Friday, January 20, 2006
Integrated Marketing needs Integrated talent-Globally
The process of Integrated marketing has become inextricably linked with the ability to correctly and quickly identify the right talent. Globally.
This expertise based need was highlighted early last year when Omnicom was not successful in pitches against competitive holding companies. From last summer on, they have steadily defeated the opposition gaining more real revenue than the initial losses as well as a sharply honed set of battle proven best practices.
Omnicom, the largest communications company in the world has 80,000 employees.
But prior to the demand for Global pitches in the last couple of years, a formal process for identifying talent had not been necessary. Omnicom as a holding company is a small, simple organizational structure. The informal social networks have been reasonably effective at putting experts in touch with those who are in need of their services. As McKinsey says, "Around here, people know one another" is a common refrain. "If I need help, I know whom to call."
So the question appropriately asked by McKinsey was, "do you know who your experts are?"
(The title link requires a sign in so I have been fairly liberal with their content).
They advised that companies need a new approach to finding their elusive experts. Omnicom did just that.
"Expertise can be surprisingly difficult to find, even in institutions that have spent millions to attract and retain world-class experts. Take the experience of one manager at a biotechnology company.
Early in the project, it needed someone with deep technical knowledge of a particular protein. We spent weeks looking for an expert—calling HR, asking around the office, scanning personnel records. Finally, we concluded the expert didn’t exist. Three days later, I’m in an elevator complaining about this to a colleague, when the woman next to me turns and says, ’I wrote my doctoral thesis on that protein. What do you need to know?’"
Such inefficiency and reliance on chance would normally be unthinkable for corporate resources. Project managers don’t find cash lying around in elevators. Store managers don’t idly speculate on the whereabouts of their inventory. IT managers don’t spend weeks rummaging through offices for spare computer terminals. Companies, after all, follow well-established processes to connect valuable resources (cash, inventory, equipment) with the people who need them.
But the days of knowing whom to call may be over. Mergers, growth, globalization, and employee turnover have diminished the ability of informal social networks to ferret out experts. As a result, many companies are no longer willing to let serendipity dictate how their experts interact. A growing number of companies, including BP and IBM—afraid that their productivity may fall, their time to market slow, or their competitive position erode—have adopted more systematic approaches to both finding and leveraging expertise.
A large high-technology company spent tens of millions of dollars to develop a state-of-the-art expertise portal that it rarely uses or updates
Unfortunately, there has never been a good way to get the job done. Until recently, companies had two primary ways of capturing their expertise: document repositories and expertise databases. Neither can help seekers of expertise very much. Written documents reflect only a fraction of what an expert knows, while expertise databases suffer from inadequate classification schemes and tend to be out-of-date almost from the moment of inception. (One large high-tech company spent tens of millions of dollars developing a state-of-the-art expertise portal, which it rarely uses and even more rarely updates.)
Context is king
Expertise is difficult to find largely because it can be difficult to pin down. Suppose a colleague asked you to describe your expertise. How would you respond? If the question came from a stranger in a distant corner of your company, you might give a general answer such as "market research" or "clinical-trial design." But if the question came from the next desk, you would probably be more specific, giving your area of specialization within market research or mentioning the clinical trials you managed. To a colleague in another country you might give a geographic answer, while you would tell a local about your product expertise. And so it goes.
That is because the answer to "What expertise do you have?" depends on who is asking and why. The question, by itself, is too abstract to invite a meaningful reply. People looking for expertise are doing so within the context of specific problems. Cash, inventory, and equipment are always the same, but expertise is defined by its context. That makes it an unusually difficult asset to identify.
Moreover, in most cases, finding an expert is less about identifying the world’s leading authority on a recognized topic and more about reaching the person who happens to fit the demands of a particular situation.
Sometimes, the expertise wanted can be very narrow—the call might be for someone who has launched a product in a particular geography or worked for a potential customer. This type of expertise can be the most valuable of all. But it is often the most elusive because those who have it might not think of themselves as experts.
The problem of context befuddles most of the expertise directories that are in use today. Such directories contain short, context-free summaries of a person’s areas of expertise. These summaries have their benefits—especially in small companies that have relatively few experts, so informal social networks can complement the directories. But the abstracts generally are not up to the challenge of identifying the large amount of highly specialized expertise that is available in large companies with tens of thousands of employees.
What did Omnicom do?
We mapped out the specific business process and knowledge needs with the help of the Global pitch leaders. In addition to their counsel based on learning, they gave us a wish list of what they would liked to have had prior to the pitch and when they would like to have had it.
We also tested the process with 52 of the top CEO/COOs from Omnicom companies worldwide, as well as senior Harvard faculty from the Graduate School of Business.
If you can pass muster in this arena, you are close to a viable solution.
We were able to marry the business process and knowledge needs with an existing technology within Omnicom that was able to work around most of the problems articulated in the McKinsey article.
We were able to develop a unique method that functioned far more like the "Next desk" example than an expertise directory or experience database. The additional good news is that this system can not be duplicated by the competition as the information is unique to Omnicom.
This analysis not only helped identify a solution to a problem but opened up a better way to deal with broader talent issues that occur as an organization grows and matures. The technology also provides a better response mechanism for the broader aspects of integration, especially on a Global basis.
This expertise based need was highlighted early last year when Omnicom was not successful in pitches against competitive holding companies. From last summer on, they have steadily defeated the opposition gaining more real revenue than the initial losses as well as a sharply honed set of battle proven best practices.
Omnicom, the largest communications company in the world has 80,000 employees.
But prior to the demand for Global pitches in the last couple of years, a formal process for identifying talent had not been necessary. Omnicom as a holding company is a small, simple organizational structure. The informal social networks have been reasonably effective at putting experts in touch with those who are in need of their services. As McKinsey says, "Around here, people know one another" is a common refrain. "If I need help, I know whom to call."
So the question appropriately asked by McKinsey was, "do you know who your experts are?"
(The title link requires a sign in so I have been fairly liberal with their content).
They advised that companies need a new approach to finding their elusive experts. Omnicom did just that.
"Expertise can be surprisingly difficult to find, even in institutions that have spent millions to attract and retain world-class experts. Take the experience of one manager at a biotechnology company.
Early in the project, it needed someone with deep technical knowledge of a particular protein. We spent weeks looking for an expert—calling HR, asking around the office, scanning personnel records. Finally, we concluded the expert didn’t exist. Three days later, I’m in an elevator complaining about this to a colleague, when the woman next to me turns and says, ’I wrote my doctoral thesis on that protein. What do you need to know?’"
Such inefficiency and reliance on chance would normally be unthinkable for corporate resources. Project managers don’t find cash lying around in elevators. Store managers don’t idly speculate on the whereabouts of their inventory. IT managers don’t spend weeks rummaging through offices for spare computer terminals. Companies, after all, follow well-established processes to connect valuable resources (cash, inventory, equipment) with the people who need them.
But the days of knowing whom to call may be over. Mergers, growth, globalization, and employee turnover have diminished the ability of informal social networks to ferret out experts. As a result, many companies are no longer willing to let serendipity dictate how their experts interact. A growing number of companies, including BP and IBM—afraid that their productivity may fall, their time to market slow, or their competitive position erode—have adopted more systematic approaches to both finding and leveraging expertise.
A large high-technology company spent tens of millions of dollars to develop a state-of-the-art expertise portal that it rarely uses or updates
Unfortunately, there has never been a good way to get the job done. Until recently, companies had two primary ways of capturing their expertise: document repositories and expertise databases. Neither can help seekers of expertise very much. Written documents reflect only a fraction of what an expert knows, while expertise databases suffer from inadequate classification schemes and tend to be out-of-date almost from the moment of inception. (One large high-tech company spent tens of millions of dollars developing a state-of-the-art expertise portal, which it rarely uses and even more rarely updates.)
Context is king
Expertise is difficult to find largely because it can be difficult to pin down. Suppose a colleague asked you to describe your expertise. How would you respond? If the question came from a stranger in a distant corner of your company, you might give a general answer such as "market research" or "clinical-trial design." But if the question came from the next desk, you would probably be more specific, giving your area of specialization within market research or mentioning the clinical trials you managed. To a colleague in another country you might give a geographic answer, while you would tell a local about your product expertise. And so it goes.
That is because the answer to "What expertise do you have?" depends on who is asking and why. The question, by itself, is too abstract to invite a meaningful reply. People looking for expertise are doing so within the context of specific problems. Cash, inventory, and equipment are always the same, but expertise is defined by its context. That makes it an unusually difficult asset to identify.
Moreover, in most cases, finding an expert is less about identifying the world’s leading authority on a recognized topic and more about reaching the person who happens to fit the demands of a particular situation.
Sometimes, the expertise wanted can be very narrow—the call might be for someone who has launched a product in a particular geography or worked for a potential customer. This type of expertise can be the most valuable of all. But it is often the most elusive because those who have it might not think of themselves as experts.
The problem of context befuddles most of the expertise directories that are in use today. Such directories contain short, context-free summaries of a person’s areas of expertise. These summaries have their benefits—especially in small companies that have relatively few experts, so informal social networks can complement the directories. But the abstracts generally are not up to the challenge of identifying the large amount of highly specialized expertise that is available in large companies with tens of thousands of employees.
What did Omnicom do?
We mapped out the specific business process and knowledge needs with the help of the Global pitch leaders. In addition to their counsel based on learning, they gave us a wish list of what they would liked to have had prior to the pitch and when they would like to have had it.
We also tested the process with 52 of the top CEO/COOs from Omnicom companies worldwide, as well as senior Harvard faculty from the Graduate School of Business.
If you can pass muster in this arena, you are close to a viable solution.
We were able to marry the business process and knowledge needs with an existing technology within Omnicom that was able to work around most of the problems articulated in the McKinsey article.
We were able to develop a unique method that functioned far more like the "Next desk" example than an expertise directory or experience database. The additional good news is that this system can not be duplicated by the competition as the information is unique to Omnicom.
This analysis not only helped identify a solution to a problem but opened up a better way to deal with broader talent issues that occur as an organization grows and matures. The technology also provides a better response mechanism for the broader aspects of integration, especially on a Global basis.
