It’s worthy of a whole conference…

A few thoughts;
The contrarian; Why does IBM need to explicitly reward collaboration? If it’s really so great shouldn’t it’s impact be felt on the traditional measures?

This is kind of the “OpenSource” approach, sometimes bastards write good code and they’re accepted into the community, but normally the “nice guys” get farther ahead.

I don’t think that’s a 100% great answer, and if you think about history and the “personality” types approach (Innovator, Developer, Connector, Influencer, etc…) you know it’s very probable that people get credit for your work and you get nothing for being such a kind, caring, connected and hard working individual.

But there’s two flaws integrating it into performance… as subdigit said, if you mandate participation you’ll get crap. Also it’s unlikely that anyone @ IBM would have said (and likely still rare) that “Oh, you’re twittering … that makes total sense, keep up the good work”.

Rules by nature (or tenancy) suppress the unknown.

So I think the goal is to (A) Recognize an employee’s influence through all channels .. (B) Not force that participation.

You said “You can’t give a raise to a group” and I know someone will usually bear the weight (or the lesser) of the effort… but I disagree. If my team does well on a project why shouldn’t we all win together? And if we lose, maybe the weak get recognized and culled…

Why give guaranteed raises? Why are “Thanks you were a big help” awards limited to generic stuff and not actual cash?

If employees could use the same social techniques to recognize a helpful contribution that we’re now using to collaborate, then perhaps it would be easy to see how the financial incentives should flow…

- There are some people–many, in fact–who will *not* see the value in great social contribution or networking. You better accept that as a fact and move on.

- There are sometimes immediate returns on your time investment in social stuff.. and I think those can always be quantified in terms of time saved. E.g. Being able to get to the right people, or convince someone of a thing, etc., in short order due to the relationships + trust established via these kinds of activities. That’s an easy thing to record–though practically impossible to verify–thus easy to reward.

- Most of the time though, the measureable returns come after longer scale time investments. Longer scale thinking or investments are *not* generally supported in the modern, short-sighted, quarter-by-quarter-driven corporate environment. At least not below the senior executive level.

So clearly we know what this is not easy, but has anyone got any valid contributions they would like to make public about what it SHOULD be done?

I for one would like to see people who act as network bridges recognized for the value they bring but often it is too intangible and far away from the final transaction to be measured and tracked back.

It IS currently difficult for organizations to track and attach value to this sort of activity. On the outside, is it “personal marketing” that through a process of Emergence bubbles up into a “group marketing” that benefits an organization, on the inside, is it a way of making connections and helping liberate new innovation with transformational ideas?

Also we need to discuss the impact on extended value chains. I was in a meeting the other day when someone made the comment that they did not consider themselves as part of a startup of 10 but part of a value chain of 200 people(or words to that effect) – how do you start to measure the impact of something in that level of complexity?

Questions, questions, and much uncharted water! Ever felt like the guys before Columbus, not daring to stray too far from shoreline into deeper waters? Someone must be developing the answers to some of these questions, we’ve done it before, we’ll do it again, but it is going to be an interesting voyage of discovery. .

A great topic for someone’s Thesis or next book, unless the material is out there and I haven’t found it yet . . . I look forward to hearing about more interesting signposts

Now, I am one of thousands in IBM who have enough experience to write those best practices. My first inclination was to set up a wiki and invite my colleagues to help me write them.

But, since there is a direct correlation between the number of assets I create in a quarter, and my quarterly bonus, I stayed my hand.

It’s been over a week now, and I’ve done nothing yet. My next step is to talk to my manager about how she will measure me if I go the participatory route.