Information leaks on social networks : that’s not the problem

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Summary : businesses see social networks as possible channels for information leaks caused by negligence. What is right. But their retort, that is mainly technological, does not solve anything because social networks are only one of the many channels that can make risks become true, not the cause of the risk. As a matter of fact the largest social network in the world is the street. If a global approach through awareness and accountability will help to deal with the whole risk, solutions that are being currently implemented are only window-dressing regarding to the many channels information can use to leak. Human issues can’t be solved by technology only and firewalls will never replace trust.

It’s obvious that information leaks is a sensitive point for businesses and the risk of employees being negligent on social networks has to be taken seriously. Hence the need for limiting this risk. Most of time the response relies on technology. That solves a part of the problem but is far from being enough.

As a matter of fact, prohibiting any connection to these sites or filtering outgoing information may limit the risk. But such an approach has weaknesses. It only works on corporate devices. At the moment people use their mobile or connect from home the risk is here gain. Making employees aware of the risks caused by their own behaviors is more useful because, in some ways, tools are only the vehicle behaviors use to make information flow. Adopting this approach helps dealing with some of the consequences but none of the causes.

The largest social network is not Facebook or Twitter but…the world, life, the street. And no technology will prevent anyone to do anything there except accountability. The good side of this approach is that, when it’s successful, it works with any device, anytime, anywhere.

We all have examples to tell. This group of coworkers of Bank xxxxxx having a drink and talking about their employer’s solvency, not being conscious everyone was listening to them. These two executives discussing their secret new corporate strategy at lunch. Everyone around appreciated. This group of employees of YYYYY vacationing together and discussing, around the pool, of lay-off program they were secretly working on. The problem that, even if they were on the middle of the Indian Ocean there were lots of french people in the hotel. One more thing. I would like to thank the sales rep of ZZZZ that were discussing their plan to sign with a customer in the plane….since I was meeting the same client a couple of years later my colleagues and I make the best possible use of it. I also think about all the people that can’t prevent from working in trains or planes, making it easy for anyone to see what’s on their beautiful HD screen.

Of course such things never happen. I’m even sure that in the above mentioned companies, social networks are filtered or blocked. Human issues won’t be solved by technology and firewalls will never replace trust.

 

 

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

Is reputation a new currency ?

December 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary :reputation is often mentioned as a new currency in models based on exchange, trust and collaboration. It’ logical to some extent but a too easy shortcut if it prevent from thinking about how to remunerate contributions from people who are not looking for recognition but to satisfy more basic needs. Reputation is rather a new raw material that will be used to build new systems than an alternative money.

That’s something we often hear here and there : reputation is the new currency for a world and companies based on collaboration, sharing, networking. Both a liogical and too easy shortcut.

It’s logical because trust is key in emergent collaboration based systems. And reputations contributes a lot to trust. It does not replace trust but can accelerate it. Similarly, systems promoting empowerment and intrapreneurship, making employees become businesses in the business, need a personal branding approach in which reputation plays a big part. That’s also the same outside of the organization because reputation contributes to separate the wheat from the chaff on an internet where every individual can participate and could need to prove his legitimacy. Last, in a connected world, one’s reputation helps to spread ideas and thoughts.

That’s also an easy shortcut because, in a social or community system that need the contribution of lots of people, reward and remuneration approaches to contribution are still poorly understood and defined (and sometimes even taboo). Hence the choice of the easy way : reputation is the reward. As a matter of fact, who does not like to see his work and contribution recognized and his reputation improved. And what’s more it has been proven right by Maslow : this kind of need strands at the top of his famous pyramid. But does something hide behind this sweet image ?

If we want Maslow’s model to be relevant in this case, the people in question are supposed to have climbed up the first steps of the pyramid. It’s easy to say that reputation equals money when it applies to people who have no problems with their basic needs. That’s true for most of the people (and I’m one of them) that talk about this topic, practitioners, consultants etc.. But when it comes to embark all kind of employees in the system, one need to address people whose opinion is seldom asked, don’t blog or speak at conferences to share their point of view. But that’s the economy of sharing, of donation isn’t it ? Maybe…but it implies people have things to give and to share. And, most of all that they have the means and enough time to do it because that’s not because something is free that it costs nothing. We are not all equal in such situations. As someone recently told me “it’s easier to nicely contribute for free when your job is secured than when you fear to be laid off or don’t know if you’ll be able to pay or rent at the end of the month”. Try to pay your rend with reputation and you’ll measure how wide is the gap.

Being paid with a currency with which you can’t by anything is just like being fobbed off.

Let me also mention the french philosopher François Elie, someone very involved in open source communities and I had the chance to met a couple of week ago. Speaking about communities in a conference he said ; “in communities, people contribute and people get money and rewards for the work done. The problem is that these are not the same people. Community bases systems don’t scale if you only pay people by saying ‘thank you’”.

So, is reputation a new currency ? I don’t think so. It’s rather a raw material that will be used to built new models for HR, collaboration etc… and provided that it won’t be use to avoid tackling trust related issue to focus on a personal marketing approach that’s often lead astray and becomes unhealthy and counter-productive.

 

 

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Does transparency harm sincerity in business social networking

November 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : social networks, most of all in a business context, need trust. And trust needs transparency. Are there exceptions to this statement everyone agrees with ? Obviously yes. Because transparency brings into interactions a lot of of elements that cause interference on its quality, lead to irrational decisions regarding to the intrinsic quality of the business proposition In short, transparency harms sincerity. The example of an anonymous social networking platform raises questions such as : trusting people vs. trusting the system, anonymity vs not being identifiable and, at the end, makes us wonder if too much transparency and people centricity do not play against the purpose of a business relationship.

Specialists have been discussing whether people should be able to be anonymous or not on social networks. Some, like Google +, want to force people to use their real identity instead of pseudonyms while other gives them the choice. Beyond that there are usages and social proprieties that encourage such or such beavior depending on the platform. There are many reasons to use a pseudo on twitter (one of them being as simple as the 140 characters limit…) but doing so on Facebook or, most of all, on twitter, is irrelevant.

I’ve I’ve been asked the question a couple of weeks ago I would have say I would prefer if anyone uses his own identity. Having a rather business-oriented use of all these tools, I like to know who I’m talking with. In the same way, I can accept to “like” a brand page on Facebook but I will never become “friend” with brands misusing individual profiles. As for twitter I distinguish between non-identifiable pseudos and identifiable ones : people may use pseudos for many reasons while not hiding the identity of the person behind the account.

Of course we have to take into account the case of some totalitarian regimes, risks related to one’s job and employer….that may cause legitimate exceptions. But, a priori, I would have said I prefered that anyone could be identifiable. That was before a meeting that happened in september.

A friend came and told me “I need to show you one thing…an anonymous social network”. “A what ?”. “A social network relying on people being anonymous”. Such a thing should have made me laugh but knowing this friend quite well I told to myself there were reasons why he wanted me to have a look at his discovery.

It’s a business social network like Linkedin but with a huge difference. People register with their real name (which is validated) and, rather than inviting their whole network on the platform, they only disclaim the names of the people they know. They only give the names to the platform (which have only a relative value) but not the contact’s email address. If, for example, I disclaim I know  Anthony Poncier,anyone trying to get in touch with him with have to explain me why. Then a discussion starts, aiming at helping me deciding whether it makes sense for Anthony to accept of not. And this conversation takes place anonymously (I don’t know who is the person requesting an introduction, the person does not know that I am the connection…à. I can decide to stop because I think it’s not worth or think that it would be a good idea for them to meet. In this case we can stop being anonymous, connect people and even discuss the terms of the connection (connection fees for example, if things end with a juicy business deal).

While anonymity ? I had the opportunity to discuss this point with  Philippe Mangeard, the founder of the JKPM network. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Investing in people ? Are you kidding ?

September 28, 2011 By 2 Comments

Summary : the knowledge economy rely on people as an efficiency and growth driver. That’s a given. To ensure the competitiveness of businesses in the future, new operating models, frameworks and practices will be needed. That’s understood but not easy to implement. Investing in human and the frameworks that will ensure that the best use will be me made of their skills in the production process is a nonsense, most of all regarding to business and accounting indicators that were designed for other value creation models and lead businesses in the wrong direction. Knowledge accumulation and sharing, collaboration, frameworks based on trust which is essential in this context makes no sense regarding to rules that need change if we want to build a suitable environment that will favor business and employees’ development.

In a previous post, I mentioned that an economy relying on the intensive use of knowledge was, before all, a system relying on accumulation.

- knowledge accumulation : before being reused, knowledge should be shared, so made accessible so be formalized. In other words, if we take the example of an enterprise social platform supporting the way work is done, it will take time before a critical mass of knowledge can be found in the platform to make anyone found a reason to go there to take what they need and even bring their own knowledge.

- trust accumulation : trust is at the center of collaboration frameworks as well as of work models relying on knowledge sharing and exchange. But it can’t be ordered and only come over time, as people interact more and more the one with the other. Trust applies to lots of things : relationships between peers, with one’s manager and subordinates, with the enterprise as a cultural entity, trust in the tools one has to use, trust in the organization and work model. When anyone does not trust one of this elements, the whole system collapses.

- reputation accumulation : reputation is a kind of accelerator for trust because it says a priori that someone is legitimate, skilled, nice to work with, based on peers’ experience, before one starts to investigate to know if one is worth being trusted. It’s not the solution to everything but helps things to start and even accelerates them. But, like reputation, it takes time to build one’s internal reputation on any professional matter.

Let me add one more thing. Such a system also relies on combining. Combining knowledges, expertise and ideas that need to be continuously combined and re-combined to make decisions and solve problems in complex contexts that need a multidisciplinary and transverse approach. Since all these resources are embodied, are stored in people’s brain, it’s also about combining people and their work in an adhoc way, out of static and rigid structures.

Accumulation is nothing new. It was already there in the industrial economy we’re about to leave. It was about the accumulation of tangible capital. The cost for businesses was impressive but they were able to rely on rules that made it easier to follow the economic revolution that was on its way. Amortization with one this rules. Smoothing costs made investment possible. It’s only an accounting trick that made the spending acceptable on the balance sheet, keeping it nice-looking while lot of money was spent to prepare for the future even if the final cost was strictly the same. The only purpose was to make things acceptable without preventing businesses to invest for their future.

That’s the same with combining. When a department buys a machine they won’t use alone, their is a mechanism that makes sharing acceptable : the allocative key. Here again it does not chance anything to the price but makes resource sharing acceptable.

The economy we’re entering, usually called the knowledge economy, needs, to create value, an intensive use of intangible capital made of people, knowledge, relation or social capital that is key to agile and continuously evolving work. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Employees first ! Supporting those who really create value.

June 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : “Reverse the pyramid”…other words may be used to scare less but it’s concern shared by many organization. It’s, in some ways, necessary to face the increasing complexity of the world that surrounds us but it’s also the obsessive fear of many organizations and managers used to the command and control model and not willing to go out of their zone of their comfort zone to improve what’s happening in the value zone. Value zone ?  As a matter of fact that’s because value is created at the field employee level that the command chain should turn into a service one. But, beyond exhortations that are easy way to drive change while being surprise it doesn’t work it’s a hard work that consists of reversing flow, redesigning some processes and transfering responsabilities that has to be done. That’s was was made at the Indian compant HCL and the story is told by Vineet Nayar, HCL CEO, in his book, Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down. Here are my takes.

One year ago, in July 2010, I read attentively and bookmarked this blog post by Gary Hamel where he was telling the incredible management experience that people just lived at HCL, an Idian IT service company. Spurred on by its CEO, Vineet Nayar, they seemed to be on the right way to meet a goal that look unreachable for many : reversing the pyramid to make the organization more successful.

Here’s what I highlighted at that time :

– Transparent Financial Data. Vineet realized it’s hard to feel empowered if your manager has a lot of data you don’t. With this in mind, HCLT’s IT team created a simple widget that gave every employee a detailed set of financial metrics for their own team and other teams across the company.

– U&I. Early on, Vineet and his leadership team set up an online forum and encouraged employees to ask tough questions and offer honest feedback. Nothing was censored on the “U&I” site; every post, however virulent, was displayed for the entire company to see.

– Service Level Agreements. Powerful corporate departments, like HR and finance, often seem more interested in enforcing blanket policies than in making life easier for employees. When Vineet would ask front line employees, “What have the enabling functions done to help you create value in the value zone?”

-Today, HCLT employees are able to rate the performance of any manager whose decisions impact their work lives, and to do so anonymously. These ratings are published online and can be viewed by anyone who has submitted a review.

- As the CEO, Vineet was being asked to weigh in on hundreds of unit-level plans each year. Recognizing the limits to his time and personal expertise, Vineet challenged his colleagues to develop an online, peer-based evaluation process. The solution: MyBlueprint. In 2009, three hundred managers posted their business plans, or “blueprints,” online. Each document was accompanied by an audio presentation. More than 8,000 employees were then invited to jump in and review the plans.

- Three years after launching this concept, 20% of HCLT’s revenue is coming from initiatives launched in these communities of interest.”

Today, Vineet Nayar tells us more in a book called Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down. Rather than summarizing a book that’s very easy to read, I’m going to highlight what seem to me being the key points of his approach and share a couple of comments. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books I read, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is sanctuarizing social networks a palliative to lack of trust

April 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : one of the first concerns that come when deploying a social network is the fear that the freedom of speech and action allowed to employees will eventually backfire on them. Hence the idea of sancturarizing the social network in order to reassure employees who will know that things they could say or do won’t be used against them. At first sight it looks like a good ideas but it raises some questions tool. Does it mean they won’t be able to take advantage of their activity ? Making the network the only place where people won’t have to take responsibility of what they do, isn’t there a risk to dampen managers from using it as a work and productivity tool ? Should such a project take for granted the lack of trust between organizations and employees or, on the contrary, is it the right opportunity to work on restoring trust ?

When any organization thinks about deploying a social network, one the first questions tha comes when working on governance is about the use that could be made of what’s published in the network. At first sight that’ logical and even essential because of employees are not able to put at work what they learnt in the network, this last will have few value. But, in fact, this is not the matter. What matters is to know whether the organization will be able to use what employees did in the network to act toward them.

Toward ? I’d rather say against because the question behind is to protect employees from seeing their own words used against them. That’s a real stake. Knowing that participation relies only on people’s desire, having the feeling to be in the middle of a mine field don’t makes things easy and, consequently, clear statements that reassure them and commits the organization are more than welcome.

As a result, more and more charters include measures that state that “nothing that will be said on the network will be used by the enterprise against employees”. But is it a good thing ? Is it even relevant ? [Read more...]

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

Turning lurkers or unhappy customers into fans. Stroke of genius or swindle ?

March 14, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : what’s a fan on facebook ? Someone who likes a product or a brand of course. Are we wure ? When, to be able to use this channel to get information or the solution to a problem with the product people have to become fan, the system is biased. So the only question is to know what one think of a system that turns lurkers or unhappy customers into fans despite of them. Clever trick or false advertising ?

What company is not trying to recruit as many fans as possible for its Facebook page ? No one is quite sure of the valuation of a fan (while the acquisition cost is well known) but fans are needed. Some will buy more, some will share the essage…fans can have several role what makes it difficult to know what their contribution to the business is. That said, they have an intrinsic value for any business ; if between two competitors there is a big difference on the number of fans it must mean something.

I’ve already discussed the relativity of the concept of community membership. That’s the same with fans. And I’m close to think that it’s even worse.

What can make me go on the page of a brand toward which I’m neutral ? Get informations, maybe in order to buy the product later, know them better before thinking of sending them my CV…

In some extreme cases, I may want (rather…need) to meet the brand on its page because I’m not happy with their product, service, and would like explanations or a fix. Why not, after all, since they say “we do customer service on Facebook”.

But it’s often impossible to read of write anything without being fan. Not a serious issue after all…only a button to click. But the mechanism looks like swindle :” you want to complain, you need information, so tell the world you’re a fan first and then only we’ll talk”. Like if, before going to the customer service desk in any store, customers had to run in the street shouting “I love [the name of the store]“.

Ok, sometimes it’s only an impression. If some brands keep their contents only for their fans, in many case people only need to know were to click to get rid of the welcome page and access the content without become fans. But Mrs Anybody is not aware of that and thinks that only way to access the page and get rid of the welcome page is to click on “like”.

We can also un-fan after having done what we needed…but who’ll think about doing so ?. And  how many neutral and unhappy people did have to demonstrate their “fan-ness” to access the most basic level of information ? Sometimes I feel I’m deceiving my network when I become a fan only to have a look…

Swindle ? If you think that when I become fan while I’m only looking for information or I’m unhappy with the brand may make my network think I recommend the brand in question…there’s a real point here.

Ok…I’m quibbling. It’s all about wording and ethic. And who cares about that today ?

 

Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

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

February 11, 2010 By 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 ?

[Read more...]

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

The future impact of open money in organizations

April 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

In the beginning I didn’t really take an interest in this topic and, so I missed many things about what may have a real impact on organizations in the future.

Virtual Moneys are nothing new and come in many forms : in France we have the SEL, Switzerland WIR. Closer to us, people who are used to second life use Linden Dollars and twitter users are discovering  Twollars, a currency they use to thank each other and help charities.

There’s a common point to all these initiatives : they aim at allowing exchanges, through a trusted currency, in a context of scarcity of legal money. Anybody can create his own money which doesn’t rely on tangible and material wealths anymore but on trust and what people have to give to one to the other. If I wanted to use great words, I’d say a currency that rely on Human’s wealth. A currency indexed on human and social capital. At the end that’s not very far from the truth and perfectly fits the current trends and expectations. Anyway, many organizations, from non profits to large businesses, even banks, are now investigating thid field. This is no surprise as experience teaches us that open and virtual moneys are the alternative par excellence to legal moneys when the last are becoming scare although the real wealth (in the general sense of the word) people can exchange remains intact.

I highly advise those who can understand a word of french to watch these two videos from Jean-François Noubel on the future of money.


The Future of Money (Partie 1) – Jean-François Noubel – 8′ 21″ from ChristopheDucamp on Vimeo.


Future of Money (Partie 2) – Entretien à Paris avec Jean-François Noubel from ChristopheDucamp on Vimeo.

Let’s remind one thing : in a close future, we’ll have to learn how to deal with many different moneys.

What does it mean for organizations ?

[Read more...]

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

Disintermediarization : how a 2.0 practice can help against credit crunch

October 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Enterprise 2.0 is enterprise before being 2.0 and social tools are tools before being social. It’s very important to understand that anything 2.0 is, before all, characterized by a vision of interactions between people before being about the use of such or such tools. And a relevant vision can help bringing an old legacy business back to youth without changing its purposes nor its main characteristics.

The current economic situation shows us how once “what can’t be changed” faces a major crisis despite a presupposed infallibility, it’s possible to makes things change since the “we’ve always done things this way so there’s no other way” reflex is not relevant anymore. But it needs a real paradigm shift.

Banks don’t have money anymore ? They don’t trust people ? They don’t lend anymore ? They don’t even trust other ? Add to that the fact people don’t trust banks anymore too and you get all the required elements for a credit cruch.

So, strangely, everything that was only about mathematics, based on foresseable nature of things, cartesian risk scoring, showed its limits and more and more attention is paid to what was ignored : people, trust and what underlies all that, that’s to say the existence of links, of interpersonnal exchanges that make trust possible. Perhaps the beginning of an answer for those for are convinced that discussions and networkings had no business value.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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