I have always sought simplicity in every learning solution that I develop. As our products evolve to simplify more and more complicated day to day problems, the learning solutions must be simplified as well. My post about the Future of Organizational Learning was a thought in this direction but on a broader scale. Now I'm thinking of a granular level of learning that can be developed and packaged with the product. Large enterprise products solve complex domain specific problems. Learning about such products becomes equally complex. Hence our role as learning designers calls for us to be specialists. We must be able to design learning so it can be seamlessly interspersed within the product.Imagine a newly installed enterprise solution with many of pages, regions, dashboards, etc. The user who is a domain specialist and probably familiar with related products in the domain must be able to log in and use the product without having to undergo a rigorous and exhaustive learning regime before using the product. Its pointless if we strive to solve a complex problem, but learning to use the tools itself becomes a challenge. Learning must be interactively available in the context.To start with the product itself must be designed with superior user interface that anyone can easily use. So we don't have to create learning for that. That solves one part of the problem and leaves the domain learning issue to be addressed. Someone familiar with the domain should be able to find familiar names on the UI and instantly be able to understand what to do next. Here comes the scope for creating embedded learning units.Each learning unit is self contained, simplified content that can be in any format:Conceptual information on concepts related the the actions on the toolbar or page.Information about the relationship of the UI object with other areas.Impact of selections user interface choices on related features or objectsThe underlying principles of certain choices made.Decisions to consider when making choices.How to do something?This list can evolve, however the key here is that it takes more to 'learn' something that is naturally complex.Considerations while designing simplified learningThe reality is that the learning designer must know the domain deeply and work very closely with subject matter experts to come up with the simplest way of explaining it to product users. A thorough grasp of the product and domain is an invaluable asset in designing such a granular and interactive learning solution. The learning units can be layered over the product layer based on licenses and be available on request or via a setup option.Despite this we may still have a demand for advanced learning solutions. Advanced learning can be instructor led or highly interactive simulations. From a cost-benefit ratio perspective ILT is practical but this is something for me to start thinking about as well.

Social Analytics. Don’t you just love it? Oh, metrics, what would we do without you in the business world, right? They are the main reason, apparently, of our mere existence in a corporate environment. And, lately, attempting to measure the Return On Investment of Social / Open Business has been grabbing most of attention in the last 3 to 5 years, but perhaps for all of the wrong reasons altogether, since time and time again we just seem to keep focusing on "measuring what’s easy as opposed to what’s important". Just like with technology, we seem to have developed, over the course of the last few decades, a fetish for trying to measure everything, and I mean everything, that happens around us, specially, in a business context, because, apparently, that’s the main only criteria we are using in order to improve the thing we are measuring in the first place. And it’s been rather interesting to see how over the course of that time, and more vehemently as of late, we seem to have dropped the whole topic altogether on measuring the ROI of social technologies, which is quite intriguing on its own, since it seems to confirm it’s been pretty much useless all along, since it is no longer possible to revert back on our Adaptation to Open Business practices. They are here to stay and it’s just a matter of when, not anymore about how, what or why.  Yes, I know, change is inevitable, after all, and the only thing we can do, eventually, is delay it. That’s probably the main reason as to why very few people are continuing to question the value of social networking for business. It seems like everyone has finally come to terms with the fact that, whether we like it or not, Social / Open is here to stay. But things weren’t always like that in the past. In fact, there have been numerous different articles, insightful blog posts,  inspiring dissertations and what not, that have attempted to come up with a good, smart way of hinting how we may eventually measure the effective use of Social / Open Business. Pretty much like we did with Knowledge Management over 18 years ago and that we still haven’t managed to get it right, after all of that time. Somehow, I keep making the connection that perhaps we have attempted to measure what we shouldn’t have in the first place and instead we should have put our efforts in helping out, plenty more, with that adaptation to Open Business.  As usual, Seth Godin, in perhaps one of the top blog posts from 2013 (Yes, I know, that’s how good it is), pretty much nailed the whole argument around what has been the current state of affairs in terms of measurements within the business world. To quote:  "As an organization grows and industrializes, it’s tempting to simplify things for the troops. Find a goal, make it a number and measure it until it gets better. In most organizations, the thing you measure is the thing that will improve." Not much that I can share across after such brilliant reflection, other than perhaps add further up one other key element that seems to describe, pretty well, what may drive that kind of industrialised mentality: inertia. As in why change what has worked in the last few decades, right? Well, wrong. That’s the problem, it hasn’t worked out all right, because more than anything else what’s happened is that we have diverted our attention away from the real thing and just decided to muse on what’s easy, i.e. the low hanging fruit, what we can quantify in an effortless manner iteration after iteration. But Seth states it much more beautifully with this brilliant conclusion that I half referenced above already. To quote again:  "Measurement is fabulous. Unless you’re busy measuring what’s easy to measure as opposed to what’s important." So, what can you do then? What’s important? Well, lately, to me, for a good number of months, it’s been down to two things: Results and Relationships. As you may have noticed, none of those really focus on measuring the use of the digital tools at our disposal, which seems to be what most social analytics efforts focus on at the moment. Somehow I suspect we need to perhaps level up the game and start focusing on what kinds of measures, if any, at all, we would need in order to quantify the effectiveness of not just using social tools, i.e. the low hanging fruit, but the bigger challenge: the modelling of new behaviours. That adaptation to new ways of smarter work I have been mentioning for a little while now and which I think would be much more relevant.  That’s exactly what I am focusing on at the moment, at work. Not necessarily on measuring the easy bits, in terms of adaptation and enablement, but more on trying to identify how the power of storytelling could help us provide a much more meaningful and empowering method to quantify and measure those results and relationships. How? Through sharing of stories, of insightful anecdotal evidence of how knowledge workers have been capable of transforming the way they work by addressing business problems and fixing them adapting to new social / open gestures while getting their day to day work done in an effective, productive manner. The fascinating thing about this shift is that over the course of the last few months I have started to notice how business storytelling is starting to make (big) waves into the corporate world in terms of how it’s helping organisations understand what an effective method it is not only to facilitate knowledge transfer or innovation, or to give meaning, or to improve employee engagement, or to progress further, but also to capture such knowledge in a much more noteworthy manner that could help out everyone make sense of it all in much more profound ways through a key element that I am incredibly excited about seeing it emerge time and time again lately: Narrative.  Every single business out there needs one. And perhaps if there is anything good that Open Business is facilitating at this stage it’s that huge opportunity to help inspire the creation of that narrative that employees cannot only identify with, but breathe it, as part of their new fabric, their DNA on how they work, eventually, something that I am 100% sure doesn’t just happen with the low hanging fruit metrics. Why? Because we can’t relate to numbers and figures out of context. We can relate though to people sharing their stories, connecting, collaborating, sharing their knowledge openly with one another, to eventually produce better business outcomes by working together smarter, not necessarily harder.  Networked and hyperconnected.  Oh, and if you are interested in the whole topic around Narrative, please do allow me to point you to one of the First Thinkers on the topic who, just recently, put together, a series of 3 blog posts that I can certainly recommend everyone to go and spend some time reading, and reflecting further along, on the huge potential impact of narrative in the business world. Neither of those three posts would leave you indifferent, I can tell you that. Here you have them Aspects of Narrative Work: Part I, Part II and Part III by the one and only: Dave Snowden.  [Thanks ever so much, Dave, for generously sharing them along with us!]

Last week at work was, perhaps, one of the most excruciating, rather annoying and frustrating weeks that I can remember in my 16 years of work with my current employer and it was not because of the sheer madness, rather hectic and busy work schedules, you know, those are business as usual and quite good fun still (Already having crossed through the second month on the new job!), but more because for the first time in a long while I got to experience what I think is the Achilles Heel for Knowledge (Web) workers in this digital age. Specially, for those of us who are working remotely, away from the traditional office. Yes, indeed, last week I experienced, in full force, what it would be like having an intermittent connection to internal networks, through VPN, as well as the Internet in general, through my ISP. And I tell you, it wasn’t pretty. At all. Indeed, like I mentioned above, it was one of those dreadful experiences that clearly reminds us all how fragile remote knowledge (Web) workers are in terms of the dependencies on the availability of a good, reliable and accessible VPN and Internet connections. Most folks out there know by now how, thanks to the "Life Without eMail" movement I started over 5 years ago, I have now been successful in having moved over 98% of my daily work to the Web, whether on the Intranet or the Internet. Yet, last week was perhaps one of the quietest times I have gone through that I can remember. Why? Because I was offline for the vast majority of it. Both my VPN connection as well as my local ISP were having continuous issues helping me remain connected and eventually ended up in me putting a bunch of extra hours at work just trying to catch up with things when they would become more stable. And some times they did, and some others, they didn’t. But right there I realised how when you are working from the traditional office space things are relatively good in terms of connectivity. You know, everyone working along through the same pipes, so to speak, and if the Internet or the Intranet goes down, that’s just fine, it’s down for everyone, so you are in equal terms for that matter and might as well enjoying a coffee or two while the system goes up to support back again several hundreds of office knowledge workers. However, when you are a remote knowledge worker, who depends on the Web for the majority of your work, things are much different. As a starting point, you are alone. You are, typically, in the middle of nowhere (my closest IBM office is about 1,200 KM away from where I live / work), trying to get connected to the rest of the world that flies passed by you at a lightning speed, and that you hope to jump into the bandwagon which is the Internet, so that you can catch up. Well, last week, my train never showed up, helping me understand the challenges of what it would be like if, all of a sudden, remote knowledge (Web) workers, get to suffer from intermittent (Or permanent, for that matter!) connectivity issues in order to carry out their digital work. It just won’t happen. And, you know, work won’t stop. It never does. It will just keep carrying on and piling up, which means that, as a remote employee or knowledge worker, your dependency on a good VPN and ISP connectivity are going to be critical. Otherwise, it’s just like one of those dead tentacles you can just chop off and no-one will notice. And while I can see how that may well not be too worrying for companies and businesses, since it’s just an isolated case or two, perhaps a few hundred (tops), the reality is that for you it’s like the whole world just collapsed and decided to stop spinning around. Yes, I know, I realise I am putting a little bit of extra drama on the huge impact of network connectivity for remote employees, but is it really that much of an exaggeration? Because, somehow I feel it’s not, specially, if you consider how, unless you live in a rather large urban place, you, as a remote worker depending on the Web to get your work done, are doomed and big time. And, most probably, no-one would even notice. And, let’s face it. We are entering the stage where broadband penetration, at least, in (Western) Europe, is pretty much a good myth, specially, if you don’t live in big cities. If you live in relatively small towns, or rural / remote areas, that pervasive connectivity is non-existent, which comes to fight the argument that the Web keeps us all hyperconnected and networked no matter what. Well, it matters, connectivity, at least, in Europe, is not as pervasive as what most folks feel, and if you have been reading my recent business trips across several European countries, it’s more of a wider issue than anything else, not necessarily related to a specific country or local region. It bugs me. I tell you, it bugs me quite a lot, actually, because, last week, I realised how I was no longer capable of accessing the most precious thing that makes the Internet a wonderful thing: free information. And I don’t mean free as in you don’t have to pay for it. I mean it from the perspective of no longer being capable of accessing free flows of information to allow me to get my work done in an effective and efficient manner. Never mind the good amount of conversations I could no longer have in terms of nurturing and continuing to build my personal business relationships, including blogging away over here, which I couldn’t, as some of you have well observed through offline interactions. Ugly. Very ugly state of things, if we have to keep depending on that reliability of connectivity for that major shift of the knowledge workforce that’s already well underway, where more and more people are becoming remote employees, or even no longer attached to companies but doing freelance work, and still needing to have that connection to the Web. That shift is not going to change, nor disappear, but to accelerate greatly over the next couple of years and seeing how urban places are starting to become more jammed and overpopulated, it’s going to be a huge issue if those remote workers from small, rural places can’t keep connected in a reliable manner. Or if, all of a sudden, ISPs decide to sacrifice their quality service to reduce costs or companies decide that good, robust VPN solutions are not worth the investment anymore, therefore forcing their remote employees to trash off the flexibility they once had and return back to the traditional office, no matter at what costs. Of course, we have got email to fix that problem. I am sure you all have been thinking about that very same thought all along while reading this article, and, to be frank, no, we don’t. Email will not solve the problem, because, yes, you can work offline through your mailbox and everything, but you still need the connectivity to send those emails across and when exchanging large rich media files, or presentations, proposals, status project reports and what not; you are going to have a need for a rather fast and robust network connection. We are no longer in the mid-90s where a regular analogue line could get you through the daily email in a matter of minutes. Plus, I am not sure I would want to venture to state that email is safe in the current workplace just because we don’t have enough broadband capacity or a rather robust VPN set of solutions. It would be just totally wrong and for a good number of reasons. We need to step up, we need to level up the game and start embracing the fact that over the course of time, the vast majority of your companies’ work is going to be executed, done and dealt with by people who are not working at the traditional office anymore, and, as such, we would need to ensure they are reliably connected to the Web to get their work done. As more and more of us progress further away from firewalls and internal protected networks into the Open Social Web, I guess we would be saying good-bye to VPNs, but then again, if you have been watching the news over the course of the last few months, and, lately, in the last week or so, you would know how some conversations would still need to take place in a secure, private, protected space, although still open and accessible to everyone concerned (i.e. employees, customers and business partners, for that matter). So the need for ISPs to understand how freelancers work remotely and how much they rely on that network connection for a whole lot more than just sending an email, also correlates to the need from businesses to understand how critical good, reliable VPN connections are to allow those employees to stay connected in a world that’s become more virtual, distributed and remote than ever. Upping the game will get us all there, eventually. Not doing anything, though, thinking things will be all right, after all, will help us go into a Dark Age I doubt we’d ever be able to recover from accordingly. All of us. Now, imagine if all ISPs, while they are going to become more under pressure over time, decide to take us through on to those dark ages … for good. Imagine, if, all of a sudden, after seeing last few weeks’ global events all over the place (Take your pick as there are a lot of those to choose from!) things just collapse. Just like that. Well, don’t imagine it. Let’s just work really hard on not making it happen any time soon, because somehow the trend keeps showing how we are heading towards that collapse, without remedy. I know, I know, I don’t plan to finish off this article with a negative thought of what might happen. Instead, I would want to finish it off with a rather outrageous, optimistic and heretic trend of thought on what’s at stake at this point in time, so please do allow me to leave you with this absolutely stunning, rather inspiring and incredibly thought-provoking presentation from one of my favourite thinkers of the 21st century that I just can’t have enough of in terms of showing the way of where we are heading, not only in the business world, but in our society. Check out Manuel Castells‘ recent RSA speech on "Networks of Outrage and Hope", which will also confirm, for that matter, why social networking is here to stay and for a good few years, not only as matter of expressing yourself, but perhaps altogether as a matter of finding a new purpose, a new focus and a new meaning altogether: a better world for all of us. No exceptions. 

Over the course of the last few years, and with the emergence (AND convergence) of social networking tools for business, cloud computing, big data and social analytics (amongst several other buzzwords and hyped concepts), we are starting to see that growing trend of shaping up one other key concept from today’s business world: our own economy. It seems to be it’s starting to take control of our collective mindset, of our conversations, of our interests and attention, to the point where we are beginning to have no more time than to talk about just that: economy. And that’s understandable, seeing the current financial econoclypse we are going through, and still with plenty more to come! But what if there would be something else? What would happen if all of a sudden we would be able to switch from our traditional concept of economy into something much more meaningful, purposeful, refreshing and rather inspiring altogether? How about if we would start focusing quite a lot more on the Connection Economy instead, to eventually have a bigger impact beyond just focusing on the money, the power and the greed?  In the recent past, we have seen plenty of various different people, including myself, blogging about the Circular Economy, the Semantic Economy, the Simulation Economy, the Hacker Economy, the Locust Economy, the Passion Economy, the Freelance Economy, the Attention Economy, the New Patronage Economy, the Post-Job Economy, the Content Economy, the Digital Economy, the Collaboration Economy, the Knowledge Economy, the Knowledge Networked Economy, the Creative Economy, the Sharing Economy, the Sustainable Economy, the Experimental Economy, the Gift Economy. Goodness gracious me! It looks like there is no end to the huge amount of economies we have got out there! Stop it! Seriously, once more, stop it!  Never mind the main two economies that keep coming up over and over and over again. Such as the Sharing Economy and the Collaborative Economy, which a whole bunch of smart folks have been talking about extensively over the course of a good number of months through insightful blog posts, news articles, dissertations, and what not. At this point in time, we may as well just go ahead and kill the economy for all that matters. Something tells me that we may be much much better off altogether!  But then again, serendipity does it magic, just like that, and it helps me bump into this particular video clip over the course of the weekend, from the one and only, Seth Godin, raising the bar big and helping introduce what I, too, think is at the heart of the matter in terms of helping our own global economy flourish, once again, but this time around through sustainable growth and focusing on what it is all about: connections and relationships. Indeed, welcome to The Connections Economy! In a superb short video clip of nearly 4 minutes long, Seth gets to talk about what, to him, the Connection Revolution is all about as the Industrial Economy is fading away. And he gets to describe, in a very powerful manner, what are the main fundamental pillars of such economy. To name:  "Coordination Trust Permission Exchange of Ideas"  From there onwards, he gets to build though on two additional underpinnings, two traits that make it all worth while, and that, for what matters, are essential to us all human beings, specially, in terms of what we can deliver. Generosity and Art. Yes, once again, it’s all about the givers and a rather inspiring and very refreshing notion of what art is all about. To quote him briefly: "Art is the human act of choosing to connect; the human ability to do something for the first time. Something that might not work". Whoahhh! Powerful words, indeed! Stunning!   I couldn’t have agreed more with him when, towards the end of the clip, he quotes as well how "we crave connection". It’s in our genes. Its part of our DNA. It’s about our ability to find that hidden connection through sharing our passion for a particular topic and for wanting to learn plenty more about it, based on those interactions and all of a sudden expose it all in full force out there in those open networks for others to benefit mutually from such connectedness.  On another short clip, from the same SAPPHIRE NOW event, he gets to talk on what I feel Open Business is all about, while relying on social networks, as key components from that Connection Economy, as the glue that ties in everything altogether: caring. He then develops the thought that in that same Connection Economy adjusting while failing along, fast, is going to be critical altogether, more than anything else because we are already transitioning from an age of scarcity into an age of abundance, abundance to connect, to make a difference, to follow, and what not, by how it scales to … tribes. Another piece of brilliance!    And to top it off there is a third short video clip where he gets to expand on how we can all enable others for success which is also priceless watching it through in its entirety, because he concludes with a killer sentence that I think needs to become our new mantra in terms of how we do business in that new economy: it’s not really about whether you would be able to succeed or not, since there is a great chance that you would, but whether you care enough to matter, after all. Goodness! I doubt it would get any better than that, as to what our focus and purpose should be like on how we need to keep pushing for that transformation that Open Business will unleash as we move forward. The interesting thing is that, for the first time ever, and thanks to social networks, it’s all going to be based on something we never had before, that is, the intangibles, those connections; in short, those personal business relationships that will confirm how The Connection Economy will eventually rule them all.  And that’s a good thing. Actually, it’s a wonderful thing altogether!  I just can’t wait for it to unleash its full potential, and you?  [Oh, and if neither of those three wonderfully refreshing and rather thought-provoking video clips got you going off to a rather inspiring start of another working week, here's a bonus video clip, highly recommended as well, from Seth Godin himself, once again, from a recent event that he participated in at CreativeMornings where talked about "Backwards" and for which I am not going to share much more about it, but will just let it surprise you big time. It's probably one of the best 20 minutes you would be spending on this whole year, I can guarantee you that! From now onwards, you would eventually be thinking completely different around the whole concept of clients, including your own … bosses!] 2013/05 Seth Godin | Backwards from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

If you have been reading this blog for a while you would remember how all along I have been insisting on the fact that for businesses to facilitate and adapt to that Social / Open Transformation technology is nothing more than just an enabler, it’s the icing on the cake, and how the key to become a successful Socially Integrated Enterprise there is nothing more than just acquiring a new set of behaviours, a new mindset, in short, a new core of good healthy habits to get things going on that journey. It may well be much easier saying it out loud than writing it down, but what is a habit though? Is that something that you inspire in yourself, and / or in others? Is that something that you aim to acquire by osmosis mimicking what other people may be doing already? Is it that inertia that keeps coming up without questioning the status quo of how certain things get done around the workplace? Well, may be not. A habit is, apparently, a reward. Over the course of the last few months I have become very interested in the whole concept of behavioural dynamics, about how we may be able to influence the behaviours of those around us, and the good old habits they may have accumulated over the course of the years, in order to think differently in terms of how they share their knowledge across and collaborate perhaps much more openly and transparently through social technologies versus whatever other traditional means. And all along it looks like I haven’t been the only one interested in that topic judging by the extensive amount of additional reading materials in terms of blog posts, articles, dissertations, reflections, infographics, and numerous, never ending, Top N Habits posts to perform or do XYZ, you name it. Plenty of extensive reading on the topic of habit formation, too, I can tell you. I would event bet you all may have your own favourite picks that you may have curated over the course of time in terms of what would be those desired good habits (Even for Community Managers!), or whether they are related to keeping up with healthy habits, or perhaps enjoy the odd pleasure of showing your gratitude. You may even want to break away from your email habits altogether (As my good friend, Oscar Berg brilliantly wrote recently at CMSWire) or from any other bad habit from that matter! The thing is that habit formation is hard. And yet, it’s of paramount importance, because habits are at the heart of our successes and our failures, apparently. So when thinking about that Social / Open Business Transformation I just couldn’t help thinking whether we have got it figured out how we can inspire those new habits in terms of how people connect, collaborate and share their knowledge across. Whether we can model new behaviours and new habits and, if so, how can we achieve such goal, because something tells me that it’s not going to be an easy one. You know, they keep saying how for a human being to acquire a new habit for a particular action, it needs to be repeated, at least, 31 times. I know, that’s a lot! Well, that’s what would take us to build a new habit into what we do on a regular basis. Interestingly enough, a couple of months back, I bumped into this superbly done short video clip (Under 3 minutes) from Epipheo that pretty much describes The Power of Habit from Charles Duhigg and which surely makes up for quite an interesting watch altogether. No, I haven’t read the book just yet, in case you are wondering, but I finally managed to buy it for my Kindle for my upcoming, and ever growing, summer reading. The video though clearly highlights what’s perhaps the main challenge we, social / open business evangelists, keep facing when helping fellow knowledge workers adapt to those new behaviours, those newly built habits, in terms of whether they are going to succeed in the long term or not. Here it is, so you can have a look and see what I mean:  Apparently, a habit is based on three components: a cue (the trigger), the routine (the behaviour itself) and, finally, the reward. I am sure, at this point in time, you may know exactly where I am heading, right? Well, may not. If you look into how most businesses have been facing the adoption / adaptation to Social Business as their new fabric, their new DNA in terms of how they get work done, you would notice how time and time again we do have the cue, we do have the routine in place as well for that matter (The hundreds, if not thousands, of use cases), but more often than not we seem to lack the reward. And I am not just thinking, perhaps, about tangible rewards, which is, I am certain, what most people would be thinking about out there. I am talking more about the long term reward of that habit, that is, of how we are transforming the way we work, interact, build relationships, while still keeping the focus on the business results. That, to me, seems to be missing from most of the various different deployments of Enterprise 2.0 to help further along with the overall Social Business strategy; to the point where it is no longer surprising the apparent high % of failed deployments of social networking platforms for business, if your vision and focus are on the behaviour and the mindset (which is where it should be, in the first place), as Gartner recently indicated. Somehow, it’s probably now a good time then to dive into the world of psychology, behavioural dynamics, and social sciences in general to understand how Social / Open Business has never been about technology, nor the business process themselves, but about the people, their mindset and their behaviours. In short, their day to day work habits they have accumulated over the course of time and the rewards in place to realise that long term vision of becoming a successful Socially Integrated Enterprise. Somehow, and like I have mentioned above, we seem to have the cue, the routine, but we better get our act together around the reward piece, because otherwise those new habits would not stick around for long, before people would move on to something else. And, once again, we would be going back to square one. Remember Knowledge Management? We shouldn’t have to go back. Instead, I do want to have my small piece of chocolate today, and you?

It’s been a little while since the last time that I had a chance to write another post over here in this blog, so I guess it’s now time for another experiment then. No, I know what you may be thinking, but I am not going to stop blogging nor give up on writing for that matter. I still feel it is one of the very few pleasures out there on the Social Web, and still rather relevant, apparently. If I could, I would spend the whole day blogging away like crazy the several hundreds of ideas and drafts I have got in my brain that are rather desperate to come out. There is just so much that I would want to share, talk about and throw out there on the Web that writer’s block has never been an issue for me in the last 10 years that I have been blogging. The issue is, as usual, time. As in where can I find the time to blog? Well, this is where that new experiment will kick in, because I’m just about to switch from where do I find the time to blog, on to, how can I make time to blog? At the end of the day, that’s what it is all about: choice. Lately, as you may well have duly noticed, work itself hasn’t given me much of a choice though in terms of my external social networking activities. As I am about to enter the 3rd month in the new job as Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM Connections, I am finding that I am spending more and more time in social networks behind the firewall than on the Social Web out there, resulting in me dropping off plenty of my external social activities in detriment of participating in internal conversations. Now, that may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it’s certainly starting to have an impact on my external presence that I am not too sure I would want to give up on it that soon yet. The challenge though is that after rather long, exhausting, but exciting work days, the last thing my brain wants to do is to spend time participating on more social networks. It just basically needs a break. And so do I. For Seth Godin showing up daily is not an issue though, as much as it appears to have been for me as of late, as he brilliantly wrote about on his 5,000th post anniversary article. But he mentioned something that I can certainly relate to myself on this brilliant quote he shared across on why blogging still is very much worth it: "[…] it’s learning to live with the fact that I can’t say everything I want in a single post, that the trade-off of reaching people easily is that you can also lose people easily. It’s a journey, for both of us, and I’m thrilled to be taking it with you" And it gets even better when he continues to explain why he still shows up every day to his blog: "For me, the privilege is sharing what I notice, without the pressure of having to nail it every time… I treasure the ability to say, "this might not work"" Well, perhaps that is my main issue, that every time I aim at pretty much nailing it and that’s probably the very same reason why more often than not, if I cannot make the time for blogging I just don’t. And I end up watching how days go by without those blog posts coming along. That’s why it may well be a good time to shake things off a bit and experiment. Play. See if I can shake off that perfectionist flavour when blogging away over here. Now, on the other hand, here I am smiling away reflecting on the fact that, at least, my Inbox is not broken The thing though is that there is always time to learn new tricks on blogging, no matter how long you may have been going at it. There is always an opportunity out there to learn how you can juggle with it, along with work, family and other commitments. It’s just a matter of establishing priorities and stick around with them, which is essentially what I will be playing with from here onwards. Like I have mentioned above, I have got no intention of giving up on blogging, or hanging out on external social networks, but I am certainly going to shift focus and intentions on how I would want to stick around with it all from here onwards, which is essentially when this new experiment will kick off. All along you may have noticed how blog posts over here have got a tendency to be on the long form, sort of mini-essays. So I am thinking that while not neglecting such opportunity of writing longer pieces I’m going to start playing around (again, as I have attempted to do it in the past a couple of times already …) with the opportunity of sharing shorter reflections on things that come across my mind, whether work related, or not. Pretty much a la Euan Semple, if you know what I mean I know you may be thinking that perhaps there is an opportunity to share those shorter thoughts on other social venues like Twitter, Google Plus, Tumblr and what not, but I am thinking that while those other options are out there, there is still a place for some of those reflections to happen over here, in this blog. Specially, for one particular use case, that one where I am thinking about sharing a thought or two across that I would want to come back to over time, something that it’s proved to be quite a challenge in multiple other social networking tools, due to poor quality search capabilities. Never mind the fact that this blog still is my home, whereas all others I am just passing by  and the door can be shut down any minute, any day, any time. At least, over here, the door will always be open. For you and for me. So … game on!

Tweet Jams. Perhaps some of the most exhilarating, intriguing, mind-blowing, inspiring, and fast pacing online events out there on the Social Web that typically happen in a rather short time span, with hundreds of tweets, from a handful of top-notch really good quality experts on a given topic sharing generously with everyone their insights, experiences, know-how, practical hints and tips and whatever else. End-result? An adrenaline rush of new ideas, trends of thought, connections and a massive number of serendipitous knowledge discoveries that can leave you with a wonderful aftertaste to confirm why the Social Web matters: hyper-connectedness of both ideas AND people. My favourite Tweet Jam event, and for a good while now, has always been the one that the smart and talented folks from CMSWire host on a monthly basis under #SocBizChat. One not to be missed, if you can, as you will be exposed to some of the most innovative first thinkers on this whole topic around Social / Open Business. Take, for instance, the one that was hosted for June 2013, earlier on last week, where the following hot topic was discussed and covered widely: What’s Next for the Social Enterprise? These Tweet Jams usually have got a bunch of questions proposed by the CMSWire folks themselves around a particular topic that a pool of experts then get to answer and provide their insights on over the course of that 60 minute timeframe. So, for instance, this month, here’s the list of questions that were proposed for the subject mentioned above: What 3 key elements define the social enterprise? Is it important to distinguish between internal social practices & external marketing or customer related social or are they one & the same? What are the key challenges still blocking adoption of social in the enterprise? What role does IT play in the social enterprise? Wide vs. Narrow focus — how should social tools be deployed and why? Do any elements of 20th century business work in the social enterprise and if so, which? What three words would you ban from the social enterprise conversation? What is your vision for the future of the social enterprise? From there onwards, that’s when the good fun starts, because over the course of just a few minutes you will start seeing dozens and dozens of live tweets going by covering those various different questions, along with multiple on-the-side conversations on the overall topic, reaching the state where at some point it’s almost impossible anymore to follow it all up! A real blast I can tell you that! There used to be a time where, in the past, I made use of TweetChat in order to keep up with the flows of conversations, but since it is not working any longer I recently switched over to the rather nifty and powerful tool called Twubs. And it does make a difference following it all up from the traditional desktop / mobile clients or even the Web interface. So I am sticking around with it for now as perhaps one of the best options out there. The really cool thing about these Tweet Jams though is not really the quality of the superb interactions that happen throughout such a short timeframe of 60 minutes, which would surely keep blowing away your mind time and time again. But it’s actually having folks, taking the time afterwards, curating the outcome of the Tweet Jam, sharing their favourite insights learned or discussed making up for a wonderful aftertaste of the event that can go on and on and on. Usually, folks make use of CoveritLive or rather Storify (Like my fellow colleague Colleen Burns) as the potential options that there may well be out there to curate those tweets further along and share along the Storify links. One of my favourites, from last week’s event, was the one put together by my good friend, Greg Lloyd, who did an absolutely phenomenal piece of work capturing the vast majority of those golden nuggets into this Storify that I can certainly recommend folks out there to sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, or tea, or whatever your favourite beverage, and read through it to savour Greg’s brilliant curating skills. It will definitely be worth your time, I can guarantee you that! As you go through the curated tweets, you would notice how I, too, was one of the panelists participating in the event as well sharing my insights on What’s Next for the Social Enterprise and I thought that, to close off this blog post, I would go ahead and grab those tweets that I initially shared trying to answer each and everyone of the questions that were put together and that I referenced above as well. I know sharing those tweets over here would act a little bit like teasers, but I am sure they would give you an opportunity to decide if you would want to tune in for next month’s CMSWire Tweet Jam, which I can certainly recommend you attend AND participate virtually in an effort to keep improving the overall user experience for all of us by participating in it getting exposed to plenty more different and varied points of view that would help enrich the event to no end. So, without much further ado, here you have the embedded tweets I shared to answer each and everyone of those questions: Q1. Open (Transparent), Networked (Interconnected), Nimble (Agile) #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q2 They are not, should be kept separate, because *some* conversations still *need* to happen behind the firewall #brave #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q3 Inertia, (Top) Managers not wanting to let go, relinquish their power & control (information), not enough transformation #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q4 Enabler, always an enabler, never the gatekeeper. Just like technology; act as if it doesn’t exist, move on #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q5 Pilots have always worked best. Ability to fail fast, learn, re-iterate, fail again, learn, repeat, deploy widely. #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q6 - Seeing current financial econoclypse & crisis of values (integrity,honesty,empathy,caring) I don’t think so. Sorry #reboot #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q7 - Social, Drive, Adoption (In that order… being guilty as charged myself & why I moved to Open, Enable / Inspire, Adaptation) #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013 Q8. Vision of the future: Hello and Welcome to Open Business! Get comfy, it’s here to stay! #SocBizChat — Luis Suarez (@elsua) June 20, 2013

If you would ask me what’s that single component I keep missing within the corporate world more and more by the day to help enhance both the innovation and open knowledge sharing processes, amongst several others, I would venture to state that single one missing component would be creativity. I am sure you would all agree with me that creativity on its own is perhaps one of the most precious things we have, as human beings, and which makes us all, each and everyone of us, for that matter, rather unique. Yes, indeed, we can all be creative on our own. Yet, if you look into the business world there is very little creativity going around apparently. Do you know why? It’s as if we were educated, and told, consistently, over the course of decades, to not think out of the box, to stick to the given rules, to follow that inertia of accepting the status quo that has dominated that business environment as it is today and eventually to just keep quiet, since you never know what’s going to happen and for that matter you surely don’t want to stand out too much. It’s just as if you were told to even stop thinking on your own, because you might even get creative and that could well be frown upon with the argument that, you know, you are not working hard enough anymore. You are being creative, therefore you become dispensable. Careful where you are going… Your boss, all of a sudden, sadly owns your own decision making process. And you get stuck. For a (long) while. Does it ring a bell? Over the course of the last few months I have been reading a good number of articles that, thankfully, are starting to question such status quo of neglecting creativity at work and we are seeing how there are more and more blog posts, articles, dissertations, inspiring presentations and what not that have helped us understand how Creativity (With a capital C) helps us accelerate, through both acts of playfulness and mindfulness, the process of how we share knowledge across and, more importantly, how we collaborate together in a much more effective manner by being capable of sharing ideas openly, build upon each other’s thoughts and eventually get work done in ways we would have never expected or assumed possible. Creativity is all about making the impossible today’s new reality, after all. To me, it is, basically, just an opportunity to feel empowered enough about how your own thinking process, as crazy and wild as it may well be, can help make a difference in today’s corporate world by helping address and fix some of the most burning business problems. Yet, when you look into it, creativity is still not embraced as something very much necessary within the corporate world and I suppose after watching a particular short video clip, I am now starting to understand why: for creativity to flourish in a working environment the less constraints we have (As in the less right answers we have), the much more effective that creative process will be. See? That’s where the problem comes up, because, in general, the corporate world always aims at putting together constraints and live by them. Regardless. And the larger the corporation, the much heavier the constraints.  But what would happen if that wouldn’t be the case? What would happen if, all of a sudden, businesses out there, in general, would tear down apart their own constraints and allow for knowledge workers to let creativity flow and thrive again? As usual, the answer is within our kids. Take a look into this particular short clip, that lasts for a bit over 2 minutes, and which explains, quite nicely, what I mean above with the kids always having the answer in terms of taking simplicity of a complex task into new levels:  Goodness! Is that it? Can it be, indeed, so simple? I mean, can creativity make such a huge difference by just getting rid of the constraints, of the right answers, of not giving people enough freedom and autonomy and just let people use their imagination to achieve optimal results? Well, that seems to be the case and I am glad that video consistently demonstrates it rather well.  It reminds me of an article though I put together over here as well, in this blog, about three years ago where I was also reflecting on the importance of creativity in the workplace but from a presentation that John Cleese, the one and only, I know!, did back then under the suggestive title of "The Source of Creativity", where he talked not so much about constraints, but about boundaries, which is perhaps a softer concept in principle that helps expand further on with that flexibility towards the creative process.  And this is just something really fascinating, because apparently those corporate driven constraints will eventually need to transform themselves into those human boundaries imposed by knowledge workers, who may have a better context for that creative activity anyway, resulting all in all in them establishing the rules, the guidelines and the modus operandi of what needs to be achieved, which also reminds me of this delightful blog post by Maria Popova quoting another two different video clips from John Cleese himself, once again, (Highly recommended going through both clips, by the way!) and with one killer quote that I think pretty much nails it in terms of how we can bring forward that whole creative process (And thinking) back into the workplace. To quote:  "This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious." Perhaps that’s what it is all about. That the corporate world, once and for all, stops resisting creativity and becomes a bit more gentle and friendly towards it, to then leave it down to knowledge workers themselves thrive on what they have already been doing since an early age: "a way of operating" from their unconscious.

I am not too sure what happened yesterday, but it looks like the previous blog post I wrote over here on Mastering the Art of Creativity in the Workplace dragged some massive traffic all around and for that I am very grateful. So thanks much to all of those folks who visited the blog and checked out that article. Well, today, I guess I am back for more! If on that article I talked about creativity and how it is being affected by both constraints and boundaries, I thought today it’s probably a good time to talk briefly about the impact of time in the whole creative process. Specially, in an environment where more often than not one could surely benefit from the Joy of Pause and Reflect. Some time ago I bumped into an article that included a reference to a short video clip where it was indicated how we, human beings, seem to become more effective at the creative process when we have got the constraint(s) of time. Essentially, meaning that we would use all of our creativity spark much more effectively when we are constrained by time than when we are not. I wish I could find the reference to that article again with the short video, but alas my memory is not playing nice with me at the moment and can’t locate it anymore. Perhaps folks reading this post may well know which one I am referring to and add the link to it in the comments. Thanks in advance, if you manage to locate it. [Appreciated] The thing is that while that may hold true and rather accurate, I am also starting to think what would happen otherwise? I mean, what would happen if we wouldn’t have that time constraint in terms of how our creativity processes would work out eventually, after all. What would happen if in a business world where things seem to pass by at lightning speed, and without much of an opportunity for a breather, we would eventually take time out to pause and reflect, to let our creativity juices do their magic and serve us to address that pending business need or solve that business problem that seems to be escaping us time and time again, because we just can’t focus well enough with all that’s going on around us?  Well, it seems like kids, once again, have the answer for all of us. Right there, in front of our eyes and at our fingertips, as usual. While I was putting together the previous article doing some additional research on Mastering the Art of Creativity in the Workplace I bumped into this particular short YouTube video, that lasts a bit over 2 minutes, titled Creativity Requires TIME, that explains the potential issues behind time constraints when engaging through a creative process, whatever that may well be. The video describes one relatively easy exercise that needs to be carried by a bunch of kids over a short period of time (10 seconds) and that very same exercise over a longer period of time (10 minutes).  In terms of achieving the goal, that is, completing that particular task, the kids succeed through both rather nicely, but if you pay close attention you will notice how the magic happens when that time constraint seems to be longer, substantially longer, to the point that it allows creativity to take place in full force allowing all of the students to utilise their imagination, smarts and ability to create something beautiful in ways perhaps none of us would have envisioned in the first place:  I know you folks may be wondering what does this blog post got to do with Social / Open Business and Adoption / Adaptation, right? Well, it’s got do very little, or a lot! If you think about how most businesses are approaching the adaptation of social software in a business context, you would notice how time constraints are rather common, to the point of becoming the norm. For most businesses, and social enablement teams, adaptation doesn’t have much time. It needs to happen yesterday, by everyone, and for everyone, in all contexts, at all costs, with no restrictions and never mind whatever the waves of adapters. If it doesn’t happen within the first few weeks, it’s a failure, and like all failures, it’s bound to be ignored, neglected and never to be looked at again.  The reality is that adaptation takes time, usually an average of 6 to 12 months, before you can start seeing the very first results in terms of how knowledge workers may have adapted to a new set of behaviours and habits, while embracing a new mindset altogether of becoming a bit more open and transparent on how they work using social technologies. Yet, time and time again the business world, in general, already begins to demand results within the first month, of in the first week or two, if too pushy. In reality, what they are doing, without not realising much about it, is that they are shooting themselves on the foot, because that adaptation is not going to take place in such a short period of time and the sheer frustration that would come up as a result of it, from both the business (for not seeing results sooner) and the practitioners themselves (For being pushed back and forth, left and right, non stop), pretty much kills that adaptation effort in a split moment, just like we saw the creativity process being trumped down on that video clip with the restrictive time constraint put in place.  Thus next time that people may push you around during the first few weeks of getting started into delivering results for your adaptation efforts of Open Business within your company, I would strongly encourage you all to show them this video clip that although dealing with the whole concept of creativity, I would venture to state that it would also be applicable to Open Business Adaptation, more than anything else, because, as with all knowledge work, Open Business Adaptation is, pretty much, a creative process. And, as such, it would need time to both produce and deliver best, optimal results.

You gotta love Twitter and those wonderfully inspiring serendipitous knowledge discoveries that it helps you bump into, time and time again, because most of the times they surely help you make up for whatever the tough situation(s) you may be going through. And bring you back on track, of course, to what your focus area(s) may well have been all along. Well, I have just had one of those the last couple of weeks (Which I am hoping to be able to blog out it at some point, since it’s still burning inside my brain like hell), but since we are just about to wrap it up for another week at work and move into the weekend, I couldn’t help blogging about that delightful serendipitous moment I experienced earlier on this week, because it surely has been quite an interesting learning experience and a superb reminder, perhaps even to us all: never, ever, lose track of your purpose, and your focus, on what drives your passion(s).  It’s not even worth the effort, nor the energy, being sidetracked, just because it may well all seem more enticing altogether. It won’t. It never will. That’s why I am really glad that a few days back, my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Ben Martin, introduced me to Bernie Mitchell, who along with Andy Bargery, they run the absolutely delightful London Bloggers podcasting series. Bernie invited me to participate in the recording of an episode around blogging, after having read a recent article I wrote on the topic under the title "Why Blogging Still Matters".  Of course, I couldn’t reject such a generous and enticing offer and earlier on this week, the three of us, Bernie, Andy and myself got together to record "LBM Audible #9: Luis Suarez from IBM on Blogging and Corporate Hippies" and while the main topic was around the purpose of blogging and why it still makes plenty of sense as perhaps one of the most powerful tools out there to help enhance your own personal brand and digital footprint out there in today’s Social Web, mostly dominated by social networking tools, we eventually ended up talking about pretty much everything around Social / Open Business.  It was a rather enjoyable, gratifying and delicious podcast recording, more than anything else, because, while we were going through a rather fast pace and jolly dialogue, it helped me realise how much off track I have gotten from my core beliefs around Open Business over the course of the last few months. It felt like my own reckoning that I may have been losing, slowly, but steadily, my hippie 2.0 mojo, and that, somehow, I needed to get it back at some point. Well, that some point is exactly that podcasting episode I did with both Bernie and Andy, because they helped me recover from the back of my mind a good number of ideas I have been rather passionate about over time and that, for one reason or another, they went into hiding, because of other things. So, what did we talk about then on that podcast, you may be wondering, right? What were some of the themes that helped me get back on track on keep on pushing for Open Business with that rather well known, by now, flair of being the outlier, the corporate rebel, the outrageous heretic and free radical optimist, and, essentially, that hippie 2.0 practitioner. Well, like I said, we talked about lots of various different subjects, but here are some keywords that hopefully will help describe what we discussed and talked about as a brief teaser for the longer piece, in case you may be interested in listening in: Open Business, Adaptation, #lawwe, business blogging as your personal / digital footprint, being bold, fear and reluctance, trust, relinquishing control, leaving a legacy (i.e. a digital footprint), executive (lame) excuses on doing both social and open, ghost writing, authenticity, honesty, best practices don’t exist for knowledge work, blogging101, employee engagement, sustainable growth, evolution vs. [r]evolution of social, servant leadership, managers vs. leaders, hierarchy vs. wirearchy … phew! A lot of topics, indeed, but above them all, we talked extensively about passion for what you do and for what you have always believed in! The podcasting episode lasts for a bit over 30 minutes and you can listen to the podcast here, if you would be interested in tuning in further:  Hope you folks enjoy it just as much as I did going through that interview with both Bernie and Andy, and from here onwards I just want to take the opportunity to thank them both sincerely for having me in the show and for allowing me to participate on one of the most fun interviews / podcasts I have participated in that I can remember.  More than anything else, because it’s helped me realise how I need to re-focus on doing what I know best: change the business world, one step at a time, continuing to challenge the status quo of how certain things happen in order to let that passion do the magic of realising what a Socially Integrated Enterprise is all about in a world dominated by Open Business.  WOW! What a journey, indeed! 

One of the things that I am continuing to find rather fascinating and intriguing altogether is how, time and time again, even now in 2013, I still keep bumping, every so often, into various different people who keep questioning the validity and (business) value of checking vanity pages, as they usually call them, when referring to social networking profiles from knowledge workers / practitioners. To them, social networking is just a complete waste of time. A passing fad. A wonderful opportunity to goof off at work and get away with it. It’s that activity you would do whenever you would have some free, idle time in between workflows. And that’s about it. And since they are all incredibly busy and hectic processing 4 to 5 hours of email they just can’t seem to go beyond their own eyes. In reality, little do they know that, after all, whether we like it or not, that knowledge is hyperconnected and that everything around us is a network, a giant network, that’s been with us for millions of years interconnected through one of the most amazing networks of species: Bacteria. Excuse me? What did you just write above, you said? Bacteria? Did I just read right that we, networks of species, are connected by bacteria with one another throughout our very own history, from way back at the beginning of time? Yes, indeed, I wrote that. Apparently, it’s been documented and confirmed how 90% of our bodies are made of bacteria, just like pretty much any other creature in this world. The remarkable thing from that discovery is not necessarily the realisation that we, human beings, at the top of chain of the so-called evolution, are just made up of bacteria. The amazing thing is that all of that bacteria is interconnected and therefore we are all connected. No matter what. Whether we like it or not, that’s who we are and it’s a fascinating journey to realise how the new specialisation of today’s complex world seems to be that we need to know a little bit of everything in order to make sense of the environment, the context and the connections we are surrounded by.   Goodness! Truly mind-blowing, don’t you think? Well, those are some of the main conclusions, amongst many others, that you would be able to get exposed to, if you decide to spend about 11 minutes watching the absolutely stunning and rather inspiring RSA Animate video clip on The Power of Networks by Manuel Lima. It is definitely a must-watch video, not only from the perspective of getting a glimpse of the hyperconnected, networked, complex world we live in, but also from the point of view of trying to help us understand our (distant) past, to live and experience the present in order to understand the future (we are heading to).  It’s one of those video clips that would not leave you indifferent. Quite the opposite. Lately, it’s one of my favourite weapons, whenever I bump into those skeptics, those critics or those laggards who keep saying that (social) networks are just a complete waste of time, resources, energy and attention. You see? They have got work to do. And yet they are missing a brave new world out there that social technologies are, finally, helping unleash some of its true potential in helping us understand how network thinking goes well beyond a business context. It’s what we are, it’s who we are, what we will become and what we have been all along:  A complex network of interactions, relationships, contexts, systems and what not that we need to start learning how to manage them to make some sense out of it as we progress further into that Open Business world where we are, finally, starting to come to terms with what my good friend Esko Kilpi brilliantly wrote about at "Social Business and Complexity" not long ago and which I am going to take the liberty of quoting over here as well:  "We are the result of our interaction. We are our relations" To then finish off with a short note on the impact of social technologies in today’s complex, more interconnected world than ever:  "The new social technologies have the potential to influence connectivity and interaction as much as the sciences of complexity are going to influence our thinking. The task today is to understand what both social business and complexity mean. The next management paradigm is going to be based on those two, at the same time" Oh, boy, I just can’t wait for that one to unleash and disrupt for good, and rather massively, the way we have been doing business for decades. And you? 

After having just returned from another business trip to the US (Westford, MA, this time around, to participate on a client workshop on Social Business and Knowledge Management to figure out whether they could blend and become one and the same, but more on that one later on…), I guess it’s probably a good time now to share another blog post over here on that progress report around Life Without eMail, specially, after my last article on the topic, where I was mentioning what it was like going back to basics through that massive hard reset I experienced earlier on this year. I am sure plenty of folks are wondering where I am with it today and whether I am back on track, or not, right? Well, yes, I surely am! In fact, today’s entry will be about a Newcomer Challenging for King eMail’s Crown.  If you would remember, about a month ago, I put together the last progress report to date where I was indicating how for the first 20 weeks of year 6 of Life Without eMail I was noticing a rather steep increase in the incoming number of emails received. Nothing to do much with the fact I moved on to another job (Although it contributed as well somewhat!), but, essentially, that intriguing trend of how both my social networking activities, as well as my incoming email, grew up further along hand in hand highlighting perhaps another interesting trend I have noticed as of late: over-sharing of information and knowledge all over the place, just for the sake of making yourself visible and ensure everyone knows you are out there, working really hard, whether on social spaces or in email, so that people would not jump into the wrong conclusions of you slacking off while at work. I guess tough times and work pressures are kicking in stronger and harder than I ever thought they would.  And while email seems to be Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online (Very worth while reading Wired article, by the way, on the power of email in terms of its successful conversion rates vs. what social networking tools out there are doing), we should not forget though how emailing gives us all a false sense of progress. And if there is anything that I have learned during the course of the last few weeks from year 6 of having ditched corporate email is that realisation that I am now more convinced than ever about the paramount role that social networking tools will play in a business context in terms of how we share our knowledge and collaborate helping accelerate both our innovation efforts and our decision making processes, to the point where email still is a massive disruptor of that free flow of knowledge and information across the board. And it shouldn’t be.  Indeed, email fosters closed, private, secretive interactions amongst a few people, what I have been flagging all along as sharing your knowledge across on a need to know basis vs. what social networking tools do, which is promote that wonderfully inspiring mantra of default to open. It’s been rather interesting to note as well how email is pretty much used nowadays as a way of managing your employees and your knowledge workflows vs. perhaps walking along the virtual aisles of social networks to find out what your team members are doing in terms of opening up the conversations, narrating their work or working out loud. And all of that without having to even ask a single question once. Somehow the latter approach sounds so much more of an effective use of our time than the selfish, egotistical use of email just to fit our own individual purpose(s). So while that transformation keeps taking place I am sure you may be wondering what has happened in the last 4 weeks since the last progress report I shared over here, right? Well, like I hinted above, at the beginning of this article, things are slowly, but steadily, coming back on track. As you can see from the attached snapshot, after the massive peak of email activity for Week 20, with the highest amount of incoming emails for a single week that I can remember in years!, there has been a steady decrease on the amount of emails received for the following four weeks, which I can think can only be, but some really good news. For a moment, I thought all of that hard work of over the course of the last 6 years around Life Without eMail was just gone! Well, not really. We were just having a break, apparently…   As you can see, the average amount of incoming emails is still sitting on 31.2 per week, which is pretty much the very same volume of incoming email that I was receiving back in 2009, but the good news is that over the last four weeks you will see a decrease on the total amount of emails received, and that is a good sign that things are going back to normal, the new normal: a Life Without eMail. Yes, this year it may well have been a bit of a bumpy road, but that’s a good thing, because, amongst several other things, it’s allowed me to revisit, review and reposition the whole movement since I started it, and, if anything, I have also learned that I may have gone back to levels of email activity as I had them in 2009, but I have got plenty of years of first hand experiences of how to turn it back on the right track, once again, by living social, by living Open. And I know I am not just ready yet to let things go away like that forgetting everything we have done in the recent past. There is still a good fight out there to go for. One where we transition from closed systems of record into open systems of engagement. One where we continue walking the talk, leading by example on what really matters: a much more purposeful, meaningful work where openness and transparency through social networking tools help us all become more effective and eventually more productive at what we do, i.e. get our work done collectively as teams, networks and communities. And that can only be a good thing for businesses that want to promote sustainable growth as their primal reason for survival in today’s Knowledge Economy. After all, when was the last time that you could do your job without the help or support from your (extended) team(s)? And talking about that Openness and Transparency, I just couldn’t help closing off this progress report post sharing across a recent article I had the privilege, and true honour, of writing it for The Times where I basically shared some additional insights in terms of how king email’s crown is getting more and more challenged by the day by a certain newcomer that’s transforming the way we work: social networking for business. Indeed, over at The Social Business report, pages 12 and 13, you would be able to read "Newcomer Challenging for King Email’s Crown" where I mentioned the larger impact all of these social technologies are having around how we get work done in a business environment nowadays: "Social sharing, when occurring in the workplace, is becoming more focused, purposeful and is making a meaningful contribution to productivity. […]  Knowledge workers are more comfortable with sharing work-related items in the open, but they are also encouraging transparent working. There is an understanding that the more business-related information available out there for practitioners to benefit from, the better the decision-making. It is increasing the ability to share responsibility and accountability" Yes, I know, I just couldn’t help teasing you all with a couple of paragraphs from that article, so that, if you would be interested, you could have a look and read on, specially, if you are keen on finding out plenty more how that openness and transparency are challenging the traditional role of management, decision making, knowledge sharing and, eventually, executing work. Resulting, all in all, in helping us address what I still think is the number #1 business problem of today’s corporate world: employee engagement.  Because, after all:  "Socially integrated enterprises have been empowering happy employees to create delighted customers, all through the clever use of digital tools. Social technologies have just become the new overlord. It’s about time." [Oh, and before I forget, here's a friendly reminder, in case you may want to find out further more, to come and join us at the Life Without eMail Google Plus Community where a bunch of us (Including the coiner of the well known mantra I have been reusing for years > "eMail is where knowledge goes to die") have been having some rather interesting, refreshing and thought provoking conversations of how social technologies are reshaping the workplace by helping email repurpose itself into better things…]

For a good couple of years I have been a huge fan, and big advocate, of what I think is one of the most empowering and refreshing social networking tools out there: Google Plus. Yes, I know I may have well been one of the very few, but all along I have always felt that in terms of features, capabilities, blending of online and offline interactions and, above all, the deeper level of engagement in conversations is what made G+ special. Very special. Till a couple of days ago, where I discovered, by pure chance, which is how these things happen usually, I suppose, how it has been hiding away the best part of that social networking tool: the conversations themselves. Remember the filter bubble? From the very beginning, I read in one of the review blog posts around Google Plus how the Home Stream (All) doesn’t really display all of the various different posts that your networks get to share. It only displays a fraction that the system itself identifies based on whatever the algorithm. Now, I can imagine how plenty of people may not feel very comfortable with the fire hose of updates coming through, so they may actually appreciate, quite a bit, having Google figuring it all out how it would work for most people. Alas, not for me. I would want to see every single post that comes my way, so I can then decide whether I would want to read it or not. I have always felt that’s the ultimate choice from social networkers in terms of defining the amount of signal / noise they would get exposed to without having that social networking tool calculating automatically what may matter to you or not. I am sorry, but it just doesn’t work that way. So a few months back I started relying more and more on Google Plus Circles to the point where I became rather dependent on them. I created a bunch of them, that I check on a rather regular basis, but there are four of them that I consider critical food for my brain. You know, the One50, Two50,  and TheRest and a new one I created which is a combination of all three of those coming up to nearly 500 people in total, which is what I am checking out nowadays the most as my new timeline. Essentially, the one circle of those folks who I would want to receive whatever updates they share.  Thus a little while ago I decided to try out an experiment, which was, essentially, keeping an open tab in Chrome throughout the day for Google Plus and, in particular, for that specific G+ Circle (That I called Everyone), and which would allow me to jump in every now and then and check what people may be saying, talking about or sharing across. You know, in between work tasks, coffee breaks, those spare idle moments in between meetings and so forth. The idea was to be able to catch up with everything that may have been shared across with an opportunity to do it at my own pace, and without any restrictions. However, over the course of time, I started noticing how after a short period of time, without checking things out, the lovely blue box would show up indicating the number of new posts that I had catch up with since I last refreshed, and I started to notice how if I would have, say, 74 new posts, when clicking on refresh it would just display (I counted them!) about 36, which means that half of the content is gone. Just like that! WOW!!!  And here I was thinking that G+ algorithm was only in place for the Home Stream (All) page. Well, apparently, not. I have actually raised this very same issue on my Plus Profile, on this post, where I talked about it more extensively, and a bunch of other folks have been very helpful sharing their insights, including reference blog entries like this one on that very same topic with the flair that it’s working as designed. Well, no, it’s not. At least, it is not my design.  See? If I create a new Circle in Google Plus because there is a list of contacts / networks that I would want to keep up with and get exposed to everything they share in G+ that’s what I expect the circle to handle graciously, not just show to me what it thinks is better for me. Never mind how much data you have about me. No, sorry, systems should not be making that choice for people. At least, people should be given the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of that model, which in this case it’s just not happening. And I am finding that incredibly frustrating and perhaps somewhat disturbing as well for that matter. Why? Mainly, of course, because of that filter bubble. I would want to be the person in charge of what I get exposed to, how I would want to get exposed to, and, most importantly, how I would want to consume that content shared across. And let it be down to me to decide if I would want to mitigate, or not, the fire hose effect of content I get exposed to. It should be my decision, not the system’s. That’s actually one of the reasons why I have never been a fan of Facebook, Twitter and various other social networking tools that do pretty much the same thing: putting constraints in place by the system, within the streams, thinking it knows better than their end-users. Well, maybe not.  Yes, I realise that I am perhaps making a big fuss out of anything. I mean, I am sure that you folks would be able to identify a whole bunch of various different areas of improvement for Google Plus in terms of missing features and capabilities, but, to me, it’s all down to this: can I use it for work? Yes, I know I can use it for personal use, which I have already for a long while, just like any other social networking tool, but, to me, Google Plus was special, because I could also use it for work. Or, at least, that’s what I thought, because, after finding out about that behaviour, I am just not sure anymore. I mean, think of this very same scenario happening with work email… Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. There is no way that you just can’t miss work related emails, specially, from a customer, or business partner, or from an urgent request from your boss or your fellow colleagues, only to find out the system thought about dropping it out, because it was not that important. Goodness! That would never happen with email. Period. It’s out of the question, even. So why should social networking tools be different? Why can’t we have that opt-in / opt-out option where we, the end-users, the social networkers, get to decide how we would want to process, consume and digest those streams? That’s a fair request, don’t you think?  So what’s going to happen next then, you may be wondering, right? Well, for now, and while I am awaiting for an official answer from Google Plus Help and some other folks, G+ has dropped out to the same level of attention, engagement, involvement and relevancy as plenty of other social networking tools, because no matter how hard you would try it looks like with Google Plus, just like with plenty of others, you will always  be missing stuff and, to be frank, if that’s going to happen, I rather prefer to focus my attention elsewhere. It’s not even worth the effort anymore. Does that mean I will be ditching Google Plus for good? No, not yet. Like I said, I like it quite a bit. I am not going to give up on it that easy or that soon, even though I fully realise I will never get an answer from the Help & Support team(s), which is also another one of those issues with all of these public social networking tools on the Open Web. I will continue to make use of it. It’s just that instead of spending a substantial amount of time in it every day, the level of attention has dropped quite a bit, to the point where it no longer has the priority on my external social networking activities as it used to have. That focus is now gone.  And that’s a pity. I know and I fully realise about that. But I guess that’s what happens when you, Google Plus, in this case, make the assumption you can own the filter bubble of those who have given you the mere existence of your own being, ignoring their voices and opinions, thinking you know better than them. Perhaps you don’t, perhaps you shouldn’t have. Perhaps you need to address the issue before I will be coming back. Why? Well, because, amongst several other things, I still want to own the filter bubble. My filter bubble. Thank you very much. 

I can’t remember when was the last time that I updated my Curriculum Vitae. Actually, that’s not accurate. Of course, I do. It was around beginning of 2009 and it surely sounds like ages ago! Either way, I can’t help going through a giggle or two every time folks ask me why don’t I update my resume more often, at least, for the sake of keeping it up to date. I keep responding back that I actually do update it on a regular basis. It’s just that for me the concept of CV has got a completely different meaning than to them. I mean, to them, it’s all about having an A4 page, stored somewhere in a static location, perhaps your own computing device, telling everyone how wonderful and skilful you are for whatever the job you may be applying to. To me, my CV though is nowadays pretty much my own online presence out there on the Social Web, where you constantly need to prove your skills, talent and expertise, so that eventually people can find you and corroborate whether you are fake or not, and whether your merit and online reputation clearly represent not only who you are, but also what you do: essentially, your own digital footprint, or, … personal brand. That is one of the many reasons why I have truly enjoyed the Forbes article Dorie Clark put together, just recently, under the rather suggestive heading of "Reputation 3.0: The Internet Is Your Resume", where she gets to explain how more and more recruiters and employers are starting to flock to the Social Web in order to find new talent and if that expertise cannot be found there, it seems you no longer exist, quoting Debra Feldman with the following paragraph:  "If the search inquiry doesn’t find you, there’s a void like you don’t exist. Your credibility suffers. You’ll never know that you were eliminated [from consideration for a position], or what chances you’ve missed…Anonymity and mistaken identity are the biggest threats to your reputation" Very powerful words, indeed. In fact, perhaps a bit too scary that your career, from here onwards, may well depend on the fact of not only whether you have a digital footprint out there on the Internet, but also whether you may have left a mark, a legacy, on that very same Social Web.  I guess that’s one of the reasons why all along, and over the course of the years, every now and then I keep googling my own name, which I am sure you would know by now how much of a popular name that is, at least, in the hispanic world, in order to figure out what people are talking about around my online presence, my skills, my experience and expertise and essentially my digital footprint. Yes, I know most of you folks out there would be associating that activity towards doing some social ego searches just to see what people are talking about you, but the thing is that it’s one of those rather refreshing and mind-blowing activities I keep telling people to actually do in order to find out how others perceive you out there on the Social Web. You never know what you are going to learn about yourself from how others perceive you online… So while you "consider your Internet search results "a perpetual resume - a dynamic record of achievements, affiliations and ideas"", I am sure you may be thinking about how can you keep feeding the beast, that is, the Internet itself, in order to make it easier for you to be found out there. After all, that’s all part of looking after your brand and while I have seen plenty of people thinking about using social networking tools to help amplify that digital footprint, I keep saying the most elaborate, powerful and relevant tool to help you manage that online reputation is probably your own blog. In the past I have mentioned how Google Search is probably your best friend out there, too, how it’s your new business card and pretty much one of the best options out there to help you understand your visibility in the context of how people find you, which social networking tools you hang out at, what blogging platform do you use, etc. with the ultimate premise, perhaps, of providing the most powerful business reason to invest in the Social Web today, as a knowledge worker:  ""No longer can you plan on internal promotions for career progress. You must manage your own path and that’s best done through connections. Virtual ties can be as influential as in person relationships […]" Indeed, in today’s more complex, disruptive and uncertain business environment than ever, it’s something you cannot afford not having anymore. You can’t even ignore it. People would keep talking about you, your product, or your brand, anyway, for a good while, resulting in that urgency of having to come up with an strategy that would work for you to help you ramp up efforts and get things going. And that you is no longer the corporate brand. That you is just the individual you, craving for that attention and exclusivity when in reality social networks work in much different ways, because, after all,  "It’s better to have a strong network before you need their help".  And that’s the main reason why I keep telling folks how if they would still need to come up with a business reason as to why they would need to justify their Social / Open Business involvement and participation, let it be just this simple one: looking after your digital brand (One of my favourite online resources on the topic, by the way, put together by the one and only, Chris Brogan). Not necessarily because you may not need it now, but more specifically for when you really need it. Networks need to get ready. They need to know who you are, what you do and what you are good at, so that when you may need that help, they can highlight that sweet spot they can help out with and engage right away.  On that Forbes article, Dorie takes the liberty of sharing across some of Debra Feldman’s tips on how to build a strong social presence, so that your own online CV looks healthier, stronger and more relevant than ever. So I thought I would also take the same liberty and quote those helpful tips as well, not only for folks out there to savour, digest and start thinking about them, but also for myself as I continue to work on that digital footprint, because, you know, it’s never good enough, right? Thus here they are:  "Positioning: differentiate yourself from the competition Distinguish yourself as a trustworthy expert within a niche market(s) Identify the target markets or employers you’d like to focus on Describe the unique contribution you can make in each target area Prepare and publish examples demonstrating your expertise across all media channels Direct your social and in-person networking towards attracting decision makers Evaluate your current online persona and compare it to how you’d ideally like to be perceived Establish social networking accounts, create profiles, and start participating Prioritize your social networking activities to generate the best ROI for your career goals Set up mechanisms to regularly monitor your reputation and address any negative or incorrect information" The key message though when thinking about your online digital footprint and reputation, remember, your new CV, is not to think of personal branding as an external self-promotion campaign, but as an overall leadership trait. It’s not just that. It’s a whole lot more as well we need to start realising about, just as much. It’s essentially around that ability to recognise, and fully embrace, the fact that personal branding also happens on the inside, I mean, within the firewall, in each and every organisation, that’s where it all starts, because, after all, it does bring you one key aspect that we surely need more and more in today’s tougher than ever corporate environment: job satisfaction. And that’s essentially why your personal brand matters, whether internally or externally, because whether you like it or not, if there isn’t job satisfaction coming along with what you do, there isn’t probably anything left out there. Yes, I know, there is always the money, but is it the only motivator that keeps you going in today’s Social / Open Business world?  Probably not. Perhaps, what you may just need is some Arbejdsglæde…

If a couple of days ago I was talking about job satisfaction, about happiness at work, that is, Arbejdsglæde, I think I am now ready to take things into the next level and declare, out loud and clear, how we may be running through that particular point in time where it may well be a good thing now to come to terms with the fact that you, too, will fail to have a great career. Get over it. Move on. Shocking, don’t you think? Well, what would you do about it? Keep trying? Really hard? Or give up on it altogether and be at the mercy of a world of mediocrity?  That’s pretty much the wonderfully inspiring proposition from Professor Larry Smith, at University of Waterloo in Canada, that he presented at a TEDx UW Talk event back in 2011 and which, funny enough, seems to be making the rounds out there on the Social Web at the moment, two years later. Specially, after this particularly inspiring Forbes article interview, where he talked extensively about his speech and what he actually meant with it. Quite a thought provoking read, just as much as the TEDx event with some rather witty and smart quotes, like this one: "Find and use your passion and you’ll have a great career. Don’t do it, you won’t. It’s as simple as that. People don’t look for their passion because they haven’t tasted it. If you’ve never tasted what it’s like to get up in the morning and be pleased to go to work, you don’t know what you’re missing" Or this other one, which pretty much nails it for me at this point in time for my own career:  "Get out doors. Do it all. Talk to as many different people as you can. Read as much different stuff as you can. Go out and see things—industrial tours, museums, walk on the street and look at what you see. Plug yourself into the whole array of human experiences. Don’t do one of them. Do all of them. And if you do, how can you not find something that you can’t stop thinking about? Read things outside of a narrow band of books, talk to people outside of a narrow band of a few friends"     Yes, indeed, curiosity can be such a wonderful thing! But even more, curiosity, inspired by serendipity, is just unstoppable. It’s that glue that makes magic happen, specially, on the Social Web. And that’s essentially, in a nutshell, one the main reasons why over 13 years ago I turned into social networks and social networking tools: curiosity, serendipity and passion. Absolutely! That’s the whole point behind the 15 minute long presentation from Prof. Smith, where if there is a single reason out there that would be solely responsible for your failure to have a great career is, amongst several other things, that potential lack of passion in what you do. Followed behind, very closely, but that constant fear of failing, of learning (and wanting to learn even some more!), of trying. You name it. Actually, he *does* that for you enumerating plenty of the several reasons as to why we can’t keep advancing forward in our careers due to that lack of passion.  Interestingly enough, this is not the first time (Nor the last one for that matter, I am sure!) I get to talk about over here, in this blog, about the whole topic around passion, specially, in the Social Era of Open Business. And I am not going to be the only one either talking about the huge impact of bringing in your passion for what you do at work. We have seen how it’s an integral part of what drives social networks (Specifically, for that inner urge of connecting with other passionate believers to share and learn about that common interest). We have seen how it’s going to be one of the major key drivers of the future of work, as my good friend, Ross Dawson, brilliantly blogged about, just recently. We have seen how it transforms people’s lives to levels no other human trait is capable of accomplishing over the course of time. And the list goes on and on and on…  But if there is a particular aspect about it that I really enjoy in terms of how it describes the way I see passion myself, specially, in the context of the Social Web and work, in general, is the brilliant dissertation shared across a little while ago by my good friend John Hagel under the rather suggestive title of "Exploring Passion - what kind of passion do you have?", which he then developed further in a short speech that can be found over here and which culminated on another TEDx event (WestLake) that I thought would be worth while sharing across over here as well in this article. Yes, it’s that good and I just couldn’t help embedding it below as we speak:  John gets to talk about how passion and engagement are not the same thing. He gets to describe four different passions that pretty much drive our interactions. To name:  "Passion of the fan Passion of the player Passion of the true believer Passion of the explorer" I am sure that at this point in time you are all thinking about what kind of passion do you have and whether that would translate into what you bring to work. Or not. So I will leave you to read all of the various different descriptions for each and everyone of them that he talks about, and I would include over here, in this article, the one that I think is driving most of what I do: the passion of the explorer. And here is why:  "The explorer commits to a domain, usually one that is broadly defined, and is excited about the prospect of making a growing impact in the domain over a long period of time, often a life-time. But here’s a key difference relative to the true believer. The explorer has no idea where they will end up and they have little sense of the long-term path they will pursue. That’s part of their excitement, they get to carve out their own path as they go and they get to be surprised about where it leads" To then pretty much state, loud and clear, what passion to those explorers really means in terms of how things work for them:  "Explorers also reach out to connect with others. They are constantly seeking new challenges that will test them and help them to make an increasing impact in their domain. As a result, they’re always seeking others who either share their passion or who have some expertise that’s relevant to the challenges they are confronting" And there you have it… After having watched both inspiring speeches I am starting to think that I might as well fail to have a great career in the long run, after all, but, then again, for as long as that passion of the explorer keeps driving my core beliefs and inspiring my day to day interactions for what I truly believe in the area of Open Business, that is, I know I may be experiencing moments of weakness, here and there, where one would be inclined to head out through the easy way. But then again, let’s not forget, we are here for the long journey, for the experience, for embarking on that constant learning curve where you will not know, ever, where you will end up, nor that you would care much about it either. Essentially, you have come to terms with the fact that you are just planting the seeds for a harvest that will be collected afterwards. After you are long gone, but, to you, it’s that kind of sacrifice you are willing to make: because their success will be your success.  And it all starts with passion. Your passion. 

I have been a remote knowledge (Web) worker for almost 10 years now (Back in November 2003, when I was still living in The Netherlands) and over the course of time, while I shifted from European based projects into worldwide ones I have been doing plenty of adjusting of work schedules to meet the demands of work and therefore become a night owl of sorts, but at the same time ensuring that work life integration is there, right from the start. It’s been an interesting journey all along and even more so when it has given me the opportunity to live fully key concepts like flexibility and negotiation in a collaborative workplace. Well, it’s now a good time perhaps to take things into the next level and become an early bird, once again.  Indeed, for a good number of years I used to be an early riser, and I mean, a really early one! However, and like I mentioned above, over the course of time, and as I have shifted into more global working schedules, I became more of a night owl, starting work at around noon, my local timezone, and then finish work related items late in the evening, never mind adding up after-work related activities, of course. All in all work life integration has always been a key theme for yours truly, since I have never believed in the so-called work life balance that plenty of people have been talking and writing about for a long time, more than anything else, because I have always believed, and rather strongly, that balance is just a myth. Why? Well, because work always wins.  What I am finding truly fascinating from this journey as a remote knowledge (Web) worker is how time and time again we all get to redefine and redesign our very own work habits and mindset to meet up a new set of behaviours that would allow us reach our business goals: mainly, get work done in both an effective and productive manner through the use of social technologies. You know, the good old mantra I have been talking about over here for a while now around working smarter, not necessarily harder. But what happens when, all of a sudden, everything gets disrupted because you end up finding out it’s becoming harder and harder to keep up with both worlds: internal and external? Is that something that has happened to you all as well?  What I mean with that is simply how ever since I moved into this new role as Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM Connections within the CIO organisation, my external participation on social networking tools has become more and more scarce, not necessarily because of a time issue, or intent, or motivation, or willingness to do it. But more than anything else because both my brain and body seem to have had enough with it all. No, don’t worry, this is not a blog post where I am going to announce I am going to give up on external social networking activities. This is more of an article to reflect how the time that I used to allocate for those external activities needs to shift accordingly to match a new reality: at the end of the day, both my body and my brain are just wonderfully fried. Why? Well, because I am loving what I am doing. I am having a blast helping my company understand and embrace that new brave world of Social / Open Business. I am enjoying tremendously the huge amount of interactions I have daily helping fellow colleagues adjust their habits and mindset, and eventually adapt to a new set of behaviours, a new wave of interactions to do business, where they themselves become more open, collaborative and transparent on what they do. And it’s that passion that shines through that keeps me going at a rather full throttle pace that some times it’s hard to keep up with. The immediate result? At the end of my work day, I am wonderfully exhausted.  Indeed, it just doesn’t feel like work, this job role is truly aligned with my core values, even if that means that I get to fully challenge each and everyone of them, on a regular basis, in terms of what I have always believed over the course of last 13 years around social networking for business, so, yes, I am very willing to suffer as a passionate method into learning how everything flows around me and those I interact with, understanding fully where the limits may well be in terms of commitment, involvement, engagement and what not. Hopefully, it does get noticed as time moves on realising how pretty much that exhaustion, that fulfilment, that readiness to come back tomorrow for more pretty much drives what I do nowadays.  You could say that I have turned myself from a first thinker (around 2.0 matters) into a powerhouse practitioner in full mode for executing, and walking the talk, on the Social / Open Business mantras and philosophy. Am I enjoying it? Yes, you bet! I surely am! Is it having a price, a toll, on yours truly? Yes, it is! At least, on my external personal, digital brand / footprint. Am I really willing to sacrifice it for the greater good, i.e. helping everyone else get there? Yes, very much so! That was one of the main reasons why I took this new job in the first place! Will it mean that over time I will keep fading away till I pretty much disappear from the Social Web? I just don’t know. I haven’t explored that yet, or the implications of such thought, but I do sense how I am slowly going into oblivion, to the point that I am not too sure anymore I may be able to recover that external social presence anymore to what it used to be. I guess I will have to take that risk and, yes!, I am willing to take it. It’s perhaps all what I have got left, if I would want to grow further along on that learning path of becoming a fully engaged and empowered knowledge Web worker. The trade-off is huge and rather risky, but quite an adrenaline rush all along. At the same time, I feel though how I am starting to miss those thinking times where you would pause and reflect on what’s happening around you, that is, your own thought leadership, in order to develop some ideas around it and share it across with everyone else to keep improving things for you and, hopefully, for everyone else. Yes, I am starting to miss that thinking time for reflection. Why? Mainly, because as soon as I start my working day at my home office, there is no time for a pause, or a breather. A constant influx of internal social interactions, instant messages, phone calls, videoconferences, meetings, conference calls, *cough* email *cough* , etc. etc. you name it, take over and by the time it’s all done and dealt with both my body and brain are so exhausted that I cannot longer think and reflect properly to interact in a meaningful way out there on the Social Web in conversations where I would want to share my ¢2 and still make sense out of it. So I just go elsewhere and do other things, typically, what most people would flag as private quality time with your family, friends and relatives. Basically, enjoy the other side of life. Still my external social presence gets to suffer on this one quite a bit, because that time that I had allocated for those external social interactions is now a thing of the past, since it is used for something else now. Still, like I mentioned above, I do miss the thinking times around Social / Open Business, perhaps as an opportunity for yours truly to keep advancing and learning plenty more, since we are just at the tip of the iceberg, right at the beginning, of this fascinating business transformation journey. Thus time to take action then, I suppose: become an early riser! Indeed, there have been a good and rather extensive, varied number of different articles, blog posts, dissertations, research and what not, that talk about the various different perks of being an early riser. All packed with plenty of helpful, practical and rather relevant hints and tips on how to make it work accordingly. Well, to me, there will be a new one out there that I would be adding into the mix: my own thinking time. Indeed, that time where you just kick things off with your day, where you just focus on what you would want to do, that may not necessarily be even work related, but that can certainly give you that opportunity to work on something you would want for yourself in terms of your own thought leadership, effectiveness at achieving something or just plainly personal productivity. In my case, an opportunity to pause and reflect on interesting and rather inspiring links I may bump into from my various different social networks or perhaps an opportunity to blog on a more regular basis, shorter pieces, maybe, as I will just be capable of focusing on that particular writing activity without constantly being pulled off in multiple directions.  Somehow I feel rather enticed by the idea of whether I can change my own habits from being a night owl into an early bird. To see whether I can regain that productive time (not related to my internal work) to focus on my external social presence and to whatever the level. Remember, no need to be constantly over-sharing stuff all over the place without thinking the potential purpose and additional for that activity, i.e. your audience and yourself. I can see how some times I may be able to spend the odd hour here and there, perhaps two!, or may be just 30 minutes, or even less, after all, don’t forget that we are all in here for the long run, so the important thing is just to kick things off, learn from that new experience and I guess that with this blog post I have just done that!  So, any other early risers on my external social networks … ? 

Once again, it’s been nearly a couple of weeks since my last blog post over here on The Perks of Being an Early Riser  and I am sure at this point in time folks out there may be thinking that, once more, I have failed to keep up with restoring my social presence as I mentioned on that last article. Far from the truth, I am afraid. Over the last few days I have been doing something that I have been looking forward to for quite some time and that it’s always something that I can never get tired of: Vacation. And this time around a very special kind of holiday, because it’s been a rather disconnected one, too! Not by choice though, although the world works in mysterious ways, so perhaps that was what I needed all along in the first place: a time to strike for "the best opportunity to take a step back, inhale, exhale, think about life, and ask: am I happy?" Indeed, every year, during the course of the summer I have been enjoying tremendously that pilgrimage back home to see my family in León, Spain, where I was born and raised, and catch up with them for a few days to see what they have been up to. And time and time again, it’s been a fun experience, specially, when this time around you try to explain to your mum what you do for a living and you realise that she has never seen, played, enjoyed the Web. Quite an interesting and thrilling challenge I would encourage you all to go through, if you haven’t just yet!  Even worse when you try to show her what it is like from your laptop and there isn’t any ADSL or wi-fi around. Or you try to show her on your mobile smartphone and tablet through a so-called rather robust 3G network and you see that it fails to keep getting connected to the point of embarrassment. And you eventually give up, because you know that so-called pervasive connectivity isn’t just coming around. Yes, indeed, someone had to say it out loud, I guess, there are parts in this world where broadband and the Internet are just … not … there!  Goodness! I can’t believe that I am writing about this in 2013, where everyone keeps claiming that we are now more connected than ever before in our history through the (Social) Web, where wi-fi and ADSL lines are pervasive enough to make it an enjoyable experience and where, as a last resort, 3G may come to the rescue. Well, not really. Not everywhere as I have been able to experience fully in the last 10 days or so. And this is happening right here, in Spain, not some kind of remote island, in the middle of the ocean, where the 21st century may not have arrived just yet!  See? Disconnected holiday not by choice, but then again perhaps it was better that way, because I had a real blast altogether! And for a good number of reasons, starting off with having an opportunity to do a proper catch-up with family and friends face-to-face and without any smartphone or tablet devices getting on the way. Never mind that wonderful opportunity as well to find plenty of time to pause and reflect wondering about things, in general, whether I have been enjoying work, my personal life, and so forth. You name it. It’s amazing to see how much one gets to think when you do have all of the time of the world without the so-called distractions we are all pretty familiar with. What Ted Leonsis brilliantly described on a recent article under the suggestive heading "Find Time to Reflect". Anyway, I am not too sure whether I eventually succeeded in explaining to my mum what I do for a living, or not, but I can tell you she was right on when she threw back at me a rather short, sharp question that I guess summarises everything and that it certainly puts things into perspective: "Are you happy, son? (Because that’s what really matters at the end of the day, you know)".  Whoahhh!! Mums are wonderful, aren’t they? They just know us inside out, and without having to say much, to find out really quick everything they would want to know and in just 4 words she was capable of detailing whether I am on the right track or not, and not just in my professional career, but also on a personal level. The intriguing thing is that I failed to utter some words as a response. Instead, I just got a huge smile coming across my entire face that she received warmly with a nod of approval and "That’s all that matters, really, that you are happy with yourself and those around you and that you keep smiling. The world needs that, son".  You can see why I am getting goose bumps all over again as I get to write down those few words of wisdom, right? And she didn’t even need to be aware of what the Internet is or have access to it or for me to explain what I do for work. Some things are just so profound, so touching and mind-blowing altogether, yet so simple and uncomplicated that it’s incredibly difficult to not just feel overwhelmed by that feeling of immense gratitude. She has done all right with all of her children all along throughout all of these years. And me being worried all along about not being connected to the Web to be in the know and everything, when all I needed was just right in front of my face! Right there! How could I possibly miss that?  I guess that’s what I meant earlier on in this post when talking about taking that disconnected holiday to visit my family and to pause and reflect on things, the smallest things, you know, the ones which seem to be the ones that keep driving us towards whatever our goals may well have been all along, but that, for whatever the reason, we may have deviated a bit in our directions and / or intent. I suppose that’s, amongst several other zillion things!, what mums are really good at over the course of time when they keep reminding you what you are here for in this world and everything, helping you focus on what you really need to focus on… those around you who you care for and … yourself. In finding time to reflect Ted talks about several common steps that would surely help us all towards becoming happy and successful. To quote them briefly:  "Goal-Setting Communities of Interest Personal Expression Gratitude Empathy and Giving Back Higher Calling" It is a rather fascinating and inspiring read all along for sure and I highly recommend going through it, specially, if you are still enjoying some time off and could do with some additional hints & tips on what that thinking time could be like. I can tell you, after the 10 days I have spent back home, with my family, in mainland Spain, there are a couple of them that truly resonate with what I have experienced during that time: personal expression, gratitude and empathy and giving back, understanding fully that all of the above will eventually help me figure out the biggie, that is, the higher calling (Whatever that may well be, whenever … time will tell).  Ether way, you can probably sense from this blog post how after that holiday break my batteries are fully charged, and ready for plenty more to come along! I will be back to work next Monday. That outrageous, heretic, corporate rebel optimist, that hippie 2.0, is back in full throttle and interestingly enough with a new focus (I told you, that thinking time was going to have its toll as well! hehe) that will start unfolding itself from next week onwards, when as an early riser back into the social grid, will start unleashing his personal expression. But for now, I thought I would share over here a couple of photos I had the chance to take as well of the town where I grew up back in the day… 

Earlier on this month, my good friend, Euan Semple wrote a short blog post on the topic of how tough it is to put together that initial first blog entry, if you are new to blogging, and even more so if you are an executive. It’s just like the whole world is watching you for that first article and you just want to do things right. You certainly don’t want to look like a fool, never mind that feeling of being ridiculed by your peers if things don’t work out. You just can’t afford to go through that and that’s where most of your reluctance to blogging comes from nowadays. You know how it goes, the longer you leave it, the stronger the pressure on you and when you, finally, decide to get things started with your own  blogging you realise it’s not going to be as easy as you thought it would have been, but will it be worth it? Well, for the sake of bravery, authenticity, honesty and openness, yes, it surely will. Even for you as a CEO.  Blogging is coming back, in case you may not have noticed. Even for senior executives it’s becoming one of the most empowering opportunities to engage in an open, direct dialogue with your audience(s) about whatever the subject matter you may decide to write about. The thing is nowadays most executives feel like blogging is something that their communications & PR teams should be doing for them. After all, it’s just another publishing platform, right? Well, that may well not be the case, perhaps. Euan defined it as a "slippery slope" and I couldn’t have agreed more with him. To quote: "First they help you, then they start to write the posts for you, then you get busy or bored, and the next thing you know it is not your blog but someone else’s".  That’s probably one of the best descriptions of why I have never believed in ghost writing myself either over the course of the last 10 years that I have been blogging already. It just doesn’t work. And that’s probably one of the main reasons as to why blogging is so tough. It requires lots of energy, hard work and good effort to make it happen and for that you may need more time than just posting a tweet, or a short message on LinkedIn, Google Plus or whatever the other social networking tool. And we all know how tough it is nowadays to make time for your social interactions, even for blogging, in between your ever increasing workloads, right? Where is the balance then?  The balance is on trying to figure out whether you really need a blog or not for yourself. Remember, blogging still is the most powerful key element on the Social Web out there to help you build, sustain, nurture and develop your own personal (digital) brand. So should you, as a CEO, or a senior executive, for that matter, start blogging? Most probably.  The good thing is that those folks who may decide to jump into the blogging bandwagon do have it relatively easy in terms of the huge amount of resources, helpful how-to articles, pragmatic blog posts, lessons learned, hints and tips, productivity hacks, numerous user guides on blogging that surely help address the potential technological barriers, even for guest blogging. Even more so The Next Web has put together a stunning article where they have detailed "The 15 Best Blogging and Publishing Platforms on the Internet Today. […]". So there are plenty of choices and helpful support / resources out there, no doubt. Why is it so tough to get things going with your own blog then? Well, I think Euan pretty much nails it with this particular quote which pretty much summarises some really good and practical advice:  "Be brave, say what you really think, say it in your own words. And I mean your own words - the way you would talk to a friend. Not falsely informal nor nervously official. Your real voice, the real you. Surprisingly this is what makes it so damn hard. We are often not usually our real selves at work. Often we have forgotten how to speak normally! It feels raw, you feel vulnerable, it an’t natural. But it is. It is the most natural and effective way to truly communicate with someone. To make a real connection. If you can remember how to do it, and write like you mean it, then things can only get easier and real magic starts to happen." [Emphasis mine] Indeed, at the end of the day, it’s all about a couple of things, really. It’s about whether you, as the blogger, may be able to find both your own blogging voice and your own blogging style, no matter how high you may well be in the organisation. And stick around with both of them. Being afraid or fearful about what others, including your peers!, may say about your own blogging style / voice is not going to help much. In fact, it will manage to keep you in your cave for a good while, so that you, too, can conform with their own inability to leap forward and get their own blogging going. That’s where Euan’s commentary on bravery is so accurate. We just need to be braver out there and share more of what we know and what we are good at and what we would be able to keep writing on and on and on for years as if it were still the first blog post.  Yes, absolutely!, blogging, eventually, is all about sharing your passion about that subject matter. About making it contagious for others. About being open, transparent, trustworthy enough to comfortably share your thoughts out there in the open, understanding that they may be incomplete, imperfect, awkward, at times, perhaps, but they are still your thoughts, your passion, your blogging voice and style coming together. Now, I am pretty sure we don’t have an issue with finding our passion, do we? I think we all know pretty well what it is that drives us not just at work, but also in our personal lives. I think we all know how we can, once again, become more authentic, transparent, honest, open, engaged, more our selves, really, on the Social Web out there while we interact with others. We just need to bring it back and don’t take ourselves too seriously. Let’s not forget the play factor, please. Will your peers continue to make fun of you and ridicule you? Most probably, since that’s how they would want to keep hiding themselves and fight their own uncomfortable circumstances by deviating the attention elsewhere. Should you care about it? Definitely not. Remember, after all, you have got a passion hidden inside wanting to burst out and be shared with the rest of the world. Yes, that’s the moment you know you are now ready to start your own blog. Yes, we know, we have been waiting for you all along. Don’t worry, the waters are lovely. Welcome to the Internet Blogosphere!

One of the really interesting things in the world of social networking is how every now and then you bump into a specific resource, an online video clip, a blog post, a mainstream news article, a dissertation or whatever else, that is just so thought-provoking and rather mind-boggling in challenging your own notion, experiences, know-how, skills and expertise on the topic of social networks that surely makes you think about your own experiences twice, to the point where it makes you pause and think, really well, whether you are doing it right or not (and whatever that means with "doing it right"). Gary Hamel calls it "changing the way we change". I call it growing-up, although my notion of growing-up is a completely different kind of growing-up than the one Euan Semple blogged about just recently as well. Indeed, welcome to the disturbing world of Loneliness! Euan, in a rather inspirational short blog post, puts together all of his hopes around the Social Web (and our societies, for that matter) on those people who "are brave enough to be naive, foolish, enthusiastic, and open - because maybe that is how real grown ups should be?". I would put my hopes on those, too, although I would also include those who are always open to exercising plenty of critical thinking, in a constructive manner, of course, but always willing to challenge the status quo to help us move forward, to progress further, to grow, to keep learning, to understand how we should strive for avoiding becoming a commodity and thrive in the new Creativity Economy (Yes, another economy to add into the mix) as empowered knowledge (Web) workers.  And then you bump into absolutely stunning video clips like the one put together by Shimi Cohen on the Innovation of Loneliness (Vimeo link, if interested) that starts off with a rather evocative and refreshing question that I doubt most of us out there on social networks have ever even dared to ask ourselves: "What is the connection between Social Networks and Being Lonely?" I am not going to spoil the contents of the video for you. Not even going to give you a teaser or two, like I typically do to entice you all to go and watch through it. This time is different. This time I am too shocked to even muse about what I thought about some of the key messages coming through after I watched it. It’s a little bit over 4 minutes long, and it’s one of those wonderfully troubling videos that would not leave you indifferent. On the contrary. It will help you question, and big time!, not only your own notions of what social networks are all about, but the role we all play in them. I can tell you that after I watched it I just couldn’t utter a single trend of thought that would be meaningful enough to share across other than "WOW!! Is this really where we are heading with our very own social networking experiences out there on the Social Web? Please tell me it isn’t. Please tell me we are aiming higher, bigger, better, because otherwise I know we are going to be in trouble, in deep trouble altogether". If not, judge for yourselves on what I mean and watch through the video clip itself below. Let me know what you think in the comments. Yes, I know, I’m, too, still coming to terms with it myself on how brilliantly poignant it is altogether:  

One of the things that I got to appreciate quite a bit during the course of the summer vacation I took earlier on this month was having the opportunity for doing plenty of reflective thinking and one of the recurring themes that came up over and over again was that one of Leadership and how the role leadership itself is being transformed, in a now more complex than ever (business) world, thanks to the significant impact of digital technologies. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while would remember how much of a big fan I am of concepts like Servant Leadership, but there is one type out there that’s been there for a while now  and which I am finding rather inspiring in terms of describing the emergence of a different kind of leader: Situational Leadership® (Paul Hersey). Inspired by Kathy Sierra (Who by the way is now back into the Social Web as serious pony with some stunning blogging coming along as well) I put together, what today, still remains as one of the most popular blog entries over here in this blog: Social Business - Where Bosses and Managers Become Servant Leaders, where I reflected on the changing role of management into leadership in today’s complex world. Fast forward to 2013 and that assessment is probably even now more accurate than ever. I am not sure what you folks would feel about it, but I am starting to think we are witnessing perhaps one the most profound, deep and impactful crisis in Leadership in our entire human history. If you look into the world today, not just the business world, by the way, but the world in general, you would see how there is a massive crisis in terms of both Management and Leadership. Look around you and see where we are with today’s financial econoclypse, the various different unjustifiable war conflicts, the abundance of corruption and fraud (All the way to the top spheres and across the board!), lack of morals and ethics, the so-called NSA protocol, you name it. If anything, you would probably be able to say that we don’t have much of a world leadership going on at the moment. Quite the contrary. I’m starting to think that we got stuck in that 20th century model of tailorism / management (The Hierarchy) in a world that has clearly demonstrated it cannot longer by managed. It never was. If anything, it can only be facilitated and lead accordingly (The Wirearchy). Steve Denning all along has been talking about how the business world needs to make that leap of faith and push forward for that transformation of today’s workplace with Radical Management. According to him, we are nowadays experiencing the Golden Age of Management. To me, this is bigger. Much bigger. We are probably witnessing, in the flesh, the perfect storm of how Management is going to transition into Leadership provoked, more than anything else, by that massive disruption of knowledge stocks no longer cutting it and instead transitioning into knowledge flows in order to survive into the 21st century. The scarcity of information for better decision making that used to be in the hands of the few is now transitioning into that massive free flow of information and knowledge that’s helping inspire a new generation of leaders: situational leaders®. Interestingly enough, situational leadership is not a new concept. It’s been with us for 30 / 40 years already and I am finding it rather intriguing how it’s now making the rounds 30 years later, and well into the 21st century, to describe not only the role of the leader, but also the role of the follower(s). In case you may not be familiar with the concept, here’s a short description of what it is like, taken out from Wikipedia: "The fundamental underpinning of the situational leadership theory is that there is no single "best" style of leadership. Effective leadership is task-relevant, and the most successful leaders are those that adapt their leadership style to the maturity ("the capacity to set high but attainable goals, willingness and ability to take responsibility for the task, and relevant education and/or experience of an individual or a group for the task") of the individual or group they are attempting to lead or influence. Effective leadership varies, not only with the person or group that is being influenced, but it also depends on the task, job or function that needs to be accomplished" I am pretty sure that after you have read that excerpt the first thought that may have come to your mind would probably have been this one: "Oh, yes, I, too, can certainly be a situational leader (at times)". In fact, you may as well have been all along a few times without not noticing, right? Whereas if you think about Management the whole equation changes quite a bit. All of us can certainly be situational leaders at some point in time, in a specific context and scenario, but if I were to ask you whether you could be a manager the answer would probably vary. Naturally. That’s why I am finding all of these conversations around Leadership in today’s interconnected, hyperconnected, smarter world than ever, through digital technologies, more fascinating than anything else. Specially, from the perspective of how every single person out there seems to have an opinion about what leadership should be really all about. So, to that extent, while I was going through that thinking time, I decided that from here onwards I am going to start talking over here, in this blog, about some of my favourite reflections around leadership, that others may have shared across already, and its key paramount role in today’s complex (business) world that I have bumped into over the course of time. Essentially, what I will try to aim at is to eventually hint, perhaps, a new kind of Leadership. That one that would thrive in an Open Business world. Yes, indeed, you know where I am heading. Just like I have made the transition, earlier in the year, from Social Business into Open Business, from here onwards I will move along with a follow-up transition from Leadership into Open Leadership, where I will try to decipher and reflect, every now and then, how both Servant Leadership and Situational Leadership fit in together in terms of how we need to keep pushing, by challenging the status quo, the traditional hierarchy, understanding that while there may well still be a role for traditional (senior / executive) management  out there in today’s corporate environment, we may have run out of steam with it altogether, because as Don Tapscott quoted a while ago: "Business can’t succeed in a world that’s failing". And we are failing pretty badly right now. And talking about Don himself, I thought I would go ahead and share over here a short video interview he did recently around "A New Model of Leadership" where he doesn’t quote situational leadership per se, but he gets to describe it pretty well on what it would look like in today’s business world dominated by the Social Web: And, finally, I thought I would finish this initial blog post on the topic of Open Leadership pointing out another video clip that I bumped into earlier on this year, and that, although a couple of years old already, it provides a very good entry point in terms of what would be the main differences between Managers and Leaders. The video was put together by Scott Williams and lasts for a bit over 5 minutes. It’s totally worth it and I can certainly recommend you go through it to understand how and where the shift needs to start happening, if not already, as we move onwards and transition into a brave new world of uncertainty, perseverance, resilience, coherence and, finally, complexity. Essentially, a more human world:

It’s rather interesting to ponder how, over the course of years, us, consumers, have been asking traditional industries to move on with the times and enter the 21st century (of the Digital Era), so that they could embrace and apply different business models, than those they have been operating under over the course of last few decades, to make themselves profitable again, in order to meet, at the same time, their potential new reality: a smarter, interconnected, mobile, always-on consumer force. Of particular importance and relevance is the massive fight the Entertainment Industry has been putting together all along, where, instead of making that transition, it has consistently made things even more complicated and worse for their main constituents, i.e. us, consumers, to the point where they have tried, repeatedly AND unsuccessfully, to even criminalise both our behaviours and ourselves for something that in most cases is even part of our constitutional rights: that one of sharing our culture with others. The fact they have never succeeded is perhaps a good indicator of how things may have changed in the last couple of years as they are starting to come to terms with the fact that they no longer control us (they never have) and that, instead, they would be much better off eventually handing over such control towards those who seem to know better not only what we are consuming, but also how, with whom, when, where and for what purpose we are consuming that particular piece of content. Some times you eventually need to have some trojan mice. People who can disrupt the system from the inside out strongly enough to provoke a stir and continue to challenge the status quo. Specially, if you keep seeing how very little things have changed from the outside after all of this time. Essentially, no matter how many zillions of times people may be telling you about needing to change and adapt with the new times, stubbornly enough, you keep moving your own way ignoring those wise words of wisdom. Till it might be just too late.  Well, Kevin Spacey is the trojan mice of the Entertainment Industry. A few days back, he gave one of the most inspiring, noteworthy, and refreshing speeches (for the keynote James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival) that I can remember in a long while. So much so that it was one of those rather mind-blowing dissertations that you would probably watch this year in terms of taking upside down an entire industry that kept refusing to move on with the times and that, eventually, will need to give in and relinquish control to that group they wanted to the least… their audiences. At the risk losing them, for good, otherwise. Now, as usual, I am not going to spoil the contents of the nearly 5 minute long highlights that have been shared on this YouTube video clip about Spacey’s speech, I would rather encourage you all to take a look, watch it through in its entirety and then make the switch into a pure corporate environment and you will see how scarily accurate it is in terms of seeing that reluctance from various different industries to enter the Era of Open Business, the so-called Connection Economy:    My favourite quote, you may be wondering, right? Well, without any doubt, this one: "And through this new form of distribution, we have demonstrated that we have learned the lesson the music industry didn’t learn: give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it and at a reasonable price and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it." Or also this other one that I am sure would resonate with those folks who have been following this blog for a while, as we have talked about this very same topic on a rather regular basis over here. To quote:  "[…] It’s all content. It’s just story […] And the audience has spoken. They want stories. They are dying for them. They are rooting for us to give them the right thing. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus, and at the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly gifs, and God knows what else about it. Engage with it with a passion and an intimacy that a blockbuster movie could only dream of. All we have to do  is to give it to them".  I guess folks would now understand why I am such a big fan of services like Spotify and, most importantly, I suppose now people would understand as well how change in the (Digital) Era of Open Business, most of the times, doesn’t just necessarily need to come from the outside, i.e. from those outsiders who seem to know better than you what you are doing on a daily basis as part of that business transformation. Some times, it’s just right there, inside, right beside you, watching over your shoulders, …  Thus, do you know who your trojan mice are? Can you find them within your own organisation and empower them to become those catalysts of change, pretty much like Kevin Spacey has done for the Entertainment industry?  In case you haven’t, hurry up. You are running out of time. You may as well start looking around right away, as they may already be disrupting your business, without you not knowing it … Remember, they are now in control…

One of the things that I have always enjoyed, and quite a bit, from the Social Web, and the different social networking tools out there, and the main reason why I keep coming back for more, is that no matter how much time may have just gone by, the good content, the golden gems, those pieces of reflection and insight that you know you are going to bump into over time they keep resurfacing time and time again, making the mere presence on social networking tools just worth it on its own. Earlier on this week, I had the opportunity to experience it once more, by bumping into "The Mindset of a Winner". Perhaps one of the best short video clips you will be bumping into this year on the topic of focusing and pursuing your passion(s) through multiple dips. It’s pretty remarkable that the video clip is a short interview published on January 2008, conducted by Gerhard Gschwandtner from Selling Power, of Seth Godin and how five and a half years later it’s just as fresh, insightful and relevant as ever. In it, Seth, once again, is at his best talking about a whole bunch of different subjects, starting off with spending a few minutes on what I feel is one of the main issues at all levels we have got to deal with in today’s (business) world: mediocrity. While the interview may have that connotation of just being relevant for sellers, as that’s the primary audience, I can tell you that it’s very much worth while going through it as plenty of Seth’s relevant insights would apply to everyone out there who wants to escape mediocrity on everything they do, whether at work or in their personal lives, with stunning reflections like this one: "The big win is when you refuse to settle for average or mediocre. […] What you do as a sales person is you communicate emotion. But you can’t communicate emotion and trust  to someone if they are not listening and the only people who are going to listen to you are the people who are pre-sold on you, because someone told them about what you do and how you do it." Just brilliant, don’t you think? Specially, how it applies to not just everyone out there, but to everything else that we do as well for that matter. From there onwards, it just gets better. Seth then gets to talk about focusing on what you are good at and forget about all of the different distractions that may well be out there enticing you to go into multiple directions making you lose focus of what you should be working on. He uses the example of his blog, which is just a part of himself, as his own voice out there on the Web. That is, his presence, his digital footprint and personal brand for that matter, in contrast to his light involvement on the various social networking spaces out there. His follow-up insights on experiencing multiple dips to keep moving forward is just rather inspirational on its own. If not, judge for yourselves playing the video clip below: The interesting thing, for me, while going through the interview itself, is how it reminded me of a superb blog post by the always inspiring Valeria Maltoni under the rather thought provoking title of "Why on Earth Would You Still Bother with Blogging?" where you would find incredibly insightful quotes like this one: "Providing a frame of reference, composing thoughts in an open forum like a blog, publishing a point of view, are more than merely a way to develop a personal channel for getting the word out on what matters in your world. Stand for something and work on backing it up over time" that she then develops further under "Why bother with all the blogs" with perhaps one of the most descriptive, helpful and reflective reasons as to why blogging still matters. To quote: "They are an opportunity to shape a conversation about topics that matter right now — whatever we call this moment, whether the age of conversation, or real time something, or collaboration, the path to useful is a path to usefulness. Sticking with topics also allows you to explore ideas and develop new thinking. In most cases it goes beyond that. A blog helps you keep track of what you said about how something would develop. And that is incredibly useful to understand how you got to where you are today" So perhaps that’s what blogging is after all. An opportunity to experience plenty of dips on multiple topics of interest that you can reflect upon at your own leisure, so that, over time, while you develop your own blogging voice and style, and you keep building on your own digital footprint, you get to understand what your focus area(s) may well be, find those strengths that keep you moving along, and stick around with them, so that at some point in time they become you, you become them, without having to fall back into that world of mediocrity that’s just destroying everything we have ever believed in and built over time. Yes, I, too, "refuse to settle for average or mediocre". And that’s probably one of the main reasons as well why I keep blogging on a regular basis, i.e. to reflect on these golden gems that one keeps bumping into, but also as an opportunity to share, out there in the open, what my passion(s) are and what drives me to work day in day out. Why? Well, because, amongst several other things, the alternative, that mediocrity, is just too ugly to bear. Yes, indeed, I refuse to settle for average or mediocre. And you? 

You know that summer is almost gone when September comes along in full force, work peaks up again a notch or two, and conference month kicks in. Pretty much like March, after the rather long winter months. I am not sure why, but it’s really interesting to see how both March and September themselves seem to be the busiest times of the year, at least, this year, in terms of public speaking and attending various different conference events over the course of a short couple of weeks.  So as I get to prepare myself for the upcoming European World Tour I will be embarking on shortly I just couldn’t help get reminded of the power of changing the world through a rather simple, yet, incredibly inspiring action: the sharing of ideas. Indeed, late last week I bumped into this short article by Michael Hyatt under the suggestive heading "How Your Next Speech Can Change the World". It’s a couple of years old already (Got to love the Social Web, for that matter, in helping resurface, once again, the true golden gems hidden out there!), but it is totally worth it. It points out to a TEDx East event speech that the one and only, Nancy Duarte, the presentation goddess, put together to help demonstrate how powerful delivering a good presentation can be to excite and inspire your newly found hero: your audience. In the past, I have been sharing a good number of different articles over here, in this blog, where I have referenced plenty of practical hints & tips on the topic of public speaking. It’s a subject that fascinates me, because there is always room for improvement. There is always something new that you can learn about inspiring others, no matter how seasoned your presentation skills may well be. There is always an opportunity to do better. That’s why, as a public speaker myself, I keep collecting, digesting, reading, learning as much as I can on the whole theme of public speaking, which is why, as of late, I have been enjoying tremendously the good bunch of rather interesting and relevant links on the topic have been shared by folks like my good friend Peter Billingham. Lots of really good stuff in there to keep you busy for a while helping you fine tune your public speaking skills. I do realise how there are plenty of dos and don’ts for any public speaker, plenty of interesting role models and a whole lot other articles, dissertations, blog posts, various presentations, practical hints & tips, along with lots of know-how, real life, down to earth,  experiences in delivering good, pragmatic, stunning speeches, but if I were to highlight and recommend highly a single resource, my new favourite is the one Michael highlighted on that short blog entry from a couple of years ago from Nancy Duarte herself. Why? Well, for multiple various reasons, but perhaps because of this superb quote that I think pretty much resonates with my own experiences with not only the public speaking I have done in the past, but also what I have learned from having attended, witnessed, gotten excited / amazed by the several hundreds of presentations I have had the privilege of experiencing fully over the course of the years. To quote: "If you communicate an idea in a way that resonates, change will happen" How empowering and truly inspiring is that quote to highlight how important the sharing of ideas openly out there, through the Social Web as well, perhaps, has been all along? How inspirational can it be that the main obstacle you need to get rid of when promoting your idea(s), your passion(s) is no other than yourself. We all are our very own first obstacle in sharing what drives us, just because we think no-one is going to be interested, nor find it relevant, or because no-one is going to pay much attention, or perhaps because we assume no-one is going to like our very own ideas. Ether way, if you would want to learn a lot more about the drive behind those ideas, your own ideas, about the empowering inspiration of story, who the real hero is, after all, when delivering a presentation, how critical "meeting with the mentor" may well be, and what’s the shape of a great presentation, eventually, this is a video clip you just can’t miss. Nancy Duarte at her best. Be prepared to be wowed, because you will. I know for sure it will be totally worth it the 18 minutes that it lasts and I can guarantee you that you will never look at a presentation at a public speaking event the same way. And that’s a good thing.

Earlier on in the week, my good friend, Eric Zigus, put together a rather thought provoking blog post that surely has got me thinking big time about the whole topic of adoption of Social / Open Business and about the different techniques that fellow practitioners get to employ to help other knowledge workers embrace new technologies, whatever those may well be. In Adoption via Peer Pressure? Eric comes forward to suggest that driving adoption through peer pressure, if done properly, could surely help out in the long run. Well, at some point in time in the recent past I may have agreed with him that would be the case, but, if I judge from my own experiences in the last year or two, I am not so sure myself anymore about it. I am thinking we may need to aim bigger, and better, perhaps even more effectively, from driving into inspiring and from adoption into adaptation, if we would want it to be successful.  Over the course of the last couple of years there has been plenty, and rather extensive, literature (along with some pretty interesting and insightful frameworks) shared across all over the place about the whole topic of social networking for business and its wider adoption beyond just the initial wave of early adopters, even behind the firewall with social intranets. We have seen lots of very interesting reflections about its very own adoption as a new kind of digital literacy we all need to start getting comfortable with (to the point where it seems to justify everything to no end, some times even ignoring what matters the most, i.e. business performance); or about its own transformation journey even for managers and leaders (who, if not engaged properly, could surely slow things down tremendously); or about plenty of rather interesting and relevant trends on digital adoption.  Perhaps, even, how social / open business adoption may stink (if done incorrectly); how it may well all be about removing certain roadblocks and plenty of other obstacles, never mind the ever growing list of rather intriguing challenges; how it may well be all about putting people first (technology second); how certain big words like culture,  empathy are back into the game (the only game, for that matter, if you look deep enough into it), along with looking into the soft side of things to make it work; how incentivising practitioners may well do it (More on this one later on, I am sure, since it’s been one of my major pet peeves on the topic for a long while now, and I am really glad I am not the only one…); how building it and they will come is no longer going to be good enough at this point in time in order to keep up the momentum making it self-sustainable; how it’s all about perhaps defining a good number of personas to establish some specific roles and responsibilities, to the point where it’s been highlighted how even community managers may be critical for that successful adoption (or rather the opposite); and eventually how social business adoption is a whole lot more organic than what vast majority of people may have thought about all along.  Phew! Social Business Adoption is, indeed, a topic that truly fascinates me to no end, since forever, as you can see from all of the various areas it covers as mentioned above with the different links to plenty, and rather interesting, reads I have gone through over time. And I am pretty sure there are plenty more materials about it out there, all over the place, that I would certainly love to read on more about them, if you care to leave your favourite picks in the comments. I have always felt though it’s right at the heart of the matter in terms of helping businesses provoke their own transformation in order to survive on the Connection Economy of the 21st century, where, as I have mentioned in the recent past, we are transitioning from having lived through the scarcity of knowledge stocks into the abundance of knowledge flows. But I am no longer certain that (social) peer pressure would eventually help much with those adoption efforts. In fact, lately, I am inclined to think that we may all be much better off if we stop talking about driving adoption and instead we switch over to inspiring adaptation, because that’s eventually what we, social business evangelists, have been doing all along: inspiring / modelling new behaviours, a new mindset, to help fellow knowledge workers adapt to a new way of working by becoming more open, public, transparent, engaged, collaborative, in short, trustworthy, in what we do. And, I am starting to think that peer pressure, if anything, is not going to help much. Rather the opposite. It will re-introduce a behaviour that we are all far too familiar with from previous decades and that we all thought we had left behind for good: (unhealthy) competition.  Over the course of the last few months, specially, since I moved into this new job role as Lead Social Business Enabler, I have come to realise, big time, that adoption is hard, specially, if you move beyond the initial first waves of early adopters and you get a deep touch with reality. Adoption works in mysterious ways. It’s a tough job. It’s an art in need of craftsmanship. You know, acquiring new habits is not an easy thing to do, specially, when your natural inclination is that one of defaulting to what you are used to, what you have been doing over the course of the years, through traditional collaborative tools, whatever those may well be. And on top of that, never mind the massive work pressures most knowledge workers are currently going under, here comes another one: peer pressure, specially, the higher you go into the organisation, that’s preventing those practitioners to experience the main benefits of social networking in a business context. As if they didn’t have enough already! Fear is a powerful factor that should not be ignored, nor neglected, more than anything else, because it’s the main element that gets added into the mix when embracing peer pressure. Practitioners would always be a bit reluctant to want to enter the digital world, if they would be fearful to try, to play and learn, perhaps even to fail or make mistakes, in case of being ridiculed by that social pressure of their own peers. So what do they do? They switched off, before they even try.  That’s essentially the main reason why I don’t think that peer pressure would help much in our adoption efforts. What you would want to inspire within your organisation is an opportunity to explore, to reflect, to challenge the status quo of how certain things happen at the workplace in order to make things better and improve. You would want to figure out whether you can apply some of your already existing day to day use cases, i.e. your tasks and activities to a new mentality, a new mindset, a new set of behaviours with a not too steep learning curve, so impact of change would still be meaningful. And, as such, I just can’t see how peer pressure could help. I am starting to question whether even healthy peer pressure would help much in the long run, specially, since that innate connotation of competition will be lingering around quite a bit.  Lately, at work, I have got a tendency to attend a whole bunch of meetings, well, not really meetings like these ones, or these other ones, that my good friend Bertrand Duperrin would love to ditch for good (He surely has got my vote, too!), but different gatherings (I am still trying to find a name for them… any suggestions more than welcome, please!) that would be classified as education and enablement sessions, where I spend a good amount of time trying to understand people’s challenges and inhibitors, potential technical issues, business concerns, daily work habits, productivity pain points, use cases they would want to explore further and what not and all along I have noticed how I have shifted the conversations myself away from adoption and into adaptation, because that’s essentially what I am aiming at: helping other knowledge workers adapt to a new way of doing business by opening up and becoming more transparent and engaged to help accelerate their own decision making process to innovate. And it’s been a fascinating journey all along, because, eventually, the focus is on modelling new behaviours, new ways of interacting, of conversing, of opening up, of helping and caring for one another getting work done, understanding we are all in this journey to provoke our very own transformation, and, certainly, harmful items like competition, knowledge hoarding, corporate politics and bullying, gamification (in whichever form and shape), busyness, extenuating work / peer pressures and whatever else are not very helpful in getting people to adapt to a brave new world: becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise. A few months back I wrote about transitioning from Adoption into Adaptation in order to achieve maximum impact to become a successful social / open business. I surely am glad that I am no longer the only one talking, or writing, about it anymore. Fast forward into the end of 2013 and, to me, walking the talk, leading by example, learning by doing, narrating your work, working out loud, challenging the status quo, etc. are plenty of the new mantras that matter in terms of helping inspire such transformation. It’s essentially right at the heart of it, and I am no longer certain that carrying potentially bad habits from the 20th century (like those pressures or harmful items I mentioned above) into today’s business world is going to help us achieve our goals. Let’s leave out all of those different types of (work) pressure(s) and get down to work.  We still have got a lot to achieve and somehow I am starting to sense, rather strongly, that adaptation will be much more effective than adoption. It’s just a matter of adjusting accordingly, because, you know, language matters, after all.