Tag: socialenterprise

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.

Social Business not just another KM 2.0

Love this article from Social Business News. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saw this on the Linkedin wires yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social Enterprise – real or fiction?

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

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

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

From loco to social

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

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

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

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

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.

We don’t do workflow

One of our knowledge stakeholders recently asked if we have a ‘workflow’ process document which is used across the intranet. The fact is we don’t – and deliberately so. Let me explain.

Content comes in different shapes and context. Some needs ‘locking-down’, other content is ‘open’, while elements develop as it is pushed, modified and enhanced. There is not a ‘one solution’ fits all process flow within each stream, nor within each site area within a community site. Some communities have areas which are controlled by a central team, and no-one else can update/add. They also have areas which are open and require no authorisation or approval to publish and enhance. Other communities are more centrally controlled with some locked-down areas.

What we do provide is a ‘governance structure’. Generally speaking teh governance structure provides visible ownwership for each area of a site. The owner is best placed to determine the requirements of content production for their area – from the user, risk and stream perspective. When we sit down with each ‘owner’ we then structure the content flow process and build as required. An overall ‘steering group’ would ideally determine the overall suitability of the workflow, however, experience suggests this is more a rubber stamping process.

Currently many sites are built around a traditional knowledge management approach – the sites are merely manipulation of information already created. This type of governance structure us suitable for this. When/if we look to introduce more ‘knowledge transfer/sharing’ elements it may be of value to look at adding various processes for each area.

The key thing in all of this, for me, is that whether we talk of process workflow, knowledge sharing, transfer, or management, it only has value if it can result in action: new knowledge generation; new ideas; thoughts. But I think that action is more likely if we are open-minded about where and how it may arise. This may not be an appropriate for some communities that require lock-down on many areas of content, yet maybe something that will develop once the site is launched, adopted and trust develops. But I think that action is more likely if we are open-minded about where it might arise. If we try and predict where it may be, and from which interactions it might come, I think it is most probable that no useful action and value will result in the long term.

Acquiring knowldge has no value – it’s what you do with it that provide the value.

Seekers of knowledge and wisdon

Enjoyed this post from Chieftech

Isn’t this the original role that early intranet managers adopted – bridging that gap between the technology and the business? In early examples these were mainly from the knowledge or information background role that had an understanding of what technology could achieve, but ensured it was the servant, not the master. Over the last few years I agree there has been a growing divide. I am amazed when I speak to ‘intranet managers’ and they have little knowledge of the platform, search etc. Similarly, those with a technology background should have a far greater understanding of the context and purpose of the information they manage.
I would suggest these business information managers are actually now also outdated. We should no longer talk about knowledge managers, business info shares, transfer, push, pull etc. The introduction of social media is a good start in creating a greater sharing culture but that should not be an end in itself, nor should well-managed business information. The intranet managers, business information managers of 2013 should be equiped to enable a seeking and discovering culture, putting structures in place, in social, physical and virtul spaces to create greater wisdom to solve problems and create solutions that bring value to their clients

When two become one

Got a baby sitter on Saturday so my wife and I went to see ‘Up in the clouds’ – good film but that’s not the point of my post. In one scene  ‘preppy’ rookie employee was giving presentation that focused on the merger of the words ‘global’ and ‘local’ to form Glocal!! Stealing my thunder I think. For a while I’ve garnered a sense that we are looking back towards local solutions to combat the rise of ‘global this and that’. The same applies in the world of intranets. Some of our most popular communities are based around strong local connectors, doing local things that matter to the members. Regardles of the ‘global’ solutions offered (or forced upon them) from new technology, fancy new branding,  etc. The communities work because they know and understand what’s required. A know all usability people will say that any site should do the user research etc prior to launch but sometimes you can’t please everyone and comprises to fit within the company guidelines. Our local community sites have purposely kept themselvs under the radar to avoid having to conform to global requirements and have remain far healthier than gloabl communities that have grown big and perished.