A Smart Human Energy Grid

I am a customer of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the electric utility of Northern California. PG&E installed smart meters in my home a few months back and gave me access to a web site where I and they can monitor my energy usage. I also signed up for a service where PG&E can control my air conditioner to turn it down a bit during peak energy usage hours.

This helps PG& reduce massive capital investment in power plans that are required only to meet the needs of few hours of demand a few days a year. By avoiding such power plants PG&E reduces the amount of carbon it dumps into the air northern Californians breath.

Such smart energy management is in its infancy even in the developed world.

Is this an invasion of my privacy?
There are two ways to look at this. One way is to look at this as an invasion of my privacy. Pretty soon PG&E will know my energy usage on a daily basis, the devices I use and when I use them. They will also be able to control almost all device in my house such as the fridge, the washing machine, the dishwasher, the television and even lights.

The second way to look at this is as my active participation in the smart energy grid. By providing and getting some insight into my energy usage and patterns, I am helping PG&E reduce my bill, reduce harmful emissions pumped into the air that are slowly but surely turning the air we breath into poison and laying the foundation for a stronger future economy.

Let me compare this situation with usage of human energy
Organizations have been behaving a lot like US electric utilities for a long time. Most employees and people management leaders have little timely insight into how human energy is utilized, how effectively it is utilized and for what purpose it is put to use. All they know is that a certain amount of human energy is consumed every year to produce some goods and services.

This worked well during the industrial era when most organizations were manufacturing tangible things. So human energy demand was arrived at dividing by the number of things produced by the number of people deployed to produce the same.

Then things changed. Most of the developed world moved from a manufacturing economy to an idea driven economy. But organizations did not change their human energy management systems to suit the changing reality. Suddenly they lost visibility into how much human energy it takes to produce something, how much it costs to produce the same and when will such energy be available for use at the lowest cost.

Affluent organizations plan capacity for peak demand and waste the excess capacity during non-peak hours, incurring enormous costs to the company, loss of value for shareholders and lost opportunity for unproductive employees. Poorly run organizations respond to demand spikes in human energy by deploying their human energy unproductively, unsustainably or by simply missing the opportunity.

A smart meter for every employee
Like the energy grid in the US, the human energy grid is not smart today. There is a very small step that human energy managers can take to nudge their organizations towards a smarter human energy grid. Organizations can ask every employee to make his or her performance goals and activities associated with those performance goals public. This simple act of providing visibility into what a person is working towards and what they are doing to get there will make organizations a lot smarter about human energy usage.

This is a bit like having a smart meter for every employee. What do you think? Are you ready to move towards a smarter human energy grid?

Facebook As A Social Media Tool For Non-Governmental Organizations

A few days back the president of an Indian non-governmental organization, that works for the welfare of women, approached me and asked me if I can create a web site for sharing their activities. The purpose of the web site, she said, is to share what they do with their members, attract young members and present a professional image to donors and the community.

After thinking about it for a while, I suggested that they should go for a facebook page rather than a web site and associated email. This will save them money, spare them the administration overhead and introduce them to social media marketing.

After creating the facebook page and training them on updating the page, I realized that other NGOs might benefit from what I did. So here are the details. Since there is no money involved, this can be done from any country and by anyone who has an internet connection. Since 500 million people know how to use facebook, your users and admins will require little or no training.

1. I created a free email address for them using Gmail.
2. I used that email address to create a facebook account for the organization.
3. I created a facebook page and added the contact details and mission details.

It takes 30 minutes to do this and, I believe, is a good way to provide a Web 2.0 presence for non-governmental organizations who do not have a web presence.

Here is the page if you are interested in taking a look. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kasturiba-Mathar-Sangham/129727327096178

Some useful things that any non-governmental organization can use a facebook page for.
1. They can put their contact and information there. Here is an example
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kasturiba-Mathar-Sangham/129727327096178?sk=info
2. They can post regular updates on their activities. Here is an example
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kasturiba-Mathar-Sangham/129727327096178?sk=wall
3. They can post photos of their events.
4. Once they login they can see the number of views on every post, right from the page.
5. They can have an idea about how fans they have and who their fans are.

If you have experience with using Facebook or other social media, tools for promoting non-profit organizations, please let me know your thoughts. I will appreciate it.

The Great Reset By Richard Florida

I am reading The Great Reset
by Richard Florida this week.

Richard Florida says that despite the communication revolution, geography matters a lot. He says that people will congregate in mega regions of the world so that they can live and work together on similar problems. This might be a good book for human capital management professionals who want to understand how to attract talent.

A Trailer For Your Story

While telling a long story to your investors, executives, peers or team members during a short presentation, you may have to show a trailer of your story rather than the whole story. Here is a template I use to compress a long story, of a user accomplishing something, in one screen. I am going to make the assumption that you are convinced about the value of story telling instead of using bullet points to get your point across. In this post, I only explain the mechanics of conveying the story using a trailer.

Composition of the trailer
Put a big picture of the main persona in the middle. Convey the emotion of the person using speech bubbles. For example, it could be old lady exclaiming that she is not able to move around freely or a working mother talking about the lack of time to do everything. Put a supporting persona on the left. Make one supporting persona the narrator of the trailer.

I have tried this out in presentations to executives, customers and analysts. You can print this out and put it on the wall to generate interest during workshops. You can use this as the opening picture before you show a demo of the prototype, you will build later. This can be the slide where you capture the value propositions for each user. You get the idea. It is useful to build a trailer for your story.

Tools
You can use your favorite presentation tool to compose the trailer. I use PowerPoint to compose the trailer because of its ubiquity. I create the illustrations myself using a Toshiba Tablet PC because I like to do so. You can pick images from the stock photo library of your company or from a public royalty free photo website. You can also make a simple sketch, take a picture of it using your phone and use it here.

I use such trailers to understand the essence of my story, enhance the conversation around the story, explore new ideas and convey my thoughts clearly. Go ahead. Give it a try. Let me know if I can be of any help.

Some hurdles you may face

Most people know that drawings convey the message instantly. Even a stick figure with a speech bubble conveys more information that a page full of text. And yet, most people prefer to write. The interesting thing is that many of us underestimate our ability to draw and overestimate our ability to write. 

My First Thoughts On Salesforce Chatter

I just signed up for Chatter, the collaboration tool from Salesforce.com. It looks simple and neat.

Sign Up Process
I like the simplicity of the signup process. Like Yammer, Chatter requires you to signup with your work email address. There is hardly any hurdle for anyone to create an account with Chatter.

Building The Network
Inviting colleagues to join is easy. Click on the "Invite Coworkers" button and type the email of the person you want to invite. The network is everyone in your company. That might not be true. Everyone in my company is not my network. My network is the people I work with and trust. I wonder how that will be addressed.

Groups Feature
I can create a group. I wonder how this might work on a day-to-day basis. Will I end up creating groups for each and everything I do or will I just create a few groups. Time will tell.

Main Features
The main areas of Chatter are Updates, Profile, People, Groups and Files.

Updates: All the updates from things and people you follow.
Profile: Just my name and email for now.
People: everyone one who shares the same company email.
Groups: I have to start a group
Files: All my files

I noticed that Chatter is giving documents the same level of importance as people. I wonder why. These are my first observations. I plan to expand this post as and when I explore more.