The May issue of Harvard Business Review contains an interesting article on Talent Management: "How to keep your top talent" by Martin and Conrad Schmidt. In this article they highlight 10 critical components of a Talent Development Program. These components are: Explicitly test candidates in three dimensions: ability, engagement and aspiration. Emphasize future competencies: rather than current performance. Manage the quantity and quality: see talent as a scarce portfolio of growth assets. Forget rote functional or business unit rotation: rather focus on intense assignments with development challenges. Identify the riskiest,most challenging positions: assign them to rising stars. Create individual development plans: linking personal objectives to corporate plans for growth. Reevaluate top talent annually: on changes in ability, engagement and aspiration. Offer significantly differentiated compensation: and recognition to star employees. Hold regular, open dialogues: between high potentials and program managers. Replace broadcast communications: about strategy with individualized messages from emerging leaders. These components were uncovered as a set of best practices based upon research. In my opinion not all components are really about talent development, but rather about talent management. I also find the suggestions quite high-level, interrelated, and culturally biased. But, you might be able to translate them into ingredients of your talent development programs. Good luck, since effort in talent development will become more and more critical in the years to come!

A couple of days back I posted a presentation on Visual Design Basics. What was really the result of work between breaks from being the host for RubyConf India, turned out to be a fairly popular presentation on Slideshare with over 2000 views and counting! I'm sorry again that the presentation doesn't have too many notes for you to glean the narrative in the background. I've gone ahead and put up a narrated version of the talk here. I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised that there's such a huge interest in design skills. In fact, this is something I think about all the time and if you've been on this blog for long enough, you'll remember me saying that instructional designers need more skills than just writing. I also remember having some strong views on my friend Rupa's blogpost about a hello world approach to instructional design. Somehow the word 'designer' evokes all sorts of thoughts in my head and I can't stay shut when the disciplinary skills of instructional design become separate from the meta of instructional design. As I gain experience in this trade, I feel that while the skills for instructional design are important, there are a few personality characteristics that instructional designers just can't do without. I call these the four passions of an instructional designer. Let me explain what these are.The Passion for Embracing ConstraintsAll of us work under some constraints or the other. I would love to have a budget of a million dollars for every course, the best tools at my disposal; a really skilled set of developers and just have an unlimited set of resources. Unfortunately, none of this is true for my situation. The fact is that I love it! I believe that the best designers are the ones that embrace their constraints and still come up with stuff that's of the highest quality. I am a sucker for doing more with less and I've tried my own hand to illustrate this in my blog posts. If you have to create quality elearning, I strongly believe that the tools don't matter and you should use your creativity. I also believe you can do elearning on a shoestring -- your budget constraints should only motivate, not deter you. I'll go ahead and also say that constraints inspire creativity -- don't believe me, just look at the number of cool ideas that the 'humble' rapid-elearning community has come up with! Look at the ways that people are pushing the boundaries -- Bryan Jones' eLearningart.com (the source for characters on this post) is a prime example of how cool rapid elearning can be once you have the right hustle behind the muscle!The Passion for Simplicity"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated awesomely simple - that's creativity." - Charles MingusI've spent ages in conversations that circle around, "But they need to know ______ as well!" and "Oh, but we should include ______ because that's how it is in reality." Unfortunately, people can't know everything in one go. Also, if people were ready for reality they wouldn't be in your classroom or going through your elearning. As an instructional designer you need to have an undying passion for simplicity and the natural ability to break down a complicated concept and explain it in simple chunks. As I always say, simplicity is not about being 'simplistic'. It's about making things easy to understand; this takes a huge amount of creativity and if you can't do this, I'm sorry - you're not an instructional designer. Here's an example where I've tried to explain a fairly complicated process in a fairly simple manner.The Passion for LearningWe're all busy people and it's very easy to get stuck in the rigmarole of daily work and stop learning from the world around us. As a start, it's important to start getting connected in the community. Over the last couple of years I've had the opportunity to interact and learn from a number of my colleagues around the world. There's so much cool stuff happening in the realms of traditional elearning, virtual worlds, enterprise 2.0 and social media, that being stuck to your office seat and your specialist mode of learning is nothing but a recipe for being stuck in the dark ages. But then again, instructional designers need to have the passion to learn from different sources to just make their lives easier. If you believe you have the passion then a good place to start are some of the industry blogs. I've gone ahead and packaged my favourite blogs into two Google Reader bundles. Please feel free to subscribe to them if you like:Blogs about Enterprise 2.0Blogs about Elearning and Learning TechnologyWhile I don't get the time to participate on #lrnchat, I always follow the transcripts and that's a great place to learn about the who's who of learning innovation in the world. Take some time to participate in #lrnchat and I'm sure you'll find a lot of inspiration.I'm also going to say that you need to look at other people's work and be able to gather inspiration. I keep aggregating elearning examples here, so that should be a good place to 'watch and learn'.The last point I'll make about this is that you've got to be able to learn from unconventional sources. Look at billboards for inspiration on visual design; watch news shows to learn how you can make information interesting; read different kinds of books to develop your lateral thinking and ideation abilities; learn the art of story-telling from movies -- I could just keep going on and on. The Passion for ExcellenceLast but absolutely not the least -- you need to have a passion for excellence! If an instructional designer doesn't constantly iterate through his work and isn't passionate about putting out excellent stuff, then I get really concerned. Instructional design requires a lot of attention to detail. You need to be fussy about every little element that eventually adds polish to your course. You need to set the bar really high; your bar can't be Sumeet (because I'm quite average) -- instead look at someone like Tom Kuhlmann as your role model. There are a lot of people I've learned from including but not limited to: David Anderson, Stephanie Harnett, Tracy Hamilton and Jeanette Brooks and if you follow these guys, you'll notice that there's heaps you can do in order to drive excellence in your course design. So learn, iterate, fuss and optimise your work until you stop dreaming about it at night!We have an instructional designer position open at ThoughtWorks and I in particular actively evaluate candidates not just on their abilities and past experience but also their passion for the four things I've mentioned above. What do you think? Am I being very hard by placing these requirements? Or do you think I'm setting the bar too low? I'd love to hear what you look for when hiring an instructional designer. Let me know what you think, by posting your thoughts in the comments section. And BTW, if you liked this article, please also read Garr Reynolds' 10 tips on how to think like a designer -- it's great inspiration!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

I have a confession to make -- I am more stupid than I usually seem and I usually learn the hard way. I've always had the wrong ideas about enterprise knowledge management until I started to work with Dinesh Tantri and more recently heard Andrew McAfee speak and read his book. I always thought that unbridled freedom was the way to go with knowledge management in this decade. What I realise today, is that to achieve a freeform, frictionless and emergent platform for knowledge in the enterprise, you need to start with some rules and a bare minimum structure. In today's article, I want to share some thoughts about the importance of this very structure - read on to know what I think.Walled Gardens are the bugbear for Knowledge SharingVery recently I had a conversation with Dinesh and Nikhil about the value of community spaces. One of the things that became clear to me was that community spaces are not only overhyped, but also if done incorrectly, a deterrent to knowledge sharing. This is a spin-off from Andrew Mcafee's concept of walled gardens. Let me explain this through a scenario:Company Foo establishes a knowledge sharing platform that allows every group of people to create their own space, with a separate set of access privileges.The platform doesn't have a way to search across different spaces, because every space is almost like a site in itself.Soon, different groups of people (communities) set up 'community spaces' and restrict access only to members of the community. Sales has their own space. Technology has a separate space. Marketing has their own space. Support and Evolution has their own space. The story goes on.One fine day a new salesman trying to put together a proposal needs information about:Company Foo's previous work in the space;case studies of successful deployments in the domain;Company Foo's track record and capability supporting this kind of work;and the various technology platforms they have expertise inGiven that each community has it's own space (walled garden), the new salesman doesn't have a way to search across all communities for the information he needs.Over a painstaking few days, the new salesman eventually finds all the information he needs by signing in to every individual community space and searching separately on each space. He has to wait a couple of days before he gets approval to join a couple of community spaces, and that delays his proposal.We could go on with this story but I guess you can see how tough things can be when every community builds their own isolated knowledge sharing space. Community knowledge can never become organisational knowledge this way, and over a period of time, the system becomes extremely difficult to manage. This is the classic nature of walled gardens in the enterprise.Tear down the walls firstOrganisational knowledge sharing can do without walled gardens. What we need instead is one place for all communities to share knowledge and the structure to emerge from user generated tags and metadata. This is where a certain bit of knowledge housekeeping comes in. I believe that leadership and knowledge management teams need to strongly discourage internal groups and communities from creating inaccessible islands of knowledge. There needs to be a strong incentive to contribute knowledge to one platform, that is powered by search. Yes, there'll always be the need to have team wikis and collaboration spaces. This is where it becomes important to clearly define the scope of team collaboration and organisational knowledge and create some clear (but porous) boundaries between the two. Which is to say for example, that it's absolutely OK for a team to set up their own wiki or workspace and do so with minimal friction, but when some team knowledge becomes organisational wisdom the team has the incentive to contribute to the organisational knowledge base. The challenge for knowledge managers is to make this contribution as easy as possible so that people don't have to make the same effort twice and the structure doesn't come in the way of knowledge sharing.My beliefs about post-modern Knowledge ManagementIn my current world view, I have a few beliefs:Enterprise knowledge needs to be public (to all employees) by default and private only if there's a very, very good reason for it.Knowledge sharing needs to move from being part of closed channels to open platforms.People should have a choice to collaborate privately, but have the support to easily make their private knowledge public.Discussions and conversations should get organised using tags and metadata as against separate mailing lists and groups. People should have the option to subscribe using email, but this shouldn't be the default.Knowledge managers need to define, maintain and protect the structure of 'no initial structure'. The structure should emerge over time using tags, ratings and user input. This however needs continuous involvement with all communities and is by no means easy.Content stewardship is key -- things don't happen on their own. Knowledge managers need to keep their eye out for quality content on private channels/ spaces. They need to have the agility and presence of mind to move this to being organisational knowledge with a strong incentive for the authors. This is essential to the process of long lasting change.What do you think of today's blogpost? I'd love to hear your views on the topic, so please post liberally in the comments section. The inspiration for this blogpost was a conversation with my friend Sahana, so I'd like to give her some credit for this. If you liked my post today, you may be interested in some of my other posts on collaboration and enterprise 2.0.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Harold Jarche wrote a though provoking item on Learning Organizations.  It is based on a paper with the interesting title: "Why aren’t we all working for a learning organization?". I couldn’t resist to comment on this discussion. I love publications on the Learning Organization. They are abstract and paint a picture of an organization that no one would resist. It’s implementation though is very hard, because it requires a deep change in most organizations on all organizational aspects (e.g. style, structure, systems, …). The research on learning organizations and organizational learning tends to focus on organizations that are far from these concepts (large corporations with scientific management roots). That is why I find it interesting to research organizations on the other end of the continuum: organizational learning in new ventures / start-ups. These new organizations have most of the admired characteristics of learning organizations, but still also have their limitations in learning. They often lack the command & control, structure and systems required to effectively capture their learning. The ‘too much’ that large organizations have of these factors can be ‘too less’ in new ventures. The inhibiting factors for learning therefore have two different faces.

In today's blogpost I want to touch upon one of my other favourite topics - presentations. There's no doubt that an effective presentation is a killer tool for business success. The ability to express your idea effectively lends a tough to beat edge to your technical skills. If presentation skills are so important, then you'd want to think every professional worth their salt should be able to create and deliver an effective presentation. That isn't the case, is it? So here I am, making another set of points -- about six things you should NEVER do, if you want to be an effective presenter. Read on to know more.Don't just start slamming slides togetherI find it really strange how the first thing prospective presenters do, is to get into Powerpoint and start slamming slides together. Having followed Garrey Reynolds for long and having been a fan of Steve Jobs' style of presenting -- I've come to agree that the computer should be a bicycle for your mind. This means that a computer should accelerate your abilities and actually give wings to your own thinking. Having said this, when you start slamming slides together, where's the thinking? You may argue that you're thinking while putting together your slides, but is that really the case? I'll argue that when you start your presentation design at the computer, you're context switching between slide layouts, searching for images, dealing with hang ups AND thinking through your story. We know that context switching isn't the best thing for any kind of productivity. So if you really care about creating an effective presentation, then take some time away from the computer to think through your story. Try answering a few questions for yourself:What state of pain are you addressing?Why does it matter?What's the solution?How can you make the solution simple?If you can do that and then draft out on paper, a play by play plan of your presentation, then you will see a few benefits:Because you know how you wish to present , you select the best tool for the purpose -- Powerpoint, Keynote, Prezi or the good old whiteboard.You know exactly what you want to show on screen - so putting together your presentation is a fast paced, almost mechanical job.Lastly, if things go wrong and you don't have a projector at the venue or your computer crashes or there's another catastrophe, you're still well prepared. You can confidently make your presentation, because you have a strong grip on your story!Don't be a compulsive bullet-pointerIn my recent post about slideuments, I argued that if your slides can convey their message without your presence, then you might as well send out an email and save everyone the time. The good old practice of bullet pointed presentations has to go away. Remember your audience can read faster than you, so if you have to read from your slides, then your presence is already redundant. Take a look at Steve Jobs' presentation style and look out for when he uses bullet points - never! Does he read from his slides? Never! Does he look back at his slides for prompts? Never! That says a lot for the amount of work that one of the most inspiring speakers of our generation puts in.But it's not just Steve Jobs who you need to look at. TED presenters don't do bullet points! Now you may argue that your business presentation isn't the same as Steve Jobs' product launch or an inspiring TED talk. Agreed! Here's what I'll say though, and I'll say it with a two bullet points!If you want to make your 'business' presentation effective, you need to make it engaging.A bullet pointed presentation where you read from the slide, is not engaging.So if there's a lot of text that you believe your audience should absolutely see, then put it into a well crafted document. Give it away as a handout. In my previous post on this topic, I've outlined a few strategies to avoid slideumentation - they could be helpful. And if you really, really are dying to use bullet points - then as Simon Jones says, use them at the end of your presentation to summarise your points!Don't do live demosI think I've heard Martin Fowler say the same thing at some point; I believe live demos are a recipe for presentation disaster. Forcing yourself to do a live demo is like saying, "Look at how much of a man I am! I'm willing to put my presentation to risk with my bravery!". One of the things you want to do in a presentation, is be in absolute control. I like to minimize the number of things that are out of my control in a presentation situation. Patchy network connections, a bad day with the demo software, and 'errs and ummhs' at the time of presenting are all things beyond my control.What I prefer instead of a 'manly' live demo are screencasts embedded into my presentation. Powerpoint, Keynote and Prezi support embedded video quite well so why not make use of this capability? You demo looks assured and polished and there's very little chance of failure. And then once you're done with your presentation, you can show live stuff in a more intimate and less intimidating setting. Don't have a screencasting tool on your computer? Mute your mic and use a simple tool like Screenr.Don't darken the roomI can't tell you how many times I've seen presenters do this. They set up the room, they get the projector to work and the moment the audience is in, they switch off the lights as if it's a movie theatre! What happens is, people can't see the speaker -- they just look at the screen. In his excellent article here, Cliff Atkinson says:"It turns out that when you watch people speak, the visual cues help you to predict and understand the auditory cues that follow soon after. These visual cues are actually not limited to the lips, but include the entire human face."Remember that even if you don't switch the lights off, people should be able to see your presentation clearly. That's because most modern projectors can handle ambient lighting and have sufficient contrast to be able to deal with a well lit room. By keeping the lights on, you keep people awake and can easily maintain a connection with them.Don't use age-old clipartIf bullet points are bad, clipart is worse. A decade old, cheesy, overused clipart makes you look as if you were too lazy to click a photograph or search for a 'meaningful' image from the internet. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure screenbeans were a rage in the 90's! Design trends change fast and using screenbeans today is like wearing 70's style bell-bottoms to work. It's perhaps a bit unfair to generalise all clipart as bad. Some of the more recent illustrations in Microsoft's clipart collection are great for creating a consistent look in your presentations. I must say however, that I prefer to snag my own photos and I often use stock photography for my presentations. Yes, stock photography can be expensive, but there are quite a few places where you can find high-quality, free images. Of course there are many ways to use images poorly in presentations, and you need to avoid those! And visual design plays a huge part in making your message effective.Don't droneLast but not the least, you owe it to your audience to keep things simple. Last year at one of our conference briefings, Martin Fowler handed out an invaluable tip -- structure your presentation around no more than three key points. That's presentation zen for me! Most presenters drone as if it's their last opportunity to speak about their topic. What you want to do instead, is create enough interest for people to feel excited about your topic. In his post about the Japanese principle of 'hara hachi bu', Garr Reynolds says, "Performers, for example, know that the trick is to leave the stage while the audience still loves you and don’t want you to go, not after they have had enough and are 'full' of you."So for this last section here are my tips:If you're doing a sales presentation, stick to your USP and avoid forgettable details. As Guy Kawasaki says, follow the 10-20-30 rule and finish your presentation in (less than) 20 minutes.If you're speaking at a conference, leave at least 25% of your speaking time for (detail-seeking) questions and spend the remaining time to generate interest.If you are teaching people then present the strawman first and tease out details through facilitated discussion and exercises.Keep things simple - provide additional details in a handout or a follow up email.Remember, if your presentation is interesting enough then your audience will hunt you down for details. But if you bore them with forgettable facts, they won't wait to rush out of the room when they have the opportunity!What do you think of today's post? I must say I am no presentations expert and I've learnt all these lessons the hard way. What I do have, are sufficient experiences of failure to say what doesn't work - and of course that's the focus of this article. I'd love to know your thoughts about this topic, so please do let me know either by emailing me or adding to the comments section. And BTW, if you're keen on exploring and analysing Steve Jobs' style, then take a look at the links I'm categorising here. Until next time, cheerio and present well!The characters in this blogpost are from Byan Jones' elearningArt.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Very nice book promoting video on ‘Where good ideas come from’ from Steven Johnson. Slow hunch and connectivity seem to have an important role according to the author. Besides a wonderful way of presenting his thoughts, there are quite some good insights that make this 4 minute video a worthwhile watch!

If you haven't noticed, I've avoided personal blog posts in the recent past but this one is a little different. It's been exactly a year since I brought Tequila home. It was a bit of an up-and-down stay for her and eventually she died in a freak accident. If she was still around, she would have been more than a year old today.I haven't stopped thinking of her for a single day since she died and I've always thought of a dozen 'what-ifs' that could have possibly meant that she was here today. She was my little girl and always had unconditional love for me. I can't stop blaming myself for her death -- if I had come home earlier that day, if I had not secured her enclosure or gotten her a better crate, if I had ensured that she was without a collar each time she was unattended, she would perhaps be with me.I miss her a lot, particularly today -- all I can do is hope that she's reborn stronger and fitter and is part of a family that can give her a healthy and happy life. I hope you can join me in this prayer.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Again a very nice Animation! Sir Ken Robinson speaking about the need to change our Education Paradigms. Although this is not a new discussion, the way it is represented here is almost Art. The Art is both in the content and in the presentation. And just like with all good Art, the interpretation and idea’s about solutions are left to the audience. The remaining challenge is: "How can we transform the educational system to meet these ideas?"

I've always had one pet peeve -- when designing onlines courses, we instructional designers often try to do everything within a Flash-based elearning course. Somehow I feel we need to think beyond the Flash shell and rather design learning 'experiences' than just courses. When we start appreciate the concept of learning experiences, it automatically helps us think beyond the context of the elearning shell. I do understand however, the need to minimise context switches for the learner. This is where it helps to integrate media from the web into the context of our courses. There are several benefits to this approach: You can add high quality interactivity into your courses with minimal effortYou can reuse existing contentYou can update content easilyThere are perhaps several other benefits too, but I'll leave it to you to do that research (especially if this blogpost interests you). Let's take a look at a few examples of web content in elearning. I've used Articulate Studio 09 for the purpose of these demos. Example 1 - Set up your Scenario Click here to launch the demo A few days back, I discovered this wonderful tool called xtranormal. All you need to do, is add a few lines of text and lo presto! Your video's ready! Given what Rich Mayer and Ruth Clark have discovered about the power of videos in scenario based learning, this can be an excellent way to create high quality scenarios, rapidly. Here's a simple elearning scenario that I created using xtranormal. Example 2 - Show an Interactive TimelineLEBANON (History of) on Dipity. When I did this demo, a friend of mine said, "The Articulate timeline is nice, but timelines that you can drag around are nicer."  While I don't necessarily agree with that assessment, I do realise that timelines that you can navigate using scrollers are quite a common interaction. It could take you quite a bit of time and money to try and build something like that from scratch, using Flash. On the other hand if you could take xTimeline or Dipity and use that to create an embeddable timeline, you'll perhaps be done really quickly. And to add to that, the output is quite nice as well. While my output needs a lot of cleaning up, here's a quick demo I created this morning. Example 3 - Display content differentlyGoogle Search Tricks on Prezi Often, we look for different ways of presenting our content and the interactions within the rapid elearning tool may just not be enough. What do we do in such cases? I find the idea of getting web content from sources such as Vuvox or Prezi, quite interesting. Here's a quick demo where I've embedded a prezi into Articulate. Cool, huh? Example 4 - Collect FeedbackEveryone wants feedback for their courses (I hope). However most rapid elearning survey tools are not designed for great data management. OTOH, other tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Docs are better suited for this purpose. So why not bring these tools into your course and have learners submit feedback directly into the more capable application? Here's a demo I've put up with Wallwisher and Google Docs.Of course, with all this, there's the challenge of visually integrating the web object with your course look and feel. That said, it is pretty cool that most of this web 2.0 media is embeddable and sharable. That gives you a whole lot of power and flexibility when designing your instructional experience. I think this is very cool and represents a huge advantage especially in the rapid elearning space. If you liked this post, you may like other people's articles on the same topic. As usual, I'd love to know what you think, so please comment liberally. The source files for today's demos are here. Well, that's it for now folks -- enjoy! © Sumeet Moghe, 2009

A few days back I was witness to a debate where we were discussing if the choice of tools really mattered when selecting a knowledge platform. A group of people felt that an organisation should make a far sighted decision about their knowledge platform and select one that offers features to scale, rate and manage information better. The other group believed that the tools didn't matter. As long as an organisation could take a popular tool and start getting more people to use it, the features didn't matter. After all, isn't post-modern knowledge sharing all about the culture of collaboration? I find both arguments very compelling. Being as dim-witted as I am, here are my conclusions: The tools don't matterThe tools do matterConfused? You must think I'm out of my mind! Let me explain what I mean. The tools DON'T matter if you don't have the Right EnvironmentLast year, I'd written a post that talked about how little things can help your enterprise 2.0 efforts succeed. Let me be very clear about my opinions here. The most sophisticated tools will not help knowledge sharing thrive, if you don't have the following socio-cultural elements nailed down. An Engaged CommunityPeople are naturally helpful -- they want to contribute. Unfortunately, most corporate intranets are so restrictive that they discourage the most enthusiastic contributors. When they're permissive, they just have all the wrong workflows. Add to that the participation inequality principle by Jakob Nielsen and you have a fairly huge challenge on hand. Andrew McAfee talks about the importance of making your knowledge ecosystem freeform, frictionless and emergent. That's a first step. To deal with participation inequality, communities need to find creative ways such as the ones described here. Committed Community Management5 Tips For Increasing Community Engagement The concept of self-organisation is pretty cool, but in my experience of working with a strongly self-organising company, I can say a couple of things: To self-organise, the first thing people need is a shared objective. It's naive to imagine that people will self-organise without clear goals.Once there's a clear objective, every self-organising team needs a facilitator. In the case of communities, this person is the community lead or the community manager.As it turns out, many community managers are volunteers running a volunteer army. While that's how many organisations have to operate, it's fair to say that community managers can't be 'just' volunteers. The organisation needs to cut them some slack from their day to day responsibilities and the these leaders need to channel that time back into making their groups more successful. The above presentation from mindjumpers provides an excellent summary of how a community manager should operate. Content StewardshipKnowledge is everywhere. Its on email, it's on IM, it's on discussion forums, conferences, unconferences, team wikis; it's in people's heads! It's in every possible place you can imagine. Most of this knowledge never finds it's way into an organisational knowledge base. Without establishing the right workflows to ensure that knowledge can move from these day to day channels to a universal platform, we run the risk of losing valuable information. As a consequence, we lose the opportunity to create the critical mass of information that attracts contributors. This is where traditional knowledge managers can still play a huge role and channel emerging knowledge from a silo to the rest of the organisation. The Right Incentives"People usually have no more than 10 minutes each day to contribute content 'for the benefit of others'. When they have a choice between the broad, appreciative, internet and the puny, thankless intranet, the decision is quite simple."The last socio-cultural factor which I think we often overlook, is the question of incentives. Whether it's a soft toy, overall recognition or a rating on their performance reviews, people should have a clear idea of what's in it for them if they contribute. In the initial stages of an enterprise 2.0 rollout, this is crucial. I say this because there's very little reason why someone should spend time out of their regular work hours trying to contribute to a knowledge platform if they don't see a strong incentive. I'm not saying that there has to be a defined incentive here. The incentive could just be that it's 'the cool thing' or 'the fun thing' to do. In which case you need to invest heavily in the design of your knowledge system. In the Right Environment, you DO need Capable ToolsIf you manage to take care of everything that I mentioned in my rather long discourse until now, then you will need a set of tools that plays well with your ecosystem. Simply layering 'search' over an archaic document management system will not do the trick. Knowledge sharing in this age is much more than just organising documents. You need a system that: Can scale to hundreds of pages without adminstrative oversight. Is easy to contribute to and integrates with the users' preferred channels (email?). Accepts contributions in various formats and isn't tied to one method of content creation.Has support for metadata. In a subsequent post, I want to touch upon the importance of metadata in a world of search, but let's just say for now, that metadata has four distinct uses:illustrate relationships between discrete pieces of information;illustrate the value of some information;illustrate appropriateness (self-policing);and to gather opinions about the information itselfThe above tag cloud is a representation of how I look at tool capability when it comes to selecting a knowledge platform. More on this in future blogposts.So what do you think? Do the tools truly matter? Or do they not? I'm I taking the right view of this debate? I'd love to hear from you - so please comment liberally and let me know what you think. If you liked my post today, you may also like my other posts on the topic of enterprise 2.0. I'm quite passionate about organisational knowledge sharing, so feel free to reach out to me directly if there's a topic you'd like me to contribute to!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

An interesting piece about Boeing’s Workplace Innovation Lab in Management Innovation Exchange. Boeing started a 90 day program that connected Gen Y employees to their managers for business innovation. The aim was to accelerate business priorities, leverage personal networks, facilitate conversations, and spread the use of new technologies. The idea of ‘reverse mentoring’ is something that strikes me as an interesting way of bridging not only a generation gap, but also a knowledge gap. This gap is mainly about the new technologies that businesses are facing. The aim of the Workplace Innovation Labs were: Performance improvement through more collaborative working More effective ways to transfer expertise across the generations More productive use of investment in collaboration tools Helping leaders to be people-leaders as well as technical-leaders Some of the lessons learned: that communication tools should be varied according to the importance and urgency of the communication; that a less seasoned employee can bring fresh perspective and valuable insight to a long standing business problem; that having a manager open to innovative solutions and using young talent in innovative ways can be a powerful retention lever. What I like about programs like this one is that they contribute to organizational learning and create social capital within the organization. That is why a program like this one should not be limited to a one-shot 90 days, but can work as a continuous tool for workplace innovation.

These are live-blogged notes from a very interesting webinar with Cathy Moore and Patrick Dunn, where they were talking about new approaches to Instructional Design. It was a pretty cool session where Cathy and Patrick talked about how old approaches towards design cease to be meaningful and how instructional designers need to make an effort to create experiences over architecting information. Cathy's talkFor more than 25 years, Cathy's used technology to help people learn. These days, she helps people strengthen their instructional design skills, and designs and writes elearning for businesses. We as instructional designers have jobs because organisations have problems. They have useful information and we have to get it into peoples heads. We decide to make this information interesting, so we chunk it or add interest by adding narrators. Sometimes we play games to make it fun. We tell stories with a character who need help. We've got into the business of putting lipstick on a pig through these approaches. Information isn't bad -- getting information into people's heads doesn't change behaviour. Knowing that smoking is bad for you doesn't make you stop smoking? So we need to start over. Cathy is a great proponent of instructional design using action mapping. It's a simple process: Start with a measurable goal.State job behaviours to help people reach the goal. These are real world behaviours. A useful question to ask, is "Why aren't people doing it?" Is it really a lack of skill? Brainstorm realistic practice activities for each job behaviour.We then identify the bare minimum information people will need to complete these activities.The information is on the fringes -- it's not in the center. We need to limit the amount of information in our courses and place it in the spots where people will find it in their real jobs and teach people to find and use this information. Design Lively Elearning with Action MappingView more presentations from Cathy Moore. Our job is not to design information -- it is to design an experience. As we do this, we start to solve performance problems and stop converting information into interactive presentations. Patrick's TalkPatrick Dunn has been designing, producing and thinking about various forms of learning technology for more than twenty years.  According to Patrick, instructional systems design is perhaps an outdated, heavy process. On a pragmatic basis, what really happens in instructional design is the ADDIE process - analyse, design, develop, implement and evaluate.  In this world of gaming, social media, twitter, etc, is our old approach to instructional design still appropriate? Earlier, our options were few. Constraints were few and clear. Learning challenges were structured, well understood. As against that today, we have many options, many and unclear constraints and very chaotic learning challenges. Patrick is looking a cheap, quick and effective design that combines: RapidisationGamingSocial LearningThe question is -- does the old approach still make sense? Is it still fresh? For the current business climate it's neither fresh nor does it really make sense for the high impact solutions we're looking for. So here are the ways to move to fresh approach. Think experience, not contentThink about experiences in the real world that are changing people.Get emotional!What's the tone?Nobody learns from content, people learn from experience. You cannot know something until you do something with that knowledge. Research shows that using information supports long-term recall more than studying information. As I always say, it's not enough to just look at a lake and read about swimming -- you have to dive into the lake and actually swim! Design bottom-up and top-downWe don't design from business objectives to performance objectives to strategies, etc. We should have Lean design, where we start with learning tactics and trust our hunches. If our strategy doesn't work, we should be flexible to change. Everything should be flexible to change. Use multi-role teamsSubway subs are great because they get created by people in sharply defined roles. If people switch roles, then the subs can be awful. We don't want this in our teams. We need few people overlapping in roles and generalising deeply. Writers should be able to build, builders should be able to do graphic design, etc. Use usersWe need more contact with learners.We need the right kind of contact with learnersThat's because people are now more into creating digital media than before. They can help us in a big way. Prototype and IterateA working prototype gets more feedback than scripts, etc. A prototype forms a placeholder for discussion, so it's really important to get it wrong the first time and iterate from there. It's continuous improvement in design. Play!Designers take themselves a bit too seriously. We need to play, laugh, sing, dance a little more and that'll allow us to experiment and do things in a truer designer like fashion.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Ever since the introduction of the term Learning Organization back in the 1990s the concept has been the ‘holy grail’ for many organizations. In some business plans I reviewed recently, the organizations producing them had an explicit aim of becoming a learning organization. As it has turned out that the concept of the learning organization is rather abstract and difficult to implement, I was struck by this ambition and directly responded with some questions to articulate this ambition: 1.     Why do these organizations want to become a learning organization? 2.     How can these organizations become learning organizations? 3.     What kind of learning do these organizations aim at? Why? Many management concepts are hyped by consultants and/or scientists, which in return, earn good money by implementing them. But, the learning organization is beyond that point. The importance of knowledge and learning is a given for almost all organizations. Therefore all organizations need to find opportunities to produce, distribute and commercialize knowledge. Learning is a critical process in contemporary organizations. As research has shown this process is multilevel when considered from the learning organization perspective (e.g. 4I model by Crossan et al.). Most critical learning takes place at individual and team level. Some of this learning is institutionalized at organizational level and is embedded into systems, procedures and practices. On individual and team level learning is also important for competency development, as it helps individuals and teams to grow and improve their performance. When looking at organizations, the answer to the why question depends largely on their strategy or the business drivers that are appealing to them. Strategy and business drivers are for instance aimed at security (compliance), improvement (exploitation), innovation (exploration) or HR policies (talent management). How? How does a learning organization learn? Of course 80% or more occurs in the informal or non-formal space. But, interventions are needed to secure that the learning is effectively captured and embedded in the organization. As many scholars suggest the right mix of formal and non-formal learning should be found in order to reach effectiveness of learning in organizations. Also the connections between individual, group and organizational level learning should be optimized. This ensures the proper institutionalization of learning in the organization. Developing the right mix of learning interventions, either formal or non-formal, is the aim for true learning organizations. This is quite a job and requires a learning climate that balances organizational characteristics in leadership, culture, structure and systems. Also it requires maturity in learning & development offerings that are aligned with the broader HR and talent management practices in an organization. What? What the learning organization wants to learn is a question that is overlooked in literature on the learning organization. In the why question some directions where given, but when you look at organization strategies some assumptions about the required learning for successful execution can be made. Typical strategic options are presented in the work on Value Disciplines of Treacy and Wiersema. They distinguish operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy as strategic options. -      When you want to play in the ‘operational excellence’ league, you probably want to have smaller learning cycles based upon process improvement. Learning will be focused on operations with a combination of plan-do-check-act learning cycles and a sharp eye for radical operational innovations. Learning will take place at production and supply chain level to a large extent. -      When you want to play the ‘product leadership’ card, learning should be aimed at technological and design innovations that can be embedded in products. This learning is focused on finding new combinations of technologies and design. Probably learning will take place with knowledge and business partners in this case. -      When your aim is ‘customer intimacy’ your learning should be aimed at the market and your clients. Market intelligence, questionnaires and direct learning from customer complaints and needs is a key differentiator. With these questions in mind, the implementation of the learning organization concept is quite challenging. In my opinion it is a worthwhile ambition for organizations to become learning organizations. Not only for them to stay competitive, but also to provide their members with an inspiring work environment that allows growth and talent development.

OK, I admit that I use Google search a lot. I won't deny the importance of search in my life. These days, search is a convenient entry point into our complex intranets. However, I don't believe that layering search over document management systems is the answer to today's knowledge problem.Here's why I think so:Knowledge is linked. While search can identify physical connections between information, it cannot show qualitative relationships.Knowledge is contextual. Search cannot identify the contextual significance of information.Knowledge is valuable. Search by itself can't show value -- it needs 'intelligence' to decide value.This is where I see the importance of metadata on knowledge systems. Metadata, coupled with search makes enterprise knowledge systems as useful as the web for finding the right information.BTW, what is metadata?"Metadata is a concept that applies mainly to electronically archived data and is used to describe the definition;structure;administrationof data files..." - WikipediaIn today's post I want to outline the power of metadata for your enterprise knowledge platform. Hopefully, you can use this as a guide to choose your knowledge platform if you're at that stage of your journey.The Power to Relate InformationThe ability to show relationships between information, is key for knowledge platforms. A lot of systems do this through tags. On learninggeneralist.com, you'll notice that there's a 'label list' on the website that relates articles about similar topics. If you've used social bookmarking, you'll notice that we categorise information under tags. On enterprise systems, collective tagging helps relationships and structure emerge. It then becomes easy for people to look at a certain tag, to reveal all information possibly connected to it. For example, I've tagged my favourite enterprise 2.0 case studies here. This holds great potential for induction, onboarding and capability building.The Power to Show Value and AppropriatenessWhen everyone has the power to create useful information, everyone also has the power to create havoc through inappropriate contributions and misinformation. This is a risk that most execs are concerned about. Enterprise 2.0 systems mitigate this through 'more eyeballs looking'. We want users to have the power to say how valuable or suitable a contribution is. You must have seen several ways of doing this on the web.Favourites - if a lot of people 'favourite' an article, then it's perhaps valuable.Thumbs up or down - similar to favourites, except the thumb down can indicate if an article is unsuitable.Flagging - allows you to flag items as inappropriate.Rating scales - a quantitative way to suggest the value of specific content.The Power to Contextualise Information"Information in context, trumps information out of context." - Karl KappDr. Kapp's quote is a clear indication of why enterprise 2.0 systems are becoming the rage today. The ability to find useful, bite-sized information just when you need it is indeed the killer advantage. The ability to further contextualise this information makes it more relevant to the user's situation. On the web, we see this context emerge through comments. Take a look at blogs and associated comments for example. Free-form comments serve a number of purposes:They allow users to show their reactions to the content.They allow users to give feedback about the content. e.g. "I used this technique at work and ..." or "Here's another perspective..." or "I want to add that..."They allow other users to use the content effectively. User commentary gives different perspectives and much needed context for the information in question.This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the benefits of metadata on enterprise knowledge systems. As you can see, the right kind of metadata can make your knowledge infrastructure come alive! I strongly believe that a knowledge platform based only on search is similar to putting lipstick on a pig! To make your knowledge come alive, you need users to contribute through low friction means. Comments, ratings, tagging create low barrier methods to make sure this happens. So do think about these elements when choosing your knowledge platform. Dinesh Tantri knows a lot more about these things than me, so do follow his blog here. Hope you enjoyed this post, please let me know what you think -- your comments are always valuable!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, Slideshare. There is a lot of buzz around social media application in every area of today’s organizations. Social media have deep impact on work and private live once embraced as a part of the live. But, still social media usage in corporations is not undisputed. Whilst in a recent study 81% of corporate training leaders belief that social media offer valuable learning opportunities for their workforce, there is also concern. Mainly about the impact of social media on employee productivity, security issues it might raise and the quality of information sources. Will the benefits triumph the risks? A brief analysis from three perspectives follows in three blogposts on this site: organizational perspective, employee perspective and manager perspective. In this starting post some figures that show the impact of Internet and social media on today’s live, both working and private:  1.97 billion Internet users worldwide, with 825.1 million of them in Asia, 475.1 million in Europe and 266.2 million in North America. An estimated 25 billion Twitter messages were sent in 2010, and the company added over 100 million users. Facebook also saw record numbers, reaching 600 million users. It’s amazing to think that Facebook started 2010 with 350 million users. Internet users sent 360 billion pieces of content across Facebook over the year, which included links, notes and photos. Flickr, just one of a number of popular photo sites, saw 130 million photos uploaded to the site each month. People watched 60 billion videos on YouTube each month — that’s 730 billion videos throughout the year. And the average Internet user watched 186 videos each month. To be continued … Next post about the impact of Social Media on organizations.

This evening I was on UMBC's "ISD now!" webinar titled "Doing more with Less". These are live blogged notes from the event.UMBC’s ISD Now! Webinar Series is UMBC’s ISD Graduate Program’s newest online platform to share ideas and information on topics related to business, organizational productivity and workplace learning and performance.The panelist on this was Jay Cross - the progenitor of the term Informal Learning. Jay Cross is a champion of informal learning, web 2.0, and systems thinking. His calling is to help business people improve their performance on the job and satisfaction in life.As usual, Jay was on his favourite meme of Informal Learning and as always, it was fun listening to him.We started off with a poll that asked us about the importance of informal learning and not surprisingly most people said it was important or very important.Jay started off with a picture of the cloud. Well -- signs of what he's thinking, huh? Jay claims to learn a lot from his buddies at the Internet Time group and the web. Jay had a lot to say, but decided to do whatever he could do in the time he had at hand. F a while I was having a hard time keeping up -- 2230, and no visuals, what do you expect?Convergence of Work and LearningBut then we realise that Citrix was playing up, so back to a more visual webinar. Well, Jay started on his meme of 'work is learning now' and reminded us that we need to be moving learning platforms and workscapes. Well, this can't be easy. There are risks and not everyone's going to make it.10 Dirty WordsThis carries on from Jay's great article on 8 dirty words for us L&D professionals. So Jay doesn't like the words social, elearning, informal, learner, learning, etc. He likes to call this 'working smarter'. Jay talked about the examples of:how a twitter like information sharing saved a turbine company $3-$5m annually.how CGI saved 4000 systems engineers two hours a week by using in-house subscriptions to research findings.how intel's free wiki became the go-to source of information eliminating $20m a year in duplicate effort.how P&G has outsourced 50% of it's R&D to its customers, cut staff and increased innovationhow 7000 workers at a major insurance company are sharing information in near real-time via Twitterhow at Best Buy 2000 employees have providede more than 20000 answers to customer queries using Twitterhow at CAT 3000 communities of practice have generated more than $75m in savingsJay started to talk about Hans Monderman who radically changed street and road design. Read the Wikipedia article. So we need to be radical to be effective -- calling people learners isn't going to do that. They're workplace performers!Moving from Formal to Informal LearningJay finds the phrase 'Formalising informal Learning' to be absolutely incorrect. What we need to do instead, is 'institionalise' it. I agree -- that's what I like to say.So, informal learning is more pull than push. Formal bolsters knowledge, informal is wrapped up with doing things. Formal takes a while, informal is bite sized. Formal is away from work, informal in embedded in work. Formal design is by SMEs and instructional designers, informal design is by individuals. Formal takes months/weeks to develop, informal takes minutes. You go through formal learning in advance of the need, you pull informal learning only when you need it. Formal learning is top-down, informal learning is laissez-faire.Each of these have their space. If you're a novice, you need formal learning of some kind. Yes, some informality helps, but the recognition that a specific phase is over, becomes really important. But as you gain experience, you're looking for little wins, and small experiences which solve specific problems are really useful.Formal Learning is like being on a bus. You need to go through the entire journey. Informal Learning is like being on a bicycle. Stop where you want to and when you need to.We're all experienced with formality, but our focus on the informal is minimal. Most of our spending is for formal learning, but most of our learning is informal! Don't know how mathematically correct that is, but sounds right.Spectrum of ActivitiesThe above picture talks about the various activities that move from Formal to Informal learning and illustrates the bridges amongst them. The key is that you need to go through the entire spectrum. Try wrapping the formal learning experience within informal experiences. Example: team meets in advance of a workshop and discuss their goals for the workshop; go to the formal workshop and then ends with an alumni-support network followed by brief recall sessons.Businesses are part of a large ecosystem. What's the benefit of helping our customers and partners learn? Is it improved business results, better partnering, lesser friction? Hell, yeah!Q to Jay by a CxO: How do you know informal learning works?Jay's fabulous answer: Well how did you learn to standup, walk and learn? Did someone train you for hours before you spoke your first word?OTOH, do you believe everything you learnt at a religious school? Do smokers quit only because they know that smoking is bad for them?Skipping to the end - Cost/ Benefit of Informality.Jay skipped most other stuff and moved right to the end - bummer!Tips to make your informal learning project succeed:Your sponsor is god - well they're the folks backing you aren't they?Coordinate throughout.Agree measures up front.Only valid metrics are business metrics. If the business don't care, you shouldn't measure!If numbers are squishy, interview sample and extrapolate. Don't present unconvincing data -- find what you can.You must manage what you can't measure.Some more tips:Think of an elevator pitchKnow the ROI - you may not know the actual 'returns' but being able to articulate true value of the investment is quite useful in MY opinionTalk about helping people work smarterAsk for support from the executivesMost of Jay's talk is in a free white paper at his website. It's an awesome read, so please download it - great stuff. Jay's own website has a lot of free materials on the topic, so please look through that too! All in all, interesting, engaging webinar!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Currently I am in Pakhuis De Zwijger, Amsterdam at the Startup Weekend. This is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web, software or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. Entrepreneurship is a trade you learn in practice and this is where Startup Weekend provides an inspiring learning experience. Within the first 24 hours our team made great progress and developed our startup: Askbox. Askbox is an App for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Our aim is to connect questions from Askbox users around the world to a crowd of leading experts. They give users instant advice using rich media content (text, images, audio, video). So far it has been interesting to see how a team of back-end & front-end developers, designers and marketeers can work together to create something great. More updates to come of how the entrepreneurial Askbox team will progress. Follow us on twitter via @getaskbox.

Today I delivered a webinar for the 'Thought Leadership Webinars' series from ThoughtWorks Studios. I thought it could be  useful to share stuff from the webinar on this blog, for the benefit of those who may be interested in this topic. My topic had nothing to do with the technical mumbo jumbo of creating software. While 'feedback' is a key XP value, it usually manifests itself on Agile projects as a way to improve software. I like to look at feedback as a way to improve people as well, because people that improve continuously are more likely to produce better software in teams. Anyways, the slides for talk are on Slideshare and you can download them from there. I've tried to design my slides so they're self-explanatory to some extent. I'm happy to answer questions if you have any. During the webinar, I also shared an elearning module on Feedback, which you can find here. Hopefully, this could be useful for any team to develop a healthy practice of sharing feedback. Let me know what you think. This apart, chat transcripts and a webinar recording will soon be available at the ThoughtWorks Studios community, if they aren't there already.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

"Presentation is the ‘Killer Skill’ we take into the real world. It’s almost an unfair advantage."- The McKinsey Mind.If you've followed this blog long enough, you'll know that I am big on presentation skills. I completely agree with McKinsey when they call presentation, the killer skill. If you're a salesman, you can make an impressive pitch. If you're a teacher, you can deliver a memorable lecture. If you're a technocrat, you can make an effective point to your clients. If you're an exec, you can appeal to your employees. If you're a keynote speaker, you can do what Steve Jobs does. The list is endless! An effective presentation is often the edge that your core skills need.So what goes into an effective presentation? I want to examine this in a series of posts. In today's post I want to touch upon the first step to an effective presentation -- planning. This is before you slam in your first slide. This is where you start to think of your story and how you will present it. I have a few tips that'll help you create a compelling story for your show.Don't Start at the ComputerThis has got to be the most common mistake of all time and it's one of the six mistakes you should never make as a presenter. I find it very awkward to plan my presentation on slideware. I say so, because when my first step is Powerpoint or Keynote, then I end up context switching amongst the following jobs:crafting my story;deciding how i spread the story over slides;finding the right images;and dealing with every challenge the program throws at me.To avoid this, I like to avoid the computer at the first step. As presentation guru Garrey Reynolds says, "One way to ensure that your computer and software applications remain great tools to amplify your ideas and your presentation is to first turn off the computer and walk away from it. You'll be back soon enough."Plan on PaperSo if you don't start at the computer, where do you start? I like using low-tech, hi-touch tools like index cards, stickies, whiteboards and good old writing pads. Garrey reynolds calls this 'planning analog' as against 'planning digital' on the computer. These tools are highly flexible. If I don't like what I've done, all I do is rip the paper apart and try again. During this phase, I try to do one or more of the following things.I decide how I'll deliver the presentation. I like telling stories over providing a collection of facts. So at this stage I decide what my story'll look like and how it'll progress through various stages of my talk.I like to get some details nailed down at this stage of planning. I try my best to create a topic map from my story. This helps me understand what parts of the topic I'll cover at each stage of the story.If possible, I like to do some storyboarding at this stage. For this, I lay down index cards and try to sketch out as many slides for my talk as possible. In this video, you'll see an example of how I do my storyboards.Think of 3 Key PointsYou may have heaps to say about your topic. Nothing wrong with that, except that people can only remember so much. To craft a memorable message, it's a good idea to structure your presentation around no more than three key points. I usually let my audience know right up front, "In today's session, we'll touch upon three things...". Once I've done this, then I keep coming back to this list of three so I can keep reinforcing the message in my audience's memory. Take a look at the examples in the above image. They are from real presentations and though my style could do with a little more variety, you'll see that each talk focusses on three main topics which I can keep coming back to during my presentation.The Grandma TestBeing complicated and difficult to understand is no longer fashionable. The acid test for your plan is if you can take your story to your grandmother and she can understand what you're saying. Well, if you think that's a stretch then you need a patient wife. My wife listens to all my stories and interrupts me when she doesn't understand something. If she doesn't understand, then that's a signal for me to simplify my message.There's something I want to say about statistics at this point. We seem to be obsessed about presenting statistics in our presentations. We use complex charts and graphs in presentations as if people can glean all the details in a few split seconds. Most charts, tables or graphs have one key point that we want to drive home. If that's really the case, then why not present just that key point? I was recently watching Steve Jobs announcing iPhone OS 4.0. Steve presented a lot of statistics in this talk, but it's an education to see how he presents these numbers. A few things Jobs does really well:He doesn't present more than one number at a time.Whenever he has to, he provides context for statistics. It's meaningless to say how many applications there are for the iPhone. It's meaningful to say how this compares with the competition. For more inspiration on how you can do this, take a look at 'Shift Happens'. No wonder it has close to a million views!Jobs uses visuals to convey his message effectively. Take a look at how he uses colour contrast and simple imagery to make his statistics stand out. This is something you and I can do. All that it takes, are simplicity, restraint and naturalness. I have another example about presenting statistics - Jamie Oliver's TED prize talk. It's one of the best presentations I've seen in a long, long time. Jamie presents statistics and yet he doesn't. He talks about how American families eat unhealthy food, but instead of showing food consumption charts he shows a video of an American mother with all her junk food on the table. Definitely more compelling than a chart. He talks about how children don't know about vegetables. He could have shown education statistics, but instead he shows a video of children failing to recognise vegetables in school. The most memorable part of his talk is when he explains how much sugar children have, just from milk. He doesn't present statistics, he brings in a wheelbarrow of sugar to make his point. Now that's what people will remember!So, let me come back to where I started. If your plan is to use a chart or graph in your presentation, then show it to your grandmother or wife. If you can make an impact on them, then you're OK. If not, please reconsider your plan!The Catastrophe TestIf you've planned analog, thought of three key points to hang your presentation around, and been able to convince grandma about your point, then you need to undergo the catastrophe test before you get into Powerpoint, Keynote or Prezi. What's the catastrophe test? Well, it's simply a test for you to deliver your presentation without any electronic tools. Why should you do this? Remember Murphy's law?"Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong."What if the projector fails? What if your computer misbehaves on the day of the presentation? What if you realise on the day of the presentation that slides are not the way to go? You've got to be prepared, right? So I like preparing for the worst. That's my catastrophe test. If I know my story like the back of my hand, then slides are just another way to visualise it. If I know my story well, then I can also move quickly when designing my slides. So try this out -- see if you can use your paper based plans to talk in front of a mirror. If you can, then you've got most of your presentation nailed.If you can pay heed to these five pieces of advice when you plan your presentation, designing it will become almost a mechanical exercise. You may feel that this planning phase is tough, and you may well be right. This will take some time. This will however, save you time when you create your slides. It's also likely to make your audience's time worthwhile, because you're less likely to drone and more likely to tell an engaging story. What do you think? Do my tips make sense? They've certainly worked for me, but I'm keen to know how you feel about them. Let me know by commenting on this blogpost. In my next Monday's post, I'll cover off a few tips for effective presentation design.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Today I became official and proud member of the Registered Marketeer (RM) or Expert Marketing Professional network. This network is part of the Dutch Marketing Association NIMA and is governed by the European Marketing Certification Foundation (EMCF). The network holds just over 100 experienced marketing people from the Netherlands as it’s members. Why is this network important to me? It helps me to exchange knowledge and experiences in strategic marketing and business development. The network has quite some variation in backgrounds, age, industries and types of business (corporates to startups), which makes it very interesting. The network also actively contributes to the body of marketing knowledge and aims at exploring new developments in marketing linking research & practice. Distribution of marketing knowledge is important to the network and its members and up until now I have experienced this in interesting sessions about Neuromarketing, B2B- and Content Marketing. And the final good news: the study trip this year will go to Cape Town!

Talk about never having a dull moment. This evening was quite eventful to say the least. The pup in the picture is 'Beast'. Beast is an Indian mongrel pup. I'm calling him Beast because that's the first name that came to mind, but I guess he doesn't care yet.This evening, Beast got hit by a speeding motorcycle and was lying helpless on the middle of the road. I was walking my dog at the time and I noticed him trembling in shock. I rushed him to my vet who checked him and confirmed that he's slightly hurt, but has no broken bones. Beast is now at my home, scared, but OK. He's eaten some food too.Now comes the big question. My wife and I can't raise another dog given our work-schedules and the absolute lack of domestic help. I want to, but I just can't.Will any of you be willing to adopt this little puppy?I'm happy to help you out with vaccinations, training and everything that goes with bringing a dog home. Let me know if you're interested -- I'll give him to the first person who is willing to raise him like family. If I don't hear from anyone in the next couple of days I guess I'll take him to the dog shelter.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

The Innovation Pitfall Organizations need to be superior in innovation to survive in today’s challenging business environment. New technologies, processes and business models emerge in ever shorting cycles. When we imagine innovation, in most cases breakthrough technological innovations come to mind. Hunting for these innovations is a risky adventure that rapidly soaks up Research & Development funding. In most technology companies up to 80% of the R&D budget goes into the search for breakthrough technological innovations. Surprisingly most business value is generated from other types of innovations. Business model & social innovation tend to account for up to 80% of the innovation value for companies. A classic 80-20 or Pareto principle pitfall? Of course investment in both technological and social innovation are needed, but the focus needs to change. The Quest for Social Innovation Recent Dutch research RSM and Panta Rei conducted at 1.500  companies has shown that innovation success is determined for up to 77% by what they call ‘social innovation’. The technological innovations contribute 23% to this innovation success according to the researchers. ‘Soft innovation, has hard impact’, according to innovation professor Henk Volberda: ‘but most companies don’t have strategies for social innovation in place’. The researchers indicate that there are four types of social innovation: new ways of management, innovative organization structures, smarter working, and external cooperation. Supporting entrepreneurship within companies is one of the strategies for supporting social innovation (and for customer focused technological innovation it might help as well). Dutch electronics giant Philips aims to foster entrepreneurship via its Accelerate! program. In the Finance sector ABN AMRO organizes Startup Friday to mix employees with the outside challengers and Startups in order to create and pitch new ideas. Just some examples of first steps fostering Intrapreneurship. This Intrapreneurship is not just about a program or initiative. It is a change in corporate culture, employee behavior and innovation tooling that needs to make large corporations more successful in innovating their technologies, social structures and business models. Lean Startup meets Corporate Innovation It is not surprising that the Lean Startup Methodology attracts quite some attention in the Corporate world. The approach first described by Eric Reis is all about short cycles of building, testing and measuring. It combines the best of entrepreneurship, co-creation with customers and the Deming Wheel of quality management. A Golden Formula for innovation as more and more Corporate Organizations are finding out. But it is not easy to get the Entrepreneurial spirit and Startup approach embedded into the innovation processes of corporate organizations. It requires a different mindset managers and employees apply to innovation. The need to take ownership of the innovation process and apply a Lean approach to managing innovation projects that is not intuitive for most of them. Following Lean and Agile ways of working within the boundaries of their organization is still a struggle. In most cases Lean Innovation is limited to specific programs, contests or initiatives. Embedding it into wider innovation practices and the organization as a whole is challenging. A good starting point for adopting Lean Startup or Lean Innovation are all Internet related innovations. This is where the approach comes from and build-measure-learn cycles for validation can be easily monitored and supported by good data. Besides the approach this should be the area where corporate organizations need to release or foster the Entrepreneurial spirit. Bringing the entrepreneurial spirit in So, besides the Lean Startup Methodology it is required to bring the Entrepreneurial spirit into your organization. To have employees and managers experience what it takes to work from pitching ideas via restrained budgets to innovations that have the traction to be successful. Have them work together on the Challenges and Must-win-Battles of your organization in a Pressure Cooker style. To learn and fail fast and use innovation accounting to capture this learning. At StarterSquad we help organization towards application the Lean Startup Methodology for building successful innovations. This includes working on the skills and mindset required to put this methodology to work. We support innovation programs that go from Idea Pitching, via intensive Bootcamps with teams, all the way through to the actual launch of Startups. On the execution level our Distributed Development Teams help build the actual web-based solutions that can be taken to the market. We have experienced that bringing the entrepreneurial spirit into organizations is extremely rewarding for employees and business results, and besides the hard results it is a lot of fun!

Today's liveblogged notes are a recap of the Learning and Skills Group webinar by Laura Overton of Towards Maturity. Laura is one of the UK's leading consultants in the elearning space and is widely renowned for her work with Towards Maturity - an independent, not for profit organisation with a passion for helping others to improve the impact of learning technologies at  work. The topic was about how learning consultants can maximise management attention on their programs."Practical stuff backed with hard facts...", was how Don Taylor introduced the topic. The agenda of the webinar was to cover off some points from the list below:How we create managerial indifference!Why estimating benefits always sells you shortReporting on impact not activity - why complex ROI methodology is unnecessaryHow to use the Impact Indicator findings in your organisationTricks for tackling managerial indifferenceWe've all heard stuff like:Training is not my job!Elearning isn't real work!My manager won't give me the time!This is just not a priority right now!You want to spend how much?!Audio was very choppy today, so my notes are patchy as well.What are the top tips for managerial indifference?Often the things that we do are the ones that cause management to be indifferent to the things do. IMO, use of the word 'social' is one of these as is not using their language as is the lack of communication linked to making real performance change. Here are Laura's top 5:Make sure it's not relevantDo as much possible to imitate past bad experiencesNever talk about business outcomesOnly focus on cost savingsAlternatively don't talk to them at all!There's a comprehensive list here.Why is it important to grab managers attention"55% learners say their line managers opinion is most likely to influence their elearning uptake." This is based on Laura's research. The way to grab attention however is to create value -- managers need to know that learning technologies will actually generate value. There are heaps of case studies on Towards Maturity to help create your business case. A picture of possible success is more likely to get traction than pure imagination. "Leave the cost benefits in the business case and promote the benefits in operational efficiency and flexible training such as reductions in travel trainer and time costs." ,said one participant.3 Impact indicators:EfficiencyCost, Volume, TimeBusiness AgilityTime to competenceAbility to respond to business needBusiness responsiveness to change.Management perception of valueHow do we measure?report?Efficiency"There's no point delivering more learning for less cost faster if all we're doing is rubbish."This said, effficiency indicators look good. People are reporting time cost and volume savings! Obviously, saved costs mean that you have more time and money to spend elsewhere. That said, if the quality of learning isn't great, it only accentuates your problems because you're now just creating problems at a much greater speed.As it turns out most people don't seem to do simple cost benefits of the use learning technology. Only 29% of Laura's participants do this. The cost benefit calculation is perhaps quite siple. Business Agility69% report faster time to competence59% report improvement ability to implement changes faster.This has got to be a great case to make with management.There are a host of other benefits:reach of learningefficiency with compliancesatisfaction/ engagementcustomer satisfactionorganisational productivityqualificationsrevenue increaseThe results however seemed mixed and my guess is that it'll be useful to look at the Towards Maturity case studies to find out what succeeds in the success stories.Management PerceptionUnfortunately, we don't communicate very well if productivity, efficiency and time to competence has improved significantly. Most people report the following - % of staff uptake, efficiency in demonstrating a skill and staff satisfaction. That said, other measures such as productivity, revenue, customer satisfaction don't necessarily get address. I guess this is because it's not easy to measure, but oh well!That said, it's not all about ROI! Case studies, podcasts, social networks, surveys and talking to managers really can help capture our success quite well.If people come and say good things, try capturing it on audio for podcasts or in a document, for a case study! Great advice for bottom up cultures.Tips for tackling managerial indifference - the 5 C'sCultivate relationships and ask questionsCut out the jargonCalculate the basic efficiency benefits. (convert  features into benefits)Confirm your own impact indicatorsCapture and communicate your successes Here's some interesting stuff from the Towards Maturity evidence for change campaign that can help actually show some of the value that we are gunning for.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Building a successful Startup is hard work. You always start with a big vision and lots of energy. But after some first iterations of your idea you get to this crucial stage. Will our Startup takeoff or will it go nowhere? The following questions help to find our in a (more or less) structured way. 1. Are we tackling a real Customer Pain or Need? Is your Startup on to solving a real problem or fulfilling a real need of customers? That is the first an most important question. Customers prefer to work with established companies from a risk management perspective. So, you need to be sure that you find a unique pain or need to fulfill. Go out and meet the potential customers and validate the pain or need as soon as possible (see Customer Development). Some things to keep in mind: Focus on a broad need, rather than focusing on a smaller pain. This will give you more room to adapt and pivot (make a change in the direction of your Startup). We see many Startups that in fact are not much more than a Mobile App. You need to build something more compelling to have a sustainable business. Really validate: don’t base your value proposition on the assumptions of you and your peers only. Really validate and have at least 30-50 potential customers that confirm the pain or need. Be sure to ask the right questions and get some early adopters on board. Buying is pain as well: asking potential customers if they would buy your product or service is a good thing. But, this won’t immediately turn them into actual buyers. The pain or needs must be substantial enough for customers wanting to go through the actual pain of buying your product or service. Their pain or need needs to be frequent, substantial and have no substitute solutions. 2. Do we have Product-Market Fit? With your the pain or need validated the next step is to find product-market fit. This is bringing the gap between your value proposition and the target customer. Ideally there is no gap and you have a clear understanding of who your customers are and why they buy your product and/or service. The ‘Why’ question can be answered in terms of functional, social and emotional benefits you offer your customers. The ‘Who’ question can be answered with a customer archetype. What are the characteristics of the customers that seek these benefits? This archetype or persona can be as concrete as a picture on the wall of your Startup office with name, age and preferences. Be sure to find the Product-Market fit as soon as possible. 3. What is our scaling strategy? It is nice if you are able to gather some proof for your idea on small scale. Working with Early Adopters and Pilot Customers will provide useful insights. But you will have to think about scaling as well. How do you go beyond the level where you know your Customers and Scale your Startup for success? This scaling is not only about acquiring new Customers, but also about keeping them. You will need loyal customers that are promotors for your Startup. For scaling it is also important to have a business model that scales well. This about your revenue model, the key partners you require and the relationship and channel you need to become successful. 4. Do we have the superpowers to execute? Execution is key to Startup success. It is all about team, traction and focus in this one. First you need to have a team that is really into tackling the Customer Pain or Need. The team members should be passionate about this and have the necessary skills and experience. Second you need to find your way to early traction. Traction is the proof that your Startup is on the track to success (e.g. growing user base, converting visitors, word-of-mouth, press coverage). This traction can be used to access the additional resources you might require to raise your execution power. Finally you need focus. All iterations during your Startup process must be focused. Not that you can’t change your path. You should make so called pivots when needed (see Lean Startup principles). But, focus on your big idea and focus on making the most out of all iterations is key for execution power. More information about how to build a viable Startup? Check the StarterSquad Business Viability Scan or pre-order the StarterSquad "Get Ready for the Launch" book.