered similarity, we're friends with the people we do things with, not necessarily with the people we resemble. More, we don't seek out friends, we simply associate with the people who occupy the same physical places that we do.

Back to Milgram's then. People in Omaha are not, as a rule, friends with people in Massachusetts so how did the packets get halfway across the country in just five steps? The explanation is that in the six degrees of separation not all degrees are equal, many of the chains reaching to Sharon followed the same asymmetrical pattern, half of the packets passed through the hands of 3 people: Jacobs, Jones and Brown.

Six degrees of separation means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those few.

Mrs Lois Weisberg & asmallworld.net

POST ROSSO - "CAREER OPPORTUNITIES"

Ritornamo sul tema dei network commentando due links molto interessanti scovati la scorsa settimana (in realtà i due links rimandano alla stessa storia).

Il punto di partenza di questo breve viaggio è "Ticonzero", rivista online dell'Area Organizzazione e Personale dell'Università Bocconi (www.sdabocconi.it/ticonzero) dove sul numero di questo mese potete trovare un articolo di Francesco Virili dal titolo "Non tutti i nodi di una rete sono uguali" che tratta approfonditamente il tema dei "brokers" (vedi post precedente "Go For Brokers") illustrando la peculiarità di alcune reti di relazioni sociali dove alcuni soggetti "che conoscono tutti" moltiplicano le occasioni di contatto tra gli altri e li mettono in relazione tra loro.

Il racconto - molto breve - da cui prende spunto l'articolo è stato scritto da Malcolm Gladwell e pubblicato sul New Yorker nel 1999. Oggi lo potete leggere completo su http://www.gladwell.com/1999/1999_01_11_a_weisberg.htm.
Verrete a conoscenza così della storia (penso vera peraltro in quanto Gladwell non è tanto uno scrittore quanto un giornalista) di Lois Weisberg, l'anziana signora di Chicago protagonista di un racconto che inizia più o meno così:

"She's a grandmother, she lives in a big house in Chicago, and you've never heard of her. Does she run the world?"

The Pecking Order Phenomenon

POST VERDE – ACHIEVING OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES

In questi giorni – per questioni che non sto ad approfondire – professionalmente si fa un gran parlare (direttamente o indirettamente) delle relazioni tra buy-out e motivazione dei managers. Queste riflessioni mi hanno fatto tornare alla mente un atteggiamento mentale vincente ben esemplificato da John Merricks e Ian Walker, velisti inglesi pluriolimpici che nel loro libro “High Performance Racing” sostengono:

In sailing more than in most sports people get used to the normal “pecking order” in fleet racing. There is no God given reason why the same people should be in the front of the fleet. It is fundamental to our mental approach that we believe somebody has got to win and it might as well be us!

Ovvero, parafrasando Merrick e Walker: “we believe that somebody must rule this business and it might as well be us!”

Knowledge Management

POST VERDE – "ACHIEVING OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES"

Durante un recente viaggio mi è capitato di leggere un articolo di Andrew Baxter riguardante il Knowledge Management apparso sul Financial Times (Scandinavian Airlines non ha la Gazzetta...). Alcuni spunti, una volta estratti dal contesto dell’intero articolo, riprendono ed approfondiscono il tema del primo post “If you want to lead, blog”, in particolare quello della circolazione delle competenze manageriali...

Performance in highly competitive markets requires managers armed with knowledge that goes beyond the explicit information contained in manuals, there is an increasing need to tap into experience, intuition and social networks. The value of this knowledge is largely hidden: if the average company managed its money in the way it managed its knowledge it wouldn’t be in business anymore.

Una leggera divagazione ci aiuta a capire ancora meglio l’importanza della condivisione delle conoscenze.

The biggest challenge for companies with a long story of downsizing, job cuts and corporate upheaval or for organizations that have grown by acquisition and that are in many cases nothing more than a federation of loosely coupled units is to foster to share knowledge.
The prevalence of what is euphemistically called “knowledge recovery”, meaning bringing back people whose knowledge has been lost as contractors or consultants can be a proof: 60% of organizations are doing this.
On the other side succession planning, traditionally limited to top managers, needs to be pushed further down the organization and a “friendly leaver” policy ensuring that successors are fully briefed should be encouraged.

Nel finale – che qui sotto ho leggermente rielaborato facendone una specie di dichiarazione d’intenti – l’articolo diventa particolarmente interessante ed arriva quasi a suggerire le caratteristiche salienti degli “Information Brokers” che portano valore ad un network:

In this blog we recognize the need to capture and retain the knowledge and the expertise of key people that is never written down. For us key people are people with: 1. Domain Knowledge; 2. Relationship Knowledge; 3. Intellectual Properties in their heads.

Non posso che spingervi ad allargare selettivamente il network invitando chi ritenete possa portare valore: basta una mail con l’indirizzo del blog e due righe personali di invito…

Go For Brokers

POST ROSSO - "CAREER OPPORTUNITIES"

Continuiamo dal post precedente con "Managing Yourself - How to Build your Network": come valutare il proprio network attuale e come migliorare la propria connessione? La risposta è... go for brokers!

An "Information Broker" is a person who occupies a key role in a social network by connecting disparate groups of people, targeting other well-connected people in a way that news spread widely and quickly.

Social networks are typically separate clusters - friends of friends are also friends with one another and they share similarities creating an "Echo Chamber". Brokers can connect the pools by linking independent clusters together - giving every member of each cluster better access to other parts of the network.

If you've introduced yourself to your contacts more than 65% of the times then you are probably building your network using the "Self-Similarity Principle and your network may be too inbread.

The best way to break through this barrier is by using the "Shared Activities Principle". Any executinve can benefit from a variety of shared activities: sport teams, community services, voluntary associations, cross-functional teams, ... And remember that activities that evoke passion in participants, necessitate interdipendence and have something at stake are more likely to produce networks.

... e in questo modo torniamo a collegarci al post "Play to Win": giocare fa bene!
E ora andiamo a cercare i brokers anche per questo blog: invitate tutti coloro che pensate possano portare un apporto di idee, di partecipazione e di diversificazione alle nostre discussione, mandate loro una mail con il link a questo post e chiedete loro di fare lo stesso. In questo modo avremo punti di vista non solo più numerosi ma soprattutto più vari ad arricchire il blog.

Build Your Network

POST ROSSO - "CAREER OPPORTUNITIES"

Da "Managing Yourself - How to Build your Network" di Brian Uzzi & Shannon Dunlap un post "preparatorio" al successivo che - prendendo spunto dallo stesso articolo - parlerà di come valutare il proprio network attuale e di come migliorare la propria connessione.

A strong personal network can launch a burgeoning plan into the limelight: most executives knows that they need to learn about the best ideas and that, in turn, their best ideas must be heard by the rest of the world.
Moreover, everyone experiences a lull at some point in his or her career: one way to jump-start your resurgence is to examine your social network.
But strong personal networks have to be carefully constructed through relatively high-stake activities that bring you into contact with a diverse group of people.
In return networks deliver 3 unique advantages: 1.) Private Informations; 2.) Access to Diverse Skill Sets; 3.) Power.

1.) Private Informations
Public information is easily available from a variety of sources but precisely because of it is easily accessible it offers significantly less competitive advantage. Private information, by contrast, is gathered from personal contacts who can offer something unique that cannot be found in public domain. Private informations therefore can give executives and edge.

2.) Access to Diverse Skill Sets
Highly diverse networks ties can help you develop more complete, creative and unbiased views of the issues. And when you trade information or skills with people whose experiences differ from your own, you provide one another with unique, exceptionally valuable resources.

3.) Power
Power is repositioned in the network's information brokers linking specialists with trustworthy and informative ties.

Play to Win

POST VERDE - "ACHIEVING OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES"

Ecco un buon motivo in più per giustificare le serate passate alla Playstation, le notti con Age of Empire, l'online continuo su Travian: giocare per migliorare le proprie capacità decisionali. Da "Videogames & Workplace", di Henry Jenkins.

50% of Americans play videogames spending approximately 7 hours a week glued to some type of screen...

They become very good at making rapid decisions based on limited information. Oline games make constant demands on your attention; there are multiple problems emerging at the same time and players get very good at making reasonable predictions and charting actions based on information as it comes in. They can then quickly reroute themselves and change their priorities as new problems arise, which is the style of decision making emerging in the contemporary workplace.

And if you think that constant gaming could hurt player's social skills, actually it does the opposite. Collaborative play is quickly becoming dominant on the Net. Users of multiplayers or alternative-reality games learn how to work with other people over distance, to share knowledge, to resolve disputes quickly and to stay on task.

If You Want To Lead, Blog

Per iniziare con questo blog cito - un po' liberamente - alcuni concetti tratti da un interessante articolo di Jonathan Schwartz, COO di Sun Microsystems (www.blogs.sun.com/jonathan) uscito su Harward Business Review di Novembre 2005.

Many senior executives have blogs that can be read by anyone, anywhere in the world. We discuss everything from business strategy to product development to company values. We host open letters from the outside and we openly respond to them. We talk about our successes and our mistakes.

For executives having a blog is not going to be a matter of choiche any more than using e-mail is today. Blogging lets you participate in communities you want to cultivate and leverage your management culture competitively.

How do you get started on a blog? I suggest clearly defining a blogging strategy and guidelines then find your voice. Be honest and open. Be respectful of your audience. Link to those who interest and influence you. Once you get going do not micromanage the process: know the guidelines and let it loose. Be sure to listen to feedbacks and respond to legitimate ideas. Authenticity is paramount.

Quindi di cosa discutiamo?
Potenzialmente, come dice Schwartz, di "everything"...
Per cominciare però sarà meglio moversi dentro alcune linee guida altrimenti rischieremmo di perderci.
Quindi vi propongo due temi di interesse generale, in modo da poter coinvolgere un network più ampio possibile (e tra poco parleremo proprio di networking per l'appunto).

Tema Uno (chiamiamolo tema verde): "Achieving Outstanding Performances", ovvero circolazione di idee su come migliorare costantemente le proprie competenze di management, chi/come/cosa/quando/dove fare e perchè farlo secondo le nostre esperienze.

Tema Due (chiamiamolo tema rosso perchè un po' più sensibile): "Career Opportunities", ovvero cosa/come/quando succede che lo sviluppo della carriera passi anche per un cambio di funzione, di responsabilità, di azienda.

Pensiamo ora al "Come": con quali modalità portiamo avanti questo blog?
I suggerimenti di Schwartz sono pochi e chiari e li abbiamo già in gran parte seguiti: abbiamo già definito delle brevi guidelines e limitato gli argomenti che tratteremo.
Aggiungerei solo una motivazione al fatto che troverete diversi brani di questo blog in inglese: la diversificazione nel network. Senza arrivare a "forzare" tutto il blog in una lingua che non possediamo completamente penso che lasciare alcuni concetti-chiave in inglese ci permetterà di coinvolgere anche partecipanti non forzatamente di madrelingua italiana.

Highly diverse network ties can help you to develop more complete, creative and unbiased views of the issues. And when you trade information or skills with people whose experiences differ from your own you provide one another with unique, exceptionally valuable resources

Bene, e ora... che il blog cominci! O per dirla con le parole di Jonathan Schwartz: once you get going do not micromanage the process: know the guidelines and let it loose...