Companies are actively promoting blogs because they serve as an excellent medium for sharing content, knowledge and information. Such blogs not only encourage individuals to create “content”, but also serve as an important self-development tool for the bloggers.

I have been thinking about the idea of “HR Blogs” in organizations.

My discussions with hundreds of employees and tons of employee survey data has led me to believe that employees generally feel the need for more communication from the HR department on policies, practices, guidelines etc. And, I felt that a company HR blog could be one of the media which can be used to communicate and disseminate such information. Such a platform would make the information sitting in dusty files easily accesible to employees on-demand. The blog would also help in reinforcing communication. Some sample purposed which the HR department could use the blog for could be:

• Disseminate general information about programs and policies. 
• Share updates on upcoming training programs.
• Inform employees about performance appraisls. Educate managers on best practices for conducting appraisals.
• Share other best practices on people management like selection, on-boarding, goal-setting, recognition, alignment to corporate objectives, progress reviews etc.
• Disseminate information about HR business partners for other divisions / departments.
• Outline the role of line HR and describe how they can help.
• Share information on new policies.
• Use simple polls to conduct dipstick surveys.
• Creating “interview” posts with employees by inviting them to share great ideas, practices and feedback.

Such a HR blog could help in getting employee opinions on many of the HR-related issues and would guide policy-making. Moreover, this will be a much more accessible and searchable repository of information.

Do you think HR blogs would make sense? How could we leverage these?

• From a content “consumer”, social media encourages people to also create content. So, I no longer am just a consumer, but a part of the ecosystem of producers and consumers. I write articles on my blog, create photographic content, video content etc. And, it’s not that I had a major change in my life which made me a “content producer”. It’s is the very nature of the “wikipedia economy” to make people “active”, rather than “passive” in the ecosystem.

• Social media has weaned me off traditional media. I hardly read the newspaper these days. It’s quite a big “object” to hold in the hands anyway. Instead, I prefer to read all the news / blogs via Google Reader on my iPhone. It is always available, easy to use and serves me fresh content.

• Not that I am a big TV fan, but I was quite sure that people cannot imagine their lives without the idiot box. But, I can see a lot changing there. More and more video content is moving to the web (Hulu, Youtube, on-demand movies etc.). Not only this makes content available on demand, rather than fixed show timings, it is also a great way of content “discovery”, rather than being tied to the content you subscribed for. Also, there are possibilities to buy specific content that you like and watch it at your leisure on the phone or computer. So, I don’t like all shows on Discovery Travel & Living, but I can definitely buy Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations through iTunes.

• I have an audio cassette of one of my favourite artists, but I don’t know how to play it. With music moving to digital formats, we made the content more portable. The iPods provided a great interface to run through and organize your music on-the-go. And, then phones doubled up as your music player. Even more, now I don’t necessary have to store music, I can hear it streaming from the web legally though sites like Last.FM, Pandora etc. While the radio still is in fashion (somewhat), you have tons of web apps offering streaming radio.

• The social media makes the content timeless for me. So, I am free to go back to look at the content repeatedly with ease.

• Best of all, my content is no longer confined to me. It’s out there in the open – for sharing. Always available to everyone – on demand!

Many of these changes we see in this new web-driven world are very disruptive, changing attitudes, behaviour and even ways of doing business.

What changes did social media bring to your life?

It has been an eventful year for me. I got promoted. I left my job at Gallup India. I got married. Yay! I had a wonderful vacation in Thailand. Yay, Yay!! I joined Towers Perrin in Sing a pore. I went about Singapore. And so on.

Meanwhile, a lot of posts on this blog got quite popular. And, I thought it will be a good idea to do a quick round-up of the various things I wrote about in 2008.

• The concept of “Micro-Boredom” and how the mobile phone has become my saviour.
• My wishlist from the grand-daddy of internet – Google.
• The business case for Employee Engagement. This post got a lot of attention and was eventually published on the front page of Deccan Herald’s Career Supplement DH Avenues.
• I got myself an iPhone 3G and wondered if it is “smart-phone” enough. Subsequent fixes from Apple have resolved some of my issues with the almighty phone.
• I borrowed from some research by my company to think about “deal-structuring” for employees or how we could maximize employee RoI from their relationship with organizations.
• 2008 was the year of economic ‘pain’. I mused about how we could manage differently.
• I am bowled over by the wonderful system of ‘incentives’ in Singapore. But, why are restaurant staff here not incentivized enough to provide great service to customers?
• I became a fan of TED. Fascinating stuff. Kevin Kelly impressed with his talk on the next 5000 days of the web.
• Mumbai will not forget 2008 so easily. Neither will I. I blabbered as Mumbai took the bullets.
• I started thinking about simplifying the interfaces of enterprise applications. I think this is a big big opportunity.
• I stumbled upon an idea to convert the employee benefits system into a ‘marketplace for benefits’. I have completely given up on looking at traditional system thinking on solving this critical problem that so many organizations face. An innovative and experimental approach is more likely to lead to a solution. I am looking for organizations who would like to partner with me on such an experiment.

And, if you think, I have bored you enough with this serious stuff, go straight to my alternate blog at Tumblr to enjoy some really cool pictures, videos, quotes and fun stuff. Or meet the shutter-bug in me at Flickr. Or, just head straight to my FriendFeed page to get a snapshot of all my online activity and networks. 

Here’s to a peaceful and fulfilling 2009. Cheers!

I have become a huge fan of www.ted.com. I came across this very interesting talk by Kevin Kelly, founder-editor of the Wired magazine, on the future of the internet. He begins with a simple, yet powerful statistic – “the web is only about 5000 days old” and then goes on to predict the next 5000 days. Some key takeouts:

• The total processing power of the web will exceed that of the human race by 2040. He does this using simple approximations and using similarities in the functioning of the human brain and the web.
• All devices (PCs, mobiles, cameras, cars etc.) are just ‘windows’ to look into the big machine called the web. Every device will be web-based and the web will own every ‘bit’.
• Media will have a common platform.
• Humans will become the extended senses of the machine!
• Data would be able to transcend websites. Eg. you won’t have to tell different social networking websites about your identity. It will be able to identify you and your friends by itself.
• Humans and the web will be co-dependent. We will be “always on.” The web will be able to provide us a complete personalized experience, provided we are completely honest with it.
• In effect, the web will become much smarter, personalized (at the price of transparency) and very ubiquitous.

• First things first – let’s talk about Gmail – the killer email service that gave Yahoo and Hotmail the jitters of their lives. Now, Google provides its Gmail users complete access through POP3 / IMAP, so that they can access their mails from a desktop client like Outlook or from mobile devices. They also have a neat application for mobile phones, that brings the real Gmail experience on the small screen. But, this application misses something which is the “in-thing” today – push email or the ability to fetch email as soon as it arrives, without having to manually check mails. I think this should be an important addition to the product.
• Gtalk was “love at first sight” for me. The neat, simple interface was a great relief from that of Yahoo Messenger. I got hooked. And then I wanted it on my mobile phone as well. Apparently, Google does offer a Gtalk client for Blackberry phones, but not for others. What sin has Symbian or Windows Mobile committed? I agree that there are tons of companies offering Gtalk clients like Talkonaut, EQO, Nimbuzz, Fring, Morange etc., but I really don’t feel very comfortable keying in my password on these applications. After all, I use my Gmail for receiving statements from my bank account.
• Google has a wonderful collection of essential softwares which it bundles and offers as Google Pack. Can we have something like that for mobile devices? A single download that offers essential communications, productivity, entertainment and security tools.
• And, how about a Google Mobile Suite – a collection of apps that provide close to full-blown (with all the limitations of mobile devices) experience of all Google services.
• Currently Google allows its mobile users to access Google Docs on their devices. But, users can just view their documents and not edit them. There are so many smartphones out there in the market which suffer from the same handicap – their devices come installed with Office-like software that enables them to view, but not edit documents. How about Google removing this handicap and getting more eyeballs on Google Docs!
• Google acquired Jaiku, a micro-blogging service, sometime back. Google – can you please give us some information on what are you doing with this? Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms are going to eat you for breakfast. It would be great to have a Google micro-blogging platform which is well integrated with Gtalk, Gmail, Orkut, Reader etc.
• Finally, I know you have a great SMS search service. India has one of the largest number of mobile users in the world and SMS as a service is quite cheap. People do not hesitate to pay premium charges for SMS to vote for their Indian Idols or participate in a game show. I am sure that Google’s SMS service can take off in a big way. Most mobile users in India still don’t use GPRS/Internet on their phones, so SMS can play a big role in bridging the information divide. But, there are two stumbling blocks – awareness and localization. How many people know of this service? A miniscule proportion. First of all, Google should popularize the SMS-based search service. In doing so, they need to push mobile operators as well, since they pocket the lion’s share of the SMS revenues. Secondly, if they succeed in providing the service in local languages, the potential simply doubles or maybe even more. Instead of going to ITC’s E-Choupal centers to get weather information or commodity prices, farmers would get the information in their fields, in their palms, whenever they want. That’s going to be huge!

Dear Google, a little more is all we want!!

The executable file is only about 300kb, but it downloads more setup files when you run the installation. The installation should be a breeze (a couple of minutes) and is a no-brainer. And you logon and see the very familiar interface of the very popular Gtalk Gadget. The overall interface is clean and clutter-free and just the way you expect Gtalk to be! And yes, the Labs Edition does come with all the much-craved features of the gadget like Group Chat, ‘cool’ emoticons and much more built into a desktop client. It gives notifications from Orkut, Gmail and Google Calendar as well. I particularly like the notification thingy from Google Calendar. I use Google Calendar extensively, but get most of the alerts by SMS..that can be a hassle at times – getting too many of those. As opposed to that, the notifications on Gtalk will be much less intrusive, I guess.

The only thing that baffles me completely is the name “Labs Edition” – what the heck!!

I have my own bouts of micro-boredom and when I think of it, I love the way various companies are tapping into my ‘nothing-to-do’ space. And, it’s far from being intrusive, but is actually quite helpful at times.

I use a Nokia E62 with Symbian O/S. It helps me check my company’s emails (MS-Exchange) with Mail for Exchange and sync my phone calendar/tasks/contacts to my Outlook. Google went on to create a suite of service for the hand phone. So, I can check my Gmail, add reminders to the calendar, watch Youtube videos suited for mobile phones, catch up on Google News, check out my Google Docs and catch up with my favourite feeds using Google Reader. They even created a handy application for Google Maps, which you can download to your cell phone. It is really useful – so when I have to find out where my hotel is located in Mumbai, I know where to look for it! Then, somebody realized that there has to be a better way to browse the net on a small screen and we got Opera Mini. Ideal for browsing, Opera Mini optimizes the internet for your cell phone. I use it to update my Twitter status; send private messages over Jaiku and connect with people on LinkedIn. It also has a feed aggregator and easy management of favourites. Yahoo Go puts in a host of Yahoo services in your palms – push email, weather updates, news, calendar and of course, Flickr. I browse through my albums, catch up on old times and share a laugh with myself at times. Then there is WidSets. It allows me to add tons of widgets to my application window – Twitter, Gmail, Jaiku, Feed Reader, Weather, Sudoku and tons of other time-killing games. I also micro-blog at Tumblr. So, you have this cool application called Tumbla, which lets you post text, quotes and pictures to Tumblr. In the evening, when I get a message that I need to be in Delhi for an urgent client meeting, I use applications from Jet Airways and Yatra.com to book my flight tickets on the go. Did I mention that I like to track the stock markets? I use Markets on Mobile from Moneycontrol to get updtes on my portfolio and the markets in general. Sometimes, when I get up in the night, I even use it to see how the US markets are doing! Whenever I feel the urge to chat up with a friend, I log onto my Gtalk / Yahoo Messenger. There are tons of options for this like Talkonaut, Morange among others. Though multiplex movie tickets are pretty steep these days, whenever I feel like I use the application from Book My Show to book movie tickets. What’s more, it even allows me to choose the seats of my preference. Oh yes! I swear I use my phone to talk as well.

So the other day, someone asked me “Don’t you get bored staying by yourself?” Nah! No way! Micro-boredom has evaporated into thin air! My phone is my saviour – my very own, personal Jesus Christ.

Salvation lies in your hands!

There is this whole story about allegations that senior players in the team stifled the juniors, they mistreated them and someone said they even abused them. The senior players, of course, denied this outright. What is interesting is that how much we Indians love hierarchy. Hierarchy is perhaps as old as India. The caste system provided an overall classification of the society. Even today, we see hierarchies in offices (“yes sir”), government (“please sir”)…everywhere. I have seen deep-rooted hierarchy systems in companies which are the stalwarts of Indian business and are multi-nationals in their own right. 

Now, I see the same thing in cricket. I don’t understand why should there be even a mention of a hierarchy in a sport. All that matters is talent and execution. Why should there be someone in a team who is senior and someone who is junior. By doing something like this, we regress towards a system where seniority is determined by tenures and not performance. How can we classify people as “seniors” / “juniors” based on their length of careers? If that is logical, they should perform every time (especially when India needs them the most) because they are, well, seniors. What instead should matter is performance.

Using such terms by the coach, team members or the media is just fragmenting an already rattled team and hierarchies are not going to work. It is a team and should be looked at and managed as a team. Every one is same in terms of merit, that’s why they are a part of the team. Every one has potential, which can be deployed at an individual and collective level. Let’s hold our fanaticism for a while. Let’s give Team India breathing space and time and I am sure they will strike back.

What are we afraid of? Is it the pain of tearing apart old wounds? Or is it the fear of reopening the debate and controversy? Or is it plain aloofness – absolute refusal to participate in things that directly don’t affect some of us? Or is it escapism – creating an artificial sense of well-being

We have loads of movies around fantasies – Switzerland romance, village damsels, rich-girl-poor-guy-and-no-consent-from-family, Supercops, Superheroes and Rags to Riches – talk of it and we have it. But, we have run away from reality. Of course, the 60’s and 70’s did give us movies relevant to the realities of that time – middle-class struggle, politics, bureaucracy, unemployment and the like. But, suddenly we chose to snap the strings that bound reality to cinema.

I really feel that “Reality” cinema is a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped. It has the potential to move from posh multiplexes to second-tier cities. Given the low cost of production, it can be a money-spinner. But, above all, it will help people closer to reality and will shape the psyche in a better way.