Tag: yammer

Yammer and LinkedIn

Yammer and LinkedIn

I’m sure Microsoft brought LinkedIn with a specific purpose in mind although it wouldn’t be the first time they know something is good, buy it and they figure out what to do with it!

It sometimes reminds me of some of the mega-rich English Premier League clubs who buy in talent that have very little to do with the current style of play, sit them on the bench and wait for a situation to arise when it becomes clear why they brought them in the first place – or just serendipity!

I would like to think that Microsoft see the future value of collaboration around new ways of working is not to just support the current hierarchies and structures of an organisation. In essence that’s what most of O365 does in supporting this structure of group working around file uploads, storage, document production etc. All important stuff but does nothing to drive innovation and new wealth / value creation.

Where the value creation comes is from building networks, relationships and communities, nurturing new behaviours and processes and blending diversity to create new ways of working.

Yammer and Delve begin to achieve this inside the organisation and adding something like LinkedIn gives an organisation the opportunity to source content, connections and resources far beyond their current network.

I’m thinking of an example where a project manager can initiate a new project and Yammer / Delve (whatever these channels would be called in the future) to source ideas, content, connections and resources from within the organisation and then get seamless connectivity to a LinkedIn type resource (professional and educational) to source gaps or enhancements to the knowledge they have within the organisation. It changes not just the potential reach but also the relationships organisations have with professionals. It would also increase the diversity of thought that an organisational begins to call upon, ideally making it far more social, transparent, agile and democratic.

Still a future for Yammer despite Skype Teams

Still a future for Yammer despite Skype Teams

Microsoft are now looking to compete with Slack.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-beef-up-skypes-team-collaboration-capabilities-to-take-on-slack/

In the article it mentions how they fail to see what the future of Yammer would be and they struggle to see where it fits in. In my eyes they have completely different capabilities.

Yammer is about networking, relationship and community building. It enables discovery, innovation, crowdsourcing and engagement that potentially involves hundreds and thousands of colleagues.

You would struggle to do that with Slack or Skype teams. The key word here is teams. Skype Teams would work well with defined, identifiable colleagues – in essence building around existing hierarchy and structures.

With Yammer you discover and network with people and groups you never knew existed before, creating new ways of working through the diversity that can be attracted through discover.

Stewardship of the Enterprise

At a session today with a company to talk about the tasks around Enterprise Community Management (ECM) – the initial stewardship required to develop a Yammer network.

The tasks can vary dependent upon your Yammer strategy (every company should ideally have a Yammer strategy closely linked to the overall business strategy (and related KM, New Business, People, L&D, Engagement strategies etc.) which will help define the priorities around the ECM tasks.

Other companies Yammer strategies have included:

  • Help change a ‘command / control’ company culture
  • Remove middle management roadblocks
  • Develop untapped future talent
  • Remove remote team’s reliance on reporting into the centre
  • Support development of a social learning programme

And the ECM tasks can vary greatly to help meet the strategic requirements.

Here is an outline of some of the tasks we will run through.

  • Help sections – maintain and update ‘Getting Started’ and Help areas on the network
  • Use Cases – assisting to develop use cases to show case the possibilities of Yammer
  • Stewardship – making sure everybody plays nice and all voices are heard
  • Formal Governance? – some companies need this so generally you’ll be involved in coordinating
  • Promotions – active in promoting Yammer through numerous channels
  • New Joiners – getting Yammer on various New Joiners radar
  • Coaching – determine how this is dealt with. Some formal ‘how to’ or focus on behavioural change and community management (my preferences are the last 2)
  • Events – running events around Yammer (Yamjams, 30 days of Yammer etc)
  • Advocates – nurturing advocates of the network
  • Strategic Initiatives – involved in any planning around big initiatives
  • VIP’s – Not everyone gets the same treatment so if someone ‘special’ joins Yammer give them the ‘silver service’ treatment
  • Community Management – developing good community management practices. Linked to coaching
  • Case Studies – Pulling together case studies to show the value it delivers. Good storytelling works wonders
  • ROI / Metrics – Pulling these together. Linkage to overall governance

Approaches aren’t mutually exclusive

Over the last few days I’ve looked at various approaches you can take to creating adoption of collaboration tools.

It’s important to remember that none are mutually exclusive.

Adoption by chance

  • You can run a standard approach believing you may be the exception.
  • Once you fail to gain adoption you can switch

Adoption by hierarchy

  • You can structure a formal approach but if roadblocks and delays are occurring (scheduling workshops, factfinding etc) then begin with a social approach for early quick wins

Adoption by ‘social’ (tribes and communities)

  • If your social approach spreads success quickly you may wish to consider how to align the organisation with a ‘mini formal approach’ to deal with leadership requests

And you can also try a concurrent approach

To maximise the chances of success you could run both a formal and social approach (bottom up and top down), ensuring awareness, sustainability and rapid quick wins

It’s more than the ‘like’

Colleagues that are thinking of how to strategically deploy Yammer are starting to ask questions around metric packages that will provide some of the traditional measurements around online sites.

In terms of ‘measurement’ here are some of the basic criteria you could use to benchmark participation and activity within the communities based on attraction, attention and adoption:

  • 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?
  • What resources are being used?

We still see the benchmark of activity as something which should be measured. But the value of the activity is something which stakeholders rarely ask for.

As a Yammer network matures leadership begin to realise how it can be used strategically and the ‘ask’ for measurement begins to look at the value of the relationships and communities that are being developed. Generally, they would look for articulation around:

  • 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
  • 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

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 default Yammer analytics 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).

To measure the value of the relationships and transparency created by the individuals, groups and communities residing on Yammer we still need to conduct a lot of manual digging to find measurement around such artefacts as:

Over the years of working within companies here is my list of useful metrics from ‘mature’ Yammer networks that have developed from basic ‘microblogging platforms to integrated work process and social business / learning platforms (the need for ‘measurement’ moves from attraction to outputs from relationships).

You may not think these type of metrics will be useful now but fast forward 18-24 months and these will be the type of measurement leadership will be asking for:

  • What % of newcomers remain members for more than a month
  • 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
  • The % of newcomers which initiate a discussion. This highlights whether newcomers may be unmotivated or intimidated to start discussions
  • Do members’ interactions have continuity and depth. (Are members engaged in productive, on-going, interactions?)
  • What collaborative activities are emerging?
  • What documents, tools, resources, or other artefacts are created and utilized. (How are these useful to the members?)
  • Is the community providing value for its sponsors?
  • Is participants’ involvement in the community affecting their professional practices and learning
  • What are the on-going practices and processes that contribute to the “life” of the community and keep members engaged?
  • How is knowledge being shared within the community? Beyond the community?
  • Are leaders or roles emerging in the community? In what ways? How are they being cultivated?
  • How are members being supported in the community?
  • How are members contributing? Posting? Replying? (When? How often?)
  • What are the prevalent patterns of interactions?
  • What is the proportion of new topics that get 5+ replies? The percentage of new blogs at get 5+ comments? The percentage of (video, audio, lesson plan, etc.) uploads that get 50+ downloads or 5+ comments?
  • 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)?
  • What is the average new (topics, replies, blog posts) created per member?
  • What are the emerging benefits of the community for members?
  • What is the average number of “followers” that community members list or have collected in/on their member profile pages?
  • What are the proportion of topics or replies that specifically relate to the practice?
  • The proportion of replies where links to potentially helpful resources or other referrals are provided
  • The proportion of replies to a post in which helpful or constructive advice is directly provided
  • The proportion of replies that build on previous posts (as opposed to just responding to the original poster)
  • The proportion of replies that contain offers of collaboration or introductions to potential collaborators
  • The proportion of replies that contain creative, novel, or innovative ideas
  • The proportions of replies that summarize, distil, or synthesize prior posts/replies
  • The proportion of posts in which community members show or express vulnerability, such as a lack of domain knowledge
  • The proportion of posts in which community members share personal stories
  • The proportion of posts in which community members are (emotionally) supportive or helpful to other members

Stick to the recipe for Enterprise Social Software success

Stick to the recipe for Enterprise Social Software success

When I look at reasons given by organisations for the failure of their Enterprise Social Software project to deliver any success or value (whether this is adoption or return on investment or engagement) I still hear the same issues around poor adoption, cultural issues specific to the organisation, change management, alignment to business needs etc. You could date stamp this as ‘2010’ and the issues haven’t changed.

It still amazes me that in 2015 organisations are struggling to get value from social software despite a reliable ‘recipe’ now being known.

All consultancies both large and small have a framework which is pitched to potential clients that will deliver various degrees of success – but success nevertheless.

Every software vendor has similar material that it will tell clients prior to any adoption programme how to get success (actually an interesting exercise would be to look at how the vendors have changed their ‘tune’ from 2008 onwards by looking at how their client adoption material has changed from ‘just plug it in’ to more strategic thinking).

I would also suggest that the vast majority of organisations that deploy Enterprise Social Software have an understanding or at least an awareness of what needs to be done – and I speak from a perspective or having sat on both sides of the table (industry and consultancy) and I would estimate that 90% plus of people I have dealt understand this.

But despite all this material a large majority of organisations appear to ignore the recipe.

I’m trying to find a simple analogy to compare this with so let’s try cooking.

If I were a chef (the ‘sponsor’ of the deployment) and I wanted to make a paella (deploying the tool) and I have a known recipe on how to make paella (the vendors material, consultants material, freely available material online etc.); then why do I think my paella will turn out fine if I refuse to use some key ingredients like the correct rice, saffron, paprika, wine etc. (change management, governance, use cases etc.)?

Some may be down to cost; some may be lack of knowledge – but wouldn’t you look at the recipe before you start!; some may be down to stubbornness (you deployed other tools before and your way has always worked) but I believe in many cases it’s down to the simple fact that most sponsors are purely concerned with plugging it and making sure it works from a technical perspective – and not appraised on the engagement or value it brings. No different to a chef not being appraised on how good the paella is but the fact they have served up a plate of rice that is dressed up as paella but has none of the taste.

Unless the success criteria is driven by engagement and value – which often happens a number of months into the adoption phase then organisations will continue to cite the same issues with their Enterprise Social Software.

The vendors realised their business model needs to change – not so much about selling licences every 5 years but seeing their software being adopted, adapted to working ways and providing value.

Few areas of an organisation focus on how engaged their workforce is with the ‘service’ provided but this will change. It will eventually filter down to project teams that are built to deploy social software.

In my ideal future world deployments will focus on behavioural change rather than just technology change in order for social software to be a success.

A project team for future deployments will have a very different line-up. The focus won’t be around IT Project Managers or business analysts but instead recruit business psychologists, community developers and social network analysts to ensure social software success.

The sound of social

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.