Exploring The Future of Work

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As a person who's passionate about learning - as well as a social media enthusiast - I have blogged and talked about how social tools could be used for learning within organizations.

So I was quite excited to get a copy of Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham's book "The New Social Learning". Marcia is a Partner at the Altimeter Group and Tony is the CEO of the American Society of Training and Development.


The book is a great collection of leading edge organizations that are experimenting successfully with various social technologies (like internal social networking, microsharing, video-tagging, communities of practice) to enable their employees to learn and connect with each other.


The first good news is that you don't need to be a tech organization to deploy social tools to enable people to learn from each other. The examples in the book range from organizations like the CIA to Booz to Wells Fargo to Coca Cola.

The second good news is that deploying these tools does not mean a lot of expense unlike the earlier investments into technology that enabled learning like LMSs and e-learning content.

The third good news is that trainers can breathe easy. They are not going to be redundant anytime soon - but if they leverage these tools they can help their learners learn better and faster.






What I liked about the book is that it takes each argument that organizations would take against implementing social media tools - and gives reasons why it would work. This is a great resource for HR and learning people who are looking to be change agents. It has tonnes of tips on how to leverage social media for in-person events like conferences and classroom events.

The book also looks at the underlying reasons why social technologies are being adopted - and how organizations have a choice to either get in their employees' way or to use it. There's an appendix on governance which looks at organizations like IBM and how they put in systems and processes that help them become a "social business"

Where I think this book could have been better would be by including a chapter on non-social media savvy HR and L&D people on introduction to how they can use each tool for their own growth and learning. Maybe there's another book idea there?

That aside, this is a must read book for anyone who is working in the areas of employee learning and wants to build a more open and collaborative learning organization.
You can see the book's website here and keep up with it on Twitter at @newsociallearn

Interesting post by Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the parallels between having influence on Twitter and the new competencies for success.

In the 21st century, America is rapidly becoming a society of networks, even within organizations. Maintenance of organizations as structures is less important than assembling resources to get results, even if the assemblage itself is loose and perishable.

Today, people with power and influence derive their power from their centrality within self-organizing networks that might or might not correspond to any plan on the part of designated leaders. Organization structure in vanguard companies involves multi-directional responsibilities, with an increasing emphasis on horizontal relationships rather than vertical reporting as the center of action that shapes daily tasks and one's portfolio of projects, in order to focus on serving customers and society. Circles of influence replace chains of command, as in the councils and boards at Cisco which draw from many levels to drive new strategies. Distributed leadership — consisting of many ears to the ground in many places — is more effectives than centralized or concentrated leadership. Fewer people act as power-holders monopolizing information or decision-making, and more people serve as integrators using relationships and persuasion to get things done.

This changes the nature of career success. It is not enough to be technically adept or even to be interpersonally pleasant. Power goes to the "connectors": those people who actively seek relationships and then serve as bridges between and among groups. Their personal contacts are often as important as their formal assignment. In essence, "She who has the best network wins."

Go ahead read the full article - and you can follow Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Twitter too

This is a post to let you know that the HR Professionals community has really grown from its small beginnings and now has more than 350 people - and 6 groups discussing Innovative HR and work related areas like Learning and Development Specialists , Consulting , Compensation Experts , Recruiters  and HR Generalists .

Then there is the Forum  where people can discuss any issues they are passionate or want to know more about.

For people who want to start blogging but don't really know how to go about building a readership - the community has a blogging feature which has a ready-made audience of the community members! Check it out here

The community primarily comprises of HR professionals from India, but there are a large number of consultants and experts from other countries as well.

So why don't you join us there?

On a totally unrelated note, you can join this blog's Facebook page too. Currently there are 35 fans :-) You can follow this blog on Google Reader by clicking "Follow This Blog" on the right hand column. Currently there are 9 followers.

Over the last week, the engagement metrics have been really rising on the blog. The visitors' average actions per visit is 2.7 and average time per visitor was 2minutes and 10.6 seconds.

Maybe it's the slowdown and the lack of regular posting from my end... 

Linkedin has a new site called Learning Center and here's a great resource for Consultants who wonder "how exactly can I use Linkedin" ?

Some more pointers that I think one can use - use your Linkedin recommendations on your own website - so that non-Linkedin members can see them too.

Use the URL/Q&A feature on Linkedin to expose people (and the Googlebot) to your website (check my Linkedin public profile to see how I've done that)

Use descriptive sentences to elaborate on areas of expertise and specialisation. Every word on the web (whether on your website or your Linkedin profile) is a branding and positioning opportunity. Use it after a lot of thought or get experts/Clients who you've worked with in the past to review it and give opinion on it.

Why does the SHRM conference in the US have Sidney Poitier and Lionel Richie addressing HR folks?

US HR types, what the heck's happening? If "SHRM is the voice of a profession" as Ulrich claimed, I sure don't like the way the voice sounds - even if Sidney Poitier sounds great! Lionel was never my fave singer :P

Let me guess - US HR folks are bored of listening to Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank and Peter Capelli is busy in India.

Thank goodness, the NHRD hasn't asked Navin Nischol to be a keynote speaker.

Yet.

Shudder!

I like what Ford Harding calls the Stern Elevator Speech - before you get scared, it's not stern (being named after someone called Stern) and it's not a speech. In fact, it's less than the 140 character Twitter speech :-)

I use variations of similar introductions, without necessary getting into a spiel about what I do. It's great to get business development opportunities from social occasions.

Some weeks ago I took my kids to one of their friend's birthday party. Got talking to one of kid's father.

Turned out that he was a promoter of a niche manufacturing firm. Then he asked me "So what do you do?"

Me: "Oh, I help organizations set up HR systems and process." (I say that because saying "I'm a HR Consultant" makes them think I am a headhunter, and the conversation goes into a different direction and too much effort goes into making them come around to what I want them to remember. Saying "Am a strategic HR and OD consultant" would ensure another round of clarifications)

When you are trying to build a business relationship, choose to let the person do most of the talking.

"Really?" he said "What kind systems and processes?"

Me: "We work a lot with small and medium enterprises, and because they can't usually afford to set up large HR departments, we develop their recruitment, compensation & benefits system, Performance managment systems so that they can get the most suited talent to come and work for them"

"Hmm"

After a couple of minutes he said "I heard what you said. We are also facing a lot of talent challenges in our business. Competition has gone up, and we are losing people to them. Do you have a card on you so that I can call you later?"

"Sure"

It was a social occasion. I did not want to be the one making the 'sales approach' and seem pushy. It was the elevator speech that made he CEO ask for my card.

He called me back, too. Last week.

We had our first meeting today.

Update: And if you think you in HR, Finance and IT don't need to know all this stuff. Here's some advice. Tom Peters thinks if you want to get anything done [and implementaion is paramount to Tom], then you are in sales.

Another interesting article by David Perry and Kevin Donline on How to make your Job Outsource Proof. First thing to do:

Whether or not it's in your job description, finding new business is everyone's responsibility. Cash Flow is the lifeblood of every business looking to grow, prosper and create a stable environment for its employees. So, even if you're in accounting or information technology, what one thing could you do to bring in more revenue? If you're not sure, buy your company's top sales superstar a cup of coffee and ask. Then take action to help bring in more money--and make sure your boss knows about the time you've put in.

Social networks in the corporate world involve very different dynamics, and scientists at IBM Research's Collaborative User Div. in Cambridge, Mass., are learning all about them. Over the past two years, IBM has been busily launching in-house versions of Web 2.0 hits. "We're trying to see how things that are hot elsewhere can be fit for business," says Irene Greif, an IBM Fellow who heads up Collaborative User Experience.

So far, IBM has Dogear, a community-tagging system based on Del.icio.us, Blue Twit, and a rendition of the microblogging sensation, Twitter. It also has a Web page called Many Eyes that permits anyone (including outsiders, at many-eyes.com) to upload any kind of data, visualize it, and then launch discussions about it on blogs and social networks. The biggest success is the nine-month-old social network, Beehive, which is based on the premise of Facebook. It has already attracted 30,000 users, including top executives.

Why would Big Blue want to promote such behavior inside the company?

A couple of reasons. First, in a global company with nearly 400,000 employees, most people are too far away to plop down in a teammate's cubicle or grab a cup of coffee. These social tools, IBM hopes, will provide a substitute for personal connections that flew away with globalization—and help to build and strengthen far-flung teams. "People are putting up pictures of their family, the same way they'd put them up in the cubicle," says Joan DiMicco, one of the research scientists.

Adapting these tools, according to IBM, is also important for recruiting. Hotshots coming out of universities are accustomed to working across these new networks—and are likely to look at a company that still relies on the standard '90s fare of e-mail and the phone as slow and backward.

Isn't that cool? IBM is really keen on discovering whether knowledge access is faster via social media than traditional KM efforts. In fact one of my online buddies, Luis Suarez, is a community builder in IBM. Check his presentation that he made to Next08 on More Collaboration through less email. On a related note, on my post on HR and web 2.0 someone else from IBM left a comment:

Ford Harding, consultant and expert on Professional Services Marketing, posts on his blog:

The characteristics of a good, though not-deep relationship include mutual respect as people and as professionals and commitment to help each other, if in limited ways. They do not need to include shared interests beyond the narrow field in which the two people network together.

At this level the born-again Christian and the atheist give to each other and get back. The sports nut and the ballet buff work to make each others’ lives better. People whose countrymen are at each others’ throats look out for each others’ welfare.

This is not a utopian vision. It exists in many heavily networked markets. It is not a formula for world peace, but can make our lives more interesting and rewarding.

Remember one more thing about these less than profound relationships: Anyone who has been out of work or had a personal crisis learns that it is not always the people you expected to who help you the most. Sometimes the deep relationships are not as deep as we had thought and some of the shallow ones aren’t so shallow.

I often see in networking groups that my friend Vincent Wright manages that unknown people volunteer to help with nary a thought about getting 'returns'. Such people understand the actual meaning of networking.

If you are going to be there too, then let's meet.

SHRM India is the Indian chapter of the Society of Human Resources Management.

Details here. Call Shrividhya to get more info.

Stealthily contact management site Plaxo has been adding functionalities to take on business networking site Linkedin as well as trying to become a platform for people to integrate their disparate online personas (like Friendfeed for example)

So when I logged in today to Plaxo (I am still a Linkedin regular :-) I noticed that Plaxo has added people search abilities.
Then there's the option to add your professional profile, which you might agree does not link very clearly to its stated position of being a "address book for the web"
But Plaxo's most interesting feature is Plaxo Pulse which tells you what your connections have been twittering, blogging or connecting with others.

In fact, one can now setup a public profile that can been seen by others with a easy to remember URL like mine is http://gautam.myplaxo.com/

Should Linkedin be worried? Maybe not in the short term, since Plaxo is still limited to the early adopters and its earlier privacy concerns haven't really gone way. However, if Linkedin does not iron out its performance issues, people might start using Plaxo increasingly more.

Of what good is Twittering or Microblogging? A few months ago even I did not understand. Much the same way as I did not "get" the concept of blogging in 2002 (I'm a slow learner, you see ;-)

What is Twitter, you ask?

If you are seeing this blog post on the web then you might have noticed some text on the right hand sidebar under the heading "Twitter Updates" with some text under it.

Twitter is the tool that helps make this possible and people are using it differently from what it was started for. In a very simple form, it asks you to answer the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less. People can choose to follow your updates, if they choose to become your "followers". Here's a more in depth article by Jeff Jarvis on the Twitter phenomenon.

Then like Technorati for blogs, there's a specific search engine for Twitter called Terraminds. I am such a Twitter newbie that I discovered it today. I searched for HR and Human Resources and found lots of people to follow.

The biggest advantage of twitter is that it enables you to get away from the computer as you can choose to receive the tweets on your cell phone. So imagine that you are doing an informal salary survey for accounting professionals, and you tweet your question to your followers if any of them know how much accountants are making, you can receive real time data.

That's not all, tweeter tracking is another killer feature for you to track specific phrases and have them delivered to your phone/IM. So imagine you are hiring Strategy Consultants, you can set up a track for "Strategy Consultant" and whenever anyone publicly mentions that phrase in their Tweet, you get an update and can contact the person directly. Adding an @ before the username of a person on Tweeter makes the person see it as a reply.

Since Twitter has opened up their API lots of applications are being built around it. My personal favourite is Twitterfox, a Firefox extension that enables me to twitter without going to the website.

Then for the bloggers amongst you, there's Twitterfeed that enables you to send a link to your blog posts to your twitter followers. Some 9 ways Twitter can add to your blogging depth and richness is described in this article.

Oh yes, did I mention how you can use Twitter for recruiting?

Anyway, if you are on twitter, or have decided to convert to a Twitterer (or is it Tweeter?) you can find me here! And other HR folks and Recruiters on Twitter too.

I was talking to a friend who offers marketing and branding services to the Small and Medium Enterprises sector in Delhi and I told her that she should start a facebook page for her firm, and that it's free to do so.

I then realised that sharing it here could help a lot more people. So if you go to the Facebook Business page and then click on Business Pages, you come to this page

Click on the button "Create a Facebook Page" highlighted below

You can then create a page either for local businesses, brand or product or artists, bands or public figures.

You can then get a page like this and people can write about your business and become its fans. It's great for SEO also as the page gets indexed and ranks fairly high on search engines.

Another way to build a good search engine rank for your blog page or firm is through Linkedin.

Most people put in links to their blogs using the generic Linkedin defaults, like this:However, one can instead name these links by going to "edit my profile" and then clicking the edit next to the websites. In the drop down menu choose "other" and then name the keyword you would want the search engine to track.
Since Facebook and Linkedin have very high page rank of 8 and 7 (in Google) and overall credibility across all search engines the link passes on the credibility for your blog and website too (that's what my SEO friends tell me)

So apart from SEM small businesses can use such measures to build their visibility.

It was on 8th of July 2002 that I first tentatively posted my first post. It was a Blogger that still was run by Pyra Labs and hadn't been acquired by Google.

This was what it looked like:


Then after a couple of years when a lot more templates were available to choose from, I opted for this look and a new name which was around for a longish time.

Then for some time I used the K2 format when we could play around with Blogger templates:

I think then in 2007 I settled for the current look :-)

My posting frequency has also varied down the years, with 2006 and 2007 being the most prolific by posting frequency so far:

• 2008 (65)
• 2007 (517)
• 2006 (618)
• 2005 (375)
• 2004 (288)
• 2003 (110)
• 2002 (16)
  

Search engines have primarily been responsible for driving traffic to the blog with over 70% of visitors over the last year having come through them.

The blog that sends the most visitors after the search engines has been Rashmi's blog. Thanks Rashmi!!

The best part of the 2000 posts has been the comments that people have diligently left and have given me food for thought and occasionally castigated me too. It has enabled me to connect with like minded people across the world and has also enabled them to find me when looking for an area of shared interest.

Thanks Blogger! You've been an incredible friend and a very useful tool!

....to become more relevant, feels Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist.

But is the world's largest HR organization upto a change in culture?

Tvarita Consulting pays for me to be a member at SHRM, and I don't get anything of value from there. Maybe it's because my work is more related to India, but even Kris feels SHRM is not the place to turn to, then obviously there is something wrong.

It's the same case for similar networks in India. Bodies like NHRD are rooted in the structures of the past. How will they evolve to be relevant to the new generation of HR professionals?

If you're on facebook you might want to check out this page :-)

Hope to interact with you there.

Would love to hear your ideas on how this Facebook page can be used to connect the readers with each other and to have a better many-to-many dialogue.

I'll be traveling to Chennai tomorrow for addressing a gathering of the Travel Agents' Association of India (TAAI).

The talk would be on how to have a strategy to deal with an uncertain environment, and the people processes to help one's organization negotiate change.

So if you are anywhere near the Ambassador Pallava hotel do give me a call and we can meet either before or after my talk.

2007 was an unforgettable year for me. Maybe, when I am an old man, playing with my grandchildren, I'll tell them about this year. I did say, maybe.

It was the year when the actual meaning of being an independent consultant actually hit me, and my own shortcomings were exposed. Cash was running out and I was staring closely at bankruptcy. It was then that I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and decided to join a firm. In June a large technology and management consulting firm made me an offer to be part of their Leadership Development group, but it would have meant uprooting the family and moving cities, and while the offer was interesting I was forced to say no to it.

Then finally in October I decided to join Tvarita Consulting, and the best part of being here is that it combines the best things of both life as an independent person as well as being part of a larger organization. For me the most fulfilling thing is the ability to convert business leads due to the capability of a larger and experienced team. The ability to join a co-worker for a coffee and brainstorm over ideas is something that an independent consultant often misses.

On the blog front, it has been a great year. I've had more traffic in this year than all previous years combined. And yes, my AdSense earnings went up considerably too ;-)

The highlight of the year was that thanks to the blog, a lot of media folks discovered me and I got a fair share of exposure in the news. Thanks folks, you know who you are :)

One of the most interesting things about blogging is meeting folks you follow virtually, in person. This year I met Rashmi Bansal and Jim Stroud in person during their visits to Hyderabad :-) It's amazing how known a person feels when you have been following their blog posts over a period of time. Unfortunately missed meeting Dina Mehta during her visit. And one jobsite CEO actually took to blogging after our conversation when we met in Hyderabad. Sanjeev, I hope you get back to blogging more regularly :)

Some other friends started to blog too. Prasad Kurian, my senior from XLRI, for example, has some of the most insightful takes on OD and HR. His take on issues in organizations is a must read for HR and non-HR folks. Ishita Bardhan, a junior from XLRI, on the other hand posted only four times and this post by her got quoted verbatim in Paulo Coelho's newsletter.

I also started Facebooking and Twittering this year and thanks to them know a lot more about my friends, like how Australian blogger Michael Specht was watching Australia whallop India at the MCG test match today (ouch!). I also added my blogger rss feed to feedburner and got a good idea of my total subscribers now :) Also created a community on MyBlogLog and you can join if you want to connect with other readers of the blog. My daily links through del.icio.us are available on my personal blog. You can also follow the blog posts I find interesting through my Google Reader shared items page.

It never ceases to amaze me how blogging can help one connect with people whom you might have never met. I mean, how else can one describe my connecting with Ford Harding, the professional services rainmaking guru?

As the year ends, I received some good news. HRWorld thinks this blog is amongst the top 25 HR blogs worldwide.

Thanks for giving me your attention through the whole of 2007 and I hope I keep coming up with stuff to deserve your attention in 2008 too.

Wish you a very prosperous and hope-fulfilling new year !

After I posted about Ford Harding's blog earlier Ford sent me a thank you mail. We got into a conversation and I started telling him about how blogging has benefited me and my ability to get consulting clients. Ford then asked me if he could share my story on his blog and he has :-)

Ford also offered to send a couple of his books to me to read, and I received them yesterday. They are Creating Rainmakers: The Manager's Guide to Training Professionals to Attract New Clients and his earlier book Rain Making: The Professionals Guide to Attracting New Clients

As you might have guessed Ford Harding and his company help professionals become "rainmakers" as their site says:

If you're an accountant, attorney, architect, engineer, executive recruiter or management consultant, you've spent years learning your profession.

But now, if you and your firm are going to prosper, it turns out you're going to have to become a rainmaker, too. And no one ever taught you that in school.

Harding & Company helps professionals learn to sell and market. We help them make the transition from doing and managing client work to bringing it in. We help build the sale behaviors that are a vital part of any professional service firm's success.

I have just started browsing through the books and have found that some activities that I have been indulging over the last few years (unknowingly) is what rainmakers do as second nature. Two aspects being, looking at every thing always optimistically and cultivating a network without the thought of immediate business gain.

In fact, before the days of blogging and before the days of Yahoogroups.com I interacted with students from other B Schools and CAs on a Rediff chat site called "A Smoke Filled Cafe". I am still in touch with them. One is a retail consultant with AT Kearney and the other is a KPMG auditor at London.

Other examples have been to create a community of HR professionals and KM practitioners in 2000. Many members of these communities have become personal friends and people who sound me out for advisory help.

Then of course, there is this blog, and the Linkedin community and connections through Orkut and Facebook.

As Ford says in his book, developing network is a pay-off that is a J shaped curve. It starts very slowly, probably leading to disappointment in the short term...but when the curves starts going up it moves very steeply :-)

Keep an eye out for my detailed review of Ford's books coming soon.

I'll be at the HR Samathi 2007 management fest at IPE Hyderabad tomorrow (1st November), interacting with the students there on "Performance Management for Competitive Advantage"

If you are there too, just feel free to meet up :-)