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.

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.

Making the same mistake

Every day I see a greater digital divide within companies. I recently worked on a collaboration project that involved both groups of apprentices / graduates and those that are more used to faxes than Facebook. It made me realise we are making the same mistakes with collaboration tools (open, social, transparent working etc.) as we did with email and Knowledge Management tools of the 1990s.

Apprentices and graduates ‘just get it’ in terms of understanding how to use technology to connect them to people and content, regardless of interface. Forget about corporate emails – they just don’t want to bother about desktops or email clients. But reach out to them on mobile day or night and they will respond. They see the value of making connections online and how to use the open and social tools to network within organisations. They expect good technology and connectivity and if the company can’t provide it they will use their own. If they can’t be provided with spaces to connect and network they will develop their own.

Other groups within the company needed far greater training, floor walking and hand holding to understand the potential and possibilities of the value of connecting and collaborating. With good content strategies, knowledge and people management, stewardship and governance many of these issues are overcome but what struck me was the change in approach needed by those responsible for implementation and success of collaborative working.

I’m old enough to remember the only ‘IT’ training you received was how to use the fax machine, the photocopy and the phone handset. When email arrived it was similar with one approach to training and ‘after school’ extra training for those that were slow on the uptake. The training provided showed us how to use the new tool. When you asked the trainer what to use it for that was a very different matter.

As we move towards more open, transparent and social ways of working within organisations I do fear we are making the same mistakes we made with email and Knowledge Management. We can introduce the tools and technology, show them how to use it but not guide people on what to share.

Too many times I have seen organisations deploy the technology, train people how to use it but give them no further guidance on how to work more transparently, open and socially. Hence we get the situation that the tools are not used, or maybe worst they are used to create additional noise but no value. If we thing email and various KM document coffins are bad enough imagine a screen full of irrelevant activity streams, notifications, thousands of 2 people communities (if you can have a community of 2) and invites to connect and follow with thousands of people you have never heard of and frankly don’t need to connect to every within your organisation.

To bridge this digital divide within organisations we need to ensure that these collaborative, open, social tools have sufficient strategy, governance and stewardship around them, aligned with a good content or knowledge strategy for the user groups so they have an understanding of what will provide value to themselves, their communities and their company. Once this is in place we can then worry about the floor walking and handholding from a technology level.

Why do so many change management initiatives fail?

Came across this piece from Forrester looking at why so many change management initiatives fail.

http://blogs.forrester.com/claire_schooley/12-12-30-why_do_so_many_change_management_initiatives_fail

I would highly recommend reading the Managing Transition essay by William Bridges. If a business transformation or change project was on the agenda I sense Bridges 3 phases of transition (Ending, Neutral Zone and the New Beginning) would well within most organisations, particularly some of the proposed early adopters. .

3 phases of Transition

Transition is split in three phases, which overlap. Ending, Neutral Zone, and the New Beginning.

These 3 phases are not sequential and at one given time, departments (generally this wouldn’t work well with communities) may be in more than one phase. This depends on how advanced different teams are in the process of transition. Some may already starting the new beginning while others are in the Neutral Zone for instance.

It is not a problem for the department to be in a mix state in terms of transition phases just as long as leaders have a clear understanding of who is at what stage.

Ending

· Understand and accept with empathy that teams will lose many things

· Give people didn’t have the chance to express their loss

· Identify what people will lose according to their role, team position etc …

· Understand what it means for the people and clearly communicate this understanding

· Identify ways to compensate for people loss

· Communicate on a regular basis.

· Clearly communicate on what is over and why it is necessary for the organisation strategy

· Do not denigrate the previous situation

Neutral Zone

· Productivity might go down

· People may feel overwhelmed and anxious

· People may get polarized

· Recommendations during that phase :

· Openly communicate around the unstable nature of this phase

· Build a Transition Monitoring Team.

· Encourage experimentation

· Ensure failures are not punished

· Train the teams so they can feel more comfortable with the change.

Beginning

· 4 P : Purpose, Picture, Plan et Part.

o The Purpose is the answer to the question of the departments justification.

o The Picture is critical to illustrate in a clear and straight-forward way the vision behind the change. It contributes to a much faster acceptation and change ownership process of by the teams.

o The Plan shows that leaders have been thing about the transition process

o The Part : involve as many people as possible to that they engage with the change process. Communication must concentrate on selling the problem.

· Be consistent. Sending conflicting messages during the Beginning phase is the best way to foster confusion and to stay in Neutral Zone.

· Look for quick wins : it is very important for the change initiative to get early in the project some quick wins, from small tasks..

· Symbolize the new cultural identity. With methods, processes, visuals etc … that gives a physical and visible aspect to the change.

· Celebrate success. Just like we need to spend time and acknowledge the loss (Endings) it is critical to celebrate results of what’s starting

Intranet Professionals

Been following this LinkedIn discussion on Intranet Professionals with interest as it’s something I and other intranet focused people have been talking about (with little action on my part) for some time.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Why-arent-there-more-Intranet-113656.S.206734508?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=113656&item=206734508&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b-pop_ttl-hdp&ut=3yZGP7ilLlJ5A1

I believe there are two major issues that are barriers to seeing greater number of ‘intranet professionals’ or defining this as a skill set.

Firstly the lack of a recognised qualification still hinders the role. HR, Marketing, Communications and these types of roles have all formed, for want of a better word, institutes that begin to define qualifications. It’s something I have pondered upon for many years (in 2010 we held the Intranet Career Path discussion at IBF 24) but I still struggle to define what we would include within this type of qualification. The demands of linking ‘people to people’ and ‘people to content’ internally changes so rapidly that developing modules would be hard. I also sense that intranet professionals are more ‘artisans’ than ‘workers’ as they are on the innovative edge of changing the way organisations work. It’s true that many intranet managers need to conduct many roles not just within the intranet field, but even in large organisations that have dedicated intranet teams it would be brave to suggest they are not innovative or creative in the practice of changing the way organisations work. Unfortunately I sense this may be to the detriment of the profession as many organisations still struggle in how they organise and departmentalise innovation.

Secondly the career path is still not mapped out. If someone was looking to become a CKO, CIO, CTO (even CDO – Chief Digital Officer) they would need a lot more on their CV than just ‘intranet’. For other areas this may not be the case. While it’s not a burden it certainly would struggle to get you a seat at the top table by just running successful intranet programmes.

No plan and no chance

2013 appears to present the same issues as 2012 with organisations unable to get value from their collaboration platform. Yesterday I attended a session with a global fashion brand to discuss why they have failed to get any value from a collaboration / social business platform deployed over a year ago. Yet again the same issue emerge.

1 – Platform determined before any requirements were gathered (in fact there were no initial business requirements gathered after the technology was chosen!

2 – Only customisation is around brand and not the features or functions (in no small part due to no requirement gathering, use cases or user testing)

2 – The ‘IT project’ has deployed and everyone has a user ID but no-one has told employees what the business needs them to discuss and share (it doesn’t come without direction).

3 – After an initial burst of activity the platform now has some idle chat completely unrelated to business strategy

4 – There has been a complete failure in integrating the platform into the ways of working within the business.

The deployment of the technology is the simple piece. What is lacking to make any social business tool an effective collaboration and knowledge sharing tool are the elements that tie all these pieces together, namely the content (both in terms of structured and unstructured content and the relationships and networks that form around this content) and the ‘stewardship’ (I would sheepishly use the word ‘management’ but that wouldn’t be appropriate in the context of a social business tool). Any future deployment will soon hit a number of hurdles unless the following elements are developed.

1 – Develop a content strategy that covers social, intranet and other relevant applications – both organisational wide and within each group or community. Once you have an understanding of the type of content you need to mine, create, discuss and refine you may then want to create a group to look at categorising this.

2 – Develop a governance process to provide stewardship around the content – not the channel.

3 – Once the governance is establish you will ideally have work streams to enabling integration of content throughout the available channels (Social, Document Management, Intranet, ‘People directory’?). These may focus around:

· Metadata – this will be needed to tie any social, document management and intranet content together to enable real enterprise value to be gained

· Search – define a strategy to ensure the surfacing of content is possible

· Content – maintaining the developed strategy and aligning all departments

· Usability – ensuring all the channels develop a common standard (not just look and feel)

· Connectivity – this relates to how we ‘connect’ all the common elements. This maybe be employee directory and social business tool bio or documents and users profile.

4 – Do the ‘boring’ ground work of requirement gathering, building personas, develop use cases that are integrated into the way people are working.

5 – Start small with some simple use cases that can be supported. Have a phased approach to adoption that can be supported, building case studies as you go to support the business case.

6 – Don’t sell the benefit of ‘removing email’ because until the various platform vendors solve issues around filtering activity streams people will still reply on email as there ‘go to’ application.

From ‘Social’ to ‘Open’

Love the blog posts from Luis Suarez and this one is no exception as he challenges the terminology of using ‘social business’ and also where the next level of sponsorship will come for the tools and methodologies used to make the workplace a more ‘social’ (‘open’) place to work.

http://www.elsua.net/2013/01/08/social-business-in-2013-an-opportunity-open-business/

I agree ‘social’ still struggles to hit the right targets. Terms such as ‘social intranets’ and ‘social business’ may be used within the industry but to the people that sign the cheques and deploy the campaigns within the business it sits on the shelf with other terms such as ‘user generated content’ and ‘semantic web’ – people just don’t care how they are bracketed.

I like the term ‘open business’ and steers closely to my belief that the tools that enable greater engagement, collaboration and knowledge sharing within organisations that will lead to greater innovation for the company and a more democratic and inspiring place for employees to work and develop work / life balance. My only concern is the Risk and Compliance people in organisations may raise a concern if they hear of becoming an ‘open business’.

In terms of sponsor these type of tools currently IT and CIO (if there is one) have ownership or responsibility for much of the deployment. A savvy CIO will see how they can become a perfect fit for them to go beyond IT, step up, and take an enterprise-wide view.

A CFO may also become a good sponsor. Now, this is less obvious. Why get the numbers person on board here? Well, collaboration is first and foremost about creating economic value; it’s a strategic search for good cross-company projects. Many CFOs also oversee the strategy department, so why not add cross-company strategic activities to the portfolio?

I would steer away from Internal Communication, Brand or Marketing if you are looking for the social (open) tools to untap hidden expertise, knowledge or innovation. In most companies the more traditional Marketing and Communication roles have other priorities and agendas that don’t sit well with this type of tool. For example, Marketing may be extremely pleased if the social tool is fully brand compliant and has all the latest corporate messages. But that may turn users off in drove as the goal will be to create relationships and networks that create new value.

The head of HR should be a perfect fit for new streams of sponsorship and potential adoption campaigns. Good collaboration requires the right incentives, performance evaluations, promotion criteria, and people development. So it’s only natural for the head of HR to take on the role; that entails going beyond HR issues and working with others, such as the CIO, to craft a holistic solution to disengaged employees.

New roles emerging as we bridge the digital divide

New roles are emerging as companies begin to bridge the digital divide. Is this an aspiration for intranet managers? Your thoughts please.

http://blogs.gartner.com/dave-aron/2012/11/10/chief-digital-officer-from-oh-no-to-of-course/

With potential changes to the scope and role of the intranet it means an opportunity to redefine what the intranet editors do and how they work. Intranet teams have traditionally been rigidly built around the organizational structure and technology, with the intranet team often emerging as an afterthought. The emergence of a social platform and a change in the way people are engaging with content represents the possibility for some radical re-shaping of the intranet team in order to prepare for these shifts as well as open up new career opportunities.

Where content has been a central focus, this evolution will also mean putting people at the centre of the intranets. And as this starts to happen, the intranet team’s role moves beyond design and communication towards that of a facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing.

While IT and the intranet teams control, the wave of employees using a social platform are looking to innovate, share, collaborate, learn and engage not inside the physical boundaries of an office nor the virtual boundaries of a network but a social business platform that spans the globe.

These changes in the workplace do not mean that the fundamental skills of the intranet team are no longer needed, but they do mean that the intranet team need to respond by developing new key characteristics:

· Becoming more agile and fluid – able to adapt quickly to new technologies and ways of working. This may mean learning new skills quickly, or bringing in these skills from other parts of the organization, or outside.

· Becoming more user-centric – focused on fostering communities, and facilitating interaction and knowledge sharing. Nurturing the capabilities to make best use of the digital platforms available.

· Leading by example – as the intranet team increasingly takes on the role of facilitator/ enabler, it is key that they demonstrate new ways of working in the digital workplace in their own behaviours. This is further emphasized by the fact that as the workforce becomes more technologically savvy (anyone can set up a blog, start microblogging, or find what they need on the web) everyone is becoming an “expert”.

· Being the innovators – as traditional boundaries and ways of working are challenged the intranet team need to become ever more creative in understanding the opportunities for the organizations online channels to develop and merge in new ways. To do so it is essential that the intranet team understand emerging technologies on the web and the user behaviours associated with them.

Nuture the community

As we move towards the end of 2012 I’m in a musing mood, reflecting on my many conversations over the past 12 months. From my conversations in 2012 I am reminded we are still on the learning curve on how to build and sustain a truly collaborative organisation and must be continually reminded that technology is an enabler and not the solution. Most collaboration projects are still IT led and using heavy duty project management methodology to what is essentially a people issue.

Social business technologies are helping to make the task of collaborating and sharing easier and more in tune with how we run our personal lives but that does not mean that people will automatically start to share what they know or information they possess with other people who might need it. To improve collaboration using social business we still need to understand the psychology of sharing. We also need to understand the context in which we want people to start sharing with each other. When we have that understanding, we should have some idea of what buttons to push to make it happen, such as what technologies to use and how to design, implement and introduce them to the intended users.

I hope in 2013 we start to move away from the IT led deployment approach and look at how we instigate change in organisations, primarily through the people centric approach – in essence spending time in building and developing champions, advocates and communities, both physical and virtual, to support change initiatives that collaborative tools bring. The development of champions, advocates and community managers, tied with a strong emphasis on communication planning, allows local adoption of many enterprise wide initiatives.

The focus on people and communities at a local level may start to bring real value from adoption of collaborative technologies. The nurturing of these communities will be where the real value is for enablers in 2013.

Mark Tilbury – digital workplace specialist

Working smarter in the digital workplace

Tag: Governance