Top 100 Influencers in HR v1.66: Kevin Martin

We’re taking a deep look at the world of the industry analyst. Straddling, as they do, the gap between vendors and practitioners, these pathfinders are always at risk of being perceived as biased. Much of the rhetoric you see and hear about the various analysts is designed to counteract the perception of bias.

Industry analysts occupy a unique position of trust. They work closely with vendors in order to establish opinions and insight about the companies and their offerings. Rather than deploy a full time team to wade through everything in the technology arena, most companies outsource their research (whether or not they think of it this way) to Industry Analysts. Analysts parse information about features, functionality, trends and products that would overwhelm an individual HR practitioner.

Over the year or so that we’ve been looking at influence, we’ve covered 9 people who fall into the analyst group. Wielding disproportionate influence, this eclectic group drives the HR Industry from a financial perspective. The right word from the right analyst can seed acres of contracts. At the same time, some very high profile awards (like the HR Tech shootouts) generate a good deal of smoke and very little fire.

Before we’re done with the project, about 20% of the top 100 will be analysts.

One could be forgiven for thinking that these players are really at the heart of industry influence. With real decision making input in the affairs of thousands of vendors and practitioners, industry analysts shape the trends, technologies and innovations that populate HR Departments. Here are the analysts we’ve covered so far.

• Josh Bersin’s organization delivers massive volumes of research to its 500 subscribing companies.
• Gartner, by far the best known industry analyst firm, serves the HR Departments about 400 companies in the group led by Jim Holincheck.
• Brian Hackett runs one of the dozens of micro-firms offering insight through peer to peer collaboration, solving the same problem.
• Steve Boese, one of the emerging class of new media rooted analysts, does his work in the courses he teaches.
• Bruce Steinberg roots his industry analysis in labor market trends.
• Wes Wu, currently employed by Knowledge Infusion, is the longest running observer of technology trends at enterprise scale.
• Bill Kutik is one of the leading analysts of HR Technology and the father of the HR Tech show.
• Elaine Orler, founder of Talent Function, integrates technology analysis into her practice in a singularly hands-on way.
• The reigning queen of the HR Technology analysts is Naomi Bloom whose fingerprints are all over the structure of enterprise offerings.

That’s an awfully long introduction to Kevin Martin. Martin runs a group of Aberdeen’s practices that focus on customer and employee-centric research. He is the principal analyst in Aberdeen’s HCM practice.

Analyst firms have a variety of operating models. They all take funding from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. Many of them bill users and claim to have little or no revenue from vendors. The truth or falsity of this claim merits close inspection.

It is really common to find analysts speaking at vendor conferences. Even if no money is exchanged, the value of the exposure is enormous. The cozy relationships between vendors and analysts bears your attention.

When Martin arrived at Aberdeen, the firm was more or less known as a ‘pay for play’ operation. That is to say that Aberdeen had the reputation for being a place where you could purchase a positive review. Though there is some reason to see this as the pots calling the kettle black, the reputation is long lived.

That was the first question I asked Martin in our interview. He was quick to thank me for getting the tough question out of the way. “That reputation”, he said, “forces us to be ridiculously scrupulous. Everything we publish is based on hard data.. We poll our group of 450 HR leaders every month and spend our energy understanding what they do.”

According to Martin, “HCM is the science of linking human performance to business performance.” He says, “there is a huge disconnect between HR and the rest of the organization. A well run HCM approach can close that gap and give the enterprise a massive competitive edge.” We joked that he should be writing ad copy for Success Factors as they single handedly revise the industry’s self-concept.

Martin measures Aberdeen’s success. The most important piece is end user satisfaction. Martin wants his research to be read and understood (unlike some of the other firms whose data is a way of building a consulting business). Since the research is financed by vendors, he wants to be sure that they are recognized while making it clear that they can not influence the outcome. “We offer branding opportunities, not influence.”

We discussed the future of HR. Martin sees a rapidly growing trend to move Talent Management out of HR and into the rest of the organization. “If you ask the folks in HR ‘who is the most important part of the TM function’, they’ll all say ‘HR’. Everyone else in the organization says ‘it’s the CEO.”

Managing an employee’s experience from cradle to grave is the next major trend Martin sees. “Recruiting may stop but talent acquisition never does.” He imagines a world in which all of HR is CRM-centric. “It’s the relationships over time that energize the workforce.”

Finally, Martin sees agility as the dominant buzzword in the next generation of HR. “HR that works enables the firm to turn on a dime. That is what emerges when you get the data fully integrated and kick the foot draggers out of the process.”

The analysts worlds are cyclical. One year, one of them is the most influential, the next, it’s someone else. Kevin Martin’s star is shining currently because he’s had to work off a tough reputation. Expect to see his fingerprints in a lot of places.

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Top 100 Influencers in HR v1.65 Jim Holincheck

Gartner (IT) is the preeminent IT research firm. With 650 analysts covering over 1,000 subspecialties, the firm wields mighty influence over the IT industry. Their value proposition is nicely summarized by a customer (who i quoted on their website):

“Without Gartner, we’d likely find ourselves perpetually overspending on technology and taking more time to complete technology-enabled business initiatives.”

Famous for its magic quadrant and hype cycle view of technology adoption, a positive review from Gartner can make the critical difference for companies entering the market. The company specializes in creating a simple view from the complex barrage of information that overwhelms its customers. One way of thinking about the company is that it creates intelligence out of chaos for its clients.

Sellers need Gartner’s approval. Buyers depend on the firm for everything from contract analysis and acquisition guidance to environmental scans of business intelligence about emerging tech trends. These two complementary realities create a powerful niche for Gartner in the operations of its clients.

Jim Holincheck is the head of the Gartner operation that covers Human Capital Management. As the Managing VP – Applications: ERP – Finance, HCM, and Procurement, Holincheck is singularly powerful in the Enterprise software arena. That he has such dramatic impact in the HR ecosystem is a testament to his incredible capacity to cause things to happen.

Holincheck’s blog lists the following categories of interest in the HCM space:

* Call Center Workforce Management * Compensation Management * Contingent Workforce Management * E-Learning * E-Recruitment * Employee Performance Management * Global Solutions * High Performance Workplace * HR BPO * HRMS * Human Capital Management * IT Workforce Management * Retail Workforce Management * Sales Workforce Management * Service-Oriented Architecture * Software as a Service * Software Market Consolidation * Talent Management Application Suites * Workforce Analytics * Workforce Management

After a career on the partner track at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in the software intelligence group, Holincheck got his feet wet as an analyst at Giga Information Group.

These days, analyst firms point heavily to the data that drives their conclusions. The role is so powerful that there is a constant pulling and shoving between the firms and the marketplace. Gartner has been particularly adept at navigating this dynamic.

In his current role, Holincheck spends an enormous amount of time on the phone with individual or groups of clients. Coupled with writing and public speaking demands, you start to wonder where he ever finds the time to manage his team, let alone think coherently about the future.

We talked for some time about the flood of data that is about to hit the HR operation. We have an enormous store of information about what people know and what they do. Still, the applicability of this data to the workplace remains hard to clearly envision. Jim is very aware of the difference between a pioneer and a practitioner. It’s very easy, he says, yo let your view of the future get too far out in front of the real world.

As he looks towards the future of HR, he believes that practitioners will want:

• Social Media as a Sourcing Mechanism: Finding and connecting with the people you really want to hire
• Data Driven Innovations That Improve the Quality of Hiring Decisions
• Next Generation Performance Management: Moving beyond the automation of 20th century MBO programs to flexible performance leverage that continuously meets dynamic business objectives
• Next Generation Workforce Planning: Dynamic systems that facilitate the development of agile talent pipelines and scenario based acquisition plans

Most importantly, Holincheck sees an emerging end to the idea that people are all one thing. “The same people play different roles. They can be a candidate, an investor, a customer, an employee, a neighbor or a supplier. Often they play multiple roles. The fact that we are starting to have enough data to differentiate these aspects means that there will be ongoing pressure on internal silos to share decision making.”

That’s a clear vision for the future of HR as a fully functioning organizational peer.

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Top 100 v1.64 Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin is living proof that you can create influence from whole cloth. In seven and a half years, his eponymous company, Bersin and Associates, has come from nowhere to extraordinary industry prominence. His small team is increasingly responsible for the way that HR sees itself.

In 2001, with 20 years of marketing experience (mostly in high tech), Bersin and a couple of collaborators launched their soon to change the industry analysts shop. Bersin and Associates “provides research and advisory consulting in enterprise learning, talent management, leadership development, and strategic HR. The company focuses on trends, best-practices, benchmarks, and technology solutions which drive strategic business impact.”

It’s a strange place for a guy with an MBA from Haas, a Masters Degree in Engineering from Stanford and an Engineering Degree from Cornell to end. That’s the profile of a typical Silicon Valley entrepreneur, just not in HR. When you talk with Josh, it’s easy to see him in engineering roles.

That’s really the heart of the company. Rigorous analysis in astonishing volume is how the world knows Bersin and Associates. The company produces a flood of insight on an expanding range of HR topics. If you want to understand the common benchmark practices in the industry, you go to Bersin for the documentation. With over 800 reports that span the HR Industry’s silos, there are few more cost effective ways to understand how the industry is run at the baseline.

The company has seven analysts who conduct research in Training, Performance Management, Leadership,Talent Management and various aspects of Talent Acquisition. The research covers benchmarking, best practices and problem solving. In addition, There is a consulting and strategic services component

Josh is passionate about Talent Management. “It’s a business problem, not an HR problem,” he says. “I’m interested in the three questions that are on the minds of the top 30% of HR leaders and practitioners.

• How do you improve productivity?
• How do you lead for the future?
• How do you make performance management work?

In this market, everyone is in transformation. No one is left untouched. HR has an enormous opportunity to demonstrate its real value.”

We talked for a long time about the value of benchmarking. As most readers know, I thin benchmarking is a silly way to approach a problem. The only guarantee you get with benchmarking is that you are a follower.

Bersin, as you’ve probably guessed, disagrees.

“It doesn’t make sense to be great at everything. Particularly in a resource constrained environment, you have to pick your battles. Real differentiation means doing most things well enough and focusing on the key areas where you can make a competitive difference.”

The company, tries to deliver on this promise. A very high-touch approach to its customers (who are all ’subscribers’) differentiates the firm from other analysts who seem to price their services based on the lack of availability of the key personalities. Not so at Bersin. Over the time I spent getting to know them, the players were all productively engaged. Bersin himself seems to have a particularly brutal travel schedule.

In this case, the essence of influence boils down to:

• Willingness to take big risks (no experience as an analyst before launching the firm)
• Deep commitment to quality of the product
• Astonishing volume (if you sign up for their RSS feed, you’ll get buried)
• The ability to build an egalitarian team in a company that carries your name
• A profound willingness to listen.

At the root, Bersin’s product is a method for listening to the HR profession. Nobody does it better.

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Top 100 v1.63 RD Whitney

Grit, determination and a smile go a long way towards building sustained influence. The intellects all assume that influence and smarts are somehow correlated. The truth is that it’s hard to trust someone who is busy being smart.

Influence has more to do with reliability and predictability than it has to do with transformative insight. Wisdom, like intelligence, is vastly over-rated by those who poses’s it. People are more likely to be moved and affected by certainty, a sense of purpose and regularity.

Think about the language that is so popular today. “Following your passion” or “finding your place” has everything to do with the way things feel. A large part of being able to influence taste and opinion boils down to the capacity to generate a feeling.

It’s easy to confuse focus on a goal that isn’t yours with irascibility or some other form of resistance. Truth is that sometimes what you’re doing isn’t very interesting or important. People who figure that out and more or less ignore you are simply working their own priorities.

A long time ago, when I was building a business near Macon Georgia, I learned about being ‘dumb as a fox‘. This is what my peers tried to explain to me about ‘that stupid guy who falls asleep in all of the meetings’. I assumed he was a bumpkin and wasn’t paying attention to the important stuff (namely, me).

Somehow, every time I made a move, there he was. I was young and trying to win by being smart. He was slow and un-busy which gave him enough time to be prepared. He just had no need to impress me. He loved to tell me that ‘old age and treachery will beat out youth and enthusiasm every time’.

I got to thinking about these experiences while I was talking with one of RD Whitney’s business partners. “Let’s talk every Thursday until we figure out how to make money together, RD said. We did and ultimately came up with the current project.” Whitney is quiet, unassuming and just about ready to turn the marketplace on its head.

There are about a half dozen trade-show / media company executives in the HR/Recruiting industry. We’ve profiled a few of them in the Top 100 so far. Debbie McGrath, Bill Kutik and David Manaster (to name a few). On a personality level, they have so little in common that you may rest assured that the job doesn’t require a personality type.

You may have heard that OnRec purchased the corporate recruiting conference, website, content, and database media assets of Kennedy Information. The coup was engineered by Whitney who made nary a fuss as he scooped up the pieces of the empire of his former employer. Of all of the players in the game, Whitney looks most like a careerist.

Over the course of a two decade career, RD has mastered the art of building online community and making it possible. He ‘follows the money’ and has a unique capacity for identifying leverage and opportunity. He says of himself, “I connect the dots and find the opportunities”.

He’s worked with a number of B2B media companies: Thomson, IDG, Kennedy and, most recently, Tarsus. Tarsus, owners of the OnRec Brand and now Kennedy’s assets, are a massive global conference organization

Here’s the gist of RD’s empire, Tarsus Online Media(TOM):

Operating in the UK, USA, France and Germany, TOM comprises established online products in the events, merchandising, venues and online recruitment sectors. TOM continues to be an area of significant growth potential, with the launch of new online communities to connect buyers and sellers. The essential face-to-face business and networking taking place at trade shows and conferences is strengthened by online interaction.

The buyer/seller conversation increasingly takes place both off line and online. In addition, online media provides Tarsus with an ideal low-risk testing ground to penetrate new markets and geographies. The Tarsus Online Media division is responsible for generating profitable online media revenue streams and organic new development for game-changing online business models and new market exploration.

The division comprises a portfolio of online media products in key markets including the UK, USA, France and Germany. It operates established online products in the merchandising, events, venues, gifts, HR and online recruitment sectors. The growing Tarsus strength in online media is proving to open doors to new opportunities and uncover innovative media business models, whilst also supporting low-risk “bolt-on” growth of our various sectors. It enables us to turn our research and development efforts from a cost centre to a profit centre and to achieve our strategy of owning and managing the full spectrum of media in the sectors in which we operate.

Focus on Talent Management: With offices in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Tarsus Online Media supports a growing portfolio of educational and networking products in the talent management, HR and recruiting sector including Talent ManagementTech.com, Onrec.com, a web portal for the online recruitment industry, RetentionInstitute.com, TheRecruitingConference.com and now RecruitingTrends.com.

RD’s boyish charm and good looks are a powerful cover for the shrewd businessman below. Quietly, one piece at a time, Whitney is assembling a formal, global, recruiting, HR, talent management empire.

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Top 100 v1.62: Ryan Johnson

The process of trying to identify patterns of influence in the HR-Recruiting Industry has been revealing. The domain is composed of a number of subordinate silos and the totality is only loosely tied together. If you ask a Recruiter who Jay Cross or Ann Bares are, you’ll draw blank stares. (Hint: They are rock stars in learning and compensation) Few people outside of the the Outsourcing business recognize Mary Sue Rogers’ name. almost everyone in traditional HR roles recognizes Dave Ullrich. It’s fair to say that he’s not well known in Recruiting circles.

When you try to identify hyper influential VPs of HR, they are few and far between. Clout, at that level, seems to have as much to do with position as it does personality. Even then, the influence remains after the achievement is gone.

Influence is a kind of credentialing system. For most of human history, people have wondered and studied the art of developing influence. One of the oldest pieces of literature, the I Ching, is devoted, in part, to the study of influence.

“The tree on the mountain is visible from afar, and its development influences the landscape of the entire region. It does not shoot up like a swamp plant; its growth proceeds gradually. Thus, the work of influencing people can be only gradual.No sudden influence or awakening is of lasting effect .Progress must be quite gradual and, in order to obtain such progress in public opinion and the mores of the people, it is necessary for the personality to acquire influence and weight. This comes about though careful and constant work on one’s own moral development.” The I Ching
, 53. Development (Gradual Progress)

One of the important questions of the era is whether or not social media creates a fast track. Does the ability to communicate broadly and quickly create a pattern of consequences that you could identify as influence. You’d have to say that it does among the people who are actively using social media. How much that group of insiders matters is an entirely separate subject.

In each media revolution (the inventions of language, poetry, song, narrative, printing press, popular fiction, telephone, telegraph, radio, movies, email, web, social media), the early adopters received value that was different from the mass of people who ultimately became users. In fact, one of the driving forces of technology adoption seems to be the wild claims of the early adopters. There is a definite kind of influence that early users of new technologies gain.

At the end of the day, however, media sophistication is no substitute for substance. For a short time in the evolution of any social phenomenon (fad), people who ‘get it’ gain visibility whether or not their output really merits attention. As time goes on, the balance returns to a more normal editorial flow in which important stuff rises to the surface.

The most powerfully influential people covered in this series have patiently built reputations and networks that exploded in effectiveness when they introduced social media. The next most powerful group doesn’t use social media at all. They are the current owners of the institutional seat of power in the Fortune 50. Then comes the flock of early adopters in social media who found a home there.

World at Work, the compensation professionals trade association (it’s more or less like SHRM for Comp professionals) is a 50 year old organization. It is a global association focused on compensation, benefits, work-life and integrated total rewards to attract, motivate and retain a talented workforce. Founded in 1955, WorldatWork provides a network of nearly 30,000 members in more than 100 countries with training, certification, research, conferences and community. It is getting adept at weathering the storms of media revolutions and manages to continue to grow as the game changes.

Ryan Johnson is their Vice President of Publishing and Community.

“Ryan M. Johnson, Certified Compensation Professional (CCP), is responsible for member community, issues management, research and publishing.

Prior to joining WorldatWork, Johnson spent more than 10 years in public policy, public affairs and consulting/strategy work, having worked for Gerbig, Snell/Weisheimer of Columbus, Ohio, and the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University. He started his career in Washington, D.C. on the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business.

He later worked as a research analyst for the Institute for Strategy Development, a private, financial institutions-oriented think tank. Johnson has authored numerous articles on topics such as current legislative and regulatory developments, stock option expensing, executive compensation proxy disclosure, employee bonus programs, professional ethics, employee recognition, paid time off (PTO), outside director pay, consumerism in benefits, work-life, sales compensation, flexible work schedules, telework and disaster recovery/continuity of operations, salary surveys, salary budget surveys, and total rewards.

Johnson has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, The Arizona Republic, as well as numerous trade publications such as Government Computer News. He has been interviewed on NPR’s Marketplace program and several metro radio stations. He is a frequent keynote speaker on topics related to trends in compensation and benefits. He founded the WorldatWork Blog.”

Beyond the normal career blah, blah blah, Ryan is an articulate guy with an intense degree of personal curiosity. He moved, with a good deal of grace, from the turbulent rapids of Capitol Hill and Public Policy to the relative backwaters of the Compensation industry. With a high energy player like Johnson

When you talk to him, it feels like growth and improvement are the natural extensions of any professional’s involvement in Compensation analysis and policy. Standing just slightly outside of that small world, this seems like a pretty impressive accomplishment. It was reasonably natural for Johnson to be the founder of the World at Work Blog.

Even if Ryan weren’t such an upbeat and networking oriented player, the nature of his role would make him influential. WorldatWork’s research is used to benchmark compensation in a variety of settings. The organization’s members generally encounter Ryan or his work as the face of the organization. Yet, he’s more laid back than most.

It’s probably the Scottsdale atmosphere. While most professional associations have headquarters in DC, WorldatWork is located just outside Phoenix. It’s partly the result of Ryan’s participation that the entity has a DC office.

While the discipline is arcane and often overlooked, the compensation department has a great deal of organizational power. It’s ultimately their execution of policy that determines who gets which share of the resources. Even more importantly, the sub unit charged with executive comp is often the interface between the board and the CEO on issues of CEO pay. That simple bit of real estate is enough to make or break a VP of HR’s career. There are certainly much worse places than ‘head of executive compensation’ from which to move into the C Suite.

Our conversation ranged over a number of future oriented topics. Perhaps the most interesting involved a discussion about HR’s role in determining the pay of subcontractors. In an increasingly outsourced world, compensation experts have an important contribution to make in the evaluation of subcontracts. It’s one of those places where the interests of HR and purchasing seriously align.

My guess is that the influence of the compensation professional (and therefore Ryan Johnson) is going to grow over then next five years.

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Top 100 v1.61: ERE Expo – Center of Influence

Influence is hard to distinguish from celebrity. Being well known is one of the components of influence. (It’s almost impossible to be influential if no one knows who you are.) We are in the age of the democratizion of celebrity, the post-privacy world. People rise to the top and fall back down faster than one hit wonders with a 1970’s recording contract.

The more enduring an influencer is, the more the influencer is like an institution. It’s sort of a circular definition that means that tenure is an important aspect of the scope of a particular influencer. It’s not the only factor, however. Some people accelerate onto the world stage quickly and have influence that is disproportionate to their time on the stage.

That means that influence is a balance of momentum, duration, impact and reach. New technologies enable their early adopters to achieve a faster success. The fundamental mechanics are the same. Momentum, duration and reach are readily measurable online. Impact is harder to quantify.

There are also ‘nests of influence’; places where influencers congregate and the story gets developed. There are a number of online communities ranging from ERE and RecruitingBlogs to HR.com and the recent HRTechConference group on LinkedIn. Over the past couple of years, these niche communities have dominated the online conversation. Their aggregate influence has grown dramatically over the past decade. Before that, ERE was alone in the field. The online ‘nests’ shape the daily dialog of sales reps and industry players. They drive the small talk in conversations between industry members.

They can’t hold a candle to to the impact of the physical events in the industry. The landscape is littered with some obvious and some not so obvious centers of influence. ERE’s Expo, HRExective’s HRTech Conference, SHRM events and the OnRec events all come quickly to mind. Each of the HR Silos (Talent Management, Learning, OD, Compensation, Benefits, Performance Management) all have their own professional associations and events. There are also a number (maybe as many as 40) of small intimate groups that offer peer to peer networking for executives in the Industry. There are even other events that blur the line between the large public expos and the small intimate gatherings. The SharedXpertise family of events falls into this category.

We’re going to look more deeply into these ‘nests of influence’ and their aggregate impact on the industry in a later piece.

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the ERE Expo. Held in San Diego, the event saw about 400 industry influencers, practitioners and vendors swirl together for something that resembled a wedding with education modules. Like all of these events, there were a number of recurring themes:

• One of the most interesting demos I saw was from an unlikely source. PCRecruiter is an industry stalwart ATS and Recruiting system used by high end professionals. Their latest iteration essentially eliminates the application specific interface in favor of a deep integration with the Microsoft Office suite. What you end up with is new toolbars and reports with no pure application interface. It seems like the beginning of a powerful trend…the rapidly disappearing user interface. More on this later.
• One could be excused for having the feeling that social media is the second coming. Many speakers waxed on about the ultimate consequence of new publishing tools and social networking. Any attempt to suggest a modified view was met with disbelief;
• Another key theme, often expressed by vendors and practitioners alike, was the idea that all job applicants should receive relationship treatment; that every applicant is entitled to certain inalienable rights. Again, suggesting otherwise was met with incredulity;
• Social media was also heavily represented in the vendor arena. The vendor floor offered the full spectrum from substantial booths by JobVite, BrazenCareerist and Jobs2Web to single person alliance machines from Jibe, InsideJob, BraveNewTalent and LokLoq
• Rather than dying, the job boards seem to be having a renaissance. SimplyHired, Indeed, Monster and CareerBuilder all exerted heavy influences on the dialog.
• Partly because SourceCon was held on the first two days of the week, it seemed like sourcing really developed industry respect. There seems to be a real career path emerging in the sourcing disciplines.
• It was the year of the RPO. As costs continue to be cut, the outsourcing of all or part of medium to large company Recruiting is increasingly an option.

The influence of an event like ERE is something to behold. Over the course of the event, you could hear vendors shifting their pitches as they came to understand the positioning of their competitors. Ideas flow quickly at ERE as the networks rub up against each other and swap gossip, intelligence and insight.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that something less than 1% of working professionals attend trade shows. When you’re in the swirl, it’s all consuming and all encompassing. It really feels like ‘this is the market’. The ‘echo chamber’ effect makes it feel like the messaging from the event is viral and very contagious. The truth is somewhat different.

There are plenty of bigger events. None have the influence per capita of ERE’s twice annual expos. The show is really about the schmooze that goes on in the halls outside of the formal conference.

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Top 100 v1.60 Gautam Ghosh

In 2002, there were not many people talking about blogging (the term of art was Weblog). The dot com collapse was still front and center. Business was at a standstill following 911. Weblogging was in its infancy in Silicon Valley. There were few international proponents.

In India, Gautam Ghosh was trying to sort out his place in the world. After a series of starts in the hotel industry and pharma sales, he’d picked up an MBA from XLRI school of Business and Human Resources, one of the country’s leading universities, in 1999. While trying to build career traction, Gautam launched his blog in 2002.

By 2007, he was being recognized (by HRWorld) as one of the most influential online voices in HR. Ghosh is busy demonstrating that social media can be a real careerpath. It’s particulary interesting to hear him tell about the use of social media in India. Creating a new career path in a stodgy discipline like HR is less common outside of the United States.

As the democratization of celebrity continues to push through global society, the applecart is being upset all over the place. Much of the reaction to the algorithm generated lists of HR and Recruiting influencers has to do with the unpredictability of new work trajectories. Emerging communications technologies make head spinning career moves possible.

Ghosh rode the blogging trajectory through stints with Dell, Deloitte, HP and Erewhon while coming to the conclusion that his future was in independent consulting. By 2009, Businesspundit.com had him listed as one of the top 75 business blogs in the world. It’s pretty heady stuff.

In my conversations with Ghosh, I’ve always noticed an undertone of something particularly HR-like in his approach to developing his vocation. “I was always looking for my place in the world,” he said in a recent phone call. This emphasis on ‘fit’ is at the heart of what social media makes possible.

He told me about a large Indian company that has a Chief Beliefs Officer. The CBO is responsible the way that rituals, beliefs and myths are deployed in the workplace. Ghosh used the example to illuminate some of the differences between Indian HR and it’s more Western implementations.

“We are not investing in fundamental research and are just blindly applying Western HR concepts to work. But, as you can imagine, in a land where a ‘CBO’ is a good idea, there are some hiccups. Work, compensation, community and motivation are all different culturally. We are in the early stages of discovering what is Indian about Indian HR”.

That’s part of the reason that Ghosh joined the startup 2020Social, where he heads the talent practice. The company’s clients are mostly in the marketing space. 2020Social has Ghosh in its ranks because they understand that the difference between custmers and employees is mostly theoretical.

Gautam Ghosh is a role model in his home country and around the world. A decade of demonstrating that alternate career paths work while focusing on big ideas and implementation gives him a platform for influence all over the world.

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Top 100 v1.59 Jeremy Shapiro

In yesterday’s review of the SHRM HR Standards project, we looked at the interesting effort the professional association is generating. Standards, analytics and metrics are an integral part of the emerging world of global commerce. Jeremy Shapiro, the Bernard Hodes Group (Hodes) senior Vice President at HodesIQ, is on top of that question. He might be the most effective proponent of HR analytics in the business.

Shapiro has been a driving force in the Online Recruiting business for 14 years, the majority of that time at Hodes. He’s been central to the development of the only Applicant Tracking System owned by an advertising agency (that we know of). Managing technology development within the loving confines of an ad firm is no small challenge.

HodesIQ is a fully features SaaS system that provides soup to nuts recruiting technology including ATS, onboarding, job posting, sourcing and media metrics, succession planning and performance management. The solution is configurable and scalable. The interesting thing about being housed in an advertising agency is that it makes the HodesIQ emphasis on employment branding and career-site development all the more credible.

One measure of influence might be the number of press releases that mention you.

Continuing Bernard Hodes Group’s long-standing history of working to advance the field of human capital management, Hodes iQ’s Senior Vice President Jeremy Shapiro will lead an HR metrics workgroup for the innovative Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) initiative to help develop standards certified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which “oversees the creation, promulgation and use of thousands of norms and guidelines that directly impact businesses in nearly every sector”.

Shapiro, an author and expert in human resource metrics and talent management technology, will lead a cross-functional team of volunteers to create a standard for the frequently used HR metric, “cost per hire.” This workgroup is one of three initial efforts by SHRM to help HR teams better define common HR functions and measurements. “This is an exciting time in the field of HR metrics; executives are more interested in maximizing human capital potential, and are looking to HR for answers, but we need to get the basics down first,” said Shapiro.

“Efforts such as this one, which helps better define what cost per hire means, allows the HR function to move on to more challenging analytics. I’m excited to lead a strong team of HR professionals to submit our recommendation on a standard for cost per hire to ANSI.” A well-known expert in the world of talent management solutions, Shapiro oversees the development and management of Hodes iQ, Bernard Hodes Group’s award-winning talent acquisition and management software solution, and is co-author of the HR metrics book Ultimate Performance.

The Hodes iQ talent management system provides users with a robust business intelligence tool to report on HR metrics, in addition to access to Hodes iQ experts in talent acquisition measurement through seminars, webinars and direct consultation. – From the press release

Shapiro was a geek from day one.

Always hustling to make money, Shapiro’s youth might be better characterized as mis-saved rather than mis-spent. He loving tells the story of his first computer, a Tandy 1000. At 10, he computerized the town directory and sold it to the local politicians. He simply loved the intersection of technology and commerce.

A life long learner, Shapiro continued his education after undergraduate school picking up a degree that combined an MBA and a Computer Science Degree from Stern. The more he watches HR, the more he is sure it’s about data.

It’s easy to get at Jeremy’s passion. Just ask him about analytics. An association with Nick Burkholder got him started. Increasingly he is placing his energies and presentations into the Analytics world.

From here, it looks visionary. Of course the next generation of recruitment advertising client will be metrics (evidence) driven. Shapiro is setting the stage for Hodes’ emergence as a next level player.

We talked for a while about how HR Departments learn to use data. He repeatedly cited the following maturity scale proposed in the book he coauthored with Burkholder.

In the beginning, the use of analytics involves non-standard spreadsheets. In the end, the tool set shifts from predefined dashboards and into the issues that make talent management strategic.

In a separate piece, we’ll tell you about the conversations we had about trends beyond analytics. Meanwhile, keep your eye on Shapiro. His influence will be seen in the rate that analytics are adopted in HR.

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Reconsidering Influence

Last week, we published the Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters list on the HR Examiner. Each of the 25 people profiled are major contributors to the online dialog. They have large followings, generate significant traffic and make a powerful impact in the niches in which they operate.

The list created a small stir with critiques ranging from cronyism to a runaway algorithm. Lists always produce sour-grapes, Monday morning quarterbacking and conversation on the topic. The idea behind the influencer lists is to build an ongoing dialog about who has influence, why they have it, how they got it, what they do with it and whether or not doing whatever it is that they do will be useful in your career.

I am extremely curious about the way that ideas move around the HR Industry. As the recovery slowly takes shape, I think that budgets will get pressed, outsourcing will be on the rise and different people will be doing old HR/Recruiting jobs in new and different ways.

Talent Management can mean anything from ’succession planning’ to ‘the cultivation and harvesting of the human capital investment”. It ranges from an afterthought to the central reason for being in the HR department. Where it is shortchanged, people are treated like a physical supply. Where it is fertilized and matured, it is understood as renewable and worthy of ongoing examination and support.

HR spans a similar gulf. At the street level of maturity (a very large percentage of all firms, maybe 60%), HR is nothing more than the old personnel department, processing forms and polishing procedures. In 30% of firms, SHRM drives the performance standard with committed professionals who want to know how to make a contribution. At 10% of all companies, HR is a competitive weapon; these operations redefine the basic components of the profession as adjunct components of an offensive strategy.

The people who influence Recruiting range across these dimensions. Many of their views on recruiting are contradictory and hard to reconcile. Recruiting ranges from filling a well worn requisition to identifying the next leader of a powerfully innovative new company. Is there any question that generalizations about the discipline will come up short?

But, the web is an exercise in making things measurable. As we move through the experiment in trying to articulate and measure influence, a number of things are getting clear. We find nuances in the data long after it settles out.

Here are some of the questions I’m asking:

• Is influence really different from popularity?
• Do the people we are identifying on the Traackr lists really have influence or are they just the loudest mouths on the block?
• It seems like the people who make their way on to these lists are getting better jobs. Are the lists measuring something that has to do with career momentum?
• We believe that the measurement process will more closely correspond to actual influence over time. What else do we need to know?
• Some of the critics have great ideas. What’s the best way to involve them in the process?
• Is it true that influence will become more and more important as organizations continue to flatten?
• Will the current bits of web architecture last long enough to have institutional style consequences?
• About 60% of the HR leaders profiled in the On The Go Section of the HR Examiner do not have LinkedIn profiles. Is this because they already have all the influence they want?

The idea behind this experiment and the HRExaminer is to take a fresh look at the way that HR and careers within its disciplines actually work. If you have input, ideas or insults, we’re happy to get them.

Rev: nc 

Top 100 v1.57 Brian Hackett

There are more than 50 small organizations that offer peer to peer networking (in the old fashioned sense) for HR Executives. From the Conference Board and the Recruiting RoundTable (whose parent offers a number of similar forums) to analyst firms like Bersin and Associates to a slew of academic operations (Cornell’s ecosystem is particularly interesting). There are consultancies built around academic figures, Institutes for the Future, and a host of exotic, nichey operations. Some (but not many) vendor user groups accomplish the same end.

There are a number of things that these influential groups have in common. They are:

• Intimate (a handful to forty members in the most effective groups)
• Relatively vendor free (and always vendor neutral)
• Designed to combine networking and education
• Focused on helping members become more effective (in one way or another)
• Loosely facilitated

Some have a greater emphasis on Research (Analysts tend to chart their own courses while larger groups tend to answer the questions of members). Others focus on conversations about what is working and what isn’t.

Most interestingly, there is no central repository that compares and contrasts service and pricing. These are tony groups who don’t really like a lot of attention. There doesn’t appear to be any consistency in the price value equation.

That said, customers are often rabid fans of the service they use. Virtually every Fortune 2000 HR Executive belongs to one or more of these small groups. The networking and cross-competitor information transfer gives members a real edge when it comes to innovation and execution within their companies.

You can think of this arena as ‘the trade show business for real HR decision makers” or “the HR Industry’s Think Tanks”. The institutions are amorphous and live in the shadows. They provide a fast information distribution system while shielding members from an avalanche of sales calls.

One of the more interesting operations is called the Learning Forum. With about a dozen “councils“, LF members meet in groups of 10 to 15 participants about three times a year. A look at their website tells you that these folks are not interested in slick marketing.

The Learning Forum is a network of senior executives who join together for direct, peer-to-peer dialog and sharing of “better practices”. We focus on Leadership Development, HR Strategy, Workforce Planning, KM, Innovation, Wellness and Sustainability. We also run executive level workshops for top teams using Gettysburg, Normandy and other key historical sites to teach timeless lessons of leadership and human nature.

At the heart of the Learning Forum is Brian Hackett. A former Towers-Perrin consultant and director at the Conference Board, Hackett is one of those people (nodes) who are spectacular at making connections. A long time student of evidence based decision making, leadership, innovation, knowledge management workforce planning and a host of eclectic topics, Hackett runs the Learning Forum as a self organizing network. The members set the agenda and the rules.

Hackett is the archetype of a kind of networker not usually covered in the tomes about social interactions (yup, that means Malcolm Gladwell). At the heart of many small HR / Recruiting networks is someone who loves research and experimentation. The ability to make and develop connections comes, in part, from having something interesting to offer in conversation. The essence of real connectors is that they are profoundly curious. It doesn’t take long, when talking with Hackett, to see his wonder unfold. He loves learning and creating environments in which others can learn. What makes Hackett’s connecting work is the fact that he is content rich as a character trait.

Five years ago, Hackett co-founded Apex Performance, a small consultancy that provides what he calls neuro-leadership training. The idea is that performance can be measured and improved scientifically. The firm routinely trains high-end military teams and athletes/teams who want leadership and performance improvement.

Hackett shares our distaste for best practices. Doing the best with what you have is a better formulation for the peer to peer education he facilitates. The learning Forum is all about conversation and adaptation rather than a stream of copycat “best practices”.

Hackett is an advocate of conscious capitalism (as practiced by Patagonia, Whole Foods, Southwest Air) and is fascinated by the economics of trust in and between organizations. At some point during each of our conversations, he recommended Firms of Endearment, the seminal book on conscious capitalism. Integrity, subdivided into keen self-knowledge, project candor and maturity as the components of marketplace love. Love, says the book, distinguishes the great companies from the rest of the best.

When asked for advice to HR professionals just starting out, Hackett said, “Go into business, don’t go into HR until you have some sense of the business. Learn politics and get good at it. Develop financial acumen and expertise (overcome your fear of math). Find a mentor and be a mentor. And, if you want access to the boardroom, do a stint in the executive compensation department.”

Rev: nc