A Means to an End: Aligning Social Media and Business Strategy.

Social media is many things with many definitions. Ultimately, however, it is a collection of tools that enable us to get some things done that were difficult, impossible or just less satisfying than before.

This is a discussion is about what types of business objectives are better achieved with social media. I will look at social media as a tool for market engagement, customer service (in the broadest sense), lead generation, as well as a productivity tool, and a tool for creating high-performance corporate cultures. As with any good tool, the real value is in how its wielded – and the applications of it are limited only by the insight, imagination and ambition of the craftsmen who use it.

Lets begin with an overview of business objectives:

Market Engagement

Businesses want to engage their markets for several reasons:

- To understand market needs, wants, goals and desires so as to craft products, services, messaging and pricing to suit.

- To create awareness of their brand or offerings.

- To get new customers

- To improve their reputation Mainstream Social media has proven to be remarkably useful in each of these regards.

Enabling brand and product managers to listen to their markets, engage and discuss their needs and their offerings in a way that was nearly impossible before. Key tools: Mainstream social media sites and aggregators: Facebook, twitter, youtube, myspace, niche social networks that cater to your target market. Connections back to your own web properties is essential.

Customer engagement

Customer service in the form of providing information, support, service, updates and more for the purposes of increasing satisfaction, optimizing revenue opportunities, creating loyalty and customer advocates.

Social media has made customer engagement far less expensive while making it far more effective and satisfying for both customer and company. Key tools: Some mainstream social networking and media aggregation sites, but your own web properties play more of a starring role here. Custom Social networking sites for customer service, account management, customer communications are the primary tools, external social media tools are a place to reach out in order to bring your customers into your communities.

Employee engagement

Corporate intranets are intended to share corporate information, policies and processes with employees. In general, they are poorly designed, and disrespected as having only the most banal information. Adding a social dimension here can help increase relevance, share leadership thinking more deeply and in a fashion that garners greater buy in by employees. Employees can also be encouraged to share ideas, find answers to policy and process questions, make suggestions and generally get more benefit from the core corporate support services such as HR, facilities, finance and procurement.

Key tools: discussion forums, ratings, Q&A, idea management, blogs, microblogging.

Employee productivity

While social media is frequently thought of as a social, extra-curricular activity that may have some benefit in the brand reputation and PR realm, the same tools that allow this form of communication can also be leveraged to create super-effective, next generation productivity tools.

These tools are not toys, but leverage the new communications paradigms offered by these tools to quickly get good work done. Most organizations, particularly those that deal primarily in information and ideas – that is any company that has a significant creative, analytic or R&D arm – needs to optimize and leverage that work and those work processes to the greatest extent.

Social media tools, because of their ability to improve communications, as well as create and maintain weak ties, make it easier to support the three most important forms of collaboration and productivity:

Creative – a team can use shared workspaces and other social media constructs, such as feeds and wikis to organize work, collect individual contributions, review, edit, and iterate vastly more efficiently than only through the use of in person meetings, email and conference calls.

Connective – knowledge workers can tap the collective intelligence of the organization by finding and friend-ing knowledgeable people within the organization, spotting trends and activity that may be relevant, and contributing their own value where its relevant and valued. This type of activity can save thousands of hours in the “who knows x about y” department and research has shown that tapping a diverse set of skills and perspectives leads to higher quality outcomes in less time.

Compounding – Here’s the fundamental idea: all work should leverage, to the greatest extent possible, leverage work that has already been done. Most companies currently have the basic capability to let employees search on documents and find things of relevance (this is rarely perfect, but even so). Social media tools, however, capture not just work product, such as documents, but work processes and resources as well, making it possible to find not only a document, but how it was created, how it evolved, who contributed, and what resources were used. The ability to find and follow this type of information is vastly more valuable than having just the end product to an employee who must accomplish a similar task or bring it to the next level.

Key tools: shared workspaces, communities, friending, profiles, wikis, feeds, instant messaging, planning tools, and other technologies that promote information aggregation, communication and networking.

 

Challenges

The Challenge of acting human: As I’ve said before – acting human is an unnatural act for most corporations. They’ve been trying for so long to be perfect and distance themselves from the warmth and fallibility of humanity so as to project flawless, rock-like solidity. The problem is that in this post-commerical era, where consumers are jaded, the corporate façade is not trusted – its considered more of a sham than deserving confidence above and beyond people. People now trust people more than brands. So how do you act human without being inconsistent? Warm without looking incompetent? Sympathetic, interesting and engaging without looking unprofessional?

Well, it takes a leap of faith. Savvy employees will understand that they are aiming to reflect well on the company as well as engender excitement and loyalty from the market. Mistakes will be made. Respect will be given to those companies who admit their mistakes immediately, and offer thoughtful, meaningful responses to them. Plan for success and plan for the mistakes

The Payoff: Trust, credibility, loyalty.

The challenge of the collaborative culture: collaborative cultures are different. They are mission focused, ego-swallowing machines where every problem and challenge is quickly surfaced, discussed and dealt with. Individuals, and the team as a whole learn quickly, act decisively, and efficiently  by quickly engaging people, harvesting their work, and letting the entire team polish and hone it to perfection.

We aren’t used to working this way, however. It takes a tremendous leap of faith that I can show my vulnerabilities and still be respected. information sharing is valued over information hording, and leadership is distilled into its purest form of setting direction, orchestrating activity, inviting and responding to new information from any part of the organization.

Management by fear and blame is left behind along with its tendency to breed mediocrity from people who either don’t want to take risks, or who have lost faith that their best contributions can be valuable in the organization.

The payoff: agile, smart, streamlined efficiency that can shine like a laser beam on any challenge. Fierce productivity.

Filed under: best practices, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media, team building, web 2.0

A repost: Enterprises aren’t human

When someone you respect suggests you repost something, its a good thing to do on a late friday afternoon. So for Oscar Berg, I offer you a classic post from last fall during the Obama/Hillary race for president. I’ve fixed some of the grammar, but left the rest in tact. Have a great weekend.

December 29, 2008 • 5:10 pm (Edit)

why social media is hard for government and corporate america

Since the dawn of commerce and government we’ve been programmed to believe that enterprises are not human – they are better: polished, powerful and perfect. They have a presence (rather than a personality) that does not include human characteristics, like warmth, empathy, vulnerability, hobbies or ears. The job of the people in the enterprise has always been to perpetuate and perfect this presence.

Now employees and leadership both are confused by their centuries old mandate not to act human, and their new one to do just that. They see the risks – revealing too much, legal liabilities, leaking information to competitors, and all – and are unsure of the rewards.

But they’ve heard about “viral” and “loyalty” and “word of mouth”, and “customer-evangelists”. they’ve seen Obama be cool and successful.”

And they’d like to too. But to do this they need to take a big risk. They need to be human – vulnerable, imperfect, and all that. The people in the enterprise need to be free to (and encouraged to) come out from behind the curtain, and to know what that means.

Barriers
1. Most enterprises don’t share enough with their employees for the employees to feel confident as spokespeople.
- Beyond the mission statement, the leadership needs to discuss with people  the priorities and values of the company. Not just in an annual meeting, but constantly. It needs to be true and real – not white-washed. If you can’t convey your mission, aspirations and values to your employees, they can’t internalize them and carry them outward as people. Solution? Internal dialog. Perhaps facilitated by internal social media. Its NOT rehashing the phrases coming out of the PR team. Its not a ghost written memo. This means that YOU, the CEO, the VP of whatever, need to be in constant dialog with your team. It seems as though that would have more than this one benefit dosen’t it?

Here’s a simple example of corporate leadership being human in an inspirational way:
http://about.networksolutions.com/site/network-solutions-executive-team/

That’s not too hard. A nice step. A nice example. You could do that. You could go a step further and add an email address or a blog. You could go a step further, and do it a couple layers deeper in the organization, or for everyone in the organization. Think about how that would make the people on your team feel about being on the team.

2. Government and Commercial enterprises fear the loss of the power of the curtain.

It takes a tremendous amount of confidence to be human. It means that you are confident that on the whole, the value your organization brings to its customers is very high, and that you are operating with integrity. That you are generally proud of what goes on inside.

This is a kind of confidence that companies have not had to develop or test. But the people and organizations that we respect most are the ones with these qualities. Its the difference between Hillary and Obama, in many ways.

3. Unclear on the upside.
Well, here it is. Corporate credibility is on the decline – not because corporations are, but because people have now had enough experience to know that the facade is just that. Who believes advertising? Who trusts the literature? But they’ll trust a person – one they know, for a recommendation. They’ll trust someone they don’t know who makes the effort to gets to know them by listening, showing an interest, speaking clearly and honestly, sdoing what they say they’ll do – someone who builds a relationship with them.

If you want credibility now, you need to be communicating as an organization of people, not a corporate entity.

Filed under: best practices, enterprise 2.0 , best practices, enterprise 2.0, social media

Intel clear on ROI of Social Media

While businesses around the globe are trying to understand their social media strategy, their ROI, what it all means, and how they should participate, the US Intelligence and military communities are well beyond that.

In the Intel community, it is well understood that they need to tighten the intellectual mesh of minds they have in order to improve situational awareness, and ensure they understand the implications of what it all means. They need to do this in a way that transforms their ability to deliver on their mission. Its a mission critical, life or death capability.

Intel understands that things like preventing the next 9-11, assessing the capabilities of enemies, details that make interdiction possible, require mining the full and varied expertise of everyone – not just those focused on that particular problem.

The goal for them is to maximize the likelihood that patterns of activity are identified, and that relevant info and expertise finds the places its needed.

The Problem

Imagine 10,000 people on 17 teams, working on 100,000 jigsaw puzzles. Now imagine that some of the pieces have been randomly distributed among the other players. Nobody knows how many pieces are in each puzzle. And some pieces may be missing entirely, or fit into multiple puzzles simultaneously. Each person has a limited number of puzzles that they are aware of, and some may be working on the same puzzle without realizing it.

They need a system that will make it possible for people to know what pieces the others have, for the pieces themselves to find the holes they might fit into, and – here’s the odd one – the holes can describe themselves to the pieces. This one needs one with some blue in it, or a fairly oval shaped connector. No problem! Actually, social media can deliver on this bizarre metaphor.

The good news, is that there is good news.

1. We now have  tools that can help the intel community on its way – first generation social workplace products such as Intellipedia and A-Space have demonstrated value for the community, and are laying the foundation for great things to come. By demonstrating their worth, they are paving the way for the next round of innovation and adoption. Further, those products (and others) have also created a level of credibility, experience and expertise in the community that is ready to go further.

Second generation products are appearing commercially (I officially work for Open Text and their new Social Collaboration product), and the vibrancy of the gov 2.0 and social media communities are moving the intellectual and thought barriers further each day.

2. The intel community – in conjunction with the military – will be blazing the trail here. I predict that we’ll see the commercial sector referring to what happens here over the next couple of years as a way to justify their own investment.

3. The Intel community is investing significant time, dollars and talent here, and they will make progress.

Challenges for the Intel Community

1. The US Intelligence community is purposefully silo’d in two dimensions.

- By subject area and by level of sensitivity of data. There are good reasons for this – they bulkheads that limit risk in case of an information spill or leak. But these same silos need to be carefully connected in order to be able to harvest critical insights and information that cut across areas. This needs to be done carefully, balancing security imperatives with the imperative to “connect the dots” in order to identify patterns of activity or unexpetedly relevant knowledge from various parts of the community.

2. Cultural Silo-ing.

- The  silo-ed and the clandestine nature of its business has not lead to a “sharing” cutlure. People within the community tend to keep things very, very close to the chest. I’ve heard it said that there are people within the community, who when they get ahold of a really, really important piece of information that is really, really sensitive, they’ll protect it to the point where they won’t tell ANYONE about it. Hmm.

- Further complicating the problem, the intelligence community is comprised of 16 different agencies (plus the Director of National Intelligence, a significant agency of its own), each with its own mission and subculture, and territory. The cultural imperitives for collaboration (Shared mission, respect, trust, commitment to continual improvement) are building, but still in  early stages.

3. The intel community serves many customers.

- Their customers include the executive and legislative branches of government as well as the military. Delivery of information – in a very timely fashion is critical. As is security. How then do they provide sufficiently rich, appropriate, timely and accurate information to these people in real time?

A variation for the military.

The military is also aggressively pursuing these types of solutions, and their initiatives have backing at the highest levels.

The Army has created a list of 12 principles for knowledge management: http://fcw.com/articles/2008/09/05/army-retools-knowledge-culture.aspx, the Navy, Coast Guard, and other armed services have been pursuing similar objectives.

Increasingly, as the military fights increasingly complex wars with increasingly complex enemies and environments, the people on the ground are the ones with the most up to date information. They see, think and act.

Increasingly, this is part of their training as well – to think on their feet. With all that seeing thinking and acting, there’s a lot of information and learning coming in from the field that needs to be distributed both to others in the field as well as to command and control. This needs to be quick, accurate and include feedback mechanisms for questions and discussion.

Again there are security issues, again there is a careful and urgent balance between security and information diffusion and the ability to identify experts in real time.

Social Media Helps

Social media concepts and constructs can help make progress here.

What keeps intel and military up at night? Its not the bad guys so much as its the “we don’t know what we don’t know” problem.

Social Media, properly leveraged, creates a way for information to rapidly diffuse through the community, enables instant identification of experts on the new random topic of the hour, (anyone speak Urdu and Kurdish and while expert in Spanish geography and Lama imports?), and the ability to rapidly collect and iterate on information as a team rather than as a gang of individuals.

It may not solve the “We don’t know what we don’t know” problem, but it ameliorates it with the advantages of “We know what we know” and “we learn very fast” .

Social media supports the development of a heavily symbiotic relationship amongst and between people in the community – people who’s goals are aligned, who trust and respect each other well enough to listen carefully and debate rigorously.

This maximizes the opportunity for relevant information to find its home, for patterns of activity and expertise to be found and exploited, for people to share, solve and overcome life and death challenges for all of us.

These communities present the most interesting and most pressing test of the capabilities of social media, and there are still some crucially unanswered questions (we’re working on it).

- Tight collaboration is a cultural, not a technology issue – but how fast and how tight can social networks grow? What are the rate limiters?

- What about misinformation and self-correcting systems – what do we know about how mis-information propagates and gets corrected? How can we use that to make predictions about the quality of information?

- How can we attempt to measure the likelihood that the right information gets to the right person? Is that even asking the right question?

As a geeky-American,  these issues feel to me like our generation’s moon shot. We know its possible. We have the technology, but perhaps not as much sophistication as we’d like – yet. But these are the problems – of Intel and Military, but also of Business, Academia, Government and even personal lives.

We don’t always think of governments as blazing innovation. But history has shown us that in the realm of technology, war has been a very effective innovator. As we solve problems for the military, we drive technology and innovation throughout the civilian world.

Filed under: Government 2.0, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media

turning my back on “tacit”

It all started in college when my friend, Maggie, whom i considered the unwitting victim of a charming linguistics prof, picked a fight with me ( one of those days-long undergrad debates). She claimed that all human thought was limited by language and that we couldn’t think about what we couldn’t express in words. Fooey, says I.

I’ve been “i wish I had said”-ing  that debate in my head for 25 years. (ouch).

I’ve long since lost touch with her ( I’ll look for her on facebook later), but the first argument I wish I’d offered was poetry. You might argue that poetry is language, and hence falls within her camp, but I would argue that poetry evokes rather than expresses meaning.

The next thing I thought about was Tacit Knowledge – the stuff you know before you “know” you know it. (Like the fact that I knew her argument was terrible, but I couldn’t say why). This definition of tacit knowledge is akin to what Malcom Gladwell is talking about in “Blink” – a great read, if you haven’t yet.

So later I started getting excited about knowledge management. But knowledge management of the 90’s was about documents. Documents are expressed knowledge – or explicit knowledge. Documented knowledge.

But you know what? Most knowledge is undocumented – even if it could be – it takes a ton of effort. Which means that in most companies people know a lot of stuff that they haven’t written down. And everyday they make tiny additions and refinements to that knowledge just by talking, emailing, getting to the next step, whatever. which means that even if they wanted to document it all they probably couldn’t.

This is another kind of tacit knowledge – and what it means is that probably 90% of the critical knowledge in an organization is Tacit.

One of the many reasons I love social media is that it provides a wonderful platform for sharing small things. Ideas, snippets, links. And those snippets, and links between those snippets end up being a much better representation of what a person knows than the list of documents that they’ve written. And an even better representation of what the organization as a whole knows.

This is the most interesting thing in the world to me – really. Geeky, yes, but true.

So – why have I turned my back on tacit? Well its this. Normal people don’t get tacit knowledge. Its not a term that’s understood in our culture. And I don’t think we can get from documents to tacit knowledge in a single step.

So – when I talk to people about the benefits of social-media supported collaboration, I don’t talk about tacit knowledge (well, I try not to, but sometimes I get kind of worked up.) Cause they either think I’m nuts, or that its like the semantic web – a weird concept that they don’t get and surely won’t invest in. Its like talking about shakras or something in a business meeting – just too weird.

So – I’m focusing on helping people understand the “first order” benefits of this kind of tech-mediated collaboration. The fact that things don’t get lost, that its easy for a group of people to gradually build on what’s there till you have something good, that everyone is always looking at the same set of material. That long email trails where all the good stuff is buried that you can never find again are becoming a thing of the past.

Then I talk about how you can search this stuff, finding not only the snippets, but how they fit together, and the people who’ve been contributing to them. So you can learn from all this stuff, in context. They start to see how this is valuable.

But as soon as you mention the word tacit – you see the wall go up. Its like a verbal fart. It makes people uncomfortable.

Maybe in a few years… but for no… I do not discuss Tacit Knowledge, I will not use the word Tacit. I won’t. Really.

Filed under: collaboration, enterprise 2.0 , collaboration, enterprise 2.0, knowledge management, tacit knowledge

collaboration is not a technology

Collaboration is not a technology – it is about people choosing to cooperate. Its a cultural thing.

The tighter and more explicit the collaboration, the more sensitive it is to the culture in which it resides. I’m a big fan of workplace collaboration. If you have it, you’ll recognize that it makes work thrilling, makes you invincible, and as I’m fond of saying, amplifies our strengths and diminishes our weaknesses.

If you actually read this blog, you’ll find it repetitive of me to say that collaboration is not a single behavior, but a constellation of them, that I broadly categorize as Creative, Connective and Compounding.

But the underlying human construct of collaboration is a sense of team. An esprit de corp of some kind or magnitude. And here are the attributes of teams:

1. A shared sense of goal or mission (even if that’s to identify a shared goal or mission).

2. Mutual respect.

3. Trust

4. A commitment to continual improvement. (this is the hardest one, because to improve, one must admit imperfection, must make it a virtue to go looking for trouble, and see it as an opportunity).

What these things together allow is a powerful, compounded beam of intellect focus on the issues at hand rather than on the politics, insecurities or personal quirks of the contributors. ie – the fastest route to success.

Without these, all the microblogging, profile, yammer, twitter, wiki-tech in the world will not help. Of course if you are powerful enough to build such a culture, those tools will grease the skids in delightful ways.

Filed under: best practices, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media

power shift from hording to sharing

At the Canada 3.0 conference, I met a headhunter.

He asked me how social media helps him

My first thought was “you’re in the networking business, how can you not get how social media helps”? But fortunately, i paused long enough to ask another question of him. “Do you use linkedIn?”, I asked.

“Yes, sort of ” he says, “but I’m afraid that people will see my contacts and steel them”.

Oh – fear. Now that’s something that I can understand and relate to.

So I asked him if he could see other people’s contacts. What if its sharing and not stealing? I asked him if that could make him the “go to” guy and if he’d see that as a good thing.

I started my spiel about information sharing replacing information hording as the new source of status and pride.

And then he asked the key question. The KEY.

He said – “Once I empty my little cup of knowledge for someone, what value do I have left?”

He nailed it. The source of Social Media fear.

I did my best on the spur of the moment to answer his question with sensitivity and wisdom (not sure how good my best was, but I tried), so here’s what I said, and perhaps a bit of what I should have.

Information has some value.

Insight has more value.

Capability even more.

The  ability to reliably  find any of the above is perhaps most valuable. So a headhunter should be near the top of the food chain. But he did not see it that way.

So – how can someone like my smart, but worried friend move forward in this world? He’s got 2 key things he needs to do.

1. Become more familiar with Social Media in a non-threatening way. Take little steps that don’t feel high risk. I recommended some a while ago.

2. Start to think of himself in new ways. If he was useful when he horded information, he can be more useful, more influential when he starts giving it away. Just ask google. When people know that you’re the one with the info, they go back, they listen, you get an audience.

My new friend is worth much more than his rolodex.

More critically the point here, if I failed to make it yet, is that information isn’t the treasure, its how you got it and what you’ll do with it, and Fear is the only thing keeping you from discovering your post information, insight-economy value.

Filed under: collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media, web 2.0 , canada 3.0, enterprise 2.0, fear, information hording, social media

canada 3.0

Canada 3.0 – a quickly organized conference designed to bring together canadian government, students and tech industry to get some excitement flowing around the new Stratford institute for digital media- a joint venture between waterloo university and Open Text.

Beginning  a great conversation -  It forced an initially awkward close-quarters interaction between people who would normally never meet -  interesting to watch. It also brought a lot of people who hadn’t a clue about social or digital media together with people who did.

I didn’t get into most of the track talks, as I was working the show floor, but I got to speak to a pretty wide assortment of the highly varied attendees – everyone from students to government ministers, retired school teachers, consultants and analysts.

Canadian Keynotes – they all had a  strong theme of canadian nationalism – the message  – that if canadians want to lead, all they need to do is step up to the plate. The government, the institutions of higher learning, industry – they’re ready to do what they can to enable it.

a couple  things could have made it more valuable, I think.

1. An intro to digital media track. we could have given the people new to the industry more of a vocabulary to work with thru the rest of the camp. We from otex used it as a place to showcase our wares – which was fine, and many people, I believe were excited about it. But it could have been an opportunity for us to talk about what digital media and social media is, what some of the ideas of the future are, and given more people a truly interactive way of learning about it.

2.  More interactive, please – there was a lot of presenting – even people (gasp) reading their speeches – this community is still learning what listening is – and it does take some getting used to. but after attending a few unconference, barcamp, startup weekend events, I can attest that the quality of the conversation that emerges is very impressive.

An advantage -  it was much less self-referential than many of the events in the U.S. since this is an emerging community there was less of the “we’re all experts affirming one another” thing going on than you sometimes see when the same cast of characters shows up time and again at various events. This is a great chance to develop a community with its own distinct personality and objectives.

Website done fast, well and in real time -  very slideshare, twitter, hash tag, youtube enabled, and updated with content in real time.

Key take away – its the beginning of a potentially awsome thing. we all know that this type of excitement fades fast. And in reality, they could work on building up the participation and excitement Should have been thousands there. That said – it was a solid beginning, and, if followed up fast and tangibly, could add up to something big.

Filed under: collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media , canada 3.0

14 slides on enterprise 2.0

I was asked to put together a very fast deck suitable for internal evangelism – something that someone could use to convince other (technical) people in the organization that collaborative technology was something they should care about. I had one day to do it. Here it is – I’ll be working on it to make it more convincing, would value your opinions.

Filed under: collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media, web 2.0 , collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social enterprisel

we all just want to be valuable

So we all talk about the benefits of collaboration (or at least all of us within a very narrow circle), but I rarely hear any discussion of one of the most critical components to unlocking potential productivity.

Most knowledge workers I know (and this varies widely with where they work) do not feel as though they are living to their potential.

When people have a sense of mission, that they are striving toward something meaningful, and that their contribution is making a significant difference along that path, then they are motivated and focused. They make decisionss, they don’t waste time, they are excited to be there.

This is the role of leadership. To ensure tht people have a mission and a vision that makes sense to them and that it is clear to them how their work forwards those goals.

Another great thing this does is to help people make the many decisions they need to in a way that will always tilt toward the goal. Including finding problems or challenges that would prevent the organization from reaching that goal, and sharing them in a way that they can be addressed and solved.

FOr example. I’ve never seen a team get really excited about “we’re going to launch these 10 features by March or else!!” Woohoo! rallying cry. Nope. And every one of you knows it.

Now try “We’re going to take this product to the next level, and become the most useful widget this market has ever dreamed of. And we can do it by getting these 10 things done”. Better.

A collaborative environment helps people get constant affirmation that their expertise is useful and their work is valuable. A well lead collaborative organization has a fine set of leaders at every level who understand that their role is to have a mission and include their team in it.

A collaborative environment keeps people engaged and focused on the work at hand – and that makes people happy. Really. There are several books on the subject. One of the most readable is called “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, though there are many academic articles and books on the subject.

So imagine a workplace where the vast majority of people are engaged, valued, “Flowing”, toward your corporate mission. Would that be more productive than what you have today?

This is the goal of enterprise 2.0. A fully engaged workforce where the product of that work is instantaneously available where its needed anywhere in the organization.

Filed under: best practices, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media, team building , engagement, enterprise 2.0, flow, leadership, productivity, satisfaction

tales from the collaborative front

Its a whole new world with all sorts of new twisty things to work out – at work too.

So – this collaborative culture we’re promoting and developing – its new, and people are banging around the middle and the edges.

Case in point. We, in our englightenedness, have a system (that you will certainly hear more about soon) where it takes approximately 3 seconds to set up a community. The community has a participant list, a wiki, a discussion feed and can hold docs.

There’s a (small) team that built a community to support a specific goal. They’re experimenting and trying to fly under the radar. One member – a well meaning one to be sure – wants them to “open” the group to the wide world, especially the team we can call the “broad responsibilities” team.

So – are they being open and transparent? No. Is that wrong? Maybe not.

Who is your team?

Your team is the set of people with whom your goals are aligned.

This implies that you have different teams for different goals.

You also have your day to day team, the slightly broader stakeholders team, and the general wide world of potentially interested parties team. They are all legitimate, and good things come from each.

But is transparency and collaboration the same across all three teams? Should it be?

Is it legitimate to want to fly under the radar? Or is this inherently anti-collaborative? What is the purpose of collaboration, and how is it affected by this sort of thing?

These dramas and many more will fold and unfold as we go forward. The good news, is that we’re learning a lot. The bad news is that learning is sometimes, uh, eventful.

My gut feeling is that there’s a place for small, insulated teams to do some experimentation, but at some point the insulation should come off. Or even better – what if this team was visible to others, but only if they were searching for a relevant term, tag or person – a sort of need to know filter? This wouldn’t be hiding, but not explicitly inviting participation unless there’s a reason.

I think at the very least its a great opportunity to dig into the value prop of collaboration a little deeper, and see what emerges.

Ok – half of the people involved are going to read this, so fire at will…

Filed under: collaboration, enterprise 2.0, social media, team building , best practices, collaboration, learning, teams