Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Réseaux sociaux et amitiés

Comme à peu près tout le monde, je suis assez impressionné par la vitesse de développement de Facebook et la pertinence de l'ouverture de leur code.

Je trouve leur style éditorial encore à revoir. "Jean and Claude are now friends" - vous avez du voir ce message des dizaines de fois. L'analogie avec les réseaux NON sociaux est amusante. Prenez le TGV ou les autoroutes par exemple : "avec l'ouverture de la ligne Paris - Strasbourg on va enfin pouvoir passer un week-end à Strasbourg". En d'autres termes, on va enfin pouvoir aller à Strabourg.

Faux.

On pouvait de tout temps aller à Strasbourg. D'ailleurs, lorsque ni les autoroutes ni le TGV n'étaient disponibles, c'est le voyage lui-même qui était d'une autre nature. En étant un brin excessifs, on pourrait dire que le TGV et l'autouroute ne permettent pas de voyager, ils suppriment l'espace. Et donc une possibilité d'apprendre, de comprendre, de faire une transition entre deux régions, entre deux géographies. Ce qui n'est pas un jugement de valeur, juste un constat. Il y a toujours d'autres moyens pour rattraper le temps perdu lorsque l'on arrive a Strasbourg et essayer de comprendre, de s'adapter.

"Jean et Paul are now friends" est un peu excessif. Je me demande ce que supprime cette accélération de la vitesse de la "mise en relation".

Friday, October 19, 2007

Web 2.0 talent management or talent management with new tools ?

I had a great lunch with Pierre a few days ago, and we obviously talked about Taleo Performance. I have seen some screen shots, and the stuff is really interesting. Obviously, the interface is very much web 2.0 (the tag cloud for network management is particularly interesting) but others like Workstream seem to be following the same lead.

Including personnal network development and involvment in the anual review is really a best practice. I would say it is an opening for what is next in talent management.

For what I have not yet seen, and that I am finding necessary at some clients, is collaboration management. That is to say, not to use web 2.0 tools to enhance the annual review process and enhance the network of people involved in talent management, but to include adoption and usage of the new web 2.0 collaborative tools by a team or community as an indicator of their performance of team work capability.

We should be giving teams responsibility for talent development and assessment very soon. And I have a feeling that Taleo Performance data model is almost ready for that coming customization era.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Human capital and accounting, or how to learn foreign languages

On October 11th, there was a passionate discussion about investment decisions regarding human capital at AFPLANE, in Paris. HR directors from major French Groups, Partners from venture capital firms and from accounting firms argued about the best way to take into account human capital in investment decisions.

As a participant, I must say I had the feeling that no one really wanted to go deep inside the issue. As one partner from an accounting firm put it, "we have been asked to look for new methods to account for human capital for years and I must say I have given up looking". Basically, HR investments are expensed and capital investments are capitalized.

I was having a conversation with a good friend from Scientipole Initiative after the show. We argued that human capital issues were new to our accounting friends. And he told me that "some languages are just not ready to describe certain facts". He related a story from three points of view : entrepreneur, finance, accounting. Very interesting.

So yes, accounting is not ready to account for human capital, or at least I have not yet heard of an ambitious initiative. Is it the accounting cycle (year) that is not adapted to an accelerated economy ? In this case, it would be the balance sheet view that should change ... Is it actually the "industrial-age" vision of the economy that still drives accounting specialists ? Or is it just that we HR have not taken the matter seriously enough ?

Probably the latter. But the point is, when we invest some million euros in our key people development, interesting things tend to happen : new privileged relationships, new R&D projects, and new skills for these key people that they will some day negociate on the market.

That, to my mind, means that some value has been created, for the company and for the individual talents. We have to learn to identify the assets behind that value (and that should help close the growing gap between book value and market value of our companies).

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Le facteur humain dans les décisions d'investissement

Parmi les sujets brulants dans le monde du talent, aucun ne suscite autant de contreverses que celui des indicateurs, des métriques, de la vision financière du talent ou du capital humain.

L'AFPLANE organise une soirée débat sur ce sujet le 11 octobre prochain. Grand intérêt de cette soirée, celle de permettre la confrontation des points de vue des trois catégories concernées au premier chef par ce sujet:
  • Les managers ou dirigeants de la fonction RH
  • Les investisseurs
  • Les experts financiers et comptables.

Nous espérons pouvoir faire avancer tant soit peu le débat, d'autant plus que sont représentés à la table ronde des profils très divers (investisseurs en capital et aide à la création d'entreprise, direction générale, direction des ressources humaines, experts comptable et financier).

Pourrions-nous espérer voir un jour au bilan de nos entreprises une trace de ses investissements dans le développement des collaborateurs ?
Ce serait peut-être le lien manquant entre le talent et les autres actifs immatériels ...