Enterprise social network : a famous stranger

May 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : enterprise social networks are the future of corporate IT, a tool overwhelmingly supported by employees because it will save them from email and favor the adoption of more efficient work practices. Sure ? Outside of  a circle of initiated (that is growing everyday), except for people who are in charge of such programs in their organization, the words “social network” and “enterprise” seldom come together in many employees’ mind. And, when it happens, it’s more about Facebook and brand management than work efficiency. The reason ? Few people have tried to understand what it’s all about, personal usages are hard to transcribe in a work context to articulate a clear value proposition and the ubiquitous image of Facebook is a real burden.

I had recently the opportunity of talking with a small group of people who had one thing in common : their title started with either “chief” or “director”. Suddenly, one said the magic word : “social network”. All but one had an opinion, a question, something to share about this topic. Nothing surprising since social network has become a very trendy topics in organizations over the years.

And then…crash ! The star of the conversation quickly became facebook and the focus came on information leaks, lower productivity etc., to the surprise of the person who launched the conversation and thought it was obvious that everybody around the table knew this kind of thing. Obviously they didn’t. Surprisingly I was expecting this kind of reaction.

Enterprise social networks are a paradoxical topic. Of course, you, who read this blog, are well informed about that. Of course, you, who are in charge of deploying such a thing in your organization, know what an ESN is. Now, ask the question around you, to your friends, family etc.. I’m sure you’ll get lots of ideas, opinions or concerns about “enterprise and social networks”. But nothing “enterprise social networks”.

We have to admit that, outside of a circle of initiated people, social networks are seen as an entertaining tool, sometimes as a tool for marketing and communication. This article from French newspaper speaks for itself. It says that CHROs get social networks better and better. And what do they say to illustrate their thoughts ? Recruitment, employer brand, image and general public social networks. And yet HR should have many things to say on the potential (and risks) of internal social networks….

ESNs are far from having “killed their father” (Facebook…even if many ESN solutions were already existing when FB became mainstream and open to all).

Ok, anyone who talks with “real people” out of the echo chamber already knows that. But knowing the causes to deal with the issue more efficiently can be worth.

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

Business awareness : the social signal without relationship

September 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Summary : Everytime we talk about social media we focus on rich relationships and exchanges, conversations, community feeling, what are very heavy and complex things to make happen. That’s forgetting that there’s a lighter and at least as productive way to use social channels : a short, factual social signal that aims at informing hand helping people to visualize their environment without engaging too much. Social media can be awesome “business awareness” tools without needing strong interpersonnal relationships.

The assumption is easy to get : social tools bring more intensity and flexibility in the way people and information behave, get organizaed, interact and thats makes it easier to invent new way of collaborating within any organization or between a business and its ecosystem. Social networks that provide lots of tool to support interpersonal relationships has become the incarnation of these approaches to such an extent that they’re often shown as the solution to any problem.

But is the monolithic vision of social networking that comes with social media relevant.

1°) Does a social network need to be conversational

It started with a conversation I had with a friend about a general public tool on the web but it can also apply to enterprise tools. We were talking about foursquare and a friend told me : “why do you use foursquare ? xxxx is much better and more engaging”. My answer “Humm…I’m not convinced”. “Yes Bertrand, on foursquare people usually check in to say where they are while on XXXXX they say things, share their state of mind, share photos, have conversations”. “How to say…In fact I don’t care at all about all these things”.

Let me explain : what I like in such tools is that I can know who is where. Everything else ils superfluous and pollutes the signal. On Foursquqre I’m looking for location information and not digressions about moods or the state of mind of M. So-and-so. There are other channels for that.

These tools are “ambient awareness” tools : they have to send short and low signals (not aggressive or intrusive), coming from my ecosystem and too much information and conversation kills the signal, making it hard to hear.

That reminds me off the conversation I had years ago with Reid Hoffman about what he called “Business Intelligence for People”. Today, I’d rather say “business awarness”  but the fact remains : being social does not always mean having lots of conversation and engaging a lot but receiving / sharing a clear and short signal in order to visualize / help others to visualize what is their informational context, what’s happening in their relational environment.

So there’s a wide part of the social activity that has not to be conversationnal, rich in terms of content and interaction, and where, in fact, interactions are rather the exception than the nom. What matters there is to improve people awareness about something (business in this case) with a a clear and not overloading signal.

2°) Do social networks need to be bijective and global ? No. [Read more...]

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Is information sharing a visceral need or a lucky good practice ?

July 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This is the rest of my Milanese conversation with Mark Masterson. By dint of digressing on Yers we came to tacke the so-called sociability of employees. The idea was to go beyond the idealistic common place according to which “everyone wants to share, to open, to connect and those who refuse to go this way are naughty people” and try to have a more objective standpoint in an enterprise context.

First easy answer : “it depends”. Of course, between those who overshare and those who withdraw into themselves there is a wide range of behaviors due to a tangle of complex factors.

Then : “it’s (as usual) a matter of culture”. Everybody nows agree that in some countries people want a clear separation between their professional and private life and what to belongs to one has not to be known in the other.

Then again : “what makes us say that people share information on the web after all ?”. They share statuses, emotions. They answer their contact, give them some help. Does it mean being “social”, obliging and is it enough to make us deduce that people want to be connected and bring something to their fellow contacts ? No.

If we look at what’s happening on the web, the act of sharing information is rather about “I am” than “I give”. “I am at such place (and you aren’t)”, “I want to talk about my experience”, “I have something to say (most of all I want to be heard”. At the end, sharing looks much more like self-promotion that a will to help and share that seem to be only means to a personal strategy. It’s a little bit like people (some politicians for instance) that are very active on the field for 10 minutes and stop at the minute the TV cameras leave. Should we regret it ? In my opion no, if egos contribute to a common good then Adam Smith was right. But we have to admit this is rather show-off than deliberate sharing.

Quoting a good friend I’d say : that’s ego-altruism.

What does it mean in the workplace ?

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Putting conversation into processes

July 20, 2010 By 4 Comments

Summary : nowadays, people need to continuously solve problems to execute business processes. To do so they need a quick and easy assess to knowledge. But knowledge needs stimulis to be expressed, what seldom happes out of conversational logics. Traditional processes need to be enriched with a social layer. On top of that, business processes are the smallest common denominator upon which an enterprise 2.0 dynamic can start without having to deal too much with cultural issues because it brings a focus to what makes sense for anyone : solving actual issues they face while they tried to achieve what they are evaluated on.

There are many ways to deal with the articulation of enterprise 2.0 dynamics with business processes. Here’s the presentation I made at the Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Milan in June.

Putting conversations into processes

And here are some explainations… [Read more...]

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Need to take users by the hand ? Remember they only have two !

July 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It does not matter things are seen from the people or technology point of view, since we all know that people seldom embrace new things keeping their eyes shut and without questionning (even more in the workplace) we all understand that users have to be taken by the hand and accompanied. On the other hand, the failure of many strategies aiming at doing so show that many change programs do not know where to find the hand or have a wrong idea about its location.

It means that beyond the myth of multitasking, employees focus on two things and that all their attention goes there. It’s not a matter of lack of goodwill but they can’t do more if they want to do things well and keep their concentration. So any other issue is seen as peripheral, and dealing with it will force employees either to make it superficially or to stop doing something important, come back to it later and make up the delay later. Nothing pleasant at all.

Every day, people have one hand in their email client and the other in their structured activities (call it process, workflow…) and the tools that help them to manage and deal with these activities. The first is their principal means of communication, the only that even if it’s not properly used, keep them in touch with everyone. The second is the reason why they have been hired, what they are evaluated on, what they have to do (and do it well) before thinking of doing anything else.

That can help us to draw some conclusions in terms of change management. Since, in order to grab a hand we have to know where it is, it’s impossible to do anything without taking into account the email and its place in employees workaday life or the relationship between the new things and the structured activities. Any other angle won’t impact employees and will fail. Then, we’ll have to explain how to put their hands elsewhere won’t prevent them from doing what they used to do before, what is essential to their job.

Any other approach would be like telling a driver “take you hands off the wheel” without telling him that, on top of being enabled to do much more things, he’ll be provided by something that will at least help him to drive better than with a steering wheel.

It also has consequences on technology for both companies that try to implement social software and vendors who provide solutions to these companies. There is an incredible number on players on this market despite it has reached a consolidation phase and each of them is pushing a different approach, focusing on a specific kind of social activity to seduce buyers. The truth is there are only two valid approaches and not one more. The rest is only marketing blah-blah and even if the verbiage may sound seducing, it never survives to the confrontation with real business.

No solution can be sustainably adopted on a large scale in any organization if it doesn’t meet at least one of the following requirements (both is better) :

- high integration in email clients. It can come in different ways, from the most simple one (alerts / notifications) to the most accomplished (widget in the client, shared data and services)

- integration with tools that are used for structured activities (CRM, ERP, BPM…even ECM). Interactions and conversations often come from the need to solve a business problem…guess where these problems emerge and are identified ?

Many lines can be taken in front of employees, many tools can be proposed. The truth is much simple : who does not tackle one of these points of entry is saying things that make no sense for employees, adds problems without bringing any solution.

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Are employees content producers ? No !

June 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

How many times did we hear the famous “content is king”, pushed as the pillar of a new world where social media is predominant. Consequence : the future belongs to those (people and businesses) who’ll produce the more content. A contrario, who won’t produce content won’t exist in this world. After all, why not…

By definition, a contents is defined regarding to a container so it’s logical to assume that the container is the raison d’etre of the whole what, in fact, makes no sense once you understand that content should be interoperable and volatile to be reused, shared, far beyond the orignal container.

But content is not self-generating so it’s important to have it generated by people. What sometimes troubles me is that this looks very much like “there are new containers, so let’s fill them”. In this approach, the value, the interest of any content is that it fills one or many containers and has few to do with its intrinsic value. I’m not even saying that it may favor noise and quantity agains quality.

Things become more complicated when it comes to the workplace. I have to admit that I nearly fall off my chair whenever I hear recommandations like “you must encourage your employees to produce contents”, “to stimulate your social network’s activity, don’t forget to generate contents”. This is often understood like “there are new spaces…now your job is to fill them” or “on top of the amount of work and responsability you already have as a manager, don’t forget to find things to say every day”. Hearing such words makes manager run away to avoid what they understand as a nonsense, a new improductive and useless burden they have to deal with.

Communication is a part of any management word. Besides that, we should be cautious when the world of communication invites itself (or is imported) in the workplace without paying any attention to the goals of the people it should apply to : produce and deliver results.

Employees are not paid to publish things on online media (social or not) unless they have a marketing or communication position. They are paid to produce and, to achieve this, have to exchange and share information. To be successful, they may need more relevant practices and the right tool to support it. Saying that, the approach to “content” dramatically changes.

People emit and share information out of necessity, not because they have a container to fill (what also makes them fear the “blank page”). They must say to themselves “I have such need so I need to communicate in such way” and not “what will I find to publish to please them today, get rid of this burden, and go back to my real work”.

Be caution of not applying to employees the same punishment as Sisyphus and turn the intranet into a Danaide’s barrel.

Employees are not and should not be content producers. They are people with a job to do and, even if communication is a part of everybody’s job, it should happen because of a given context and the added value of communicating, not because there are spaces to fill.

PS : to explain the business process approach to enterprise 2.0 during the last enterprise 2.0 conference, many people relied on the content/context articulation. A sign ?

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , ,

Social media and ricocheting benefits difficulties

April 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

To convince peope to start using social media in the workplace it’s important to demonstrate quick personal benefits. And that’s not alsways that easy

Let’s consider profiles for instance. What’s my interest in filling in a rich profile where I’ll share many informations about me and know that the more socially active I’ll be the more this profile will refine according to my readings, my activities, the tags I use etc ? I’ll help who needs someone like me to find me, of course, but that’s not what we can call a direct personal benefit. Of course, if others do the same, I’ll be able to find my “saviors” and that’s an actual beneif. But the lofgic that will make make me fill in my profile hoping that it will gave others the idea to do the same is so nebulous that the average user may not understand the direct benefit. More, since as anyone I’m more than very busy, I don’t have time for such a thing. So I’ll update my profile later…maybe…

Since microblogging is becoming a trendy tropic, its “quick and direct” benefit is also being questioned. One may be “give others visibility on what I’m doing to avoid answering endlessly to the same questions”. Ok…the benefit seems more direct…but we can go one step further.

In a team, other often makes decision that have consequences for us. They overestimate our availability, decide to take an action without knowing if it’s coherent with what we’re doing etc… and, at the end, we have to explain, do things we didn’t plan or want,  keep up appearnaces. Well used with scenarios that fit the needs of teamwork, microblogging help others to make better decisions and, most of all, avoid us suffering from the impact of decisions made regardless of the context.

Does the fact that information sharing through social media produces a benefit that’s not direct but ricocheting inspire you anything special regarding to social media adoption ? Is it something that’s been neglected or underestimated ?

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , ,

My takes on the Enterprise 2.0 Forum : Enterprise 2.0 and the end of social washing

March 23, 2010 By 9 Comments

Capture d’écran 2010-01-23 à 00.12.50I’d like to take a few minutes to share with you my takes about the last  Enterprise 2.0 Forum that took place in Paris on march 17th et 18 th. First, a few words about the context.

I was looking for a professional event about enterprise 2.0 in Paris. Why do I mean by “professional” ? I’m fed up with the usual 40 min “show flat” presentations which conclusion is “it’s really awesome but I can’t do this in my company” and where we have the vague impression that insteat of getting answers to our problems we’re being sold a little piece of dream that comes with a big piece of software. In brief, attendees leave with shining stars in they eyes but realize, when the time to wake up comes, that it does not help them to achieve anything. I don’t even mention the events where we gather among experts, gurus, convinced practictionners to share certainties and common places before we realize that those we’re supposed to help weren’t in the room.

I came to the last Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Frankfurt with this idea in mind and, there, two things surprised me in a positive way. First, the format, that favors exchanges instead of one way talks (exchanges with the speaker but also among attendees) and, second, the fact that sponsors, even present around the event and the conference room were not allowed on stage to turn case studies into disguised sales speeches. So I we had the idea to bring this format to Paris, with a modest ambition regarding to the time we had : demonstrate it was possible in a local an french context and provide attendees not with discourses but with a strong added value. I think we did it and can already promise you there will be a second edition next year and than having 12 months instead of 2 to organize it will allow us to make things even better ans maybe bigger.

Last thing before delivering my takes. We usually judge this kind of event regarding to the quality of speeches (and of the buffet if you’re french). That’s not enough in the format we chose because it relies on an active participation from attendees (what implies to keep an “human size” to favor discussions). If I got many positives feedbacks, it’s also mainly because of the audience that asked the right questions and started vibrant discussions. When a conference room is crowed with people that have to het things done in their company, the debate easily reaches a higher level.

After the form, the substance. Here are my conclusions in a few points

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From Social Media to Social CRM : a recent experience with airlines

January 11, 2010 By 13 Comments

I already wrote many posts about social CRM on this blog and I recently had the (unfortunate ?) opportunity to add a real life experience to my thoughts. Those who’d prefer to pass over the narative of a long story may directly go to the bottom of the page to read the conclusion.

The situation

A simple holidays week. The discovering of an airline I never took before and, on my trip back home, the experience of very bad weather conditions that made thousands of people strand in many airports.

The background

I have many topics of interest outside of enterprise 2.0. Among them are travels, airlines industry and planes. I’m following and reading some specialized blogs and twitter accounts (airlines, professionals..) as well as some people who share these passions. Some of my “friends” and “followers” are also frequent travelers, ranked “Elite +” by their favorite airline and, like me, they consider that it’s more than a means of transportaion : it’s a true passion. Discussing with these people has a real added value when I need a piece a advice about an airline, a place to go, an aircraft, an airport… better ask it to people who fly more than 60 000 miles every year. Mind you, this is also true for many other fields…but I’ll discuss that later in this post.

Of course I follow the twitter account of my “usual and favorite airline”. They use twitter to broadcast more or less the same things that can also be found on their site or their newsletter, mainly advertisement about promotions. No discussions nor “retweets” of any message coming from a third party (clients or other professionals). The account is not very active and is mainly a one-way channel, with a very weak community side.

For instance, when the “community” live tweeted the delivery of their first Airbus A380 that was broadcasted in video on the web (btw that was a great idea…) and asked some questions to the airline about the plane or wanted to know if the videos would be available for reuse on blogs…no answer, no interest. No more sign of life when I took the time to bring my personal blog back to life (I rarely have time to blog on it) to share the experience of my first flight on their A380. A position that is, a priori, neither bad or good and must be the consequence of a well-though-out strategy.

So, this is the state of my social media experience with “my” airline. Quite frustrating when you’re both an “Elite” and passionate passenger, but the community is large enough so I can share this passion even without the airline. Of course there are many opposite examples (no need to mention Southwest…), but I’m only considering my own personal experience.

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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: , , , , , , , , ,
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