Week's Learning #2

I am continuing with the summary of what I have learned from Twitter the last. I realize it also helps me to curate and aggregate with greater focus.

@networkingCEO: "Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you wish for. Happiness is something you design." http://pinterest.com/pin/57632070206981726/ …

What Great Companies Know About Culture - @HarvardBiz http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/12/what-great-companies-know-abou/ … #culture

Although this post is more than 3 years old and #culture has been discussed ad infinitum, it’s still one of those elusive organizational aspects that everyone talks about in vague terms. The article is a short one and a good read but the most telling section for me was this:

They’re upgrading. Old-fashioned benefits like health insurance, family leave, and flex time ranked only 15 percent when considering most valued HR offerings. Traditional onsite benefits, such as cafeterias, childcare, massages, and volunteer opportunities ranked a mere 5 percent when determining what benefits provide stability during economic uncertainty. Instead programs that offer the most stability, as reported by 75 percent of respondents, are those that communicate brand mission and provide career development opportunities.

Six Components of a Great Corporate #Culture - Vision. Values. Practices.  People. Narratives. Places. @HarvardBiz http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/05/six-components-of-culture/ …

Growth Mindset: A Driving Philosophy, Not Just a Tool | Edutopia http://edut.to/1wABmbd 

I believe in the value of strong outcomes that represent high expectations, but I know that if we aren't applauding the processes along the way, we're setting ourselves up to fail -- some people's efforts will be devalued because they aren't achieving the defined goals in the given time.

Talk about open. @davegray has all 60 or so interviews for his new book, "Principles of Agility," up on @YouTube. #Delight2014

"I want you to think about storyLISTENING. It's way more important than storyTELLING. Empty your mind and listen." @davegray #delight2014

Week's Learning #1

Following Harold Jarche's example of Friday's Finds, I thought where better to collate and synthesize my week’s learning from Twitter than on my blog. Here’s the first of the series...

@jhagel: The paradox of organization - @davegray: paradox fuels power to rethink, reframe, and see more than one side of things http://bit.ly/1rEX1vU

“For example, an organization must have a way to attract and retain members, or it will cease to exist. At the same time it must constrain people’s behavior, or it won’t be able to get anything done. This means any organization has the oxymoronic goal of being an attractive prison.”

@charlesjennings: The role and value of learning content is changing. (article in TIQuarterly) @TrainingIndustr #learning #training http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2014fall/#/10 …

“The role and relative value of learning content is changing fast… A second driver for a new use of content is the jettisoning of the idea that training is primarily about knowledge transfer. It is not. Training is primarily about “enabling to do.”

@Forbes: What it takes to create a strong corporate culture: http://onforb.es/1shII2f

@edutopia: Growth Mindset, Jedi edition: http://edut.to/1sWB33V . #Pinterest #YodaWisdom

@socialmediaweek: "@iZoliswa: #QuoteOfTheDay 'Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories. #SMWJHB #SMW14"

@kaushikcbasu: When at last you meet a man with solutions to all your problems, the chances are you've met a man who doesn't know the meaning of solution.

@kaushikcbasu: "Same law for all" is no guarantee of fairness. A law that prohibits all from sleeping on park benches is clearly not targeted at the rich.

@kaushikcbasu: Those who say that a more equal world would be boring don't realize that the bottom 90% of the world would give anything for that boredom.

@AbhijitBhaduri: When CEOs tells HR to learn the "language of the business" why does it includes everything except people issues. #SHRMI14

@Josh_Bersin: How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Very important read. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/ … #diversity #HR @sciam

“Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured that they will agree with one another; that they will understand one another's perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to easily come to a consensus. But when members of a group notice that they are socially different from one another, they change their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: people work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.”

@Forbes: When you're really learning, you're going to be a novice: http://onforb.es/XoPBRl

“And becoming comfortable in that situation – staying curious and open and continuing to explore and improve – that’s the essence of real learning.” 

Revisiting My Learning Journey on Social Media

On my way to office today, I was pondering about my evolving use of social media. Six years have passed since I joined Twitter in 2008, when twitter was in its infancy, and I was clueless about its use. In hindsight I realize how immensely lucky I was to have stumbled onto the learning network I did. I got to learn from the experts – individuals who were charting the path and devising ways to use the tool as an avenue for learning, sharing and innovating – building a strong global community of learning professionals. Here’s my heartfelt thanks to people like @janebozarth, @janehart, @hjarche, @jaycross, @charlesjennings, @jeanmarrapodi, and many more for generously sharing their learning and experience and for changing the face of learning – for individuals and organizations. As I see colleagues and friends and peers still struggling to comprehend how to use social media for “learning” and often expressing skepticism, I thought I’d share my journey in brief. This is also a journey back in time for me to trace my own learning pathway through the maze called social media. I hope my journey will encourage others like me to embark on this path. 

I stumbled across twitter quite by accident or should I say serendipity. It was perhaps a case of opportunity meeting the prepared mind. Just prior to that, I had finished reading Jay Cross’ Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance and was primed to explore new ways of learning. Needless to say when I found the same person on Twitter, I was part excited and part overawed. I lurked and waited. I observed the interactions. I followed the links being shared. I read avidly hoping to reach a level where I would be able to contribute or at least understand part of what was going on. Driven by curiosity and a deep desire to learn, I entered a wondrous world. It was equivalent to an online library being personally curated for me by some of the best learning curators and designers. I found out who followed whom and started following some of the people. I didn’t know then that I was building my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and that it would change how I learned and thought forever. It’s no exaggeration to say that Twitter and my growing PLN contributed to what became transformative learning for me. And I guess this was the Seeking time for me (if I were to map my journey onto Harold Jarche’s Seek-Sense-Share Framework).

I discovered the blogs of several of the people mentioned above and was amazed by the power of the platform – a free tool to share thoughts, ideas and get feedback and inputs. I started blogging—albeit very tentatively. It took me a while to realize that blogging is not about other people – unless you are blogging to market something. Blogging is one of the most critical and powerful personal learning and reflection tool. Just like I am blogging now to delve into how I’ve learned from social media and my PLN. Here’s a link to my first ever blog post called Games in Corporate Training written at a time when most organizations thought that gamification in corporate training was a sacrilege. While the post leaves much to be desired from the point of view of analysis, knowledge and maturity, it’s still a critical part of my learning journey. No one tweeted it. And I didn’t have a Share option on my blog then. It looked very different then from what it does now. It was the March of 2009, and I have completed 5 years of blogging this year. Blogging took me to the next stage of the framework – Sensing. I started to analyze, assimilate and connect the disparate dots – things were beginning to make sense.  

Sometime later, I stumbled on to my first ever online learning community, #lrnchat. Little did I know then the influence that it’d have over me. I think it was one of those days when I was just lurking on twitter (as had become my habit), and I saw a series of tweets with the hashtag #lrnchat stream past. I didn’t know what was happening but found that clicking the hashtag showed me all the tweets related to it. I sat through the entire one hour and found out that this “phenomenon” took place at a fixed time and day every week. Intrigued, I was back the next week and the week after and the following week... Again unknown to me, I was following the classic behavior of a community member going from lurking to participating to contributing to lurking again. All that l learned here, I took back to my work. I started to view elearning and instructional design through different lenses. I felt empowered. Such is the power of a learning network and community. Here’s an old post from one of my early #lrnchat days: An Impromptu #lrnchat. It was an exciting time. I saw everyone contributing in the community, and understood the importance of Sharing.

When I trace the path back, I can very clearly plot my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) approach. But that’s only in retrospection. Here’s an old post on the various learning tools I used way back in 2010. Some of the tools are no longer in existence. But they facilitated my learning journey when they did exist.

Since then, I have learned to curate, filter, aggregate, save and share. I consciously follow people who I trust and who become my curators. I use different curating and aggregation tools like paper.li to share content. Today, my list of social media tools—apart from Twitter and my blog—includes Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, and occasionally, Tumblr. I'm still trying to streamline my sources. I want to avoid the trap of homophily, and try to keep my sources as diverse as possible. However, that seems to be becoming increasingly difficult as we keep receiving “more of the same” kind of content with the web acting as a giant curator. I am not sure if I want everything “irrelevant” filtered out automatically…but that is a topic for another post. 

Managing Information Flow on Enterprise Platforms

Are multiple activity streams the way forward for enterprise platforms...?


As an enterprise community manager, I am often faced with varied user questions and needs. One that has been surfacing on and off recently is around the ability for more granular filtering to find relevant content.

Before I move on let me briefly explain how Jive--which powers our social platform--works. Jive offers users the ability to customize their two activity streams--one stream reflects everything the user is Following on the platform and this includes people, places and content. The other reflects what the user is Tracking--and Jive makes a subtle distinction between "follow" and "track". Tracked content, people or places are deemed to be of greater relevance to the user and all activities and communication in these get captured in a separate stream called What Matters: Communication along with @ mentions and direct messages to the user.

 Nevertheless, in spite of this level of segregation and filtering, I have had users requesting for further granularity, more specific filtering options, and ability to follow tags and such. Some deep diving and conversations exposed that users were missing or feared missing out on information. As is wont to happen with activity streams, content quickly moves below the fold and runs the risk of getting overlooked. A heavy user of TweetDeck and Hootsuite, I could identify with the need for further granularity. Both these applications make my Twitter use a breeze by allowing me to set my filters and create multiple streams.

Moreover, from an enterprise context, finding relevant content at the point of need is of paramount importance. While I was surfing the net to see what other organizations/users are doing, I stumbled across an interesting posts by Alan Lepofsky that seemed to mirror what I was thinking: Making Activity Stream More Manageable. I have quoted from it here: If we are going to continue down the path of taking dozens of different pieces of information and cramming them into one place, then a single stream is not the way to go.

In a different post, he writes: … I am concerned that having status updates, file sharing, Q&A, news links, CRM updates, social media feeds, workflow approvals, ERP orders, support tickets, polls/surveys and a dozen other sources of information all piped into the same stream can make social software almost unusable.

The more I think about it, I am beginning to feel that multiple activity streams is the way to go. Moving from a locked down inbox to an activity stream is a paradigm shift, and one that is well on its way to taking place. And reflects how far we have come. Nonetheless, enhancing user experience by giving them more control to filter in what they need or filter out as the case maybe will lead to greater adoption of social business platforms. Enterprise platforms will also need to give users greater flexibility and the ability to create personalized lists, follow tags, and so on. I am sure those days are not too far away and social business platforms like Jive and SocialText are improving by leaps and bounds.

Will greater granularity kill serendipity?

I don't think so. With content being created, shared and commented upon every second of every day even in the enterprise, it is essential that users be able to effectively filter and curate for themselves in an intuitive manner. Some of it will get taken care of by smart, automated filtering options like Jive's Recommendation engine, which suggest content based on the user's prior activity on the platform. But this may soon not be enough.

What do you think? Have you encountered similar needs? I would love to hear from you.

Related articles

• Towards A More Participatory Culture: Enterprise Q&A (Part 2) (blogs.cisco.com)
• Communities and Collaboration " Activity Streams Meet the World of Manufacturing (steve-dale.net)
• Making Activity Streams More Manageable (alanlepofsky.net)
• Missing Pieces: The Activity Stream Aggregator (Collaborative Thinking) (mikeg.typepad.com)

Tweetbook: Save all your Tweets and Favorites...

Inspired by the post TweetBook: Create a PDF diary with all your Tweets by David Hopkins, I went ahead and did just that.


I generated a PDF of all my tweets (of the last one year and that is pretty substantial) as well as one of all my favs. Neat!

sahana2802's Tweet Book


sahana2802's Favorite Tweet Book

HPT and Social Learning: David Wilkins via Skype #ISPI -Sharing some key points...

I just attended an #ISPI session hosted by the Massachusetts ISPI chapter (@MASS_ISPI).  

The session was on HPT and Social Learning: Organizational Performance in the Cloud by David Wilkins, VP of Product Marketing at Learn.com. Jean Marrapodi (@jmarrapodi) in her inimitable fashion made it possible for me to attend this session via Skype. And Dave (@dwilkinsnh) made getting up at 4:00 a.m. so totally worth it. 

A keen and passionate believer in the power of Social Networking (SN) in improving organizational performance--not marginally but manifold--this session was an eye-opener for me.

Before I launch into my take on this one, I have pasted below some of the tweets from @jmarrapodi capturing the key points of the session.

1. SoMe is largely driven by groups other than L&D. We need to get w/the program!
2. No one owns SoMe. We should! ~@dwilkinsnh #ISPI #ASTD
3. GenY has a tribe. People move in tribes. Your SoMe group always moves w/you. ~@dwilkinsnh
4. Much of using SoMe is abt trust.Putting name on the line helps. Can't be anonymous. Shared expertise builds credibility. #ISPI 
5. 
   
   "We should no longer teach a man to fish. We should teach a man to teach & share expertise." ~@dwilkinsnh
6. Organizational network analysis (Rob Cross) shows how companies really work. Sometimes reveal that C-level disconnected. ~@dwilkinsnh 
7. @dwilkinsnh is talking about @hjarche & @jaycross Inverted Pyramid needs of training.Not mgmt down but collaborative work http://j.mp/aRxfQT

At the same time, sort of fortuitously, Guy Wallace (@guywwallace) was tweeting some very pertinent questions about the viability of implementing SoMe in organizations. I have pasted those below as well since they form a part of the larger whole. 

1. Don't expect executives to see the value in what you propose if you don't understand how they calculate value in the first place. Homework.
2. What is the philosophy in your Enterprise about using ROI, ROA, EVA, etc.? What business metrics are the most important? How do you link?
3. What is the typical expected payback period for investments in your Enterprise? And what total payback will there be x2 or x3 years out?
4. When you suggest/ask the Enterprise for funds for Training - do you look at both First and Life Cycle costs in the ROI forecast?
5. What costs could be avoided/lessened, and to what extent, if Informal Learning tools were embraced in work processes? That's part of the R.   
6. What types of Performance would you recommend which SoMe tools for - if you had a 90 floor ELEVATOR ride w/ the CEO - and she asked?
7. Could SoMe help remote Sales Teams respond better to RFPs? What would that be worth? And then how many times might that be repeated a year?
8. Could SoMe help Field Marketing Teams do their work? What would that be worth? And then how many times might that be repeated a year?
9. Could SoMe help a Global Team do their work? What would that be worth? And then how many times might that be repeated a year?
10. Activity measures (results) without the Value measures (results) don't tell enough of the picture to make a decision on anything.

Highlighting the movement from the one:one to one:many and now to the many:many model with the rise of different SoMe platforms, Dave stressed on the importance of the network, of being connected.   

My take:

With the increasing availability of informal content via different networks, customers are more connected than ever before. The "Cluetrain" effect is here to stay.     

Thesis #12: There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.      

Networking, exchanging and sharing, learning from one another--be they partners, clients, competitors, subordinates--is imperative. Connecting is no longer an option. An organization that refuses to break down the rigid walls of hierarchy, top down management, one way communication, control and command approach will stagnate.

Stagnation is a notion of false comfort. There is no such thing as status quo. Nothing stagnates. It just decays and dies.

 

In response to Twitter Quitters - 40% leave after one month.

Why am I writing about Twitter? Because it is a powerful social networking tool that is fast becoming a social learning tool. The connotation of the word social is changing from one of "connect" to bring into its fold other meanings like collaborate, learn, share, give, participate, hear, be heard, ask, be answered...This is not a litany in praise of Twitter--it is in support of all social networking sites (SNS) that will help us to collaborate and build collective knowledge. The latter will be our saviour in this time of recession when corporate training budgets are at an all time low.

I think like all new applications/technology, Twitter will face its share of scepticism and rejection.

Refer to the article on Twitter Quitters.

One primary reason why people would quit in a month:

It takes about a couple of months to get the hang of how to “use” Twitter in a way that brings in returns–that is, makes one a part of a community of practice, helps to build a knowledge base, and connects one to like minded people. All of this takes about two months of diligently pursuing twitter. This learning curve often proves to be the hurdle and people who are not adventurous or naturally willing to explore are likely to quit before they have found the true usage.

Also, I feel Twitter falls into the slightly advanced category of social networking site–more complex than Facebook or MySpace. For non-believers in social learning/advantages of social networking and first time users of social networking, Twitter is probably not the place. One has to come to twitter willing to be a part of the huge collaborative learning space–prepared to give and receive.