I am not too sure whether meetings lower our IQ or whether they make us all more stupid, as my good friend Stowe Boyd reflected on a recent blog post, but I can certainly confirm they do take a toll on your own productivity. Specially, when those meetings are not set up by you, but by everyone else, and therefore making you lose the control, once again, in terms of one of the most precious things all of us, knowledge workers, have that we don’t seem to treasure well enough: Time. Attention management, indeed, is the new currency and it looks like meetings want to keep having that special place in our day to day workload in terms of grabbing most of it: our attention, that is. But perhaps enough is enough. Just like 5 years ago I started challenging the status quo of corporate email with the "A World Without eMail" movement, I think this week it’s a good time to start its follow-up: Life Without Meetings.  I still haven’t settled up on picking up the hashtag I will be using from here onwards to identify the movement (More than happy to read suggestions in the comments, please!), but I am certainly more than willing to getting started with this new initiative, in terms of wanting to improve my own productivity by what appears to be, right now, my biggest time sink while at work: meetings, specially remote meetings. And here is the funny thing. You may be thinking that one of the disadvantages of having moved into this new job as Lead Social Business Enabler at IBM is that I basically spend far too much time meeting up with my new team. Well, that’s not really accurate.  I do meet up with my team, don’t take me wrong, and I enjoy those meetings since they only happen a couple of times here and there per week. In fact, if I were to count the hours I spend on those team meetings it would be probably about 5 to 7 hours per week, which doesn’t sound too bad if I consider the 40 hours of work. Indeed, the issue is not the meetings I have with my immediate team colleagues, but the meetings provoked by everyone else. Specially, from other teams, in other organisations and business units, in other projects with their own agenda, never minding your own. And in this case that is when I do have an issue, because, amongst several other things, they are inconsiderate enough to not be aware of your own work, your own agenda, time, availability and willingness to participate in their projects.  My good friend Euan Semple pretty much nailed it on what the main issue is in a recent tweet that he shared across:    I never use those meeting invite thingies because having a diary full of things that other people are in control of fills me with horror! — Euan Semple (@euan) April 18, 2013 If you notice, there are plenty of similarities with some of the various different issues that I have highlighted over the last few years in terms of how we keep abusing email through our bad habits and behaviours in a successful effort to try to kill each other’s productivity. Well, apparently, the same thing happens with meetings. Or, perhaps not.  When I was in my previous project I used to average about 10 to 15 hours of meetings per week. Nowadays I am doing between 25 to 30 hours of meetings. About 5 to 7 hours of those are dedicated to team meetings and the rest are remote ones solicited by other teams that want to abuse and take advantage of my reduced attention management span to sneak in. And over the last couple of weeks I am starting to think that the main reason why knowledge workers seem to have an obsession with hosting meetings (Specially, back to back, or what I have learned to call very descriptively as meetings galore) is not that necessarily down to work, but perhaps to a couple of other reasons:  If you are in the office, meetings are usually put together because you want to see people face to face and play the corresponding political, empowerment and bullying games that you have been taught about really well over the course of time.  If you are working remotely, like from your home office, or at a customer site, or while travelling, the main reason why people host those remote meetings is because (I know I am going to be very blunt and rather bold on this one, so bear with me) people feel lonely at work, isolated, disengaged with what happens "at the office", distrusted, disempowered because they are just not there and therefore they provoke those meetings so they can have a good chance at disrupting that and show that they, too, count! Of course, they do. We all do. But there are different ways of showing and demonstrating that. And perhaps meetings are not the best option anymore. We, human beings, have been stuck in meetings for thousands of years I would think and if you come to consider the huge amount of time we have wasted over the course of time for those meetings, think now about the possibilities and the potential of what we would have done with all of that extra time.  There have been several attempts to try and fix the way we host and conduct meetings in an effort to make them effective. I am sure you, too, may have got your own hints and tips on how to make them work, and I would love to read some more about it in the comments, so feel free to share your best tips. Lately, I am playing myself with a couple of options: creating buffers, participate in meetings no longer than 30 minutes and be ruthless in terms of how many meetings I can participate in during the course of a working day. In my case I set that threshold in 4 hours of meetings per day. Maximum (with the odd exception here and there, of course).  But, apparently, that doesn’t seem to work very well, because I still spend between 25 to 30 hours of meetings per week. Last week, for instance, 26.75 hours were just spent on conference calls participating and hosting meetings. Not good enough, I am afraid. And not good enough not because the meetings may have been rather helpful and useful overall, which they were, but more from the perspective that vast majority of them did *not* need to take place, since we could carry out the work offline and rather effectively.  And this is where I am going to jump in and kick off that movement of "Life Without Meetings". Because all along I have felt that the vast majority of meetings wouldn’t need to take place if knowledge workers would make a much more effective use of social networking tools for business. You know, All Hands Meetings, Cadence Calls, Weekly Team Meetings, Status Project Reports, Monthly Calls and what not can eventually be conducted and rather effectively through various different social technologies.  Never mind as well how by shifting gears and moving the interactions of those meetings into social networking tools we would have the opportunity to get rid of the two main reasons I mentioned above as to why we are so obsessed with hosting meetings at the moment. You see? We don’t need so show up at meetings to play those political, empowerment and bullying games. We have got work to do. By relying (heavily) on social software tools, if anything, we would never have that strong feeling of being isolated, or ignored, or neglected, as remote employees. Quite the opposite. If there is anything that social networking shines and thrives at is helping us all stay connected, regardless of where we may well be in the world. And that’s the main reason why I am now ready to kick off this particular initiative where over the course of time I have decided to strive for that goal of seeing the number of meetings I participate in go down to those levels of 10 to 15 hours per week. If I can hit 10 or less, even better. But we have got to get started somewhere, don’t you think? And that’s why from here onwards, and every now and then, depending on the frequency, I will be blogging about different techniques knowledge workers can put in practice to reduce the amount of time they spend in meetings, so that they can carry on with their work. And perhaps I’ll kick things off with a bold statement in terms of sharing with everyone what meetings, to me, should be all about, whether face to face or remote ones: decision making. Anything else, it’s just a waste of time, resources and precious talent that could be working on something much more interesting, relevant, purposeful and meaningful altogether.  So, there! I said it. If you come to think about it, we have spent already a huge amount of time on theorising how we could improve the way we host, both online remote meetings and face to face ones. Everyone seems to have an opinion, or an infographic, as to how to make them better. And that’s just a wonderful thing. I guess what we would need to do next, eventually, is acknowledge that it’s a good time now for action to start re-thinking how we would want to keep hosting and conducting meetings in an effective manner, instead of thinking they are one of most poignant productivity drains within the corporate world. We already know that. Let’s move on. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, get down to work and change the way we get work done through meetings by realising that work does *not* happen when we meet. So how much time do we want to keep wasting away drifting our attention to them instead of figuring out perhaps different ways, methods, techniques of how social / open business tools can help us re-gain our productivity back.  In the recent past, we have already done it for email, so there is no reason, perhaps not even an excuse anymore, why we couldn’t do the same thing for meetings and shape them up the way we would want them to by asking perhaps the first initial key question: What’s the purpose of the meeting? How are you planning on achieving that purpose, and, most importantly, can social technologies help achieve the same goals? Because if they do, there is no need to conduct that meeting any longer. We would then have to redefine again the true meaning of meetings, because the current one is already obsolete, and utterly broken, to match today’s complex collaborative and open knowledge sharing working environment. So, we better get our hands dirty and get down to business. It’s time for us all, knowledge workers, to take back responsibility, buckle up and own them again, as Seth Godin brilliantly quoted not long ago:  "Somewhere along the way, meetings changed into events where we wait for someone to take responsibility (while everyone else dives for cover). How would you do it differently if the building were burning down? Because it is." That’s it! Finally, an Open Business without meetings. I am game! … And you?

Social learning is known by many names - social learning, collaborative learning or informal learning. For many years we considered formal training to be the only way to make people learn. Formal training required people to be present all at one location. As technologies evolved, people could remotely hear and speak to a teacher in a classroom from any location. But these options were still quite expensive. Then elearning came by and we had people making loads of self-paced courses. Somehow even this seemed insufficient after some time and people started exploring blended-learning strategies. There was a need to provide more support and information to people on-the-job. As people kept looking for new ways of teaching and learning they realized that that learning happens in other ways too. You learn when you speak to like-minded people and people sharing similar interests and professions.During this time social networking tools came by and people found new ways of connecting with each other. Meeting and connecting with people was made so easy! Then Wikipedia emerged, discussion groups and forums were largely being used to share information and resolve on-the-job problems. Google became the largest learning resource due to its super-fast search capabilities. It was observed that when people were desperately searching for solutions and more information on subjects, they proactively searched the Internet and found all relevant resources and learned more about their subject of interest and also resolved problems with the knowledge gained.Social networking tools gave people opportunities to connect with people sharing similar interests and professions. Groups of people sharing common interests or a profession irrespective of their geographical location are termed as communities. Now, it was possible to discuss and share knowledge and learn a lot more from the other person's experiences. This process of proactively searching for information and shaping it into a form that makes sense for a situation is termed as informal learning or personal knowledge management (PKM). So, the best ways today of learning beyond what you receive from formal training is to reach out to others and learn from their experiences to solve real-world day-to-day problems. Experienced professionals today don't need spoon-feeding but quick solutions to problems. They are self-directed learners and are motivated to define their own learning paths and manage their learning resources using social bookmarking tools and advanced search engines. We can leverage on social networking tools to drive social learning in our organizations. Using social learning will help people grow in their domain knowledge, problem-solving abilities and make the process of communication much faster. People will be able to create best practices, learn from sharing experiences and not waste time trying to reinvent the wheel. Eventually, it will help improve their productivity at work. The goals social learning tries to achieve are:Connect people who share a common interest and provide a platform to share ideas and experiences.Serve as a knowledge base for searching solutions to problems that people have already faced.Sharing knowledge about specific domains among a large groups who are distributed in geographically different locations. Give learners the flexibility to learn in their own means, define their own learning path and choose resources that will help them learn more.Keep learners constantly motivated as they share and exchange information and get recognized for their knowledge and contribution to the community.It is also important to know that it takes a while to adopt and change your working style and use social learning as part of your regular job. Also, understanding the mental process of learning in case of social learning is an interesting study and the article on when we should collaborate on the Anecdote site is really an interesting read. Following this you may have more questions on implementing collaborative learning in organizations and measuring the benefits of social learning.

Fascinating topic, don’t you think? And here we are, still in 2013, and already thinking about what the workplace of the future would be like by 2020. Well, one thing for sure is that it won’t be anything like we have today or what we may have had over the course of the last 50 years. Even more, I am suspecting that over the course of time, if not happening already today, we are going to make a very healthy split between work and jobs. Because, you know, they are not the same, no matter what people keep telling you. They have never been the same. And, certainly, with the emergence of digital tools that split is even more natural and in full accordance with a new reality: work is you, you are the work. So what is the future of You? What is the future of work then? It seems that lately there have been lots and lots of interesting and rather relevant insights shared across, i.e. blog posts, articles, mainstream news, insightful whitepapers and whatever else, shared across by folks who have embarked themselves into redefining how we should be looking at work from here onwards over the course of time and also from the perspective of how we are rethinking the role of jobs, even to the point of perhaps venturing whether it’s worth while quitting yours and move on to the next big adventure (Highly recommended and superb read by Irvin Wladawsky-Berger, by the way). Uncertainty will be there. Uncertainty is always there. But that’s perhaps a good thing, because it’s essentially what helps us progress further into the unknown while we keep rethinking what we will all want to be doing as work. Long gone are the times where we were aiming for long term careers and their big aspirations, for loyalty to a specific business or company, for a long-term opportunity to have an impact over the course of decades. Long gone are the times where knowledge workers were aiming at fitting in within a working environment for which they were perhaps not ready for it, while carrying on their work, with very little motivation, waiting for the payslip at the end of the month. Hummm, well, maybe this one is not gone just yet. But perhaps it is a clear indication already as to why certain jobs need to be questioned and redefined in the context of whether they are still purposeful or meaningful altogether. After all, and this is what I keep telling people all around, we only have got one single life, so it is probably a fair game we all try to make the most out of it, don’t you think?  Lou Adler has also got a rather thought-provoking article on a similar topic under the suggesting heading of "There Are Only Four Jobs in the Whole World - Are You in the Right One?" where he proposes how those four jobs are the following ones: Producers, Improvers, Builders and Thinkers. Go ahead and read it through, as it will certainly be rather helpful in understanding what your current job may well be about and it will confirm whether you might be on the right one, or not. Interestingly enough, while I read it myself, I just couldn’t help thinking how in today’s more complex than ever working environment each and everyone of us may eventually be doing the four jobs at the same time depending on the context of the task at hand, which is essentially what keeps driving us all into achieving our goals: that purpose and meaning I mentioned above, along with the right context in such a hyperconnected, networked (business) world.  And to that effect, while I keep reflecting myself on the future of work, I thought I would point you to a recent article that my good friend Jemima Gibbons worked on over at "What will "work" look like in 2020?" where she gathered a good bunch of folks sharing their insights on how they see themselves the workplace of the future. Some pretty interesting insights with key concepts like Intrapreneurship and its impact behind the corporate firewall (By William Higham); or the redefinition of work from a physical space / office into a state of mind where work life integration play a rather key, paramount role (By Karen Mattison) towards sustainable growth; or how the convergence of cloud, mobile and social (Along with the "Internet of Things") will inspire more contractual / freelance work helping organisations become more liquid, hybrid while knowledge workers become freer and more autonomous around their work, owning it and co-sharing that responsibility (By David Terrar); or how knowledge workers will no longer be talking about adoption of new technologies, but more a key concept that I have become rather fond of myself over time and which I find also rather descriptive in terms of where I feel the key is of how we redefine work, that is, how do we adapt to this new digital work environment to make the best out of it, as in how well do we adapt to change (By Helen Keegan). Like I said, lots of great, relevant insights and plenty of key pointers that surely highlight where we may be heading to over the course of time. Jemima asked me as well whether I would be able to contribute with my ¢2 and, of course, I couldn’t reject such generous offer so I added a short paragraph that explains what’s been in my mind for a while in terms of what I sense the future of work would be like in the not so distant future … So I thought I would go ahead and finish off this article by taking the liberty of quoting it across:  "In the future, work will be more distributed and remote - technology means that people will be able to work from wherever they want to. Work processes will be driven by interactions from workers through networks and communities rather than traditional company hierarchies. Large enterprises will no longer need to exist, because of the nature of the hyper-connected and networked workforce. Trust between workers will be more essential than ever - and critical for success. People will find new meaning and purpose through building strong personal business relationships: the key objective for everyone will be sustainable growth." So what will "work" look like in 2020 for you? Care to venture and share a comment or two on what it may well be like? Perhaps in a few years we can come back to this blog post and see how accurate our perceptions were after all. Or not. Something tells me the journey is going to be just as fascinating, inspiring and refreshing as the final destination, if not more altogether! Why? Well, because for the first time in decades it will be us, knowledge (Web) workers, the ones who can choose what we would want it it to be. And that’s a good thing. After all, work is us, we are the work.

This is the first step towards the success of my blogging effort and I'm really excited about it. I thank all of you in the community for your support and I hope to keep writing good stuff that you all can make use of. elearninglearning is a very useful website (and topic hub) that features good blogs related to elearning. It has been a really satisfying journey till here since I started off seriously from January 2009. My posts so far are:Social Learning?Audience Analysis?Social Learning Adoption?Call for elearning Demonstrations by Tony KarrerInstructional Designers Community of IndiaShould you share information?How to make social learning work?Suggestions to measure social learningBeyond Kirkpatrick?April's Big Question: OMG I'm Stuck!Collaborative Learning with Trek EarthLong Live ILT? Whats the point here?Best Practices and Design PatternsAction Mapping in ActionMarch Big Question: Workplace Learning in 10 yearsKirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation ModelPure Courseware vs Reference HybridsSkill sets of an Instructional DesignerLanguage for technical coursesAnalyzing Technical Information SimplifiedChallenges and solution to technical software product trainingRole of IDs vs SMEs??elearning in IndiaI have been learning a lot in this journey and feel a greater sense of achievement when I write my posts and have your support. Thank you all!

We live in rather interesting, intriguing, complex, uncertain and wonderful times. We surely do. We live in times of extreme negatives juxtaposing themselves with extreme positives. We live in times where the Social Web has become that amplifier of (global / local) events, of our passions, of our emotions, of an unnerving polarisation of opinions and beliefs, where tolerance, compassion, empathy and caring, some times, all shine for their absence. Just like in the real world. Where did we leave all of those characteristics behind in our human nature? Have we forgotten what makes us all, human beings, unique in this world, where we have been given an exclusive, uncompromising, cherished opportunity to enjoy and celebrate it accordingly? Where have we left behind our innate social nature? Is there any hope left? Please do tell me there is. Please. Do. In times where the world seems to keep rejoicing on narrating rather painful and excruciatingly demoralising extreme negatives, I just can’t help but for the rebellious and hippie 2.0 side of me to come out and fight back in search of extreme positives. I guess there is a reality out there that we may not be able to escape, tame nor mitigate, even, in terms of the amount of pain and suffering one might get exposed to, or suffer themselves, but the thing is that I am starting to feel it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight back. There is hope. There needs to be hope. Otherwise, what’s the alternative? I do apologise to those folks who may be reading this blog post today, as I am fully aware it may well not be the article they were expecting. I know this is the kind of philosophical reflection that’s very rare to see in this blog, but I just couldn’t help fighting back. Please bear with me. I need to get it out of my system. Then things will be back to normal, the new post-normal. Like I said, having seen the unnerving (That word again!) increase of extreme negatives we all keep getting exposed to in our daily lives, I want to strongly believe there is a different way. A much different way. A better way. For all of us.  And there is, apparently. Phew! I am really glad there is. I surely needed this extreme positive to compensate. I guess serendipity just decided to do its own magic once again, right when one needs it the most. Earlier on this week, and coming through my Google Plus stream, I bumped into this absolutely delightful, energising, refreshing, inspiring, jaw-dropping, thought-provoking YouTube video clip, that I am sure that once you all watch it through in its entirety it will restore your own faith in humanity. It surely did for me. If anything, because of that strong sense of hope permeating throughout the entire clip of the true potential we can achieve with that amplifier effect that is the Social Web. In an age of polarisation, balance is key. It will always be. And although I certainly realise that video contains lots of kool-aid about us, human beings, it’s also undeniable that we are more than capable. Yes, indeed, we are capable of the most horrifying things, BUT, at the same time, we are more than capable of the most wonderful things. And that’s the reason I wanted to share this blog entry across to perhaps use it as a gentle reminder for us all about what we are here for. Remember? We live in rather interesting times. For real. We should just seek each and every single opportunity we may have to make a difference, to have an impact, to share, not through those negative experiences, since they are always the easy way out, but focus more on the positive ones. The ones that allow us to understand the negative being turned into a positive. Those experiences that the Social Web has helped us treasure over the course of time with that amplifier effect of what we could all achieve if we just put our mind and intent into it. That’s just what the Digital / Social (R)evolution is all about. And, if not, judge for yourselves. Hit Play, sit back, pump up the volume, watch AND enjoy what we are capable of. Today:   See? There is hope. We, too, can do better. Much better. All of us. No exceptions. I guess we just need to be reminded every now and then that right when an extreme negative happens there is another extreme positive in the making just right around the corner. And perhaps that is the intent of this reflection in this post, that, whether we like it or not those negatives may always be with us all, as part of our daily lives, but I guess it’s also going to be up to us to decide how we are going to amplify them, or not, by making a much smarter, sharable, responsible and thoughtful use of the digital tools at our disposal. Welcome to the Social (R)evolution! Happy birthday, mum! [I love you very much!]

An excellent question for one and all, and what better opportunity to motivate me to get back to the blogging scene that I have been away from for quite long now, and so for reasons precisely related to Time Spent. Tony thanks for this excellent question!To start with I'd like to tell folks that I am quite versatile and love doing a lot of things. I live believing that after all I have only one life to do everything that I want to do, so I do not stop myself if i have an urge to do something quite new and compelling, that I would enjoy.So what do I spend my time with?Well I work on weekdays, so my commute to work and back itself takes a away a lot of my time. At work, I manage to tweet and get on FaceBook and chat with my friends and colleagues in breaks between working. These are important to me and I have linked my twitter and FaceBook accounts so the tweets are shared on FaceBook as well. But I have several friends on FaceBook (school time friends, other friends and colleagues) with whom I share a more personal relation, so I quite often set more personal messages on FaceBook only, and enjoy it when my friends come back with comments that often add humor to the situation. Social media does become an integral part of my life as a lot of my friends aren't in the same location as me and it isn't possible for me to meet them otherwise. I was recently, suddenly flooded with loads of work and had several issues to resolve that were making my current project very complex. I was really stressed and bogged down and was feeling guilty for a while that I didn't have time or the bandwidth to blog. My mind was always preoccupied and I couldn't write blogs or read a lot of other blogs and news in such a situation. But, my feeds stay in my reader so I can read them at a later point and time. That way twitter is really effective to keep me up to date and point me to the most valuable posts and latest happenings. It almost comes like a breath of fresh air in such times. So twitter is just great for me!What am I doing less of today?Social media has actually got me connected back to zillions of people whom I had lost touch with many years ago. I don't think I'm doing less of anything but actually doing a lot more things now. Today, I'm more exposed to information and more aware as a result of social media. I love reading blogs and learning from all you wonderful folks in the community. All this gives me a broader perspective while doing my job and I owe a lot to the confidence I've gained in the field of instructional design and elearning to social media. So, effectively I am doing a lot more things that I ever thought I would be doing before. I've also fallen in love with photography and have a group of colleagues who go for photoshoots on weekends once in a while. I'm learning from them and from the collaborative photography site Trek Earth where I post my photos. I have connections and networks here as well and that adds to my satisfaction.I am simultaneously fascinated by several things and also want to do my bit to the environment and participate in tree plantation, play a volunteer role in activities organized by our employee club, learn aerobics to stay fit, yoga someday, eat well, shop...etc. I also love to travel and am absolutely in love with nature. Saving up money so I can visit wildlife sanctuaries in India or anywhere that I can make it to. I love spending time with friends and family too and drop everything when I get a chance to do that. I am also an ardent sleeper and sleep late at night and wake up late in the day on weekends. In effect I love to sleep ... :) So, my life is a mix of all these things and I am not very consistent or disciplined about doing just one thing. So lots of things often result in my occasional lapse in blogging or regularly following on or commenting on people's posts. But I do love to and push myself to multi-task. I tell myself that I should be able to do everything and not complain that I don't have enough time. I take things as they come and don't fret about them before.Sometimes all this gets really overwhelming, so I manage to cut off too when I feel like I'm reaching my threshold, and I enjoy those solitary moments as well. Wake up and sit with a cup of tea, read the newspaper or just a book. I also dream of going off to some far off place with only nature around me, sans technology and gain back my peace of mind. Thinking of such things replenishes my brain cells that get dulled with the daily grind of commute to work and getting back. So, effectively to answer the last question is, I actually have a better life due to social media and not the reverse. My motto is to live life to the fullest learn all I want, do all I want, live the way I want! So social media can actually be used to your advantage .... think about it!

As I have mentioned in a recent blog post, you would remember how I have now moved into a new job role within IBM, as Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM Connections (both internal and external), where I am much more heavily involved with IBM’s knowledge workers’ own adoption efforts of social business and social technologies. So far, the journey has been incredibly fascinating, if anything, because we are just about to enter the last stage of Social Business Adoption and Enablement: Adaptation. And this is the best part, frankly, I am not really too sure we are ready for it just yet. If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you would know how I have been involved with social networking tools since early 2000 to 2001 when I was first exposed to instances of wikis and people aggregators. And throughout all of that time I have seen a good number of different tipping points and different phases of adoption that have marked a rather interesting evolution into helping social networking for business become the new fabric, the new DNA, of the company in terms of how we collaborate and share our knowledge. There have been plenty of interesting and relevant challenges, and yet, the toughest is still awaiting us. Having been involved with social networks inside the company from right at the beginning has given me the opportunity to witness how different waves of adopters have been able to embrace social technologies, at their own pace, in order to help themselves become more collaborative and effective by ways of opening up their knowledge sharing processes. At the same time, it has allowed me to witness how over the course of time those waves of adopters are getting narrower and narrower. Early adopters, first, second, third waves of adopters have all gone through that transformation of how they work and everything. And while there have been some good challenges, I feel the most pressing ones are yet to come. And for two different reasons: The Laggards, The Critics and The Skeptics The first one is that the one or two waves of adopters who still have got to make it across are probably the most intriguing, because they are the ones whom in another blog post I have called The Laggards, The Critics and The Skeptics. Yes, these are those knowledge workers who have already tried and played with social networking tools in some form or shape, and who have definitely heard and have been exposed to social networking and they weren’t very convinced. In fact, quite the opposite. It just didn’t click for them. They saw it, they dived in, it didn’t meet their needs and wants and they moved on back to where they were.  Slowly, but steadily, they turned themselves into skeptics with the earned right to voice out their concerns, issues and what not, in order to make the point across that they are not going to make the change over, no matter what. At least, for now, or till the point where things have changed and shifted so radically they won’t have a choice anymore. And while I think you folks may highlight that as a potential issue in terms of the overall social business adoption strategy, it’s perhaps the one group left we should not try to keep convincing of what lies ahead, but let them re-discover it at their own pace and everything, over and over again till it hits, if needed be, at their own time, at their own pace. Indeed, there will always be different waves of adopters and each and everyone of us, social software evangelists, should be ok with that. The sooner we are, the much better of we will all be eventually. If not, we are the ones who have got an issue, because we are just not working hard enough to understand their context and different working styles and adjust accordingly.  Social Business Mandates The second reason, which is the one that has got me extremely worried at the moment, is that one where we have failed in inspiring to transform our very own knowledge workforce and switched gears thinking that Social Business Transformation can be accelerated by mandating its adoption, whether you, the knowledge worker, like it or not. Yes, I know we are all excited and rather committed to provoke the change, no matter what, even if we decide to go ahead and mandate such shift. But it is just so flawed, it’s scary. Very scary altogether, because it just shows how we haven’t learned much in the last decade.  Social Business transformation is not a project team, it’s not something that you start by date X and you finish it off in a year or two. And then you are done and time for you to move elsewhere. It’s not something that you put together with a group of folks picked up by you to force it down to the rest of the employee workforce, just because you are in one part of the organisation that feels it’s entitled to push down those corporate mandates. Specially, onto those who still haven’t made the switch-over. It just doesn’t work like that, I am afraid. Even more so when those corporate mandates are pushed down into people’s throats by that executive hierarchical structure understanding they are entitled to do so, just because of who they are and the position they hold. No, I am really sorry, but it just doesn’t work like that. Today’s corporate environment is a whole lot different than what it was 10 to 15 years ago. In the world of social networking for business it’s never been about mandating and forcing certain behaviours or a specific mindset (That one of Openness, for instance). It has always been a personal, individual choice of the knowledge worker him/herself to have a play, to try things out, to find new ways of working where openness, transparency, trust, etc. become the norm in terms of how we share our knowledge and collaborate effectively together. And it will always be that: *a* personal choice. So I cringe, and I die a little bit inside as well for that matter, whenever I bump into a group of fellow colleagues who have been mandated by their corporate executive(s) to use social software tools, or, else! Or, even worse, when knowledge workers are expecting to be told / mandated by their management teams that they must do it, or else. Yes, I admit it, it drives me a little bit crazy as well, because it sounds as if they have failed to inspire to transform and, instead, use their position, power and entitlement to enforce it, so that they could put a little checkmark, right next to their yearly performance evaluation, that they have been social and time to move on.  And if there is anything wrong with that is that they have enforced the very same kind of mentality and behaviours that social business has been trying to fight all along: corporate politics, bullying, power struggles and hierarchical clashes. And it gets even worse when they have mandating their team(s) to become social and yet they haven’t even explored it themselves, can’t be bothered arguing all of this social networking stuff was not meant for them or whatever other lame excuse. Whoahhh? Really? Is that what *you* really think? See? To me, that’s the main key difference between a manager, ruling by command and control using their position of power and entitlement, and a true leader, inspiring a new behaviour, a new mindset, walking the talk, taking the lead, while learning by doing, on what all of these social networking behaviours are all about and which this snapshot shared below (Courtesy of 9GAG) captures it very nicely:  The biggest challenge with all of that is not that senior leadership, no longer believing in the power to transform through being a living example of the shift, but it is actually the folks, right underneath those executives, who execute those orders, because they want to please the command from the ranks above. Never mind thinking about questioning the validity of such assertions, or challenging the status quo of something they know it’s wrong, or even rebelling against it since they know very well it just won’t work. It’s just as if they have drunk so much kook-aid from the whole thing that they are still drunk with it and can’t see anything around them anymore.  And this is where the corporate rebel side of me, the hippie 2.0, the heretic, the outrageous and optimist free radical me is coming back and in full force to fight it back as much as I possibly can, because I feel that if I don’t do it, no-one will question it, and everyone will just basically conform with it. No, we shouldn’t. We should keep up the fight and help out our leadership, regardless of the company (As I am sure there are plenty of businesses out there going through the very same thing as I get to write these few thoughts), understand their new leadership role, that one of being servant leaders, that one of provoking that social business transformation by themselves and for themselves first, as a personal experience, so that they can comprehend better the new dynamics of engagement, those where "knowledge is power" transforms itself into "knowledge SHARED is power", where traditional command and control management progresses through into doing is believing leadership. And this is exactly what excites me about my job, that, 12 years later, I still feel like I am just getting started with my social networking evangelism efforts, that there is just so much more to explore, discover, play with, learn and experience that we are just starting to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg. The difference between today and those many years back though, is that I have now got all of those years of additional experience, skills, knowhow, pragmatic way of 2.0 thinking and so forth that I can apply further along that I have finally decided to make the switch from Adoption and move on… Earlier on this year, you would remember that blog post I put together on me making the move away from Social Business into Open Business, well, a mere 5 months later, I am making the move from Adoption into Adaptation, which I think is much more appropriate for what all of the business world is trying to do with Social Business. We are not doing Adoption per se anymore, specially, driving adoption. Instead, we open up the door to adaptation, where we help knowledge workers adapt to a new way of working, where we become more open by nature, more transparent, more trustworthy, hyperconnected, networked, engaged, participative and so on by doing something we, human beings, have always been very good at: sharing our knowledge. The Industrial Age neglected our ability to adapt. Instead we became machines; robots and drones capable of putting together a massive amount of silly hours working really hard, without applying too much (critical) thinking, or even questioning the status quo, so that we could just get a pay check at the end of the month, hoping that one of those years we might potentially become part of the executive chain that everyone aspires to because we feel things would be much better. No, they were’t. Indeed, things never got better for the vast majority, only for the very very few. In fact, they got worse, because with the current work pressures people are behaving even more like corporate drones understanding that if they don’t put enough hours during the work week (7 days a week!) they may get fired altogether together for not being productive enough. How flawed is that? I mean, how can we keep ignoring over 150 years of research on what’s obvious? Perhaps we should get fired. Maybe we need to go through that massively rude awakening to understand how we need to go back to basics: our very own human nature. They say that we are one of the very few species in this world that can adapt adequately to any given environment, no matter how harsh it may well be. Well, perhaps we may not have adapted well enough to a corporate environment where we have been eaten up alive by the status quo, because we just haven’t challenged it well enough like we have done with other environments. The difference between last 50 years and now is that for the first time ever, we have got the tools, the social technologies, to help us provoke that transformation of how we do business and how we should behave in the new business world that aims at sustainable growth, equity, parity, earned merit, digital reputation, etc. and how the sooner we may be switch from adoption to adaptation, from corporate mandates to servant leadership, from corporate drones into human beings with an ability to think and make beautiful things, the much better our societies would become as a result of it. Not just for each and everyone of us, but for many future generations to come. It’s the least we can all do. Adapt for our mere survival as a species. The race has already started a while ago. The clock is ticking and faster than ever… Think, inspire and execute. Don’t waste any more time trying to conform with a status quo that was never meant to be. Challenge it by helping people understand and fully embrace how they can adapt to a new reality. Their own reality. Remember that life is just too short to have to conform with a status quo you never believed in, nor adapted to, in the first place. It’s now a good time to level up the game and demonstrate what we are all capable of in terms of adapting social business gestures to how we work. Indeed, doing is believing! Adaptation: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

I started thinking about putting together some qualities of an instructional designer (ID) versus the skills of an instructional designer, when I attended the April 2009 Learntrends webinar by Jay Cross. The tool used for online conferencing had a chat feature and I got speaking to many of the participants and moderators. Cammy Bean and I happened to discuss what qualities an instructional designer should posses. Clark Quinn intervened with some of his suggestions too, and this got me thinking. The few qualities that came out of the discussion:InnovationCreativityBusiness sense (goal)PassionSensitive to learnerMinimalistTo start with, an instructional designer has to be open-minded, self-directed and self-motivated with one goal of making the learning experience for learners complete. An ID has to understand the business need that drives the requirement for any learning. Having good communication skills, an ability to gather and analyze information and organize it into a structured format are critical skills for IDs. An ID also needs to be really sensitive to learners and their needs. Understanding how people learn should be an ongoing study, and his/her focus on addressing business needs by leveraging evolving technology and standards. An ID also needs to be a minimalist (apply minimalist theory). Over and above a whole list of must-have's, IDs need to have the discretion to selectively apply what is relevant and will enhance learning, rather than bombard a learner with information.Some guidelines for all IDs are:Perform a thorough audience-analysis and remain focused on the learner profile and his needs.Design meaningful and measurable goals.Design task-based courses after performing a thorough task-analysis.Use relevant examples and analogies to aid learning.Device methods in which the learner can interact and discover facts, concepts or procedures themselves to keep them interested.Design minimalist, or loosely-coupled, self-contained modules that focus on learner goals and drive to the point quickly.Keep it simple and use animations, demos, practices selectively and only where absolutely necessary.Whatever you do, you do need to think 'business' at all times and be able to provide quick, relevant and no nonsense information to learners without getting them distracted. All of this calls for you the ID to do your homework well before you get down designing your course.

I'm quite thrilled to let all of you know that my effort to push social workplace learning in my team has been recognized. Post my queries posted in my blog post Social Learning Adoption, I have been slowly evangelizing social media tools and social learning to management at every opportunity I've had. It has been a great recognition for me the last week, when the manager of our team from the US, acknowledged my efforts and my knowledge in the domain, and included the use of social-networking to benefit our global team in my goals for the next year. I know this is a tough job, given the challenges I listed in my post, but never-the-less its an encouragement that motivates me to work at it in an organized manner. I believe I owe my knowledge and confidence to the community who willing contribute and encourage me. Getting listed in the elearninglearning site was very encouraging too and I thank Tony for it.I'd like to use this post to also answer a question one of my co-bloggers Sahana raised on her blog, do people need training on how to learn? Her post suggests that when she urged one of her colleagues to use twitter, he came back to her asking her to create training on how to use it. I think and agree that the process of using social learning tools like twitter does have a learning curve for everyone. How fast one can pickup the tools and use them to their benefit depends on their 'tech savvyness' and their familiarity with Web 2.0 tools as such. But what I also want to emphasize, is that it doesn't make sense to talk of formal training on the use of such tools for the following reasons:These tools are quite intuitive, and if one wants to use them, they should just go out and read relevant resources and get started.You cannot show the 'value' these tools bring unless you go out, use them and participate actively. You cannot expect to sit back and just have information 'come' to you from others. So it requires 'active' users to 'proactively' go out and look for information and figure out how to use these tools to your benefit. So 'pull' learning always works with these tools, as these tools are designed to promote 'pull' learning.Once a user figures out the tools, they need to be persistent and be able to identify their own learning patterns, interest areas, what works for them and what doesn't. So it does require mature self-directed learners. The tools promote what Web 3.0 is trying to achieve with personalization of information and limiting it to what users find useful to them. So it does call for self-directed learners.In spite of these facts, what I'm saying here is that it doesn't mean that all learners need to be self-directed and well-versed in the tools from day one, but they do need to be self-motivated and persistent. What we, who are savvy with the use of such tools can do, is to provide people tips and tricks that we figured out, guidelines on getting started and most importantly urge them to go out and look for information, participate and contribute their experiences. Then they will just figure out for themselves! The only way they are ever going to see value, is by being part of this virtual community and figuring out what they're interested in. A good analogy is a seeker of information, going to a book store with no specific book in mind, exploring the available options and finding a subject of their interest. After this the user may buys the book. He will then read it after which he may like it or not like it. If he does like it, he recommends it to others or he may go out and write a book review highlighting whats good and whats not. That's how social learning works as well, except that the whole process takes place in a virtual community and you won't be spending money on that book!Trying to get to the background of the mental pattern a user goes through while using social media for learning is well explained by the Cynefin Framework. There's also this video I found useful:So it is important for us who recommend social media to others, to understand the patterns that a new user will usually go through and help them work through those. The best way is to recommend reading the online resources available. A more theoretical insight into understanding the learning pattern is the double-loop learning concept.To solve the problem in question, I would recommend reading specific online resources to the user:Twitter for learningA beginners guide on how to Twitter?The Twitter network modelWhy I suck at twitter?The Social Learning Guide by Jane HartI will also recommend telling them about successful collaboration initiatives like Trek Earth and reading stories or case studies of social learning implementation. Looks like I have a plan already!

I am attending a deep dive training for the product I work on, and this is probably one of the first detailed internal trainings that I'm attending. I have a lot of observations and learning from the way the training has been designed. In effect, attending the training gave me a much deeper perspective into what goes on in the learners mind during a class. I recommend that all IDs attend trainings sometime, just to get a better insight into the learner's mind.When creating training for complex and advanced products, learners benefit from having a greater number of hand-on exercises and demos. They help in improving a learner's confidence on the subject tremendously. Such cases call for classroom training. Here are some of my insights...Examples and scenariosI think the instructor needs to be loaded with relevant real-world examples to help learners grasp the concepts better. Examples help build the connections that learners are looking to make. As you delve deeper into a subject, learners benefit from scenarios that make sense to his job, rather than random analogy. The examples should also keep in mind other systems interacting with the product in question. Thankfully, our instructor is not short of examples when somebody asks a question or he explains a concept.Hands-on exercisesI must say that in the specific case of the training I am attending, the product is really complex and we are working on exercises that are over 3 hours long. So how does an instructor address such a challenge when it cannot be avoided? I think such exercises should be chunked down to no more than 20 high-level steps, and the task and concept explained before beginning each part. Our instructor is doing a good job with that.The other thing with exercises that I realized is, how important it is to have standards and be consistent in your way of referencing things, in order to enable students to see exactly what they need. Some suggestions:The classroom setup needs to be detailed and communicated to the class prior to starting the session.For each exercise, ensure that you mention the prerequisite requirements.Give a short summary of the task and objective that will be achieved using that part of the exercises, just before it.Have standards and be consistent in your way of referring to components that repeat.Group instructions of one screen or component under a high-level instruction.Write short sentences that start with where the object of action is located.Emphasize the button/option where the action needs to be performed and the value that needs to be entered/selected.Overall, I think the class also needs to be very interactive and solicit participation from learners. But you really need to plan your time well so you can cover everything needed, and also have the class contribute to the learning.