Some activities would be conferences, summits, social gathering, focus group meetings, training's and seminars. Aside from the technical value we get, the social aspect often yields more. One of this is the expansion of your personal network and the social skills we develop. More importantly, we get to learn what others in our field are doing, best practices, new technologies, implementations tips and others, we also get a chance to immerse at what the real situation is out of our comfort zone(box).

I attended a online and mobile marketing summit a year back and I can still remember the flood of information I learned from the two day event. I got immersed at a totally different industry from where I was and yet I was able to translate it into how I can capitalize on the new ideas this industry was undertaking.

As days, weeks and years pass by without people going out of their comfort zone, it becomes harder for people to venture out and admit that we are but a tiny fraction of the industry we are in and that the world is bigger than the box we have made. It is a hard fact to admit for most.

As we stay in our box day after day, we tend to bring other people inside our box too and we then become the hindrance or the boundary for other people. If we are truly open and free, let us not put a box in the first place, let us socialize and build relationships.

Trust is the key, as we build relationships among our peers, colleagues and management, trust becomes more and more important and vital. Let us capitalize on these relationships and make it worthwhile for all stake-holders, let us value each individuals strength and focus it to value adding initiatives.

Let us continuously poke each others minds and drive us to improve and evolve, as people become more flexible and open, organizations... corporations must be as agile and open as its human resource, the company who is not able to adapt will loose out on the new, upcoming and future great minds.

Trust and communication is the key !

I however have come to a realization, every since I started working, I overextended and made the office my home. I immersed myself in work and I was loving it, I enjoyed it so much, I spent more time at work than at school and at home. I made the office my house, my locker was full of clothes and there are countless times when I would sleep over at work.

The rare times I was at home, with family and out of the office with friends, my mind would still be with my work. Work was my life and it was my passion. I also know of countless people who bring work home, some even working till the wee hours, effectively cutting quality time suppose to be dedicated for the family. Most of these people don't file overtime.

I later on asked why it was ok for work life to cross personal life yet personal life is treated like a baggage and checked in before going to work, I said to myself, that is unfair..... I dwelled on this corporate situation for a bit and I the realized that the top management may have already realized this fact and that is most probably the reason why most organizations focus on initiatives that improve not only technical and work competencies, capabilities and work careers of their employees, most organizations have already extended them into the personal life.

I think corporations have realized that there is a direct connection between both work and personal life, for if work life is not doing well, personal life will directly suffer, this goes for a not so well personal life to greatly affect productivity and work performance. I believe this is the main objective and reason why top management fully supports activities and personal development initiatives that extend to the families of employees, a happy employee is a productive employee.

However, there are still some enculturated mentalities among current middle managers, a couple of isolated cases would still give employees negative evaluations for mixing work and personal life and will even enforce guidelines to make sure personal life will be checked in the baggage counter before entering the workplace.

As I have already expressed in my earlier article, Most initiatives from top down gets blurred and mis-implemented.

But I do understand these initiatives and changes do not happen over night and it takes a lot more time to change cultures. So, I would therefore advice people who are in these isolated situations to give your full support and do not tire in persuading your superiors as they are also people who have families I am sure constant communication and the right approach will bring them to the right point of view.

For managers who still think the way of old, try and have an open mind, this is the era of social and collaborative management, employees are more social, free thinking, driven, passionate and have very good self-confidence and acceptance. Harnessing the new workforce by open and good communication will be beneficial to everyone and will directly have a positive effect on the organization.

However, as with most initiatives being cascaded top down, it most of the times gets blurred and mis-interpreted and worse implemented and measured wrongly. One of the most common scenario is that great measures and pressure is put on a organization to develop open communication, sometimes it works among the ranks, however, vertically it does not as the team leaders and managers often feel they are not part of the initiative and that it is only for the ranks, these types of individuals often believe that another set of rules apply to them and they are not covered by most corporate initiatives.

These kind of mentality is what tends to leads ranks who are trapped in these types of situations to be disgruntled. The whole initiative fails and tendency is the ranks get the bad end of the stick.

The point of developing communication does not only apply for the lateral type of interaction, it is more important for the vertical hierarchy. It is understandable to have more confidentiality as the hierarchy goes up but is also more important to cascade properly and delegate efficiently so as the team, the organization can work as one to achieve the company's objective. A organization will be far more agile, flexible and pleasant if the vertical approach is through collaborative management.

As it has been proven already, celebrating quick wins always leads to the up-liftment of moral and the visibility the organization gets from that will lead to improvement in perception and brand building. This all ties up and is held upon by having a very good foundation on communication and collaboration.

It is therefore imperative for organizations to focus and be careful in the implementation of such initiatives, the development, implementation and maintenance of such is very crucial and special attention must be made for the vertical aspect of the organization as this tends to be the filter from top management to the ranks and how it is filtered will have great impact on how it will be implemented. Communication must be first opened up from top going down, the only way this will happen is to have a conducive environment for communication and a open door policy, as the personal life is a part of an employees life and corporations must make sure work life balance is given it's share of focus.

Open communication from down up will follow when the top down as already been opened up, a collaborative approach on most aspects of the operations and strategy of the team and company will lead to better acceptance among the ranks and great ideas are given the chance to be nurtured and bloom.

P.S

Internet was non-existent last night here at the hotel, after waiting for almost an hour, the guest gave up and trickled down back unto their rooms.

Just shows how much internet connection is very important now a days.