Quoted in the latest Chief Learning Officer magazine

My twitter friend Dan Pontfract the author of Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization, and Head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS recently wrote an article in the Chief Learning Officer magazine.

The article is titled "the social C-suite" and Dan says if the C-suite increases its social media use internally and externally, it could be used as a tool to impact organizational competence. You should buy the magazine - I am not sure if it is online right now.

Dan was kind enough to ask me if I would be willing to answer some questions that he would answer. I agreed. Here's what he asked and my answers.

*         What benefits does 'going social' bring members of the C-Suite with respect to internal employee engagement?

Remember the days of T-groups and OD interventions that originated out of NTL? Their objective was to make organizations more open and transparent. The thought being, if feedback loops were open and transparent, then it would be an adaptive and learning organization. "social" shorn of the buzzwords, aims at creating that organization finally. The benefits would be an organization where opinion and information is unfiltered and real time. Eventually creating an organization that responds faster to stimuli - both internal and external.

*         What are 3 key attributes C-Suite members should employ when 'going social' with their employees?

- Willingness to rethink the way they view "management" and "leadership"
- start thinking in flows rather than stocks as Hagel, Brown say in their book "The Power of Pull"
- Stop thinking of the boundaries as opaque walls - both internally and externally. Think of them as porous, translucent membranes.
-Be ready to fail. In public. Embarrassingly. Remember, it's a world of flows. You will recover faster as you will learn faster.

*         What if the C-Suite doesn't go social. What happens or will happen over time?

- The organization will go on. Things will be the same. For a time. Then the slow continental shifts of time will make sure that the organization gets irrelevant. And dies.

The #IndiaHRchat on Twitter. Why you should participate

Image via CrunchBase

For those people not on Twitter, here's an introduction to Twitterchats. A Twitterchat is a conversation centered around a topic which is tracked by a hashtag (denoted by a # sign followed by the name) - So #indiaHRchat would be a twitter chat. This was taken up by Tanvi Gautam (Singapore based consultant) and almost a month ago she hosted the first such chat with special guest Abhijit Bhaduri (Chief Learning Officer - Wipro) on the topic of social media for L&D.

Today evening is the second Twitter chat that Tanvi is hosting - this time the guest is Anand Pillai, Chief Learning Officer of Reliance Industries, and he would be talking on Personal Branding for HR professionals.

The great thing about Twitter chats is that they are not a one on one conversation and that anyone can participate. The open nature of Twitter makes it possible for even people who did not know about it to get involved.

So if you're on Twitter and interested in the topic, join us today from 7 pm IST.

Here's what happened at Abhijit's Twitter chat.

McKinsey on 6 social media skills for leaders

McKinsey Quarterly has a brilliant article on how leaders need to build social media skills, at a personal and organizational/strategic level. Along with examples from GE.

So if you're a leader in an organization which of these skills would you focus on depending on organizational priorities?

#SocialRecruiting news: MyParichay and Shine.com tie up to launch social job board

In the boldest step yet, Shine.com the job portal of HT Media, has tied up with social recruiting app MyParichay to launch a solution called "Social Bar"

Using their online network of Facebook contacts, job seekers on Shine.com can now get their foot in the door or an interview with a potential employer and expand their professional network on Facebook. One of the main benefits of the MyParichay Social Bar™ is that Shine.com users are able to see which of their Facebook friends and friends of friends work in the company that posted the open job on Shine.com. Once they have this information they can forward their resume to these connections and increase their chances of getting an interview.

 Shine.com has been a follower in the job board market in India to Naukri, Monster and even TimesJobs. So it's interesting to see them trying out something innovative like social recruiting to break away from traditional job boards.

The future of education and learning is social and gamified

So my friend +Gaurav Mishra shared this article about the 10 most innovative companies in education, and the list is led by companies like Coursera and Udacity, who are taking education out of the physical confines of classrooms.

This change of "social and gamification" is coming to corporate learning too, as this post at HBR shows how Deloitte made learning a game.

What is gamification?

Gamification takes the essence of games — attributes such as fun, play, transparency, design and competition — and applies these to a range of real-world processes inside an organization, including learning & development. The technology research firm Gartner, Inc. predicts gamification will be used in 25 percent of redesigned business processes by 2015, this will grow to more than a $2.8 billion business by 2016, and 70 percent of Global 2000 businesses will be managing at least one "gamified" application or system by 2014. 

Typically customer service and loyalty programs have been gamified mostly. Employee recognition and rewards is also being gamified by vendors like Work.com

I predict that the next big growth would be in corporate learning and development. So, are corporate learning leaders in India looking forward to such disruptive technology? That learners would love, but would mean L&D folks themselves would have to unlearn and learn a lot :)