For the 30 odd years of my life I've been an introvert, a facet of my character that I have tried very consciously to run away from. Recently I was in Africa for work and that work involved meeting a number of unknown people and attempting to build relationships with them. I felt very tired in the evenings. Not physically, but emotionally. The entire hypersocial experience of adjusting to new coworkers in a new office, meeting new people and building relationships was tough for me as an introvert. And of course, I couldn't hide behind intraversion so I built up a bit of a facade of extraversion to keep at my work. And it's amazing that over the years, despite my strengths being reflection, introspection and contemplation, that I was intimidated by the fact that I was in a role that was individual than as part of a team. I should have been happy in a way, but somehow years of feigning extraversion seem to have done me in.So yesterday when our Managing Director shared this video with me, I was excited. It was Susan Cain speaking about the power of introverts. I'm quite certain I'll pick up her book and read, but in the mean time, I can't deny that there are several points she made that were epiphanies for me and learnings that our most important institutions - schools and workplaces can learn from. At the very least for introverts, I hope it'll help you feel a lot more at ease with yourself.A few thoughts that I think employers, teachers and individuals can ponder over, from this rather excellent talk:Is your school or workplace architected for extroverts? Do introverts get safe opportunities to be by themselves, intute, impute, introspect, reflect and contemplate their work? Is there an unspoken taboo against introverted behaviour?Do introverts face a natural disadvantage in the way your institution runs? Do they get routinely overlooked when it comes to leadership and career advancement? Across the leadership of your organisation, do you have enough introverts who are allowed to be that way?Are the role models in your institution mostly extroverts? If there are introverts who have the freedom to be introverted, do people know their stories? What's the story of the introverts who do grow in your organisation? Do you bring in people in the image of the organisation itself - focussed on gregariousness and extraversion? Do you value quiet contemplation and individual work too? How individualised is your system? Individualisation isn't the same as being individualistic. Nor is it about devaluing the collective.Does your institution have enough low-key environments that are inviting for introverts? Or do they have to 'fit in'?As a leader do you allow ideas to run a life of their own, or do you stamp your personality on them? As a leader do you display empathy and step back from offering your opinions - preferring to reflect on occasion? This is an important question for corporate and educational leadership. Do conversations always have a logical end? Or are you willing to go back and reflect on things you may have learned or not totally understood?Have you ever rejected a person who is quiet or introverted as not being a team player, or as someone who won't 'fit in'? How does your institution look at intraversion vis-a-vis your said or unsaid entry criteria?Is there an unspoken assumption that all brainstorming, creative thinking and ideation needs to happen in groups? What examples do you have of people having a free rein to explore and express their ideas without being subject to groupthink?Are magnetism and charisma the most valued leadership traits in your institution? As a leader do you expect your people to be able to sell their ideas vocally, or do you routinely investigate what they're upto and create an environment for them to succeed?Do people need to win arguments or convince others to move forward with their ideas? If you're the person they're having to convince as a extroverted leader, how willing are you to set aside your own thinking and biases and let your people do their thing?Would you consider anyone asking the questions I've just asked, to be anti what your organisation stands for? I'm sure there are other thoughts this talk provokes and I'll be sure to watch it a few more times for it all to sink in. This talk was amongst the most inspiring and liberating ones that I've heard this year. Susan Cain's been through her own journey of being an introverted public speaker - one that I've been on myself. She's developing an online course on 'Public speaking for introverts' and I've signed up for the updates on that - do so if you're interested. And if anything, I hope you're that much more empathetic to that introvert near you.© Sumeet Moghe

In the past, you may well remember how I have been putting together a good number of blog posts on a topic that I have grown to become rather interested in, and very fond of, over the course of time around the Circular Economy. You know, that kind of economic shift towards sustainable growth for everyone, even planet Earth. Well, it looks like there is a new one out there that I got introduced to, just recently, thanks to a Google Plus post by Luis Alberola referencing the excellent work from Charles Eisenstein and his rather intriguing book "Sacred Economics". Of course, I’m talking about The Gift Economy.  There is a lot of really good, well written, spoken, and inspiring literature around the topic of the Gift Economy. But perhaps the one that I have found the most transformational one is that one from Charles himself where he keeps talking about it in his new book Sacred Economics. This book, indeed, does look a little bit out of the ordinary, specially, when you go into the Web site and you find this rather uncompromising quote:  "In keeping with one of the main themes of the book, Charles has made the full text of the book available online as a gift. Click on the links below and enjoy. If you feel moved to send Charles a return gift, you may do so below" Of course, as intrigued as one can be, I decided to spend about 12 minutes on watching through the promotional video clip that was put together by director Ian MacKenzie and I doubt there would be anything more inspiring that you may have watched this week, perhaps this month, or, maybe, even, this year. What an absolute delight you will be embarking on if you start watching it. As a teaser, it kicks off with this absolutely stunning, and worth while living for, quote:  "We’ve all been given a gift, the gift of life. What we do with our lives is our gift back" - Edo Needless to say, that I would strongly encourage you all to watch further along the video, so that you can see what are some of the main key statements that Charles himself postulates not only on the video clip itself, but on the book as well. Topics like ancient gift economies, modern capitalism, the role of money on how it’s contributed, tremendously, towards "alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth". How money is just an agreement; how it just doesn’t have any value per se; and how scarcity is built into the money system, just as much as our traditional concept of growth. How our very own separate selfs have contributed into building a hostile environment for us as a species, in constant conflict with nature, with ourselves, with schooling (learning), with life and how we are already embarked on a ruthless self-destructive path difficult to revert back from. And in that context that’s where that gift economy kicks in. "We didn’t earn air, we didn’t earn being born, we didn’t earn our conception, we didn’t earn a planet that could provide food, we didn’t earn the sun" is just another superb quote that finishes with a rather mind-blowing affirmation: Inborn gratitude, where life is a gift and the natural response to giving / receiving a gift is gratitude. Naturally. The one we show every day. According to Charles, in a gift society, if you have got more than you need, you give it to somebody who needs it. That’s what gives you status, a stronger sense of security. If you build up all of that gratitude people are going to take care of you, too. If there are no gifts there is no community and therefore societies become monetised. Eventually, according to him, we just can’t have community as an add-on to a monetised society. We actually have to have a need for each other, which surely makes perfect sense from the perspective of how we, after all, are social animals, with a strong sense of caring and belonging to the group. Regardless.  His description on the video about The Shift and what it would entail is just priceless altogether on its own, finishing up with a quote that I thought was worth while mentioning over here as well, since I have mentioned it a couple of times already myself on where we are at the moment: "It’s going to be up to us, to determine at what point this wake-up plan would happen". Remember, Awakening 2.0? Just brilliant! Charles’ closing remarks from the video clip itself though are even much more profound ones on what’s needed to revert the tide, to aim at that significant change of how we do things, who we are as human beings, as community, and what we should be focusing on: "[…] We have been messing around, playing with our gifts of technology and culture. And developing these gifts. Now we are coming into adulthood. And it’s time to apply them to our true purpose. At the beginning, […] it’ll be about healing the damage that’s has been done. […] We are in the business of creating miracle around Earth. […] It’s necessary. Anything even less than that is not even worth trying" The interesting thing though is that for all of that to happen, for that shift to take place, and the sooner, most probably, the better, we may well need the current economic system to collapse and fail, big time, as my good friend, Dave Pollard, hinted out on a superb blog post under the title "Moving from Understanding and Protest to Direct Action", where he reviewed the book  and he concluded: "If we are hugely fortunate, when the industrial growth system starts to fly apart and collapse through its own unsustainable failings (a process that’s well underway for all the attempts to cover it up), some collective of smart, generous, articulate people might start to put some of Eisenstein’s ideas to a real-life test. But I wouldn’t count on it. When things start to collapse, panic, denial, blame-seeking and reactionary thinking are more likely human responses" Probably, but, on the other hand, recent signals are starting to come out and tell us otherwise, and with various multiple flavors that are starting to become rather difficult to hide away from the common public, regardless of what mainstream media, governments or whatever other public / privates entities are trying to portrait further. A couple of them have actually become my true favorites, mainly, because they have started to show what that Gift Economy would look like in the real, and, specially, in the context of the current financial econoclypse that we are going through over here in Europe, by demonstrating that, if there is a way, we can make it. It may take some time, it may take plenty of good effort, energy, and passion, but if there is a way that we can show and demonstrate caring and sharing for one another, specially in times of need, and I mean, serious need, we will eventually find it, embrace it, apply it. Live it.  Yes, indeed! Welcome to the Gift Economy! Where sustainable and profitable growth for everyone, including planet Earth, is now finally becoming a reality. Our communal reality. And where businesses take a new meaning in life by co-sharing that responsibility with the community to do things right and where money may no longer be the only ruling principle in town. Exciting times, my dear friends. Indeed, very exciting times …  Have a good one everyone! [Oh, and in case you are wondering, here's how the gift economy would work… Charles' book on Sacred Economics can be read entirely online for free, but I felt so inspired watching through the video, learning tons along the way, getting really excited about it, that I just purchased a copy of the book for my Kindle, as a token of gratitude for the inspiration. It *does* work!]

There are plenty of times, throughout our very own lives, when we bump into some wonderfully inspirational reading material(s) that, while going through them, reading them at a slower pace, with a smile on our faces, savouring each and every single word of that written piece, letting your mind go wild into deep thoughts of how profound the impact of that article may well be not just for you, but equally for those around you, that you just don’t want to finish it off any time soon, you get to realise, at that stage, that you may be reading perhaps the Top 3 article of your working lifetime. Yes, you know, that kind of impact; that single masterpiece that will slap you left and right to wake you up, to transform your working life for good, for better, for everyone’s better, to show each and everyone of us not only why we do what we do, but also who we are for what we do. Every single day. Well, I think I may have just bumped into such crown jewel and, in case you may not have read it just yet, I would suggest you stop everything you may be doing on the side, right now, while multitasking, and read what I think is probably one of the most truly inspirational readings you would be doing this year, perhaps even in the last few years altogether. Please allow me to point you all to what I would consider an indispensable read for all of those knowledge workers out there, who would need to go for a little bit of a reminder of their own identity, as workers. Please go and enjoy reading "The Labor Day Manifesto of the Passionate Creative Worker" by John Hagel. John, along with a bunch of really smart collaborators, has put together what I would consider some seminal, foundational piece of work on defining not just the concept of the (traditional) knowledge (Web) worker (Driven, in most cases by passion, creativity and collaborating with others sharing their own knowledge openly), but that one of the Workplace of the Future at the same time.  To go ahead and reproduce the entire Manifesto wouldn’t probably be a smart thing to do, but I think I’m going to take the liberty of grabbing a few bits and pieces over here, so that you folks can see what I mean with foundational piece of work. The purpose, if anything, is more along the lines of paying a tribute to a genius piece of writing that is already hanging on my wall, right across my laptop, to remind me, everyday, why I come to work and why it matters. So I have decided to quote each and everyone of those mantras, highlighting some of the keywords that I have felt identified myself with all along, for years, and which I am hoping they would serve, as well, as a small teaser that would encourage you to read the rest. It’s also an exercise I want to do for myself to internalise each and everyone of those principles, so that on those weak moments that we all get exposed to every now and then, I can remember, treasure, rejoice, reabsorb, restart, and re-inspire myself to keep pushing the limits forward, because that’s what we have been rather good at all along. We just didn’t realise it till now. So here we go:  Live our lives, not someone else’s: "We are the arbiters of meaning in our own lives"  Blaze new trails: "There is no established path to greatness [ …] We challenge the status quo, and in turn, seek out things that challenge us" Prioritize learning over efficiency: "Mistakes, while the enemy of efficiency, are the fuel for learning" Share knowledge freely: "We see each person’s enormous potential to contribute to our global knowledge base […]" Recognize that institutions exist to serve people: " We don’t exist for institutions, they exist for us" Quit jobs that we hate: "There are too many interesting things to do in this life to waste time on things that don’t matter" (This is one of my favourite principles from the whole list put together!) Escape the trap of wasting time by being busy: "Being overscheduled, even with the best things, will cause us to miss the important things that can’t be planned, and will rob us of the most valuable opportunities of our lives" Live life for the adventure: "Life is as amazing as we make it" Stay on the edge: "The people who change the world are out at the edge of their field, pushing back the boundaries of the unknown."  Continually reinvent ourselves: "We know that passion is the key to personal growth" Never settle: "Never. Ever. Not even once […] Let us join forces and help each other along the way to become better, far better, than we ever could alone" I am really hoping that such a teasing exercise would help you drop over John’s Manifesto, but at the same time take the pro-active approach of leaving a comment or two, singing up for it, making that formal commitment that you would be living your work life from here onwards embracing and celebrating each and everyone of those principles, so that we, together, can continue to up the game into bigger, greater, more meaningful things. In short, the workplace of the future. Our workplace. I am sure at this point in time you may be wondering whether there are any examples out there that would be fully embracing and breathing the true powerful inspiring spirit of this Manifesto itself, you know, moving from the theory into the practice, and since we are talking about this in the context of business and our working lives, I thought it would be worth while sharing, perhaps, a couple of examples that have certainly made me think, a lot, about plenty of the key messages from John’s masterpiece. More than anything, because both of them truly show the potential of what we could achieve together. As one.  The first example is another manifesto, The Holstee Manifesto Lifecycle Video, (Big thanks to my good friend Stephen Collins for sharing it along!) which is currently portrayed in another superb, rather short, video clip, that I can certainly recommend everyone to go through. It lasts for a little bit over two and a half minutes and the way it introduces itself across to everyone is with a single one liner that I am sure we can all relate to and would sign up for time and time again: Do what you love. And do it often. The Holstee Manifesto Lifecycle Video from Holstee on Vimeo. "Life is simple. Life is short. Live your dream and share your passion" are also some of the mantras that you will see permeating throughout the video clip, which is just perfect, because they are going to help me introduce the second example that I wanted to share with you today. This time around shared by another good friend, the always insightful and thought-provoking Dave Pollard, who pointed us out to Doing it Ourselves, where you will see a beautifully crafted, rather smart, witty and mind-boggling video clip of about 12 minutes under the suggestive heading "What the Economic Crisis Really Means - and what you can do about it", which would sound very fitting for the current econoclypse and financial turmoil we are going through and which, once again, managed to get the Hippie 2.0 side out of me. Here is the embedded code of the video clip, so that you can see what I mean. It’s probably one of those brilliant clips that you would want to show everyone out there to explain why we are where we are, but also how we can all start reverting the tide, realign and change, for the better, on what really matters: our mere survival at this point and here is why:    Finally, in a recent article, If You Were the Next Steve Jobs…, Umair Haque keeps challenging us to think different, to tackle good old known problems with new eyes, new insights, new ways of working, of solving those issues, together, as one, highlighting what I feel are some of the most prominent challenges that Social Business is facing in today’s corporate world. Basically, finding a new purpose, a new meaning of wanting to do things different, a new way where sustainable and responsible growth becomes the new norm, our latest mantra; this time around though to stay with us for a while, a long while, because, after all, we have always known what to do, and how to do it. We just needed the trigger to ignite and wake up our knowledge workforce once again and bring them back to life; then the rest will come up rather easily, on its own… How? Well, how about by fully embracing and living "The Labor Day Manifesto Of the Passionate Creative Worker", as a good starting point?  Something tells me, perhaps my Hippie 2.0 side, once again, that we wouldn’t be that far off from where we would want to head towards to in, say, the next 30 to 50 years. Don’t you think?

Some seven years back, Sir Ken Robinson delivered a landmark speech at TED, citing how schools kill creativity. It's one of those talks that sparked my own interest in public education. In his inimitable, humorous style, Robinson launched a scathing attack on schools. Some of his quotes remain stuff of legend.I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatised. When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. But now ... you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children.More recently, Sugata Mitra made his inspirational TED prize talk, following up his landmark speech about his hole in the wall experiment. Mitra made a case for a school in the cloud - self organised learning environments (SOLEs) where children can explore and learn from one another. And while he helped us look ahead to a time of joy and amazement in learning, his subtle attack on the system of schooling was fairly evident.We don't even know what the jobs of the future are going to look like. We know that people will work from wherever they want, whenever they want, in whatever way they want. How is present-day schooling going to prepare them for that world? The reptilian part of our brain, which sits in the center of our brain, when it's threatened, it shuts down everything else, it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the parts which learn, it shuts all of that down. Punishment and examinations are seen as threats. We take our children, we make them shut their brains down, and then we say, "Perform.I think what we need to look at is we need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It's not about making learning happen. It's about letting it happen. There was a time when Stone Age men and women used to sit and look up at the sky and say, "What are those twinkling lights?" They built the first curriculum, but we've lost sight of those wondrous questions. We've brought it down to the tangent of an angle.So after watching these amazing gentlemen speak about how school and the public education system is the perfect killer for the joy, amazement and self directed learning journey we call childhood, the third talk is ironic to say the least. A young Maasai boy, Richard Turere from Kitengala in Kenya had found a solution to lion-human conflict at Nairobi National Park. A child from a cattle herding family, Turere often lost his cattle to lions from the park. As is Maasai custom, an act like this has no forgiveness - the marauding lions have to die.Through his own journey of self discovery, Richard learned that lions were afraid of moving flashlights. A few experiments and failures with his electricity supply and a few games with LED lights gave fuel to his invention - Lion Lights. Richard's now fitted a series of LED bulbs facing outwards from his cattle enclosure. He's wired them to a box of switches and a solar powered battery panel. Every night, these lights flicker intermittently just as a flashlight would if a human were patrolling with it! Ever since, his family hasn't lost a single animal to lions and Turere has now become a mini celebrity amongst the Maasai at Nairobi National Park.What this boy did, was a consequence of the natural joy and amazement of childhood. No one taught him electronics. He learned it himself. He just had a big challenge, his own little quest, "I had to look after my dad's cows and make sure that they were safe." This seems to resonate with what Ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra seemed to say about creativity and learning in their respective talks.So where is the irony? Richard's reward for his natural genius is that good people with great intentions have now placed him in one of Kenya's top schools. So Richard wears a fancy uniform everyday and will join the rat race of academic achievement alongside several other children who are learning to be cogs in an industrial economy. I hope for Richard's sake that he retains his genius despite school. Chances are though, that as Robinson laments, he will get educated out of his creativity. And when the lions figure out the lights, the Maasai won't have Richard there to figure out what to do next. I hope I'm wrong. I want to be wrong. I can't help but lament the irony of this case. If I get the time, I do want to meet Richard on my trip to Kenya in June. I keep my fingers crossed that we hear more about his astounding achievements in years to come.© Sumeet Moghe

A few days back Scott Edinger put together a very insightful article on the topic of whether remote knowledge workers are more engaged, or not, than people working at the traditional office. The interesting thing though is how the whole concept of teleworking has been all along with us for several decades now, specially, since the emergence of groupware, collaboration and knowledge sharing solutions came about. And it looks like with the opportunity of embracing social networking tools for business that we are enjoying nowadays, there is a new rush in trying to figure out whether social technologies can finally free up knowledge workers from the yoke of the traditional office, resulting, if anything, on what I feel has been one of the main mantras behind both Social Business and the future of work meme: work is no longer a physical space, but a state of mind. Work happens, indeed, wherever you are, whenever you need, with whatever the tools you have at your disposal, with whoever the connections you may collaborate with in getting the job done. Never before have we been capable of realising that dream of the fully empowered knowledge worker to work virtually in a more than ever distributed world than thanks to the emergence of all of these social networking tools. To the point where, finally, we are starting to see how it’s helping employees become more engaged, more participative, more collaborative, taking on a fair bit of co-ownership and responsibility for their work to levels we haven’t seen in the past just yet. And it makes perfect sense, specially, if you take into consideration how initiatives like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) have taken the corporate world by storm. However, there may well be perhaps a couple of other additional reasons altogether than those Scott has talked about on that article itself that should probably be added into the mix.  But before we go into that and explore it a bit more in detail, and perhaps as good background for this topic of discussion, on teleworking, that is, we should not forget about the huge amount of literature, in the form of blog posts , articles, studies, research, infographics, white papers, etc. etc. that we have seen over the course of the last few months talking about the various different benefits, the perks, the advantages, the good practices and lessons learned of working remotely thanks to the extensive use of social networking tools. It’s definitely noteworthy to state how it’s perhaps, finally, moving forward in the right direction, raising the right questions: does remote working help you improve your productivity and effectiveness at what you already do? The answer seems to be on the positive side of things. Yes! And I would wholeheartedly have to agree with that assertion, at least, based on my own experience as a remote knowledge (Web) worker from over the last 10 years and counting… We have seen as well though a few folks talking about some of the various disadvantages; nonetheless, if there is anything clear out of the whole discussion taking place is that working remotely, while remaining productive and effective enough at what you do, still raises questions, concerns and whatever other issues that have certainly kept challenging the relevance of the traditional office as well as the potential place for the virtual workplace of the future we are moving forward to. This time around, nothing to do with technology, apparently, as it’s just an enabler, as usual, but more from the perspective of culture and how in a good number of different environments teleworking not only doesn’t it get promoted nor encouraged, but eventually it gets turned off, to the point of not tolerating it, because both knowledge workers and managers have got that presumption that if you can’t see, or can’t be seen, you can’t be productive, you can’t measure the results. You see? Apparently, we are still very much inclined to measure our productivity by our sheer presence at the office rather than the results and deliverables you produce, in whatever the timeframe, wherever you may well be. Well, that presumption may well have its days numbered, thanks to the emergence of these social networking tools, because if there is anything out there that they are very good at is at helping generate enough visibility, openness and transparency to continue working out loud, narrating your work. In short, becoming comfortable with observable work (a.k.a. #owork) by which we are seeing a fundamental shift from measuring individual performance by your mere presence at the office cubicle to measuring network / community / team performance based on the results you get to produce in a collaborative and open manner. And this is, indeed, when work is no longer considered a physical place, i.e. the traditional office, but more that state of mind: work happens around you and your networks (physical or virtual) who collaboratively share your knowledge to achieve a common goal. That is, getting the job done.  However, with all of that said, I still think Scott missed a couple of interesting insights that I have seen over the last few years in that transition towards adopting and embracing teleworking. The vast majority of knowledge workers who are still skeptic about it are mainly so, because they haven’t experienced it themselves. They keep saying that they wouldn’t be able to do it;  that they need to be in contact with other people face to face, that they lack the discipline to stick to work related stuff, they would instead do the shopping, or the laundry or just keep the kids buzzing around. They just can’t possibly see themselves working remotely, never mind their managers, specially, those who are still living that illusion of command and control or those other managers who thrive on micro-managing their employees. Yet, they keep feeling that way, because, in reality, they haven’t tried it out themselves for a good number of weeks, months. Versus just perhaps a couple of days.  Yes, indeed, you would need plenty of discipline, motivation, encouragement and commitment to make it work. There is no denying that. It’s not easy. Just like commuting to the physical office, one has got to set one’s mind up towards understanding that work is work and the rest is … life. And this is exactly what I think Scott is missing from his article. Two of the main key motivators for which remote workers excel at engagement, participation and collaboration with their fellow colleagues, customers and business partners: flexibility and work / life integration.  Flexibility from the prospective that the traditional 9-5 work schedule is a thing of the past. Long gone are the traditional 8-ish working hours per day (Although we know that every knowledge worker works, sadly, more than 8 hours per day, contrary to what studies have shown as the perfect work week schedule) and instead knowledge workers, through the use of these social networking tools have become more flexible, understanding that depending on the kind of work at hand there would be times when they would be chipping in 14, 15 or 16 hours of work, but then there would be other times when things may be slowing down a bit, and they may just work 2 to 3 hours. And it would be totally fine, because thanks to that flexibility they just focus on the task at hand, versus having to keep working even if the task is completed already. That flexibility is a huge motivator and incentive for remote knowledge workers, because right there they are starting to grasp the notion of how they are in much better control of their workflows, according to their needs & wants and those of their networks. Eventually, working together to finish the job even faster and with perhaps much more quality, thanks to that network effort.  With regards to Work Life Integration, there is very little that I can add, since I have blogged about it recently as well. But I can certainly add one other key aspect related to such integration. Notice how I am no longer talking about work life balance, since I think it’s a myth. It’s always been a myth. It’s never worked. Despite corporations trying really hard for knowledge workers to embrace such balance, in almost all cases there isn’t such a thing: work always wins. Regardless. However, with integration it is different, very different. Because what you introduce into the equation is a new key concept that’s finally making its way into the business world: choice.  In particular, your choice to become a remote worker. In the vast majority of cases, it’s the knowledge workers themselves the ones who request from their managers and their day to day work to become remote workers. They are the ones who have got that initial urge to become remote employees. Some times it doesn’t get granted easily, depending on the nature of your job, whether you have got direct customer exposure, or not, whether your team is all collocated, etc. etc. Whatever the reason. But the vast majority of times it is granted. That’s when flexibility kicks in. That’s when the motivation is huge! That’s when micro-managers become servant leaders helping facilitate interactions and connections, even remotely, in order to facilitate more openness, transparency, trustworthier exchanges, etc. etc. to get work done even more effectively. And it just works! Why? For something that most people don’t seem to realise just yet. And that’s the fact that those remote knowledge workers are the very first ones who are truly interested in being allowed to continue working remotely in the first place. So they are the first interested party in keeping up that status. For their own good, never mind that one of their teams, networks or communities. They are the first ones who will work really hard on it, because they realise that thanks to that very same flexibility and work life integration they are much more effective and engaged employees than as if they would be working from the physical office. That’s why whenever someone asks me how I can keep up working throughout my work week from Gran Canaria, you know, paradise island, they are still surprised they can reach me any which way thanks to those various different social networking tools, instead of, say, just being on the beach. Yes, I know, I could well do that, but then again, for how long? How long would you think I would be allowed to keep such status if I weren’t the first interested party in remaining a fully empowered, networked, engaged, motivated knowledge worker? Even more, do you think I would be allowed to work remotely, where I live, by just making use of corporate email, instead of Living "A World Without eMail", by making an even heavier use of social networking tools? I probably wouldn’t. And understandably given that lack of openness, visibility and transparency that email provides. That, on its own, is the main reason why I keep walking the talk on becoming an engaged remote knowledge (Web) worker, because thanks to that very same flexibility and work life integration I get to enjoy, every so often, things in life like this …  And that’s not too bad for a professional, remote, networked knowledge worker, don’t you think?

It's a provocative title isn't that one? It'll probably set the alarm bells ringing among proponents of the right to education. I guess it may have incensed feminists as well. Some of you may call me a crazy parent. I'm quite happy to take all of the criticism as long as you have the patience to read to the end of this article. Before I put you through that misery though, let me share my basic premise. Education and school are two distinct and often non-overlapping concepts. I personally believe that the institution of school is counterproductive to the journey of education and to the irreplaceable experience that is childhood. I want my daughter to grow up as a beautiful human being. I want her to enjoy her childhood, to embrace the confusion of teenage and to follow her passion. I'd like her to learn deeply and question status quo as she grows up. School is unlikely to give me any of that. And by the way, when I say "school" I mean school as we've always known it. I'm happy to accept newer definitions for that institution. Yes, you may disagree with me. If you do, I'd love to learn from you. If you thought my article promotes illiteracy or misogyny though, my disclaimer may just prompt you to read further.What is education?An interesting question to ask ourselves as parents would be, "If governments across the world banned certificates, diplomas and degrees then what would we consider as education?" I find it interesting that Wikipedia describes education this way:"Education in its general sense is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, or research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of others, but may also be autodidactic (self-driven). Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational."- WikipediaWow! Does it surprise us that no part of that definition has school or university in it? To me education has two very simplistic sets of goals:Utilitarian: the acquisition of skills so that children can grow up and make a livingSocietal: the addition of great human beings to society so they make the right decisions. This is even more important in our day and age as the impact of small actions at an individual level has far reaching consequences. So how does school do on each of these goals? Let's see.Imparting skills - how does school fare?If you were remotely interested in this post, I take it that you've seen Ken Robinson's brilliant talk about how schools kill creativity. If not, do watch it. The talk from 2005 was path breaking in that it brought into public cognisance what we'd always said about education. Sir Robinson, in the space of 20 witty minutes tore the education system into shreds. He called out the absurd hierarchy of subjects, the process of academic inflation, and the need for multi-disciplinary thinking. He illustrated through examples how the system stigmatised bright people, simply because they didn't conform to the mould of school. Ken Robinson was neither the first nor the last to speak about this loss of creative potential but the talk did open up a proverbial Pandora's box.Now, you'd imagine that if school is getting rid of "the creative types" and if you had the illusion that some children aren't creative, then well - school should do well with the remaining folks. Nothing is further from the truth. Let's look at millions of India's engineers and quiz them about the application of Boyle's law in real life. You'll find that several struggle to even recollect what Boyle's law is. Take the topic to organic chemistry or calculus which some of us spent four to six years of our lives studying. The lack of intuitive understanding for these topics is striking. As people how Gandhi's declaration of Swaraj relates to independent India and I doubt you'd receive much more than blank stares. The fact is that the factory of school is meant to do one thing - maximise pass percentages. The "good schools" pride themselves on creating "toppers" - children who can get great grades in exams. Frankly this is a worldwide plague. And yes, I know Finland has a great education system but it'd be foolish to compare a country of 5.4 million people with little or no diversity amongst them to a country of over a billion that speaks 800+ languages. When one designs a school system to maximise grades then true learning falls by the wayside and the pressure for success in exams take over. Don't waste your time with lenses - the syllabus for the exam is just about mirrors. Stop reading that blogpost about environmental justice, it's time for you to focus on math. Why do you want to learn about germination now? It isn't part of the exam papers until next year! Why are you interested in learning about communist dictatorship when the teacher's asked us to study Tughlaq? Unfortunately we don't really learn in that fragmented fashion. We learn through a deep immersive passion for things. We learn through joy, amazement and wonder. Despite their best intentions, teachers with 30-50 pupils each in dark, prison like rooms, operated through a sequence of bells, are only able to focus on maximising exam scores. Guess what children learn from this factory like environment? They learn how to obediently follow narrowly focussed orders. Passing exams with good grades is only a head fake for this hidden curriculum."If you sit kids down, hour after hour doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget." - Sir Ken RobinsonIn addition, schools and teachers have gotten increasingly protective of the institution as the world has moved on. Back in the day, the notion of school may have made sense given knowledge was scarce and one had to "go to school" to learn from a teacher. Today, with the advent of IT, knowledge and means of skills acquisition are everywhere and yet, most teachers haven't woken up to the world and its possibilities. I don't think technology is a panacea for learning, but it surely does change the notion of what an educational institution is meant for. And by the way, what are the eventual results like? Across India and the US, high school completion rates are often less than 50%. School has done nothing to bring generations out of poverty. In fact, industrialisation and modern schools have only created a bigger divide between the rich and the poor. A million engineers each year are unemployed in India. China has a rising number of unemployed graduates despite being one of the largest economies out there. And the US has half of its college graduates working in jobs that don't need a college degree- over 50% of graduates under 25 were without a job. One in three American graduates believes that the education system didn't prepare her well for real life! So much for the glorious promise of jobs that follow 16 years of formal education. One may point out the odd success story and the story of how their child became a fantastic professional because of school. I argue that the statistics reveal this to be the exception and not the rule. Most children that "succeed", do so despite school, not because of it. Things are just-not-working.School and the History of Injustice"Once he is educated, he will leave this mountain and learn this lifestyle. He will sell our land to the company. At these schools, they don't teach how to live with nature, they teach how to live by exploitation." - Tribal Sikuka Sani on why he doesn't want his son in schoolTo understand the social impact of school, we need to understand its origins. Now I don't want to deny that we had some form of schooling even in ancient and medieval times in the form of gurukulas and universities like Nalanda. There is a stark difference however, between the very principles of modern schools and these institutions. We can probably touch upon that in a separate post. The modern, western school is by design an instrument of injustice. The reason for that particularly in the Global South countries, is the inextricable link between school and colonialism. The European colonialists followed a very repeatable pattern. They invaded native lands and killed people indiscriminately. They took over the land and resources to exploit for their own benefit. Following this, the missionaries arrived to tell natives that they were heathens or pagans and that they needed to embrace a new god. Alongside, the colonialists set up schools to train entire generations of natives in lessons of obedience and to destroy their native way of life. The idea was to create a people that would be so conforming to the white way of life that they wouldn't see the white man as foreign. No wonder the inaugural address of the Carlisle Indian School said, "Let all that's Indian within you die".    The story has repeated itself across the world. In India Lord Macaulay sought to create Macaulay's children, "a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect". In the Philippines, after a civilian massacre by the American forces, school teachers moved in swiftly to civilise the survivors. In Africa, the Europeans applied more brutal means through slavery and eventual Bantu schooling to serve the needs of the elite. Across the countries of the global south, the agenda of education has been quite similar. I'd like to believe that some people were acting in good faith. They believed it was necessary to civilise these brown and black people. The white man's burden was to educate indigenous people in their self proclaimed superior ways. "You do it my way, by my standards, at the speed I mandate, and in so doing achieve a level of output I ordain, and I’ll pay you handsomely for it, beyond anything you might have imagined. All you have to do is take orders and give up your way of doing the job for mine." - Fredrick Winslow TaylorAt the very same time 250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution was changing the world in a way that 500,000 years of human existence had never imagined. Machines had made means of production incredibly sophisticated and yet, the pace of production growth was limited by a major bottleneck. The effectiveness of the machines was almost undermined by skilled craftsmen who wanted to do a job well over doing it quickly. Their skills and deep thinking for their craft were no longer applicable. Post the industrial revolution, we needed people who followed orders. Obedience, not skill was the primary characteristic for employment. And so the workers sacrificed their creativity and skill for obedience, thereby making a deal with the devil. This has led to the system of schools that is modelled after factories. Back in the day workers sat on benches, in neat rows. That's what schools look like today. They operated in schedules dictated by a ringing bell. That's how schools operate today. They obeyed narrow orders without context. That led to the way we learn in fragments and follow teachers' orders today. You could choose not to believe me but there's significant literature out there to articulate how school was an institution established to benefit few at the cost of many. In that, the system of school that we follow promotes the same injustice that it sought to create in the times of its inception.So what does school teach after all?With all this said, it's important to ask ourselves what children actually learn at school and I've come to the realisation that school is not just ineffective for young citizens of the global south - it's highly dangerous. Let me enumerate to you what children actually learn at school. And while this list isn't comprehensive, let me share with you ten deadly aspects of the hidden curriculum of school.West is Best: School teaches our children that the western model of life, is the paragon of humankind's potential. So our children grow up idolising Western cities - they've been sold on the idea of the west being so awesome, that they want to live there and work there. The accept everything that is western as superior, despite the fact that the west has serious problems with inequality, ecological balance, employment, women's rights, racism and other social issues. We look at our ways and our lives through the evaluative lens of the west. Whatever the west denounces, we denounce. Whatever the west approves we approve. No wonder every great city in India is losing its character in its quest to look like a Western equivalent. English rules the world: In Indian schools, children receive punishment if they speak in their regional languages - even on the playground. They're taught that English is a ticket to the high life. That no one will respect them if they speak their local language. As a consequence, parents too speak to their child in English if they can. This leads to a huge loss of culture through the loss of languages. India has lost 220 languages in the last 50 years - partly due to this mindless promotion of English over its true value as a link language. Language isn't just words and grammar - it holds the key to culture. Tribals in New Guinea and the Western Ghats can identify dozens species of birds by their songs; traditional healers can identify thousands of medicinal plants and how they affect the human body; the Andamanese tribes have the knowledge of how to sense natural disasters like the tsunamis. Every language we lose, eventually leads to the loss of rich culture associated with it.Your family's ways are backward and primitive: As children learn about the western world and its ways, they start to look at their indigenous ways as backward and primitive. Already, people look down on Ayurveda and glorify allopathy. They consider western dairy farming to be superior to our far diverse approaches. They think of mechanised industrial farming as a way to create better yields though traditional organic farming is far more sustainable. Children don't want to use local materials for their home any more because they're messy and awkward. Bio fuel from dung is despised because despite it's sustainability, it feels primitive. At the level of elders, this creates great inferiority as they start to believe that they know nothing and that school is a panacea for their children to experience happiness in life. Academic failure = failure in life: As Manish Jain of Shikshantar says, "One of the things that is most disturbing to me, at a level of justice and morality, is that you have an institution in place globally that is branding millions and millions of innocent people as failures." Is failure to succeed in school really the only indicator of a human being's potential? Haven't we learned from the likes of Beethoven, Tagore, Lincoln, Akbar, Edison, Einstein, Eminem, Jackie Chan, Sachin Tendulkar and several others that non-conformance to the institution of school is no measure of a human being's potential? And yet, every year we have millions of children who will not jump through the hoops of school and hence identify themselves as an "8th class fail" or something like that. How can any of us who think of social justice accept such an institution that is binary enough to say that those who conform to it are successes and those that don't are failures?Conform and get rewards: A corollary to the above learning what children learn about conformance. Those that obey the teacher's orders are those that get rewarded. Those that jump through the hoops of exams are the ones that come out on top. The learning of conformance comes from the act of wearing similar uniforms, mingling only with people who are in your age group. If you have an interest that isn't part of the syllabus, you'll most probably get no encouragement. On the other hand if you finish your borderline clerical homework the way your teacher wants, you'll receive a pat on the back. Conform to rules, conform to the bell, conform to the time table. If you play for longer than the time table allows (so what if you're a child), be ready to stand on the bench or kneel down or sit outside class and be the subject of ridicule. Worse, get caned.  Initiative is over-rated; wait for orders: Amongst the most dangerous things that school does to children is take away the boisterous enthusiasm of childhood. Someone lays out your day in a time-table. Someone decides what you study and when you study it. Someone decides who you can play with. Someone decides when you can play. If you try to do anything different, god save you. Guess what we get at the end of 16 years of such indoctrination? We get a society that takes no initiative and is ok with everything that happens around them. Let's not blame India's middle class for being apathetic to every social issue. School taught them to be that way.Be fiercely competitive: Don't get me wrong - I have no problem with competition. Certain spheres need competition - sports is an immediate one that comes to mind. Competitiveness becomes a problem when it becomes a way of life. Teachers and parents are obsessed with getting children to score the highest grades possible. Take a look at this commercial to visualise the pressures children face today. It's no surprise that children respond to these pressures by being fiercely competitive. Winning is everything - irrespective of the cost. So what if cheating is necessary to maximise your grades? Should you cram instead of learning? Why not? Especially if that boosts your scores. A central focus on competition makes for very bad decisions. Add to that the fact that schools usually are more obsessed to fill classrooms than to create great learning environments. Play spaces are small and pitiful. Hundreds of children compete for one basketball court. Guess who gets the court? The big, strong bullies? What learning does that reinforce in children?  The Triple Bind: I admittedly stole this from Stephen Hinshaw but this is primarily for the girls. I obviously care for my little girl and the advent of western education has created a new set of pressures for our girls as they hit teenage. We still want girls to be caring and nurturing. If we don't raise them this way, society looks at them awkwardly regardless of which part of the world they grow in. However the western focus of school and it's glorification of western media brings with it the pressures of looking a certain way. Girls also face this new pressure to "beat the boys" and be number one. So by the time our girls reach teenage, they have to help their moms at home, be involved deeply with the family, look drop dead gorgeous, be athletic, get super grades all while also being a size two. No wonder Hinshaw says, "One girl in four by the age of 19 will have developed serious depression, suicidal behavior, binge eating, cutting - etcetera." I believe Indian society isn't there yet, but we'll quite likely be there in another decade by the time my daughter is about to hit her teens. Massive consumption represents success: We've embraced the western economic model as our own and at the heart of the western model is the story of stuff - consumption. School by design glorifies everything including the western economy, globalisation, free markets, et all. Children, over years of education learn to value material objects deeply. Who has the latest iPad? Whose dad has the biggest car? Who has the coolest bungalow? They look down on others who may not have as much. Being mindless consumers means that you don't relate how many lives go in vain for that diamond ring or how much blood stains the coaltan in your phone or how many people were displaced for the aluminium on your motorbike. This creates a set of people that have a very different relationship to the planet than what we need in the next few decades. Nature is not an externality to the way we live our lives. All our wealth eventually comes from scarce natural resources. The forces of this world have enough firepower to destroy the planet a few times over. Our only hope is our next generation - one that questions mindless consumption.Working with your hands is stupid: The biggest bit of social injustice is what I save for the end. I work in a fancy IT company. I sit at a computer for most of the day and hardly move around. I actually have to run long distances each day to burn off the calories I eat. Society gives me a very high place - much higher than the farmer that feeds the nation. Wait - isn't that absurd? A person who slogs away to create food for the nation is lower in social hierarchy to a person that creates virtual 'stuff' in an air-conditioned office? The way we've architected our society reflects itself in how we teach at school. Children learn that working with your hands is for the lowest strata of society. They see no dignity in manual labour. The repurcussions of this are far reaching. The lack of interest in agriculture, the loss of indigenous professions, health, respect for people in society - the list could go on. And hey, I haven't even bothered to brainstorm any further than this list. I'm sure if we thought this through, there'd be several other problems we'd be able to articulate with school's performance on social goals. In effect it's easy to see why the world isn't getting any better despite about 300 years of modern schooling.What's the alternative then?My daughter is just five and half months old so I have a lot of time to think this through. I realise though, that I'd be very unhappy if my daughter ended up having to suffer a factory school. Do I have a clear alternative in mind? Frankly, no! I know that my family may have preferred factory school because of the 'formula' it provided. They did the best they could for me. Today, I realise that the formula isn't working and really, education is a dynamic activity which we can't boil down to the simplistic progression structure of school. I'm exploring several different options, including alternative schools like those from the Krishnamurti Foundation or the Steiner Schools. I do have a few things in mind that I want my daughter to get out of her education - and I'm particular about these to the extent that I'm more than happy to homeschool her if necessary.Enjoy her childhood and grow organicallyDevelop a respect for natureExperience the dignity of labourBuild respect for tradition and indigenous livelihoods; learn extensively from themGain mastery over all our family languages - Hindi, Bengali and MarathiPursue knowledge for its own sake - not for curriculumDiscover the ability to follow her passion without fearQuestion the status quo of the current worldLearn to work with others, not against themApply her learning in real life through inter-disciplinary challengesAnd this journey isn't going to be straightforward. I expect to face new challenges every day. That's why I'd like to go along and learn on this journey with my daughter. This is not a well charted route - I don't know how to begin or how this will end up, but isn't that what parenting is all about? Isn't it far better to look at every day as an adventure than to give up your lives to the predictability of an institution? I surely would prefer the former.Over the last few years I've grown more passionate about education than corporate learning and development and about social and economic justice more than just the business of IT. So pardon me if the bent of my posts seems very different from what I've posted earlier - maybe even contrary. I don't expect to keep the pace of posts I once had on this site but I do intend to post more about the issues that interest me right now. I hope you stay with me on this part of the journey as well and please feel free to tell me what you thought of this post.© Sumeet Moghe

In last Friday’s blog post you would remember how we talked about the huge impact of social business and social technologies in helping us adapt and embrace a new model of work, where in a world that it’s now more virtual and distributed than ever, work itself stops being a physical space alone and instead it evolves into becoming a state of mind. Again, "work happens, indeed, wherever you are, whenever you need, with whatever the tools you have at your disposal, with whoever the connections you may collaborate with in getting the job done". There is no denying that in order to make that new mantra a reality within the business world there is one other massive component that we should be bringing up into the mix in order to bring forward that flexibility and work life integration that we mentioned earlier on: mobility. And it’s just too funny that I am mentioning that today, as I’m just about to get started with a new round of business travelling where I am beginning to get the feeling that I will be taking the whole concept of work mobility into a new extreme. Over the next few weeks I will be visiting Brussels (5 hours stuck at the airport, which I think is worth while noting already!), Nice, Amsterdam, Zurich, Brighton, Montpellier, Washington D.C.,Valencia, Amsterdam (Again!), Madrid, and a couple of other cities that I’m still waiting for a final confirmation… As you can see, pretty close to a European tour with the odd visit to the US, once more for this year. And I’ll be taking with me my iPhone, my iPad and my MacBook Air, as my favourite weapons of mass mobility! Along, of course, with that lovely VPN connection to the IBM network, my company’s Intranet. Nowadays, when I travel, I usually get by with just my iPhone and my iPad, but this time around I’ll be taking the MacBook Air as well, as a couple of those events will involve some heavy computing. I am just hoping, and perhaps a bit of praying, too, that I will be capable of experiencing the future a little bit more this time around, so that I can truly confirm that mobility in the workforce is now more of a reality than a distant future. Keeping fingers crossed… And while I actually do that, you may want to take a look into this absolutely wonderful blog post by my good friend Oscar Berg under the title "What’s your mobility strategy?", where he exposes, quite clearly, the state of mobility within the corporate world, or, at least, he gives us plenty of good glimpses of where we are heading already, starting off with a rather brief description of what mobility means for all of us, knowledge (Web) workers, and also what it means for the organisation as business benefits. And making the great point that when looking into bringing mobility into your workforce it’s probably best if you look into it from both a strategic and tactical points of view, highlighting one of my favourite quotes from Peter Drucker that I have taken the liberty of quoting over here as well with an additional explanation from Oscar on what it actually means for him (For me, too!). Isn’t it pretty amazing the huge amount of brilliant quotes we keep bringing up from Mr. Drucker every time we would want to highlight a point on why Social Business makes perfect sense? Well, this would be another one!:  "I personally prefer Peter F Drucker’s simple definition "strategy is doing the right things, tactics is doing things right." A strategy is a strategy if it answers what you need to do and why to achieve a certain business objective. Tactics are the detailed maneuvers you need to do to realize the strategy. Strategies must come first, then the tactics" [Emphasis mine] And from there onwards Oscar gets on a roll to continue with this rather brilliant observation of how to make it work, how to get both strategy and tactics working together as one to achieve maximum results. To quote:  "When it comes to how mobile devices can be used to improve business performance, I really see that as tactics. What an organization should have is a mobility strategy. Developing such a strategy should be about making informed decisions about what to mobilize and why in order to achieve business objectives" [Emphasis mine] Indeed, right on the money! Organisations should work on putting together that mobility strategy and us, the knowledge (Web) workers, will get down to business and make use of the mobility tools at our disposal in order to keep being effective and productive while on the move. If you ask me, the best of both worlds; if you ask me again, I can actually summarise it all with a single keyword: empowerment. Best part of it all? That perhaps with BYOD glowing in full force for the last couple of years there may well be no way back at this stage and we are continuing to witness a rather massive consumerisation of IT in the Enterprise, as my good friend Dion Hinchcliffe has brilliantly pointed out in a couple of highly recommended articles. At IBM, we are fully immersed on building, shaping up and putting together that mobility strategy, well, the organisation is, for that matter, while a bunch of us have been enjoying the full benefits of going tactics, while on the road, and take the most advantage of using both smartphones or tablets to continue working whenever and wherever we would need to. There have been plenty of news items on this very same topic and how IBM has become incredibly flexible in this regard to the point where there is probably now a much richer environment of devices connected to the IBM network than ever before in its entire history.  My good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Chris Pepin, has been doing a fantastic job over the course of the last few months putting together a bunch of presentations on this very same topic, describing that fascinating IT transformation that IBM itself has been going through by becoming not only platform agnostic, but also device agnostic for its own employees, pretty much allowing each and everyone of us, with the proper security protocols in place, of course, to be a bit more in control of our very own (mobile) computing environment, which, if anything, I can tell you, it’s been rather liberating over the course of the last 6 years that I have been enjoying such bold move myself of trusting your employees to use your IT in a responsible and trustworthy manner: that is, get work done whenever, wherever, with whomever. Perhaps my favourite presentation that Chris put together and that details that revolutionary journey for yours truly, and for several thousands of IBMers as well!, is that one of Deploying Apple in the Enterprise, which is a case study of how fellow IBMers have been using Apple products, whether Macs, iPhones or iPads, for work related tasks without hardly any official support, but more than anything else relying on what has always worked the best: peer to peer support networks. But I can imagine that for today’s blog post folks would be much more interested in this other dissertation that he did at IBM’s Pulse 2012 conference event, under the suggestive title "The New Workplace: Unleashing the Power of Enterprise Mobility", which would help address a good number of different concerns people out there may well be having about their own mobility strategies. Nonethless, though, if we are about to look into not just strategy, but also tactics, folks out there may well enjoy this other presentation put together as well by Chris himself, which just basically details what you might need to kick things off: Becoming a mobile enterprise - Step by step.    Becoming a mobile enterprise: step by step from Chris Pepin There used to be a time when plenty of people kept telling me that I was very lucky for working at IBM, since technology was always a given and we always had the opportunity to work with the best IT at our reach. I kept telling them that perhaps 10 years ago that may well have been the case, specially, when social technologies were still in the making, and we were lucky, indeed, to enjoy that luxury of just being on the Internet. Fast forward 10 to 15 years later, 2012, and I’m more and more convinced that with over 50% of our total employee workforce being purely mobile, we are no longer talking about a luxury, or consider ourselves lucky, or just value that tremendous flexibility that empowers us to be more in control of our very own workflows. I’m starting to think that we probably don’t have much of a choice anymore. Mobility is here to stay. It’s changing the way we work, connect, collaborate, share our knowledge, be in the know, innovate together, you name it. And if there is anything clear out there from today’s mobility landscape is that we are at long last breaking loose from that technology fetishism of being attached to a computer or a laptop and instead we are, finally, grabbing the tools in our hands, just like in the good old times, thousands of years ago!, to do what we know best: collaborate, share our knowledge, get work done together. Whenever. Wherever. With whomever. A warm welcome to the mobile digital nomads! We salute you!

As I have mentioned on yesterday’s blog post, I have just started my next round of business travelling that will be keeping me busy for the next few weeks. Summer is over, indeed, and it’s time to get back to work, as if we ever left it, right? Anyway, this week I will be going to both Nice and Amsterdam to participate at a couple of IBM driven events on the topics of Social Business and Adoption of Social Technologies. I’m currently en route to Brussels though, where I will be spending a few hours hanging out at the airport. Yes, I know the joys and glamour of travelling, in general. I guess, over time, you get used to it and you move on. This time around though, I have been thinking, and for a little while now, that I’ll be making a much more conscious effort of keeping up with blogging over here, since last time around I went through a rather extensive hiatus that took me quite a bit to recover from and it didn’t feel good. At all. So here’s my attempt at keeping things up and starting off right from the first day I’m away from my home office. Let’s see how far I can take the whole concept of moblogging. If you have been following this blog for a little while now I am sure you may have noticed how my blogging style is usually that one of writing relatively lengthy articles where I usually start off with an idea, then I dive into a whole bunch of research, start connecting with a bunch of other ideas and links to other blog entries, articles, news items, etc., see what sense I can make into it all and hopefully conclude with the same idea and what I learned from the whole process, giving an opportunity to learn as well from everyone’s thoughts about it on the comments, which is perhaps my favourite process from business blogging overall, because that’s usually when I get to learn the most out of the whole process of self-reflection and thinking out loud associated with blogging. Basically, an introduction of the idea, development of the same idea with links and interesting references to similar ideas, and share a conclusion as a result of it that will hopefully trigger some kind of reaction out there, anywhere, any which place, at any given time. Then, as time allows and conversation(s) develop, time to dive back and respond to comments people leave adding their additional input into the conversation. I have been trying to tame that process for my blog posts all along, specially, in the area of keeping them shorter, following great examples like those of Seth Godin and Euan Semple, two of my favourite bloggers and essential reads of the day, who always hit the nail right on the head with sharp, brief, but equally thought provoking bursts of pure genius. And yet, time and time again, I keep failing.  See? Like now, for instance. Point well made already, I guess. Either way, at some point I used to worry about it, thinking that people would not be really much interested in reading those lengthy blog articles, but, apparently, plenty of you folks out there do enjoy the reads, and keep coming back for more, leaving some absolutely delightful feedback comments. So I learned to live with it, accept it, embrace such blogging style, and do my very best in keeping up with those book-like chapters, as a bunch of you have suggested to me for a while already. Perhaps one day those blog chapters will turn themselves into full books, who knows. Well, for now, I’m willing to start a new experiment though and see how it would work. With the excuse of being mobile with all of this business travelling coming up and therefore having less time to create proper lengthier blog posts I have decided to give it another try at putting together shorter blog entries, on the go, where I will just point to something that I may have found rather interesting, worth while referencing and instead of just linking to a bunch of other related ideas and trends of thought I will just leave it at that pointing folks to that single idea that trigger that initial reaction. Then, whenever both time and work would allow, I plan to keep up putting together those longer articles hoping to still do a bit of that deep thinking that I think we all need to go through every now and then, instead of snacking around. I guess it’s just like with food. Some times we do enjoy and treasure having some lovely tapas and some other times we just rejoice at the prospect of a rather nice full meal with friends where the conversation is just as good as the company, never mind the food!  That’s it! That’s what I will be doing from now onwards. Worth a try, I can imagine. Perhaps this longer blog post helped me develop an idea that I have been having at the back of my mind for a while now and that I thought would be worth while sharing it across: make the connection between business blogging and food (Yes, I know, I guess that’s what #foodies do all the time, that is, associate everything with food! hehe) and consider that some blog entries would be like some of the gorgeous Spanish tapas I am sure you have had the treat of enjoying them any which place, any time and then some other blog entries as full meals where magic comes along in the shape of that absolutely brilliant conversation with friends, usually accompanied with good wine, or a after drink or two.   I am sure that at this point in time you may be thinking that I could well be doing that through social networking sites like my two favourite ones: Google Plus and Twitter. And you may be right, but then again I also thought that perhaps it may well not be such a good idea. Initially, because while I’m on the road, participating in a good number of events, I will be doing quite a bit of extensive live tweeting at @elsuacon and, secondly, for Google Plus it may well be a bit too much, since I have just gotten started with a new initiative in there that I’ll be blogging about next and which I think would help me diversify my interactions a bit. But more on that shortly …  I think it was my good friend, and KM mentor, Dave Snowden, the one who once commented about when talking about social computing and social networking interactions, and probably like everything else in life, one shouldn’t be putting together all of one’s eggs in a single basket, just in case, and I am guessing that’s essentially what I will be doing at this point, and, hopefully, from here onwards: blogging, Google Plus, Twitter, Flickr, etc. etc. will help me have multiple baskets where I can place those eggs without thinking I’m kind of missing out or something. Somehow, for a mobile knowledge (Web) worker I guess it could well work. However, I think folks would also need to understand that some times nothing may just happen, too! Work can get in the way, actually, it’ll always try to do so! Real life conversations, right where my favourite social networking activities keep taking place, will still have priority and just seeing the whole bunch of colleagues, friends, and people I have treasured over the course of time whom I will be meeting up over the next few week … Like I said, there may be some times where, for a day or two, I will go quiet. Fear not, I’ll be coming back. It’s just that at this point in time I probably need to strike some more for something that I have been feeling I have lost a bit of touch with, perhaps due to the summer vacation, in the realm of the Social Web: balance. Hope you folks would help me strike a good one keeping things going with this new experiment of combining social networking interactions with some blogging full meals & Spanish tapas, while I’m on the road for the next couple of months, so that we can keep up with those conversations, whether short or longer ones! And if there is a chance that we will be able to meet up face to face I shall be looking forward to go for a drink or two along the way! Reach out on the usual places and let’s make it happen! Thanks ever so much, as usual, for sticking around! It’s greatly appreciated! Let’s do it!

All along, and ever since I started making use of Google Plus, over a year ago, I have been saying time and time again how, to me, it is probably one of the most powerful Social Networking Sites available out there on the Social Web, allowing us all, knowledge Web workers, not only to live social, but also to get work done, never mind the huge amount of deeper conversations one can certainly host over the course of time and that we are starting to see more and more by the day now that a whole bunch of people are starting to realise the huge potential versus other social networking tools. The combination of multiple levels of interaction from a same single user interface is a killer. Public vs. private vs. dedicated interactions - through circles -, offline social networking through text, real-time with IM, videoconferencing with Plus Hangouts, one of my favourite features, without a doubt!, broadcasting events through Hangout On Air, a phenomenal mobile experience with stunning iOS Apps for both iPhone and iPad, etc. etc. are just a few of the capabilities that have made Google Plus escalate to number #2 position for yours truly of social technologies to enjoy nowadays. And I suppose I’m not the only one thinking along those terms. But I’m now wondering whether we may all have an opportunity to up the game for Google Plus and try to prove what’s really made of. Take it to the next level. Show and demonstrate how it can take productivity and effectiveness into new heights and how it can help you build your online reputation like no other social networking site may have done in the past, perhaps with the well known exception of your own personal business blog, as I have blogged about it in the past. Well, here’s what I am doing to level up Google Plus then for myself… I have always been fascinated by the whole concept of narrating my work, working out loud and observable work (a.k.a. #owork). I have blogged about them in the past already a few times and it never ceases to amaze me the huge impact each and everyone of them have been having in helping transform the corporate world as we know it, within the larger context of Social Business. Once again, nothing to do really with technology, but more with attitude (One of my favourite key terms when talking about corporate culture as of late. Isn’t it everything about attitude and what we do about it?), with that shifting of gears, of mindsets, of human behaviours, where knowledge workers become more open and transparent about their own workload, strongly believing that by doing that not only are they helping themselves to become more effective and productive by raising their visibility by demonstrating their subject matter expertise, but also helping others excel at what they are good at, along with helping their organisations build a huge amount of information and knowledge flows freely available to everyone, where before they were all trapped in a good number of corporate silos, regardless of the current excuse du jour.  Well, in that context of narrating your work, working out loud, I keep getting asked by folks outside of the firewall what it is that I do for work eventually inside IBM as a Social Computing Evangelist. And all along I have been trying to do my best in describing what I have been up to and what it is that I try to achieve at the end of the day. However, all along it’s been a bit of a challenge on its own, because in the vast majority of cases despite my eagerness to try to become more transparent and open on what I do to folks outside the firewall, external social technologies still keep presenting a good number of challenges: Twitter with the silly 140 characters limitation, amongst several others; LinkedIn because of the hugely aggressive Terms of Service which still continue to be a complete turn-off for yours truly; Facebook not much anymore since I deleted my account over 2 years ago and haven’t had a need to return back to it just yet (Doubt I ever will, since it’s kept that personal use flavour ever since I left it); Slideshare because of how heavy centric it is on presentation materials and a bit too tough when I no longer do them for public speaking; and a whole bunch of other starting social networking sites that bring forward lots of promise, but that they then end up being acquired by other major players and there goes all of the excitement.  Till we then bump into Google Plus itself, indeed! And that’s where it clicked for me a little while ago now, because the limitations  from other social networking sites are just not there. Quite the opposite. It’s got that unique opportunity to explore it for a good number of use cases from your day to day work and eventually see which one would stick out the most. I have got to admit that for a good number of weeks I struggled to keep up with it, having long periods of silence or sudden bursts that even me, I thought, were a bit too much over the top. All induced, perhaps, by some of the habits I have built up already over the course of years from several other social networking sites. But once I learned to build a new set of habits for my use of Google Plus things have finally clicked. And all thanks to a one single key concept that we all seem to be taking for granted, perhaps far too often, but that’s is critical to any good social networking behaviour: engagement. Yes, in Google Plus I no longer get to post as frequent as I perhaps do in Twitter. I’m lucky if I get 1 to 3 to 5 updates per day, depending on the context of what I may be doing. I am now totally fine with that! Just as much when a day, or two, or more! go by and I haven’t shared anything. That’s fine, too! I decided what I want to do is focus on the long term of the interactions, pretty much like with blogging and realise and embrace that some times you would have something to talk about and that in some others it’s much better to sit back, relax, enjoy the conversations flowing by and keep learning. In Google Plus I do care more for the conversations, taking the time to respond to each and everyone of the comments that come through, pretty much like I try to do on my personal business blog. Main reason being that it’s much easier to keep up with than with other social networking sites. I hardly ever share, broadcast any link, unless its content is just so powerful that I feel compelled to engage on a follow-up conversation with various people. I have built up the habit of sharing and commenting on links to other interesting readings, more than anything else as a learning experience for yours truly when interacting with others, build a bunch of food for thought which will then be reflected on upcoming blog posts, like this one. And so forth.  Essentially, what I decided to do with my Google Plus experience is to tailor it to be half way in between short bursts to connect with people all over the place, to then spark conversations on topics we both / all may care about and feel very passionate about and eventually develop deeper thinking about them that will see the end-result in blog posts. And over the last few weeks that seems to have worked incredibly well, to the point where one of the threads that I have started in there helped me prepare (Thanks ever so much everyone who participated in it!) the flow for one of the most important presentations I may be delivering in my lifetime next week Friday in Zurich. And this is where I feel narrating your work by working out loud with Google Plus would probably be my main use case for G+ from here onwards.  That’s right, from now onwards, I plan to continue making use of the following hash tags to share a glimpse, or two, of what it is that I go through at work as a social computing evangelist with the aim of inspiring some more observable work coming along. So, to that extent I will be using #elsuasworkbook #narrateyourwork #workingoutloud #observablework #owork plus whatever other hash tags related to the context of what I will be sharing. One of the other perks and advantages of doing so as well is to be able to capture plenty of the activities I’ll be involved with throughout the year, so when year end comes along I will have a good overview of what I may, or may not!, have accomplished throughout. And since it’s going to be shared out there in the open and transparently, I am hoping it would also benefit other folks as a result of it.  Thus, if you are just catching up now, and would want to take a peek of what I have been doing over the last couple of months, go ahead and dive into it, see how narrating my work is helping me become more effective and productive at what I do with Google Plus and I do hope as well some of that content shared may be compelling enough for you to drop by and share a comment or two and keep the dialogue going … I will surely be looking forward to it! Pretty much like I have been doing on this blog all along… Yes, I know what you may be thinking about … will Google Plus replace this blog over time, like it’s done for a good number of people out there already? No, I don’t think so. At least, not yet. My blog is still my blog, my voice, my online CV, my business card, my virtual self. Google Plus though is just about to help amplify and augment that voice one notch higher…

Dear Amazon,Many of us are glad that you've started your services in India. In fact, your presence has made our India e-tailers be far more competitive than they otherwise would have been and we, the customers have been eventual winners. We appreciate this. What we would appreciate more however, is for you and your marketplace vendors to treat your customers well and to offer the same first class service that your pride yourself on in the states.We recently received one of the most rude customer service responses ever - one that we'd have never associated with Amazon. We'd like Amazon and the readers of this post to decide what's fair.Now what does that screenshot from Amazon tell you? Exactly what it tells us - that the shipping is free! And that's all we expected. It also tells us that this order is Amazon Fulfilled. What you say this means is, the following:Orders are eligible for FREE Delivery and can be placed using Cash on DeliveryProducts are stored, packed and dispatched by AmazonOrder delivery tracking to your doorstepProducts can be returned easily by visiting our Returns Support CentreAmazon handles all customer serviceOrders containing items Fulfilled by Amazon worth Rs. 499 or more are eligible for FREE delivery.Note: For a limited time, there is no minimum order value and delivery is FREE for all items Fulfilled by Amazon.As it turns out, Aum Entertainment, the marketplace vendor selling this item ended up adding an Expedited Shipping charge of ₹52/- to our order. The cost isn't as much of a big deal, as the fact that on principle this is against Amazon's promise for "Amazon Fulfilled" orders. When we contacted Amazon about this issue, hoping that "Amazon handles all customer service", we got redirected to Aum Entertainment. When we explained the issue to them, they replied saying,"We have only Expidited service and use Amazon Easy Ship hence we charge shipping Charges we do not have standard Delivery option for your area."This of course is really lame claim. We are in downtown Bangalore! Amazon does ship to our location! Additionally, when you say "Expedited Shipping", the package better arrive in time. The package took 5 days to arrive. Most importantly we were concerned about the opacity of the charge. When we protested however, the vendor, not Amazon, responded very rudely saying,before you Place an order u have 3 times to see what u are ordering and what you are paying and before u click on buy now you again have the option to see what u are paying and what you are ordering in case you are not intd u can cancel the order . the fault is yours so Pls do not Blame the seller for your mistakes.So, dear Amazon here are questions for you:What happened to our Free Shipping? Why this exception on our order? Do you let your vendors make exceptions on Amazon Fulfilled orders?If you store, pack and dispatch orders, why are you delegating the response to the vendor?Do you take ownership of this customer service? Is a rude response like this what characterises your company?It may just be the question of ₹52/- but I hope you agree that you owe us an answer and at the very least a written apology! Otherwise, your reputation as "Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company" really takes a hit in my world.Thanks in anticipation,A rather upset customer© Sumeet Moghe

OvervieweLearning is fast growing in India. elearning is mostly delivered in two modes — Web Based Training (WBT) and Instructor Lead Training (ILT). Computer Based Trainings (CBTs) are used these days only when standalone learning is in demand, like training on your new mobile handset or a latest gadget that you have purchased. Wherever there is a need for training a large audience, it is more economical to have Web Based Training (WBT) over Instructor Led Training (ILT). There are advantages of one over the other and using one method doesn't eliminate the other one. Overall effective elearning solutions can save organizations a lot of money and increase their return on investment, besides the convenience and accessibility offered to the learners.Roles in the elearning industryeLearning demands a variety of roles like Instructional Designers, content editors, document reviewers, Subject Matter Experts (SME), Authoring personnel or content integrators, Graphic Designers, 3D modelers, animators, LMS (Learning Management System) administrators and programmers, etc.Who needs elearning?At a high level companies/industries who require elearning professionals can be categorized into two types — product and service companies. Product companies use elearning as a medium to create product training for their customers and internal staff that use and / or work on or develop the products. Service companies take the work outsourced to them from clients who prefer outsourcing over internal development. These service companies are equipped with the resources, skills sets, and infrastructure that are required to execute these projects.Domains which elearning benefits elearning serves as a viable solution for several different domains. The aviation industry was one of the first to identify a need for having online learning and thus many of the based standards and processes were laid down by the aviation industry. In general depending on the training demand in a particular domain companies require different types of elearning solutions. An airline company or manufacturer may require training in the field of aviation, whereas a technical products company may require training in the domain of ERP, Messaging, ESB, networking, databases etc.To provide the requisite technical knowledge for a domain, Domain or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are to work with an Instructional Designer to create the course structure, content outline and detailed design. Applying knowledge on Instructional Design Theories, Models, and strategies the Instructional Designer structure's and fleshes out a course which is finally and integrated by graphic designers and content integrators. Finally the course is deployed on an LMS and hosted from there.The evolving industry In my opinion, several companies in the industry aren't matured in to the levels in demand. By matured I mean having established processes and well documented and tested standards and guidelines for delivering effective training solutions. Abroad, this field is at a much higher and more professional level. One of the major reasons for this is that there aren't many graduate/postgraduate courses in this field in India while there are such opportunities abroad. There may be few very good companies, but the list of companies in this field in India is very huge. eLearning is India is gradually evolving due to the initiative taken by professionals to walk the extra mile by learning from other sources and developing processes and standards based on the business needs and the market demands. This has led to the evolution of more streamlined and process based approaches which have delivered high quality professional learning solutions.Another facet of this is the out sourcing of course development from structured process driven companies who had already defined standard models due to their vast experience in the domain of creating elearning courses. An example of this is Microsoft learning who has been a leader in delivering training and certification for more than a decade. When Microsoft out sources their courses to a vendor they train and groom vendors to follow their standards and models, and in the long term this enables vendors to understand and create processes of their own. Besides this some leading elearning companies in India like NIIT and TIS have played a major role in training and grooming individuals aspiring to make a career in the elearning domain.Whats next?And thus the elearning industry in India continues to grow and mature. We need to keep watching out for how the trends change over time and what the next generation of elearning courses could be like!

A couple of days ago, one of my favourite Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business thought leaders and blogger extraordinaire, Oscar Berg, put together a rather inspiring article that I thought would be worth while reflecting on, specially, since it is at the heart of not just social software, but also collaboration and knowledge management in general. Indeed, in "Why do people share?" he comes to reflect on perhaps one of the toughest challenges to answer for any knowledge worker out there: why do you share your knowledge across? Even more so when the vast majority of people just don’t share theirs out there openly and transparently in the first place. Not even a fraction. Why do we do it then? Or, even better, why don’t we do it? Oscar points out a good number of reasons, with some rather interesting additional reading materials, as to why we are so inclined to share what we know with others without even asking for much in return: sharing as a gift, as a key motivator to increase our reputation, as we seek emotional communion, etc. etc. And while reading through the entire article, which I can certainly recommend, specially, the link to Nancy Dixon‘s superb entry on "The Incentive Question or Why People Share Knowledge", I just couldn’t help thinking myself about my very own motivations to share my knowledge across out there, whether internally and externally, more than anything else as a self-reflection exercise trying to answer *why* do I do it and why do I keep doing it, and most, importantly, why can’t I conceive a business world where we couldn’t survive without sharing our knowledge across for others to benefit from it. I can see Oscar’s points about sharing as a gift or to increase your reputation or as a method to seek that emotional communion. However, if I come to think about what drives me to share my knowledge out in the open over the last 15 years that I have been working in the corporate world, the motivators are sligthly different. To name: Knowledge Sharing is the Learning, Learning is the Knowledge Sharing Indeed, all along, and ever since I was first exposed to traditional Knowledge Management, over 15 years ago, it really hit me to think that perhaps one of the most profound key accelerators for one’s learning is that one of sharing your knowledge out there, in the open, and the more, the better, allowing others to benefit from it, contrasting it, challenging it, reframing it (What Harold Jarche has been talking about lately on Seek, Sense and Share, that another good friend of mine, Jack Vinson, captured so nicely in a recent blog post under a very suggestive heading: "Seek-Sense-Share is iterative"), instead of seeing it stagnate, inside your brain, because you never give it an opportunity to let it grow through that enriching experience of knowledge exchanges with other knowledge workers. To me, since we are all embarked on a lifetime learning experience of what we know, what’s around us, who we are, what we do and why we do it, who we connect with, etc. etc. knowledge sharing is innate to our human nature of wanting to connect and collaborate with others. We, human beings, are social beings, and as such have been bound to share what we know with others, so that our learning curve never becomes flat. On the contrary.  The interesting challenge though is how over the course of the last few decades we have been "educated" to reject such human nature and instead of sharing our knowledge not only for our very own benefit, but that of others, we have been taught how we need to protect it, to hoard it from others, because "knowledge is power" and if we release our knowledge, we release our power, when we all know it’s rather the opposite: knowledge SHARED is power. Thank goodness for social networking tools we are now, finally, starting to realise about the damage that unnatural behaviour of not sharing our knowledge across has done to the corporate world, academia and our societies in general. It’s just like we are finally breaking free from that "information is power" yoke to fully comprehend we cannot longer neglect, nor ignore, what we were born to live by in the first place: share our knowledge openly. Share out stories. Sharing is all about helping others Indeed, this is perhaps one of the key motivators that plenty of people seem to have forgotten about all along. Pretty much along the lines of what Oscar mentioned about sharing as a gift, I keep telling folks that one of the most powerful things we can all do as humans is to eventually help other human beings when they are in need, and in order to do that we would need to start by sharing our knowledge and experiences, know-how, skills, lessons learned, etc. etc. In short, by sharing. It’s all part of what Dave Snowden has been advocating all along as one of the main principles behind traditional Knowledge Management and which would still apply very much to Social Networking for Business today. In "Rendering knowledge", to quote: "In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge". Here is an example: no matter how busy you may well be, no matter how much, or how little, knowledge you may have about a particular topic, no matter whether you are new to an organisation or a seasoned knowledge worker, if a fellow colleague would be asking you for help, because they may feel you may be able to help them, it is going to be almost impossible for you to neglect providing that help in the shape of sharing your knowledge. We just do it. It’s in our nature. It’s part of that equation of trusting your peers, your networks, your communities, the folks around you, the ones whose personal business relationships you have been cultivating all along and for a reasonable amount of time. And once you have shared that piece of knowledge and helped your peer(s) there is nothing more gratifying than seeing them excel at what they are already good at. It’s that feeling of knowing you have done the right thing. It’s that feeling of fulfillment seeing how those folks around you keep succeeding, because you have taken the time to help them succeed. They succeed, you succeed. You succeed, they succeed. Sharing is all about leaving a legacy behind for others to treasure Ever since I started getting involved with traditional knowledge management, then moved into collaboration, then online communities and, lately, social computing / networking, I keep telling people that one of the main key personal benefits of participating, engaging, and sharing your knowledge in social networks is that ability to build a legacy for which people would be able to remember you over the course of time. Indeed, what most other folks know as your personal (digital) brand. Part of our human nature, once again. We love telling stories, we heart learning from stories (whether our very own, or stories from those who we trust the most), we rejoice from learning what other people are doing to leave a mark behind that would help us remember them when they are gone. We treasure and nurture all of those knowledge sharing exchanges that happen on the fly, allowing the magic of serendipity to do the rest. Yet, if you look into the corporate environment we seem to have forgotten about leaving a legacy, as if we didn’t care back then, we don’t care now. Time and time again I keep talking to fellow colleagues who haven’t dived into social networks just yet about how they are missing a huge opportunity to build their own legacy for others to remember and treasure when they are gone. The fact that they keep hiding behind their mobile phones, or their favourite Instant Messaging client or, even worse, their eMail Inboxes, is not helping them much. You see? Whenever you would be ready to leave your organisation and move into your next adventure the first thing that Human Resources does is wipe out, *entirely*, such tools. And before you realise all of "your history" is gone! For good! And, even worse, without allowing anyone to take a peek at it! There goes your so-called personal brand. I know that plenty of very experienced knowledge workers would be thinking that at that time, on the verge of perhaps reaching retirement, they wouldn’t care that much about not having that legacy and what not. And, to be honest, that’s probably one of the saddest things you can hear nowadays. How can’t you care much about your last 25 to 35 years (Or more!) of a hard working, professional life, where you have spent more than one third of your lifetime dedicated and committed to one, or several!, of your passions? Really? Is that how we all plan to live our one single life nowadays to think that we don’t care about leaving a legacy behind? I am not sure what you would think, but I would tend to think it would be rather the opposite. Otherwise, what’s the point? What are we doing for our future generations to help them remember who we are, what we do, why we do what we do? Least we could do is to give them an opportunity to be exposed to that legacy based on the knowledge we have shared, who we connect with, how we collaborate and innovate together and whatever else. Imagine if in 15 to 20 to 30 years from now people would not remember who you are anymore, specially, those who you have cared for the vast majority of your lifetime. Please do tell me that you care, that you are working your way towards leaving that legacy to those behind us. For their benefit. For our benefit. For everyone’s benefit. It’s the least we can all do at this point, don’t you think? This blog post, indeed, has been quite an interesting and unexpected reflection for yours truly on what motivates me every day when I wake up to come to work and share my knowledge out there. It’s not just that urge and eager need to connect and collaborate with others, to share that common passion across with those who I trust the most, to belong to a larger mission, to share that responsibility for what we do and who we are, to own it; to me sharing is all about pushing further my own learning experiences, to never stop learning, to always keep up with that critical thinking mentality that allows me to grow both intellectually and emotionally, to help others keep excelling at what they do, understanding that if they are successful on their own ways I, too, will be successful. How by going the extra mile for them they become better at what they do and they eventually make me better as a result of it, and how, as a result of all of that, at the end of the day, it’s all about the legacy each and everyone of us leaves behind in this world so that through that collective knowledge gathering and sharing experience we help future generations to build a better, smarter world, not just for them, but for future generations. Their own future generations. Today, we are just planting the seeds for them to start collecting the harvest  tomorrow, when the time is right, but if we don’t open up enough to share what we know now, we may not reach that common goal eventually in the long run. So, why do you share your knowledge? What drives you every morning out of bed to do what you do and to care for what you care? Because there is probably something out there that you care for, right? Whether it’s your family, friends, relatives, colleagues, your work, your community, this world., etc. etc. What is it that drives you to share your knowledge and experiences eventually? What’s your legacy? Dare to share it across?

Let's come to the basic question as to what do we do as instructional designers?Understand learner profilesCreate curriculums, course outlines, storyboardsReview developed content for accuracy etc etcOver and above all this, what we should be doing as 'good' instructional designers, is to be able to suggest appropriate learning solutions based on learner need and business demands. For any of these activities a vital component is 'SME support'.In my experience as an instructional designer I have had experiences with SMEs from different domains.My first experience was to create learning content for the aviation industry. My company bagged contracts from several aviation majors like Airbus, Finnair, Snecma, Saudi Arabian etc. Here we worked on courses for audiences like cabin crew, pilots, flight dispatchers, maintenance personnel. In this industry our SMEs would be persons with aviation & training backgrounds. Working for this industry was fairly simple in one way that the syllabi or curriculums for each type of audience is globally standard with the existence of the FAA and JAA (Flight Aviation Authority and Joint Aviation Authority).A typical process we followed to:Derive the course/curriculum outlines from customer requirements and standard recommended syllabi.Create lesson plans for each lesson defined in the course consisting of the course objectives, lesson objectives, key teaching pointsDevelop storyboards based on the the lesson plans.All through the process we would work with SMEs at all stages to suggest guide and review the technical part and structure of the lessons / courses. Since this was a service based company SMEs would be paid for the time they spent on the courses and besides this we also had a full time SME always available. Work was fun and interesting as you work on topics like, flight planning, meteorology, ETOPS, aircraft systems, etc.My second experience was with working for a products company where the client and SMEs would be in-house. This is a place where i first experienced working on highly technical products and the experience was truly worthwhile. The experience with SMEs was significantly different from my previous experience. Here we had to respect SME time as SMEs were part of the same organization and had their own targets to achieve.Here we came across several kinds of SME profiles consisting of product managers, engineering team members/managers, professional consultants, QA, documentation persons and instructors. Each kind of SME can provide specific inputs related to their job which can in turn add more value to the courses and curriculum.Here the task was to :- Analyze audience needs- Perform task analysis- Create curriculums and come up with learning tracks- Come up with business scenarios and use cases- Design course outlines and develop storyboardsOnce again all this is done by soliciting inputs from SMEs. Hence the role of a SME very clearly critical for the technical accuracy of course content, while an instructional designers role is conducive to the instructional quality, structure and flow of the training.The only other perspective I see is that if IDs are expected to learn and become product experts and trainers, then they have to choose between being a training solution provider for different training domains, and graduating to be subject matter experts themselves! This is a tough choice sometimes....

As you may have seen it already, once again, I am on the move. This time around to Zurich, Switzerland, to go and present at the Joint Alumni Conference - JAC 2012 event, perhaps on what may well be one of the most important and relevant speeches I may be delivering to date, around the topic of "The Future of Work in the Age of Social Business", which is turning out to be one of my favourite topics to talk about at the moment, for that matter. Over the last few weeks I have been working on the dissertation itself for this particular event and time and time again I have been thinking about different ways of how I would introduce the topic to such a rather selected audience. Who would have told me then though that, despite all of the various different iterations I have been working on so far, I would be going eventually for the one I fully experienced during the course of today, on my way there, as perhaps one of the most powerful introductions on Social Business I have done to any presentation I may have delivered so far in the last few months. As part of the series of "Social Business Is People to People Business", here’s the next take of what living social is all about. This time around with an unexpected surprise: Iberia. The future of work is social. I haven’t got a doubt about it. And, after today, even more so. The future of work is going to be exciting, too! It’s going to help knowledge workers become more empowered, more autonomous, more trustworthy, more motivated and engaged, more open and transparent than ever before carrying out important, meaningful and purposeful knowledge work. Work that they care for, work for which they have built certain attitude to do it just right, in short, work that aims at perhaps the panacea of what doing business nowadays should be all about: delighting your customers.  After today’s experience, which I will start detailing shortly, I am 100% convinced that we are not going to have it any other way. On the contrary, we, customers in general, are going to start aiming higher and higher at what excellent customer service should be all about. And we are perhaps going to start demanding it more and more as well! And rightly so, to be honest. It’d be about time, too!, don’t you think? Here is why … Here is another story as to why the future of work is social.  If you have been following this blog, and my various social networking interactions over the course of time, you may well remember how I get to travel quite a bit for work and throughout all of those years I have been on the road, or up in the air, I keep having a good number of unpleasant experiences, in general, to the point where I have learned to develop lots of extra patience, resilience and perseverance in order to learn to live with it and move on. Well, today it was different. Totally different. Today, for the first time, in a long while, I have been having one of the most gratifying customer experiences I can remember as a road / air warrior. And all of that with what it is turning out to be one of my favourite airlines out there: Iberia.  As I keep writing this article further along, I am sure most of you folks out there would be thinking that I am crazy, right? I mean, Iberia? Really? Iberia is your favourite airline nowadays? Are you really sure? Well, yes! And here’s the reason why… excellent customer service through a rather unexpected channel: Twitter. Indeed, like I was saying, earlier on today, I was supposed to take a plane from Madrid to Zurich arriving about early afternoon to then get everything ready for tomorrow’s presentation at JAC 2012. Everything was going according to plan. No delays, no additional, last minute problems. Just everything perfect. For a change. So we get on the plane, take off and about one hour later, approximately, the captain tells us that the two systems that regulate the cabin pressure of the plane both broke and we needed to lower our altitude to the point where eventually we needed to divert our course and head to our nearest airport, which, at the time, was Barcelona. The tone of the message was rather reassuring and calm, so everyone did just that: remain calm. And perhaps a bit defeated that once again something did eventually happen, although without further consequences. Something for which I am very grateful altogether on its own! So there they went, all of our intentions to arrive on time In Zurich on another uneventful trip. We got off at Barcelona airport and this is where the story begins and where it’s changed completely my view of the airline itself. When we all arrived to the airport all of the passengers headed to the Transfer Desk to see what was happening and to find out plenty more details as to whether we would be able to fly again that evening or in the early morning. I didn’t. I decided to remain, lag behind and instead get my iPhone up and running and go into Twitter. After all, I was supposed to meet up a group of colleagues to catch up and needed to tell them I was going to be running late and perhaps not make it altogether, if we were going to leave the next morning. So I told everyone what happened, about the incident, about how everyone was all right, about how we all remained calm (Despite the good amount of recent events that have been reported in the press that I am sure we are all far too familiar with for multiple other airlines) and how we were all waiting for things to happen…  At that point, it occurred to me that I could query @Iberia and see if they would know what was actually happening. What was the failure about, how long we would need to wait for something to happen and whether we would be leaving for Zurich eventually, after all. And lo and behold within a few minutes I got a lovely response back from the @Iberia folks confirming the problem, how they found out from their colleagues they were sending another plane from Madrid to Barcelona and how about one hour later we would be taking that one from BCN to our final destination and how everything was going back to normal. And there I was, from feeling a bit uncomfortable, tense, perhaps a tad too nervous about what was happening, waiting for more news to come through, I got all I needed: the right information to reassure me (us all, in the end) we were being taken good care of.  From there onwards, I no longer felt that I needed to go to the Transfer Desk to inquire any longer. Word started spreading pretty quick and before we all knew it we were all enjoying a refreshment waiting for the next flight to arrive. And it surely did! 35 minutes ahead of the scheduled time we were told! Once again, that distress, uncomfortable situation of not knowing what was happening, which is usually the feeling one has when travelling, was transformed into excellent customer service and all of that thanks though a delightful exchange of tweets, not just with the folks behind @Iberia, but also a couple of other folks (Aviation enthusiasts for that matter, who were tuning in on how the plane got diverted for no apparent reason), and also my own social network(s) who all kept me entertaining sharing glimpses of what was happening to them while they interacted with me to confirm whether I was ok and being taken care of, which I was.  Yes, I can imagine! I am sure you may all be thinking this success story is an easy one. I mean, so easy to keep your customers informed about what’s happening, right? Specially, while they are on the move… Well, the thing is that it’s not happening as often as it should! Like I have mentioned above, I travel quite a bit throughout the whole year and this was the first time any airline tuned in on to their social channels (Twitter, in this case), to go the extra mile and help their customers get comfort after a rather interesting incident which turned itself into just another anecdote, which is essentially what happened after we got the information we needed. Now, imagine this whole scenario without having social technologies helping out. Imagine the chaos of several dozens of people piling up, complaining about their own rights, about having good information on what’s happening, about their vouches for refreshments while the wait ensured, etc. etc. Yes, I am sure it’s not hard to imagine. It would have been a complete chaos. Mayhem unleashed. And yet, a couple of exchanges with @Iberia through Twitter and we are all good. Yes, just that, 2 or 3 exchanges in Twitter and we are back in business! Needless to say that this success story, just like it did for Movistar a little while ago and that I have blogged about over here, can only mean something, something that we all seem to take for granted, but that, time and time again, it’s incredibly difficult to gain and enjoy for much longer nowadays as we have all become rather disenchanted: customer loyalty and employee engagement. Because you know, happy and engaged employees surely help cultivate happy customers. Each and every time. Indeed, thanks to that helpful exchange on Twitter, one gets to comprehend how the future of work is social, how Social Business is all about people to people business and how customers don’t interact with brands to get their problems addressed and fixed and their needs met. Customers talk to people, people who take ownership of their customers’ problems and whom, within a matter of minutes, ensure that problem has been taken care of and a proper resolution is on the way, depending on the context, obviously. Essentially, no matter what people out there may well say, that’s what customers care about. Perhaps not so much about engaging with those brands per se, but more talk to people to have their problems solved, so that they can move on. And since that’s just what has happened to me that can only mean one thing: my new favourite airline out there to do business with is … @Iberia. Just another business that has embarked already on that fascinating journey to become a successful socially integrated enterprise. In short, another business that, finally, shows and demonstrates fully, by walking the talk with these social technologies, how to care about their own customers: From people to people solving their problems by making them their own, while finding a solution in a timely manner. That, folks, is what a Social Business is all about! And, I do realise that this may well be just an isolated occurrence, so we will have to wait and see about that! But, for now, once again, Iberia is showing everyone the way… It’s now up to us to follow suit. [ I already have, by the way. They just landed themselves a new, happy AND loyal customer ]

I worked with a company that created aviation training and my transition to software technical training was met with several challenges. For one thing initially I did NOT understand the products by just reading up ILT and documentation. We started with conversion courses that put me into the comfort zone. Converting ILT to WBT was the perfect thing for someone like me with no prior experience in the use of such technical and complicated software products.The products were based on SOA and had concepts, (as deep as the Java language) to be understood in order to be used; finally there was the implementation part, the so-called production environment, where the customer implements the product in his organization, which the ID cannot see or imagine!The next course we got into got us chewing up every bit of our left over nails and wondering where we could run and hide. This was a newly acquired company that had a great product but no available documentation or training! And that was just the beginning of another whole journey of a course development cycle, as our SME was in another country from a 3rd party company. The company that was acquired had outsourced all of the work to this company and most of their expert team within the company were laid off or had left! This is where I began to realize how product knowledge becomes critical to your success in a product company irrespective of the role you play. The company looks to make everyone product literate so that it helps do our tasks with greater insight.The SME RealityIn time, I realized that being part of a software products company was one of the most challenging things for an ID. Contrary to common belief that since I was part of the same company that creates the products, I should have greater access to SMEs, the reality was exactly the opposite. The product teams are so deeply involved in their project schedules that they would never commit to providing us with a single person as a SME! Moreover, the product was so big and complex that it would take more than one individual performing a specific role to be able to give you all the information about features and facets to the product. Whew!Dealing with the situationOver time I learned to deal with a situation like this and following here you will find only solutions, so I can conclude this post on a positive note! Let's start with what are all the things we need to do in order to be able to plan and execute such complex courses successfully. In this post, I will only focus on the gathering of information and their sources. I plan to write more posts on how to analyze and segment this information to be able to produce effective courses for such products.Accessing information typesThe first thing you need to do is to identify and get access to all the available types of information within such a setup. Here is a high-level list of such information.Documented Information- You need to have written information in the form of blogs, wikis, documentation, feature design documents, course/ILT material to start learning stuff.Product Trainings - Look out for and get enrolled to any relevant product trainings that get scheduled. Do check on whether it is a high-level functional training, giving the benefits of the product and its features, which will be useful to your job, or a deep dive session, which will be mostly irrelevant to you.Hands-on Product experience - You need to install the product or get access to an environment and be able to implement and use the features of the product from a task point of view, over just playing around with the features casually. Learn the product with a specific goal in mind like create a process to take a purchase order using the product, and get it running. This will not be easy and you will need to get guidance from someone here.Implementation information - You need to have scenarios/use cases of how the product is used in the customer's setup or the so-called production environment. You have to be able to visualize the setup at a production environment and how the customer will use the product.Value added information - You need to have information about the real-time problems faced by the customers while implementing the products (remember all software products are never bug free and their real-time performance can only be assessed in production)That looks like a short list with just few high-level points, but believe me getting all this to get your course out is undoubtedly a herculean task, given that you also need to do your usual ID work, of audience analysis, task analysis (which I will cover in later posts) over and above all this. That's one of the reasons I decided to start blogging as it helps me to get thinking on a way to work these things out.Identifying your sources of informationGiven the challenges to getting these different information types, you need to identify the sources of such information. Well who else but multiple persons playing different roles on the product within the organization can provide such information? Let's identify the roles:The Software Engineer/DeveloperA great source of technical information to understand the product features and how to work with them. Ask them all you want to know about the product architecture, how components work with each other, where to find certain options/features etc. They also understand conceptual information a great deal, so leverage on it!Words of caution- They usually always know 'how' to do things but not necessarily 'why' you do things 'that' way and not any other way.- Sometimes due to the way the team is organized and time constraints, certain developers would only know some of the features/aspects and not all. So you need to find the right persons for your course.- They also may have no/limited knowledge on how the product is used in the real-time or in production.- They have little or no knowledge about how important a product/feature is to the audience and a particular role.The Quality Assurance engineerA great resource to ask about how the product installs, what environment it uses, what are the bugs/problems with the product currently. Ask them questions about concepts, test cases, what works what doesn't and why. They are also a good source of conceptual information and would be familiar with the product architecture and how it integrates with different components.Word of caution - Similar limitations to the development/engineering teams.Both Dev and QA folks are usually high on technical product knowledge and the workings of the internals of the product, rather than the implementation and functional perspective.Product ManagersThey are great resources for customer information, customer profiles, product positioning, correct terms to use in your courses and documentation, and how to present the product to the audience. Remember that product companies often use training and documentation as a means to subtly market the product and make it look more attractive.These are the people you should be asking the ‘why’ questions. For example: Why do we need this feature? How else can this task be accomplished or is this the only way?They can also point you to the right resources, collaterals, product demos to customers, etc. They have a good understanding of the functional working of the products and their integration with other products.You can ask them about how a customer uses the product, what features they use more often, use cases/scenarios, common problems etc. so that you can prioritize your content and improve relevance of the material.Word of caution- Do not expect them to know the internals and the workings of the product features to the same level of Dev/QA folks. The Dev/QA guys are the techies and only they can get you such information.Consultants and Professional ServicesThese folks are usually the implementation guys who go to the customer and help them install and implement the product. They also have a subtle marketing role associated to their portfolio. Their role is a post marketing strategy that serves as a benefit to the customer for implementing the product successfully, but also comes at a price.Though consultants and Professional Services vary in terms of the level of their expertise on the product, Professional Services being quite superior, these people are the right ones to give you implementation related information, best practices, do's and don't, tips and tricks etc. They usually know and understand all facets of the product related to the implementation. They may also be able to give you a greater insight into the workings of the product with other products/third-part software/plug-ins etc. These are also the right people to ask the ‘why’ question to.Word of caution- They may not know the product internals but understand the functional and implementation perspectives very well. Another downside is that you almost never get access to these guys, as they would always be onsite! You may try connecting to them through email.Product SupportThese guys take the calls for the customers who have paid for support on the product and help them resolve issues post implementation. This can be compared to a maintenance support role, where the customer using your product may have problems issues, questions, complaints, etc. The kind of information these guys would be able to give would be product bugs, common problems faced, troubleshooting information.Word of caution- Same as consulting/professional services.Note that Consulting/Professional Services and Support roles may not be distinct in all organizations as their structure may vary. You may need to identify folks by the roles they play and decide which category they fall into in my list above.Experienced Technical Writers/Trainers/InstructorsThese people are good resources because they learn the product as a result of their job and experience. They also often have hands on knowledge of working on the products. They are good people to consult on prioritizing the information you have, segmenting it, organizing and structuring it. There you go you have more help!Word of caution- Do not treat these peoples knowledge on the product as final. Use the previous resources for that.Wrapping upI just realize how huge this post has become, given that i don't get enough time to blog more often, I tried to package a lot into one blog post here.So to conclude on the above,- Gathering information in software product setups usually comes from multiple sources and never from a single SME.- People give you information based on their exposure to the product and their experiences. You need to filter out the right information by studying your audience and the tasks they will do using the product.- The above information types and sources may vary depending on company organization and their way of functioning. Several times, due to policies etc you may or may not have access to certain kinds of information.It is also important to ask the right people the right questions based on their roles, else it would seem like harassing them to give information on a domain that is not part of their key job role. So respect that and choose the right way to do this. Finally, make an effort to work your way through by making the right contacts, building a rapport with the right people and getting what you need. A good and professional personal rapport can add a whole new dimension to getting information! Remember good and effective communication can get you places…

As you may have seen from my recent live tweeting from over the last couple of days, I am returning back home from Zurich, Switzerland, one of my favourite European cities, after having presented at, and attended, the excellent Joint Alumni Conference 2012 event on what I think has been one of the most inspiring events that I have attended in a while. More than anything else, because it’s been a rather eye-opening experience for yours truly with regards to where we are with the adoption of social software and that social business transformation that a bunch of us have been advocating for for a few years now. I know that most people out there reading this article would not believe it, but those of you who may be thinking that we are done with the job and are ready to move along into the next thing could not have been more wrong! Ladies and gentlemen, Social Business is just getting started! And it’s a good time for us all, social computing evangelists and enthusiasts, to get out of our lovely, some times desired / needed, 2.0 echo chamber(s) and comfort zones and get to experience the business world in full force, because it’s completely different than what we think it is. There is still a lot of work to be done and we have only just scratched the surface. Roll up your sleeves, because we are not done here just yet. By far!  Yes, indeed, that has been the main ah-ha moment and massive wake-up call that I have been having while attending and presenting at JAC 2012. My fellow colleague, and good friend, Paivi Raty, invited me to participate on this event to talk about the topic of "The Future of Work", in general. To talk not only about the subject of Social Business and its impact in the corporate world, but also to talk about general trends of what’s happening with the traditional concept of both work and the workplace, with knowledge workers and the various generations, with mobility, with innovation, with leadership, etc. etc. As with all of my recent public speaking, I didn’t make use of any slide-ware to deliver the dissertation, but I did record it and those folks who may be interested in listening to it can download the .mp3 audio from this location (You may want to turn up the volume a bit since it came out a bit too soft!) I must confess that for a couple of months before the conference event took place I was a bit apprehensive, as well as incredibly excited for the opportunity, of course, more than anything else, because, if I recall correctly, it was the very first non-technical conference event that I participated in for a long long time, never mind related to Social Business, and I wasn’t really sure whether I was going to fit the profile or not, but since they say that in order to keep improving one self, one has got to throw one-self into the lions and leave that comfort zone I accepted the invitation and decided to go for it. And now that I am, finally, home, while reflecting about what I learned, it was a good decision. A very good one, actually.  It helped me understand how both the IT and the Business worlds are living separated lives in two bubbles that don’t talk to each other, necessarily. It helped me understand how that lack of communication between IT and the Business is not going to be much more sustainable in the current times we live in. It helped me understand as well how if IT would listen to the Business on the many various different challenges, problems AND opportunities it faces and if the Business would try to understand how IT could help address the vast majority of those, we would ALL be in a much much better position. It, finally, helped me understand how we need to start building a much more cohesive ecosystem where we would be combining both business and IT as part of the same equation: as ONE single entity, facing the same challenges, but also the very same opportunities. And I am just not talking about the dichotomy we see inside companies between the needs and wants of the business and the prerequisites and requirements from IT. I’m talking more about the fact of how the IT industry needs to start leaving its own comfort zone and start mingling further along with the rest of the industries, because, right now, there seems to be a huge disconnect between the two. In numerous occasions, while engaging in various different conversations at the event, talking with business leaders about their own firms, their strategies, their many challenges, etc. etc. I couldn’t just help thinking how for a good number of them technology could have made a huge difference in helping address them and find a solution for them. Yet, because both worlds don’t talk to each other, they both keep missing out from one another and therefore from these wonderful opportunities to keep innovating by making a difference. It needs to stop. And soon! Just as much as something else that I witnessed while at the event that I thought was rather remarkable: the huge disconnect between the IT / Business world and the world of Academia. I am hoping that I would be able to get hold of the presentations that I attended from a couple of professors from various universities who shared their insights and research on some really fascinating topics, because not only were they incredibly inspiring and rather resourceful, but they highlighted a bunch of really mind-blowing research that’s been done on how the current role of Leadership needs to change and adapt to face a brave new world. Covering both natural, born, networked leaders, to executives reaching all the way to the top. Incredibly inspirational research as well on how we need to shift gears on how we are viewing professional development in the corporate world, moving away from that extra focus on weaknesses of your knowledge workers into just focusing on their strengths to help them excel and achieve more at what they are already good at! Yes, the well known positive psychology and positive leadership. Lee Newman‘s on this topic was just brilliant! Like I said, lots of really good insights that I took away with me on a wide range of topics: Leadership, Healthcare, Finance, Sustanability, etc. etc. and that have made me realise I need to make a much more conscious decision from now onwards to start attending more business related events rather than just technology driven ones.  Specially, in the area of social business and social networking for business. I just felt that I kept missing the business part for far too long! It may well seem like our job is done, like I said above, specially, those folks who may have been heavily involved with driving such social business transformation at their own organisations, but I am starting to think that’s no longer enough. The ecosystem, yes, that one I blogged about a while ago, needs to GROW and fast! Stagnation is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to any kind of movement. If it doesn’t find a way to develop new trends of thought, if it doesn’t evolve, if it doesn’t continue to challenge the status quo of the corporate world in general, we are not going anywhere. We need plenty more cross-breeding. We all know that the business environment needs to change, but I am starting to strongly believe that it needs to change with a purpose: not just that one of aiming at sustainable, and profitable growth for everyone, not just a few, but also how it is going to reflect into our societies, where we are all starting to sense how the business needs to come closer to our society in general, in order to provide us all with an opportunity to strive for a better world, not just for us, and our children, but for many future generations to come! For far too long the corporate world has been totally disengaged with taking ownership and responsibility for how it can help societies flourish and boom in a sustainable and resourceful manner. It’s just been far too focused on amassing huge profits, power and greed for the benefit of just a few, while destroying the resources, and the planet, for that matter!, we all live in. And if there is anything that I am starting to strongly believe in is how Social Business can help glue both the corporate world into our societies to become ONE. That single one entity that each and everyone of us, humans, continue to build, nurture and cultivate over the course of time. More than anything else with the growing urge for businesses to drive societies into becoming much more sustainable, profitable, relevant, purposeful, educated, meaningful, etc. and for societies to help businesses re-find a new purpose where that power and greed that I mentioned above both stop being the main key drivers. Essentially, what Don Tapscott brilliantly stated at his recent TED Talk: Business Can’t Succeed in a World That’s Failing. There is probably a whole lot more that I could talk about from what I learned about this event, but perhaps, instead of doing just that I will stop for now, thinking that several reoccurring themes will pop up again in upcoming blog posts over time, I am sure. But, for now then, if you would want to learn some more about what the event was like you could have a look into this .PDF file that I have created with all of the live tweeting I did during the course of the day and perhaps witness, a bit more in detail, why it’s probably a good time now for both the IT and the Business worlds to come together, one step closer, to help us all realise that business and societal transformation that we all know we need to go through, but that we keep postponing time and time again hoping it will fix itself on its own at some point. It won’t. The clock is ticking and we are running out of time. If you ever thought that social business was all done and dealt with, think again please, my fellow social computing evangelists. We are just getting started! And we better begin to hang out there a bit more to keep spreading the message, which is, I guess, what true social business evangelists need to be up to nowadays, specially, outside our very own comfort zones. Don’t you think?   Luis Suarez Live Tweeting Highlights from #jac12 Event, Zurich, September 2012 from Luis Suarez Exciting times, indeed! Time now, for me though, to prepare for the next business trip that will take me, over the next two weeks, to Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, Brighton, UK, and, finally, Montpellier, France. But more about that business trip in upcoming blog posts … 

You can start planning the design of your course once you have the requisite information. You can decide what is 'sufficient' based on some of the following points:1. You have information about your audience profiles.2. You have the business problem that needs to be solved.3. You have the product available for research.Once you have answers to the above, you can start making your course/curriculum plan. Though you might have heard these terms before, I will attempt to define them from a perspective that is more generic.Curriculum: A curriculum is a set of courses that are logically put together in order to provide a complete training solution for a single product. For example, you may have a single curriculum for an entire product, like a curriculum for learning how to use Adobe Photoshop CS4.Course: A high-level tangible task that a learner needs to accomplish in order to use a single or multiple features a product. Again this would depend on the complexity of the feature/s. So we can divide our curriculum to contain both basic and advanced courses.For example, our Adobe Photoshop CS4 curriculum may contain the following courses:1. Adobe Photoshop Basics2. Using Adobe Photoshop to Edit Bitmap Graphics3. Adobe Photoshop Advanced Concepts4. Creating Special Effects Using Adobe Photoshop5. Automating Tasks Using Adobe PhotoshopWhat have we done so far?- Identified the curriculum and what it aims at achieving- Based on the goal of the curriculum, we came up with a list of courses which are essentially task basedNow let’s get on with the rest of the task. Our goal is to create a curriculum and define the courses that would enable certain audience profiles to perform their activities effectively using the tool Adobe Photoshop. Here are the next steps.Identify your audienceIn order to design your curriculum, you need to know the roles your audience play. For example, let’s consider the following different users of Adobe Photoshop:1. Visual/Graphic Designer2. Photographer3. Usability engineer/GUI specialistDesign your objectivesThe next step is to define your course objectives. You can start with defining your terminal objective which you will further break down to the level of enabling objectives. The terminal objective is the high level objective that your course aims at achieving. When you analyze your terminal objective your break it down to the constituent tasks that enable the achievement of these objectives. These are your enabling objectives.Thus task analysis is a top down model that enables you to drill down from a course level to the level of identifying the lessons or modules or even the topics, that will constitute your course. It is a drill-down cycle, where you can continue this process till you have the most simplified unit, which could be a single task that the learner can learn to execute in one go.So let’s take a single course out of our list above and analyze the objectives.Course Name: Adobe Photoshop BasicsTerminal Objective: To familiarize the student with the basic concepts and tools available in Adobe Photoshop.Enabling Objectives:By the end of this course, the student should be:1. Familiar with the basic concepts of Adobe Photoshop2. Familiar with the menus and tools provided by Adobe Photoshop3. Able to use the user interface of Adobe Photoshop effectivelyNow the following enabling objectives each could be converted to a lesson:1. Basic Concepts of Adobe Photoshop2. Tools and Menus of Adobe Photoshop3. Using the Adobe Photoshop User InterfaceYou can use this method and continue to drill down based on the need. Now we’re almost done.Delivering your courseFollowing this, you can plan your course delivery method. Decide what will suit your audience better. Whether they would prefer to have online courses or instructor-led or blended. Typically it makes sense to deliver simpler and more conceptual courses online, but keep the advanced task oriented ones for an instructor-led course. This does not mean that you cannot make effective complex online courses, as you can come up with various strategies to make the courses engaging as well as effective. Scenarios and use cases are most effective for technical product training.Here are some sample curriculum and course design templates.Dr. Tony Karrer's blog post on Course and Courseware Fading - The Future of learning gives a more futuristic point of view to this model of traditional courseware.

The language for technical courses should be fairly simple, straightforward and formal, as the content is most often action or task oriented. A few general guidelines to write for such content are:Don't use irrelevant jargon to decorate your conversation. Doing such things will not help engage the learner, but distract his focus from the objective. Instead use short but relevant scenarios and examples that help the learner relate to their job. Relevance is a great attention grabber. For example: As an administrator, you are required to assign permissions to various users based on their job roles. Look up the master list of users, and assign the users to their roles using the User Administration tab.Always start the instruction step of a procedure giving the location of the object on which an action needs to be performed. For example: In the Volume Control dialog box, select the Advanced button.Always give the result of the action at the end of the step soon after the instruction. For example the result of Step 2 would be, The Advanced Controls for Volume Control dialog box opens.Use third person when it comes to technical documentation, but you could selectively use the second person. When it comes to online courses, try and keep a conversational undertone with a conscious effort to keep the seriousness of the topic. This would change if you are creating a story based learning course built around a real time scenario.Follow your style guide, but keep in mind that when you write for online learning you need to bring emphasis to certain words using styles. Certain times style guides do not address the needs of online learning courses. For example: In the Volume Control dialog box, select the Advanced button.Avoid using pronouns often in sentences when you are trying to indicate an action. For example: The sentence, Look up the master list of users, and assign them to their roles using the User Administration tab, is confusing over, Look up the master list of users, and assign the users to their roles using the User Administration tab.Use contractions where they help make your sentences more concise, as unnecessarily long sentences can also be distracting.Avoid using the gerund form of verbs unless absolutely necessary. For example: Use Run the setup file over Running the setup file. Always keep these guidelines in mind without forgetting that you don't want to sound like a robot and you need to do everything that will help your audience learn complex technical topics better .

It’s been a bit over two weeks since the last blog post I put together over here, where I was celebrating "The Joy of Business Travelling", and just as I got back from my next business trip, that, this time around, took me to Apeldoorn, Amsterdam, Brighton and Montpellier, I couldn’t help thinking that the sentiment behind that original entry is now even more accurate than ever! So much so that this time around I decided to keep quiet  on the blogging front on purpose and, instead, enjoy and get the most out of the face to face conversations I have been participating in with a wide range of Social Business evangelists and Social Collaboration enthusiasts, amongst several other people. And what a couple of weeks that have gone through so far! My goodness!  My head is still spinning along, but I suppose now that I’m back at home, it’s time to pick things up again and keep up with the blogging mojo. And what a better resume than talking a little bit about one of the main conversations I have been having in the last few weeks: Has Social Business matured enough compared to, say, two to three years ago? Where are we? Have we made any progress? What’s the state of Social Business today? Is our job now done and dealt with and perhaps time to move on? While most people would think either way, that is, either direction, I tend to think we are somewhere in between. And here is why…  There was a time when a business decided to embark on that fascinating and truly empowering Social Business journey that the conversation would usually start with something along these lines: "Yes, I want to have a Facebook for the Enterprise (running behind the firewall) and I want it yesterday!", or, my favourite one: "What’s the ROI of Social Media? Show me the money, please, or stop bothering me with all of this social nonsense". You know how it went; we, social computing evangelists, used to spend most of our time, energy, effort and hard work trying to set the right stage of how things may well get off to a good start. Perhaps you wouldn’t need to have a Facebook like solution in the first place, perhaps instead of focusing on the low hanging fruit of measuring the means to a goal, you should focus instead on that goal itself and how to improve your overall business performance, and so forth. You know the gist. I am sure we are all just too familiar with it. That used to be our day to day battle horse. And still is, perhaps, in some parts of the larger business world. However, the conversation is changing. And it’s changing for the better, in my opinion. More than anything else, because apart from the long awaited promise of a better, more sustainable, healthy growth driven business world, it’s also starting to demonstrate the maturity of the industry and the quality level of the interactions themselves. Yes, we may still be suffering from a too heavy technology focus (Mostly due to our eternal tech fetishism that we have been having for decades), but the reality is that Social Business is finally way underway to enter the next level of maturity. At least, if I judge from the recent sets of conversations on the topic that I have been having both online and offline. Take, for instance, the subject of Facebook, and how for a good number of years a bunch of us have been using Facebook as that easy way to convey across the power of networks, as that new model of conducting business, because everyone could relate to it. You know, it’s 1 billion users, after all. Well, that’s certainly changing and the current sentiment towards Facebook itself is inclining itself more towards acknowledging the huge damage it’s caused all along, more than the various benefits, on the conversation on becoming a successful social business, that it’s no longer pretty. Take a look into this superb blog post that my good friend Megan Murray, the one and only, has put together a little while ago under the rather thought provoking title "Why Facebook Is The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Social Media". Both the article and the excellent commentary are precious in helping set the stage of why we are, finally, breaking free from the Facebook copycat yoke and we are not coming back! Lucky enough, businesses, in general, have finally understood as well that they don’t need to have an exact copy to mimic Facebook’s behaviours behind the firewall. This Social Business journey is something bigger, something major, a huge business transformation of how work gets done. And, in most cases, people are realising they no longer need Facebook as a helping hand to deliver those messages. It’s down back into a culture shift, a new mindset, about inspiring a new wave of working habits where people become more open, public and transparent. Where trust, co-ownership and co-responsibility, along with engagement are key traits that would keep inspiring and driving that social business transformation and, finally, it’s happening at a time where we are looking away from Facebook. It’s no longer there for most of us. At least, in a business context…  And then, further along on that Social Business maturity journey, we bump into the other theme that has also shown a huge transformation on its own to the point where I bet a couple of years ago it was the unthinkable and yet, fast forward to today, it’s happening all over the place, that is, that shift away from just questioning the business value of Social Business by asking the sempiternal "What’s the ROI of Social Media?" and progressing into the How do we do this? Indeed, moving away from the What? and Why? and diving straight through into the How do we make it happen? What business problems do we want to address and fix accordingly? How do we keep improving our overall business performance? How can we keep delighting our customers, our very own employees with that so-called engagement mantra? How do we, eventually, become more effective and productive at what we do by working smarter, not necessarily harder?  My good friend, and fellow colleague, Peter Bejlerrup, shared with me one slide a little while ago that describes quite nicely such transition and transformation, specially, with one of the main challenge groups when the first initial round of conversations about Social Networking for Business kick in: Executive Management. Here it is, so you can have a look:    Indeed! Is that something that folks out there could relate to already? Do you reckon? I am not sure what you would think, but if I have to judge by the good number of conversations that I have been having in several of the business trips I have done this year, the conversation has matured, it’s evolved, it’s moved beyond the point of trying to come up, time and time again, with whatever the excuse, instead of exploring the full potential that it can unleash into transforming business as we know it today; it’s moved on from stopping by questioning everything into figuring out how it’s going to improve overall performance, increasing customer satisfaction, both employee and customer engagement, talent management, knowledge transfer, innovation, the bottom line, open collaboration, and whatever else your main business objective may well be. In short, the conversation has shifted from that technology focus into a business focus, what it should have had from the beginning, but that we are finally playing good catch-up with it.  This is exactly the main same argument that other folks, like David Armano, have addressed just recently on where we are at the moment and how we may have witnessed the starting point of something bigger, much bigger. In a recent article under the heading "Technology Will Only Solve 1/3 of Your Social Business Problem" he quotes brilliantly:  "The dirty little secret in the technology world is that technology, even really good technology looks automated but in reality requires people to make it work" Spot on! In fact, David develops further what he calls The Three P’s of Social Business, which for those of us who have been doing Knowledge Management for a bit over a decade now, would sound far too familiar: Platforms (Technology), Process and People, as shown and illustrated on this graphic: And this is when I am really excited about witnessing this giant leap forward, or, better said, giant leap backwards, because we are, once again, having that unique opportunity to get things right this time around, since we didn’t have much success with KM back then and it could mean that things may work out all right this time. I am very hopeful we will. In fact, I will be able to confirm that maturity level of Social Business moving away from just a technology focus next week when, for the first time ever, I will have the chance to attend the Knowledge Management event of events, KM World 2012, where, if you look into the programme itself, you will see more topics, conversations, dissertations, presentations, speeches, workshops and what not, around the world of Social than ever! To me, it’ll be a confirmation of whether both of my passions, KM and Social Business, would collide and destroy each other, or, instead, whether they would be capable of co-existing, learning from one another, build further up on each other’s strengths and eventually shake the business world into becoming what KM attempted once trying over 18 years ago. The stakes are high, for sure, but so is the passion and excitement about both worlds finally reuniting to strike for a common goal: improve our businesses’ overall performance through meaningful, purposeful, engaged, sustainable and responsible growth. The one that matters. The one that will make this world a better place to live for everyone. Not just a few.

BackgroundI recently read this post by Tony Karrer discussing the development of what we traditionally call pure courseware versus the creation of Reference Hybrids Shift in eLearning from Pure Courseware towards Reference Hybrids. Though posted in 2006, this post seems very relevant even today and I feel like I have a lot to say about the probable solution to the discussion that this course brought out.Citing past experienceIn one of my previous organization, our management was looking at buying a rapid elearning tool that would make the creation of courses faster and easier. Now thats the impression the general audience has about rapid elearning tools, and is also the obvious reason why they think that buying the tool will solve all their training problems. Exactly what the vendors would love you to believe when they sell their tool. But, I think it's time we start being more realistic and start looking at what it is that we really want, and not conclude on using rapid elearning tools without understanding the essence of what they are equipped to deliver. Another post by Tony - What is Rapid elearning? really brings out the reality and I suggest reading this to get a better understanding of rapid elearning.So there after me and my team, who believed that a custom made course design could be used to deliver the same business goals managed to convince our management over time, that we could deliver what the tool promised and much better, as we already had the basic framework for a custom course template (in HTML, JavaScript and Flash) in place by then. Now that was a successful transaction there as our instructional designers were happy that they would continue have the opportunity to design interesting strategies that would enable achievement of the training objectives and also engage the learner. I do not mean to say the available rapid elearning tools cannot create engaging courses but there are issues when you do get down to a lot of specifics. Janet Clarey's post clarifies this point better .What's the point I'm making here?Now let's get to the point without digressing from the main topics that were discussed in Tony's posts. The bottomline is that we need to look at training from a more holistic point of view than just arguing about what is phased out and what isn't. The point is, that we started making traditional courseware at one time and it worked pretty well. But when we evaluated the courses, overtime we found that there were several gaps in spite of all the instructional design strategies that went into creating the courses. Then we started asking questions like why is this not working, what did we miss out on, is this kind of courseware not working? And then boom, it strikes us that we need to change the way we do training. Maybe the 'traditional' way is not working because learners just want on-the-job, just-in-time and on-demand training. We should be able to give learners what they want, when they want it, and in whichever format they want it. Then came the age where we started believing that mobile learning was the next big thing. But please let me know how effective mobile learning has been? I am really curious as to me, it seemed completely unrealistic to believe that people could learn how to do their job from a tiny screen on a handheld device! Maybe this is because I am a digital immigrant species and not a digital native. Please fill me in here.What's the solution?Now, let's get specific and categorize all the random thoughts that I listed above. We're talking about 'traditional' courseware versus reference hybrids like just-in-time and just enough learning. My answer to this though is to remove the 'versus' part and start looking at an entire training solution.First let's set our goal. We have an audience that needs training on a particular topic. You need to study your audience profiles to be able to come to a consensus about what modes you need to deliver the training.Example Scenario 1: If you are designing training for teens to learn about using a specific 'cool' gizmo, you would be missing the basic point if you think of making formal training online/computer based training for this. This kind of a situation demands what you call just enough and just in time.Solution:So we can provide the following information:Give a quick primer on the gadget and its capabilities.List the features that enable this.Cover the procedures to use the features.Then link up this information to the feature of the gadget only when the learner demands it. The reason for this being, that most probably this person is a gadget freak and will figure it out if the product is intuitive enough.Now what if the product is complex to use? Well then you need to put more effort and probably make the information more easily available at the right time, but certainly the 'coolness' of the gadget and how well it sells to these dudes primarily depends on how easy it is to use.Example Scenario 2: You need to make training to enable learners to be able to use a particular software application on their job. Your audience is technical and don't need to learn the basics of using such applications. They need to know what does your application do to make their job easy.Solution:Here goes...Plan a training curriculum which would be a combination of:Formal classroom or full fledged online training supported by relevant interactivitiesHands on exercises using scenarios that would be relevant to their roleFormal documentation including context sensitive helpNow this is serious training and your customer will buy and continue to use your product provided you provide a complete solution package. This is a scenario where I don't think only reference hybrids would work. They can only be a part of the whole solution but not sufficient to provide enough training to a customer using your product in their enterprise where even the customer's business depends on the performance and usability of your product.Let's get real, this is a reality and thus I choose to differ in saying that we cannot choose one over the other and say there is a shift in the strategy. I would like to hear what everyone has to say here...

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

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

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

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