Organizational Courage

What's your "Theory in Use"?

I just love this: Chris Argyris has written about something called 'theory in use' as differentiated from 'espoused theories'. In other words, he has outlined in a Harvard Business Review article some of the reasons that people's actions don't line up with their words. Among those reasons are wanting to keep control and avoid negativity.

I recently blogged about the values of Web 2.0. Among others: Meritocracy. Open information. Open platforms. Speed over perfection. User-generated content. Collaboration.

Whoa. Lots of room for negativity and lack of control there. Threatening to some? You bet.

But consider this: if there's negativity out there, chances are folks are feeling and saying it whether a web 2.0 platform is available or not. They're telling their neighbors or friends or co-workers. Depending on how irate they are, they're telling anyone who will listen.

It's tough to open up and hear what's really being said. Web 2.0 creates that hearing aid. It takes a true leader to slap on the hearing aid and align "espoused theories" of open-door policies and "people are our greatest asset" with "theories in use" including communication forums for listening.

A Community for every Relationship

Anyone under thirty who's ever had a friend get married is familiar with such wedding resources as The Knot, Ultimate Wedding, Wedding Channel...and the list goes on. Now divorcees - or those just thinking about it - are hopping on the online community bandwagon with Divorce360. Very cool. Includes not only some very comprehensive articles, but also a robust user community including areas for journaling and peer advice.

Divorce is tough enough. Good to see folks don't need to go it alone.

SLATES anyone?

Reading Andrew McAfee's Sloan article on characteristics of Web 2.0 (sorry - wish I could share but it's a 'purchase only' read). There are so many ways to look at Web 2.), and Mr. McAfee does a nice job outlining what to look for. In brief Web 2.0 includes those tools that include something he calls SLATES:

- Search function (making it easy to look for content that interests the user)

- Links (again, cutting down on slogging through lots of uninteresting info)

- Authoring (or, as we at frank like to call it, user generated content)

- Tags (categorization)

- Extensions (if you liked X, you'll enjoy Y)

- Signals (think RSS feeds)

A nice simple way to encapsulate the technological characteristics.

But I can't help adding a nod to the other equally important Web 2.0 characteristics - the Web 2.0 values. Speed over perfection. Open Source. Collaboration. (Alluded to in 'Authoring' but still worth calling out.) Real-time information. Authenticity. Transparency. Ease of Use.

All in all, Web 2.0 still defies a simple definition. But I liked McAfee's list, so what the heck.

EPS pay attention! Employee Engagement impacts Financials

Chief Learning Officer magazine recently ran a great article on the new Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study. Surveying 90,000 people worldwide the study outlines various levels of employee engagement and the impact of engagement on financial performance. CLO's article provides a terrific synopsis, so I won't reiterate. However, the most exciting part of the study to me was the quantitative link between engagement and financial performance. Companies with the higher numbers of engaged employees had an average 19% increase in operating income and 28% increase in earnings per share, contrasted with a 33% average drop in operating income and 11% drop in earnings per share where employees were not engaged or less engaged.

So often in organization development and human resources there's a lack of financial data backing up 'the soft stuff'. Hats off to Towers Perrin for their comprehensive and fascinating study!