Accuracy and Trust

On March 10, 2009, in All, Daily News, Futures, JohnSumser.com, Online Community, Personal Publishing, Recruiting Strategy, by John Sumser

News: Accuracy and Trust

(March 10, 2009) How far can you trust the news that comes to you through a social network? That question has come up a couple of ways in recent days. There’s a big question, context, and a little question, accuracy. Maybe there’s a third, credibility.

As a bit of background, I’ve cancelled the newspapers, don’t watch TV and recently moved to a place where the local paper reports on the fire department’s crab and polenta feeds. If I didn’t have a hunger for global news, I wouldn’t need to get any out here. The finches, raptors, seals and starfish don’t seem to notice our silly little economic troubles.

But, I’m curious and want to see the big picture. So, I get lots of news online. You can see the flow by following me on Twitter. Lots of news is a good thing. Seeing the big picture is an entirely different question.

While Google News provides an interesting flow of material, it lacks editorial vigor. Google can only tell you about stories that have a lot of traction. If the news were a popularity contest, Google would have a very clever angle. But, the news is moved by little things that explode into the national consciousness.

For instance, using my approach to following the news, I completely missed the virtual bankruptcy of the FDIC. This is really something. I missed it because I glaze over a certain range of national news. It took a good editor (Dave Winer) to point out the importance of the story. Being your own newspaper means that you have to trust other people to find things out for you.

That’s where we get to the second piece, accuracy.

On Monday, I followed the Tweets (sorry) of a person sometimes known as PunkRockHR (Laurie Ruettimann). She was microblogging from the a speech given by Laurence O’Neil, the president of SHRM at the Legislative Conference. (The Tweet Flow is here).

In her coverage, Ms Ruettimann noted that O’neil said “HR is nothing less than civil rights and human rights.“Jessica Lee, another microblogger at the convention heard “Wow. HR is the continuation of civil rights”

Now, you know me. I am a fan of social media and believe that this thing is quickly shifting the world. But, I have a hard time basing my worldview on the twitterings of a PunkRockHR person and another whose blog opens with “I hate the saying but sometimes isn’t karma really a total bitch? you know what i mean?“

So here I sit with an outrageous quote, an itchy keyboard finger and nothing in the way of context or credibility.

It’s really easy to believe that the president of SHRM could be out of touch enough to think that it’s okay to say HR is nothing less than civil rights and human rights.” HR people are that out of touch with their organizations. They see no conflict between having an external political agenda and ‘having a seat at the strategy table’. Which flavor of human and civil rights do you suppose HR stands for? Are they for or against the human and civil rights of the unborn? Is HR really supposed to be the PC police, extending and policing rights? Are they really supposed to be an organizations arbiter of politics beyond the law?

Or is the job simply educational and administrative?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I have a deep and longstanding history as an activist in Human and Civil Rights work. My personal views extend them well past their current boundaries. I just don’t think that it’s the business of a function in an organization to serve that agenda.

HR is an important administrative function. HR can make an astonishing difference by controlling and improving talent acquisition, development and deployment. HR has an important role to serve in education and documentation.

However, to suggest that HR is an arm of the Human and Civil Rights movement is to misunderstand HR and to insult those precious rights movements. Typically, legislation is written to correct HR practices, not to enshrine them. To say the “HR is nothing less than civil rights and human rights.” is the worst sort of doublespeak. It sullies the teensy bit of credibility that HR Departments work so hard to build.

I’m on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendfeed. Catch up with me.

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John Sumser

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Heather Bussing

Actually, employers and their abuses of children, women, minorities and now white males, are the primary reason that human and civil rights legislation exists in the first place.

In my experience, many companies continue to spend most of their energy trying to find ways around laws concerning discrimination, payment of wages, hours worked and workplace safety. The main reason any of those laws get complied with is because it becomes expensive not to. Business as usual.
http://punkrockHR.com laurie ruettimann

If you’ve looked at my blog, you know that I am a senior-level HR professional. The title is just for fun.

I was live-blogging the SHRM convention and just reported the quote from O’Neil and didn’t comment on it. My take? HR is not an extension of civil rights. I think that’s silly; however, HR professionals have a responsibility to guide their companies towards greater profitability and efficiency. The best companies to work for are easy to identify: they offer a competitive salary, provide comprehensive health benefits, and treat employees as shareholders and partners instead of widgets.

If HR can link decency and common sense with current business practices, we’ll be doing a much better job of increasing profitability and productivity than ever before.

Best,
Laurie Ruettimann
http://www.recruitingroadshow.com johnrsumser

Hey, Thanks for checking in, Laurie. The question of name and credibility is going to be the tough part to manage as Twitter-like tools move into the organization.

You can easily imagine an internal profile that helps people understand who’s Twittering. You can also easily imagine people wanting to take their profile outside the company and on to facebook or linked in.

I liked your blog and added you to the Blogroll.
Amitai Givertz

John, great post and comments.

Are we to take it that, given your reply to Laurie, there is a direct correlation between personal brand and the perception of accuracy and building of trust?

One of the problems that social media present is the unresolved dichotomy of personal and professional persona.

My experience is that too few have the depth of perception themselves to know how to accept the “online” persona for who the living/working/reporting person behind it really is.
http://www.johnsumser.com John Sumser

In the absence of a responsible (was it ever?) centralized media, we don’t have much choice. One of the real ironies of contemporary many to many communications systems is that they set certain things back by a couple of centuries.

One of the interesting things about enterprise deployments of social software is that the difference between personal and private lives is generally minimized inside the corporation.

The folks who live inside of those places tend to think that:
a) they have a unique handle on how the world runs; and,
b) that it is okay to depersonalize people in favor of organizational roles.

Out here in the other 90 percent of the world, it isn’t much like that.
http://www.johnsumser.com John Sumser

I think the punkrockhr example is useful to examine. One reader suggested that “punkrockhr” was like a “Jerry Garcia Tie”, a juxtaposition that could produce commercial value. I think it’s just bad branding.

What interests me is that Laurie seems to be making real headway with the punkrockhr brand. That suggests a smarter audience for the question you raise.

When you read the “Personal Brand” stuff (Dan Schwabel is great), you walk away with the idea that a brand should have no imperfections. My sense is just the opposite. The essence of a brand is its imperfections.

How does one build consensus and get things done when communication is a mosaic and reputation is multi-dimensional. That’s the practical question for the next 25 years.
http://www.jessicaleewrites.com jessica lee

interesting discussion.

what’s surprising though is that you took a tweet of mine to build an argument – but you did not include the whole tweet, john… what i said was, “Wow. HR is the continuation of civil rights, Lon says. Do toy agree? #shrmlegal. I dunno if I like positioning…”

to position HR as a continuation of civil or human rights seems completely bizarre to me. it seems to convenient to crop a tweet as such in order to make an argument.

we don’t know each other at all – but we were to spend any time together, you’d probably find that we’re likely more well aligned than what you portray here.

and as for the blog posting you link to of mine referencing karma… well, that was a deeply personal post that i threw up as that particular blog i mix personal and professional content. most people who read that blog know that i use it as a playground for larger projects or topics that i write about on Fistful of Talent. to make a judgment of me as an HR pro based on just that? well, it’s a little odd to me – but i get that it’s fair game since i choose to put my personal life and feelings out on a personal blog for public consumption.

let’s chat about it though… we don’t need to draw this out in the comments section. i’d love for you to shoot me an email and then we can chat by phone!

best,
jessica
Amitai Givertz

John, two points in reply to yours:

One: To the idea that a brand should have no imperfections, at what point does “authenticity” become a quantifiable thing? When we start to measure “authenticity” have we lost the essence of it?

Two: If the beauty is “in the imperfection,” and “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the only way I can remain truly authentic is to carry on without much care about what you think about me personally, professionally or otherwise. I trust that my “following” and “reputation” — combined with a reader’s ability to discern “truth” — is enough to preserve my personal, and yes, my integrated professional brand.
http://www.johnsumser.com John Sumser

Jessica,

Good to talk to you yesterday. I’m looking forward to today’s conversation.
http://www.johnsumser.com John Sumser

Ami,

Great question. Not all of the ‘imperfections’ in a brand are a part of authenticity. There is a large overlap with market segmentation.

So dentists who blog are probably not all that interested in HR people who blog and vice versa. Among the dentists who blog and ARE interested in HR people who blog, some will enjoy high levels of personal disclosure, some will enjoy highly literate writing and still others will want a blunter, less personal perspective.

To your point, what will get measured is audience reach, demographics and temperaments, not authenticity. Stickiness will be inferred from what sticks.

If what you want is an audience of people who are simply your fans, your formula works (following + reputation + reader savviness). But, if you want to reach out beyond your natural allies, some different tactics are probably required.

For example, if you like to swear a lot, you won’t get through the filters of most East Coast HR people. If you prefer the San Francisco business casual dress code, you’ll have to modify it to gain admittance at the Harvard Club. If you speak Dutch, it’s silly to think that you’ll be instantly understood in Korea.

Credibility and authenticity are context sensitive. It’s just not much of a surprise that dress and demeanor trump message in first impressions. Tailoring your message to the audience you want to reach is not a breach of authenticity.
Joshua Letourneau

“So here I sit with an outrageous quote, an itchy keyboard finger and nothing in the way of context or credibility.”

Good point – actually, that describes much of Twitter is to me. It’s fun . . . but can be intellectual quicksand. I’ve begun to notice that I may now perhaps be considered “old school” because I derive many of my recruiting thoughts through actual practice of the art on the street level. We are a dying breed as more and more technology vendors further bloat the HR tech landscape – I have to again agree with Mr. Danny Cahill that it won’t be long before we once again return to the roots of what recruiting really is (and hint: a robotic automaton making instantaneous lists of names for a ‘candidate developer’ to call isn’t it.)

I’ve also said many times before that the desire to break the entire recruiting value chain into a high-automation assembly line is what’s endangering the full life-cycle recruiter species, but I digress . . .

In defense of some of the people here who have had their 140 character tweets paraphrased (I have to laugh as this is the first I’ve ever seen tweets condensed for editorial effect – lol), I follow most of them and am appreciative of them pushing out random quotes and thoughts from conferences that I can’t physically attend.

What I’d love to see more of is independent thought on Twitter, even if it is only 140 chars or less. The RT’ing has gotten out of control as the desire to tweet every 20 minutes has trumped tweeting anything worthwhile.

Ultimately, I’m glad there is a ‘follow’ and ‘un-follow’ button on Twitter.

P.S. I just found this convo through a Twitter stream, so I have to take the good with the bad.