Tag: socialenterprise

If you need to choose between email or ‘activity streams’ email still wins

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Nice to see one of the social networking vendors looking at some filtering or context capabilities within ‘activity streams’

http://www.gofuzed.com/blog/enterprise-social-networking-collaboration-evolution-of-activity-streams-into-context-streams/

Working with organisations one of the biggest barriers to the acceptance of social networking tools is the unfiltered activity stream. Once thought of as a key function (and for many it still is) the constant stream of unrelated updates, activities and content is totally unsuitable for the way many people work. In the current market given a choice between email or an activity stream employees will still prefer email.

I recently worked with a global travel organisation and spend time with many of their remote workforce in observing their daily tasks. Unless you are regularly tied to a screen (whether desktop, tablet or mobile) the ability to follow and make sense of unfiltered activity streams becomes an increasing burden. You could argue that withg appropriate training we can guide people to use these streams more effectively but few companies will provide that training – similar to few companies providing training on how to use email effectively. Users then result in use many of the ‘inbox’ features within the social tool, however, we begin to lose initiative once the ‘inbox’ starts to become less effective tool than their enterprise application email client.

Until more content, filtering and understanding is provided the reliance on email will still prevail despite the presence of social business and networking tools within many companies.

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.

 

We need to learn how to use technology to be better, more human professionals

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Caught this comment from Dr Paul C Tang, chief innovation and technology officer at Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California, which emphasises why breeching the digital divide is only possible if we see deployment of tools and apps as a way to improve human interaction, not replace it.

“Just adding an app won’t necessarily make people better doctors or more caring clinicians. What we need to learn is how to use technology to be better, more human professionals.”

The proliferation of gadgets, apps and web-based information has given doctors a black bag of new tools, but also created something of a generational divide.

Older doctors admire, even envy, their young colleagues’ ease with new technology. But they wory that the human connections that lie at the core of medical practices are at risk of being lost.

Far too often we look at deployment of collaboration and knowledge sharing tools as a technology project with the hiring of IT project managers and business analysts. Why, after all these years of collaboration tools being avaialble, do we still have less than 10% adoption in many organisations, and in many cases only 1% of actual valued usage? Part of it is due to the cultural and business change elements not being factored into any IT programme. How do we deal with nuturing people into these technologies? How do we look how it improves the human interaction and relationships? In many cases we reach for the easy targets of cosy office based workers who have desktops and an understanding of why these tools help. The real challenge is dealing with front-line and hard to reach workers that need to be guided on the benefits and how the trust relationship is changing. This nuturing and in mnay cases ‘hand-holding’ will be essential to enable collaboration tools to be seen as an key tool in changing the way we work and our relationship with organisations, customers, colleagues and others.

Stopping the stream from flooding

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With all the wet weather around in the UK it was timely to revisit these articles regarding managing the stream from social business tools.

http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2012/03/26/enterprise-activity-streamssometi…

http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/three-areas-id-like-to-see-improved-in-social-business-software

In all my work within organisations I have yet to see a solution to the management of the activity stream. It’s one of the reasons that email will be with us for a long time. People can organise their own stream of content through their inbox.  With current social tools it’s similar to packing up the sandbags in a flood zone as the torrent of content, updates and communications is impossible to keep up with after being in meetings, telephone calls and catch-ups for much of the day. Yes it is a case of filter failure but the filter needs to come from a gatekeeper otherwise the stream will burst its banks and drown us with content.

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.

Generation Desk

Been lots of traffic recently on what the workplace will look like over the next few years and even if offices, desks and workspaces will exist. I agree with Ross Dawson’s articulation around the need for common spaces to exist.

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2012/06/will-offices-still-exist-in…

I also wonder if the drive towards migration from the office environment is a generational aspiration and / or defined by the stages of our life? I was speaking with my nine-year old son during the last half-term holiday, talking about what we are looking forward to over the next few weeks and months. We talked about the Euros (not the currency but the football tournament), the school trips planned, our holiday and then he mentioned that he is really looking forward to starting Year 5 as he will get his own desk! In the early years his class would sit on floor mats, then upgraded to chairs with a shared desk for each group but now, finally in Year 5 he gets his own desk. There was a sense of arrival, being a senior part of the school – one of the big boys.

Thinking about my own career journey I had been working virtually for nearly 7 years when I joined a new employer. The first minute in the office my boss walked me over to a corner of the office and told me “here is your desk”. Immediately I wondered what I actually did with it! I had been working so long virtually, in various office spaces, hot desking or as a ‘coffice worker’ that I had to remember what it was for. Needless to say after a few weeks the drawers were still empty as I sought to work not at a desk but where the ‘action’ happens within an organisation. I was at a stage of my life where a desk became irrelevant, part of a legacy that I was once held hostage to.

I started working ‘virtually’ when my son was born. I wanted to ensure I spent more time with him rather than catch the odd bath time at the end of the working day. So, having a forward thinking boss, I endeavoured to find ways that enabled me to achieve true work-life balance. Working in a global role helped so I wasn’t confined to the 9-5 routine, but through enabling technology I could complete tasks, innovate, create and add value in an environment I created, without the need of a branded office building. The common spaces were important but these were virtual rather than physical spaces.

Over the last few months I have been interviewing graduates and apprentices (generation X?) as part of some user requirement gathering projects I have been working on. One of the interesting aspects I found from the sessions, other than their flexibility around when they receive and deal with work tasks and the technology used to complete these, was the desire to go to a physical office, or common space. They wanted to meet co-workers, people of the opposite sex, people from diverse backgrounds, not to collaborate on work tasks (they can easily do this with their social technologies) but for their own development as individuals.

It got me thinking is the ‘digital workspace’ primarily for the ‘working parent’ generation that have matured to an extent that work-life balance means the mixture of quality time with family (both young and old) whilst continuing a career.  We always talk about social and enabling tools being something generation X demand but in fact do the ‘more mature’ workers that demand these tools to create more fulfilment within their working lives. Generation X may become ‘Generation Desk’ as they enter into the office and look for some traditional symbols that give them the sense of belonging. Will this generation be bragging to friends not about the ability to bring your own device to work but they actually have a floor, a desk, a desktop (ok – maybe not that far) to show they have arrived.

21st century management, social business and feminine values – do we all need to find our feminine side?

Love this piece from hypertextual

http://thehypertextual.com/2012/05/03/21st-century-management-social-business-and-feminine-values/?goback=%2Egde_1829403_member_112419553&blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-3

and supports my belief that the skill sets are dramatically changing for those with stewardship over platforms (many have no need to change but I’m sure the rest of us do).

It got me pondering on the new structures organizations need as various functions and technologies are becoming increasingly intertwined and extend not only to, but beyond, the firewall. In many organizations departments have traditionally selected someone who knew a little about technology to be the main contact with IT. The same approached happened with functions such as Knowledge, Marketing, Training etc. Now we require top-of-the-line technologists within departments, who are dually knowledgeable in both their specialist discipline and technology to really understand the way the digital environment works. It’s an area where intranet teams have led the way, being early adopters of merging business needs with the possibilities of the digital environment. As the digital world moves on the disciplines and roles of intranet teams will change. From the early days of intranets (we could trace this back to 1989 is we look at some of the early IBM work) the role of the intranet team has been based around the development, governance and maintenance of a database (or database apps). As intranets move away from the firewall the skill sets change. I believe we are looking more towards managing a users experience with content and relationships, in numerous areas, rather than managing a database that a user engages with. The softer nurturing skills will become more valuable, rather than development and design. Most organizations may be some years away from this model but times are changing and intranet team skill sets will change with them.

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.