The importance of social media to organizations

Yesterday was at a seminar hosted by SHRM on Social Networking is changing the way people manage their careers and organizations. The panelists; Mahesh Murty of Pinstorm, and Rajeev Dingra of WatConsult, expressed balanced views on both the upside and downside of the use, as well as the non-use, of social networking within organizations.

Mahesh described his company's use of two metrics, the Desirability Index (DI) and the Engagement Matrix. The first metric, the DI, was directly proportional to the number of times the company's name appeared in search results, and therefore indicated a prospective employee's interest in it. By inference, it served as a barometer to the company's popularity as an employer. An event like the publishing of a book Employees First Customers Second by Vineet Nayar, the CEO of HCL, propelled the DI of the company northwards, indicating its rise in rankings as an employer of choice.

On the other hand, the second metric, the EI, tracked and analyzed what people were talking about the company on various social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Social media have the power to transmit any view, either good or bad, extremely fast across the globe and therefore a company needs to be highly alert to what kind of conversations are going on about it. Prompt action in such matters as adverse reports about the company's products or services can help avert disastrous consequences. Obviously, both these metrics are critical in a company's recruitment efforts as well as, sales growth, and need to be monitred closely.

Rajiv on the other hand made the important point about how employers need to track what their employees are talking about the company on the social media networks.  Most importantly, Rajiv explained, used the right way, these networks can serve to alert employers about the gripes and complaints their employees are making on various company related matters. Employers responding promptly and sensitively to such feedback would be seen as caring employers, making social media powerful culture building tools..

A lively interaction with the audience by both panelists followed, which made the event even more interesting.

The Buddha's Eight Fold Path to Personal Success

The power of coaching lies in its individualization to the client needs.The coach needs to understand the coachee; his personality, his needs as well as his expectations. Having understood this, the coach then proceeds to create a customized approach to help the client move from where he is, to where he wants to be.

This will become clear from my experience with a client of mine. After having successfully managed the international interests of his family, he had handed over the reins to his brothers, and had taken to concentrating on investments and charity. He ran a well-managed charitable hospital for the poor in India, and also did a lot of good work in an African country  - his way of giving back to a country which was the source of all his wealth. 

For our first meeting, he invited me to London, where we had week-long coaching sessions. In his well-appointed office (he had the queen as neighbor!), hung a large portrait of Shiva and he always attributed everything that happened in his life to "the good Lord's wishes". Having observed this side of him, I began to think of ways to use this spiritual trait to hasten him towards the achievement of  the goals he had set for himself. The result was a worksheet - The Eightfold Path to Personal Success.

 Using the Buddha's Eightfold Noble Path as a template, I modified his eight original Right Paths

Source: http://brian.hoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/HST330/13.IndianBuddhism.html

to Appropriate Paths to render them more practical to practice to make them look like this;

1. Appropriate Understanding
2. Appropriate Speech
3. Appropriate Livelihood 
4. Appropriate Concentration 
5. Appropriate Mindfulness 
6. Appropriate Effort  
7. Appropriate Action and 
8.  Appropriate Intention

I presented the worksheet to the client at our next session, telling him to read, contemplate and interpret the eight paths in his own life situations and implement them. The client was greatly impressed, and kept asking me where I got it from.

"From the Buddha," I replied. And I wasn't far from the truth. With the Buddha's blessings, the client benefited significantly from the contemporary rendering of his Eight Fold Path.

If you too wish to use the worksheet to help you carve your path to personal success, write to me and I'll send you a copy.

Why is the practice of leadership difficult?

More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tsu, in his The Art of War, advised military leaders to "Know the enemy." In WW II, the German general Erwin Rommel did it so well, that he came within an inch of hammering the Allied British forces. On the other side of the enemy lines, the commander of the gun battery on the Dover cliffs knew his enemy too! Every night, during the war, a German boat from the other side of the channel would travel up the straits on a reconnaissance mission. The commander, knowing the Germanic trait of being methodical and disciplined, watched for a pattern to emerge. He soon realized that the boat would come around exactly at 10p.m. He would therefore set up his guns and be ready and waiting, and when it hove  into view - he would just blast it away!

So then, can the knowledge of military history and strategies, along with the study of Sun Tsu's Art of War and other writings on leadership, lead one to becoming a successful leader? Well yes, but only partly. 

The reason? Leadership is  a complex phenomenon.

Being a leader requires heavy lifting!

 But just how complex? Atul Gawande in his book, The Checklist Manifesto, describes 3 levels of complexity;

• At Level 1 are simple problems like baking a cake, you master the recipe, and you are ensured success.
• At Level 2 are complicated problems like sending a rocket to the moon. The special expertise, once learned, becomes replicable.
• At Level 3 are complex problems such as raising a child. Since every child is unique, outcomes are uncertain.

Leadership shares it complexity with parenting. Just as every child is unique, every leadership situation too is unique. And therefore, even though reams and reams have been written, researched and studied about the subject of leadership, its practice continues to create uneven outcomes.

Given the complexities of leading a business , business leaders have found a CEO coach to be a useful help in becoming better leaders. A coach can help leaders unravel the complexities, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and make the knowledge work to their advantage. As one of the business leaders I was coaching remarked," Uday,  after I have started  practicing my coaching commitments, I find my employees have a greater respect for me."

A respect born purely out of understanding and successfully working on his leadership potential.

Indian firms losing leaders!

There is worrying report in yesterday's Hindustan Times, a B-school study shows that there is a serious downfall of leadership in Indian companies.

The findings of the study, conducted by Pune's Symbiosis indicate that in the past two years, a lot of people in leadership roles at all levels, have either switched jobs or been laid off. When such roles are offered to existing employees, they find excuses to reject the offer. The reason? Lack of investment  by Indian companies in grooming them to become leaders and bringing in people from outside to fill leadership roles.As a direct result of their neglect of developing and investing in the potential of their own employee, they find themselves low on confidence in taking on leadership roles.

According to Mr K.S. Subramanian, the director of Symbiosis, neglecting to groom employees to become leaders results in them display  'stopping behaviour' where their mindset stops growth. "The self awareness to rise up the ranks is missing," says the director.

As an Executive/CEO coach, I have noticed this neglect of grooming employees for leadership roles at first hand. A few companies who do invest, do so on the conduct of training programs, the objectives and design of which are little related to leadership grooming.

As an Executive/CEO coach, my prime objective is to build my client's self awareness by offering a mirror to himself . I do this by initiating the coaching process with a focus on Leading the Self. Only after this do I move on to the other two leadership domains - Leading the People and Leading the Organization. This inside-out approach proves extremely valuable in enlarging the self-awareness of clients, and helps them engage better with their external world .

One of my clients after a coaching session, said to me, "Uday I realize now that I have been spending only 0.5% of my time on my most important priority - communicating my vision to my team!" 

Imagine what that one single insight can do to a leaders effectiveness!

How good are you at reading the pulse of your employees?

In his book, author Alfie Kohn, relates an interesting tale of an elderly man who had endured the insults of a crowd of 10-year-olds every day as they passed his house on the way home from school.One afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back the following day and shouted rude comments about him would receive a dollar. Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering epithets for all they were worth.