Tag: Governance

Made to measure

View1

I’ve heard lots of talk recently around metrics and ROI on social business tools. Many of the Intranet, IT, HR and Marketing people I speak to are looking for metric packages that will provide some of the traditional measurements around online sites.

In terms of ‘measurement’ here are some of the criteria I use to generally benchmark knowledge and collaboration communities and programmes. There are some basic metrics to measure participation and activity within the communities.

•                     Total number of users

•                     Number of new users per week

•                     Number of new posts, threads (plus response), ideas, blog and other content

•                     What are members doing in the community?

•                     What are the popular trends in posts? Blogs? Forums?

•                     What resources are being used?

However, these basic metrics won’t provide a true understanding of the value around the collaboration that a platform could provide to individuals and the community as a whole. For the measurement of value around collaborative communities I would generally look at analytics that articulate:

•                     Attraction

•                     Attention

•                     Adoption

•                     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

Some of the questions I ask to evaluate these items would include:

•                     % of members / users which make a contribution

•                     Members active within the past 30 days

•                     Contributions per active member and the value of these contributions related to the purpose of the community

•                     Content popularity

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

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

The various social business tool reports (i.e. Community Manager Reports in Jive) will 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 of working within communities I’ve compiled a list from various sources that are useful in articulating some measure of value or return on the community. Top 30 are:

 

1.             What % of newcomers remain members for more than a month.

2.             Speed of replies to discussions. How quickly are discussions receiving a reply? The faster the responses, the higher the level of social presence within the community and the greater the level of participation.

3.             The % of newcomers which initiate a discussion. This highlights whether newcomers may be unmotivated or intimidated to start discussions.

4.             Language and tone of voice. What language do members adopt when they address each other? Is it formal and polite? Is there friendly banter? Is there a sense of familiarity? This will let you know what stage the community is in.

5.             Do members’ interactions have continuity and depth? (Are members engaged in productive, on-going, interactions?)

6.             What collaborative activities are emerging?

7.             What documents, tools, resources, or other artefacts are created and utilized. (How are these useful to the members?)

8.             Is the community providing value for its sponsors

9.             Is participants’ involvement in the community affecting their professional practices and learning.

10.          What are the on-going practices and processes that contribute to the “life” of the community and keep members engaged?

11.          How is knowledge being shared within the community? Beyond the community?

12.          Are leaders or roles emerging in the community? In what ways? How are they being cultivated?

13.          How are members being supported in the community?

14.          How are members contributing? Posting? Replying? (When? How often?)

15.          What are the prevalent patterns of interactions?

16.          What is the proportion of new topics that get 5+ replies? The percentage of new blogs that get 5+ comments? The percentage of (video, audio, lesson plan, etc.) uploads that get 50+ downloads or 5+ comments?

17.          What proportions of new topics or new blog posts are un-responded to or uncommented on (an important measure of the responsiveness of the community, which in turn affects key factors like trust)?

18.          What is the average new (topics, replies, blog posts) created per member?

19.          What are the emerging benefits of the community for members?

20.          What is the average number of “followers” that community members list or have collected in/on their member profile pages?

21.          What are the proportions of topics or replies that specifically relate to your practice?

22.          The proportion of replies where links to potentially helpful resources or other referrals are provided

23.          The proportion of replies to a post in which helpful or constructive advice is directly provided

24.          The proportion of replies that build on previous posts (as opposed to just responding to the original poster)

25.          The proportion of replies that contain offers of collaboration or introductions to potential collaborators

26.          The proportion of replies that contain creative, novel, or innovative ideas

27.          The proportions of replies that summarize, distil, or synthesize prior posts/replies

28.          The proportion of posts in which community members show or express vulnerability, such as a lack of domain knowledge

29.          The proportion of posts in which community members share personal stories

30.          The proportion of posts in which community members are (emotionally) supportive or helpful to other members

 

Digital must support the physical

Love this piece from RSA.

http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2012/social-economy/web-20-rise-partisan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rsaconnectedcommunities+%28Connected+Communities%29

It shows how we can isolate ourselves within digital networks and increase the silo mentality rather than try to increase the transparency. The same dangers may prevent themselves when implementing social technologies and without strong ‘human engagement’ to support the digital engagement many deployments will fail.

I strongly believe the digital world is here to support the physical world that we occupy. We must resist the temptation just to confine ourselves away in the digital social networks but use them to support our real physical world and the relationships and beliefs we develop. In many areas of life digital interaction would not succeed without some physical, real-life human contact.

The 2012 Obama For America (OFA) campaign was the culmination of the president’s belief in the power of neighbourhood action that he acquired as a community organiser in poor areas of Chicago in the 1980s. That faith in bottom-up organising was combined with a massive digital database to produce a campaign that was simultaneously hyper localised and rigorously centralised.

He created a matrix of field officers that were concentrated in the swing states. The Obama camp believed a strong missionary fervour that friendship, contact and the personal touch are how you win elections.

The deployment of adoption of social tools is not about technology. It is about building the right conditions; champions, advocates, support networks and contact points that ensure the purpose of the deployment (generally breaking down silos or barriers, increasingly transparency and knowledge sharing) are successful.

The digital must support the physical

Love this piece from RSA.

http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2012/social-economy/web-20-rise-partisan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rsaconnectedcommunities+%28Connected+Communities%29

It shows how we can isolate ourselves within digital networks and increase the silo mentality rather than try to increase the transparency. The same dangers may prevent themselves when implementing social technologies and without strong ‘human engagement’ to support the digital engagement many deployments will fail.

I strongly believe the digital world is here to support the physical world that we occupy. We must resist the temptation just to confine ourselves away in the digital social networks but use them to support our real physical world and the relationships and beliefs we develop. In many areas of life digital interaction would not succeed without some physical, real-life human contact.

The 2012 Obama For America (OFA) campaign was the culmination of the president’s belief in the power of neighbourhood action that he acquired as a community organiser in poor areas of Chicago in the 1980s. That faith in bottom-up organising was combined with a massive digital database to produce a campaign that was simultaneously hyper localised and rigorously centralised.

He created a matrix of field officers that were concentrated in the swing states. The Obama camp believed a strong missionary fervour that friendship, contact and the personal touch are how you win elections.

The deployment of adoption of social tools is not about technology. It is about building the right conditions; champions, advocates, support networks and contact points that ensure the purpose of the deployment (generally breaking down silos or barriers, increasingly transparency and knowledge sharing) are successful.

Sprezzatura ??? is this the perfect word for the Intranet Manager?

Sprezzatura – Is this the perfect word for the Intranet Manager?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

This is an Italian word for being able to do your craft without a lot of visible effort. It’s a combination of elan and grace and class, sort of the opposite of loud grunts while you play tennis or a lot of whining and fuss when you help out a customer.

Many people are unable to put their finger on it, but this is a magnetic trait for many of us. We want our lawyer, dentist and waiter to demonstrate sprezzatura, but of course, not particularly try to. Is this the perfect word for Intranet Managers? And I was going to order it with a tagliatelle!

Resurrection of Alchemists

Love this piece by Braco Dimitrijevic from 2006 (currently showing at the Tate Modern – London) which expresses the dangers of crushing the innovation and creativity of ‘artist’s (we can replace artists with knowledge workers in the corporate environment).

The great gold rush to a social organisation should be tempered with a vision of what the future could look like. If everyone within an organisation becomes ‘social’ are we running a risk of conversation and sharing overload or do we just need to adjust the way we work to learn how to consume what’s relevant? Ideas welcome.

Changing the skill set to meet the digital game changers

Excellent article – be interested to know if anyone feels the ‘intranet’ skill sets need to change to adapt to the ‘game changers’?

http://www.csc.com/insights/insights/78770-the_next_generation_of_digital_game_changers?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 This is an exciting development for intranet teams, with changes to the scope and role of the intranet meaning an opportunity to redefine what they 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 dawn of the social and digital workplace represents the possibility for some radical re-shaping of intranet teams in order to prepare for these shifts as well as open up new career opportunities in the area of social and collaboration.

Where content has been a central focus, this evolution will mean putting relationships at the centre of what intranets can achieve.  As this starts to happen, the intranet team’s role in the organization moves beyond design and communication towards that of a facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing.

In addition, as organizations emerge from the recession, a new paradigm is becoming apparent as technology provision is no longer limited to the traditional IT department 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 is compounding this trend.

While IT and intranet teams control, the new generation of workers 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 or digital workplace that spans the globe.

The behaviours, attitudes and expectations of employees are undergoing a seismic shift.  A new generation are 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 being at ease with showcasing and communicating via digital platforms, will put pressure on traditional intranets to evolve in my dynamic and interactive ways.

These changes in the workplace do not mean that the fundamental skills we have looked at for intranet management are no longer needed, but they do mean that intranet teams 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.

·         A broader scope – the intranet team may no longer be called the “intranet” team – an opportunity to re-write the definition of what the team does. For example, “Digital Communications Team” or “Web and Workplace Centre of Excellence”.

·         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 social or 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. 

A more visual digital world

Is it me or are larger graphics making a comeback and is Pinterest leading the way?

Pinterest is a step in an ever growing visual direction. There is definitely a need to step away from heavy text laden social and knowledge platforms in the age of smartphones and tablets. People want to be captivated by images and I think Pinterest fills the niche.

Even top news sites like the BBC have moved towards a more graphical display to signpost content.  Strangely enough Facebook have started to limit image size (more memory size than pixel size – is this a sign that Facebook is no longer ahead of the curve!).

At the moment I am working with some young artists and they love what Pinterest offers. Whether large organisations can derive benefit from it is another matter.

Much of my work is with organisations internal applications and there is a shift toward imagery across some areas such as intranet homepages. When intranets and external websites first entered the arena we saw large graphics used to make impacts on news items or links to key content. As more and more content piled onto sites the  trend then went to reduction of graphics and more links. Maybe we are all looking for a simpler doorway to content and relationships. Rather than bombard users with links, text and documents  the trend may be back to’ less is more’ but more relevant content with large, bold graphics as a signpost for them?

I must confess I always thought something like audioboo would take off as people became fed up with text and documents. Maybe Pinterest is the visual answer as we enter a more colourful and visually pleasing digital world.

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.

Day 2 at Gartner

 Day 2 of the Gartner summit was time to look into the future. Attended sessions on  how we can monitor social tools, looking at the next generation of real-time mobile connected workers and the success and failures of cloud-based computing. Some good networking with organisations that are facing similar issues to us (always good to confirm we are not alone). Some key themes throughout the day focused on ensuring we determine requirements and define purpose. In the best traditional of tag clouds here are some instance words / terms / phases I picked up from the 2 days of Gartner summit.

There are ‘birthright workplace tools’

Time and place are no longer boundaries to collaboration (except with my laptop!)

We must put the user experience in context

Our job is about engaging eyeballs

Intranets and portals are becoming more e to e (employee to employee)

The governance role is to find the balance between control and flexibility 

Leaving the summit I left with a real sense of worth with my role. There has been lots of talk recently about the future of online teams (‘death of the intranet manager’; ‘out of the box’ websites etc) but I left with a real sense that the role I and industry peers play will be around for the next few years. It’s not about the technology but a collection of methodologies and approaches that enhances the end-user experience.

Something to support the physical

One of our business units used video to deliver strategic messages throughout the year. The feedback we received from the unit (approx 250 people) was that it was a ‘nice’ way to deliver a message, but in terms of registering what was said it had very, very little impact (reports received back from employee focus group). I was also part of a discussion today regarding the launch of a knowledge programme with a large business unit (approx 800 people). We talked over a mixture of delivery methods to determine how to launch a new initiative in knowledge sharing. The general consensus of opinion from various areas of the business unit was that methods such as ‘video’ look and feel fresh but do not register with the audience without some physical take away. A number of people quoted an example of an initiative that was launched last Easter which included an Easter Egg on each employees desk. The initiative is remembered far more than video messages given by a CEO. My early musings on this is that any virtual campaign needs to be supported (or vice versa) by a physical example that the audience can take away. Someone quoted an example of a match-day programme or magazine from a concert of football game. You need something you can hold/touch to remember the messages (or event) you attended. I’ve always maintained that we need to look at channels which satisfy our physical, virtual and social needs to make an impact.