E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

The Web in Twenty

A few days back my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Aneel Lakhani, tagged me on an on-going meme that’s been going around for a little while now called "The Web in Twenty" where participants have to eventually provide answers to three different questions:

• How has the Web changed your life?
• How has the Web changed business and society?
• What do you think the Web will look like in 20 years?

So, since it’s been quite a while that I have last embarked on chiming in on one of those blogging memes I thought it would be a good time to do that over the course of the weekend and the actual blog post is up and running already. Over at my Posterous site under the same title: "The Web in Twenty", which will give me, by the way, a nice opportunity to kick things off again over there after the holidays, the business travelling and catching up from last week. Regular blogging activities will resume there as well with the same spirit as before, starting off with that entry I have just shared.

I wonder though whether the folks I tagged (Rick Ladd, Paula Thornton, John Tropea, Jay Cross, Harold Jarche and Stephen Downes) will dive in as well and share their insights with us …

What do you think? Do you reckon they will chime in?

Tags: Internet, Web, Future, 2030, Memes, Internet Memes, Metablogging, Blogging, Predictions, Rick Ladd, Paula Thornton, John Tropea, Jay Cross, Harold Jarche, Stephen Downes, Aneel Lakhani, Tagging

How Will You Manage?

I know that plenty of folks out there do not buy into the argument of the generational divide; most people think it’s just something that has been designed and developed to sell the concept of Enterprise 2.0 to businesses (Specially, if you think about the good old KM meme of "Knowledge Transfer" of senior employees about to retire to younger ones). So naming conventions like Traditionalist, Boomer, Gen X or Millennial all seem to be bogus, but are they really? I mean, when was the last time, while at work, you stopped doing what you were doing and started looking around at the various peer knowledge workers close to you?

I bet that in most cases you may have found two or three different generations working together in the same project, being part of the same team or belonging to the same communities. So how do they get along well with one another then? How are they managed? Not sure what you would think, but I *do* believe there is such distinction of how various generations get to collaborate and share knowledge across with their peers in the same working environment.

That’s also the incredibly provocative phenomenon that this YouTube video titled "How Will You Manage?" (Put together by Kronos) tries to cover over the course of nearly 5 minutes. If you are an skeptic on the concept of the generational divide I would strongly encourage you all to have a look and watch it. It may, or may not, change your perspective on things, specially around those folks working closer with you. However, one thing I can certainly assure you is that it would make you think twice about the whole subject and I am certain you won’t be looking at your peers in the same fashion as before any longer. And if not, judge for yourselves…

What I have found really interesting about this YouTube video is how having multiple generations at work (Here inside IBM I got colleagues I work rather closely with who would cover up to four different generations working together! So you can imagine some scenarios sometimes…) will surely present new challenges for one specific part of the workforce: managers.

That’s right! Somehow it looks like the current corporate environment (And, definitely, the future workplace) will probably require a new breed of leaders that would hopefully be able to manage those generations (Working mostly in a distributed virtual world across the globe) in much more meaningful ways than ever before, perhaps even leaving behind that traditional flavour of command-and-control and, instead, take on much more of that leadership role that perhaps managers of the future should be having as one of their primary and fundamental skills.

Definitely, the kind of new leadership that Jemima Gibbons describes quite nicely in her recent book "Monkeys with Typewriters" (Book that I can certainly highly recommend everyone to read, if you would want to see how social computing is changing not just the way we do business, but also who we are as social knowledge workers) when describing the kind of leadership role that Gina Poole (IBM’s VP, Social Software Programs & Enablement (BlueIQ), SWG Web Marketing & Sales), amongst several other leaders, defines for herself with her own team:

"More pure leadership than command and control…in the old management era, knowledge was power. Now in the social era you want to unleash the knowledge. The powerful person is the one who can lead by influence. You don’t need a big budget and lots of direct reports. I can lead more effectively by influencing others, getting them excited and having them join my movement. It feels like you’re managing more of a matrix. Listening is very important"

The main challenge though remains as to whether traditional management, and all businesses for that matter, would be willing to let go that command-and-control attitude and, instead, allow their own employees to become those new leaders of today’s interconnected, distributed corporate world. I am sure most folks, at this point in time, would probably be thinking about the risks involved and how to managed them. Me, instead, would be thinking about the huge potential of how social computing is helping define the future of the workplace by co-sharing plenty of that leadership responsibility with people, who were hired for being, and acting, as professionals in the first place. I think it’s time for the corporate world to grow up and start treating their various generations at work as who they really are: people. The Social Web.

Tags: Management, Leadership, Leaders, Generations, Generational Divide, Kronos, Jemima Gibbons, Monkeys with Typewriters, Gina Poole, IBM, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Transfer, Social Web, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Learning, Innovation

Welcome to the new @elsua!

Or welcome to the new Luis, for that matter! I guess there is nothing better than honest, constructive, candid, helpful feedback about your blog and blogging style, specially when it comes from people you respect and treasure for what they have taught you over the years in one of the areas you feel very passionate about; in this case Knowledge Management and blogging.

Yesterday afternoon my good friend Jack Vinson shared the following tweet across with me:

"@elsua I know I have mentioned this before, but consider getting an editor "

Of course, he was referring to this, my personal business, blog and my own blogging style, which some times tends to meander in and out quite a bit and become perhaps too verbose, making it almost impossible to go straight to the point at times and get people confused in the process.

Check! Guilty as charged! If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you would reckon it’s been one of those on-going challenges I have been wanting to address and fix, specially for those folks out there who can’t afford to spend lots of time reading through lengthier blog posts to then have difficulties finding out where the golden nuggets are. Yet, it’s been such a complex challenge to fix that Jack suggested, for the second time, I should look for an editor to help tame that storytelling flavour my blog posts seem to be permeating from all along.

Well, this is it, folks, this is a new beginning for yours truly, Luis Suarez (a.k.a. @elsua), as I am about to make one extra effort in order to accommodate that potential audience out there wanting to read and grasp those knowledge nuggets in the shortest time possible and move on. Not sure how it is going to pave out in the end; it will be, I guess, another on-going learning experience, but, if it helps, I’m surely willing to give it a try and then see how it may conflict with my usual self.

Earlier on this morning I had one of those wonderful and rather educational Skype calls with another good friend of mine, David Tebbutt , who saw my Twitter exchange with Jack yesterday and who kindly offered, during our conversation, some tips on what I could do to change some of the flavours that may be coming from those blog entries. I do know I just cannot pretend to be someone else I am not; I do know I am someone who isn’t too preoccupied with getting thousands of reads per article published.

I do know, however, I am someone who cares a great deal for those folks out there who may be following this blog (Or bump into it by pure chance) and who candidly provide lots of constructive feedback as a token of gratitude to help improve the overall content from this blog. So I decided enough with the meandering in and out, let’s cut to the chase, go straight to the point with what I would want to do, or say, because, after all, that’s what constructive feedback from folks you care about is all about: a continuous learning experience that helps you become better at what you do, i.e. that helps you become better at who you are!

So hello and welcome to the new @elsua! Feel free to drop by, say "Hi!" and leave a comment if you would want to improve that overall learning experience from yours truly. It will be very much appreciated… And a big thanks to both Jack & David for triggering something I should have done a while ago. Hopefully, it won’t be too late

Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Renewal, Blogging Style, Blogs, @elsua, Feedback, Learning Experiences, Jack Vinson, David Tebbutt