Book Review: The Groundswell- everything is about social networking today

My inspiration for this blog rant comes from a book "Groundswell" by charlene li and josh bernoff from forrester research.


Are you doing these things?
- looking it up on a wiki (www.wikipedia.com)
- tag it with del.icio.us (http://delicious.com/)
- find a widget that will do it
- will you Digg this (www.digg.com)
- can you friend me
- let's mash these up on one page

This is the groundswell! And you say, so, what is it? Some of us are in the know, others are not, some are up and comers, some are out of touch. Some think of this as an opportunity, others think of it as an annoyance.

What it really is is a force that can be harnessed like a skill set. But to harness it effectively, you will need the proper level of knowledge and experience to understand it and how to use it to your advantage. The use of social technologies can be analogous to the Big Bang of the Internet. Scientists know that the Big Bang of the Universe (wiki it at the big bang) happened, but they couldn't identify it at first. With learned knowledge and experience, they figured out where it was coming from and how it was created.

Same thing here. These social technologies are being lumped together as the Big Bang of the Internet, They call it web 2.0. The groundswell is already underway, people are consumed with the various techniques to connect with each other, are creating communities that are effecting change, and are creating content and ideas that could never have been aggregated. These changes come in the form of interlocking relationships within newly created communities or networks. These networks do not exist in any physical sense (we all know what a networking event is or was), they do not rely upon meetings, conferences, or phone calls (think about how many people are BBM'ing each other all day long). These social communities are being formed on the Internet and then are extended into the physical space. Remember how you use to create a relationship or community of like-minded people, then it was really cool to extend that to the Internet and set up a Yahoo Group so that everyone can communicate? Very coordinated and orchestrated. Yeah, well that ain't happening anymore.

So, now you create a community of inspired folks using some social technology like a blog, a wiki or linked in to allow people to connect to each other, to create content, to build ideas, to profess knowledge, to eschew innuendo, and to self-express. It's very uncoordinated! This is the groundswell and people, companies, organizations are using this to build communities. Uh, didn't Obama announce his Vice Presidential candidate on his website? NO, he sent a text message, a BBM from his Blackberry for God's sake.

So, you better get a good widget on your website, you should add a Twitter dialogue to your blog (oh, you don't have a blog?) Tell me your not even using Facebook, My Space or Linked in? All I can say is that you better go and DIGG this.

Why are companies moving away from older learning systems?

Why is this happening all of a sudden? Is this a case of follow the leader? Why migrate to another system when you have spent lots of money in getting the first one correctly positioned?

I'd like to inject my thoughts into this market phenom in a series of short articles on the best practices in selecting your 2nd or even 3rd Learning Management System.

People get tired of their systems, people just get tired of things they own, whether they be personal or business. When things get old, you want to freshen things up...like getting a new paint job or getting a new piece of furniture.

So, why not freshen up your technology system? Well, it's not that easy. Many companies purchased systems years ago when the way of the world said: "buy this, install this, customize this and you'll love this". There are many people dependent upon those systems, IT folks keeping it backed up, database people writing scripts.

I see companies with learning systems that are 5 and 6 years old and you know what, they never got freshened up. Same old look and feel, same old functionality. In fact, its the same old people who are using them...they can't get the newer employees to learn and develop because they are trying to satisfy their needs with older, tired-looking, and slower-working learning technologies.

So, these companies are on the hunt for newer technologies, fresher looks, faster systems and more importanly, something they can purchase and NOT have the same staleness fall into their laps in another 3 years.

Companies are digging deeper in new technologies and service models that utlize Software as a Service, such as salesforce.com, workday ERP, igoogle for business.

There is no hardware, software, middleware, databases, or business intelligence tools to buy, install, maintain, and upgrade. It is based upon a multi-tenancy model that means that each customer securely shares one physical instance of software without ever seeing each other’s data.

There are No Pain Upgrades, seamless for that matter...
With traditional on-premise applications, many customers often fall drastically behind the latest technology & feature releases. With SaaS, all software updates and upgrades are seamless delivered throughout the year to all customers at one time.

Use The Best Available Technology...
Make sure your product is built on a next-generation architecture (using .NET 2.0 and AJAX) that enables the deliver of services faster – deliver implementations & integrations through the use of Web services - so they can easily interact with other applications. In this way, the platform is always moving ahead, it's not getting about getting stale.

So, what is a good (no, great) product demo?

We'll take a look at some of the best practices for presenting a product and for viewing a product presentation...

The best way to start a demo is the way you will end the demo. Heh, I didn't make this up but the theory is that you most remember the last most important thing you saw and most presentations 'end' with the best thing you will see. So, why not show the best up front, cement that vision, and then work through the rest of the product?

Most presentations tend to stray away from the core functionality that the customer wants to see. So, give them what they need to see and only what they need to see, really, everything else is just a distraction for the viewers.

The power of the presenter is to illustrate the "Power of the Delta", if you can differentiate the way it is done today and the way it could be done tomorrow, then you created the proper vision that will resonate and 'stick' to the viewers.

Heh, if I am tying to impress the viewers, the best way is to develop illustrations for their use cases (how they will use the product in each specific instance). The first illustration is to show the baseline, the shortest way to do it. Then you show the improved version, using some options to make it better, more efficient. Lastly, you show the advanced version, basically on steroids (bad word these days for David Ortiz in Boston) with the bells and whistles...a visionary approach>

Now, let's talk about questions that arise from the audience. If you really need to know, sometimes, we love to hear those questions, other times the hair rises on our back! Why?

There are three types of questions:
- a great question
- a good question
- a stupid (sorry!) question

Can you figure out what a GREAT question is...easy, it's a question that leads you directly into your next presentation point. Perfect! Give them kudos and move forward.

OK, how about a good question? Something that you can effectively address but the answer really doesn't impact everyone just a select few in the audience. For the others, its boring. So, you take it over to the 'parking lot', write it on the white board and address every detail after the main preso. This way, whoever is interested in the answer can stay, the others can leave. Perfect, everyone gets what they want.

Finally, a 'stupid question'. I hate to do this, but it's question that a distractor asks where the only purpose is take the presenter away from where they are into an unknown space that has no relevance to the audience or the objectives of the meeting. Even if you want to or can answer it, you do NOT want to, it's a waste of every one's time and serves no purpose. SO, take it to the parking lot, just like above and deal with it later, see if that person is willing to stay late so they can get the answer in private, one on one, with the utmost attention. Guess what, they will leave because it is not even worth their time. Result: detractor is detracted, case solved!

I was thinking "Why am I important to my customers?" it is the word 'custom'

So everyone has some importance to someone...we hope. In the course of what I do everyday, selling complicated software solutions to large companies and their HR organizations, I look to build relationships and trust with the prospective 'customers' that I work with, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Some call your prospects who purchase services or product from you a 'client.

Firstly, I like to use the word 'customer', my client sounds like there is an arms-length transaction at hand, you know, what the attorneys and Wall Street people do. If you think about it, the word 'customer' is comprised of 'custom' - 'er' (see www.dictionary.com). So if you think about it, a custom, habit or practice means an established way of doing things. Custom, applied to a community or to an individual, Habit, applied particularly to an individual, implies such repetition of the same action as to develop a natural, spontaneous, or rooted tendency or inclination to perform it: to make a habit of reading the newspapers. Practice applies to a set of fixed habits or an ordered procedure in conducting activities.

So I decided that I want to 'practice' the 'habit' of providing a 'custom' experience to my customers!

Investing in Talent Management: what's needed to enhance your ROI

What Provides Positive Return from Your Investment?

Integrate Your Learning and Performance to Achieve Talent Management-
The talent management suite covers the employee lifecycle from onboarding through learning management through performance measurement and succession planning and into a pay-per-perfromance culture. Assessing employee performance in isolation is often not enough – you should be able to close skill gaps with dynamically recommended training and development. Don't get stuck with different tools, disconnected databases and no unified view of the data.

Use Talent Management 2.0 web tools-
Workforces are changing fast – hierarchies are flatter, workers are more geographically dispersed, and generational differences are as sharp as ever. Integrated talent management now must account for the numerous ways that your employees interact, learn, and work. An integrated approach is required – one that enables high-impact success around employee collaboration, professional networking, development, and performance. Make use of social networking to foster engagement, drive adoption through intuitive interfaces, make sure there is some AJAX programming that will decrease the use of those pop-up blockers.

Utilize a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model-
On-demand delivery is fast, cost-effective, secure, and meets the needs of some of the world’s largest global enterprises. SaaS architecture provides clients with minimal IT costs, high flexibility, great reliability, and the lowest total cost of ownership. Unlike silos of talent management systems, An integrated SaaS delivery model is fully deployable across the entire enterprise within weeks.

Make Sure the Tools Are Configurable for Your Business Processes-
Every organization is unique and a one-size-fits-all approach to talent management does not work. The need to configure your Organizational Units is entirely more scalable and more flexible than domains and allows for ready matching of your specific workflows and processes with the processes and work flows being managed by the application – down to the tiniest of details.

That's just some of my advice....

WSJ highlights what talent managers know: keep developing, keep training THROUGHOUT THE CRISIS

Some of the sound bites from this article are beginning to sound all too familiar.

I thought all of the talent managers would want to read a synopsis of what Dana Mattioli had to say in her "Theory & Practice" column published on 2/9/09

Those of us who remember the previous downturns all too well, see the same things happening again. Companies historically cut leadership-development programs during downturns, but the moves backfired and prompted midlevel managers and top performers to leave before the economy recovered…It’s obvious that without capable managers “the ability to come through (the recession) in a healthy fashion is diminished”.

Josh Bersin of Bersin Research (a talent management analyst) says the deepest cuts are typically in training for ‘soft skills’ such as communicating with co-workers and conducting meetings. He says “…leadership development is taking a growing share of training budgets. Identifying and grooming leaders is important in good times…in time of crisis when the economy is struggling…it’s imperative”.

Executives need to deploy the proper set of tools that will provide direct operational impact (lower costs and increase productivity): by increasing retention, by deepening your bench strength, through employee development, and filling those critical skill gaps.

As the Wall Street Journal identifies, the problems being sewn today require new systems for tomorrow. Looking forward, 2nd generation Talent Management Systems can offer HR partners, OD&E specialists and executives with tools that will increase employee development, engagement and productivity.

I'm not sure how your company manages this today or what your vision is for the recovery, but feel free to schedule 10 minutes with me to discuss specific customer case studies that might help you.