The December edition of the NASSCOM Emerge Friday 2.0 talk held at Taj Deccan on 16^th December 2010, had Hari Thalapalli, the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer of Mahindra Satyam, addressing the gathering on ‘Effective business across cultures’. The forum began with everyone in the packed hall accepting that culture has become an integral part of the corporate world, yet ‘Culture’ as a concept is often misused. Hari defined Culture as a synchronization between what is said will be done and what is being done.

Talking about culture within the organization, Hari highlighted the importance of questioning. Organizations must encourage their employees to ASK. Encouraging them to ask questions empowers them to think individually. Indian culture has inculcated in us over time the notion of ‘respecting’ our elders, i.e., their word is final and not to be questioned. And this has led to Indians being viewed as subservient. Unfortunately, this has trickled down and penetrated into our corporate culture as well. As an organization you want to be known as adaptable but not rigid or subservient. Moreover, every individual member of the organization represents its culture.

What I found interesting was the fact that it’s in the first 90 days of a person’s job that she makes an impression of the organization. Organizations should maintain the impression created through the recruitments even after it is done. Hari illustrated this with a typical HR-Recruit instance. If the HR team believes its job to be over once the employee meets her manager, the employee develops an impression that the organization cares less about its members and more about its output. Instead, the impression should be that the organization cares equally about its members and output. It’s all about synchronization of what is said and what is done.

Speaking of working across international cultures, we often stereotype a region’s culture. “The American culture is very open”; “Italians have great style”; and we believe that every American or Italians fits the bill. However, it’s not always so. For an organization it is essential that they look at people and other organizations independently but within the culture. Organizations go out of their way to embrace other’s culture and practices, but a question raised by a member of the audience was, how far is too far? When do we stop being ‘flexible/accommodating enough’? To this Hari said, “When you get hurt”. That is, when you have to forego your personal values is when you stop.

Hari also spoke about change and its effect on organizations’ culture. Change is an inconvenient truth that organizations have to deal with. You can either make change happen, or watch change happen, or be the victim of change. Culture changes over time. While some changes happen gradually over a period of time, some are sudden. Either way, trying to fight it will do you more harm than good.

Being just an intern and very new to the corporate world, this discussion highlighted for me the new direction of the corporate world. Hari brought a lot of global experience and the audience was very responsive in sharing their own international experiences. It was interesting to sit amongst and listen to entrepreneurs and senior executives talk about the errors and corrections made by their companies.

Key Highlights:

• Culture should be a synchronization of what is said and what is being done
• You want to be known as adaptable but not rigid or subservient
• Stereotyping cultures maybe easy but not necessarily reality
• You can either make change happen, or watch it happen, or be the victim of change

“It is our nature to be social”

Last week as I spoke at the NASSCOM Emerge Friday 2.0 and while sharing my experience on the Causeaneffect.org NGO initiative, it dawned onto me that social media has always been around, only its importance has accentuated in the last few years. Attending conferences all over the world and presenting the case of social media and the experiences of iridium Interactive, it was pretty apparent that social media has no barriers across countries, it is a unified digital revolution that has been transforming our lives, only under different names since more than a decade. How has it changed our lives has not been introspected yet.

Here are the some of the reasons how social media has changed our lives and why we should make the most of it.

1.       It has made us more social, we know a lot more people than we would a few years back.

2.       Larger networks- college friends, school friends, people we meet at social occasions, relatives, and friends met though friends, this used to be our typical networks, social media has exponentially increased our networks.

3.       More vocal about your thoughts- Forums, blogs, tweets, status updates are allowing us to speak our mind, wondered why? Because we know we will be heard by some or many.

4.       Enhances PR skills- you do not have to take PR lessons to talk to people on social media.

5.       Converse with like minded people on these social networks.

6.       Get in touch with thought leaders, influencers and even people who inspire you.

7.       Reconnects with old connections- People you have lost in touch with since a decade can be traced from any corner of the world (provided they are on these networks themselves) on the wide world of social media.

8.       Your virtual network is always ready to help. All it takes is to put forward a question and there you will have experts recommending the best to you.

9.       Ease of companies to get in touch with their consumers and vis a vis.

10.   Looking for a job or looking to hire someone, your professional network helps you find the best fit.

Social media brings out the extrovert you. All that matters in social media is your network, communities, connections and finally your discussions with them. Social media has reduced distances both for individuals and companies.

Have you seen a change in your social profile by social media, do post what you have gained from social media.

Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter @sbharatam.

Image Source-Rosaura Ochoa from Flickr

This cleanliness drive has enthused us iridiumiites and we, right now,  right here pledge to keep our city clean and also create awareness amongst people in our own big or small way and make our cities a heaven to live in. Spread the word and let more people join in!!!!

Manish is a Practice Director at iridium Interactive and spear heads the Web2.0 and Social media practice.

I completely look forward to this epic forum since it is undoubtedly Asia’s largest leadership conference with a diverse mix of inspirational experts from the industry. Flooded by the outpour of registrations,  NILF boasts of a record registration of 1650 delegates this year from countries all over the world and India. This is going to be one opulent event with the stalwarts of the IT industry who will be present there.

Exactly this time around last year when the economy was caught in the clutches of recession the theme of the event was mainly focussed on how to tackle the downturn. This year holds particular importance as the industry recovers from the financial slowdown, we look forward to new times, new dimensions, new outlooks and the opportunity to explore new directions which is also the theme of  this event this year ‘New Times, New Ideas, New Directions’

Do check this out….

1. The NASSCOM EVENT online destination: http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in
2. NASSCOM EVENT BLOG : http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/blog
3. NASSCOM EVENT NETWORKING PORTAL : http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=92

You can also avail the live updates from NILF from : http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=207&Itemid=262

Exactly this time around last year when the economy was caught in the clutches of recession the theme of the event was mainly focused on how to tackle the downturn. This year holds particular importance as the industry recovers from the financial slowdown, we look forward to new times, new dimensions, new outlooks and the opportunity to explore new directions keeping in lieu with the this year’s NILF theme as ‘New Times, New Ideas, New Directions’.

The industry is completely looking forward to this epic forum since it is undoubtedly Asia’s largest leadership conference with a diverse mix of inspirational experts from the industry. Flooded by the outpour of registrations,  NILF boasts of a record registration of 1650 delegates this year from countries all over the world and India. This is going to be one opulent event with the stalwarts of the IT industry who will be present there.

Do check this out….

1. The NASSCOM EVENT online destination: http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in
2. NASSCOM EVENT BLOG : http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/blog
3. NASSCOM EVENT NETWORKING PORTAL : http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=92

It was only in the last leadership meeting we made a conscious collective decision to come out with a iridium Interactive Celebration Calendar  which is now being discussed in our weekly huddles more than the project delivery plans..

We made it a point to invite all the team members last night, including those who have left Iridium but still feel highly connected with the rest of us. It was great fun sitting at a Dhaba in the open air and talking through those mid night biryanis and early morning dosas and idlis; Although most of us hated those long hours we all were putting in,  when we looked back and refreshed our memories, it was such a great learning that we all had; the day clients came in and congratulated us  and acknowledged the bottom-line impact we have made to their businesses .. I was telling most of the team if they put these project experiences in their resumes nobody in the industry is going to believe them that during recession times the team at iridium Interactive has been working on such world class cutting edge projects.

Folks, now its time for the IIPL third season… yeah its IIPL (iridium Interactive Premier league) and already invites are being sent out to all the iridium Interactive alums and customers too..to be part of the T20 cricket match scheduled for 30th January 2010. If you cant make it for the match watch out our blog or alternatively subscribe to the live twitter feeds at iridium Interactive

It is important to find ways to work differently, more efficiently and more productively. It is not enough to try to do the same thing in the same manner. The need is to change the paradigm. Question the status quo.

The old norms of pricing for IT solutions would soon be thrown out of the Windows – no pun intended here. Customers are unsure of their own business survival; and hence, are expecting their partners and associated companies to aid them in developing solutions to help make their decisions smarter and better.

Solutions to be provided quickly; global launch on the fly. Sounds ludicrous? Not any more. Cloud Computing is in. These kind of solutions will ensure that organizations can ramp up faster; scale up speedier. And not at the cost of the proverbial many arms and many legs.

For instance, one session talked about how a Banking Client rolled out an innovative Zero Branch Bank in Europe. Oracle is helping them put this together. All touchpoints are automated. Of course, not just that! The application is a Hosted Solution model. Rather than investing in infrastructure to be deployed over many months and years, this will ensure rollout in a fraction of that time.

The learnings from this Live example??  – Even if times are bleak, innovative solutions are always going to invite discretionary spending by organizations.

As pointed out by Peter Coffee (Salesforce) and Sharad Sharma (Yahoo R&D), the most glaringly outstanding examples of how an existing proposition has been successfully remodeled and presented to the world is of how CLOUD COMPUTING has enabled the runaway success of AMAZON and FACEBOOK. The former utilized Cloud Computing as a Development Platform while Facebook used it for a Distribution Platform. This enabled both these business ideas to ramp up into global entities pronto.  And ofcourse, the cost savings on doing it all in this manner instead of an on-premise-model  have been huge too.

Given the very nature of the beast called CLOUD COMPUTING, it would not be foolhardy to expect that the next big blockbuster business hits aka YAHOO or FACEBOOK can be from the garages or streetcorners of Hyderabad or Mumbai or Delhi.

The NILF also had a heady mix of celebrated and eloquent academicians. This lot expectedly stated their perspective take, without mincing many words. Professor Pankaj Ghemawat, who has already made his mark as a noted academician who redefines norms did the same during his session. He highlighted the need for focusing on the Key metric of Revenue per Employee. Seems obviously simple? Inspite of this, this key metric has remained flat for most Indian IT companies over the last 4-5 years.

Having said that, the intention should not be to cut costs needlessly or retrench benches but to work towards shoring up efficiencies.

Some to Dos (This is not intended an exhaustive Dhobi List):

• No Needless Buyouts
• No carte blanche reduction in headcount
• Reshape. Don’t just retrench
• LIFO approach in retrench to be avoided
• No moratorium on training and development

The message to all is that the Cloud looms large over the blue sky. The Dark Clouds shall soon pass – but the Clouds of the Computing kind are real and here to stay. The Cloud Computing concepts are going to be the new paradigm shift happening while we speak and let’s embrace it.

Getting registrations, bookings, delegates and sponsors is always a challenge at the pre-event stage. That having been said, getting the various stakeholders and participants to actively interact and network with each other is a critical imperative for such Events – that also makes or breaks the perceived success of the event – as seen through the eyes of all the beholding participants.

iridium Interactive, India’s leading web and interactive company has come up with an innovative web based product that addresses this aspect of the Event Management.

It’s called Conference Konnect, and was officially launched in Nasscom India Leadership Forum (NILF) – 2009.

Konnect is a social networking application that is event – specific and is designed to compliment the requirements of a specific event. It is a combination of Linkedin and Facebook, that will help attendees and delegates to maintain ties and continue their dialogue in the virtual space in the Pre-Event, In-Event and the Post-Event phase.

The intention is to make participants connect to each other, network and socialize even before the physical event kick off. Importantly, they could continue to use this platform to keep their conversations going, even after the Event. This enables the brand owners to extend the longevity of the event far beyond the limited period of the actual event.

Key Features

* Meet attendees who are attending the same sessions to discuss similar problems and issues relating to the topic.
* Meet other attendees to compare notes on exhibitors and products.
* Meet exhibitors to learn more about their products and services.
* Know about events such as parties or activities being hosted by the exhibitor.
* Explore job openings available by companies attending the event.
* Powerful Search Features enabling you to find new attendees and delegates of specific skills, interests and geographic location.

February of every year, the city of Mumbai sees a different profile of visitors – not just the filmstars, sportstars and political leaders but the stalwarts of the global IT world. The NASSCOM INDIA Leadership Forum (NILF) has become an event that has become a ‘Must-Attend Event’ for the entire IT diaspora & related audiences from across the world.

It is a great sense of joy and pride that iridium Interactive has been selected to partner with NASSCOM for this event. iridium Interactive has been working closely for this prestigious event – our efforts and painstaking night outs have gone on to ensure the success of NILF in 2008. In keeping with the adage – ‘Good work begets more work’, we are pleased that iridium Interactive has continued its association for 2009 as well. iridium Interactive has now embarked on a grand objective to take the NILF event to a next level of virtual connectedness.

New tools and avenues have been designed, developed and implemented on the web portal – that enables delegates to virtually meet, interact and work closely together.

Check out the new look NILF site that is drawing huge crowds from across the globe already. The new additions are being raved about – the trendier looking NILF Blog and an all new NASSCOM Connect Section.

iridium Interactive has worked on the mission of developing solutions that would facilitate the event – by leveraging the power of IT and the web medium to simplify business interactions and streamline interconnected effectiveness.

The NILF, to be held from Feb 11-13th in Mumbai, will see the arrival of IT doyens from across the world.  In their midst will also be the iridium Interactive team – working at the backend – to ensure that the event is captured in all this regal pomp and splendour for now and for posterity.

Cross functional teams across our Development Centres have worked on this NILF portal for the last many months – including the excited Chaaywallahs at the office. After Jamaal Mallik’s astounding success in SlumDog Millionaire, the Chaaywallah has become a sought after position in most IT offices across India  :). JAI HO – ii

The work shop offered a platform create awareness of the power of IT/web technologies and how it can be leveraged to revitalize agricultural Industry. Sriram and Nishant attended the session, representing iridium Interactive.

Sriram was also one of the speakers and spoke on Web Standards, Technologies and Standardization. The talk started off well with the audience clued on to the jazz of the presentation but it hit the note when Sriram started talking about the Rural initiatives through CauseanEffect, e Learning bringing insurance closer to rural people, Case Studies of using Web 2.0 to solve business problems for Maruti, NASSCOM, Escorts and ITC e-Choupal and delivery mechanisms through examples of films made to educate people on alternative livelihoods post tsunami.

Agriculture and its audience need to be understood to use technology to bring value close to the rural people. There are so many initiatives that can change lives… eLearning for Agricultural practices, banking and insurance facilities for rural people, latest trends and machinery in farming etc. Hoping this workshop will help generate ideas for rural betterment.