What happened in Paris on 13th of this month is something that will stay with all of us forever. It is heart-wrenching. It is inhumane. In this context, how people had reacted on the Social Media is also something that we should look at. Social Media had played a very important role this time, both in a good and in a bad way, and these are the three main trends I have observed that are completely unnecessary, dangerous to the world in general and hence, should be avoided.

1. The argument that everyone is talking about Paris but no one is talking about the attacks in Beirut and other places that had happened before the Paris attacks.
2. The spreading of rumours both vocally and also through images that were not only irrelevant to the event but also misleading.
3. The fact that we, the people, act irrationally, and some even act to satisfy their own egos and thus, we hinder the people who are really in need from benefiting from the social media.

There have been, and still are, several people posting on Facebook and tweeting on Twitter that the media, and in fact the whole world, is being unfair that they are worried, concerned and sympathised at the Paris attacks but no one is even mentioning the bomb blasts that have happened in Beirut two days before, on the 11th. But a search on Google shows that all the major outlets have covered the news.

NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/world/middleeast/lebanon-explosions-southern-beirut-hezbollah.html?_r=0.
BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34805466 with even pictures.
Al Jazeera http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/multiple-explosions-reported-southern-beirut-151112162331001.html and http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/isil-claims-suicide-bombings-southern-beirut-151112193802793.html where they even take the experiences of the poeple.
Daily Mail UK http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3316018/At-37-people-killed-double-suicide-bombing-Beirut-Isis-claims-responsibility-attack-wounded-181.html with videos.
The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/12/beirut-bombings-kill-at-least-20-lebanon and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/13/lebanon-families-mourn-victims-beirut-bombings.
The Telegraph UKhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/lebanon/11992262/Isil-suspected-in-deadliest-attack-in-Beirut-since-end-of-civil-war-kills-dozens.htmlwith videos.
CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/13/middleeast/beirut-suicide-bombings-explainer/.
PRI http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-13/fathers-split-second-decision-during-bombings-beirut-saved-countless-lives which has focussed on the courageous sacrifice of a man who tackled the bomber and exploded together saving many poeple.
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Note that all these are the media coverages that have happened on 11th and 12th, so before Paris attacks took place and hence were not affected by the pressure of the world to show these events. All of these feature pictures, videos and experiences of the victims, not just mere mentions.

If you are posting on social media that no one is mentioning them, and that no media outlet has covered these attacks, then it shows that you did not even try to find if any media outlet has covered it. If you wanted people to talk about these attacks, did YOU talk about this on YOUR social media pages when these happened?

Claire Wardle of First Draft has written an awesome article on how rumours spread during the events like this should be controlled in real time.
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Many of the pictures shared on Facebook and Twitter were misleading:

This picture was rumoured to be taken on the day of Paris attacks but it was in fact taken from January’s attack on Charlie Hebdo.

The same is true with the rumours that the Eiffel Tower had gone dark in lieu of the attacks but in fact, it goes dark every night at 1am.
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There have been several instances like this, not only on the 13th but also before that, where people seeking recognition and ‘Likes and Comments’have resorted to actions like these. Posting such pictures on the 13th might not have had serious repurcusions in this context but this may be dangerous to some poeple in a different context. Imagine if a picture of sensitive nature related to refugees surfaces in a completely different context where its meaning is interpreted in a completely different sense, it may spark hatred in certain parts of the society against the refugees. The problems the world has already are enough; dont spark new ones.​

This articles was first published in The Coffeelicious publication on Medium. You can read the rest of it here.

Pace is, in english, defined as the rate of movement, or the speed. In change strategies, pace could be defined as the speed at which the company tries to change certain aspects of its business, such as business units, the technology used or the culture, and the speed at which the change strategy is really implemented. This pace is never constant when you are changing or transforming your business; the pace of change is always volatile because uncertainities exist in the business world.


For instance, if a company predicts that it would take around 3 months to adapt a new technology or a manufacturing practice, the top management may realise that the employees are not open to the new manufacturing practice or they are finding it not so easy to adapt to the new automated work environment. The company could have anticipated it to be easy and useful for its employees but they might not have taken into consideration that mental models that govern the employees’ actions. So now, the company needs to educate its employees and change their mindset first and this would include changing the culture of the employees. Now, the change strategy might take 6 months to be actually implemented.
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But how can such uncertainities and even the entire change strategy and its pace can be managed? I suggest, pacing of a change strategy should constitute of two elements: radical or high-paced change and incremental or slow-paced change.

The company should set different milestones along the duration when the company predicts change would happen. Then these milestones should be used to set goals that need to be met. For instance, a company might predict that a change strategy would take 3 years and it could divide this period into 6 milestones of 6 months each (or each milestone could be of different duration). At the milestones, all the radical changes need to be planned such as adapting a new technology or entering a new market horizontally or vertically or even launching new revolutionary products. In between these milestones, the company should focus on the incremental changes such as educating its employees, changing the culture and evaluating the change tactics carried out at the previous milestones.

By evaluating the change tactics carried out at the previous milestones, the company can understand what models are working and what models are not working, and adjust the change strategy at the next milestone.

These slow-momentum periods, between the milestones, also help the company educate and get ready the key players who do not like the status quo to change. Because of these carefully planned slow-momentum periods, these key players will understand that the top management is focussed on change.
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Pacing also helps the companies to estimate the resources and efforts it needs to invest to achieve the intermediate goals at the milestones.

Whenever we think about innovation, the first thing that comes to our mind is the Silicon Valley. Google, Apple, Facebook, Intel, Tesla, IBM, Fujutsu, Chevron, Gap and many more. What makes them so innovative? What do they do differently than other companies? Can any company replicate this?
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These companies might be doing several things but one of them is learning and developing new knowledge. Continuous learning and innovating is the rule of thumb to succeed in today’s competitive environment. But companies need also to keep innovating on small incremental levels in their existing products and services. Google did not just become the best search engine because they have innovated in search; they are the best because they keep on making their products better and better, on small scale, in tiny areas of their code, in the areas which we do not notice. Tesla has to keep innovating in its organizational practices, culture and business on a daily basis so that it is ready for radical innovations in its field.

Unlearning old habits, forgoing redundant software tools and giving up unnecessary policies is an important step to incremental innovation. organizations and key players in the organization have their own mental models about how the markets work, how their policies are better and what their customers want; and these can severely limit the future innovativeness of the company. If the key players are not even open to knowing what are their customers’ real desires and needs are, how can they encourage any form of innovativeness?
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It is also important to empower every employee in the company and encourage them to come up with new and unique ideas to both create breakthrough products and also to make incremental changes to the existing products. This is what the Google’s 80/20 rule is famous for. They encourage everyone to pursue their own ideas, present it to the founders and the top management and implement their ideas as real and commercial products.

Even for this, for encouraging individual contributions, for giving up old models, and for getting new knowledge, skills and know-how, companies need to open their doors to learning from all the resources available to them. If the company learns only from within their boundaries and interfunctional business units, this will limit their possibilities to stumble across unique ideas and innovative breakthroughs. What they will be really good at is just incremental innovation. But the companies that collaborate and share with other companies and resources succeed in rapidly adapting new technologies, encouraging a culture to share and radically innovating.
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What we see in the Silicon Valley is not something that cannot be replicated by other companies. It is just what they do better than other companies. Any company can succeed in achieving innovation by having an open culture, a zeal to gather new know-how and a strategy to innovate.