Tag: sharepoint

It’s not about the like?

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:

  1. 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).
  2. 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
  3. 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.

Making the same mistake

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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?

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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

 

Future Conversation: ???Do you have wireless???? ???No???? ???Good.???

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Nice piece from the RSA

http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2013/socialbrain/escaping-the-woes-of-the-wireless-world/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rsaprojects+%28RSA+blogs%29

Totally agree we need places where we can disconnect. It’s becoming a common problem inside the workplace as the increasing use of social buisness tools distract and deflect on a constant basis. Similar to email, what was once seen as a liberator can now be holding us hostage to a screen or activity feed. Not sure there is an answr yet other than some training and education on the context these tools should be used in.

New roles emerging as we bridge the digital divide

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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.

 

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.

A slow start

Love this item from Intranet Focus

regarding the implementation of SharePoint.

I had an initial meeting with our IT people yesterday on the implementation of SharePoint across our collaboration/knowledge sharing functions. The initial approach is to look at the metrics and value behind the current offerings. Maybe appropriate to start slowly – I doubt we will see a major impact internally until late 2010 – but really exciting at looking at how we can start connecting the various collaboration and knowledge tools we have.

My fear, speaking to other intranet folk who have implemented a new platform, will be anything and anyone associated with the old platform will be excluded, being seen as part of the problem, rather than using their skills and experiences to see how they have done the best with what they were given. Rather than a technical deployment it should be seen as a vehicle/platform for integrated collaboration. This vehicle takes trained drivers rather than mechanics. Interesting times ahead!

To open up or lock down?

Two projects we are currently working on emphasis a paradox in the world of knowledge and information. There’s a constant tension between spreading information around and locking it down. In collaboration and knowledge we have a natural inclination towards access – our focus is all about helping others find and access the information that will enable them to be more effective. But controlling access is equally important. Whether for compliance, privacy, or counter-intelligence, restricting access is a critical component of collaboration risk management.

 

Our current work provide practical insight on both sides of this tension. One side of our role, developing the knowledge communities for both streams, focus on finding channels to share information and knowledge. The other task, equally important in terms of risk and compliance, is how to prevent information leakages.

 

How information is shared or controlled is a key theme for both communities. So far, we are looking at technological tools to help them control usage. Another card maybe to increase the knowledge of community members (i.e. the stream) to the risk associated with some access. That is a harder nut to crack – and more expensive to implement.

Taking the first step on Sharepoint

Sharepoint is coming. By the end of next year our intranet and collaboration tools should be migrated to Sharepoint. Over the last 12 months I’ve been doing lots of research on the good, bad and ugly of Sharepoint. Work by Martin White and IBF sessions have provided the most value.

For me, it emphasised how Sharepoint was not built as a CM system but an integrated Information Management system. All the presentations, and previous Sharepoint intranets I’ve seen, appear just to treat it as a CMS and little more. For us to get maximum value from the deployment we must think of how documents, collaboration and content can be integrated across the platforms, both behind and beyond the firewall. We need to start thinking about a strategy behind this so some deep musing time ahead.

Although Sharepoint may be a year away from getting behind the firewall we’ve taken the first steps to developing a strategy group/working party, not IT focused, but in terms of how we can use the information management applications (thinking of layered content, outlook, instant messaging, collaboration etc) so when its time for platform migration we have some joined up thinking and ideas on how to get best use, not by product, but by KS, Collaboration and document management. Anyone interested in following this year long journey can check out updates here.