19 posts tagged “web2.0”

Zero.

Implementing social media systems in a business will only add value with adoption and usage. JP asks: "Does it make sense to have asymmetric information within the firm? Once we start acting as if information has value by and of itself, it is only a matter of time before people start using this information to gain personal advantage within the firm."

That is why social media in just about all its forms requires openness, transparency and trust. But, for all their protestations, that's not how businesses typically function. So I'm a little surprised that Martin Koser is stressed by the fact that "Management is supposed to be [a] people business, it is inherently social by all accounts."

Management is, but business is not. Business is mainly about the bottom line. And that is why Susan Scrupski points out that many businesses think 'social' equals productivity drag.

But collaboration using social media can help the bottom line if it is in the flow, a part of the every day, part of the nature of a business. Rob Paterson asks, hypothetically I think: "Isn’t an underlying principle of 2.0 that it uses nature’s rules and hence should make everything a lot easier?"

For early adopters of social media, social media already is part of everyday life. The SF Web2.0 Expo is not the first to use live audience participation (this time through Twitter), and sometime soon many company staff events will follow suit - a trojan mouse if ever there was one.

Unlocking the ability of a business to collaborate, to activate a virtuous circle able to create new knowledge is where the value of social media in the business lies. As JP concludes:

"We should concentrate on providing good service and good product, concentrate on providing that service honestly and diligently. And the money will flow. Not by hoarding information, but by freeing it up. Collaborating with each other, within the firm, with our customers, with our partners, with our markets. Even with our competitors."

There’s a growing shift in the conversation around E2.0 away from the technologies and on to the culture change that will unlock the value of social/networking systems.

You would think that persuading the Board about the merits of a more open, transparent culture isn’t too uphill a task, especially when you consider the alternative and the negative impact on the bottom line. Ross Dawson writes in Trends in the Living Network of networked organisations, in which being more effective at ad-hoc communiation and collaboration underpins organisatinoal performance.

Susan Scrupski's post Corporate Antisocial Behaviour: the Enemy is Us refers to five reasons why projects fail, and notes: "The technologies we had prior to web 2.0 would enable employees to 'speak up.' Email, telephones, even notes passed under the door could have prevented huge cost overruns and errors, but technology – old or new – won’t fix these problems."

Whether it is inside or outside the enterprise, one message does not fit all anymore. So should internal communicators use the new web to lead a cultural revolution, or to feed an effort to make the company more open that rides on the coat-tails of another project?

It depends. Assuming you accept the need to change your culture, then a corporate rebranding effort would provide a great opportunity to kick-start what Susan calls 'social process re-engineering'. But rebrandings do not happen often.

For a more likely opportunity, any significant project that requires upfront change management and/or communication input - and to the converted, that would be all of them - could be used by internal communicators as a trojan mouse.

Andrew Keen writes, "We all now know [Web2.0's] technological strengths and weaknesses, its cultural accomplishments and failures, its economic appearance and reality." Lead or feed doesn't matter as long as efforts are made to change people's day-to-day views on the value of effective communication, and corporate communicators should by now have an idea of the what the new we means for them, their role and, crucially, their company culture.

There is increasing evidence that companies are beginning to come to terms with E2.0, but Information Week stills rightly asks if Web2.0 can evolve into an enterprise technology.

"...enterprises lag far behind consumers in adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. What's more, our online poll shows that interest in technologies such as blogs, wikis, and mashups has gone down during 2007, despite explosive growth outside the firewall."

One issue seems to be the incumbent culture in a company, something Andrew McAfee picks up on: "It’s way too early to despair, or even to start getting discouraged. We need to keep in mind that most E2.0 tools are new, and that their acceptance depends on shifts in perspective on the part of business leaders and decision makers, shifts for which the word ‘seismic’ might not be an overstatement."

As ever, leading indicators of shifts in enterprise culture come from outside the world of business. And one such indictor is that October was the first month when social networks overtook webmail in the UK.

Should you feel frustrated at the slow pace of change in your company, then Hugh MacLeod has an answer:

"Somebody in the audience today asked me what they should do if their boss doesn't like the idea of them blogging. I replied that if you have something interesting to say about your product, and if your boss won't let you blog, my guess is that he's probably an idiot, and you should quit your job and go work for somebody else.!"

Forget whether people ask if Facebook is for business or for the older generation. Microsoft's investment shows that Facebook is not only for business, but can be viewed as the final proof of life for Web2.0.

The move was widely flagged, the reasons are fairly sound, and include this insight from Jeremiah Owyang:

"...imagine fluidity between enterprise collaboration tools. We already know that many Microsoft employees are using Facebook, and this is becoming an identity tool that Microsoft has always wanted (remember Passport?). Microsoft will experiment with connecting Facebook, looking for alignments to daily work and personal lifestyles, and combine where appropriate."

Hopefully, this move will add a little more credibility to the reasons why companies should allow Facebook-style networking into the enterprise.

And just in case there is any doubt that Microsoft doesn't get social media, have a look at this video.

I saw this, and think I finally got the identity issue with Web2.0. Instead of repeating your identity throughout the interweb, do it once and let the applications come to you. Not the other way around. Bit like confused.com.

A week may be a long time in politics, but trying to keep up with the pace of change in social media is just as mad. Even as mid-size companies get to grips with Web2.0, and corporate blogging reaches a tipping point, up pops an interesting look at what the blog of the future could be like!

The pace of change can be seductive and/or discouraging, yet really understanding what can help you, how and how to do it is critical. A few luminaries have shone their torches recently on information about systems that should help when considering these key questions:

• Chris Brogan on Facebook
• Jeremiah Oywang on Twitter
• Bill Ives on Wikis

You might be waiting for all of separate systems to be fully integrated, easy to update and simple to find. Maybe you are waiting for Microsoft's unified communications product Live Communication? In the meantime, social media is here and now, and no longer something that only your secretary should know about.

Whatever size company you work for, it’s frustrating knowing that there's information worth sharing out there, but either you just can’t get to it or it can’t get to you.

What to do is to open up both paths so that there's nothing in the way of two-way information flow. Companies traditionally set up editorial panels to meet and discuss story ideas. An alternative now might be to turn as many employees into journalists. I like Scott Karp's swing at defining what a journalist is for Web2.0, as I think it opens opportunities within corporations:

"Being a journalist and practicing journalism is no longer strictly a function of where you work - it’s a function of what you do — and how well you do it. Not everyone who publishes on the web is acting journalistically - VERY far from it. But we need to embrace the reality that not all the people practicing journalism, for better or worse, are working for traditional news organizations."

Businesses should equip as many of their employees as possible with the right tools - a mobile phone with a camera would be a minimum - and let them send the information to you. Then, the editorial panel can act in a more value-adding role. Scott summarises discussions on the role of the trusted human editor by, among other things, leveraging a "fabric of trusted individuals / people who are trusted and credible."

This might be slightly counter to Rob Paterson's take on why organisations can't collaborate - insofar as I do not believe that they break "up work and people naturally into separate and competing parts." 

Get rid of the organisation! That was Euan Semple's advice at a conference earlier this year when explaining one of the early steps to help at least experiment with social media in an organisation. And it seems that employees are, indeed, taking matters into their own hands according to CIO News (props Mike Prosceno for the link).

"For instance, 53.6% of respondents told Yankee Group that they would be more productive at work with access to the applications and technology they use at home. Forty-nine percent said their personal technology is more advanced than their workplace technology."

Well, we know that the corporate world lags the real world, which is why Enterprise2.0 lags Web2.0, even when it comes to something as explosive as the next e-mail.

Maybe this employee-based velvet revolution will help answer the question posed by Dennis McDonald: Should corporations make or buy their own social network?

Shel Israel's rather excellent SAP Global Survey attracts a response from the rather excellent Chris Shipley - credited as the person responsible for coining the term 'social media'. In her response, Chris reiterates that:

"By social media, I meant that community would play a fundamental role in shaping content. At that point, we thought that content might be seeded by writers/editors, but that the community voice would ultimately speak louder than that of the original writer. We saw the role of the media company as a facilitator of the conversation, not the producer/editor/arbiter of news and information."

Now, in a corporate environment, community is employees, content equates to information, and writers/editors equals managers. And in business, communicating is the single most important skill of a manager, whether it's face-to-face or in writing, down or up the hierarchy. Bernie Charland asks, with the advent of Web2.0, if managers are still the most critical and effective communication channel for employees?

Were they ever? If you believe that what gets measured gets managed, according to a 2004 study by Melcrum, only 21% of companies measured the communication performance of managers.

However, though these line managers may no longer to be gatekeepers of information becasue of Web2.0, a good manager's job goes beyond being a conduit. He/she also should be a trusted source of information - the sort of 'friend' you might want on a social network. So for social media in the corporate environment to even come close to supplementing this, businesses would have to follow Amazon's micro-store for every shopper approach, and develop a wholly unique communication experience for each employee. No wisdom of crowds here.

PS: Belated birthday wishes Shel! 

Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times (subscription required) writes about the three types of 'we' in business:

"There is the we that executives use to show that everyone is one happy family. There is the new fashionable we about crowds and social networks. And there is the traditional we that refers to we, the workers."

The point Lucy makes about the third 'we' - namely that managers are not a part of this group, 'even the ones who are popular and seem like nice people' - applies also to the second "we".

As managers are (in most cases, rightly) encouraged to embrace social networking internally, the reasons for doing so might need to looked at. If it's to learn, take part in the conversation, show the human side of the organisation, then great!

According to research by Melcrum, just over a quarter of senior managers use what could be considered a social media communication platform. And as Strategy+Business points out in Web2.0 - Profiting from the Threat: "building competency with the new platforms is not an option; it’s a requirement for any company that wants to ensure its reputation is not hijacked."

But if executives wish to be show that they are part of the worker "we" through these internal social networks, then Lucy's closing advice from a friend is pertinent: "She [a manager] knows that there is a we. And that the we will never include her."