Chris, your vision matches mine, even if largely it's pie in the sky at the moment.
Here in Australia we're mostly 18-24 months behind where the US is on corporate social media uptake. Those of us involved in social media here are still trying to convince our clients of the benefits of changing corporate culture to consider these ideas and tools and building the sharing and openness into corporate DNA such that the risk aversion inherent in many businesses sees social media as a benefit rather than as a source for leakage of corporate data.
It's largely about trust in your people to act like adults and implementing a technical infrastructure that reflects that trust. Presently, much of what happens here is still about blocking at the desktop or corporate firewall, treating people like naughty children and adopting a position about one's own role where control and possession of information is where you define your value, rather than seeing value in the sharing of what you know and defining your future value by what you are yet to contribute or create.
We'll all get there - US, UK, Australia and the rest - but we've a way to go yet, unfortunately.
Alex Landefeld
· 2 years ago
Chris,
sounds like too much of an open working environment...but I do think that this is the direction most office work will be moving: moving voip locations, moving workstations, more audio and video on the internal 'net, more daily intercommunication (beyond Outlook or Lotus Notes) across global distances.
..alex.
Marina @ Sufficient Thrust
· 2 years ago
I like the integration of Bluetooth a lot. I need to do that more in my home office. (I was interviewed for an article on web work this morning and mentioned that Twitter gave me a new project/idea every five seconds. Thanks for yet another great one!!)
I still see a lot of separation between work and life -- she might listen to an audio update on her iPod during her evening run, but if you maintain a corporate Twitter/Pownce/Blog/Google Reader/Gcal/etc. and a personal one, that's a lot of overlap. I've discussed personal v. work Twitter feeds with other Twitterers and those conversations thus far have ended with the decision that the Internet is making it harder and harder to put those kinds of walls up.
Why is Sonia even *in* the office? And why do they have firm office hours that someone can be late for?
Why does she use Pownce? I know Pownce can send files and Twitter can't, but I could FTP the file in 0.002 seconds and Tweet the URL. A large corporate environment should limit the # tools they use to those that sync seamlessly with one another. (I have personally tried to sync Pownce and Twitter and given up. Maybe if it worked...)
I know Seesmic is the new thing. I haven't yet been filled in on the idea behind it, and I support everyone working in the way that's best for them, but ... I'm a corporate efficiency consultant with lots of clients around the country, and I never, ever, ever want to receive a video of anything that doesn't absolutely have to be video. Status updates should be text, and ongoing working relationships should build the trust that someone can handle a crisis, not my wasting time listen to them talk to me via video. Sorry, but I'm just not getting this new video trend.
You asked for holes, so there ya go. Very interesting concept, although I would like to see a huge movement away from traditional corporate environments like that altogether.
shel israel
· 2 years ago
Chris this is great. I'm going to mention this in my SAP Global report
Clay Newton
· 2 years ago
Interesting. Here are some thoughts.
You verbed a lot of technology. Just something I noticed, and it's easy to do, but it has some implications, eh? For the sake of brevity, I'll speak only of Twitter. Using Twitter for corp comm is a tough one. I do it to a degree, have pinged @nieskowitz at 6am to see if he could do a demo to some folks on the east coast. Got a tweetback in less than ten minutes. Impressive. Beyond that, the risk of IP loss, brand mangling and such are pretty significant on an open system such as Twitter.
Next assignment: transition plan. The challenge I see in bringing this to a reality is a cultural one. The issue being not so much that a biz culture cannot adopt this type of workflow, but rather a cultural journey that every staff member would have to embark upon. That would be purely magical, but the realist in me gets a bit skeptical. Here's why: at best I have been able to successfully convert only a small percentage of people to social tools in my current and past roles. A Jaiku thread I had with Jason Wehmhoener re: this topic http://jasonw22.jaiku.com/presence/14504530 and a link to the wikipatterns 90-9-1 Theory http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipattern...
I think that 90-9-1 is the general case for biz collaboration in general. That said, 10% is a pretty low bar for making social media effective in the workplace.
It's hellish getting people to use Sharepoint. Maybe that's because Sharepoint is not a good enough tool, but there may be other reasons as well. It wasn't that long ago that email was something of a pain to use due to lack of adoption, was it?
Lovely thought though. And I was not joking about the transition plan. Big question: how do you drive adoption of disruptive things that make complete sense but require a leap of faith? Especially at work!
Shannon Whitley
· 2 years ago
Great stuff. Let's get HR into the act with some social bookmarking:
In response to an earlier phone call, Sonia receives a notification in her RSS feed that her Benefits Manager has added some links to her collection of private bookmarks.
Sonia quickly scans the new links. Just what she needed, a list of clinics that treat social-media-induced stress disorder. She'll read the details later from her Blackberry while she watches her son's soccer game.
Kenya
· 2 years ago
This is definitely a wish list of how the enterprise can use social networking. The things I like are the corporate Twitter (the folks at Twitter should think about selling this to corporations). It would be perfect for status updates not just from those you are working with but various systems and applications as well. This also is the up-to-date way to find out what someone is up to. A friend of mine works at a company where every one's Outlook calendars are open to everyone in the company. I think that is very intrusive as I maintain one calendar. But if I could update my corporate Twitter to say that "I'm in Chicago today" I don't have to send emails or call folks to let them know.
Internal Facebook is great as well as in large companies where project teams are spread across various geographic areas, you may not ever even meet your team members. You would be able to associate a face with the emails and voice you hear over the phone. I like the Seesmic scenario as well for the same reason. At one company I worked for our projects always had people from different geographic areas and it was especially hard after the company implemented hotelling - no one was ever at the office. Most times, I never met the entire team. I drove 100 miles each week to work with those that were closer because even in the electronic age relationship is key. When they don't see you, you don't exist. We also did a lot of video conference calls so I get the video. Also with email many times, it's hard to get where someone is coming from - your interpretation may be completely different than the meaning of the email.
I like the blog as well because that would be a way for employees to showcase their accomplishments and projects. It might also give some insight to a person you might have to work with. It is most difficult working with people you don't know over email and the phone without knowing anything about them. One thing that bugs me as a techie is knowing what a person's background is as it is important when I have to explain something to them. At my current company, everyone has a bio posted and that helps a lot.
While I don't see the point of connecting with random co-workers on the public versions of Twitter, Facebook, etc. I can see the usefulness of having internal corporate versions of these tools. Of course, corporate adoption wouldn't be immediate but for those that do, I can see their productivity increasing. If you get teams full of folks using social networking tools, I can see all kinds of new synergies being created. But then, we still can't get some people to use the corporate IM. :(
Pete Gilbert
· 2 years ago
An interesting set of scenarios. The problem? As someone else pointed out, getting people to use tools that are outside of their comfort zone is a tough job. Most people here at UWE will use Office, email, perhaps peek at the intranet. We've been trying to get people to communicate using SharePoint 2007, using the MySite/MyProfile functionality. Slow take up, even though they get a blog, wikis, lots of Facebook style functionality. The reason? It's outside their level of comfort, for now. One tool that is at present in transition from not used to being used is corporate IM. Thats a good 10 years after the technology became available! That's just the staff by the way. Our students adopt all technologies straight away.
Annika Lidne
· 2 years ago
Hi all,
I agree largely with Stephen Collins.
Here in Sweden I work with several big multinationals and they are curious but terrified of social media.
The main fear is bad fallout from allowing people to post their comments and opinions, both within the company and from outsiders. To a large degree the root of this fear is bad relations (real or imagined) between management and employees and that allowing blogs (or commenting in some other way) will be like opening Pandora's box.
I think corporations need to address this problem thoroughly before they can move onto social media tools.
It is also a fear from decision makers within the communication department that social media might backfire and they will be blamed (and loose their jobs).
Another major problem that I see again and again, is the "won't" policy of the IT departments, i.e. they will not introduce anything new no matter what. Ambitious project leaders know it is useless to even ask for the tools they need so they start a wiki, a blog or a project management place somewhere else using Web 2.0 tech.
Of course this cracks corporate IT security polices wide open and introduces social media tools to a large group of corporate employees that leads to a bigger internal pressure to implement them.
All in all, I think that corporations need to embrace social media tools sooner or later to stay competitive, but it will be slow. What's needed most of all is for someone in top management to take an interest and be a trailblazer. Neither the IT deparment nor the communications department hold much clout in large traditional organisations.
Some really great comments here. A lot to consider.
What's interesting is that most of you pointed towards the enterprise's disinterest in trying something new. I can see that would be a factor in introducing something new. Specific to that, it was interesting that lots of people mentioned that corporate IM wasn't widely adopted. I've seen a lot of cases where the corporate InfoSec policy that went along with the corporate IM would scare anyone away from using it, so I buy that.
@Marina- I think this calls for you writing your own variation on the post without an office. Believe me, I'm all for the death of traditional work environments in lots of cases. I just figured I didn't want to blow people's minds ENTIRELY with one post.
@Pete- I don't think SharePoint is synonymous with all the other tools mentioned. I think it's one implementation, but when I tried it, I felt stifled and just reverted to using web apps.
I think one important point Pete brought out was the Generation Y and younger just use these tools without thinking.
Did anyone catch which technology I didn't mention AT ALL? Hint, it's a 20 year old technology.
Dan York
· 2 years ago
Chris, Great post! I love it when someone tells a story to illustrate how all the moving pieces can be used. I think the reality is that pieces of this puzzle *need* to be implemented behind the firewall... or else the workers will just use "consumer" tools out on the Internet (thus introducing security and privacy concerns for the corporation). Yes, the Gen Y and younger crowd just assume these tools will be available... so do we hyper-connected ones of older generations! (I don't quite think of myself as "old", but I *am* the same basic age as you, eh? And we're not exactly "young" anymore, at least physically! ;-)
And yes, I did notice your omission... as the younger crowd says, that's only for communicating with "old people" (where "old" = anyone over 25).
Thanks for the great post, Dan
Michael De Leon
· 2 years ago
Wow, I want to work there. I already do a lot of this stuff personally and for my blog and podcast, but to be able to use the tools I already do with my job would be great. I am lucky though in the fact that a prospective employer seems to be pretty forward thinking. The owner is on facebook and twitter and I'm trying to get a job there by showing them that there are several ways to cover news, especially using new media.
Mark Cahill
· 2 years ago
I think the key is to provide an easy means to identify someone's preferred contact medium. Forget about trying to train people to use things they aren't comfortable with, simply let them know what other users preferred methods are. They'll dovetail at some point.
Once again, we begin to get a diaspora of devices...but that's where aggregators like Meebo, Trillian etc. could take it to the next step. Or internal comms pages, where we tie in the widgets for the various services our people use.
Dale Cruse
· 2 years ago
Chris, what you're describing is best-case scenario. There are plenty of people in the enterprise who are older and not used to computers - much less social networking. There's still a great digital divide in this area. We'll all get where we need to be eventually, but we're not there yet.
Travis
· 2 years ago
Do you really think email will fall by the wayside? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, just curious to hear what else you might have to say about that.
If email dies because people can't use it effectively anymore (bloated inboxes, spam, etc.), what keeps that same thing from happening to other inputs (twitter, facebook, etc.)? Is it because the user gets to decide who can reach them and who can't?
All Comments
Here in Australia we're mostly 18-24 months behind where the US is on corporate social media uptake. Those of us involved in social media here are still trying to convince our clients of the benefits of changing corporate culture to consider these ideas and tools and building the sharing and openness into corporate DNA such that the risk aversion inherent in many businesses sees social media as a benefit rather than as a source for leakage of corporate data.
It's largely about trust in your people to act like adults and implementing a technical infrastructure that reflects that trust. Presently, much of what happens here is still about blocking at the desktop or corporate firewall, treating people like naughty children and adopting a position about one's own role where control and possession of information is where you define your value, rather than seeing value in the sharing of what you know and defining your future value by what you are yet to contribute or create.
We'll all get there - US, UK, Australia and the rest - but we've a way to go yet, unfortunately.
sounds like too much of an open working environment...but I do think that this is the direction most office work will be moving: moving voip locations, moving workstations, more audio and video on the internal 'net, more daily intercommunication (beyond Outlook or Lotus Notes) across global distances.
..alex.
I still see a lot of separation between work and life -- she might listen to an audio update on her iPod during her evening run, but if you maintain a corporate Twitter/Pownce/Blog/Google Reader/Gcal/etc. and a personal one, that's a lot of overlap. I've discussed personal v. work Twitter feeds with other Twitterers and those conversations thus far have ended with the decision that the Internet is making it harder and harder to put those kinds of walls up.
Why is Sonia even *in* the office? And why do they have firm office hours that someone can be late for?
Why does she use Pownce? I know Pownce can send files and Twitter can't, but I could FTP the file in 0.002 seconds and Tweet the URL. A large corporate environment should limit the # tools they use to those that sync seamlessly with one another. (I have personally tried to sync Pownce and Twitter and given up. Maybe if it worked...)
I know Seesmic is the new thing. I haven't yet been filled in on the idea behind it, and I support everyone working in the way that's best for them, but ... I'm a corporate efficiency consultant with lots of clients around the country, and I never, ever, ever want to receive a video of anything that doesn't absolutely have to be video. Status updates should be text, and ongoing working relationships should build the trust that someone can handle a crisis, not my wasting time listen to them talk to me via video. Sorry, but I'm just not getting this new video trend.
You asked for holes, so there ya go. Very interesting concept, although I would like to see a huge movement away from traditional corporate environments like that altogether.
You verbed a lot of technology. Just something I noticed, and it's easy to do, but it has some implications, eh? For the sake of brevity, I'll speak only of Twitter. Using Twitter for corp comm is a tough one. I do it to a degree, have pinged @nieskowitz at 6am to see if he could do a demo to some folks on the east coast. Got a tweetback in less than ten minutes. Impressive. Beyond that, the risk of IP loss, brand mangling and such are pretty significant on an open system such as Twitter.
Next assignment: transition plan. The challenge I see in bringing this to a reality is a cultural one. The issue being not so much that a biz culture cannot adopt this type of workflow, but rather a cultural journey that every staff member would have to embark upon. That would be purely magical, but the realist in me gets a bit skeptical. Here's why: at best I have been able to successfully convert only a small percentage of people to social tools in my current and past roles. A Jaiku thread I had with Jason Wehmhoener re: this topic http://jasonw22.jaiku.com/presence/14504530 and a link to the wikipatterns 90-9-1 Theory http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipattern...
I think that 90-9-1 is the general case for biz collaboration in general. That said, 10% is a pretty low bar for making social media effective in the workplace.
It's hellish getting people to use Sharepoint. Maybe that's because Sharepoint is not a good enough tool, but there may be other reasons as well. It wasn't that long ago that email was something of a pain to use due to lack of adoption, was it?
Lovely thought though. And I was not joking about the transition plan. Big question: how do you drive adoption of disruptive things that make complete sense but require a leap of faith? Especially at work!
In response to an earlier phone call, Sonia receives a notification in her RSS feed that her Benefits Manager has added some links to her collection of private bookmarks.
Sonia quickly scans the new links. Just what she needed, a list of clinics that treat social-media-induced stress disorder. She'll read the details later from her Blackberry while she watches her son's soccer game.
Internal Facebook is great as well as in large companies where project teams are spread across various geographic areas, you may not ever even meet your team members. You would be able to associate a face with the emails and voice you hear over the phone. I like the Seesmic scenario as well for the same reason. At one company I worked for our projects always had people from different geographic areas and it was especially hard after the company implemented hotelling - no one was ever at the office. Most times, I never met the entire team. I drove 100 miles each week to work with those that were closer because even in the electronic age relationship is key. When they don't see you, you don't exist. We also did a lot of video conference calls so I get the video. Also with email many times, it's hard to get where someone is coming from - your interpretation may be completely different than the meaning of the email.
I like the blog as well because that would be a way for employees to showcase their accomplishments and projects. It might also give some insight to a person you might have to work with. It is most difficult working with people you don't know over email and the phone without knowing anything about them. One thing that bugs me as a techie is knowing what a person's background is as it is important when I have to explain something to them. At my current company, everyone has a bio posted and that helps a lot.
While I don't see the point of connecting with random co-workers on the public versions of Twitter, Facebook, etc. I can see the usefulness of having internal corporate versions of these tools. Of course, corporate adoption wouldn't be immediate but for those that do, I can see their productivity increasing. If you get teams full of folks using social networking tools, I can see all kinds of new synergies being created. But then, we still can't get some people to use the corporate IM. :(
I agree largely with Stephen Collins.
Here in Sweden I work with several big multinationals and they are curious but terrified of social media.
The main fear is bad fallout from allowing people to post their comments and opinions, both within the company and from outsiders. To a large degree the root of this fear is bad relations (real or imagined) between management and employees and that allowing blogs (or commenting in some other way) will be like opening Pandora's box.
I think corporations need to address this problem thoroughly before they can move onto social media tools.
It is also a fear from decision makers within the communication department that social media might backfire and they will be blamed (and loose their jobs).
Another major problem that I see again and again, is the "won't" policy of the IT departments, i.e. they will not introduce anything new no matter what. Ambitious project leaders know it is useless to even ask for the tools they need so they start a wiki, a blog or a project management place somewhere else using Web 2.0 tech.
Of course this cracks corporate IT security polices wide open and introduces social media tools to a large group of corporate employees that leads to a bigger internal pressure to implement them.
All in all, I think that corporations need to embrace social media tools sooner or later to stay competitive, but it will be slow. What's needed most of all is for someone in top management to take an interest and be a trailblazer. Neither the IT deparment nor the communications department hold much clout in large traditional organisations.
I wrote a post last week about if slow technology adaption will make it harder to recruit. Read it and give me some good comments! http://businessbydesign.lidne.com/index.php/bus...
:-)
Annika
What's interesting is that most of you pointed towards the enterprise's disinterest in trying something new. I can see that would be a factor in introducing something new. Specific to that, it was interesting that lots of people mentioned that corporate IM wasn't widely adopted. I've seen a lot of cases where the corporate InfoSec policy that went along with the corporate IM would scare anyone away from using it, so I buy that.
@Marina- I think this calls for you writing your own variation on the post without an office. Believe me, I'm all for the death of traditional work environments in lots of cases. I just figured I didn't want to blow people's minds ENTIRELY with one post.
@Pete- I don't think SharePoint is synonymous with all the other tools mentioned. I think it's one implementation, but when I tried it, I felt stifled and just reverted to using web apps.
I think one important point Pete brought out was the Generation Y and younger just use these tools without thinking.
Did anyone catch which technology I didn't mention AT ALL? Hint, it's a 20 year old technology.
And yes, I did notice your omission... as the younger crowd says, that's only for communicating with "old people" (where "old" = anyone over 25).
Thanks for the great post,
Dan
Once again, we begin to get a diaspora of devices...but that's where aggregators like Meebo, Trillian etc. could take it to the next step. Or internal comms pages, where we tie in the widgets for the various services our people use.
If email dies because people can't use it effectively anymore (bloated inboxes, spam, etc.), what keeps that same thing from happening to other inputs (twitter, facebook, etc.)? Is it because the user gets to decide who can reach them and who can't?