On Escalation

Recently I discovered this great blog written by Nigel Dessau -Chief Marketing Officer at AMD. The blog is called 3minutementor and has very very good tips on preparing for an interview, assignments and all the possible things you could ask a mentor. And of course all the answers come through 3minutes videos. Pretty cool!

What I really found useful for all the professionals out there was the video on escalations, how we escalate, who/ what, when and why. A brilliant video I must admit! I think it shows that all the people who see escalation as something mandatory, person related and as a great weapon are absolutely wrong (maybe we do that cause we have a Latin origin? :-)).

Escalations can be avoided and we must try avoiding it by discussing about it, trying to convince the person to do a job in a different way and most important if we proceed with it, then we be sure the person will be informed in advance. After all the purpose is not to make someone feel miserable but to get a job done. Then we don't escalate PEOPLE but PROCESSES, TASKS, etc. So before you write a bad email or make the call, think about what upset you and if there is really a need for escalating this. Ask for advice: escalations are not about punishing someone but about finding a solution. Check the video below for more tips. Really hope to see less silly&personal escalations and people focusing on facts and goals.

My Smarter Planet

This year IBM launched what I personally consider the best campaign we ever made. Maybe because it's not just a campaign but a call to change the way we live, work, build, think, travel and more. We called it the Smarter Planet and you can read all about it here. You can learn about how we can make our cities smarter, how IBM helps local agencies to create a better infrastructure, or how we help patients by tracking their responses to new medication through smart pills that alert doctors via sms. And even more you can share your thoughts on better education, food, banking, energy, retail and discover the new intelligence and how analytics can change the way we understand information.



As I told you it's just HUGE! And because it's soooo huge IBM asked for all its business partners, local governments, companies and employees to participate in it, share ideas, tell people about it, make friends and family aware and finally take action! We have many tumbles, tweets, blogs and many resources dedicated to explaining what INTERCONNECTED, INSTRUMENTED and INTELLIGENT mean (the 3 aspects of smarter planet), so I'll let you discover them :-)

Meanwhile that's my Romanian tumblr: PlanetaDesteapta (RO for Smarter Planet), a place where I share my tips on things that are really smart and could help us have a better life.

Konnichiwa

Another blog in my life :-) So after sending out a poll yesterday asking friends if I should start another blog where I could write about my life at IBM, the people, the passion, the wonderful journey and its challenges, we finally have our output today. It's not in Romanian as I just couldn't be that egoistic and keep it in a language that is understood only by few of us. And I must confess, I've been writing and speaking in German and English for the past 7 years, so it somehow felt more natural, not to mention that the best way to talk IBM is English :-) The last argument would be that I do have many friends abroad and after getting this job my audience started to spawn across a few more countries.

So what would I post here? As you may know I do talk a lot on twitter (@silviaemilia), post many stuff on Facebook and the happymaking blog, and some other places. But will try to aggregate my ideas and feed this place with valuable information for IT savvy people, graduates trying to step in the spotlight, marcom professionals looking for inspiration, creative people, fans of virtual worlds, ex and present IBMers and of course IBM fans ;-)

To keep it short. If you're after a job @IBM Romania go here ibm.com/start/ro . Also if you have questions regarding your application don't bring them here, just send HR an email at recruitment.gd@ro.ibm They will be more than thrilled to hear from you :-) Then, we won't focus on making people happy here...cause we have the happymaking blog for that :-) Also I hoping to connect to some more Romanian bloggers and organize some cool events around Bucharest...and we'll see :-) one step at a time.

To close up this introduction here is the first blue image, yeah the happymaker went blue ;-)
PS: and in case you missed the disclaimer, these opinions belong to me only, and not to IBM.