Designing Organizational Learning for the Social Business
Posted on 16. Feb, 2010 by Gautam in How To Guides, Ideas
Adults learn by social processes. David Kolb’s Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (1984) theorized that four combinations of perceiving and processing determine four learning styles that make up a learning cycle. According to Kolb, the learning cycle involves four processes that must be present for learning to occur:
- Activist – Active Experimentation (simulations, case study, homework). What’s new? I’m game for anything. Training approach – Problem solving, small group discussions, peer feedback, and homework all helpful; trainer should be a model of a professional, leaving the learner to determine her own criteria for relevance of materials.
- Reflector – Reflective Observation (logs, journals, brainstorming). I’d like time to think about this. Training approach – Lectures are helpful; trainer should provide expert interpretation (taskmaster/guide); judge performance by external criteria.
- Theorist – Abstract Conceptualization (lecture, papers, analogies). How does this relate to that? Training approach – Case studies, theory readings and thinking alone helps; almost everything else, including talking with experts, is not helpful.
- Pragmatist – Concrete Experience (laboratories, field work, observations). How can I apply this in practice? Training approach – Peer feedback is helpful; activities should apply skills; trainer is coach/helper for a self-directed autonomous learner.
It is our belief at 2020 Social that social technologies can provide each employee with their learning content that suits their overall approach and help in better retention of learning. Hence the proposed solution will have elements that cater to all the above.
Part 1: Consists of static content that would help people to discover the “must know” aspects of what is to be learned
Basic Content focused on the Subject Matter that every new Executive/Manager would go through when they join the organization. It would cover the following
- Basics of the subject expertise – Files, Websites, Videos, List of Books that act as a primer for gaining knowledge
- Additional Reading Material – Documents that people can download
- List of Resources – Agencies, Thought Leaders, Partners collated at one point.
- List of People (yellow pages) – employees who have worked on Initiatives and how to contact them (email, Skype, IM)
- FAQs – A series of basic questions focused on what a new employee needs to know
- Best Practices – e-books, videos, ppts.
All the above can be edited by certain key people. Other employees can add comments below the content.
Once people have gone through this they can be tested for their knowledge using a quiz/survey tool – acting as a feedback measure to what they have learnt
Part 2: Dynamic Learning
What’s new and up to date in the domain and what is the buzz around the firm’s products/services/ operations and what is the Market/Competitive Intelligence
This would consist of a stream of constantly dynamic news and market/competitor intelligence that would get updated on an employee’s dashboard that he/she can click through and view the detailed content if he/she wants.Personalised Dashboard for each Employee which can be customized to follow information and news relevant for his/her own needs
- RSS feeds of Google Alerts with key words around the brand name, competitor name, market name.
- RSS feeds of thought leaders’ blogs and websites to ensure new ideas come directly to the employee’s desktop
- Twitter updates of the who’s who of subject matter so that employees can track and even interact with them. Using lists curation services like http://listorious.com/
- Competitive Intelligence – A dynamic page which is updated with news/tweets about the major competitors based on publicly available data. Collated and shown on a specific site. The comments section would enable the employees to add their personal experiences on what the competitor is doing in their specific regions.
- New videos and Slideshows – Using a keyword tracking processes, new videos and slides updated on the specific subjects (like “Financial marketing” or “Consumer Behavior” or “HR Trends”) would be embedded in the dashboard of the employees.
Part 3: Collaboration
Enabling employees to learn from each other using learning logs, ideation and connecting with each other.
This part would focus on how employees can use social software to connect with each other and work together to create strategies, tactics, execution. This would consist of the following parts:
- Ideation Platform: A blog/wiki in which senior management asks for ideas around a certain campaign, product on initiatives
- Status updates – would let other people know what the employee is working on so that if anyone has any ideas/lessons to share can do that via the tool.
- Lessons Learnt: Similar to the ideation platform focusing on the past initiatives and what worked and best practices learnt from them
- Sharing project plans for campaigns and getting peers’ feedback on them.
- Q&As with partners, senior management, consultants – which are archived – and after some time some which are basic can be moved into the FAQs section in the static part.
- Discussion around events like conferences, trainings that some employees go to – can share learnings, videos, slides with the rest of the peer group – resulting in richer and more learning
(Cross posted at Gautam on Organizations 2.0)
Thinking about Social-ERM
Posted on 13. Jan, 2010 by Gautam in Announcements
Many business leaders and HR professionals I meet and talk to take stances that are either on the lines of “Oh, Orkut and Facebook is such a drain on my company resources and time ! I need to ban such stuff – or at least regulate it – so that we can do our jobs better”
Or (and this is a smaller number) some CEOs, COOs, HR professionals and many Marketing professionals – the ones who are more open-minded, say – “Hold on, here are some things that are changing at a fundamental level in the way we engage with the external world, and our employees are out there on Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut, Twitter – talking about their jobs, our products, answering questions from their friends and strangers. If we can’t ban this, how can we channelise it?”
Welcome to Social ERM
Yeah, I just coined the phrase Social ERM – and I take this off from the concept of Social CRM that Gaurav blogged about.
So what would Social Employee Relationship Management do?
- Listening - Monitoring of the social web to keep track of what your employees are saying on various platforms about their work/ industry/market/ customers/ organizations/ other employees.
- Profiling - This step would involve trying to classify your employees in the following ways -
- What kind of postings are they carrying out?
- Do they respond to user queries?
- Do they post about new stuff that is happening in the industry/ market ?
- What is the influence they have built?
- Who is their audience?
- Sharing and Connecting - This would look at building an online community within the firewall amongst the people you have profiled so that they can share and curate the content each of them create on different site
- Collaboration - The next step would be for these online innovators to create content jointly or ideate on what they can work together – or to reach out to each other when faced with a external query not in their area of expertise.
- Converting and Supporting - When one does steps 1 and 2 – one would also discover disgruntled employees – This step looks at how HR and Operations can respond to the source of that negativity so that the at least become neutral if not positive. However, I foresee companies still not being open enough to do this, but one does hope!
- Energising and Retaining - Clearly employees who engage in social media in the work arena are excited by other rewards and recognitions than employees who are not vocal about their work. HR and Operations needs to think new ways to energise and retain these employees – and giving them augmented roles with social media responsibilities
So CEOs, COOs, HR professionals – are you ready for Social Employee Relationship Management?
How to Build a Social Organization
Posted on 10. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
This post was collaboratively written on a wiki by Gautam and Abha.
How would 2020 Social engage with organizations to build collaborative, open organizations
At 2020 Social we understand that while business is social – organizations must change internally to be truly authentic and social externally.
We have posted earlier on the changing nature of leadership in the age of social web within organizations, as well as some of the deeper trends driving this reality in organizations.
As the nature of work itself changes from personal productivity to group and team work, organizations need to have better tools to get work done between people.
Knowledge work can often get to be frustrating in most organizations because information is passed around in emails and often a lot of to and fro happens when two or more people try to collaborate on it. The problem gets compounded when people are in other locations
Social Technologies can address the issues that challenges communication and collaboration within organizations. It takes the focus away from information and puts the people in the centre of the conversation. Collaboration and internal networking can help employees use existing relationships to not only reach out to distant experts but also build trust and foster team and group bonding.
Tools to broadcast company related information can be leveraged by the organization.
2020 Social will engage with organizations in three main phases to make them social and collaborative
Diagnose
Diagnose would be the first step in a three step engagement process This would consist of two meta approaches – after the beginning of the engagement:
- Interviews with senior stakeholders
- Focus Group discussions with other employees
The output of this phase would be
- Major areas where collaboration is a challenge
- The business impact of non-collaboration
- Priorities that need to be addressed
- Sign off by top management on metrics to be tracked.
The interviews would also give data on the current level of readiness and maturity of the organization and its employees around the following areas:
a. Technology savviness
b. Readiness to experiment with new systems
c. Current level of work that can be done collaboratively
Based on organizational needs 2020 Social also looks at helping organizations develop social media policies that impact both internal and external social media and networking interactions.
Select
Based on the needs of the organization 2020 Social consultants would test various third party tools and select the one most appropriate tool with the functionalities suitable to the client
These tools would be a SaaS (Software as a Service) tool that an IT department is not required to maintain it on a regular basis. Currently we are in active talks with several such tool providers and in the process of tying up partnership agreements with them.
Engage
2020 Social Consultants would work with the client to train people on the behaviors and the tool. This would be necessary to drive adoption in the organization.
Some Objectives of the Tool related Training would be around
- Familiarity with product
- Roles of different user groups
- Usage of tool in specific scenarios
Objectives of the Behavioral Training could be
- Understanding changes how work itself is changing
- Articulating current pains and how they impact business outcomes
- Understanding that change in the way work will be done
- Helping them articulate apprehensions so that they can be addressed either in the training or later
Depending on the understanding and the complexity of the client system these could range from a workshop to a “train the Champions” approach and help desk support for the organization.
Want to know more?
Ask us how we can help you leverage social technologies within the organization.
And you can look at these three scenarios how we can help organizations build organizational culture, create an innovation mindset and facilitate effective team working by leveraging and creating internal communities around a passion and vision.
Using social technologies to build Organizational Culture
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Case Studies, How To Guides
BUILDING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE
The Story Until Now
(scenario 3 from here)
Over the last two decades LMN Corp has grown from a family owned business to a professionally run conglomerate with diverse interests in shipping, mining, IT, telecom and media. Growth has been robust as the diversifications have paid off.
Sumit Bangia, the 50 year old COO of the company, has been an old LMN hand. Over the last few years, Sumit has become increasingly concerned with the increasing turnover of younger workers. Sumit’s trusted HR Head, 35 year old Shalini Taneja, found out from exit interviews that recent recruits felt disconnected from the conglomerate and felt that they didn’t know how they fit into the big picture.
Sumit and Shalini decided that the key to retaining young recruits was to build an open organizational culture where young recruits could connect with each other and older mentors across levels and functions. It was also important that they felt empowered and encouraged to bring their whole self to work.
When Gautam met Sumit he said “I don’t think we need more increments and higher salaries or better designations to motivate our people. We’ve hired some great people over the last few years – if we can just make them connect with each other and discover their strengths and then get out of their way, I am sure they will take us to great heights… my question is how can I help help them to tap their full potential and connect with each other?”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Gautam tells Sumit “You have the right approach, however before jumping into an initiative like this you have to think through certain aspects”
“What are those?” Sumit asked, intrigued.
“The first thing is you have to understand such an initiative will mean disrupting existing power structures – are you sure you want to do that? Will the rest of the management team support this initiative?”
Sumit pondered on Gautam’s question “Maybe not, but I am prepared to push my way through – as this is what will enable us to break to the next level”
“You can’t push an initiative like this Sumit, it has to be owned by all the leadership.. however what you can influence is by leading the way – and influencing others to follow your lead. Let’s assume over all your objective is to increase the engagement of people with the organization and with each other, would that be right?” asked Gautam
“Yes true” agreed Sumit
“You need to build a community that will congregate around areas of work, levels and other areas of interest”
“You mean like a Facebook for the whole group?” Sumit asked.
“Well, it would look like that, and have rich features to encourage people to connect with each other – however there would be features that would encourage a mix of social and business interaction. What would really help this would be the softer aspects of the initiative”
“Such as…?”
“It would encourage people to connect with others, discover people across organizational silos, understand them beyond their roles as individuals – and trigger overall encouragement. It has been proven that having friends is a sign that people will be more engaged at work.”
“Really…?”
“Of course, people like to work in a place that enables them to bring their whole selves at work”
“How do we know that people won’t just goof off? Keep chatting?”
“You’ve got to give them guidelines, Sumit. We can help you in evolving these guidelines. Many large organizations have such guidelines. However, you have to remember that the ‘how we use it’ will become a process when people realise that they have to work with people, not to do things to them. People like you and your senior team will be instrumental in creating that mindset – which is why we’ll have to collaborate with them extensively to make this a success.”
Three Scenarios: How Can Indian Firms Leverage Social Technologies Within the Workplace?
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
Gaurav and Gautam collaboratively wrote this blog post on a wiki. This is the first in the series of blog posts where we will explore how social technologies, when used effectively within the organization, can create significant business value for Indian firms.
A TYPICAL CONVERSATION
Ever since Gautam joined 2020 Social three weeks back, we have had several interesting conversations with Indian firms of all shapes and sizes on how to use social technologies within the workplace.
The typical conversation starts when someone fills the “Ask Us How” form on our website: “I am excited by the possibilities of using social technologies within our company and want to explore what these technologies can really help us with.”
During initial discussions with Gautam, it becomes clear that the client faces a business problem, but she is not able to make the connection between how “the business being social” will help her solve her problem.
In the first post in this series, we have outlined three typical business problems several Indian firms are struggling with. In the next three posts, written over the next week, we will share scenarios for how social technologies can be a part of the solution.
SCENARIO 1: PRODUCT INNOVATION
Bedi Electronics has been amongst the top ten firms in the Indian consumer electronics industry over the last twenty years. Its 1200 employees are spread across six plants and twenty sales offices. Over the last two years, it has fallen behind its competitors in terms of product innovation.
Rahul Bedi, the 28 year old scion of the family, has recently taken over as the Chief Marketing Officer of the business. Rahul knows that his 250 frontline sales officers have the pulse of the market. However, Rahul gets to meet them infrequently, in annual sales conferences and monthly market visits. They share interesting product ideas with them during one-to-one interactions, but he doesn’t know how to validate them with other sales officers and build on them.
“I wish I knew how to learn about consumer preferences from my frontline sales officers,” Rahul said to Gaurav, “help them build upon each others’ ideas. If we can revitalize our product innovation process, Bedi Electronics will regain its strength in the market.”
SCENARIO 2: TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
Alacrity Legal Technologies is a new Legal Process Outsourcing firm which focuses on a complex method of helping law firms in the US get their litigation issues outsourced to India. On each of these teams it needs the various groups of people to work together so that case materials and lawyer’s notes for clients to work on before the start of the day. Hence teams of law researchers, Indian lawyers and US client managers need to work together to get fast turnaround times.
Sundar Raman, the 43 year old CEO of the firm, was concerned at the high levels of customer complaints – the key theme being that ALT teams always seemed to be missing their deadlines. Sundar decided to dig deeper and found that the reason why this was happening was that the nature of serial processing that the work required meant that a delay in emailing (due to whatever reason) would impact the final output by a large extent.
Sundar instinctively knew that a way for people to work on documents together without necessarily emailing versions back and forth would speed up the deliverables.
“But I don’t know what that toolkit looks like,” Sundar told Gautam, “and I don’t know if it’s even possible to change the work habits of seasoned paralegals and lawyers.”
SCENARIO 3: BUILDING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE
Over the last two decades LMN Corp has grown from a family owned business to a professionally run conglomerate with diverse interests in shipping, mining, IT, telecom and media. Growth has been robust as the diversifications have paid off.
Sumit Bangia, the 50 year old COO of the company, has been an old LMN hand. Over the last few years, Sumit has become increasingly concerned with the increasing turnover of younger workers. Sumit’s trusted HR Head, 35 year old Shalini Taneja, found out from exit interviews that recent recruits felt disconnected from the conglomerate and felt that they didn’t know how they fit into the big picture.
Sumit and Shalini decided that the key to retaining young recruits was to build an open organizational culture where young recruits could connect with each other and older mentors across levels and functions. It was also important that they felt empowered and encouraged to bring their whole self to work.
When Gautam met Sumit and Shalini, Sumit explained his dilemma: “I don’t think we need more increments and higher salaries or better designations to motivate our people. We’ve hired some great people over the last few years. If we can just make them connect with each other and discover their strengths and then get out of their way, I am sure they will take us to great heights.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Now that the stage is set in all the three scenarios, you must be wondering: what happens next? Find out in our next three posts.
Finding Experts within Organizations using Social Technologies
Posted on 07. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Trends
‘Interesting article in the WSJ how social technologies can help tap into and be aware of an organization’’s expertise systems.
Activities and interactions that occur in blogs, wikis and social networks naturally provide the cues that are missing from current expertise-search systems. A search engine that mines internal blogs, for example, where workers post updates and field queries about their work, will help searchers judge for themselves who is an expert in a given field. Wiki sites, because they involve collaborative work, will suggest not only how much each contributor knows, but also how eager they are to share that knowledge and how well they work with others.
While I agree with the premise – let us agree that social tools won”t just enable adoption – specially if the organization has treated external social networking with a different standard (i.e. by banning access and firewalling them 
My view is that adoption of tools will also be slow in organizations where automation is being viewed as something to be suspicious of, or if it entails duplication of work and effort.
The other aspect is – not all experts would like to write about their expertise or they might not have the skills needed to cultivate readership or networks.(cross posted from Gautam on Organizations 2.0)
2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, connects their customers, partners and employees, and helps them achieve their business objectives.
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