If you are interested in how politics, social media & the Internet can be weaved together – in technical, practical & philosophical terms – to achieve a more transparent and collaborative approach, then I urge you to follow the development of the Piratenpartei (Pirate Party) in Germany. They have just managed to enter another one of Germany’s regional parliaments and are on course to shake up German politics even more profoundly than Die Gr?nen (The Green Party) did following their emergence in the 80s.

The Sunday Times, in the article “Extremists rattle Europe’s old guard”, took the approach of lumping them into the same pack as the usual, backward-thinking, in-the-past-living, platitude-spouting left and right wing scaremongers and status quo enforcers. Obviously, the comparison is utter nonsense but the premise is true: they rattle the old guard.

They rattle them because the connected internet and social media is at their core, not just an add-on PR machine, defining their policies and stand points. They rattle them because they can’t be stuffed in the old outdated political party boxes of left or right, Labour and Tory, blue and red. They rattle them because they enable citizens to use their rights and shape politics instead of just ticking a box on a given Sunday.

They rattle them because all of the above attracts voters from every political block, including the traditionally non-voters and including the highly educated and wealthy ones (a clear sign that they have nothing in common with the extremists and fascists mentioned above). They rattle them because they practise transparency, co-creation and collaboration – they are a party of the future, a party that understands that democracy is about participating, a party that embraces the Internet and fights for a free internet and therefore challenges the status quo of the industrial age, from ownership to copyright and patents to the way they fluidly build a working organisation for election campaigns and only allow leaders of the party to remain in place for 1 year before re-election.

It will be interesting to see how the Piratenpartei will cope with being part of parliaments, how they will channel the grass root democracy principles and the social media ‘shitstorms’, how they will embrace freedom of speech without being held hostage by radicals, how they will create a vision of the future that is coherent and what kind of vision this will be? It will be interesting to see how they grow up.

Even if they would not succeed as a party they have already changed the political landscape in Germany and have given us all a glimpse of a future in which transparency, communication, co-creation and choice will supersede control and ownership.

Below are a couple of links to articles in English that give some more background into the Piratenpartei – showing both sides of the argument. Hopefully we will soon see an equally transforming UK and US equivalent of the Piratenpartei.

Manifesto of the Pirate Party of Germany

Is the Pirate Party Its Own Worst Enemy?

German Pirate Party Attempts to Reinvent Politics

Pirate Politician Says Party ‘Rising as Fast as Nazis’

Intellectual Property Debate: Artists Turn Against Pirate Party

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace – this explains some of the philosophical background, but isn’t from the Pirate Party

The Evenbase acquisition of Jobrapido means many things. Some of which may not be immediately apparent, nor possible for us to reveal right now. One thing the deal does mean however, is that our frequent visits to Milan need no longer be a secret so I’m now free to check in again on Foursquare and Path, share with you some incredible stories about British Airways, my very positive impression of Gatwick’s re-designed  South Terminal and some great Milanese restaurants.  But that’s all for another day.

In this post I want to give you an insight to the strategy behind yesterday’s news.

First, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture as the pieces of the puzzle then tend to fall into place! Very simply put, everything the team behind Evenbase has been focused on in the past two years supports one of the below goals:

1)      To harness and focus the talent, technology and expertise of our multiple brands within one entity =  Evenbase

2)      To empower Evenbase with global scalability and reach =  Jobrapido

3)      To use this reach to enter local markets with relevant solutions = well, watch this space…

For a reminder on the thinking behind the Evenbase launch in January, see the post “Becoming Evenbase“.

Yesterday saw us realise our second goal, that of injecting Evenbase with a global reach. Incorporating Jobrapido within the Evenbase family projects us firmly into the Top 5 global digital recruitment brands, and distinct as the only one with a non-US heritage. In calculating the Top 5, I’ve included LinkedIn based on its total traffic. HRxAnalysts, however, estimates that only 5% of LinkedIn’s visits are done in a job seeking capacity. If we would apply this logic, than LinkedIn would fall out of this set and would even struggle to make the Top 10 (Which actually makes their revenue generation even more impressive!).

As a standalone business, Jobrapido is formidable. The metrics speak for themselves:

• Jobrapido is the second largest vertical job search business in the world, operating in more than 50 countries, and continually outperforms its competitors.
• Jobrapido revenues in 2011 were €24.4m.
• The acquisition of Jobrapido will enable engagement with job seeking candidates on a massive scale (current run rate 800m+ visits annually) across all of the major European markets, and the key developing markets such as India, Brazil and Russia.

It is this rich international candidate list – one of the world’s largest talent pools – that attracted us to Jobrapido from the get go, along with their growth potential. Jobrapido will continue to build their engagement with these candidates on a global scale with their inherent determination and creativity.

But we didn’t make this acquisition based on the metrics alone. Jobrapido is run by fantastic people who will remain with the business, and are relentlessly focused on becoming the leading vertical search engine in the world. The constant evolution and innovation of their website and product delivers staggering conversion rates.

Some benefits of the deal are pretty straight forward and deliver directly to goals 2 and 3 I mentioned earlier, such as allowing Evenbase to:

• access priority markets and gain local footholds more quickly and nimbly
• strengthen the position and vary the offer of existing assets and brands
• build up very interesting data sets that will let us understand demand and supply for talent on a global scale
• explore more fully a variety of different recruitment models and solutions for the global stage, based on recruitment and performance principles, with the candidate firmly at the heart of it all.

There are some incredibly interesting and cool developments on the horizon … and lots more to tell you very soon.

We have every confidence that the combination of Jobrapido and Evenbase’s existing brand assets will create an awesome force in the digital recruitment market.  And rightly so, because – and let’s be frank – if you’re not global at the moment, you may survive; but if you’re not global in the near future, you are irrelevant.

In an increasingly globalised world, with the changes that we can see happening in the world of work to date, projects and employment will not be dependent on location, but will flow as freely as money flows currently.

And that’s why Jobrapido is a very important piece in the Evenbase puzzle. It gives us the breadth, now we need to drill down for depth across our priority markets. After all, we don’t just want to be in the Top 5 by audience alone. But that is another story for another day…

Sometimes I hope that the Olympic Games will be a real catalyst of changes to the workplace. Most London based companies will only have skeleton staff in their offices and will have set up systems and solutions to continue to trade successfully with the majority of their employees working from home. Hopefully a positive experience during the Olympic games might trigger a more fundamental shift in the world of work.

Surely, this will be beneficial on several dimensions: The employee will perform much better as he/she can work more in accordance to their own physical and psychological preferences, be it when they work, or what temperature they work in (apparently a really important element for performance, according to John Sumser). There’ll be no commuting, therefore having more disposable income and more time (which is a really big ticket item given that “money is the currency of the economy and time is the currency of life” - Subi Rangan).

Companies will benefit as they will have better performing employees, but also as they can shrink the required office space. Furthermore they’ll become a more flexible and global organisation. It opens up talent pools right across the world, with physical boundaries and catchment areas becoming a thing of the past. It will shake up old control structures and will make companies nimbler, more agile and better able to compete on a global scale.

Communities will benefit thanks to a renewed focus on local life. As most of us require and enjoy social interaction, shared workspaces (besides the current freelancer hangout Starbucks) will be created, potentially offering some managed services. And as more time and money is spent, the local economy and community will prosper. Wealth would be spread across the entire nation (and potentially the globe); it will ease the pressure on the transport network as well as making London a more affordable location and the UK a more competitive nation.

Years ago the term Glocal (global & local) was all the rage, now with the available technology and an open mindset we can make it a reality. Everybody’s a winner, especially as it would surely spread swiftly beyond London.

photo credit: joncandy

In recruitment there are two avenues towards success. One starts with the hirer in mind, the other with the candidate. But before long they all want to be in the elusive middle ground where hirer and candidate interact, in the lively marketplace of exchanges and transactions. Even those people that start with the intention of occupying the middle ground normally come down on either of these two sides. It most certainly is a permanent balancing act.

The winner on the side that starts with the hirer in mind will be a solution similar to a “meta application” that brings all the different streams together and crosses over the brand imposed boundaries, therefore bringing simplicity to the increasingly complex (social) recruiting world. The success factor is finding unique pools of candidates.

On the other side it will be the service that brings candidates really relevant jobs, referenced with their data and behaviour, delivered while they are still in preparatory stages of job hunting; therefore making the recruitment process better and more beneficial for everybody involved. The success factor here is the quality of the match and the ability to communicate it in the most appropriate form.

Currently, not a single provider is covering either proposition in a satisfactory manner, so future approaches will likely require a stack of different recruitment solutions. Presently, too much simultaneous, sideways and up-stream/down-stream integration is required and whilst most solutions are built to easily integrate into Twitter or Facebook, they don’t work so well with each other.

This has become even more apparent to me after two internal Evenbase sessions, where we had the pleasure and privilege to listen and learn from John Sumser and Bill Boorman. On their own merit, each session was fantastic, but in combination – and with several things bubbling nicely at Evenbase – these sessions were incredibly revealing, providing answers to existing questions and in turn creating new questions about existing answers as well as opening up completely new angles.

Here we go:

“Social recruiting is moving much slower than the internet was at the same stage. So at this stage the best option might be to wait and actively observe”, offered up Sumser. The emphasis for me is on actively observing, which means being involved and getting ideas and experience through trialling some solutions, because one thing we know sure:  social & mobile, the two enablers of the connected age, will shape the things to come beyond imagination.

At the same time, and that was one of the key insights when listening to Bill Boorman, let’s not be blown away by purely the desire to be involved in social or mobile, by the next coolest tool, by the present darling of the twitterati and the media-hyped one hit wonder, but by looking at it through the lenses of a recruiter and a candidate. Only in combination and with balance will we revolutionise recruitment.

So when looking at new services and tools, when thinking about new concepts and solutions, the questions I would ask are:

Does it make sense for both recruiter and candidate?

Do they both benefit?

Does it increase their experience and convenience?

Does it make the recruitment process better for everybody involved?

Can it be repeated over & over again and therefore automated and digitalised?

And this might seem a little random but ensures future orientation: does it work in a world where we will interact with all our devices via voice control?

Checking every concept and proposal against these questions, finding ways to easily and meaningfully integrate different solutions with a clear purpose in mind, yet being completely aware and permanently improving one’s own competitive advantage will go a long way to building a successful and competitive digital recruitment proposition.

photo credit: onemice

Life is a spiral, an upward cycle of part repetition and part evolution. This conversation – between John Sumser, Keith Robinson, DeeDee Dokes and myself – at the last TruLondon Event is about the recent past, the present and the near future of the recruitment industry. What has been here before? What will happen? What is the difference between the UK & the US? Is it a watershed or just the same old in a slightly different disguise? It was certainly a real hoot and I thoroughly enjoyed this mind-provoking debate. Have a look at the video below and let me know your opinion…

At the recent TruLondon event, Gareth Jones (CEO of Brubaker HR), Miranda Ash (Global Director for WorldBlu), DeeDeeDokes (Editor of The Recruiter) and I discussed and debated democratic workplaces, Big Society, freedom at work, employee engagement, employee citizenship, political principales at work and the impact of social media on every aspect of recruitment. It includes some real world case studies from India and the USA.

Recently I was invited to attend the DMGT Chairman’s conference in India. We visited companies and NGOs (you can read about this experience in the post “Insights into India: a glimpse into the future?) and had two days of internal sessions on innovation, globalisation and leadership. It was good, really good.

Keith Potts has already written an exciting post inspired by our experiences and his vision for Evenbase going forward. This post is based on the second part of the conference, the internal sessions. To give you a taste of the inspiration, insight and energy on display, I decided not to write a post, but just let the quotes speak for themselves.

Subi Rangan – Professor Insead and facilitator

“Leadership is about doing the right thing, management is doing things right”

“Money is the currency of the economy; time is the currency of life”

“Things will become worse before they become better: as we will lose customers, groups of employees and need to get rid of companies that we love.”

“Display courage not only for risk but also courage for significant loss. Risk is just an index between upward and downward. You are not risk averse but loss averse. Risk is therefore a euphemism.”

“Sophistication requires the ability to deal with ambiguity.”

Peter Duffy, HRD, dmgt

“Culture is defined by the conversations we are having and the stories we are telling.”

Kevin Beatty, CEO A&N Media

“Great things come out of chaos.”

Suresh Kavan, CEO dmgi

“Thinking bigger and bolder means changing the operational mechanisms and the culture of a company.”

“Passion without talent and people without empowerment is meaningless.”

“We are too accepting of mediocrity.”

“The urgent gets into the way of the important.”

Bill Raduchel (Technology advisor for dmgt)

“Technology isn’t important but how it affects human behaviour is.”

“The Internet is a destination for relationships and engagement – not display.”

“Content is king, unique content will distinguish everybody. Habit (commitment) is important.”

“Continuous innovation is required. We need to be changing; not once, not twice, but all the time.”

“Ready, aim, fire, is now ready, fire, aim. You most likely will always be wrong, but you’ll get better.”

Lord Rothermere, Chairman DMGT:

“The capital is in the people and not in the enterprise.”

“We are in the cusp of an information revolution. History is like lava, it is fluid and then it cracks. The ramifications will be as significant as the invention of the printing press. It has caused a shift of power from businesses and nation states to customers and citizens.”

“Principles for success: pride in our products, belief in our people and courage to challenge yourself to innovate and change.”

“We are not bound by values or traditions but we respect them if they help us act with authenticity.”

“We want you to think like owners not managers.”

Galen Poss, COO, DMGT Events

“Leaders need to become learners.”

Hemant Shah, CEO & President, RMS

“Culture starts with a mindset. It starts with looking into the mirror and asking ourselves: do we really believe that we need to change and do so with a sense of urgency?”

“Take individual responsibility as leaders. Take risks to meet different outcomes. Change profoundly.”

“The journey and transformation is very painful. The outcome is uncertain.”

“Cultural change needs oxygen which is autonomy because that gives purpose. Autonomy to make decisions and being prepared to be held accountable. Accountability morphs into control, when it should be empowering.”

Everybody who has read Keith Potts’ post about throwing best practise out of the window knows that at the beginning of March we were at the DMGT Chairman’s conference in Bangalore, India. It was my first time in India and I found it both incredible and amazing. It blew my mind to the point that I’m still processing it all.

Here are some initial thoughts about what I learned in India both in our lectures and through meeting local people, companies and NGOs.

A Linux religion

One indigenous tour guide gave us a short introduction into Hinduism. He compared Christianity and Islam to closed systems, in that they have one man at the top, one book, and places to congregate and worship en masse. In contract, Hinduism is an open system, a Linux religion, as each believer decides how it manifests itself and when it manifests itself. As it is open source it manages to adapt and has survived under the rule of other faiths. Narayan Ramachandran, former country head of Morgan Stanley and one of the speakers, remarked on a similar topic that India was plural from a religious base and deeply tolerant in character, which in itself can be complex as it enables but also dampens conservatism.

Social enterprise = good business

In the western world we talk a lot of social businesses and it is often interpreted to mean no or low profits, same salaries for everybody and self-sacrifice for the greater good. The businesses my colleagues and I visited in India all had a social component. They need to as the state cannot provide the same cover it does in most of the Western world. However, it was also made very clear that social elements are incorporated with great business acumen and only as they also benefit the business.  High margin and different salary levels for different people were a given. It reminded me of the saying that you first have to look after yourself (and especially in India as the state won’t look out for you) and then you look after others. Social enterprise in essence is operating a good business, as good businesses provide work and take the community into consideration. After all, the healthier the business, the healthier its contribution is to wider society.

Small scale globalisation

India is obviously a country of contrasts. We heard of the young Indians that prefer now to stay in India, instead of going to Silicon Valley. We were told that it is more difficult to get into some universities in India than it is to get to Harvard.  At the same time less than 10% of Indians speak English, and in rural areas you have 10 hours of power cuts a day.  India is tolerant in character and yet its politicians continue to reinforce the caste system that gives them a powerbase. At the same time, increasing urbanisation weakens this very system.

And then there’s its sheer scale. India is a vast country: The Indian labour force grows by 9m a year, with 2.5m people taking Engineering exams per year.  As a result, jobs need to be created at a breath-taking pace. Even though 35% of all code is written in India, India itself is mainly a service society.  Narayan Ramachandran describes the conundrum eloquently: “Think of India as at least 3 countries: middle Europe, the aspiring group and – as the largest group – the desperately poor. Because of its size and diversity, standardization of anything is difficult, if not impossible, in India.”  But still India is one state, with underdeveloped infrastructure and therefore difficulty to enforcing the monopoly of power, but lots of nations with many individuals that make sense of the seemingly chaotic and take their lives into their own hands.  The local becomes more pronounced into a more and more globalised world.

When I look at India, I see a snapshot of the challenges and opportunities created by ever increasing globalisation. I see the difficulty global governments have in reaching those who need them most, and as a result, the increased importance of local communities and individual participations. I see the speed and fundamental nature of change occurring, and the danger of leaving entire parts of the population behind.  I see the passion of people to make sure that that doesn’t happen and their passion to change their current situation and overcome quite significant challenges. I see the energy of humanity to be harnessed in a country with a population of 1.2bn.

Let’s learn from India as an example, let’s embrace the spirit of the people and let’s recognise the seemingly chaotic as a fountain for inspiration and creativity.

Guest post by Keith Hatter

I used to know a decorator called Louis. Louis was always late and he had the biggest book of excuses in the world to explain why. Some were plausible, some were funny and some were just stupid. The truth was that Louis didn’t really care about turning up on time, though he knew that he was supposed to, so he had loads of excuses.

Fast forward 25 years and Louis the decorator seems to have friends and relations who hold leadership positions in different businesses. All these leaders know they should be working on high performance, express great frustration at the current state of play in terms of beliefs, attitudes and behaviours they witness and at the unrealised potential that surrounds them – yet they seem to have borrowed Louis’ book and updated it for modern corporate life.

The time’s not right. We haven’t got the budget. We’re too busy. Results aren’t great. I don’t know how we’ll measure it. The team’s not complete. The team’s too old. The team’s too young. Maybe next year. I need to think about it some more. I’m not sure it’s perfect. The team seems to be OK at the moment. We need to focus on the quarter. We tried that once and it didn’t work. My tummy hurts.

It’s a great list and they all sound pretty reasonable. Well most of them. And that’s the point. High performance isn’t reasonable. It’s unreasonable. It’s not what everyone else does, it’s what the few do. They find many reasons why they can’t do things they know to be vital for success because they just seem too hard. The few find a way to do them because that way lies success and competitive advantage.

How many athletes in the lead up to the London Olympics will be giving those excuses? Not many. They’ll find a way.

The time to work on performance is always right now. If results aren’t good, then those people who are truly committed to being the best they can be – let’s call them athletes – work on performance. If things are OK, then athletes work on performance to make them better. If things are great, then athletes work on performance to see just how good they could be. Athletes who are too busy to work on performance don’t stay relevant for very long. Old or young, athletes work on their performance – it’s not something they grow out of. Athletes would no more think about whether they need to work on performance than they would think about whether they are going to breathe next week – it’s a given.

Expecting perfect is an academic indulgence – perfect is your enemy, progress is your friend – athletes strive for perfection but don’t expect it.  And since when did performance become a function of age or having a perfectly formed, injury free team?

Yeah, but the budget…well you know that you can always find budget to invest in what’s important to you – it’s just a choice. And in any case, working on performance needn’t cost a thing and is a lot cheaper than the current involuntary investment too many business leaders are currently making in under-performance.

So be honest. If you are serious about high performance, you could be working on it now. If you’re not, you’ve either taken a leaf out of Louis’ book or are adding a new entry.

You don’t have to be great to get going. But you better get going if you want to be great.

Keith Hatter is the CEO of K2 – coaching the business world to think, prepare and perform like elite athletes.  He is working with companies such as Eurostar, Evenbase, Axa, Toshiba,  Sony, The Olympic Delivery Authority… Follow him at @keithhatter and K2 and @planetK2

photo credit: jramspott