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….”

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.

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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

Thoughts and takeaways from the Enterprise 2.0 Summit – Day 1

The opening keynote of this Paris event was a shared session with Rawn Shah from IBM and Yves Caseau from Bouygues Telecom titled “Understanding Social Business Excellence”. Rawn started out with an excellent presentation about the importance of harnessing the pervasive conversations emerging in companies and linking them to the business goals. It may sound very simple, and the prescribed formula was also very easy to understand and pragmatic. How you adapt it to fit your own organization and the objectives of your Line of Business is a different topic.

One thing that struck me during both presentations was that social business practitioners on one hand seem to be in a hurry to denounce Frederick Taylor’s principles of scientific management and on the other hand can’t seem to get everything measured and aligned with Lean and other somewhat traditional management processes. We also talk a lot about engagement and trust, but the minute people actually start to engage, we shift focus to monitoring what they do. I find this somewhat ironic, but I also think it goes to show that many of these principles are still in full working order when it comes to our production environments, but also that we need to revisit and revise these ideas to include the knowledge workers of the 21st century as well.

A topic that was touched upon in many talks was motivation and rewards which made gamification a ‘hot’ topic. Interestingly enough, when speakers from companies who have well established communities were on stage, rewards and motivation were not something of their concern. I’m 100% sure that it has not come over night and that while extrinsic motivation through eg. gamification may help increase adoption, it is the intrinsic motivators that make people come back and turn it into a vibrant community. I see quite a few analogies to Herzberg’s two-factor theory, but that’s a topic for another day.

Jon Mell from IBM and Jerome Colombe from Alcatel Lucent were prime examples of two companies with thriving communities. It quickly comes down to culture and management support and as Jon argued that if management sees Engagement as ‘free work’ you are not likely to succeed in creating communities. In Alcatel Lucent there is a very strong backing from the CEO which I believe is the key to their success. They have community ambassadors, but the title sounds like a voluntary/honorary title – much like the concept of the “Yammer midwife” I heard about at a recent event. Both great concepts but that degree of volunteerism is hard to achieve in many organisations.

Like many others I have been struggling with the term “Social Collaboration” (Can you collaborate without being social?), but today I heard a fresh take on this. Collaboration was a shift in technology – Social was (is) a shift in culture. Agree or disagree, I think it makes a lot of sense to look at it like that and now I am not so sure that I will continue crusading against the term social collaboration

These were my main thoughts after the first day of the #e20s, as the event is known under on Twitter. I already look forward to more interesting insights tomorrow. If you are interested in a more detailed account of the presentations, head over to Samuel Driessen’s blog where he has been live-blogging from many presentations.

Flight E-2.0 taking off – Destination: Unknown

Back in December I was recommended to read Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee and so I did. A very inspiring book which really provided some food for thought and put some of my own thoughts into a new context. This is not a review of the book – I have included links to a couple of reviews at the end of this post.

Working in a highly dispersed and specialised – but also fairly old – organisation it has become very obvious to me that we have a number of very strong informal networks within the company and I believe that’s one of the main reasons that the concept of weak ties really struck a chord with me, and also made me wonder if this could be a relevant angle for introducing the concept of an internal social network.

In one of my previous posts I wrote about our annual intranet survey, and back then I decided to include some questions around social media in the organisation. Now the results are in and as you can see below, almost 30% “don’t know” if an internal social network will improve collaboration internally.

From 2011 intranet satisfaction survey

This obviously helps make the case, and with a plethora of “free to try” tools available, I feel that now is the time to see if a corporate network can bring value to the company. The big questions: Can modern technology ie. a corporate social network…

…Bring “us” closer together?
…Help break down organisational and geographical barriers?
…Speed up the process of finding information and knowledge?

Now the next step is to get backing to run an actual pilot. We already have the obligatory rogue networks on eg. Yammer internally which, all things considered, will make it easier to recruit people to help spread the word, but there is no guarantee that this initiative will succeed.

Other companies succeed – we can too. It requires an effort, it requires support, but first and foremost it requires that the right people BELIEVE that this can make a difference. It almost sounds religious and maybe it is, but now that I think of it, many of the most significant changes in the world has not happened because of careful planning (and business cases) but as a result of a strong belief and commitment.

We’re ready on the tarmac – all we need is a ‘Go!’ from the control tower! Stay tuned for updates – over…

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If you are looking for more about the book I can recommend the comprehensive reviews by Samuel Driessen (who recommended the book to me – much appreciated) and Gil Yehuda.

User adoption – How hard can it be?

Today I was invited as guest speaker at one of the international communities of practice by J. Boye at their meeting in Gothenburg hosted by SKF. An excellent meeting with like minded people from all over Europe.

The topic for my presentation was the introduction of new features and subsequent user adoption. Unfortunately I am not allowed to share my slides here, but here’s the outline and recommendations I presented.

Get involved!
Don’t expect your colleagues in IT to look out for the end user. It may happen, but all too often projects start out with a tech-focus and this makes it likely that the user experience will suffer due to things which may seem logical from a technical point-of-view, but backwards for the users.

Know your audience!
Make an effort to find out how the new solution impact the daily work and what the IT skills the users have. This is a good opportunity to go sit down with someone, or just to see how they actually work.

Culture and values – ”This is how we implement”
The old, familiar way is not necessarily bad. When you implement eg. social features it is tempting to use radical approaches, but it is important to bear in mind that implementations create discomfort in the organisation. If the level of discomfort created is to low you will not succeed in creating sustainable change. If the discomfort becomes to big, people will object to the change.

Align user adoption strategy with business case – and vice versa.
What does the business case say? That everyone need to use the new solution? Then you need to set a lot of money aside for user adoption compared to if the business case calls for 50% adoption. The problem is that business cases listing less than 100% adoption are less likely to get approval!

For more on this topic, I can recommend Michael Sampson’s book “User adoption strategies” which I have written more about here Don’t just build it and throw it out there!

Balancing openness and comfort – a real-life story

Meet Joel. Joel has just created a new collaboration space on the company’s collaboration platform. Everything went nice and smooth, and as a part of the process Joel decided that his collaboration space should be avalable for everyone – ”Heck, I’ve got nothing to hide and if people should take a closer look it’s OK with me!”

Meet Tim. Tim has also created a new collaboration space but Tim has a lot of confidential information which should only be shared within his project team. The latest addition ot the team is a part-time consultant, Louise, who have been granted access to the collaboration platform. Tim really likes the flexibility, but something doesn’t quite feel right. He calls the webmaster and his fears are confirmed: Louise has access to all the public places on the platform. Yikes!

Tim decides to abandon the collaboration platform fearing that Louise, even though she is a trusted partner, she has access to other information related to the company and Tim simply can’t accept that risk.

Meet the webmaster. Initially, he is sad that Tim has decided to abandon the collaboration platform since it has proven very useful and quite popular due to the very open nature. Colleagues sharing Tim’s view has been discussed as a part of the project and the project team made the decision that if you can’t accept the openness, the collaboration platform is just not for you.

The above approach is commendable and probably also the best way if you have a small intranet team since it requires relatively little oversight. However, this approach also requires a high degree of mutual trust. Both between the adminstrators and the employees, but also among the employees themselves, but since they are both readers and owners we have a conflict. The role ambiguity creates a need for having some kind of fence around one’s own yard in order to comfortably use a platform like this which ultimately ends up contradicting the idea of having an open platform.

A gordic knot? Far from it but this issue needs some careful consideration. As I see it there is one big question that remains unanswered is: How do you create an open and transparent platform while attending to people’s need for having a place of their own?

How to increase your intranet user satisfaction

When I hear about corporate intranets and how they are perceived by the users, it is clear that some do really well while some struggle. Most are somewhat successful and gradually improving which is good. I recently conducted an intranet survey in my company and much to my surprise our intranet was perceived as both ’useful’ and ’important’ while the overall satisfaction was below average. Why was that? I looked through the survey results and it made me think that we had to re-focus. Our challenges were not that people didn’t use it – they did, but seemingly in spite.

I got to think about Herzberg’s two-factor model for motivation where he speaks about hygiene factors and motivator factors and how you can’t create motivation if the hygiene factors aren’t satisfactory. This prompted me to come up with the following three-factor model which I think applies to all intranets since there is a rather big overlap between motivation theory and user satisfaction.

User satisfaction on an intranet depends on a number of factors which can be grouped in three groups. You must succeed at the lower levels before you can start working with the next level factors.

Primary factors: Speed, Stability, Consistency, Access
Employees generally have high expectations when it comes to web-based tools and this also applies to the intranet. If they are expected to use eg. an intranet they must not get the perception that it get’s in the way. It must always be available, it should be easy to access, it must be quick, and consistent. By consistent, I refer to the fact that it must be recognisable from one day to the other. Generally people are uncomfortable with change, and of things move around chances are that they get insecure and don’t know what to do.

Let’s turn the primary factors upside down for a minute: If your intranet takes forever to load and you only get in half the times you try, it doesn’t matter if you have the best tools and the most compelling content – people will see the intranet as a nuissance getting in the way of their work.

Secondary factors: Findability, Accuracy, Information Architecture, Tasks
Once you have addressed the primary factors and made them meet the employee’s expectations, you are ready to move on to start working on the intranet itself. The most important thing is that it’s easy to find the things that people need daily – quickly. A proper information architecture and a well functioning search facility is paramount. It doesn’t matter how it looks as long as it gets the job done!

Whether your intranet is based around tasks (which most successful intranet are) or something entirely different, it is also important that the tools and information is accurate and up-to-date. This is something that should be easy to identify in the context of the tool/information and usually the technology behind your intranet can help here.

Again, try to look at it from the opposite perspective: If you have lots of information but people can’t fint it – what’s the point? …and if you have lots of information AND it’s easy to find but everything is from 2005 – what’s the point? I’m sure you get the picture.

Tertiary factors: Graphic design, Personalised content, Participatory Features
Now it’s playtime! If you have succeded with the primary and secondary factors, you should find yourself in a situation where you have an intranet that people like! Now the focus shifts away from avoiding to get in the way to create a more compelling experience for the employees. A nice design is closely linked to the information architecture, but it’s a fact of life that people can put up with a whole lot of ugly as long as they get the job done!

The tertiary factors mentioned here are not a comprehensive, exhausting list – it should be seen as a few examples. The point is that you need to get the basics right before going ahead with the fun, ’modern’, stuff otherwise people still dont get it.

What do you think? Does this make sense? Remember this is about an intranet – not the www...

Don’t just build it and throw it out there!

That is one of the most important messages from Michael Sampson in his most recent book “User Adoption Strategies – Shifting 2nd wave people to new collaboration technologies“. This is the first time I read one of Michael’s books and since he calls himself @collabguy on Twitter I have to say that my expectations were rather high….

….and I can now honestly say that I have not been disappointed!

The book provides a comprehensive toolkit which you can put to good use when you need to get users to use the new stuff you have developed. Obviously the book is centered around online tools, but most of the approaches work equally well with many other kinds of projects as well – and not only things online. Michael outlines 20 different approaches for you to pick and choose from because as he says already on page 14 “Don’t do them all, and don’t wait until page 105 before figuring that out!”

The initial chapters focus on adoption and change in a more general perspective and provides a nice introduction. One thing that becomes increasingly clear after reading this is that change is not about tools and methods - Change is social! If you can’t get enough on board there’s really no point! This brings us back to the “How?” and the 20 approaches.

They have been divided into 4 stages which are somewhat linear. Most of them are complemented with survey results from Michael’s recent user adoption survey which gives a nice picture of what others do and what actually works. Here are the headers and my own brief interpretation (more details in the book – obviously):

1) Win Attention = Make sure to get lots of attention, and most importantly from the right people!

2) Cultivate Basic Concepts = Educate people on the basics of the new system

3) Enlivening Applicability = Make people comfortable with the new system

4) Make it Real! = Get it done! Make it a part of daily lives.

If I should point at one small thing that I miss, it would be some kind of quick overview of the 20 approaches for quick reference after you have read the book.

All in all Michael has written a book for everyone who is working with change management and adoption – particularly in the online realm. Whether you are an experienced change agent or you are coming to terms with your first project, I’m sure that you will find a lot of useful tips and strategic approaches, and that you’ll find yourself reaching for it again and again.

Some may say that parts of the book seem an awful lot like plain, common sense, but isn’t that often what makes a book truly great? As French philosopher Voltaire put it: “It may be common sense, but after all sense is not that common!”