Showing posts with label Gen-Y. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gen-Y. Show all posts

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Lessons About Feedback From The Okra Salad Recipe

I cook South Indian dishes regularly. Last week I wanted to make Okra Salad and I looked up the recipe in the book Dakshin, by Chandra Padmanabhan. The author suggested that adding a bit of salt to the salad brings out the flavor and enhances the taste of the dish. But she cautioned that quantity and timing is everything. You have to sprinkle the salt over the dish at the end. If you add the salt in the beginning it will bring out the water in the okra and make the dish soggy, sticky and almost inedible. On the other hand, if you dump a spoon of salt after the dish is done and try to mix it, the okra crumbles into pieces and looks unappetizing.

There is a lot we can learn from this about giving feedback to a person about his or her performance. I have seen people, who in the name of feedback, pour cold water over every idea a person suggests. My colleagues do not open their mouth when such a person is around. Such people have good intentions. But they dampen the performance of everyone else around them.

The other extreme is managers who never give timely feedback and pour it all out during the annual performance review, leaving the employee wondering why the manager never shared his feedback throughout the year.

A good manager knows that the quantity and timing of feedback matters; very much like a good cook knowing when to add salt, how much to add and how to blend it in.

PS: In India the okra is called "ladies fingers". If you want to order Okra in a regular Indian restaurant in the US or Europe, look for "Bhindi Masala". Bhindi is the Hindi word for Okra. You will not find the Okra Salad that I make it any regular restaurant. I am afraid, it is a dish available only in South Indian house holds and select Indian vegetarian restaurants. Image Credit : Food.com

After I wrote this post, the Head of Customer Success at Rypple @dpriemer reached out to me via twitter and said that they have developed a suite of social software that enables managers to improve the performance of their team members by giving feedback. The Co-CEO of Rypple @ddebow liked the post as well.

I am not an active user of Rypple. But I have tried it. If you liked what I said and want a tool to engage your colleagues by giving them feedback, you may want to give Rypple a try. There is a free trial.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Enterprise 2.0 Books For General Managers and Human Capital Management Researchers

For the past couple of years I have been focusing on the next generation workplace. My goal was to find out on how the new generation of employees, new technologies that make connecting and sharing easy, will change enterprise software and people behavior in the workplace. I found these books valuable and decide to share the wealth.  The authors are a blend of seminal thinkers, radical practitioners and consultants. Did I miss anything?

Reading for general managers

Andrew McAfee - Researcher, Academic
Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges


Charlene Li - Analyst, Consultant

Book: Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

My takeaway: This was the first book I read that covered the Web 2.0 topic in a comprehensive manner.

Josh Bernoff
Empowered : Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business

My Take Away: Consumers are empowered. The only way you can meet their needs is to empower your employees using Enterprise 2.0 tools. A good guide for business and people leaders.
Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead
My takeaway: The way an organizations leadership behaves needs to change to adapt to the new generation of people and tools.


Morten Hansen's book, "Collaboration"
Recommended by
@movito
My takeaway: The book focuses on the economic value of collaboration. 



Reading for designers and users of people management systems
Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein - Academics
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
My takeway: I understood how choice architecture by designers of systems can influence people.


Nicholas A Christakis and James H. Fowler  - Academics
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
My takeway: I understood the power of connections and how they affect our lives. The strength of weak links was a good lesson.


Clay Shirky - Academic
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
My takeaway: I understood why there is a sudden surge in people's urge to creating rather than just consume.
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations


Seth Godin - Thinker, Marketer
Tribes: We need you to lead us
Linchpin : Are You Indispensable?
My takeaway : In todays world, the factory needs the worker more than how much the worker needs the factory.


Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson - Entrepreneurs, Radical Thinkers
Rework
My takeaway: A small number of companies are disrupting traditional thinking about hiring, managing and retaining workers. 37 Signals is a company to watch. 


Dennis Shiffman
The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today's Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture


Don Tapscott - Researcher, Consultant
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything


Learning, Performance Management and Succession
Jay Cross - Thinker, Researcher, ConsultantInformal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance 
My takeaway : Conversation is the best learning technology. Learning systems should enable conversation.



Ram Charan - Thinker, Academic, Consultant
Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis
My takeaway : Apprenticeship is the key to succession planning and dialog among leaders is the key to talent management. Not a system that tries to automate talent management.


Daniel Pink
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
My takeaway: Higher financial incentives do not improve performance in 'cognitive' tasks.


Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations
Network Challenge : Strategy Profit And Risk In An Interlinked World

Demographics and Millennial Generation

Marketing and Customer Relationship Management
These book are not directly related to people management. But they are a good read to understand trends in the consumer world.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Keeping the Millennials

I am reading the book "Keeping the Millennials"
Keeping The Millennials: Why Companies Are Losing Billions in Turnover to This Generation- and What to Do About It
It is a good book on the topic by two experienced organizational development consultants. The language in the book will be familiar for human resources and training professionals. I particularly liked the chapter on the topic "preparing the millennials to lead".
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