Becoming a Social Business -- Beyond Culture Change

A paradigm shift occurs when prevailing mental model has so many egregious anomalies that it “breaks” and a new mental model of the world is perceived to be a better explanation of how the world works. ~Steve Denning

Our words define our worldview. We use the vocabulary available to us to describe and analyze our experiences and perceptions. The founder of the idea that language and worldview are inextricable is William von Humboldt, the Prussian philologist. The German word Weltanschauung—used to represent the mode of apprehending reality of a community—was first used by Kant and later popularized by Hegel. Weltanschauung represents the collective consciousness of a community of a certain experience.  

In this context, I had a bit of an epiphany. Over the past few years, the need to become a social business and to promote enterprise-wide collaboration have taken hold in many organizations. The usual approach is to launch an enterprise collaboration platform (technology first being easy to do) and hope that people will engage and contribute with a bit of cajoling and coercing. But a majority of these endeavors fail leading to skepticism and finger pointing. The usual culprits are the hapless organizational culture closely followed by hierarchy and leadership lethargy. We have become accustomed to blaming the culture of an organization for the failure of any initiative, and more so when the change calls for redefining and re-imagining how people work and interact. Before I proceed further, let me clarify that these culprits are not blameless. A fair number of mistakes can be attributed to them. I only want to say these do not invoke the complete picture. We have to dive deeper to understand why organizations across the world – from the Americas to Asia – are apparently making the same mistakes.

We have to take a step back and examine the metaphors and the discourse that organizations abide by and are described by. The crux of the problem lies in our inability to see how the culture of organizations stem from and is shaped by the very discourse of management that we have collectively subscribed to ever since the Industrial Revolution and the manufacturing era. No matter how hard we try to change the culture – and I do believe that leaders and managers are trying – the discourse we use lets us down. The words become reality. Currently, our management discourse is permeated by the language of two metaphors – the military and the manufacturing. The business model and operating principles in today’s organizations hinge on “making” profit through the deft use of limited resources in an organized manner. The military metaphor dominates the world of business – right from “staff”, “line”, “chain of command”, to “war for talent”, “competitive strategy”, and “line of fire”. The assumption is that doing business is akin to waging war and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Organizations thus begin to behave with an almost “military” mindset – valuing planning over innovation, dwelling on constraints over opportunities, giving in to enforcing over enabling, compliance over collaboration…

Underlying this military and manufacturing discourse is an insidious and difficult to pin down aspect – the scarcity mindset – be it of money, skills, information, time, talent, and so on. A world defined by scarcity is driven by the ethos of competition, hoarding, survival of the fittest, suspicion, exclusion, elimination of the other, and fear. These concepts are fundamentally opposed to the principle and values that support cooperation and collaboration – the pillars of social business and authentic communities. As long as our organizations are operating under the principle of scarcity, we will continue to struggle to get people engaged and motivated enough to collaborate. The words we use not only reflect but also reinforce and reproduce the reality. The words become reality.

Now, let’s look at the words that come to mind when we thing “community” which has its root in the Latin word “communitas” meaning things held in common. Community elicits in my mind words like commune, abundance, love, wholeness, trust, belonging, authenticity, creation, safety, inclusion… and other similar words. As anyone who has ever been or aspires to be a community manager, we know that these are the emotions that we have to inspire in our users for them to become engaged and collaborative community members. However, the discourse that defines community within organizations get subsumed under the larger discourse of the organization itself which, as I have already mentioned, is defined by scarcity and competition. When the two discourses clash, the larger one signifying the organization as a whole inevitably wins. The words become reality.

Let me make a disclaimer. This clash is not the fault of managers or leaders taking the organization forward – in most cases, it is done in good faith. Controls are put in place to prevent information from going to competitors; non-compliance is punished; transparency is censored to prevent general dissent. And we simplistically club all of these under the umbrella of an amorphous and ambiguous culture and dismiss it by saying that “the culture of the organization is not conducive to collaboration”. We have to identify the words that run counter to authenticity, trust and transparency and replace them with a different set of words when speaking about organizations. Words carry their own denotation and connotation and define our consciousness. It might seem like a trivial matter, but it truly has deep implications for the kind of transformation organizations need to go through in order to become authentic communities.

The discourse of communities doesn’t and cannot hinge on and around scarcity. We need to redefine and reimagine the very description of an organization itself. What if we were to define an organization like a community: “Self-organized network of people with common agenda, cause, or interest, who collaborate by sharing ideas, information, and other resources...” (Wikipedia). We have to shift from the old ways of working that was driven by extrinsic motivation – bonus, salary hike, promotion, and other tangible rewards to one that is driven from the heart, that engages people intrinsically by giving them the autonomy, providing the purpose and creating a sense a belonging. Jeremy Scrivens writes in his post, The Future of Work is Social Business at Scale, “…authenticity is not only the foundation of collaboration and innovation, it is the very experience of being well - being who you really are - Being! not just doing.”

Tangible rewards are limited, and hence automatically lead to competition and fight for survival. In contrast, intrinsic motivation, authenticity, trust, and kindness stem from a deeper source of abundance. Organizations need to shift their paradigms and transform at a far deeper level than we are currently addressing. To see real impact, and deep and lasting transformation, we have to attack the root, and reimagine the organizational metaphor.

The Inimitable Jay Cross

I had the good fortune to meet Jay in 2011 when he, along with Clark Quinn came down for EDGEx – The Disruptive Education conference. That was the first time I met him face to face, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Apart from the fact that I was totally in awe and had to muster the courage to go and speak with him, I think I was expecting a serious individual, the distinguished author of many books who had coined the term “e-learning” and led the thinking in the field of learning. An iconic figure in my mind… The individual I encountered was full of zest and spirit, fun-loving with a quirky sense of humor, and a warm, affectionate heart. I was bowled over. I think I behaved a bit like a star -truck teenager but that is understandable when you meet Jay Cross in person for the first time. 

My introduction to Jay had been through his book Informal Learning. Needless to say, it had become my bible to understand what social learning is and could be in the context of workplace learning. In those days, I was just a rookie instructional designer trying to write storyboards and grasp the basics of e-learning. I stumbled upon his book and him (virtually) on Twitter. I still remember the excitement I felt when I read Informal Learning and subsequently Working Smarter. Jay infused a new way of looking at how learning happens. For a learning-hungry person like me, it was like manna from heaven. I understood the concept of workscapes for the first time:   

A workscape is a platform where knowledge workers collaborate, solve problems, converse, share ideas, brainstorm, learn, relate to others, talk, explain, communicate, conceptualize, tell stories, help one another, teach, serve customers, keep up to date, meet one another, forge partnerships, build communities, and distribute information. ~ Jay Cross

There were so many Aha! moments as I journeyed through Jay’s books and thoughts. They are too innumerable to list down. I consider myself absolutely privileged to have been included as a part of the advisory board for his latest book – Real Learning! I don’t know what value I added, but I know I got a tremendous amount just by going through the draft of the book, interacting with Jay and other thought leaders in the group. I keep learning from him!

Jay’s excitement and enthusiasm was infectious. He had an almost indefatigable zest for learning, for enjoying life, and a childlike curiosity for exploring. As little as a fortnight ago, he was contemplating different platforms for hosting the Real Learning community. He never stopped thinking of new ways of looking at things, of learning and helping others learn better. We will go on learning from him and reaping the benefits of all that he has left us with – a veritable legacy in how we approach informal and self-directed learning!

Thank you Jay! Real learning will live on and continue to inspire…

Workplace Learning in a World "Beyond Automation"

I just finished reading an HBR article by Thomas Davenport and Julia Kirby called Beyond Automation, which is the trigger for this post. With automation, AI and robots looming over the job scene, there seems to be a constant fear of humans losing out to computers and technology. It's akin to one of our childhood sci-fi movies finally becoming a reality - the machines are taking over. The digital disruptors in the shape of Robots, Big Data and Sensors are here. However, this HBR article takes a different view of automation and digitization of work, going beyond the gloom and doom mindset. It posits:

What new feats might people achieve if they had better thinking machines to assist them? Instead of seeing work as a zero-sum game with machines taking an ever greater share, we might see growing possibilities for employment. We could reframe the threat of automation as an opportunity for augmentation.

In another related HBR article with an interesting title, We Should Want Robots to Take Some Jobs, the writer makes a valid point:

In the task-centered economy humans have no value beyond the tasks they perform. Consequently, they are indistinguishable from machines and will be replaced by them for reasons of cost-efficiency as soon as technically feasible. In the human-centered economy on the other hand machines liberate humans from predefined tasks with prestated outcomes. This allows them to exercise the value that emerges from collaborating with other humans on open-ended, creative endeavors. (Highlights mine)

Workplaces will have to become more human-centered and purpose driven if they wish to survive and thrive in the 21st Century. And another telling line from the post emphasizes this point : "In the 21st century, creating meaning and innovating will be democratized through technology."

The key is to remember that the tasks which cannot be automated - the ones that require contextual and human touch - are also the ones that cannot be codified and structured. Increasingly the human workforce will have to take on the unstructured work that requires skills like judgement, decision making, pattern sensing, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and more. The reality is that any work that can be codified will be automated. The remaining tasks will require individuals who fundamentally think differently about work and learning. The key question we (as L&D/HR) need to think of is how are we going to support workplace learning to build such skills in the workforce? The table below captures the shifts as I see it:

I have been writing about social and collaborative learning, the importance of communities of practices and networked learning skills like building one's PLN and PKM for some time now. The overarching requirement is to develop workers who think for themselves, who can drive their own learning and are not restrained by the norms and processes of the past. Certain skills will become fundamental to thriving in future organizations. Given that the culture of an organization will also play a crucial role in whether employees are enabled and empowered to think and act autonomously, that is a complex topic related to reinventing organizations and their underlying structures. The transformation required are deep and often painful. 

The diagram below by Charles Jennings captures the shift succinctly. The last point in the image is particularly important -- in the past, workers were seen as part of the machine, replaceable cogs whose performance was measured by efficiency. In today's world, workers are co-creators with machines where the latter augment and help individuals to do what we are inherently good at while taking away the repetitive, "codifiable" tasks.  

Unfortunately organizations have been created with efficiency in mind. All the management framework and operational processes have been honed and polished to increase productivity and to bring about standardization. The digital era has suddenly turned everything upside down by bringing in automation and replacing the human cogs and requiring humans to become more "human like" - thinking, feeling, social and collaborative. This massive shift cannot be dealt with at an incremental level and requires a complete re-imagination and transformation of management models and operational processes. That is the topic for another post. 

This post tries to explore how L&D can partner with business to prepare organizations to meet this shift with greater equanimity and success. 

Build communities - Increasingly it is becoming evident that the era of "follow orders and processes" are gone. Unlike what Henry Ford had once said of his employees: “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?”, it is imperative for today's workers to bring their heads to hearts to work as well. However, complexity and constant emergence, exceptions and novel challenges also mean that individual workers will not be able to solve problems. An individual worker can be efficient; but innovation calls for collaboration, conversation, and cognitive diversity. Inclusive and diverse communities of talented and passionate individuals can do what computers and robots cannot. Communities foster collaboration and cooperation, exchange of diverse perspectives and creation of entirely new knowledge. CoPs lead to an outcome that is greater than the sum of the parts. And L&D must be able to enable such community building within organizations. 

A successful organization today will be an amalgamation of different communities - some of these will be transient forming around projects consisting of multi-disciplinary and cross-functional members. Other communities will be more permanent in nature forming around domains and practices to strengthen thought-leadership and innovation in key areas. L&D's role will be to enable these communities to form, to function effectively and provide sustained value to the members and to the organization.  

Foster meta-learning skills - It is evident from the HBR article that individuals who wish to grow and add value to themselves and to their work need to develop a different set of skills from what worked in the past. The past was driven by fixed knowledge bases, set ways of doing certain things, and a focus on increasing efficiency through task repetition, process improvement, and time management. The future will be driven by learning agility, effectiveness, and process innovation. The big question for L&D/Organization is how can meta-learning skills be fostered? How can workers become self-driven learners? What are the fundamental support required to enable this? IMHO, here are a few things organizations can do to start with:

• Encourage "working out loud" - Put in place an Enterprise Social Network (ESN), provide community management support, and make openness the default behavior of senior leaders.  
• Help individuals to extract learning from work - We know that most of workplace learning is experiential, happening on the job while in the process of solving a novel challenge or when creating a new design or managing a particularly "difficult" client. There are two ways to approach the work. There will be employees who will do what needs to be done to complete the work and then move on to something else. Then, there are those who do what needs to be done and take some time to reflect/analyse the learning gleaned from this. The latter are extracting learning from their work and thus building stronger neural pathways to tackle similar challenges in the future. L&D needs to facilitate this for organizations to continually learn. Managers and mentors can give feedback, encourage introspection, and show how sharing in a common forum can help in extracting and codifying the learning. 
• Provide cross-functional exposure - L&D can recommend and support business in defining learning paths that will enable individuals to work across different functions on stretch assignments. Not only will this ensure that an organization has employees with a holistic view of how the business operates but also provide the diversity much-needed to build pattern sensing and critical thinking skills. It is now well-known that often the best solutions to crowd-sourced problems come from individuals who are far removed from the specific domain of the challenge.  
• Create space for social learning -  While we know that all learning is social and individuals learn from each other, from experiences, from the environment and the ecosystem, creating a space dedicated to collaborating and co-operating with one's peers can help to build greater confidence in those still tentative about social learning. This will also mean an L&D team well-versed in the various aspects of building one's personal learning networks (PLNs). They will need to actively help the workforce build the required skills well-articulated in the PKM framework developed by Harold Jarche. 

Prepare for future "unknown" skills - This is a tricky one that most organizations steer clear of. There isn't any direct pathway that tell us what will be the core skills needed for the organization to survive 5 years from now. However, a little bit of research tells us that many a promising and thriving org vanished into oblivion because they failed to see what the future held. With organizational lifespan rapidly shrinking (down to 15 years from an average of 75 earlier), preparing to meet the future before it gets us is perhaps the smartest move. But how? The onus is on the organization, on L&D and on each individual to stay on the cutting edge of their domain, follow the digital and technical transformations taking place and evaluate their collective impact. Look at how the newspaper industry has transformed or the film industry for that matter. Kodak failed to see what was coming and went down ignominiously. No one can sit on their laurels and bask in past glory any more. The future can be bright or brutal depending on how we prepare to meet it. L&D and the business have the responsibility to maintain an ongoing research in their domain of operation on the skills they need to develop to grow the domain, the community and to create ongoing value. 

Develop a "growth mindset" - Today more than ever before, organizations need individuals with a growth mindset and flexible expertise. Dr. Carol Dweck eloquently writes about what growth mindset can achieve in her book, Mindset - The New Psychology of Success. According to her, growth of individuals - be they corporate leaders or sports-persons - can be largely attributed to a growth mindset. She cites examples from diverse fields to show how those with a fixed mindset eventually brought about not only their own downfall but also that of the organization they were leading or the team they were a part of. In this age of automation, one of the make or break skills/abilities could be developing a growth mindset. Without an ability to constantly introspect and learn, we will gradually become irrelevant with outdated skills and ways of working. L&D and business need to be constantly vigilant. An organization's culture can impact mindset. A repressive leader can kill passion and a desire to learn. A closed, ego-driven culture can foster a fixed mindset. I highly recommend the book for a through understanding of how to develop a growth mindset in individuals, in oneself and in the organization one serves. 

How is this linked to human work being augmented by machines?
It is closely related. Without the ability to self-direct one's learning and keep pace with change, we will run the risk of remaining tied to past skills and doing well those tasks that can be done more efficiently by machines. A growth mindset and learning agility ensure that we are able to course-correct and keep developing skills that can be augmented by a machine but not completely automated. The same HBR article referenced above talks of 5 ways that an individual can build and develop deeper skills in their domain. For a detailed understanding, do read the article. For a quick reference, I have inserted the diagram below. 

Some fields undergoing rapid development are healthcare, retail, telecom, manufacturing, and BFSI. The digital revolution will eventually embrace all aspects of business irrespective of domain. The dichotomy is that while we are scared of losing our current jobs to computers, we are not equipped to fulfill the potentials and promises that a digital era heralds across industries. Organizations have to be prepared to let go of what made them successful in the Industrial era to build the framework for success in the future. There is a serious dearth of skilled workers in all domains. How do we tackle this dilemma? And training is not the answer. The solution has to be holistic enough to let the employee learn in the natural course of his/her work and strengthen that learning through ongoing collaboration and social participation. 

There is much to do and much to think about...this is but a start. 

2014 - A Rambling Retrospective

I have meandered and rambled a bit in this post...ruminating and thinking aloud in part as I analyse and summarize the year that is coming to a close. I also want to say a heartfelt thank you to all my readers and friends who have staunchly supported my growth -- by leaving encouraging comments on my blog, tweeting my posts, generously sharing their knowledge, and connecting.

As the year draws to a close, most of us go into retrospection mode. I had intended to go through 2014 a little differently from the earlier years. Thanks to books like Creative Visualization, The Power of Now, Small Victories, and such, I have come to believe -- in principle and seen the effect in practice -- in the power of being able to achieve what we want. As Paulo Coelho says: “When you want something deeply, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” The desire has to be deep; it has to be true. There can be no half-heartedness involved. I learned that when what we desire is intrinsically linked to our purpose, half-heartedness has no place. The commitment comes from within, and we are in the flow. I have tried to consciously follow my intellect as well as emotion in what I do. It has been tough! As we enter the penultimate week of the year, I thought it'd be a good time to see what I have managed to do differently, where have I just continued as I in the past, and where have I slipped. 

To make it easy for myself, I thought I would follow the star fish model and do a short analysis of the year.

Keep Doing: I want to keep reading, writing, working on what I love, and travelling! 

a) I finally picked up my reading pace this year. I have always been a voracious reader but somewhere in the last 5 years, my pace had slipped. I made excuses for myself - lack of time topping the list. I got frustrated with all the books in my "to-read" list that had grown to be a mile long. The more frustrated I got, the less I got done, and I got even more frustrated. You get the self-defeating cycle. Till I re-read Getting Things Done by David Allen and got back to re-prioritising what was important for me. I got back to my "to--read" list and picked the first one. After resisting checking twitter, email, blogfeeds and myriad other similar distractions, I read through the book. The joy I find in reading kicked back in, and I haven't stopped after that. This was in Jan'14. I've read most of the books I wanted to (fiction and non-fiction combined). I have made a commitment to myself to keep doing stuff that matters to me. I have made my 2015 to-read list. It may get re-prioritised based on new finds...but I will keep reading.

b) Writing is my passion. I am at my articulate and expressive best when I am writing about what moves me. And apart from travel, I am fascinated by "learning" and the cognitive processes involved. My purpose is to enable individuals and organizations learn openly and collaboratively, to become self-directed learners inspiring each other. Idealistic? Perhaps! I keep writing about it; regular readers of my blog will know what I am talking about here. I want to write more frequently and more purposefully, synthesizing my reading and practical experiences, and share what I learn. 

c) Travelling is how I rejuvenate myself. It's part of who I am. It would be somewhat facile to say I love to travel! It is more accurate to say, I have to travel. I find myself when I travel, and I mostly travel alone. It is strangely exhilarating, forcing me to be completely present and alert in a new place, soaking in the experience and all the sensations. Travelling offers me a way to not only unwind but also to discover myself. This year, I went to two places I have been dreaming of visiting for years -- Ladakh and the Sunderbans. I have stayed in a boat for 4 days, in a tent in surrounded by the majestic range of the snow covered Himalays, sat in the middle of Nubra Valley on a full moon night. And each time, it has been a journey of self-discovery. In 2015, I intend to go back to Ladakh again, and also pack in a few more trips, perhaps to the north-eastern parts of India. 

More Of: I want to become good at visual representation of concepts and ideas, practice meditation and mindfulness more regularly, and burn more calories daily.

a) I am in my comfort zone when I write. I am trying to hone and refine the skill; yet, I still find it comforting. I want to push myself to present my ideas in different forms -- presentations, visual maps, infographics, videos, podcasts, etc. I have  tried to capture some of my thoughts in the form of presentations rather than blog posts to push myself to think more visually, and structure my ideas succinctly. Here are the links to a couple of my slide decks on SlideShare: L&D Re-Imagined--21st Century Workplace Learning and Community Management--Toward a Learning Organization. I want to use more visual techniques to illustrate my ideas and concepts -- sketches, infographics, diagrams. This is definitely something I am going to do more of in the coming year.

b) I have been practising meditation and mindfulness somewhat sporadically for a year or so, and more regularly in the last 6~months. I can vouch for the benefits and am committed to my routine. It means giving up perhaps an hour's worth of sleep but that is a small price to pay. There is nothing to beat the very early morning quiet, when the world is still caught in that moment between dawn and daybreak, that fills me with a sense of deep calm and peace.

I am learning the value of prioritisation and managing my time. While I have always been a stickler for "being on time", I learned that valuing my personal time is different. "Being on time" to fulfil someone else's plan is what we are quite good at. When it comes to being on time for myself, I have often failed. Miserably! I have never showed up fully for myself. However, I recognize that it is in fact critical and directly proportional to the value I add to my work and family, to the people who matter to me deeply,and to myself. I've learned that others respect my time only to the extent that I respect it. I have begun to "respect" my time -- what I do, whom I spend it with, how much of it do I spend pursuing my passion, how do I curtail superfluous or meaningless activities -- are questions I have actively started asking myself. Everyday. As Randy Pausch said: "Time is all we have. You may find one day that you have less than you think."

c) I am also one of those people who take up exercising and follow through only to give up in 6 months. This year, I have committed to taking up exercising not as a separate activity but instead integrating it into my lifestyle. I am happy to note that even small changes do have a big impact -- on health, mental and physical agility, and general well-being. 

Start Doing: I want to learn facilitation techniques -- from visual facilitation to online facilitation, contribute more to online communities, and be a strategic L&D consultant.

a) I have always felt that facilitation is a powerful means of enabling dialogue, fostering open collaboration, and providing guidance for deep thinking. This description captures the essence of facilitation and also the reasons why I want to develop and hone my skills in this area: 

A facilitator is an individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve synergy. She or he is a “content-neutral” party who by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open, and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group’s work. A facilitator can also be learning or a dialogue guide to assist a group in thinking deeply about its assumptions, beliefs, and values and about its systemic processes and context. ~ Kaner, 2007 

As a start, I am joining the International Association of Facilitators. I am going to look out for opportunities to facilitate workshops (I have done a few but want to facilitate with more rigour and skill), run sessions for organizations and integrate my online community management skills with facilitation. 

b) While I am a member of many online communities, I realised that I have been a lurker in most. I have learned from these communities and taken my learning back to my blog, my work and my inner development, but I have not actively given back to these communities with my contribution and participation. I fully intend to do so in 2015 starting now. This also means prioritizing my time and putting in place a calendar for my writing schedule. 

c) On the professional front, I want to focus on the kind of work that requires problem solving for my clients. I want to be working on strategic L&D consulting assignments where I can apply my different skills and experience -- learning & development strategies, organizational development, instructional design, online community building and management, training and facilitation, designing learning ecosystem, and such.

Stop Doing: I am going to stop over analysing and re-thinking the past, resist spending time on what doesn't give me satisfaction -- intellectually or emotionally.

We all go through experiences and phases where we haven't put our best foot forward, or done what we should have. I have been no different. I have reacted when I should have thoughtfully responded. I have often over-analysed and drawn conclusions when I should have just let things be. I have spent time on fruitless rumination when that time could have been spent doing myriad other things that give me profound joy like spending time with my daughter and family, listening to music, just being with nature, reading, writing, learning, travelling, growing...being my own best friend. 

Less Of: I want to do less of work that does not add to my learning or challenge me to give my best. Most importantly, do less of procrastination in everything that I know I must do. 

a) The mind is a curious machine. Its innate ability to come up with creative and innovative reasons for procrastination have always amazed me. I am not going to give into it as often as I used to. Less procrastination and over-analysing and more of putting my work out there is my mantra this year. While some of my best ideas come to my when I am daydreaming and my brain is in a diffused mode, I intend to do more "focused daydreaming" and not drift.

Overall, 2014 has been a good year. I have done quite a few things I set out to do. Most importantly, I am beginning to value just being in the moment, being present and embracing life. As Isabel Allende says in one of my absolute all-time favourite TED Talks - How to Live Passionately, No Matter Your Age:

"What have I gained? Freedom. I don't have to prove anything anymore. I'm not stuck in the idea of who I was, who I want to be, or what other people expect me to be. ...I love my brain. I feel lighter. I don't carry grudges, ambition, vanity, none of the deadly sins that are not even worth the trouble. It's great to let go. I should have started sooner." 

She is my hero. If I can be 1% of the woman she is, I will dance with joy! Looking forward to 2015...

10 Books from My Reading List

I have spent the last couple of months reading--reading and reflecting, scribbling random ideas in my tattered moleskine but not really blogging. My thoughts felt more scattered than usual...and I wondered if it had to do with the books I was reading. A couple of months back I made a conscious decision to move away from pure L&D, Instructional Design and Performance Consulting stuff to those which would challenge my thinking and perhaps force me to question myself and the choices I am making. I picked up some of those mentioned in the list below after reading reviews, receiving recommendations or just browsing. I haven't regretted a single choice.

I am putting up the list here to share with my friends and communities. These books have moved and challenged me, made me feel guilty and exhilarated--all at the same time, provided insights, changed how I think and have often left me feeling confused--at many levels. I am profoundly grateful to the authors for penning these...for opening up doors and windows for the likes of us.

The list for you to pursue...

1. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen
2. Dumbing us Down by John Gatto
3. The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyenger
4. The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward Wilson
5. On Violence by Hannah Arendt
6. Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
7. Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
8. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
9. Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain
10. Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

Taking Stock and Making Choices: Working from home and other such stuff

I have come back to blogging after a hiatus of almost 5 months. Mostly, business as usual at work and crisis situations at home took my time and attention. My father’s heart attack and the subsequent rush to Kolkata taught me a few things—about myself and my priorities. It forced me to take a long hard look at myself and what I’ve been focusing my energy on over the last few years. Because I love what I do (and I am hugely fortunate in that sense), it’s very easy to let my work consume me and my time. 

Much has been written about priorities and work life balance—especially for women. And it is increasingly becoming evident to me how difficult it is for a woman to pursue a career (that is do everything it takes to grow and keep up) and also be the mother and wife and daughter she wants to be. I didn’t realise how deeply this constant tussle and tug of war have been affecting me at a sub-conscious level till I had to sit down and weigh some of the choices.

To be connected to colleagues and co-workers, be in office as much as possible. Skype and Hangout are second best. Face to face is different, and it matters as Simon Sinek points out in Restoring the Human in Humanity. Bonds don’t form over a Skype call but over coffee and lunch when conversations veer to the personal and discussions revolve around interests. Luis Suarez summarizes the key point in the para here:

… we need handshake leadership; we need to have handshake conversations, handshake friends, handshake dialogues, handshake meetings. You name it. We just need to bring back the human spirit into all of the interactions we keep getting involved with. It’s eventually what makes us all more humans…

But I have a problem. To be in office, I have to be in a different city altogether and this means I can only be a weekend wife and mom.  I did that too for a very long time…close to about 4 years till I decided not to.  

To strike a work-life balance, work from home as much as possible (most of the time). This taught me a few things about work, technology and myself. Technology—is great for exchange of information, updates and other transactional stuff. But not so great for building bonds and trust. Work—complex knowledge work requires solitude as well as collaboration. Working from home offers me plenty of solitude but not the intellectual stimulation and those over-the-shoulder conversations so crucial to serendipity, ambient awareness, and informal learning.  Activity streams and collaboration platforms can enhance and support such awareness but not replace it. Myself—I am a true blue introvert and while I had kind of known this all my life, Susan Cain’s Quiet. The book revealed me to myself, clarifying why I made some of the choices I did.  How does working from home affect me as an introvert? Immensely! For someone who cringes at the thought of social small talk and just picking up the phone to have a chat, being an introvert coupled with working from home puts me even more on the periphery of things than ever. I realize that I run the risk of just hovering on the edge—an onlooker but not quite a participant. 

To let people know about my work, socialize it as much as possible. In today’s non-hierarchical, networked organizations with fluid job roles, conversations over coffee are often how people find out about skills and common passions. In the absence of such conversations, I have to consciously make an effort to write about and communicate what I do within the organization. Now, if you are as old as I am (that is 41), you will remember growing up on the adage “your work should speak for itself”. This makes socializing (publicising?) what I do (when I do it) out of character and especially hard. It’s definitely a skill much needed in today’s extrovert oriented, non-hierarchical workplaces. 

To grow myself, go that extra mile—always. Ever since I started working primarily from home, I realized (even more so than before) the importance of online communities—within my organization and without. As a practitioner in the adult learning and development space with specific interests in social business and community management, knowledge management, capability building and organizational development, I have started tapping into different online communities where I can “meet” practitioners. While I have always been an advocate of informal learning (immensely grateful to Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Jay Cross and the ITA for showing the way) and communities of practice, I am now becoming an evangelist of both. Without the support of various online communities, I doubt if I would have had the fortitude or the skills required to do my work effectively.    

To add value, do the work that puts me in flow--always. Now this seems like an obvious statement. But this is especially significant when one works most often in solitude which requires a great deal of internal motivation. It would have been impossible for me to keep going if the work itself didn’t drive me. If anyone reading this is a knowledge worker and is thinking about working from home, read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow.  While it may seem idealistic to say “I will only work where my passion lies,” it is also intrinsically honest. If I am passionate, I will strive to deliver my best—not because of external reward and recognition but because of my internal drive. And as Daniel Pink has pointed out in his now legendary book, Drive, internal motivation is one of the driving forces of creative knowledge work.  

Are you a knowledge worker working from home? I would love to learn from the challenges you’ve faced and overcome…