ThoughtWorks is a company of really smart people - we base our business on it. As part of my job at this company, I am privileged to work with the smartest of the smarts. Some of our best consultants come to ThoughtWorks University and that's what makes the program as good as it is today. On the side, I've become a bit of repeat practitioner in putting teams together in a high intensity performance environment. Over the last few years in this firm, I've put together over 20 teams and fortunately each team has made the company proud with its performance. You could say that I know a thing or two about making teams tick. While that may only a be a conjecture, I'd like to share with you what I've learned while working alongside some really smart individuals.Set ContextAt ThoughtWorks, my favourite word is context. Context is what we need to perform effectively. Context provides the background for why we do the things the way we do them. Context often illuminates the very meaning of what we do. To set context is perhaps the most important part of building a new team. My colleague Patrick Kua is an absolute hero with setting context. I use a lot of his onboarding patterns to get new teams up to speed with the rationale, background and mechanics of our work.Give them FreedomI strongly believe that when you put a group of smart people together and they agree on the goal they wish to achieve, they will find effective ways to get there. ThoughtWorks University v2 is a great example of this - even rookies prove this hypothesis. In my time at ThoughtWorks, I've noticed that it's usually enough for me to set context, share some broad guidelines with my new team and then just let them do their thing. Sure, they'll make mistakes. If we can plan some slack to allow people to learn, we can easily mitigate that risk. Sure, they'll need guidance. That's where my experience comes in.Avoid the 'postman pattern'One of my previous bosses was a nightmare to work with. All she ever did was pass on work via email. We never caught up, she never worked alongside me or my colleagues. She sat in her ivory tower, while her minions slogged away. I call this the postman pattern. I try to consciously avoid this kind of aloof behaviour. This to some extent has been my Achilles heel as well, but I believe the only way to have influence in a team, is to work within it. For as much as I can, I work with my teams on a daily basis. When I can't work alongside them, I try to step away and remove blockers instead. There's no point trying to operate by remote control. Either earn your right by working with the team, or be ready to relinquish it.Shorten the feedback loop When people are new, they will make mistakes. They will also taste success. The key is to ensure that they can recognise these occurences and know how to repeat them (in case of successes) or learn from them (in case of mistakes). This is where a commitment to continuous feedback becomes crucial. I'm a big believer in the value of continuous feedback - in fact I know some teams in ThoughtWorks that use Rypple to facilitate this process. Feedback doesn't have to be a grand event. It can just be a few lines that strengthen someone's confidence or improve their effectiveness. And by the way, there's no harm in letting someone know they're wrong. I created a course on this some months back - take a lookPlay the facilitatorMy colleage at ThoughtWorks, Angela Ferguson often used to speak of her role as a project manager being more like that of a facilitator. I think she's quite right. If we truly want to make our teams succeed then our biggest responsibility is to remove blockers from the way. Quite often it's also about absorbing external pressures so the team can perform effectively. Often it also means connecting people to people. This in my view is crucial. There are several problems to which a team may not have solutions. This is where connecting to people outside the strongly knit team helps -- tapping into the power of weak ties. I've been around for a while. My job gets me to know a lot of people and connect with them on social networks as well. I use this strong network to get my immediate team connected to other ThoughtWorkers when the need comes by. I'm obviously no leadership or team building expert. I'm sure there's heaps more one could do when setting up and working with new teams. All I've added here is from my own experience - do you have any ideas you want to add? Feel free to drop them in the comments section of this blogpost. Next week, we'll be back to my musings on social business.Photo credit: Éole© Sumeet Moghe

Ever since Clay Shirky first used the quote "It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure" at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, back in 2008, there has been an ongoing, everlasting, but rather passionate discussion from both sides of the story pondering whether it’s really all about facing and dealing with information overload or whether it’s just purely filter failure. I am sure that this is one of those topics we are never going to get tired of talking about, conversing, share our first hand experiences, try to convince others about our own point of view, etc. etc. You name it.  But what if we throw food out there into the mix? Yes, you are reading it right. What if the key towards dealing with information overload is not just filter failure but a matter of food. Actually, thought for food. For a good number of years I have shared across my admiration, praise and just pure delight for having the continued unique opportunity to pick up on the brains, and muse further on, from a great group of rather talented and insightful thought leaders in the Social Computing space, who, if anything, have always managed to get everyone thinking differently about certain ideas, trends of thought, and whatever else, around that social transformation of the business world; not to mention as well the impact of our societies going digital, and how we deal, in general, with information and knowledge to make some sense into it, without asking anything in return. One of those folks I have been truly admiring for a long while is JP Rangaswami, a.k.a. @jobsworth. Why?  Well, not only because of the superb writing that he keeps putting together over at his blog "Confused of Calcutta - A Blog About Information" or his various tweets, amongst several other online places he gets to share his thoughts out loud on, but mainly because, just recently, he may have given us a new way of looking into information overload and how we can deal with it making plenty of good sense, in addition to Clay’s mantra about filter failure. And it’s got to do that with one of my favourite topics du jour as well. Food! Who would have thought about that, right? Information / knowledge and food walking hand in hand to explain one of those current issues we keep facing in today’s more interconnected, intelligent and information abundant world than ever before. Yet, making perfect sense. Take a look and read further JP’s recently blog entry on this topic under the suggestively provocative title "Thought for food", where he referenced his recent appearance at TED Salon in Austin as he delivered a truly inspirational speech of a bit over 8 minutes long, that exposed one of those brilliant analogies that, when going through it, as you watch him further dive into it, you realise it just makes perfect sense! Why didn’t we all see it before?  Take a look into the TED Talk video clip itself that I have embedded below. Like I said, it lasts for a little bit over 8 minutes, but it really is worth while watching in its entirety. And you will see what I mean after you finish it off. So here it goes:  Basically, on that short dissertation JP comes to confirm what may well be the potential solution to how we deal with information in the knowledge economy. Yes, it may well have to do quite a bit with collaborative filtering; term I have grown to become rather fond of while describing how the networks you keep treasuring and cultivating are those very same ones that will be filtering the best, topnotch content available out there for you!, but it may well not be good enough. JP explained it beautifully with this quote on what really matters at the end of the day on how we handle such information abundance:  "Information, if viewed from the point of view of food, is never a production issue. … It’s a consumption issue, and we have to start thinking about how we create diets [and] exercise" And this is where it hit me. And big time! This is where I realised about that wonderfully inspiring connection between information & knowledge AND food. You see? There used to be a time when I didn’t care much about the food I consumed, nor the portions, nor the quality of the ingredients, or the variety, etc. etc. Whatever it was good to fill my belly up with and move on back to what I was doing was just good enough for me. Exercise and good working out sessions were out of the question, too!, for yours truly. I just didn’t have the time and I wasn’t that interested at all. Till around July last year when I reached what I would consider my own tipping point, that is, 101.5 kgs. / 223 lbs and on the brink of reaching 40 years of age. No, not to worry, no body warnings or body alarms blew off, but, right there, right then, I realised I needed to start doing something about it, because I was entering that dangerous situation where I was no longer feeling healthy, based on my food intakes and the non-existent exercise habits.  As you well may remember, I eventually blogged about that transformation I started right there, how by doing three simple things I have managed to change that dangerous path towards an unhealthy lifestyle with everything that entails. Those three simple things were:  Watch, much more, what I do eat, looking for variety and healthier foods (fruits, vegetables, fish, legumes, etc. etc.) in much smaller portions aiming for no longer feeling full meal after meal.  Start doing daily exercise and some workouts, in order to carry on burning all of that bad stuff I have accumulated over the course of the years. I started small, walking, then fast walking, then moving on into slow running, and, finally reaching a certain level of running where my body feels comfortable and I, too, fell comfortable without putting too much strain, but still getting the job done; then every so often a bit more of rowing, some yoga and off we go. The journey began… and it never stopped ever since. And, finally, ensure that every night I would get a good night sleep, of, at least, 7.5 hours, if not more, since that seems to be the best quality sleeping time I can get, as Sleepyti.me bedtime calculator taught me over the course of time. And that was it! That was my discovery journey into figuring out that I needed to start working my way on not only how I would consume food, but also how I would burn it all, or a large chunk of it, and how I would need to get better sleep which helps oneself, as you all know, fully charge your own batteries ready for the next day. Right now, as I write these few words, I’m at the stage that I would call on maintenance mode, having lost 19 kgs / 41 lbs; and if I were to describe how I feel at the moment, both physically and mentally I would probably be able to do so with a single word. This one: liberating! Indeed, feeling and being healthier altogether surely has got its traits and whatever other perks, and it’s just the beginning on to, hopefully, a better good quality life. To me, it’s just that experience in the last year that I have found strikingly close to what JP mentioned throughout his talk about how we should be looking into information, not from the perspective of what we produce, or see others produce, but more from the point of view of how we consume it. That’s what matters.  That’s where we need to realise that in such a world of over abundance of free information flowing back and forth, and just like we ourselves continue to be more proactive on looking after our own health promoting and living further along with a good number of healthier habits, we should probably be equally religious as well on figuring out how we are going to best consume the information that’s available out there that would matter the most for us and our needs. And I suspect that the key magic trait that would probably make it all work for us is, as JP brilliantly mentioned, how we are going to put in place not only those various different (information) diets, but, much more importantly, how we are going to exercise the mind into figuring out what works and what won’t work as part of that healthy and nurturing mental activity. In that matter I suspect critical thinking is going to play a key role, just as much as endorphins play it when we engage on some kind of physical activity. The key challenge though is whether we are going to be able to put a stop to the always tempting, increasingly everlasting, and irresistible urge of information gluttony. Because I can imagine that with the huge amount of information and knowledge available out there our brains, most likely, will continue to be enticed by that massive flow of abundance that’s probably going to be far too tough to tame, if at all. Collaborative filtering, as we all know, may well help out, but we may as well be much more effective if we start training our brain(s) about when to strike for the balance of consuming the right info, figure out the right portion, and exercise it well enough so that we can make the best out of it, without having that pernicious feeling of empty saturation. We probably don’t need it any longer. We will be, most certainly, much better off without it, don’t you think?

Most social business platforms are maturing quite fast. The landscape now has players that have been around for a while and provide functionality that'll put some consumer apps to shame. That being said, often times the stock platform isn't 'exactly' what you want. You may need to customise the platform to get the most out of it for your company. While this is quite common in the enterprise, it's also a big opportunity for you to destroy every chance of success that you can potentially have. We've done a significant amount of custom development on our internal social business platform, myThoughtWorks and our successes and failures have led me to a few lessons that I want to share with you in today's blogpost.Find a stakeholder who understands social business Social business is new and isn't necessarily compliant with the traditional notions of knowledge sharing, learning and internal communications. And let's face it, you're unlikely to have a free rein to build whatever you want to. If these two realities have to combine to a happy end then you need a stakeholder who understands social business. Easier said than done, I know but if you have to succeed then your business stakeholders need to be speaking the same language as you. Talk to Dinesh Tantri and Nikhil Nulkar and they'll tell you that the most successful enterprise 2.0 implementations they've seen involve stakeholders who were really passionate about the potential of social media in the enterprise. Sometimes we're not as lucky to have supporters of that nature. In that case, we need to do the best we can to educate our stakeholders on the potential of social business. Starting work with some common ground and common vocabulary can do a world of good.Evaluate well, understand your prioritiesSocial business may not be the most mature practice around but the technology is advancing quite fast. Companies like Jive, Yammer, SocialCast and others pride themselves on the user experience they've crafted and the approaches they profess. Now of course some platforms have a lot of features and others don't. This is where a thorough evaluation comes in. Look at your budget, look at your needs and find the platform that's a closest match. Now the key is to honour that match. Social business suites build their platforms the way they do for a reason. A lot of them have had a lot of success selling their tools. You could easily start rigging your platform to be 'exactly' how you want it to be, but there's tremendous value in running a near vanilla install with just your company's branding on it. This is not to say that customisation is not important - you just need to hold your horses. See how people use the defaults, understand them well. There's no point extending a platform without fully understanding its existing potential. While you take the suite through its paces, prioritise what you really need to build. In fact, I daresay that in the initial months any customisation that's likely to drive engagement trumps what you would consider 'business requirements'. Frankly, if people aren't going to use the platform enough, the fancy business requirement means nothing.User feedback trumps imaginary requirementsIf you're building for users, then you need user feedback. You're not trying to release the next big thing in the market. Remember, people use tools such as these almost everyday in real life. So there's nothing sillier than to try and build stuff off your own wild imagination. That kind of thing may be necessary once you have the right level of engagement, but surely not upfront. Speak to users, seek their feedback. Understand their problems, help them find solutions within the system first. Check if it's only a clash of mental models. If it isn't then find out what's the bare minimum customisation that could possibly work. The key here is to make small, iterative improvements, to put changes into production and then to let real, informed use to drive improvements. If people aren't using it, then it's perhaps a case for you to look at usability first than to build new requirements. By churning out new functionality on a broken user experience, you'll drive users away faster than you can imagine. It's tempting I know, but resist the temptation to over engineer requirements - simplicity is the greatest sophistication.Keep the experience consistentI'll let you in on a dirty little secret about enterprise 2.0 platforms. They're so flexible that you can run them the way you like. You can create the cool, corporate equivalent of your favourite social media platform or you can build out a crap, 1990s style intranet. Now I don't know about you, but I'm hoping that somewhere in your firm you want to run social media like social media. And if that's the bulk of your usage then you don't want to saddle it with legacy style requirements. It's confusing for your users, it's a nightmare to manage. Not evident upfront, but I can tell you this from experience. This is a consulting challenge for most internal social business consultants, but I realise that this requires long term influence and stakeholder education. Again, you can choose to run new systems the old way or exploit them to the hilt by encouraging new business behaviours.Innovate fast - appreciate the consumerisation of ITIf I had to add one last piece of advice to today's post, I'll say this. Everyone knows what social media looks like and how it works on the big, broad, internet. To tell you the truth, we see the latest and greatest sooner than we see it in the enterprise. Think of user experiences for example. You can access Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Google Apps by just tapping an icon on your phone. No login required whatsoever, once you've enabled credential storage. How do you logon to your intranet? You perhaps have to key in a cryptic passcode. Think of Flipboard for the iPad - it's a magazine interface for all your social media intake. It's just perfect for 'keeping up'. In comparision, even a leading enterprise provider like Jive Software hasn't updated their iPhone app for over a year! With the recent announcement of iCloud, even email and calendaring as well will be heaps better than anything the enterprise offers. You could take every use case and people have access to better tools than you're providing them from the enterprise. The key is to focus your customisations on bridging the gap between personal and enterprise tools. How can we reduce the entry barrier? How can we help people's information intake? How can we increase engagement? These are key questions for us to answer.So, are you extending your social business platform? If you are, I'd love to hear how your experience has been. Do my musings strike a chord with you? Do you have suggestions for other blog readers? Let me know. Next week, watch this space for some more of my thoughts about social business adoption and maturity.© Sumeet Moghe

Here is an interesting study that I have just bumped into a couple of days ago, and which may resonate with plenty of folks out there on the relevancy of Social Business in today’s corporate world. It is not a pretty one, for sure, but rather revealing perhaps on what’s still ahead for most of us, and a clear indication we are just barely getting started with our journey to become successful social businesses: 70% of social media complaints are ignored!  In the world of the Social Web who would have thought about that, right? Well, perhaps time for a wake-up call for all of us social computing evangelists… Change is not happening as fast as what we would have thought and perhaps that is ok. It will take time, we all know that, but will we be ok about it though? About the fact that we may not even be able to witness that final business transformation we have been eagerly anticipating all along after all? That is one of the reflections that has been in my mind over the last few months and interestingly enough it keeps coming back as soon as I embark on my next round of business trips. Like today, on my way to London, to participate and present at the rather intriguing Social Business Strategy Summit and then flying to Milan over the weekend to participate on the event of events on Social Business in Europe: the Social Business Forum 2012.  Why does that reflection keep coming back then every so often nowadays? Well, as you may have noticed, once again, I have failed about keeping up with my usual regular blogging schedule over here on this blog. It’s been a few weeks since the last time that I have shared an article over here and although things at work are now more hectic and buzzing than ever (Specially, as we keep seeing how more and more executives are finally diving into the world of living Social, "dragging" along their teams and own networks), the main culprit, once again, has been my traveling schedule, not because of traveling itself, but mainly because, once again, I continued to fail on staying connected to keep up with my blogging and other social networking activities. As you may remember from my last blog post, I mentioned how I was on my way to Rotterdam, to present at the IBM / NLLUG Social Business event (Along with visiting a couple of customers in Utrecht to talk about adoption of social networking tools, networks and communities); then from there onwards to lovely Seville to participate and present at the first edition of the event "Congreso de Empresa 2.0 y Social Business - El Presente de la Gestión Empresarial", which was, by the way, a beautiful experience, not to mention spending a few days in such a stunning city as Seville is. And, finally, make my way to Barcelona, where I took a couple of days off to unwind and recharge my batteries to finish off the business trip with conducting an IBM workshop for managers on Why Social Business, Why Now and How to get started.  Phew! All in all, 7 different social business events in an 8 day long timeframe. Rather hectic, I can assure you all, but what an amazing experience! My head is still spinning, for real, with the great amount of ideas I have been munching on as a result of some wonderful conversations throughout the entire time! And I am certain over the course of the next couple of weeks plenty of those ideas would be making their way into several blog posts over here   So, why am I becoming increasingly skeptic though about the role of social media in the corporate world, specially, when I am on the road (Although not to the point of becoming a curmudgeon per se perhaps, I can imagine some people may perceive it that way, alas), and certainly starting to question some of the motives of those "so-called" social businesses? Well, probably because of a worrying issue that keeps growing further along over time: not walking the talk when being consistently confronted with bad customer service after having had some of the worst customer user experiences.  Social Business is a whole bunch of different things, indeed, perhaps far too many which may well be a bit of a problem initially as well, but one of the main key major traits is that one of businesses becoming more customer centric improving tremendously their own overall customer experiences engaging in meaningful conversations out there on the Social Web to try to address and fix their problems. Yet we bump into studies, like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this article, where 7 out of 10 complaints raised through social media are just basically ignored. Don’t you think it leaves plenty of ground to question those claims from companies stating they walk the talk when living Social, yet, time and time again they keep failing to deliver? Yes, they make me question it, too!  And that is exactly what’s happened to me in the last couple of weeks, while I have been on the road, that, once again, both hotels and ISP providers have kept failing to deliver on their so-called promises of being successful social businesses. Starting in Rotterdam itself, where I stayed 4 days at a rather nice, cosy hotel, the Hampshire Hotel - Savoy, but with quite an appalling experience regarding their Ethernet service. Yes, I get that, as a hotel, you may not want to provide free wifi / Ethernet connectivity to those mobile workers constantly on the road, because you may not make enough profit out of it, which is something I would debate, too, specially, after the superb blog post put together by my good friend Neville Hobson on this very same subject. But I *do* have an issue with it when you charge me 15€ per day for an Ethernet connection that doesn’t even reach 0.5 mbps download and then you claim that’s the standard service to stay "connected" after being told off by a customer support representative somewhere in India that is all I am going to get, including questioning my English skills to comprehend the situation. Welcome to the wonderful service of Quadriga, the Ethernet provider from the Hampshire Hotel - Savoy.  Want to know more about the story? Oh, don’t worry, there isn’t much left… It just ended up right there! No further discussions to compromise on providing good quality service for 15€ per day fee. Take it or leave it. I gave up, eventually. I had a superb time while in Rotterdam, for sure, enjoying some pretty amazing offline social networking interactions, but both Quadriga and the Hampshire Hotel - Savoy are now on my growing black list of service providers to avoid and hotels to never go back to. Life is just too short to have to put up with such an utterly disgraceful and disappointing customer service on all grounds. And, don’t worry, this would be another "social media complaint" that will go by pretty much ignored, because I don’t expect any response any time soon. Why bother, right? After all, I am just a customer. #lesigh Ok, time to see things improved, then! Off we go to Seville, to attend and present at the rather energizing and inspiring #e20Biz event, first edition of many more successful years to come, I am sure! and there we are at the conference event venue, the Hotel NH Central Convenciones, ready to get started with the event, when, once again, we all got hit by the next round of awful customer service. This time around by a rather well known ISP provider from yours truly, since I have put together a couple of blog posts about their horrendous customer service in the past. Of course, I am talking about Swisscom. As you may well know by now, Swisscom is the provider of the wifi services to all NH Hotels, and it has been a few years since the last time I stayed at one of those hotels, after some disappointing experiences. But this time around I decided to cut them some slack, once more, and give them another chance, why not, right? Well, big mistake! Not only are they continuing to provide some rather poor service to their customers for a rather pricey fee, but this time around they were also the main providers from the conference event wifi and it was just what you might not have been expecting: non-existent!!  And while talking to the event organizers, who did their best in addressing the issues, we found out that they payed big bucks, and I mean big bucks!!, for a wifi service that even at our very own homes is much much better! Why do we keep putting up with this? Seriously, who do they think we are? Wouldn’t you think that after having paid a rather expensive hotel room, even pricier wifi connection for what we got, we would deserve better? Apparently, we don’t, because their only response, several hours later than expected, was only a timid tweet that got through advising on what we have already done a few times earlier on in the day and the rest of the conversation died off right there! Not surprisingly, since I wasn’t already expecting much more from Swisscom in the first place. They know better, but they consistently keep failing to deliver. Go figure.  So what did I do then? Did I give up on that one, too? Yes, I did! In fact, I gave up on both Swisscom and NH Hotels a long while ago and that experience in Seville just confirmed why those two companies are also on my black list of service providers to avoid, and for a good reason. Thus I decided to go local, since I was in Spain; I decided to rely on my 3G connection for my iPhone and iPad and on my 3G USB modem or my Mac. And while I was expecting a good, reliable connection, the results were different, much different! There I was, struggling, once again, even with my own 3G options, but this time around a bit worse, since the 3G USB modem is not my own, but from the company that employs me, IBM. For the entire remaining of the week and even when I went to Barcelona for the following 5 days I kept failing to get consistently connected after experiencing some rather poor performance, right at the city enter from both Seville and Barcelona. How can that be? I mean, I know for sure that my company is paying big bucks, once again, to allow its mobile employee knowledge workers stay connected, while on the road, and we can barely make it, since Movistar‘s service barely provided more than 1mbps download / upload. Yet, it doesn’t happen. Time and time again we have to keep up with the frustrating experiences of staying connected and eventually give up (before we would go all go crazy to no avail). Once again, that is exactly what I did! Over the course of the last couple of years I have learned to tame myself with the frustration, trying to stay connected reliably while I am travelling, since I have come to the conclusion it is no longer worth the fight and it is starting to become, even, rather unhealthy. So I decided to switch off completely and enjoy something that I am starting to appreciate more and more by the day: talking more to people offline and nurturing those offline social interactions. Over time, not only is it proving to be rather a healthier activity, but overall I am finding it a whole lot more refreshing and energizing altogether!  And, for that, I would have to thank, and very much so!, plenty of my physical social networks for coming to the rescue of this poor mobile social networker, who can no longer keep up with the virtual world, while on the road, because it just dies a simple, uncomplicated death. And in the mean time 7 out of 10 social media complaints go by unanswered and pretty much ignored! There is Social Busines and customer service for you, going down on a rather dangerous spiral of no return apparently. And you know what is the worst part of it all? One thing that I never expected it would happen in today’s rather interconnected, distributed, pervasive world, specially, in the Social Web of today: that, more and more, I am starting to feel rather disconnected from the virtual social networking world with the growing feeling of disappearing into thin air, because I keep failing to resurface into my virtual social streams, to the point where some of my closest networks are starting to question where I am and what I have been doing. So much for all of that "narrate your work", "working out loud" and "observable work" mantras, eh? #lesigh Well, I am right there, for sure!, it is just that while I wish I would be more active sharing openly plenty more of my knowledge, experiences, skills, abilities, know-how, and whatever else around all things social, including getting involved in multiple conversations where I feel I could add my two cents into the online dialogue, I keep finding it’s not happening as often as I would have hoped or wished for, and somehow I am starting to suspect it’s becoming rather damaging for my own online digital social presence out there. At what costs? I don’t know, probably you folks would be in a much better position to judge that than myself, but somehow I sense I may not recover from it in a long while seeing the way things are moving on, as I keep reflecting on it while putting these few words over here on my way to London, then Milan, then Boston (mid-June), then Madrid, Barcelona, Seville again till mid-July… Finally, after such a rather lengthy reflection (Thanks much for sticking around this far!), that I needed to get out of my chest before it becomes rather unnerving and unhealthy, you may be wondering whether I am expecting to see any kind of reaction, or even a slight service improvement, from both the hotel business, as well as the ISPs, in general? Will they ever become successful social businesses? I have no doubt they will, eventually, perhaps in the next few decades, but for now please do allow me to remain skeptic about it, because I just don’t see it, despite their claims they are getting there. For as along as their social media complains remain ignored and neglected, nothing will change. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Perhaps time to move on? Thus, my dear European Union, since those businesses aren’t doing much to change the situation, due to their ever growing monopolies, and since countries have got their hands tight up in the process, what are you going to do to empower your mobile knowledge Web workforce to remain productive and help them get you out of the disgraceful econoclypse you have been experiencing in the last 4 years and still going strong? What do we, European netizens, need to do to wake you up and help us help you get back on track by empowering us to be productive and rather effective, even while we are on the road? Tell us, we are eagerly awaiting. Please, tell do us soon. We can’t wait much longer…

Image Credit - T HallI recently came across that picture on Flickr and I thought it could be a nice title shot for my post today. As a company that values Entrepreneuralism, you'd assume that ThoughtWorks would be a fast moving, risk embracing mean machine. In more cases than one, that's absolutely true. In some less than ideal situations we do end up freezing up in the face of risk - much like deer in the headlights. The only difference is that deer eventually move on, but we often get stuck worrying about risk. Why does it happen at ThoughtWorks? Well, we're human after all - and frankly it's commonplace to fear possible loss than embrace possible gain. You've perhaps already read about in the 9x endowment effect and the sunk cost fallacy. Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe in being a cowboy - risk management is a crucial project management skill. I find extreme risk averseness however to be a deterrent in moving a project forward at a motoring pace. It hurts innovation, and obsessing over risks takes away a lot of energy and momentum from real, productive work. At the end of the day, risk management isn't a deliverable - real work is. Risk management is only a tool to facilitate work. I don't claim to be a great project manager, but I do have some thoughts I want to share with you today, about risk management.You don't know how big it isLast week we had a challenge. We needed to close out a legacy knowledge repository in view of the fact that we have new social business platform in place. As a team, we wanted to give the company 30 days before we archived the old system. Now for any medium or large sized company this brings about a set of risks. What if we lose data? What if we upset people? What if people need help and we can't support them? Are all these risks real? They probably are. How big are they however? We don't know. Now we can either freeze up and do nothing or ask ourselves - what's the minimum we need to know to move ahead.Here's what we did. To check whether we'd lose data, I tried out an experiment on a test domain. Turns out that you lose no data whatsoever, you can turn the service back on and retrieve data whenever you need to. A quick, dirty experiment is often all you need to gauge the impact and mitigation for a specific risk. For the other two risks, no matter what we analysed, we would only be conjecturing as to how big the risks were. We've made the announcement and ever since, less than 15 people have reached out to us - most for tips to migrate their data, some for thorough guidance and just three who wanted us to actually assist the migration. Turns out, that no one really was hugely fussed about the move. In the worst case, if when we do shut down the service someone comes back saying they were on vacation and completely missed our warning, we can pop the service back on a weekend and help the individual move over. Risks addressed, we move ahead.All risks are not equalRisks are these little mystery balls. Some have a large impact, others have a negligible effect. Some might have a high likelihood and others are highly unlikely. Your plan is really conditional on how you evaluate these risks. The key in my view is not to over evaluate. In my world, risks have three parameters - the likelihood, the impact and the mitigation plan if the risk does manifest itself. The key however is to not over analyse. If the impact is low and the likelihood is bleak, then do you really want to spend all the time in the world analysing what you will do about it? The cost of analysing the risk far outweighs the cost having to respond to it without a pre-defined mitigation strategy. On the other hand, if it's a high impact, highly likely risk, then you want to do what you can to avoid it and not even have to get to the point of mitigation. The key is to look at likelihood and impact as a balance with mitigation strategy. From that point, it's about incremental changes, iterating and moving fast. Keeping everyone aware of how you percieve the risks just ensures that everyone knows what to do when you move ahead. Finally, risk management is conjecture - the key is make this systematic conjecture than just pure obsession. Also, sometimes it's important to just know what you can do and what your options are. The moment to act may not be until much later - Chris Matts calls this the last responsible moment.You may ask why a blog on learning and social business has a post on risk management. I think it's a crucial competence when dealing with change and managing projects. Also, it's not as complicated as we'll often make it out be. I hope this short post helps you see my perspective on why I like to be pragmatic about risks and why I like to keep pushing forward with projects I am on. Not to say that I don't have things blowing up in my face - I've had an experience of that last week! That said, I would take that any day as long as I have the ability to respond quickly and to keep the pace of innovation high. I think that's a fair trade-off. What do you think?© Sumeet Moghe

It’s been nearly two weeks already since the last time I put together a blog post over here, on purpose, and, yet again, another round of business trips is now done and dealt with. Phew! What a rush! As I have mentioned back then, this last time I participated in the Social Business Strategy Summit in London and then off to present in Milan at the quite amazingly insightful Social Business Forum event. Yet, as a surprising fact, why am I mentioning that I didn’t blog on purpose this time around, you may be wondering, right? Specially, since time and time again I kept relating how I struggle constantly getting connected, finding the time and eventually write down a blur of entries while on the road. Well, basically, because I wanted to wait and see what digital customer service was going to be like. Once again, I was not disappointed. To summarise it all in a single word I could probably use this one: non-existent. Indeed, in my last article over here, under the heading "The Trials and Tribulations of a Mobile Knowledge Worker in a Social Business World", I mentioned how a bunch of businesses have been providing, consistently, quite an appalling set of digital (customer) services and how, two weeks later, I am still waiting for a response from Quadriga, Swisscom, NH Hotels and my all time favourite one: Movistar (Who coincidentally has just taken things into the next level of insultingly poor customer service when, upon my return back home they have downgraded my home office ADSL connection from the 10MB I am still paying to a mere 6MB download. And all of that without asking!!) #lesigh Things haven’t improved much, it seems, or have they? It looks like they haven’t and I guess at this point in time I’m on the brink of giving up altogether on getting some decent customer service through social digital channels, specially, for those rather expensive offerings one has got to endure in order to get work done. It looks like it’s just not happening and I guess from now onwards you would have to colour me skeptic with regards to the role of digital when providing good, solid, overall customer service. Again, so far, non-existent. And it is just way too funny, because as we are fully immersed in the world of the Social Web, in the new, exciting era of Social Businesses, yet, plenty of companies out there keep failing on delivering. Time and time again. Not even thinking about engaging through digital channels to keep their customers happy. Brand loyalty, anyone? No wonder we bump into research studies that confirm how poor customer loyalty has been in the last couple of years and counting. In fact, I would venture to state that, if anything, it’s deteriorated big time and from a very dangerous point of view: not just from customers to vendors, but, more worryingly, from vendors themselves to their customers. And that’s just what I would not have expected to experience till today, hoping that most businesses would wake up eventually to a new era of engagement or involvement with their customer base. Or is it? While at the Social Business Forum (#sbf12), held in Milan, Italy, a week ago exactly, there were plenty of incredibly insightful highlights that will come through over the course of time in several blog entries from yours truly, plus a nice new experiment I have been playing with that I am hoping folks out there would enjoy as well (More on that shortly…), but one of the most revealing and eye-opening ones was the absolutely stunning couple of presentations that my good friend Esteban Kolsky did on the topic of Social CRM (As in Social Customer Relationship Management) under the rather suggestive title "The way we will complain. How customer service is going to evolve over the next 10 years", which he also covered, some of the materials, that is, at the Social Business Strategy Summit as he documented well on this article.  As a starting point here are some great quotes from some of his initial, starting slides: "90 percent of transactions for customer service happen offline" or this other gem: "80 percent of organisations think their experiences are good (8% of customers agree)" or, finally, this other one that clearly blew me away when we got exposed to it: "66 percent have no defined processes for customer service over social channels". Yes, that’s right, you are reading it correctly: 66% of businesses out there have no defined processes to engage with their customers through social channels. Whoahhh! Still think we are living on a Social Business Era?  Ha! Absolutely!! We all are! It’s that we are just getting started! Remember, this whole thing about Social Business is not only a destination, the final frontier, but also quite an amazing journey, one where we are all embarking on it as we speak, and one where we can see how some businesses are more ready than others. But, we will all eventually get there as Esteban himself pointed out very clearly throughout the remaining of his presentations and the blog post he put together on the subject, which I would strongly encourage you all to take a look, including the slide decks!!, specially, the piece around the essence of social business which drives around three major, core concepts that I just couldn’t have agreed more with him when he explained them together in context:  "Channels (Social) Engagement (Connected) Collaboration (Collaborative)" Brilliant stuff altogether and clearly very thought provoking on laying down for all of us, what lies ahead, including the various different opportunities, but just as well the many challenges. Fascinating altogether, to say the least! So I guess I shouldn’t have held my hopes too high to get some decent customer service through digital / social channels for all of those businesses when they may not have even planned accordingly for them in the first place. Perhaps I should try out the next time the offline approach and see how that works. But then again, I would still want to muse further along about the whole subject behind customer / vendor loyalty. Because it is still there, isn’t it? Or have we lost it for good altogether? What do you think? While you, too, keep pondering about it further along, and would love to read your thoughts in the comments, please!, here’s something that I would want to throw out there on the table as well for all of us to consider… How about Reinventing Relationships with Social Business? That’s the interesting and rather intriguing title from a recent short video clip that IBMSocialBiz has put together and which, when going through it, I am sure it will help reframe these questions about managing, or better, facilitating customer relationships, vendor relationships or even just your employees, your partners, even your competitors. All part of a giant ecosystem where there is no way back, apparently. Now, you all know that I work for IBM, so I suppose the usual disclaimer applies in here, but must admit that the video clip itself even made me think about my own relationships as a customer, as a vendor, as an employee, as a partner, as a competitor, even as myself! to the point where it may well be rather accurate to start reinventing those business relationships into rather personal business ones where we try to apply lots of fresh thinking on how we engage with those around us, because by just thinking about reinventing those relationships we are probably considering what may be the critical success factor around them: how to make them better, that is, more beneficial for all parties involved?  Perhaps it’s all part of that behavioural change we should ALL aim at in order to become successful social business. Perhaps it’s all about building up new, more empowering and inspiring loyalties, or learn in a different way, or maybe develop altogether a new model of trust that would work both ways, mutual and beneficial for everyone, one where the whole focus would be on providing overall exceptional experiences. Wouldn’t that be quite something? Still a utopia? Or today’s reality, perhaps? Well, let’s make it happen then! Let’s go and Reinvent Relationships with Social Business. Together! It’s time. The right time.

There used to be a time when social business evangelists were perceived, mainly, as disruptors, to a certain degree, of any given status quo within the corporate environment out there at large. They were optimists, outrageous, somewhat heretic, true rebels at work, free radicals to some extent. Perhaps even a bit of hippie 2.0 in each and every one of them. They were, essentially, the change agents who were helping act as catalysts for that business transformation that was becoming a full socially integrated enterprise. What happened to them though? I mean, I believe that social business evangelists, in general, are still breathing those very same traits I just mentioned above, but where are they? Have they become a bit too complacent with their own beliefs, needs and wants, and several other aspirations to want to change the way business gets done today, now that the corporate world by and large is, finally, becoming more savvy around Social Business itself? Have they moved on to something else already? I am not sure what you folks would think about, but I’m starting to see that trend more and more and it worries me. It worries me a lot! More than anything else, because we are not done at all with our Intrapreneurship efforts, as my good friend David Armano would claim, and by far! but yet again it looks like we all may seem to be content with how things are going. Is it time to bounce back? It probably is, because, like I have mentioned above, there is still a lot of work to be done! Yet, I cannot get off my head that feeling of seeing how those social evangelists may have become a bit too complacent within their own role of becoming a disruptor and eventually fade away (into other things), because they feel their role is no longer needed. That was essentially one of the several perceptions I experienced, while attending the premier event on Social Business over here in Europe at the Social Business Forum event held in Milan, Italy. That’s why during Day One of the event itself I may have been perceived, in several conversations, as a bit too pessimistic about the state of things. Quite the opposite though. And for a good reason. We are not done, by and large; no matter what people may tell you, we are just getting started! In a superb blog post, my good friend Cecil Dijoux, highlighted plenty of the good work that still needs to be done. Go and have a look and read through that highlights article to get a glimpse of what he perceived from the overall event as well. It will be worth while your time, I can surely guarantee you that! And as a teaser, here’s a golden quote that he reproduced from the thought provoking keynote session from another good friend, the always inspiring, mind-blowing, John Hagel, which highlights pretty much where we are today: "Information is power. Institutions are designed to provide some people with information which is power. If knowledge flows, it is undermining the foundation of people power in organisations. How do we confront that power?" Then allow me to be a bit too provocative as well with this particular follow-up commentary. Remember when perhaps 3 to 4 years ago we used to go to all of these social networking for business events and suit and ties were just missing from the equation? You could hardly see one or two in a large room. They were the outcasts, to a certain degree, and perhaps frown upon for no good, nor apparent, reason. But if felt good. It felt disruptive, provocative, heretic, even a bit rebellious of what you have been experiencing all along. Well, fast forward to today and it looks like in a good number of social business related events the suits and ties are back! Have we become a bit too formal and given up on our outrageous, heretic ways? We are no longer seeing ourselves, social business evangelists as disruptors? Have we, finally, been assimilated by the corporate world, before our job is done and completed? What do you think? That’s essentially part of a reflection I went through with a good number of friends at the Social Business Forum event that then crystalized on this nearly 8 minute long conversation I had with the always knowledgeable Bjoern Negelman, which he then shared later on in YouTube:   In that short video interview we talked about the need to bounce back; to shake off our very own complacency with the fact that now that businesses are starting to live social our job may be done; to bring back those weird, fancy, crazy (t-)shirts we once wore vs. those lovely suits and ties we know well from all along; to essentially realise that now that we have got the right level of attention our role as social evangelists is more critical than ever not just to help early adopters make their move into getting the most out of social networking, but helping businesses understand how the whole paradigm of work is shifting into a much more open, trustworthy, collaborative, knowledge sharing prone, transparent and nimble workplace and therefore it would require a new mindset, a new set of behaviours to be lived and enjoyed by each and everyone of us. With perhaps no exceptions. That’s where the challenge still remains. We may have prepared rather well the way for those various different waves of (early) adopters, but our job is far from done! Remember? "90 percent of transactions for customer service happen offline", or "70% of social media complaints are ignored!", amongst several others… That’s why we need to bounce back. That’s why we need to shake off our very own comfort zone(s) and soon enough, before it’s just too late! The fight is still on! And this is, once again, one of those times when I am going to be rather grateful to serendipity itself, for having played its magic one more time incredibly well, by pointing me into this rather short video clip, that lasts for a bit over 90 seconds, under the suggestive title "The Branding of Culture" and which has got plenty of really interesting, insightful and relevant tag lines all over around social business. Yes, I know, I know, the usual disclaimer would apply here, once more, since it’s an IBM video clip, but you would see what I mean with what is, to me, the key message I got from the clip itself and which would be spot on for today’s reflection on the key, essential, critical role that Social Business Evangelists would still need to keep playing for many more moons to come:  "Practice what you preach" (Always!)   My dear fellow Social Business Evangelists, be honest, be authentic, be open, be transparent, in short, be yourself! We are now, more than ever, very much needed by the businesses who employed us in the first place to complete that shift into realising that full socially integrated enterprise. Your business. Our business. And everyone else’s for that matter.

If you're reading this article then I guess you have a keen interest in social business or are perhaps already running your own setup. If my guess is true, then you perhaps have some frustrations running your internal program. Now don't get me wrong, I am a big, die hard fan of social media in the workplace and frankly I wouldn't have it any other way. That being said, I am mindful that social business is still quite a new space with just about 5 years in the mainstream. While public social media has reached a really ubiquitous state in our personal lives, it's no secret that social media in the workplace is big jump in thinking for several knowledge workers. I think social business technology itself needs to grow several levels in maturity. In today's blogpost I want to talk about a few things that'll define the future of social business and perhaps its eventual ubiquitous position in the enterprise.Composite identities vs Corporate identitiesPeople are just people. They don't have a corporate identity and a separate personal identity. They are who they are; they blog externally and perhaps blog internally too. If they're passionate about what they do, perhaps what they blog externally is about the work they do for the company. They are on twitter and they're perhaps sharing interesting stuff. People's activity on public and private networks are two sides of a composite social identity. I think of it as Identity 2.0 - enterprise systems seem to present themselves as a new network in a vacuum. The assumption seems to be that the enterprise network exists by itself as a prima-donna platform. The truth is that it doesn't - until the activity stream of the enterprise social network can include elements from both sides of the individual's social contributions, it will continue to miss out on the prolific contributors from the public web.Simple extensibility vs Painful upgradesThink big, start small and iterate. It's a mantra that works for startups and I believe it should work for social business too. Whether we like it or not, we live in an age of consumerisation of IT. Regardless of how good our internal systems are, people have access to better stuff in the outside world. Things move so fast that it's tough to keep up. Heck, it was only recently that Google announced its intent to get into the social space in a big way and hey, we already have Google Plus doing the rounds. Think of how often Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and the others are adding features. It's quite tough to keep up as your people start taking these enhancements for granted and start expecting them in enterprise systems. The truth is that not many enterprise 2.0 platforms are built to evolve. Extensions are a mess, upgrades are a pain. Vendors need to understand that customers will need to move fast. Seamless upgrades, the ability to receive enhancements automatically, the power to develop extensions and an extensions API that stays backward compatible are all crucial requirements that vendors need to respond to.Frictionless participation vs Enterprise securityIT teams across the world may think otherwise, but most people actually do care for security. At the end of the day the least risk is that their personal data gets compromised and really no one is likely to be happy with that. Having said that, I guess there's no doubt that enterprise security can be more a deterrent than anything else. Take a step back - think about how you access Facebook. You perhaps have an icon on your smartphone, which when you tap, you go right into your news feed. It's the same for Twitter, Foursquare and whichever social app you like. As a contrast you perhaps have to go through a thick wall of two factor security before you break into your intranet! Now no one's saying we don't understand the rationale, but the fact is that thick security blankets are often a deterrent to contribution. We can be blind to this and say things are the way they are, or understand that the shape of the digital world is changing. People will continue to look at their enterprise social media experience as substandard to their 'regular' networks as long as we don't get creative about solving this problem. There's perhaps some middle ground - we just need to find it.Mobile first vs Mobile as an afterthoughtMobility is big for me. In fact for most ThoughtWorkers who are at client sites, mobile access is really big deal. Smartphones and tablets put together already have a much greater penetration than laptops and desktops. It's a no brainer - mobile access makes your social network ubiquitous. And yet, several enterprise 2.0 vendors have a mobile strategy only as an afterthought. Heck, Jive now has a decent mobile strategy, but until recently their iPhone app hadn't had an update for over a year! Guess what, there's a mobile app for every public social media platform. There's several consumption mechanisms on the mobile -Flipboard and Zite being notable examples. What's there for our enterprise systems?Change management support vs Cookie-cutter consultingLast but not the least, I want to throw in a few words about change management. For most organisations, moving to a social business platforms is a strategic yet tough journey. We all know it's not enough to build and hope they'll all participate. Most organisations have no clue of how to go forward with this stuff and make it thrive. Enterprise 2.0 vendors will pepper you with case studies and whitepapers in the sales journey and will have cookie cutter advice for you before you go live. What's notably absent in most offerings is post go-live change management support. Most problems don't surface before go live. They come up when the dust has settled. If vendors don't have this kind of support as part of their offering, then they're selling the enterprise short. Remember, it's about the technology, but it's more about the people and a new way of working.My post today has been a bit of a rant based on my own experiences. I love the way the world is taking to enterprise social software. I hope that if we can push organisations and vendors to think ahead and innovate around the themes I've mentioned, social business could cross the chasm between edgy technology and business as usual tools. The power of technology is when we can take it for granted - I'd love to hear what else you think could be steps for social business to mature and become a common theme in most organisations. Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section.© Sumeet Moghe

it’s been a long while since last time that I participated on a Blog Carnival, specially around the topic of Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and Learning. In fact, I would think that there aren’t many out there anymore since most folks tend to spend the vast majority of their time in whatever the social networking site interacting with their network(s). So when I received an invitation a few days ago from my good friend Félix Escribano, over at adidas, where they are currently hosting one around those topics with a specific focus on Learning and how it’s helping redefine the workplace of the future, I just couldn’t help myself diving into it adding my two cents to the conversation. And if there is a topic dear to my heart around learning and education in general, specifically, in a corporate environment, that would have to be Informal / Social Learning. What else? That’s why today I thought I would share a couple of reflections that have been going on in my mind on something that I have noticed, for a while now, that’s happening around social learning and which showcases how we may not have learned much about how we did things in the past. Now, if yesterday I was musing about how Social Business and Social Evangelists are becoming more and more industrialized by the day, it looks like we are starting to witness how social learning is trying to get formalised just as well, thinking that we can control it in pretty much the same way that we did with formal learning. How unfortunate! How can you try to formalise what you just simply don’t know, can’t grasp, nor comprehend, or put any kind of physical or virtual barriers around it? It is just pretty much the same thing as trying to find the answer to that on-going debate of how can you manage knowledge when you just simply don’t know what you know till someone may prompt it to come out of you?  I am finding it all rather fascinating, to say the least!, because as we get to witness how social networking tools are helping accelerate how effective we are not only at getting work done, but also learning efficiently while on the job (Yes, we are finally coming to terms with the fact that Learning is work, work is learning!, -thanks to social technologies- About time!!), time and time again we seem to be very keen on putting borders around such learning activities thinking that we can streamlined them and industrialise them accordingly, because otherwise that learning never happened. And yet, we all know that we just can’t do that. We just can’t formalise what we don’t even know, i.e. how people learn while on the job. They just do.  Now, there are plenty of people out there who have been talking about this topic for a while, but there is in particular a group of very smart and talented folks that have been trying to set up the right landscape of how organizations should be embracing Informal, Social Learning. Of course, I am referring to the Internet Time Alliance folks (Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Clark Quinn, Paul Simbeck-Hampson and Charles Jennings), all of whom I can strongly suggest and encourage you all to follow up on if you would be interested in the kind of work they do.  In particular, and for the purpose of this Blog Carnival Post on the topic of Social Learning at the Workplace, I would love to point you to a superb presentation Charles himself did a couple of years ago and that, still today, it is more relevant and descriptive than ever: 8 Reasons to Focus on Informal & Social Learning, where not only does he get to describe what social learning itself is all about, and, most importantly, what it is not!, but it also covers some of the most fundamental aspects as to why every single organisation out there would need to embrace it and for a rather simple reason: knowledge workers are already doing it! (Whether organisations like it or not…).  Indeed, in that rather thought provoking presentation Charles gets to detail two of the main key drivers behind informal learning: "We’re working in an always-on, beta world" and "Learning often isn’t what we think it is", as well as detail a good bunch of insights on why businesses won’t be getting the most out of it by trying to formalise what can’t be formalised and for that purpose he mentions 8 different reasons that I thought would be worth while mentioning over here as well to set the right context on why we need to look at Learning with new eyes, trying to understand the needs and wants from knowledge workers - learners in such a way that they can define for themselves how that embedded learning would be taking place eventually. To name:  "There are imperatives for continual learning Learning is a process, not a series of events Most learning occurs outside classrooms The vast majority of learning is social A lot of formal learning is ineffective People learn better when they are in charge There’s inherent inertia in formal approaches Information and social learning are cost-effective" No, don’t worry, I am not going to spoil the rest of the fun talking about the remaining insights that Charles gets to cover on that set of slides. Instead I would strongly encourage you all to have a look into them with the embedded code of the deck itself shared below, so that you can see what he is aiming at and that we should all be considering as we keep redefining the role of Learning in a now more than ever Connected / Social Enterprise environment:  8 Reasons to Focus on Informal & Social Learning View more presentations from Charles Jennings Some really good stuff, don’t you think? To me, the key messages, which are also pretty good sound advice on how to tackle informal learning in the corporate world, as social networking for business keeps taking us all by storm, it would be to instead of trying to formalise it, so that it would become much easier to measuring it, we should "focus instead on helping people do their jobs well and work smarter".  And let the learning be up to them, the knowledge workers themselves, because, amongst several other things, they probably know, much better than you do, what they need, and what they don’t need. And it would be through that autonomy, decision power shift and that lowering of the centre of gravity that their learning would accelerate to places you even didn’t think they could happen at any given point. Yet, there they are, getting work done, now much more effective than ever, and learning along the way. Still think that you need to justify it with formal processes and measurements? What else can you, or should you, expect from social learning?  Not much, I can tell you. That’s probably as good as it gets…

If you follow me on the web, then you perhaps know that I'm big on photography. I absolutely love taking pictures - my Flickr stream with about 13000+ pictures will tell you just that. I'm no pro, but something makes me feel I've gotten better with time. As I reflect on the last 10 years of having owned cameras, I think I've some interesting insights on how adults learn. In today's post I want to share some of those thoughts with you and I'd love to hear how you feel about what I'm writing. Learning is effective when it's autonomous and purposefulWhen I got my first digital camera I wasn't fussed about technique. I was just keen to take pictures. I think I had a 256 MB card for my camera and it was an absolute luxury for me. All I wanted to do was capture every moment of my life. You need to know something about me. I didn't grow up with many of the gadgets that kids my age in the west were exposed to. So I didn't have a computer or video games. I have some photographs of my life prior to getting a camera, but the frank truth is that we were always constrained by the 36 pictures on the film roll. The ability to take pictures and see them instantly was gratification enough for me. Gradually, I got interested in photography as an art and only over the last few years have I gotten over the desire to 'snapshot' my life. Instead, I want to capture vivid moments that tell stories of their own. I haven't yet been to a photography course. I haven't let anyone dictate how I should shoot. As my purpose and subjects have changed, I have learned and my approach has evolved. I think this tells me something. It has taken me 10 years to learn what I know about photography, which frankly is precious little. On the other hand, someone else with a completely different purpose may have learned much quicker. I don't feel that I'm stupid because I took 10 years - I didn't need to. I enjoy the autonomy with which I learned. My learning has served my purpose and that's all that matters. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.Our educational systems are built around the premise of promoting success and success alone. I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating success, but we can't forget that failure is a stepping stone to success. I love shooting wildlife. Unlike many other subjects, filming wildlife is a very unforgiving experience. I can safely say I've had more failures than success filming wildlife and especially fast moving birds. A few days back I went to the lake near my house to try and follow the resident pied kingfishers. This is a curious bird and to watch it fish can provide hours of entertainment. It was no easy task filming these little geniuses given how skittish they can be. I failed at least four times before getting some satisfactory pictures on the fifth attempt. Failure was heartbreaking I must say, but the safety of knowing I have another chance gave me confidence. Each time I failed, I learned a little more. When I finally got the shot I wanted I was able to repeat my technique several times over. As you design learning experiences, how are you building in the safety to learn from failure? Constraints make for great learningWhen I bought my first camera, a simple point and shoot Yashica film device, I'd complained heavily about the lack of zoom. That complaint carried on as I graduated to better, more expensive cameras and super-zoomers. What I failed to appreciate was that every camera has a built in zoom - our two feet! Ever since, I've moved onto better equipment and longer lenses, but I must say my favourite lens today is a the 50mm prime that I own. It's a simple piece of equipment. It can't zoom, it has no image stabilization. That makes for great learning on how to get close to my subjects and how to keep my hand steady. In a similar manner I have learnt from the constraint of having to shoot vivid images through a single frame of a prosumer camera. Cameras don't see what our eyes see - there's way too much contrast to capture. This has led me to explore techniques such as high-dynamic-range (HDR photography) - the picture above is an example. I love placing meaningful constraints in the learning programs I design. For example at ThoughtWorks University I like to place the constraint of learning while on the job of delivering software to a client. It helps the new consultants to learn how to learn and gain useful experience on the side. There's no match to social media  and mobile platforms as learning toolsOne of the things I've learned from photography is that it's extremely gratifying to get feedback from your friends, skilled or not. I often put up my photographs on Flickr and sometimes on Facebook. When people favourite my images or comment favourably on them I know that I must be doing something right. It motivates me to do more. Social media has been a big influence on my learning journey too. Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook and Flickr put together have become an integral part of my photography learning journey. The byte sized pieces of inspiration I get every day are just the right size to help me learn on a daily basis. Add to that inspiring mobile apps like Life and Guardian Eyewitness  help me analyse great professional photography. As Brent Schlenker writes on his blog, mobile apps and new media are removing the middlemen from the learning experience. I learn from the best today by following their blogs. Trey Ratcliffe's blog is far more up-to-date than his book. That's an example of how powerful the social media learning experience can be. The era of having to go to school is past. School comes to me - every day and at my own pace.Learning is an iterative, experiential process. We however seemed to have based corporate learning around a dated model of education which lacked autonomy, had little social structure and discouraged failure. I can't say my experience with photography is representative of all kinds of learning. I do think that there is something for us to think about as we analyse experiences such as these. I'd love to hear how you feel about my musings today. I apologise my bad back has stopped me from being regular with my blog posts. As I grapple with this situation, I hope you continue to visit this blog as and when I post. I'll do my best to maintain a regular schedule as well. Hope you enjoyed today's post.© Sumeet Moghe