How many stars in the sky?

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How many stars in the sky?

A Forrester report states that, on an average 5 to 15 per cent of an organization’s staff can be considered as high potential. Does it mean that the remaining 85% is lesser than being high potentials?

The truth is that the 85% is comprised of a good amount of the silent do-gooders..

These are brilliant people with great ideas, who however,  will take those ideas with them to their graves. These silent people, are often the most knowledgeable and competent people in an organization.

They are often unnoticed. They are trusted and revered by their project mates, but their shine doesn’t reach further than that. Perhaps, a manager who takes a very careful look at his subordinates will spot and nurture such employees. However, the typical talent finder programmes, have been seen to identify and reward people who talk and make themselves visible.

The result? These invisible Samaritans of the organization eventually find themselves ignored and leave the workplace disenchanted. The greater issue is that the organization never comes to understand this, as it continues to spend all its efforts on safeguarding its top 15 per cent. On the ground, projects suffer, work gets delayed and customer complaints mount. The problem is very generically attributed to attrition. The issue is not of attrition, but of attrition of these highly talented, but unspotted individuals.

The good thing about collaboration platforms is that they enable such employees to come into a broader limelight without having to shed their usual style of working or without having to change their character. They become central hubs of expertise and drive and channelize their large group of followers. They become more visible and are recognizised.  Its not as if this phenomenon is not happening  now; but unfortunately, it is happening outside the organization.   An internal collaboration platform will enable organizations to  bring this knowledge back into their domain and discover a new lot of people that it can depend on.

If organizations are asking for merits or ROI of using such platforms for workforce, then this should proivde the answer.

Why KMs don’t work?

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As we start talking about enterprise collaboration, most customers talk about the Knowledge Management (KM) systems and tools in place in their organizations. But even as they describe, there seems to be a sense of self-doubt if the initiative is working or paying off to the objectives that were originally defined.

When speaking to the HR manager of a large Indian corporate, he mentioned that the organization does not get understand if people are using it. And if they’re using it, how’re they using it. The organization sure gets the basic statistics, but not any specific insight – for example, did people find the artifacts useful and effective. Another organization tries to overcome this issue by sending periodical survey forms, expecting that 10% of the recipients will respond.

Wikipedia describes Knowledge Management as a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice.

This definition perhaps gives some hints to why KM initiatives lose their charm soon after their launch:

- Most organizations focus on identifying, creating and distributing insights and experiences of specific people and practices in the organization. Hence the range of knowledge resources that gets created is limited by specificity of first, the people involved and second, the topics on which they write.

 

- Secondly, the KM initiatives almost do not focus at all on the adoption side. Some who do, approach it in ways that are unsustainable. A well-known IT company makes it mandatory for employees to read and contribute to the KM repository. And of course, there are surveys and internal campaigns.

 

- There’s also a bigger issue. While KM strategies include a wide variety of knowledge sharing tools, most KM strategies are synonymous with document management systems (DMS). And it is not uncommon for KM strategies to be taken as pure training and learning strategies.

As a whole, the implementation of these initiatives makes them less democratic than they should be. Given that the source of knowledge in an organization could be anyone, and that data gets refined into knowledge by steady inputs from several people, over a period of time, locking it to a few specific users does not make sense.

Also DMS is just one instrument for KM. They lack the ability to capture the fluidity with which information grows, refines and is consumed.

A holistic collaboration platform is a great tool for KM pioneers. A collaboration platform supports a wide variety of KM strategies – story telling and experience sharing, communities of practice, knowledge forums, expert voices, pre and post analysis, and of course document repositories as well.

They are open – inviting people to share and contribute. However, it’s not about unsupervised, uncontrolled information deluge. It’s rather about allowing anyone in the organization to contribute and add value within a given context, in a meaningful and responsible manner. With such platforms, organizations get to know the knowledge sources that are popular, effective and most talked about, enabling them to focus on the right strategies.

It frees the organization from the whole creation – consumption monitoring cycle. It shifts these responsibilities to every user who strive to provide the best, most relevant and correct information to their fellow colleagues. Yeah, it is democracy, as good as it can be.

Give that thumbs-up!

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The radio is tuned to a popular radio station. A lady is very happily sharing with the RJ, how her, otherwise reticent boss, came out his cabin and appreciated her good work, openly in front of her team members. How apt!

In his book ‘The Carrot Principle‘, Chester Elton talks about the importance of day-to-day recognitions. He says that the value of such day-to-day recognitions is high, as they are low cost, but high touch. They are the regular pat in the backs, the notes of appreciation, a token of thanks that fill the recognition-vacuum between two appraisals. The predominant absence of providing such recognition is considered one of the prime reasons why employees leave organizations.

Chester says that such recognitions are effective when they are frequent, specific and timely.

In most organizations, appraisals are perhaps the most used mechanism for acknowledging performance and providing feedback and recognition. By their very design, appraisals fail to provide the kind of recognition that we are talking about. They are simply not frequent, specific or timely. This is not to say that appraisals are unnecessary, but just that they’re inadequate.

Enterprise social networks can serve as powerful channels for a simple, but effective recognition mechanism:

Writing a note of appreciation in a social network is quick and easy. Managers do not have to schedule an appointment for providing such feedback. This enables them to provide, frequent and timely recognition.

  • The acknowledgement happens out in the open; it carries legitimacy. It not only affects the credibility of the recipient, but also that of the giver. One cannot afford to be biased. A mutual admiration club will not be able to run its shop in such an open network – people will quickly realize what’s happening.
  • Recognitions carry anecdotal references – timely support given to support a customer escalation, extraordinary effort put in completing a project on time, a fantastic presentation made to a customer – all can be said. This makes the recognitions more specific and contextual. Recognition is also provided directly by beneficiary of the employee’s action, making it more ‘in-person’.
  • When an employee receives recognition, it is instantly seen by her network. She is suddenly more visible and recognizable to a large group of people. Such visibility is shown to make people act with more responsibility. In fact, it is seen that such people continuously raise their bars to stay up to their image in the organization.
  • By making the recognition more visible, the organization effectively sends a message to all its employees on what it values and rewards, thereby triggering a simple ripple effect of such good behaviour.

 And of course, there are no budgets to be considered for appreciating good work.

The motivation that such social recognition can provide to employees is not surprising – just think how much you value the ‘Likes’ to your Facebook posts. So, go ahead – be generous and give that thumbs-up!

Don’t like Spaghetti? Try Archipelago

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Recently, I was talking to a good old friend. He is a HR academician. We were talking about collaboration in enterprises and how it has always been the core idea behind organization design.

The ability to collaborate or operate effectively is at the centre of every organization’s design. Departments, projects, teams, divisions – all are responses designed to answer the question of effective collaboration. Organizations structure and restructure in an attempt to collaborate and accomplish better.

Some companies have experimented with radically new ideas for collaboration. The Spaghetti structure pioneered by the Danish, hearing-aid company Oticon in the late 1980s is well-known for its revolutionary approach.

The then CEO of Oticon, Kolind, designed the spaghetti organization as a completely project-focused structure with no vertical hierarchies. He called it ‘a spaghetti organization of rich strands in a chaotic network’.

At the core of the spaghetti organization, are interaction, collaboration, connectivity of people, customers, suppliers and ideas. Flexibility to collaborate is the key and it enabled Oticon to innovate faster and better. The new organization structure did turn things around for Oticon. In a big way.

Despite the amazing success story [Oticon improved its revenue by more than hundred per cent], the spaghetti model has not been adopted in many other organizations. Even Oticon, adopted a more formal structure in the later years [though it continued to avoid rigid hierarchical structures].

The main reason for this lesser adoption is that the structure calls for a total abandonment of formal structures which many organizations are wary to do. And if not governed properly, there is also the risk of the no. of ‘strands’ or projects sprouting in an uncontrollable manner.

It’s quite possible for an organization to take advantage of the spaghetti structure without hugely disrupting existing structures. A collaboration platform can enable this. With a collaboration platform

- Cross-functional or multi-disciplinary teams can be quickly assembled and brought to focus on the task at hand.

- Such teams can collaborate in their own space – define projects & accountabilities, brain storm ideas, put-together documents and artefacts.

- Teams can constantly be in touch with each other, stay in context and contribute to the overall goal of the project.

- An individual can contribute to multiple projects.

- When goals are accomplished, teams can be dismantled and members can regroup in other projects where they’re needed.

- Or more permanent teams can exist, which become special task forces to tackle similar opportunities or issues.

We call this the Archipelago model. Just like archipelagos which emerge due to tectonic forces, clusters of strategic teams can emerge in an organization, as a response to any external or internal force. They can float on the top of the organization without disrupting the original organizational structure. The result is a very flexible organization where governance is used to encourage and enable collaboration rather than curbing it.

Injoos is now part of KineticGlue!

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Injoos is now part of KineticGlue!

Press Release

Source: KineticGlue
Friday, December 10, 2010 12:00 AM IST (Thursday, December 09, 2010 06:30 PM GMT)
Editors: General: Economy; Business: Accounting & management consultancy services, Financial Analyst, Information technology, Media & entertainment, Stock exchanges; Technology

KineticGlue Acquires Injoos
Acquisition to Expand presence in Social Business Applications for enterprises

Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Friday, December 10, 2010 — (Business Wire India)

KineticGlue, an enterprise focused social collaboration company today announced the acquisition of Injoos, a company building social media tools for the enterprise. The acquisition expands KineticGlue’s offerings and will accelerate its own product development.

“KineticGlue has built a strong installed base in large and medium sized companies in India over the last year and we have received terrific feedback on our product features and usability case studies, says Vivek Paul, adding that “The Injoos team and their product will strengthen and enhance our offerings for the Indian market across multiple industries. I am pleased to welcome the Injoos team to KineticGlue”.

Enterprises across the world have turned to social applications to retain and engage talent, make information flows more collaborative, and unleash innovation. KineticGlue is a leader in this space in India and has already built strong industry expertise in Banking (Yes Bank, ICICI Bank), Healthcare (Fortis), Infotech (L&T), Retail (Future), Telecom (Airtel) and Education (BITS). In addition, KineticGlue already has over 200 medium to small sized companies in its network.

Injoos was founded in 2008 by Jagdish Vasishtha and Srinivas Seshadri, both formerly with Infosys. Jagdish and Srinivas will both join the company’s board and respectively be COO and CTO of KineticGlue. Says Jagdish, “There are few products that can improve productivity, enhance employee morale, and deliver on the innovation promise” all at the same time – so we are very excited about this opportunity. Customers from both companies have already endorsed the value we bring and this combination of technical strengths of Injoos and market reach of KineticGlue will create a global leader in social business.

Srini added “This combination allows us to offer more comprehensive integration with existing systems, including Microsoft and IBM, and allows us to create a social intelligence layer on top of existing applications. We remain committed to enterprise class security and access control. Being cloud based, we can provide any time any where, any device access”.

Companies have used social applications to improve sales pursuits through real time collaboration, engage distribution partners through specialty communities, improved project management through common document repositories, reduce attrition by giving employees a chance to express their creativity, and enhanced new product development by increasing cross department connections.

About KineticGlue

KineticGlue Online Communities Pvt. Ltd. (www.kineticglue.com) is a leader in enterprise social collaboration. Based in Bangalore, it was founded in 2008 by design expert Meeta Malhotra and Vivek Paul, a globally recognized technology industry veteran. .

For press backgrounder on KineticGlue click here

Media contact details

Meeta Malhotra,
KineticGlue,
meeta@kineticglue.com

What is Organizational Democracy – WorldBlue

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Traci Fenton (CEO, WorldBlue) describes this in a simple way as:

Democratic Design + Freedom-Centered Leadership = A Democratic Company

Enterprise2.0 technologies provide a great promise to enable and accelerate the move for organizations to become more democratic and innovative. We at Injoos have espoused this in our product philisophy:

We believe in the power of the collective to make things happen and this has been amply demonstrated by social networks. Bringing the same philosophy to an enterprise, we believe will allow people to break the shackles and communicate uninhibitedly. The power of the collective not only can solve things for an organization quickly but also helps in filtering relevant information to the user. Injoos was created with this in mind – the people and we believe that Injoos teamware will help organizations unleash the collective power of their people to solve business problems and to innovate.

 

You can watch Traci explain in detail on the WorldBlue model for companies. Traci explain in detail on the WorldBlue model for companies.