My Top posts of 2010

2010 was a mixed year for the blog. I took a lot of sharing content kind of posts off, doing the linking on Twitter and Google Reader  as well as writing answers on Quora

Then I discovered Amplify, and am back to sharing interesting content here (along with it being on Twitter and Google Buzz)

I put out 207 posts in 2010 and got around 62,000 views.

I am particularly proud of these posts, which didn't get that much traffic :

• Designing Training for Organizations 2.0
• How organizations can build talent communities
• How can HR use social media
• Why HR needs to leverage Enterprise 2.0
• 7 types of roles in employee communities
• Employee Advocates
• Use cases for Talent and Employee Communities
• Making Work Meaningful
• The Social Business Employee Manifesto
• Social Human Resources
• Enterprise 2.0 and Social Intranet - what is the difference?

However, the posts that got the most views were:

1. The most powerful HR professionals in India
2. An old post from 2006 10 reasons why Organizations are not able to retain employees
3. A post from 2005 (!) should software engineers go for an MBA?
4. My parting from 2020 Social
5. 5 things social media has taught me
6. A post from 2004(!!!) Challenges for Training and Learning - guess some things don't change :-)
7. Sexual Harassment in India's Knowledge industries - an ugly truth we don't want to see?
8. Cisco on People Power and Collaboration
9. 5 Skills for Career Success
10. The Content Community Social Media Model

And there were some mainstream media mentions also :-)

See you in 2011

The top 25 Influencers in Enterprise Social Media

Bill Ives recently blogged about Traackr (who do the Top 25 Influencers in HR and Talent Management too)

And I guess it was the KM related keywords that Bill defined - but I was ranked number 4 in the list

Others in the list includes many people I look up to, like Bill Ives, John Ingham, Dion Hinchcliffe, Luis Suarez, Sameer Patel and Ray Wang. I am flattered to be in their company :-)

ROI of Enterprise 2.0 at Accenture

My friend Karthik S recently shared a very interesting page on Accenture about their Social Software and how it benefit them.

In case you're an Internal Social Strategist in your firm you should use these numbers to convince your business leadership to adopt the Social Workplace

 Take a look:

Amplify’d from www.accenture.com

Here is an overview of our results as reported from internal employee surveys and our scorecard: Increasing usage and adoption 100,000-plus people use profile pages an average of three times a month to find experts and connect with colleagues. About 100,000 Accenture employees have customized their profiles (options include pictures, bios, hobbies, etc.). 4,634 updates per month made to employee profiles. 10,706 blogs created annually, increasing at a rate of more than 200 percent annually. 3,336 microblog posts made per month. 1,579 specialized groups created to date. 7,886 items added to Accenture Media Exchange. 110,850 desktop audio calls made per month. 764 entries posted to our internal encyclopedia. 14.9 million IM sessions/conversations occur per month. 139,269 desktop sharing sessions occur per month. 3,900 telepresence hours used per month. 15.17 million audio/video/desktop conferencing minutes per month. Reaping cost savings More than 20 million minutes of company-standard monthly VoIP audio/video usage, resulting in avoided mobile and landline long distance/international voice costs. More than 5,000 annual video conferencing meetings resulting in avoided travel costs. Telepresence usage has slashed travel costs and the savings are exceeding our annual targets, thus far returning more than two times our monthly operating cost. Improving employee satisfaction We have achieved our highest scores to date on employee surveys for: “I can easily find information I need to do my job” and “I can easily find people with expertise/skills I need to do my job.” Our employees tell us Collaboration 2.0 plays a crucial part in the timely completion of projects for clients, while improving client satisfaction: “I found the expert in 15 minutes versus two days.” “Collaboration 2.0 served as the lifeline when communicating with our global teammates, and helped us establish less of an offshore versus onshore perspective and allowed for more of a fluid team feel.” “We harnessed the power of social networking to create a virtual community of new recruits—a place where people in similar situations can support each other and access the resources they need. It’s very exciting when we can leverage technology to establish that connection.” “I’ve been generating anywhere from $500 to $1,000 of savings per week over international dialing rates.” “Microblogging helps me connect to the experts. It doesn’t limit me ... I’m able to post a question or make a comment and it doesn’t matter whether I’m an analyst or a senior executive. Everybody’s opinion counts.” Enhancing client relations Enhanced ability to staff global teams with the right skills at the right time during critical junctures in client projects. Helped maintain long-standing, trusted relationships with clients: 99 percent of our top 100 clients have been with us for 5 years and 87 percent for 10 years. Improved reaction time to client requests. Employees on client teams comment on how Collaboration 2.0 strengthens client relations: “Collaboration 2.0 tools helped us reduce our travel expenses by about 25 percent and improve work/life balance. The audio, video and especially application sharing make teaming much more interactive when we are all offsite.” “It is common for us to be in IM sessions and then quickly decide to pull in two or three other people into the session, add audio/video and share someone’s screen so we can review a document together.” “Accenture People has been a great help defining a similar system with our client.” Collaboration 2.0 brings together our highly matrixed, ad hoc, virtual teams. I now interact with people I didn’t know before we built Collaboration 2.0. When we piloted Accenture Groups, one of our US-based employees noted: "I had no idea we had Java developers in Tokyo" after he saw several Tokyo employees join the Java developers group. Forming groups raises awareness of our global resources and enables networking among colleagues at a faster pace, which matches our rate of growth. Most importantly, our tools work in concert with a myriad of workflows and processes — and this ease-of-use, we believe, is the coup de grâce of our groundswelling success. Read more at www.accenture.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/jxe8

Curating the Indian Enterprise 2.0 vendors and tools

Great cartoon at Geek and Poke

Over the last 2 years I have been noting with pride how some Indian startups fuelled by SaaS products are building Enterprise Collaboration tools out of India and competing against the big boys in the global market.

Here's my work in progress list of such tools... If you know any more, please leave a comment with the tool's URL

1. Qontext by the group behind Pramati Technologies (who also built SocialTwist)
2. Cyn.in by Cynapse (open-source)
3. KineticGlue (blogged about it here)
4. Remindo
5. Kreeo - focused on social learning and KM
6. Mangospring
7. Infosys iEngage (blogged about it here) 

Amongst these tools I have worked a little bit on Cyn.in - so am not ranking these on features and functionalities right now. But its interesting to see how they are positioning themselves and building linkages with other tools 

The New Management is Abstract-Expressionistic

In the NYT several Innovation consulting firms and thought leaders are profiled - but what caught my eye is this quote by Dev Patnaik of Jump who shares how technology has changed the meaning of management - and how today we are in the Abstract Expressionistic Era of Management.



Read it here:

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Dev Patnaik of Jump has his own answer to the why-now question. He contends that advances in technology over the past three decades have gradually forced management to reconceive its role in the corporation, shifting its focus from processing data to something more esoteric. “My dad was a midlevel manager for I.B.M.,” Patnaik explains, “and I remember him in the ’70s, sitting there with plastic 3M transparencies, by hand, with marker, to make presentations. For years, the good manager was one who had data at their fingertips. What’s our sales in Peoria? ‘It’s actually 47 percent above last year.’ People say, ‘Oh, he’s a good manager.’ ” By the early ’90s, though, companies like Microsoft and SAP were selling software that digitized this task. The days when a manager at, say, the Gap could earn a bow just for knowing how many sweaters to ship to Seattle were over. “When that happens, what is the role of the manager?” Patnaik asks. “Suddenly it’s about something else. Suddenly it’s about leadership, creativity, vision. Those are the differentiating things, right?” Patnaik draws an analogy to painting, which for centuries was all about rendering reality as accurately as possible, until a new technology — photography — showed up, throwing all those brush-wielding artists into crisis. “Then painters said: ‘Well, wait, you can tell what is but you can’t tell me my impression of what is. Here’s how it looks to me, like Seurat. Or the Cubists who said, ‘You can’t capture what is going on from multiple angles.’ ” Technology forced painters to re-evaluate, which transformed their work. Something similar has happened in corporate America. As Patnaik puts it, “We’re in the abstract-expressionist era of management.” Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/jsai

Article on Social Media and HR

I recently wrote a guest column for India's leading HR magazine, People Matters on why and how HR people should leverage social media.



Here's an excerpt from the article. Click on the link to read the full article.



Would appreciate your feedback

Amplify’d from peoplematters.in

The big change between earlier media and “social media” is that people who participate in these have moved from being passive consumers of information and entertainment to creators. Every person can theoretically publish his own newspaper editorial (aka blogs) or his own TV channel (on YouTube). Most organizations don’t get this. They believe Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are additional channels to TV, radio and print. They then are surprised when consumers react and respond. It’s a great high when the reaction is positive – and despair when they react negatively. Organizations that are venturing into social media need to embrace transparent and open communication. It also has to set processes and workflows that add on to traditional operations and customer service workflows so that external issues are absorbed internally and resolved and then communicated externally. Having just one gate between the organization and its customers results in social media bottleneck – and that approach does not scale for larger companies in the long run. Hence, the social business enables a large part of the employees to interact with customers and encourages customers to connect with other customers. A large technology firm in the US found that it could reduce support costs if it put in a bulletin board where experienced users helped newer users. At its epitome, the social business involves the customer in its innovation process either by using the collective wisdom of the community or by an ideation system where users give ideas for the product or service. Why should HR lead this initiative? HR (in the sphere of OD) has the critical skill to make such changes less painful and with a higher rate of success. Let's face it, change management seen from a tool vendor's point of view is just a "training program" and about process changes. Other business functions really don't have the change management understanding that OD practitioners have. That understanding can be channelised to make "social business" a reality by thinking about the structure, process, emotional and personal aspects of change. Enterprise 2.0 is both about engaging people with other people (employees, partners, customers) as well as embedding that in the business processes. Typically, HR professionals don't get a chance to influence what happens in the business – but with E2.0 they can – and build their strategic impact. Holy grail, anyone? Enterprise 2.0 will soon be the platform of learning and people to people engagement in the organization and as such will have impact on all aspects of HR work – Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Learning and Development. And unless HR leads the conversation, it will find itself more and more redundant like IT departments are finding themselves. My view is that someone in the Marketing / Recruiting function needs to take a “Talent Community Manager” role to drive these initiatives and to get others internally in the organization to get engaged with the candidate community. This community manager needs to have a mindset of open and honest collaboration and organizations must be clear about what objectives they expect from her / him and therefore what metrics to track to check her / his performance. Soon companies will collate all these efforts into a community that they will own – and which will have representation on social networks and blogs. Read more at peoplematters.in

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/jjf2

Workshop on Social Media for HR departments

Recently I conducted a workshop for the HR leadership of a firm on how they could use social media internally and externally

Thought I should share the presentation with you all too

Click on the link below

Social media for HR executives workshop

View more presentations from Gautam Ghosh.

If you think anything more needs to added send me a mail at gautam@gautamblogs.com

If you'd like me to run this workshop for your organization do let me know :-)

The Presentation I didn't make @Indiasocial #iss10

This was the presentation I had initially prepared for IndiaSocial summit - but didn't end up making

Thought I'd share it any way ;-)

Work is Social, Gautam Ghosh, Management Consultant

View more presentations from India Social.

Customers and Employees in the age of Social Media

At the IndiaSocial talk I made a point that social media does not scale. Lots of people mentioned that they disagreed with me.

Maybe I wasn't clear, what I meant was that conversations don't scale - if you start a Twitter account or a Facebook page (managed by Marketing/or outsourcing it) and people flood you with questions.

Which is why instead of an "social media strategy" team - the conversations need to be between all employees and the customers.

Like the way Best Buy has done with Twelpforce (see this introduction for their employees)

I have talked about how we're seeing the employee emerge as a huge brand ambassador and advocate, indeed the new media. 

However, as this post by @BillIves quotes a Forrester research, employees who are empowered and use social media are more likely to recommend their company's products and services.

Sure, you will need to give up control when you empower employees to speak on behalf of your firm. And yes, some might misuse the power. 

However I believe that employees when really empowered - respond admirably. 

What it also needs to be balanced with is processes, structures and culture internally where this is reflected. 

As I said during the IndiaSocial summit - "you cannot be social outside and anti-social inside" the firewall. 

Enterprise talk at @IndiaSocial

Was an interesting experience today at my first "Social Media" conference - where I was part of the B2B and Enterprise panel.

When Gaurav (@gauravonomics who was moderating) asked me what I thought B2B organizations should do internally - I replied that organizations that want to be social externally should not be anti-social internally. To really leverage the power of employees and scale conversations. I also shared that organizations needed to "design time" for employees' "cognitive surplus" to ensure sharing and internal connections and conversations to develop

Prem Aparanji (@prem_k) shared that social CRM looks at customers having consistent experiences across channels - and therefore internally silos need to be connected using social networking within the enterprise. He added how his firm Cognizant has a vibrant internal blogging culture, which is possible because there already was a culture in place where one could give open feedback to seniors. So the culture needs to be in place before the tool, to make it useful

Here's the presentation that Prem made about Social CRM

SCRM@ISS10

View more presentations from Prem Kumar Aparanji.

Amit Ranjan (@amitranjan) of Slideshare shared examples of how different parts of organizations are not in sync. He said often the Marketing folks put up slides on their site - and after some months they are sent DMCA notice by the same firm's Legal team to take down the presentations.

Sanjay Sahay (@sanjay_sahay) of Infosys shared that internally moving a large organization to "social" is going to be bumpy - and there will be disruptions which people have to be ready for.

Hari V Krishnan (@harivk) of Linkedin India shared how investing time by business leaders can build thought leadership by simple things like using Polls and Linkedin Answers informatively.

Overall it was a great conference and I thoroughly enjoyed some other sessions - specially the Mobile Social Networking session and the key note speech by Santosh Desai (@desaisantosh) of Future Brands. His insights on "brands hate people" and therefore will be painful for them to adapt to this new form of media - that was refreshing.

Here's a photo that @prem_k clicked when I was listening to Santosh Desai



The ended on a great note when I found that I had made it to two Influencer lists compiled

1. The Enterprise Social Media top 25 Influencers
2. Top 25 Online Influencers in Talent Management v2

P.S. Blog posts on the IndiaSocial summit by Gaurav Mishra and Karthik S.

Some Interesting Articles: HR, Social Business

Eric Garland thinks HR systems and processes are at odds with the demands of innovation and creative destruction. And I think he's right. HR focusses on how do we hire/promote/develop people based on what has worked in the past. Which could be a huge reason why successful companies fall into the Innovator's dilemma. What do you think?

Oscar Berg writes how in today's increasingly virtual workplace corporate social networking helps employees build strong personal networks that cut through silos.

McKinsey’s new survey research finds that companies using the Web intensively gain greater market share and higher margins. A new class of company is emerging—one that uses collaborative Web 2.0 technologies intensively to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend the organization’s reach to customers, partners, and suppliers.

Prasad Kurian asks whether HR should stop worry about being a "strategic partner to business" and instead try and become "Architects of Meaning"

Did you know that the word "dynamic" was the most overused word in Indian job hunters' resumes - according to analytics by Linkedin. See some of the fun facts and other hackneyed phrases here.

And if you've ever worked in a toxic workplace you'll nod at the Gervais principle or recognise the Office according to The Office

Happy reading!

Participating at @IndiaSocial Summit #iss10

This Friday, 17th December, I will be participating in a panel discussion at the first IndiaSocial summit 2010 - probably the first Indian conference dedicated to how businesses can leverage social media.

The panel I would be participating in is:

Different Expectations – B2B and enterprise How can B2B marketers leverage social data for product development, customer service, marketing and others aspects of business. Lead generation is a key aspect of B2B use of social media -what are the learnings? How do social technologies facilitate and impact Enterprise collaboration. Is Social CRM just a buzzword?

The panel participants would be moderated by my friend Gaurav Mishra, Director – Social Media-Asia, MSL Group, Amit Ranjan, Co-founder, Slideshare, Hari V Krishnan who's Country Head, LinkedIn India, Prem Kumar Aparanji, Evangelist – Social CRM, Customer Solutions Practice, Cognizant and Sanjay Sahay, Global Head of Digital Marketing at Infosys

Am also looking forward to hearing Santosh Desai of Future Brands, Kirthiga Reddy of Facebook, Jaspreet Bindra of Microsoft at the conference.

Can HR really be the Rockstar of the Talent Age

I think I saw it first on a slide in Tom Peter's presentation. It stated something like "Human Resources? Or Rockstars of the Talent Age?"

That was a time I felt really proud of being a HR professional.

However, over the years I have seen organizations which rely on "Rockstar" talent - and I can say because of  the critical and central nature to the business, HR gets sidelined in such organizations by the business leadership.

So while HR thinks of standardisation - in a firm driven by rockstar talent (think a stock market trading firm, a law firm, or a football team or an IPL team) the focus is not standardisation, job descriptions are discarded, and there is stratospheric compensation for the rockstars.

The focus of talent and development in such firms is not "competency development" by looking at what gaps need to be filled. But rather to deepen and sharpen the skills the rockstar talent already has.

Recruitment is the personal goal - not of the HR people- but of business leaders and the CEO. And they recruit not by sending out job descriptions, or advertising on job sites - but by knowing the industry and knowing who are the rockstars and pursuing them as they would pursue a prospective client and taking responsibility for closing the deal (read this article on how Bill Gates used to spend 50% of his time on recruiting related roles)

What do you think?

Is HR needed in a Rockstar driven organization?

Also read this earlier post of mine: Great HR Happens when work is Boring

Related articles

• Is HR Too Important To Be Left to HR? (blogs.hbr.org)

Enterprise 2.0 and Social Software should be opt-in

Often I've come across the argument how activity streams in Enterprise 2.0 tools would be great for building the "ambient awareness" that microsharing works - and I agree. Today's email culture of cc'ing everyone leads to overload of actionable information for the employee.

And yet, I shudder when I think what would happen if really social softwares are adopted by the majority of employees, if things are not designed well can we see tools that add to the noise they were supposed to solve?

This thought struck me when a CEO of a firm that makes an enterprise collaboration/social intranet tool called me and was describing a new feature they have added. (I haven't got a demo yet, so don't have screen shots to share) The feature basically adds every activity you do on the software and even your desktop software to the activity stream.

So imagine if you opened the ppt your colleague sent you - added your comments on specific slides and made some changes - that update goes on to the activity stream. Imagine even 25% of your employees doing that regularly.

Clearly this is a useful feature and yet we have to make this as granular to opt in as possible in the part of every employee - otherwise we'll see the issues that plague email on the social software too.

What do you think?

Related articles

• Make It Work: One Key to Enterprise 2.0 Adoption | Enterprise 2.0 Blogs (aiimcommunities.org)

Signs of a toxic workplace

Image via Wikipedia
There are various definitions of toxic workplaces that can be found. Here's my take on what makes a toxic workplace:

1. Zero trust or worse, active distrust. When a manager/leader believes that people are basically bad and they need to be "controlled" we have the most critical pointers to a toxic workplace. This gives rise to a plethora of policies that puts the onus on the employee to prove everything - and gives rise to behaviour by them that is shirking and slacking.
2. Big brother syndrome. Arising out of the first point every body is expected to seek permission before every small activity. And decision about that is centralised and lower managers are not empowered to take those decisions.
3. Ethically challenged. In the rush to control the bottom line the focus on doing the right thing is lost and employees bear the brunt of it.
4. Negative behaviour is rewarded. When the leader comes from a domineering and bullying workstyle - the tolerance for other behavior is low. It is assumed that a collaborative leadership style is ineffective. This leads to every manager role modelling the bullying behavior to conform to the leader's style and a cascading nastiness in the workplace.
5. No distinction is made between behavior and people. Mistakes are pointed out publicly in front of peers and people are humiliated with their dignity stripped away.

What do you think? What are the other signs of a toxic workplace that you might have encountered?

See some of the articles linked below:

Related articles

• Trashy Leaders and Corporate Black Holes (psychologytoday.com)
• Why Nastiness in the Workplace Can Destroy a Company (biojobblog.com)
• Snakes in Suits - risks with psychopaths in the workplace (lukenotricks.blogspot.com)

Employees Creating the Social and Sustainable Organization

Came across this interesting interview of Judah Schiller on Sustainability: Make It Personal | Sustainable Life Media

SLM: More companies seem to be putting employees at the center of their green marketing efforts as well. For example, Anheuser Busch is airing new commercials that feature employees discussing the company's environmental programs. Coke's chief marketing officer recently called employees the company's "green ambassadors." Is this the beginning of a trend?

Judah: A brand can stand for a lot of things. Having a culture of sustainability - one that's based on an organization of people who are actively tied into creating a sustainable company and a sustainable brand - speaks very loudly and shows a deep commitment. What could be better for a brand than being backed by five or ten thousand people who are genuinely working both for their own personal interests and for the organization and its attempts to be a better corporate citizen.

I see a fundamental difference between the companies that are instituting high-level sustainability programs and the companies that have culture-building engagement programs designed to incorporate sustainability at all levels of the operation. The companies that create a culture of sustainability are equipped to demonstrate their sincerity and authenticity to the consumer by really unpacking the brand throughout the product lifecycle. There's already a sea of eco-labeling going on. Being able to tell a more robust sustainability story is going to be essential.

Should HR students read my blog?

I guess I write about unconventional things - which I have to admit "traditional HR" might find impractical, subversive or nonsensical. So I was surprised to find that this blog was listed as one of the 50 Resources for Students Attending Online Human Resource Management Schools

You can see it here

Personally, I think HR students shouldn't read my blog :-) They'll question their HR leaders too much then ;-)

More on Social Media and Organizational Use

So last night I was invited to a party where there were lots of legendary Indian HR leaders. These were folks who probably collectively handle HR for some of India's biggest conglomerates, BPOs, HR Consulting firms.

The host introduced me to them as the "HR professional who knows most about web 2.0 in India" and the conversation soon turned to "oh, I always wanted to blog but I think it's a generational thing - I just can't get round to blogging or Tweeting"

Normally I smile politely (taking the compliment that I am "young" ;-) in my stride) but yesterday I decided to take a different track. So I said "No it's not a generational thing"

"What do you mean?"

"Well if Tom Peters (@tom_peters) in the US and Sivakumar Surampudi (@s_sivakumar) CEO of India's very own ITC ABD can Tweet and Blog - what's your excuse. And they're not exactly generation Y :-)"

And I quoted @rotkapchen who said in @marciamarcia's book that "Status updates are to the knowledge firms what the assembly lines are to manufacturing firms"

I then shared my view that soon organizational firewalls will melt away and the only way to manage in the coming age would be to nurture employees into becoming advocates for both your employer brand as well as your product brands.

Then I asked the folks if they had heard of Zappos - and when they said they hadn't - I told them that they should read the @zappos CEO's book - Delivering Happiness ( my review here) - in which he says "Culture is the brand - and the brand is the culture"

There is no greater call to HR leaders to be integral to the business than that!

My interview at Blogadda

The folks at Blogadda - the Indian blogging community- recently interviewed me on my experiences as a blogger and my understanding on the Indian workplace and social media

You can read the whole interview here

Why HR needs to leverage Enterprise 2.0

When someone asks me how HR can become more strategic (y'know - the same conversation we have been having since the 1990s) these days more and more I find myself thinking that HR should be joining and indeed leading the Enterprise 2.0 conversations.

I believed the same in the early 2000s when the KM conversation was going on - and found HR folks unwilling to engage and own that conversation - with the result that IT departments used a tool-centric approach and vendors marketed hyped up products in the guise of KM and most of the time it failed, with everyone having egg on their faces.

And as I believe Enterprise 2.0 (or social business) is going down the same path for most organizations.

Here are the reasons why I think HR should be a critical member - and lead the Enterprise 2.0 agenda:

1. HR (in the sphere of OD) - has the critical skill to make such changes less painful and with a higher rate of success. Let's face it, change management seen from a tool vendor's point of view is just a "training program" and about process changes. Other business functions really don't have the change management understanding that OD practitioners have. That understanding can be channelised to make "social business" a reality - by thinking about the structural, process, emotional and personal aspects of change.
2. Enterprise 2.0 is both about engaging people with other people (employees, partners, customers) as well as embedding that in the business processes. Typically, HR professionals don't get a chance to influence what happens in the business - but with E2.0 they can - and build their strategic impact. Holy grail, anyone?
3. Enterprise 2.0 will soon be the platform of learning and people to people engagement in the organization and as such will have impact on all aspects of HR work - Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Learning and Development and unless HR leads the conversation it will find itself more and more redundant like IT departments are finding themselves.

So are you a HR leader and are you owning social ?

Using Social Media

I am often stumped by people's questions like "how to use social media"

That's because I didn't have an objective when I started engaging and connecting with people. Those were the social web was a much more innocent and idealistic place

I was a blogger first and then dabbled in Facebook and Twitter. So unlike most of you my friends were people whom I met online and then sometimes met in real life

So here are some of my learnings on using social media - that I can say holds true for companies as well as individuals -

1. Communicate with your heart - passion and interest in whatever you are interested in will carry over to people who are following you. 
2. Connect with people who share your interests. Link to them, share their content, leave your comments

Of course, there are other important stuff like using keywords, crafting an attention grabbing heading, using tags, and pictures. But these 2 points are the most important, IMHO :-)

Cleaving HR into 3 parts

I have often wondering with the paradoxical demands on Human Resources folks why it persists in being a "single" department.

Personally sometimes I feel that Human Resources/ Human Capital/ People Dept - whatever you need to call it - should be cleaved into at least three different groups - and I don't mean the traditional groups of Recruiting, C&B, Training, HRIS and HR Business Partner.

I think HR should be divided into three different parts - being internal versions of the Marketing, Sales and Customer Support groups that are present externally.

Because if you think about it really, HR markets the firm to external candidates and internal employees, sells processes and new policies to the biz leaders and responds to employee queries

So instead of functional division of HR which is great for HR professionals but not so great for the employees - I feel that businesses should divide HR by its purpose - branding, long term or relationship building and help desk

What do you think?

Matching HR process with practice

Often I wonder whether HR folks concentrate too much on process rather than thinking about practice. By practice, I mean the level of maturity of the business and the culture.

Sometimes I feel the easiest things Human Resources folks find is to make policies - sometimes with a little bit of "internet research" but don't bother to check if its suitable to the maturity level of the business.


So what are the parameters that HR people need to look at when launching a new process/policy:

• The complexity of the system compared to the earlier system - Sometimes you can hire a great HR leader to replace a pathetic one - but what often gets forgotten is the level of his/her peers to accept comparatively radical ideas
• The infrastructure to capture data/metrics - It's no use designing a robust performance management process when you don't have systems to capture metrics or have to rely on managers to collate the data
• Structure: Systems need to reflect the current job structures - but often HR processes live in an ideal rather than real world - which ensures that current realities are not reflected in the policies, and therefore is not followed

What do you think? What are the big issues that HR falters in?

Enterprise 2.0 news: JP joins Salesforce

In the course of learning about Enterprise 2.0 I have been fortunate to read and learn from JP (@jobsworth on Twitter) so when I heard that the former Chief Scientist at BT would now move to Salesforce also as chief scientist I am pretty excited

JP is considered to be the philosopher guide of enterprise software thinking deep not just of tools but also what impacts people and work. Be sure to add his blog to your reading list

JP Rangaswami, the former chief scientist at BT, will take the same position at Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com said Wednesday that Rangaswami will contribute to the company’s product strategy and be an evangelist for cloud computing around the globe. Rangaswami will focus on European customers and preaching real-time collaboration.

Rangaswami is a veteran of multinational companies and his experience at BT should help Salesforce.com garner a larger enterprise footprint. Rangaswami has been a chief information officer as well being a key player in startups. Rangaswami was behind the Ribbit effort at BT.

In a statement, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said Rangaswami has “the rare talent of being able to see what the future should be, knowing what it takes to get there, and the enthusiasm to make it happen.”

Emotions at Work

Rashmi Bansal makes the case for building "emotional gyms" in today's workplace for HR and business leaders to deal with Emotional Atyachar - moving beyond it

Once upon a time, men came to office, did the work they had to, and went home at 6 o clock in the evening. There, a hot meal and unconditional acceptance (if not necessarily 'love') could always be counted on.

You worked for money and got emotional support at home. But hey, that was then.

Today, there is no guarantee of that hot meal or unconditional anything, coz women are working, or following the daily soaps.

Besides, you don't work just for money. You work for your life to be thrilling, meaningful, and full of tangible achievements. You must be recognised, praised, rewarded, respected, even loved for this act of showing up and doing your work.

When life at home is shitty, you take refuge in your office. Sometimes, that works. You live in a fantasy world where this is your family, and so you cross that lakshmanrekha - and share your secret world.

But let's say life at office is equally shitty. And you don't have a boss or colleagues for emotional support. You escape from home to be trapped in office. You escape from office, only to enter the torture chamber you call 'home'.

There are millions of people out there in this horrible situation. And they simply don't know how to get off this Misery Merry Go Round.

If you're lucky, you have a bipolar mind where no matter what pins and needles are stuck in your heart, your mind continues to function and you are able to 'deliver' at work.

If you can't, well then, at some point your job will be in danger. And then, things will only get worse.

Yes, it's all very depressing but the worst of it is, it's like second hand smoke. An 'innocent bystander' can also get depressed, when he or she becomes exposed to your toxic emotions, constantly.

Your problem thus becomes everyone's problem. The world itself becomes sooty, coughy and grey.

Logotherapy and Meaning at Work

Ever since I blogged about Making Work Meaningful and Professionalism and Love of Work my thoughts have returned to Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Cry For Meaning" and his work on Logotherapy.

Frankl was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp and wikipedia tells us:


It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps that he came to his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion served as a strong basis for Frankl's logotherapy. An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:

... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us." That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...." ^[7]

Another important conclusion for Frankl was:

If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life– an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival.^[8]

Frankl's concentration camp experiences thus shaped both his therapeutic approach and philosophical outlook, as reflected in his seminal publications. He often said that even within the narrow boundaries of the concentration camps he found only two races of men to exist: decent and unprincipled ones. These were to be found in all classes, ethnicities, and groups.^[9] Following this line of thinking, he once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on the East coast of the US be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West coast, and there are reportedly plans to construct such a statue.^[10]
Frankl's approach is often considered to be amongst the broad category that comprises existentialists.^[11] Frankl, "who has devoted his career to a study of an existential approach to therapy, has apparently concluded that the lack of meaning is the paramount existential stress. To him, existential neurosis is synonymous with a crisis of meaninglessness".^[12]
He is thought to have coined the term Sunday Neurosis referring to a form of depression resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over.^[13][14] This arises from an existential vacuum, which Frankl distinguished from existential neurosis.^[15]

Related articles

• Book Review: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (imperfecthappiness.wordpress.com)

Abhijit Bhaduri on Talent Management

Abhijit Bhaduri talks about Preparing Talent for Tomorrow's Challenges in Knowledge@ Wharton

One of the ways in which we are going expand is to go with a localized talent pool in some markets, which means we are going to have to work very hard to assimilate people into the Wipro way of working and yet draw on the advantage of what you get when you get a lot of people coming in from the outside.

The second [aspect] is in the technology as it is emerging. There is a fair bit of change that happens because we work with a variety of partners [and] a variety of clients. How do we get people to keep their technical skills completely up-to-date? [We have] a huge engine which works on increasing the technical competency of people at all levels. We have a huge focus on developing project management skills because that is the crux of what we do. We have looked at creating a multifunction, multi-geography, and multi-business approach towards developing our leaders. One of the ways in which the leader's role is going to change is to work with a multi-generational workforce, and that's not a skill that is taught in most places. How do you work with people who are substantially younger or older than you? That is going to determine success or failure, because as we are getting into different markets, the profile of the workforce is very, very different.

The Top 25 HR Digital Influencers for 2010

Am proud to be listed at the 6th rank in the HR Examiner top 25 HR Digital Influencers for 2010.



The influencers project is part of a series that John Sumser is doing both at a personal level as well as with a digital algorithm. He already profiled me in the top 100 influencers in HR at number 60 after a long telephonic interview.

Here's what John has written about the list:

The HRExaminer Influence Project has two components. The digital research uses algorithms to discover and validate the influence of people who are actively engaged in online discussions of HR. The analog component of the project involves an interview process. We’re talking to 450 people in hour long interviews in order to identify the 100 most influential folks in HR in the real world.

The theory is that the two lists will start to blur over the next couple of years. It really is getting harder and harder to function in the HR industry without a vibrant public presence in social media. Every single person on our digital lists has a blog and a facebook account. Most use Twitter, LinkedIn and some other form of social tool.

Today, on what is more or less the first anniversary of the digital project, we’re releasing the 2010 version of the Top 25 influencers in HR. The change is dramatic. Many of the people who were prominent in our analysis a year ago have reduced their output, shifted their focus or changed their jobs. They fell off of the list, replaced by new voices with the ability to sustain routine publishing.

It’s been a blustery year in HR.

With the winds shifting towards measurable results and away from the legacy emphasis on process control, many people left the field and or changed jobs. The longer that cloud (or SaaS) technology is around, the less likely it is that HR folks will work in the trenches of administrivia.

The profession is changing.

So is the way people use social media. Last year’s Top 25 Influencers in HR were often early adopters who developed their audiences because they had proficiency with the technology. They may not have had quite as much substance as the new group.

Communities in the center of KM, Social Media and Enterprise 2.0

My blogging friend @billives blogged about my ex-HP colleague @StanGarfield on Communities of Practice during KM World on how to facilitate communities
Personally I think communities form around "identities" or what @gapingvoid calls "social objects" and the more deep the identities - the richer the communities.
Here are Stan's 10 steps to community management

Communities should be independent of organizational structure. They should be based on the content.
Two – Communities are different from organizations and teams. People are assigned to a team. Communities are better with self–selection for joining and remaining.
Third – Communities are people and not tools. You should not start with tech features. A platform is not a community. Readers of the same blog are not a community but that might be a byproduct.
Fourth – Communities should be voluntary. The passion of members should be what drives a community. You should make the community appealing to get members and not assign them to it.
Fifth – Communities should span boundaries. They should not be for a particular group likes Sales or IT. There is a lot of cross-functional or cross-geography learning that would be missed then. Diverse views help communities.
Sixth – You should minimize redundancy in communities. Consolidation helps to avoid confusion by potential members. It also reduces the possibility of not getting a critical mass. Reducing redundancy also enables more cross-boundary sharing.
Seven - Communities need a critical amass. You need at least 50 and likely 100. Usually ten percent are very active so you can get sufficient level of activity with 100 people.
Eight – Avoid having too narrow of scope for the community. Too much focus can lead to not enough members. Stan advises people to start broad and narrow if necessary. Or start as part of broader community and spin off if needed.
Nine – Communities need to be active. Community leaders need to do work, often in the “spare time” at their regular work. This means that the leader needs a passion for the topics so he or she will spend this extra time. There needs to be energy to get things going.
Ten – Use TARGETs to manage communities. TARGET includes: Types, activities, requirements, goals, expectations, and tools. Each of these issues needs to addressed and explained to prospective members. Tools are necessary, but the least important component, so they are placed last.

Related articles

• New report proves lack of community management "a huge missed opportunity for brands" (freshnetworks.com)
• Organizational Culture and Enterprise 2.0 (gautamblogs.com)

DNA Story on Facebook's Email/Messaging platform

Image via CrunchBaseI got quoted in this DNA Bangalore story on what we expected from Facebook's Messaging platform. This quote was taken 6 hrs before Mark Zuckerberg actually made the announcement and unveiled the platform.

Here's the quote

Why should you be excited?
This is a potential game-changing development, possibly at a par with Gmail’s launch. Gmail, apart from its matchless usability, is after all just another web-based e-mail service. If Facebook (FB) e-mail lets me import contacts from FB — keeping the hierarchy of contacts intact — it is a huge thing. People could use FB e-mail exclusively for their social network.
—Gautam Ghosh, blogger on workplace and social media issues

Check out the stories post the launch:

Related articles

• Facebook moves into multi-platform messaging (v3.co.uk)
• Facebook's messaging: Rise of the IM generation (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• What Facebook Messages is not (theglobeandmail.com)

Organizational Culture and Enterprise 2.0

Image via Wikipedia
I recently read a quote "First we shape our tools, then they shape us"




So is the case with organizations. Every tool/technology/structure process that gets implemented impacts the organization in ways that usually wasn't the original intent.



We saw the way Quality, ERP, KM, Email were all implemented and how they have impacted organizations.

So why would Enterprise 2.0 tools be any different?



Collaboration or Community or Employee Content Creation would happen in organizations that have a culture that already encourage such behavior. However if an organization has a culture steeped in command-control-compliance mindset, then a tool that gets implemented will be ignored or actively subverted.

So if you're a Enterprise 2.0 advocate in a traditional organization that is implementing "social tools" without thinking through it - you need to tell leaders:

1. The benefit of the movement to social collaboration will be apparent in the long term 
2. They will need to be role models to embrace social within the enterprise
3. People spending time on the tools won't be considered to be "goofing off"
4. Early Adopters would be recognized and acknowledged to enable them to be role models

What else would you suggest?

Facebook and HR - Free Speech?

Image via CrunchBase

Trish at hrringleader.com has an interesting post about how a firm fired an employee over a Facebook posting. I think these are areas that organizations need to tread carefully and educate employees on the accepted norms of behavior when writing anything about work, organizations etc on social media.
Does your organization have a progressive HR policy about how to deal with employees' social media behavior?
Here's the blog post:
Fired Over FaceBook Posting? It Can Happen to You

The New York Times ran an interesting article this week about an employee who was fired because of something she posted on her FaceBook page. An emergency medical technician at American Medical Response of Connecticut was told she had violated the company policy that prevents employees from depicting the company on social media sites. Additionally, it is thrown in that this was one reason for her termination and alluded that there were other reasons as well. According to the post, this is “the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.”
Without knowledge of what the other reasons for the termination were, and if we had a case where the disparaging remarks were the only issue, should this company have fired the employee? Let’s assume that the company did a few steps before terminating. Here are a few questions I’d like answered:
* Did they use progressive discipline with the employee?
* Was this the first time the employee violated a policy?
* Is this policy violation serious enough to have termination as a consequence?
I think the bigger question for us and our organizations is, are we doing all we can to educate employees about using social media in a way that promotes professionalism? We’re not there yet. Many instances like this can be avoided first and foremost if the supervisor is open to feedback on a daily basis. Additionally, if the organization gives employees an outlet to let leadership know if there are issues brewing. And, while a majority of employees do not use social media as a platform to bash colleagues, I would recommend that for those few who do, education and discussion should be a major component of dealing with the issue before termination is used.

Related articles

• For Employees, Facebook Counts as Free Speech (mashable.com)
• Free Speech on Facebook an Employee Right, Federal Agency Says (readwriteweb.com)
• Is Talking Bad About the Boss on Facebook Grounds for Termination? (webpronews.com)
• Company Social Media Policies Challenged (socialmediatoday.com)
• Don't Overreact To Case Over Employee Being Fired for Badmouthing her Boss on Facebook (blogs.forbes.com)

Professionalism and Love of Work

Image by conskeptical via Flickr
When my friend @dhanvada tweeted that "A professional is a person who can do his/her best work even when he/she does not feel like it" that it brought to my notice what about my last post was bothering me so much.


When we talk about beauty in work we talk about being an artist- no matter whether you are number crunching or selling or managing back-end operations- and an artist is an amateur.


The root of the word amateur comes from the Latin (I think) word for "love"

So the dichotomy between being someone who loves his work and someone who is professional is that people can rely on the professional almost all the time.


However, and this is my submission - when an amateur does the work he/she loves then you can compare that with the best professional's work and say "This has soul in it. Heart. Beauty"

Unfortunately modern corporations don't see an ROI in "love of work" - and yet we know when we see it in elegant designs of computing devices by Apple, in the clean user interface of Google, in the thoughtful tools that Ideo designs, the in joyful movies that Pixar makes.


Because sometimes the search for ROI hides the opportunity to be great. To soar and to touch the sky.

But I know you'll remind me of the story of Icarus. Didn't he lose his wings and fall to the ground?

Yes he did. But for a brief time he reached higher than any human before him ever had.

Success is transient. Beauty and Art even more so. But the love of doing that lasts a lifetime.

And for that reason I want to be an Icarus.

Making Work Meaningful

Image by Larry Tomlinson via FlickrLots of people think that unless you are pursuing your passions you are wasting your life. However they never stop to explain that pursuing your passions is not enough to be successful. Pursuing your passions needs a lot of skills that being an entrepreneur calls for - like reframing skills, discovering or creating a market, and marketing and sales skills.


No wonder many of us don't choose the freelance or entrepreneurial route. And in cases like mine, choose it, explore it, and head back to the corporate world, which for all its imperfections enables you to do one thing and do that well.


If that is the case, why are so many of us unhappy at work?

Well the reasons are as varied as there are employees, and depends on what we expect from our jobs. Is it the need for achievement or affiliation or power as McClelland postulated?


Personally I think every human being wants to be part of something larger than himself or herself. An organization should look at goals that excite even the most world weary cynic and say "I am part of something meaningful. Something larger. Something beautiful"

I think it was Umair Haque who wrote that things that excite human beings like meaning, sense, love, beauty and passion are deliberately stripped and removed from the modern corporate in the single minded pursuit of profit without "purpose and passion"


Look at the workplace near you? Do you hire human beings or "human resources" or "human capital" or "talent" ? What we (and I am guilty as charged too) all try to do is seek conformance of people - hoping they just get their brains or hands to work and keep those pesky emotions away.

Unfortunately, unless you want to emotionally passionately change the world - you cannot see meaning in boring power points and excel sheets.


Until then corporate work for the majority of people will continue to be boring and drab unless you can start to see meaning in your own work and make sense and inject it with beauty and passion.

Have you done so? Are you an artist amongst plodders?

Tell me your story.

Related articles

• Joy on the Job (psychologytoday.com)

Sexual Harassment in the Knowledge Workplace

Image via Wikipedia
I was stunned to read this report in the Hindustan Times one day.

A pioneering survey by the NGO Centre for Transforming India has found evidence of rampant sexual harassment of women employees even in the classy, knowledge-driven environs of the Indian information technology and information technology-enabled services (IT/ITES) industries. It also reveals that

though most IT/ITES companies have some sort of mechanism for dealing with such offences, large numbers of women employees are unaware of them and the guidelines too are not strictly followed. 

See the numbers here It says that 88% of women have faced harassment by male colleagues and 50% have faced extreme harassment.  82% of incidents happened outside office premises and a majority said (72%) that the perpetrators were superiors. An overwhelming number (91%) did not report it due to fear of being victimised.



Such statistics are mind numbing and I am flabbergasted that organizations are still not recognizing that not making female employees safe and secure would hurt their competitiveness in the long term.

What do you think organizations should do to make women feel safer and ways to eradicate this menace?



Leave your comments and ideas below.

Related articles

• Cabinet clears Sexual Harassment Bill (ibnlive.in.com)