5 Social Computing Benefits that Adoption Rates Don't Show

Are you are promoting social computing in your organization and being questioned about the low "participation levels" or "adoption rates"? Well, here are 5 points that should help you explain that it's not just about the percentage of people that actively participate.


1. Thanks for Asking

Sometimes it's just being asked that matters! Even if people choose not to participate, it's still a choice. Have you noticed the term "employee engagement" showing up everywhere these days? The term happens to be the most common search phrase leading people to my blog.

To engage employees means that you actually need to start by asking for their input. Even if they don't have specific input right now, that's fine. What you don't want to do is incent the wrong behaviours such as "gaming" a system to meet an objective. Providing opportunity is an implicit benefit of social computing. It demonstrates respect for the employees input and leads to a more engaged and committed organization.


2. La crème de la crème

A favourite book of mine is, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. In the book, Jim explains that the role of leadership is NOT to motivate. If you have to motivate and convince people to do something, you're already starting in a bad position. Instead, if you have the right people and the right opportunity they will be "self-motivated". The role of leadership then becomes making sure you don't let people become "de-motivated". Jim goes on to explain the importance of making sure you find the right people. But how do you do this?

One way is to leverage the power of self-organization. For example, we run on-line "jam" sessions and invite 1000's of people to participate. Not everyone will, but those that do tend to be "passionate" and willing to take on accountability. And those concepts that rise to the top tend to be well thought through. The point... Even if you only have 10% participation. It's likely that the 10% you want!


3. Needle in a Haystack

Mass collaboration isn't about simple consensus. It also provides greater opportunity to find a few gems by casting a much bigger net. 60 Minutes had a great story on John Kanzius , a retired Radio and TV engineer who's invention may ultimately cure cancer. He has zero medical training and his unorthodox method involves the use of radio waves and nano-particles! He likely would never have been invited to any discussions on the topic. And it is only that his own very unfortunate situation has inspired him to look for an answer. Is there a way to purposefully stimulate more creative ideas?

I often hear people ask for "out of the box thinking" and if they truly want that, we apply different techniques. One of the techniques is simply to bring in experts in different fields than the topic we're actually working on. Why? To drive a completely different perspective on a given situation. Hopefully leading to a breakthrough. Social computing allows us to invite many many people each with different views and perspectives. Even if you don't have high participation, if you get that one breakthrough idea, it's all worth it!


4. One for All

A well designed social computing environment encourages interactive participation of the right people. For all of you "executives" that believe this is something you let "employees" do but aren't actually engaged in yourself, you are missing a huge opportunity. The opportunity to drive "trust" and "confidence" throughout the organization.

When I see an executive who "gets it", the effect can be amazing. You can read a conversation that is authentic, public an non-hierarchical. The participants in the conversation see a "real" side of an executive whom they otherwise may never have even met. But what if it's only a handful of people engaged in the discussion? That's fine. Because even if the participation level is low, the folks that read and view the conversation also benefit. The readers will also see an genuine conversation which aids in building trust and confidence in your organization.


5. Back to The Future

By the time I write this blog, I hope many people will read it and benefit from it. I also hope many people will discuss it. But realistically, I know that it's value may really be in the future. Unless you need this information now, it may be just an interesting (which I also hope) article. In the future, when someone really needs help in this area, it will be available to them, and perhaps will help them articulate the additional benefits in leveraging social computing.

This pertains to your organization as well. Even if you don't have immediate participation, the conversation is not time bound, and employees can still join the conversation even into the future. They can understand the context (how we came to decisions we did) in addition to the ultimate decisions. This depth of understanding helps ensure smarter, better, more complete decisions can be made moving forward.

So the next time someone challenges you, that your social computing endeavours just aren't "engaging enough people", you can explain that the full value of social computing and enterprise 2.0 is more than the number of people fully interacting. These 5 real benefits just can't be determined by some magic "participation rate".

Keeping the Faith: The E2.0 Evangelist

It's said that when asked if she would join an anti-war protest, Mother Theresa responded that she would rather be pro-peace.

I was reminded of the Mother Theresa story in a post by Euan Semple and it was timely for me after a long week.

Many of us who push the concepts of social computing, and enterprise 2.0 are often referred to as "evangelists". From my experience, this is a pretty good way to describe what we do. We spend huge amounts of effort & time bestowing the values of engaging employees, providing them an opportunity to be heard, to really collaborate en mass.

And we have to do that without having hard "proof". Belief without proof? Well, I guess that's referred to as faith. Considering the number of blogs I have seen that talk to "trying" to calculate an "ROI" for Enterprise 2.0, I am guessing that several others share this challenge on selling the concepts of social computing in an organization. It's hard, it's really really hard!

So why is it so hard? Well, corporations are often geared towards "risk management". When I've had to push concepts of social computing in my professional career, I have on several occasions encounter folks that jump to "risk management". Why not? Haven't we trained people to think this way?

Companies often say they want to promote "risk taking" and "innovation" but we don't reward them for that. The truth is that we ask for this, but when we take a risk and it doesn't pay-off, the company often comes down hard on those people. Actions speak louder then corporate messaging. Over time, we train people to be risk averse. You won't get fired for NOT adopting social media in the company.

When did all the departments shift from being centres of excellence to becoming "risk management" centres? Human Resources (HR) is about what we shouldn't do. Corporate Communications is about what we shouldn't say, Finance is about what we shouldn't fund. Someone help! We are "risk managing" ourselves to death!

Perhaps the pendulum has swung in the wake of the big corporate scandals. Perhaps it's just reinforcing Maslow's hierarchy and we're too busy worrying about survival that we're nowhere close to self-actualization. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear, and that is the challenge ahead of all E2.0 evangelists is enormous.

But keep faith my friends! Because in your organization, there will be people that "get it". That will support your concepts. They may not get it yet, but they will. Because what you're evangelizing isn't about a bunch of technology. It never has been. It's about the human potential. About a more efficient and effective way to collaborate. Collaboration is the ENTIRE reason a company exists. That's why we brought people together, because we could do more together. Our perspective needs to change and you need to be that agent of mental change management. In a way, you too are managing risk. The risk that your organization will be irrelevant if doesn't start thinking about what social media means.

I'll give you a tip. There is no "one way" to succeed. I've seen top-down, bottom-up, middle-out evangelism that have all been successful. There are several tactics you can use, but I'll save that for another post. For today, I just wanted to remind you that it's worth the effort and you're not alone! Don't give up.

Video Games + Social Computing?

I admit, one reason I've written fewer posts recently is because I am the new owner of a Wii. Each time I turn it on, I feel a "pang" of guilt, knowing full well, that there is always house stuff to do, great articles to read, blog posts to complete....

But thanks to an interesting article in Discover Magazine titled, "This is Your Brain on Video Games: Gaming sharpens thinking, social skills, and perception", I have been able to partially justify my addiction. It turns out that the hours spent playing these games is really an intellectual investment in myself. Yay!

"they now recognize the cognitive benefits of playing video games: pattern recognition, system thinking, even patience. Lurking in this research is the idea that gaming can exercise the mind the way physical activity exercises the body: It may be addictive because it’s challenging."

"The findings contradict nearly all the preconceived ideas about the impact of games. The gaming population turned out to be consistently more social, more confident, and more comfortable solving problems creatively. They also showed no evidence of reduced attention spans compared with nongamers. "

The article is full of interesting references to various scientific studies, and examples of the application of video games into the real-world. I can't do it justice in this post, so suggest you take a read.

I do want to highlight a couple points that have implications in the world of social computing and Enterprise 2.0

1. Focus

You've likely read articles that talk about the lack of focus in today's youth. For example, they are unable to read a whole article, never mind an entire book. That they are constantly in the need for "multi-tasking" but is that really just another way of saying they can't focus? Well have you ever tried to pull them away from a video game?

The article provides examples of how several subjects were able to withstand high-levels of discomfort and distraction for hours playing a video game simulation. Now think about an E2.0 work environment where we ask for collective input from our employees. Perhaps we ask a sales person to update the sales manual, or a service rep to provide their thoughts on how to provide awesome customer experience through a blog.

Unless you are one of a very few companies that actually provides time for employees and have changed your compensation model to allow for this activity, it is likely, these requests are additional "volunteer" work that people just can't find the time to do because they are too busy or become distracted by the barrage of e-mails, phone calls, etc...

In a world of Blackberrys, it's pretty easy to get distracted. Using game design may help ensure focus on the social applications we build, or simply how we work. Have you been to a presentation that you just couldn't focus on and perhaps once or twice you peaked at your Blackberry? The next two points can provide some clues as to how to do this.

2. Optimal Learning and the "Regime of Competence"

This concept talks about finding the sweet spot to learning. Basically, the challenge can't be too hard where it's frustrating nor should it be too easy where it is dismissed. If you create a packaged application that is designed for the masses, you will undoubtedly have some people that will dismiss/ignore the application and others that will be frustrated by it.

Video Games however, stagger difficulty on a progressive basis, that finds the "sweet spot" (or as psychologists refer to it, a regime of competence). Similarly in any social application you deploy consider offering a basic "level" which anyone can get started, but then increasing the challenge level after they successfully master a level.

The concept of raising the challenge progressively ensures that people develop and enhance skills always in the sweet spot. If it's too easy, people dismiss it and if it's too hard people give up.

"In October 2006 the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) endorsed video games as a potential means for teaching 'higher-order thinking skills, such as strategic thinking, interpretive analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change.'"

3. Reinforcement & Motivation Theory

That which gets rewarded gets repeated. Video game designers knows this really well. So much is written on motivation theory, so let me just provide a couple of "video game" concepts that work.

• Relative ranking: With online gaming, you can see how good you really are relative to other players in the world. You can also see it based on various other dimensions (i.e. Geography, Level, etc.). Vroom's infamous Expectancy Theory talks to the valence concept which is the value held to the reward. The value to an extent is relative (i.e. If I achieve a score of 10,000 I might be pretty happy, but if I find out that score is in the bottom 5% I am not going to be as thrilled). Competition helps ensure we don't become satisfied with a certain level of performance but strive to do better and better with a known achievable benchmark.


• Badges: After achieving a special feat you are awarded badges. This is an emblem to show others or for personal fulfillment of accomplishment. What makes this effective is knowing they you have achieved a certain level of distinction which can be proudly shown to others.


• Progression levels: If you have completed 37/40 levels, the desire to just complete it after you've spent so much effort is there. In fact, smart design may actually skew the level so it is non-linear. In other words, level 1-30 may really have been very easy but 31-38 hard and 39-40 extremely hard. Gamers only see that they are "so close" when really the design was intentionally done to get them to that level.

• Unlocking Surprises: Often games will provide a "surprise" that you can accidentally find. This seemingly "random" reward is a powerful motivating factor. Think of the power of slot machines as an example. Several studies have examined various reinforcement schedules and have found the the most "addictive" of these is Variable Ratio. Variable ratio has the highest rate of responding and the greatest resistance to extinction compared to other reinforcement schedules.

I can now go back to my parents and explain that I really wasn't wasting my life away playing all those video games. If James Gee, a professor at the University of Wisconsin is correct, we can expect the video game generation well prepared for a 2.0 world

"They’re going to think well about systems; they’re going to be good at exploring; they’re going to be good at reconceptualizing their goals based on their experience; they’re not going to judge people’s intelligence just by how fast and efficient they are; and they’re going to think nonlaterally. In our current world with its complex systems that are quite dangerous, those are damn good ways to think.”

Now if you don't mind.... "Scuse me while I kiss the Sky" on Guitar Hero III

5 Facebook Lessons to Improve Employee Engagement in Your Company

So perhaps your company isn't sold on this whole Myspace/Facebook thing. Perhaps they've dismissed it as a fad for young people, much like how the Internet had been dismissed when it first exploded over a decade ago. You may even be hearing the familiar concerns around "lost productivity" and "control of content" that you heard during the explosion of the Web.

Few today would argue that the Internet is a fad or that it's not important to an organization. But the Internet from 10 years ago is not today's Internet. Today's internet is all about collaboration. Sure there is a lot of over-inflated hype in web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 but there are underlying truths you can benefit from.

Today, according to Forrester, over 60% of Internet traffic is considered User Generated Content (UGC). This is not a "revolutionary" event. It didn't happen overnight. It's simply an alternative means to communicate and collaborate that can be more efficient in some situations. IS it Facebook? No! I sure hope not! But the underlying concepts that Facebook and similar environments have created can teach us several lessons in employee engagement. Lessons that will help your company be successful.

These concepts can be applied to your corporate applications or portals. In fact they can be applied outside of technology into your processes and meetings to drive employee engagement and collaboration. In this post, I've listed 5 Facebook lessons for your corporate consideration.


1. PERSONALIZATION

No two Facebook profiles will be exactly the same. This is because your profile is unique just like you are. In Facebook, the world revolves around you. It's your friends, your applications, your feeds, your notes, your wall, your profile that everyone else connects to. This level of personalization isn't just an "ego fix" (although that's part of it). It drives efficiency. With all the websites on the Internet, you are never going to see them all, nor would you want to. We often hear about how the Millennials spend so much time on the Internet, which there is some truth to, BUT it's only on a few select sites. These sites cater to the individual needs giving them ONLY what they need (and perhaps a few ads!).

Can you see how an employee might benefit from having everything at their finger tips? And don't forget the "human" piece. Companies often say, "you matter" but then only communicate in a "mass communication" or "form letters" that treats you like everyone else. Extreme personalization caters to the individual.


2. AGILITY

In a previous blog, I commented on a Forrester finding that showed only 10% of the knowledge you need, as an information worker, is actually acquired through formal training. The 90% is actually sourced ad-hoc and developed via collaboration. The speed of commerce is simply too fast, to formally learn things. And the cost to deeply understand is often outweighed by the realities that knowledge has a shelf life! Agility in how we get information, how we share information, how we add applications, are all concepts that your teenager understands and employees could benefit from. Are the Millennials different than every other generation in regards to agility? I don't think so. I think the difference is we've been told over-and-over that it just takes time. So we accept it. Even though it's not true.


3. FUN

Can work be fun?! Absolutely. Unfortunately, we've taken the fun out of work often because on misconceptions around productivity. "Don't waste time chatting! Get back to work!" I find it funny (funny peculiar) how we as Enterprise 2.0 practitioners are asked to justify ROI for social media but nobody asks us to show them the ROI on taking that client to the hockey game or what's the ROI of that golf game? We know people collaborate best because of relationships. Not just business clients. ALL people. Yes, even our employees! If you treat employees as machines don't expect any breakthroughs or creative thoughts. Machines are not capable of that.


4. TRUST

Surprise! You are more likely to believe your friends than you are corporate advertising. Forrester also did some recent surveys that show Trust in Corporate Advertising is at an all-time low! Adding social elements to applications, processes, meetings, improves relationships and ultimately trust. Trust is accelerated by the informal. By the, "So how did your daughter do in that soccer game?".

Can you create ways for employees to converse amongst themselves around business messages and still yield productivity results and maintain focus of the message? Yes! In fact, I would argue, you'd be surprised that the employees might even know the message better than the executives if given a chance.


5. COLLABORATION

Facebook would be pretty boring if you were the only face on it. The ability to connect with people, and provide opportunities for self-organization are core. In a past post, I talked about the engagement factors (motivation, opportunity, capability) and Facebook gets it. It's fun and respects the individual. It feeds our ego centric curiosity and we're motivated for more. It's open to anybody. You can leverage "spare moments of time" to update your status and read your aggregated news feed. You have the opportunity. And it's simple! You don't spend time reading the manual to use Facebook. Everyone has the capability.

Ultimately, this allows people to interact and collaborate. In a corporate setting, I would suggest you add some direction to the area you need to focus on, but maintain the elements for engagement.

Theses are my 5 key lessons from Facebook. If you want to read more about lessons from Facebook, take a look at this good post by Derek Abdinor, "Facebook: 10 lessons for the Enterprise".

I know we apply these when designing social applications. What other lessons can you think of that can be applied to a corporate setting?

The Millennials will alter how we work

Today, myself and some of my colleagues had the opportunity to chat with about 100 grade 9 students. It was the annual "take our kids to work" day. I know the intent of this is to show students what work is like, but I have to admit I was eager to learn from them and test whether they were aware of how they will and already have changed the way we work. With 80,000,000 millennials born in North America there is no doubt we need to listen and learn.

So much is being written about millennials and the "war for talent" these days. One of my favourite articles is a white paper published by New Paradigm on the Net Generation. In it they provide some specific recommendations for companies on how to attract millennials and how to retain them.

In my discussion today, I showed several "enterprise 2.0" concepts... A thought struck me as I was demonstrating how we are using these enterprise 2.0 tools...for them it's really 1.0! There is no "change" per se... It's just always been that way.

The opportunity to express yourself digitally, to obtain information on-demand, to multi-multi-task, to have fun is simply how they operate. When I asked them why a company would consider using "Facebook", they got it immediately. It's about collaborating, sharing information on your terms, keeping relationships. I didn't need to "persuade" them. They started telling me statistics on Facebook and it's adoption in Canada was nearly 15%.

I even showed illustrations of SecondLife and virtual reality and asked them why a company would even consider this. I heard back instantly... "Because it's fun." Interestingly enough, one of the chaperone's replied with disbelief, "Why would anyone consider virtual worlds?". That concept of fun and work don't intersect will not hold up for this generation.

So it was a fun day, and to be honest, I didn't get the feeling they understood the impact they will have on work... But then again they're still only in grade 9.... And for them... it just is.

Holism: The Real Enterprise 2.0 Opportunity! - Part 4

THIS IS PART 4 OF A MULTI-BLOG POST ON HOLISM & E2.0

Click Here to Read Part 1: Introduction to Holism & E2.0
Click Here to Read Part 2: Organizational Complexity
Click Here to Read Part 3: Process Complexity

Technical Complexity

In the beginning, we had no technology, well let's say no Information Systems. The advent of the computer allowed us to start doing some neat things. Initially, the operational applications helped us automate tasks and simplify our work, then later on, decision support systems allowed us to leverage the data being generated and apply it in decision making.

The rapid growth of technology in both operational and decision support systems was amazing. Basically any process you can think of, could be complemented to some degree with computer aided applications. We built each application for a specific purpose (well that seems logical) and then we built decision support systems for each of these operational applications.

No problems so far... except that each application we build is really in support of a larger process. Those companies that could "automate" information flow form system to system could further optimize their process through integration.

So.... We built lots of great interfaces. Taking "ordering information" from the ordering system, transforming the data so we can pass it on to the provisioning system. But it was a lot of work, and the number of systems out there were large, and they were never built to be integrated. Eventually we had something like this...

Remember, the whole purpose for an organization to exist is to collaborate. Why else would we group people together? The challenge though is that the systems were designed in silos, and data was scattered everywhere. Operational efficiency was a mess because of difficult, complex integration and decision support was a mess because data used in the systems were never intended for decision support. Data was inconsistent across all of these systems and non-integrated.

Eventually, the SAP's of the world attempted to think holistically about the systems, arguing that all the apps could be (should be) produced by one organization therefore ensuring tight integration and process flow. Concepts around data warehousing & knowledge management emerged both from a centralized (move all data into a single data warehouse) and a decentralized model (create ways to better integrate, transform, standardize, govern data across all the existing systems).

Not to go over the entire history of the rise of IT systems, but the key points are that "people were not stupid", sorry all you IT haters out there. We just focused on the problem piece-by-piece as requested. Without holistic context though we created a mess. Our attempts to resolve this were usually from a top-down command and conquer approach. Very tough & very costly. I should note that newer architectural concept of SOA however may help prove to be very helpful.

But how does enterprise 2.0 help? Well, it's by focusing on the individual (the person) instead of the systems. Rather than solely trying to build the ultimate system or the most rigid governance rules to force consistency of information across an entire organization, let the people in the organization organize the information and context. This could be through wikis, tags, or other social computing applications.

The self-organization of people, in an open system that allows for individuals to provide input collaboratively can result in:

1. Relevancy: Self-organization means that you will build knowledge stores of information that are relevant to most people in the organization. Rather than trying to update and maintain every piece of data, people prioritize what is relevant. Those items that are irrelevant or of less need simply get less attention. This means higher efficiency of the information system.

2. Comprehension: Having been in the IT domain for over a decade, I know first hand how the language of IT and the rest of the world is different. Structured metadata, often lacks business context. Even with metadata governance programs that leverage business input, we often miss the point and it's always a small group (or 1 person) that decides the context for everyone. Open-systems allows the entire organization to modify the meaning that will best suit the organization.

3. Agility: Individuals that are closest to a process or a change in the process are not the same folks that can offer the context the changing nature of information. Not usually anywasy. Have you ever read a data dictionary that was out-dated with no means of fixing it? Having everyone as potential editors means massive levels of parallelization, and often leads to subject matter experts contributing to their domains specifically.

4. Usability: An open, central system that enables coordinated input from an entire organization means everyone knows where to get information and how to update information in a direct way. Other attempts in BI & KM also focus on centralization, but often only from a consumption perspective.

I am not arguing against ERP, KM or BI systems and theory but suggesting we complement them with the awesome power of people. In the end, the organization really is about the people. Your people are the only way to provide understanding & insight. That's something that can't be automated. Not just a few but everyone in the organization since it's everyone that makes up the organization. With proper guidelines, 'necessary' level of governance, we may have a better way to think holistically. Are there challenges and risks? Yes. These are similar to the ones we hear about Wikipedia. But this is where you as an Enterprise 2.0 practictioner can go beyond web 2.0, consider the success factors and offer supporting processes and accountability to minimize the risk.

This is the final part of the Holism discussion. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on any of the parts.

You are the Centre of the Universe

A simple concept that sometimes gets lost in all this discussion about mass collaboration and social networking is around perspective. More specifically, the perspective that the individual is the centre of the universe, and everything else revolves around them.




The concept of collaboration should not focus only on the "WE", but celebrate the "ME". In fact omission of this will lead to "group think" and inappropriate consensus building. For those designing social computing applications, the implication is that an attempt to build a "platform" without the ability to tailor the experience to the individual will only be partially successful.


We can start to see this adoption of user centralization blossoming in the Web 2.0 world as discussed by Bill Ives in his recent blog titled "Everyone in Web 2.0 Seems to be doing Profiles". Without this "profile" and understanding, your contributions are limited to your ambitions and efforts alone. Profiling, then starts address the "opportunity" aspects of engagement.


What if Wikipedia, had profiling information (or leveraged profile information from elsewhere), the casual reader may be alerted of an article that fits his profile that is either recently updated which they mind find of interest or they may be asked to help the cause by identifying articles that fit the profile but require more input or validation.


WIKIPEDIA HERE'S AN IDEA.....


I don't know about you, but I don't spend my Friday nights trying to find articles to update in Wikipedia. But I might be motivated to update an article if I was asked to do it and it fit my interests and expertise and was readily visible with no search required.


We should see more and more "profiles" being created into applications, and ultimately people will get frustrated by the numerous profiles they have to maintain, and perhaps that's where Google will jump in and create the ultimate profile and social graph. ;)

When self-organization fails

I had an interesting discussion with my friend Peter the other day about when social computing may be less effecting or perhaps inappropriate completely. One of the items touched on was the concept around self-organization.

In situations, where you are looking for the passionate, motivated and driven people in a mass crowd, self-selection can help navigate the social network through transparency and openness. For example, if a company wanted to identify new product features for a niche product, it may simply open up a forum of some sort to all, and allow those with interest self-organize and provide input.

But what about when you need to bring people together who don't want to come together. Perhaps it's a sales team VS a marketing team where you need to make a critical decision for the company? Holding a forum and providing opportunity for participation may yield no benefit as both groups may see it as a "waste of time". What if the "experts" in the room are so set into their thinking they have dismissed the new "concepts" flat out? Or if the new "concepts" do not heed the wisdom of the experts?

Ever hear of the concept of "locking people in a room until they solve the problem"? What happens when the people don't want to be in the same room? Sometimes, the face-to-face session is necessary to "force" collaboration. Through tailored collaboration events and skilled facilitation professionals, you can chip away at the limitations of self-organization. Perhaps an E2.0 approach could be a sequential next step once you've overcome the motivational factors that oppose collaboration.

There are other areas where social computing (as an initial start) may be less effective that I've discussed before but would love to hear your thoughts.

Web 2.0 an evolution of facilitation and not KM?

I recently had the pleasure to chat with David Ticoll on a variety of topics. One of the observations he made during our discussion was the concept that Web 2.0, may be the evolution of facilitation and not knowledge management as many people believe.

Within the company I work for, we definitely see the relationship between facilitation and next-generation collaboration tools (Enterprise 2.0). In fact, we've created a single organization that combines these areas.

As I thought more about this, the more I was convinced that Enterprise 2.0 really is an extension of facilitation. Although there is definite value in the digital retention of conversations & documents, that is more a secondary benefit. The holy grail for is really on the achievement of results impossible to accomplish individually. It's the true definition of collaboration, and the creation of new insight or innovation.

Perhaps it's semantics but knowledge management usually implies the ability to effectively retain, distribute and find specific information. This would be effective communication. There is a big difference as I've previously written about... Enterprise 2.0 isn't about communication.... It's about collaboration...

The Weak Links in your Social Network are the Greatest Value.

Last week, Shiv Singh wrote an excellent article, "Social Networks and Group Formation", about theoretical concepts of social network based on various research that has been conducted on the topic dating back to 1973. His insight and application to 'modern day' web 2.0 concepts provides practitioners with some practical considerations. Here are a couple of interesting points he makes.


1. Focus on Weak Ties for your social applications.

Weak ties are more beneficial for individuals. One study demonstrated that people landed jobs thanks to their weak ties not their strong ties. The thinking is strong ties already share most of the same information so do not add much incremental value.


2. Provide Opportunities for sub-networks to grow.

The majority of people in a social network are actually outside the "main" network and reside in sub-networks. Overtime these networks integrate with the larger network. Those social applications that understand this will benefit. Perhaps another insight I would suggest is that having the "capability" to "integrate" these networks (for example using a single platform) into a larger network can overcome concerns of diversity that I previously blogged about.


I look forward to reading the next part of Sivh's article.

Holism: The Real Enterprise 2.0 Opportunity! - Part 3

THIS IS PART 3 OF A MULTI-BLOG POST ON HOLISM & E2.0

Click Here to Read Part 1: Introduction to Holism & E2.0

Click Here to Read Part 2: Organizational Complexity

Click Here to Read Part 4: Technical Complexity

Process Complexity

The more steps in a process, the more groups involved in a process, the more complicated it is and ultimately companies miss the complete picture and think they are doing well when in fact they are doing terribly. Let me jump right into an example to explain this. You may be able to relate to this example...

The above process diagram is a simple process example of someone calling a helpdesk to fix a problem they are having with one of their appliances. In this example, the customer calls the "Customer Support" line and gets treated to a wonderful Voice Recognition IVR type system. The IVR system quizzes the customer for information for the model# of the appliance, the warranty#, etc. In this example, the IVR System records the information from the customer correctly 90% of the time. Errors may result in the system incorrectly translating input from the customer or even the customer providing incorrect information.

Armed with all the information from the IVR system, a call centre rep next talks to the customer and goes through a standard list of questions (i.e. Did you check the batteries, Did you try check the fuse, etc..). 80% of the time, the FAQ actually works or we properly send it to a 2nd level support person. Unfortunately 20% of the time we make some kind of mistake and perhaps falsely diagnose the problem & solution. Maybe the problem even looks solved but there is a bigger problem we missed.

The customer is now getting a little frustrated but confident that the "expert" 2nd line support will solve the problem with their appliance. The "expert" engages a detailed discussion with the customer and eventually comes to solution. Not only do they have a solution but 95% of the time, it's the right solution. Happy that they figured out the problem, the "expert" types up a ticket, and sends the ticket to call in the technician to get the parts and fix the problem. The ticketing system still required human input and 90% of the time everything is entered properly in the system.

Finally, the technician gets the ticket and schedules an appointment with the customer to come and fix the problem. For the most part (85% of the time) showing up to customers place on time actually happens and 90% of the time once the technician arrives, they have no defects in the parts and can properly fix the problem.

The reality is that only 47.1%, less than half of the customers calling in, actually have an "acceptable" experience dealing with the company to get the problem fixed. The Majority actually experiences a problem somewhere in the overall process. In fact, they are likely to experience more than one problem in this example. Now that is definitely a bad thing. But it gets worse!

As discussed in part 2, we have different divisions in the company each focused on their objectives. On the surface, each of the groups thinks they are doing well. Imagine you were a technician, and someone said that customer service is horrible and it's your fault. Well!!!! You would pull out your reports and show them that 90% of repairs are fixed correctly and 85% of the scheduling is done correctly. You hit your targets! Let's say you even understand that of the 85% of the customers properly scheduled that only 10% of the time could we not fix the problem. You would still argue 76.5% isn't bad. It's definitely not 47.1%!!! So the problem must be elsewhere....

Ultimately, the company either falsely thinks things are doing just fine because they look at the division metrics and draw conclusions or they go insane trying to pinpoint the problem when the problem isn't just one point.

This is a VERY simple process. Try taking this example and thinking realistically about a process in your organization. I guarantee it's more than 7 steps and 4 groups like this example. Real processes in large organizations looks much uglier than this example. The point here is that you need to understand the complete end-to-end process and all the steps to fully understand the impact. Say that fast and it may sound easy, but I assure you, it is far from easy.

Enterprise 2.0 allows us to re-think this. These tools, provide a means to allow an entire company to collaborate on any situation. Not just a sample group or a focus group, but every individual working for one cause and as one organization. It would start by enabling us to see things holistically. Imagine if everything was tagged with just a customer's name. Imagine, that individuals could openly share their insights into blogs, discussion forums or custom built social computing applications. Imagine that tools like wiki's would be used not by division but by customer to create holistic understanding.

Once we realize the magnitude of the problem, we can allow the employees to resolve the problem. To work as one company and address the problem as a whole. What if the Q&A, FAQ, Repair details were all on one wiki being collectively worked on instead of handed off. Might the technician be able to review the work from the 2nd Line support and correct a discrepancy before they make a mistake in fixing the wrong problem? What if the customer themselves could modify details of the scheduling? What if the call centre had read/write access to a wiki of FAQ's as did the 2nd line support and Technicians?

This list of ways we could improve the overall process can go much further. The point here is that... Arguably... For the first time we can start to really give all employees a voice that integrates with all parts of the organization. Will it happen by technology alone? Absolutely not. But it's not not about the technology.

4 Tips to Harnessing Informal Learning

I read a Forrester article called "Informal learning connects with Corporate Training Programs". Although the title may not suggest it, it is actually a very interesting article.

One piece of research they discussed that caught my attention is that back in 1986, 75% of the knowledge you needed to do your job was "in your head". Things you would have formally learned. In 2006, only 10% of the information you need to do your job is actually "in your head". The rest is access to information, Internet and collaboration.

The implications are several and most are discussed in the article. The bottom line from Forrester...

THE DAYS OF FILLING EMPTY HEADS IS OVER!

The new critical skill is the ability to un-learn and rapidly learn new. Here's a few suggestions I have for you to survive in this new world.

1. Enhance Your Network/Community
If only 10% of insight is useful, then the more connected you are the better the chances you will get the help you need with your network. Personally I prefer the concept of community over a network. Your network/community needs to have a trusting relationship to work. Notice I didn't say build the network. The fact that you have 1000 contacts on LinkedIn is useless unless you are able to really tap into each of those 1000 contacts. Don't just focus on quantity, focus on strength of your relationships.

2. Constantly Learn
Take advantage of RSS & Social Bookmarking! There is so much information out there, how do you find what is of value to you. RSS & Social Bookmarking holds part of the answer.

3. Collaborate
More and more we have opportunities to collaborate. Take advantage of them. If you want to be the lone hero all of the time... You will end up just being alone.

4. Develop Critical Thinking Skills
With the abundance of information, and no clear cut answer on anything. You'll need to personally evaluate what is right and what is even more correct. Tap into the network, RSS, other sources but in the end make-up your own decision.

What else would you suggest?

Holism: The Real Enterprise 2.0 Opportunity! - Part 2

THIS IS PART 2 OF A MULTI-BLOG POST ON HOLISM & E2.0

Click Here to Read Part 1: Introduction

Click Here to Read Part 3: Process Complexity

Click Here to Read Part 4: Technical Complexity

Organizational Complexity

Typical organizational structure stems from the military model. The classic hierarchical model is intended to ensure proper chain-of-command, decision making and consistency. The "cascade" method of information and delegation, ensures a single focus especially in complex situations where the explanation of details impeded action. For example, in a war, immediate actions needed to take place and there was no time to explain every single action to every single person. Business operates in a similar fashion. We create hierarchies to ensure speed since the ability to manage all the details and make smart decisions on every aspect of a business is simply impossible for any single person. We "empower" the different levels in a hierarchy allowing them them to make their own decisions but always from a cascaded fashion to ensure a "single" direction.

So far, this seems to make sense. The side-effect however is that the bigger the organization and the larger the hierarchy, the more difficult it is to truly understand the entire business. This lack of holism, eventually results in decisions and ideas that may be good for a small group but is actually not the best option for the larger group. We get what we reward for.

For example, consider a company that is organized as shown in the org chart. This company makes widgets, and has grown rapidly over the last 5 years. To accommodate this growth, they've needed to hire more and more people. The size of the company requires the President to delegate decision making authority. Each SVP has clearly defined objectives. The SVP of Manufacturing, is tasked with reducing the per unit cost by 10%, the SVP sales is tasked with increasing total sales by 25%, etc... For the SVP of sales to hit her targets, she knows the biggest growth area will be in North America, and that her efforts should be slanted to growth and cascades targets to the VP of N.A. to 35%, and 20% to Europe. This cascaded approach attempts to ensure a single focus and continues down the hierarchy.

There are several examples, we can now illustrate where the need of the "division" goes counter to the best value for the company. The organizational structure inadvertently rewards people to think in silos. Here are a few examples, I am certain you can think of more.

1. GM of Prod A in North America has client who really needs Prod B but doesn't realize this because his specialty is Prod A and is rewarded for Prod A sales.
2. GM Prod A in Europe has client who wants Product B which is only available in North America for now. Since this doesn't contribute to the goals of the SVP nothing becomes of this opportunity.
3. Manufacturing is testing out a new development process that will increase the strength of the product. Sales person in North America knows of a client who would is in need of a stronger product. The two never talk.
4. Manufacturing fixes a "bug" with it's products but the ground sales staff, have found out that some of their lead customers are taking advantage of the "bug" to do interesting things with the product.
5. Techniques used to sell Product B in Europe could also be applied in North America but are not necessarily shared.

In some cases, we incent people to not collaborate and in other cases we don't even know what we don't even know. This is where Enterprise 2.0 technologies can level the organizational structure and allow flow of information, to cross all parts of the organization and not be restricted to the hierarchical model.

It doesn't mean we abolish the hierarchical structure (although I know some of the readers of this blog would argue that... I did write a piece on self-organization which you may find interesting), but at a minimum it means providing the decision makers at every level of the hierarchy with unfiltered raw information. Information that would likely not float up and over. At least not having been filtered for "relevancy" at each level.

Not only is it information flow, it's connecting people in ways we wouldn't have had them connected. Allowing the right people to get connected. What if we brought in that sales person who was very close to a product and knew exactly how the clients were manipulating the product to suite other needs. What if you tapped into his knowledge when testing out the new designs? What if you connected 5 people out of 10,000 who all had dealings with a specific client but didn't know one another?

Discussion Forums, Blogging, JAM sessions, all have the opportunity to open up communication. Tagging, RSS, social bookmarking, Next-Gen Search capabilities provide the means to wade through the information.

Classic delegation through hierarchies and the creation of silos have the inadvertent effect of filtering information. If it's not relevant to my department or business unit, it's unlikely to stored by the company. This is where Enterprise 2.0 can have a direct impact. We can now ask the questions across the entire corporation (if you don't ask, it's unlikely you'll get an answer). Not only can you ask questions, by allowing people to express themselves on those things they personally judge to be of interest could answer questions we have yet to ask. The personalization of Enterprise 2.0 means that not only does information flow, but the people either "answer" the questions, or provide insight can be brought together to work on new initiatives, or ad-hoc requests in teams that may never have known one another before not bound by department, functional area, or hierarchical level.

Holism: The Real Enterprise 2.0 Opportunity! - Part 1

The BIGGEST opportunity for a company that applies web 2.0 internally (aka Enterprise 2.0) is to create a holistic understanding and achieve holistic execution.

What is it worth to have a complete unified end-to-end understanding of your company, products/services, processes and customers!? Using that knowledge to truly create a holistic strategy for your corporation and then able to execute and track it holistically! Imagine being able to have all the benefits of being big (economies of scale & scope, stable infrastructure, reliability, credibility, financial strength, etc...) combined with the benefits of being small (agility, innovation, intimate knowledge, flexibility, etc...)!

This is part 1 of a multi-part blog that explores the achievement of holism in a company, why it fails today and how Enterprise 2.0 technologies, processes and philosophy (yes there is a philosophy behind this) COULD allow large companies to achieve impressive achievements. Like all things, there is no "magic bullet" but there is opportunity for those that are willing to invest, be patient, nurture and commit to an Enterprise 2.0 strategy.

Most of what you will see today on applying web 2.0 in a company (aka Enterprise 2.0), revolves around achieving similar benefits internally that have been proven successful out in the Internet. For example, people talk about Wikipedia and say... "Now what if we made a Wikipedia but just for our company? Could we create a Companyipedia that allows employees to document terms we use in our company? We could achieve the same results Wikipedia has done...". This kind of "replicating" value internally could be stated about most of the web 2.0 type technologies (RSS, Tagging, Social Networks, blogging, etc...)

There is nothing wrong with this, but it is only a small part of the story. Sure, you will be able to gain value from the technology, but it's the ability to integrate thoughts, knowledge and ideas that smash through silos & bureaucracy for a unified corporate vision that should excite smart companies. As companies grow in response to growing demand for their products/services, or to improve their offering or to achieve economies of scale & scope, they often unknowingly sacrifice agility, innovation & flexibility.

Growth leads to specialization in different areas which ultimately adds overall complexity to the organization. This complexity ends up destroying our ability to achieve a complete holistic (end-to-end) understanding of the company, the products/services, and it's customers. How exactly does this happen? Well, it's complicated but can basically be grouped into 3 areas.

1. People/Organizational Complexity


2. Process/Competency Complexity


3. Technical Complexity

The next series of blogs will focus on each of these 3 areas and how Enterprise 2.0 can start to address these areas to re-gain holism for a large company. Although I am speaking primarily to large corporate entities, the same could be applied to other large organizations. For smaller organizations, they can also reap the benefits however theirs is not the same challenge. In a small company, the ability to know everyone and what they do and how it affects everyone else is easier. Until Enterprise 2.0 however, there was arguably no real way to achieve mass collaboration.

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Considerations before jumping on the E2.0 Bandwagon.

Here is a recent post I did on the Wikinomics group on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here for those readers that are not on that discussion group. This post was part of a discussion around good & bad experiences with social networking. Regular readers of this blog will see the first point a recount of the Mesh07 session on Digital Blinders.

Aug 6, 2007

Here are a couple of my thoughts related to the the conversation. Let me start by saying, I am convinced about the positive power of mass collaboration but so much is written on this, that I didn't think I would add to it here. Instead I picked a couple of thoughts that hopefully are a bit different.

1. In theory, could social networks of self-organizing individuals actually pull people further apart? The concept is that people often band with those that have similar thoughts and ideas rather than thoughts that have ideas that go counter to theirs. For example, if I was active in politics I might join a community that caters to and reinforces my political beliefs further driving in my beliefs and "dismissing" others beliefs. I saw a news show that talked about some disturbing organizations that held beliefs that were downright scary (and illegal) but apparently members banned together to reinforce that their beliefs were "justified" and everyone else is "wrong". I spoke to an editor of Wikipedia at a recent conference around some apparent concerns that Wikipedia, was "slanted to the scientific" beliefs and not accurately providing "creationism" a fair chance, so a separate encyclopedia for "creationism" perspectives has been created. What is good though, is that at least one of the ingredients is there to improve upon understanding and that is availability. An individual can choose to open their minds to alternate concepts or not. If however they choose not, they can likely find ways to reinforce their beliefs and dismiss others. I was introduced to this concept at a recent Mesh conference. Here is my blog on it if you're interested:

http://rexsthoughtspot.blogspot.com/2007/05/mesh07-digital-blinders-are-we-inch.html

2. The "whisper" and "smear" topics made me think about the reality of speed and the potential negative impact if we're wrong. Recently in Ontario, a government official made a derogatory remark referring to a citizen as a "ghetto dude". They didn't realize that they had sent the e-mail back to the citizen and when news broke, groups started popping up in several spots (including facebook), many of which publicly showed the picture of the person and demanded their resignation. The concern here was that some of these sites actually put the wrong picture up! Same name, wrong person. I listened to the mother of the falsely accused girl on the radio tell her story,(I suppose the girl herself was too distraught to tell her story directly) about how people accepted these pop-up groups as truth and immediately started harassing the girl and her family. Yes, they got the picture removed eventually but it seems much damage had already been inflicted. Here's the Toronto Star article on this:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t576946.html

I guess a common thread here is that each individual has the opportunity to seek multiple perspectives and sources of information through the Internet and social networks. But do they? Do they REALLY seek to understand those different beliefs? Are we sometimes victim to the zero-sum game concept? That there can only be 1 right answer? I don't know the answers but would recommend enterprise 2.0 practioners consider these concepts when building their overall strategy.

Swarm Theory & Social Computing

As a father, I've watched the movie "A Bug's Life" several times. In the movie, there is a scene where the locust (the bad guys) are laughing about how they can boss around the wee little ants (the good guys), until the head locust illustrates to the other locust that as individual ants, they are puny, but if they were to organize themselves they would be over-powering mass force. Yes, I realize I am referring to a kids cartoon, however, the power of self-organization by insects and animals to overcome huge challenges is the topic of this months National Geographic. The article is called Swarm Theory and it has interesting applications to social computing and mass collaboration concepts.

The article has several very interesting examples of how ants, bees, fish and other animals can do seemingly complex tasks even though individually these creatures really aren't all that intelligent. For example an experiment on bees shows how scout bees select the best new home through a democratic process based on individual assessments. Read the article, it's fascinating. The ability to do this isn't dictated through some genius bee nor is it a simple group think. Instead it is individual analysis where some bees select one home and others select another home. "Voting" by the bees is used to make the final decision for the colony on the "best" location.

"One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all—at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing."

For a company looking to enter in the social computing domain, there are lessons we can learn from nature. The ability to harness social computing and mass collaboration requires opportunity but also individual assessment. If we let people loose to "self-organize" but they don't have enough expertise to make a "valid" decision or they get lazy and go with the most popular we lose the benefit from mass collaboration. When rules and laws are well understood mass collaboration is powerful. Simple rules lend itself to large groups but complex rules, if understood well, can also be addressed through collaboration.

"an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. "

Before you expect great things from social computing in your organization, consider whether or not your employees are equipped to act responsible and empowered to make their own decisions. Thank-You Vanessa for pointing out this article.

Kindergarten Creativity: How to break out of the box!

A group of concerned executives of a large firm gathered together to address a pressing issue that could literally destroy their company. They needed to collaborate.

"How many of you are, artists?" asked the facilitator

2 of the 30 put up their hands.

"If I had asked that same question to a group of Kindergarten kids, all of them would have raised their hands." responded the facilitator.

Over time, we incorrectly "grow out of" being artists and transform ourselves into professionals. As if these two things need to be separate. This chips away at our ability to be creative.

We learn from experience, how to get things done, and we validate it every time we apply a proven process to resolve a problem. We become experts in our fields of choice. The more success we have, the more confident we are in our capabilities and skills.

As creatures of habit, we apply mental shortcuts without even knowing it. We identify common patterns and resolve problems as we always have. We see what we want to see, and dismiss those things that don't fit into our paradigm. This is usually a good thing, since most of the problems we'll face are variations of problems we already solved so we are thinking efficiently without having to "re-invent the wheel" every time.

A challenge occurs though when we're suddenly faced with a problem that our mental shortcuts can't resolve. The rules, and logic we've built over time will not allow us to resolve the problem. We are unable to be "creative."

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." - Einstein

It's in these situations that we most need to gain new perspectives, some of them radically different then our own.

But how does one "change their thinking"?

One of the most effective ways is to concede that it will be extremely difficult for you to truly change your thinking. You are a product of your experiences. So instead of struggling, reach out to others who have different experiences and perspectives. Collaborate!

The Gold Corp story that Tapscott references, illustrates this. Through mass collaboration, radical ideas and concepts ultimately saved Gold Corp from bankruptcy. These solutions did not come from their expert geologists but from groups of people who may never have spent a day in the mining industry but were experts in all-together different disciplines with completely different ways of thinking.

It doesn't have to be mass collaboration either. In several situations, mass collaboration is completely in-appropriate. Collaboration in any size can produce creative breakthroughs. The challenge in any type of collaboration is how to ensure people are capable of understanding the perspectives of others, especially when they run counter to ones own paradigm.

A technique that's been used for several years is graphic facilitation. The use of images and graphics, often allows us overcome the limitations of language as we each try to articulate our concepts. You might be surprised by what happens when 2 people are arguing over a point and you ask them to draw their point. They often gain a completely different level of understanding and retention. Sometimes they