Posts Tagged ‘people’

Tribes do not include everyone… or in other words, not everyone forms a tribe. It is constituted of people who care about a specific topic or interest or looking to bring a specific change. Real change comes from real people – who then influence others – who, in turn influence others.. .and before you know you have a tribe!

Tribe is needed to change the world. And Changing the world is addictive.

Social Media can be overwhelming but it has created a tremendous opportunity for anyone to be a leader. There is no test to pass, no permission needed. Before you needed millions of dollars to get on Television. NOW you need ten dollars to create a video. So, if you care about something, you can get up and lead.

If you are someone who wants to change the world, you will continue reading this post because you still need to understand how to gain advantage using social media and not get simply distraught by its demands. The understanding involves:

• Understanding transaction: If you have thousands of friends and followers on Facebook and on Twitter and not one of them is helping you to set up a meeting with a prospect, connect you with a decision maker or help you in any way to meet the objectives of your initiative – these friends and followers are worthless. Tribes exist because people care about something and they have the collective power to do impossible things – otherwise how do we explain airplanes and satellite communication – almost unthinkable a while ago.
• Understanding Meaningful: If you have to sell everything to everybody, then you will either drive yourself crazy or fail in your initiative. You need to sell it to a few who care about what you have to offer. Then they will talk about it to others. So, there is no need to SPAM people. Just find people who care about what you have and talk about you. The election of President Obama is an example of how people found meaning in his message and then brought in more people. And together these people changed the world.
• Understanding Focus: You cannot possibly be doing everything to change the world. Become focused on what aspect of the world will you change and the specific task that you believe you are good at in this effort. Tweeting, Facebooking, reading blogs, Youtubing – all these activities require a lot of time – if you are good writer – just write, if you are good networker just meet people – don’t do everything.

To change the world you need a Tribe – where people care about the same thing… are skillful in different tasks and… have relationships with people who care about the same change.

This is RAW power needed to change the world. Once you belong to this tribe, when you enroll people – you will discover it is addictive – not because it is COOL to do so. Because you will see the limitless possibilities and positive change that will impact others lives.

Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC and co-founder, ActiveGarage (the company behind 99tribes). Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle

Tagged as: 99tribes, deepika bajaj, enrollment, focus, invincibelle, meaningful, people, permission marketing, Social Media, transactions, tribes, viral, writer

We have all been in that situation where there is someone that is not pulling their weight, which places a constraint on the group’s overall performance. We often like them as people but not as much their performance, but we humbly tell ourselves things like “rather the devil we know than the devil we don’t” or “it would be too much of a disruption to replace them now”

To share a recent event, we hired a support staff that was pleasant and capable of most of the tasks required of the role but just not able to grasp the importance and flows of the business. What resulted was them performing the tasks they understood and all the things they struggled with were reassumed by those that were performing the tasks before their hire.

From a management perspective, some components of the operation were running smoother as there was a dedicated resource working the admin function; however from an operational perspective we had increased our operational overhead without increasing our service delivery to the clients which was the core objective of the hire.

After more than 4 weeks of training, the employee resigned. We wondered where we were going to find another employee and the loss suddenly felt enormous considering the investment to educate the recruit. Time to start again…

A quick search of craigslist.org produced a resume, a quick call the following day had the interview  and hire conducted before  noon. The following morning the replacement employee began – a mere 48 hrs and a new employee was in training. Within a week the replacement employee is competent at all the required tasks and adding depth to the operation in areas not considered possible with the earlier recruits.

To our clients there is a noticeable improvement, to the operations staff a confidence that the back office will be taken care of and a new capacity to produce has been facilitated – exactly the original objective of the hire.

On the flip side, do not forget that if the employee is not able to perform, they will know it and it will also be producing a stress for them always being behind or not knowing if their position is secure or not.

In these situations it is both beneficial to the organization and the employee  for the employee to be  relocated or replaced. The longer you procrastinate taking action, the more the focus is on the cost incurred as opposed to the cost of lost opportunities and the decision to take action becomes insurmountable.

Be decisive for your organization and your customers  when selecting and assessing performance in a role.

This article was contributed by Guy Ralfe, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book ProjectManagementTweets. You can follow Guy on Twitter at gralfe.

Tagged as: active garage, business, Business Management, execution, fire, Guy Ralfe, hire, human resources, people, performance, role, www.activegarage.com

Today is a special day for Active Garage.

What makes this day so special is that today, we are unveiling our flagship project that we have been tinkering on “Actively” in our “Garage”.

Active Garage is proud to announce the launch of its new project, 99Tribes – A People discovery engine for Twitter.

There is no dearth of people directories on Twitter. So, why another one?

99Tribes helps you find and DISCOVER twitter users who share their interests. Based on the patented Rawsugar technology, you can start discovering people by typing what you are interested in (popular examples being: marketing, sales, blogging etc.)

Like any directory, 99Tribes will show the search results. What happens next shows the power of discovery.

On the left column, you will notice a set of tags. These tags show the “other” interests of people displayed in the search results.

For example, marketing may be your interest and you search on Marketing. Looking at the tags on the left you may notice that a set of people interested in marketing are interested in music too. You click on music and now the search results are updated to reflect people who are interested in Marketing and Music. It does not stop there. The tags get updated and you may notice that there are number of people who are interested in Music and Marketing are also interested in Fashion and Art. Or Camping or Hiking.

In other words, you can drill down to multiple levels and keep discovering wonderful people along the way!

We invite you to check it out, add yourself to 99Tribes and have fun discovering others with like interests!

Wish you the very best,

Active Garage team.

Tagged as: 99tribes, active garage, directory, discovery engine, fun, people, rawsugar, search

Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. It is a familiar and very close affective connection with another as a result of entering deeply or closely into relationship through knowledge and experience of the other. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity.

So, you may ask what does it have to do with Social Media?

Intimacy with others:

Every morning, we wake up and some of us reach out to our laptops. This is true for those who go to work. But what I have started to see is that most of us log into Facebook. What we are checking out is our news feed. We start to see what some of our friends are doing? What some of our business associates are saying? What some of those people we don’t know are talking about?
Suddenly, this simple act of checking our news feed cultivates into interacting with them. We start to comment OR like some of those news feed. And then there is a sudden feeling of being close to people we care about and those we would like to know better. There is a dialogue that makes us feel part of their lives and transparency that they display wins out instant trust with them….And this dialogue and transparency was the genesis of building relationships even before social media arrived.

Intimacy with self:

When we check out our Facebook profile, we see someone we love MOST – that is YOU/ME. And just seeing how closely we are knit with our friends, family and colleagues gives us an instant self-confidence. Man is a social animal. Social Media enables man to be SOCIAL at a level that was not possible before. On your Birthday, you thank Facebook, since you get messages from people all over the world. The large list of people wishing you “Happy Birthday” makes a public statement of how blessed you are – Don’t deny it! We all love attention on our Birthdays.

Intimacy in building relationships:

Twitter has made it possible to Follow people and really build an instant communication with them. The @replies make it possible for people to have a public conversation with some people you either have relationships with or want to build relationships with. And when you have communicated with them, it is possible you will send them a DM to further engage with them at a deeper level. Followed by personal email and then potential meeting. This intimacy even before you have met the person gives us a sense of a relationship based on the context of that communication. You know what are the interests, passions of the person you are engaging with – instantly giving intimacy to this budding relationship.

Intimacy is a human tradition and social media is emerging medium – Intimacy scores well with Social Media…

Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC and co-founder, ActiveGarage (the company behind 99tribes). Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle

Tagged as: active garage, deepika bajaj, intimacy, invincibelle, others, people, relationship, self, Social Media

Last year, in November, I posted 12 posts on QUALITY in the form of QUALITYtweets, on Active Garage. It didn’t quite seem right to stop just there… when there is so much still left to say about QUALITY!

Here are the first twelve posts, in case you would like to go back and take a look:

1. Quality #1: Quality is a long term differentiator
2. Quality #2: Cure Precedes Prevention
3. Quality #3: Great People + Good Processes = Great Quality
4. Quality #4: Simplifying Processes
5. Quality #5: Customers are your “Quality Partners”
6. Quality #6: Knowing what needs improvement
7. Quality #7: Productivity and Quality
8. Quality #8: Best Practices are Contextual
9. Quality #9: Quality of Relationship and Communication
10. Quality #10: Inspection can be a waste if…
11. Quality #11: Driving Change Through Leadership
12. Quality #12: Middle Management and Quality Culture

#QUALITYtweet Make every review meeting a learning

experience by reviewing the product

and process, not people.

We create, we review and we make it better. Reviews are an integral part of product/service quality improvement. The core purpose of any review process is to “make things better” by re-examining the work product and find out anomalies or areas of improvements that the creator of the work product was not able to find.

Establishing a good review process in an organization requires management commitment and investment, but for returns that it generates, the effort is totally worth it. In software world, a lot of emphasis is given to formal inspections, but they work best when a formal process marries with a set of common sense rules. Here they go:

1) Reviewing early

Reviews in early phase of product development means that findings are less costly to resolve. The later defects are found, more expensive it gets to resolve those defects.

2) Staying positive

The art of review is to report negative findings (problems) without losing the positive undertone of communication. Negative or destructive criticism will only make the process more burdensome. Stay positive and keep the process lightweight.

3) Keeping review records

When a lot of time is spent on reviewing, it makes sense to track the findings to closure. Recording the finding helps you to effectively track the closure and trends.

4) Reviewing process, not the person

Always question the process and not the person. Human beings are bound to make mistakes, which is why reviews are required. So accept that mistakes will happen. How can we have a more effective process so that these mistakes are not repeated? That is the critical question.

Imagine that Bob is the reviewer of John’s work product and consider the following conversations:

Bob: “John, I reviewed the code of invoices module developed by you. Again this time, you have not implemented the architecture correctly. You committed the same mistakes that were also found in the registration module earlier.”

OR

Bob: “John, I reviewed the code of invoices module developed by you and your team. We have found some anomalies in the architecture implementation. I just wanted to know if the team had undergone the workshop on our standard architecture. If not, we should invite our systems architect to take a small workshop on system architecture so that the team has better clarity on how it can be best implemented.”

Two conversations with a totally different outlook. The first conversation tries to blame the producer where as the second conversation tries to assess the process and take corrective actions.

5) Training and more training

Reviewers can make huge mistakes if they are not trained. If you don’t invest in training your review teams, you cannot expect them to do it right, the first time.

6) Reviewing iteratively

Review often. During the course of product building, product needs may change. New ideas may be implemented. Keep review process constant amidst all these changes. Discipline is the key.

7) Reviewing the process of reviewing

Are we reviewing it right? Are we reviewing the right things? Periodically, assess the results and the benefits of having a review process. Assess how reviews helped improve product quality. In process assessment, also identify if people are heavily relying on reviews. It that is the case, it is a bad sign.

Success of any process depends on 2 E’s – Efficient and Enjoyable. Same holds true for your review processes. Review is a control mechanism, and hence the focus on getting it right the first time is still very important. A good review is just an internal quality gate that ensures that internal customers (reviewers) are happy with the final product. If your internal customers are happy, your external customers will be happy too!

—

Tanmay is a Software Quality Management professional based out of India. He hosts QAspire Blog and tweets as @tnvora. He is also an author of the book #QUALITYtweet – 140 Bite-Sized Ideas to Deliver Quality in Every Project

Tagged as: active garage, customers, efficient, enjoyable, investment, iterative, learning, management, meetings, people, process, product, qaspire, Quality Tweets, records, reviews, service, software, tanmay vora, training

The new year is coming on us and as we say good bye to 2009, which for most industries was a challenging year, we need to keep our eyes on the future. By far, 2010, will be the year when social media marketing is going to get really SERIOUS. You may ask, what does that mean?

For most part, like every maturing industry, here is what we can expect:

1. Consolidation: All the companies that support features and functions for Twitter and Facebook will see some consolidation.

2. Metrics Matter: For those managing marketing budgets, will start to put practices and metrics in place that will help them analyze social media spend and ROI.

3. More Adaptation: The MarketingSherpa report also notes U.S. marketers plan to increase budgets, cites eMarketer. Retail and e-commerce marketers are more likely to increase social media marketing budgets next year, 79%, followed by publishing and media at 63% and computer hardware and software companies at 55%.

Here is a small twist: It is true that 2010 will make ‘social media’ more serious and that brings us back to SOCIAL in social media.

Whatever we might do in terms of setting policies, metrics and practices around quantifying and qualifying social media, we can be rest assured that PEOPLE and RELATIONSHIPS will rule the space of social media.

Here is what we can do to become more competent contributors and users of social media:

1. Are you listening? : If you really think that there is someone  (other than moms) interested in what you ate for dinner, you can forget about it. As a contributor ( company or an individual), you will have to bring “quality” to what you have to say… and even more important than what you have to say, is what you listen. If you have the competency to listen on social media, there is good news. A new career is shaping up, people who can listen on social media will be valued and compensated. This is where new ideas, fresh perspectives and solutions will be created.

2. Are you giving good help? : For a decade, the business world had a nice ride telling what consumers should buy. With social media came a new revolution, where a consumer was able to make informed decisions based on help from people he/she trusted. The real question is “Is your customer service responsive?”, “Are you keeping the promises you make to your consumers?”, ” Are you willing to break some traditional and outdated rules that hurt your consumers?”

3. Are you building long -term relationships? : We have to give up our instant gratification mentality. Patience and perseverance – TWO KILLER APPS to WIN OVER MANY. Building long-term relationships means, you will have to first invest and nurture in those relationships – without getting anything out of them. And this means, to give a lot of help, a lot of value and a lot of time. Your content, your customer service and your response time – need to be impeccable to RULE the SOCIAL MEDIA Kingdom.

Welcome to 2010. I can’t wait to begin the ride….

—

Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC and co-founder, ActiveGarage (the company behind 99tribes). Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle

Tagged as: 2010, active garage, adaptation, deepika bajaj, invincibelle, listening, metrics, people, relationships, Social Media

This is the third part of a 12-part series titled #QUALITYtweet – 12 Ideas to Build a Quality Culture.

Here are the first two posts, in case you would like to go back and take a look:

1. Quality #1: Quality is a long term differentiator
2. Quality #2: Cure Precedes Prevention

#QUALITYtweet No certification will

save the project if you staff it with

poor resources

Great quality is always a result of good people working passionately towards organizations goals. People can be your strongest (or weakest) link that has the strong influence in quality of your deliverable.

In the process improvement initiative, if due consideration is not given to the people aspect, processes manuals and specifications can easily give you a false confidence that everything will go as per the process. People form the core of any project because they write specifications, understand, design and develop your solutions.

I believe that organizations need good people to deliver quality – process acts as a catalyst to drive the success and manage risks. People are always the strongest or the weakest link in the success or failure of a project.

One of the key challenges for managers/leaders is to build a “quality aware” team where people know that quality is everybody’s responsibility.

For example, having a set of development guidelines or testing guidelines does not stop an individual from developing a bad product. Ability to develop a good product, associate it with business understanding and finding optimized ways of accomplishing things is an art – an intrinsic ability. Focus should be on people because they develop solutions with the help of a process (whether a formal or personal process).

Processes help you create a right management framework, manage risks, measure outcomes and take right decisions. Processes should act as a tool and help people perform better. Knowing the priorities, business model and having insight on what has really worked for you in the past is crucial to see that processes drive growth and not become an overhead.

Recipe for great quality is to have right people following right processes employing right tools at a right time.

—

Tanmay is a Software Quality Management professional based out of India. He hosts QAspire Blog and tweets as @tnvora. He is also an author of the book #QUALITYtweet – 140 Bite-Sized Ideas to Deliver Quality in Every Project

Tagged as: active garage, framework, people, process, qaspire, qaspire.com, quality, Qualitytweet, risks, software, solutions, tanmay vora, tools, weakest link

There are broadly three phases of entrepreneurship

1. The Beginning

2. The Journey

3. The New Beginning ( Yes, It’s Not the Destination )

Now, the quick outline of the elements in each phase:

1. The Beginning

The five elements for the beginning phase are:

1. Purpose: Knowing why you are in this will help you keep going when the going gets tough

2. Passion: Doing what you love will make it feel like you are not working

3. People: Building together with the right people will make it look easy

4. Problem: Solving a real problem will help as people will pay to solve a real problem.

5. Plan: Having a plan even when you know that it’s going to change along the way

2. The Journey

The five elements of the journey

1. Patience: Everything takes longer and costs more. Patience is a MUST

2. Persistence: Sticking to the course of action even in the face of difficulty

3. Perseverance: Sticking to your beliefs even in the face of no successful outcome

4. Pain: Ability to handle the “pains” of entrepreneurship along the way

5. Politics: Knowing how to navigate in the sea of politics. You may not want to play politics but surely you should know how to survive and thrive in the politics that already exists

Last phase is what I call the “New Beginning.” I purposely did not call it the destination because rarely I see entrepreneurship “ends” with something – it’s usually a stepping stone to begin something new.

3. The New Beginning

So, here are the five elements of the new beginning

1. Pride: The satisfaction that comes with taking a concept to a completion

2. Profits: If executed well, there is money to be made. There are also profits in terms of personal growth and fulfillment.

3. Power: Since nine out of ten companies go out of business, if you are part of the one that succeeds, you automatically have more power.

4. Possibilities: New possibilities open up as you have more credibility

5. Philanthropy: You can make a bigger difference to the world as you have “extra” capacity

For those of you who are starting on this wonderful journey, wish you the very best.

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: Entrepreneurship, pain, passion, patience, people, perseverance, persistence, philanthropy, plan, politics, possibilities, power, pride, problem, profits, purpose