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

Ghost Writing – Good or Bad?

Once again, I am on the road on to my next business trip, this time around with two distinctive parts; one of them to Helsinki, Finland, where I will be participating in a number of IBM sponsored events around the Social Enterprise, a really cool, inspiring and rather innovative initiative on “Redefining Work 925” and, believe it or not, Living “A World Without Email” (One of my favourite topics du jour, as you can imagine …) and the other one to Paris, France, where I will be participating, and moderating a couple of panels, at the always engaging, entertaining and rather thought-provoking Enterprise 2.0 Summit, which starts next week on February 7th, and that this year promises to be quite an amazing event! But more on that one later on …

Yet, once again, since connectivity while on the road has got a lot to be desired for, I have picked up the good habit of pruning my RSS feeds (Remember RSS?), spice them up a bit and enjoy offline reading while I’m disconnected. And while I am doing that up in the air, I bumped into this brilliantly provocative blog entry by Tim Elmore on “Confessions of a Ghost Writer … for Students“. Goodness! How low can we, human beings, get? Or, even worse, how can we still allow that to happen?

Indeed, in a rather sharp article Tim comes to question not just the ability of ghost writing for students per se, but the ethics, or, better said, the lack of ethics and morale, in doing so when students are employing those ghost writers to pass on their exams on subjects that may be of interest to them, or not. Showing, at best, how laziness, and perhaps that lack of morale or motivation combined altogether, can certainly damage the true spirit of hard labour (Even on the literal sense of the word!) in delivering something for which one would feel very proud of. At least.

The story of the ghost writer that Tim exemplifies in that article will surely give you chills going through your spine big time, as it highlights all of those traits that a bunch of us have been wanting to wipe out from the corporate world as well for a while now: hypocrisy, lack of ethics and morale, unwillingness to do meaningful work (that’s truly yours, not someone else’s), lack of responsibility and co-ownership, laziness, instant gratification for the sake of it, not the value you may be providing, etc. etc. You know the gist…

What’s really troubling though from the article itself is not what Tim portraits quite clearly of what’s happening out there right at this very minute with students and the work they produce (Or don’t produce, better said), but a rather poignant question that I thought I would include as well over here to see the whole context of where we may be heading:

“What will our world look like if these students become our leaders?“

Whoahh! Sorry, but before we try to venture an answer for that rather provocative question allow me to comment on it for a minute: No, we do NOT want to have those leaders governing in our world. Sorry, that may have worked in the recent past, but as we moved into a (business) world that’s more interconnected, networked, engaged, transparent, public, nimble, collaborative, trustworthy, engaged, committed, authentic, and whatever else you can think of, along those lines, that is, the last thing we need is to have a range of generations who become our leaders by doing something that doesn’t match, really, any of those traits: cheating (due to lack of ethics and morale).

Tim’s article clearly reminds me of a recent internal conversation I had with a bunch of fellow IBMers where we were discussing the concept of ghost writing on blog posts and social networking sites, specially, with senior leaders in mind, as a way to allow them to enter the world of Social slowly, but steadily, helping them adjust to new ways of interacting with the help of others, who may be a bit more versed. Well, now more than ever, and after reading Tim’s piece, I’m not convinced at all that ghost writing, even for executives!, is a good thing!

The Social Enterprise has always demanded authenticity, co-ownership, responsibility, trust, transparency, commitment, engagement, motivation, being the real you, your self, the don’t pretend to be who you are not, etc. etc. Around the world of blogging, I have always found it very difficult to try to justify ghost writing when authenticity and trust kick in, even for senior leaders and that article surely confirms that belief. If you can’t be you, please don’t get someone to be you. No matter how important you are, how busy you may well be, how much of a thought leader you are (and perceived by others), engaging in social networks requires your personal you to do it. Sorry, no ghost writing.

Yes, I can imagine such activity may have worked in the traditional world of communications and marketing, and, to a certain degree, I can agree with doing such activity when you need to deliver a certain corporate message, whatever that may well be, but when it’s just you (your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideas, etc.) what you are delivering we want to hear, read, learn from you, AND interact and engage with you!, no intermediaries, please. We had enough of those in the recent decades and I am starting to think we need to move on from that discourse. To the point where I am more and more convinced by the day that if you can’t engage with your real self in social networking sites, your blog and whatever other means of living social, I think it would be much preferred that you don’t engage at all. We want the authentic you, the trustworthy you; we want to have the certainty that we are talking with the real thing: your own person.

I guess you folks may be thinking that I am a purist and all, and perhaps I am (Don’t think I will have any issues with that notion in this context, to be honest), but read Tim’s article once again, move that context into the corporate world, and try to answer that question again: “What will our world look like if these students become our leaders?” … with that mentality, but, even worse, with that notion of ethics and morale about meaningful work, inspired by their so-called role models that have already starting shaping up that wrong set of core values. Not sure what you would think, but I feel we need to stop it. And very soon, before it is just too late!

How can we possibly justify ghost writing / engaging in social networks today when that lack of authenticity, trust, openness and transparency, amongst others, will clearly not just damage your reputation as a business (Remember businesses are made of people!), but also your engagement with your peers, subordinates, thought leaders, customers and business partners alike?

Is this the new workplace of the future, we have been envisioning over the course of the last few years, that we would want to inspire within our younger generations, as well as our more senior knowledge workers? I surely hope not! There is something very wrong about this out there, in my opinion, and the sooner we all put a stop to it, the better. So next time that you may be thinking about doing ghost writing, or ghost blogging, please do think about it, think of the repercussions, of the implications, of the consequences, of the potential damage you will be creating. And, above all, be transparent and open enough about it and let us know you will be still carrying on with it… so that we can move on in search for those other leaders who want to be their selves inspiring lots of trust, authenticity, transparency, openness, engagement and whatever else, because, somehow, I feel we would ALL be much, much, better off altogether!

Business. Made Social. Earn it!

BlueIQ at IBM Finally Goes External!

(Note: You see? This is what happens when you go away on holidays and your team decides to have plenty of good fun without you hehe and they embark on launching our first external blog to talk plenty more about IBM’s internal and external Social Software Adoption Program: BlueIQ, which this year will be making our 5th anniversary… Here is a cross post of my introductory blog entry over there, so you can see what you can expect from it, should you decide to subscribe to it and keep the dialogue going… I will probably be writing one or two articles per week over there, along with the rest of my team, so let the fun begin! … And thanks for reading!)

One of the many things that you realise about, while you are on vacation, and something that over the course of the years you tend to come to terms with is the fact that, while you are away, life goes on, work goes on; with or without you. And that’s just fine! That’s how things go by and probably very little left for us to do on that matter anyway. So, as I am ramping up the last few hours of my holidays, yesterday afternoon I found out, through my colleagues, that, after a long while, our IBM Social Software Internal Adoption Program is now ready to transcend the firewall and go external. And, as such, a couple of days back we have now launched an external blog, called BlueIQ at IBM where, from now onwards, my team, along with myself, will be blogging every so often about IBM’s own adoption of social networking tools, as well as our full transformation, over the course of the years, on becoming a fully Integrated Social Enterprise. Yes!, folks, BlueIQ, finally, goes external!

And as you may have noticed already, a couple of my colleagues (Including our boss) have already been blogging away earlier on this week setting up the stage of the kind of articles you can expect to read, and engage with, hopefully, in our team blog. The vast majority of the topics that we will cover will describe how BlueIQ works, what we do to help accelerate IBM’s own adoption of social technologies, both inside and outside of the firewall, and at the same time you will also find interesting and relevant articles around topics like The Social Enterprise, Social Business, Social Networking, Adoption, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Communities and Community Building, etc. etc. Pretty much along the lines of the kinds of articles I have been sharing myself on my own personal Internet blog as well over the course of time.

The thing is that it’s not the first time that BlueIQ goes out there to the general public. In the past, there have been a good number of resources made available from our team on what we currently do at IBM, whether it’s our public wiki site available here, or the free whitepaper that both Jeanne Murray and Rawn Shah co-published a few months back and which covers our entire methodology on our social software adoption program (What’s worked, what hasn’t, lessons learned, program activities, metrics, etc. etc.), or the several presentations we have done at various conference events where we have been telling the BlueIQ Story.

However, this is the first time that we are working our way through our first public Internet team blog, where we are surely hoping to keep sharing further stories, experiences, know-how, lessons learned, hints and tips, and whatever other anecdotal evidence on what’s worked for us with our own social software adoption program and what’s happening in this very same space out there for other businesses. However, since this is also my first entry over here I thought I would point you folks to perhaps the most comprehensive BlueIQ Story we have got out there at the moment and which would certainly help serve as a good Introduction of who we are and what we are working on…

Yesterday, Rawn Shah, who, by the way, has now moved into another role within IBM as a Social Business Strategist, but you know how it goes, once a BlueIQer, always a BlueIQer tweeted about something that is pretty exciting for all of us at BlueIQ:

made Finalist for @profhamel ‘s Management Info Exchange “Beyond Bureaucracy challenge” @hackmanagement ow.ly/8rAYW

— Rawn Shah (@rawn) January 12, 2012

Indeed, over at “Cutting through BigBlue Tape: Using Collective Passion to Scissor Bureacuracy at IBM“, you will be able to see how our very own “BlueIQ at IBM” program is now one of the finalists on the “Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge” that Gary Hamel is sponsoring. And to say that we are incredibly eager and over-excited about the great news of even just being the final round would probably fall short pretty badly. We don’t know, obviously, who the winner will be, but to us all, on the BlueIQ team as well as our army of volunteers, the BlueIQ Ambassadors community of social software evangelists, it’s already a huge success and something to be very proud of.

But for you folks out there, you may be wondering what it is all about, right? Well, like I said, on that nomination paper that Rawn submitted, you would probably be able to find one of the most comprehensive and thorough descriptions of how, when, why, and for what purpose BlueIQ came into existence nearly 5 years ago to help fellow IBMers accelerate their own adoption of social technologies, both inside and outside of the firewall.

In a recent article I shared over on my Internet blog, I described a little bit IBM’s own journey to become a fully integrated socially enterprise, which would certainly be a rather nice complement to plenty of the historical and anecdotal evidence you would find also on Rawn’s piece of how IBM got started living social in the first place. However, what’s most interesting about that nomination piece is the various different sections that put together a rather nice picture of the kind of work we do and what triggered us to get started in the first place. So, to give you a taster of what you could find in it, allow me to include over here the headings of the various different sections, so you could have a look and read further on about them:

• Summary
• Moonshots
• Context
• Triggers
• Key Innovations & Timeline
• Challenges & Solutions (Which covers “Building an environment that fosters social collaboration”, “Enabling social collaboration skills by tailoring to specific needs”, “Gaining support from executives” and “Developing country-specific focus where needed”)
• Benefits & Metrics (With plenty of anecdotal evidence, and success stories from fellow IBMers who were facing real problems and found real solutions with social technologies)
• Lessons (Which covers “Keep the eye on the prize”, “Teach tasks, not tools, and help people learn socially”, “Engage your peers”, “Showcase executive participation”, “Use a deliberate approach”, “There is no “finish”")
• Credits
• Tags
• Helpful Materials”

Like I said, a rather extensive and pretty comprehensive resource, no doubt, that will surely give you all a pretty good base of what BlueIQ at IBM is and perhaps get also some other ideas you folks may want to give a try for your own internal or external adoption programs, and which we would all be more than happy to help out where we possibly can. Don’t forget to check out the extensive list of Helpful Materials as well, where you can find plenty more details about our overall program.

From here onwards, I would just personally want to thank Rawn very much for the wonderful piece of work done on that nomination piece and for making it into the finalists and I do wish him, and us, I suppose lots of good luck with it, knowing that we are already feeling winners just being on that final round, after checking out some of the amazing initiatives other people have been working on. Exciting times to be working on the Social Business space, for sure, and even more exciting when next week our entire team will be in Orlando, Florida, attending this year’s IBM Lotusphere 2012 event, where we hope to see all of you, face to face, to keep the conversations going about the Social Enterprise and its / our / your own adoption of social technologies.

Oh, and don’t forget we will be posting several articles per week in this blog with the whole purpose of keeping the dialogue going, before, during and after the event, because as Rawn mentioned, “there is no “finish”"

“Innovation never stops, and culture change takes time. Understand that victory is in the daily accumulation of social exchanges, content, and connections that lead to value. Understand that serendipity happens because the seeds of collaboration are sown throughout the organization. And understand that innovation never stops. You are not reaching an end line with social business adoption. Rather, you are creating patterns of behavior for collaborating and connecting that will transcend today’s innovations and position your business and your people for tomorrow.“

And if you would want to meet us up while at Lotusphere next week, to talk about adoption, enablement and share / exchange some further experiences around social technologies, here you have got some contact details from yours truly on where you can find me online, and, with me, the rest of the team as well …

Luis Suarez a.k.a. @elsua
Blog: http://elsua.net
Google Plus Profile

Welcome everyone to BlueIQ at IBM! Glad you could join us on this exciting journey!

Want to Trust Your Employees? Give Them All Unlimited Vacation Days

As I am about to enjoy my last day on vacation, since tomorrow morning I will be heading over to Orlando, Florida, to embark on the regular yearly pilgrimage trip to attend IBM’s event of events around the world of Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and the Social Enterprise (Of course, I’m talking about the one and only: Lotusphere 2012), I just couldn’t help putting together this blog post about an article that, when I first bumped into it, I found it incredibly innovative, rather refreshing and very re-energising, but after finishing it up I just thought… “Gosh, that’s a given! Why are we not doing it in today’s corporate world on a wider scale?” … “Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days” may sound all to unrealistic and utopian at best, yet, to me, it’s the ultimate goal for any employer out there around Employee Engagement: Trust your employees to do the right thing!

Indeed, in a rather inspiring and incredibly thought-provoking article, Joe Reynolds (From Red Frog Events) shares the story of how over at his company (Red Frog) they celebrate vacation. They encourage it and they ensure that once work is done and you are covered you are happy to take as many holidays, as an employee, as you would want to. And interestingly enough he comments that this new system has never been abused so far. Surprise, surprise. Well, not really. Why should it?

I mean, last time I brought this subject up, perhaps not over here in this blog, (Although I think I may have hinted it earlier on over at “Reflections from 2011 – Is Employee Engagement Still a Myth?“) but certainly in multiple conversations all over the place, unless you are a rather special business, you have always got a tendency to hire the smartest of talent out there; truly hard working networked professionals who know exactly what’s expected of them and how to excel at their jobs. I know that most of you out there would get a good giggle out of this one, but last time I checked no-one out there is hiring jerks nowadays, and, if you are, you certainly have got a rather problematic issue with your own HR hiring process that needs fixing really soon, that has got nothing to do with social networking tools nor how people use them, by the way. It’s more of a fundamental, organisational issue altogether.

So considering that you have got a whole bunch of hard working networked knowledge workers, why wouldn’t you allow them to take as many holidays as they would want to? It’s not surprising, indeed, that the system won’t be abused, as Joe mentions on that article. On the contrary. If your knowledge workers are truly motivated, and rather passionate, appreciated, recognised and rewarded for their exceedingly good jobs, not only are they going to be willing to take their extended holidays, but there is also a great chance that they would come back to work sooner than expected! That’s what passion does for you. You can’t think any longer whether work is holiday, or whether holiday is work. It’s no longer about striking a good balance between work and life, but more moving things into the next frontier: work life integration.

Yes, that’s right! It’s all about finding that flexibility of doing your job in an effective manner, when you need to do work, and treasuring your personal life when you would need to do so as well. More than anything else because, as Joe mentions, the traditional concept of office work (From 9:00 am to 5:00 pm) is now a thing of the past! Things have moved on and we are at the stage where more and more employers are starting to lower down their own center of gravity, and the power of decision, and leave it down to employees to make the right decisions for the work they are doing. Main reason why? Well, as a starting point, they are beginning to trust their employees much more than whatever else in the past. And this is an important matter, because we are seeing, finally!, that social transformation where knowledge workers are no longer treated like sheep, as in sheeple (and, as such, they no longer behave like sheep either!), and, instead, they are treated as what they are: people with enough motivation and passion for their jobs to want to go the extra mile, if you offer to go the extra mile yourself. So why not offering that opportunity of unlimited vacation days then? It does make plenty of sense, right?

Of course, it does! If not, have a look into the main reasons that Joe mentions why this rather creative initiative is working out really well for them:

• “It treats employees like the adults they are
• It reduces costs by not having to track vacation time
• It shows appreciation
• It’s a great recruitment tool“

Plenty of common sense altogether, no doubt! But perhaps this quote from Joe’s article is much more accurate in describing why such innovative policies will be key, critical, and essential, to attract and retain top talent in a world where we are starting to see plenty of fierce competition on the subject:

“Through building a company on accountability, mutual respect, and teamwork, we’ve seen our unlimited vacation day policy have tremendous results for our employees’ personal development and for productivity“

Both of my good friends Beth Laking and Paul Gillin pretty much nailed it a few days back as well when they tweeted their thoughts about this very same article:

Trust your staff and they will reward you…Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days bit.ly/wSbQN1 @IncMagazine

— Beth Laking (@bethlaking1) January 6, 2012

From Inc.: ‘Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days. It’s true. Ppl take fewer days if you don’t limit them. ow.ly/8o8Rk

— Paul Gillin (@pgillin) January 10, 2012

The rather interesting and exciting thing though is that Red Frog is not the only company doing this. One of my favourite people, and really good friend, the always insightful and rather smart Maggie Fox, has been doing that at Social Media Group for a good couple of years now and has been having tremendous success with this initiative highlighting how it exactly works out for all of them. She wrote about it a while ago under “Why we decided to offer unlimited vacation at Social Media Group” and it’s even more surprising how the only negative reaction towards that initiative is that most people, specially, new hires, don’t believe that there could be such a thing! Goodness! If that’s all, perhaps we also need to start shifting gears ourselves, knowledge workers, thinking that it is also possible working for employers who truly respect and very much appreciate us, employees, to do what we do best, i.e. our jobs, and be rewarded with that much deserved extended holiday break.

After all, it’s thanks to that flexibility, passion, engagement and commitment to our jobs, in keeping excelling at what we are already pretty good at, that clearly demonstrate how not only do we love what we do, but also how we love our lives even more, like Elizabeth Lupfer talked about over at The Social Workplace just recently in a beautiful blog post, which I would highly recommend you go ahead and read through it all, to ponder further and digest on some golden nuggets like this one, which clearly sets the stage of how the corporate world is, finally, starting to come to terms with embracing that new concept of Social Transformation of Your Business – The Workplace of the Future:

“Organizations that create cultures that value balance, and assist employees to achieve life balance will be rewarded with highly engaged employees. Work-life balance does not mean  that employees are not loyal, nor committed to their organizations, it means that employees want to lead whole lives, not lives solely centered on work“

To me, replace “balance” with ”integration” and we are already there! Don’t think about striking a good balance between work and life, because you will never achieve it (Work will always eat that balance up any given time, before you even notice it!), but more a full integration of your personal life into work and work into your personal life. That’s the key, the sweet spot. That’s what really matters.

I just had one of the most amazing holidays I can remember; mostly disconnected, unwinding from everything online, re-charging my batteries fully, getting plenty more energy levels, full again of optimism and outrageousness, and yet, I can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow, on my way to Orlando, Florida, to attend Lotusphere, even if that happens over the weekend… Already looking forward to seeing over there lots of smart friends and customers wanting to Live Social. Do Business.