Category: Uncategorized

The digital workplace is more than technology

I’m a keen reader of the Chieftech blog and saw this interesting take on the digital workplace

http://chieftech.com.au/what-is-the-digital-workplace-mostly-harmless#comment

The ‘digital workplace’ (or whatever people call it) is far more than grouping some technology as a response. For me it’s an enabling cultural change to the way we work, manage, lead and combine work with the changing needs of our life.

If you shepherd some technology products under a banner for employees who still spend hours travelling to an office to plug into a network extension and spend one day ‘working at home’ where they complete their standard weekly powerpoint presentations, then this fails to understand what can be achived.

The digital workplace is a mindset and technolgy toolkit that enables organisations and employees to truely shape the environment where they can innovate, create and begin to gain some work / life balance that reflects the growing change of the society we live in. It will provide us the ability to be flexible and agile, enabling us to combine work with true quality of life – raising our children (rather than atching 30 minutes before bedtime) and caring for elderly relatives, having freedom to think and create in an environment create by the you rather than sat at a white desk, in a white office. 

Organisations that have the tools but still expect powerpoints, use the term ‘working at home’ and continue with the statics processes around people development and innovation (just look at the standard yearly appraisal systems) will be on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Leaders need to understand where best employees can innovate and create, employees need to develop disciplines and behaviours that understands that the physical office is perhaps the worst place to get their work complete and Intranet Managers, or whoever is respoonsible for stewardship of this toolkit need tolearn more nuturing and relationship skills rather than managing a database behind a firewall.

It’s a ‘must happen’ for organisations (particularly in the West) that will enable us to complete in a new economy. The alternative of more of the ‘corporate shoulder pads’ of the 1980s is something that will ensure organisations fail to atract the best talent and the best responses to changing markets.

Social Business not just another KM 2.0

Love this article from Social Business News. 

http://www.socialbusinessnews.com/is-social-business-just-knowledge-management-2-0/

I am a strong believer that ‘social’ we be far different to KM. From a visionary perspetive you could argue it begins to give employees a voice that has been eroded since the 1970s – maybe not so much in how an organisation is run but certainly in how it delivers a service, innovates and connects.

It certainly questions how KM has been run in many organisations. If a virual deployment of Yammer can do more to connect and share that a KM program we have to look at how that business has been running.

It shifts the skills that are required to provide stewardship of this process (not capture or manage) as eluded to in some early posts on ‘digital divide’

http://digitaldivide.posterous.com/changing-skills

http://digitaldivide.posterous.com/the-value-is-in-the-playground

It raises questions around roles of Information Management, Taxonomies, documents etc. The incoming generation want to connect around people and relationships and avoid the clutter of documentation. This won’t work immediately for many organisations, particularly in highly regulated environments but the cultural use of technology has always driven the compliance agenda and no doubt social will eventually do the same.

Moving towards a social enterprise will enable wider skill sets to be used to create these conversations and relationships. No longer would we need management of information and documents but facilitation of groups, people and relationships around some core principles and conversation topics.

It certainly is an exciting time as the social enterprise changes the way we work, lead and deliver value to organisations and our own work / life balance.

The technology is a response and until you find out what the issue is any response is pointless

Saw this on the Linkedin wires yesterday.

 http://blog.web100.com.ua/2012/02/28/study-enterprise-social-networks-failing-to-meet-expectations/

Enterprise social networks failing to meet expectations is hardly surprising news. Too often we approach the implementation of a ‘social network’ as a technology deployment and is managed and treated this way. The technology is a response and until you find out what the issue is any response is pointless.

Last week I spoke to a very large global bank who have deployed a social platform. It was a IT led deployment and they were having problems with adoption. When asking who the current users and communities were the response was they were all IT focused. I asked about the use cases, personas, key tasks etc that the platform was ‘social’ platform was meant to address. They have none. The focus was on deploying a product and then finding a need. Rather than asking better questions from the business, gaining greater insights and working with groups to define purpose and focus. The last 15 years of website development has shown that if you build it people won’t come. You need to find the need, propose a solution for the need and then work, in both the physical and social areas to ensure there is understanding and adoption.

No one says “lets get back to email” but everyone involved in creating a social enterprise has to ensure the approach is client centred, define actually benefits from the results and continue to sell the value proposition. In essence, step back from creation and look at curation – what do we want this to achieve. The business rules for introducing social are no different from any other successful adoption.

Some years back I worked with a large service line, within a global organisation, to successful deploy a social platform to coordinate the activity around their first Director conference. A key element was the group already had a defined structure with leadership and governance in place, essential when looking to progress solutions. The approach to the Knowledge Lead was not to introduce a new platform but to look at addressing their issue around garnering ideas and feedback from a widely dispersed group of very busy people.

Lots of time and attention was given to the sponsorship and governance of the potential solution before we even discussed the technology. We had to get the concept and purpose right, and also the topics. If people don’t talk about the topic already, you have the wrong topic. We worked on how a potential community platform could improve user end-to-end tasks, how it could provide direct solutions to business problems and needs and ensured we talked about it effected the bottom line. Not a mention of the platform name or technology until all these elements had been sold, together with some quantifiable, measurable impact on the success of the group. Importantly we also had a timeline and retirement strategy in place.

Social enterprises will only make an impact within organisations when people responsible realise it takes lots of work to understand what the pain points are within the business, what need a platform COULD address and talk about garnering greater insights into business issues rather than knock on the door with a ready made product looking for a purpose.

Social Enterprise – real or fiction?

Following an interesting debate on “social enterprise: real or fiction?”

http://www.zdnet.com/debate/social-enterprise-real-or-fiction/6346201

Organisations needs have not changed since the industrial revolution but the role workers play in that role has. The adoption of social (or maybe we do need a better word to reflect the virtual engagement or connecting behaviours that was so hard to attain for a worker) starts to give a voice to people who actually understand and do the work. This has incredible impact in terms of changing the way organisations are structured. Anyone who goes through the pain of appraisal processes, training courses and many of the practices that belonged in the 1980s realise the potential of thsi digital workplace to change the way employees begin to take control of their working lives. Organisations still have the power to hire and fire but now employees have the ability to create wider networks and not leave their careers in the hand of one boss or organisation.

From loco to social

If I ever needed reminding on the value for social business tools I will turn to ‘the app gap’ and read about Carol Sormilic, a VP in the CIO office at IBM

She has not sent her team an email for over a year and through the use of social tools seen increase of skills, finding experts quicker etc but also an increased sense of belonging.

We are just at the beginning when it comes to understanding the cultural, structural, and change management aspects of what a social organisation will deliver and the dynamics it will trigger. I sense the dangers of having to keep up with social spaces within an organisation. We struggle to keep up with social communities in our personal life so what hope do we have within a large enterprise.

But having experienced working environments with and without social tools I sense the biggest danger is not having access to these areas in support of the physical, social and virtual aspects of our working life.

Business and people enablement

Love the comments on Intranetizen

especially

“5. Improve intranet governance; reshape the role of intranet manager
The last 3 years have seen an evolution in intranets, changing from simple internal communication publishing spaces into business-critical collaboration, social, transactional platforms. Your intranet manager is really the Director of Business Enablement.”

Love the comment about the job title changing. Business enablement may work but also something about enabling people within the business, aligning closer with capability, development, innovation and learning spaces rather than IT, Knowledge and Communications. It’s no longer about managing content sitting on a database behind a firewall but developing spaces where people can gather, innovation, network and play.

Protect my time and relationships

I wonder if blogging provides any value in 2012 ??? or I guess it???s the meaning and value of the content posted that is important. Anyway ??? decided to begin blogging again for the first few weeks of 2012 to see what connections and collaborations this leads to.

My main message of early 2012 is to ensure I disconnect at suitable times. Spent 2 weeks away from the digital world and even read a newspaper ??? so refreshing. It allowed me to witness how much time family and friends are transfixed by their mobile. Even heard a tale that a father banned mobiles from the Christmas dinner table ??? my hero. Protect my time and realise the importance of my relationship.

When I first set up this blogged I called it the Digital Divide as I believed there would be the ???haves??? and have not??? as everything went onto a digital platform. I also see a digital divide developing between those who CAN manage when to dip into the digital sea and those who are addicted to being connected. Protection of time and entrance to networks / communities to develop relationships will be as valuable as getting people to engage with these networks. Need to give this more thought but I am certain the potential big earner for the next few years are organisations that can introduce social networks but train and educate employees on how to manage these to avoid creating another email hostage culture.

Other things on my mind in early 2012:

??         Social performance
??         Gamification
??         Klout and Kudos
??         Work life balance
??         The digital platform in enabling the way we change the way we work
??         More LinkedIn ??? less Yammer

What is the point of IT?

Last year Christy Season hosted a panel discussion looking at the skills needed to progress as an intranet manager ??? the main thread of the discussion focused on the unique position IM have across departments and organisations and how business engagement skills were of most value.

 

Since that time we have seen great change in the digital world with social intranet truly becoming part of the norm and increasingly external technology bleeding into the internal world. So this year ???s IBF 24 we wanted to look at what is the future for intranet managers . Will we be around in 5 years time, do we need to change our skill sets, their role, the tasks of their team or is it still business as normal? A panel discussion on IBF 24 involved Christy, Mark Morrell and myself.  

 

My concern for intranet managers is that we appear to be doing the same thing now which we were doing 10 years ago. Technology is moving but are we?

 

Are we performing the same roles for digital technology that a ???property and facilities??? department play in the physical world? Will this lead to most roles being outsourced. In the next 5-10 years what will be the point of a IT department or a CIO when everything can be provided faster, cheaper and with more innovation through the cloud ??? or what the buzz word is (wasn???t the cloud just web services 5 years ago?).

 

For intranet teams I fear our core functions have not changed in 10 years. Will these roles still be valid essential? Intranets are now the norm but where do we now take them. Will the current platform go the same way as the typing pool or office telephone exchange ??? if anyone is old enough to remember them!

 

We are undergoing cultural change with technology. We no longer rely on our IT department to ???do??? technology for is. Everything is far easier to deploy personally than go through the pain or ordering via a IT department. Technology provision no longer limited to traditional IT departments and argument over whether the colour looks right, or what graphic goes where. The availability of tools, many open source or ???freemium??? outside the firewall, and employees??? desire to use them in place of outmoded enterprise systems, are compounding this trend. The same could be said for intranet. Yammer, Tibbr and Klout ??? is that a intranet for a small organisation?

 

Unanswered questions for me. In 5 years time:

??         What is the point of IT departments?

??         What is the point of a central intranet site?

??         Will the intranet be an App store?

 

While IT and intranet teams control, the new generation of workers wants to innovate, share, collaborate, learn and engage, not restricted by the physical boundaries of an office or the virtual boundaries of a network but across a digital workplace that spans the globe.

The behaviours, attitudes and expectations of employees are undergoing a seismic shift. A new generation is entering the workplace at ease with technology and redesigning our perceptions of private and public in the digital environment. This new generation, with a reputation for limited digital patience, attention seeking and familiarity with showcasing and communicating via digital platforms what things to happen fast. But is this really the corporate world ?

All in the network

A blog alert linked to a keynote speech (lost the link and forgot the name!) reminded me of Cisco and it???s understanding of the importance of online networks, not just at a technical level but at a strategic business level. It seems that Cisco???s vision has deepened with experience, and the concept of Networked Economy taking over from the Information Economy is being discussed.

Adapting to the age of networks  and understanding their importance is a major step in getting connected within an organisation and assisting in the process and execution of role. The enterprise network, social business, social intranet ??? whatever we wish to call it ??? is where the internal digital platforms we see most success. There was a time when content, documents, files were loaded onto an intranet and complex ways were devised around how this was pushed to the user. Now the user has little time or patience to read a document that is shoved into their digital space. What they need to do is to be able to connect and form networks and relationship and extract value from these.

I???m increasingly falling in love with Klout ??? www.klout.com ??? and tools like this which will be the next generation of tool that start to add meaning and value to the networks that are being created by tools such as Yammer. The need to identity influencers is paramount within any network and it???s logical that once networks are accepted as adding value we need tools to measure this value ??? and people to begin nurturing and training how to use and form these networks.

Building the academy

One area that I am keen to develop is a global digital academy for my organisation, that will enhance the skill sets of participants within this space. This should not just focus on Sharepoint but transferrable skills around key online disciplines such as building senior sponsorship; engaging with key areas of the business; delivering services; search and people finding; governance and policy; collaboration; monitoring and metrics; and Intranet team and Intranet Manager role.

Wrapped up into physical, virtual and social training spaces I see this as a valuable addition to increasing the effectiveness of portal participants. We not only need to address how to manage a technology or a database sitting behind a firewall. The digital workspace is changing and the skill set required for those involved in the space must also need to change. Your intranet / portal space needs to feel in control. But we don’t need to feel in control. Our audience needs to feel in control. The world of online management is shifting. More and more online teams are realizing that site management is about continuously improving a relatively small number of pages, not administering large quantities of content.

Of course, the ultimate goal is not managing the content itself, but rather managing your users top tasks and relationships. Content will support top task and relationship completion.