tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-388955772024-02-07T18:29:31.650+05:30Venky RamachandranVenkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comBlogger192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-8088383922624792172021-05-12T09:12:00.009+05:302021-05-13T08:43:07.178+05:30About Venky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hello there,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif;">Welcome to my home. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Sometimes, I wish this page gets updated in real-time, every moment an experience changes my perceptions and the way I see the world. How wonderful would it be, if I were to wake up one day and see clearly, this dynamic me, bundled over countless lives of experiences, inside and outside me? </span></div><div><br /></div><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">What do I do?</b><br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I am not what I do. I am a writer and independent management consultant. I am curious about culture and agriculture. I track the agritech scene and also work with few agritech startups and mid-size firms. I love writing and telling stories, especially from Mahabharata. My writings can be found on <a href="http://agribusinessmatters.substack.com/">Agribusiness Matters </a>and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkinesis/detail/recent-activity/posts/">LinkedIn</a>. More recently, I started <a href="https://dharma.substack.com/">Dharma and Dharmasankata </a>to learn and discover my indic roots. If you want to know my boring professional background, you can check out m<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkinesis/">y LinkedIn profile. </a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>My Story</b></span><br /><div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Any sufficiently advanced work is indistinguishable from Play" - Seb Paquet</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ever since I received my first "satori" of the potential of the Internet in 2009, I've realized that I don't need that old twentieth-century idea- "Career" - to dictate what I needed to do in my life. Wherever work felt like music, I've played along.<br /><br />After working for eight years on a paycheque lifestyle, I have taken the free agency road for the 2nd time to test the truth of Seb's hypothesis. You can check out <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/birth-gigyasa-project-venkataraman-ramachandran/" target="_blank">"The Gigyasa Project Begins"</a> to learn more about my business philosophy and my Consulting page to learn more about my offerings.<br /><br />I have also co-founded <a href="http://mandram.org/" target="_blank">"Mandram Indic Talks Foundation"</a>, a non-profit organization with my friend Maggie to curate cutting-edge scientific research, innovative ideas, insights and concepts in native indic languages. We conduct open-for-all TED-like events and help scientists, innovators and technologists explain their work in native languages to reach a wider audience. We record these talks, edit and distribute them via Youtube. You can check out "<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mandram-journey-ahead-venkataraman-ramachandran/" target="_blank">Mandram Journey Ahead</a>" to learn more about our vision and check out our videos on our Youtube page.<br /><br />When I am not working, I play Mridangam, sing and at times, travel across the country to play Kanjeera with my fellow Kabir fakiri singer Vipul Rikhi.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-ctvcDN74AT74UFnQquk5YewT4DHOYP1QId8QhdFIEwYKbXYutsY2ii-FMjIM9gzc2SSlCPJBbrJQ-x4j2tItXLWVKhPdJbpTWqwZB3gXD8gHQnFKr8zRllqHwhcZfTH8Dd79Q/s1600/venky-profile.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1069" data-original-width="1600" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-ctvcDN74AT74UFnQquk5YewT4DHOYP1QId8QhdFIEwYKbXYutsY2ii-FMjIM9gzc2SSlCPJBbrJQ-x4j2tItXLWVKhPdJbpTWqwZB3gXD8gHQnFKr8zRllqHwhcZfTH8Dd79Q/s640/venky-profile.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-85858357449215839072020-08-05T08:05:00.003+05:302020-08-05T08:05:49.168+05:30Ponzi Schemes of Your Mind<font face="georgia">Narratives are the Ponzi schemes of your mind. And once you understand narratives deeply, you discover a key insight into learning almost anything and everything.<br /><br />One of the biggest learnings I discovered, thanks to a decade of blogging, is the power of narratives. It's almost like the Inception movie.<br /><br />Once you create a powerful narrative, you start invading others' subliminal space where their deepest thoughts and emotions reside.<br /><br />Of course, it's not so easy.<br /><br />The lead character Dominick Cobb, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, in Inception explains why it’s so difficult: “If you're going to perform inception, you need imagination. You need the simplest version of the idea – the one that will grow naturally in the subject's mind. A subtle art.”<br /><br />And that's exactly what happens when you plant narratives into the world out there. You start putting the simplest version of it, and to watch it sprouting in others' minds is incredibly fascinating.<br /><br />If you don't watch out, you can get consumed by your narratives.<br /><br />The key to learn is to first put out the simplest version of your idea and watch the convexity of social media play out. Sooner enough, you stumble upon something that will debunk this Ponzi scheme.<br /><br />And then inception continues. You learn infinitely.</font>Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-3690208272822192342020-07-12T11:50:00.001+05:302020-07-12T11:50:49.435+05:30The True Price of Entrepreneurship<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is the true price of Entrepreneurship?</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Curiosity.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After working my ass off over the past week, I spent Saturday like a Saturday should be. What can be more rewarding than reading RK Narayan on Saturday?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As I let my nerves to unwind after an intense week of entrepreneurship (read as maddeningly intense bout of workaholism to get things done) , I realized a very discomforting fact.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When you are in "Entrepreneur" mode, you are stripped of every iota of natural curiosity reserves you have in "Storyteller" mode. You operate with blinkers on to get things done.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's extremely hard to be curious about the world, and acknowledge the physical,tangible world when you are operating in that mode. Even when you are engaging with others (human and otherwise), if you are not conscious, you end up using others for your means. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I operate in storyteller mode, I engage with the world without any agenda. I try my best to observe without judgement and engage in the rewarding act of seeing myself in the world that you and I inhabit.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps, to make a dent, being an Entrepreneur helps. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">For bigger things - living and meaning, try being a storyteller. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-36066131210013433162020-07-11T10:52:00.000+05:302020-07-11T10:52:11.217+05:30Why I Hate Alarm Clocks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If there is one object I viscerally hate with every molecule of my being, it has to be the innocent-looking alarm clock.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For the longest time, I had been a slave to the alarm clock and over the recent months, based on the experiments I did on myself, I am happy to share this: I don't need it any more! Good Riddance!<br /><br />My experiments involved high-risk, high-stakes. What will you do when you have an early morning meeting which you cannot miss? What will you do when you have an early morning flight to catch? Do you set alarm and then wake up before the scheduled time with fear, snooze every now and then, shuddering to think about the worst-case scenario?<br /><br />Having been a student of circadian rhythms, although I had programmed my subconscious to not need an alarm clock for my everyday schedule, it pained me to see that I needed it whenever I had an early morning flight to catch. And so, few months back, when I had a flight to catch, I set myself this do-or-die experiment. Can I trust my subconscious to wake me up when I have a flight to catch?<br /><br />The good news is, you don't need an alarm clock in your life at all. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sleep is the most fascinating janitor you could ever employ in your life to manage the house you call as your body. Sleep organizes unopened tabs of your mind. It flushes out unwanted emotions through dreams with no-headset-VR effects and when you wake up, conscious of your last dream, you have a key insight to figure out what triggered that emotion in the first place. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I</span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">f you understand the process of sleep better, you would understand that waking up with alarm is the most violent thing you could do to your body.</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-54674842340307151142020-07-10T10:20:00.000+05:302020-07-10T10:21:07.212+05:30Invasive Artificial Intelligence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In one podcast about depression, celebrity chef David Chang, mentee of the late Chef Anthony Bourdain, described it in a way that stung my heart badly. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Very badly.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>"[Depression is] “like fighting some kind of invasive artificial intelligence of my psyche... It is constantly observing and getting data on how I am trying to beat this thing... And after a 15-plus-year battle with it, it is an incredibly complex organism. That is smarter than I am half the time..."</i>
</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Who is this phantom? Can we outsmart this phantom who pretends to be us, questions every intent, every action and take us to court for every shrapnel of memory piercing through our skins in every living moment? </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
David Chang is not alone.
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dig six inches deeper behind everyone who tells you their story to the world outside with relentless positivity. </span><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chances are, you may be meeting someone sailing in rough waters, struggling with denial or worse, a fragile mask that could break apart anytime. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In my yoga practice, I have discovered a lifejacket which sails me through rough winds, and serendipitously, David also touches briefly about it.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<i><b>"Work should never give you meaning"</b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>
</b></i>It's tough. </span><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know, especially in an age when careers have become the endless reality show running 24 X 7 across our social media lives. But, honestly, there's no other way out! </span></span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-26301308918684927652020-07-09T17:58:00.001+05:302020-07-09T17:59:14.284+05:30High Friction, High Value<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My Ayurveda Doc is a delightfully irascible octogenarian. Although I've known him well for the last 3 years, I shudder to open my mouth in front of him. And so whenever I recommend him to my friends, I ensure that I coach them first before they get ready to manage his anger in their first visit.<br /><br />When I think about my love for my Ayurvedic doc, and other amazing people who are largely unapproachable, I see an interesting heuristic.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We have been conditioned to think: High friction means low value. Especially, if you are product managers and designers. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But how about high friction and therefore high value?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />In an age of information abundance, unapproachability is a useful gatekeeper to weed out the non-serious from the serious. The more unapproachable you are, the easier it becomes for you to find the right people who truly value what you bring.<br /><br />Call this the Collaboration Paradox, if you will.<br /><br />The more doors you build to invite others towards you, the less sought-after you become.<br /><br />I often use this high-friction heuristic to evaluate doctors and professionals whose services I consider important. The more customer-friendly a hospital or a doctor is, the louder my warning bells ring about the doctor's efficacy. I know, it sounds idiosyncratic.<br /><br />Think about it.<br /><br />When friction-less design is pervasive, products and services with high friction are going to be very useful to sift the wheat from the chaff.</span></div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-57801988046234674042020-07-08T10:12:00.001+05:302020-07-08T11:53:37.596+05:30Work as if writing only matters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For the longest time I can remember, wherever and whenever I went to work, I've carried a mini-writer-devil in my left shoulder who had no business being there other than fly-in-the-walling. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I shoo him away when I am in the uphill phase of my work. He knows who is the boss! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the downhill phase, I let him actively prowl around. He can often be seen (of course, only I can see him) goofing around, asking silly and profane questions, cackling often when he stumbles on an insight with an evil grin: "Now THAT's a juicy tale waiting to be told. Allow me to reflect on what you did, what happened and what blew your mind". More often, I let him take over and I often get handsome rewards in the end. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At first, I thought this was a writerly thing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It turns out that this is a good thing if you want to be a "learn-all" and master a variety of domains. Cognitive researchers and meta-cognitive studies seem to be chorusing in unison. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you want to learn, write first so that you think & model and then examine what you modelled for everyone to poke holes.</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-25068750076498385162020-07-01T08:01:00.000+05:302020-07-01T13:12:30.011+05:30On Writer's Block and Writer's Vomit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are days when I suffer from writer's block and there are also days when I suffer from writer's vomit.<br /><br />When I suffer from writer's block, I feel inadequate. I fear someone would find out that I have a shallow understanding of that subject that I am writing. Imposter Syndrome kicks in. I fear I would be exposed as a fraud who uses his writing skills to couch his imperfect knowledge.<br /><br />When I suffer from writer's vomit, I feel overwhelmed. My mind is writing, even when I don't want it to. My metaphor sandbox gets too busy and starts trying out different metaphors that would convey the embodied understanding that is waiting to be sensed inside the noodle soup of my veins.<br /><br />When I have writer's block, clicking "Publish/Post" is an act of courage. There is a subtle pit that hits your stomach and it takes a couple of deep breaths to let go of what I shipped.<br /><br />When I have writer's vomit, to repudiate the writer inside is an act of courage. "I write, therefore I am" changes into "I am, and so I write". Breathing becomes a powerful tool to love the human who doesn't want words to remind himself that he is human.<br /><br />Both are not happy places to be. The art lies in discovering the balance so that I write when I want to, and I breathe, when I don't want to</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-81304432316612485482020-06-25T09:33:00.002+05:302020-06-25T09:45:30.434+05:30What LinkedIn Tells Me Everyday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_HNiqMgnogvpMNnOJ0eSyNFvuvfwl68QKOYK0COhyWpcdziEnD-QyMESE40m8A_1CpDbx1_NpBwU9GU1IkfRG3flD94DuYlUo_CaONuzGu0coP_OYFPV1UDNbBOPWt2D3rJj4fw/s1600/linked.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="411" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_HNiqMgnogvpMNnOJ0eSyNFvuvfwl68QKOYK0COhyWpcdziEnD-QyMESE40m8A_1CpDbx1_NpBwU9GU1IkfRG3flD94DuYlUo_CaONuzGu0coP_OYFPV1UDNbBOPWt2D3rJj4fw/s640/linked.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have been prolifically active in LinkedIn since 2014. It has been a blessing. It has been my favourite laboratory and sandbox to learn about the mind of the market and the market of the mind. As much as I love this platform, I am aware of its biases.<br /><br />Every day I am told by LinkedIn that<br /><br />❆ A professional, to borrow a phrase from William Gaddis, is nothing but the dregs of his work.<br /><br />❆ I shall quell romantic notions and learn to demarcate between my professional and personal self.<br /><br />❆ My work experience shall be an artefact to be churned, polished and referenced, to keep the grist mills of thought leadership running.<br /><br />❆ I have to write about what I know in order to be known for what I know.<br /><br />❆ My work journey is a linear order of roles that I play.<br /><br />❆ Reach of my network trumps the context of my professional relationships.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">❆ Endorsements are cute euphemisms for "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">❆ I have to write often to stay perennially in the radar of attention of my community</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">❆ It's a crime to hibernate for profile views unlock success in my professional life</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I do my best to subvert all these in doing what I do in LinkedIn. But, it's important to state these biases out. Any other biases would you like to add?</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-70748108483568134142019-12-04T20:46:00.001+05:302019-12-04T20:46:16.266+05:30Nosumer Media in the Brave New Age of Work<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAB_zDABMFwSQOnJ5blkCgL1apoXztP8DuE/">Sajith Pai</a> has an uncanny ability of coining neologisms which stick. The last time he coined 'Indo Anglian', I took to it as a fish would to water.</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAAotZYBVsTLHJp90CbcaF1nO-cBtDOPAHM/" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Maggie Inbamuthiah</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> and I articulated the vision of the Mandram Community that we are building, it felt obvious to state this: Mandram is a community and movement led by us, the Indo Anglians, who have started to yearn for our indic, native language brain that we once had access to. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And now, he is back with yet another catchy neologism. This time it is 'Nosumer Media', a new category of media led by creators who are happier to have no consumers, as they are more interested in the joy and the process of creation and the inevitable social experiments that follow it. This neologism may not become as viral as 'Indo Anglian' did. But, I guess, it will stick for a niche group of creators, like me who enjoy blogging for the sake of blogging. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I've been running a one man 'Nosumer media' org for more than a decade now. Why bother to blog in the first place for a nosumer - no consumer ? And what does it mean for the gig economy?</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Read <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nosumer-media-brave-new-age-work-venky-ramachandran/" target="_blank">Nosumer Media in the Brave New Age of Work</a></span></div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-33102246480493652342019-11-10T06:32:00.000+05:302019-11-10T06:32:08.915+05:30Rhapsody Of Madness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDiIytsKpXeN7KGsw5gvuX85rrrmKNrIT_jCvgocCWwvsRdo2FgMp3jjKDxwOIMYYlxxxwUO6Z7RmEci7wapmp7Sgr065-tFY9_sFZj2zb5rFESlaB2EpYOdPoQawIc5T_YIoqbA/s1600/joker-dance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="739" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDiIytsKpXeN7KGsw5gvuX85rrrmKNrIT_jCvgocCWwvsRdo2FgMp3jjKDxwOIMYYlxxxwUO6Z7RmEci7wapmp7Sgr065-tFY9_sFZj2zb5rFESlaB2EpYOdPoQawIc5T_YIoqbA/s400/joker-dance.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How does one explain the tragic human condition which turns so surreal that what you see inside the celluloid is exactly what is happening outside ?</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In that iconic moment of the film, when Joker dances gracefully to the morbid rhythms of a human mind careening towards insanity, there was an eerie moment of silence in the theater. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At first one lone voice howled out in adoration. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then another clapped. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then another whistled. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In no time, the voices inside and outside the celluloid came together in unison and savoured the rhapsody of madness. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ever since Joker movie got rave response from audience worldwide, it was evident that it had touched a raw zeitgeist nerve. When the world doesn't make any sense any more, how do humans cope with the dreadful act of living? I recently spoke to an entrepreneur who bamboozled me when he said that he derives inspiration from Joker. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is it about this film that connects so deeply with the times we live in? </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is it because, like Arthur Fleck, we too realize that there is literally no one to listen to the clinical case history defining humans on earth : Chronic paranoid delusions about the reality we live in. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Or is it because in the bottom of our hearts we feel entitled to project our realities onto others and rebuild the world in our own image?</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-14781864360187348682019-11-08T21:06:00.000+05:302019-11-08T21:06:24.917+05:30Are you a Live player or Dead Player? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What makes a framework useful? </span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps, when it doesn't create much fuss and quietly gets into your bones to let you make few distinctions carefully! </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ever since I first read <a href="https://twitter.com/SamoBurja/" target="_blank">Samo Burja</a>'s distinction of <a href="https://medium.com/@samo.burja/live-versus-dead-players-2b24f6e9eae2" target="_blank">Live Players Vs Dead Players in his blog, </a>I've been seeing Live and Dead Players in orgs, in startups, and in people I meet in my work and travels. <br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Who is a Live Player? </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Samo's words, a live player is a person or a tightly coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> A live player usually does things outside their domain, is tightly coordinated with the group, possess a living tradition of knowledge and knows to play in stealth mode to avoid opposition. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Who is a Dead Player? </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In Samo's words, Dead player is a person or a group of people that is working off a script, incapable of doing new things. And what causes them to die? When tight coordination is replaced by bureaucracy, when an intellectual tradition dies. They may compete in old tested domains, but they can never do anything new. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Few days back </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAA1axrIBntFtyq2Mt_Hz-1LjXpxQ_4uTyjU/" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Matt Stoller</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> published a fascinating argument to break up </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-walt-disney-company/" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Walt Disney Company</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">. Reading his argument, it was obvious: Disney is no longer alive. They are a dead player. But remember this. Never write one dead though. You never know if they are playing dead.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6598465963509809152/#"><img src="https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C5122AQHoE7GcfYDmqQ/feedshare-shrink_800/0?e=1576108800&v=beta&t=Nm1a8vkctS0tGaAuuM31EnS3wSyC44bxqQhAXrIgk3E" /></a></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">P.S. I used to be a dead player. I talked about my transformation <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tale-unlikely-mentor-how-organic-farmer-screwed-my-ramachandran/" target="_blank">here</a> </span></div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-28980881112763767932019-11-07T21:05:00.000+05:302019-11-07T21:05:05.506+05:30Betaal's Digital Agribusiness Riddle Revisited<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I've been fond of Vikram Vetaal for quite sometime, and its magnificent riddles have often helped me throw light on complex, wicked challenges which evade easy answers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who've been reading my blogs would know my penchant for understanding wicked problems in the business of agriculture. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was invited <span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 0.975em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">to address the students of Institute of Rural Management, Anand for their agri-input marketing symposium which was held recently in their campus. And I chose to look at the big picture of Digital Agribusiness through a riddle from Vikram Vetaal. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 0.975em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 0.975em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can read the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/betaals-digital-agribusiness-riddle-revisited-venky-ramachandran/" target="_blank">blog post here.</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 0.975em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 0.975em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Do join the conversation in LinkedIn if it evokes you.</span></span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-27770101649465806742019-10-19T15:55:00.001+05:302019-10-19T15:55:12.242+05:30Gigyasa Project Begins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, this blog is waking up, after a long period of reverie. Some of you may not be following me through these spaces. Nevertheless, here are some life updates. Gigyasa Project Begins. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am yet to figure out what to do with these blog spaces. Should I curate all my short bursts of writings or keep them only in LinkedIn? Should I put together my long articles only here? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a free agent life, you figure things out as you go. Will keep you posted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/birth-gigyasa-project-venkataraman-ramachandran/" target="_blank">The Birth of Gigyasa Project</a></span><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-31743423021458741152016-05-16T12:46:00.001+05:302016-05-16T12:46:57.642+05:30Introducing A Brand New Game: Careers!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8y9zchz3WVobKFVYXpTopTjoHEY2z4uGmcomgvMTZgZyOHcjcD0pioOb9wvNY9t4UtmTeaCktiD_vJe2LodQr7IWwvcOltLj5aItmNUlNsy2LcdC4PUvJMrgLx1_-5j_yUoQWFw/s1600/5224899169_e81366be1d_b+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8y9zchz3WVobKFVYXpTopTjoHEY2z4uGmcomgvMTZgZyOHcjcD0pioOb9wvNY9t4UtmTeaCktiD_vJe2LodQr7IWwvcOltLj5aItmNUlNsy2LcdC4PUvJMrgLx1_-5j_yUoQWFw/s400/5224899169_e81366be1d_b+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
Networked World proudly presents a brand new game for the future.</div>
</span><div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Careers</span></b></blockquote>
<br />For 1 to n players / Ages: 12 to n<br /><br />Available on Play Store for download. <br /><br /><b>Game Description</b><br /><br />Careers is an <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/05/the-short-game-the-long-game-and-the-infinite-game.html">infinite game</a>. You play as long as you love to play. The journey is Life. Forget the old finite game rules. No upfront investments. No more suffering from <a href="http://engineered.typepad.com/thoughts_on_business_engi/2013/10/malcolm-gladwell-on-.html">Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder</a>. No winners. No losers. No weekday/weekend dichotomy. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/work-life-balance-venkataraman-ramachandran">No work-life balance.</a>The game doesn't end when you turn sixty. In other words, you never retire.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a name='more'></a><b>Equipment</b><br /><br />Life Experience, Gap Year, Failed Gotten-Hands-Dirty Projects, Work-In-Progress Prototypes, Degrees (For proxy <a href="https://www.quora.com/Is-higher-education-college-in-the-US-more-about-skill-building-or-about-signaling">signaling purposes </a>alone. Not mandatory.)<br /><br /><b>Game Plan</b><br /><br />Life Style Designer? Nomad Growth Hacker? Community Architect? Teacher? Storyteller? What do you want to do when as you grow up?<br /><br />As you play around, pick the game plan that excites you. <br /><br /><a href="http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=78cbbb7f2882629a5157fa593&id=9097e29ad7">Sisyphus Account</a><br /><br /><img src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAjjAAAAJDk5NDA3ZjQ1LTI5MTEtNDExNi05YzY5LThhZTRiYTM1ODc5OA.gif" /></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">You play the average Startup Joe who is driven to change the world, one product at a time. You don't mind sweating it out to make big things happen. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />You are suspicious of those who are caught in the bureaucratic rut of large corporations. You frown on those who build vaporware and coast along without doing what's necessary for the long haul. Execution matters to you more than anything else. <br /><br /><img src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAkyAAAAJDViOGE4ZmM4LTAwYWItNDU1ZS1hMWE0LTNiNjdkYjFlMjA1Yg.jpg" /><br /><br /><b>Robin Hood Account</b><br /><br />You play an average corporate Joe in a large MNC in the day. And in the night, you turn into a rock-star hustler in your community of merry men.<br /><br />You rob from the large corporations in the day and give it to the startup community in the night to settle your day's karmic dues. Think Neo in Matrix before he gets enlightened.<br /><br /><b>Docking station Account</b><br /><br /><img src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAl3AAAAJGIzZWQ4NjFlLTVjOWMtNGM3Ny1hMmNiLWNiYmE2YTQwY2U1MA.jpg" /><br /><br />You play the nerdy serial Intrapreneur, perpetually busy experimenting with docking and undocking portfolios of skills you'd like to offer the market and get paid commensurately.<br /><br />Your docking station provides you a simplified, risk-averse way to manage your portfolio without burning yourself out. You draw distributed streams of income, based on the energy you are willing to invest in monetizing each of your skills. Whenever you feel bored with a particular offering, you either put it on sleep mode or undock it completely, without shutting down your docking station. <br /><br /><b>Flaneur Account</b><br /><br /><img src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAksAAAAJDliZDA4MjkzLWQ5ODItNGZiNi05NzQ4LTI2ODkyMzU0MzcyNw.jpg" /><br /><br />This is an advanced meta game plan that will be unlocked only after you've demonstrated enough affinity towards the philosophy of gaming. <br /><br />As a flaneur, you observe things around for a living. Playing games doesn't excite you as much as observing others play. You are the eternal voyager, who loves discovering newer games to be played by others. The moment you start playing by discovering new rules, newer games take shape for others to play, <a href="http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/10/21/playing-games-to-leave-games/">and the older ones drift away</a>. <br /><br /><b>Game Play</b><br /><br />Remember. There is no such thing as winning. There is no limit to the number of times you may enter and leave any game plan. Go through as many career games as you can, as long as you have fun managing chaos. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">______________________________________________________________</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Image Credits: Sisyphus: <a href="http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/sisyphus.html">Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology</a>.Robin Hood - <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielvf">Creative Commons-Danielvf @ Flickr</a>. Docking Station <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_station">Wikipedia</a>. Flaneur: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur#/media/File:Rosler-LeFlaneur.jpg">Wikipedia</a>_______________________________________________________</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-24921983256787271892016-05-11T16:08:00.003+05:302016-05-11T16:09:32.699+05:30So, Are you a Thought leader?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-xH5oFrBWrsIVB7TVwI9iSoByK1YlrZsDCcmItHNlzMOTKKTkn4fR5vLtIRyuANGPo0O-nPgXTHCrHG9J5y5mLuTeBkhu8fTL7yq-GoCPBvI4DXXqMpJaFhKArWQIulzIaLD5g/s1600/thoughtleader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-xH5oFrBWrsIVB7TVwI9iSoByK1YlrZsDCcmItHNlzMOTKKTkn4fR5vLtIRyuANGPo0O-nPgXTHCrHG9J5y5mLuTeBkhu8fTL7yq-GoCPBvI4DXXqMpJaFhKArWQIulzIaLD5g/s400/thoughtleader.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is Thought Leadership?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, the question is "What", not "How".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I know, Thought Leaders love "How" more than anything else. Nevertheless, I am going to resist my temptation, and inquire on "What". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First things first.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is no such thing as "Thought Leadership" in the abstract. It exists in the mind of perceivers who are led ahead to think by those who think ahead to lead. And what each one thinks it is is what it is. </span><br />
<div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We have been peddling ideas in business and everywhere else as if "Thought Leadership" lies out there. This shouldn’t surprise us, because, that’s exactly what language does – project a subjective view, with its encoded mental maps, as theobjective reality. In other words, we mistake the map for the territory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The thought leader creates the framework, and in turn, the framework creates the thought leader.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Consider these two statements: John is a Thought Leader in IT Mergers & Acquisition. John wrote a book titled, “Mergers & Acquisitions’ IT Best Practices” (I made them up. The person doesn’t exist)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let’s break down the first one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here’s a likely translation more grounded in reality: When we perceive John’s professional competence in an inter-subjective environment that exists within the IT related communications network (comprising both meat and virtual interactions) linking the subjective consciousness of several IT professionals, we perceive him as a Thought Leader in IT Mergers & Acquisitions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Did you notice that we are talking more about ourselves than John?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet, if you ignore the translation, and simply go by the shorthand, it seems fairly obvious that we are talking about John. How is that possible?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You see, the magic of language is at play here. By an act of grammatical abracadabra, “we” has disappeared. We’ve objectified our perceptions, and projected it as the truth, outside our skins, out there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Why do thought leaders take their time out to post snack-able content regularly of various forms regularly on social networks with a specific hashtag reflecting their domain of expertise to own it eventually in the social web? You already know the answer. Don’t you? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, let’s break down the second statement.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By writing this book, John has created recipes of best practices which could be helpful for an IT Manager managing IT Mergers & Acquisitions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, let us assume, as a thought experiment, John wrote another book titled, “IT Mergers & Acquisitions: Worst Practices”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, which of the two books would help him get better recognition as a Thought Leader?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s obvious, if the growing “best-practices” literary cottage industries are any indication of its acceptance as a sure-shot method to become an industry “Thought Leader”. You can build an authority only by building a citadel of thoughts in the affirmative(as in "best"), rather than in the negative(as in "worst"). No wonder, we keep littering the internet with “How-to-dos” on everything under the sun. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now consider this.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you’ve worked in the Information Technology industry, (or if you’ve read the works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb) you would know that the latter book would be more helpful than the former for two reasons.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, best practice recipes lead to side-effects and unintended consequences. So, you are better off with worst practices, relatively speaking, as you are more likely to benefit from omission rather than addition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Second, you can never be sure if the recipes and only recipes improved the state of affairs in an IT environment in the throes of mergers & acquisitions. As you can never control all the factors that influence a complex IT environment, any attempt to use "best practices" recipes is fraught with more dangers than imagined.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, are you a Thought Leader? Who are you?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And for those who came all the way here expecting some advice on "how" to be a better thought leader, <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-thought-leadership">may I direct your attention elsewhere?</a></span></div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-72032305609168484142016-05-11T15:56:00.000+05:302016-05-11T16:02:12.255+05:30Do You Have an Instinct?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwsbUw9FBSeus1MmurIYITkHmRa1S8nf0KGN4fzDRmmyKNFHXS07-j0kj2ZwNLCdAh6oqUw2usXJnRD2ZSAfBt9t8CK_hlrGlIDvKmHek8P9jBOoP7eYAu44XLiww1GCsLprDUZg/s1600/lion-kill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwsbUw9FBSeus1MmurIYITkHmRa1S8nf0KGN4fzDRmmyKNFHXS07-j0kj2ZwNLCdAh6oqUw2usXJnRD2ZSAfBt9t8CK_hlrGlIDvKmHek8P9jBOoP7eYAu44XLiww1GCsLprDUZg/s400/lion-kill.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nature doesn't have any currency. There is no intermediary. The transaction is direct.<br /><br />When a lion pounces off on a deer and rips it apart, it doesn't go to the nearest counter to swipe the card. It finishes the deer and the transaction is over.<br /><br />For everything humans do, there is a material intervention, and since the material element is critical, it is always open for analysis. You can analyze it as much as you want.<br /><br />No wonder, we have bought into the idea that we can analyze everything. Of course, you can, if you make some stupid assumptions: All routes are similar; my customers are in those segments that I have defined.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For every material part that governs business, there is also an invisible non-material part, which involves human relations, which cannot be understood through analysis alone. You get that only if you develop an Instinct.<br /><br />Here's the deal. Instinct emerges only when you develop strong feelings. If you don't connect deep enough, you will never get it.<br /><br />You know when you mother is angry, even if she hasn't spoken a word. You really don't know what your customer wants, because you don't give a shit about him.<br /><br />As we move on from the material industrial age to the non-material digital age, instinct becomes the killer app. Do you have an instinct?</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-62550521605818025702016-04-19T15:45:00.000+05:302016-05-16T12:42:15.812+05:30Networking is BS and Other Truths About Building Relationships<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaKOZK5Uj7elQeE8VZ_gWv6BS4xp8ZnCuDdSIfC9S4jZ-uD56ralceGbj_eVjru0OMPiwa5zG3BmSjzm_JKmLPb3i8vNwjpzGXYhT4o-C9DhqzE9N-FxaOtsOU7Y_M6XHzjX130A/s1600/nettingwork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaKOZK5Uj7elQeE8VZ_gWv6BS4xp8ZnCuDdSIfC9S4jZ-uD56ralceGbj_eVjru0OMPiwa5zG3BmSjzm_JKmLPb3i8vNwjpzGXYhT4o-C9DhqzE9N-FxaOtsOU7Y_M6XHzjX130A/s400/nettingwork.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Few years ago, when I used to work for a large consulting firm, Networking was the in-thing. <br /><br />You could see the word everywhere. Inside work cubicles with motivational posters urging you to not simply work, but network to achieve collective goals. Even inside dining rooms which probably meant that you better have a working lunch to get your net work done with, well, eating business.<br /><br />You could hear the word everywhere. It probably won the first prize for a million dollar quiz question sponsored by the Human Resources Department: Tell me one good buzz word which will be uncritically lapped up by everyone - from CEO to Managers to colleagues.<br /><br />Do you want to get noticed by Principals to vroom up your career graph and do exciting stuff? Do you want to switch teams to other greener pastures outside your comfort zone? Do you want to get a favorable rating in the labyrinthine 360 degrees performance evaluation process? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To be frank, I was wet behind the ears in the consulting business and it was quite incredulous for me to imagine that all those questions could have only one answer, repeated ad nauseum by any one you met inside the organization.<br /><br />In case you’re wondering, if this sounds like a lament of an introvert, no, not at all! We haven’t met in flesh form, I suppose? I am sure you wouldn’t entertain that train of thought otherwise.<br /><br /> Here’s the thing. Networking was all over the place. But, relationships? Rare.Very rare. No wonder, I felt asphyxiated.</span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 32px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> ***</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Look, if you cut all the PR crap, at the end of the day, business simply does two things. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />It converts nature into products, and relationships into services. Broadly speaking, the former happens in industries, and the latter through networking. <br /><br />Networking.<br /><br />Scratch the word deep enough, you will realize that the word is the illusion. As I speak, I recollect one of my favorite lines from the sufi saint, Hazrat Zaheen Taj,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pani-Pani rat'te rat'te pyaasa hi mar jaaye!</span></i></b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chanting 'water', 'water' endlessly, one dies of thirst</span></i></b></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most of the professionals I meet in business suffer the same sad fate. Repeating "networking" endlessly, their human selves die a little in those frayed, lonely moments, when they feel disconnected from their breath, their environment and everyone else. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />You see, it is in our human nature to confuse means with the ends. Strategy with the result. If you are doing something, with an exuberant thought cloud hovering over your head, "Yes! I am networking here!", it is likely that you are screwing up. You better stop, right there. <br /><br />Why do we long for relationships and yet remain averse to anything that even remotely smells like 'networking'? Because, we humans have tasted the real thing. We know it - a pulsating spark of a shared human energy throbbing in a spontaneous moment of ideas, thoughts, and feelings resonating in unison.<br /><br />And if you look back and zoom in those precious moments, you will realize that what made the moment sweeter was your presence - pure fulsome presence without any inkling of an agenda. We were fully present without the urges of an impulse to get something. And that made the difference. <br /><br />But there's a twist in the tale. <br /><br />In a world which makes it easier to be in digitally mediated relationships with anyone through networked technologies, our expectations of relationships are changing. We hold conflicting desires to remain in loosely coupled relationships, and also remain secure in an arm’s length, or, in today's terms, a node's length. In other words, we want the rosy parts, safely pruned from the thorns.<br /><br />In case you didn't notice, our modern notions of "relating" and relationships, are gradually taken over by the shape and language of "connections" inside social networks.<br /><br /> You can stay in touch, without being connected. Or be connected, without staying in touch. More importantly, all human connections by default come with a neat, user-friendly, exit clause – all it takes to disconnect is a single click.<br /><br /> So, let me outline the intricate painting of human relationships with a few broad strokes. Yes, broad strokes do imply that it would come with necessary simplifications so that we could proceed with our inquiry, building on the substrate framework of relationships. <br /><br /> Human relationships and the way we relate with each other broadly exist in a metaphorical spectrum spanning from solid to liquid state. (I borrow the term "liquid" from the works of the famous sociologist Zygmunt Bauman)<br /><br />In a solid state, relationships are marked by human bonds which remain impervious to communication mechanisms. Think of your relationship with your mother, or, your spouse. You would know exactly what I am talking about.<br /><br />On the other hand, in a liquid state, the strength of relationship is constantly in a flux, depending on the strength of the connection between the nodes of the network.<br /><br />Let us take the case of LinkedIn to understand this liquid state better. <br /><br />Say, you are connected (and not necessarily 'related') with me in its first-degree-of-connections cluster, and, let us assume, you've been regularly interacting with me in these virtual spaces. Then, it's likely you are reading this post after a LinkedIn notification prompted you about this article I published a while ago. <br /><br /> Now, what made sure that you received this notification? No, you didn't receive it just because we are directly connected with each other. <br /><br />You received it because the LinkedIn algorithm, based on the connection strength score it computed from its cloud service, decided that you be told of my article in your notification panel. (Whether is it right on the part of any algorithm to mediate the terms of relations is a lengthy post for yet another day.) <br /><br /> Solid relationships are couched in the familiar-yet-ambiguous language of "relationship" and the complicated-yet-human act of "relating". They rely more on implicit understanding and less on explicit communications.<br /><br />Why do they rely less on explicit communication? <br /><br />The solid nature of the bonds, solidified with implicit understanding, obviates the assumptions held about the depth of trust and intimacy in the relationship. <br /><br />You never think twice before calling your kin in the middle of the night, because you know that it is a normal thing to do. And such strong bonds make it possible for us humans, to build a relationship on something which on the face of it, looks deceptively simple - a promise, or a commitment.<br /><br />Liquid relationships on the other hand, are couched in the technical language of "connections", and mutually exclusive acts of connecting-disconnecting, as they rely more on explicit communications, and less on implicit understanding. <br /><br />Why do they rely more on explicit communications?<br /><br />The liquid form of the bonds makes it dangerous to proceed with presumptive assumptions about intimacy and trust. If you aren't socially attuned enough, it could lead to embarrassingly awkward moments, which could destroy the possibility of relationship forever.<br /><br />Haven't you come across social situations in parties where somebody, who isn't yet a part of your group, makes a presumptuous insider comment which completely puts you off to ostracize that person forever? </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmpSQqaNZ53xh2_28E6PLJpvQNmSESAMCakSSAOZJKyEIdvqph4Let1lCnA73Uq-wAQaC0A_v9Jjr0FPfrNmiMfqca2a6cLIBjpjI2J8PtCIOSW4Vf4ziUGMdDQuBppbPbIKjXGA/s1600/spectrum-revised.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmpSQqaNZ53xh2_28E6PLJpvQNmSESAMCakSSAOZJKyEIdvqph4Let1lCnA73Uq-wAQaC0A_v9Jjr0FPfrNmiMfqca2a6cLIBjpjI2J8PtCIOSW4Vf4ziUGMdDQuBppbPbIKjXGA/s400/spectrum-revised.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The tenuous nature of liquid state relationships makes it amenable to perceive connections as investments. Managing them can sometimes resemble a stylized speed dating game, bordering on the slapstick, with ritual games turning every mundane moment into a social occasion. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /> Let me give you another example from my favorite social lab, LinkedIn.<br /><br /> I captured this screen shot from my LinkedIn page while I was writing this article. </span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-n3Nlka6g9X8n9a0qUHPEte1PMKD6CvxMxZrHefdnXNDMXxZqMqFN_tRiRDYFXb89VQi0enr7GRC5yylPb7WIrU1vOBHusjOnHNbtbhCyaEiFTxNeSEXGlaCRtCu16lzIXsNoaA/s1600/job.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-n3Nlka6g9X8n9a0qUHPEte1PMKD6CvxMxZrHefdnXNDMXxZqMqFN_tRiRDYFXb89VQi0enr7GRC5yylPb7WIrU1vOBHusjOnHNbtbhCyaEiFTxNeSEXGlaCRtCu16lzIXsNoaA/s320/job.PNG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So it turns out, at this moment, I have 15 ways to keep in touch with my professional network. My connections are celebrating their birthdays, work anniversaries, new jobs, when they aren't busy sharing their updates and articles on the work domains they are actively involved in. <br /><br />So, when I play these games regularly, my actions could be easily theorized under the lens of a portfolio investment strategy where I work towards building an optimal set of connections within my limited basket of attention span, to develop contextual liquid relationships as per my needs.<br /><br />If you've followed me this far, here's a piece of advice that should be obvious by now.<br /><br />Before you go ahead and introduce yourself to that Influencer who could do wonders to your career, evaluate honestly where you stand in your social equation with him/her in the Solid - Liquid spectrum of relationship. The closer you stand with him in the solid state, the stronger your chances of him/her acceding to your request.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> ***</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is something deeply ironic about the act of networking that can only be seen through the light of a lived experience. You know that you are doing it well, only when you know at the bottom of your heart that you aren't consciously doingit. And there's a good reason behind this. <br /><br />Those who most want to meet and network with others are those who are least wanted to be met and networked. If you've dated fellow humans, this should be obvious. Those who are the most desperate to date others are those who are least wanted to be dated.<br /><br />Why is this so? Let us understand this social dynamic in depth.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmpl-ZZF9k4bs4Ie4EFS7tH13FCRqD8cdpgMuHnwFRbnkGW6J9Spm6-yJaEl0Ud-txqzJbGeTZF7JOe8NMSCZVFaA5UKogVuuj60BesR3qmOlHUIfVZm1BHjmaNFG586x7bvKyFw/s1600/tru.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmpl-ZZF9k4bs4Ie4EFS7tH13FCRqD8cdpgMuHnwFRbnkGW6J9Spm6-yJaEl0Ud-txqzJbGeTZF7JOe8NMSCZVFaA5UKogVuuj60BesR3qmOlHUIfVZm1BHjmaNFG586x7bvKyFw/s320/tru.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We learned earlier that human relationships extend in a liquid-solid spectrum.<br /><br />In every act of relating, taken to its full cycle, we embark on a gradual journey of building trust and intimacy from the liquid state to the solid state. So, what happens when someone, whom we perceive as desperate to network, approaches us? <br /><br />We experience a curious reaction which can be described in two parts. <br /><br />a) We are put off by the presumptive assumption of over familiarity and trust which is out of touch with reality - our reality - the level of trust we perceive as required to facilitate a networking opportunity. <br /><br />b) We recollect similar situations where we've been accosted by such people in the past and impose our previous reaction upon the current situation. Did you notice how the language used to describe this situation quickly turned from approached to accosted?<br /><br />So, how does one embark on an organic journey from relationships to services, which doesn't feel contrived, or manipulative?<br /><br />I would like to introduce you to Networking Pyramid, that I thought would be fun to construct for this article, in the lines of the hugely powerful <a href="http://www.oscarberg.net/2012/02/collaboration-pyramid.html">Collaboration Pyramid </a>built by Oscar berg.<br /><br />Networking Pyramid depicts the broad set of activities business professionals need to undertake to make networking effective without compromising on the underlying relationships.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBNamahyDVTTyqPFeTvOEstLeCcpVUJ3GzzlciKd1s2KvG5dxxu5X_pduYRj4ilVGM9ggVqjIw3E9kFt1K-cVjEoE8F2StTOrFJWGDKovIYiYBXwjlJCX5dYUSevd_dG0vCA_UnA/s1600/pyramid-new.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBNamahyDVTTyqPFeTvOEstLeCcpVUJ3GzzlciKd1s2KvG5dxxu5X_pduYRj4ilVGM9ggVqjIw3E9kFt1K-cVjEoE8F2StTOrFJWGDKovIYiYBXwjlJCX5dYUSevd_dG0vCA_UnA/s400/pyramid-new.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Each of the activities has been arranged in a sequence corresponding to their degree of trust and intimacy required to function in a social environment. <br /><br />(Aside: This design pattern originates from the world of architecture, and has been described as <a href="http://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl127.htm">Intimacy Gradient</a>, in the legendary book, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language">Pattern Language</a>, authored by Christopher Alexander)<br /><br />In the bottom layers constituting the liquid relationship zone, you find activities which are more public and socially oriented. <br /><br />You exert your presence, share your thought capital, route knowledge and people in relevant context, get acquainted, and contribute towards the networked commons in your social environment. <br /><br />Think of the activities that are happening in your public LinkedIn feed right now. It is likely that you are doing one or more of these activities to develop contextual liquid relationships.<br /><br />These liquid spaces also give you the necessary ambient awareness to keep track of potential networking opportunities. They alert you of high-leverage information of economic value flowing through your network streams. And as you immerse yourself in relevant streams aligned to your needs, you also build necessary pathways to realize them.<br /><br />In the top layers constituting the solid relationship zone, you find activities which are far more personal and individually oriented.<br /><br />Think of job search, or pitching for Angel funding. It is highly likely for such activities to unfold in personal and intimate spheres of sociality. And posts ( like the one below) which contravene these spheres of sociality turn spammy in no time. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6XAoGC5XvZahHLPqL3NtUTjwSC5nyJ4ziOVGQkwbAihXPejsqRDYDMviXNWXpdLpXRT7bZFMPC28XVSk3fS49iXdi22ftfpgwFwHSSAvXiv1D2gobYls6SrDVw1kfLoxeXUGcNg/s1600/recruitment.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6XAoGC5XvZahHLPqL3NtUTjwSC5nyJ4ziOVGQkwbAihXPejsqRDYDMviXNWXpdLpXRT7bZFMPC28XVSk3fS49iXdi22ftfpgwFwHSSAvXiv1D2gobYls6SrDVw1kfLoxeXUGcNg/s400/recruitment.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is a reason why this is called as Networking Pyramid, and not Networking Hierarchy. The activities haven't been structured to imply that those in the bottom are simple, and those at the top are complex.<br /><br />The Pyramid indicates each activity as a stepping stone to orchestrate a successful networking opportunity at the apex where direct, monetary benefit awaits you. <br /><br />I believe understanding the spectrum of relationships and the Networking Pyramid can be useful to grapple with our predicament in this modern digital age where relationships have become the sine-qua-non of business.<br /><br />I am eager to hear your feedback on this, and would love to learn more from your experiences in relationships and networking.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-81522793514665767772015-11-23T11:35:00.000+05:302016-04-13T13:32:36.030+05:30Woody Allen And the Truth About Enterprise Collaboration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdrBddB-gn_zd0gvsxG4GHdQPl3pN4j-kVLKtLcWW4weUigFmmD5E02UWkaDcXpyVG8ic6L8UzdT9UaIkGNsoNodwXKkEr4wl3JniE9JaGlzATXVMtnPKrT4TDC5op7-H48agIQ/s1600/woodyallen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdrBddB-gn_zd0gvsxG4GHdQPl3pN4j-kVLKtLcWW4weUigFmmD5E02UWkaDcXpyVG8ic6L8UzdT9UaIkGNsoNodwXKkEr4wl3JniE9JaGlzATXVMtnPKrT4TDC5op7-H48agIQ/s320/woodyallen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I love Woody Allen's movies. How can any writer not adore this auteur with a sweet tooth for words on celluloid? In one of his masterly creations, crafted with his giddily effervescent energies, <b>To Rome with love,</b> Woody tells the story of a mortician Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato) who loves to sing in the shower. The trouble is that the man sings well only in the shower. And so, when a grumpy retired Opera director(Woody himself) decides to promote this tenor's talent, he installs the shower cabinet, soapsuds and all, in the theater.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOad3gLZh0O62dDiSlThDB9GsQFo5e9bRpTkEs7S6jTeS-S-1hgSVx73j60e9iYExl9HwhaLZBAEJRVBCw-RXQElPjB5tYnCoiKVWPFERRhzvtBx3SYbSl7ZWBah2i3O1_zEwzvQ/s1600/bathroom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOad3gLZh0O62dDiSlThDB9GsQFo5e9bRpTkEs7S6jTeS-S-1hgSVx73j60e9iYExl9HwhaLZBAEJRVBCw-RXQElPjB5tYnCoiKVWPFERRhzvtBx3SYbSl7ZWBah2i3O1_zEwzvQ/s320/bathroom.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In what could be one of the absurd-goes-for-a-walk-with-the-preposterous moments of the film, where we see the tenor wheeled on the stage in a production of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagliacci">opera Pagliacci</a>, singing inside the shower cabinet, I stumbled upon an unlikely metaphor which distilled the reasons why enterprise collaboration is defunct in most of the large organizations, despite the profusion of digital ways to collaborate with.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Allow me to go meta and unpack the metaphor slowly, without blowing it up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />The mortician at work. The Shower Cabinet. The Theater Stage. The metaphorical elements at play must be obvious.</span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The shower cabinet (or more commonly bathroom) is the modern day equivalent of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Euripides">caves of Euripides</a>, where we express ourselves naked within the cloistered comforts, allowing us to be at ease with the untamed wilderness of our lives. We sing out loud to the heavens, allowing those exuberant outbursts which were once repressed to the surface. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ask anyone who has lived his/her virtual life inside an enterprise social network. It is the closest an employee can experience the digital joys of working inside an Euripidean cave. We work out loud in the corporate wilderness, sharing our thoughts and ideas which are meaningful to us, birthed from the purpose we believe in, and connect with kindred souls who share our purpose. In such a space, work and play become impossible to tell apart. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is difficult to step out of the cave and not feel anxious about the role we are obliged to play in the corporate theater. Those who've worked in a large organization long enough know the dynamics too well. Your role tells you everything. What status to play, high or low, in relation to other actors on stage. What mask to wear, insider or outsider, when you are accosted by strangers trying their darnedest to get things done from you. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the truth. Building vibrant, open-ended life streams of people and ideas within an Enterprise Social Network inside a large hierarchical organization can sometimes look as farcical as transporting a shower cabinet onto a stage. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Why is it so hard to embrace Work-Out-Loud to coordinate teamwork and get things done? To understand this in depth, allow me to dissect <a href="http://www.oscarberg.net/2014/11/the-collaboration-pyramid-revisited.html">Oscar Berg's model of how collaboration should work</a>.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBQdEgCVif7NGbD-jbkWaNxInVyWTjnQUaX3DqpGecDjGge01RKckK14wwtlt8MmE0bVxcj_OYBXxvP1VNjypxYVQJLYxCeGutSXw696Mkkkiee1OOsZbn3v_Vpvg8Knn-wVdiMg/s1600/oscarberg.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBQdEgCVif7NGbD-jbkWaNxInVyWTjnQUaX3DqpGecDjGge01RKckK14wwtlt8MmE0bVxcj_OYBXxvP1VNjypxYVQJLYxCeGutSXw696Mkkkiee1OOsZbn3v_Vpvg8Knn-wVdiMg/s400/oscarberg.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The model is useful in showcasing the importance of social capital - accumulated from social interactions and relationships - needed to facilitate collaboration. It has eight layers, with each layer building on each other from the bottom to the top. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The zone of low visibility, focuses on the predominant set of activities which happen in Enterprise Social Networks. These activities build trust over time, constructing the shared identity essential for the community to grow. The activities happening in this zone remain oblivious to the organizational hierarchy, and going by the volume of activities happening, one can fall into the seductive illusion that the ground underneath is shifting, bureaucratic reforms are round the corner, beckoning us to the hierarchy-free, networked paradise.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The truth is that successful engagement happening in this zone is not only invisible to the surface,it is also decoupled from organizational change levers. It doesn't even begin to scratch the organizational habits and entropy accumulated over time.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As we move further to the top zone of high visibility, we get into a direct conflict between the affordances of social technologies and the organizational hierarchy. Noble intentions to work-out-loud get killed by these conflicts, and this is largely the reason why social collaboration rarely succeeds in large organizations. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It doesn't help that we tend to pay more attention to the dazzling social technologies, without focusing on the interplay dynamics caused by the forces of organizational hierarchy.Myopic attention to the social technologies without understanding organizational design would probably sound like a radio commentator, who, attending the Word Cup cricket match, offers his listeners a detailed description of the playing field, rather than account of what the players are doing.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Only when we directly address these conflicts, we stand a chance to make social collaboration work. In my next posts, I will address these conflicts, with its various dimensions in detail. Do share your comments and feedback. I would love to hear your thoughts.</div>
</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-787403215727812192015-10-08T14:54:00.001+05:302016-04-13T14:20:02.879+05:30Digital Transformation Delusion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitDsnL6v3dTShjvBGFG1CohTDXeAQ_jhuP5t2wQLM3LYbDLuu36OLNgiegrFS3CT6wrmNbVsq1vpMFSuUAY0qEVA-qjrkbkl_RTek9TdT-ULenIEyRl62f_3LoXgrwxyCDiMzBHg/s1600/superman.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitDsnL6v3dTShjvBGFG1CohTDXeAQ_jhuP5t2wQLM3LYbDLuu36OLNgiegrFS3CT6wrmNbVsq1vpMFSuUAY0qEVA-qjrkbkl_RTek9TdT-ULenIEyRl62f_3LoXgrwxyCDiMzBHg/s400/superman.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The term "Transformation" doesn't ring too well in my ears. There is something axiomatically pejorative about it, when used in a business context. That the term is liberally used by technology consultants, prescribing bright, shiny objects for pain points within an organization, is widely known. Its deeper implications in the way we perceive and formulate change isn't. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Before I inquire further, let me share the provocation which triggered it.</span><div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">
Stumbling upon McKinsey's recent article in my feed, curiously titled, "<a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/transformer_in_chief_the_new_chief_digital_officer">Transformer-In-Chief: The new chief digital officer"</a>, I perked up reading these lines in the first paragraph.</div>
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<i>The CDO is now a “transformer in chief,” charged with coordinating and managing comprehensive changes that address everything from updating how a company works to building out entirely new businesses. And he or she must make progress quickly</i>" </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My apprehensions over the hoity-toity title, which looked like the love child of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bay">Michael Bay </a>film and the latest Gartner report, rang true. Definitely, it would take a nerdy superhero from the Marvel Universe to accomplish everything McKinsey has charted for.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Probably, some of you might be sneering, in response, "Oh dear! Who do you think would take the strategic and budgetary responsibility for the digital agenda and lead the organizational change towards becoming a digital organization?"</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am aware that the current leadership and organizational structure in most of the large organizations isn't oriented towards the <a href="https://medium.com/@aarondignan/the-operating-model-that-is-eating-the-world-d9a3b82a5885">new operating model</a>. It is tempting to make an argument from the lens of history, derived from the works of notable historians such as Joseph Tainter and Daron Acemoglu, as eloquently paraphrased by Venkatesh Rao in his brilliant, <a href="http://breakingsmart.com/">Breaking Smart series</a>,"<i>...[that] it is the nature of the problem-solving institutions, rather than the nature of the problems themselves, that determine whether human societies succeed or fail in adapting to change</i>"</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, it still doesn't take us far to the root of understanding the prescriptive nature of change, formulated by McKinsey and the likes of Big Four Consulting Organizations,and implemented in organizations through roles with sexy job titles.</div>
<br /><div style="text-align: justify;">
This isn't the first time, this trope is being played in Change Theater. When<a href="http://www.dkms.com/papers/generationsofkm.pdf">Knowledge Management came into fashion in the mid-nineties</a>, we chorused for Chief Knowledge Officer; during <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_innovation_officer">the early 2000s, we rallied for Chief Innovation Officer</a>; and more recently, during 2008-10, we began to root <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/is-it-time-for-a-c-level-social-media-executive/">for Chief Social Officer</a>. As the etymology of words like corporation and organization suggests, we humans have a tendency to not just romanticize organizations through anthropomorphic metaphors, (as was evident during our collective mourning over the death of Kodak), but also perceive significant, epochal change through similar anthropomorphic metaphors. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Despite the successful exceptions, these roles haven't become the norm for a good reason. These “planned changes” rarely led to “planned effects”. Why do we still persist with the same, tried approach to change? Why do we consistently operate by our wired assumption that every organization with a challenging problem needs new leadership?</div>
<br /><div style="text-align: justify;">
Perhaps, our change management paradigms are still driven by the old, western Myth <a href="https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~soc186/AssignedReadings/Manz-SuperLead.pdf">of Heroic Intervention. </a>Underneath the glossy facade of the digital technologies, we still rhyme along the old myths, dominant in the Western imagination where the Transformer- In-Chief, battles the odds of bureaucratic hierarchy, slays those inefficient processes, and empowers his followers, to give birth to a radically new, digitally transformed organization.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As Dr. Neal Preston, an organizational psychologist, addresses <a href="https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/making-sense-of-organizational-change-a-conversation-with-neil-preston/">in this insightful interview</a>, the problem with this myth is that it projects a naive, linear, cause-and-effect model of reality, oblivious to the complexity which underlies the change.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
How can organization “transform” itself by domesticating the messy, and unwieldy technological landscape through a consultant’s legible, one-size-fits-all definition of “digital”? Is it fair to sprinkle the magic dust evoked by the word “transformation” for change that originates from <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/10/07/ges-immelt-has-advice-for-tech-chiefs-get-a-seat-at-the-table-and-for-ceos-stay-paranoid/">paranoidal fear of staying relevant</a>, by adapting oneself to the way startups go about their everyday business, investing heavily on startup accelerator programs, with all the paraphernalia, including open offices with bean bags, an ample supply of coffee and high-falutin rhetoric about disruption?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Scientists who study the origins and salient mysteries of life, have talked about a spectacular event that paleontologists call the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion">Cambrian Explosion, </a>which happened half-billion years ago, where in a relatively short span of few million years, the biological diversity that represent life on the planet today, were invented in a frenzy of evolutionary innovation.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today, we are witnessing a digital “Cambrian Explosion” moment, with a similar explosion of mind-boggling diversity of business models, fueled by the restless, creative, entrepreneurial energies thriving inside the vibrant startup ecosystems all over the world. When you should be tinkering and experimenting with radical business models and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/organisations-age-algorithms-lee-bryant">sentient organizational structures, </a>that will nevertheless sound ridiculous in theory to the old, conditioned strategic brain, the last thing you would want to do is conform to a circumscribed, howsoever authoritarian it may seem, “digital” framework, imposed by a consultant outsidean organization. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In case the writing on the wall isn’t clear, let me state it without mincing words. Consultants, in the traditional sense of the word, following the old school of strategic thought, cannot help you <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grok">grok </a>digital transformation. The operating word here is “grok” because, it is possible to understand "Digital Transformation" through comprehensive models built by consulting firms, which capture the ambit of your customer's journey. To grok "digital transformation" requires you to penetrate into the soul of it. It demands you to immerse yourself into the restless, creative process of tinkering, as Venkatesh Rao <a href="http://breakingsmart.com/season-1/tinkering-versus-goals/">puts it succinctly</a>, "<i>where problems are solved in serendipitous ways, through innovations that break assumptions about how resources can be used, typically making them less rivalrous and unexpectedly abundant</i>".</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here is the crux of the conflict. Traditionally, consultants are wired to solve problems only through a goal-driven approach. This graphic (credits to my colleague Jayakumar Rajaretnam, during an intense conversation which birthed it) might help you understand this approach better.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTq2sF-DCiaCenXCPdGY2egmoI2VsR-BU2BNWE078W57r_v8HPTHHGLdO1VUYnN3VOX5Bjqke8Jx_QtpEyKIz_BSyQdwIDRfAQa4-jDs3W6QUMhF4vqcbhm1HcsiuER08sLZVjSw/s1600/as-is.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTq2sF-DCiaCenXCPdGY2egmoI2VsR-BU2BNWE078W57r_v8HPTHHGLdO1VUYnN3VOX5Bjqke8Jx_QtpEyKIz_BSyQdwIDRfAQa4-jDs3W6QUMhF4vqcbhm1HcsiuER08sLZVjSw/s400/as-is.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="text-align: justify;">This goal-driven approach is defined by reframing the predicament, emerging from the changes in the business environment, as a problem with a defined scope boundary, with a "To-Be" vision, to be solved, by, you know who, the consultant. Understanding this approach in depth requires you to understand the subtle, yet</span><a href="https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.in/2006/08/problems-and-predicaments.html" style="text-align: justify;">critical difference between a problem and a predicament.</a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now, what is problematic in solving "digital transformation" problems through the familiar goal-driven approach? No model is future proof. Defining the "Proposed state", when you are uncertain about the future, is a recipe for failure, not to mention hugely limiting for organizations that should be ideally prototyping creative possibilities in this "Cambrian Explosion" maturity phase of digital technologies. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now, you may genuinely wonder, why am I saying all this? After all, my job description still reads as “Consultant”, and I do attempt to solve my clients’ “digital workplace” problems which can be categorized under the umbrella term “Digital Transformation”. The truth is, I am busy unlearning old habits, and learning new skills. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let's be frank. It's hard to resist the lure of the word "transformation", with its deeply enchanting image of the cocoon metamorphosing into a butterfly. In the past, I've used the word uncritically, to convey subtle signals of importance to the work I did for my clients.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today, I use the word sparingly, strictly in a personal context. Because, what I've learned in all these years as a consultant, is that it is easy to preach endlessly,write books and explore concepts dialectically, with the vain hope that clients will transform and do the appropriate action, with the help of the truth conveyed inside those theories.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If one is serious about exploring the possibility of transformation, in the truesense of the word, the first, difficult, and the most painful step, is to become clearly aware of the delusions of transformation. The rest will fall in place.</div>
</span></div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-88212825361148542872015-09-26T01:03:00.003+05:302016-04-13T14:30:09.057+05:3041 Ways to Probe Employee Engagement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIlcUGCPw8MRkN5uPHDbGUUJVoen29DZN_SOfR6I-QSTSyvslCdUN2EU8HEnMFV1aEnnPS86dPcjIEHN6y9Uo6cP1m0-2O46PkFjH7u51bzzW1xu_JKuV23w6prZPBDBY-1Dj5LA/s1600/communities%253Dpics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIlcUGCPw8MRkN5uPHDbGUUJVoen29DZN_SOfR6I-QSTSyvslCdUN2EU8HEnMFV1aEnnPS86dPcjIEHN6y9Uo6cP1m0-2O46PkFjH7u51bzzW1xu_JKuV23w6prZPBDBY-1Dj5LA/s400/communities%253Dpics.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Can I be brutally honest?<br /><br />Employee Engagement can be a bitch.<br /><br />If you’ve spent a lot of time addressing this pain in the patootie through shiny little objects for your clients, you would know what I am talking about.<br /><br />You can either blame it on the Digital Utopia hype piping in the air right now. Or on the enterprise collaboration vendor’s popcorn content which pops in, every now and then, with fantasy stories about the digital workplace, conquering the evil forces of hierarchy, breaking the tyranny of emails, and promising us the ego-less, networked paradise where humans live in harmony with machines of loving grace.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You are blessed with good karma if you engage with clients who <i>get </i>complexity. Because, it is <i>tough</i>, and I say this from the scars of my experience, wearing the hat of a consultant, and juggling the convincing act necessary to drive home the point that ‘Employee Engagement’ cannot be framed through simplistic, linear cause-and-effect models, whose success can be clearly defined through legible, outcome-based targets.<br /><br />Since you never start from a blank state, (unless you are approaching it for a startup), your work involves treading along an archipelago of systems of disparate maturities, collaborative silos of diverse interests, addressing a battery of dimensions such as governance, employee needs, incumbent organizational processes, and, more importantly, the organizational cultural climate.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In my experience, I've seen a lot of value in approaching "Employee Engagement" through a series of safe-to-fail probes. When you are dealing with complex systems, theory recommends experimentation as the best way to introduce small-scale interventions, which can quietly push the boundaries of what <i>is</i> possible when employees feel empowered inside an organization.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the wise men at the <a href="http://cognitive-edge.com/methods/safe-to-fail-probes/">Cognitive Edge describe it eloquently in their blog,</a></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>"Safe-fail Probes are small-scale experiments that approach issues from different angles, in small and safe-to-fail ways, the intent of which is to approach issues in small, contained ways to allow emergent possibilities to become more visible. The emphasis, then, is not on ensuring success or avoiding failure, but in allowing ideas that are not useful to fail in small, contained and tolerable ways."</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As you track the incoming feedback for each probe, you tweak and adopt them appropriately. Complexity theory recommends that safe-fail probes are best done in small groups, preferably through a facilitation process. While some of these probes emerged from my collaboration consulting and implementation experience, the critical ones were forged from the crucible of minds that were a part of many virtual facilitation processes and communities which deeply care about employee engagement in Cognizant. In short, I don’t own these ideas. (I find it strange to believe that one can entertain such a thought with a straight face) </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am indebted to the wise stewardship building the Cognizant Community, who've let us play along in an open, fertile ecosystem to explore and test ideas, no matter how quirky they may seem, inside our official enterprise social network. <br /><br />We have a long way to go. So,let's get started. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">1) Can you approach employee engagement as a social experiment? Design social experiments to test hypotheses around emerging workplace collaboration principles such as “Work-Out-Loud”. Once you are clear on the hypothesis to be tested, spell out the rules of engagement. Rules should define the context at which people can walk in, and walk out. It would be better, if rules remain time-bound and evolve based on incoming feedback. At the end of the day, members benefit from the engagement, and you will learn a lot about your community.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Employee Collaboration Technologies</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">2) Can you create an internal time marketplace where employees offer x% of their working hours for sale? When your community gets comfortable with the idea of time marketplace, can you try time-bidding for the most knowledge contributor in a particular domain?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">3) Every time you deploy a new collaboration software with benedictions from the senior leadership team, can you validate the assumption that just because a particular tool has been <i>deployed </i>for a specific function, the same tool is going be <i>used </i>for the <i>same </i>function?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />4) Can you examine the choice architecture of collaboration technologies in your work place? If there are multiple tools for enterprise communication, do they empower the users with multiplicity of choices or disempower them with high transaction cost of micro-decisions involved in every communication? </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">5) When you need to communicate a message across multiple, internal channels, are you posting one single message across multiple channels together or duplicating one message posted in a particular channel across the remaining ones? Why is the latter scenario more prevalent than former in today’s digital workplace?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">6) Cloud based Enterprise collaboration vendors often fail to understand that addition of new capabilities, made easier by the forces of the Cloud, can, sometimes, change the fundamental ways in which technology facilitates work. How often do you assess if new, incremental capabilities are affecting your integrated collaborative work experience?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">7) When legacy organizations wake up one day to realize how much they are behind the curve, there is a temptation to jump miles ahead, without deeply understanding the implications involved. Before you make a sweeping jump from your almost defunct Intranet to a “Mobile First” social collaboration tool, can you examine if your workplace environment is ready with post-procurement adoption necessary to adapt the workplace infrastructure within the context of the work experience you desire for? </span><br />
<div>
<br />
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">8) It may be a surprise for you to know that some of the leading enterprise collaboration vendors in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace also treat the mobile experience as a <i>subset </i>of the desktop collaborative work experience, with differentiated user experiences, dictated by the triumvirate OSes (Android, Apple iOS, and Windows) driving them. Can you rethink "Mobile First" approach to make it a seamless, inter-operable collaborative work-experience, no matter, how often you switch from your desktop to mobile in your everyday work life?</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">9) Often early community members, flush with the excitement of a shiny new tool, show signs of ephemeral enthusiasm after attending collaboration training sessions. Is it possible to detect specific superficial gestures, stemming from their mental models which equate adoption as a leadership decision, without deeply considering the work-routines that have to be changed at a fundamental level?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">10)<a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-06-social-networks-group-boundaries-ideas.html">Research confirms that it is </a>wiser to work towards making silos permeable, rather than fretting over breaking the silos completely. When you organize events/activities for your employee community, can you make sure that the activities span across different collaborative silos built in the organization? This ensures that the silos slowly lose their grip in the minds of the employees. Remember this. The hardest silos you would confront always reside inside the human mind.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Community Engagement</b></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">11) Can you approach community engagement through the metaphor of “<i>Let’s organize a party</i>”? Once the community manager wears the hat of a host of a party which is going to happen forever inside an enterprise social network, it completely changes the way the community manager takes responsibility for the planning of the resources, permissible behavior/etiquette, ice-breaking among new members, cadence of communications, and stage craft necessary to let employees build a shared narrative.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">12) "What do you want to bring to the Community?” This question is useful, if you want to <i>prime</i> the community members to share their knowledge in their particular domain of expertise.Can you track the members' response and the subsequent outcomes when you ask this question to those who have already bought in the community agenda?<br /><br />13) “What do you want to bring to the Community?” This question isn’t going to deliver value if your community members are simply there to test the waters. Every time you feel the urge to ask this question to a potential community member, can you evaluate if he/she understands the community agenda, and has the wherewithal to partake in the shared narrative that will be co-created?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">14) Trying to build a community through a confluence of interests, sometimes, can be as futile as wishing for a long-term relationship with your partner, just because you share similar hobbies. Matters of taste and interests are bound to change by the vicissitudes of time. When you receive the brief to build a community based on shared employee interests, can you attempt to map the core beliefs, and values of the community which can withstand the ephemeral nature of interests?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">15) When you build a new, organization-wide, enterprise social network, it is often tempting to <i>re-purpose</i> existing intranet content for the enterprise social network. Can you resist this temptation and build an editorial community content approach from the ground up, without the baggage of existing content?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">16) In the early days of one executive leadership community I had built for a client, one individual stood out with his vibrant energy and pizzazz. One interaction point was sufficient enough for me to reference him in the community newsletter as “one of the most energetic, active contributor to the community”. And he turned out to be that way. Can you build a commitment hook for early, enthusiastic members to build a positive, reinforcing loop of engagement?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">17) Legacy organizations, which are used to formal, sterilized language approved by the communications team, take time to get acquainted with the informal language, including <i>emojis</i>, GIF Memes, and blur-of-consciousness blips common in enterprise social networks. Rather than waging a battle over the political incorrectness of the language to be used inside enterprise social networks, can you try shaping the language of engagement, slowly, albeit in a <i>perpetual-beta</i> mode, based on the way the incumbent organizational culture is adapting with the new ways of working?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">18) Can you resist the temptation to use email communication to promote your recently launched enterprise social network? Striving for <i>new </i>ends, through <i>old </i>means is, more often, a recipe for failure.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">19) </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Can you install television screens in your office water cooler spaces where trending conversations and key Influencers can be showcased?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">20) Can you keep a watchful eye over instances where conversations driven by individuals exhibit social dynamics viz., a) Contagion - succumbing to diffusion of perspectives/ideas spreading via employee social networks b) Social Learning - adopting a learning practice after seeing </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">how it helped others at work c) Social Influence - adopting new ideas/behaviors in response to the actions of trusted friends and influencers from proximate social circles adopting them.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">21) Can you embrace the power of rituals for driving community engagement? In the communities I've managed, I've conducted welcome rituals for on-boarding new members, and they've worked well to make new members get acquainted and comfortable with each other. Rituals can be either activity or content based. Be it Wiki Thursdays or Socialize Fridays, rituals work brilliantly through the power of <i>accretive </i>meaning, gathered in strength through repetition. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">22) Online communities built to achieve business objectives carry a curious paradox. Businesses are designed to focus narrowly on the outcomes, oblivious to the process which went inside. Communities, on the other hand, gain their valuable currency of engagement through their focus on the process, more than the outcomes. Can you resolve this paradox by approaching every outcome-driven activity as an incremental action, or, better, a ritual, which can be continuously tinkered in <i>perpetual-beta</i> mode? </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">23)How often do you narrate the story of your community? Episodic Newsletters can be a powerful means to narrate the genesis story, the key protagonists who've invested in the vision of the community, and how the community broke through their barriers, thanks to the collective strength pooled by the members, to achieve the outcomes they aspired for. </span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">24) Can you encourage your business development team to collaborate through social networks with various stakeholders in driving RFP proposals? Having gone through the grind of RFP proposal writing through emails and social networks, I can vouch for the efficacy of the latter approach in getting things done with the least amount of organizational friction. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">25) New community members do not take much time to identify the insiders who are treated favorably in a community. Can you conduct a social experiment to find out the signals which give the reassurance of belonging to the insiders of the community? If you are an </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">outsider, </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">say a community consultant working for your client's community, you would need to quickly figure those signals which evoke trust among the insiders.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">26) </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How do you address your community? Do you simply address it by appending your organization's name with the name of your platform vendor or do you coin a unique name which carries subtle, but powerful signals about your workplace culture? </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">27) How do you address those who belong to your community? Do you call them as "members", which carries the baggage of being a <i>part </i>of a larger group or as "partners", which implicitly respects their individual contributions, while remaining participants of the community?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">28) Latent knowledge available in the community comes to fore only through an appropriate context stemming from a question asked. Can you foster a climate of trust and engagement, which makes it easier for those who belong to your community ask for help without the fear of judgement? It is the responsibility of the community manager/evangelists to cross-pollinate the responses in eclectic contexts to drive the engines of serendipity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">29) When you are hiring a community manager from third-party partners, training the community manager isn't enough to make him/her appreciate the subtleties of the organizational culture. Can you facilitate a relationship between the Community Manager and Employee Evangelists, as the latter can be powerful collaborators in bringing a deep understanding of the company culture along with the situational awareness of "local issues", which often elude the attention radar of the community manager?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">30) How deeply do you listen to your community members? Apart from addressing the regular needs to curate content and respond to member's queries, do you listen to understand your community members better? When you are monitoring conversations, do you look for digital body language markers such as tone of the word, the choice of words and metaphors, the defensive stance held in arguments, opinions which are weakly/strongly held in discussions, tendency towards tech-buzz speak, vacuous superlative fillers, and propensity to showcase one's own wares ?</span><br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Breaking the E-mail Jinx</b><br />
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></b>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">31) Can you swallow the uncomfortable truth that <a href="https://medium.com/@ev/what-are-we-doing-when-we-re-doing-email-a2873712825a">you are doing work, even when you are doing emails</a>? Breaking the email jinx requires you to probe into the intrinsic power dynamic which governs emails - Email messages are<i> delivered</i> to you , while you <i>go </i>and fish for relevant information flowing in the streams of enterprise social networks. In the former case, in an ideal scenario, the sender owns the responsibility for communication, while, in the latter, the receiver sets appropriate filters to reduce noise, and improve relevant signals from the streams. How do you construct a social experiment to probe deeper into this power dynamic? This might be little tricky. Can you stop <i>cc</i>ing recipients inside your enterprise social network for messages meant for specific individuals and see how quickly they are able to receive the intended information?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">32) Can you mine your corporate email servers to map the internal social graph of your employees?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />33) Can you mine your email servers to <i>fluidize </i>existing mail archives of your employees inside the enterprise social network? For this experiment to work, you would need to build a customized application which scans the inbox to reproduce conversation threads along with the participants so that the knowledge stocks are converted into knowledge flows, discoverable for the community members to extract and build value.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Harnessing Employee Generated Content</b><br />
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">34) Can you curate e-books on topics which have generated the most valuable conversations from experts in your enterprise social network?</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">35) Can you curate internal newsletters/link blogs based on external content shared by Employee Influencers who have active outside social presence?<br /><br />36) Can you attempt a massive story telling experiment using enterprise social networks to narrate the people's history of your organization? If you are looking for inspiration, let me recommend <a href="http://sherlockholmes.io/">Sherlock Holmes IoT experiment </a>and <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Frog">Crazy Frog</a>.<br /><br />37) If you work in an organization which churns out several PPT slides everyday, can you create a <i>commons</i> involving useful resources such as Powerpoint visual frameworks, colour themes, infographics templates?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">38)If you are facing issues of ownership/authority on employee-generated content, can you run a <a href="http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News-Analysis/Everything-is-fragmented--Blog-storming-in-six-stages-50451.aspx">blog storm experiment, </a>which can be executed in six stages, as outlined by Dave?<br /><br /><b>Executive Engagement</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b>39) Can you build a reverse mentoring equation between the leadership executive and the millennial employee? Reverse mentoring is always a bidirectional value proposition game.The executive shares the wealth of his/her experience, while the millennial shares what's new and relevant,and how it can question assumptions which have been taken for granted. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">40) How can you test the efficacy of the reverse mentoring value proposition without assigning tasks to the executives to measure their digital quotient? Can you try posting an awkward question involving your competitors in Quora to be answered by your executive leadership team? Addressing a can-of-worm question in an external social network tests vital digital skills related to network intelligence, and ambient awareness. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">41) Can you try floating a rumour inside your internal grape vine which would require intervention from the executive leadership team? This quirky challenge will test the vital skills required to communicate effectively across dynamic contexts, through siloed, modern communication channels.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Recommended reading </b>(in context with the probes explored so far) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">1) <a href="http://www.seriousinsights.net/media/Serious-Insights-Rasmus-Why-Collaboration-Is-Broken.pdf">Why Collaboration is Broken </a>- Serious Insights Report by Daniel W. Rasmus</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">2) <a href="http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/04/03/ritual-and-the-productive-community/">Ritual and the Productive Community - </a>Blog post by Ryan Tanaka</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">3) <a href="http://ryangtanaka.com/technology-and-the-sacred-space/">Technology and Sacred Spaces</a> - Blog Post by Ryan Tanaka</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Acknowledgements:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I would like to thank Sanjay, Prem, Victoria, Jay, Kartic, Lolita, Soundarya, Captain Shantanu for many stimulating conversations inside the Cognizant Yammer Community, which have enriched me in countless ways.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-55974245903377424352015-08-28T15:49:00.000+05:302016-04-13T14:22:35.821+05:30When Bad UX Led to Serendipitous Customer Experience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The best of the brains in the industry are spending too much resources on persuasive technologies and too little on appropriate technologies. Why?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgedwAOWHgWUnab_LApb099aVn6COwaQZymMOiOuo7BxfrCJC-5TuFjsZf7bV85L4EDTzBNL_UrJEyBfRKpqA65sr8k6coKfY5iFa5LKNt3eaHAczfOXrI-zlomEu2m_12Gcpy4YA/s1600/taxi.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgedwAOWHgWUnab_LApb099aVn6COwaQZymMOiOuo7BxfrCJC-5TuFjsZf7bV85L4EDTzBNL_UrJEyBfRKpqA65sr8k6coKfY5iFa5LKNt3eaHAczfOXrI-zlomEu2m_12Gcpy4YA/s320/taxi.jpeg" width="252" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /> It was yet another day at work, burrowed inside slides and excel sheets, quietly nibbling away my body’s energy and my laptop’s virtual memory. It took me a second longer to notice my wife calling from home.</span><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
“Can you please book an Ola Cab for me?” “There is no electricity at home and Ola App isn’t opening properly in 3G. I need to go to my Yoga Class.”.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“I am in office”, I mildly protested. “I know. Can you help? I am getting late”?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I breathed deep enough to make the necessary context switch from consulting work to home errands. I opened my Ola Cabs app in my Nexus 4. I turned on the battery guzzling Location-icon.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Despite all the glorious tech press they’ve garnered, drooling over their torrential investments, I’ve found Ola’s app tedious to address my needs. Their UX sucks when it comes to identifying change of location. It is always late to detect when my location changes from X to Y ( especially when I had booked a cab in Location X). Despite these misgivings, I have to carry on, as they are the only player who has earned minimum viable trust (Uber is a strict NO) and bandwidth to address my frequent commuting needs.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I turned on the App. I noticed how, like every other time, the location was stuck at the previous location where I had booked the cab earlier. Now, wait! My eyes glinted with smile. Oh Yes! I want the location to exactly remain my previous home address where my wife is waiting for the taxi to pick her up. What once stuck out as an UX sore thumb suddenly turned into a serendipitous customer experience moment!</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This isn’t an one-off scenario. Operating in India, Ola should know (I earnestly hope they do) that when relatives or friends visit you from far away places, it becomes an act of cordiality, especially for older guests who aren’t comfortable with technology, to arrange for their transportation. I am surprised Ola hasn’t thought about this.(<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/battling-cabs-ripul-kumar?trk=prof-post">Read this</a> insightful post from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=3275935&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=txhS&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A3275935%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1439916486900%2Ctas%3ARipul%20K">Ripul Kumar </a>if you are interested in exploring few other scenarios taxi app players aren’t thinking about)</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today, in this digital age, it is natural to<a href="https://hbr.org/2015/08/great-ux-doesnt-guarantee-a-great-customer-experience"> assume that great UX always translates into great customer experience.</a> This is not true. Delivering great customer experience requires appropriate UX that provides just the right amount of technological plumbing needed to deliver superior customer experience.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In order to appreciate what appropriate means, I think it is significant to re-think the way we understand the relationship of technology with human behavior. It would require some rewiring, unhooking the connection that makes you think that technologies have to be designed to persuade people to do what we want them to do, and reconnecting that wire to whatever terminal lets you see technology to be designed based on user’s context — taking into account both biophysical context — involving user’s physical and mental well-being and climate of usage, and psycho-social context — involving politics, culture and personal/spiritual needs of individuals.</div>
</span><br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCfN1l82UxocCjoloqylhONJv4oFQp1QpLU-LJzEgt4yHA5TuqfAUG7Wu0X_z8Uh279jYzlUFR0tVjZ0pukfLtmOKhZnS_fvETP1rK1G1pFjizjxbNTg9WS6X6320XiOYOXEMYQ/s1600/persuasivetech.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCfN1l82UxocCjoloqylhONJv4oFQp1QpLU-LJzEgt4yHA5TuqfAUG7Wu0X_z8Uh279jYzlUFR0tVjZ0pukfLtmOKhZnS_fvETP1rK1G1pFjizjxbNTg9WS6X6320XiOYOXEMYQ/s320/persuasivetech.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Currently, the best of the brains in the industry are spending too much resources on persuasive technologies and too little on appropriate technologies. The ethical implications are huge. It is now implicitly assumed that great technologies have to be addictive to thrive and succeed.It isn’t enough to pass the responsibility of safe use to the users. Designers have a much larger role to play.Is it possible to design with a sense of humility that users and not designers themselves know what’s in their best interest?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I leave you with this powerful quote that captures how we are becoming victims to our own toys of persuasion.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglB-SMtliETtwS37ZOlxWG1XApWezvnhconMKSfmTgDU8zP0CzBv5972dB_CRb8Ute1Vec1f5zzllWTd0NE6X-Vl8PLtkaQalLZuorLccD5esmOGl5JMe3FyQIHfgRpruCy5xB3w/s1600/quote.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglB-SMtliETtwS37ZOlxWG1XApWezvnhconMKSfmTgDU8zP0CzBv5972dB_CRb8Ute1Vec1f5zzllWTd0NE6X-Vl8PLtkaQalLZuorLccD5esmOGl5JMe3FyQIHfgRpruCy5xB3w/s320/quote.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><i>Originally published at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-bad-ux-led-serendipitous-customer-experience-ramachandran">www.linkedin.com</a>.</i></span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-46834691295122333432015-07-14T22:22:00.001+05:302015-07-14T22:23:03.458+05:30Are your clients asking for a boat?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCAALwkK5W4H0FQ3AtigUA57o3j5yMMiOyuU4ybdawieIJmY2l4vkAPGNC6lVp-_NVnNXdmG3K3iUplmolmsJsV_BdBvXtFiwEfPgwGXJhSWsYbTLPnyivPVvyDUzaOlEayAW0oQ/s1600/boat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCAALwkK5W4H0FQ3AtigUA57o3j5yMMiOyuU4ybdawieIJmY2l4vkAPGNC6lVp-_NVnNXdmG3K3iUplmolmsJsV_BdBvXtFiwEfPgwGXJhSWsYbTLPnyivPVvyDUzaOlEayAW0oQ/s400/boat.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some clients will ask me for a boat.<br /> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What they actually need is to cross a river -Ronald Shakespear</span></b></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I discovered this quote canoeing through my social stream, I was delighted by the sweet scent of familiarity. Any technology consultant worth his salt would narrate to you (probably after few mugs of beer) anecdotes of consulting engagements that went awry after painfully coming to terms with the futility of nailing down the scope and requirements in the aftermath of stakeholders' radically different world-views and expectations.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32px;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Among the ones that I have heard of, my favorite anecdote is the tale of a <a href="http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2009/02/12/the-one-best-practice-to-rule-them-all-part-1/">disgruntled Share-point Consultant</a>. In a last, desperate attempt to break the project deadlock with the client stakeholder, the share point consultant decided to catch up for a casual, coffee chat. Sipping his cold coffee, the client stakeholder coolly asked,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><b>"Can you tell me what is the difference between SharePoint and Skype?"</b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Seeing the consultant wear the countenance of a child lost at the fair, the client continued to explain, “I can collaborate with anybody in the world using Skype for free, and even call regular land lines very cheaply. Why should I pay half a million bucks for SharePoint to collaborate?”</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If all of this sounds depressing in a place like LinkedIn where experts are busy doling out pint-sized advice to achieve super awesome business effectiveness, I am sorry. I didn't mean to. <br /><br />What I am more interested in exploring, and I hope you would join me as well, is the holy-grail question pursued by a consultant - What does your client want?</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Stumbling recently upon <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/05/a-hierarchy-of-organizational-needs.html">Seth Godin's hierarchy of organizational needs</a>, I found an intriguing pathway down the rabbit hole. Here is my adapted version.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNqYX7DOm2Hz16ESWp0IfXHeAoFcTHZf0mc6TwY1Irhwx1JUPj-wX88YJ5-0xQe4BVJcX51YfFc_BrhemfoCv7yd7tDXoYe3We7vq1UG8JGMdLf9TnaFo-vQb_XEXgDHIuSS5SA/s1600/hierarchy-of-org.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNqYX7DOm2Hz16ESWp0IfXHeAoFcTHZf0mc6TwY1Irhwx1JUPj-wX88YJ5-0xQe4BVJcX51YfFc_BrhemfoCv7yd7tDXoYe3We7vq1UG8JGMdLf9TnaFo-vQb_XEXgDHIuSS5SA/s400/hierarchy-of-org.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let me start with the obvious. It gets more and more challenging for organizations to move from "Make it properly" to "Make change". If I start to look closely at this , from the lens of a consultant, things get more interesting.<br /><br />The cluster of needs at the bottom are the "stated needs" zone where most of the consulting engagements begin with. You start defining the "As-Is"state, capture the requirements, and start idealizing the "To-be State". Most of you would know the rituals and the games consultants play. I need not elaborate further.<br /><br />What intrigues me is how more often, the client spells out the "stated needs" exactly using the same patois of buzz-words spouted by Industry Analysts. Back in 2010, every organization wanted to be "social business", and today, circa 2015, every tom, dick and harry of an organization, wants to be "digitally transformed", although they aren't sure what "digital" really means.<br /><br />"Stated needs" are anxiety driven and are transactional in nature as they can be measured through appropriate key-performance-indicators. Things get fuzzy as we move up the hierarchy and approach the zone of "unstated needs". You start building trust with your client, as you start the journey from transactions towards mutually-beneficial relationships. <br /><br />Here is the crucial thing, which I learned the hard way in my consulting experience. It's a strange paradox, and I want you to huddle up to listen very carefully. <br /><br />You cannot reach the "unstated needs" zone of your client, unless you comfort them with "stated needs". And, when you trudge along with all your efforts and reach there, you strangely realize that the client never wanted those "stated needs" in the first place.<br /><br />I've witnessed this paradoxical truth in so many engagements to regard it now as an axiomatic belief in my game of consulting. This belief operates in mentally filing the client's obvious "stated needs" under "the strong opinions, weakly-held" category, and begin the point of inquiry to see how far the actual needs diverge away from the starting point. <br /><br />I wouldn't be surprised if this subversive revelation puts you off. When you begin to embark on that train of thought, you would be justified in treating all consultants as charlatans and most of consulting as bullshit.<br /><br />If all of this sounds too abstract, let me tell you a story of one such engagement. I have no choice but to put it in metaphorical terms. Such is the nature of non-disclosure-agreements. Let's start from where we began. <br /><br />Once upon a time, I was hired by a client who wanted to cross the river. Excited by the client's impulse to change, I started designing a nice, swanky swim suit. Little did I imagine that the client would repose in the cosy illusion that he could swim in the river as he had the most-sophisticated swim suit certified by Gartner. It became a challenge to convince him that he has just started wearing the swim suit, and there is a long way to go before he grows fins and learns swimming.<br /><br />As the project hit the blind curve, I decided to take matter in hands and went for a casual coffee chat with the key stakeholder. The informal environment soothed my nerves and made it possible for me to tell the harsh, but obvious truth - You cannot start swimming just because you have the best swim-suit in town. <br /><br />I couldn't have told this truth openly, without first going through the ritual of designing the swim-suit, although I knew, at the back of my mind, that if you really know to swim, you can manage without a swim-suit, to begin with. <br /><br />Back, in the good old days, when I was wet behind the ears in the consulting business, I harbored romantic notions of consulting as "<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141125041343-50024830-how-to-save-the-world-from-knowledge-a-business-fable?trk=pulse_spock-articles">let's find the truth" </a>business. Today, I know for sure that I will lose my client the moment I start playing such pranks. <br /><br />What excites me today is to observe and play along the intriguing dynamics of walking in the razor-thin edge between stated and unstated needs of the client and arrive at that "no-sacred cows", trust zone, where the first glimmer of truth emerges.That's fun.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Story originally published <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-clients-asking-boat-venkataraman-ramachandran">in LinkedIn</a></i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-56342533955787597972015-06-18T09:25:00.002+05:302015-06-18T09:29:39.829+05:30Not Another Brick In The Wall<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"..<i>I somehow knew this...the present schooling system was not the best that we could have come up with to educate our children. We who have come up with wondrous symphonies, unbelievable art work, innumerable myths and stories to explain the mystery of human life, could have come with something way way better, something much closer to the way all of us learn, something that gives space to our curiosity and not a system that systematically destroys it...</i>"</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Amit is not just a dear friend of mine in Hyderabad, but my oasis of silence and reflection in this noisy modern world. In this TEDx talk at IIT Kanpur, he shares his journey so far. The transcript can be found <a href="https://medium.com/@venkinesis/not-another-brick-in-the-wall-368152cda80">here</a>. This should take you around 10-12 mts, if you choose to read in one go. I think you will like it. You can view the video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcCifYkT6fg">here. </a>Do share your thoughts/comments.</span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38895577.post-5553025503550537122015-04-05T21:42:00.000+05:302015-04-05T21:42:50.934+05:30What I learn in LinkedIn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My new post examining the subtle messages conveyed by LinkedIn platform <a href="https://medium.com/building-context-and-crafting-narratives/what-i-learn-in-linkedin-a65c9d8f334">is here. </a>It is very brief.I should not take you more than two minutes to read. Do check it out and share your thoughts. </span></div>
Venkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15155504457508095282noreply@blogger.com