making the case for social media inside the organization

Making the Case for Social Media Inside the

Organizationby Connie Crosby

@conniecrosby Crosby Group Consulting

Knowledge Workers Toronto#kwTO

June 20, 2012

Where is Enterprise 2.0 today?

• 2 years ago we were primarily talking about adding in tools/applications such as blogs, wikis, and Twitter-like microblogs such as Yammer to the intranet.

• Today we are seeing a race to create/implement full-on social layers to the intranet or social intranet platforms e.g. Jive, Speechbobble,ThoughtFarmer and others.

• Yammer is now a full-blown social platform and there are rumours of Microsoft planning to purchase it to fill the gap in their offerings.

• The Enterprise 2.0 conference is taking place in Boston as we speak. Follow #e20 on Twitter.

What are the challenges in making the business case for

social?

Challenges (1)• history of being an entertainment

tool

• keeping people engaged

• privacy issues

• investment in people needed, too (e.g. training, support)

• cost to implement higher than expected

• unmoderated; loss of control

• general business case issues, eg. ROI, addressing risks, business use “Why”

Challenges (2)• reputational issues - for both

individuals and the organizational culture

• “just don’t get it”

• who is going to pay for it?

• “free” tools are not free

• engagement/creation of content - does the 1:9:90 rule apply? (i.e. 1% create content, 9% comment, 90% only read)

• information overload

• is the business case based on the reality of the organisational culture?

Ambivalence

FearDistrust

ParanoiaInsecurity

Skepticism

BARRIERS

Will social create a sharing culture?

1. The right tools will make us collaborative.

2. Collaboration is inherently a good thing.

3. Collaborating takes extra time.

4. People naturally will/will not collaborate.

5. People instinctively know how to collaborate.

5 Myths of Collaboration

Gartner - Press release June 3, 2011http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?

id=1711814

Some invalid assumptions

• The purpose of collaboration is obvious

• Bigger is better

• Build it and they will come

• The real value in collaboration is connecting people to content

Source: Sara Roberts, Roberts Golden Consulting, Inc. & Margaret Schweer, Tammy Ericson & Associates

at Enterprise 2.0 2012 - notes by V. Mary Abraham http://aboveandbeyondkm.com/2012/06/building-intelligent-organizations-e2conf.html

• Sharing knowledge is always voluntary. No one can ever be forced.

• We share knowledge when we have the right audience, that motivates us and creates the right context.

• Social software alone is not the solution to the old problems of knowledge management.

Source: T-systems Multimedia Systemshttp://www.slideshare.net/TSystemsMMS/enterprise-20-knowledge-management-people-at-the-center

Here’s what T-systems says:

Building the

business case

Marketing / Communications

• Communicating from the top down

• Getting staff on board

• Keeping a wide-spread team (such as sales) on message

Human Resources

• Recruiting

• Employee on-boarding

• Training

• Employee work satisfaction

• Retention

Library / Research

• Current awareness

• Aggregation of resources - internal & external

• Shared work / research space

Professional Development

• connecting with colleagues, mentors, experts

• attending seminars at different times, in different locations (webinars)

• learning on demand

• finding support from peers

Knowledge Management

• encourages culture of sharing / collaboration

• retaining content / knowledge (outside of email)

• making tacit knowledge explicit

• sharing knowledge for succession purposes

Enterprise-wide

• space in which to develop policy

• record and maintain quickly changing procedures

• engage everyone

• and: how can you “do more with less”??

And more:• crisis/emergency communications

(internal & external)

• customer service - co-ordinating issue resolution

• communicating & recognizing staff success stories

• crowd sourcing (if big enough staff

• research - mining content for major topics/themes of interest; providing real-time info on these themes

• library - social layer in the catalogue providing reviews, tagging, ratings, recommendations

T-systems says:

• It is no longer about storing knowledge...

• but about knowledge just in time

• this happens in formal networks

• ...and even more in informal networks

Social tools

• Crossing boundaries between employees

• Crossing boundaries between organizations

• Crossing boundaries between organizations and their clients or stakeholders

• Crossing boundaries among clients and stakeholders to create communities

Social media is people!

• Connect

• Communicate

• Share

• Collaborate

• Learn

http://www.socialsignal.com/cartoonused under Creative Commons

“Idle chatter” is how:

• staff learn to use the tools

• tacit knowledge is transferred

• teams are reinforced

• staff are engaged

Recommended Reading

www.gartner.com/thesocialorganization

The Social Organizationby Anthony J. Bradley & Mark P. McDonaldHarvard Business Review Press, 2011

Recommended Reading

www.charleneli.com/openleadership

Open Leadershipby Charlene LiJossey-Bass, 2010

Recommended Reading

http://www.russlinden.com/html/books_videos.htm

Leading Across Boundariesby Russ LindenJossey-Bass, 2010

Recommended Reading

Business Cases for Info Prosby Ulla de StrickerInformation Today, Inc., 2008

http://www.destricker.com/en/books.html

Effective Blogging for Librariesby Connie CrosbyThe Tech Set series,Neal-Schuman Publishinghttp://www.neal-schuman.com/ebl

Connie CrosbyCrosby Group Consulting

http://crosbygroup.caconnie@crosbygroup.ca

@conniecrosby@crosbygroup416-919-6719

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Thank you!

Image Credits

• “Podcamp Montreal 2008 71” (Jay Moonah) by Eva Blue - Flickr - used under Creative Commons - http://www.flickr.com/photos/evablue/2875304911/

• successful business woman on laptop by Search Engine People - Flickr - used under Creative Commons - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sepblog/3941048713/

• “A lot of networking going on..” by Jacob Bøtter - Flickr - used under Creative Commons - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/15792280/