What is OD?

No, I am not referring to overdose (wipe that smile off, you :-)) but the art and science of Organization Development.

OD is often confused with Training, and sometimes with business strategy. For me, it's all about building the capability of the organization when changes are made to human systems (think of team reorganization, or to intra team issues) or to non-human systems that interact with human systems (structure, job design, people processes).

To understand OD you could read books like Process Consultation Revisited by Edgar Schein or you could head over to the new blog, Learn OD by Gurprriet Siingh, OD leader at a large Indian conglomerate.

The purpose of the blog is to help and educate young OD professionals or other HR professionals who want to get to understand what is Organization Development and what are the skills needed to be successful here. Take a look at some of the posts from the blog and I am sure there are lots more of such useful posts yet to come.

• Capabilities of an OD Professional 
• What's that? 

So go ahead. Learn. Connect.

Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, Azim Premji on Philanthropy

Image via WikipediaThis Thursday was quite a special day for me. I got invited as a blogger to a press conference by Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and Azim Premji. When I got to the venue I realised that other bloggers hadn't turned up and I was surrounded by mainstream media types :-)

They started by sharing how this is a visit to China and India to try and meet business leaders and share their experiences in philanthropy and giving.

When asked by a journalist what was the Indian businessmen's response Buffett replied that they met around 70 people and experienced a lot of enthusiasm and interest.

Another journalist asked whether the fact that Indian business folks are mostly 1st generation interferes with giving away. Melinda Gates replied that people who have made the money want to use their business skills to give back. Bill Gates added that what he has seen is that first generation wealth is more generous than dynastic wealth.

Warren Buffett added that he was almost certain that there would be an increasing percentage of people who would give away their wealth.

When Kushan Mitra of the Business Today asked how do they feel when businessmen in India who've made dirty money give it away to make it good money, Bill Gates answered that he's not the Indian police. Education and healthcare in India is a priority and the child who gets the vaccine is not going to question the source of the money.

On a related statement by another jounralist that business uses CSR and philanthropy as an eyewash for their black money Azim Premji retorted that it was a very cynical view that the journalist had and it wasn't true.

On a question how many people committed to giving away their billions, Bill Gates said that wasn't their aim. An overwhelming majority of the people invited chose to come and it is up to them to decide how they want to give back. While in the US they have a "pledging" system - it wasn't for Gates or Buffett to decide what the system should be in India. Buffett said the conversations were amazingly personal in nature. People talked about what they believed in and what they wanted to impact.

When asked why they want to give away their money , Bill Gates said when you're lucky enough to be successful you have a choice on how to spend that money and what to do with it. He and Melinda discovered that philanthropy gave them pleasure.

On a question whether the Indian government's proposal for companies to use 2% of profits for CSR would succeed, Azim Premji was vehement it would not. He said you cannot generate CSR by statutory clauses. It would only lead to misuse. It should ideally be a guideline and not a mandatory rule.

On another question whether the increasing income gap in India was cause for social tension and whether philanthropy was needed for that, Premji said it was mission critical for organizations and also because it was the right thing to do. Talking about his own work with education he said that the government is co-operative and grassroots change is institutionalised with the help of the government. It needs extra-tenacity and timelines are different.

On being asked what has been their most successful project, Melinda Gates talked about the reduction of childhood deaths and the miracles of vaccines, specially cutting the time it takes after a vaccine gets developed in the US to reach Indian states like UP and Bihar.

When a question was asked on why Warren Buffett is looking at spending his wealth in short period of time rather than put it in a trust and spend it over a long time, he shared that he has five foundations (including the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation) which are the recipients of a large percentage of his personal wealth. He has decided on these foundations looking at the kind of people who are managing them and he would rather trust his money to be used better by them, than by someone sixty years later.

On a question on what's the difference between creating wealth and giving away wealth, Buffet answered that in business he's looking at sure shot successes with the information he has. And time frames for success is in a few years. In philanthropy he looks at difficult problems. He shared that he's told his children who work with two of the foundations he's pledged his wealth to that if they are successful after some decades they would have failed, because that would mean they didn't attack a really difficult problem.

When asked about billionaire Carlos Slim's statement that he would rather be a "job creator than a Santa Claus", Buffett claimed it was a false argument. When he or Bill Gates spend their shares and money from their company it does not impact the business viability of those firms to be competitive in the market and to create more jobs. You can do both.

HR news and blogs you can use

Image via CrunchBaseLinkedin Launches Job Portal for Recent Graduates

The crowded jobsite market just got a new player. Business networking site Linkedin which is also used
by professionals for job hunting launched a job portal for Internships and Jobs for recently graduated
students. The interesting thing with this job portal is that it is not country specific . When one clicks on
the jobs listed it leads to the results of the Linkedin search of all Jobs listed there. So while the jobsite
might be marketed to students it can facilitate as a job search for any professional. What would be seen
now is how Linkedin would market this site to employers for employment branding initiatives. There
is a India sales team too – so it would be interesting to see how the traditional job portals counter this
niche threat from the networking site. Linkedin has been growing too. It crossed a 100 million members
worldwide, recently and India membership saw a 76% growth over the previous year too.

Top Level Exits in the IT sector

Bhaskar Pramanik, MD of Oracle India; Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Microsoft India; Girish Paranjape
and Suresh Vaswani, joint CEOs of Wipro; and Ashok Soota, executive chairman of MindTree, have been
some of the recent top level exits in the Indian IT sector. iGate lured away Cognizant’s head of banking,
Debashis Chatterjee who is reportedly going to be its COO.

As the industry goes through a boom period organizations are grappling with turnover across the
ladder. Senior level exits however have different implications than middle or junior levels. Apart from
business disruptions and cost implications, such exits affect employee morale most. People always
wonder “why did that person go? Did he know something that we do not?” The way to handle such exits
is to communicate frequently with employees. Having a succession plan for all contingencies is of the
essence – even for top level executives.

90% of Indian workers ready to relocate

Almost nine-in-ten Indian employees are willing to move for the right job, with many even prepared to
relocate to another country or continent in order to secure a preferred position, according to the latest
survey from Kelly Services. The findings are part of the Kelly Global Workforce Index, which obtained the
views of approximately 97,000 people in 30 countries, including almost 2,000 in India.

A total of 89% of the respondents said that they were willing to move for the right job. Out of these,
39% of the respondents said that they were prepared to move within the country while 49% were
willing to relocate to another country or continent to secure a job of their choice.

One reason for this is that historically Indians have been a people who have migrated to far off lands to
earn and make a life since centuries. From semi-skilled to highly skilled, a lot of people look for better
options in other cities and countries. The familiarity with the English language enables Indians to move
to most English speaking countries – and high demand skills ensures that countries that need them roll
out the red carpet. Another reason why Indians are more willing to be mobile is that a majority of the
Indian working population is young and do not have encumbrances that might stop them from moving.

Primary school enrolments plunge.

While the government has been trying to popularize its efforts to send more children to school, enrolment
in primary classes across the country has, in actuality, dropped since 2007. Between 2008-09 and 2009-
10, enrolment in classes I to IV in Indian schools dropped by over 2.6 million.

While more data is not available, it would seem that the economic slowdown should be blamed. The
slowdown impacted industries that use semi-skilled and un-skilled workers , impacting their ability to
send their children to school.

Hopefully, with the growth in these sectors since last year these children will get back to school this year
and not be deprived of a future.

From the HR Blogs

The successfactors blog focuses on the Next Economy and what leaders should do to reduce the gap
between strategy and execution. One fact it shares Enterprise organizations are failing to monitor,

motivate and retain employees. Only 17% of organizations know all its top-performing employees and are
looking to develop them for future roles.

Read more here

Theresa Welbourne blogs at the TLNT blog that leaders should forget about trying to change culture and
instead work on the climate and habits

Read more here

At the Systematic HR blog, Dub Dubs shares that while HRIS implementations are focusing on Talent
and Analytics, in the recent past there has been renewed focus on core HR.

Read more here

Related articles

• LinkedIn in Asia: India 9, Australia 2, China 1 [INFOGRAPHIC] (penn-olson.com)

Challenges and Trends for HR services

Some excerpts from the latest article we wrote. You can also see the presentation we made

The industry of HR in India

View more presentations from People Matters.

Amplify’d from peoplematters.in

Challenges for clients As business evolves, the role of HR will see a transformation towards becoming more business-oriented, and this will create varied challenges for client organizations in finding the right partner and engagement model to address their business needs. While there is systemic demand for HR services, client companies face a host of challenges in finding the right partners to • Fragmented market - As a result of low entry barriers, lack of certification norms, huge business opportunity and decentralized decision-making process in the HR function, many service providers are entering this market, resulting in more confusion for the client organization in making the right choice. • Inadequate information and absence of a central access point: While the service providers are many and come in all sizes, client organizations often face the issue in finding the right partner as there is virtually no central repository or information network where client organizations can find information about all service providers to assist in decision making. • Absence of service providers’ credentials: The absence of credentials of the existing service providers add to the challenge. This is especially true for recruitment and technology segments where the buyer has no protection against unethical practices. • Inability of service-providers to scale up to client organizations’ needs: The client organization faces a challenge in finding a partner that will be able to cope with their potential growth projections. • Lack of India-centric frameworks - Most assessment tools, consulting frameworks, and HR services are borrowed from the west, leaving many loopholes while addressing the needs of organizations operating in India. • No pricing standards and benchmarks: While client organizations’ focus is to ensure price advantage while partnering with service providers, there is no defined price catalogue that service providers follow. This has led few client organizations to focus on outcome-based payment where the fee charged is directly proportionate to the success of the intervention. Challenges for service providers If the players in the HR industry want to capitalize on their increasing role in driving client organization growth, they must reflect on how they can turn this opportunity into an exponential growth trajectory for themselves. • Build on home-grown expertise to develop Indian frameworks – Service providers face an urgent need to invest in extensive R&D to build on expertise through home-grown solutions and frameworks that will address local challenges. • Maintain talent caliber – As a result of increased number of projects, service providers have resorted to engaging fresh talent from the industry who are often much junior and are less experienced than the client representative themselves. This has resulted in a credibility gap in the eyes of the client organization. • Create measures to calculate business impact - As HR in client organizations struggle to show the ROI of these interventions, service providers have to prepare themselves with appropriate metrics that can demonstrate real business impact either on the top line or the bottom line. This will meet the urgent need to establish a link between fee and desired outcome. • Pricing pressures will build with increased market competitiveness – The increasing number of players entering this space will lead to market cannibalization and therefore impact pricing. For example, a larger strategy consulting firms will find itself competing with HR consulting firm for certain assignments or even take up executive search or leadership development projects, taking away business from the traditional executive search firms. • Choose your game plan - As the industry evolves, service providers will need to choose between positioning themselves either as a one-window-service provider or a niche expert. Both will find a space in this growing market. Trends that lie ahead The dynamic nature of the HR industry makes it an industry to look out for. The challenges faced by client organizations and service providers will result in creative steps taken at both ends: The industry of HR will witness the following as we go along: : • Phenomenal growth opportunity will see an explosion of players. This industry will see a growth of 3 to 4% of the country’s GDP growth rate, says E. Balaji, MD & CEO, Ma Foi Randstad. As a consequence, the market will see growth for current players and increasing entry of new players. The traditionally non-HR providers (such as communications and branding firms entering the employer branding or employee communication space) and investment are expected to flow in. • The top-end of the segment (executive search, HR consulting, leadership development) and the low-end of the segment (HR outsourcing, RPO and process driven services) will grow at a towering rate. Companies will spend either on farming out the low-value work to partners (like increased outsourcing of transactional or operational work), or focus on increasing investment in high performers (using leadership consulting or executive coaching services). Hence all service providers will have to either capture the high-end or the low-end (or both) to continue growing. • Consolidation is happening, mostly dominated by MNCs. The industry has grown over time through consolidations. Better technology, marketing muscle and benefits in terms of offering and outreach from being part of the larger player will continue to drive this trend. • Increased focus on HR shared services and HR outsourcing. As HR moves towards a strategic role, its focus will shift from transactional to business partnership. There will be an increased focus in HR shared services and HR outsourcing as more and more organizations will look at centralizing the HR activities. “HR Shared Service Centre combined with single process outsourcing (in big conglomerate) e.g. payroll, compliances, benefits administration, or strategic HR with major processes being outsourced, are maturing as two alternatives,” shares Deepa Mohamed. • New career avenues for professionals. The HR industry is fast getting recognized as an industry in its full right and will attract talent from other industries. Candidates from other industries within functions like sales, marketing and finance are eyeing this industry as an opportunity for faster growth. It has been established that internal HR functions need the assistance of the service providers to be successful in their growth journey and remain relevant to their businesses. The novel and emerging needs of HR professionals is the raison d’etre of the HR industry. The industry is still at a maturing stage in India, and many service offerings are very new and will require more time to mature. Both client organizations and service providers will see a lot of churn in the coming years, sometimes competing for talent, sometimes arguing over fees charged, and sometimes even over their engagement objectives and working models. However, it is like a marriage. Both sides need each other to grow and be successful. Increasing conversations between both sides will help them to know each other’s needs and therefore grow the industry as a whole. Perhaps the solution lies with the creation of a HR industry body that will focus on training, certification and quality benchmarks, of this large and fast growing industry. Read more at peoplematters.in

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

Digital and Social Media in India

Image via WikipediaI was recently interviewed by the students at Singapore Management University as part of their project on Digital Media Across Asia project for the Digital Media in India scenario.

How they decided I was an "expert" is beyond me :D

You can see their wiki here and listen to my audio interview here

The state of the HR industry -Consulting, Outsourcing & HRIS- in India

The latest issue of People Matters is focused on the state of the HR Industry in India.

You can read the cover story here (written by Ester Martinez, Rajlakshmi Saikia and yours truly)

There's a very valuable article by Dr. TV Rao -his views on HR Consulting - and his interview

Other interviews about the industry are by Consulting leaders NS Rajan of Ernst & Young , Dhruv Prakash of Korn Ferry and HR advisor Aquil Busrai

HR leaders like Krish Shankar (HR head of Airtel) talk about their expectations from the HR industry and changes required for HR professionals

Industry experts like Deepak Dhawan and Debu Mishra also share their thoughts on the nature of the industry

Current state of the HR industry from the service provider's side is by Pankaj Bansal , CEO of People Strong and E. Balaji of Ma Foi


There are a tonne of other content in the issue too. You can access them here


Hope you like the issue. Would love your feedback 

Talent Management and Knowledge management - what's the link

Yesterday I was invited by a Delhi based MBA college, IILM, to deliver a talk to the students on Talent Management and Knowledge Management.

My first response was "What's the connection? They are fundamentally different approaches, Talent Management is figuring out who your top performers are and how to empower and grow them. Knowledge Management in the traditional sense is "extractive" in nature. It wants to find out what your people know and attempts to "capture" that." (note: When I say KM, I focused on the first generation of KM)

So here are the key points I shared with the students:

• Talent Management is not really about managing people's talents - but about assessing, finding, developing your top performers. 
• Traditional HR is silo driven , and Talent Management calls for a structural change in the way HR processes are delivered to these top employees.
• An over-focus on Talent Management might make the average and good players disengaged.
• In some way, Talent Management becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You choose a group of people, tell them they are better than the rest, and give them differentiated inputs. 
• The concept of "Talent" originated from sports, however in organizations, performance is contextual to the business, processes, team and industry. 
• Talent Analytics is one of the fastest growing aspects as organizations want to understand with data which people are going to perform and who is not when put into a role.
• I suspect Talent Management approach will replace HR, as organizations will say "if we can do this for high performers why can't we focus on all employees" - and that would be driven by technology.

When the turn came to focus on Knowledge Management

• The "extractive" nature of KM 1.0 ensured it didn't succeed. People didn't see meaning and sense in it.
• The focus to KM 2.0 is by using enterprise social tools to enable employees to connect with and engage each other to create collective knowledge. 
• KM2.0 will succeed when it adds value to the employees as well as the organization, when more than the usual creators are involved.

SHRM urged by members to be transparent

I have blogged on the meta trends shaping culture and tools being developed that support the drive for transparency and desire for connectedness, changing leadership itself.

Here's one more example of this trend of transparency,  and how tools are giving powers to people to act as a pressure group in a different kind of organization.

The leadership board of the Society of Human Resource Management in the US is being questioned by a group that is calling itself the SHRM members for Transparency, sharing their letter to the Board in a public place on the social web.

They've been getting media attention too, being featured on HREOnline, and TLNT. Recruiting thought leader Gerry Crispin also wrote a post on why he's part of the campaign.

We don't know yet if this will change things at SHRM in the US, but without doubt the tools have made it easier for the word to be got out and opposing viewpoints shared.

So are you ready for the new transparent organization? Or will you be forced to become one?

Maruti revamps HR Talent systems

Faced with increasing competition for talent in the auto sector market leader Maruti (owned by Japanese maker Suzuki) has revamped its Talent compensation systems. The innovative part I find is the bit about helping employees to buy a house at a lower price. I wonder if this practice will catch on and what kind of impact it would have on attrition.

Amplify’d from articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Maruti plans to induct younger professionals into to the senior management cadre and devise salaries linked to performance even as it hikes entry-level pay, and throws in novel incentives to hold on to its executives on the fast track. Maruti has increased performance-linked pay from junior levels to the top management by between 10% and 25%. "We have linked our variable pay to the financial performance of the company with a greater focus on cash variables as the liability is lower," said S.Y Siddiqui, Managing Executive Officer, HR & Administration, Maruti Suzuki. Other carrots include helping employees buy a house by negotiating with builders for a better price. Read more at articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com

 

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

Google finds a Good Boss is about people

We all knew that from research about EQ and IQ - so much so that maybe someone will look at Google Oxygen a management effectiveness project - and say "Hey Google, you rediscovered the wheel".



It wanted to delve into its data and figure out what kind of people make good bosses in Google.



Guess what? It's the same kind of people who are better bosses in other places too. Read the results here:

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock’s group found that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.” Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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

People, Data, Decisions, Serendipity

Dub Dubs at SystematicHR has a great post starting with his own personal story to illustrate the point that waiting for complete data is not the best way to go about making decisions.



I'd like to add that while technology would make really mini-transactional data possible, more and more we'll need the skill of looking at the trees, the leaves, the flowers and then zooming out and gaining an understanding of the forest. Sometimes the difference between a tree and another can seem fascinating, but the question we need to ask ourselves is "How does this change the nature of the forest"



The question is relevant for HR professionals because I have seen fellow professionals looking at spreadsheets of data - rows and columns - of salary data - and then saying "When I became a HR manager I didn't realise that I'd be spending more time with numbers than with people"



It's time to remember that the numbers represent people and should not be the only way to define them.



Read the great post here:

Amplify’d from systematichr.com

We often talk about analytics and how it changes how we operate in HR.  High quality data leads to high quality choices – and often times that is true.  But it is also true that we don’t always have all of the data that we need at any specific point in time – if we had everything we needed to know, we might make vastly different choices. I’ll take succession planning as an example.  We know who the top 10 succession candidates are for top positions (hopefully).  We know when they will be ready, what their relative skills and competencies are, and how their strengths compare to one another.  But we don’t know which of them are going to jump ship and go to another company before the position becomes vacant.  We don’t know which of them are going to stop growing, regardless of our best efforts to continue developing them.  The best that we can do, is to invest in a pool of candidates, and hope that one of them, the right one, is ready when the time comes. We use decision support and analytics to crunch the numbers for us, but at the end of the day, it’s still serendipity – it’s still luck.  The hope here, is that while analytics and decision support can’t be a perfect predictor, we can in fact “make our own luck.”  We can improve our odds at getting the best outcomes.  At the end of the day, it is not serendipity versus decision support, but a combination of the two that will make our best data work for us. Read more at systematichr.com

 

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

SuccessFactors enters the Social Learning space

HR software firm SuccessFactors has acquired Jambok, reports TechCrunch. This is interesting because it shows a sign in the HRMS space. Some time ago a company like SuccessFactors would have taken over a LMS or eLearning company to shore up their offering, while now it is focusing on social software related firms like CubeTree and Jambok.

Shows how much organizations are focusing on the "learning that happens outside of the classroom" by peer to peer collaboration. Personally I think the training model is broken and needs to be made relevant by social learning. The really useful Social Intranet will not be a place where employees will just get information. It has to be designed for all the 4 kinds of learning



Read more about the news and Jambok below:

Amplify’d from techcrunch.com

Jambok’s SaaS enables companies and communities to share knowledge in the the cloud. Ideal for the “informal learning” (everything that’s not official training) part of corporate communications, the Jambok platform allows you to post video, audio, photos, as well as screen capture your desktop in order to share knowledge within your organization. Users can also rate, tag, and comment on content on both the web app and via mobile apps.

SuccessFactors plans to integrate Jambok’s social video creation and sharing tools into its social collaboration offering as well as other areas of the Business Execution (BizX) Suite, including social recruiting.

This is SuccessFactors’ fourth acquisition in a year. The cloud software giant bought social enterprise software company CubeTree for $50 million, Inform for $40 million, and cloud-based analytics platform YouCalc for an undisclosed amount. Read more at techcrunch.com

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

The 4 kinds of Learning

As a HR professional one always thinks of training but as I mentioned before, learning is a much more broader term. I came across this interesting article which focusses on the different kinds of learning. I've blogged about connectivism before and I suspect would hear more about it in the future.



Here are the 4 kinds of learning

Amplify’d from theelearningcoach.com

1. Connectivism

Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital world, where information is constantly changing and updating. Developed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes, this big idea is based on networks and on community, which is defined as “a clustering of similar areas of interest that allows for interaction, sharing, dialoguing and thinking together.”

2.Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning—acquiring knowledge and skills through working with others—goes against the traditional model of pushing instruction on to audience members. This big idea assumes that learning is active, social and constructive.

3. Situated Learning

This model, developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, proposes that effective learning occurs through the same activities, context and culture in which it will be applied. Further, that learners take on the sensibilities and beliefs of the community of practice in which they immerse themselves, so that enculturation happens seamlessly. This contrasts with the traditional approach to learning, which typically occurs separate from where the learned performance will take place.

4. Informal Learning

This big idea is based on the fact that people are naturally designed for learning. Infants and children are compelled to explore, discover and experiment; adults learn more outside of structured programs at work, home and play than through formal means. Read more at theelearningcoach.com

 

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

Social Intranet: Collaboration in the social context of Enterprise 2.0 using Qontext

The week before last I was given a demo by the folks at Qontext on their social intranet and social sales product.

While the product itself was good, what was the deal clincher for me was the ability that Qontext has of integrating with browser based business applications. Jay Pullur, the CEO, shared that they have developed a technology which enables them to embed Qontext in any such app. Currently they integrate well with business apps like Netsuite, Sugar CRM and Salesforce.

Qontext also acts as a great social intranet tool, building abilities of facebook, twitter, blogs and even email within itself, and HR folks who are looking at a social communication tool to engage employees. 

Jay says that collaboration has to be within the business object/app (or as JP says, in the systems of record) and that email is resorted to, when there are exceptions. Unless exceptions and the discussions around it are dealt within the context of the app, email will always be the preferred system of exchanging work related information. "It's just an Alt-Tab away" he says "However email discussions take attention away from the contextual business related discussions"

Here are two interesting videos that demonstrate what Qontext does in a collaborative selling method





Would Qontext be used by CRM tool vendors to fight the challenge of Salesforce's Chatter?

The sugarcon would be a good place to see the response

Disclaimer: Qontext paid for my ticket to Hyderabad to see their demo

Twitter and its uses

Yesterday I tweeted this on my twitter account

It turned out to one of my most "re-tweeted" tweets ever. (A "re-tweet" is akin to forwarding a mail or sharing  on Facebook)

A lot of people (and organizations) have asked what is the way they should use twitter... and my response is always - "It depends" (yeah, I know that's a typical HR guy's answer ;-) I question them next "What do you want to use it for?"

That question almost always prompts a pause and then a question "what can I use it for?"

Personally I use twitter for these different uses:

1.  "Personal Learning Network" - when I want to learn about a certain area I follow the thought leaders and notice whom they are talking to. I click on the sites they recommend. I learn by conversing with them, asking them questions. For example, if I want to learn about Social CRM who better than the person who literally wrote the book about the subject, Paul Greenberg?
2. Asking for help - There are tonnes of people who know stuff or people who know people who know stuff. Asking what to do in a city, or which gadget to buy, or whom to ask for help - people on twitter respond with help. It sometimes is more useful than a search engine. Because people respond, not "keyword optimised websites"
3. News - When there is an international event, like Egypt, Libya, the Mumbai terror attacks, New Zealand earthquakes, someone is out there tweeting about it, from that spot. And news on twitter shows up, as people share it.
4. Social Network - A lot of my "blogging buddies" (from the HR and KM and the Indian blogosphere) have been early adopters of Twitter. It's a great way to stay in touch with them, find out what they are reading and sharing and also to meet them serendipitously meet them
5. Curation - I use twitter as a way to share interesting content I come across - not just for the people to follow me. But I am also using it as my own bookmarking service.
6. Promotion - Very less, but when I want to promote my work (as a consultant, or content creator) I use twitter to spread the word. Most people end up doing only (or mostly) this through twitter, and then it doesn't work. 
7. Promoting others and their efforts - I do this often. It could be a cause. A great piece of art. An achievement. Someone's new job. I share it

So that is how I use twitter. And I don't have a "strategy" to use twitter. 

ex-McKinsey head Rajat Gupta charged with insider trading

Image via WikipediaThis news although it came to light when Rajarathnam was being investigated, and Rajat Gupta's name was brought up, still sent a shock in the business community yesterday when the ex-McKinsey managing partner was charged by the US SEC for insider trading.

As this article says:

“McKinsey is the closest thing the business world has to a confessional, and [Gupta] was the high priest,” said a former managing director at Salomon Brothers and business school dean.
And a former Goldman MD talked about McKinsey "as the psychiatrist-in-chief for corporate America." The person explained to Bloomberg that if Gupta was found guilty of his alleged crimes," it means you can trust no one."

And over here in India, where he's a role model, students at top B-Schools are not giving up on him even though P&G seems to have given up on him. Rajat Gupta resigned from the P&G board on 1st March.

“The news came as a shock. I have known Rajat and know how much Indian students look up to him. Given his association with us, we feel personally affected,” a senior Wharton faculty member said in an email, requesting anonymity.

Related articles

• Mean Street: Davos Man Rajat Gupta in Bizarro World (blogs.wsj.com)
• Rajat Gupta and Wall Street's Biggest Insider Trading Scandal Ever (thedailybeast.com)
• Galleon Insider-Trading Probe Fingers Former McKinsey Head (blogs.wsj.com)
• Is McKinsey a bearish indicator? (theglobeandmail.com)

The issue with automated influence lists like Public Relations 2.0

Image via WikipediaLots of people keep talking about how "influence" cannot be reduced to mere numbers. How algorithms cannot capture the essence of why people are influenced and by whom.

Here's again how it was brought home to me. The folks at traackr who track the conversations on the social web around various topics, have listed me number 19 in the Public Relations 2.0 list. To be fair the break up of the score shows my "relevance" score to be a measly 10 - and the only reason it is there is because I tweet sometimes on the areas of intersection of Public Relations and Social Media. But still, me being on that list puts the system of such lists in question.

I mean, the list doesn't have heavy hitters in the PR domain from India, like Palin, Karthik S or Surekha Pillai, two of whom have much larger number of followers on Twitter than me, and one who blogs and tweets more about Public Relations than I do.

Ultimately, my advice to businesses who might be relying on such tools (others being Klout, Twitalyzer and Peerindex) to make decisions about online influencers - they are a good starting point to point to influencers, but even they can't be the top of the funnel. Human intervention is still needed to understand who the influencers are - and while its early days for the tools yet, the only way they can go is up.