If you have been reading this blog for a while now you would know how, all along, I haven’t been very much in favour about supporting the argument of the digital / generations divide or the distinction of various different generations at work, whether baby boomers, Gen-Xers, Gen-Yers or whatever else. However, and with that said, I do realise how each and everyone of those generations do really bring up a tremendous amount of diversity into the workplace with their own habits and unique mindset which, back in the day, I described as different working styles in place and that for the corporate world to benefit from those different ways of getting the work done, businesses would need to do, if anything, a single thing to make it all work: embrace them and celebrate such wonderful diversity, more than anything else because that’s what makes working in a now more complex than ever environment quite an exciting and unprecedented adventure for learning and growth to flourish.  And with that premise I thought for today I would go ahead and share a rather short (10 minute long) video clip that I bumped into in my good friend Felix Escribano‘s Google Plus stream that I thought would be worth while sharing across over here to demonstrate how those various different working styles have been operating over the course of the last few decades till today. The actual video clip is based on a piece of research from the smart folks from Box1824 and it’s packed up with lots of useful information on behavioural data, trends, ways of living / working from those various different generations and it’s perhaps one of the most insightful documentaries I may have seen in a while that clearly describes, and rather accurately, I must admit, too, who we are, regardless of age, work context, ambitions, motivations, mantras, aspirations and so forth. If you are working in a corporate environment where you are exposed to all of these various different working styles, I can certainly recommend you take a look into it so that you have got a good chance to be exposed to the diversity of what’s behind each and everyone of those generations. It will be worth it the 10 minutes it lasts, so here is the embedded code so that you can start playing it right away:  What do you think? Not too bad, eh? Did it help change your perception of those colleagues from those generations you work with on a daily basis? Here’s the key question though: how identified do you feel with your own so-called generation? Did it represent you well enough or can we then stick around with those working styles that I mentioned above? Either way, while I would love to read in the comments what you would think, here’s the one liner that describes how I feel about that argument of the digital divide and the various different generations at the workplace:  "It really seems to be more important to have fun on the ride, than to make it to the final destination" Or this other one as well for that matter:  "It’s all about exchanging knowledge, no matter your age" Or perhaps this other one, much more impactful altogether: "Besides having a job, it’s becoming more important to have a purpose that can be carried out in different forms at the same time" Or, finally, the kicker:  "It is about living better in the present, with no illusion that the future can be controlled" Followed, perhaps, by the one and only question that every single knowledge worker out there should be asking themselves every day as soon as you get up in the morning and while you get ready to go to work:  "Are you doing what you love right now? No? So start!"

On January 20th 1997, while I was holidaying in The Netherlands, I started my adventure into the corporate world with a new job at IBM, as a Customer Support Representative for the Mainframe. 16 years later that adventure continues, and big time!, still having just as much fun as I did in Day One. So much so that later on this week I will begin tasting the Joy of Business Travelling, once again, and that this year is going to take me to a good number of countries and continents I haven’t visited just yet, for which I am really excited about, as you can imagine. But, for now, I’m starting to get things ready for IBM Connect 2013, which kicks off on January 27th till the 31st, and which surely promises to be one of those events difficult to forget around the space of Social Business. Are you ready?  Well, before you answer that question, and while you may want to go ahead and check out the superb agenda put in place, I would like to ask you to go and have a look into the wonderful short article put together by the one and only, Seth Godin, on the topic of "When a conference works (and doesn’t)". What a delightful read packed up with plenty of helpful tips on how to build, perhaps, a new strategy, in case you haven’t done so in the past, when attending face to face conference events, like I am about to do later on this month.  I thought perhaps for today’s blog post I would go ahead and highlight a couple of those tips that I thought would be worth while sharing across and which match, somewhat, some of my own experiences attending face to face conference events in the recent past. As a starting point: "[…] someone is going to say or do something that might just change everything. Something that happens in the moment and can’t possibly be the same if you hear about it later […] In the digital age, if I can get the notes or the video later, I will" Indeed, this is what I have been telling folks over and over again. Focus on the face to face conversations, the networking aspects of the event, specially, with those folks who 1. You may not know just yet, so you can keep expanding your network beyond your usual suspects or echo chamber(s) and 2. You may not be able to see them F2F again throughout the remaining of the year. Think of it as your last chance in the year to catch up with them F2F. Don’t waste that opportunity. Seize it and make the most out of it. The notes, and video streaming, indeed, you can always get them later. No doubt. The conversations, you won’t. "[…] If there’s vulnerability and openness and connection […]" This is something that I am going to be trying it out myself quite a bit in numerous other conference events this year, but certainly going to kick if off at IBM Connect 2013. Actually, not just me, but two of my co-presenters and myself, when on Tuesday 29th at 5:30pm local time, we will go up on stage to kick off our session on "Pardon the Interruption at IBM Connect 2013" around Social Business, Adoption Techniques, Enablement, Collaboration, Online Communities and Social Networking for Business in general. Perhaps even a bit on Open Business as well, why not?  Yes, that will be the time when "The Three Louie" (Louis Richardson, Luis Benitez and yours truly) will throw themselves into the lions living through that vulnerability, openness and connection in chunks of 3 minutes at a time with whatever the question folks in the audience may well have around all of these topics related to social networking for business. We are currently gathering questions over in Twitter under #ptisocialbiz so if you happen to attend IBM Connect 2013 as well and have got a burning question you would want to share with us, drop it over there and we will grab it for the session. If not, take them with you and ask them live while we are all there. Perhaps even more fun to show how vulnerable we may all well be with the unexpected! After all, what are the chances for you to see The Three Louie on stage at any given conference event? It’s a rare occasion, I can tell you that, since it will be the first time we are all three on stage on the same session. That promises to be plenty of really good fun, I can guarantee you that! Even more if you look into the time of the day for our slot and what we may be bringing up with us along the way … Following further along on Seth’s reflections about face to face events and how to get the most benefits from them, here’s one of my favourite quotes from the entire post:  "(At most events, competitiveness born from insecurity trumps mutual support)" And you know why that happens in most cases? At least, in my own opinion? Well, mostly because, due to that competitiveness flair going around, people who attend face to face conferences don’t have a tendency to be generous on the information, knowledge and experiences they share. Quite the opposite. They are always a little bit reluctant to share openly what drives their passion, their interests and their motivation to attend the event, just because they feel they need to protect something: their selves. Well, not really. This is pretty much what I have been saying for years around the well known mantra of "Knowledge is power". Yes, it is, of course, it always has been and always will be. But make it square, please! It’s "Knowledge SHARED is power". Indeed, the more you share generously about what you are doing, what you know, what you are good at demonstrating your thought leadership, the much more powerful you become, because it’s that visibility at conference events that clearly highlights how you will continue to build those strong personal business relationships. So get out of your comfort zone a little bit. Throw yourself into the lions, once again, of those who are thirsty for your knowledge and share it across generously. What’s the worst thing that can happen? That they now possess your knowledge? So what? You are the one who knows the most about that piece of knowledge or information in the first place and you would just need to remember that we, human beings, are just so bad in documenting and transferring our knowledge across through oral or written forms that no matter how much you share openly you would still be the one who knows the most about that particular subject. Always. Do remember the brilliant KM principles from my good friend Dave Snowden on Rendering Knowledge that would still apply and very much so. Don’t forget that tidbit that most people seem to ignore time and time again since they decide to go the easy way out: hoarding their knowledge. Don’t! Share it generously. For your own benefit and for the benefit of your networks. They will remember you for that.  As Seth mentions in a rather smart and succinct manner on his blog post, you will become their hero because you have finally realised, at long last, you don’t have much to lose, but a lot to win.  [Really looking forward to seeing everyone at IBM Connect 2013 and, please, don't be shy. If we bump into each other, say "Hi!". It's the greeting that kicks off the magic of serendipitous knowledge discoveries from conversations you may have with  your networks and other people!] 

A few days back my good friend, the always inspiring and thought provoking, Dan Pontefract, put together a rather interesting blog post which is just a beautiful story of a conversation he recently had that I could see myself behave and react pretty much in the same way that he did. In "Should Companies Allow Facebook at Work?" he comes to talk about that number of companies out there who, still, in 2013!, are blocking the use of social networking tools for their employees, so that they wouldn’t waste time at work, or goof around unnecessarily. Yes, still today in 2013, and despite the huge impact of social technologies in our society, there are businesses out there that seem to be rather happy with shooting themselves in their feet. Isn’t it time that we finally, at long last, wake up and embrace the inevitable? Social Networking is here to stay and for a long while even.  In fact, in a recent blog post I mentioned how perhaps if there would be a major challenge for the corporate world of today with regards to social media tools is not how some of those firms keep blocking their use, but it’s more the assumption from knowledge workers that if they get blocked, like they are doing, apparently, right as we speak, they are receiving a significantly loud and clear message from their employers that all of these social tools are to be used for private and personal reasons. And they do that eventually, resulting in people switching off the work context of living social and just apply it to how they do interact with their family members, friends, relatives and acquaintances. Essentially, personal, private use.  A missed opportunity on its own, if you ask me, because when those very same firms decide to start their own social business journey(s) they are going to find out how they are facing a much tougher challenge with regards to adoption of these social tools, because their employees won’t just see the connection anymore. "Remember? You told us we can’t use these social networking tools at work, so we are not going to start now" is what most folks would probably say. And that reluctance can surely undermine whatever efforts you put in place to help drive that adoption. It just won’t happen.  In the past we have seen some very insightful articles on the topic of whether employees do really waste time at work with social technologies or not, or other relevant pieces where, if anything, they are offering plenty of sound advice as to why businesses should not block the use of social media tools; on the contrary, they should promote them quite heavily, if anything. Perhaps my favourite article so far, at least, from the ones I have read over the course of time would be the one from TechRepublic by Jack Wallen under the title "10 reasons NOT to block social networking at work", which, basically, covers some of the most compelling reasons as to why businesses, again, should not only encourage the use and adoption of social technologies, but embrace the many perks behind it. I am not going to reference each and everyone of them, for sure, but I thought I would just go ahead and share a listing of them, as a teaser, to see the kinds of perks that embracing social networking tools and letting your employees be not only responsible, but accountable for using these digital tools to get work done in a professional and responsible manner could do for the business. Your business. To name:  "Morale Reputation Communication Advertising Collaboration Social Research Skill Building Transparency PR Networking" Needless to say that in the world of Open Business my favourite perks of embracing social networking tools in a work environment would be those of Transparency, Collaboration, Networking and Reputation from the list shared above. More than anything because those would be some of the key ingredients towards provoking that particular business transformation that has been in the making for perhaps a bit too long already. Who knows. Businesses today are starting to look more how they can become more authentic, more transparent, more unique on how they do business, on how they can help differentiate their brand. After all, we all know and fully understand how people do business with people, so the more transparent, open, collaborative, networked those conversations and interactions can well be amongst knowledge workers in a world where you have to work really hard to earn the merit and reputation with your customers and business partners, blocking social networking sites is not going to be very helpful for your overall mission, i.e. becoming a socially integrated enterprise. As Dan himself concludes: "Social is the new normal. You are the antithesis of collaboration […]". Actually, I would go even further. Social is the new post-normal, as my good friend Stowe Boyd wonderfully described just recently in a couple of very good articles describing what it is like. But it gets better, because if you have a bit over 30 minutes I would strongly encourage you all to have a look at the recent presentation he did on the topic at the Meaning 2012 Conference in Brighton, UK, that I blogged about recently and which was, without any doubt, one of the best presentations from the entire day and perhaps one of the best from the whole year. Watch through it and you will see what I mean. Here’s the direct link to the video clip and the embedded code if you would want to play it right away:  So, there you have it. Next time someone approaches you and comments on whether they should block the use of all of these digital tools in the Open Business era, or if you engage in a conversation with people whose companies have already blocked the access to these social technologies, remind them how we are living in the Social Era whether they like it or not, in case they may not have noticed it just yet, and how we will be keep moving forward. With or without them. It’d be their choice. 

And here we are! Nearly a couple of weeks since I started working again, after an extended holiday break, I’m on the road once more. First business trip of the year, and perhaps one of the most exciting ones that I can think of so far. As usual, it’s the yearly pilgrimage to Orlando, Florida, to attend IBM’s event of events in the space of Social Business and Social Collaboration, formerly known as Lotusphere, now morphed into IBM Connect 2013 (Check out the stunning agenda put together so far!). Yes, of course, I just can’t wait to see everyone in there, fellow IBM colleagues, customers, business partners, industry analysts, and, certainly, good friends whom I haven’t seen in a little while and that I’ll have a chance to meet up again face to face to do a proper catchup. After checking out the live tweet stream coming from #ibmconnect it looks like folks have already gotten things started and somehow I sense that, once again, I will keep struggling with keeping up with this blog, while attending the event, embarking myself on a massive experience of offline social networking. Yes, the best one there is out there still!  This year though, I am planning on doing something … different. I am going to keep it quiet for a little bit and hide it as a surprise and see whether it would work out all right or not. It’s something different, like I mentioned above. Very different. Something that I haven’t done in the past and that, if it works very well, I may adopt it for future face to face events that I may attend during the course of 2013. It would be interesting to see … Thus stay tuned and see how it would go further along… It will probably kick off on Sunday, while I’m in Orlando already… Today though, I am in Madrid, where I hosted a couple of face to face workshops on social business enabling fellow colleagues on making the most out of social networking tools, along with a couple of 1:1 coaching sessions on the same topic with some managers and it’s rather interesting to see how there is plenty of eagerness along the way to get involved and fully immersed into the whole realm of social technologies for business, but there are still plenty of questions raised as to how to get started in an effective, efficient and, specially, smarter manner. Well, I keep going back to basics and refer to what I think is the number one activity that not only managers, but also knowledge workers in general, should master before embarking into blasting out messages out there for everyone to digest and be exposed to it. In fact, the first pillar of interactions that I always suggest to get started with begins with something so simple in theory, but yet extremely complicated in practice. Of course, I am talking about Listening, or, better said, Active Listening.  I have always described being an active participant in social networks as just not necessarily broadcasting or marketing your messages out there without being interested in following up, diving into the conversations or whatever else (Which we know is perhaps happening far too often nowadays, unfortunately). There is a whole lot more than that. In fact, one of the most interesting, engaging and powerful activities, also as a good overall learning strategy, is that one that helps us build the skills and the ability to listen carefully to conversations to then decide whether we would need to dive into them or not and add value into the overall dialogue. Something that doesn’t seem to be happening far too often, unfortunately. Again. But there is hope out there, because just when you need it the most, there is the wonderfully insightful, as always, Tom Peters coming to the rescue of all of us to stress out, not just to managers and leaders, but for everyone out there wanting to dive into the world of social networks, how important and critical it is to master the art of active listening and break off the old bad habits we have developed over the course of the years. And if he can then pack it up in a superb short video clip of about 3.30 minutes you know you have got to watch it. It’s the least you could do. And listen… Carefully. As I am wrapping up a pretty intense week at work where there has also been some massive soul-searching for yours truly (Now completed, by the way!), after bumping into that odd diversion of your own attention from what really matters (But more on that one later on …), and, just as we are getting started with the weekend, I thought I would go ahead and leave you with one thought Tom shares across with something that we all perhaps need to make much more frequent use of: Passion. To quote:  "(Strategic) Listening is a profession that has to be learned […] Your profession is listening" Thus as several thousands of us are heading into Orlando, Florida, to attend IBM Connect 2013, I would strongly encourage everyone to practice listening quite a bit, to master the art of active listening, AND learn, before you embark on with your own agenda. There is a great chance you may not have realised about just yet that even your own agenda will start with going back to basics in the world of social: listen with intent, to then decide how you are going to help people become even more awesome! That’s just as good as it gets… The rest is just irrelevant. Nice challenge ahead, don’t you think? Oh, if you, too, are going to IBM Connect and would want to hook up with yours truly, while in there, to say "Hi" and perhaps catch up on some conversations around Social Business, not to worry, I’ll be there … listening at @elsua with intent to then get together. Don’t be shy! That’s what massive face to face events like this one are all about… People listening, talking … connecting with people. 

As you may have noticed by now, the little experiment that I had in mind to go and play with while I was attending last week’s IBM Connect 2013 conference event in Orlando, Florida, didn’t work too well, not because of lacking the intention, the motivation or the energy for it, but mainly because I killed my voice on the first day of the event. On Sunday. Yikes! How unfortunate and what a bad timing, because I was really looking forward to exploring that new experiment I have been toying with for a while now. Oh, well, next time around then, I guess, right? Either way, I am now back home, still in full recovery mode from 36 hours non stop return trip, but you may be wondering why I broke my voice on the first day of the event and what provoked it, right? Well, nothing more than plenty of wonderful conversation after conversation around perhaps what I feel has been the main theme throughout the event: Social Business Adoption! Indeed, if there would be a highlight of what I learned, what I participated in, spoke about, talked about with fellow colleagues, customers and business partners, I could surely summarise it with a single key word: Adoption! It was truly fascinating to see how mature the Social Business field has become over the years and how plenty of the customers I talked to last year around Adoption were this year’s keynote or breakout speakers sharing their story, their journey, on becoming socially integrated enterprises. Yes, fascinating is a good word to describe the overall experience and the huge sense of pride I experienced (even today!) when I get to see customers sharing very powerful stories all around their social business journey(s) with lots of incredibly refreshing and inspiring success stories. Yes, of course, and the good lessons learned here and there, too!  I think it was also the first time ever, in the 20 years the conference has been running (All along known before as Lotusphere), that there were more case studies and customers on stage and breakout sessions than ever before, which I guess is a really good sign that highlights how mature the whole field of social business is when the customers are the primary focus. That’s probably the best part of the conference, where you just sit back, relax, free your brain from any constraint and just learn. That is essentially what I did for the entire week non-stop!  I tried to attend a good number of the sessions with customer case studies and success stories, but, unfortunately, I didn’t succeed in making some of them. Not because I didn’t want to, but simply because I had lots of other customer meetings myself, plenty of them for the first time ever that we meet face to face, and that I am sure next year they would be on stage as keynote or breakout speakers themselves sharing their own story. Yes, I feel that confident it will happen. The energy was there, the excitement, too!, but specially, the commitment, purpose and focus to make it happen all around. In fact, I raised the challenge for each and everyone of them that a year later they should be the ones on stage!  And they accepted it! Game ON!  Either way, like I was saying, the main reason why I broke my voice during the event on the first day was because of the huge amount of conversations I had with people, fellow colleagues, customers and BPs, non stop around adoption strategies and mainly describing IBM’s own journey towards becoming a successful social business that prevented me from even hanging out at the poolside bar, which, for instance, was the place that I spent most of my time last year. Well, this year I only visited it once and on Thursday evening, once the event was over! Ha! I need to work on that, I guess, and get closer next year. After all, the weather was just gorgeous whole week long!  Over the course of the next few weeks I will be sharing plenty of additional highlights of what I experienced and learned throughout the conference, since I will have a chance to reflect on what I was exposed to and inject those learnings into new blog entries that I will try to connect with the overall theme from this blog. Perhaps the most exciting one insight I can share now is how a good number of the conversations I had moved around Open Business, which is starting to grab more and more attention by customers as an opportunity to open up, become more transparent, honest, and authentic on how they would want to conduct their business with their own customers. So I will have a good chance as well to talk about that over the course of time. So much so that on the #ptisocialbiz session that I co-presented I stated how my main objective for 2013 is going to be to drop the Social Business moniker and instead adopt Open Business. For now though I thought I would just point you into perhaps one of the main resources out there that I will keep referencing time and time again about the event itself, which, in this case, it’s the link to the Livestream presentations that took place and that, although didn’t cover them all extensively, some of my favourites were recorded for later viewing as well. Like the Opening General Session, which I thought didn’t present us with much of a WOW! - Bang! Boom! feeling confirming, if anything, that social business is now mainstream. It’s here to stay and it’s here to transform the way we do business and instead of focusing on a massive spree of new features and capabilities the shift now has moved on into how I can apply it to my day to day business, regardless of the industry. Refreshing altogether! Another favourite session worth while checking out would be the keynote from Day 2 where there were some of my favourite case studies shared through a short video clip, along with 3 live customer stories where David Jones pretty much just nailed it, sharing plenty of insights and helpful tips on accelerating their own adoption of social software for business! But for the rest, I will be talking about it at a later time in a number of different articles, like I mentioned above. Perhaps, for now, I will give you a teaser sharing along, and like I have been doing for other conference events, the .PDF file with all of the extensive live tweeting I did during the whole week, so you could have a glimpse on what customer case studies sessions I was rather interested in, what other general sessions I attended and, specially, what kinds of conversations I embarked on throughout the event itself, both face to face and virtually.  As usual, you would be able to find the .PDF file over at my Slideshare account (Here is the direct link to it), and here’s the embedded code, so you can take a look right away and breeze through it. Like I mentioned, I will be covering in the near future plenty more ground of those social business adoption stories, some of them so inspiring that I still have got a lovely aftertaste that will be difficult to get rid of. So here it goes:  elsua’s Live Tweeting Highlights from #ibmconnect in Orlando, Florida, January 2013 from Luis Suarez And that would be it for me for today for the first, of several, blog entries on some major highlights from IBM Connect 2013, although I am thinking I’m not going to share them all right away, so I can pace through some other interesting reflections I have been musing and pondering about since my last article over here. That way we can balance it a bit nicely in between multiple other things that are happening at the moment.  Oh, in case you are wondering, the picture I decided to include above on this post was also one of my favourite highlights from the overall event: a live snapshot taken while at the Opening General Session where Alistair Rennie (General Manager for IBM’s Collaboration Solutions) gave a huge shout (and mention!) to a smashing, talented, gifted group of individuals who are taking brand advocacy into new levels: the IBM Champions for Collaboration Solutions. Splendid highlight for sure and the perfect way to kick off quite an amazing event: start by treasuring and nurturing your brand advocates and social evangelists. It’s the least you could do to recognise, acknowledge and embrace their extended hard work and their ever going the extra mile for you and your brand! Always.

A couple of months ago, when my good friend and fellow colleague, Louis Richardson, came to talk to both my twin brother Luis Benitez and myself to participate at the IBM Connect 2013 conference event in Orlando, Florida, following the well known format of "Pardon The Interruption" we knew, back then, it was going to be a risky bet, one where we thought it was going to be rather a huge massive smash hit or just simply a notorious everlasting failure. Since all three of us do enjoy challenging ourselves on a regular basis we decided though to, what the h*ck, take the risk and go for it! We may as well enjoy the ride along the way, right? Well, we surely did! That’s how "Pardon The Interruption in Social Business" came into being and how it was a stunning success we can now go and treasure for a long while… Indeed, that was the breakout speaker session the Three Louie (#troislouie) decided to embark on, making it the very first time in history that three Luis’ heavily involved with Social Business would be making it on stage at the same conference event, at the same date, at the same time talking with passion about the same subject. Of course, there was a bunch of preparation that took place before that day arrived. Louis got us all three organised (without even sending a single email across, by the way, but collaborating through IBM Connections Activities < W00t! Yes, walking the talk!) and before we knew it we were off to something magical. Earlier on, indeed, while in the preparation stages, we knew that in order to make it a successful event we needed to count on a little bit of help from the audience, so a few weeks before the session took place we dived into Twitter and started socialising the #ptisocialbiz hashtag, where folks, who would be attending the session live, would be capable of sharing across their questions so that we would then be able to incorporate them into the PTI presentation and give ourselves 60 seconds each, or less, to share that insightful thought that would serve as an educated answer. Somewhat. And the audience responded! Oh, boy, and brilliantly! Overall, we got through over 18 of those questions over the course of one hour making it a quite fun, interesting and fast paced presentation, which is something that was well perceived seeing the time the session took place at (5:30pm to 6:30pm). Right from the start we knew that we all three needed to be somewhat radically different, so we decided to play some roles as well where Luis Benitez was the traditionalist social product manager, Louis Richardson was the pragmatic social sales evangelist and yours truly was the social business outlier, a role I have grown to become rather fond of over the course of time, perhaps, mostly as a result of "A World Without eMail". The vibe during the session was amazing. We had a packed up room with very few spaces left and from what we were told later on in the week coming closer to 300 people attending the session overall. Right then I realised it was going to be a smash hit. The atmosphere was just perfect: relaxed, condescending, inspiring, rather jolly and, above all, brilliantly engaging. You could feel it in the air. Just brilliant! Just the perfect ambience to let your brain do its magic and let yourself go, let all of that passion, wit, knowledge and accumulated experience on living social shine through, just as the audience was rather attentive, alert and willing to be wowed! Well, we were the ones who ended up ourselves being the ones wowed and big time! We know the quality of the audio throughout the large room was not up to the optimal stage. In fact, we were told by those looking after the sound / mikes that we would better stay close to the main stage as to avoid poor quality of the audio coming through and that was perhaps a bit of a bummer, because, originally, we had the intention of mixing and mingling with the audience, walking about, and bringing forward different points of attention depending on where we may well be in the large room. Oh, well, may be next time around! The good thing though is that right from the beginning we knew the session was going to be recorded and everything, so, at least, we would have a good quality recording to share across when it would be over. And we surely did. In fact, Louis has already put it together with a copy of the slide-ware we used and shared it across over at his Slideshare account. So folks who may be interested in taking a peek and go through it may be able to do so with the embedded code shared below:   Pardon the Interruption: Social Biz Hot Topics from Louis Richardson What an adrenaline rush! Still getting shivers through my spine as I keep reflecting on what we learned going through that exhilarating experience of throwing yourself into the unknown and see what would happen, and in front of such a large audience! Just wonderfully delightful and highly recommended altogether! Judging from the superb, generous feedback comments we received throughout the following couple of days, both offline and online, it looks like it was worth it. My good friend Stu McIntyre probably summed it up nicely with this particularly tweet that we surely appreciate very much, specially, thinking about the initial reservations we had when initially diving into it for the first time:   I think the #ptisocialbiz format is the best thing to hit this conference in years. Could do this for technical sessions too #ibmconnect — Stuart McIntyre (@StuartMcIntyre) January 29, 2013 To me, it was also a bit of a special session, since it was the first time that I ever spoke at IBM Lotusphere / Connect in the 5 years I have been attending the conference event in a row, and it is probably something that I will keep remembering and treasuring as that new format presentation that perhaps will mark a new beginning where instead of focusing on delivering master classes of slide-ware we eventually throw ourselves into the audience to embark on a 2-way open dialogue bridging both the online and offline worlds, where both speakers and attendees learn just as much as we can from one another. Surely one of those fond experiences I won’t be forgetting any time soon! So much so that perhaps there will be a v2.0 next year where we will expand further on in the concept and take it to a new level. Who knows… For now, we just want to thank dearly and sincerely Stu, for that wonderful piece of generous feedback shared across in the moment, and to everyone else who came over to our session and participated rather actively to help us keep up with our learning curves, the pace and the rhythm on what it is like thriving in social business where the collective keeps trumping the individual master class(es) of those so-called slide-ware prone gurus If you have a chance to go through the recording and the presentation, we also want to thank you for taking the time to go through it and please do let us know through the comments what you thought about the session itself and how we could improve it for the next time. Because, you know what they say, right? There is always plenty of room for improvement! Practice makes perfection (Or so they say…) We hope to see you all next year at the next #ptisocialbiz session, hoping it will be just as much fun, entertaining, educational and enlightening for everyone all around as this year’s, if not more altogether! [Oh, did you notice our answers for one of the very last questions from the session on "What is your personal plan / objective for 2013 to support the adoption of Social Business and IBM Connections?" Well, if you have been reading this blog for a little while now, like since the beginning of this year, or longer, you will know what my answer was… … Challenge is ON!]

A couple of weeks back Laura Dinneen put together a rather interesting and insightful blog post on the topic of "Five Essential Qualities of a Social Business Champion" where she described, quite accurately, some of the various different traits Social Business Champions need to master and excel at if they would want to keep pushing the limits and change the way we do work nowadays and make it more social. That article got me thinking, of course, about my own role as a social business ambassador (champion, evangelist, or whatever other term du jour you would want to make use of) from over the last 12 years I have been doing this myself and I thought I would put together this article over here today where I could expand further, but perhaps around the field of Open Business evangelism. After all, I committed this year to get rid of the Social Business moniker for myself, remember?, at IBM Connect a couple of weeks back, so better get things moving then. So what are some other key characteristics from Open Business Champions? Before we move further along, let’s cover for a couple of minutes the main qualities Laura covers on her blog post to recap what we have got so far:  Passionate: Of course, otherwise what’s the point? How can you be a Social Business champion (Or a champion in any other subject for that matter), if you are not truly passionate and enthusiastic about your topic? How can you transmit that energy, that enthusiasm, that subject matter expertise, or that purpose and focus on the topic if you are not passionate about it altogether, right? Indeed, not much more to add further up on this one, I am afraid…  Innovative: Not necessarily an exclusive quality from Social Business Champions per se, but perhaps more from knowledge workers in general. The key thing here is that social champions will always be on the look-out for innovative ways and methods about how they can share their knowledge across on that particular topic in order to have their voices heard, which I think is the main reason why creativity and innovation walk hand in hand for them. It’s not an easy task, for sure, but one where they certainly need to master over time, if they would want to be really good at it as time moves on.   Collaborative: Another quality that’s a given for social champions, more than anything else, because if there is anything that they need to do above and beyond their call of duty is to walk the talk, learn by doing, and this implies that they are the very first ones who breathe this collaborative nature, if they would want to succeed. They fully understand they are part of a network, of a community, but they also understand they are just one node of that same network and therefore one more of the pack wanting to change things, to collaborate more out there versus trying to keep protecting and hoarding their own knowledge. They wouldn’t. They shouldn’t! Rather the opposite.   Flexible: Flexibility is, for sure, our middle name. I don’t know of any social champion who may not be flexible enough to understand we are living in a rather complex, networked, hyperconnected, distributed and rather virtual working environment and therefore we would need to live that flexibility in getting our work done, because otherwise we would not be advancing much further along …   Courageous: Definitely, one of those qualities you would probably not expect to see that often in a work environment, yet, incredibly critical for those champions, because being courageous means they do not fear anything, not even their managers! They are in a position where they feel that passion, that innovation, that collaboration and that flexibility would allow them to achieve everything they may well get their heads around in trying to push the limits. And it’s that very same position the one that empowers them to be fearless, even if they are seen as a potential threat, due to their own influence with those around them, i.e. the network(s). As my good friend Richard Collin once presented at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris, social business champions need to come to work with this mentality: "Come to work each day willing to be fired" As you can see, I took the liberty of adding some additional commentary around each and everyone of those qualities that Laura mentioned on her original article. It’s now time for the second part of the blog entry where I would want to reflect on another ten critical open business qualities champions would need to master and excel at, because they are going to define the challenges they will be facing over the course of the next few years. Interestingly enough, all of them have got a lot in common with the ones referenced above, but with a little bit of a twist. Let’s have a look:  Open: Indeed, Open Business is about being just that: open. Open to the unknown, to the unexpected. To uncertainty. Open to living our lives in perpetual beta, as a constant form of improvement, of learning on the go, of adjusting accordingly, of understanding hiding away behind your Inbox, for instance, or your own little cubicle is no longer good enough. Open means embracing those serendipitous knowledge accidents where magic happens to transform how we collaborate and share our knowledge. Essentially, how we work.  Transparent: And along the lines of no longer being capable of hiding away from everything at work, here comes the need for Open Business champions to become rather transparent on what they do. So that instead of protecting and hoarding their knowledge, their expertise and their networks, they transition successfully from that good old mantra of sharing knowledge "only on a need to know basis" vs. sharing publicly by default. Or that other one that I keep referencing time and time again on "Knowledge is power" (so if I share my knowledge across I share my power), when we all know it’s all about "Knowledge SHARED is power". It’s that openness and transparency the two single traits that have got the most significant impact on helping business realise that journey of become socially / openly integrated enterprises. Empathic: In the world of social networks there is one quality that shines through time and time again; a quality that social champions have passed on to open business ambassadors when interacting through these digital tools, which is, essentially, empathy. Our ability to build much more fruitful personal business relationships highlights the need for each and everyone of us to become more empathic with those around us. To help them when they need it and for whatever they would need, all in all without asking for much in return. We would need to be patient and resilient; to persevere, because we know that good active listening and understanding can take you very far. And showing that you care is what matters the most at the end of the day… Engaged: I don’t think I have ever bumped into a social / open business champion who may not be feeling rather engaged at work. Have you? Indeed, they are a special breed. They define their own rules of how they would want to work, what kind of work they would do eventually and who they are going to be working with. For them, hierarchies just don’t work. They live through wirearchy. They understand that if someone moves their cheese it’s their turn, and full responsibility, to re-engage back again into what they live for and engage back. They won’t be asking the traditional hierarchy for much help. Their free radical nature, their outrageousness, their eternal optimism, their hippie 2.0 lifestyle, their (corporate) rebel at work nature will help them shake off that disengagement and find their cheese again. They are essentially the good outliers who know how to get things back when someone decides they are becoming too much of a threat and use their political / bullying power to displace them. Not to worry, they always find their way back and when they do come back, they are even much stronger, more powerful and engaged than ever before! Trustworthy: Open Business champions live on trust as well, of course, as I am sure you know all along if you have been involved with social networking tools for business over the course of time. Trust takes plenty of time to build up (And a split second to break it away forever). It’s about getting to know someone, i.e. what they are good at, what they are not, what they are passionate about, what they care for, how they build personal business relationships through nurturing to the extreme their social capital skills. So much so that in the end it becomes second nature. Yes, trust, we all know, is an essential quality, but it’s one that it’s not been worked at much over the course of time and I guess we are paying for it at the moment seeing how the financial econoclypse keeps hammering multiple economies and countries worldwide due to that lack of trust. Say, for instance, when was the last time you had to work with someone you didn’t trust? Something tells me it wasn’t that long ago …  Authentic: If there is anything that these champions will be excelling at as well, as a living proof of what an open business should be all about, is how authentic they all are. Essentially, how they keep building very powerful authentic personal brands, that, if anything, help amplify the overall corporate one. If there is anything they do rather well is they walk the talk. They don’t come around and talk to you about how wonderful and how great these digital social tools out there are, and then go and hide inside their mailboxes processing email, because, you know, they have got work to do! Never mind you won’t see them complain much about how overloaded they are with email, because, eventually, they don’t get much. They no longer live there. They are out there, in open networks, interacting and collaborating with their peers and knowledge workers helping build further up on those digital footprints and authenticity that they know customers and business partners would appreciate quite a bit, because it’d help them convince businesses and brands that they, too, need to be just that: authentic. Honest: And right along those qualities of being open, transparent, trustworthy and authentic would surely permeate into perhaps another trait that we may have been neglecting for far too long in the corporate world: honesty. Call me Hippie 2.0 and everything you want, but I feel that if businesses and people working in those businesses would have been a bit more honest with not just themselves, but with the societies they live in, we probably would not be where we are today: perhaps one of the most serious, critical, and revolting crisis times where lack of ethics and morals have surely trumped people in the millions, while only a few benefit. Honesty knows better. Honesty fosters ownership and responsibility, not just towards you and your business, but towards the societies we live in. After all, what’s the legacy we would want to leave behind for future generations? Just like social / open business champions are much more honest, so do businesses in this brave new world. I doubt we can afford heading in any other direction without having to pay for the consequences in the short AND long terms…  Autonomous: Right along the lines of being engaged, here comes one of those qualities that is perhaps the most refreshing one, coming out of the tailorism regimes we have been living in over the course of decades: being autonomous. Having the opportunity to think for yourself, to make decisions on your own grounds based on the experiences and skills you may have, without having to depend on your manager to make those decisions for you. That lowering of the centre of gravity, of the decision thinking process is probably as good as it gets on empowering your employee workforce to learn (even from failures) into doing things better, much better. More than anything else, because along with that autonomy and free thinking comes along dissent, i.e. constructive criticism, which we know in today’s corporate world is far too rare and almost inexistent, because we just don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. Well, it’s not about that. It’s much more profound than that. It’s just that we have become much more comfortable with not having to think much and let that task to others so we get to live the easy life… Social / Open Business champions aren’t like that at all! They transpire autonomy, they define their own rules of how they would want to contribute to change the game, how they would want to redesign the way we work, which, if anything, has demonstrated how the last 50 years we haven’t done much in terms of progressing further in our thinking processes. That has been of the most liberating capabilities from social technologies today: give us a new opportunity to think and think freely, something that may surprise most, but it’s part of our human nature. It’s just been too hidden for far too long altogether! Motivated: What can we say about motivated champions that may not have been said before, right? I mean, do you know any social / open champion who may be rather demotivated on wanting to keep pushing the limits of how we work and look for ways and methods that could help transform not only the way we do business, but also our very own organisations? I surely don’t know of any and, like I have mentioned above, if someone decides to demotivate them, because they may have reached a level of autonomy difficult to control and manoeuvre around, there is something out there very clear that we can see time and time again come afloat: they will fight back. Finding new energy, new ways to show their passion, to build even more powerful social networks, to eventually become motivated again about what they do, to keep sharing with passion what drives them to work over and over again. And, believe me, they always find the way to re-motivate themselves. Remember? They are rather resilient and perseverant with plenty of flexibility, so they would always find out there what would motivate them. Ask them and they would tell you how they do it. They are rather open and transparent about it after all … Caring: And, finally, perhaps the quality that I find the most inspiring and refreshing to have happened in the corporate knowledge workplace thanks to social technologies for a long long time: caring for one another. I know that this one may also sound a bit too Hippie 2.0 as well, but I keep thinking that if there is anything that all of this social networking has done for all of us within the corporate world and within our societies for that matter is help us understand how over the last few decades we haven’t done much to care for one another, but to care only for ourselves, because that’s how we have been taught and educated about it thanks to those individual performance traits and reviews that measure, if anything, how good of a fighter we are trumping everyone else’s efforts along the way. And it shows… It shows, indeed, where we are and where we may have gone wrong all along. Can you imagine a business world where we could do plenty more caring for one another with just trying to answer a rather simple question that I have quoted over here in this blog a couple of times already: "how you are going to help people become even more awesome?" Well, how about starting with caring plenty more about them and what they do, instead of just focusing on your own self that, we all know, over time, is not going to take you very far…  Yes, I know, this has been another relatively long blog post that I have put together over here. I guess that’s what happens when you are stuck in a plane, en route to Philadelphia, to then land in NYC, to spend an entire week with your work team, and you have got plenty of thinking time, and lots of space to write about it comfortably. But here is the thing, you may be wondering that these social / open business champions are far too rare inside companies or too hard to see / notice them, while demonstrating those qualities at work. Well, maybe not. Maybe it’s just that you haven’t paid much attention to what’s happening outside your self. They are all around us. Amongst us. With us. We are us. They are slowly, but steadily, coming along as a rather powerful network of change agents that, if anything, should be treasured and nurtured by every single business and, mainly, because of a single reason: they are the only main reason why your business still exists today, as my good friend Carmen Medina described a little while ago on a rather short, but incredibly insightful and relevant presentation on why we needed to cultivate and treasure those outrageous optimist rebels at work:   

Once again, it’s been a little while now since my last blog post over here, and I am sure most of you folks may be wondering what have I been up to in the last couple of weeks, right?, specially, after returning from my last business trip to New York City on the week of February 11th. Well, if I were to tell you that loads of things have happened, that I have been embarking on a massive non-stop frenetic roller-coaster ride, some of which have had a significant direct impact on yours truly, you may not believe much of it, right? After all, it’s not the kind of thing that I usually get to talk about and share across over here. That’s about to change though. At least, this time around. I’m going to give you all a little bit of Pep Talk. And then we are going to talk about Who Moved My Cheese? Because someone just did that.  Ok, I will leave the Pep Talk for a little bit later on … You know what happens when someone decides to move your cheese without telling you in advance, right?, that, when it hits you, it’s already probably too late. Lucky enough, I have always thought it is never too late. So when it, finally, happened to me a few weeks back, it was a good time to start that process of soul-searching that one embarks on once in a while and see where I will end up going. Judging from my close social networks somehow I sense that for everyone out there 2013 is going to be the year of Change (With a capital C). Well, for me, that soul-searching process is now over. And that week I spent in New York City surely has changed my life and in so many different ways that it’s going to be a bit too tough for me to relate it all over here. Yes, I know what you are thinking… How much more cryptic can one get when reflecting on all of this, right? I mean, can you just tell us what’s going on and why have you been absent from your external social networking activities for perhaps far too long?  Hummm, in its due time. Not yet though. I am still not ready to share it along. Many years ago, nevertheless, I bumped into one key online principle I have lived by ever since that has been perhaps the most helpful piece of advice one can give to someone else who is just about to start participating in the digital world and the Social Web: never, ever, write anything online in a blog post, a tweet, or whatever else, when you are upset, angry, frustrated but also EXCITED or far too exhilarated about something.  I guess that in the last month I have gone through both ends of the spectrum detailed above, which would explain why I haven’t written much online out there. Before my business trip to New York City I was on the very negative side of the spectrum and right after the NYC trip I was right at the opposite end. I guess that’s what one of the most amazing places on this planet can do to you over the course of a week, or, in my case, in 20 minutes. Yes, I know, here I am again, being rather cryptic, aren’t I? Sorry, it’s not intended, nor on purpose. I’m just trying to reflect on the fact that certain things and certain decisions usually taken within minutes can have quite a significant impact, one way or another. And probably the best option is to just take it as it is, re-think quite dearly your purpose, meaning and focus and go and start searching for that new cheese.  Till you find it. And I did! And I am excited. Actually, I am incredibly excited, but, like I said, I am not ready to share it or talk about it out there, just yet. Still a bit too soon. Which is why I thought I would finish off this blog post letting you know that I’m back with my usual regular blogging schedule, now more intense and relevant than ever to the main themes from this blog all along, including Open Business, of course, and with a huge piece of news coming up soon that I am hoping will help explain why I have been relatively quiet out there on the Social Web. For most folks out there who know me somewhat it’s going to be a bit of a shock, for those of you, my dear friends, who know me personally, it’s going to be something I have been waiting for for the last 12 years and it’s finally here. Yes, I know, the suspense and the intrigue are killing you all right now, aren’t they? Well, here’s the Pep Talk piece of this article then. Through one of my fellow IBM colleagues, who blogged about it internally, I bumped into this delightful short YouTube video, about Kid President sharing with us a little bit of a pep talk that I am sure we would all need to watch every now and then to remind us about what really matters. It’s one of those amazing inspirational video clips that would not leave you indifferent, to the point where it may help provoke that soul-searching activity you may have been parking on the sideway for far too long. In the context of what I have just shared above, it surely has for me, which is why I thought I would share the embedded code over here so that you folks would have an opportunity to watch and see what I mean about the video being one of the most motivational, hilarious, witty, relevant and smart discourses you will bump into out there. If not, judge for yourselves:  Like I said, there is probably not much of a need to worry when someone decides to move your cheese without you not knowing anything about it; there is a great chance that change is good and perhaps this pep talk from Kid President will help you get back on track while you redefine your new purpose, your new focus and, specially, your potential new meaning to everything you do. "I want to be anyone that leads to … awesome" (Yeah, me, too!)

Over the course of the last few years there has been one particular aspect of social networking for business that I still haven’t come to terms with throughout all of that time. That is, self-promoting your own content in your own blog that you may find scattered around all over the place (other blog posts, podcasts, vodcasts, webinars, seminars, online workshops, mainstream articles and so on and so forth). Somehow it just sounds a bit too meta. Perhaps it’s just me, but it’s something that I have always found it a bit too awkward, although it doesn’t bother me when people in my networks do it, because, essentially, I feel they are pointing me to some of the great quality content that they keep posting away in other places, rather than their usual hangouts. I guess it’s just me with that kind of reservation. Either way, that’s just about to end, because while I have been away these past two weeks I have realised I have been sharing content in multiple other places without pointers back to this blog highlighting the fact that as a result of it I am neglecting this blog perhaps much more than I should have and that’s not necessarily a good thing, right?  Specially, when talking about video. Yes, apparently, 2013 is the Year of Video. Specially, if you look into the rather significant impact it’s having across the board in multiple social networking tools. Perhaps the most vocal one being one of my favourite social networking tools: Google Plus. And this is when it really hit me, because I realised I keep spending plenty of time participating in Google Plus Hangouts (Or Hangouts On Air) on multiple various topics related to Social / Open Business that they never get to see the light over here. So I thought I would perhaps change that and eventually start sharing some of those links across to keep feeding the beast, i.e. this blog.  At the same time it’s been quite interesting to acknowledge how much more you can share through video than through standard offline text. This is something that my good friend Dave Snowden has been talking all about from the perspective of how we render knowledge (Still one of my favourite blog posts out there, by the way!). To quote:  "We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down. This is probably the most important. The process of taking things from our heads, to our mouths (speaking it) to our hands (writing it down) involves loss of content and context. It is always less than it could have been as it is increasingly codified" Indeed, this is something that I can vouch for as well. I am a fast typist, for sure, have always been all along, but I actually talk much faster. Perhaps even too fast at times, as I get carried away in excitement and passion when talking about all of these topics around social networking and knowledge sharing. And that’s probably why I am thinking of giving it a try over here and make the switch from that trend of thought of self-promoting your own content in your own blog and instead consider those other snippets sort of blog entries as well to go along with the usual regular blogging. Why not, right?  After all, I guess it’s all about sharing along all of those relevant and insightful pieces of content you think would add further up into the overall conversation. It’s the dialogue that matters, right? I would love to know in the comments what you folks think about it. Whether it’s helpful to point to those other tidbits or not. Feel free to let me know as we move further along…  To start with though, I thought I would go back to one of my favourite social networking tools that I mentioned above already. Google Plus. And, specially, Google Plus Hangouts, where I have spent a good amount of time lately participating in a few of them with other people. One of my favourites was a recent Google Plus Hangout On Air I did with my fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, Daryl Pereira, where we spent about 18 minutes talking around the topic of "Enterprise Social Networking Tips" covering the following items:  My current background and current role (For those folks interested… hehe) My own motivation to use social networking tools, whether internal or external (After 12 years heavily involved with social technologies) The benefits of being a Social IBMer in a digital world And, finally, some key points, practical tips on how to get started with social networking (for business), in case you may not have dived in just yet The beauty of Google Plus Hangouts On Air, and one of the reasons why I heart them quite a bit, is not only how easy it is to engage in the videoconferencing event without hardly any technical hiccups or issues or foreign software to install, but because it also provides you with an opportunity to have a recording of the event. And we did. You can find the link to it at this YouTube video, or, alternatively, you could also watch the embedded code below:  Hope you folks get to enjoy that 1:1 interview I did with Daryl on Enterprise Social Networking Tips just as much as we did when we recorded it live. From here onwards I also just want to thank sincerely Daryl for inviting me and for conducting the interview and I surely look forward to the next one!  And hope you folks, too!

A few months back I put together a blog post over here where I highlighted the fact that Great Products Don’t Need Customer Service by pointing out one of my favourite experiences I went through when I went back, where I grew up, for the summer holidays, and enjoyed some of the most amazing morcilla. And for several days! Well, today I thought I would go ahead and venture to state that excelling customer experiences don’t need much of customer service either. And perhaps not much of Social for that matter! When was the last time that you had a customer experience where you felt touched, emotional, engaged, perhaps even loved? While you keep thinking about that one, I can tell you that I had to go way way back in time to remember my last one of those superiour customer experiences. However, there is hope out there, specially, when you bump into a rather short video clip that a fellow IBM colleague, Fran O’Sullivan, shared internally, in our social networking platform, and which has been making the rounds quite a bit, although externally it looks like it has faded away a little bit. Unfortunately.  In The Simple Truth of Service Barbara Glanz shares along one of the most inspiring, touching, mind-blowing stories you are probably going to hear, read or see this year. No doubt. It’s about a story where "you put your personal signature on the job". About how you, the seller employee, needs to think about "something you can do for your customer to make them feel special", building up on a memory, or series of memories, that will make them come back to you for more.  And there it begins the wonderfully touching story from Johnny the bagger. No, not to worry, I am not going to spoil it for you folks. It’s a delightful 3 minute long video that I would ask you to stop anything you may be doing, including reading this blog post, and watch it through in its entirety and then come back:  Truly amazing and rather incredible story, don’t you think? I am not sure about you, but I guess, after watching it, excelling customer experiences have taken a new meaning for me. Hope for you, too! One where "everyone is having a lot of fun creating memories". One where the focus shifts away and turns into "our customers are talking to us … they are coming back, they are bringing their friends" [Emphasis mine], more than anything else, because for the first time in a long long while employees choose "to make a difference".  Barbara herself highlighted it very recently what it is all about: "Great service comes from the heart!", but in the exceptional case of Johnny it lies even deeper than that, as it is brilliantly quoted on the video clip itself:  "Johnny’s idea wasn’t nearly as innovative as it was loving. It came from his heart — it was real". That’s what touched customers, his peers… and those who read this story" [Emphasis mine] They say that Social / Open Business is all about inviting customers to participate and share in open, direct, transparent conversations with the ultimate goal to delight them. In short, it’s all about engagement. But I guess we should never underestimate the power of stories either, stories that go rather deep, that touch our hearts in places we never thought even existed. In stories that truly bring up what an exceptional customer experience is all about: everything, but technology. It’s all about emotion and essentially how much of that emotion, passion, loving AND caring you put into it all. And for the vast majority of cases you may not even need to use technology for that. Just your human nature. That special one we all have hidden somewhere deep inside ourselves and that I sense needs to start coming out more and more often as we transition into that fascinating world of Open Business.  "When the heart is in the right place, The ego gets out of the way.That’s when great servicecomes shining through" Wise words, indeed. So next time that someone asks you to define what a truly engaging and delightful customer experience should be like, we probably don’t have to look any further up than Johnny the bagger. The simple truth of service.