Gautam Ghosh

The following is an article I wrote for the National HRD Network newsletter. Would love your feedback

So the folks at E&Y reached out to me for this report and it's come out with some interesting findings for social media and India.

You can read the report below. My quote is on page 38 :)

The problem is that social within organizations is doing exactly what we’ve always wanted it to do: it’s maturing.

Which means we don’t need rockstars, we need performers. People that can further business goals within a system and build and implement strategies that fit as part of an entire organization, not just their personal agendas.

We talked in The Now Revolution about social becoming a skill rather than a job. A set of capabilities that every person will have, to some extent, and apply differently within an organization depending on their needs and responsibilities.

It’s already happening.

We need people who can understand social’s impact on an organization, but not just so they can be the ones to use the platforms and engage with customers online.

We need them so that they can socialize that knowledge, form key leadership teams within of centers of excellence and distribute what they know deeper and contextually inside a company so that everyone gets smarter and more immersed in social as a catalyst for better work (not necessarily the solution for it).

The social ‘superstars’ need to be the best enablers we’ve ever seen. Which means they might need to be behind the scenes, not right out in front.

These are people who are polymaths and understand the intersections of social with different corners of the company. People who are skilled in diplomacy and teaching and creating consensus, bringing lots of different people to a table to develop a unified vision and a plan to get from here to there. People who can and will do the hard work, slog through the inevitable trenches, work through the arduous process of resetting organizational memory, and sticking with the sometimes slow process of change.

Am glad because that's exactly what we are doing at Philips India. We want to build "social" as a skill to all the HR professionals and also to get the senior leadership to engage with social and do stuff, to understand the power of the medium and therefore implications for the organization.

In fact I had said this some time ago on Social Samosa too :) There are a bunch of us at Change Agents Worldwide who are trying to learn from each other as we do this. 

English: Logo Tata Group (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The HR Consulting market in India is in a state of churn. NS Rajan (Blog, Twitter) who built the largest HR consulting practices in India, is joining the oldest and one of the most sprawling Indian conglomerates (which makes everything from salt to steel to software (with a revenue of $100 billion) the Tata Group as group chief Human Resources Officer and will be reporting to the new Chairman, Cyrus Mistry.

The HR Consulting industry in India is seeing a churn. Ganesh Shermon who was Rajan's counterpart in KPMG has also left, and the Mercer India head Nishchae Suri is replacing him.

Mercer's Rajiv Krishnan is joined E&Y as HR Advisory Partner in October and is seen to be Rajan's successor.

Eight months ago Smita Anand (ex-Hewitt HR Head) joined Korn/Ferry in India whereas Dhruv Prakash who was heading India Leadership Consulting at Korn/Ferry left in November to be self-employed.

Do share the videos with others if you find them useful :)

It's great that smart learning professionals are already leveraging it. See this tweet :)

In my new role as a "digital and social" subject matter expert in HR, I was approached by two senior (non-HR) leaders of the firm to be a "reverse mentor" to them in the "social and digital" domain.

What is Reverse Mentoring?

As Krish Shankar of Bharti Airtel says in this article:

This concept, being increasingly adopted by savvy, new-age organisations, turns the old paradigm of mentorship into a higher and more effective collaborative effort. The clincher here is that the younger person becomes the mentor and the seasoned senior professional the mentee. Typically, the mentee has more overall experience (as a result of age) than the mentor (who is younger), but the mentor has more knowledge in a particular area and therefore reverses the conventional relationship.
Clearly, the modern-day notion of an exchange of ideas and knowledge has changed, especially after the phenomenal expansion of the social networks, and the digital and mobile marketing platforms, blurring the rigid and accepted norms of relationships between individuals, teams and organisations. Today, an exchange of ideas is no longer restricted to an inner circle of influence, the purview of designations and age.
Reverse mentoring can re-energise older employees, keep younger workers engaged and improve relationships between the different generations in the workplace. For example, junior mentors can help managers understand how to motivate and retain young workers. They can also share first-hand knowledge of a younger customer base — critical for companies aiming to tap the youth market.

So yes, it has been an interesting experience in my first few mentoring meetings. Will blog about more experiences soon :) 

A break during the Dachis Group Social Business Summit in Austin, TX (Photo credit: Lars Plougmann)

When I started my career in the social business consulting space, there were two firms I was following closely. One was Altimeter Group the analyst firm started by Groundswell co-author Charlene Li with superstars like Jeremiah Owyang. The other was a firm that started off as a consulting firm, but has since become a social analytics product firm - The Dachis Group, fou.nded by Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis.

Three years ago Dachis Group launched a series of events called The Social Business Summit. This year in 2013 the Social Business Summit comes to India, on 23rd May.

Here are the details. And I am proud to be a speaker at the event. Hope to see you there :)

Image via CrunchBase

Let me start off with a confession. I love Twitter. It is my social/information network of choice. (btw, here's where you can follow me :))

But even the Twitter evangelist in me cringes when I come across something like this Wall Street Journal article that says Twitter is the new resume.

Er, no, WSJ.

Twitter can be a great way to judge a person's passions and interests - and that is useful for some kind of jobs and some kind of roles. For a handful of roles (social media marketers, etc) the number of followers and the virality of your content is relevant. But that's what they are - a handful.

What is emerging however, is that for some kind of roles, where skills can be showcased - there are firms like Entelo and TalentBin which track your digital footprints across networks to determine your interests and skills (your programming knowledge is showcased at Github or Stack Overflow, for example)

Then there are services like Gozaik, which use Twitter to distribute resumes.

But a 140 character resume? Nope. Not going to happen for the vast majority of jobs and roles.

We've all been there. That job that sucks. That abusive manager. Those subordinates that don't listen.

Oh how would you like to be rid of them. Tell them "STFU"

But it's never a good idea to burn your bridges. Today's employer might be tomorrow's consultant. Or whom a consultant reaches out for more data.

Quitting may be normal. However, quitting with grace, is an art.

Today, a friend shared his resignation he sent to his boss. I am not sure how his boss is going to reply, but if I was that boss I would be delighted to get a resignation like that.

Quitting gracefully can be a better and tougher job than staying and cribbing. Choose wisely.

Here's a short update. I have joined Philips India as a GM- HR Strategy and Projects at Gurgaon from today.

Here's my updated LinkedIn profile. Am pretty excited to work with Yashwant Mahadik, Vice President - Head of Human Resources, Indian Sub-Continent at Philips. You can find him on Twitter too :) 

When I was recently locked out of my Google Account (because I had 2-step verification and the phone wasn't available) I didn't miss Gmail much. I could still see the emails on my phone. The two Google services I realised I missed the most were Blogger and Reader.

When people ask me how I have blogged close to 2900 posts over 10 years, I tell them a big part for that is I consume a lot of content too. And since 2006 (after the Bloglines era) Google Reader has become my default way to consume content from a myriad of sources.

And now Google is shutting down Reader from 1st July.

I guess the writing was on the wall. After they shut down AdWords for Feeds. Google is a business enterprise and has to think about monetization vs resources.

So, thank you whoever worked on the Google Reader team. Before the days of Twitter and Facebook you gave us a way to keep up with our favorite sources of content on the web.

And I'll still use Reader till 30th June.

Seems like Pizza Hut is trying a recruiting stunt at Austin's Digital and Music festival, South by South West Interactive or SXSW as it's known.

Forbes reports that it will hold 140 second interviews to select its Social Media Manager. Crazy or inspired? You decide. One thing is that is a great PR-able story. But as a HR person, I worry that Pizza Hut is focusing on the bells and whistles too much than actual potential.

Here are the details:

The interviews will last just 140 seconds as in the hyper speed, think-on-your-feet social media space, Pizza Hut wants applicants who can actually demonstrate their credentials
Candidates are asked to bring nothing more than their smartphones and ID to the interview.
Also, Pizza Hut notes that those who are interested can officially apply for the position on the Pizza Hut careers page or during the interview process, which will include a review of each person’s LinkedIn profile live via mobile device. No paper resumes! 
The official job description and responsibilities will be posted to the Pizza Hut career’s mobile site and the company will conduct a another round of interviews via Google+ on March 14.

 What do you think? Leave your impressions in the comments below?

Altimeter Group, which regularly brings out reports on how large organizations surveyed about 700 people working in social media within large firms (not agencies) and this is what they found.

The main points:

1. Only 34% of businesses felt that their social strategy was connected to business outcomes
2. half of all executives are not informed, engaged, or aligned with their company’s social media strategies

Most social media efforts are either led by Marketing or the PR/CorpComm groups.

But as this graphic shows, one Full Time Employee is also working on social media in other groups - take a look at the percentage of companies in which a person in HR is also looking full time after social media - 20% of companies that have Marketing leading social report that while 34% of companies that have PR/CorpComm leading social have at least a full time employee in HR focusing on social.







And this is how an organization grows as it matures in social.




And the budgets they have for external and internal social


You can download the full report from here 

Image via CrunchBase

Often when I have presented to HR teams that information they believe is confidential - specially "internal information/knowhow" - is not so, and I present information about the company that is present on Glassdoor, Mouthshut or JobBuzz (from TimesJobs)

And then the penny drops.

Salaries. Ratings of company culture/work/benefits/CEO. Interview process. Career growth. Everything is out there.

That is not the only thing. Prospective employees are reaching out to current employees via public platforms like Twitter or more private channels like LinkedIn, and getting to know the inside reality of work in a specific business unit/function or even how the prospective boss is like.

So on the one hand, individuals are finding their information, and on top of that reviewing sites are acting as aggregators for the crowd's views.

There are two things organizations and HR people can do.

1. Ignore it. Pretend it doesn't matter. Justify that the vast majority of their hires do not do such background checks. As of yet. And say that it is anyway skewed as people only vent negative views on such sites.
2. Or accept it. As a trend that is a sign of the times to come and is only going to grow bigger. Also understand that in the age of transparency the culture of the organization is employer's brand. They also understand that they need to tell positive stories and encourage their advocates to also share thier stories. Listen to conversations, and engage to tell their side of the story.

Yes, it is a new normal. And the companies that will benefit the most would be the ones to embrace the change and be the pioneers. And part of that change is understanding that organizational culture is more important than ever - and however HR labels is "Employee Value Proposition" or "Employer Branding" improving internally and sharing that externally is the way to go. As someone said "Social does not change the culture, it makes it public and transparent"

So I am moderating a panel at the Shine HR Summit at Mumbai on 4th, and they asked me some questions - here are my answers
Oh the interview is online. You can read it all here

So I asked the Indian twitternagar for who was their favorite Indian blogger.

Here are the responses I have received until now:

Himanshu Kapadia said the late Rehab was his favorite blogger
Ruchi tells me her favorite bloggers are Meeta Sengupta, Abhijit Bhaduri and Manish Chauhan
Shreeharsha tweeted that his favorites were Nirmala (Whom I have followed also :), Sorav Jain, Vinaya Naidu, Jogi and Sandhya
Rajesh Dogra said his favorite blogger is Jyothi Menon
Vibgyor tweeted that his favorite blogger (and also mine) is my friend Gaurav Mishra
Shahid nominated the eminently readable commentary blog on Indian media, Churumuri.
Rimsha (from Pakistan) shared that Kiran Manral's blog is the only one she reads.
Rakesh Kumar nominated two of my favorite bloggers Manu Prasad and Karthik Srinivasan
Guillaume said that uber blogger Amit Varma's posts on poker made him his choice
Ashish Basu said that Nitin Gokhale (Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV) and Meeta Sengupta were his favorites
Pallavi shared that the Mad Momma, Sunny Days, Diptakirti (my fave Bollywood blog), Just a Mother of two, and Thirty Six And Counting

My twitter friend Dan Pontfract the author of Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization, and Head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS recently wrote an article in the Chief Learning Officer magazine.

The article is titled "the social C-suite" and Dan says if the C-suite increases its social media use internally and externally, it could be used as a tool to impact organizational competence. You should buy the magazine - I am not sure if it is online right now.

Dan was kind enough to ask me if I would be willing to answer some questions that he would answer. I agreed. Here's what he asked and my answers.

*         What benefits does 'going social' bring members of the C-Suite with respect to internal employee engagement?

Remember the days of T-groups and OD interventions that originated out of NTL? Their objective was to make organizations more open and transparent. The thought being, if feedback loops were open and transparent, then it would be an adaptive and learning organization. "social" shorn of the buzzwords, aims at creating that organization finally. The benefits would be an organization where opinion and information is unfiltered and real time. Eventually creating an organization that responds faster to stimuli - both internal and external.

- Willingness to rethink the way they view "management" and "leadership"
- start thinking in flows rather than stocks as Hagel, Brown say in their book "The Power of Pull"
- Stop thinking of the boundaries as opaque walls - both internally and externally. Think of them as porous, translucent membranes.
-Be ready to fail. In public. Embarrassingly. Remember, it's a world of flows. You will recover faster as you will learn faster.

- The organization will go on. Things will be the same. For a time. Then the slow continental shifts of time will make sure that the organization gets irrelevant. And dies.

Image via CrunchBase

For those people not on Twitter, here's an introduction to Twitterchats. A Twitterchat is a conversation centered around a topic which is tracked by a hashtag (denoted by a # sign followed by the name) - So #indiaHRchat would be a twitter chat. This was taken up by Tanvi Gautam (Singapore based consultant) and almost a month ago she hosted the first such chat with special guest Abhijit Bhaduri (Chief Learning Officer - Wipro) on the topic of social media for L&D.

Today evening is the second Twitter chat that Tanvi is hosting - this time the guest is Anand Pillai, Chief Learning Officer of Reliance Industries, and he would be talking on Personal Branding for HR professionals.

The great thing about Twitter chats is that they are not a one on one conversation and that anyone can participate. The open nature of Twitter makes it possible for even people who did not know about it to get involved.

So if you're on Twitter and interested in the topic, join us today from 7 pm IST.

Here's what happened at Abhijit's Twitter chat.