Engagement is ‘nice’ but democracy provides the value

I sense we are still in the early stages of how ‘social ways of working’ can create value. Communications, engagement and knowledge sharing are early ‘adopters’ of ‘social’ but the internal audience’s affection with tools may eventually fade and move on to alternative channels. The real value from these ‘social’ tools comes when we explore how to utilise them for innovation, crowdsourcing, validation and creating more open, transparent and democratic structures within organisations.

By using collaboration and open business tools like Jive and O365 (Yammer) the chance to develop new ways of working is immense. Rapid validation of innovation and and organisational structures are enticing but the opportunity to bring democratic approaches into areas such as product development, strategy and governance can truly change the way colleagues, suppliers, customers and leaders can develop organisations for the future rather than bleak rigid corporations built on ‘war-like’ structures and sound bites.

It’s not about the like?

I’ve heard lots of talk recently around metrics and ROI on knowledge and collaboration tools. Many of the intranet, social media, IT, HR and marketing people I speak to are still looking for metrics that will provide some of the traditional measurements around attraction, attention and adoption, such as downloads, unique users, popular pages etc. In the new world of social, open and collaborative business should we be looking at ‘likes’, ‘favourites’ or user comments?

For me it has to be more than just a ‘like’ or thumbs up but something deeper about exploring the depth of connection to people and content that has been developed.

In many ways the measurement still produced for various stakeholder dashboards has not changed for many years. We still see the benchmark of activity as something which should be measured. The value of the activity is something which stakeholders rarely asked for.To measure the value of the relationships and transparency created by the individuals, groups and communities residing on collaborative or social platforms we still need to conduct a lot of manual digging to find measurement around such artifacts as:

• Social Knowledge – this can be defined in many ways such as assets being shared around a community (and beyond) and related practices emerge.

• Relationship development – the ability to create new relationships and networks that previously didn’t exists

• Number of relationships created by individuals and their depth – look at followers and participation in threads

• Discovery of communities – have members joined communities outside their ‘physical’ or existing network

• What collaborative activities are emerging

• What threads, replies, comments or connections contain referrers to potential collaborators

• What threads contain creative or innovative ideas

• Are members sharing personal stories and how much emotional support is provided

The various web metric packages and social business tool reports do not provide this type of information and much of it will be antidotal evidence. Social analytics are poor within most social tools (it will be a major revenue stream for a vendor that can start to provide some of the softer metrics that articulate quality and not just quantity).

Over the years I’ve reported on numerous ROI and metrics to various groups of stakeholders. My top 3 in no particular order are:

Creating an online community platform saw a 25% increase in the production of material for clients – by providing a collaboration platform for an existing professional service group their monthly ‘physical’ were supported by an online community platform. It enabled the sourcing of wider expertise (from across the country) that resulted in a 25% increase in the production of thought leadership material to be issues to clients (you could argue if that was a good thing but that is missing the point).
IA change resulted in senior managers saving an hour per month searching for documents – by conducting user research into how audit managers worked a change of IA and navigation within their community site saw, on average, senior managers save 1 hour per month in sourcing the relevant methodology documentation required, enabling greater time to be spent on finding and minding clients
Developing the online community sees a rise in employee satisfaction scores – a large customer service group within a global organisation were given access to form their own online community. With good strategy, governance and stewardship the community thrived. In annual employee satisfaction surveys the groups average % score increased significantly (I’m sure there were many other factors involved by why spoil a good tale) and was over 20% higher than other similar customer service groups. In some areas a 1% rise in employee satisfaction equates to £2m extra revenue – so you can work out the potential benefit!

On the downside my most disappointing metrics was reporting the drop in homepage visit after an expensive rebranding exercise on our intranet homepage but that did reflect an increasing trend in the value of the homepage becoming diminished

My favourite ‘metric’ as such involves a community set up to bring two very diverse groups together, to collaborate in reporting common faults and reporting back workarounds and fixes. I am hard pressed to call it a community as neither group had any previous interaction (which was part of the issue) and I do preach that unless a conversation is already taking place in the physical world it is hard to develop this online.

One group was a skilled manual workforce based across the UK. The other group dealt with customer service and could be located across the global. With governance and steward in place the volume of activity began to increase.

When it came to the assessment report the ‘metric’ I took most pride in was not the volume of activity nor the number of cases solved but the anecdotal evidence from both sides of the fence that the visibility and transparency created through the forum had begun to create a greater appreciation from each group, an understanding of the issues each face and how to work with them.

You could then spend months evaluating how much benefit this continuing of connections could save the organisation but sometimes the user comments mean so much more than a hard metric.

Pandaemonium

I’m currently reading ‘Pandaemonium 1660-1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers’ (by Humphrey Jennings, co-founder of the Mass Observation movement of the 1930s)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pandaemonium-1660-1886-Machine-Contemporary-Observers…

It fascinates me to compare the benefits and dangers of the industrial revolution with today’s digital revolution.

Pandaemonium collects texts taken from letters, diaries, literature, scientific journals and reports of the time, and traces the development of the machine age in Britain. Covering the years between 1660 and 1886, it offers a rich tapestry of human experience, from eyewitness reports of the Luddite Riots and the Peterloo Massacre to more intimate accounts of child labour, Utopian communities, the desecration of the natural world, ground-breaking scientific experiments, and the coming of the railways. Pandomonium was originally published in 1985, and in 2012 it was the inspiration behind Danny Boyle’s Opening Ceremony for the London Olympic Games.

Interestingly (for me anyway) is the book is divided into 4 sections:

Observations and reports

Exploitation
Revolution
Confusion

I spend much of my time looking at how organisations introduce and sustain knowledge sharing, collaboration and communication technology and associated behaviours.

If we get adoption and adaption right these are disruptive technologies that can assist in changing the nature of the way colleagues engage, communicate, share, learn, nurture and collaborate with each other.

If we get adoption and adaption wrong organisations, and the people / networks within them, go through the trials and pains articulated in the chapter titles above (quick reality check – I’m not comparing the suffering of the industrial revolution with that of an employee who can’t work out the # function on their enterprise social network).

We have seen the observations and reports of how a more open and transparent environment can enhance both employees and organisations.

We are at the exploitation stage where there is a mad rush to social without the analysis or change management processes needed to create the value.

We will soon have the revolution as organisations and employees fight, struggle, resist or forge ahead in the use and value of this new way of working. Many organisations will embrace, while many will fail to get value and asset it’s the technology and / or culture that is the issue.

For those that forge ahead confusion will be created if we lose interest in the on-going stewardship of these tools and behaviours and at worst we see employees burdened with another deafening channel in an already noisy eco-system or technology.

Changing the conversation

One of the key challenges many companies have to face when deploying social collaboration and KM platforms is facing the new realism of becoming ‘stewards’ rather than ‘moderators’ of the environment. Rather than monitoring behaviours, those responsible for stewardship of the platform (whether Enterprise or local community managers) need to understand how to influence rather than control behaviours (comments).

Removing and banning members is the last straw and will also certainly lose any goodwill in changing behaviours in an organisations that have attempted to spread a collaborative culture whilst dealing with legacies of failed online forums or procedures that conflict with a desire to get people collaborating.

You can influence what people say (more possible than most realise) and there are several methods to achieve this. The most common is to showcase the behaviour you want. People broadly do what they see others doing. If they see petty fights, personal attacks, and more they’re going to engage in them. If they see thoughtful, constructive, debates they’re more likely to participate in them.

You can indoctrinate members by recruiting advocates that understand and embrace the philosophy and ‘culture’ of the community and are willing to influence others as they join. Third, easiest, is to prime behaviour immediately prior to posting comments through stage management. This works well in the conceptual and embryonic stages but you need the advocates to eventually perform this as part of their ‘community duties’.

One good piece of collateral its worth producing is a guide for ‘managers’ to ‘deal with conversations’. These are some good community guidelines on how to deal with certain behaviours and how to respond. At one of my clients we developed a 7 step guide to dealing with ‘risky’ conversations that was sent to many of the ‘manager’ grades and developed a group for managers to seek guidance and support in dealing with issues. Coaching internal communicators is also key as they begin to see the possibilities and the dangers of very reactive platforms.

I’ll be eager to garner any insights from members what collateral has been produced to help companies deal with the changing conversational behaviours within companies that have deployed platforms such as Yammer?

Movement of the People

Is it me but do all the major issues over the summer appear to deal with ‘movement’ (or maybe transportation)? The news agenda is full of items around the movement of:

People (across borders, cities and the basic A-B of getting from work to home – or maybe the issues of why many people still do this as networks, drones and live video streaming becomes more common).
Identities – easily replaced, replicated or stolen
Data – see above
Finance – across borders and laws
Goods – whether physical or how they will be replaced by 3D printing

Maybe how we fuse the physical and digital worlds will be the key to dealing with the issue of movement over the next 5 years?

Nudge the network

If you do have a spare 30 minutes I would recommend reading the Behavioural Insights Team Update report.

Click to access BIT_Update-Report-Final-2013-2015.pdf

As more enterprise tools such as O365 / Yammer and Jive the old traditional methods of IT adoption fail (if they ever succeeded) and that’s where the digital transformation agenda takes over. IMO any deployment of collaboration tools need to look at behvaioural insights, nudging the network and behavioural economics to ensure success adoption.

Stick to the recipe for Enterprise Social Software success

When I look at reasons given by organisations for the failure of their Enterprise Social Software project to deliver any success or value (whether this is adoption or return on investment or engagement) I still hear the same issues around poor adoption, cultural issues specific to the organisation, change management, alignment to business needs etc. You could date stamp this as ‘2010’ and the issues haven’t changed.

It still amazes me that in 2015 organisations are struggling to get value from social software despite a reliable ‘recipe’ now being known.

All consultancies both large and small have a framework which is pitched to potential clients that will deliver various degrees of success – but success nevertheless.

Every software vendor has similar material that it will tell clients prior to any adoption programme how to get success (actually an interesting exercise would be to look at how the vendors have changed their ‘tune’ from 2008 onwards by looking at how their client adoption material has changed from ‘just plug it in’ to more strategic thinking).

I would also suggest that the vast majority of organisations that deploy Enterprise Social Software have an understanding or at least an awareness of what needs to be done – and I speak from a perspective or having sat on both sides of the table (industry and consultancy) and I would estimate that 90% plus of people I have dealt understand this.

But despite all this material a large majority of organisations appear to ignore the recipe.

I’m trying to find a simple analogy to compare this with so let’s try cooking.

If I were a chef (the ‘sponsor’ of the deployment) and I wanted to make a paella (deploying the tool) and I have a known recipe on how to make paella (the vendors material, consultants material, freely available material online etc.); then why do I think my paella will turn out fine if I refuse to use some key ingredients like the correct rice, saffron, paprika, wine etc. (change management, governance, use cases etc.)?

Some may be down to cost; some may be lack of knowledge – but wouldn’t you look at the recipe before you start!; some may be down to stubbornness (you deployed other tools before and your way has always worked) but I believe in many cases it’s down to the simple fact that most sponsors are purely concerned with plugging it and making sure it works from a technical perspective – and not appraised on the engagement or value it brings. No different to a chef not being appraised on how good the paella is but the fact they have served up a plate of rice that is dressed up as paella but has none of the taste.

Unless the success criteria is driven by engagement and value – which often happens a number of months into the adoption phase then organisations will continue to cite the same issues with their Enterprise Social Software.

The vendors realised their business model needs to change – not so much about selling licences every 5 years but seeing their software being adopted, adapted to working ways and providing value.

Few areas of an organisation focus on how engaged their workforce is with the ‘service’ provided but this will change. It will eventually filter down to project teams that are built to deploy social software.

In my ideal future world deployments will focus on behavioural change rather than just technology change in order for social software to be a success.

A project team for future deployments will have a very different line-up. The focus won’t be around IT Project Managers or business analysts but instead recruit business psychologists, community developers and social network analysts to ensure social software success.

The sound of social

Summer is upon us and I’ve been spending time reading through some of my notes of the various interviews I have conducted over the last 12 months in relation to collaboration tools and enterprise social networks.

I have interviewed over 250 ‘non-IT’ business users / advocates / leaders / stakeholders that have been introduced to new or upgraded collaboration platforms (O365, Jive, Chatter, Fuse, Yammer – the platform doesn’t really matter in relation to this article) and have found many of the comments follow a familiar pattern on the main issues which I believe companies still face in making a success of collaborative tools.

I should stress the issues may not be with the technology but a company’s ability to provide the appropriate implementation and change management support to assist participants in the adoption and utilisation of these tools.

I loved the work of Studs Terkel (just let the interviewee tell the story and don’t try to over complicate the message) so in the style of his oral histories here is the current story of 2015 directly from the mouth of a few participants faced with new technologies:

Making users feel safe

“People wouldn’t have felt safe putting certain information on the site. Few understood the privacy settings and people are generally worried who can see what within the company. Leadership need to support and validate it before it gets used.”

“There is a hierarchy within the company and people generally would not follow or respond to comments by someone who is senior. It may be shyness or maybe culturally the way we have done things but we have to face this fact.”

“The most obvious element that is missing is the ability to make people feel safe. Networking with people in this company means putting your head above the water margin. It’s not something we do and we need a heavy support programme to show us how it’s done.”

Integrate into how people work

“The problem is that this isn’t “how we work” currently, it isn’t natural for people to use the tool and so the potential couldn’t be realized in this short time period. I think that if everyone was signed into the tool and they were encouraged to use it, it would be incredibly valuable.”

“I found the tool somewhat complicated if I’m being totally honest. Not being immediately able to find what I wanted or know how to do something made me slightly reluctant to use the tool regularly and left me frustrated.”

“It does feel a little bit like you are bombarded with reminders that someone has posted.”

“I did feel that some of the posts from individuals were not entirely appropriate for a company website and were more suited to Facebook. For example when someone is having a bad day and venting via their updates. I personally feel this is not something that you necessarily should be sharing with work colleagues and is best saved for a private social media page.”

“This tool will be useful only if it replaces other tools. We get too much information and there’s not enough time in the day to process it all.”

“Just more clutter which distracts me from my busy day.”

“During busy periods when colleagues are required to pull together and resolve issues against a deadline, I do not appreciate updates and activity streams bombarding my screen – which does not directly help with the matter in hand. Filter failure or not it is distracting.”

“The mobile app is just a tool for viewing the chit chat or direct messages so its functions are useless for me.”

“Unfortunately for me personally this is just another tool in an already overcrowded environment.”

Governance and linkage with other channels

“If corporate messages were put on the collaboration platform it may devalue the message. People see the intranet as the official source of information.”

“Go where the people want to go. Don’t force people to choose between one and another. Intranet and ‘social’ need to be integrated.”

“I believe a ‘technology first’ approach has been taken by the tool. There has been poor implementation and communication planning. I just don’t know what to do with it.”

” The intranet is the backbone of the organisation structure. The social channel is the living parts of the organisation. Like skeleton and flesh. We need integration but not replacement. We also have other communication channels. I need easy to follow and seamless integration of content across the platforms.”

“It lacks the credibility of an official channel like the intranet.”

“We need to build trust on the channel. Some people trust it, others don’t.”

“On the platform everyone is an amateur. The intranet site is professional. If the social channel had more professional news and articles it may add more value.”

“There is concern over governance – my department on the social site has a page with outdated documents and people are discussing content within the document. I spoke to the intranet team and they didn’t have time to deal with content on the social platform as its run by a different team.”

“If management make an announcement and it is not on the intranet people may have issues. The expectation is it should be on there and not a social platform. It just doesn’t have that credibility.”

“I’ve not been on the social tool much. I wasted time looking at groups and communities of no relevance. It needs more governance. Too many groups now have details out of date – it’s getting worse than the intranet.”

“I’m frustrated by governance, or a lack of it. Imagery doesn’t look like the official brand. Too many sites are being setup and it’s becoming a mess.”

“I’m now seeing duplication with the intranet.”

“It’s not an official channel and it’s painful to find information.”

Lessons learnt

There are simply lessons that companies still fail to understand. To make these platforms a success you need to:

Have a strategy (business, content and knowledge)
Understand how the platform needs to integrate with intranet, document management, metadata, enterprise search and other channels
You need to do the ground work of business analysis, use cases and understand how people work. Ensure you understand what success is – and it can’t just be adoption.
Start small with good use cases that provide quick wins and have a supported phased approach to implementation. Volume brings value.
Provide the physical support – community management, advocacy, coaching and leadership support.

In essence enable the organisation, enable the technology and most importantly enable the people.

We all love a good story

Storytelling can be a powerful tool when you want to explain how collaboration tools can help colleagues.

Stories are one of the most powerful emotional currencies we possess. They move people to feel, and they move people to act.

At work, stories take the form of narratives, conversations and anecdotes that connect us with the narrator and the subjects and broaden our pool of knowledge. When you share a story, you will spark a story or idea.

We use stories to make sense of our environment. They make us care. They provide a shared context for mutual understanding of events and issues that impact us. And they inspire us to change our point of view.

Ideally a good story around working with collaboration tools should communicate some form of causal resolution of a problem and also have the addition of meaning and significance for the audience.

When I speak to people around the capabilities of collaboration tools I generally don’t talk about what each feature or button does but how the enabling tool (and associated behaviour coaching) has changed the way people have solved an issue; or created innovation; or developed new engagement channels.

My favourite stories of how these type of tools have helped include:

Solving departure delays at Istanbul airport
Ensured passengers flying into Heathrow received their ‘Bloody Mary’s’ just the way they like them
Helping sped up the alterations to passenger wash bags
Safety lessons from drilling rigs were shared across an organisation within hours
How a banana ice cream maker could peel a thousand bananas at the same time

Obviously these lose much of their currency once taken outside the context of that particular sector so it’s beneficial to begin building a library of wins / case studies as soon as possible. They don’t need to be too details – just a good story. .

Often a new manager or colleague won’t know how these tools and behaviours may have made a difference, but peers and other leaders may have a rich store of anecdotes and memories to make the use meaningful.

Mark Tilbury – digital workplace specialist

Working smarter in the digital workplace

Author: Mark Tilbury

It’s not about the like?

Pandaemonium

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