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.
6 Comments
Lists like these are heavily biased towards measurable quantities and are therefore easily manipulated. Collect enough followers on Twitter, Linkedin and other networks and you will be catapulted into the Top X of any current list, irrespective of the value of your real contribution.
Not to mention the 100% bias towards English. In other words, the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Of course there are no influential recruitment specialists in China…
While there is an increasing need to be able to objectively determine someones authority, current attempts fall short of any reasonable expectation. However, they are probably the first inevitable baby steps towards a sensible method. Until that happens these lists are no more than lab experiments that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Other than by the people that are on it…
Hi John
Thanks for an opportunity to explore and question this. I don’t want to downplay any of the people on the current lists with my comments – that’s not my intention – I’ve personally been influenced by a few in some way, shape or form.
Influence to me is about engendering behavioral change in others – simple! I guess the larger the audience / popularity / network the greater the chance to enact influence. To me influence is not about being on Twitter lists, and having lots of followers, being RT-ed, endorsements on LinkedIn, pumping out blog posts etc. I think one could crack the Influencer code if they tried hard enough, but that doesn’t necessarily make them an influencer – it just makes them world famous on twitter, linkedin etc -and active and savvy. I would even go as far to say that one could be an online influencer without being an active participant on the social web themselves (eg Seth Godin). Having a fan-base helps.
I have an Industrial and Organizational Psych background and I’m wondering if there is a psychogenic / behavioral profile of an Influencer (online and offline influence). This could include peer / influencEE evaluation/feedback and an evaluation of actual ‘outcomes’ (results) of the influence.
Sometimes the people who are providing the quality blogs posts with robust thinking don’t have much of an audience and could easily be over-looked. Popularity doesn’t necessarily equate with quality – and one could quite easily influence an ill-informed audience. Influence can also be used for evil over good. Nonetheless, influencers are most likely to be seen as trusted advisors with some degree of specialization or relevant experience. And a good influencer should be able to tap into others’ emotional drivers. Communication skills also plays a big part.
Maybe you should publish some top 25, top 100 InfluencEE lists
You’ve got to start somewhere.
One of the best parts about running this experiment in public is seeing the various reactions to the results. Mark raises great points about the inherent bias in these sorts of lists. The same sort of critiques apply to Grammies, Oscars and a host of other lists. Yet, for all of the bias, there is a certain kind of utility that a list offers.
As Paul notes, influence can mean an array of things. My mentors were private folks who would never show up on this sort of assessment. They were interested in a bog influence in a small place. That sort of influence, while powerful and extremely important, is not something intended for the limelight. One is tempted to argue that it only works when it is private.
In the large sphere of gigantic media and public policy, I can see no correlation between depth or quality of insight and influence. Generally, about half of Americans seem to think that something like the other half of Americans are flaming idiots because fo their alignment with one or the other sides of the political fray. For my money, there are few ‘quality’ ideas there. But, the influence is great.
HRMargo notices elsewhere ( http://bit.ly/dl3tPi ) that lists have an elitist (or exclusionary) tendency. She raises useful concern about the impact of such lists on people who are not on them.
This, I think, is one of the lurking issues of the 21st Century. As celebrity is served in ever tiny slices, what will the response be from the people who get no slice (or have to wait a long time for their 15 minutes). My guess is that there will be some polarization.
Somehow, that hasn’t stopped Google from creating a market for SEO. What we are facing is the commercialization of our private space. Having it happen in the B2B world (like professional groups or industries) is not very surprising. It is, as Margo notes, very personal.
Here’s an interesting list of companies that offer the capacity to measure influence online. http://bit.ly/9dDKZs
John, I appreciate your openness to discuss this. Let’s be open that I’m on the list, so my post (that you link to) was more in jest than criticism. These ‘lists’ in our space have kicked up such a firestorm of conversation and debate that I think they move the needle forward because we’re engaging in deeper discussion. In my opinion, that’s the important thing. Sumser’s Lists (not to be confused with Schindler’s) of 2010 may be a flashpoint of progress; the HR celebrity battle that has ensued from mastery of social media tools may have come to a head. Perhaps your lists are the “shot heard round the world.”
Imho, deeper discussion is a manifestation of influence itself. ‘Influencers’ are nodes within a network that propagate ‘influence’, right? Well, if so, then ‘influence’ is manifested by deeper discussion and changes in behavior. You’re now living the influence experiment.
Before I offer short answers to your questions, let me state that I believe there are some ways to improve the Traackr algorithm; ways to insulate against the gaming that Marc mentions. But they’re largely mathematical and would be outside the scope of this to detail them all. If you’re willing to speak offline, I’m game . . . but let’s just say that you can calculate other centrality measures that indicate how ‘far’ someone’s influence can flow by the shape of their network itself – indeed, how far can they ‘Reach’? Reach is about the size of our 2nd degree, our indirect connections (also called our ‘network horizon’) . . . much more than about the size of our 1st degree, our direct connections (i.e. those that retweet us, comment on our posts consistently, etc.) With what I’m describing here, John, we begin to evaluate ‘Influencers’ by the reach and speed in which their influence can propagate . . . I’ll explain if you’re open offline.
Your Questions:
* Is influence really different from popularity?
[Josh: Yes, it is. Popularity is a trait, such as prestige. Influence is a contagion, something that flows through a network. Being popular may or may not increase influence. In fact, 'popularity' is often a measure of how 'central' someone is to a given cluster. And if they are central to a cluster, it's mathematically improbable that their influence extends beyond the cluster because their network horizon exists within the cluster itself; they're silo'd/clique'd - see my 2nd degree comment above.]
* Do the people we are identifying on the Traackr lists really have influence or are they just the loudest mouths on the block?
[We may or may not be the loudest mouths. Even so, being loud within a clique means we're only influential within the clique. Show me a loud person with overlapping memberships in various circles, and I'll show you an 'Influencer' by virtue of their position in the overall network. Bear in mind that while they may occupy an ideal network position, they can only influence by using their mouths and/or by setting the right example.]
* 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?
[Insightful observation. Being an entrepreneur, I can tell you that being on these lists open doors, even if for the wrong reasons. So yes, maybe being on lists gets you the job, but they won't keep you in it.]
* We believe that the measurement process will more closely correspond to actual influence over time. What else do we need to know?
[I can speak about this with you and/or Traackr offline. Here's my takeaway: It's network position that is most important when we're discussing our ability to flow a 'contagion', in this case 'influence', through a network. Other examples of contagions are happiness, work information, gossip, violence, positivity, H1N1, obesity, new ideas, etc. I mention this because network position is most important, not contagion.]
* Some of the critics have great ideas. What’s the best way to involve them in the process?
[Hmmm, do you mean critics of lists, or of existing dogma? If it's dogma we're talking about, it's enabling them to have a voice without shooting them and their ideas down for not conforming to the status quo.]
* Is it true that influence will become more and more important as organizations continue to flatten?
[Yes, no doubt. In my opinion, however, network position, self-organization, and decentralization are key. Consider the notion of redundancy as it relates to influence - in a decentralized business/military unit/etc., you just don't seed one 'influencer', you seed multiple 'influencers' with your message or contagion. This is a one of the tenets of a new business I'm launching soon.]
* Will the current bits of web architecture last long enough to have institutional style consequences?
[? Can you rephrase the question?]
* 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?
[Network position extends far beyond what we see online. Their online presence is a part of a much larger equation, a much larger network of overlapping and intersecting networks. In that sense, I would imagine that the 60% you mention actually measure their influence as their ability to exact change within their organizational network, which may or may not have a digital signature for us to find.]
I am curious about why the “outrage” over this list but not the HR list?
When I meet with CHROs and talk about social media, we privately laugh about the HR blogosphere. No one really wants to read blogs about HR and leadership. They want to read blogs and follow tweets from people who are interesting. The fact that there are a few interesting people in HR? That does surprise some CHROs.
Here’s my broader point: the smart bloggers and HR superstars are using their popularity and community to softly and subtly influence a key group of HR change agents who are part of large management associations. These HR leaders have the ears of CEOs and CFOs. And I’m telling you that those bloggers and their activities will never be written about for legal and contractual reasons — and thus, those bloggers will never appear in true influencer lists.
But they do influence.
And no, I’m not talking about myself. I just hang out all day on my couch and eat bon bons with my cats.