Assessing Human Capital in the Entreprise

In these first days of the new year, I feel like I've started to climb an unfamiliar mountain. The path is narrow and looks unsafe, but the vista that is revealed to me as I make my way up, step by step, is gorgeous and full of nice surprises.
What is this mountain? It's the personal challenge that I've decided to meet to establish myself as an independent consultant in Collaboration and Social Network Analysis.

So, where am I on the journey?
As I am preparing to leave my current company at the end of the month, I've been contacting colleagues who are potentially interested in using the ONA approach in some of their client departments. So there is a (small) chance that this company becomes my first client. In addition, I am in contact with my former boss who is now at the head of an informatics group in a pharmaceutical company on the West Coast. Here again, there are active talks that could lead to positive outcomes.
These contacts are extremely valuable, whether they lead to work or not, as they prompt me to refine my offer and clarify the approach that I am offering to conduct Organizational Network Analyses.

ONA is one of the tools to assess Human Capital
Human Capital is the value creating potential of the entreprise. It relies on how the actors, who make the entreprise thrive, interact with one another while juggling with the following organizational constructs:

• Values that enable constructive human interactions
  As a primary example, I would mention Strategic Thinking which helps determine the courses of actions that will help align everyone's efforts in a common direction. There is also the fundamental value of Respect for People which is a keystone of any human interaction. The third value is the promotion of knowledge sharing as an instrument of power, as opposed to knowledge retention, which is so widespread in many companies.
• Obligations and Constraints
  Human Capital can often be hindered or inhibited by the set of internal constraints and duties that are grown off sheer organizational complexity. The first one comes from the hierarchical organization, that can sometimes be mixed with a dose of matrix reporting. Other self imposed constraints are the business objectives, which are necessary and a good thing when they directly support a well established and understood strategy., but can be translated into sets of unaligned individual goals. Another big constraint on organizations is the time sinks represented by rigid bureaucracy, including governance, corporate policies, meetings and email overload.

Faced with the organization's sluggishness and the values that give a framework of how to cope with its complexity, the Human Capital can be assessed by the responses of individuals and groups:

• Their behaviours
  regarding how to do their day to day jobs, how they interact informally with one another (social networking), what time they can afford to spend on improving the way they do things (innovation) and how they develop themselves.
  
• Rewards and recognition
  This is the feedback loop that can re-enforce or undermine any effort towards a more collaborative environment. What are the behaviours that are really rewarded? Is it global thinking, team focus, knowledge sharing and personal contribution to improve the level of cooperation, or is it exacerbated competition, hero mindset, power by information silos?

Organizational Network Analysis focuses on the collaborative behaviours within the entreprise. Its results have the potential to reveal the dynamic results of the set of obligations, constraints, values, rewards and recognition that form the culture of the entreprise. It will give clues about what could be changed to enhance people's contribution to the welfare of the entreprise, thus helping to improve Human Capital.

I will dive into how ONA's can be conducted as I take you along in my exciting journey up the mountain!

Link: A mind map of Human Capital Assessment

Photo: Jura (France) - August 2007 - Patrice Chollet

2007: Transition and Discovery

It's been two weeks without a post. Much too long regarding my own commitment to the task. So what happened? We've gone back to France for the season's break and visited parents and family, which means some travel (about 800 miles in all), leisurely activities and very little time on-line. This is no excuse, of course.

I've also been busy attending a one-day Consultant Marketing seminar organized by ITG, an umbrella company which offers haven to independent consultants who do not wish to be swamped by all the administrative tasks required when one starts his or her own business. Such companies will deal with all invoicing, insurance, pension, tax duties while consultants can devote their time to do what they like most to do: develop their business, nurture their network, land contracts. I have some contacts who could lead me to find my first mission as a free-lance consultant. If this happens soon, I'll seek to strike a deal with such a company.

So what about the earlier part of 2007?
The big events have run around the reorganization of the business and my struggle to find a suitable position in the Knowledge Management domain at my company. This has not worked out, but at the same time, I've found this to be a great opportunity to put my professional life in perspective and ask myself what is it I really want to do for the rest of my active life (probably about 10 years). So, I've decided that it was worth pursuing what I am passionate about, helping people and companies work better in a cooperative environment.

As a consequence, we have planned to move back to France during the first quarter of 2008 and establish this new business of mine there. It will fulfill a long time desire of ours to get back to our friends and family.

2007 has been notable also with my realising how social networking is at the heart of most human activities these days and especially for the knowledge worker that I am. So I have taken every opportunity to connect or reconnect with all the people I know or once worked with and I have started to make new on-line friends in France. This latter part worked amazingly well: I was able to find like-minded people who had just started a discussion group (La nouvelle énergie du business - the new business energy) and we've been busy planning for further development of the group in the new year.

The values promoted by that group are:

• Take responsibility for your own life
• Cooperation is at the heart of personal fulfillment and societal achievement
• Be generous - Give without thinking about retribution
• Open your mind to trusting others
• Stand by your word to earn others' trust

I have made these values mine and hope to live up to them in 2008.

Dear reader, I hope you had an enriching year and that the coming one will bring you what you most desire. And I hope that some day we will find opportunities to help each other.

Taking Time to Realize One's Dreams

This morning, I came across this slide deck on Prashant Bekhare's blog which helped me shed some light on my journey through life and work. In essence, we work for Time, Money and Security.

• Time: we spend time earning the money that help us achieve security. As we are working, we exchange time for money.


• Money: we need it to achieve our dreams, whether material, intellectual, social or spiritual as they may be.


• Security: this is the state where we can spend time and money to do whatever we've always wanted to do.

What is argued is that earning money in exchange for working time limits our ability to spend time on realizing our dreams. The next step would be to establish a royalty-based business that multiplies our virtual time, by having others spend time to earned money on our behalf, in exchange for our business knowhow and experience.

However powerful the message is, it leaves me with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, as I am striving to achieve financial independence and I have hopes that could happen some time in the future, I realize that time is our most precious asset and that one has to know when to stop spending it to earn money and security in order to use it to fullfil our dreams .

On the other hand, I cannot help thinking of the slide deck as some sort of propaganda to join the Income Royalty Organization, which seems to have goals of its own that are very unclear to me.

How does it feel to you?