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Enterprise 2.0

I Take It Back – SOCIAL Does NOT Belong In HR

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As a follow up post, during the rest of the HR Tech conference, I looked for more social vendors and found them.  Yammer  and ThoughFarmer was there.  As were a number of others that added Social into their mix of HR offerings.

I even learned that the company I mentioned last time, Peoplefluent, bought SocialText – not too shabby.  It was refreshing to see so many companies trying to add it in at various degrees.

But that is from the vendor side.  Not from the HR side.  In fact, watching a panel discussion it hit me even harder. The people talking about Social didn’t have a clue about it.  But the audience didn’t know any better.

So, I was wrong.

For years I thought SOCIAL should live in HR.  It seems natural, right?  We are talking, in essence, about employee performance in many different flavors.

But during this conference I had a light of understanding. It is one that has come to me before, but never with this much clarity.

Enterprise 2.0, this type of collaboration, cannot be used in context of how we have done business for years, and certainly not with the same rules. THIS MUST BE DONE FROM SCRATCH – from a totally new thought pattern. That is the only way you can do Social correctly without it being unduly influenced by the inefficient methods and traditions of the past.

It’s is not to say that HR or IT or Learning or Corporate Communications or another department can’t lead their organizations in Social. In fact I have seen some do it well (Marsh, Lowes). But they must do it with a completely different look outlook. As long as it is focused on the people and not the software (not that software isn’t a critical piece), I think any group could do it.

In The Innovators Dillema by Clayton Christiansen he talks about disruptive innovation, which fits with Enteprise 2.0. For it to succeed, one of the “rules” is to allow them to play by their own rules and become detached from the culture of the mother organization. This way they have full latitude to exploreand discover their own rules and values.

For social collaboration to work without being steamrolled by the culture of the organization, this is what needs to happen. In the organizations that have been successful, this is what I have seen happen.

(Note: If you haven’t read the book, do so now.  Even if you don’t think it will be relevant to your work, you will be surprised.)

 

HR Doesn’t Get Enterprise 2.0 – But They Should

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While everyone I know in this space is at Jive World in Las Vegas, I spent the day at the HR Tech Conference in Chicago.  The expo floor was impressive.  Lots of great booths.

But I was there to see just how well Enterprise 2.0 / internal social technologies / collaborative technologies have made it into the HR profession.

First of all, we have to realize that if there is any place collaboration should live – which is meant to increase employee performance – where sharing knowledge or connecting employees to share expertise should live, it should be HR.

Granted, there are a myriad of reasons why it should NOT live in HR depending on the organization, but if we take it generically, it just makes sense.

So, naturally, you would think that SOCIAL would be all the rage right now – right?  Well, you would be almost correct.  There are many companies on the expo floor which sell software for recruiting.  And SOCIAL is all over their signage – but they are hooking into LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  But I looked for social IN the enterprise software companies’ were selling.

I couldn’t find one.

Until I was leaving.  There was one: Peoplefluent.  I asked them about their social offering (to see if what they really said about “social collaboration” was really internal social collaboration).

I played dumb.

They talked.  I asked a few questions.  They had it.  But I don’t know that they know what they have.  Sure, they know that they have integrated Enterprise 2.0, but from the answers it gave me the impression that it was JUST another feature.

That puzzled me.  Then I remembered: HR (obviously) isn’t looking at E2.0, so Peoplefluent (selling to HR departments) isn’t focusing on it either.

But their software links the collaborative offer with (get this) their recruiting, learning (LMS), performance management, compensation, succession planning, vendor management and compliance offerings.  AND, they have what seems like a pretty good mobile solution.  Pretty impressive.

Granted, I didn’t do a deep dive into their solution, but I am amazed (or maybe not) how they were the only company I talked with that “got it.”

I haven’t talked with all the companies, and I would not be surprised that there is another, but this just shows how little HR understands what E2.0 can do for them when it comes to communication, employee performance, collaboration, etc.

And this goes for HR derivatives, including the learning community.  Sure, there are some that understand, but no many.  I could go on forever, but I wouldn’t want to bore you (even more).

And, it is sad.  To me it is as if Michael Jordan didn’t know how good he could be at basketball and only coaches a middle school team – which, in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the potential is severely unfulfilled.

As a keynote today said, “Ask, ‘What If.'”

Yes – What if?

15 Ways To Fail at Social Business: Free eBook

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How do you fail at social business?  Let me count the ways.

Having worked with companies trying to be more “social” I have seen many fail and many succeed.  We hear the success stories all of the time.  But what we don’t talk about are the failures.  Why?  No one wants to talk about their failures, naturally.  So we hide them.

But from our failures we can learn so much!  In fact, I would argue that we can learn more from failures than successes.

In that light, I have pulled fifteen of the top failures to becoming a social business that I have seen – and experienced myself.  This list is focused on Enterprise 2.0, or using collaborative technologies within an organization.

I frequently speak at conferences on failure and how to fail at social business – and what we can learn from it as well so we don’t fall into the same traps.

To help everyone interested in avoiding these failures, I have put together an ebook entitled 15 Ways To Fail at Social Business: How companies have failed when implementing Enterprise 2.0 – and how to avoid their fate.

You can get it for free by clicking the link above or you can get it on Amazon.com.

Business Practices That Refuse To Die: Email Trees (Video)

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Why do we regularly torture ourselves with endless email trees that are branched off, creating 14 separate discussions and CC: everyone and their dog? It drives us mad yet we find ourselves being sucked these holes each week. We contort ourselves to fit this time-wasting model of communication and despise it every time it happens.

We can end the madness by using collaborative technologies and work in a way that works for us, not us for it. We can save time, confusion and frustration.

Those of us who have been using collaborative technologies understand  this.  But it is not an easy concept to teach other in a way that it has a lasting effect – so they change the way they work.  The real challenge is how do we explain this to other people?

I hope this video helps you explain how we can work so much better and really upgrade the way we work.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIqA_YKeboc’]

As I was making this video I thought of other business practices that I wish would die.  Do you have ideas, too?  If so, let me know in the comments and I will put them in my bucket list of videos to make in the near future.  Thanks!

Pandemic Failure – Failure Unabaited

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A couple weeks ago I gave a keynote speech at the Enterprise 2.0 conference entitled, “Embracing your E2.0 Failures” (watch the video here).  There I talked about three different types of failures, Pandemic, Catastrophic and Intrinsic failure.

At the beginning of the keynote I showed this video I created which exemplifies the most dangerous of the three failures: Pandemic Failure:

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSIMc4j5Sg’]

Pandemic Failure has three main characteristics:

  1. It runs rampant within a culture.
  2. It is obvious to most within that culture and it is often discussed and complained about.
  3. Rarely does anyone take action to make the needed changes.

This is the most dangerous because bad behavior becomes an acceptable way of working or accomplishing a task.  For example, when was the last time you were in a meeting you didn’t really need to be in, but felt obligated to be there?  You didn’t lend any real advantage to the meeting nor did you take away much.  Not that it was completely worthless – you probably did get some good information out of it – but what you did get was not an hour’s worth of your time.  You could have received it another way in only about a minute’s time.

But we too often work this way and it is acceptable.

Pandemic Failure leads to apathy and diminished effectiveness.  And this is why it is the most dangerous type of failure.  It allows for growth while at the same time stifles it and can bring down whole subsets of cultures.  It gives a false sense of security and at the same time an overall uneasiness.

Overcome Pandemic Failure

How do we overcome pandemic failure.  Like anything else, we first need to recognize it.  Then, we can’t just let it go.  We need to actually do something about it.  And it probably won’t be comfortable because it will be part of the culture.  It will take guts because you are challenging the status quo.  Everyone will be on your side, yet no one may back you.  It will be a very strange situation to be in.

Yet if you let it go, you become a victim of an annoying culture trait.  And I don’t know about you, but any time I become a slave to something that is ineffective, I feel I must change it.

So here is to all you Change Agents!

Forget About the Human Experience: Social Business Failure #13

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Disney got the human experience right.  From the moment you walk up to Disneyland, you are in another world.  The environment is set to walk you through an experience.  From the layout of the streets, to the paths you walk, to the music, sights and colors.  There is a story behind it all and you are led fluidly from one experience to another.

Contrast this with a discussion I have had many times…

Me: “When employees log in to their computers, they should be able to open up this tool and automatically be logged in.”

Them: “We can’t do this. It is against policy.”

“If we don’t, they won’t use it.  If it is a pain to get to, they won’t use it.”

“But policy says, ‘blah blah blah.’  This is something we need to follow.  If they want to use the tool, they will follow these policies.”

“But the policies are based off of out dated assumptions.  The simple fact is, if it is not super easy to get to, adoption will suffer.  So we have a choice, either we change or ignore the policy or we abandon the effort.  Which is more important?”

This is one of many, many instances I have run across where we bang our head against the wall because what people want and what the company is willing to give them are very different.  We have all seen programs, incentives and tools go untouched simply because they don’t take the humans into account.

With software tools, we often talk about UX – or User eXperience.  When the user steps up to the tool, what kind of an experience will they have?

In a conversation on Google+, Rachel Happe and I came up with a new twist on UX, “HX  = Human eXperience, the art of creating, optimizing and enhancing experiences around ‘organizational identity, values and goals.'”

When we focus on the human and their relationship to the organization, everything else works out because we are focusing on that which changes – and we expect it.  In contrast, if we focus on the organization (something we try to optimize and keep steady) and try to mold the humans into it we find that it backfires.

In the end, what do we learn?  Remember the humans. Rather than viewing them as a necessary part of the organization, see them as the organization itself.

 

Social Business Failure #12: “This Isn’t About the Tool”

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In complete juxtaposition from last week’s post, we can’t forget this is also about the tool.

When I first started working with NASA, there was a group sent out to look at tools. (Although this story is about NASA, there are others I have worked with which have done the same thing – this is a pretty common scenario.)  They went through the usual drill.  They gathered features, functionality.  They conducted a bake-off to determine which tool is the best.  They chose one and implemented it on a pilot basis.

It failed, which is why they asked me to help.  It didn’t work for a number of reasons, but not the least of them being that although they were looking for social media, what they were evaluating were tools that were not “social”.  They thought they were social tools (indeed, the tools marketed themselves as such) but they were not.  They lacked some of the more basic requirements needed to pull it off.  They were looking more at content management tools, not social tools.

Then, when we got on the right track, there was a tendency to go with the cheaper solution.  But this solution did not have what was needed. (Cost and convenience are odd things.  They lure us to a decision we know is not worthy and we are caught between the two – what is right and what is more convenient or cheapest.  But that thought is for another day…)

Too many times we try to jump in with the tool first.  RESIST THAT TEMPTATION.  But when it is time to choose a tool, it is a very important decision, one not to be taken lightly.  Although social is not ABOUT the tool, the tool is a heavy component and should not be discounted.

For example, the number of clicks it takes to get to information, the flow in which that happens and the ways users are notified of new/changed content are often overlooked or glossed over points by a novice when choosing a tool.  There are many attributes that have a hidden importance and until you understand the social element you very well may not uncover those needed features.

So what to do?  1) Make sure the person who evaluates potential tools has experience in this.  There are enough people out there that finding someone should not be a problem anymore.  2) Listen to them and weigh their advice heavily.

And then know this: No tool (or set of tools) will give you everything you need and want.  There are gives and takes, many of which won’t be discovered until you have purchased and implemented the tool in production.  Just go with it and enjoy the journey!

Social Business Failure #11: Being Social is About the Tool

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Social technologies have become wide and varied making the landscape confusing.  “What product should we use?”  This is a question I am asked all the time.

A number of the organizations I have worked with have come to me and said, “We want to be more social so we thought we should use SharePoint / Jive / IBM Connections / Yammer / Drupal / etc…”  But there is a fundamental flaw in that sentence.

“We want to be more social” is not solved by buying a tool. It can be aided, but it does not solve the issue.  Although slight in semantics, the different is huge in application.

When I talk to these organizations they want to see how they can be more social online.  It is for this reason that I rarely bring my laptop to these type of meetings – I don’t want to talk about technology. Social Technology will happen when you have all the other pieces in place.

What is business problem you are trying to solve?  What are your purposes / goals?  Who is asking? What is happening now and where is it you want to go?  Why are you not there now? (And don’t answer “we don’t have the technology.”)  What is your culture like?  And there are SO MANY more questions.

Once you have the answer to these in place, the social technology piece will be so much more clear.  It will also be a side note as you work on the real issues of your business.

 

Social Business Failure #10: Assume This is About Being Social

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In preparation for a meeting, I came in early and set up the computer and projector with the organization’s social networking application.  My job was support a team lead as she rolled out how they will use the tool to totally revamp and streamline their on-boarding process.  The first two ladies came in.  As they talked among themselves, one of them looked up at the screen and said, “What is that?”

“Oh, its our social networking site.  I don’t know much about it.”

“Social networking?!  I don’t have time for that.  Who does?  I don’t have time to waste.”

“I don’t know – neither do I. I have been in a couple times, but haven’t done anything.”

I sat back, silently, smiling, knowing that they are about to be asked to use it and wondering what their reaction will be in an hour.

After everyone arrived, the meeting kicked off.  The team lead talked about the current process and how difficult it was.  They all agreed: it was a real pain and had been for some time.  Then the lead talked about how she found a way to decrease the frustration and at the same time create more accountability, more visibility and decrease the time to bringing a person on to the payroll.

All sat and listened and gave input.  At the end she asked, “Is this something we can all do and commit to?”  Everyone agreed – this was going to be far better than what they have now.  They were all ready to adopt this new process.  This included the ladies who wanted nothing to do with the tool an hour earlier.

It’s Not About Being Social

Why did the lady’s attitude change?  At first, for them, it was all about “social” and they wanted nothing to do with it.  When they realized it was about getting work done and the word “social” was never used, suddenly they saw the benefit.

Social technologies within organizations are about working differently to get the job done better, more efficiently and effectively than could be done before.  It is about improving business.  When we approach the workforce from the standpoint of a business consultant, focusing on integrating it into their workflow, helping them to transform the way they work, and they see the benefits, it is hard not to give it a try.

Social is a byproduct of the work and the environment, not the product itself.

Questions:

  • How can we help others focus on working differently?
  • What can we do to show that this is about getting real work done?

Social Business Failure #8: Workflow Integration

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The NUMBER ONE way to best implement any internal social business initiative is to integrate it into the workflow.  I have been preaching this for years and cannot stress it enough.

This will be a short post because I want you to go read Laurie Buczek’s post, The Big Failure of Enterprise 2.0 Social Business.  Not only is it spot on, but her example is perfect.  I spoke with her about a month ago about her experiences and her frustrations and I recognized them all too well in what I have worked on.  But I really couldn’t share our phone conversation.  Thankfully, she did a fabulous job of it in this post.

I agree with Sameer Patel‘s comment on her post that the money phrase was, “Lack of cultural change is not social business’s biggest failure.  The biggest failure is the lack of workflow integration to drive culture change.”

Then, Dion Hinchcliffe added to it.  Well done yet again!

Go read these two.  Stop reading this.  Go!

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