Posted
CommentsPost a comment
I like to think of myself as being relentlessly human in my approach to business, and life really. What I've found is that this can often make people very uncomfortable. That tearing at the walls of our self-imposed dysfunction is a tough position to lead with. Telling people their baby is ugly tends to throw up a few defenses. Who knew?
I've certainly adapted my approach in influencing others to embrace
change, but I am not so willing to go quietly into that dark night. I am not so
willing to succumb to the depression driven cynicism needed to fuel the
business as usual, people-never-change approach. The global culture shifts of the last
50 years guide me to that position. I am however not one to embrace the rah-rah
fluffy, nothing-to-hold-onto, reliance on our potential for
altruism-as-catalyst.
I need pragmatism with telescope more than
pragmatism with a microscope. There is always a bigger picture and it needs to
be seen if there is any hope for us.
In our work of helping organizations adapt, the argument often manifests as the hard world of real business vs. the soft world of driving the behaviors of our human capital, or simplified further as tools and people and process. To see these two sides of our experience as the only two sides shows our lack of perception and often willful, comfort-seeking ignorance. I see it as cowardly protectionism. I get that it sounds harsh. To me, it's not unlike climate deniers. We are multifaceted creatures who are deeply interdependent. To ignore this reality is dysfunction. It is a lie we often tell ourselves. We obfuscate and build a plausible arguments of rationale bolstered by skillfully curated data, marketing messages, pretty infographics, ROI calculators designed to support our stories and sell a notion to the board, methodologies that increase the number of hits, actions, connections, responses, etc. We apply a laser focus to the things we know we can impact, usually in an effort to make a chart rise or fall, whichever reaches the bottom line goal. We are risk averse (business lingo for frightened) to the ideas we are less sure of having impact on. We idolize and canonize those with the bravery to behave differently and see another road.. but only after they've made a billion in the process… gotta have those hard numbers! We so limit ourselves through fear, and we've all seen the dysfunctional cultural results of leading with fear.
Our org ecosystems mirror our relationships and life outside of the org. All of the complexity and depth required to be truly excellent (or innovative, or effective, or truly successful as an org, or a species) must be embraced to really make a difference and move the world on. A better phone, a new methodology, another way to harvest marketing data, a more controlled way to broadcast "communications" to employees don't achieve this. We achieve this in how we choose to leverage that phone, our data, and where we apply our skill for creating process. The mold needs a hammer and more and more of us willing to swing it. We can't rely on the edge dwellers to be our only change makers. And we have to stop assuming that our edge dwellers are all technologists.
The more idyllic notion of E2 and its marketing-based cousin, Social Business, was that we'd all be so open that the irrefutable truth would be exposed and would be catalyst to the future of work. Where we hire well, trust and share and build healthy working relationships that offer one another a hand up and out of our Tayloristic industrial age. A new model for the new age, an opportunity to put down the stupid stuff and get to the good stuff. We know that hasn't happened yet. Right now we're busy with the microscope and the slide show. We aren't taught or rewarded for any other behavior.
The prevalent business training does not appear to value these notions of improvement. Improvement is simply identified as MORE with no critical thinking or sustainable logic to support what MORE gets us. The education issue is a link in the chain of broken models that we will have to adapt over the next century, to include our markets and governing ideas. You know... the whole notion of how to be a sustainable planet and species. The change we are feeling so impacted by is one that will come in fits and starts for the rest of your lifetime. We'll look up in another 20 years and be astonished by the rapidity with which it is all happening and how far we still have to go. Some of it will be a hell of a lot more amazing than the shiny phones in our pockets or the app that allows us to order dinner on the way home from the office. To that I say, nice. BFD. How's that humanity coming?
To see any of these changes we must first be willing to make the change personally. A collaborative world doesn't work until you participate. You. Not your employees, not your audience, no driving others as they were cattle. It begins with you understanding your part in the change and fighting the urge to be a Human Denier. Talk to your colleagues. Open up the discussion. Get it started. Think about how you can change your part of the work. Think about getting rid of the stupid things. If you think your actions don't have impact you just might be suffering from a bit of denial.
"Technology is a big destroyer of emotion & truth… opportunity doesn't do anything for creativity. Yeah, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner. But it doesn't make you a more creative person. That's the disease you have to fight in any creative field... ease of use. "
As someone who spends her days trying to straddle the Berlin Wall of the technology vs. people story and make it more human, I found this statment profound and wonderful. To me, it sounds like Jack demands depth, and that the depth comes from real work, and maybe even discomfort.
Here we have a guy of passion and depth, so intimatley connected to the root and source of his passions that bedazzling them with technology beyond a pickup and some noisy pedals is a degridation of the whole. Beyond Jack White's brilliance there is the framing of the statement. It comes from a fantastic 2008 film called It Might Get Loud. An exploration of three iconic, and very different guitar players, Jack White, Jimmy Page and The Edge. You bounce from hearing about The Edge's OCD effects rig and Jimmy Page's description of him as a "Sonic Architect" to Jack's contrasting statements about technology, to include the brilliant example in the image above, where Jack crafts a guitar from scraps. The thing is, they are both absolutely correct and the outcomes are equally brilliant. Which brings me to the point.
I say this ad nasuem, it is never all or nothing. It is never technology or people. Our constructs of right and wrong are skewed and out of balance when it comes to that basic, foundational perspective. They have been for decades, centuries, millenia… depending on your choice of diety (or lack of one) I suppose. Marketing has been yanking on this lever for as long as communications have been possible. Our monkey brains find comfort and ease in simple equations and the Tarzan-speak of good vs. bad. We are a species bound together by depth, complexity and surface tension. If we omit an element of who we are we tip, and ultimatley, either course correct or fall. We see this in our trade systems, our health care systems, our emergency managment systems, our enterprise tech, banks, our work, and relationships....
When we cling to stories about what's worked in the past as evidence to 'right' we need to go deeper and explore the whole of the story. Success, in the past, has been defined by very narrow critera. In business it's usually, "did we make the expected profit?". So many strategy plans simply omit any consideration of excellence, sentiment, quality of relationships, or the wellbeing of those involved as "soft" or "not our job". That autistically rationalized answer often came at the expense of someone, and that expense very often does not materialize within the assessment of success. Immediatley we tip again, ensuring ultimate failure and a repeated attempt. Regardless of human or financial costs. The monkeys are at it again.
Our critera for success is broadening. This is felt in the disruption we're witnessing across the globe. We're growing weary of business as usual. We're (at a painfully slow pace) growing weary of inhuman practices in the name of business. Cynicisim is the manifestation of fear that inhibits meaningful change, and ensures long term failure. We're feeling that too. Just read a newspaper for examples.
I'll stand in the front row and testify. I'll shout a loud amen and agree whole heartedly with Jack White. I'll applaud him for embracing those who have wildly different approaches to the same work as well. On the way home from that tent revival I'll bounce from a Jack track to a Flying Lotus track. My mind will be equally blown and my need for rhythm satisfied by both.
I don't want an easy answer when someone asks me "what kind of music do you like?".
I'm working hard to embrace complexity, to learn something every day, to freak myself out a little and grow as a person. I don't want a box to check or a best practices plan to follow. The prevailing criteria is too limiting. The models too historic. I'm working on a mind that is open to personal disruption, and hope there are others who seek the same. Ultimately all of this change we're talking about has to begin at a personal level. I can't ask anyone to do something I'm not willing to do. It doesn't matter how good my intentions are, the ask will fail.Truly meaningful positive change doesn't often come with a strategy plan. It happens in cycles of deconstruction and construction, when we make room for it and get beyond good vs. bad, people vs. technology, right vs. wrong. Grab a wider lens. Let go. What you see will surprise you and change you forever.
btw, if you haven't checked out Blunderbuss yet, wth are you waiting for?
I rant about Facebook. A lot. I'm not sorry. I know I'm among a legion of FB haters. My buddy @rhappe responded to one of my many anti-FB rants by telling me that I should write a blog post titled "Why Facebook is the worst thing that ever happened to social media" and here it is.
The idea that openness and connection are the social mission of FB is laughable at best when you consider the relationship that's been built between FB and its users.
Let me be clear right up front that I am deeply aware that users of FB are far from its customers. Its customers are the ones who fork over cash to cack up your stream with ads lightly aligned to the information you've offered up, either through use, or through the rouse of giving an app access to your every move. FB is simply the one who provides the space, ever encroaching space, and the logic to those customers.
Now, onto why FB's mission is disingenuous. Having a relationship with FB is impossible. It's like having the great and powerful OZ as a landlord. It simply doesn't exist. They don't even have a visible spokesperson who engages with the community to figure out what users or customers might want. The model is ancient; a singular, secretive (unless you spend your cycles keeping tabs on their every move or sifting through the double speak in blog posts and press releases) plan to increase the number of eyeballs and hits on links. They are taking the newspaper ad sales approach, but the quality of content is more Weekly World News than WSJ. I've often referred to FB as the awkward, amorous boy on his first date, doing the old Yaaaawn, arm goes around the girls shoulders and hand sinks a little lower than it should, stretch. FB preys on what a friend of mine likes to call "the dumb kids".
(Charming - Thanks Mark, I feel very connected! How did you know I wanted to be an Astrology Counselor at a School?! Wait, is that even a thing?)
The most important way that FB's mission is crap has to do with the information bubble the user is placed in. You'll note this deeply with the "top" stories (based on what? and whom?) vs. the recently posted filter, and in screaming volumes when you move from the mobile app to the web experience. So much filtering is going on that it's common to simply not see all of your friends posts because you haven't interacted with some of them recently (uh, that's why we're FB friends. To stay connected despite a loose tie.) Don't worry though, you'll see the ads! Phew!
Why is the this the worst thing to happen to social media? Because the mission is misleading and it's teaching those with no big picture view (the kind who live and die based on so called best practices instead of personal depth or development) the "successful" way to build a network. When we consider all that's good and promising about social media, transparency (for all), serendipity, connection and the ability to mobilize quickly when we need to, each of these elements are not shared between the user population and Facebook. The transparency is foisted on users, not shared. The serendipity is being programmed out to ensure it only supports FB and ad sales. The connection? Only if your activity patterns align with the algorithm that feeds ad sales. If we can't see and don't know what's happening we can't mobilize, hell, we can't even seem to impact FB's road map. Imagine how the increasing info bubble could have impacted the Arab Spring events.
Facebook's assertions are rarely backed up with actions that match and that's the why FB is the worst thing ever to happen to social media. They are inauthentic, and lack integrity. They still don't understand their civic responsibilities. Pretty harsh statements, I know. But precedent has been set, that with a thin demonstration of acceptable human behavior and a little bit of code, you can launch an app, create a network, then hold that network hostage. It is a model that has played out over and over in the dearth of networks that have sprung up since FB's' ascent, where the wide, dollar-signed eyes of investors got a peek at social networking as the future of big biz. That mere presence assumes engagement. It's 0-1 thinking and it's damaging.
What FB is missing is engagement. Engagement is the human element that keeps things from going off the money-grubbing rails. Engagement meaning, a real relationship with the users of the network. A mutual exchange of benefits, ideas, and involvement. That is what true transparency looks like. That is how you create meaningful opportunities for serendipity, and that is how we are able to act as a connected community. What we are now is batteries in the Matrix. Ducks being turned into foie gras conversion opportunities.
Personally, I'm still on FB because I live 3000k miles away from my family and closest friends. I'm here because everyone else is here. There are other options, however they are not options that have enough adoption to make for a meaningful transition. I'd simply lose touch with a large hunk of folks that I am genuinely interested in keeping a connection with. I use it a lot. I never click on ads, play games, add apps or use the "social news" features. If something interests me I'll Google it. If I'm asked for more information I decline, and if you're my FB friend, you'll suffer from my embittered rants with some (hopefully not too much) frequency.
I've considered leaving a million times. Of late, I've been thinking of returning to my blogs and inviting my friends to grab a feed if they are interested in one of them. I know with that route that I'm back to losing hunks of friends. FB has made me a bitter, willing captive. The one thing that is true on this planet is change, especially in the fickle and ADD world of tech. Empires diminish and fall quickly. I honestly don't expect all of us to be here 2-3 years down the line. I'm really looking forward to the next step in the evolution of social networking, and the time when we mature meaningfully around the offerings and use of social media.
Grow up, Facebook. It's time to leave your awkward 20's and move on to more adult relationships. Those who don't grow, die.
/rant
Continuing with the series on Hub and Spoke network building I've been working on at Moxie. Cross posting here as well. This week is all about discoving use cases. Hope you find it valuable.
As we continue our blog series this week, we’ll focus on finding and developing use cases to effectively initiate an enterprise social network. A large number of organizations have already invested in an enterprise collaboration tool and need help getting past the notion of an awareness or education campaign as ‘the’ strategy for adoption. It’s time to get teams to move and groove as easily online as they do offline.
Humans are creatures of pattern and culture. If a team does most of its collaboration offline, despite frustrating inefficiencies or pain, it will continue to work offline without a clear and simple solution that everyone buys into. Under the everyday stress of professional demand, few make time for efforts that don’t bring instant value to their day. Creating a culture of online collaboration takes time and patience. So, let’s focus on creating instant value.
First, Find out Who’s Collaborating.
Time to get away from your desk and go for a walk. Observe the behaviors and rhythm of your office offline to identify those who can help you build a collaboration network online. The trick here is focusing on relevance to work. Not just who’s talking or who has content, but who’s working
together:
- Strike up conversations across teams and functions. Learn their needs, projects, and priorities. Do teams usually meet in person or remotely? How are they capturing ideas? What do they do with those ideas? Who attends the meetings– what teams and roles are involved? Who feels like they need more information and who feels like no one reads their reports?
- Look for stories in broadcast emails or newsletters. This will help you identify projects around your company that you may not be aware of—and may be ideal for bringing online.
- Connect with event or training groups who have a regular need to promote, and engage; offer resources and support an audience in the long-term.
- Learn your organization’s business goals for the year and what initiatives are supporting these goals. Demonstrating a meaningful alignment with the business can show deep value if executed well.
This up front research helps the right groups bubble to the top quickly. Taking this time to understand your network upfront makes all the difference. Remember, they are the network. The tools simply support them. Here are some additional tips: http://www.slideshare.net/rhappe/community-a-strategic-imperative
Next, Focus on Goals to Create First-wave Momentum
This is where it’s time for a sanity check. Not every business initiative or group will be ripe for first adopter collaboration. Remember that these folks will be demonstrating great use for others. Revisit the goals laid out for collaboration. These goals will help hone in on the right groups to help build early adoption, tailored to support your organization’s specific needs. For example, if the goal is to connect disparate groups, creating use cases that keep groups separated while in the environment would be unsuccessful. Here are some ideas that tie goals and action together:
- Need to connect people and increase the involvement of experts? A focused profile drive followed by use cases for specific expertise groups can be an efficient way to kickstart the right environment.
- Need to reduce email, disjointed reply-all threads and improve discovery? Select key initiatives with specific teams who suffer most from this —such as cross team initiatives working on planning, editorial or deliberation cycles. See more details: http://community-roundtable.com/2012/07/start_with_email
- Need to pull together existing work and cultures? Work with HR to support their need for messaging & feedback, support, Q&A, and perhaps events.
- How about supporting the day-to-day collaboration of business? Help teams establish use cases where they transform their reporting, messaging, editing or approval work from email to online.
- Need to increase awareness and build a more common vision across the organization? Consider a use case around blogging with a supporting editorial calendar to highlight big news, resources, quality use, education, and more.
Last, but not Least: Begin with the End in Mind to Develop a Healthy Stream of Activity
Online collaboration is a shift in mindset inside most organizations. In the recent past, the intranet was a place for broadcasting and libraries. The new healthy collaboration environment is a place for people to be active. Activity is the primary goal.
Enable your teams to do more than just broadcast and consume. Think about other ways your organization interacts with each other as well as information:
- Creation (and co-creation) of products
- Deliberation of ideas
- Decision-making around future initiatives
- Dialogue within and among teams
The bottom line is that a participatory shift is essential for the health of the environment. Designing diverse use cases and relevance to your organization’s goals will point your efforts toward success.
We’ll go a little deeper next week and talk about how to design these use cases to be as relevant and sticky as possible. Stay tuned!
Image Credit: http://geronimocoachingnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/goldilocks.jpg
Man, it's been a long, long time since I've contributed anything to my own blog! I've missed writing here a lot. My work with Moxie has kept me very busy with the day-to-day of supporting clients in developing their networks. I've been doing plenty of writing internally and I'm excited to be writing for the web again. I'm working on a series of posts for Moxie that will offer a deep dive into the Hub and Spoke process of network development and thought it made sense to re-post them here as well. As always, I'm eager to hear what you think.
Using the Hub and Spoke Approach to Build Adoption of Enterprise Social Technology
Everyone wants to be a part of a healthy organization that encourages open communication and knows how to facilitate the exchange of knowledge to create greater operational efficiency. The good news is that enterprise social software is taking off among leading organizations, transforming the delivery of products and services to customers.
While enterprise social is a powerful resource, it provides little value to organizations if not meaningfully adopted by employees. Inserting technology and hoping for the kind of strategic use that speeds the organization to the goal is a well intended, and frequently doomed approach. Identifying the right use cases is important when beginning an organization’s social network, or reviving a network that never really got off the ground.
Today, we’re starting a series of posts focused on exploring effective use case development. We’ll cover how to – identify and evaluate potential use cases, develop effective use case champions, and support valuable and relevant, goal-centered use that will pave the way for wide adoption of enterprise social technology.
When you’re dealing with the goal of getting work done you can’t ignore that people need to do more than communicate. Organizations don’t want people communicating just for the sake of communicating. Organizations need to build relevant experiences and create meaningful interactions that promote the value sought in collaboration as a business solution. This need is addressed through a hub and spoke methodology and leverages these key components:
- Use case development: this approach allows for scalable growth and user support, while preparing an organization for wide adoption. In addition, it offers the added benefit of iterative approach, where small groups can quickly modify tactics based on feedback to support the user experience.
- Identification of purpose driven groups: find the use that serve the greater goals of an organization. Each spoke in the network helps set the tone and highlight use for specific business needs.
- Cultural changes: in many situations, the introduction of collaborative tools represents a shift not only in the work being done, but also in the culture of the organization. Asking users to “work out loud” for the first time can be disorienting and uncomfortable. Focusing use cases on specific action can help orient new users quickly and increase their comfort.
In the coming weeks, we will be publishing several posts with practical advice to drive adoption of enterprise social technology. Stay tuned as we get into the nitty gritty of how it’s done with next weeks post on discovering and developing new use cases to build the network.
via the99percent.com
The book looks fantastic and includes insights from voices I've learned much from. The excerpts in the post alone are inspiring. Have you read this?
In years past, by day two, the ice breaker "so, do you see a theme this year?" would pop up. I wasn't asked once at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last week. I'm hoping it's a signal to the idea that we're moving past the need for low value sound bites, though I look at Twitter and lose that hopeful thought right quick. Despite the apparent lack of need for such ice breakers, I did note a theme. I'll get to that.
On my flight home I sat next to a thirty year tech veteran who grilled me as best he could on the value of the work I was doing. Not sure he was open to seeing a bottom line impact as much as he was interested finding a way to prove that I was foolish for not coming to his conclusions. He spent a telling amount of time grading me on my ".60 words" and attempting to diminish my contribution to the debate by verbally patting me on the head and asserting I'd "held my own" in the discussion. The debate was the 101 stuff by the way. Sharing what you're doing has no value, everyone can see, security is so much more important than work, yadda, yadda. Don't let me give the wrong impression, there were many smiles and this was an extremely personable debate. I smiled a bit at the universe's sense of humor in ending my conference this way.
What it all boiled down to for me is this. It's great to want to change the world to be a better place, for work to be less frustrating, limiting, focused on spending cycles and budget on inane processes. It's great to want more productivity, fewer mistakes, and an innovative, self-healing environment. We've simply got to spend more cycles practicing the pragmatism we preach. That 101 process we've all discovered for selling the business case? That's the process we use to change minds and build adoption. The idea that changing the minds of humans who have no desire to change should be a strong focus is a poor investment and yields even poorer ROI. Remember, don't feed the trolls. Change is about creating an environment of irrefutable value where the majority join in to collect their own perceived gains. In our case, one where business value, more clearly, a positive impact to the bottom line, organizational or personal, is demonstrated. Your ability to achieve such at an enterprise level, right off the bat, is slim. Your chance of doing that by consciously supporting a growing network through an organizationally self aware plan, real-time analysis and iteration, and through creating a network of supportive advocates by offering real value to their bottom line is how it happens.... I know, I know, that's a mouthful. It's tough to force fit authenticity into a org chart or a quarterly numbers sheet. The process is still navigable if we can put down our baggage and get to navigating towards something specific.. mind you, that also means specifically leaving room for the unplanned and the unspecific, where the really good innovative stuff comes from.
Heightened pragmatism, even around the more assumedly estrogen laden topics of community management, HR, learning, etc, is bobbing up with direct paths to business value and impact to the bottom line. Who knew... estrogen has brains too (yep, it's snark, you're soaking in it). That pragmatism is an element of this work I've clung to for sanity over the years. Finding solid, actionable information on the merger of systems, humans, and process is as simple as collecting water with a tennis racket. Thankfully, many of the few people who deeply get the full scope of the effort are reliably present at #e2conf.
Some observations to underscore my point of an improved sense of pragmatism:
- We swam in solid *use case stories. Refreshingly, both successful and unsuccessful. TEVA, Harvard, NASA, Vanguard, Merc, Eli Lily, EA, ArcSight, YUM, etc... all with business driven, culturally thoughtful strategies. All with an eye on iteration and room for innovation.
- We heard from more sr. middle managers than I ever remember. The use case presenters were primarily not the senior sponsors or senior project managers who don't frankly use the systems for in-the-flow work. They were intimately aware of the challenges and the gains, and were open to share their tricks more than their sound bites.
- Even the so called "soft" topics included a theme of pragmatic business process. I was absolutely wowed with the Rachel Happe's presentation Online Communities - A Strategic Imperative. Rachel brings unparalleled clarity to the value of professional community management. It was down right satisfying to see her skillfully distill the story into an hour. I often think we'd be moving much faster if the folks who were claiming ownership of these tools/initiatives had to demonstrate a) proficient use of the tools to meet a specific business need b) acted as community manager for one year. The strategy a community manager uses is the same as the strategy needed to support the whole of a healthy social initiative. I see that little tidbit as an ah-ha few have reached yet. Full disclosure, Rachel is a good friend and I am a member of the Community Roundtable, not to mention a heavily biased community manager.
This year was also my first attending as a vendor. A big shift after many years as a practitioner. It meant that I needed to spend more time away from sessions than I'm used to. I missed the ability to attend and fully engage in the workshops, but thankfully, twitter kept me hip to what was going on in other sessions. Having too much work to do is a wonderful problem to have. I was thrilled to connect with many of my colleagues I rarely get to see in person. Moxie had a great showing and I'm proud to be part of the team there. It was exciting to see our clients sharing their need-to-hear stories. TEVA's supply chain story is unique and so strongly aligned to this sense of heightened pragmatism I'm talking about.
All in all I wouldn't miss #e2conf for the world. Despite my snarky posts. :) The beauty of #e2conf is the opportunity for us to get past our social tool prosthetics and engage face-to-face where we can separate the wheat from the chaff. I loved the new space, the abundant power and the reliable wifi, though after becoming accustomed to the tighter quarters at the WBW, I did ask Steve Wylie for a Segway to get around. I didn't feel like I could run back to my room without missing something. I loved the variety of tracks and the clear response to feedback. The fact that there's a people and culture track comes directly from feedback, that community management is a foregone conclusion, that we're now talking about CRM in a meaningful way, that we've enjoyed the presence of psychologists and HR specialists as well as an increase in use case stories. All from feedback. I still believe that if you are engaged in the work of bringing social software to your organization there is no better opportunity to learn about the full scope of the story. If you're doing social or thinking about it, you need to be here.
Phew.. that was a long one. Thanks to Oliver Marks for including me in the People & Culture track with Apprio's Steve Elmore and Saba's Ingrid Stabb. Steve's got some thoughts on the session on his blog. Thanks to Steve Wylie & the crew at UBM for all the hard work. Don't forget the Santa Clara call for papers is already open. It's a great chance to share your success, as well as your failures.. lord knows we learn more from those. Also, a final plug for the Community BackChannel. We had an amazing launch meet up at #e2conf. We're a vetted, but open community of those who want to engage others around the practice of leveraging social tools and community building methodologies for business. All are welcome to this no-sales zone where you need only declare your purpose for joining and want to bring/get value from the experience.
That's it. See you all in Santa Clara.
* I use the term use case stories intentionally as a case study doesn't hold much validity for me when those who deliver are assessing their own work. Studies should be performed by someone outside the process being evaluated. Nitpicking I know. But I've seen way too many "successes" touted as such with great omissions of challenging data.
** Big ups to @jimworth for his tireless curation. I wouldn't have links without him. http://jimworth.pbworks.com/w/page/41561709/Enterprise-20-Boston-Social-Web-Coverage-June-20-2011 All presentations (attendee credentials required) and related #e2conf information here.
*** Image Credit Enterprise 2.0 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/e2conf/5857616440/sizes/m/in/photostream/
"Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design." - Dieter Rams
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/10/a-quote-that-went-we.html
A quote that went well with an earlier BoingBoing post - Boing Boing
By now you may have heard of the Community BackChannel. Launched just a few weeks ago, the #cmtybc is private community of community, collaboration and social business practitioners, analysts, consultants, vendors, and media. While vetted to gauge interest and real desire to contribute to the community, the #cmtybc is absolutely free and open to folks from all walks of the E2.0/social business spectrum.
The #cmtybc calls The BrainYard home through a generous donation of space from the folks at UBM. The #cmtybc is not however owned or guided by UBM or its affiliates in anyway. We're just super grateful for the support and the space!
We've been sharing resources, talking about our individual case studies, swapping ideas for incentives and building new relationships with Community Managers we've not been able to connect with beyond Twitter. We're a small and growing group who are passionate in our belief that community stewardship is a vital component of success across our social business networks. If this sounds like your thing take a look at the public site and consider joining us.
A number of us will be headed to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston from June 20 - 23. What would a f2f opportunity like this be without a meet up? Social is as social does after all.
So here's the ask. Join us! Come find out what we're all about, have a drink, maybe a nosh, and most certainly some good conversation with social business community advocates from across the spectrum.
Be sure to sign up. Space is limited and we'd love to see you there.
http://cmtybcboston2011.eventbrite.com/
I've heard some interesting perspectives about community building this week. And more than once the "it's all about... " popped up. It just about always makes my shoulders creep up around my ears.
It's not all or nothing. It's not emergence or business goals, open or closed, Kumbaya or command and control. Change happens when balance shifts. We're not moving from one side of the meter to another. We're learning to balance what's now out of balance. Those engaged and conscious around why things need to change, and what improvement looks like will have a better chance of achieving their goals. They also recognize the business value of emergence and skillfully create not only spaces for it, but an environment where it is encouraged and rewarded in a meaningful and authentic way.
It's easy to run with dogma or tool and tout it as the "it's all about the..." of the day. At the core of our efforts is a change to business, to work, to the improvement of products, the client experience and relationship, the productivity, satisfaction and well being of our colleagues. All with an end game of better outcomes for all involved. That could be increased revenue, more customers, lower attrition, more frequent innovation, more meaningful collaboration, etc, etc.
Get specific about what you're after as an organization and balance that with room for, and support of emergence. It should reflect across your social tools as well as in your hallways.
#e2conf is just a couple of weeks away. I'm here to offer some sizzling predictions and probing questions for the conference to come.
I see in our future:
- a wild launch of marketing zazz and thinly veiled insults regarding who and who does not, in fact, get 'it'. whatever 'it' may be
- a stinging blog post about how wrong we all are, how vendors are barking up the wrong tree, how consultants and analysts are missing the boat, how this daffy work we're doing has already been done under another moniker. we'll all rubberneck, RT, and talk about it for days
- a sustained cry that the vendor voice is too loud, that we're all reconsidering whether we'll come to the next conference
- a boutique consultancy/vendor/analyst will change the name of a common viewpoint, resource, service, product pronounce it a brand new epiphany, one that will clearly change the world in a way it couldn't with another name. we will all believe it
- a stunned crop of first timers who aren't used to seeing people hug at conferences will be stunned
- people first! now lets talk about seats and integration. you know, just to get it out of the way
- some sassy late night tweeting that may disappear from the stream by morning. be sure to get them while they're hot hot hot
- a flow of snarky conference blog posts... some may in fact appear before the conference... you may in fact be reading one this very moment
And finally, I'm dying to know:
- who will be the first vendor/analyst/consultant(s) to take the heat from the Statler & Waldorf that is Twitter?
- who's demo will fail spectacularly?
- which party will be the most off the hookest?
- will the wifi work?
- will there be enough power for all of @elsua's gear?
- will I sleep at all that week?
- why can't I write a blog post that isn't a list?
Despite my tone, I'm stoked. E2 is my best chance to get more than 140's depth, catch up face to face with folks who're steeped in this work, and find out what I don't know.
I hope to see you there.
*for those who may not know my sense of humor, this is indeed humor. roll with it.
Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carnac.jpg
I saw a post from RWW over the holiday weekend. It irked me in the way uninformed infographics and Fox News irk me. Promoting a salacious little sliver of a larger story in an already highly confused environment does little to help anyone. It tends to promote a bunch of rubbernecking that keep us distracted from real issues. I do get that these polls are usually more about increasing page views than scientific research. In the end, it does offer illustration to a long neglected point.
The post came in response to a marketing gimmick Huddle is touting. The story we get? Huddle is guaranteeing adoption! Should all vendors do that?
The story we don't get? Adoption is defined as well as many enterprises are defining it. Here's what the Huddle site has to offer in defining adoption:
http://www.huddle.com/this-is-huddle/adoption-guarantee/
Let me change the language a little bit to clarify. An active user is one who has "performed at least one auditable action" over the course of the 90 day period. I'm guessing that means it's an action you can find record of in the db. Not sure what that set looks like in Huddle's reporting. It could be logged in, perhaps a page view, updated a profile, performed a search.....
Once. One time. That means a user has adopted. Does that sound like meaningful adoption to you? Worth the money? With numbers like that we've all adopted Google Wave, Path, and other screaming tool successes. Right? What do you think user sentiment is for a site visited once in 90 days?
The reality is that it's time we woke up around our responsibilities in successful adoption. We are doing more than buying IT, deploying it, and posting a mission accomplished banner in the office. Adoption, meaningful impact-yielding adoption, demands true engagement, a cycle of member feedback that is acted upon, relevance, and trust in our relationship to the tools as well as those engaged in the network. None of which happens in 90 days, and certainly not in an environment where adoption is consciously defined as one log in = success.
We're smarter than this folks. Know what you're solving. Listen to your members. Fix an actual work problem. Engage your employees in a meaningful, authentic way. Define adoption up front, as you should the terms collaboration and engagement. Know what these terms mean to your organization. Steer clear of gimmicks. As much as we all may want one, there is no magic pill. We're being challenged to steward a change to a better work experience. The deft weilding of thoughtful tools to facilitate that can speed things up dramatically. The opposite, well, you know the rest.
OK. Soapbox, dismount. How about a poll where we see how enterprises are defining adoption? Does anyone have links to real research there?
• I know what everyone needs to know
• My email isn’t my knowledge management system
• If I need you, I can find you
• If you need me, you can find me
• If we need one another we can gather and act rapidly, when and how it works for us
• If I’m new, I know what to do
• If I’m an expert, I can share and promote my work/capability/offering/event/idea...
• If I need talent, or content, I can find it quickly with context and evidence
• If I need answers they are discoverable when I need them
• My work is the stuff I’m great at, the stuff that drives me and adds value. Not a maze of frustrating tools & limiting processes
It’s work. Make it better.
Genius from Get Satisfaction!
2010 has been quite a year for all of us focused on this whatever-you-call-it-esque (E2/socbiz) shift to a more collaborative and open enterprise. The leaps are higher, and the steps forward are those of pretty tall folk. I finally got to see the McKinsey survey coverage yesterday, and what I see there is amazing. I remember sitting in the front row in Boston in 2007 listening to Andy McAfee implore the audience to collect a cache of case studies. We desperately needed more than a handful of success stories to point to. Though it’s easy to miss in our revolving door bubble of debate, we’re making steady progress. As the potential of collaboration becomes the new black, it’s hard to find an organization that isn’t at least looking to better understand their options. It feels like we’ve finally put aside the evolution/revolution and ROI debates and are focusing on the realities of defining our collaborative worlds. A simple scan of the vendor horizon shows relevant leaps in ubiquity, usability and rapid customization in this year alone. Hearing the McKinsey story point to definitive revenue increases shores up my optimistic perception. We’ve come a long way.
This year specifically I’ve seen our internal work mature and be firmly woven into the fabric of our organization. It’s been challenging for all of us. Growth usually is. We, like many other organizations who’ve joined us in the past couple of years, are doing the hardest part of the work in self-analysis, integration and action toward the promise of collaboration. I’m not at liberty to publish public detail about Hello, but I can say that its evolution has, and continues to be, amazing to observe. In all of my snark on Twitter, never for a moment think that I don’t know how very lucky I am.
Outside of my work I’m fortunate to be connected to many of the best and brightest in our space. I’ve enjoyed the support and cheerleading of some fantastically smart folks. They are willing to entertain my ideas and my folly equally. Every time I talk with them… with you, I learn something. Every time. I’m so very grateful for that.
I offer a hearty Happy Holidays to all of you.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22244945@N00/3278869535/#/
What we could all really use in our work is a scratch track. In recording it's a running back up, a live reference mark. You use a scratch track to record a rough expected outcome that guides the finish work. If you're lucky, it's a lightening in a bottle. You may find yourself with a spectacular new idea. You press record knowing that there's a much higher (almost expected) rubbish outcome to be achieved on that track, that the focus is the finish work. Doesn't matter. It's muscle memory to do it. It's the process you trust. It's through that process that you make room for the really good stuff. Most creative activities have some version of this.
Social collaborative tools offer a scratch track. Our trail of serendipitous breadcrumbs. A bubbling of an idea that someone, or some group can align with and get excited about. I often wish we realized how creative seemingly rigid corporate roles really are. Especially through times of shift. I believe its part of what we talk about when we cry for innovation in corporate spaces. When we exercise that muscle memory and build a trail of breadcrumbs we see trends, opportunities, and flaws faster. With that intelligence we might not be so married to the oft repeated, not-so best practices and wasteful habits large enterprises tend to assume as operating norm. We also open the door to lightening in a bottle ideas that rigid processes often close.
Image credit:dave.kobrehel
I often find either big resistance or lip service given to the idea that E2.0/social/collaboration encompasses issues beyond technology and teaching people how to use it. There is a degree of discomfort around the concept of cracking the corporate/industry veneer that we’re taught to cake on. Showing ourselves as vulnerable and fallible isn’t part of the professional equation (for many it’s not part of the personal equation either). Yet vulnerability is a vital component of trust.
For some, simply considering the idea of taking their humanity to work is just as uncomfortable as having “the talk” with a parent or child. We have to discuss the stuff we’re unsure of and figure out what feels like new rules. There’s discomfort we may not be able to pinpoint and process initially. Assumptions and reactions to stories and studies can send us reeling. It’s this dialog where we begin to identify steps to real change, understand our norms and craft ourselves a new working world of relationships.
Many adopt a language formed from years of education and grooming. It’s a language intended to identify others as members, and to bar the uninitiated. If you’ve ever spent time in an acronym, code, or competition heavy environment you know what I’m talking about. Who needs software to create silos when the experts can do it all by themselves?
You might find that speaking plainly makes people uncomfortable. You might find that human speak invites the perception that you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s OK, as long as you do indeed know what you are talking about. This is what I like to think of as high road, long-haul work. You may well have to make it to the second meeting to get to the part where they’ve processed your pitch and are ready to listen, at least a little. Relevant knowledge that comes from a place of authenticity and accountability will yield trust faster than any salacious blog headline or marketing case study.
There’s real importance in using human language. It’s a differentiator. A cue to listen, that the listener is welcome, that they have a part and a stake in the conversation. It invites them to help you work toward an answer. As with any strategy or support, it is absolutely vital that you understand the goals before engaging in this conversation, that you understand your audience before you attempt to shake them out of their silo. Without that investment from you, the change initiator, you won’t have established the trust you need to move forward.
So do a few things before selling your revolutionary ideas. First, do your homework. Understand the culture(s) and the problems you are solving before you go marching in with your blog (wiki/activity stream/tagging structure/ubiquitous mobility solution/social media genius). Speak plainly. Remember that your client may not be the only one at the table with a river of lingo in their pocket (that means you).
Don’t be afraid to initiate the talk and remember that the talk has more to do with really listening.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photogaby/2823104541/
"Nothing is so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all" - Peter Drucker (brilliant. thanks @PeteModi)
Disclaimer: I'll warn my good friends.. you may have heard this one before if we've taked about influence. Wanted to get it in writing once and for all.
Decades ago I was a projectionist dealing with intensely intelligent people, PhD medical researchers in fact.
I'd meet them in a prep room, gather and orient up hundreds of 35mm slides in trays and walk them through the logistics of the most important presentation of their professional lives. Many times these folks were coming to me after ten years of research, preparing to sell their case to a live audience of fifteen hundred colleagues from the most prominent American medical organization, ready to question their findings and theories on life saving therapies or drugs. Needless to say they were often a little nervous, very worried about how they were perceived, and sure something beyond their control would go wrong.
- Often, we simply need to be pulled from our perspective in a safe way. One that's meaningful and offers impact to our immediate needs.
- Opinions can change with the right information. Instead of beating your influencee over the head with your perspective, let them see the spectrum of opportunity. They'll tell you where to go.
- Get out of your safety zone. Often. You may well ditch a useless fear that's holding you back or remove a barrier you've placed as protection.
- Listen. You aren't always right. Don't forget that for a second.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rvwithtito/4236716778/