Daring Greatly

Theodore Roosevelt quote and words of wisdom  provide me inspiration every time I meet with a failure . 

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

How do you handle defeats ? How do you handle failures in Life ? Do you talk about your failures ? 

Or do you show only the shiny and rosy picture of you to the world ? 

We learn more from failures than from successes . Yet Leaders who talk about their failures in Social Spaces are rare. Does your organisation has a culture of discussing failures and learning from them ? Or Do Leaders brush failures under the carpet . 

You cant create a learning organization unless people are encouraged to ask questions and discuss such issues openly. Leader's approach to handling failures is Quiet telling about the culture of an organization . 

A company culture which demands innovation but does not support and accept failure is clearly one which is destined to fail.

"The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet organizations that do it well are extraordinarily rare" - HBR Article 

My Love for Reading

If you are one of those book lovers who have become book hoarders, and cant get to finish books , dont worry you are not alone. Internet and Social Media has changed our minds forever and more so our reading habbits. ( Learnt from the book - The Shallows – What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr) . Its ok if you dip in and dip out of books just like we do with social platforms . Dip in , absorb, reflect. Dip Out . Books are not meant to be read from start to finish unless it is Fiction. Gathered amazing insights from voracious reader Naval Ravikant who i follow to learn about BLOCKCHAIN. 

1/ Blockchains will replace networks with markets.

— Naval Ravikant (@naval) June 21, 2017

I stumbled upon his podcast and jumped with joy when i heard him talk about books, and his habits of reading. (experienced joy because i overcame guilt of not reading books from start to finish and reading too many books at same time and treating books just like i treat blogs and internet, jump around, skim through ) Kitaabon se jaati raabta tha, bas ab badal gaya hai :-) 

Listen to his PODCAST ON READING , HABITS , HAPPINESS, HONESTY, DECISION MAKING here 

Honored to Serve as Advisory for HR Centre of Excellece, DMA ASIA

Honored. Got Invite to serve ‪#‎HR‬ COE of DMA Asia as Advisory Board Member . Role would be to Advise, Connect & Serve HR Community.
As an apex, not for profit DMAasia ( aka DMAi), since 1992, brings about collective action for advancing & protecting responsible Data Driven Marketing and Advertising. As the key to making marketing relevant and provide sustained customer engagement DMAi advocates for creating industry standards for ethical conduct and effective self-regulation of the Data driven, Marketing & Advertising community. DMAasia is also co-founder of the International Federation of DMA’s and global alliance of DMA's.
The DMAasia, in recent times, has successfully conducted four annual global conventions drawing participation from over 125 corporations from India & afar.

As a platform for motivation, the DMAasia has established a credible Awards & Recognition program with industry participation. The DMAasia Awards instituted in alliance with the DMA International ECHO Awards aim at providing global recognition for response driven and result oriented marketing. The Hall of Fame awards felicitates individuals with lifetime awards for their noteworthy contribution. The other DMAasia programs in its third year are the DMAasia Knights and the Marketer of the Year. DMAi has added two new programs The CMO Choice Awards and the Marketing Innovation Awards in 2015. On the anvil is an all new program around internal communication excellence.

DMAasia also sets stage for learning opportunities & intra vertical networking forums like-Day Learning Events called Masterclasses, peer to peer networking forums like the UNWIND, the CxO Roundtables, breakfast briefings and CxO off-sites.D, the CxO Roundtables, breakfast briefings and CxO off-sites.

Open Letter to All Students of Life

Happiness lies in action , in showing up.
Be Thoughtful & Maintain a Bias for Action
Do hard work and smart work both as situation demands consistently
Navel gazing doesn't  move mountains but produces qualitative thought
Reflection and Quiet time is necessary for creativity / innovation to occur
Question everything . Don't be afraid to ask questions
Stay true to your friends
Connect with people from closely knit communities
Passion is the fuel to realize dreams
Talent is God given, Stay humble
Master your craft
Value & seek the company of wise folks
Love your parents & thy neighbor
Spot Comedy of errors. Comic relief is a must.
Learn to laugh at your mistakes but never repeat them
Develop A sense of humor to bear the cross
Remember fondly of folks who adore you
Make moments count, Be memorable
Take pride & interest in your career , no matter however humble or great.
You are the child of God meant to do stuff as you will
Being is enough
Read great literature and poetry
Gratitude is the best kept secret to healthy relationships & happy mind
Praise & appreciation works wonders. It makes 2 people happy -the giver & receiver
Stay curious , Stay hungry. Remain a student of Life.
Boss is always right & you are the boss of your Life 

Social Media is the talk of the Town

Social Media explosion is the talk of the town. Almost every business , industry, company is trying to tap into the opportunities that explosion in Social Media provides for improved business outcomes.
Leveraging Social Media has become imperative for companies to engage with customers, employees and business partners. Marketing & comms department has been the first to jump on the bandwagon to engage in 2 way communication models to reach out to customers. In the age of information overload, attention becomes the currency and Branding acquires centre stage.
How can HR remain immune or impervious to this excellent opportunity. Broadly speaking, when it comes to Talent Management - HR function is about Capacity planning, capability building, engagement and retention. What I see is rise in the HR Job roles that has components of Social elements embedded into it.
For example , if you are a L&D professional, you must be thinking how to utilise newer models eg Flipped classroom into learning process.
Recruitment is not left behind either. We have newer roles in Recruitment eg Recruitment Branding , Recruitment Marketing . After all the job of hiring managers is to sell the "work" ,Organisation "culture " to the prospective candidates.

Social networking phenomenon revolutionises the recruitment experience for both candidates and employers. Companies are rethinking their social media strategies to make recruiting processes more transparent and to tap into and engage with the talent pools. More and more companies are on the lookout for know how on how to leverage social networking sites eg Facebook, LinkedIn to advertise jobs, increase brand awareness, showcase Company culture and provide a glimpse to candidates about the working environment, growth , learning, career and development opportunities.
Both candidates and employers are using the digital footprints to research about each other and find data points for better decision making. Hiring can be viewed as a Match making process . More the data points, assumption is, better would be the decision ie final outcome for both employers and candidates.

In my experience, I see 2 kinds of recruiters & hiring managers. On one end of spectrum, we have recruiters who has invested in self learning , acquired new skills to use social networking for sourcing, engagement, building relationships with candidates. On other end of spectrum , few hiring managers & recruiters are wondering and still pondering over the risks. Social networking adoption Benefits far outweigh the risks, ask any candidate or HR Professional who has reaped benefits from this new medium. Technology is neutral. A fool with a tool is still a fool.  Recruiters and hiring managers must enhance their understanding on the value Social media and social networking adoption and invest in self education and self learning. They must learn from recruiters who are using Facebook graph search, Linkedin recruiters license and reaping great benefits to minimise agency dependency and reduce costs & generate value for organisation with fewer resources. They are the ones who are innovating on the field. These recruiters understand Social Recruiting . Social Recruiting as a concept is relatively new. Talent can not be hired, it can only be courted.Go figure - how. Simply put, Hiring in other words , is a long & extended conversation. For hiring managers, Hiring is about channel mix too. Employee Referrals is another process which can be disrupted using the social networking platforms. Much scope to bring Efficiencies and Effectiveness  into the Hiring process and to disrupt the existing models and evolve new Hiring Models. Employer Branding has nuances and implications understood by the privileged few. Employer Branding and Social Recruiting is bound to witness growth in coming years.

Sage advice from Social Business gurus ~  Get Social. Do business
As Dr Marshall Goldsmith says ~ what got you here! won't get you there.
If you are still wondering why, what, how ..then remember, Self education is the key. Follow and Learn from Thought Leaders. .  I tweet and share insightful stuff on Social HR through twitter (@rucsb) and my blog ~ HR Gurukul.

Bonus ~

What IBM Recruitment is upto -
1. Integrated Social approach to ATS ( Applicant Tracking System)
2. Employee Referral Program empowered by Social Referrals
3. ROI of Social Recruitment measured through  Influenced and Direct Social Hires
4. Hiring Processes enabled & powered through Analytics
5. HR Leaders Rely on Data than on Gut. Better Decision Making on part of HR Leaders. Improved Business outcomes.


3 Key Actionables to get started on Social HR (Recruitment) Journey
1. Invest time  in building your own Linkedin and Twitter Profile.
2. Socially Network with Thought Leaders in Social Recruitment
    Tony Rustell
    Matt Charney
    Todd Raphael
    Sarang Brahme
3. Invest in your Learning and Development. Join IndiaHRLive, IndiaHRChat, TChat, SocialHRSuccess  discussions on twitter . Connect with & Learn from HR Leaders and Practitioners. Learn about Social HR from  Meghan M Biro, Abhijit Bhaduri, Khalid Raza, Gautam Ghosh , Self Promotion Alert : Ruchi Bhatia

I can be contacted via twitter @rucsb






 
 
 

Future Ready WorkForce

Future Ready Workforce will constitute Individuals who are LifeLongLearners, who have the ability to learn, unlearn, relearn and reinvent themselves. Who are agile, and make  investment in self education and acquiring new skills.

Future ready workforce also mean networked and collaborative workforce. They know how to collaborate, create trust in virtual environment, reach out to experts across borders and locate expertise quickly at the tip of fingertips to create value for clients. 

Future ready workforce means individual employees may not have all the answers to client problems however have the skills to find the answers and reach out to experts.

Who knows what , who knows whom and who knows what you know  becomes utmost important , hence the value of networks.

Future ready workforce know how to manage work & get work done in a borderless economy.

Open Educational Resources for HR professionals

MOOCs offered by Coursera, Udacity , EdEx have gained much popularity over last few months. Corporations have started to experiment with MOOCs for skill development and as a low cost innovative solution to manage learning needs of the employees at large scale . When it comes to Open Online Educational Resources , HR Professionals need not look far for their own professional development. Through this blogpost, I share some of the useful OER for HR Professionals.  

1. IndiaHRChat – Hosted by Dr Tanvi Gautam  every month. #IndiaHRchat is a monthly twitter chat aimed at creating conversation with/for the Indian HR community. Every month a guest is invited as Expert and a chat discussion follows for an hour on a predetermined HR topic . Insightful knowledge nuggets get generated in real time during chat discussion.  As the saying goes, The smartest person in the room is the room , IndiaHRChat is a demonstration of collective intelligence & represents true power of a community. Dr Tanvi Gautam has wider network and interviews experts across the globe & share insights through Podcasts which are my absolute favorite.  Hashtag #IndiaHRchat

2. IndiaHRLive – Hosted  by Nisha Raghavan . IndiaHRLive is a live TV for HR professionals. Nisha interviews HR & Industry experts every week . You are likely to meet key HR & Industry experts and get to hear them live.  Hashtag #IndiaHRLive
3.  Gautam Ghosh Blog – Gautam Ghosh has earned reputation as a Thought Leader in Social HR . His blog is a great resource to stay current on various aspects of Talent,  HR and Design of Open Transparent Organizations. Gautam curates and highlights interesting HR initiatives through his blog posts and shares his insights on HR trends & initiatives across the industry through his blog.




4. CiteHR Community – Hosted by Nabomita Mazumdar , offers real world insights through collective professional intelligence on Human Resources. Do you have a question, problem or a situation in the field of HR you are grappling with, chances are your questions would have already been answered on CiteHR , or you will find several HR professionals coming to your rescue to provide solutions to your problems or specific situation. HR members openly share their knowledge and experience. I Thank Nabomita  for tagging me sometimes to engaging & interesting HR discussions happening on the forum.





5. Abhijit Bhaduri Blog – Abhijit  Bhaduri is the author of 3 books & Chief Learning Officer at Wipro. He writes interesting blog on variety of HR , business and current topics.   Abhijit writings are influential , not just limited to  HR , and is reflective of wide range of interests across Movies, Books, Music . Abhijit is queit selective in what he tweets.  I am appreciative of  Abhijit ‘s twitter curations too.

6. Meghan M Brio Blog – . Meghan writes a popular HR blog on Forbes.  Meghan through her writings cover  leadership, career, HR tech and social enterprise .  


7. Luis Suarez Blog – Professionals who have a deep interest in KM, Social & Open Business, Social Learning, Enterprise 2.0  may already know Luis. He is a popular and  well known Thought Leader on Social Media . He writes an interesting blog which covers aspects of Collaboration, Knowledge work, Communities, Social Learning and Open & Transparent Business .Luis and I have worked together for a brief period of time on Social media adoption across the enterprise and I have picked his brains a lot while working together on the key initiative. I look for opportunities to work with him as there is a lot to learn about Communities, Collaboration, and Open Business and Changing nature of work from him . Few years back,  I had my first novel experience of participating in online sessions organized by Luis where hundreds of global IBMers participate and exchange in online knowledge exchange in real time ( similar to twitter chat discussions). Luis shares his deep knowledge & expertise through his blog regularly.  

8. Jane  Hart Blog –  A must for all Learning & Development professionals to learn concepts of PKM ( Personal Knolwdge Management) and emerging Learning Frameworks.  


9. Khalid Raza Blog  –Khalid is a dear friend and colleague at IBM. He shares his experience, observation, opinion along with practical tips and advice on social media through his blog Social Glamor. I & Khalid worked together to conceptualize initial framework for India HR Hub – A community for India HR professionals @ IBM India. Khalid is involved with Social HR Programs and initiatives at IBM. He knows how to keep the audience engaged and make online communities work. I look for opportunities to work with Khalid as work is fun and engaging with him.

10. Dr Lynda Gratton Blog – I revere Dr Lynda Gratton’s work for her insights, strategic HR trends , studies on organizational behaviour & research on Future of work.

For guidance on  Who to Follow on Social Media , refer to SHRM list or  Top 30 HR, Recruitment and Social Media Industry Professionals to Follow on Twitter  , a list curated by Kunjal Kamdaar.
 
Which HR people you follow & learn from on Social Media ?
 

What I am still learning.....

1. Catch 'em young. (Newcomers )

2. Learn how to fish ( What we won't teach you but expect you to learn )

3. The Art ~ not to loose sight of "People Equation " while managing business

4. The perpetual debate ~ Great Managers /Leaders are born or made ? Fit versus Flexibility approach

5. Plenty of opportunities ~ ~ Globally connected people's economy
key skill required ~ Imagination

6. Let's talk beyond compensation - what motivates ~ Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose ( Daniel Pink's video on Ted Talk - surprising truth about motivation )


7. Chuck the 3 year 5 year Career plan .Allow room for new experiences, improvisation and serendipity .

8. Belongingness ? ~ Join communities of interest to stay current on an industry

9. Mantra for success - Don't be shy to ask for help , Volunteer to share your expertise , Help a newbie Succeed, Professional giveback .

10. Leaders are not afraid to follow. Be both a follower & a Leader.

Learning Organization

Peter Senge must be very happy with the growth and proliferation of Social Media and social networking platforms. After all , the gentleman pioneered the concept of Learning Organization decades back in 1994

Let me take this concept of Learning organization to next level.

To my mind, in future the word organization would be replaced by word "Networks ".Let me highlight Key characteristics of Learning networks

1. Mashup of people with diverse skills, experience, competencies and capabilities
2. Woven into a matrix to solve key business issues / challenges on real time basis.
3. Real time Flow of information & valuable content embedded in context.
4. Co creating and consuming value together to achieve aligned business goals and objectives
5. Enabling participation and contribution and transparency on solid foundation of systems thinking.
6. Powered by Analytics for meaningful callouts, opportunity areas, insights to make it an iterative process.

31 Questions I ever wanted to ask a Chief Learning Officer

Leaders of past knew the right answers, Future Leaders will know how to ask the right questions.
Managers ask How, Leaders ask what and why ?
Peter Drucker

here is my list of favorite questions that i always wanted to get answers from L&D Leaders.


1. Is there someone in your team who manages informal ( social) learning formally ?
2.Do you have a Leadership Development Program which is tied to Succession Planning ? Who designed that program ? Who delivers that program ?
3. What do you value more if the focus is to develop say Collaborate Globally competency , heavy content loaded deck with case studies which is just sufficient to last for a 2 day workshop or 1 hour session which focuses on lab training to learn new tools usage of which percolates new behaviors amongst target audience .
4. Share an example of one of a good design you have seen in recent times for an LD Program.
5. What are the present tools, resources, process which support Leaders Learning from Leaders in your organization ?
6. Where is the focus on LD in your organization ? On Formal classroom training sessions or informal social learning ?
7. What are the tools & platforms which support knowledge , best practices sharing ?
Does a training calendar gets published on recurrent basis for LD Programs ?
8. How many LD sessions got cancelled last month due to less enrollments ?
9. What is the average duration of a LD workshop in your organization ?
10. Do you leverage assessment center for assessing Leadership competencies ?
11. Would you rather prefer a short duration sessions at regular intervals for Leadership Development or one several months long intervention ?
12. How is the response to Blended Learning from senior leaders in your organization ?
13.What is the ususal response from Leaders in your company to a Leadership development program ? Do they consider it gyaan or fun ?
14. What makes Leaders take interest and be curious about a program that has been designed to address specific business challenge ?
15. What is the most pressing People / Leadership problem that you face in your organization ?
16. What keeps you wake at night ?
17. What when someone performed brilliantly well on your team last time ?
18. What was your response when one of your team member had a perfect recipe for disaster ? or actually had done a blunder ?
19. How often you spend time with your team members ? formally & informally
20. Do you like to coach ?
21. Do you have Executive Coaches capabilities developed in house ? Do you plan to invest in developing these capabilities in your team for organizational success ?
22. When was the last time you had much fun on a project at work ? Describe how did it feel like ?
23. Did you enjoy going through the above questionnaire ? then , go through some more...;-)
24. Is the focus on quality of LD program or operational efficiency or something else ?
25. What gets measured for your team performance ?
26. How does a typical scorecard for your team looks like ?
27. How many dollars were wasted due to non- participation by Senior Leaders in LD programs that were designed to solve business problems.
28. Are workshops conducted in house or at outside location ?
29. Which is that one book that you like going back to often ?
30. What does success look like for your team ?
31. Do you write , tweet , share yourself online ?

Virtual Learning: Changing face of Learning

How Does Enterprise Social Networking Change the Role of Learning Professionals?
Enterprise Social networking platforms have the power not just to change the way how people do their jobs but also how jobs roles are getting evolved for professionals especially in the Learning organization.
If we talk to any learning leader today, one of the biggest opportunity is integrating technology for effective learning. Web 2.0 provides ample opportunities to do that. Learning professionals need to resort to innovative methods to complement formal learning events so that learner’s performance on the job goes up.
Generation Y is entering into the workforce who has grown up using the emerging technologies. They are the digital natives and like to embrace social media and social networking technologies with ease. People like to connect and learn from one another. According to US Dept of labor and commerce 80% of the learning happens informally, outside the classroom .Social learning or informal learning is one of the oldest forms of learning being propelled and catalyzed even more due to rising social networking platforms. I can safely say that Social learning is increasingly becoming prevalent. The role learning professionals can play in this changing context and environment is very critical and important.
I’d like to take a little more time here to start a discussion about how I expect individual job roles in the learning organization to change as social learning becomes increasingly common.
At the same time, I think that it’s really important for learning professionals to remember that despite new emerging technologies, formal learning continue to play a role in enhancing business performance. We, learning professionals, must think how we can strengthen existing learning process and embed the new Social learning process into existing learning programs, courses or curriculum as we ourselves witness a Social revolution both within and outside the organization.
Taking the larger context of formal and informal learning in a socially networked world, learning professionals have the opportunity to play a critical role: that of a community facilitator and / or community curator.
Community design is such that it puts the focus back on learners/ workers. The job of community facilitator isn’t necessarily an easy one – team will have to continuously ask the right questions and find new ways to encourage participation. As a matter of fact, learning organization most likely already has the skills and capabilities needed to serve as effective community facilitators – they just need to apply these capabilities towards a new way of thinking about learners and the learning process.
I believe the solution to existing challenges faced by learning organization lies in thinking how our role as learning professionals change with the changing demands , learning styles and preferences of our learners/workers. Facilitator’s role must evolve from being on stage to a virtual guide by side. :-)

Hello World !

Welcome to Web 2.0 Learning. After blogging for 5 years and keeping my blog as private, i decided to go public. There are quiet a few reasons to do so.Firstly, I witnessed a shift in my writing from personal ramblings to professional ones and i wanted to share my thoughts on Web 2.0 world which has become my passion from quiet some time now.I am starting a blog series “Web2.0&Learning” , where i would be sharing my views with the world on Web 2.0, Learning and other interesting stuff on internet and invite people to join the conversation.




Cheers,

Ruchi