Blogging is hard work, indeed, as Valeria Maltoni recently put together in a brilliant article that I can certainly recommend everyone to go through. Specially, the superb links to a couple of other reflections from both Doc Searls and Dave Winer on the very same topic. Yes, blogging is really hard work. It makes you think. It makes you reflect on the things you are passionate about, on the things that drive you to work every day, on the many ideas that come through your brain on a daily basis and that you pick up one or two that you would want to share across in order to allow for them to grow further thanks to the wonderful exchanges with people in your (extended) networks. Yes, blogging is healthy, energising, inspiring, mind-blowing, in a way, if you would want to add, and perhaps what makes the Social Web unique, regardless of what other people out there keep telling you about the power of social networks. Of course, they are powerful, but never underestimate the power of the word, of reflection, of thinking deeply about what you care about, because that’s essentially what will help you grow both mentally and intellectually. Alas, sometimes, life has got other plans though that you would need to adjust to, embrace and move forward with, because, when failing to do that, it all then becomes far too overwhelming and before anything else you get lost. Well, not really lost, but no longer in control of what’s happening to you and the circumstances around you. I guess that pretty much sums up some of the main reasons as to why I haven’t been blogging much over the last two months and a half. Yes, I know. Way way too long since my last blog post on "The State of Social Business - A State of Maturity?" and from what I can recall the longest blogging hiatus I have gone through since I started blogging back in December 2003. Almost 10 years ago! Goodness! How does time go by when you are having fun, eh? Well, in the last couple of months I surely have had plenty of it and if I were to summarise it in less than 140 characters, which seems to be the current trending thought when engaging in social networking tools I guess I could do that with some original blurb, but then again my good friend Sam Driessen did that in a superb reflection nearly three months ago. To quote from a tweet:  The more we DO the less time we have to REFLECT #e20s — Samuel Driessen (@driessen) November 13, 2012 That pretty much would do it for me. That pretty much describes, for certain, what I have been doing over the last two and a half months where I have been doing plenty, but reflecting little and I guess it showed on this blog. I know most of you folks out there would be thinking about, or musing, how I have been rather active on social networking tools anyway (My Big Three, as I call them) during that time as a social computing evangelist helping raise awareness with fellow colleagues, customers and business partners on Living Social, but all along I must confess it felt like I was missing something…  Something that I didn’t think I would be missing this much, but that over the last couple of weeks, while I have been mostly offline, enjoying some extended holidays, and spending lengthy periods engaged in deep thinking, I realise that I have been neglecting, big time, a part of me: the thinking and reflecting self. The one piece of me who is always trying to stay ahead of the curve on what I do, to design and define where to go next, what to do and focus on, to keep redefining that so-called purpose and meaning on everything that I do, so that I keep learning further along and, essentially, grow, both physically (As I get older…) and mentally, as well as intellectually, as my body learns to adjust accordingly and my brain keeps asking for that deep thinking time.  See? There are plenty of reasons why people out there would suggest to you to, every now and then, take a break from blogging. Perhaps one of my favourite articles on the topic is this one from Sté Kerwer under the suggestive heading "5 Reasons to Take a Break from Your Blog". Really worth while reading piece for sure, but the interesting thing is that after all of this time that I haven’t been blogging much, it seems like those very same reasons that Sté talks about are the ones that could also explain why I have gone through that extended blogging break. Let’s see what I mean …  Mental and Physical Health I have mentioned above how over the course of the last couple of months I have been engaged in doing plenty as part of my daily job as a Social Computing Evangelist making 2012, perhaps, my busiest year yet, as far as business travelling is concerned, as well as raising awareness on social networking for business and the extended social evangelism I have been embarking on during that time for fellow colleagues, customers and business partners. That’s all a good thing, indeed, more than anything else because it looks like the business world is finally waking up to the notion of social networking as the next wave of business interactions with regards to collaborating and sharing your knowledge much more effectively, whether internal or externally, but, of course, it comes up with a toll: exhaustion. Not that I felt I reached that level of being exhausted on a rather regular basis, but all of those work related activities did their draining bit. Call it a bit too stressful, or whatever other name. Lucky enough, in other years I would have continued further along, perhaps even reaching the point of burning out eventually. But, as most of you folks out there know by now, specially, those who have been reading this blog for a while, over a year ago I decided to focus a whole lot more on my physical and health conditions and that has paid off big time ever since I decided … "And Health It Is".  I am still eating healthy. I am still having plenty of good sleep (Yes, plenty). And I am still running. Every day. I’m still having plenty of good fun with it all, so over the last couple of months there have been plenty of occasions where I needed to make a decision between blogging or running and, eventually, you guessed it right, running won the vast majority of times. And glad it did. It helped me fully understand, for instance, how this blog can always wait, pretty much like your various different online social networking activities. However, your body can’t. It needs constant nurturing and pampering to then empower you to do the best and most you can. So the time to keep neglecting my physical being has ended a long while ago and I can still see the results on the kind of impact that life changing experience has had in me, and those around me, over time. And it certainly has been quite an experience on its own.  Evaluate your priorities See? On this one I think I let it go, perhaps a bit too easy for that matter, as well; you know, year end activities and all, full stealth mode all the way, trying to help out others as much as I possibly could to succeed on everything they were embarking on thinking that was the least I could do to help me become better as well at what I do. Alas, that didn’t reflect on the blog, since I didn’t have a chance to write the usual lengthy reflections while on the road on business trips, or while doing plenty of enablement education sessions with customers and fellow colleagues, or the public speaking events that I participated in and that I am hoping to share some further insights on over the course of the next few days. Essentially, while helping others, I realised my own priorities with regards to business blogging were no longer there.  Of course, that’s going to change. You know, it’s a new year, 2013 (Happy New Year, by the way!). I am still on holidays, but throughout that extended vacation I have been doing plenty of deep thinking and have come up with a couple of strategies that I am hoping will help me get back in shape not just with this blog, but with a couple of other places I have decided to revamp again and start fresh. But more on that one later… Oh, I have got a draft post where I’m going to reflect as well on the consequences of helping others excel at their own jobs and how that reflects on your own. Another quite amazing experience worth while sharing across, I am sure, specially, thanks to the wonderful and unexpected results that I didn’t think were possible.  Revitalise your business Oh, yes! This one has already gotten started for yours truly. In fact, it’s been the main trend of thought that has occupied my mind, while re-charging batteries and unwinding during the holidays, and I can hint right here that the main keyword that keeps resurfacing from that reflection period I have gone through (And still not done with it just yet…) is this one: Changes. Some of them small, rather small; some of them, big, rather big. Actually, huge! But since I’m still figuring out the last few bits and pieces I will just keep it for myself till they are ready to go. Once they are ready though, folks reading this blog would be the first ones to know what happens next … (And where to…) Gain a new perspective I am excited about this one. Incredibly excited, actually! And I bet you may be wondering why, right? Well, mainly because along with revitalising my business, this has been my second focus area during this offline time and although I have already hinted it out what that new perspective would be like, in the area of Social Business, that is, I am hoping to develop further thoughts and insights on it, along with a new approach, over the course of the next couple of weeks. Suffice to say that when I mentioned I have hinted it already, I am referring to this CMSWire article that I got published towards the end of last year as my attempt towards venturing some sort of predictions for 2013 and beyond. If interested, go and have a read at "Social Business in 2013: A Challenge, An Opportunity, A Commitment".  Can you have an educated guess as to which one of those three that new perspective I will be blogging about soon enough will be based on? It’s going to be exciting and rather massive. Incredibly energising, if anything, since it’s what I feel would be the next step… Absence makes the heart grow fonder And, finally, this is the main reason why I am back to blogging. I have enjoyed tremendously the last couple of months with the huge amount of work related activities I have been involved with, including the extensive business travelling, the customer meetings, workshops, public speaking gigs, the extended enablement and education sessions I have conducted with fellow colleagues, customers and business partners and the list goes on and on and on. But there is a bunch of you, the faithful ones, my tribe, the ones who have helped me extensively grow both intellectually and mentally, who have been sticking around all along during this time, exercising some really wonderful doses of patience and perseverance asking me on a regular basis when I would be coming back to blogging. They missed my writing. They missed my blogging, my reflection time. My other self. So far, in the last couple of months people have been exposed to the doer me, the one who executes, the 2.0 practitioner, the seasoned social business evangelist who tries to lead by example on what it is like Living Social in the big corporate business world without getting slammed much along the way (Oh, yes!! I am still going rather strong on "A World Without eMail", too, by the way! - Hint: 15 emails received per week!).  But my faithful ones have been missing out on the thinker me, the one who gets to write, ponder and muse about those crazy little ideas that every now and then surface in my brain around Social Business and Social Networking for business and that they make it out there in rather lengthy blog posts, articles, and whatever else that, ironically enough, keep driving the popularity of this blog by tripling its traffic over the last year. Go figure. Either way, it’s thanks to those faithful ones that I am back to blogging, wanting to acknowledge their extended patience and resilience to stick around all of this time and wanting to wish them all the very best in the new year with lots of exciting projects, inspiring initiatives and mind-blowing collaborative work with which they will keep rocking my world making a difference. A huge difference!  So, a big thanks! to all of you for being out there, for being patient enough throughout the last few weeks to hang in there, till I was ready to come back. A big thanks! for the encouraging words to reach out for that balance between me the doer and the thinker and for inspiring some pretty amazing offline conversations on the side that, you may not realise about it just yet, but they have completely shaped up what my new mantra and focus areas for 2013 are going to be: meaning, purpose, focus, trust, transparency, equity, transformation, change, complexity, uncertainty, authenticity, honesty, and, above all, engagement. Because, at the end of the day, it’s all about engagement, isn’t it?  And perhaps Social Business may, or may not!, have anything to do with it after all … We shall see!  Yes, I am, finally, back! Ohhh and a Happy, Healthy and rather Prosperous New Year 2013 to everyone out there! Let the fun begin!

Here a quick list that I came up with:ID Theory and Concept: Understand and apply ID concepts, theories and models based on relevance.ADDIE Process: Understand and implement the ADDIE process.Business Requirement and Problem: Understand the business requirement that led to the demand for the training, and the business problem that the training is intended to be solved.Suggest appropriate Training Solutions: Suggest appropriate training solutions based on the requirements and audience needs.Audience Analysis: Understand the target audience profiles and analyze how to design the courses to appeal to such an audience and enable them to perform their job better.Task Analysis: Structure and chunk course contents and present it in a format desirable to the target audience.Write Measurable Learning Objectives: Write high-level (terminal) learning objectives and drill them down to the low-level (enabling or task level) task specific objectives. The focus while writing objectives should be to write something that can be measured.Learner Cognition: Understand the learning patterns that go on in a learner’s mind and design courses appropriately.Relevant Information: Look at a variety of available resources of information and identify what is relevant to the course objectives.Interface with SME: Interface with SMEs and build good working relationships in order to get the requisite information to build courses.Gather Information from different perspectives: Take information pertaining to the course from multiple perspectives (Dev/QA, Product Management, Instructor, Support/Consulting) and take decisions on what is relevant to the course audience.Curriculum plans: Design curriculum plans indicating the list of courses that will address the business need, define the goals for the courses, and determine the appropriate delivery format that will enhance the effectiveness of the training.Content Plans: Design the content plan for a single course, based on the results of the task analysis process. This includes writing the course terminal and enabling objectives, the topics comprising the course, and also indicating the content or key points that need to go into a topic. For online courses the strategy of dealing with the content maybe suggested. For ILT suggest how the instructor may use the content.Storyboarding the course: Translate the information gathered and present it in the format of a course based ensuring that the course objectives are met.Build use cases and scenarios: Work with SMEs to build good scenarios that the learner can relate to so that they find the examples and exercises relevant to their job.Design Hands on Exercises: Design hands on exercises that are easy to follow and focused at the objective, and enable the learner to be able to perform the tasks on their own after the training.Design Instructional Strategies: Design instructional strategies as appropriate to the course objectives and to keep the learner engaged and interacting with the course.Training Evaluation: Evaluate training feedback and make appropriate improvements to the next versions of the course.Also found another post on Instructional Design Skills. Please add any more that you can think of.

While I was pondering further along preparing my coming back to blogging I just couldn’t help reflecting on a good number of the various different articles that I have posted over here in the last few months, some of them exposing, quite frankly, perhaps too bluntly, at times, some of the various different challenges that Social Business, still today in 2013, keeps facing in order to provoke that massive business transformation we have all been anticipating for quite a bit. And it looks like some of those articles themselves seemed to have struck a chord with you folks out there as well, because, judging from the Top 10 Most Popular Blog Posts in 2012 at http://elsua.net, I can see how some of them have made us dive deeper into some amazing conversations that will help us quite a bit, I suspect, tackle those business challenges in 2013 and beyond.  And that is a good thing, except that I suppose that’s just the beginning of what we have got to face ahead of us still. More than anything else, because in the last three months, while I was mostly away from this blog, I kept bumping into a couple of relatively new challenges that I think are going to present lots of great opportunities for us all in the year ahead in the space of Social Business. Both of them being rather unexpected, specially, if you judge the last 3 to 5 years in this space. And here is why …  But before we go deeper into that, and since I guess you may all be a bit curious as to what were those Top 10 Most Popular Blog Posts from 2012 from http://elsua.net I have taken the liberty of including the titles, with the their links, over here, so that you may have another chance to take a look into them, and with the end goal for myself as well to perhaps take another look later on this year and see how those challenges have been addressed, or how they may have evolved altogether, if at all. It should be quite an interesting exercise, don’t you think? Here is the list:  Top 10 Most Popular Blog Posts in 2012 at http://elsua.net Twitter Is Where Conversations Go To Die Dear Social Business Evangelist, Where Art Thou? Why Social Business Keeps Failing to Deliver Liberate Your Company Through Employee Engagement Reflections from 2011 - A World Without eMail - The Documentary Productivity Tips on Presentations: Inform, Inspire and Motivate @Janetter or How I Started to Enjoy Twitter Once Again Once Upon a Time … The Power of Storytelling in Business Why Do I Share My Knowledge? 40-Hour Work Work - The Magic of Sustainable Growth  Ok, back to what I feel would be the main two key business challenges for Social Business over the course of the next few months. One of them I have already talked about it on a recent publication I quoted over here in my previous blog post and the second one I’m going to leave it for a little bit later in the month, once I have got some additional confirmation details as to whether it will turn itself into a challenge, or perhaps just another opportunity. So let’s go and talk about Challenge #1 for Social Business: Social Networking Is Just for Fun Yes, I know what you are all thinking about. It’s not really that much of a relatively new challenge, since it’s probably been there all along. And you are probably right. I think what I am referring to now though is how over the course of the last few months that whole aspect of social networking just for fun has been amplified tremendously judging by the huge impact that social technologies have been having in our societies as a whole! And perhaps for a good number of reasons, too! Whether businesses are still blocking the use of social networks behind the firewall empowering inadvertently their knowledge workers to make that assumption (and rightly so!) that social tools are just meant to be utilised for personal use, outside of work; whether it’s because knowledge workers do not want to mix personal / private AND work as part of the same entity (Themselves!) -this may well be a cultural thing that could vary from one country to another, or one geography to another; whether we are reaching way beyond the two year threshold for Social Business within the corporate world and we are still bumping into research studies that keep confirming how 70% of the Enterprise 2.0 deployments have / will fail to deliver, which doesn’t sound too welcoming for those knowledge workers who see the many benefits for themselves with regards to Social, yet, it hasn’t struck a chord when they enter the firewall.  I eventually wrote more extensively about this particular challenge at the end of last year on that CMSWire article that I got published under the heading "Social Business in 2013: A Challenge, An Opportunity, A Commitment", but I think it would be worth while quoting the section Social Business in 2013 - A Challenge to see where I’m coming from and perhaps for you folks as well to confirm whether that perception is something that you may have seen, or experienced, or talked about in the last few months. To quote:  "For a good number of years we have witnessed plenty of businesses insisting on blocking the use of social networking tools within the firewall, hoping to stop the use of these social technologies in order to prevent wasted time while at work. This has now essentially backfired, as we have all seen the use of social media tools increasing more and more over time. Erik Qualman recently showed this in the next take of Social Media 2013 video clips. On its own, this presents a good challenge for Social Business, because as fewer and fewer businesses block social networking tools, knowledge workers have increased their exposure and extended use of social tools in their personal lives, but not in relation to their work. And they would like to keep it this way. If you take a look into rather revealing elements like Twitter’s Trending Topics, Facebook and LinkedIn’s timelines, or Trending in Google Plus, you will see how we do have a rather interesting challenge for 2013 where businesses will need to focus not on driving the internal and external adoption of social software, but on strongly convincing their own knowledge workers that social technologies can be used as well as business tools. Right now, we are starting to see how workers remain unconvinced, while being incredibly active on social media from a personal, private perspective." I can imagine how there would be plenty of knowledge workers out there who may not be too sure about this being necessarily too much of a challenge, but I am starting to suspect it will be. If fact, it is already! Just look around you how many fellow colleagues you know at work who are incredibly social outside the firewall engaging in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and whatever else, yet when you look around inside the firewall they keep using the same good old traditional collaborative tools: email, Instant Messaging, even the phone! And it gets worse, perhaps, because when you ask them why they are not using internal social networking tools deployed by their company they take a rather defensive position stating how no-one should determine what’s best for them. They surely know better! They just don’t want to mix pleasure AND work together, because, you know, after all, you just can’t have fun while at work. It would show like you are slacking off!  And that is going to be a challenge! And a quite ironic one, too! Because if you look into it, we have spent several years now trying to convince people of the genuine value behind social networking activities to help improve and augment the way we collaborate and share our knowledge out in the open much more effectively and once we did that something went wrong along the lines and, instead, that value just remained intact for personal, private matters, whereas in a work environment email still rules, or so they tell me. My initial reaction, of course, is… Really? But then over the course of the last few weeks, and in all of the various different customer or internal Social Business enablement events, workshops, seminars, conference events, etc. etc. I have attended and participated in that worst case scenario keeps getting confirmed. Sadly.  What can we, social business evangelists, do then? Well, there are plenty of things that we could do to address this challenge and turn it into a huge opportunity for Social Business, but I’m just going to focus on a couple of them that I have decided to become even stronger about them than ever before as part of my focus areas for 2013 and beyond. The first one, of course, as you may well have guessed, is to keep pushing for "A World Without eMail", now that we (Yes, indeed, I can now call it a Movement and very soon you will find out plenty more why!) are just about to enter its 5th anniversary since I first ditched corporate work email at IBM and instead decided to lead by example, embracing social networking tools not just for work, but also as a philosophy, as a way of life, that is, social networking enhancing living a life in perpetual beta as my good friend Harold Jarche would probably say as well.  The thing though is that the stakes are higher. Much higher than in February 2008 when that little crazy idea of giving up on corporate email came about through my brain and decided to give it a go, why not?, despite people telling me I was (Probably still am!) rather crazy to do such thing and how perhaps I may well be on my way out getting fired in under two weeks. Well, 5 years on, and I’m still here!, continuing to challenge the status quo of how certain things happen in the corporate environment. Work. Our work. Or, at least, the traditional concept of what work entails. The challenge is tougher, too!, because we need to, finally, understand that, after the couple of years of honeymoon between the business world and Social Business (Yes, I know! Perhaps a bit too long of a honeymoon, don’t you think?), we are still witnessing that 70% of failure rate that I mentioned above in successful Enterprise 2.0 deployments and that’s just huge! Something that we probably can’t afford much any longer. So what can we do about this one? Well, as a starting point we will need to start thinking about Social Business in higher terms than ever before. Aim for a bigger purpose. Yes, Sales, Marketing & Communications, New Hires, Technical Leadership / Thought Leadership, IT Infrastructure and so forth are cool beans and everything, but they are not enough. Not anymore. The stakes are higher. We are just scratching through the surface of that business transformation we all know that Social Business is rather capable of provoking. How? Hummm, what do you think? In my opinion, it’s going to be down to two different groups, within the corporate world, that we would need to aim at higher than ever. Can you guess which ones those would be?  (That will be the topic of my next blog post over here … To be continued …)

I just found Donald Kirkpatrick's profile on LinkedIn and stumbled on this presentation. He coined this model in 1975 and it could most probably be outdated. He talks about the four levels of evaluation of a course:Level1: Reaction-Observe and record learner reaction to a training.Level2: Learning-The extent to which learners change attitudes, increase knowledge, and/or increase skills.Level3: Behavior-The extent to which change in behavior occurs on the job.Level4: Results-The final outcomes that occur as a result of training.I find this interesting though not surprising as the levels seem to be quite obvious.The model says you need to use 2-3 tools to evaluate each level and you need to define the measurement at the beginning of every project. The figure gives a matrix of the measurement required at each level.Another thing he says is if you don't get past level 2, you aren't using Kirkpatrick. Also he claims that using this model will cause a minimum wastage in your training investment.I would like to try this out when I have a chance, and I'm not willing to comment about it till I know, but this seems to be very generic and I'm not very sure about how practical it is in a corporate scenario.Some additional links. This table is also quite useful. Please leave your comments if you have tried using this in your setup, or if you have an opinion on this.

If you have been reading this blog for a little while now, you would know how one of the various different things that I keep trying to do, but fail miserably, struggling all along, is to embark myself into writing over here relatively shorter blog posts versus the rather lengthy essays that seem to have been more of the norm all along. Don’t take me wrong. Somehow the vast majority of you folks seem to enjoy those lengthy articles quite a bit, since blog traffic tripled throughout 2012 from previous years, but I am starting to think that it wouldn’t hurt to have little snacks every now and then, while we are all on the move, about interesting things that are happening out there, or relevant links worth while sharing across with an annotation or two, or just simply, reflect about a crazy new idea, a new thought, a new interesting initiative that may have caught my attention, etc. with just a few words to then develop it further along as time moves on and things settle down a bit. Well, here’s my zillionth attempt into aiming for shorter blog posts. Will it blend this time around? I am not sure whether it will stick around, or not, but I guess it’s worth while trying it out, once again, don’t you think?, and see how it goes… Now, I am not thinking about stopping writing lengthier blog entries, at least, not for the time being. I am thinking more along the lines of combining both longer pieces with shorter bites of things that may have caught my attention and that I would want to perhaps develop further along on it at a later time. Or if it has got to do with something related to Productivity and how we can improve, collectively, our overall sense of Effectiveness as knowledge Web workers, by all means, I am going to give it a try and experiment with this new form of combining both shorter and longer articles to help perhaps make the blog a bit more dynamic. That’s maybe the reason why it took me so long to come back to this blog in the first place. The fact that I kept aiming for longer pieces where I needed to reflect perhaps more than I should. So maybe I can prepare now for those crazy busy times ahead of me (As I am entering my last week of vacation) when time will be scarce but ideas plenty and I would need to have a place to air them out, so I don’t forget about them for when things may slow down and I can pick them up again.  So what a better way of kicking off these shorter blog posts than sharing a link to a rather interesting YouTube video that I bumped into a few weeks back and which I think would be incredibly helpful for those people who, like me, do plenty of public speaking and could do with a few tips on creating slides people will remember. That’s, indeed, the suggestive and rather intriguing topic that Nancy Duarte talked about on this video presentation that I can certainly recommend everyone to go through, since it’s just a bit over 2 minutes long, but pretty packed up with some excellent tips that I thought I would briefly quote over here, as a teaser, to get you all going:  "Use Slides Selectively Write the slides after you have prepared the speech Design slides people can "get" in 3 seconds Storyboard one concept per slide Remember that slides are a visual medium" Here is the direct link to the video, in case you may not be able to play it through the embedded version below:  I guess if this year we are, finally, at long last!, declaring war to PowerPoint and presentations in general, Nancy just shared across with all of us a nice, smart, succinct, knowledgeable manner of doing it without dying in the attempt, don’t you think? I particularly love item #1 which is why during the course of 2013 I’ll keep aiming to reduce tremendously my dependency on visuals and focus more on the power of the word, of emotion, of passion, essentially, on what drives me to do what I do and what I care about: having a good conversation where I can learn just as much as the audience does, if not more! That’s what presentations are all about. The rest are just master classes.

Before we move further on in trying to address the final conclusions I shared on a recent blog post under the heading Social Business in 2013 - A Challenge, I thought I would go ahead commenting further first on that third piece from that recent CMSWire article that I published earlier on, where I talked about perhaps one of the most important, key concepts for Social Business to thrive in 2013 and beyond: A Commitment. More than anything else, because over the course of the last few months, perhaps couple of years, I have seen very little of it, as I have blogged about a couple of times in articles like Why Social Business Keeps Failing to Deliver or Dear Social Business Evangelist, Where Art Thou? and somehow it’s starting to bring back memories of the same trip that Knowledge Management went through back in the day. About 15 to 18 years ago. Yes, the buzz is there, the hype, too! The selling and marketing of it, but when you are talking about making a commitment, that is, raising the stakes to provoke that profound business transformation we all know it’s fully capable of (about how to make it work), it’s nowhere to be seen. And that’s worrying. Very worrying. Perhaps we could go ahead and illustrate it with a cartoon from Tom Fishburne (Please do go ahead and read his blog post on the topic, too! It will be worth while a read!) that I am sure you would all agree with me that it would make the point incredibly well. If not, judge for yourselves on what I mean with that keyword of Commitment (With a capital C) and the lack of it in today’s current Social Business landscape: Just brilliant, don’t you think? I can imagine that at this point in time plenty of you folks out there would be musing about the fact that you may know plenty of firms who would fall under any of those various different strategies except perhaps for the "All too rare" that Tom mentions and that I feel is why we need to raise the stakes on not only what Social Business could do, but what it would eventually need to do! And not just with that flavour of a focus on delighting customers, but with employees and knowledge workers alike! Think about it. When was the last time that you helped your fellow colleague(s) to be more awesome, become smarter than you are at what you do… without asking anything in return? See what I mean? There are big key words in here at play in this so-called social business transformation that very few people, specially, vendors, have put into practice and perhaps that’s something that we can help them understand when talking about commitment. Concepts like empathy, equity, meritocracy, transparency, openness, authenticity, trust, engagement, participation, constructive feedback / criticism and so forth are still very much missing from vast majority of Social Business vendors out there. And I suspect that customers, whether internal or external, are just about to become really fed up with all of that NOT walking the talk from all of those social business vendors that in most cases are showing how full they are of themselves in any which way and nothing else. Very little substance coming along due to that lack of establishing some serious commitment behind their words on helping their own customers be more awesome.  In that CMSWire article I got published by the end of last year I described it in these terms. To quote:  "And finally, here we are with the commitment. In the quest for most brands to become more open, trustworthy, honest, transparent, interconnected, smarter and authentic, in other words, more engaging with their own customers AND employees, provide better quality service, better products, better customer service, and so forth, in 2013 we are going to see how vendors (and not just for Social Businesses, but everyone who may well be in Sales) are going to make that giant leap of faith and start walking the talk more often. In the world of Social, 2013 is going to accelerate the transformation of vendors talking one thing and doing a completely different other. It’s no longer going to work that way. Rather the opposite. Businesses, mainly through learning by doing, will be called upon by their customers and especially their very own employees, on the main reasons why they are not walking the talk. Why they are not provoking their own business transformation through social networking when they may well be big advocates themselves of the change? We are going to witness how trust is going to become more critical than ever, not from the perspective of how you can gain my / our / their trust, but more how you can keep it alive and kicking every single day of the year by starting to put your actions behind your words. Because if you don’t manage to make that happen in an effective and engaging manner, I suspect both customers AND employees will move on. Brands and businesses will be striving for authenticity, for uniqueness, for what makes them special, [essential] against everyone else. Customers and employees will be striving to belong to those brands and businesses whose commitment is one of wanting to transform themselves into the next generation of how we get work done in the 21st century: sustainable growth." That’s the Commitment (with the Capital C) that we are about to see unfold and unleash, both inside and outside of the firewall for most businesses out there. Of particular interest, I would think, would be the bold text highlighting the emphasis on walking the talk, on learning by doing, because we are starting to see, if not already, how businesses who bought into the idea of becoming a Social Business by purchasing some [Perhaps (too) expensive] social software a year or two ago are starting to wonder about what next, because, amongst several other things, it’s just not working! Remember how 70% of the corporate world knowledge workforce is totally disengaged? Or how 7 out of 10 Enterprise 2.0 deployments will fail, according to some piece of research that was conducted last year? Knowledge Management anyone? This is, indeed, when those social business vendors would need to stand out AND deliver. Put their actions behind their words. The smooth talk is way over by now! Not just for their customers, but also for their own employees. Only then will we be capable of talking about Socially Integrated Enterprises thriving to help you become *even* more awesome. The rest is just a waste of time. And we all know life is just too short to keep wasting along those precious moments, so I would suggest keep pushing not just for your / our customers, but, essentially for *all* of us. We cannot longer afford statements like Social Business / Enterprise 2.0 has been here for over 6 years and we still have yet to witness that true, rather profound, social transformation of today’s corporate world to become tomorrow’s social workplace. Our workplace. 

I found these slides by Cathy Moore Design Lively elearning with Action Mapping that illustrate the concept of action mapping most precisely . I thought this information to be valuable for most of the industry, as we often tend to lose focus on the business goal and what learners really need in order to perform their job better. Some of the points that I highlighted, in this months big question on learning circuits, speak about how learner-centric design, reference-hybrids, and learning outcomes will become more important in future work places. So though the term 'action mapping' seemed new, Cathy's slides made it evident as to how focus, focus, and more focus on the business goal and the learner needs in our training courses will get us the desired business benefits.The goal of Action Mapping is to successfully help you convert your formidable 'information dump' into a no-nonsense meaningful course, that focuses only on 'actions' that the learner needs to learn to perform his job better. The action mapping process, according to Cathy Moore, consists of the following steps:1. Identify your business goal.2. Identify what people need to do in order to reach that goal.3. Design activities that help people practice each behavior.4. Identify the minimum information people need to complete each activity.I believe this approach takes us away from the linear approach we had to covering courses earlier, wherein we would necessarily cover a lot of theory in the beginning of a course, hoping the user 'may' need it sometime. I think that approach is now irrelevant as it also indicates a level of uncertainty and lack of awareness on the side of the course designer. The benefits of applying the concept of action mapping to your courses are:1. Tightly focused materials.2. Realistic, compelling activities.3. No irrelevant information.4. More likely to have a measurable business impact.The things we need to avoid doing though are:1. Attempt to increase the learner's knowledge in their domain to an extent that you cover every bit of information that comes your way, and end up dumping information on the learner. For example, don't try and cover every single feature of the product. Remember that it is product documentation's job to do that.2. Create irrelevant quizzes in the name of engaging the learner and waste valuable learning time.3. Write statements that increase knowledge rather than teach actions, meaning write sentences that are task-oriented. For example, The Access Control dialog box, gives you many options to control actions of your users, can be better written as Use the Access Control dialog box to assign appropriate privileges to your users.The focus, so to say will be, the 'action' that your want the learner to learn in order to be able to perform better in their job.My 2 cents on action mappingI think we as instructional designers need to ramp up and define a niche for ourselves by proving that we 'can' understand the learner's needs and design courses to precisely address them. This will only be possible, owing to our ability to gain domain knowledge in the domain in which the training is being created. For example, if I am creating training for the telecommunications domain, I need to understand generic telecommunications concepts, as well as the way in which the product that I'm creating training for, will be used by the learner. So you, more than the learner, need to work very hard to gather this information and analyze it to the level of the 'actions' or 'tasks' that your learner will perform.I also believe that those of us who believe a lot in the traditional ways of training, need to move towards a mindset change here, and accept that the 'traditional' trainings that we created in the past were not necessarily the best solutions and recognize how practical concepts like action mapping can help us deliver effective training.There is also a need to create simple and usable user interfaces and interactions that will motivate the learner to learn more, rather than deter them from proceeding, owing to the complex nature of the interfaces.As Cathy rightly highlights, the associated practice activity linking to an action, should be taken from a real-life scenario rather than a fictitious scenario that sounds unrealistic to the learner. It becomes imperative on the part of the instructional designer to research on and create 'realistic' scenarios that the learner can 'really' relate to.In conclusion, I believe that as time moves on, the need to being practical becomes paramount and we need no more eye openers than we had in our past experiences.

And, finally, after "Social Business in 2013 - A Challenge" and "[…] - A Commitment", here’s the last article of the series, where I will be focusing on "An Opportunity" for Social Business in 2013 (and beyond), more than anything else by touching base on a deeper level on what I covered at both of those blog entries and what I have been experiencing and reflecting upon myself over the course of the last year or two. This piece would also highlight a shift of focus and purpose for yours truly with regards to the overall theme of Social Networking for Business. Yes, indeed, this is the so-called blog entry I have been talking about (Both offline and online) over the last few months about where to next … And with that I mean, mainly, where will I be moving along with my own efforts as a Social Business evangelist from here onwards as an opportunity to continue to grow, learn, explore, reflect, and share that huge new opportunity Social Business has got ahead, if it would want to succeed in today’s, more complex and uncertain than ever, corporate workplace environment. Indeed, a shift of focus away from that technology fetish, vendors’ speak, Sales, Marketing & Communications, Digital (Technical) Thought Leadership and so forth and diving right into what I have been sensing is the major key towards completing and realising that Social Business transformation we keep aiming at, but fail to deliver fully. Time to step up, level up the game, shift gears and go right to the heart, the core, of how businesses have been run over the last few decades in order for Social Business to thrive: Human Resources. Or, better said, the metamorphosis of Human Resources into Human Relationships. That’s what is at stake over here. In previous blog entries I have reflected on the fact of how I keep seeing how more and more businesses seem to stagnate in their adoption efforts of becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise after the first or second year of deploying social technologies behind the firewall (Never mind the external side for a minute… More on that one later on…). It’s what some folks have called that lovely honeymoon period where rather Sales, Marketing or Communications have been taking the lead in jumping the shark and deciding to, finally, dive into the world of Social. And, yes, businesses eventually do. Knowledge workers ultimately adopt and embrace as well a much more open, public, trustworthy and transparent manner of collaborating and sharing their knowledge. And the raw benefits have been demonstrated time and time again. Have you noticed how little we see nowadays in writing that awkward, old, now obsolete, conversation about the ROI of Social Media? It’s gone! Nowhere to be seen anymore! Nothing. Zipped. Nada. Why? Well, mainly because everyone has stopped questioning the value add that social technologies can bring up to the day to day business operations and how they can help improve overall business performance. It’s there. It’s now a given. It’s just a matter of figuring out the How, so that you can incorporate it into your overall business processes and corporate culture. But there is something else. It’s what I call Human Processes. The ones that are driven by humans AND for humans. The ones that are not spoken, perhaps not even written about much anywhere, but that everyone understands they are a key part of the corporate culture to the point that they are the ones that rule how businesses operate. Essentially, Human Resources. In practical terms, something much more mundane that I suspect is going to become the main, key focus for most businesses over the next few months, if not already: Employee Engagement. But all along with a slight new twist added to it; it’s a two way street that needs to work in both directions: Employees to employer and employer to employees. Right now, it’s a one way only street (Employees to employer), one where employers are saying that employees should even be lucky to have a job, to be loyal to the firm, to have work to do. Well, that may well have been the case over the last 50 years, but we are now past way beyond the threshold to admit it as how businesses should operate in this, more complex, inter/ hyper connected, networked 21st century than ever. It just doesn’t work that way anymore. And that’s where Human Relationships kick in. HR’s own transformation to start facing AND do something about what I feel is their number #1 business problem to solve over the next year or two: reduce the huge % of disengaged employees we have got across the corporate world and for which no-one seems to be doing much. Or, anything at all, really.   And that’s where Social Business kicks in. That’s where some of the main key mantras behind it need to become a reality for HR to provoke that business transformation we all sense is almost there, but that it keeps escaping us through our fingers. It’s now the right time for HR to step up, level up the game, and get involved in becoming the centre of that social business transformation, specially, with regards to those key human processes. Key themes like openness, transparency, trust, recognition, (digital) reputation, empathy, equity, meritocracy, democracy, authenticity, engagement, participation, constructive criticism, knowledge sharing, collaboration, learning, connectedness need to become part of HR’s new speak. And not only just speak, but do as well, leading by example, learning by doing, diving into the conversations they keep saying that have been watching and monitoring from afar to judge employee’s sentiment, but that time and time again they have neglected to dive into the conversation, because they feel they still rule the corporate world, i.e. the knowledge workforce and therefore they don’t see a need for it. Really? Ever heard of Talent Management or Talent Wars? Ever read about plenty of research done around the huge %s of disengaged employees at work? That’s not what I would call ruling the corporate world. Quite the opposite. Indeed, more like destroying it altogether to no avail.  I remember when back in the day, nearly 10 years ago, when I first started blogging, both internally and externally (Nearly 8 years ago for the latter), one of the themes I decided to go for as its own category was Social Computing, then Social Networking. From there onwards Enterprise 2.0, followed by the Social Enterprise and, lately, Social Business. That was all part of what I felt was the evolution of social networking in a corporate environment. Well, as of today, and while I move on shifting my focus into that where to next … I have created a couple of new categories. One of them is just a renaming activity from a previous one. The other is an entirely new category that I will be using to post articles on that particular topic from here onwards. It will also mean how, after 6 years, I’m starting to sense it’s time to move on from those fully loaded monikers of Social Enterprise  or Social Business, since, you know, they eventually mean something completely different altogether and it’s probably a good thing to move on anyway. That’s why Social Enterprise / Social Business from here onwards, for yours truly, are going to be Open Business, following further up the superb piece of work that David Cushman did in setting up the stage of what Open Business is all about during the course of last few months. You may want to go ahead and start reading "The 10 Principles of Open Business", or "Introducing Open Business", or perhaps check out the Open Business Council to find out more about it and you will see how for a good number of years this blog has been permeating through plenty of the vision David shared across with that new concept of how businesses should operate. I know it’s not new, for sure, I mean, openness has been there all along, but if you read further into the principles that David shared across about this topic you would see how we still need to do plenty of work about it. And that’s essentially what I am planning on doing from here onwards. I would love to read your comments on this blog post about what you think Open Business would mean to you and whether you would feel it’d be something that could stick around and help us evolve the conversation around Social Business and look for that specific purpose and focus without getting confused along the way anymore by stealing terms and concepts, because we just couldn’t find anything better at the time. Oh, and in case you may not have noticed it will also mean I’m finally getting rid of that fully loaded concept of Social, which I know it’s kind of a taboo word for plenty of people out there since it has got plenty of various other different connotations than just work, like goofing away, slacking off, or just simply avoid doing work. I know it’s going to take me a bit of time to adjust and stop using Social or Social Business, so I would ask you to bear with me along the way while I get to adjust accordingly and I get to explore further along what an Open Business is all about. That’s essentially what I am planning on blogging further along from here onwards as well.  Finally, the new category I will be using on this blog from here onwards is Employee Engagement, more than HR 2.0, HR Transformation and whatever else. It’s going to be that focus area for me where I plan to write down articles, and share some interesting readings I have bumped into over the course of time around Employee Engagement itself, but as a two way street: from employers to employees and from employees to employers. It’s going to be an exciting journey, one where I plan to learn quite a bit on how HR operates and how we can *all* help out provoke that transformation from Human Resources into Human Relationships. I am hoping you folks would be helping me out adding further up into the conversations by sharing your insights, first hand experiences, know-how, skills, ideas and so forth on HR becoming the main driver of Social Business, errr, I mean, Open Business and help us bring forward that huge opportunity Open / Social Business has got ahead of us all over the next couple of years … Oh, and if you feel I’m way off base and heading into the wrong direction, let me know, too! Like I have always said, I do care a whole lot more about the journey than the final destination, so if I’m about to start the wrong kind journey, better to know well in advance, don’t you think? [This blog post series was inspired as a follow-up from the recent article I published at CMSWire under the heading "Social Business in 2013: A Challenge, An Opportunity, A Commitment" and I am going to hereby take the liberty of quoting the last piece on An Opportunity to see the context of where it all comes from and where I will be heading next … Hope you folks will also join me along the way on this rather anticipated and incredibly exciting journey!  "The opportunity for Social Business in 2013 and beyond is going to start with a challenge. A business problem. Actually, the biggest problem the corporate world has faced in decades, which despite the rampant use of social networking tools, we still haven't been able to solve accordingly: employee engagement. Recent research studies from Deloitte have confirmed how over 70 percent of our employee workforce is disengaged or totally disengaged at work. This is while we have witnessed and experienced the rampant adoption of social networking tools behind the firewall. How can that be that the surge of social technologies has taken the business world by storm, yet seven out of 10 employees are totally disengaged with their day to day work? The answer is rather simple. We have been missing a huge opportunity in the wider adoption of Social Business within the enterprise. We have seen where social technologies have been rather successful in communications, marketing, sales, learning, retail, consultancy, research, knowledge sharing, collaboration, customer service and so forth. Yet there is one group that has not been affected by this rampant adoption of social networking tools for business, and which could very well be the main reason why knowledge workers are not engaged at work. Without this group being involved, we are not really provoking the (social) business transformation we would have wanted or hoped for. I am talking about HR and their new transformation from being Human Resources to becoming Human Relationships. That's the huge opportunity for Social Business in 2013 and beyond. Help address employee disengagement across the board by having HR drive, right at the center, the transformation of how business gets done through Social. There are plenty of implications here, but one that's going to become key is the one around Talent Management, especially, when your employees are disengaged, finding that new opportunity to be rewarded, recognized and motivated and more, thanks to the meaningful, purposeful, engaging work they may have eventually landed in. This is the chance for HR to demonstrate that Social Business has never been about having the coolest tools, or the most impressive working business processes. This is going to be the final opportunity for HR to be back at the forefront of facilitating something we have been missing for decades: employees owning their work, taking more responsibility, making the right decisions, earning their merits and (digital) reputation, to eventually become recognised for what they do best — their job(s)."]

How amusing that the very topics I had planned for my blog became a topic of discussion before I could even write up my post. I was planning to list some best practices in my field of work since quite sometime now, as I'm a believer in the concept due to the goal it intends to achieve—better and efficient performance. Looking at the posts and comments on Jane Bozarth and Tony Karrer's blogs it appears that the term is either 'overused' or misunderstood. I never had any doubts about what it meant until I read these posts. I read Jane Bozarth's post on The Myth of "Best Practices" the day she posted it and empathized with her point of view that people expect to get best practices for almost anything they want to learn. She's right from her perspective in saying that before asking such questions, one needs to understand that...------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A "best practice" is best only in the precise, specific context in which it exists.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today, Tony's post on Sharing Best Practices—Patterns originated from the same source, but I thought succeeded in dissecting the context and origin of term best practice and arrived at design patterns very beautifully. This is the way I would like to understand the concept of best practices too and totally agree with Tony. Thus, though I had absolutely no plans of writing a post on best practices, here I am writing one! After reading all the discussions, I now have formed an opinion that I want to share. Not intending to digress though, I think it is worth mentioning that today I read another post by Tony on New Blogs and how new bloggers have trouble thinking of topics to write. It seems that reading other bloggers posts intently can also give you wonderful ideas on what to write on your blog.Getting back to the topic under discussion, best practices and patterns, I suggest fully reading Jane and Tony's posts and the comments, before reading mine. In this post, I plan to illustrate the points raised in the discussions with real-life scenarios, which is my favorite way of making people delve deeper into a topic. Once you have context, you begin to see the value of things which otherwise seem meaningless or irrelevant. I urge each of you to think about the scenarios that you find relevant with this post and share your thoughts.Scenario 1:As instructional designer, I use a course outline and a storyboard template in order to eliminate the redundant task of thinking what all I need to cover in a course outline, and what all I need to write in a storyboard. Now this is a best practice we follow to help us work efficiently and focus on the main goal we're trying to achieve here—Build a Course!It is worth noting here, as to how the template was created; by observing a pattern of information that all courses largely require!The same example applies when I build a custom course template with a menu, previous, and next buttons. Even Rapid elearning tools are built on the concept of observed patterns in elearning courses. Using the custom or rapid elearning tool can be interpreted as a best practice in order to avoid unnecessary errors and stay focused on the goal—Building a Course!Scenario 2:I've just decided to update my Nokia handsets firmware as I discovered there is an update to it. I browse to their website where they have beautifully documented the procedure on how to update my Nokia phone's firmware. If you look at the pre-installation task list (Points to note), you will note that they are essentially best practices. You will also find FAQ that give you questions of exactly what may happen during your phone upgrade and under what circumstances you should or should not panic. The FAQ are designed based on observed patterns and help make the update process predictable for a first timer.The same can apply when you use any tool for the first time. Think about this; what if Nokia just gave you the software to download but never gave you the pre-installation steps and FAQ? What could happen? Your opinions are welcome...Scenario 3:I did save the best one for the last and hope this one illustrates the dicussion well. Let's say your organization has a retail product (consisting of ordering, billing and inventory) that they sold to a premium retail store. The product implementation is complex and cannot be installed and configured by just running a single setup.exe file. In order to get your product installed in the customer's enterprise, the customer needs to do many tasks:- Plan the entire installation—how many machines needed, what applications to install on each machine, and how to evenly distribute the load so that the system performs optimally.- Setup and configure several machines/servers for the database and application servers.- Install and configure the database and application servers respectively on each machine.- Install and configure each product.- Connect and integrate the products so they can communicate, meaning:- Ordering takes the order after checking with inventory.- Then confirms the order and sends the information to billing.You need to imagine a process running in the midst of all these applications and giving directions on what to do and when. By now you should understand that these are common but complex setups for an enterprise and involve a lot of risk.This, I believe, is a strong case requiring one to have best practices and available design patterns to implement a complete product solution. If the planning or the implementation of this kind of a system goes wrong, it could lead to disastrous results like:- degraded system performance;- system malfunction leading to loss of valuable business information;- unexpected system behavior.The result: A major loss in the business.The way to avoid such events from occurring, would be to follow certain best practices, as the problems listed above are actually common failure patterns observed in such systems. The way to prevent this problem would be to:- Create backup servers to backup data regularly.- Use advanced features like clustering to distribute the load on different servers (if your order volumes are high)- Go with recommended patterns for designing and integrating such systems.Finally, I'd like to conclude this discussion by reiterating some points:- Best practices can be arrived at only from experience and real time implementation of a process or product, and are always specific to the domain of expertise. Thus, I agree with the comment that called them 'expert practices'.- Using proven patterns as a base saves us from running into problems that others have already run into, and also prevent us from reinventing the wheel and wasting effort. It pays to work smart by leveraging on and building upon existing information or proven patterns to fit our need; just like I just did with Tony's post. I just used the theoretical knowledge he gave on his post and illustrated them with real-life examples. :)So irrespective of the name we'd like to give them, we do need 'things' of the nature of best practices and patterns to help us do our job better.I would like to hear from all of you as to what you think here...

I'm surprised to see such a strong post supporting Instructor-Led Learning only, in times when Web 2.0 reigns and the learning trend is slowly changing. Tony Karrer makes very good arguments in his post Long Live? and I suggest reading his views.I don't agree when Saul says that people in the community claim that ILT is dead. I am quite in touch with most of the posts on the community and that is definitely not what people are trying to say. From what I understand, we are in a transition stage where in people are exploring other possibilities of learning, and the means provided by informal learning was a welcome change for several reasons:- Accessibility to classroom training when you need help on the job- The cost of attending an ILT is high- Online courses were not sufficient to cover all that a learner neededSo, I think, the whole initiative is coming about as an attempt to make information accessible to the larger group, and enable them to learn on their own, by writing their perspective and sharing information from their experience. How often have we always wanted to know how another organization did the same job that we do, and what their priorities are? I always was curious.All of this only gets an individual to understand the bigger picture, and whats happening outside their own world. You are simulating an environment of group discussions amongst your community, by blogging your opinion/ideas and hearing what others think. You are allowing the learner to think and understand aspects on their own, stimulating the thought process and allowing them to create and build their own solutions after reading a bunch of related articles blogs etc. I think informal learning is about:- Broadening your horizon.- Learning actively rather than passively.- Being open to listening to others in the community and hearing their point of view.- Making your point after having sufficiently researched the topic you have in mind, keeping in mind that there are more perspectives and views that matter, not just your own.- Being open to appreciation and criticism without being biased.- Stimulating yourself to think rather than being spoon fed with everything on a golden plate.- Willingness to accept that there is lot more knowledge to be learned and researched, than what we already know, that the world is big and we can never know every single thing in our lifetime. In short 'Knowledge is an ocean'.- Doing what is best for a situation and working continuously towards improvement, knowing there is no limit to how much better you can do your job.- Knowing there can be more solutions to a problem, than what is given in books.- Exploring new possibilities, and reaching higher levels of cognition on cliched topics.- Accepting that what we have been doing in the past was a good solution then but not anymore!Coming back to the post we're talking about, I'd like to reiterate and agree with Tony that, no where does one say that informal learning replaces the ILT process. ILT is here to stay and so is elearning. But informal learning is the way to get on-the-job assistance, solve problems by questioning and debating, rather than accepting what a single individual source can tell you. It has more to do with the fact that there isn't any limit to how much you can learn.But then again, it was nice to have someone challenge what we all believe in, and have us rethink and validate our initiative on informal learning once more. Isn't that was informal learning is all about?