The rOle of SociAl mEdia in CorPorate... aNd it'S eFfects on tHe mAnaGers !!!

As per the latest conducted survey reports by HBR (Harvard Business Review) are concerned, using social media to accomplish a meaningful purpose involves more than providing new technology and praying for success. Successful mass collaboration places new requirements on an organization, particularly on its managers. While many organizations are technically ready for social media, they should question the readiness of managers to embrace new ways of working collaboratively to achieve social success.

Why???

Because social media and mass collaboration fundamentally challenge the relationship between responsibility, resources and management. Normally, managers accept responsibility provided it comes with the control of resources required to deliver on that responsibility. The connection between responsibility and resources sits at the heart of the management authority, control, accountability & organization design. If we look at an organization chart, we will see the distribution of resources & responsibilities - the currency by which managers measure themselves and compare themselves to their peers.

Unfortunately, this control is the antithesis of collaboration. Relinquishing control to create a space for collaboration challenges managers who rely on their authority, experience and positional power to achieve results. And managers who exercise their authority over a collaborative community will defeat the purpose of social media-based collaboration and turn energetic and innovative communities into just another form of corporate task force. 

While it sounds obvious that managers can compromise collaboration with prescriptive control, the relationship between resources, responsibility and management is one of the most frequently asked questions in organizations looking to apply social media to achieving meaningful business purposes. 

Collective responsibility is a thorny(causing distress; difficult) issue and it takes a different level of management maturity to break the idea that if there isn't one person responsible, then no one is responsible.

Manager/ sponsor as guide rather than a leader is found more effective these days. In this role, the manager/ sponsor works across three levels to drive three important outcomes:

1. Participation ~ Increased participation  can be created when managers/ sponsors work within a community to ensure an open dialog and discussion of issues, ideas and contributions, plans, etc. Participation is critical to community engagement and creativity, especially when pursuing a meaningful purpose means fostering and allowing a difference of opinion.

2. Purpose ~ Purpose requires the manager/sponsor to step outside the community and assess its progress toward achieving its overall goals and objectives. Purpose reflects the foundational idea behind the community. Managers/sponsors act as guides by knowing when to ask how a particular thread contributes to the community purpose.

3. Performance ~ Performance of the community requires that the manager/sponsor bridge collaborative innovation or ideas and the organization's formal management structures and processes. Without a focus on performance, community-based ideas often stay within the community. In this regard, managers/sponsors are advocates for community ideas and insights across the enterprise. 

 

Participation, purpose, and performance represent the goals for guiding management and the requirements for effective managers/sponsors in mass collaboration. However, it takes a particular type of manager and management team to foster the type of mass collaboration that taps into the collective genius of your customers and employees.

Now what's our concern ???

We should self-observe the following facts in order to analyse ourselves whether we (as future managers) are ready to lead such social collaboration:

(This is one of the crucial activity program designed by Anthony J. Bradley & Mark P. McDonald of Gartner Group. Both of them have mutually suggested to demonstrate these facts by undergoing a technical survey over your managers through this questionnaire.)

• Do managers rely on their formal authority to deliver results and fulfill their obligations, or do they achieve results through influence, teamwork, and engaging the talents of their team?

• Do managers have to be the most senior, experienced, or knowledgeable person on their team? Have they achieved the position based on being the best in their discipline? Is their influence based on personal capability or interpersonal leadership?

• How does executive leadership respond to ideas, insights, or innovations that emerge from the organization rather than going through formal channels? Does the executive team believe that the future of the organization is his or her responsibility alone or is it a shared responsibility of everyone in the organization?

"This is a fancy way of saying that starting small and scaling based on the expanding capability of collaborative communities and growing management capacity provides a path for every organization to become a social organization. "

It's Jargon ! !

"People who don't know how to recognize an opportunity, complain of noise when it knocks!" ~ Shiv Khera

"I don't accept criticism that is not valid!" ~ Oprah Winfrey

"You can if you think 'You Can', But if you think 'You Can't' then your right!" ~ Henry Ford

"If you born poor, it's not your mistake.. But if you die poor, then it is your mistake!!" ~ Bill Gates

"Winners don't do different things.. They do things differently!!" ~ Shiv Khera

"Adversity causes some men to break.. Others to break records!!" ~ William A. Ward 

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." ~Marilyn Monroe

"Make the tools of info-comm available to people at an affordable cost, they will overcome the handicaps of illiteracy and lack of mobility."  ~ Dhirubhai Ambani

"When people are confronted with more information than they can process at any given time, their performance tends to suffer."  ~ Anonymous

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop..." ~ Confucius 

"My diaries have always been my friends. The written word is so much more constant than human beings.." ~ Mrinal Pande 

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced." ~ Swami Vivekananda 

"People (in terms of Human Resources) can be your biggest asset or your biggest liability." ~ Shiv Khera 

"In a positive environment, a marginal performer's output goes up. In a negative environment, a good performer's output goes down." ~ Shiv Khera 

"Dreams are a dime a dozen... it's their execution that counts." ~ Theodore Roosevelt 

"Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure." ~ Norman Vincent Peale 

"Success doesn't mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle." ~ Edwin C. Bliss 

"Daily intake of knowledge helps transcend the illusion." ~ Vedanta Vision

"Your talent and ability is wasted by infatuation with the illusion." ~ Vedanta Vision

"A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century." ~ Swami Vivekananda 

"Youth is the best time to be rich and the bet time to be poor." ~ Socrates 

"Half the world does not know how the other half lives !" ~ Rabelais

"Constant labor of one uniform kind destroys the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity." ~ Karl Marx 

"When work is a pleasure, life is a joy.. When work is duty, life is slavery." ~ Maxim Gorky

"Sense-control is not unintelligent denial. It is intelligent enjoyment." ~ Vedanta Vision 

"When experiences become happier, life improves!" ~ Vedanta Vision


"Never leave till tomorrow, which you can do today!" ~ Benjamin Franklin


"Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel that you appreciate their good qualities and strengths. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger." ~ Christian D. Larsen (taken from 'Creed for optimists')

"Passion is not something you follow. Passion is something that will follow you as you put in the hard-work to become valuable to the world." ~ Prof. Cal Newport (Professor at Georgetown University and author of So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Search For Work You Love)

"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles." ~ Buddha

"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"Good things come to those who wait, but only those things left by those who hustle." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"Opportunity is born of independence handled in a responsible manner." ~ Zig Ziglar

"You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want!" ~ Zig Ziglar

"Always be Prospecting." Regularly get out of the circle you're in and start another circle or another chain. Use all your resources to keep those prospect list long & diverse so that your career is not dependent on one individual or one specific group of individuals. ~ Zig Ziglar

SuccEss is a joUrNey, nOt a dEstiNatiOn ! !

Thomas Alva Addison once said, "Our greatest weakness is giving up". It may be giving up on our plans in the face of seemingly insurmountable hurdles or giving up midway because our efforts do not measure up to the required level on our way to success. The most harmful giving up, however, is to rest on our laurels once we have achieved a modicum of success. We become smug and complacent and abandon all further efforts to sustain, nurture and consolidate it, leave along achieving greater heights in our chosen field of endeavor. 

Success does not come by accident, nor is it limited to the chosen few. It requires hard work, single-minded dedication and indomitable courage in the face of discouraging vicissitudes of life. Once you achieve success, you must strive for something higher for your satisfaction and urge to better yourself. Do not feel that you have achieved whatever you had wanted to achieve and there are no further peaks of success to be scaled.
That would be suicidal. Success, you must remember at all times, is a journey, not a destination. Once you have scaled one peak, there are many other peaks to be scaled and conquered till you reach the highest one. This, again, is elusive. You must, however, give no leeway to indolence. Nor should you crow about what little you have achieved so far.
Be patient and persevering in your pursuit of success which is, indeed, a hard taskmaster. It brooks no loosening of your grip. Nor should there be any slackening of efforts. Keep glued to your ultimate goal in the face of all distractions and hurdles because life is not roses, roses and roses all the way and success is not perennial. Once you are successful in a limited way - there may be other factors at work trying to impede your progress. Be wary of fair-weather friends and sycophants; they are your worst detractors. Above all, keep your cool and be level-headed under all circumstances. Do not let temporary success turn your head. At the same time, do not let equally short-lived failures and setbacks deter you from achieving what you have set out to achieve. Once your foot is firmly planted on the goal, aim higher... and still higher. You will make your family and those around you proud of your achievements. Good luck! 

RekinDle Ur pAssiOn ! !

From an early age, you are routinely taught to get a degree that will guarantee a job or help us in your business. But not everyone has a passion for the vocations their degrees assure them. Often, passion is put on hold in search of earning a lot dependable income.

However, it is easy to follow your passion, early in your career as there is so much to learn and every encounter is so new that even routine duties can seem flush with opportunity. Passion's flame is fresh. Over time, however, the source for passion's flame may very well shift and you have to shift with it. If you do, you'll find that work within your career and beyond remains fresh and vital for as long as you choose to stay in the arena.

If there is something which once you found to be new and unique and now find it routine and boring, then you need to rekindle your passion. Stoke your own fire as it comes from the heart and not from anywhere else. Find your own source for the flame. Shift your focus and get comfortable with being uncomfortable as renewed passion often comes with new and untested territory. Consciously choose a new venue for applying your skills as it can be a wonderful tool for relighting your passion's flame.

Remember, the most rewarding work of life might be following your passion and doing something which interests you rather than a highly visible work.  The first step in re-igniting passion is to publicly acknowledge your desire and willingness to find a new source for your passion. Stating your intention publicly is the seed for change. Without planting the seed of change by sharing your intention with someone else, it would be difficult to recognize an opportunity if it is provided by a chance encounter. Often, the first step in making a change is acknowledging your desire and willingness to make a change happen, even if you are not sure what that change will look like in the end...