Earlier on in the year, while doing some casual reading out there on the Web around HR related topics and how it’s been impacted by the world of Social, now that it’s become my new focus area around Open Business, I bumped into an article at Forbes that clearly reminded me how we may not have learned much in the last 18 years around knowledge sharing, collaboration, connecting and building personal business relationships through digital tools and the overall concept of social networking for business, as we keep applying lipstick on a pig trying to dump traditional social components into every single aspect of a business organisation, whether Sales, Marketing, Communications, Development, Retail, and, now, of course, Human Resources as well, since it seems to the hot topic du jour that everyone is trying to hop into. But seriously? Haven’t we learned anything in the last 18 years since we had the first instances of social software tools with blogs and wikis? It looks like we haven’t.  At least, judging from that article Jeanne Meister published earlier on under the heading "2013 - The Year of Social HR" and where she gets to develop further on a good number of different social media trends that will be affecting HR over the course of the next year. It’s interesting to note how those very same trends attempted to have some kind of impact around other areas of the business and with very mixed results. So it looks like it’s now a good time to try them out on HR and see if they would work. Never mind the extended first hand experience we have had in the past proving that some of those trends just didn’t even make the mark. Shouldn’t we be aiming higher with regards to HR and the impact of Social for that matter?  Allow me to explain briefly further along tackling each and everyone of those various different trends that Jeanne mentions on that article to explain a little bit of what I mean:  Gamification Becomes A Standard Practice Well, I surely hope it won’t, and big time! I know that in the recent past I haven’t written much around the whole topic of gamification or serious games at work, but those folks who know me from interactions on several social networking tools out there would agree with you that it’s currently one of my pet peeves from the world of Social. More than anything else because we have been trying it out for the last 15 to 18 years in the field of Knowledge Management and because time and time again it keeps failing under a singular, specific premise, amongst several others, that keeps getting ignored time and time again: put a gamification engine of whatever the sort behind the firewall and people will naturally tend to game it, never mind the unhealthy competitive nature that will inspire knowledge workers to protect and hoard their own knowledge even more, so that they can continue gaming the system to be on top! Therefore making it a waste of time and resources, as well as a huge disappointment for the entire workforce for not delivering much on helping improve engagement, after all. It may well be a matter of semantics, but for as long as we keep using gamification as the wording / concept it will never stick around in the corporate world as we know it, based on those couple of reasons I shared above. An alternative? Probably I would go with Behavioural Dynamics, which has got completely different connotations to what gamification has been all along, and perhaps I should develop further in additional blog posts what is meant with that behavioural dynamics, to help influence how knowledge workers engage through social technologies behind the firewall.  I, for once, would hope that gamification and social business vendors would finally put a stop on wanting to infantilise the corporate world as we know it, because that’s essentially what they are doing. You can’t engage knowledge workers by treating them like kids playing silly games of gaining points here and there, competing with one another in an unhealthy manner, showing with pride their badges. For what purpose? Reputation? Engagement? Really? See? Gaming the system will provoke one single element to come out that could even destroy the corporate culture of your own organisation: lack of value add from your own online interactions with others, just to earn that badge. We have already done this in the past with KM and we don’t seem to have learned much about it, have we? If HR would want to re-engage back the knowledge workforce I would certainly stop focusing on gamification and instead adopt the mantra of Open Business as in Open HR, meaning, becoming more open and transparent around both HR and Human driven processes, engage in direct dialogue with the workforce to find out the many different reasons they may have as to why they are no longer feeling engaged, to evaluate what can be done to revert the change, be capable of accepting constructive criticism not only on what works, but mostly on what doesn’t work, so that HR can have an option AND the opportunity to revert the tide back again. And, overall, bring back into the conversation topics like equity, democracy, meritocracy, social eminence, trust, open knowledge sharing and collaboration, meaning, purpose, focus, motivation and so forth, which have been missing on HR’s narrative for far too long! The Death of the Resume Nothing really new on this one either, I am afraid. Not even a trend anymore, but more of a reality, I can imagine. For instance, I just can’t remember the last time that I updated my official CV. I think it must have been about 8 to 9 years ago, if not longer!, yet in all of that time I have been moving around in between projects, business units and what not and I never had to revert back to the CV to show what my skills and experience are on a particular subject matter. Instead, indeed, both my personal business blog, and, specially, my extended social networks have become my new CV, which is probably the reason why my curriculum has now become the first page of Google Search results for "Luis Suarez" (i.e. my blog et al). See? Building a digital footprint is now more the norm, rather than the exception, and perhaps the end goal for all knowledge workers out there wanting to establish themselves demonstrating their subject matter expertise and their passion for a particular topic by making a smarter use of the digital tools to not just get the message across, but also to make sense of it all through meaningful conversations. Something that Howard Rheingold has described beautifully on his most recent book Net Smart. The primary goal over here for HR then would be to help prepare knowledge workers to become more knowledgable and savvy to move their traditional, fixed, always out of date, paper based CV into the digital world where it’s constantly updated on a regular basis and with perhaps much more accuracy, since it will incorporate both the expertise from those knowledge workers, along with their networks’, by how they demonstrate their thought leadership always adding business value into the conversation(s). Your Klout Score Will Become A Measurable Currency Goodness! I surely hope not! In fact, I would strongly encourage everyone that every time you may bump into a job vacancy where they are asking for your Klout score, or to have a certain score for the job, to not even think about joining that firm, because right there they are reflecting how they don’t respect much your own privacy as a knowledge worker, based on how Klout destroys it by just trying to figure out how influential you are in social networks by being rather intrusive, never mind how flaky the algorithm is and how restrictive it is when measuring that social influence since it just focuses on the easy part: how verbose you may well be in blasting out your marketing messages out to others!  Yikes! No, thanks! Seriously, if you are looking for a job, and in that job description HR mentions the word Klout, the best thing you can do is run away! As fast as you can! There are way better jobs out there waiting for you where your privacy is well respected while measuring your social influence in an smart and responsible manner. Alternatives for HR? Look into the bigger picture. Look into how you can measure the influence of knowledge workers out there in the digital world by focusing more on the conversations and the value add they put forward in their various networks and communities, rather than how many times they manage to blast out their own marketing messages without focusing on anything else. This is something that other services like Little Bird do extremely well, that is, focus on the networks, the communities, and how they are influenced by those experts (More on Little Bird shortly, by the way…) Personal Branding Will Be A Required Skill Not much of a trend this one either, is it? From the moment that knowledge workers are keen on going digital, using whatever the social Web technologies in place, this is no longer a growing trend, but a well established one. In fact, it’s been in the making for nearly 10 years now, even way before Enterprise 2.0 became the buzzword, when folks resorted to their own personal business blogs as their best personal branding tools. And that’s still going rather strong when that aspect has been hugely amplified and augmented with all of the social networking sites we are all far too familiar with.  The role of HR in this one, as an opportunity to lead by example on that mantra of Open HR, is that one of helping knowledge workers facilitate plenty of opportunities to build their digital footprint with enough resources, education, coaching, mentoring, facilitation, so that instead of becoming a hurdle where some HR departments may not be in favour of employees being out there in the open in fear of being snatched by talent hunters, they work even harder to make that happen so that they can have a chance to fight for them by caring about them. There is nothing for HR to take more pride on than having your employee knowledge workforce being enticed by talent hunters to make a move. That’s basically sending out there a tremendous message: you have got a high performing, rather talented, motivated and engaged team. It’s your job now, HR’s, to retain it.  Recruiters Will Find You Before You Know You Are Looking For A Job Finally, perhaps the most interesting of the various different trends that Jeanne talks about on that Forbes piece, not so much for the opportunity of looking for a job, way before you sense you may well be in that situation, but, specially, from the perspective that this trend on its own could well be the confirmation of another well known one that will surely tear apart the traditional concept of the knowledge workforce and the corporate world as we know it. Essentially, the shift from the traditional payroll employee workforce into that free agent, freelancer workforce that gathers around networks and communities to deliver their expertise and extensive know-how, get paid for it in good terms, and then move elsewhere.  This is the one area where HR would surely need to go through a major transformation from being right at the centre of managing employees / resources, to be shifted around the edges facilitating alumni networks, freelancers, and a small core group of employees to be part of the same ecosystem. One that, at long last, is going to reach the final frontier: The Social Web.  2013 may well be the year of Social HR, we will have to wait and see, but what I do know is that judging from the reflections I have shared above 2013 certainly is going to be the year of Open HR, where openness, transparency, publicy, equity, trust, engagement, meritocracy, purpose, meaning, online / digital reputation, recognition of networks and communities vs. just individuals are becoming common HR speak, that is, HR’s new narrative to be able to re-engage back the workforce and if we were just to learn a little bit from what we have done in the recent past, what worked AND what didn’t work!, there is only one way forward: focus on the success of your failure(s)! Essentially, learn from them, don’t make the same mistakes again and continue through that learning and sustainable growth path. Yes, I know, there won’t be a way back! Fascinating and exciting times, indeed!

Learning more about the world through photography, has been the motto of these websites—Trek Earth, Trek Nature and Trek Lens, that I ardently use to learn about my hobby—Photography! I think this has been a noble initiative that has been helping amateurs like me around the world learn the art and science of photography. I believe this site works, as I have seen people who initially had very regular photos and have now shown such improvement that I was amazed!The reason I choose to speak about these sites is not to advertise them, but to highlight how the whole learning process here is a collaborative one, relevant to what we all speak about in informal learning. The users of this website range from professionals to mere beginners like me, from people with the most high-end DSLRs to basic Point and Shoot versions. Whatever you use, does not deter you from posting your photos here and having people critique your work.These sites have some common features like:Regional Groupings of Photographs, that allow you to browse photos within Continents, Countries, Regions, States and Cities.Critique System, that allows you to give and receive constructive feedback and comments on photos.Workshops, that allow members to post edited versions of your image providing a useful visual example on how to improve a specific photo.Alerts, to receive email alerts whenever new photos are posted according to various criteria.Multilingual Capability, that allows you to view a page in any language (currently Chinese ~Traditional & Simplified~, Dutch, English, French, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish).The way the site works is you may:Post your photos, go and view other photos and critique them, thus increasing chances of people navigating to your photo and leaving you valuable comments. Critique other peoples photos and do workshops to help others learn even if you don't put up your own photos.On this site, you get credits for:Giving useful critiques that help others in the community improve their work.Giving useful workshops that others can learn from.Writing useful notes that give more information on your photo, the location and history, how you took that photo, what settings you had on your camera etc.All the above parameters are based on ratings given by members of the community. Based on your rating you can be a silver or gold star—critiquer, note writer, or a workshop editor. Besides this each member who likes your photo can give you up to a maximum of 2 points.The way you work when you are new to the site is to upload your photo, then review other photos that you find interesting. You need to be persistent, and over time people start visiting your profile more often and leaving you critiques or comments, doing workshops, marking your notes useful, etc. You reply to them and thank them for appreciating your work or giving useful feedback, and eventually end up connecting with a few members of the community whom you follow regularly, much like how we have a blogging fraternity in our community.Few things I would like improved about this website though is the user interface, which hasn't changed much since the sites inception, and to have some cool and latest Web 2.0 features like Flickr.I highly recommend this site for people who are willing to learn more about photography. But when I do, I often have people look at the photos there and say "Wow, these are too good. Are my photos worth putting up here?" My only answer to them has always been, that this is not a place for professionals to flaunt their talents, but for photography lovers at all levels to share their knowledge and learn from.I'd like to hear from all of you if there are similar sites for learning photography or even any other subject.

Continuing further with that new influx of shorter blog posts over here on this blog and since, lately, I seem to spend plenty of time, effort and energy on becoming a better public speaker doing plenty of reading, rehearsing and learning from those who do it best, I keep bumping into rather interesting resources on doing presentations right: engaging, inspiring, interactive, passionate, involving and rather energising, so I do love learning along the way not just with practice, which we all know makes perfection, but also reading the theory about how other people face having to deliver a presentation, whether they are well seasoned or just getting started. There is always something that we all get to learn. The key thing though is whether we are all ready to absorb, change and adapt our presentation skills to make even better pitches to engage our audience(s), which, I guess, is what matters at the end of the day… But what happens when you inadvertently kill your own presentation without even knowing? What can you do then?  That’s the exact same premise that Jeanne Trojan addressed on a presentation that she put together a couple of years ago, and that when I bumped into it, just recently, by chance, I couldn’t help thinking how scarily accurate it was, and still is, with regards to the engaging art of delivering presentations and what pitfalls to avoid in order not to run into trouble far too soon. Thus I thought I would go ahead and share it over here, so that you would have an opportunity to see those "7 Ways to Kill Your Presentation" and ponder whether you would need to do something about not only addressing them, but fixing them for your upcoming presentation(s) for this year:    Seven ways to kill your presentation from Jeanne Trojan After going through that lovely presentation put together by Jeanne, I bet you may be wondering what could be done in order to improve your own presentation skills, now that you have been made aware of those 7 pitfalls, right? Yes, I know, I had that very same thought, so I kept digging and saw how Jeanne herself has put together another presentation, from just a couple of days ago, where she has collected some extended advice on Presentation Tips from the Pros, which is pretty packed up with some excellent advice on how to not just deliver an engaging, passionate, meaningful and refreshing presentation, but also how you can prepare it, and prepare yourself, beforehand in a proper manner, so I thought I would go ahead as well and take the liberty of embedding it right here for other folks to enjoy as well:  Presentation tips from the pros from Jeanne Trojan Finally, here’s one other helpful source from a good friend of mine, and fellow IBM colleague, Louis Richardson, quite an amazing public speaker I have had the real pleasure of watching him live a few times now by the way, about what to expect when putting yourself in front of an audience to deliver a presentation and what you can do to get the better of you out there to engage those who are investing their time AND their attention on you, the speaker, and your message, while on stage. Check out "Top 10 Tips for Stepping Up Your Presentations":  Top 10 Tips for Stepping Up Your Presentations from Louis Richardson The really good thing about bumping into these rather helpful and insightful resources on Presentation Zen and with such a good timing, is that I will be able to put them all into good practice as soon as a couple of weeks from now, when I will be co-sharing the stage with both Louis Richardson himself and my other good friend Luis Benitez (Yes, indeed, The Three Luis’!!) at the IBM Connect 2013 event in Orlando, Florida, January 29th at 5:30 to 6:30 pm ET, under the session heading "Pardon the Interruption on Social Business" that both Louis and Luis have been blogging about it already in their blogs, respectively. The best part of that presentation? Well, amongst several other things [*cough* beer *cough*] I could probably say it’s YOU setting the agenda of the session by participating through this Twitter hashtag right as we speak > #pitsocialbiz as that’s where the three of us are currently gathering questions from the audience that we will be addressing each and everyone of us live at the event around the area of Social Business, and, maybe, why not?, around Open Business, too!  It promises to be some really good fun and I am hoping that these presentation tips I have shared across from both Jeanne and Louis would help make it all an event better experience for the live audience and for those of you folks reading along. Will we be seeing you there though? [We surely hope so! Come and join us!]

This months Big Question is about Stuck?Getting Unstuck? Stuck, is exactly how I feel, and the reason I started blogging and connecting with people. My blog becomes a forum to get my ideas out. So there's the problem and the solution right there! But come on now, don't we all feel stuck at different points in our work or even personal life? Well, being stuck is very much a reality as anything else, and I've felt this way many times before. Each place I worked posed different kinds of challenges, but to get to the point, here we're talking about being stuck in your organization with a lot of great ideas about how to improve things around you and the service you deliver to the customer.There are several reasons why one gets 'stuck' so to say:Your organization is just very happy doing what they always have been doing as it earns them money anyway.Your team members, who drive a lot of the initiatives because they've been around longer than you, just don't know what's changed in the market outside. They're fine to keep doing what they always did in the last 8 to 10 years cos the management is happy!Sometimes employees see or hear whats changing but completely fail to see the value in it.Sometimes employees just feel more secure doing 'proven stuff' than exploring new possibilities.Some employees respect the management so much, that they will wait until the end of time for the management to initiate something new. "Why get your hands dirty in trying something the management hasn't even figured out? This is easier."Some people listen very intently to the people who give new ideas and tell them, "Yeah, that sounds really cool, and right too. But you know what, this is the way they do it here. I've been around here really long and I know, nothing will change!"Sometimes your team leads and managers may tell you after hearing your bright ideas—"All that's fine, but what happened to that issue we had the other day? You better figure out or we'll miss the deadline!" or simply—"Haven't you enough to do?"The Result?Imagine the plight of the poor bloke who just had this brainwave after reading loads of blogs, wikis and cool discussions on the Internet. Depressing really! But that's the reality, and it will probably remain this way in almost all organizations, but with varied levels of intensity. I'm sure, at least two of the above points will be true for any employee unless he's the boss and takes the decisions.The employee, who was once really excited with his brilliant idea and imagined what value it could have brought to the organization, is demotivated, and begins to think that he or she is not going to get anywhere in the present organization. The employee starts questioning himself—what happens to my future and career? What happens to my dream? Will I stop learning if I continue to remain in this environment? Should I leave this place and try somewhere else, somewhere where people have more sense to see the value in my ideas? Or should I just surrender to the circumstances and become a drone like the rest?The Point?So, the implementation of all ideas on last month's Big Question, about Workplace Learning in 10 years, are immensely dependent on the organization's willingness to invest and bring in change, not forgetting that change only comes in gradually and never upfront in such cases. It takes time to provide the infrastructure to support all the changes, and most importantly the people who will help bring about the change. It requires support and acceptance from everyone involved to adapt to a new way of doing their job.So what can you do in such a situation?Rebel and let everyone know that what you are suggesting is the next generation thing, and that they're too stupid to see it? Disclaimer here: I think you should try that only if you want to loose the one or two people who took time to listen to you and advise you! You may loose even the smallest chance of ever getting your ideas across in the organization as people will start thinking you are an arrogant, alien-headed, snob! Now that's really not the ideal situation to be in, so here are a few things you can do.Step 1:First, evaluate if your idea is that of immediate action or a long term one. Based on this, set your expectations of the time it may take to get it implemented. Ask questions like "Based on the business need, will they find use of the idea? Will they need it now or later?" If your answer to these questions is yes, then go ahead and plan to give your ideas to the management.Step2:Whatever you do, it is most important to:Say the right thing at the right timeTell the right person about itNow you may ask, when is the right time? Who is the right person? My answer is, strike when the iron is hot, meaning speak about it in a relevant situation or discussion. Plan your idea well and back it up with what benefit it brings to an individual or the organization. It is hard to decide each case above, but you have to figure this out by studying the organization and their priorities over time, or discussing them with someone who has been around longer.My ExperienceWhen I had an idea, I first started asking around if there is any idea management forum in the organization. When I didn't get the information, I threw the question to one of the top managers after he gave a session on the organizations goals and how he plans to achieve them. He thought for a while and realized there wasn't any such place. He then asked me what my idea was? On explaining the idea, he seemed to like it, and asked me to send him an email with the details. He responded back after researching it himself and appreciated me for bringing it up. He now wanted to start a forum thread to collate ideas from employees. I thought that was a good start.The other part of giving ideas is the expectation we have once we have given them. But, you need to remember here that it takes high priority to implement any idea. That's how businesses work I guess!So to conclude, I can say that you may feel 'stuck' in spite of having given your idea, but its important that you at least got it across. The fact that not much changed immediately should not deter you from thinking and innovating. Try and innovate in your regular activities to make it more interesting. Try suggesting something new, but each time remember to back it up with sufficient evidence so people understand the context and the benefit that will come out of it. Try and blog the ideas that are not directly related to your company's benefit, and share it with the community. Let's accept it, its not a fair world we all live in. It is therefore important to make the best of every situation.

Over the course of the last few years there have been plenty of metaphors that people out there have been making use of to describe the transformation the traditional world of the enterprise is going through with the emergence of social networking tools to help improve the effectiveness of how we collaborate and share our knowledge across. Some of them have been incredibly helpful in describing how we are moving away from that traditional taylorism method of managing businesses top down driven by hierarchies into something a whole lot more liquid, permeable, flowing, flexible and network driven (A la Wirearchy). But if there is one metaphor out there that surely keeps grabbing my attention every time I bump into it is that one of associating the Enterprise with one of those creative activities that makes us all, humans, unique in this world: Music.  It’s Friday afternoon, and I am sure plenty of people out there would be finishing up the first pretty packed up work week of the year. For me, the last day of the week that will see the end of my vacation, since next week I will be back at work as well after having enjoyed quite an amazing holiday recharging my batteries, unwinding, disconnecting (from almost everything) and, eventually, resuming my long time dormant blog and a couple of other things I have got on the side that I will be writing about shortly over here as well. But, first things first. How about finishing off your work for the week, and my last vacation week, with one of those videos that will not only inspire you tremendously (I am certain!), but that will also be a pure treat for your ears, just to get you in the mood before the weekend kicks off? That wouldn’t be too bad, right?  Well, here you have it. Earlier on this week I bumped into this absolutely delightful YouTube video presentation from the one and only, Don Tapscott, that he did at the Association of Fundraising Professionals in Toronto, Canada, where he presented on The New Models of the Enterprise (With a slight touch on Philanthropy) covering a good number of relevant topics that have clearly set the stage of how the corporate world is slowly, but steadily, moving into that Open Business modus operandi. Key elements like Collaborative Innovation, Openness, Molecularisation, Self-Organisation, Interdependence or Dynamic Leadership were covered on that presentation by Don, but with a rather peculiar touch: playing some amazing jazz with an improvised orchestra lead by the brilliant Shannon Butcher.  For the rest, I am afraid I no longer have words to describe how wonderful and inspiring was to spend a bit over 30 minutes going through each of those topics and how some very talented jazz musicians, and the heartwarming and rather touching voice from Shannon herself, make them their own when playing several songs together, even if they have never played together in the past at all, making you realise how unique that experience could well be. Well, it surely was! … Talking about creativity and intent with a purpose! I am not going to add further more into this blog post other than highly recommending you all that if you are at the end of your work day, or perhaps way into your weekend already, take these 30 minutes to watch some pure brilliance of what makes us, human beings, unique in this world by letting music (Jazz in this case) do its magic, go through your ears into your brain, close your eyes and prepare to be wowed big time! on what the enterprise world could very well look like:    See? If Open Business is all about this, and so much more!, I am all IN for it! And you? Hope you, too!  What a stunning way of starting off the weekend! Have a good one everyone!

After reading Beyond Kirkpatrick by Tom Werner, and Jane Bozarth's post on Alternatives to Kirkpatrick, I was satisfied to hear that there has been effort to better the evaluation process. This is the kind of information I was looking for when I posted Kirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation Model, knowing that people would have tried, tested and evaluated the model by this time.I did receive feedback supporting Kirkpatrick's model from John Pasinosky, Richeek and Geeta Bose. All of them supported the model and said it had worked well for them. John Pasinosky said:--------------------------------------------------------------------------I have tried to incorporate the 4 levels in my instructional design practice. It is very valuable if you don't have any other plans in place. ( - In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king!). The good part about it is less that you can make a better product than that it gives you a framework to know what went wrong when it does go wrong - or someone is unhappy with the results.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Geeta Bose, agreed that the Kirkpatrick model had been useful. While saying that she added:--------------------------------------------------------------------------While this is a great foundation, like all other methodologies, this too should evolve to fit the changing needs of the training industry. This model (in the classical sense) does not help measure the ROI from training. This model also emphasizes on "post training evaluation" while evaluation should be an ongoing process. At Kern, we have evolved an evaluation methodology that has worked well for us and our clients.--------------------------------------------------------------------------Richeek agreed too adding:--------------------------------------------------------------------------It is definitely practical. It all depends on how you market it. If managers & other decision-makers see the value, they'll definitely agree. I have gone into meetings where managers have come in late and start a meeting saying they have to leave it early and then have them say at the scheduled end, "Can we extend this meeting? Would you have the time?" --------------------------------------------------------------------------Another presentation I found by Bersin and Associates (designed way back in 2006) gives a good insight into the problems in Kirkpatrick's model of evaluation, that I found practical. I don't mean to down sell Kirkpatrick's model but all I'm saying is that we need to move on and come up with more current ideas. Quoting from Jane's post:--------------------------------------------------------------------------In the interest of fairness I would like to add that that Kirkpatrick himself has pointed out some of the problems with the taxonomy, and suggested that in seeking to apply it the training field has perhaps put the cart before the horse. He advises working backwards through his four levels more as a design, rather than an evaluation, strategy; that is: What business results are you after? What on-the-job behavior/performance change will this require? How can we be confident that learners, sent back to the work site, are equipped to perform as desired? And finally: how can we deliver the instruction in a way that is appealing and engaging?-------------------------------------------------------------------------I believe this would be true as change is the only constant in every field.My 2 centsIt's good to know that certain strategies and models have proven in the past, but our requirements today are changing greatly and we need to move on, redefine strategies and redesign models to address the changing needs of learners. I believe it is imperative to re look at our existing training strategies, and evaluate courses to bring in this change.My questions to all of you would be:1. Do you think there is a need to change the way we design training?2. Do you think we need to have more dynamic ways to address the problems faced by our learner?3. How do you think evaluation should ideally be done to help improve and impact learning greatly?

Over at Harvard Business Review Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has put together, just recently, a rather interesting and relevant article on The Future of You that clearly highlights three rather intriguing career suggestions for knowledge workers out there for the new year to carry out, if they would want to raise their visibility, demonstrate their subject matter expertise and build their social eminence effectively in a social world infested with perhaps far too much noise. The article itself is worth while reading on its own, for sure, as it highlights some of the challenges, but plenty of the advantages of what it is like having a powerful personal brand, as a knowledge worker. But I would think there is something missing on the article itself that makes me a bit too uncomfortable: the enterprisey touch.  I am sure you may be wondering what do I mean with regards to that enterprisey touch, right? Well, if you take a look into the article you would see how Dr. Chamorro celebrates three suggestions he thinks are going to work really well for knowledge workers, but perhaps he forgets how the whole thing changes as soon as you enter the corporate world. Here is an example. In that article he quotes the need for more self-branding, along with plenty of entrepreneurship, as two key traits to succeed in the business world. Part of me would definitely agree with those two traits big time, specially, in the context of the Social Web and pure knowledge Web work, but then again, if I look into the corporate world itself, and judging from both first hand experiences while interacting with customers and other thought leaders in this space, self-branding, a.k.a. personal brand, would only work out just right IF (And that’s a *big* IF) the corporate brand doesn’t decide to kill it in the process.  Essentially, the corporate brand needs to evolve and both embrace and celebrate the richness of powerful employee brands, because, if anything, they surely help amplify and augment the overall corporate one; yet, what you see on a rather regular basis is how businesses ensure that the personal brand remains subjugated to the corporate brand’s needs and wants, resulting in turning off completely the motivation from employees to even look after their own. They just don’t see the value of being just one more voice adding to the noise, which is essentially what most companies want (mistakenly). There are better ways. Never mind that thought from companies that employees with powerful brands could become a threat to the  business or they could just be snatched away by talent hunters. Well, not really. It just depends on how hard, you, as a business, would work your magic to engage, from the knowledge worker perspective, those employees to augment AND increase both the visibility and mindshare of the overall corporate brand. Right now, that hard work is just not happening. It’s non-existent. The easy way out has always been undermining or terminating the employee brand, as soon as it is considered far too powerful or a threat to the business.  This is certainly an area where I would expect HR to take a much more active role in helping knowledge workers develop the right skills set, as much as corporations to learn how to live with that personal branding trend for their own employees, because it’s only going to become more and more relevant over time. Remember? People do business with people, not with brands. People, after all, like to talk to other people when doing business. It’s just that simple. So the sooner HR can dive into the conversations and act as referees defending with good counter-arguments the opportunity for knowledge workers to develop their brand as part of their key, essential personal development opportunities, the better off we would all become, because it will help address part of that business problem I keep referencing time and time again: employee engagement.  With regards to Entrepreneurship, we have seen that for enterprise knowledge workers it’s slightly different. Over here, in this blog, I have been talking time and time again about it referencing it as Intrapreneurship with perhaps this specific article as the most relevant one to the context of what Dr. Chamorro talks about on the HBR article. I would love to know in the comments how you folks feel about Intrapreneurs, because, somehow, I suspect we are going to start talking more and more about them as Trust Agents, Wild Ducks, Liquid Freelancers, become more and more prevalent of the new Workplace of the Future that we are currently shaping up! And, finally, the one other suggestion that Dr. Chamorro mentions in that article and which I think is perhaps the most exciting in the context of Open Business altogether: Hyperconnectivity. That is, the ability of you, as a knowledge Web worker, to act both as a powerful connector, as well as that empowered node to find what you need, which, in most cases, it’s not going to be down to you, but down to how well you have nurtured, cultivated and looked after your own social network(s).  It’s in this context that I thought I would finish off this blog post referencing a webinar presentation that I hosted way back in November 2012 for IBM’s Academy of Technology on trying to define what that hyperconnectivity would be like in the context of defining the significant impact social networking tools can have in helping redefine the workplace of the future with some essential critical traits. In "Cultural Impact of Social Networking in Defining the Workplace of the Future" you would be able to see my attempt of describing the new kind of skills set that knowledge Web workers would need to excel at if they would want to thrive in an Open Business environment. Here’s the embedded code of the presentation, so folks interested in it could have a look and see what you think:  Cultural Impact of Social Networking in Defining the Workplace of the Future from Luis Suarez My good friend, and fellow colleague, Brian Cragun, host of that IBM Academy of Technology event, arranged to have the session audio recorded, as well as a transcript of my speech, along with the live chat transcript and I thought it would be a good idea as well to share that across over here, so that if you would be interested in spending a bit over an hour listening to it, while flipping through the charts, you would be able to do so accordingly. I have zipped all three files into a single one and you would be able to download it all from this link. Dr. Chamorro’s conclusion of the article highlights the need for employees to become a brand, their own personal brand, to transform the way they work and become powerful change agents with an opportunity to keep challenging the status quo of how certain things happen while at work and with an innate ability to link to useful information scattered around your various social networks. Somehow I suspect that the hardest part of making all this a reality is not just going to be down to the employees themselves, but more down to HR, Open HR, that is, as an opportunity to help prepare for those upcoming talent wars and personal development initiatives that will help define the workplace of the future in the Knowledge / Open Economy. Somehow, something tells me that this is one of the main reasons as to why HR will cease to operate, or be perceived to operate, around the edges and become *the* central hub that makes that business transformation of the employee workforce a reality.  The challenge is on though. Will HR be capable of transforming itself into Open HR, as part of Open Business? I surely hope so. After all, we don’t have much of an option nowadays anymore, I am afraid. Do we?

Tony Karrer raises a valid point in his post Social Learning Measurement : eLearning Technology. Just the point I was thinking of after wanting to have a social model implemented in my own organization. It seems very interesting and attractive to have means to access information informally on-the-job and have it exactly when you need it. But I see the following challenges in the implementation of social learning at workplaces:- How do I ensure the information is organized well enough for an individual to access it when needed? The search feature has to span across all available information resources related to the subject to give me what I need.- How to ensure the authenticity of the information? We are in an organization dealing with real customers. Hence we can't take the risk to goof up based on something written in a social learning network. At a high-level I can imagine a reviewer/moderator model being implemented where all of the information entered is validated by experts. But this hard to implement given the amount of time commitment needed from the product experts when compared with thier priorities upfront. This model also needs to make space for new ideas that crop up and not just depend on legacy and proven information.- How do I ensure I am getting the latest and most current information?Thinking about measurement, which is the most critical factor in deciding if this model is getting us real tangible results, I can suggest a few ideas at a high level:1. Have polls on topics to gather information about whether the information has been useful or not.2. Every post should have a rating associated with it. The search should list posts that have received good ratings at the top level.3. Do regular sanity checks as information in organizations change as fast as the shelf life of a particular release of a product and are outdated quite quickly.4. Finally, the most important is to measure the learning outcome in terms of how it helped make the product better, or received appreciation from a customer, or helped tackle a complex business problem. This would be the true reality check and can be enabled by maintaining metrics or statistics that can be collected from the online systems and consolidated into reports that can be queried from various perspectives. Much like how we measure effectiveness of formal training.But let's admit it, measurement is the key to prove that social learning forms have helped employees bring value to an organization.

Over the course of the last few years, there have been a good number of occasions where, when working with fellow colleagues, customers or business partners, plenty of knowledge workers kept asking me what would be the best way for them to get started with their own adoption efforts of social software, both inside and outside of the firewall, so that it wouldn’t be too painful, but at the same time they wouldn’t lag behind too much in the attempt. They just wanted to have a jumpstart, but they didn’t know where to begin. Sounds familiar, even today, doesn’t it?  You could probably sense that fear, or a strong sense of fearing being rejected, is lingering around in the air, but it isn’t really and we probably shouldn’t think about it in those terms anymore. It is mostly about how to get started without looking too silly, or how to get started without making a fool of yourself in front of others. Or perhaps how to get things going without ridiculing yourself, or your well established reputation on whatever the subject matter. Like I said, I don’t think it’s down to fear, but more towards that reluctance of wanting to dive in thinking that you may be doing something wrong according to what someone may have established in the past, like best practices for social media. Not really!  We need to move on. We really need to. We have got lots of hard work ahead of us still. No matter what people out there may be telling you time and time again, there are *no* best practices for knowledge work, specially, for social networking tools and how you interact and make the most out of them to build powerful, caring networks around you who can go the extra mile for you, just like you could do for them. Time and time again then I have been suggesting, instead, a good number of different options and adoption techniques, or strategies, on what I have experienced myself first hand over the course of the last 11 years or so, but, lately, I seem to have concentrated most of that advice and efforts on a couple of, what I feel, are rather simple, yet critical, aptitudes to embrace for those knowledge workers wanting to shine at being practitioners 2.0 with their own networks: Active Listening and Helping others become more awesome. That’s probably the main reason why I really enjoyed Craig Chappelow‘s recent article at Fast Company under the rather inspiring title: "A Resolution You Won’t Fail At: Helping Someone Else Achieve Their Goals" about one of those totally unexpected New Year resolutions that could surely have a rather significant impact, yet without being too demanding upon yourself: that is, help those around you, i.e. your networks, become better at what they already do.  Who would have thought about that, right? I mean, who would have thought that you could be a power house in active social networking, both walking the talk and learning by doing, by just doing something so relatively easy as Active Listening of what’s happening around you, specially, as more and more knowledge workers keep embracing that mantra of Working Out Loud or Narrating Their Work. In short, Observable Work (a.k.a. #owork). Or by just doing something so uncomplicated, but yet so incredibly rewarding as helping others excel at what they are already good at! See? This doesn’t require much hard work like putting together an influx of blog posts, or scheduling dozens of tweets per day, or looking after LinkedIn groups, or Facebook Pages or even several Google Plus Communities. This is more down to earth. This is all about embracing something that we may have struggled with for far too long, but that yet, when done correctly, could be the next huge thing in the corporate world: become more open.  Indeed, as we progress further raising the stakes of the so-called Social Business field and embrace more of that Open Business movement, it’s that openness and transparency, not just to listen actively out there, but to open up your day to day workflow, so that you would allow other folks to dive in and help you accordingly, if you may need their help, that’s going to accelerate the adoption rate without looking too foolish in the attempt, even if we struggle along the way. Time and time again I keep telling people that if they would want me to help them out, I would be more than happy to do so, and I will probably go the extra mile, too!, if they are part of my social network(s), but there is something very important out there that I would be asking them out. More of a reflection than a question, actually, but here it is: How can I help you achieve your goals if I don’t know what you are doing, or working on?  For us, your network(s), to be able to help out, we first need to know a bit about you, about what you are good at, what drives your passion, what it is that you are incredibly knowledgeable about and what you may be struggling with. Only then would we be capable of helping out address those potential issues you may be going through to fix them and help you advance forward. Just like what we would do ourselves with you. Yes, I can imagine some of you folks may be thinking it’s rather tough to open up just like that, to others, specially, if they are your work colleagues, because you don’t want to show them you are weak, vulnerable, even a bit stupid, because you keep asking the same silly questions. Not really. Someone once told me, a few years back!, that there isn’t a single one stupid question out there. The only stupid questions are those that don’t get asked, because they never get an answer and therefore make you become stuck without moving forward. Now, that is silly. That you are showing your vulnerability? So what? Who cares? Actually, making yourself vulnerable is the best thing that can happen to enter the world of true leadership, because that’s when people around you, specially, those who care, would become more empathic, caring and resolved to help you out. And that’s probably why we are not so good with social networking out there today: we are not showing enough how vulnerable we all are after all. And perhaps we should.  Craig’s article actually covers this really well, although he doesn’t mention it by name specifically, but he suggests 4 things that you could implement rather easily in order to help others achieve their goals while you dive into the world of social networking tools to evoke that open and transparent, collaborative environment. To quote: Call B.S, Shove, Use Tough Love, and More Love, with perhaps this particular quote being one of my favourites from the entire article:  "But what if your responsibilities include helping other people reach their goals? Is there something you can do to get them through January and-gasp-beyond? Whether you are a manager, parent, or friend, research on goal-setting shows there is plenty you can do to help someone out" So there you have it. Next time you question yourself how you could dive into the social networking world of Open Business, or next time that someone asks you how to get the most out of Living Open there is a great chance that you, too, could suggest on doing plenty of active listening and above all helping those folks around you, your social network(s), become better at what they are already good at: doing their job(s)! You will then be well on your way to become part of that exclusive club from the bottom right corner from this cartoon Tom Fishburne shared a little while ago and which, I agree with him 100%, is far too rare to see, even nowadays:  We need to change that. Today. Not tomorrow, please, but … today.

Not long ago I mentioned over here in this blog how one of the many reasons why I went through that extended blogging hiatus towards the end of 2012 was due to a rather intense business travelling schedule that took me on a tour of several different European countries to participate, as a speaker, on various conference events, customer meetings, enablement workshops and so forth. Intense is probably the right word to describe what it was like, but another one that I can think about would be memorable. I do have, indeed, plenty of fond memories about the vast majority of those events, but if there is one that has got a special place in my heart is that one event that kicked off last year and which raised the stakes incredibly high on its first edition to the point where it will always be in my thoughts not only because of the tremendously energising vibe it had all around it, throughout, but mainly because of the amazing experience of attending, speaking and participating in an event like no other in search for something that I am starting to feel we need nowadays more than ever: Meaning.  Of course, I am talking about the Meaning 2012 conference event that took place in Brighton, UK, on October 1st and that three months later I am still remembering it as it were just yesterday. What an amazing event! Not only was the quality of the agenda and speakers top notch (I had the privilege of being one of them giving me a unique opportunity to continue learning from the greatest and the most unexpected), but the atmosphere around it was just electrifying and incredibly energising. The amount of hard work and the dedication to make things right, the incredibly warm sense of hospitality we enjoyed while in there, and the humanity shown throughout the entire event by folks, now really good friends, like Will McInnes and Lou Ash, along with the rest of the NixonMcIness team!, was absolutely a pure delight. Something other conference events should mimic and learn from a great deal! And all of that on their first edition!  There have been several different blog posts, articles, references, highlights shared across by a good number of folks who attended the event, which have made it quite a rewarding experience going through as I am writing down this blog entry, remembering the wonderful event that we got exposed to over the course of a single day and, most importantly, the sharing of some of the most brilliant ideas we got to exchange and share openly not just from the speakers themselves, but also from people attending the event live with all of the networking that went on and on and on. A delightful experience all around!  That’s why I couldn’t help resisting the urge to create this blog post where I could point folks to the recordings of the various different speakers, which you can find them all right over here, so that you could have a look and go through each and everyone of them. At your own pace, whenever you would want to. They are all worth it. Big time. As usual, and like I have been doing over the last few months, I did a bunch of live tweeting from the event itself as well, and I then captured all of those annotations into a .PDF file that I uploaded into my Slideshare account for folks who may be interested in reading further what it was like experiencing the conference live. The direct link to it can be found over here. And here’s the embedded code in case you may want to flip through the pages as we speak:  Luis Suarez Live Tweeting Highlights from #meaningconf Event, Brighton, October 2012 from Luis Suarez I had the privilege as well of being the last speaker of the day, wrapping up what was quite an amazing day that would be rather tough to forget in a long long time. Of course, I talked about one of my favourite topics from over the last 5 years: Living "A World Without eMail". This time around expanding further on the notion of what a collaborative future may well look like and hold up for us with the emergence of social software tools in the corporate world. I got to talk about plenty of what I have been learning in the last 5 years after I started that movement, back in February 2008, which reminds me that we are getting close to that 5th year anniversary, where I have got a couple of lovely surprises packed up that I am sure folks who have been following this initiative all along would find rather interesting and surprising. But more on that later on… For now, I thought, as a teaser, as perhaps an interim update from my last blog article on the subject (Yes, I know! I am long overdue an update on how things have been moving along, aren’t I? Well, coming up shortly!), I would go ahead and share the link to the recording over here, so that those folks who may be interested in the topic (It lasts for a little bit over 17 minutes), can have a look into it and watch at your own pace. I’m sure it will evoke a good number of questions and additional insights that I am more than happy to entertain and facilitate on the comments section below, so feel free to chime in as you may see fit, and stay tuned for that upcoming update on the progress report of what it has been like living "A World Without eMail" in the last 12 months. Oh, and don’t worry, it’s not going to be as massively long as the last one. That’s where one of the surprises would kick in eventually … hehe Here we go:  Hope you folks would enjoy watching through it, just as much as the huge blast and true honour I had myself on stage delivering the speech.  The vibe in the audience was something that will be very hard for me to forget. Ever. And for that I am eternally grateful to both Will, Lou and the rest of the NixonMcIness team!, for their kind invitation and for making of Meaning something that I can just define with a single word: special! … [Truly special] An enormous thank you, indeed, to everyone involved in making it happen!