E L S U A ~ A KM Blog by Luis Suarez

Open Business

Whatever Happened to Critical Thinking?

• Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Knowledge Management, Learning, Metablogging, Open Business, Open Leadership

Gran Canaria - Guayadeque in the winter

One of the biggest challenges I have been facing in the last couple of weeks, upon resuming my blogging mojo, while reducing my own online presence in different media tools, has been re-building my own blogroll. Remember them? They were a really cool way to help you build community, through wonderful interactions and connections via comments, trackbacks, pingbacks and what not, around the stuff you were truly passionate about and loved writing on and on and on. They were, and still are!, one of the core founding elements of the so-called Web 2.0 spirit that, 22 years later, is still very much alive and kicking. Or so I thought, because trying to update my own blogroll has been quite a daunting task, not necessarily because of the quantity, but more because of the lack of quality, or, better said, lack of critical thinking, if I may say that. Whatever happened to it? Where did we leave it behind?

While going through the different blogs I was subscribed to over the course of last few years, trying to see which ones were still being updated on a more or less regular basis, I found out how plenty of them no longer were having recent, fresh content (say, in the last 6 months or so). And that was pretty ok, because upon checking their different Twitter accounts I was finding out that plenty of those bloggers have moved their blogging into someone else’s homes (Facebook, LinkedIn’s Pulse, Medium, etc. etc.). Too bad I can no longer use RSS news feeds to subscribe to them. You know, ‘RSS still works. It’s still free. It’s still unfiltered, uncensored and spam-free‘.

What was most worrying though was how plenty of those bloggers who are still blogging away in their own blogs weren’t, in most cases, sharing some of their own original thoughts, ideas or experiences about what was motivating them to write and reflect on in the first place. Instead, they were just regurgitating the content shared across from a small group of social media gurus, always the very same group, ironically enough!, hoping those blog posts would trigger, in the shortest time possible, some kind of ‘engagement’. Yikes! Why?

‘Busyness just trumped blogging’, was my first initial reaction thinking that, when knowledge (Web) workers are just too frantically busy, they stop thinking, reflecting or musing about different topics and, eventually, stop focusing on building up on what’s still considered one of the most paramount skills from any good blogger out there: critical thinking. Instead, we just ‘rant about politics and share cat pictures‘.

Mark Schaefer couldn’t have said it better as well on a recent article he published on this very same topic around critical thinking. To quote him: 

‘Although we have the infinite opportunity to learn and consider opposing views, the level of critical thinking may be no better today than the people who had access to no information in the 1800s. We’re too busy to think, too busy to dig for truth.’

Ouch! That seriously hurts, but he’s got a really great point with that reflection, because, that’s exactly what we have been doing in the last 3 to 5 years with all of these so-called social tools. Somehow, somewhere down the line we all, collectively, decided to become the media. Actually, better said, we decided to become the mindless media commenting and regurgitating the very good old same discourse from that handful of social media gurus and celebrities, except that, in the process, we were determined to include tons of bullying, trolling, hate speech and, eventually, tons of hatred, specially, when we are confronted with opposing views to our comfort zone of thought. It’s just like we can no longer dissent with people in a healthy, constructive and critical thinking driven manner without being insulted in the process a few times here and there. And insulted doesn’t refer to just using foul language, but also to simple things just like ‘Oh, sorry, you are totally wrong’ or way off base just because you think completely different than what me and my social media gurus and celebrities think! Oh my my! 

I guess it must be rather tiring, and exhausting!, for those social media gurus to hear, or read, their own regurgitated thoughts by the thousands and thousands of times from their own minions, but I guess it’s something they have already gotten used to it, as they have already reached celebrity status and, of course, they need a mindless, vilified audience, more than anything else, because it’s easier to manage, even if by merely ignoring the whole thing, while driving traffic to their own personas. Good or bad, traffic volume still is where the game is at, apparently and sadly.

Mark himself highlights what may well be the problem when he writes: ‘We have more information at our fingertips than at any other time in history and the technology may be depressing our ability to think, process, and think critically’. Well, maybe. But somehow I keep thinking it may well not be technology per se the one to blame, but, once more, ourselves. We’ve always been very good at blaming the tools when they help us demonstrate, time and time again, our very own dysfunctional behaviours, more than anything, because, once we do that, we feel we no longer need to do anything else. You know, it’s the tools that don’t work, not us! It’s always the tools. Well, no, it’s not the tools to be blamed, but our very own behaviours, I am afraid.

We have stopped to think, process and think critically, as Mark mentions, because we are just too busy to build on our own thoughts and experiences and it’s much easier to build on everyone else’s, specially, when they are in our dear and beloved echo chamber (Retweets or reshares anyone?), and if it comes with a certain taint of celebrity status all the better. We no longer think, we just become amplifiers, for good or bad, although in most cases it’s for bad, because we seem to rejoice ourselves from that morbid sense of enjoying more of the bad news than the good news. 

But fear not, there is hope out there for us all to revert course, before it’s just too late. Actually, more than hope, there’s plenty of help going from excellent resources and recommended reads like ‘Net Smart’ by Howard Rheingold (I can strongly recommend as well this video clip on Crap Detection 101 (25 minutes long)) or the wonderful online course from Harold Jarche about #PKMastery. We just need to become, once more, the critical thinkers we once were, at least, at our very own online home(s), i.e. our own blog(s), more than anything else because we need to start rebuilding on that very much needed skill of questioning everything.

My good friend, Anne Marie McEwan, once wrote that critical thinking is a ‘complex process of deliberation, which involves a wide range of skills and attitudes’ along with ‘checking for bias’, but she also ventured to state what critical thinking is all about and I just thought I’d take the liberty of adding a teaser here highlighting what she then gets to develop in more detail in this rather insightful and thought provoking article about acquiring and mastering such rather helpful and very much needed skill. Critical Thinking is: 

  • ‘A systematic approach to scoping and identifying the interacting elements of a strategic problem
  • Assessing risks in the process
  • Challenging assumptions (our own and those of other people)
  • Evaluating strategic options from among alternatives
  • Identifying and defending selection criteria
  • Reflecting on effects of paradoxes, constraints and incomplete knowledge
  • Using evidence to draw valid and justifiable conclusions in making a case for action’

So why am I writing about all of this, you may be wondering, right? Well, more than anything else as a reminder to myself to resist the urge of amplifying and, instead, fight the good fight of never conforming, of questioning everything, or understanding how critical both empathy and caring are when applying your very own critical thinking skills about what happens around you, whether at work or in your personal life and that, if anything, we always have a choice in terms of what kind of online digital footprint we would want to establish, treasure, cultivate and nurture over the course of time. Either regurgitating someone else’s thoughts and ideas that you may, or may not agree with, or, through sensemaking, build your own at your own home turf. The home you never left.

Our choice.

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The Mindset of Work

• Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Open Business, Open Leadership

Gran Canaria - Maspalomas Dunes

What’s the future of work? I bet that’s probably the number one single question we all keep bumping into multiple times during the course of the day and, yet, we still haven’t got a clue about what the real future of work might be like in the long run. We know it’s going to be impacted big time by technology, if not already!, where we eventually might not even talk about work anymore, but more on that in another upcoming blog post. What I’m most interested in at the moment though is how we would probably need to start working things out not necessarily in figuring out what work might well be in 10 or 15 years, but perhaps dig in plenty more into what the present of work is nowadays and that ought to be something we need to fix first, before it all takes us by surprise and we find ourselves without work and without a future. Is work still a physical space or a mental state? Who decides?

Most people don’t know about this, but I was born a futurist. From a very very early age, while I was born and raised in a tiny village in mainland Spain, I have always been fascinated by the future and what roll humanity may well play in making it happen. I know plenty of people have always been obsessed with both the past and the present. Alas, for myself, it’s always been about the future and what it might hold for us as a species. That’s one of the several reasons why this is one of my old time favourite videos I keep re-watching every now and then to remind me (If you watched through it – it’s 6 minutes long – you will know why…). But, at the same time, I realised, long time ago, that in order for us to figure out what the future may well be like we might need to work out first what kind of present we want to have. And today, not tomorrow, as it’s not here yet, not yesterday, because it’s already gone. And it’s only when you insert words like ‘work’ you realise it’s a tougher job than anyone may have anticipated altogether. 

Take a look, for instance, into a recent blog post from my good friend Euan Semple under the heading ‘Being at work’, where he comes to question that despite our several attempts to travel into the future to see what work might be like in this day and age of social, emergent technologies, as far as work is concerned, we may have just gotten stuck in the good old 20th century, because we just aren’t there … yet. We still pretty much think AND strongly believe that work is a physical state. To quote Euan: 

‘I marvel at organisations agonising over whether or not to give their staff the choice to work at home, over engineering the technology they feel is needed to allow them to do so, and having time wasting meetings about whether they can be trusted not to waste their time!’

Does it sound familiar? Have you experienced pretty much the very same thing, even within your own organisation? I bet you have. We all have. For plenty of knowledge (Web) workers, work still is a physical space you commute to, to get work done as effectively as you possibly can, within some of the given constraints Euan mentions on that quote, hoping the day goes by really fast without making trouble with your direct boss, to then start, once again, the journey back home. Day in day out. Week in Week out. Monthly pay-check in the bank. Oh yeah, holidays!!! Yay!!!

If someone would ask me if that is the future of work, as pretty much the present, today, I think I’ll just go ahead and scream my lungs out till the bleed. NO! That’s definitely not the future of work, and it shouldn’t necessarily be its present either! I mean, don’t we have all of these wonderful technologies that helps us get together, connect, collaborate, share our knowledge more openly and transparently, and innovate faster altogether, whenever and wherever we may well be? Why do we still keep thinking about work as a physical activity one embarks on from a certain time in the day to another? Why do we still think that work is something you do while at the office, where your performance is usually valued and measured more in terms of your sheer presence (and how pretty you are!) vs. the results and outcomes you keep delivering.

If you ask me what might the problem here then I’d venture to state it’s not necessarily an issue with technology, nor with business processes, but mostly with people. And more than people with our very own mindset and behaviours. Right at the core of any issues and challenges you may be facing at work with different change initiatives they are bound to be around people’s mindset, including your very own, as well as their own behaviours and business practices. Help shape, fix those accordingly, always under the premise you can’t change people per se, but provide the necessary conditions for them to figure out if they would want to change (or not) and you are off to defining what the present of work may well be like in preparation of the future, whatever that may well be.

Euan already hints what it may look like when he writes ‘Work is more about attitude of mind than place. Most of us can do it anywhere’, as he points out how we are not going to have a single barrier from either a technology or business processes points of view. On the contrary, it’s our very own mindset alone the one that’s stopping us, as we are still pretty much behaving and thinking in terms of the scarcity and constraints of the XX century as an opportunity of survival, when we should shift gears into the abundance of the XXI century. Based on what?, you may be wondering… Well, based on what is our new oil: knowledge, our collective knowledge.

Allow me to share an example … Every single time that I start working with potential clients, and before we get down to do some real hands-on work, I usually spend some time having conversations with them (either F2F or remotely, although the latter is a bit tougher, as I blogged recently) exploring their needs and wants, why they would want to change, as they have decided to embark on the Social Business and Digital Transformation journey, and how I may be able to help them accordingly, and during those conversations I typically have got a number of probe questions just to get a feeling as to how far their mindset may have shifted already or not. My favourite one that raises eyebrows time and time again is the following: with the emergence of all of these social, mobile and cloud technologies, ‘how does it make you feel when each and everyone of your employees is your new CIO?’ Pause there for a moment and observe with full intent their reaction(s)… Priceless! 

Here’s another example, if I may, that relates, pretty much as well, to my own recent working experience. I mentioned how, when I left IBM nearly three years ago, I spent a whole month doing tons of thinking to figure out what I wanted to do next. Part of that time was also spent on reconnecting with folks in my close networks to rekindle our working relationships, to let them know I had become a free man, and to also get my act together about my own online social presence. While all of that was happening, I also had the opportunity to be interviewed by a few Enterprise Social Networking vendors, as I was just becoming available out there in the Social Business market and perhaps a bit too appetising at the same time for some, who knows.

The thing is that I went through those interviews and we had some pretty amazing conversations about potential job opportunities with each of them, but then again I just couldn’t help myself throwing out there some additional probe questions of my own, one of them in particular rather critical for me to decide whether they may well have shifted mindsets or not and therefore be able to join them or not. This particular question is, to me, the defining one, whether you’re walking the talk or not in terms of thinking of work as a mental state enabled and self-empowered by these emerging social, mobile, cloud technologies or whether you still think work is a physical activity you do at an office under command and control: ‘Can I work with you remotely from where I live?’ The answer to that question by all of them was along the lines of ‘Well, we were hoping you’d relocate to our central offices [in whatever the major European city] and work from our office’. Yikes! No, thanks! 

See? If that probe question would have been asked in such manner for any other kind of job, I would have taken the answer as in I’d need to relocate and start working from their office(s), but this time around things are different. There were all Enterprise Social Networking vendors, who are supposed to live and breathe the social technologies they want to sell to their customers. These are the ESN vendors who claim, out loud, a new way of working, a new state of mind when thinking about work, about the huge opportunity and incredible perks of working remotely to help unleash the true potential of your employee workforce, yet, they themselves don’t embrace what they preach and act accordingly.

Of course, I kindly turned those ESN vendors down and rejected their very generous offers to join them. Of course, there have been several potential client prospects I have attentively declined working with because of the answers they gave me to those probe questions. Why? Well, mindset, that’s what it is all about, I am afraid, folks. And while I realise I’m hurting my own business by either not having some amazing steady full time job at a large multinational or by decorously declining to work with clients despite their good disposition, some times one has got to realise and come to terms with the fact it’s better not to feed the dinosaurs, specially, if the mindset is just not there. 

That’s how we might still have a good chance to change the future of work starting off today… Not tomorrow. 

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Why Don’t You Show Your Work?

• Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Knowledge Management, Learning, Open Business, Open Leadership

Gran Canaria - Roque Nublo's surroundings (The Friar)

There used to be a time when plenty of knowledge (Web) workers flocked to the Social Web to nurture, cultivate and build their own external social networks. Mostly, as an opportunity to introduce emergence into their work practices, while getting acquainted with all of the rage around social tools through first hand experiences. Perhaps, the most typical example of how people would achieve such levels of commitment and involvement with the so-called Web 2.0 spirit would be through the sharing of their own work, openly and available to everyone who might be interested in the topic(s), so that different conversations around work items would come along with potential customers, business partners, and, why not?, competitors as well. Fast forward to 2016 and it looks like we seem to have shifted from that narrating our work to mastering the art of ‘postureo’ or posing. Where did we go wrong?

‘Postureo’ is a Spanish word that would translate into English pretty much something along the lines of mastering the art of posing (by poseurs). I can’t believe I’m putting together this blog post over here to describe such word as a reflection of what we seem to be experiencing with the Social Web in this day and age. But, apparently, showing off your postureo is currently what all of these media tools are all about, or at least, what we are portraying ourselves as, at the moment. Notice as well how I have left out, on purpose, the word ’social’ out of it all, because somehow I feel we left that behind as well a good while back. What really happened? 

That’s pretty much the main premise from the absolutely brilliant, and rather thought provoking, article put together by Scott Monty under the suggestive heading ‘Do You Do Any Work?’ where he questions when people do their work, if all they do is posing on all of these media tools, all over the place, constantly, around the clock, sharing tons of tidbits about everything else, but the work they do. Because, you know, those folks are supposed to be doing work, right? At least, that’s what they themselves claim they are doing when proclaiming out loud they are being hired by such and such company to do whatever the work. The thing is that we never ever get any kind of exposure to such work. Have you seen it yourself? Can you relate to what Scott writes in that blog entry? Perhaps you may have even done it yourself to a certain degree as well and never noticed. Well, people do notice.

And that’s the whole point as to why a few years back I decided to transition myself from the so-called Social Business mantra into Open Business, more than anything else, because I, too, was seeing how plenty of knowledge Web workers were extremely social all over the place sharing multiple dozens of items per day in each media tool, even the new shiny ones coming out, but, when looking closer, it was always about everything else, but their work, as Scott nicely put it together with these words: ‘I rarely see any of them sharing anything about the company they work for, or the progress that their teams have made — even when these individuals are supposed evangelists or marketing leaders for their companies’. And I always wondered why people would do that. Well, I guess I know now, or, at least, I got a pretty good way of wording it properly: postureo.

The thing is that there is something else, deeper, going on at hand at the moment that most people don’t seem to want to talk much about it, more than anything else, because they do practise it themselves as well, based on what we have been doing over the course of decades, if not hundreds of years. There is a poignant legacy at play over here. I’m going to put on my Knowledge Management hat and state that the main reason why we aren’t very social sharing our knowledge, experiences and expertise about the work we do, is not necessarily because of that postureo, but more to do with the fact we just don’t like to share our knowledge. Period. Specially, with total strangers out there on the Web.

Yes, indeed, it’s that lack of a basic open knowledge sharing mentality that’s trapping us into a world where we are transitioning from the good old Web 2.0 spirit of social media into just plain media, never better said the word plain. And I understand, partially, why people would want to do that. Well, they need to be out there, they need to make themselves present to others, they have a constant urge to put their selfies (usually, doing some really cool things!) in front of your face, so you don’t forget about them for when you might need them for that potential new gig. You see? That posing is not necessarily about showing you how cool they are, but it’s mostly about here’s another selfie (or perhaps an interesting post on something I really don’t care much about) to remind you what I look like for when you need me, because, you know, you will need me, eventually. And, just like that, we fall into the trap. Every single time! 

For as long as I have been doing KM work, now coming close to 20 years and counting…, I have always been asked by other people why do I care so much about openly sharing what I know, about sharing my own work experiences, what I may have learned over time, etc. etc. And even though I wrote, a little while ago, about the main reasons why I do it, even today, some folks still think I’m doing it all wrong. I’m perhaps just sharing far too much! They keep telling me that, while they see my intent in sharing what I know may help others along the way to become better at what they already do, they also seem to be concerned about the typical leeches (Or ticks, they call them), who are just very eager on sucking up all of your knowledge, so that they can reuse it for their own benefit without you either not knowing anything at all nor getting any due credit, because, you know, it’s open knowledge, available out there for everyone to poach on, before they move on to the next victim. 

Of course, that may well happen. In fact, I do know for a fact it’s happened to me multiples times over the course of the years, but that hasn’t changed my mind a single bit to become more protective of my own knowledge, hoarding it and sharing it across sparingly, like you get to see in media tools more often than not nowadays. You see? It’s all about a matter of givers and takers and for us to decide on which side of the fence we want to thrive in, and so far for me it’s always been about the givers, regardless of the leeches, more than anything else because that’s the kind of Social Web I’d want to live in. One that’s open, collaborative, trustworthy, public, accessible and available to everyone. And we all know we ought to put together with the ticks, but then again they will never be capable of surpassing the givers, unless we let them to…

9 years ago I had the unique opportunity to watch live one of many KM presentations by the one and only Bob Beckman and one wise quote from him has stayed with me ever since to describe as well why do I keep sharing what I know, even today: ‘Don’t be afraid to share what you know, because you know it better than anyone else!’ It’s what knowledge (Web) workers do. Knowledge sharing is our job, we just need to do it! 

Eventually, it’s the kind of Social / Open Business ecosystem I’d want to help co-create and co-build altogether. Scott wonders that, after all, we may just need to have more role models to help shift gears and mentalities and somehow I think he’s right. The thing is that those role models may not necessarily need to be the experts anymore, but perhaps we should start looking more at those who walk the talk, those who put their words behind their actions, specially, when talking extensively about the huge potential of emerging social tools, whether internal or external, instead of just admiring, and sucking up, different poseurs hoping that something may splash out. It won’t. However, our very own working out loud behaviours will, more than anything else, because that’s who we are as knowledge (Web) workers. 

Aren’t we?

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Work Stream #4 – Speaking at Client Events

• Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, elsua, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Freelancing, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Open Business, Open Leadership

Gran Canaria - Sunset Cafe at Meloneras Beach

A couple of years back I wrote about ’The Magic of That First Client Engagement’ as perhaps being one of the most self-energising thrills any freelancer can experience as we begin our own journeys of being independent and become part of the so-called Gig Economy knowing that, if anything, we might have just made the right decision, after all. We are back in business! I guess there is another kind of unexpected thrill around freelancing that I didn’t think would be possible before, and yet it’s been one of the most rewarding I can relate to from my nearly three years long journey as an independent adviser on Social Business and Digital Transformation: speaking at clients’ events.

After having written about what are some of my current work streams as a freelancer in the realm of Social Business and Digital Transformation (i.e. Client Work, Face to Face Workshops and Public Speaking), I just couldn’t finish that series of blog entries, at least, for now, without referencing what has been one of the most rewarding work related activities I have embarked on and that I totally didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off. Not necessarily because of not being capable of doing that kind of work, frankly, but mostly, because I didn’t know it even existed in the first place! You know, when people keep talking about doing public speaking at conference events, I guess they always keep missing out from the equation the opportunity to do public speaking, but at clients’ events. Yes, I know it may no longer qualify as public, really, but still it’s speaking nonetheless in front of a small, medium or large audience about a particular topic that both you AND the client are truly passionate and motivated about. And I love it!

In terms of (public) speaking at clients’ events, it’s my favourite kind of work related activity, and for multiple reasons altogether: first, the opportunity to have a more targeted audience to engage AND learn with about a particular subject matter; secondly, the huge bonus of having a more intimate setting where you can truly dig in deeper on that particular theme both parties are really interested in learning more about (you and the client); and thirdly, the wonderfully inspiring set of conversations you get to spark and learn from with your audience because there is an innate trust element, along with a certain level of openness, that has already taken place for you to be there, in the first place, which is very very different than traditional public speaking; in most cases, the latter feels as if you are delivering a massively inspiring talk on a topic that perhaps some people might not be interested in, at all, and, of course, with no time for an opportunity for questions or interactions with the audience, because, before everyone realises, you are already off to the airport, to the next potential gig, to catch your flight that you are rather late for already, while you send out a tweet thanking everyone for being there. It’s a pity, really, that, when talking about public speaking, we seem to have lost that touch with the audience, learn along the way with those who have perhaps very much anticipated your presence on stage, and eventually leave everyone (including yourself!) with that afterthought confirming whether it was truly worth it being there that day in the first place… 

Anyway, back on topic, please. That’s exactly how I feel about speaking at client events and why I treasure them to bits. Back in the day, a really good friend of mine, once told me that we are, typically, touched by the clients we work with. They help shape us to become what we are, just like we help shape them to become what they might want to become. It’s a massive learning opportunity, not only because of the unique chance of engaging with an audience on a particular theme you’d both want to talk about more in depth, but also because it gives you, as a freelancer, the unprecedented chance of constantly challenging what you know and would want to share across, so, as a result of such discussions and interactions you become better at what you do, client after client.

David Weinberger wrote up in the Cluetrain Manifesto the following quote: ’Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation – literally. And ‘knowledge workers’ are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations’ and along with Biz Stone’s wonderful write-up about how ‘the future operating system for humanity is conversation’ I don’t think it can get any better than that. In fact, if there would be a need to justify the business case of social networking tools behind the firewall (Yes, in 2016 we still seem to have to do plenty of that!), that would be it: nurturing and cultivating the art of hosting some really good conversations. 

And that’s exactly what client events are all about, specially, if you are freelancing, and why they’d be totally worth it investing your time and energy in them, in case you might be wondering; it’s about having the wonderfully inspiring and exhilarating opportunity to converse WITH your clients, AND learn along with them in a unique setting, unfiltered, trustworthy, rather open and collaborative, where you prepare yourself to roll up your sleeves and start doing the client work you agreed upon through the co-creation process I mentioned and blogged about extensively on another article. That good!

Ok, ok, I can see now how you may be wondering what kinds of themes have I been working on within those client events, right? They usually last for about 60 to 90 minutes, or from half a day to a full day or two full days (at least, so far) and they, typically, range a fair bit in terms of topics, although, all along the same subject areas I talked about more extensively over here:

  • Social Business and Digital Transformation: ‘Where do we begin and discover what may lay ahead us, as we embarked on that journey of becoming a successful Socially Integrated Enterprise?’ 

  • Connected Leadership ‘What are the new traits, capabilities and qualities of leadership in this Social Era of social networks and social networking tools? How management transforms itself into leadership through social software enablement. How do we facilitate the successful transition from hierarchies into wirearchies as a new organising principle?’
  • Social Learning: ’How can we utilise our existing Enterprise Social Networking platform(s) to enhance and augment the way knowledge workers learn and get work done more effectively while on the job?’ 
  • Knowledge Management strategies: ‘How Enterprise Social Networking platforms can help us retain some of that critical knowledge we exchange on a daily basis with our peers, customers and business partners through social software and knowledge networks?’ 
     
  • Social Collaboration: ‘Cooperation vs. Collaboration, how can we differentiate between one and the other when we have got (virtual) teams, networks and communities making smarter use of social tools and still make sense out of it all?’
     
  • Online Community Building: ‘Why should we invest in designing, creating, cultivating and nurturing an online community building programme to help accelerate the adaptation rates around our Enterprise Social Networking platform? Can’t online communities manage themselves as is? Haven’t they done that for years already? Why Now?’
  • Enterprise Social Networking Adoption & Adaption plans: ‘Once we purchase our very first Enterprise Social Networking platform, how do we get started to sustain our adaptation efforts, change plans and activities beyond the One Year Club milestone? How do we manage to make social networking become our new, enhanced, operating model?’ (A good number of times around IBM Connections, to name one of the most popular ones I’ve been able to host so far).
     
  • Working Smarter with Less eMail (#NoeMail): ‘How can we work smarter, not necessarily harder, by eliminating vast majority of the email clutter we currently get exposed to on a daily basis? How can we tame the email beast and free ourselves from its yoke and into social networking tools? Is there a way to have a successful working life without email?’ (The answer, of course, is yes!).

Phew! Yes, I know, I know, that’s quite a few topics to cover! My goodness! Indeed, but remember that this is just a handful of the ones I can remember having done successfully in the last 3 years, or so, as there have been plenty more! I just wish I would have had the opportunity as well to blog about them in the moment, including the sharing across of the different presentation materials I may have used over time, but, alas, that didn’t happen. But that’s about to change, since this is, partially, also the reason why I wanted to resume my blogging mojo and stick around with it from here onwards, because in the last few months I haven’t been able to do a good job in working out loud myself, even though I’m such a huge fan of it, and I definitely want to change that. Why? Well, because a few years back I realised the moment I stop sharing what I know and what I learn along the way that’s the moment I start dying out a bit more inside.

Over the course of last few months I had enough with that long, slow, and somewhat painful process of seeing my knowledge stagnate by not sharing it across over here in my blog, where it could get constantly both challenges and improved, even if by my own writing of my own thoughts, ideas and experiences, so it’s a good time to stop with all of that nonsense about protecting and hoarding one’s knowledge and blog again at the home I never left. If anything, for my own sanity.

Knowledge was meant to be free, accessible and available to everyone, because the moment it isn’t, that’s the moment we are in trouble, as human beings. And now that we have got social software tools to help out freeing up our knowledge for everyone else to be part of that co-creation process, we no longer have got an excuse, don’t you think?

PS. Psst, you may have noticed how throughout the article I haven’t mentioned anything about the fees I usually work with for speaking at clients’ events, so if you’re wondering about what those would be like, well, it depends… on what you would need and what I could offer based on those time frames of 60 to 90 minutes, half a day, full day or two full days, amongst others, of course. 😀👍🏻

[Contact me via Twitter DM at @elsua – got open DMs-, should you have any further questions or queries you would want to discuss in private, or, alternatively, leave a comment below (with your preferred contact method, if you wish) and I’ll reach out to you as soon as I possibly can. Thanks!]

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Work Stream #3 – Public Speaking and the Exposure Economy

• Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, elsua, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Freelancing, IBM, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Open Business, Open Leadership

Gran Canaria - Ayacata in the winterNow that work streams #1 and #2 are out there, available to everyone interested who may be reading this blog, it’s a good time to talk about what has been, perhaps, one of the most profound transformations I have gone through myself when transitioning from big corporate world (while I was a salaried employee at IBM for 17 years) into the so-called gig economy of freelancing as an independent adviser on Social Business and Digital Transformation. Of all of the different work streams I have been involved with, and working on in the last three years, it’s perhaps the only one that, so far, has provided the most surprising of unexpected results I could never possibly anticipate, specially, since it’s turned out to be completely different than what I initially expected and you will see why shortly. Of course, I’m talking about public speaking, and inherently, about the exposure economy.

While I was at IBM, and over the course of the years, I was given the unique and rather exciting opportunity to speak at several hundreds of events, either as keynotes, breakout sessions, webinars, workshops, masterclasses, remote presentations, and what not, reaching to the point in 2008 where I got to travel 33 weeks out of the 52 to speak at a certain event whatever it was. I knew, back then, that was just too much, I just couldn’t scale as a human being and still have a life, so I decided to start cutting down, gradually, on my public speaking engagements in order to try to cope with it all in an easier, but equally effective manner. Nonetheless, the public speaking continued at a comfortable pace of between 40 to 50 different speaking engagements per year and I surely enjoyed that, because it gave me a huge opportunity to be able to carry out my daily job as a Social Business Lead Enabler from a completely different and unexpected perspective: the outside world. 

Little did I know though that was all going to come to a standstill, shortly afterwards, as I was making my way into becoming an independent freelancer, beginning of 2014, more than anything else, because, all of a sudden, I was subject to be confronted with an ugly truth that seems to haunt down freelancers all over the place nowadays and that is, if anything, as ugly as it can get: the exposure economy.

That’s where the real personal transformation journey began for me, because, out of the blue, pun intended, you realise, back then, you were just a tag, in my case, the IBM tag, which was always really nice to have around at any kind of Social Business or Digital Transformation event or gathering, because, you know, IBM was there as well, never mind who may have been speaking on her behalf or what ideas, insights and experiences would be coming across. That might not be important, the tag is, though. 

Once you realise you have, inadvertently, shaken off your shoulders such tag(s), that’s where the fun begins, because right then you will be part of that so-called exposure economy where, if you get the potential invite to speak at whatever the event, the first phrase that will penetrate your brain like a painful needle is this one: ‘Will you be able to speak for free? You know, it’ll be good for your exposure (as a starting freelancer)’ [never mind your 20+ years of extended work in the IT industry. Those never existed in the first place, apparently]. Or this other one: ‘We currently don’t have any budget left to pay the speakers, so we were wondering whether you could speak for free’. Does it sound familiar? I bet it does, sadly. 

Public speaking is broken. Very broken. The moment you are inviting a potential speaker to present at your event and kindly ask them whether they can speak for free, therefore making them become part of that exposure economy, that’s the moment where you know conference events are totally screwed up. Abusing the trust, the good will, the time, the effort and energy of those potential speakers you kindly invite to be present at your event is the very last thing you’d want to do to your business as an events organiser. It’s aiming for the cheap, so you can profit while they won’t! And we all know that cheap comes at a huge price, i.e. your own reputation as a business, more than anything else, because you are sending out a very loud and clear message you are enslaving those who you would want to wow and inspire your audience with their own ideas and in-depth knowledge and experiences in a particular subject matter. What kind of business message does it send out there about you? Not a really good one, I am afraid, on all grounds, specially, in this Social Age. 

All along, for the last 20 years in total, I have always been very grateful to the company (IBM) that gave me the unique and unprecedented opportunity to cultivate, nurture and develop my own expertise around the subject matters I truly love and that I am very passionate about. It’s a luxury that’s helped build who I am today, but I knew that, one day, once I’d need to shake off that brand tag, upon moving on to other adventures, things would be completely different, because it would be only me, my ideas and work experiences, that people might, remotely, be interested in learning more about, or not, should I get invited to speak at a conference event. 

And, initially, on my first year as a freelancer, those kind invites to speak at conferences kept coming through like crazy! I could hardly keep up with them to the point where, more often than not, I ended up with multiple conflicts and had to suggest people from my closest networks to fill in for me, something that, over time, has become one of my favourite work related activities in this networked, hyperconnected world. However, towards the end of the year I realised about how each and everyone of those invites was coming up with its own price tag: me / us speaking for free, you know, just to get exposure as we begin our journey as freelancer(s). 

It’s tiring. It’s very tiring and rather exhausting, indeed, to see how broken conference events are nowadays trying to enslave some public speakers, just because they think they would get away with it, aiming for the cheap, abusing people’s good will and good intentions, just so that they could profit themselves, at one’s expense, not matter what, thinking that it’s our own problem then to find some other kinds of revenue, in the mean time, that would allow us to keep on paying for our bills, while they have got you as one of their top-notch speakers for such an exclusive event, or so we are told.

I know that this blog post may well sound a bit too harsh and somewhat negative, and perhaps I’m burying myself with it being banned from all conference events that may be hosted out there from now onwards, as organisers get to read through it, but it’s far from my intention to sound negative about conferences, in general. On the contrary, it’s my outlier and rebellious nature, once again, coming out wanting to protest about something we all know is totally broken, even conference organisers themselves acknowledge how broken they are, yet very little gets done about address AND fixing the core issues, mostly around trust. It’s never been a two-way engagement where everyone benefits, yet, like I said, we just don’t seem to want to do much about it and fight. Well, I am! I need to. I have to. For my own sanity. Even if it means I’d have to sacrifice myself in the process by no longer being able to participate from one of my favourite work related activities by far: learning from different audiences about what gets you excited day in day out and become a better person as a result of it.

Late last year, I took one of my most difficult decisions ever in my 20 years of working experience in the IT industry that, at some point in time, I may regret for good, but either way, here it goes: late last year, indeed, I decided, I would no longer speak for free at any given conference event. I’ll not enslave myself to the cheap, to the free, in return of exposure, just because it’s good for my reputation. No, thanks! I want a fairer deal. I want a system that’s totally broken to heal itself with, or without, our collective help, because every time we, freelancers, agree to speak for free at events, we are perpetuating our very own slavery to the zero-sum game where we are always on the losing end. Always. No exceptions.

Oh, and that perception that we might be just too expensive for a particular conference event, as speakers, is totally false, let me all tell you, very far from reality, I can guarantee you that, based on my first hand experiences when I get asked what my fees are for public speaking and people respond back very much surprised ‘Really?’ Yes, really. That’s why we need to very much fix such a broken system of perceptions, perspectives, needs and wants, and, essentially, trustworthy good will. But we need to start somewhere. And, for me, this would be it: stop sustaining a sickening system that only benefits a few. And you are not one of them… That simple. 

 

Phew! With all of that said, and now that’s, finally, out of my chest, while our collective struggle to fix a broken system continues…, I guess those of you who may still be reading further along this blog post, might be interested in finding out, perhaps, what may well be some of the different topics and themes I do enjoy talking about at conference events. Well, just in case your curiosity kicks in, there are quite a few and all of them have got a lot to do with what I have been doing myself for nearly two decades and counting around Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Learning, Change Management, Online Communities (And Community Building) and Social Business (And Digital Transformation), without, forgetting, of course, A Life Without eMail, which has become one of my favourite topics over the last 8 years and still going strong … 

If you are still reading thus far and would want to know about some of the different conference events I have spoken at and what topics did I cover, here’s a selection of some of my favourite presentations and video recordings, so you can have a glimpse of what you might expect should you decide to reach out and inquire further whether we could work together for your conference event in equal, fair terms for both parties. I can guarantee you it will be worth it, if not judge for yourselves: 

 

PS. Psst, you may have noticed how throughout the article I haven’t mentioned anything about the fees I usually work with for public speaking at conference events, and if you’re wondering about what those would be like, well, it depends… on what you would need and what I could offer, but believe me you may be surprised to find out what it’d entail altogether, so get in touch! 😀👍🏻

[Contact me via Twitter DM at @elsua – got open DMs-, should you have any further questions or queries you would want to discuss in private, or, alternatively, leave a comment below (with your preferred contact method, if you wish) and I’ll reach out to you as soon as I possibly can. Thanks!]

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Work Stream #2 – Remote Working in Social Business Is Dead!

• Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, elsua, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Freelancing, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Open Business, Open Leadership

Gran Canaria - Pozo de las Nieves & Risco Blanco

After I quit IBM nearly three years ago, one of the first things I really wanted to do, before anything else, was to spend an entire month doing lots of thinking trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, as I was embarking on my next adventure as an independent adviser on Social Business and Digital Transformation. I knew what I wanted to do in terms of client work, but at the same time I decided to put together a number of other different work streams, just in case, to see which ones would click and focus on those from there onwards. And what happened next, over the course of last couple of years, is something that, to me, has been totally unexpected and mind-blowing altogether, to the point where I haven’t been able to figure it out just yet, nor do I comprehend it entirely, to be frank, what’s been going on all of these years, unless we may have been deceiving ourselves all along and we just didn’t know it: remote working does not exist! Get on with it! It’s dead! 

Ha! I know what some of you may well be thinking out there right now when I said all of the above, I have just jumped the shark and gone crazy altogether. Is remote working dead? Really? No way! I bet a few of you are remote knowledge Web workers, or digital nomads, or, perhaps, folks who have got the luxury of being capable of working remotely, wherever you are, every now and then, while you combine commuting to the office and you are looking at me as if I am totally insane! ‘Of course, remote working is very much alive and kicking! No doubt!’, you may be screaming out loud! And you are probably right since you might have been doing it yourselves already for over a decade, if not more, I am pretty sure!

So why have I said remote working does not exist in today’s business world then? At least, in the realm of Social Business and Digital Transformation, which, if you ask me, I find it a bit too ironic altogether, if you know what I mean. Well, because here I am, nearly three years on as an independent adviser, and I am still waiting for my first gig of remote work around the world of Social Business with a particular client, wherever they may well be. It just hasn’t happened, not even a conversation. Not even part of the client work contracts I’ve been doing so far, unless I first work co-located with the client for whatever the initially specified time frame, before we can move on to remote work. Who knew?, apparently, working face to face with people still is a thing. A huge thing. And a critical one, too, apparently, because unless you are willing to work on site the chances of working remotely alone are pretty slim. And here’s where the irony kicks in because with all of these social, emerging digital tools we keep advocating for about how work is no longer a physical space, but more of a mental state, and yet we still have got to commute to the office to show our work with our mere presence. Isn’t that a sign of how little people still are trusted n their respective workplaces based on the work AND results they provide, regardless of wherever they may well be? Hummm …Maybe. Just maybe.

Now, like I said before, I haven’t been able to figure out just yet why that happens, specially, in the field of Social Business & Digital Transformation, where advocates and digital nomads like myself have been pontificating and praising the perks of working remotely and becoming even more effective with the smarter use of the digital tools at our disposal for well over a decade, if not longer! ’Telecommuting is the future of work’, we have been saying for a good few years already, right? Yet, it hasn’t happened and there doesn’t seem to be an indication that’s going to happen any time soon. So time to shift gears, I suppose. Time to re-focus… 

I always thought how for my work stream #2 I would be focusing on remote work around Social Business & Digital Transformation, but when I started to realise that something else was coming up, on a rather regular basis, instead of remote work, I figured it would probably be much better to apply one of my favourite enhanced skills as a freelancer that I have learned to master over time: adjust and adapt accordingly to the new conditions. And those new conditions are what nowadays have become my #2 work stream: hosting face to face workshops.

Indeed, whether it’s happening at conference events (Usually, the day before or the day after the event), or at on-site client events around a particular theme, over the course of the last couple of years I have had the unique opportunity to put together a number of different rather interactive workshops to always deliver them face to face, in small groups, of between 10 to 25 people at a time, where over the course of either 90 minutes, 3 hours (half a day), 6 hours (one full day) or 12 hours (two full days) we get to cover a particular topic that ranges from some light touches to full in-depth discussions, knowledge exchanges and learning experiences. 

I can imagine how you may now be wondering what those themes may well be for that workshop portfolio I have been capable of building up over time with clients, or at different conference events, and how I may keep refining them all depending on the specific feedback from the participants themselves or the needs and wants of potential new audiences. So I thought it would probably be a good idea to link to some of the different workshops I have hosted in the last couple of years, so you get a chance to see what kinds of themes have been getting the most traction so far, in case you may be interested as well to find out more. So without much further ado, here you have got an initial list of them I’m going to keep updating over the course of time with new additions, further information details, upcoming public workshops, etc. etc. 

  • The Top 5 Pillars of Social Business Adoption / Adaptation): In this particular workshop we get to cover the Social Business Adaptation Framework I’ve built over the years and that I’m currently using with clients who are about to begin their own Social Business & Digital Transformation journeys and which is based on these 5 different blocks: a) Business imperatives; b) Governance; c) Use Cases; d) Networks and Communities of Champions / Ambassadors and, finally, e) Education & Enablement.
     
  • From Adoption to Adaptation, From Enablement into Engagement: Pretty much the very same kind of workshop in terms of covering the Social Business Adaptation Framework as the one referenced above, but in this case with IBM Connections as the Enterprise Social Networking platform to use as a practical, hands-on example of getting things started with your own Enterprise Social Networking platform. This is a workshop I have been able to provide to clients using other different ESNs as well, so you may be wondering why I am picking IBM Connections to quote this instance. Well, more than anything else because I have been a power user of Connections way before it even became a product back in 2007 (I was, for instance, a very heavy power user of its grandfather ‘Fringe’ back in early 2001) and I have got tons of extended experience with it. In fact, when I work with clients within the EU it’s my preferred method of collaborating offline with IBM Connections Cloud, as I have mentioned and blogged about a fair bit on a recent blog post.
     
  • Leadership in a Connected Enterprise – From Hierarchy to Wirearchy: I am a wirearchist. I had the true honour and immense privilege of co-authoring a book on it, and for well over a decade, when I was first exposed to the concept of Wirearchy (coined by my good friend Jon Husband nearly two decades ago) I realised we are fully immersed on that transition from the traditional command and control, top down hierarchy into a much more flexible, lenient, porous, pervasive, open, collaborative, connected way of organising and getting work done through social networks and (online) communities. Yet, I don’t feel we are truly prepared for it just yet, specially, (senior) management, judging from what we are seeing in this day and age. It’s a tough transition, you know, to go from being right at the centre of where everything happens and where everyone listens and obeys to what you have got to say and command without having a say about it to just be a node in the network who needs to earn every single day the merit of your peers, i.e. other nodes, while you keep demonstrating and showcasing your thought leadership skills, including, of course, the traits and qualities for which everyone thinks you are a leader. A connected leader.

    So with that premise, I decided to put together a workshop to help identify the number #2 business problem most organisations have got today, while I also help identify the huge opportunity and potential behind it to demonstrate with practical hints and tips and good practices, if anything, the different traits that the connected leaders of the 21st century need to exhibit if they would want to thrive in a work environment they no longer control, nor command, i.e. their own social networks, to work smarter, that is, more effectively, but not necessarily harder.  
     

  • Working Smarter with Less Email: Yes, as you can see, I’m still a huge advocate of #NoeMail. I keep practicing it every single day for the last 8 and a half years and counting. Going #NoeMail back then totally transformed the way I work AND live nowadays and while I realise I haven’t posted an update on how things are going for a really long while (Stay tuned, please, for an upcoming blog entry where I will try to summarise what’s been going on in the last few months!,) you may be pleased to know that more and more businesses are starting to question today their own addiction and overall (ab)use of their email practices at work, and for plenty of good reasons!, so I have developed a workshop that amalgamates all of those experiences and good practices for going #noemail that I have acquired over time and have packed them in either a 3 hour or 6 hour workshop with a guarantee methodology to help you reduce your email volume by 80% in just 5 weeks. Yes, you are reading it right, a guaranteed methodology, that I’ve used with a few clients already who have embarked as well on their own #noemail journey.

    Not to worry, I’ll be blogging plenty more about all of this over time, including the stories of some of those clients, so you can see how if there is a will, there is a way. Always.

And that’s pretty much it, in terms of describing a little bit what my #2 current work stream is at the moment and how, regardless of what my initial intentions were around remote work for Social Business, I had to learn, and rather quick!, that the moment you get things started, whatever those may well be, one has got to, again, learn and really fast, how to adjust and adapt accordingly before one becomes obsolete. And iterate again and again and again, till it clicks.

It’s that constant pursuit of ‘living (work) life in perpetual beta’. That’s how I roll nowadays, and you?

Mind you, I still believe it is very much possible to work remotely around Social Business and Digital Transformation (After all, I have been doing it myself since early 2003, while I was at IBM), specially, if we all start believing plenty more what we have been preaching and advocating for all along: work, in the Social / Digital Era, is no longer a physical space, but a mental state. So, perhaps, it’s a good time now, a decade on, to, finally, start putting our actions behind our fancy words around digital transformation, don’t you think?

Prove me wrong.

PS. Psst, you may have noticed how throughout the article I haven’t mentioned anything about the fees I usually work with in this kind of change and transformation work around Social Business by hosting face to face workshops with clients or at conference events, and if you’re wondering about what those would be like, well, it depends… on what you would need and what I could offer 😀👍🏻

[Contact me via Twitter DM at @elsua – got open DMs-, should you have any further questions or queries you would want to discuss in private, or, alternatively, leave a comment below (with your preferred contact method, if you wish) and I’ll reach out to you as soon as I possibly can. Thanks!]

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