Social Networking | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Some collaboration lessons by John Chambers (Cisco)

April 29, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

I already mentioned CISCO’s collaborative experience a long time ago. I’m taking advantage of a recent article to share a few things about the “Chambers method” for collaboration.

I’m tempted to say that there’s no miracle and that what the article says is only common sense. Anyway, it’s helps to identify the main lines of any successful change project :

• Start with the “human matter”. A leadership change is not something one can improvise. It needs explainations, people need to be reassured and to be able to imagine themselves in the future situation, to make the change theirs.

• Align systems and remuneration. I often say “tell me how you’re evaluated and I’ll be able to tell you how your work”. Trying to make people collaborate while they’re given bonuses to ignore or even fightt againts each other is useless. In other words, in many cases it will be hard to avoid thinking about evaluation models.

• Think about “articulation”. Chambers talks about structure change, but what I can see beyond that is the necessity not to eliminate the hierarchical structure but implement systems that will help hierarchy to articulate with more horizontal and adhoc work models.

• Frame and explain : explain the future and make it clear. Autonomy and flexibility don’t mean absence of rules. On the contrary, employees who are often mistrustful by nature (and sometimes for good reasons…) need that the rules of the game and the frontiers between what’s allowed and what’s forbidden are clearly set.That’s what will make them focus on their rethought work instead of continuously wondering about “how to work” and “how to implement change”.

• Use social media. I don’t know if it’s done in purpose but even if it’s an essential part of the approach, it comes in last position in the list. Maybe because it’s of no use if nothing is done about the above mentioned points.

Filed Under: Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: cisco, Collaborative practices, evaluation, Human resources, incentives, John Chambers, leadership, remuneration, Social Networking

The day they (may) stop sharing

April 8, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Many current projects among enterprises rely on well known beliefs and needs : a better sharing and circulation of information are key to business performance, people share a lot on the web so organization have to provide them with the means to do the same at work.

Experience shows that it’s not that easy. Personal life is one thing, worklife is another one. That’s not because peope adopt some behaviors in one case that they’ll do the same in the other case in a natural fashion. Most of all, everybody now know that only less than 10% are actual content producers on the web. 10% on the web is a critical mass but 10% in an organization can be very few people so it implies to design work-specific approaches.

Anyway, more and and more businesses achieve it successfully. But we can already wonder how long it will last.

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

March 23, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 9 Comments

I’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

Networking and collaboration : is enterprise a land of trust or distrust ?

February 11, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I recently wrote that it what obvious to me that for many people some activities and behaviors had to remain in their private sphere and, that social networking and everything that comes with is not a part of what they naturally want to transpose in the workplace. I also temperated my words saying that, of course, generation and local culture factors had to be taken into account. But, according to the last discussions I had with people from all around the world, the gap between some european countries and the anglo-saxon world is more than a supposition.

Luck made me come across a Microsoft survey[fr] since then. What does it say ?

The survey shows that the French are attached to preserving a clear boundary between their personal and professionallives : with 86% respondants, French are,by far those who want to differenciate their online profile from their professional one. 61% do it systematically.

The whole survey is available here en english.

The survey also tells us, what may seem paradoxical, that the French are those who think the less than their online activities will affect their professional lives. Why ?

France is the outlier. French respondents reported being less concerned than other groups, and study findings suggest two key reasons for this. First, the data suggests that the French do not rely as heavily on online information to make either social or professional judgments about others. Second, data shows that the French are considerably more proactive in monitoring and managing their reputations and have, therefore, less to be concerned about.

In short, we care so much about the informations that may exist about us that we are sure (and maybe we’re wrong) that nothing that is left online can be harmful to us.

Two obvious conclusions have to be made ad this point :

• Strict separation bewteen personal and professional lives. Question : does it only concern informations or the related behaviors too ?

• We do our possible that the informations that can be found online about us would not help anyone to judge us. Question : do we transpose this behavior in the workplace ?

What future for enterprise social networks ?

December 18, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 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 ?

Real time web is not a cure-all (and twitter won’t kill blogs)

July 10, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

We can hear that microblogging is killing blogging and that, globally speaking, the future of web is real time. An hasty discourse I don’t subscribe to. It does not seem to me that a trend is replacing another but that they are complementary.

This applies to the general public web but also to the corporate web.

This complementary nature can be explained by postionning a given message according to two axis : consistency and temporality.

Consistency

No long demonstration is needed to explain that it’s hard to deliver a message and a consistent information in 140 characters. If all the information had to comply with the 140 chars rule, we would be informed of many thing without really knowing anything. In the other hand it’s hard to fill out a blog post when the message is short, terse. In this case, the title is often meaningfull alone and the body of the message brings nothing new. That’s what made a part of the blogosphere switch to the twittosphere. Not beacause one is better than the other but because its format fits more with the needs of most of people (remember that pure “creators” on social medias are only a few per cent).

Temporality

Some messages are here to stay and make their place in the worldwide informational inheritance. Some others only have an instant value and won’t deliver it if they don’t spread quickly. When one writes blog post, he aims at his regular audience, but indexation by search engines gives the post a kind of permanence. Then the long tail makes its job. Even of the indexation of the messages on twitter improves, its archives only have a few interest. If a message is missed, there are many chances it won’t be of any interest one day later : either the information will become valueless or it will become available for everydoby through more conventional channels. In the worst case, if something has a real value, it will keep on resonating (being retwitted) long enough in order it will still be able to be caught a few days later.

So a two speed web is emerging. Consistent messages that have to remain and deliver a complex message, and short and instant messages on a faster track.

It’s easy to realize how real time can reach its limits while traditionnal blogging does not have the needed reactivity in some circumstances. The complementarity between both allows to cover the full range of needs.

Some may say some messages meet both conditions. That’s why many people use twitter to mention blog posts. What reminds us the need for articulating both.

Filed Under: Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: blogging, blogs, Communication, consistency, information, internet, microblogging, real time, real time web, social computing, Social Networking, temporality, twitter, web

3 web 2.0 tools enterprises must consider

March 6, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I often touch on the need for professionaling web 2.0′s tools and usages in order to make them consistent in a corporate context. But we also have to keep in mind that there are some tools and usages that exist on the general public web that businesses haven’t considered yet and that they should bring inside their firewall.

Why three tools ? Because I didn’t find more. Even if I more addicted to the Harvard Business Review than to Techcrunch, it seems to me that as regards tools the essentials are behind us. Some cobble things up, make improveent, build mashups but no new logic comes and bring something really new in the extensive catalog that already exists. I was really looking for some new logics and not for an nth copy of something that already exists.

If you look at web 2.0 tools, very few are those that businesses have not try to implement for internal purposes yet (which does not mean they successfully managed to do so). Blogs : done. Wikis : done too. Social Networs k : they are learning. FlickR and YouTube like ? Done. Google Docs : done. Bookmarking : done. Then come some new services that are nothing but mashups. Let’s end the list.

3°) Silentale

I’ve put silentale on the third step of the podium because it’s not available yet so I rely on the promise that was made at the last LeWeb08 conference when won a special award from the public. The ability to gather and funnel all your conversations, exchanges, wherever they take place is an interesting productivity booster. This is a part of the “personal information supply chain” I’ve already developed here. A part of the corporate plumbing.

2°) Dopplr

To be honnest, Iwould never have thought of mentionning Dopplr here if I hadn’t have a conversation with a friend weeks ago. He works for a company that has subsidiaries all over the world and which teams are send…all over the world too. Experts can be in a local headquarter or send to join temps in a place near you, in the jungle or in the middle of the ocean. “Sometimes we can be 10 at the same time in NYC, each one coming from a different country….plus our NYC team. But it can also happen in the middle of nowhere without any of us knowing others people from the company are there. So we’d like to use Dopplr but, considering our industry, we can’t rely on a public platform. A prive dopplr would do the job”. What may seem of a secondary importance for sedentary businesses may be essential for those where mobility is the norm. And not only for human reasons…

1°) Seesmic.

Here is the big winner, coming in an easy first. It take a long time for businesses to recognize the business value of asynchronous and public conversations between the members of their staff. Video seems to be gadget for many of them. But the video asynchronous public conversations, instead of cumulating all the barriers bring a sudden ray of light as its ROI is obvious. Perhaps it’s also because of the current context.

Imagine that you need your sales team to be more efficient (I know…nobody cares about that today ). They are asked to qualify their leads better, to react in an adapted way to each situation…. The solution has a name : training. But how can an expert trainer work with people all over the world knowing that it’s just not possible to put him on a plane every morning !

A case can be imaginated. Everyone is asked to register his sales speech when he can. The trainer can see them one by one, make corrections showing what to improve, the the sales person start again… It’s more efficient than a videoconference because it does not disturb people’s own agendas, it allow corrections, it allow to teach by the example and, most of all, conversations can made accessible for all so that a real expertise library is available on the intranet with cases, real examples, corrections etc…

Only a blind person would not see the ROI here. And it’s only a quick and dirty example.

Ok…maybe none of these players are interested in this kind of market.

And you ? Do you see others ?

Filed Under: Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: dopplr, e-learning, e-learning 2.0, enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, mobility, seesmic, silentale, social computing, Social Networking, training, video, videoconference, web-2.0

How to integrate innovation in your organization…with your IT dept.

February 17, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I’coming back on an article titled “Teaming Up to Crack Innovation Enterprise Integration” and issued in the Harvard Business Review in last november. It has many interests : it’s about the vital problematic of innovation, it shows this so-called innovation can only be distributed and rely on sharing, it shows how such principles can be put at work within companies and explain the role of IT.

• The principle

Growth rely on two factors : innovation (ability to propose new products that meet the maket’s expectation and conceive new processes and business models) and integration (ability to make separate entities work together in order to lower structural costs, higer overall production capacity and discover new opportunities).

• The constraints

Integration and innovation share a common point : they are not in most of corporate DNAs. Innovation because it breaks with traditional habits and is more often stifled than promoted, integration because it goes against local optimization that it tries to replace with a systemic approach.

More, because they suppose more exchanges and an increased work on information, these logics need a strong support from IT departments and yet the article mentions a survey that shows that if half the IT depts are in charge of integration and a third of innovation, very few of them are in charge of both.

Everything and its opposite about using social networks at the office

June 24, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

This week again the squabble about “pro or against using social networks at work” delivered some new arguments. While CNN was telling us using social networks at work could bring some benefits, the Confederation of British Industry ways saying exactly the opposite, stating it makes companies loose billions.

What’s the truth, if there’s any ?

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