Enterprise social networking : the difference between voluntary participation and optional membership

March 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : If participation in social networks can only be voluntary, only voluntary people should access the network. Is this assumption, on which many adoption programs are based on, relevant ? It’s the result of a mix-up between the network and its community part, between membership and participation. It creates a frontier between those who want to try and others, a frontier that limits the spreading of the “social phenomenon” and the related benefits. If, for most workers, the network is not something obvious, it may come to them instead of waiting for people to come to the network. Interest comes from passive exposure and not from concealing to non-members. A real enterprise 2.0 or social intranet implies that everybody is a member, can browse and read, that the network is a part of the IS, that profiles have a pivotal role. What does not prevent participation from relying on people’s goodwill.

Most of times, when an assessment is made on an internal social network project, we can hear “xxxx employees decided to join”. As a matter of fact, since participation can’t be mandatory, volunteers are asked to register. So it’s logical that only a part of them can be found on the network. So, for instance, we can have 80 000 employees who can access the intranet and 6,7,8 000 that decided to also access the social network. Is that an impressive victory ? If we consider that it’s only a first step on a global roll-out program it may be, but if we consider that’s the way things should work I don’t believe in such approaches (except for very specific cases.

Of course, participation in a social network can’t be made mandatory. But this assumption deserves further explanation. Social networks are often mixed-up with communities. Participation in communities can’t be mandatory and depend on people’s goodwill. But sometimes work groups are turned into communities and, in this case, the answer is different. But things are different for the network as such, what is nothing but having a profile (they can fill in or not) and be able to connect to others, follow them, get in touch with them, follow the activity of blogs, communities, wikis etc…

The truth is critical mass is key to a successful project.

The network will spontaneously attract those who are born networkers. Some bystanders will also follow them. At then end it’s about 10% of employees. Bystanders will slowly move away (except the few that will “get” the social thing). So the network will live on volunteers, some will give up because the system will bring them back to the party line but, at the end, this small group of people will be the center of gravity of the social platform. Provided they don’t get out of breath.

This way of doing things has nothing to do with transforming work or the organization. Those who want will do things differently…and that’s all. It will only happen among them because they won’t be numerous enough to make the whole organization move with them. That’s another example of the “social bubble” syndrome that can even be painful for participants that work in a way with some people and in another way with the rest of the organization.

We can bet that some will want to join them over time. But it won’t happen if they have to reason to try, to find a personal benefit and feel like keeping the “social way”. What can bring them there ? They may think they’ll be able to find, at a given moment, the answer to a problem or the person that will be able to help. If only 10% are on the network there are many chances the others will think that it’s not worth, that there are few chances what they need will be there.

Confusing mandatory participation with mandatory membership has obviously a negative impact. That’s not because no one can be forced to participate that not everybody could access the network. There are many reasons to that :

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Rich profiles : an overlooked market ?

November 12, 2010 By 2 Comments

When we talk about social media in the workplace, it means, it’s about lots of tools. Blogs, wikis, social networks, social boomarking, microblogging etc… As years go all these tools are improving, each adding the core functionalities of the others to such an extent than more and more products are now looking alike.

One of these tools has not been packaged as a product by itslef : the rich profile, enriched by people activies, by more official datas, professional or personal information that makes it easier to identify, find and know each person.

Profile is key to many approaches because its usefulness is obvious to anyone : easily find people one’s now but also identifying relevant people one don’t know but are relevant to solve a given problem. For many organizations it’s, and for good reasons, the entry point to social media, because it’s seems to ensure a quick adoption of a first light social layer that meet an actual need.

On the other hand, rich profiles makes no sense if not fed by relevant information and aggregating people’s activities, what supposes it’s interfaced with as many other applications as possible, should they be social or more traditionnal. What implies the applications in question already exist and are used.

So the rich profile is the perfect entry point to discover tools and usages provided other tools and usages pre-exists. Sounds like chicken and egg. Vendors know that and all social tools include their own profile that makes the most of the use of the tool. Obvious solution. But is it the perfect one ? In fact it can be questioned.

The fact is for any enterprise, profiles share one characteristics with employee directories they are often the visible part of : they’re worth only if unique and used by all. Things are actually different  : in most organizations many social platforms coexist, each having its own profile, relying on its own data, what makes people have as many profiles as applications they use, each of them being, of course uncomplete. Moreover, even when an organization has chosen an unique tools, it’s not always accessible to all empoyees.

So a situation where some employees have many profiles relying on different sources, some don’t have any, and not every employee can see all profiles is not uncommon at all. Not a comfortable situation.

Hence the questions : is there a room for a directory relying on rich profiles, distinct from any applications but able to rely on all the existing and future ones, avoiding data dispersion and multiple updates. Is something missing on the market ? Will organizations need to connect all these data by themselbes with lots of specific devs ? Will a vendor manage to make the profile of their solution a market standard because it will easily interface with any tools and even its competitors ?

D’où la question : n’y a-t-il pas une place pour un annuaire reposant sur des profils riches, distinct de toutes les applications mais pouvant tirer profit de toutes, existantes ou à venir, évitant la dispersion des données et les mises à jour redondantes ? Existe-t-il un trou dans l’offre du marché ? Les entreprises vont elles devoir assurer elles-mêmes la mise en cohérence de ce patchwork de données à grand renforts de développements spécifiques ? Ou alors un éditeur va-t-il réussil à faire du profil lié à son produit celui qui, en s’interfaçant avec mille et un autre outils deviendra le standard de facto

This is something I’ve been thiniking about for a long time and seems to make more and more sense.

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , ,

What future for enterprise social networks ?

December 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Social networks are often the key part of every “2.0″ internal projects ? Why ? Because when the purspose is not to find people or informations anymore but to link people through information and information through people, that’s the essential link between tacit and informal knowledge, those who have it and those who need it.

Social networks may come in different forms :

- declarative : every user declarates his networks as he does on Facebook or Linkedin. It’s not very relevant, in my opinion, since refusing a connection request from a connectophile manager may not be very appreciated in the corporate world and such practices may only lead to duplicate the organization chart. More, criterias that may be professional at first sight but that will always have a part of  personal and uncounscious discrimination may put the actuality and quality of connections in question. Last, because no one can think of all his weak ties and, even more, formalizating them can be counter-cultural regarding to corporate culture : considering those who will wonder if they will dare asking and those who’ll wonder if they should accept, the game may be very difficult.

-  fact-based : the network, but maybe shoul I say “professional nearness sphere”, is not declared by users but analyzed through their activity on social spaces. Who read whom ? Who shares the same topics ? All these things can easily be found by analysing what people do in their flow, the tags they use, their profile.. In my opinion this may is more relevant and helps to identify the “real” networks, according to actual interactions and topics of internet. Since it does not rely on people’s arbitray power it’s more objective and there are few risks of favoritism, diplomacy and popularity competition.

Since networks are fed by social acitivity, they are tied to the applications that supports this activity. Most of times, they are a part of these applications. THe social component of people’s activities not being able to take place anywhere else thatn on specific applications, each vendor built a social network layer above its social application and native social networks vendors added sharing and publication functionalities.

This the enterprise social software landscape as it is today. But how long will it last ?

Voilà le paysage du réseau social d’entreprise tel qu’il se présente aujourd’hui. Mais pour combien de temps encore ?

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,