Building a Social Culture in Organization

Building a Social Culture in Organization

We all are social beings. We all want to be recognized personally and professionally. In today’s time, it’s important to build our personal brand to be recognized well not just within the organization but also, in the outside world.

Question: What is that the organizations like Facebook, Forrester, McKinsey, Google, Linkedin, Twitter etc. do differently to build their company culture and how is it beneficial for the individuals and the organizations?

Answer: They help their teams to grow personally and professionally by building personal brands. The organizations help individuals to identify their strengths, weaknesses and set goals and help them achieve those goals.

What’s in it for the Individuals?

·         It helps the individuals to receive personal and professional growth.

·         It pushes individuals to keep themselves updated and active on the latest in the industry relevant to their work.

·         It helps them identify their short term and long term goals and keeps them focused on achieving those goals.

·         It builds a culture of being socially humble: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”.

·         It helps them align with the business goals and bring in collaborative growth.

What’s in it for the Company?

·         Social culture helps organizations to attract and retain brilliant talent in the organization.

·         It helps the organization to see the contributions of the individuals who go beyond the call of duty and identify star performers and reward them.

·         It helps the organization to be seen in a positive light in the market / relevant industry.

·         Helps in identifying the common growth areas and how to help individuals in achieving those goals.

·         Helps in aligning human resources with business goals.

·         It fosters an environment of multi-cultural growth, collaboration and razor sharp work force.

·         It helps the stakeholders of the company (including customers, shareholders, investors etc) to see that the company has the right talent to grow as well as

How to achieve this?

Simple: Let’s start by getting social!

But how to be social?

• Connect with your community.
• Learn from your community.
• Innovate and share with your community.

What else?

Loyalty and Employee Attrition Rate

In recent times I have been reading about "Employee Loyalty" and "Employee Attrition Rate". A lot of organizations worldwide face this challenge of employee attrition, where they hire the best and the brightest in the industry. However, after 2-3 years of stay in the company and learning things people think they know everything and they decide to move on.

Well I do not agree to this behaviour, however, reflecting on my previous job hops it's strange that unknowingly I myself have done the same. "Unknowingly" yes, unknowingly...when today I reflect upon my previous 5 years I see having changed 3 companies already. Which essentially means 1.5 yrs on an average is what I stayed with those companies and I didn't realize till now until I think about it...that, I too moved on thinking I know everything. Strange but true. Well then just a month back I was thinking after a review meeting and hearing something very important from my Boss..."I have to think long term and what I was demanding is a very short sighted demand."

I felt a little disheartened and unsatisfied. However, I then went back to home and started talking to my wife about it and she said...hold on....come out of your present thinking and look at it objectively. Yes, I realized, I was unpractical for a moment and unreasonable too and that's when I decided, ok, let me introspect. Well I don't know it all. I need to learn a lot. And this is the right place and is in the right time over here. So let me re-look at the way I am looking at things.

Hey, I just moved out of the feeling of "disloyalty" which was developing in me...and yes it helped me grow as a person.

Question: What is "loyalty" anyways?
Dictionary: The act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action

Answer: Infosys CEO Narayan Murthy once said:” Love Your Job But Never Fall In Love With Your Company, Because You Never Know When It Stops Loving You."
Well, I am not sure in what context he said that, however, an interesting statement from a company's CEO who runs a company of over 60,000 employees.

So does that mean you should be loyal to your work and nothing else?
Well, I feel if I am loyal to my work, I am loyal to the people who assigned me the work. I am loyal to the people who thought I would be the right fit to do that job. I am loyal to the company who decided to hire me to do that job. I am loyal to my family to whom I promised I will earn and give them a good life.

So does that mean I should be loyal to my work and my company and my family always? Well answer is YES. However, I have 2 questions to ask readers...

What about my company being Loyal to me?
Where does this disloyalty actually arise?

Is it a One-Way-Street? That I keep being loyal to my employer and my employer can take a decision to let me go whenever they want to? Isn’t that disloyalty to the employee that you decide to let some one go and don't even bother to inform him about it, if, any corrective action can be taken?

There were days in my country, India, when people use to join one company and retire from the same company in there entire career. Why doesn't it happen again? Well, it's a 2-way street now. Both employers and employees are disloyal to each other OR is it that we don't communicate enough? Is it that, if we have our issues, we do not communicate them well in advance, to find a solution? I am not sure...what are the reasons...but I feel it can be corrected.

As I always say, communication is the KEY to success. If people communicate with each other about their feelings, about their opinions and what they think is right and wrong, these "Disloyal" situations can be avoided.

However, I have another question:

Question:Have we become so impatient and eccentric that we don't have the time and patience to talk and be honest?

Answer: May be yes. We do not have patience to help people. We are bothered about our own growth. We are bothered about "what's in it for me?” So essentially, it's neither the employer being disloyal to the employee, nor the employee being disloyal to the company. It comes down to Individuals. We as individuals are responsible for our actions and our decisions. And if we are taking these decisions based on our attitudes towards looking at things, as self centered people, we are more or less bound to take irrational decisions.

There are so many companies out there, which have survived for over 100 years. Have they had people taking decisions based on there attitudes and self centered behavior, today, those companies would have died, because, the success of companies is due to the people who work there.

So what does this all mean? - Loyalty is nothing but an individual's decision based on his attitude? Yes, I feel so, and if that is the case, I, as a person should spend most of the time on keeping my attitude the best and I can make most of the work done well, and I can be "Loyal" to my work, my company, my family. I need to communicate and help others communicate about any issues. I need to keep the channel open and try to keep my attitude positive and healthy always.

I can always sit and talk about it instead I will take action and work on my attitude and communicate whenever required.

Lastly, a healthy positive communicative attitude from an employer and employee can help solve these attrition / loyalty / disloyalty issues easily. Nobody should wait, instead start acting on this.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think about it.

Top 100 CEO Blogs | Sales Motivation Capsule

http://www.scottragsdale.com/

"Inspiration" "Motivation" Growth path ... yes this all is what you would get while you go thorugh my CEOs blog.

I would consider my CEOs blog among the TOP 100 CEO Blogs in the world. A must read for all Sales guys and keep themselves motivated Each Day, Every Day. Scott is one of those people who can be called epitome of "Doing things as much as saying" and as he says "if it was easy" ... anybody could have done it ... not everyone can make it happen.

A few people in this world actually "Make It Happen" and Scott is my inspiration and my motivation for making it happen.

Scott's passion for adventure sports made him cross the deserts in a marathon race marathon-des-sables-southern-morocco ... while I was reading this entry, I was just getting more passionate about what I do and it motivated me to "DO" more...

Oh by the way if you were wondering what made me get a new look ... you know now my motivation now...

Will be back soon.

Human Assets Expansion Congress 2007

www.humanassetsindia.com 19th - 20th November 2007 MUMBAI

Leading Business Information Company, www.naseba.com, is holding Human Assets Expansion Congress in India.

Innovative strategies in retention, attrition management, training and development, HR MIS systems, Performance and leadership management and more...complete Human Asset management is all what the Congress discusses.

Human Assets Expansion India is a C-level, strategic executive congress, which provides the opportunity for HR directors to meet with global industry suppliers and industry experts in a true business-to-business environment. With prescheduled one-to-one business meetings and educational sessions that are strictly limited to upper-level executives providing them a Real-Life Case Study Format with Ultimate Networking Opportunities.

Key Discussion Topics

• Innovation in Talent Retention, Development and Growth
• Back to Basics: Human Asset Management
• Defining and installing new values, attitudes and behavior within an organization
• Challenges of handling changing aspirational management of the new generation
• Leadership Challenges


Quick Links

• Event website
http://www.humanassetsindia.com
• Complete Agenda
http://www.humanassetsindia.com/index.html?pagecode=agenda
• Complete list of speakers
http://www.humanassetsindia.com/index.html?pagecode=speakers
• Event Testimonials
http://www.humanassetsindia.com/index.html?pagecode=testimonials
• Registration page
http://register.humanassetsindia.com
• Contact page
http://www.humanassetsindia.com/index.html?pagecode=contact


Key Speakers 2007

• JN Amrolia, Executive Director, Ashok Leyland
• Dr Anadi S Pande,VP of Corporate Planning & Strategy,Hero Honda Motors
• Muralidhar Rao, President & ChiefOperating Officer,NIS Sparta
• Sudheesh Venkatesh, Head of HR,Tesco
• Dr. Chandra Mauli Dwivedi,Group President Human Resources,Financial Technology Group
• Joji S Gill, Head of HR,Microsoft

What previous year's attendees said…

"Very impressed. I would be more than happy to present at any of
naseba's event functions."
HR Director, Honeywell

"This event is the perfect way for direct communication between
solution providers and those seeking development within their
companies."
HR Director, Gulf Air

"Great platform for knowledge and best practice sharing on the
available HR tools to streamline processes and make HR more
effective."
HR Director, Siemens

For any queries contact Charan Varghese - Project Director

email: charanv@naseba.com

tel: +91 80 30280562 - fax: + 91 80 30280555 http://www.naseba.com
____________________________________________________________

Goal Setting!

What will you achieve if you don't know what you want to achieve?

GOAL setting, timeline setting, steps break-up, milestone celebrations, motivation, inching closer to your GOALS. Well all this sounds more or less like a excerpt from a Project Management book at your B-School. No. This is simply the latest thing running in my office where all the employees have put together all their Goals on the wall:

1 yr goal

5 yr goal

10 yr goal

Lifetime Goal.

In the image some 32 Goal sheets are visible which says exactly this. I think its necessary and every company should do this. Get your employees to decide the goals. Set some timelines. Breakup the path to achieve those goals into smaller units. Self Motivate yourself. Keep working and celebrate the milestones. Achieve and Enjoy! Start your journey for the next goal.

What is naseba?

A lot of people have been asking me recently, what is naseba? Well here is your FAQ answered...

Q) What is naseba?

A) The word naseba comes from a Japanese idiomatic expression: "when there is a will there is a way." naseba can be translated, "if you make it happen." naseba is Business Information (BI).

We are committed to provide BI to the entire online community without them paying any charge for the same. We are a product company and our products are Strategic Business platforms like Congresses, Forums, Conferences or Expos.

Q) Is naseba Event Management Company?

A) NO

We produce, promote and host our own strategic business platforms using a conference, congress, expo or forum format - depending on the market - with the ultimate focus on ‘knowledge expansion’, ‘networking’ but most importantly maximizing ‘deal-making’ opportunities for all our executive clients.

Q) How are you unique from other similar events companies?

A) Let me answer this in bulleted format:

We are into providing you with Business Information for your strategic decision making.

We don’t host someone else’s events.

We host our own Strategic Business Platforms for business information exchange.

We give commitment in our contract, in black and white, the target number of people attending our event.

Pre-scheduled One-to-One business meetings.

A complete delegate directory with contact information & pre-course questionnaire to help you uncover the needs of the prospective client in advance.

Open business meeting to ensure you do not miss out on meeting any delegates you would want to meet.

Table sponsorship opportunities to maximize your visibility.

Limited numbers of suppliers to ensure you are not surrounded by your rivals.

Hope this makes us as a “unique” company!

Q) What products does naseba have?
A) naseba provides 4 streams of international products:

Travel & Tourism Series - 10 strategic congresses focused on maximizing networking and deal-making opportunities for Travel & Tourism professionals.

CXO Strategies - designed exclusively for CXOs by CXOs providing a UNIQUE mix of best practice and knowledge sharing in a problem-solving environment.

Global Expansion Series - a dynamic two-day platform created for busy decision makers to conduct business in their respective infrastructure sectors through prescheduled, one-to-one business meetings interwoven with re-educational sessions and the ultimate networking parties.

Knowledge Expansion - a conference format with a networking approach, focused on dynamic re-education for busy upper-level executives who do not attend vendor-driven conferences.

Q) How old is your company, some company history details?

A) In order to climb to the next level and expand more aggressively - further proving to make things happen - naseba did a reverse takeover of MM Finance, a company listed on the Marché Libre of the Paris Stock exchange - therefore, on October 5th, 2006 naseba proudly went public.
Since inception in 2002, naseba has expanded its portfolio of worldwide executive congress and forums to 60 annual strategic B2B platforms covering 26 different industries.

As a leading global business information company with headquarters in Monaco, naseba has offices strategically located in eight cities around the world and employs over 200 executives from more than 30 nationalities.

We are multicultural, dynamic and focused on making it happen.

Organization Citizenship Behavior

Organization Citizenship Behavior

“No employee in any organization is indispensable, every employee’s efforts to become indispensable brings foreword the citizenship”

In today’s competitive world we see the biggest challenge in front of a Leader would be managing and motivating people in an organization. People are one of the most important drivers of the business and no business leader can ignore this fact. People, who can be technology enablers, technology managers, sales enablers or sales managers, everyone needs to be motivated.

Another challenge faced by Leaders is to align the entire company to the business objectives. This is a major challenge posed to any Managing Director; HR Manager; Delivery Managers; as failing to align people in your company would essentially mean a Hay-wire execution which results in inability to meet business targets. This challenge of People Motivation and Alignment leads us to find out innovative techniques to achieve the same.

In my article below I run you through an innovative leadership technique which, out of my experience and interaction with business leaders from Fortune 100 companies has shown success.

Organization Citizenship Behavior or OCB is one human behavioral technique under research for improvisation in many institutions worldwide as well as tried and tested approach in many Fortune 500 companies. OCB is one way in which there is a direct involvement of the business leaders with the people in his company. There is an open communication channel and there is a clear understanding in every individual of their role in the organization.

You might wonder how come Citizenship is being talked about in respect of an organization. Essentially citizenship is considered in terms of States or Countries; however, there is a striking similarity between a state and an organization. Driven by a Leadership with values and distinct goals in mind, any state, works for the development of its citizens. In addition to providing rights to the citizen, it can motivate its citizens to contribute to there duties. Similarly, in an organization, driven by a strong leadership and distinct values one can help every individual to understand his or her roles importance in the organization and by fulfilling the basic rights of freedom of work it can drive them to go beyond there call of duty by making them the Citizens of the company.

What this leads to is, creation of a “Citizen” and not an “Employee”. Having a lot of employees in the company is not a great thing and not enough, what matters is how many citizens have been grown in the organization.

It’s a proven fact that any Citizen of the Company would perform much better than any employee. Every citizen would take decisions which are aligned with the company’s business objectives. The strategy and execution would work hand-in-hand delivering higher productivity, and increased business revenues.

I would categorize Citizenship behavior in an organization in two parts:
Self inculcated citizenship behavior
External Driven Citizenship behavior

Self inculcated citizenship behavior:

Such behavioral occurrences are due to an Individuals’ high understanding of the organization and personal belief in ideologies of the organization. The urge to get benefited on a long term basis for any individual drives them to co-operate as well as contribute. Thus drives a citizenship amongst themselves and peers to achieve long term goals and bring in long term discipline.

This behavior is not comfortably supported by an organization until the individual makes an extra effort to educate and influence others. The individual needs to communicate the same within a smaller group and hence find ambassadors to promote the same.

As an organization, starts seeing the benefits of this behavior, starts encouraging the cause and hence motivates the individual and the organization on a whole. This is the time when the individuals taking these initiatives creates a higher value for themselves in the organization and become indispensable.

External Driven Citizenship behavior:

In this kind of behavior, individuals are motivated by the management to inculcate an additional responsibility where they create enough awareness and need, to become a citizen of the organization rather than just being an employee.

Creating this culture in an organization requires additional efforts to educate all employees, to motivate them further and align them further with the company goals and objectives. To find ambassadors to promote this behavior, a strong sense of understanding is required along with a crafted communication message.

Organizations which are able to achieve such feats really have individuals working with them who are very passionate and committed. Such initiatives are then passed on from management to the employees and the employees finally become the ambassadors of the cause. This creates a lot of value for the managers. The ambassadors who practically implement such initiatives again draw enough attention from management and get recognition for the same.

Various ways which can lead to having lots of citizens in an organization can be as follows:


Leader Spending Time with Citizens
v Every Leader should spend enough time with its citizens to communicate the business goals of the organization.
v Spending time helps people understand, what is expected out of every individual, to achieve the business goals
v It gives freedom to the individuals to take creative decisions keeping in mind the business goals
v It again helps them to verify the decisions and check if they align well with the objectives
v As well as the leader should explain the importance of Contribution to the company as the next step to Learning

Citizens spending time to see the Bigger Picture
v Every citizen having understood there role in the organization should try to spend time in coming out of that frame and should try to understand the bigger picture.
v Post understanding the basic elements of there role the citizen should try to look at the importance of there role and how to improve and enhance productivity.
v Learning is a life long process, to emerge as a successful citizen there should be a focus on contributing to the company.

As an employee in an organization try to think
Am I Indispensable in this company?
If your answer is Yes try to do things which moves you closer to become a Citizen and
if your answer is No, you need to learn a lot more!