It’s like Facebook – and it’s OK…

You’ve seen them: 7 steps for a more social enterprise, 3 top-tips for increasing employee engagement, 5 strategies for…. These are all very good and useful, although rather repetitive, but one thing is always left out: The fact that Social networking is for entertainment – not for work! Or at least that’s the way many people still see social media.

I have been working actively on an internal Yammer project for the last 8 months and while we have had lots of people sign up and also quite a few engaging actively in the discussions on the platform. Notwithstanding the relatively large contingent of people who are not active, we think that it has been a quite successful journey – more about this journey in later posts.

Introducing Yammer to the masses.
Nothing beats face to face contact so My colleague and I have introduced and demoed Yammer and what it can do for a certain department at department meetings and conferences. Two statements have stood out and we hear them almost everywhere.

1. We don’t have time for a new tool.
2. it’s almost like Facebook.

The first preconception is relatively easy to address with the simple answer that you need to take some time to get used to a new tool – any new tool – and that this obviously starts with a cultural change and a handshake that a given group of people will give it a try. As always, with things that requite a change of habits, it is much easier said than done but that’s also a topic for another post.

We always start every introduction by asking a few questions about people’s social media habits and since Denmark is one of the countries where Facebook has the highest penetration rate everybody know Facebook – also if they don’t have a profile. Usually this is very helpful and people who compare it to Facebook will be more prone just to get started but there is another side to this statement. Why does this matter in relation to social media at work? More importantly: Why does the Yammer/Facebook comparison pose a challenge for user adoption?

Entering the ‘Corporate Facebook’
In Denmark we have, like many other places, lots of stories in the media about what social media can and cannot do and along with this also quite a few stories about people losing their jobs or getting bullied on various social media. Additionally some of the larger Danish unions early on told people to be very careful with what they share on social media – especially when it comes to work. People listened and learned. Companies were also quick to announce that social media (ie. Facebook activity) was banned or should be minimized during working hours. Again people listened and learned. Just imagine what could happen if I started using Facebook during my workday…

This is where we are today. Our colleagues have been ‘brought up’ with the fact that social media is something that belongs in the private sphere and when you are at work the use of social tools should be kept to a minimum.

Next thing you know is that your manager has invited two strange guys who are talking about how important it is that we share information in the company and how important it is to ‘break down silos’ – and then they show a tool that looks just like Facebook. WHOA! Slow down! Less than a year ago we weren’t supposed to use this stuff at work – and now you’re saying what…..?

What basically happens is that in addition to the change of habits that is connected with the introduction of a new work tool you also have to come to terms with the fact that you must abandon the thought that using social networks is something you do in your private life – certainly not during 9 to 5. It is not real work! You may argue that this is an ‘age-thing’ and to a certain extent you are right. There ARE more young people among the early adopters but you would be surprised how many 20 and 30-year-olds who roll your eyes at you in the beginning of each presentation, some even saying out loud that these social networks are a waste of time and that they have no place in a work context.

It starts with the managers
I’ve had this talk with quite a few managers who have been wondering why the adoption is relatively slow even if the group has received introductions, training and it has been given an official seal of approval. When we talk about the change of habit and that social networking in a work context largely is like eating forbidden fruit, the manager often realizes how much more there is to it than just throw a new tool into the mix.

The biggest upside is that the “Facebook is not for work” argument works – it makes intuitively sense and it helps underline the importance of the change management effort connected with these tools and I believe that it will ultimately improve adoption. It still takes the 5, 7 and 10 tips that I mentioned in the beginning in order to truly succeed but make sure that you repeat after me over and over: “Yes! It’s like Facebook… and it’s OK…. Really….”

Business and IT – Why can’t you guys just get along?

About 6 months ago I wrote the article below but didn’t publish it at that time. I remember that I thought it was too off topic and that I was ranting a little to much…. Today I read an interesting discussion on the collaboration between IT and Comms on the G+ Intranet and Digital Workplace forum and remembered this one and now is the time.

I’m still making gross generalisations in the post but since I am one of the people who have crossed the chasm from business to IT, I also feel that it is worth sharing these observations which are rooted in my own experience as seen from both sides of the divide and I feel quite confident that this will not be my last post around this topic

———————————————-

Some months ago I was attending an internal course in IT Service Management. I can honestly say that I didn’t find it particularly interesting. Half way through day two and in the middle of a very exciting *ahem* presentation of the process for implementing changes I started to think about how the entire system was designed to limit human interaction! Everything was neatly divided into boxes and workflows made sure that everything was moved along to the next step as soon as you had made your contribution. Very smooth.

Elaborate standards are put in place to ensure this: Standardised solutions, a predictable future, smooth transitions and continuity. Why do we then still talk about the chasm between IT and Line of Business. The processes are very linear and leave little room for learning in the process and it’s when that happens that things start to go pear shaped. The system and workflows grind to a halt and all of a sudden you NEED human interaction to get things moving – the very thing that the processes and systems have eliminated.

I am aware that the above is a rather crude generalization, but I’m taking it a step further by stating two hypotheses:

1) IT put their trust in having proper systems and procedures.
2) ‘The business’ put their trust in having proper colleagues.

In IT it’s about ensuring business continuity and that’s about rigid systems and procedures – people are by no means robots but they are there to make sure things are running as smoothly as possible so that technology helps rather than obstructs work. In the business it’s about profit, business development, and innovation – things that require research and often a lot of trial and error. Certainly not something that fits nicely within rigid systems but some times a rigid system can also help you be more efficient. The challenge is that it is not nearly as interesting to fill out an online form than it is to walk over and have a chat with the cute receptionist.

No wonder that we all too often find ourselves caught up in the ‘them and us’ discussion. As long as you have these two organizational silos we will not get rid of this. The radical solution is to get rid of the IT department and integrate the people in the organisation. You may argue that this will require more coordination but I’m not so sure about that. It will be a different kind of coordination and that is of course a daunting obstacle. Either way, you certainly need to cultivate the competence of mutual understanding or – at the very least – find someone who can translate and challenge. I’ll end this post with a few well-meant words of advice to both sides of the divide:

Hey ‘IT guys’…
1) If you insist on referring to your business counterparts as “Customers” – treat them as such or the WILL take their business elsewhere. A place to start: Ask if you would do business with yourself if you received the same treatment.
2) There is ALWAYS a business reason! It may not be evident and it may not be good, but it is not something you can determine on your own. You need to explore it together.

Hey ‘Business guys’…
1) You are very vocal about don’t understanding any “computer stuff” but have no problem telling when something is too expensive, complicated, etc. – and then you go off and buy a system or tool that you heard about at a random conference. Where’s the credibility in that? Why would I, as the IT guy, take you seriously?
2) You have many great ideas that “just” or “simply” need to be made. There’s no such thing as “just simply”. I usually say “just” takes 4 hours and “simply” takes 8. Do the math.

…and Hey! Both of you!
Pick up the phone. Grab a cup of coffee. Open up. Ask questions. Try to understand. Ask more questions. Yes! It takes time and effort and you may even find it frustrating but in the end you will find that it has been worthwhile building the bridge and there is no question that your colleagues will benefit from much better solutions than they have been used to.

COPE with BYOD – Motivators and the impact of Cloud

Spurred on by an article about devices as Corporately Owned Personally Enabled – or COPE for short – as an alternative to Bring Your Own Device, I had a – by Twitter standards – lengthy dialogue with Chris Tubb about the motivators for BYOD. This post is a follow-up to one of my recent posts and also a summary of my own thoughts during my dialogue with Chris.

The basic idea of COPE is that the company that has provided you with a device (e.g. a laptop) to get your work done. Instead of enforcing harsh restrictions on what you can install and what you can use the device for, you are allowed to install software and use it for the purposes that you deem fit – within reason. The big question is whether this is a real alternative to a potentially very costly BYOD strategy.

In my experience people’s needs for using their own devices for work purposes comes in three different disguises. All three are valid motivators but what I find interesting is the underlying reasons and with the idea of COPE, you also have an alternative.

1) Power and Capability
Your work device is less capable when it comes to speed and availability of software than what you are used to at home. This means that you feel less productive at work which increases your frustration. A personally enabled (COPE) device is not likely to solve this as it will STILL be the corporately sanctioned equipment.

Bringing your own device will help as this is the root cause of your frustration – you just know that you can do better. If I were to play devil’s advocate here, I would say that it is your employer’s responsibility to make sure that it is not technology that makes you less productive and if they provide inferior equipment, they must also accept inferior productivity.

2) Mobility and The Digital Workplace
Your job allows you to work from anywhere at any time. The problem is that you find the corporate devices limiting as they don’t fully support this and you will have to bring more than one device in order to take care of your personal stuff. In other words, if you are working with the digital workplace and aim to create a more coherent solution for your company, this ought to be interesting for you.

COPE fits perfectly in this scenario. I have a corporate device – I have access to tech support when I need it AND I can even use the device for what I need when I need it. Bring my own device? Why should I…?

3) Vanity and Status
Hardly a primary motivator for bringing own devices, but some undoubtedly find it very motivating to be able to flash the latest Android phone or the new iPad. COPE will not solve this as companies (almost) never will be able to provide the cutting edge stuff. BYOD is a potential solution, but also potentially VERY expensive for companies.

Either way, I see these motivators as largely extrinsic – comparable to a pay raise. It will provide a short term motivation boost but the most important long term aspect will be the intrinsic motivators i.e. your job. No amount of gadgets can make up for poor job design.

So both BYOD and COPE may work? Yes, but is this the real issue? In my job I work with creating a digital workplace that is available when and where you need it. I can’t help but think that in 10 years’ time when most things have moved to the cloud, we will look back at the BYOD discussion and wonder what the fuss was all about. Moving to the cloud simply took care of all these things by making everything accessible through a browser. Dare I mention that this has been possible for years by using a Citrix solution?

In the end this has nothing to do with devices it is all about creating a consistent and SECURE access to company assets that will allow you to use them from anywhere and from any device which makes it very important that companies carefully evaluate the motivators for BYOD/COPE in the organization and decide on a (potentially costly) path forward. Right now we are just in a situation where the road ahead is not obvious but waiting at the intersection for the light to change is just not an option.

3 different takes + 1 opinion about BYOD

Lots of people – also internally in my organization – talk about bringing own devices to work (BYOD). On one side in some ways it is easier for companies – and me – to let me to bring my own cool gizmos that I know inside out instead of having to stay on the cutting edge. On the other side companies ought to provide the tools that enable you to get your work done and it must work sufficiently fast, reliable, and most important sufficiently supported. This will not be the latest candy-themed Android OS or the newest iPhone, but it still gets the job done.

Personally I’m not quite sure where I stand on the topic but three BYOD themed articles/blogsposts have caught my attention today – each offering a different view on the BYOD debate. I will share them here along with a few of my thoughts.

The user perspective
“What’s my motivation? A mental model for BYOD” is a great post about how people have different motivations for wanting to bring their own devices to work. A very good starting point for a discussion as I have experienced that the BYOD talks quickly evolves into an arms race about features and specs – not about the underlying problem itself and this is in my opinion where you need to start.

The management perspective
The header “When BYOD Is a Productivity Killer” almost says it all and it did make me a little apprehensive. It turned out to be about how using your own device will make work seem more pervasive thus making it easier to switch off. The concluding sentence “Essentially, BYOD eliminates the free work that employees with corporate phones were doing.” makes me question if the author has understood the basic BYOD concept at all.

The bigger perspectives
Gartner offers a bigger picture and I have to say that I agree completely with their statement that “BYOD is not for every company, or every employee…..For the vast majority of companies it is not possible to force all users into a bring your own (BYO) program without substantial financial investments — and considerable support from senior management. It’s hardly revolutionary but there are some valid points and I believe that this is how we will see this trend play out.

Where does that leave me? Have I gotten any closer to form an opinion on BYOD? I’m not sure that this is about devices at all. It’s more about how work becomes more independent of time and place. Productivity and purpose will determine how and if BYOD will apply to your situation. One thing that’s 100% safe to say is that if BYOD is about “free work” – heck, if your company is even considering such a thing as “Free work”, no amount of gadgets will solve that. It’s about trust and respect and this truly IS the most important foundation stone of any BYOD initiative.

The Engaging, Social Intranet

How do we *do* social? In our wiki? In the document management system? …or do we just buy Chatter/Yammer/SocialCast? These questions are being asked in many organisations – my own included – and the answer is not always easy. Truth is we *do* social where it makes sense. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the context.

What about the social intranet? Personally, I’m not too fond of the term as it indicates that we need something new. A new intranet. This may very well be the case, but I find it much more important to look at when, where, and most importantly why people should use the social features on your intranet.

Chris McGrath and Ephraim Freed from Canadian ThoughFarmer have written a very interesting white paper that dives a bit deeper into what a social intranet is and what it can do for your enterprise. Among other things, they advocate that HR need to take a lead role in making companies more social and the workforce more engaged. I agree that HR is a vital player due to the fact that they reach all corners of the enterprise  but your social initiatives should be carried out in a symbiosis between Comms, IT, and of course HR.

One of the conclusions from Jane McConnell’s Digital Workplace Trends 2012 is that the emergence of collaboration solutions in companies is re-creating corporate silos – the very thing that increased collaboration was supposed to break down – but the main difference is that by introducing a social layer, i.e. a social intranet, you can bridge the silos and the serendipity of social media is likely to make it easier to discover gems of knowledge.

According to a study by Gallup, presented in the white paper, the companies with the most engaged employees have seen much higher growth rates than those with less engaged employees. This fact alone ought to command at least some attention from management. It’s hard to disagree that a happy employee is more likely to be an engaged employee – it’s harder to agree on how you make people happy (and make more $$$ along the way).

I strongly believe in the intranet as the hub for the digital workplace but as I wrote earlier I’m not too sure whether it should be dubbed a social intranet. It’s a matter of words, agree, but I would like to see it as “The People Centric Intranet”. The most important task on intranets in numerous surveys is to find people. The consumerization of internal platforms creates an expressed need to connect and follow fellow employees and share updates with them but you still have a large proportion of your intranet that consist of documents, forms, etc. which is not very social.

One of the big questions is what benefits you will get from a social intranet. It depends on the resources that you put into it but also on the culture of your company. If informal communities are common place, I would venture a guess that you are much more likely to succeed than if you come from a more traditional culture. A cultural change is a big job and this is where HR – due to their wide reach – would be formidable change agents. You people who can act as ‘flight attendants’ on the journey. You need to get safely airborne but once you are in the air the attendants need to make sure that the passengers are happy and have a comfortable journey. Hopefully it’s going to be a long haul flight

One of the finishing comments in the whitepaper sums everything up very nicely:

“Successful social intranet become virtual places that employees inhabit rather than visit”

I personally believe that this should be the ultimate goal for all intranets – social or not.

————————————–

These were some of my thoughts after reading the whitepaper. I strongly recommend that you download a copy and put it on your Easter reading list – you can find it here: ThoughtFarmer – Social Intranets & Employee Engagement

Community management, Wikis, and a bar – Learnings and reflections from IntraTeam Event 2012

The first conference day was kicked off by Tony Byrne, who set the scene with a very down to earth presentation and some may even have found it a bit discouraging, but personally I found it quite refreshing that someone dared to remind us that few companies are succeeding with online collaboration at scale. Some might even disagree, but if you look at case studies presented at conferences etc. I do agree with Tony on this one. Only a few are doing it well, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it, and personally I remain convinced that we are standing on the edge of a major change in the way we cooperate.

This naturally raises the question on how we then succeed which ties very nicely into a trend I saw at this conference: The rise of Internal Community Management.

It may not be big news but it was certainly new to me to see the very strong manifestation of the need for community managers in the organization. Not only was the term “distributed community management” introduced, but I sat through presentations from Alcatel-Lucent, SEB, and Aviva where the presenters all touched on the topic. SEB had even recently hired Anna to become the internal community manager. I found it very interesting and believe that this is these are the examples of how the role we today call “intranet editor” will change into the facilitator for collaboration and networking throughout the organization and there is no doubt that if we want the visions for the digital workplace to happen we need a lot of Annas.

To stay in the pragmatic track, I will have to say that this is hardly a surprise to see community management become more important. If you look at the commercial web services, community management has been the talk of the town for at least the last two years and focus is only increasing. I see this as a(nother) prime example of how the trends from the commercial web seep into the organization and create a demand for similar capabilities and that companies need to hire people with new competencies.

The Shell Wiki
The case that impressed me the most was from Shell and how they implemented a wiki in the organization. Griet Johannson presented some very convincing facts and figures and I was very surprised about the very honest and straight forward approach they had taken. It can be summed up to: “If you are looking for something in the wiki which isn’t there, it’s YOUR responsibility to create it!” Basically it all starts with a search query with the obvious purpose of finding information, and you don’t find it you are probably going to search elsewhere and you are then obliged to contribute to the common good by sharing your findings which then can be corrected and expanded. Simple. Easy. Pragmatic…..and it FINALLY made me see why I have had a hard time getting to terms with how a wiki should work. It’s about search. Not structure.

The Aviva Service Bar
Through a conference like this you hear about many great ideas and concepts. If you ask me the most interesting was when Luke Mepham presented “The Service Bar” initiative from Aviva. The IT department had simply created a posh bar-like setting where people could stop by with their computers – both work and private – and get a service check or support with a specific issue. The basic idea was to help people get the necessary tools to work remotely and then provide a little extra service. I think this is a truly great idea. We can do almost everything from our chairs through webcams, IM, etc. so we need to come up with places where people are “allowed” to meet on company time. Helpdesks and similar functions are all great, but we still need the physical meeting. It be less of a trend and more of a personal crusade for me, but we need to challenge the arm’s length principle that is in virtually all kinds of support and create room for more F2F contact – also for simple things.

A big thank you to delegates for two great days (and evenings) in Copenhagen, and also a congratulations to Kurt and his IntraTeam for another inspiring conference. I’m ready for another dose in 2013

If you would like to read more from the conference, you can take a closer look at the links below.

Blogposts
Very nice recaps of all three days from Sam Marshall: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

Ernst Decsey – Is digital workplace becoming an accepted term
Mark Morrell – What is a digital workplace

Presentations on SlideShare
Kristian Norling – Search analytics in practice
Jerome Colombe – A step to the digital workplace
Sam Marshall – Loving the intranet
Oscar Berg – Why traditional intranets fail today’s knowledge workers

The intranet vs. The digital workplace

In November I was in Stockholm for Intranätdagarna 2011:2 (The Intranet Days 2011:2) and during my two-day visit to the Swedish capital, I had the pleasure of talking to Paul Miller from Intranet Benchmarking Forum. Among other things we spent some time talking about the proclaimed death of intranets which I believe is greatly exaggerated.

Since then I have started at my third intranet related job at a new company and this has given me an opportunity to get a closer look behind the scenes of an intranet that has remained largely unchanged for an impressive 10 years. This also allows for a rather unique perspective on how the very traditional intranet fits in the online landscape of 2012.

In 2002 online was equal to websites and maybe also an intranet if your company had realized that there was a need for an internal website. This was for communication, information, forms, and selected documents. Self-contained with no integrations since there was nothing to integrate!

Somewhere along the way other systems came about and slowly they started to nudge into the online realm offering more and more advanced portal functionality and taking over functionality from the intranet. Big investments were made and in some companies this was at the expense of the intranet because it did a great job at publishing news and forms. This means that we now have a landscape of many portals or portal-like functions. Many of which would fit snugly on the intranet and this poses the question: What to use where and when?

The process leading up to this has been that of evolution. The solutions have developed in relative isolation, but the needs that they serve are largely the same and this is where the notion of the digital workplace comes into play. We have a landscape of monoliths where some are grouped closer together than others and if the intranet does nothing that publish news and provide a phonebook, it doesn’t take much imagination to declare the death of intranets and that the remaining

This puts the intranet in a quite unique position: You can argue that the intranet doesn’t serve a business purpose and that it should die, but you can also argue that the intranet is the independent alternative that can form the mortar between all the monoliths out there and this is the big challenge for intranets and intranet managers of today: How do you bridge these gaps between the components of the digital workplace?

Evolve or die!
Intranets and their managers are faced with an exciting challenge regardless whether you use state-of-the-art portals or of you have a homegrown HTML site: How do you connect all these vital pillars of the digital workplace to form a strong intranet that serves as a single point of access?

The notion of creating an intranet that contains everything is that of 2002. Today’s intranet will be a thin layer on top of a number of other highly specialized tools to form a ‘Patchwork Intranet‘ or ‘Heterogeneous Intranet‘. This layer may provide some core functions like news, and possibly the social dimension, but most importantly it is a layer that gives you access to what you need while hiding the underlying complexity.

“Digital workplace” and “Intranet” are not interchangeable and also not contradictions. The intranet is an integral – possibly the most important – part of the digital workplace of the future. The intranet is not dead, but if you fail to realize this potential, you’d better brush up on your life saving skills