Top 100 v1.73 Jon Ingham

For every 250 bloggers talking to an empty virtual room about nothing, there is one voice delivering value and perspective. The democratization of publishing has made it possible for all sorts of voices to be heard. That so little is being said is only troubling if you don’t agree with Einstein, who said, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” In other words, the ability to deliver social media is no guarantee of content quality.

Several factors come in to play when the information quality question involves a profession and its practice. The maturity of the profession itself; the maturity of the author (professionally and personally), the level of understanding of the problem under discussion and the relationship of the author to the audience are each aspects of the way that authors and audiences interact.

As is painfluuly clear in politics (regardless of your persuasion), the level of enthusiasm for an idea has painfully little to do with its legitimacy or utility. The factors that seem to drive influence on a national scale involve a race to the lowest common denominator. Intelligence and maturity are not inherent gateways to influence in the industry. There is infinite room in the infinite universe for the infinitely inane. Influence is not different from that.

And, this is an introduction to a guy who I think is really smart.

Jon Ingham is a British HR consultant and author who rose to global visibility throu his blog. Ingham focuses on enterprise issues and the evolution of Strategic HR. He’s definitely one of the smart social media practioners who are being paid attention. At least some of his strength comes from having deep operational experiences outside of HR.

If our profession has a single major weakness, it’s the inherent lack of grounding in the real work of the businesss. HR’s greatest mentors always preach the importannce of delivering the sort of value the organization needs as a part of its mission. Without hands on experience in sales, marketing, engineering, production and/or customer service, the organization’s work remains theoretical.

Jon says, “I help organisations gain competitive advantage through the creation of human and social capital supported by effective leadership, HR and management practices, OD interventions, and the use of web 2.0 / social media tools etc.”

He began his career as a C++ specialist (that’s software) doing user acceptance at Andersen (now Accenture). The key question became, “How do you /component/option,com_jcalpro/Itemid,99999999/extmode,cal/date,2060-03-01/”>cialis cheapest price make internal change happen in an organization?” Simply delivering technical insight was not enough. Ingham knew there was more.

He moved into HR to learn about change management. Since then, he’s worked internationally (Moscow and Egypt among others) and often in key change management roles. He spent a sifnificant chunk of time doing fundamental HR service delivery.

Jon defines HR as ‘managing people to accumulate Human Capital.” His book, Strategic Human Capital Management: Creating Value Through People, Ingham details the processes and procedures requored by a contemporay organization (Google Books has a 50 page preview). His clear eyed view of smart HR was significantly ahead of the rest of the industry making Jon both articulator and visionary.

His influence stems from his audience, a rekentless travel schedule and the depth and clarity of his thought. Ingham travels the entire HCM waterfront and is willing to take us along on the ride with him. For example,

Collective intelligence isn’t about information flows and processes. It’s about people and their connections. Speed and flexibility isn’t about formal planning processes – supported by social tools, it’s about giving people autonomy to make quicker and smarter decisions – supported by social relationships.

We talked about the trends taht are shaping the industry:

• HR continues to get closer to the business. In doing so, we risk losing the very things that make HR valuable. This tension will shape HR organizations /component/option,com_jcalpro/Itemid,99999999/extmode,cal/date,2060-03-01/”>cialis cheapest price for the next several years.
• Measurement is taking root in the culture of Human CApital Management. This is a good thing. But, you can not forecast the future by measuring the past. Measurement should be balanced with creativity and trust. When measurement becomes about performance surveillance, the culture suffers.
• Ironically, HR should be trying to become more relationship focused. Social Media is at its most useful when it is social.
• HRTech offers extraordinary ways for the discipline to add value. The US understands this far more deeply than the rest of the world.

Ingham is still early in his career. It’s not outrageous to imagine him as the next Ullrich. We’re going to keep following him.

Top 100 Influencers in HR v1.71 Alice Snell

There are not very many people who have been researching Human Capital issues as long as Alice /component/page,shop.browse/category_id,6/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,36/”>cialis buy on line Snell. The Vice President of Taleo Research has been covering the space for 15 years. Widely seen as a voice of reason in a sea of hype, Alice effectively navigates the line that separates corporate advocacy and best practices documentation.

With roots in Recruiting (she was involved with Kennedy Info as it began its transition into the digital era in the mid 1990s), Alice has been at the epicenter of Recruiting research since she went to work for iLogos. Founded by Yves Lermusi (now CEO, Checkster), iLogos /component/page,shop.browse/category_id,6/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,36/”>cialis buy on line professionalized recruiting research and was acquired by Recruitsoft in 1999. The avid handicapper of the Human Capital Software Industry will know that Recruitsoft quickly became Taleo.

In other words, Alice has been a part of Taleo since before it was Taleo.

“After I wrote a book for job hunters in 1994, I gave up on print,” says Snell. “It was clear that digital communications were going to turn everything around. As a result, I jumped into technology analysis. I was looking to see the impact of Tech on HR. Let me tell you, it’s been fast and amazing.”

“When I say fast, I mean that many changes take generations. The internet completely disrupted the employment process in under a decade. Job boards and ATS systems totally changed the way that we get work. That change fueled many of the other adaptations in the rest of HR. While some people think HR is a laggard organization, I’m hear to tell you that everything is different a decade later.”

“Today, organizations are looking to comprehensively inventory and optimize their human capital. They are learning to consider job design as a make or buy decision. It’s a whole new world.”

“What’s happening is that organizations are becoming able to use talent pools to acquire talent. Then, they identify gaps and find the best fit for everyone involved. Talent Management is all of the Work That You Do On Your Workforce,” she says.

Alice’s influence and stature are due to a couple of factors. As a representative of a major player in the software business, she reaches and represents the learning of thousands if customers in thousands of organizations. Doing so for ten years has given her an inside look at the real world of Human Capital Practice. She brings wisdom and channels the experience of a very specific crowd.

It’s no accident that some of the most influential players in the industry do not work in it. Like Alice’s view of Talent Management above, they work on the business not in it. A single change in the user interface drives the day to day experience of a huge user base and all of the people who interact with the software as employees or job seekers.

One way of thinking about influence is that it’s the ability to have an impact. Where power is the ability to make specific things happen, influence is the business of increasing the likelihood that something will happen. When Alice delivers a story about best practices, there is every reason to believe that they will be adopted.

All this is not to suggest that Alice only walks in a world where everything is automated “I see a pretty broad spectrum of practice. Some people are doing amazing things with pencils and spreadsheets. But, real results, driven by decision making rooted in data, comes from the companies with high levels of automation in their HR functions.”

Taleo’s mission is to enable Strategic Talent Management in Organizations. Alice’s role in that process involves speaking, consulting, doing primary research and keeping up with the explosion of Human Capital related information. “The hardest part is staying on top of the research tsunami.”

Alice, like many of the players in our industry, sees a transformation happening in leadership. “A recent IBM study shows that engagement is the foundation of great leadership and good employee development.” She is busyily focused on the development of tools to manage critical talent pools. She sees an HR function that has made the change to a productivity focus and increasingly driven by organizational results.

Find some time to talk with Alice if you see her at one of the conferences. She’s an old hand and understandds the evolution of the profession far better than most. Follow Alice at her blog for Taleo Research.

Top 100 Influencers v 1.69 Bret Starr

A surprising number of the people who influence the direction of the HR Industry come from Texas. Of course, Austin, with its technology industries (driven by the live music culture) produces a fair share of the ideation. But, Dallas is a major (if not THE major) Recruiting hub. And, all those small towns out in the middle of nowhere seem to produce bright young minds that ache to make a dent in the HR arena.

Apparently, young Texans dream of making music, playing football, drilling for oil, building technology or doing HR. Ask a Texan and they will assure you that it’s in the water, that anything worth doing is worth doing big. From the outside, one wonders if it gets a little boring when ‘the stars at night are big and bright’. Regardless, Alice Texas, somewhere between Laredo and El Paso produced this week’s member of the Top 100 Influencer’s club.

Bret Starr is one of five partners in the nearly legendary HR Marketing firm, Starr-Tincup. William Tincup, the firm’s other named partner, was an early member of the Top 100 group. He has, as they say in Texas, hit the dusty trail. The firm bears both his name, his indelible imprint and a smattering of his DNA..

Of Tincup, Starr says, “I could not imagine a better partner than William Tincup. Our agency is rooted tin the amazing creative work we did together. All I can tell you about William’s future is that it’s going to be fun to watch. The guy can not help but make a lasting impression wherever he goes.

There’s a reason that Starr-Tincup routinely wins honors as a great place to work. Cool policies, great people to work with and interesting stuff to work on. If you haven’t been on the receiving end of their eye opening takes on HR, wander through the website. Starr-Tincup is the freshest view you could imagine. You can get a sense of what they do in Bret’s mantra:

“If your marketing doesn’t make you nervous, it isn’t great marketing.”

The Top 100 interview has several recurring parts. Bio, the current gig, industry trends, technology trends and key industry influencers are the basic topics. Bret wouldn’t be in the information repackaging business if he didn’t have an interesting take on these questions.

On the standard query about the people who influence the industry, Bret said “It’s not a who, it’s a what. Industry media, Vendors, the US Government and the TV show The Office are the key influences in HR today.”

• “About 10% of the people in the business read blogs, go to conferences and, in general, stay up on the trends in the business. The other 90% get their information from this smaller group. Everything you know about best practices and good ideas evolves out of a small universe of people who feed on the industry’s media.”
• “Innovation flows from entrepreneurs to practitioners. Since there is no federal think tank for HR or HRTech, everything that’s interesting emerges from the vendor universe. If you want a fast education about HR and HRTech, meet with one vendor a day for a year.”
• “Tax credits, discrimination laws, disclosure, privacy regulations and a thousand other forms of social and economic manipulation shape the basic HR environment.”
• “The show The Office has made us all ask why we go to work. It’s made the whole culture aware of the results of stupid policies.”

From Bret’s perspective, there are a couple of trends worth really focusing on. He thinks that Rewards and Recognition are the sleeper opportunities in HR. As the economy comes back, focused programs that deliver rewards will be the glue that holds the world together. Employment brands, which have been savaged by the downturn stand little chance of being the backbone of great acquisition programs. /component/page,shop.browse/category_id,7/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,45/vmcchk,1/”>cialis /component/page,shop.browse/category_id,7/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,45/vmcchk,1/”>cialis generic price generic price He also sees a huge growth in strategic wellness initiatives as they help companies managing spiraling health care costs.

Bret sees a huge wave of single purpose apps with an intense focus on Usability and a sexy user experience headed our way. “The mid market is going to explode as real value comes packaged in single purpose apps designed to consumer standards.” He believes we live in an app world.

Bret Starr is one of the architects of the messages that drive the ways that our industry sees itself. It’s interesting to note that he didn’t mention marketing firms in his analysis. That’s because he’s happier to see his clients get the attention.

Jason Averbook

Jason Averbook is the founder and CEO of Knowledge Infusion, the most rapidly growing firm on the HR Consulting front lines. We had been playing a game of meeting phone tag for most of the past 6 months. KI’s rapid growth and Averbook’s legendary focus on customer satisfaction are at the heart of the scheduling conflicts. Finally, early on a Friday morning, we made the connection.

The moment I started the conversation, I knew this was going to be something different. There’s a certain sameness to the group of folks who dominate the movement of ideas in the Human Capital Industry. I had the sense that it was simply pasty-white maleness. I had less than high expectations for my conversation with Jason Averbook.

“We did some really right things last year,” he said. “We stopped being exclusively focused on HR Technology and started being focused on HR Strategy (with a minor in HRTech). What we discovered is that HRTech without a clear strategy is just dumb. In a market where people are not buying so much technology, every purchasing decision has to have a real tie to the overall business.

Now, our whole business is about tying HR to the business. We are focused on Talent Management and Business Alignment. As a result, it looks like we will grow three times our plan this year. And, I am having a ton of fun.”

With 35 Full Time Employees and another 30 Contractors, Knowledge Infusion is in the Inc 5000. They are ranked 34 in the Human Resources Category. They offer strategic advice, readiness assessment and gap analysis and the training required to close the gap.

The Knowledge Infusion CEO says, “I was surprised to discover that HR Tech never changes anything in HR. What changes HR is the people in HR.”

Averbook is a plain spoken man with a gift for profound simplification. He has a level of passion for the Human Capital function that defies easy articulation. Somehow, a conversation with Knowledge Infusion’s leader seems to open up possibilities. It’s a kind of contagious charisma in a sort of insurance executive form.

Jason talks about his roots “It all begins with your parents. My dad, who profoundly impacted me and Knowledge Infusion, was an insurance executive. My mom was a teacher and superintendent of schools. I wanted to work at the intersection of their interests, where business and education meet.”

Prior to co-founding Knowledge Infusion, Jason held senior management positions at PeopleSoft and Ceridian where he built strong relationships with industry-leading companies, and strove to provide the best service to HR organizations around the world.

We talked about the trends that are driving change in HR.

• “The first part of the 2000s was all about brand explosion. Brands became megabrands like Starbucks, Nike, Dell, Four Seasons…But, in the fast growth environment, the left infrastructure waiting. As we navigate the great reset, they are retooling, focusing on infrastructure and laying the groundwork for the next wave of growth.”
• “In that same time, everyone realized that they were global; the HR Issues are global. Up to that point in time, we could see transactional evidence for this big idea but the light bulb hadn’t yet gone off. Today, globalization is something more than having plants scattered around the planet. It’s a way of thinking about governance and employment.”
• “Talent is not what we thought it was. The jobs are not coming back. Instead, we have to focus on ‘the talent management spine’; those people who will take the enterprise into the future. The new rules are all about cultivation and attraction. Talent Management is being applied where it matters.”

In every one of these interviews (I’ve done about 430 so far), I close the conversation by asking who the most influential people are in HR. Averbook was the first person to name classes of people. His picks:

• CEOs who put talent first;
• Social Media pioneers who do something besides throw party and trash talk the profession; and
• Industry vendors who understand that this has little to do with HR and everything to do with real business impact.

Knowledge Infusion has the feel of a company that will become a 21st Century institution. Averbook and his crew are demonstrating a kind of agile consulting that moves with the market while continuing to provide new and innovative value. “The real fun is figuring out what the next brand of product will be. Our future depends on knowledge based products that build in innovation.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.