Learn and Lead

Three Elements of a Learning Organization

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:38:00 +0000

The other day we were discussing how can we build an environment where everyone in the organization will continuously learn from each other.

I feel there are three key elements to build a learning organization.

Technology: This in my view is relatively the easiest component to set up. While it is the easiest, care must be taken to ensure that the technology solution chosen is easy to use and flexible enough to change with the times. It also helps if there is one common platform across the different departments of the organization.
Framework: By this I mean a process framework that makes it easier to share and learn. These could include defined project wash-up meetings, periodic forums that invite people to share what’s happening in their area of work, or defined networking groups that allow
Culture: The most critical element of a learning organization and perhaps the hardest to build. The culture of sharing is where people share without fear, where the greatest reward for sharing is more sharing by others.

Questions I Want To Explore In 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:00:00 +0000

I am promising to myself to read more and blog more in 2012. Here are some of the questions I want to explore in 2012.

What’s changed in the learning and development industry? I will be completing 20 years in the industry and yet I feel the more things change, the more they remain the same.
How are the CxOs and Business Heads really viewing talent development? While most CxOs say that talent development is a key driver to the growth of their organizations, what are they really doing about it?
What’s keeping the training managers awake? What are the training managers’ performance drivers, their goals and the challenges they are facing.
What are the expectations from Social Learning? While social learning is being talked about in the learning blogger circles, are the on-ground managers in synch with it? What is their understanding and expectations from it?
What are the learner’s expectations from talent development interventions? While the focus is on seeking the managers’ views, what about the people who are actual recipients of the talent development interventions? What do they look for?
What’s the new ROI/ROE mantra? With tightening budgets, everyone wants to know the “ROI” of their training spend. ROI has been the holy grail of training, everyone is seeking it, but there are no clear cut answers to this.

Would love to hear from you on these and other things on your mind. Looking forward to your comments and conversations here.

Wishing you and your loved ones a Very Happy New Year.

It’s Been a Rather Quiet 2011 Here

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:17:00 +0000

It’s been a rather quiet 2011 on this blog. Thanks to a couple of guest posts, there were 12 real posts in the whole year. As I reflect on last year, the usual excuse of getting very little time was the first one that sprung to mind. But in reality, I think I just didn't make enough effort. There were many blog posts that crossed my mind that didn’t get written. Many reflections that I wanted to share, many questions that I wanted to explore. Hopefully 2012 will be a better year for this blog. With renewed vigor in the New Year, I am hoping that I will post a lot more frequently in 2012.

Here’s a summary of blog posts of 2011:

I explored the question of whether an organization/business unit should be delivery led or sales led. I am still struggling to find the right balance.
Taking a stab at rants, I make a case that It's Not This Or That, It's This AND That.
A sponsored guest post by Ronnie Friedmann on Painless way to get and give employee feedback.
Picking up a question on Twitter, I share some of the lies I have heard by people while quiting their job.
In a guest post by Puja Anand, she shares her categorization of Clients from Hell.
A video presentation talk by Sir Ken Robinson triggered my thoughts on driving divergent thinking in our children.
Rupa Rajagopalan has been instrumental in running the Instructional Designers Community of India for the last few years along with some other enthusiastic members of the profession published my interview in their newsletter IDConnect.
Another guest post by Puja Anand in which she shares her experiences of dealing with clients from different cultures.
An experience sharing event at work triggered this post in which I share my defining customer moments.
I explore the question Is changing jobs the best way of getting a raise.
In the quest for learning something “new” all the time, the younger people are losing the quest to hone and improve what they know and keep struggling with “I am not learning anything new”.
A call from a recruiter who had not checked my LinkedIn public profile made me wonder why recruiters aren’t using social networking to hire.

Recruiters, Wake Up and Use Social Networking to Hire

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 04:55:00 +0000

In a recent post, RWW reports that “In a study of 300 hiring managers and recruiters, Palo Alto-based social networking monitoring service Reppler reports that 76% of hiring managers look at applicants' Facebook profiles. An additional 56% are looking at Twitter, and 48% check out LinkedIn.”

The fact that recruiters should be checking out basic info on social networks makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem true, at least for Indian recruiters. I recently got a call from a recruiter, apparently someone involved in senior level recruitment in a reputed recruitment firm in India. So this guy starts with introducing himself and how he is specifically focused on senior level recruitment and how they carefully handpick the candidates for select senior level jobs. He goes on to say that he got my reference through someone (he wouldn’t reveal his ‘source’).

After the pleasantries, he asks me about my career background. I said my career profile is listed on LinkedIn and asked him if he had checked that before calling me.

Oh we don’t check LinkedIn profiles, we are required identify candidates from independent sources, he says to my surprise.

Sure, that’s okay but having identified me from independent sources, why haven’t you checked my public profile before calling me?

Oh no, we aren’t supposed to do that.

Duh!!!!!!!!

Why don’t the recruiters realize that they are wasting the candidate’s and their own time by not reviewing the profile on social networking sites? Surely they will be able to find a better job-candidate match by reviewing the profile before they approach the candidates.

I Am Not Learning Anything New!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:00:00 +0000

I am not learning anything new.
I am still doing what I did years ago.
There is no “growth” for me.

I have heard this a few times lately. It seems there’s a quest for continuous learning. And there’s the quest for learning something “new” all the time. Unfortunately there’s no quest to hone and improve what we know. There’s a quest to spread ourselves thin without learning in depth about anything. If I have done something once, it seems I know everything there is to know about it. And “growth” is only a rung in the corporate ladder, a designation change.

Huh!!!

Pandit Jasraj is still singing after years and years of singing. I wonder if he says I am not learning anything new and that I have singing for all these years. I am still a singer, what I was 20 years ago, there’s no “growth” for me.

If the quest is for continuous learning something new each time, what are we doing about it? Are we reading new things? Are we spending time networking with other knowledgeable people and engaging in a conversation with them? Are we writing and speaking about what we are learning?

And are we actually willing to learn? How can we be willing to learn anything new if we believe that we know it all? Where is the space for new learning in this situation?

Is Changing Jobs the Best Way to Get a Raise?

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 15:11:00 +0000

In a recent employee survey by Mercer it was found that one in two employee is seriously considering leaving their jobs for better opportunities in terms of career and base pay. Interestingly around 66% of employees under age 24 are seriously considering leaving. It leads to an interesting question that I have been pondering over and researching informally:

Is changing jobs the best way to get a raise?

After say more than 15 years work experience, do you think someone who has hopped jobs more regularly will be paid more than someone who has spent longer in each job? While I haven't done any serious research, however based on the senior level profiles I come across, I haven't yet found substantial evidence of job hoping really making a significant impact on the ability to get more pay in the long run. I haven't particularly found people with more job changes at higher salary levels than the ones who might have stayed in organizations longer.

It would be interesting to have a survey for people with say more than 15 years of work experience. Would love to hear your observations on this. Do take the time to respond below.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Loading...&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
See responses here.

Image by s_falkow

My Defining Customer Moments

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 03:20:00 +0000

I was recently asked to share some customer moments. One of my defining customer moments was during a project we were doing more than 10 years ago. This was a very large elearning project to convert huge amount of content to elearning in a short period of time. The times were short of the volume of work and everyone was under severe pressure. This included our client contact, who was also under pressure from her stakeholders and customers. As happens in elearning projects, we were expecting to get content from SMEs. Our client was managing the SMEs and they were to provide the content. There were delays and we were having a rather tense call about how to ensure that the project will complete on time. Given the pressures, I also reacted saying the content has been delayed by SMEs and so we need more time. That’s when the client asked in a terse voice as to who is project managing the project? “We are paying you for project management and you now expect me to ensure content is on time?” For a few moments I wasn’t sure what hit me and how to react. It was quite a defining moment of how I view the responsibilities of a project that we undertake.

Lately I have also been working with a lot of government departments in India. It’s been a different experience from working with mostly US-based enterprises. The most common challenge is getting signoffs. However that’s not really my key learning. What I have figured while working with government clients is primarily two things:

1) Think big. The problems government is trying to solve are really big problems, be it at country level or at state level.

2) Align yourself with the government official's vision of the scheme and work towards the success of the scheme, irrespective of the scope of your project. Always have the bigger picture of what the scheme is trying to achieve. Remember, if the scheme succeeds, your project succeeds, and it will result in long term continuing projects. If your project succeeds but the scheme doesn't, there will be no future projects.

What have your defining customer moments? Do share here.

Cultural Issues in Dealing with Clients

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Wed, 25 May 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Puja Anand writes another guest post for Learn and Lead. In this post, earlier published on her blog Accidental CEO Strategic Mom, Puja shares her experiences of dealing with clients from different cultures.

Into my third or fourth year dealing extensively with Asian clients, with a few American/UK clients thrown in, I had formed most of the ideas written here. However, I shied away from this topic because it is a form of stereotyping, and being an Indian expat living in Singapore, I have seen enough of stereotyping applied to me to be wary of it. I decided to write it down only when I was able to present my perspective constructively.
Let me start with my experience with Western clients. As an Asian service provider working with Western clients, you start at an even keel. They choose you after careful evaluation and once you have passed that test, you are their equal, unless you prove them wrong. Innocent until proven guilty…

The work that you execute is considered to be of equal value to both parties and its success likewise equally important. This trust at the starting point of the relationship lasts a long time, through the usual ups and downs of project DLC, provided you are professional and competent. You operate mostly in an environment of trust and partnership.

Coming to Asian customers, I have come across two types of relationships between them and Asian service providers. The first and the more common type of relationship is hierarchical. There is some kind of unseen but powerful driver that forces Asian customers to be aloof and somewhat distrustful of their vendors, as they refer to their service providers. Actions and decisions are often scrutinized for hidden agendas. You have to work much harder to build trust. Guilty until proven innocent! But it’s not all bad. The good thing is that once you have built this trust, it will last a long time. Customers are not likely to go to a competing vendor as easily because the barrier to entry is too high. Great thing for repeat business!

The other type of relationship between Asian customers and vendors is quite the opposite and seen in situations when the vendor’s expertise is well known and well demonstrated, usually in consultant roles. There you see a kind of respect for you as an individual that borders on adulation. Great for business but the downside is that this respect is reserved for only one individual, making it difficult to scale up such a relationship.

As in any generalization, there are exceptions. And just like any generalization, this knowledge can be useful if used effectively. Had I known about these differences at the start of my career in Singapore, I would have made fewer errors with customers and been less perplexed by some incidents. I would also have known how to overcome the barriers that seemed out of place and context at that time.

My Interview in IDConnect

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Tue, 24 May 2011 05:26:00 +0000

Rupa Rajagopalan has been instrumental in running the Instructional Designers Community of India for the last few years along with some other enthusiastic members of the profession. As part of IDCI, Rupa edits a newsletter IDConnect. Rupa interviewed me for the second issue of the newsletter. You can view the complete newsletter on the IDCI community site. I am reproducing my interview here.

The Interview

You have been conducting salary surveys for the past 2 years. Have salary levels for Instructional Designers in India improved? What are the current trends in salary?

It’s hard to find industry trends. I get inputs not just from the salary survey but also the many interviews I conduct, the people I recruit and the teams I manage. Perception plays an important role in people’s minds when trying to understand whether the salary levels of instructional designers have improved. The salary levels in absolute terms have improved but not necessarily the perception. I notice that the younger people continue to be less satisfied.

Do you think Technical Writing is a better known profession in India when compared to Instructional Design? Why?

Technical Writing has a wider job market. Instructional Designer are primarily hired by elearning vendors and some training departments. Tech Writers are also hired by software companies, product companies, website content companies etc. In that sense, Technical Writing is better a known profession.

Which of the following dominates the Indian e-learning market / business today - Template based e-learning or Creative e-learning?

I think it really depends on what the customers want. Most customers don’t want to pay too much and are constantly driving the prices and the timelines down. There are advantages of template based elearning. And template based elearning is not necessarily “not-creative”, if I may use the double negative in this case. Rapid elearning is also something that’s being looked at as a solution to crunch timelines and costs.

You had written an interesting blog post on innovation in the Indian Learning Industry. There were some interesting responses to your post too. What prompted you to write this blog post and what did you learn from the responses?

My post on innovation in Indian Learning industry was actually prompted by another post by Will Thalheimer on the same subject, which was prompted by a NY Times report on innovation in India. I was fascinated by the responses this post received. I have come to believe that innovation is a very relative term. When it comes to identifying innovation at a company, industry or country level, the scale of impact defines the level of innovation in people’s minds. My next post on what is innovation explored these perceptions about innovation.

A lot of companies in India ban use of social media in the workplace. In your opinion, social media is a tool, a medium. What you do with it constitutes the value you extract from it. Can you give some examples of how professionals in India can use social media effectively and responsibly in the workplace?

Many ways really. For one, start subscribing to blogs via your RSS reader. Start conversations with blog writers by commenting on their posts, building the ideas and sharing your ideas. It is very important to start meaningful conversations if you want o build on your knowledge. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes, or by shy of sharing your thoughts. You learn most by exchanging ideas. If you are using Twitter, follow like minded people and industry leaders. On LinkedIn join the groups of your field and engage in conversation. Share the information, links that you come across on various sources with your colleagues at work. Filter out the information and share the relevant bits. This way your colleagues will appreciate your inputs. Remember not to flood them with everything you find. Be selective. If there are questions your colleagues have, try to find answers by tapping into your social network. You will gain respect of your colleagues and your bosses and they will soon realize how social media can help.

Effective collaboration in organizations – What are the challenges and how do you overcome these challenges?

Technology and culture are two big challenged. Most companies are not beginning to solve technological challenges by providing more means of allowing employees to communicate. The bigger challenge is cultural. Organizations should work at building the culture of sharing information freely and encourage collaboration. Collaboration will start bottom up within organizations and top executives need to be careful of not doing anything to discourage it. I recently wrote a post on this subject.

What do you think is the future of learning technology?

It is always hard to predict the future. I believe that learning technology will become more collaborative in the future. How learning content is defined is likely to change and content creation will become easier in that context.

What is your advice to budding learning professionals?

My advice to budding learning professionals: Keep Learning! You have to be able to learn faster than your learners. There is a great responsibility that learning professionals have when they create the learning programs. Keep pace with what’s happening in the field. Understand what business problems your learning program is attempting to solve and ensure that the design and development of the program is in line with the business objectives.

How do you think a platform like Instructional Designers Community of India (IDCI) can help learning professionals in India?

Absolutely. Platforms like these play a crucial role in developing a community of professionals. Instructional Design as a profession has been in India for last 15-20 years and yet is still nascent in a manner of speaking. Platforms like IDCI can help bring professionals in this field together to share their common knowledge and learn from each other. It can provide people in the field a window to what’s happening elsewhere in India and across the world. I have been very encouraged with the progress of IDCI and look forward to seeing it grow in the future.

Driving Divergent Thinking in Our Children

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Wed, 18 May 2011 08:20:00 +0000

I came across this interesting video presentation talk by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award. In the video he talks about what’s wrong with public education and why paradigm change is required. While the talk and the statistics are primarily USA centric, I think the state of affairs and the arguments he states are quite valid even in India, and perhaps most of the world.

I feel that divergent thinking, while reduces as we grow up and get "educated", can increases as we start working & gather many more experiences. Many organizations (at least in the services sector in India) now are focused on teaching (training) their workforce on divergent thinking. And with the increasing exposure to television, movies, the Internet, our thought goes beyond what we might experience directly.

Of course, there is no questioning that the school system should allow children to learn the way they want & what they want. There is definitely a need to reform the education system. However, as parents I feel we can do our bit of giving freedom to children even while following the set system of school education. That is something that is in our control and easily implementable while we continue to push for reforms in the school system.

Clients From Hell... and Heaven!

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:50:00 +0000

This is a guest post By Puja Anand

Recently, I saw a website titled Clients from Hell that had funny anecdotes from web designers about unreasonable or uninformed clients with strange requirements. It got me thinking about the clients I have interacted with in the last 10-12 years. Who among them would qualify as clients from hell?

Are they the clients who ask us to reduce our prices, even as the expenses go up? Are they the ones who expect work to be delivered two weeks earlier than our proposed tight schedules? Are they the ones who ask us to change features that they approved in earlier deliverables?

It may sound hard to believe but the answer to all three questions is No. Of course, we all wish for customers who would pay us more, or do their part in the development process on time, or have sanctity for prior approvals, but we recognize that these are reflections of the environment our clients are in and of the nature of the beast called e-learning development. More importantly, these demands for lower prices, faster timelines and flexible processes have a hidden potential for creating value in the long run.

Value is the real differentiator. So, it makes sense to look for client engagements where no or little value was created for anyone involved. When I looked at all clients from this lens of value, three types of clients stood out.

The Window Dresser

This type of client gets into e-learning to impress someone else or to appear to be someone they aren’t. It sounds hard to believe that such clients would exist, especially since a significant cost is involved in developing e-learning solutions. But I have come across such clients in some government departments or large traditional firms.

The problem with such clients is that there is no real commitment to the e-learning initiative and therefore, there is no champion for it in the organization. As a result, the carefully crafted content, a product of myriads of reviews and rework, sits on the specially chosen highly-secure servers for years without being used by anyone. So much effort and value lost! Another consequence is more long lasting and damaging: A failed attempt at e-learning results in negative perceptions about the effectiveness of e-learning that persist for very long.

The Pedant

These clients are sticklers for all kinds of rules and take great pride in their attention to detail. All deliverables are scrutinized for minute issues (e.g. line alignment down to a pixel) and a lot of energy and goodwill is used up in fixing them. Sometimes, this takes a different turn- a lot of time and energy is used up in adding bells and whistles to every page (e.g. this button should blink twice and stop, these bullet points should be accompanied by sound effects, this page should have an animated transition etc).

So what is wrong with such clients, you may ask. After all, don’t they help improve the quality of the output and therefore create value? Not really. The increased focus on small and insignificant details often means that deeper issues are overlooked, such as completeness of the content and its relevance to the audience. Once the training is launched, it falls short and doesn’t provide any real benefit to the users. Once again, so much wasted effort and so little value!

The Commitment Phobe

This type of client delays making decisions on every step in the development process. Often, the person in charge is either not empowered to make decisions and/or the company’s culture is very hierarchical. The decision makers want to limit their role to seeing the final product and pronouncing it passed or failed, and junior staff is too inexperienced to deal with any design- or content-related issues confidently. Sometimes, the situation is compounded by lack of support for the e-learning initiative by the SMEs.

The problem with such clients is that projects can take inordinately long time to be completed. E-learning launch, typically tied to an impending training cycle, is delayed and loses its momentum and support of several stakeholders. Sometimes, content is outdated by the time the course is developed. Colossal loss of effort and value for everyone involved.

As I pondered over the above three types of clients, I couldn’t help thinking of the clients who are at the other end of the spectrum, clients we love to work with. What attributes of these clients propels us to create great content that adds tremendous value to the end users of the training? This is what I think makes these clients special.

Total Commitment to Results
These clients have a single focus- the results that the training will help achieve. This means that they have a clear idea of both the learner and business needs and understand what will meet these needs most effectively.

Focus on the Big Picture
Another attribute that these customers demonstrate is a hold on the big picture. When the big picture is to change the mindset of employees, or to equip them with certain skills, it becomes easier to make decisions about where to expend most effort and energies.

Work as Partners
Finally, this set of clients always works with the development team as partners with common goals and approach the relationship from a position of trust and respect. E-learning development is a two-way street. When the development team and the client work as partners, magic can and does happen.

About the Author:

Puja Anand is a seasoned e-learning designer, manager and business leader. She has over 15 years of experience in the industry. Currently on a sabbatical, her last role was as the CEO of Learning Solutions at Knowledge Platform. Find her on LinkedIn at: http://sg.linkedin.com/pub/puja-anand/1/957/834

Illustrations by Irene Wan; Cartoon from http://sinkorschwim.wordpress.com/far-from-home/

Lies While Quitting

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:28:00 +0000

@sidin posed a question on Twitter about lies we give while quitting a job. I am sure there’s a full article out with a lot more research.

Over the years, I have heard many reasons that people give while quitting. These reasons are not necessarily lies in all cases. These are just a collection of some reasons that I figured were lies after the person had left the organization.

"I want to do something different" (when the will continue in the same industry doing the same thing)

"I am getting a better role" (when they will do exactly what they were earlier doing)

"I am getting a better designation" (when they aren't)

"I want to take a break" (and they promptly join another company)

"I have to go to my hometown because my parents are old/unwell" (and they promptly join another company in the same city)

"My spouse is getting transferred" (and I find either the spouse to be in the same city, or they have joined another company in the same city)

"I am joining a full time course" (and they promptly join another company)

“I have to join my family business” (and they promptly join another company)

What are some of the lies you have heard or have given while quitting an organization?

Painless Way to Give and Get Employee Feedback

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:03:00 +0000

This is a guest post by Ronnie Friedmann

Ever wish you could evaluate your employees as if you spent the day with them, day in and day out? Maybe you can. Do the next best thing by utilizing 360 degree feedback methods. Software designed to assess employee performance from a myriad of different relationships will give your organization a much more meaningful way to evaluate and improve performance.

These new software packages can help businesses of all sizes gain valuable insights about individual employees or entire organizations from subordinates, peers, supervisors and even outside customers or vendors. How better to get a feel for your staff's strengths and weaknesses than through the eyes of everyone they encounter while fulfilling the responsibilities of their job. In the past, trying to get such a circumspective view of performance would be both cumbersome and expensive. With 360 degree employee feedback software, you can get evaluations based on numeric and/or comment based feedback. Computerization makes it easier to track completion status at any point during the performance evaluation process.

One of the most important aspects of updating your evaluation process would be to consider the ease with which you can be up and running. At one end of the spectrum, you could find a software program that is literally out-of-the-box and functional within ten days from start to finish. Or, customize the software completely so that it suits your operation's workforce assessment process. Either way, it will give you a system that will allow you and your employees to develop a better understanding of each individual's strengths and weaknesses. It will also allow your managers and HR department an idea of how best to use these new insights to develop leadership and customer service training programs to address any perceived shortcomings.

Another great benefit from 360 degree employee feedback is that it makes it easier to identify and develop the key players and the rising stars in your organization. Getting feedback from across the organization and via all existing relationships will help you tag employees who have great skills but aren't necessarily in the right job for their individual skill sets. You'll also be able to see who excels with the intangible skills that can't be taught, but must be nurtured if you're going to keep your organization's growth on an upward trend.

Key features of a 360 degree evaluation software package will also save your company time and money by eliminating the mounds of paperwork usually necessary by full scale reviews. A good program will allow you to create different evaluation platforms for the various groups within your organization. It should allow you to send personalized email reminders automatically to all participants so that your evaluation continues on pace. If there are personality conflicts that might be identifiable when viewing the results by individual respondents, you can set the program up so that all results are viewable as a summary for each type of respondent, thereby insuring confidentiality.

In business we always talk about perception being reality. If our customers believe something about us, it might as well be true until we can change that perception. So too with employees. They might think they're doing a bang-up job when in reality their peers or their customers don't agree. On the other hand, customers might think a specific employee is terrific, yet peer or internal team reviews show that employee to be more smoke than substance.

Employees are the lifeline of any business. If they're productive and focused on continually getting better, your company should succeed. Software systems giving you access to 360 degree evaluations can help improve employee performance and improve the prospects for your continued success.

It's Not This Or That, It's This AND That

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:09:00 +0000

Came across a tweet by a respected TV journalist today:

r day should be a celebration of creative genius of india, not of armed forces might. fewer tanks, more music. gnight

I have heard people cribbing and providing their alternatives in the past also. “We should not spend money on games, the same could be used for the poor”, “why do film stars get awards, they should be given to intellectuals” and so on.

Mostly we rant about why we shouldn’t do the things that are happening and why we should shift our attention, money, focus to something else. It seems as though magically by doing that we would solve the seemingly bigger problems. How I wish it was so easy. How I wish that poverty would be eroded by not spending the money on games but by giving money to the poor.

Unfortunately it’s usually never a case of EITHER OR but almost always a case of AND. We must have games AND solve our poverty problems, the Republic Day must be a celebration of Armed forces might AND creative genius of India, awards must be given to intellectuals AND film stars.

Do you see yourself using Or in your workplace or are you using AND? Using AND can give shape to ideas and your suggestions stand a better chance of being accepted.

Delivery Led or Sales Led

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:52:00 +0000

I have been wondering about this for a while now. What’s better for a business – to be delivery focused or to be sales focused? Who’s a better business leader – a delivery focused leader or a sales focused leader? I know of companies bracketed as being sales focused or delivery focused. Sales led/focused companies are known for their aggressive attitude towards grabbing business, at any cost, at any promise, irrespective of its delivery capabilities. Deliver led/focused companies are known to be more focused on selling only what they can deliver, known to be risk averse but perhaps more predictable in their ability to deliver. Do customers prefer one over the other? What’s better?

2010 Redux

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 05:30:00 +0000

2010 was a rather quiet year for my blog. My blog didn’t see much of me this year, only 24 posts this year. As for my other social media presence, it’s been mostly quiet all across. My RSS reader missed me, on many occasions I would mark 1000s of unread items as read and try to start again. Tweeting also took back seat. Tweetstats tells me I posted only 854 tweets in 2010 against more than 2000 the previous year. And still, sometime during this year, this blog completed three years, crossed 50,000 hits and more than 370 feed subscribers. Google Analytics tells me that hits this year were marginally more than last year.

During the year, my role changed from primarily developing elearning content to providing learning solutions for the Indian market. It’s mostly about selling training in various form factors, including instructor led and elearning. What’s interesting is the work we are doing with various ministries in the Government of India on employability and skill development, something that I hope to write more about in the coming year. The new role also takes me even closer to the actual implementation of learning solutions and is providing me new insights. I am hoping to make up for my sparse blogging last year in 2011.

Some of the posts I wrote in 2009 and 2008 continue to be popular and appear in the most read posts in 2010. My top 5 read posts in 2010 were:

Rules for Kids and Teenagers for Facebook Usage (2009) is the most read post on my blog, not just last year but in this history of this blog.
Top 10 Qualities of a Good Manager (2010)
Instructional Designer Competencies (2008)
eLearning and Content Development Salaries in India (2009) continues to intrigue the readers
5 Reasons Why You are Not Being Promoted (2009)

As for the posts I wrote in the year, my personal top 5 posts of 2010 are:

I also quite liked my son’s account of student life that I shared in A Day in the Life of a Student.

Thank you again for continuing to read this blog.

Career Paths for Trainers

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:55:00 +0000

Someone asked a question on the career growth paths for trainers on one of our internal forums. And about the same time I came across this interesting blog post which talks about not worrying about career path and living your career story, written by Jason Seiden. It is from Dan McCarthy’s list of 20 Best Leadership Blog Posts of 2010. Just loved the way Jason explains the need to dump career paths and focus on building your career stories.

So, what could be a Trainer's career stories? While it is really for each one to decide for themselves, I can imagine some of them going like these:

A trainer could become a better trainer. This seems to be least favorite path of trainers but is the most crucial and can take trainers to the peak. It is also the hardest in my view. By becoming better trainers I mean really be known in the industry. Build your social network and stay in touch with your students. Continue providing them assistance post training. Be less of 'sage on stage' and more of a 'coach by the side'. Start a blog and write a book on your subject or on how to become a better trainer. Understand how people learn and create training practices that help people learn faster. Do research on the subject of training and learning. If you are in the training business, there is a great scope for better trainers who go beyond training in a class and help build learning solutions, who can do research and appropriately adapt their training strategies, or even create new ones, who can create new standards in the training industry.
Depending on the acumen towards operations, people management and business, trainers could move to roles like managing training, handling projects and other ops roles. Trainers could even take on sales/business roles. They could move to manage training centers, area, territory, region, zone, country. Many senior people in our organizations have been trainers at some point of their careers. All training businesses need people with good ops, sales and business management skills and acumen.
Trainers could become Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for content development projects. Trainers could even start writing content, depending on the skill and interest. Trainers could become full-fledged content developers. And from there ID specialists, or take the other path of project management. From either path, trainers could move to taking on business or sales roles.

There's no dearth of career growth paths and I am sure there are many more than what I have listed above. What's really important is to figure out what's the career story we want to create for ourselves.

Collaboration: It’s Not About Technology, It’s About the Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 08:18:00 +0000

I got a chance to talk about how companies can use technology internally to collaborate and share more effectively. I started with examining what’s currently in use in organizations.

Email is the most commonly used collaborative tool. Unfortunately it is also perhaps the worst tool for open collaboration in an organization. You can only collaborate with people you send the email to. And the information is then trapped in email inboxes of people who were communicating with each other, with no access to others. The information isn’t shared beyond the people who the email was marked to.

There are other tools used for collaboration, like project-based collaboration using Microsoft SharePoint and wiki-based project workspaces. Amongst synchronous collaboration tools, there’s chat, video conferencing and online web conferencing tools like WebEx and Microsoft Office Communications Server. There are also tools like Salesforce that have the potential to be great collaboration tools if they are used correctly. And many employee portals also provide some collaboration features like discussion forums.

Of the tools that companies can use for collaboration, I am a proponent of micro-messaging in the workplace. Tools like Yammer, Socialcast, and Socialtext are great micro-messaging tools. Cloud documents is another collaboration tool that I feel companies should probably use more frequently. Services like Google Docs, Windows Live SkyDrive and Zoho are great online collaboration tools. Companies could also try Skype as a free video conferencing and web conferencing tool.

But I feel collaboration in companies is not really about technology. It’s about the culture. It’s the culture to:

- Broadcast yourself: Can you simply broadcast what you are doing without anyone necessarily anyone asking you? Executives in companies might be a little shy of doing this but unless you broadcast what you are doing, how can you collaborate?

- Openly seeking help: Don’t be shy to seek help, don’t worry what people will think about what you might not know.

- Respond to others: Collaboration is not one way. You have to be open to responding to others if you want collaboration as a culture in your organization.

- Share information freely: Do I even need to explain this?

- Build personal networks: The bigger your personal network is, the better your chances of collaboration. This is true even within an organization. The more people you know in an organization, the better your chances of collaboration.

- Not be afraid to make mistakes: You will make mistakes online. Can you build the culture where people are not afraid to make mistakes?

- Constantly be open to learning: Do you have a culture in your organization where everyone is eager to learn? The more open the culture to learning, the more collaboration you can expect in your organization.

It’s important to understand why companies should collaborate. Some contexts that have changed for me personally over last few years:

- I am as knowledgeable as the knowledge I have to I am as knowledgeable as the collective knowledge of my personal network.

- I am node of reference because I know things. Of course that’s true. But I am also the node of reference because I know who knows.

- I am expert because I know things, which is absolutely true. But if I don’t share what I know with others, I will soon lose my status as an expert. I am an expert because I share what I know.

- I can learn only from gurus. That’s something we should all let go. I can really learn from anyone irrespective of their position in the organization.

Here’s my presentation.

Collaboration 3.0

View more presentations from Manish Mohan.

Would You Get Your Boss Promoted?

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:52:00 +0000

I have never come across a post that talks about getting your boss promoted. So this post by Dan McCarthy is a refreshing change. We don’t seem to like our bosses, managers are always complete nincompoops, idiots who seem to have gotten where they are because of anything but competence. Everyone rushes to the ‘rescue’ of the poor worker from the clutches of the incompetent ‘manager’.

So why would you even want to think about getting your boss promoted? Dan provides useful insight. He says:

I’ll bet when you worked for a successful manager you had:

- More resources

- More credibility

- More meaningful, value-added work

- More development and career opportunities

- A bigger slice of the merit increase, bonus, or commission pie

He goes on to say:

Now think about when you worked for a failing manager. …you probably experienced:

- A lack of resources; your team was always at the end of the line when it came to budget, office space, equipment, headcount, etc….

- No matter how good you may have been, you carried the stain of your manager’s bad reputation

- You worked on low priority projects that didn’t seem to matter

- You didn’t get much coaching, and maybe not much development (failing managers are usually threatened by ambitious, high achievers)

- A lack of career growth opportunities – because your manager was stuck in place, and didn’t have the political clout to be an advocate for his/her people

Here’s how you can get your boss promoted:

1. Be damn good at your job.

2. Support your manager behind his/her back.

3. Give your manager credit for your own successes.

4. Nominate your manager for an award.

5. Show confidence in your manager’s potential.

6. Make development suggestions on how to be better prepared for larger opportunities.

7. Give feedback to your manager.

Do read his full post here.

How to Become a Thought Leader - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:09:00 +0000

Sometime back I had written about how to become a thought leader in three easy steps. Dorie Clark takes it a step further in detailing it out. She provides some useful tips on how you can share your thoughts and be publicly recognized as a thought leader. She recommends following the six steps to jump-start your thought leadership:

Create a robust online presence
Flaunt high-quality affiliations
Give public speeches
Appear on TV
Win some awards
Publish a book

Read her full post on HBR Blogs.

Would You Fire Your Best Performer?

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 03:30:00 +0000

Sanjay is a great team leader aspiring to be a manager. He has shown good results in the projects he has handled. He has shown willingness to go the extra mile in the tasks assigned. He has been constantly told he is a great performer and the company would not like to lose a great team leader. Regular feedback and company awards have made him proud and self confident. However he has had some issues in his ability to handle larger projects and teams. His view of the industry is relatively narrow. His view of a manager’s role is limited and his attitude is bordering towards arrogance and over confidence. He is closed to any feedback about his limitations and refuses to accept inputs to improve his abilities to become a good manager. He will not get the manager’s position that he is aspiring for. He has thrown tantrums that he will start looking for another job that gives him the promotion that he believes he deserves.

Would you simply wait for him to quit his job, paying him while he finds another job? Or would you fire your best performer who is great at the current role but not ready for the next role? Or would you give in to the tantrums and promote him even though he is not ready for the role?

With the job market opening up and companies vying for talent, I foresee a repeat of what was happening couple of years ago. Given the paucity of talent people were promoted to roles they just weren’t ready for. Do you think this will happen again?

Changing Context

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 02:31:00 +0000

During a recent organizational development workshop that I attended, the facilitator talked about changing context. It was an interesting discussion that got me thinking about my changed context. I could recognize a few that I have experienced in the last couple of years.

About two years ago my context as a manager and leader changed about the way I was managing my teams. I moved from

"I have to do everything and I have get everything done” to “I have to enable people to do their jobs"

This significantly changed my approach to tasks that I and my team are responsible for. I would like to believe that this has actually made me more effective as a manager.

Since I started my blog and being more active on the social network another interesting context changed for me. I have gone from

“You are an expert because you know something” to “You are an expert because you share what you know” and “You are also an expert because you know who knows”.

Truly gives meaning to the phrase “the more you give, the more you get”

People retention and recruitment is a big challenge. I have tweeted in the past how I came across resumes of people who’ve had far too many job changes in their career. Now when I am recruiting, I am looking for if the person will stay in the organization for around 2 years. My context changed from looking for

“Longevity in an organization” to “Will the person stay in the organization for about 2 years”

While it is too early to know about the specific hiring decisions but at least I find it easier to hire now.

What context changes have you experienced?

A Seat at the Table: Are you Ready?

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:07:00 +0000

Loved this article in the Learning Solutions magazine The Specialist’s Dilemma about getting a seat at the table by Fred Nickols. I especially loved the following description:

Next, take stock of your grasp of your organization's purpose, mission, operations, history, structure, strengths, personnel, politics, finances, the opportunities and threats it faces, its competitors and their relative advantages or disadvantages, its customers and markets, its key suppliers and critical inputs, its stated and manifest strategies, its reputation, any governmental and regulatory considerations, the executive cadre (including their history and relationships inside and outside your organization), and anything else you can think of that I haven't included in this list. If you don't have a good grasp of all or most of those matters, then you probably don't belong at the table – at least, not just yet.

Yup, more is required for a seat at the table than just being very very good at what you currently do. And yes, you should question whether you really want a seat at the table. It isn’t always pleasant :-).

11 Reasons NOT to Ban Social Media in Your Organization

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:46:00 +0000

Jane Hart seeks rebuttal to reasons commonly given by organizations for banning social media at work. I have heard some of these. Here’s why I believe organizations should NOT ban social media, rather find ways to leverage it. Some of these are in the Indian context of hiring and retaining workforce. I am adding an 11^th reason that I have heard for why organizations ban social media that could perhaps make it to the list.

11. Social media takes up too much of company’s Internet bandwidth hampering other work.

Given the advantages of social media, and reducing cost of bandwidth, it might be a very worthwhile investment by the organization. Investing in bandwidth is probably as critical, if not more, than investing in higher-end machines and laptops.

10. Social media is a fad.

If so do you want to be left behind and not know anything about it?

9. It’s about controlling the message.

If it is are you using the channels available to you and the employees? Just because social media is banned at work does not mean employees don’t have access to it at all. They are on it whether you like it or not. And if you are indeed worried about controlling the message, are you on the same channels are your employees are?

8. Employees will goof off.

If employees have to goof off they will, whether they have access to social media at work or not. If you are managing your work allocation and performance management well, and have the right business measurements in place, it doesn’t really matter whether employees goof off or not. If you are measuring the time they are spending on activities rather than the results they are expected to achieve, you are probably a lawyer or a consultant billing by the hour. I can’t comment on lawyers but as a consultant, you better focus on results or you’ll be out of business.

7. Social media is a time waster.

See point 8.

6. Social media has no business purpose.

If your customers aren’t on social media, investors aren’t on social media, stakeholders are not on social media, employees are not on social media, competition is not on social media, and you don’t believe in continual learning, keeping track of market trends etc., then yeah, perhaps social media serves no business purpose for you.

5. Employees can’t be trusted.

If you can’t trust of your employees, why are you in the business that needs employees? Do you trust them enough to let them talk on phones, use email? Then you can trust them with social media. Yeah sure there are sensitivities of using social media on which you should coach your employees, just as you would to use the phone or email. The video talks about employees can’t be trusted to not put up photos on the office party. Well what’s the harm? It’s a great opportunity to tell the world what a fun place to work your organization is, and therefore attract more talent for your organization, especially when the workforce is getting younger (also see point 4).

4. Don’t cave into the demands of the millennials.

Enough demographic studies show that in India the workforce is getting younger. Wouldn’t you want to create an environment that your workforce relates to and enjoys? Would you want to create an environment that your workforce finds stifling? You could potentially use social media access as a retention strategy.

3. Your teams already share knowledge efficiently.

Cool, so you will understand how social media makes it easier to serve this objective.

2. You’ll get viruses.

So get better anti-virus protection software and better processes to update your computer with latest patches.

1. Your competition isn't using it, so why should you?

Don’t all business gurus tell you to do things your competition isn’t doing to get ahead in business? Do you really have this as a reason for banning social media at work? Duh!

Progress so far - Unofficial Salary Survey 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Manish Mohan) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:29:00 +0000

It’s been a slow start to the 2010 Unofficial Salary Survey of eLearning, Content Development and Training jobs. You can now view the responses by following the Responses link.

Some highlights so far:

Functions that have participated are Instructional Designers (33%) and Technology/Programmers (22%), followed by Project management (17%) and Graphics and Media (11%).
Most participants have 10 years work experience (28%) followed by 5 and 3 years (11% each).
So far the survey seems to be dominated by male responders (72%).
Only 28% people switched jobs last year.
Mostly people from elearning/training vendors have participated (72%).
City spread is fairly even with nearly equal participation from NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. Surprisingly, Bangalore has had low participation so far.

Some changes I had introduced in this year’s survey were:

Number of years of experience is more specific rather than a range.
Salary details are now a number instead of a range. This will help get better inputs about salaries.
Gender info can help to see if there is any gender inequality in salaries.
Industry info can help identify salaries in different industries.

The survey can be useful only if more people participate. Do spread the word around.

There's nothing official about this survey. The survey is not based on responses by companies but based on responses provided by you, the employee. This survey is not associated with any organization. The survey is anonymous.

This survey is for you if you are an Instructional Designer, Content Developer, Technical Writer, Project Manager, Graphics designer, Flash Programmer, Content Integrator, Tester, Editor, Trainer, Training administrator, SME, or any other role involved in elearning, content development and training delivery.

Click Unofficial eLearning Salary Survey of India 2010 to participate in the survey. I will publish the findings on my blog here sometime in August/September 2010. This year’s questionnaire attempts to find out more about you and the industry to provide a more in-depth analysis.

Help derive maximum benefit from this survey: spread the word about this survey. Email, Tweet, Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and Blog about this page for your friends and colleagues.

Earlier survey findings:

Links for 2010-02-18 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!
Article by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, the authors of Wikinomics. Long post on why universities should embrace collaborative learning and collaborative knowledge production. Also see the ensuing discussion between industry experts in the comments section on the post.

Links for 2010-02-16 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

"90-9-1" Rule for Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Links for 2009-12-24 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00:00 PST

Top 10 lists: Twenty Top 10s in e-learning

Links for 2009-11-25 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

Learning Styles: fable-ous and tragic
A slightly long post that highlights debate on whether learning styles exist or not. Lots of links to research, papers, blogs & videos presenting both sides of the debate. Good reference post if you ever want to know more about learning styles.

Links for 2009-11-23 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

Learn to Podcast | Podcasting 101 | Guide to Podcasting Basics

Links for 2009-11-22 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

List of Enterprise Microblogging Tools: Twitter for the Intranet
From Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing

Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital
Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate broker that seeks to give consumers the information and tools once limited to real estate agents. He shares the best questions from investors during a recent fund raising.