My 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Conference Notes: E2.0 Black Belt Practitioner's Workshop – Part One
Posted by Bill Ives on Mon, Jun 20, 2011
Here is the first in a series of notes on the 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. These are close to real time so I have an excuse for typos this time. I am attending the E2.0 Black Belt Practitioner's In-Depth Workshop. Susan Scrupski is the organizer. Here is part of the session description: “Members of The Social Business Council, a peer-led community, have had an early mover advantage in thinking through the difficult transformational issues that are required to create a more connected, participatory, engaging enterprise ready to embrace the future. In this full-day lecture and interactive workshop, learn first hand from practitioners who have tackled adoption, architecture, change management, community management, education, governance, and the realities of living through an Enterprise 2.0 transformation.”
Susan began with an introduction. She said the Social Business Council is a peer to peer network that covers everything social in the enterprise. IT started as the E 2.0 Council and now has expanded its scope. They became part of Dachis Group in April 2010. They operated on Jive (243 members) and Soclalcast.(191 members). They are starting special interest groups. There is a lot of experience to share in the group. The council is free if you are doing social business. They are expanding their membership to go beyond large organizations.
Claire Flanagan next covered, “Social Business: What is it? And Why Should I Care?” Social media is contributing in many ways, including politics and business. It is changing the nature of business. Gartner predicts by 2014 social media will replace 20% of email in business and this is likely low. The next generation of business is emerging where the focus is on engagement and connection within enterprises and across the marketplace. It is important to understand your business goals to gain value from social media. It can drive a number of traditional business goals such as productivity and innovation.
What is different about social tools? The first Web revolution was about content. That was the focus. The new tools are about people. Activity Streams make things easy to find. There is more interaction. At the same time content is more open and accessible. Content gets socialized and there are more connections between people and content. There is more intelligence about content and the interactions around it.
Where do you start? Make the business case but this is a process now. Start by being credible about social media. Do your homework and understanding what has happened already. Understanding your company’s business goals so you map efforts to it and speak to senior execs. Then engaging people across the organization to sponsor and participate to make your efforts valid. Do all this before start to look at tools.
There are two types of risks, both fear-based and real ones. You need to mitigate both. Get stakeholders involved early to address these risks. These tools change the way work can do done so you need to look at organizational change. Community management is a role that needs to be staffed, as well as indentifying advocates. How do you make communities successful and go viral? Claire also mentioned the AIIM Social Business Roadmap. I have covered this before. She mentioned that a lot of the issues she raised will be covered during the sessions today. She polled the audience. Only a few are at the evaluation stage, about half at pilot stage, about a third at the adoption level.
Kevin Jones and Simon Scullion covered “Are You Really Ready to Do This? Prepare to Transform Your Enterprise and Its Culture.” Simon began talking about the cultural changes. He is a collaboration lifeguard at CSC. Kevin Jones works with NASA as a social strategist. There are going to go over six key areas with three key questions within each. This will be fast. One: understand how people are already collaborating. What are the norms you might have to break through? Traditions can a lot of weight. Where is interest coming from?
Second: How to ease the transition? Find the topics that the workforce is passionate about. Find advocates. What content are people already talking about? Do not try to change process and topics at the same time. These are certainly best practices from the KM days and still remain valid. Third: Preparing for the Cultural Shift. It will take a lot of work. It will be different for many so there will have to be personalization and varied. Monitor how middle management is responding to this change. They are key for adoption and can be caught in the middle.
Fourth: Overcoming Objections. Be prepared for these as they can be anticipated. The first one is where will the time come from. Mention that this is not separate from work and extra but should be part of daily work to make it more efficient. Address fear about inappropriate behavior. This can occur in any media, but now it is easier to self-police. How to handle information overload concern? You need filters and the new tools can actually help here.
Fifth: Winning over the critics. Kevin mentioned that success stories are helpful. His prior boss took a while to get it but it took a story to help him understand it. You need to collect and distribute stories. Let the stories convince people. Your loudest critics can become you biggest advocates once they are converted. Six; A new way of working – working out loud: Many communication channels are limiting. We want to work in a way that others can see and share what you are doing. Best to support established groups are a quick win. Move established groups to the new tools so they will become more efficient. Then they will become advocates.
Then we went to break out groups to discuss scenarios; CIO okays Facebook and Twitter within organization but then VP of HR that people are wasting time and wants to take it down. Answer: Acknowledge concern but look for success story, especially in HR. Explain how risks are mitigated. Understand what is really happening. Get senior support.
Also a blog pilot finds few people doing it so exec wants it to stop. Answer: Not everyone needs to blog. Manage expectations. Find those most interested and support them and then have others comment. Look at how rewards are provided for participation. Look for anxiety about making their thoughts public. There needs to be a strategy. Find success stories. Social media often exposes culture rather than changing it. At least at first.
I will continue in the next post with Paul Anderson and Tracy Maurer covering “Don't Forget the Technology: Key Considerations for Your Community Making Strategic Technology Choices.”