Businesses & Social Networks

There is no second opinion about the fact that most corporations have taken a very serious note of the existence of social networking sites and are keen to explore what it means to them and for their respective businesses. Everyone agrees that it is a new ball game and no one really is an authority. Everyone is learning. Some organizations have started tweeting and posting industry news. Facebook has digital images of advertisements and TV ads added in the video segment. Some corporates entertain comments and feedback from social network groups while most don't. Organizations such as police seem to conduct their business on Facebook. You could post on their wall pictures and videos of corruption or illegal license plate presentation or cars with red illegal red pilot lights and incidents, and you see police dept responding with either a promise to act or action taken.

I find organized business and social networks to be two extreme ends of a spectrum, with nothing in common. The reasons for my belief are as follows:

1) Organized business or corporates are focused on profits, market capitalization and shareholder wealth creation. They have short term and long term targets and metrics that revolve around these parameters. Social networks participants have no such end goals or targets they are obligated to meet as they participate in these networks. These groups revolve around, common interests and stuff that excites them. This stuff could be anything from Katrina Kaif to coffee to cricket to corruption to cancer etc.

2) Organized business or corporates are structured entities. When you join a corporate house, you are fit into an organization structure with clearly defined role and KPIs handed down that you need to meet in a pre-determined time frame. You can create a career progression and a development path along with the HR and walk that path based on merits of your performance. Social networks are different. Participation is voluntary. Each participant has very different goal and each individual can publish their motives and goals to garner support for the cause. People gather around the cause based on how well it emotes with them and the success is primarily a function of how many people believe in it and are willing to participate in an action needed to take the cause to its logical end. Case in point being the India against corruption drive. In a corporate house while there is a debate around ideas generated, once a decision is made, the enterprise collectively approaches to meet end goals even if a few key individuals were initially against it. The enterprise is supreme over individuals. On the social network no such rule is binding on participants of the social groups.people will walk away from a movement as quickly they walked in with support. All of this could happen in a flash and without warning.

3) Enterprises work on streamlining people, process and systems into a cohesive and well oiled machine to meet specific targets. Behind every successful delivery in the corporate house, there stands such a well oiled machine. Social networks are different. Participants of social network build resources and means of deployment of these resources on the fly as an idea starts capturing imagination. Idea originators tend to initially do this own their own and gather support around them unlike a corporate house where you get to present your ideas, work the back channel and make a pitch to secure resources. In the world of social networks, there are no key individuals at the helm and hence no back channel to work. You are not sure how your cause will emote with the social network participants. 

The habitats of corporate world and the social enterprise, even though most people play in both worlds, exhibit behavior at extreme end of every spectrum in each of these worlds. In such a scenario, does the enterprise culture and their way of life come in the way of an  enterprise participating in the social networks? Please note that most corporate employees are voluntary participants in a social network too and behave in a completely different manner on these networks.

In such a scenario how does an enterprise participate in the social networking world? Today there are tools available to gauge the mood of people and understand their opinions on  products, services and brands. Today one can:

1) Advertise on the social network

2) Gather feedback on their products, services and brand by virtue of their conduct in the real world

3) Post industry news and messages you want the world to know and read

Can enterprises move beyond these three existing possibilities and conduct business in the social network space as they do in the world of brick and mortar? How different will this be to the present e-commerce model? 

The difference between the traditional e-commerce and commerce in a social network will be inviting active participation of social network participants in the enterprise business without the constraints of operating under the shadow of an enterprise's people-process-system umbrella.

I think there is an opportunity here and a few key ingredients are needed to attempt this.

1) There needs to exist a group of people within an enterprise who should be able to lead their lives as social network inhabitants do. You need to feel and think like them to successfully emote and transact with them. A group that does not necessarily operate under the shadow of people-process-system umbrella.

2) Social media is full of data on lifestyle patterns of people, their moods, their needs, their family etc. While an small portion of this is direct data, most of the data needs to be interpreted and inferred from whats happening on these network. Enterprises need to develop social intelligence tools that will help them understand these.

3) The people-process-system engine will need some re-architecting, re-engineering or maybe even replacement to take on the task at hand. This is tough and easier said than done.

4) Social intelligence output needs to be funneled into the wheel of people-process-system to deliver personalized and custom made offerings to the social network inhabitants. A very important part of this delivery is not just the people-process-system wheel being flexible , but the user experience delivered thru touch points such as traditional web on desktop/laptop and mobile devices and tablets play a very key role. I foresee a user experience technology layer emerging in IT Architecture to meet this challenge. The social network being a connected world, word gets around at lightning speed on opinions around the experience, which begins with the user interface.

5) The part that all CIOs and IT teams are good at - the back end, needs considerable re-architecting for the purpose. Systems need to be flexible. With each initiative there will be change requests at a much higher frequency that before till such time IT teams go up the learning curve on dealing with the dynamics of social networks and the effects of it's demands on the backend systems and infrastructure. CIOs need to create a separate layer of technology overlaying the current architecture to address this issue. A layer that will work at or above the ESB layer, to begin with, one that absorbs the shocks of these changes and shields the systems below. Apps will need wrappers to both gain visibility and provide access from, social networking sites, and factor in multiple touch points such as mobile and tablets.For the lack of a better word, at present, I call this the user experience technology layer. I am working on one such project and will hopefully have more insights with the benefit of hindsight after I finish. I hope my project sponsor is not reading this, as I admit that I hope to have more learning from failure on this rather than amateurs luck!!

Integrating the output of social intelligence, into the user experience technology layer, apps, service and the people-process-system wheel will deliver meaningful results. I avoid the term success. Meaningful results  includes availability of enough data and intelligence on reasons of failure being available easily, to enable a more effective retry. More often than not, systems are not catered for such an endeavor. they are mostly architect-ed for a first time right scenario. hence you see the heart-burns when large projects go bad.  For conducting business on social networks, the people-system-process machine needs to be primarily be architect-ed for intelligence output on what went wrong or what could have been done better. On a social network, relevance of a particular people-process-system structure will need to change with the changing mood and theme  on these networks. You cannot sell insurance or a toaster the same way you did while the network was rejoicing the holiday season as opposed to the network debating intensely a people movement revolting a government policy or an issue. The user experience technology layer will have to sense these changes real time (powered by social intelligence) and offer a completely different user experience on top of the underlying fulfillment model.

My thought process on what actually constitutes this user technology layer and how does this integrate and inter-relate to the other layers of the architecture are still evolving and at the moment are very specific to the project at hand. I hope to generalize this layer to the best of my capabilities in the coming months and test its validity. In my view the differentiating factor between a transaction capable portal and business- enabled-transaction-fulfillment-capable social network  primarily rests with the way enterprises engage with consumers and the user technology layer will enable this. Once this happens, maybe there will be very little justification to incur costs on maintaining and managing a corporate portal as opposed to being present on various social networks. 

Can CIOs in India lead the change as businesses start to explore ways of participation in the social networking space. If there is anyone who is completely entangled in the present day avatar of people-process-system , it is the CIO and the business operations. They are measured on process inefficiencies and cost savings. Any technology implementation is more weighed against the possibility of contribution to bottom line. There are very little systemic incentives in place in corporates that can nudge a CIO or a COO in a direction enabling to operate outside of the current people-process-system corporate plan. It will take considerable sense of character and influencing ability to be able to sell such a thought to the management and board in India. 

Invasion of The Internet Of Things

Social media entrepreneurs are butting into every aspect of life. Like it or not. Tweets from the street, while at home or from the toilet, all have found their way into apps leveraging the context from the internet of things to bring to us some extremely unique, radical and totally wacky apps and connected devices to the marketplace! Sharing your data on the internet just went a bit beyond the wild and wacky.


Almost any and every data element seems to be a secret ingredient to a new business idea. From your license plate number to your cigarette , all the way to who your friends are and if you have a clean toilet at home; this new virtual place has some crazy and wacky ideas being turned into business models.The motive behind this..well you dont know what will catch the consumers imagination. Taking a cue from facebook that is bound to file for an IPO in an year, its valued around USD 100bn!! A very very humble microblogging site Tumblr has a USD 800mn valuation that puts it on the same pedestal as The New York Times.


All this is driving the entrepreneurs to force consumers to share. Wether you are sitting on a seat or a commode, buying soda from a vending machine, there will be a new social feature urging you to share! Hope you all like sharing!


Some real wacky stuff up on the block covered in  the last edition of WIRED magazine are:

Ceiva digital photo frames. These digital photoframes are connected to the internet and are hooked onto your facebook, twitter pics, picasa and all the other web properties that house your pictures on the cloud. The frame displays pictures from the web properties without having to download or store them on a memory car or a usb stick. Hold your breath on this one, anyone could email you picture and it just comes up on the photoframe. imagine gifting one to your boss. Morphing his or her picture and emailing it to the boss from an anonymous account during the family hour! Boss's face would make up a great kodak moment! I wish these things existed while I was in the college hostel I would have loved to gift one to my hostel warden. I have had my share of fun pasting playboy center spread on his front droor and run away after ringing the door bell at 2AM.
Check out the link Ceiva digital Frames.

Social e-cigerettes. people today scoff at smokers for an entirely different reason. You still use fire to light up? How primitive!! E-cigerettes are catching on. Wikipedia definition "An electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette, is an electrical device that simulates the act of tobacco smoking by producing an inhaled mist bearing the physical sensation, appearance, and often the flavor and nicotine content of inhaled tobacco smoke; though without its odor, and intended to omit its health risks." 
Well as if this is not revolutionary in itself ( smoking a e-cigerette that is battery powered and sold with a usb charger!!) , the makers of these gadgets blu have decided to pack these e-cigarettes in a smart pack that contains a homing device connected to the internet that does a search for other e-cigarette smokers (smart blucig packs) nearby and for blu e-cigarette retail stores to ensure that you are always loaded! Looks like people are looking at slapping social onto everything these days. Come to think of it, smoking is a social activity. Total strangers will share their lighters, their cigarettes, and their stories all over the course of a ten minute cigarette break. Even when you start to hate the actual act of smoking, it’s difficult to give up because you get extra breaks during work where you can mingle with co-workers or strangers, and inevitably make friendships. 
What blu  has done, is not just sold you cigarettes , but have designed cigarette packs that connect to the internet and search for other smokers around for you to have a great social moment. Thats a 5 start rating in my books on account of CRM being their core strategic business value. Not only that, since these packs are smart, they direct the smoker to the cigarette shop...that cleaver sales strategy. Check out their website at this link blucigs,

Bump.com : License plates of motor vehicles have gone social with bump.com.  Innovative way to take physical violence out of road rage and still realizing the satisfaction of letting it out at fellow driver! All that you need to do is text what you want and address it to a license plate number. You could click a pic of a license plate number and send a text message. The other person can choose or ignore to response. You dont have to know a fellow drivers name or email id or a phone number to communicate. 
There are a lot of applications outside of the social networking aspects as well. Los Angeles billboards track more than 250,000 license plates everyday. Bump.com set up shop at Coachella music festival that was held in April this year where it tracked license plates of people who attended the festival and ensured discounts available to their customers.Bump.com is in a position to deliver a lot of meaningful data to advertisers today. For example it can give you data of traffic on a freeway categorized by economy, semi-luxury, luxury and SUV vehicles. It can tell you how many motorcycles ply on any give road! 
A simple idea turned into a great business model is what bump.com is all about. BUT...texting while driving is a big NO. Dont want to got from bump to crash!

The CLOO'-app. My personal favorite is the CLOO' app. The wackiest of ideas yet...on the internet of people. CLOO' is a future startup that may prevent you to pee in your pants. For the cost of a Latte, CLOO' turns any private residential bathroom that you, your friends and your friends of friends could use solving the issue of too few easily accessible restrooms! Now, taking a dump or peeing is a very personal activity. Nothing social about it. Or rather a clean toilet is what every member of any social community aspires for, specially when you are out of your house and in a public space.  
CLOO' is an app when you open for use, displays a list of hosts in your areas (CLOO' members toilets available for use). Along with this list, to each toilet, the app tries to find common friends between your circles and the toilet owners social circles. The app also lists the community's rating for the toilet you select and the price for using it. Check out this link for more on this wacky idea : CLOO'.  The future is now and it demands a courtesy flush!

My.microbes : Move over facebook, here comes my.microbes a social network for intestinal bacteria! The European Molecular Biology Laboratory has created my.microbes a social network of people with similar intestinal bacteria! Some people are not content with social networks that bring friends with similar habits or hobbies or dating needs together, they go deep down to the molecule level! 

Members can share their gastrointestinal stories, something I can assure that people with stomach issues tend to do, as well as have a place to share diet tips. The researchers haven’t set up my.microbes simply for the joy of watching people with ailing stomachs get together and complain — they’re going to be watching and recording everyone’s stories in an attempt to gather and study the information provided. The idea for the social network began when the team of researchers received a large amount of emails from people asking the team could help them their their stomach issues. So far, 283 people have signed up. What does it take to sign up? Well, you need to part with some money , USD 2100 to be precise, and part with some shit, quiet literally. USD 2100 + your stool sample = my.microbes membership. Check out this community at my.microbes

Social Vending Machine: Pepsico's  social vending machine, lets you gift a soda to your friend. Nothing wacky , wierd or unique about this. Its a simple practical idea very nicely executed. The vending machine will text  your pal with a e-coupon that could be redeemed at a similar vending machine. You could record a video message that could be played back to your friends as they pick up the soda from the vending machine.

Samsung Smart Fridge : Samsung RF4289 refrigerator is the WiFi connected refrigerator with LED lighting and 28 cubic feet of storage. And with an 8-inch LCD touchscreen, Samsung provides quick access to "kitchen relevant applications" like Google calendar, Weatherbug forecasts, Epicurious recipes, AP news, Pandora music, and Picasa photos. You can also leave notes for the family or tap out a quick tweet should the compulsion arise. The wireless touchscreen is available on both the RSG309 side-by-side and RF4289 four-door french door models.Some websites have branded this as "smart fridge with a dumb price tag"! This costs USD 3499! Makes sense to stick with the existing refrigerator and buy a ipad. Considerably cheaper deal.

Withings Connected devices:Withings.com sells three connected devices :
1) A weighing machine that tweets your weight, BMI and muscle mass everytime you get onto it. Talk of peer pressure and public shame as motivators to reduce flab!
2) Connected Blood Pressure Monitor: This connects to a iphone, ipad or a ipod touch device and records blood pressure readings. The app enables you to email the same to your doctor or seamlessly upload the data into a health record application that you can manage on the cloud.
3) Baby Monitor : A baby monitor is due for launch. This connects to iphone or ipad touch 2.0. You can see your baby thru the iphone and ipad, and talk and sing to it over the internet using facetime. Check out the site Withings.com


The last three devices are simple applications with very straight forward ideas.I am completely bowled over by the first five in the list above. Let me know thru comments and feedback, if you know any more wacky stuff out there turning into a business model.

Interesting stuff from the WWW

Some very interesting stuff from the world wide web:

Equation to estimate the risk of satellite debris falling on your head!

Not just juhu beach, pockets and bi-lianes of amchi mumbai  but space is full of debris too. Since the launch of sputnik way back in 1957, humans have flung heavy mettalic ojects into space, without any regard w.r.t littering. Not much thought has gone into the aspect of planning for a return trip of all the satellites and other stuff left to float around in zero gravity. This one-way ticket model has resulted in 160,000 un-controllable  objects collectively weighing about 6000 tonnes.

As this debris moves around in low earth orbit , wafer thin sheets of air slowly decelerate these objects to a point where these then drop down to earth. Some of these satellites that are equipped with a rocket engine or a propeller tank, can be controlled and forced to fall in the no-man land or the ocean.

To determine if a satellite needs such an expensive deorbiting system, the FAA uses an equation to estimate if one such piece might actually someday land on someone's head! The equation is as follows:

Pf  x Ni x Pi (lat,inc) x A = Ec

Pf  = probability that a piece of space junk will survive re-entry. For things like falling satellites, the equation is run seperately for each chunk expected to result from its eventual breakup.

Ni = average population density in area i . For simplification, earth is divided into a grid of squares i and the distribution is assumed to be uniform across each grid

Pi = probability that the object will hit the areas i - a function of  latitude (lat) and inclination (inc) of the object's orbital path relative to the equator.

A = casuality area. The bigger the object, the larger the area. Multiplying this with Ni tells how many people would get wacked if it falls in area i.

Ec = expected casualities. This is evaluated for every area i and every distinct chunk from a given space craft.

If the sum total of Ec for the entire craft exceed .0001 i.e. 1 in 10,000 chance of a single casuality, then that craft requires investments in controlled de-orbit.
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Virtual Reality in Financial Services

If the findings of the researchers studying the proteus effect is indeed true, then we seem to take our avatars to heart. Their experiments have concluded that people who see their avatars growing fast are more likely to hit the gym than others / otherwise. If you constantly see your avatar cutting down trees you are likely to waster less paper. If you read the book "Infinite Reality" the co-author Bailenson who also heads the Stanford's virtual reality lab, you will find their claims that real world behavior can be altered by virtual experiences. Bailenson believes that avatars can get us to save money and compell us to invest in financial products rather than spend on lifestyle.

Today very few people like to live the moment and enjoy the present and hence seldom put away money saving for the rainy day. Bailenson and team have discovered that if people see a virtual version of themselves (their avatar) digitally aged by several decades, the hesitation to save up for the old age disappears instantly. they set up hypothetical retirement accounts for people as a part of this experiment to note their behavior. Contributions to this account went up by 30% as opposed to traditional advertising methods in the digital media. It would be interesting to check out Mahesh Murthy's views on this one.

Allianz (asset management business) seems to be taking this project very seriously. they plan to offer age-morphed photos for 401(k) enrollees during the upcoming holiday season , going by what I gathered on the web. Unique way to introduce their customers to the future!

OMG!!! These digital natives...

I am a digital immigrant and a parent to 2 digital natives. Most kids born post 2000 in India are digital natives. My elder daughter born in Jan 2000 chewed on my blackberry in the same year as she was teething. Expensive toy to play with, considering my income then! Parenting kids who are digital natives is a lot more tougher than parenting the digital migrants and the real world kids. It gets worse if you as a parent are digital immigrant instead of an analog parent(is there such a word!). As a digital immigrant I carry the baggage of what is right and when is it the right time to use a gadget or be on internet or have a social network account, coming from a background where I grew up in an environment where all this was a figment of imagination! I never grew up with these devices living a virtual childhood on social networks, and hence have a very convoluted belief system. When I grew up it was simply un-imaginable that I would possess 2 sets of pens. Coming from a very conservative middle class south indian brahmin family, dad would inquire if I could write using both my hands simultaneously and multi-task to learn concurrently! I had no compelling business case to present that could excite my dad to investment in 2 pens! Well, I was not born a MPP (massively parallel processing) and hence I obviously could not. Not that money was an issue. It was more of "makes no sense" and "no business case" phenomenon. Same scenarios played out as my desire to possess new and more stuff expanded to shoes and tee shirts!   Choices that my parents had to make were about the movies we could see, the kind of toys we could play with, the choice of words we use in our everyday language, the food we ate etc,etc. As a parent, right from when my kid was 4 years old, the choices I was faced with were what gadgets they could play with, what is the right age to hand them a cell phone, now tablet and how soon is not late to get them on the social network. My prime parental task seems to be creation of a controlled environment for them to surf the net. Being digital natives, my kids have taken to cell phones, tablets, internet and social networking as a process of their growing up, as they took to learning how to walk, chew, cry when hungry and learning to talk!

I have serious issues with this. You cannot be on facebook unless you are 18, all their friends are and hence they have learnt how to lie about their age as early as at the age of 8. Now its perfectly ethical to do so, in their view, as it was me who created their account, and they questioned me on every field I filled up as a process of creating their account. Why cant there be a social network for the little digital natives so that they can stop learning the art of deceit from their parents. Schools ban cell phones instead of teaching them how to use them. Result: ts fun to sneak one into school, use it on the sly, fun to break the law and now having a cell phone is seen as cool thing to do, because its cool to break the law at school! I wish teachers had the maturity and sense to induct them to the world of tablets and cell phones, the way they induct them into the world of desktop computers at school these days.

As my elder one now goes 12 and calls herself a pre-teen, I am worried about the abuse and intimidation she would encounter at some stage on the social network. And, there are these boys element to deal with, not just in the real world but also in the digital worls...and some these might not be boys at all!. I have decided on a few parenting styles I will imbibe:
1) I will have one-on-one conversations with my kids explaining them the dangers of being on social network without guidance, similar to my conversation with them on how dangerous it is to cross the road without looking left - right - left and without parental support.
2) I will give them their privacy with the gadgets and on the social network and discuss with them on some of the issues I had and how I faced them. Tell them I here to support them and help them walk the path. Support them exactly the way I did, as they learnt to ride a bicycle.
3) Hand hold them as they get hit by intimidation and face issues at school with teachers who are digital immigrants and analog natives similar to the way I support them when they fall down and get hurt or fail a test and are scared to try again.

There is no running away from the fact that we live in three worlds, India, Bharat & Digital global village. As a parent we will have to teach our kids on how to negotiate the nuances of these diverse worlds as they grow.  Well sirji, 3G or No-G the essence of good parenting is at the core and this remains unchanged.

Bringing up these bubbly, ever jumping and never exhausting digital natives in my family, has changed the way I look at the new young digital immigrants - a species very close to digital natives who are recruited from colleges into the enterprise. This generation, full of acronyms (one actually had WTF on a ppt in a presentation to the core leadership in one of the companies I worked), a  BYOT (bring your own technology to work) tribe, arrives full of hope and dreams into an enterprise , soon to be bogged down and systematically tamed to medieval way of life if not to relative primitiveness. The boundaries imposed in this day and age in the enterprise is simply so criminal on this Gen Y and a self infected damage y the enterprise.Most enterprises dont realize this.In 1998, I was part of the workforce in an enterprise that debated on who should get wordstar and lotus 123 ( remember them from your previous lifetime?)  and in 1990 windows, word and excel as they found their way (pirated because my boss found no relevance for these in our business! ). Piracy into this organization took place, because I wanted to use them to create my project report that carried considerable amount of credits in the final year of my MCA. Look at the scenario now and what got accomplished using these tools by employees down the ladder over the years in many organizations in this country! My first employer has still not thanked me for having smuggled in windows, word and excel.

I am sure sometime exponentially revolutionary will happen as you expose social networking and free use of connected mobile devices in a protected network within the enterprise-connected to the internet. As a CIO today I would make some of the following my top priorities:

1. Select a few radicals (all Gen Ys are) and open up inkedin, facebook, google plus and twitter for them for 6 months with a clear brief to use them for business purposes. Observe and learn how they engage fellow employees, partners and customers on these social networks and see if they make sense to the enterprise's cause and decide on future course of action. I personally thing Google+ with its circles and capability to post content tpo specific circles makes it a best fit enterprise tool to engage the corporate's eco-system and a potential social network to integrate your ERPs, CRM , BI tools and financial system 
2. Identify digital assets I would port onto smart phones and tablets
3. Work with the digital natives to prototype their wild and wacky lifestyle into the enterprise fabric
4. Create a portal that outlines and explains my enterprise's mission, goals and describes the business we are in. Embed a digital marketplace (app store) into it where GenY could bring their mobile apps, show their capabilities based on which I could buy these apps.
5. Distribute thru the same enterprise app store my apps to my customers, employees and partners

More power to the Gen Y. People a couple of generations older had said during their lifetime, that they were living the most exciting phase life had to offer w.r.t automation and opportunities. I feel the same and say the same. I place my bets on the fact that the coming generations will feel the same way during their lifetime - recession or no recession. Thanks god for the fact that some things dont change!

Team CIO

I choose to call this post Team CIO. A CIO is only as effective as his team, as is the case with any other team leader. Nothing peculiar that distinguishes a CIO here. Most of the fundamentals that constitute a good team applies to Team CIO as well. The CIO decides on who all constitute the team, and once done, the team then pretty much decides the fate of the CIO. The CIO starts mirroring and showcasing his team competencies in all that he says and all that gets delivered. Initially the CIOs personality pretty much colors the Team CIO perception to the reminder parts of the enterprise. In as quick as a 4 month window, most of the CIOs personality pretty much reflects the team's competencies rather than the CIOs personal ability to rise and shine. Greate leaders lead great teams and hence their greatness.

A good pit stop check is to observe the kind of conversion one has post 6 months of breaking-in a new team. So which of the following two conversation types do you engage into with your peers and stakeholders as a CIO?

Converstaion Type 1 : Transactional , Operation Detail  : Low/No Business Impact

                 






                                                                         OR

Conversation Type 2 : Technology lead enterprise strategy - organization building ; High Business Impact

A CIO typically gets catogarized into each of these two boxes based on the effectiveness of this team. Teams that take away operational issues effectively, enable the CIOs to focus on strategy that generates more exciting work for Team CIO. CIO as a business leader talks of technology disruptions needed to take the enterprise to the next level.


Lets now look at Team CIO and what kind of people should ideally make up a team. I will depart from the usual on the team construction and hence I will not be talking about having an infrastructure team, a BA team, an application team etc. The focus here is more on the selection of people based on their learning abilities. A key dimension to recruitment of knowledge workers is to understand their ability to learn and team play. The content that follows in the rest of the blog is typically what most of the management books and HR consultants teach on learning styles of people, hence there is nothing original in what I present below, but a reflection of my views and belief and learning assimilated by virtue of being in multiple leadership  sessions, working with some fantastic leaders during my formative years in corporate life and some learning by virtue of walking on that path.


There are typically 4 learning styles:

1) Concrete Experience (CE)

This category of people  primarily learn from their past experiences. This tribe is generally is very humane, sensitive to people and feelings and relate to people well.

2) Reflective Observation (RO)

This category of people are constantly learning from reflection. They view issues from                        different perspectives and observe intently to search for deep meaning. Search for depth is an           essential attribute. This tribe is always looking for meaning of things.

3) Abstract Conceptualization (AC)

This category of people are essentially thinkers. They learn by virtue of the fact that they think.         Systematic planning and logical analysis of ideas are key attributes this tribe possess. Any action         these people undertake is always a result of intellectual understanding of the situation.

4) Active Experimentation (AE)

This category of people essentially learn by doing things. Ability to get things done and taking risks are some of the key attributes of this tribe. This tribe influences their eco-system thru actions. The enterprise sees these people as who do things differently and as action oriented.

People generally have two of the above four learning styles manifesting very strongly in their personality. As shown below a combination of these dominant learning styles typically define the strengths, weakness and severe pitfalls if extreme traits of each of these working styles are engaged for purpose at hand.

A well rounded team is a good mix of these complementary learning styles. But this is just one aspect of a knowledge worker and there are more key aspects apart from just learning style. The purpose of this post was to share with you on the subject of learning styles and strike up a conversation with you to get your thoughts on the same. Please do comment and contribute to my learning.

Internet Content : Author's Credentials

School was a pursuit of knowledge for me. I do remember being curious on digging deep on what was taught in the classroom. This aspect was encouraged by most of my teachers their primary teaching style was to start a discussion on topics rather than a one-way preach. Though there were times, when I just crammed up, not really interested in understanding what was being taught. History for example. Never had enough curiosity around Alexander the Great or the life style of people who dwelled the earth during the Maurya Empire. 

Irrespective of interest, what we had to do as students was to search for the data. There was emphasis on finding the right book, written by a credible author. A lot of us used to ask people around (teachers, elders in family and others around) for author recommendations and opinion on credentials of the author. This aspect is missing today to a large extent with the young ones, specially my kids and their friends and, friend's friends.

I spent about 2 hours with my kids, helping them out on their projects (they are in Std VI and Std III). Half the time my kids were ranting about googling this and googling that and them least interested in anything that did not figure in the top 5 results belted out by the search engine. No one was interested in verifying the credentials and credibility of people who had authored this content. The top 5 results of a google search has assumed the significance of a holy gospel.! I have had a similar experience in the corporate world where a very senior executive found comfort in the fact that assumptions of the project being debated in the risk management committee was based on the article that figured in the top five search results of a google search criteria. Had the content of this same article been quoted as hearsay or had been verbalized with no reference to the great world wide web, it would have been shot down by the risk management committee. Just to make my point, you could base assumptions of a Business Intelligence project on customer profitability around a document on breeding techniques of silk worms as long as this document comes up in the top five search results when you google for "Business Intelligence in Customer Profitability"!! Having made this absurd statement, it is definitively possible to get a document on breeding techniques of silk worms or any other worm to come up in top five search results as you google for BI techniques and/or technologies used in customer profitability projects. Nothing absurd about that. Anything is possible with the right kind of tagging and coding for search result rankings.

The other day, as I watched Barkha Dutt interview Nikesh Arora of google, she had mentioned that someone is always marrying her off to various people in Wikipedia! Public domain content needs to be digested with discretion. One needs to understand the intent with which the content has been staged and the motive behind the content uploaded. Students today are skilled at using search engines effectively. One needs now training on understanding the motives and objectives behind the authoring of the content before consuming it for use either in personal or professional life.

This problem is actually age old. Different authors have delivered different interpretations of Mahabhart, Ramayan and the Bhagvat Geeta. Each portraying their own strong belief systems and uni-polar thought and ideals that have shaped their up-bringing. I only wish that content published, be it Ramayan, Bhadgvat Gita, Quran, Bible or cutting edge internet security technologies; stop preaching and start structuring the content in a manner where after establishing base facts, the content opens up the readers mind for debate and insightful thinking rather than preaching the authors view point. A well structured and well intentioned piece of literary or technology content always sets up the mind for a deep intellectual debate within. With collaboration technologies like facebook and wikipedia, a well structured content gives the connected digital natives to explore uncharted territories in each other mind and enhance the pursuit of knowledge and innovation.

I wish that experts come out with a technique to teach the digital natives on various ways the content needs to be dissected and analysed for intent, accuracy and mood educate the content consumers on stripping these aspects out before consuming content.