A True Story

As appeared on TruthorFiction 

A lady in a faded grey dress and her husband, dressed in a home-spun suit walked in timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President’s outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Harvard.

“We want to see the President “the man said softly.

“He’ll be busy all day “the secretary snapped.

“We’ll wait” the lady replied.

For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn’t and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president..

“Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they’ll leave” she said to him. The President, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.

The lady told him “We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus.”

The president wasn’t touched….He was shocked. “Madam” he said, gruffly, “we can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.”

“Oh, no,” the lady explained quickly ” We don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard.”

The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, and then exclaimed, “A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard.”

For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly,

“Is that all it costs to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own?”

Her husband nodded. The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the University that bears their name: - Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.

Most of the time we judge people by their outer appearance, which can be misleading. And in this impression, we tend to treat people badly by thinking they can do nothing for us. Thus we tend to lose our potential good friends, employees or customers.

Thoughts on Leadership Development Program

What are the key expectations of Business Leaders , HR Leaders from participants after this program ?
Does performance gap exist in business in present situation ?
Are participants motivated to go through an extensive program ? ( Intrinsic motivation levels)
How much is peer support / Leader support available ?
What are the different forums for Leaders to bridge knowledge gaps ? Existing tools, methods, platforms, forums for knowledge sharing ?
What are the existing knowledge gaps of participants ?
Who can give us insights into the existing situation / as is situation at present ?
What are the expectations of participants from the Program ? ( In terms of knowledge building, skill & capability building )
What is the current motivation level of participants to complete this program ?
What is it that participants need to know which they do not know as present ? ( Knowledge gaps)
What are the main challenges Leaders face in their day to day operations ? ( Performance gaps)
What are the key skills participants would like to develop post completion of program ?
What are the new capabilities they would like develop as Business Leaders ?
Names of Leaders from business who have driven non linear growth successfully ?
What are the existing forums / methods for Strategic knowledge sharing ?
What are the current sources for gaining market insights, competitor information ?
Brief Profile of the organization ?
Roles and responsibilities of participants and their KRAs ?
Typical internal communications towards end customer deliverables ?
Typical customer engagements in Business .
Understand Business in depth ..( deck or presentation around same)
Understand Delivery process in depth ( deck or presentation around same)
Understand participants strengths and areas of improvement in relation to Strategic Alignment , Advanced Coaching, Customer Relationship Management
Understand challenges faced by participants in dealing with internal and external customers ?
What are the critical success factors for participants ?
What are existing tools, structure, processes in Business ( for this group of participants)
How would success look like to them ?
Key performance inhibitors ?
Assessment centre proposal with details ?
Who is the Facilitator who will facilitate X workshop ? Virtual or ILT ?
Who will facilitate Advanced Coaching session ? Content / Instruction methodology ?
4D of Execution - Content / role plays/ scenarios ? Details
Leader Broadcast ? What are the key themes ? What topics ? End goal ?
Anything else you think i should know .

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. :-)

IIM-C EPHRM Program begins !

I applied for IIM-C Executive Program in Human Resource Management . Yippie, i got selected. The competition was tough. This program is meant for working professionals . Only total of 100+ professionals were selected from the total pool of 500 + candidates . The selection was basis academic profile,statement of purpose, and achievements . Next year onwards, there will be a CAT like examination as entrance test.

The program will be delivered via Satellite technology in partnership with Hughes.
Yesterday was the first day for Orientation and technical briefing. We got a virtual tour of IIM-C campus / auditorium .

Most of the features are of live virtual classroom are same as Centra and Elluminate, so it was pretty easy to participate. Candidates were jubilant as we all were excited about being part of IIM , one of the most prestigious management schools in India/ Asia Pacific.

Thanks to proliferation to Social networking sites,we, participants decided to quickly form a Linkedin group to stay connected with each other throughout the program.
Next class is briefing session by Program Director from IIM-C. Look forward to exciting journey .

Windows Live Writer

Test Blogging from Windows Live Writer. Enjoy my pic.

Social Hotspots

I just coined the term "Social hotspots" ( Inspired from Lynda Gratton ) ! Social hotspots occur in collaborative spaces when people are aligned to common shared GOALS and when Social Neworks & Social platforms are the enablers & act as catalysts to fasten the process.
See diagram below and tell me from which quadrant do you think it is easy to move to Q4 ? if Innovation is what Business want in present times .

How Smarter Leaders collaborate !

Being a part of IBM feels so great as one not only experiences the best environment not just in terms of the technology , but in terms of ideas as well .Enjoy this , have fun and learn as much.

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