Category Archives: Social Business

ME2: Spring Forward Edition

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I am breaking form this week and going with a short version instead of my typical format because I lost an hour today and I have a really hectic week to prepare for! So think of this one more like a journal / reflection of the key things on the tip of a practitioners mind…and will likely ask more questions than provide any answers for anyone:

Enterprise 2.0 Stuff

  • One of my favorite weekly tasks is working with a group of folks to identify the best blog posts written within Lilly to publicize to the internal blogosphere. As I peruse the various blog entries that have been written I discover bloggers I have never read before, learn about projects and issues within the organization I wasn’t aware of and I typically take the time to comment on a few during the process where I have something intelligent to contribute. It is always  nice way to start off my week!
  • At Lilly we have many different buildings on our campus, and multiple campuses for that matter. In the last few weeks a few Foursquare users have begun to create locations for our buildings and have been checking-in regularly. It is a very small community, but a little game of #mayorwars has emerged. It has gotten a few of us thinking about ways to make practical business use of this in the enterprise. I know how business are using it to attract customers, but how could enterprises use for their internal employees? The employee engagement aspect is obvious, but what other ways can you think of to leverage location awareness on a corporate campus? This post offers one idea, but I’m wondering if any other creative uses out there?
  • I’ve been doing some prep work for some consulting with our internal recruiting department. While it is easy to study examples of how other companies are utilizing social media for recruiting and teach about effective ways to use external social media tools, the non-obvious element to consider teaching this group is creating increased awareness of internal social collaboration capabilities for two reasons: 1) For communicating to potential recruits the capabilities we have available for working effectively with peers and 2) As a safer “practice” environment for social tool interactions that they’ll need to utilize communicating with prospective employees.

Fun stuff:

  • Loved watching the PGA Tour event at the Doral Resort in Miami, FL this weekend. I have played two rounds at that course and watching an event on TV when you are familiar with the course changes the experience. I’ll still never forget standing on the tough 18th tee needing a par to shoot 79…and hooking my 2nd shot into the water! Double-bogey, 81. Now I want to got back and get it next time! Nice win by Ernie Els too.
  • Michael Emerson, Dr. Ben Linus, incredible on LOST this week. I actually watched that episode twice. So in the 2004 flash-sideways Ben and his Dad left the island…hmmm. Pretty significant revelation there, no doubt.
  • I am watching The Apprentice with Donald Trump in the background while writing this, and I am imagining getting 10 minutes in his boardroom to try and make the case for increasing the social collaboration presence in his organization. Tip #1: Don’t tell him that Rosie O’Donnell believes in it (not that I know if she does or doesn’t). But he has no love lost there.
  • This NCAA tourney is going to be fun for me, because in one form or another I have at least an indirect vested interest in the following teams: Kentucky, Butler, Ohio State, Duke, Louisville, Purdue, Notre Dame, Pitt. Sometimes that interest is in hoping that team loses!

Have a good week all. I’ll certainly be ready for some basketball come Thursday afternoon.

ME2: Network Effects in Action

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Thanks for visiting ME2: Monday Enterprise 2.0…my weekly foray into exploring professional and personal topics on the tip of my mind. Today I am providing an algorithm for predicting what time of day on each Monday this blog entry will be posted: Weekend weather in Indianapolis good = Late post; Weekend weather in Indianapolis bad = Early post. Playing outside is too much fun! And sometimes I’ll take the kids out with me too.

From the desk of @TheBrycesWrite:

Network Effects in Action

As I was brainstorming the content for today’s post, I kept coming back to the amount of activity I received late last week on my Horizontal Collaboration post from February 22nd as a perfect real-life illustration of the very concept the post was trying to convey. Let me explain:

  • I published that post on February 22nd, and tweeted its existence one time as @TheBrycesWrite. At the time I only had approximately 55 followers on that account. My blog posts also get syndicated to my personal Facebook account (~200 friends) and the 2.0 Adoption Community website. The post had approximately 45 total readers through March 4th, 32 of which came from the 2.0 Adoption site!
  • I also posted it that same day to my internal Lilly blog for Lilly employees to read, and posted an “advertisement” on our internal micro-blogging platform (probably reached ~150 eyes that way). I also sent a couple of emails to individuals in the week or two following with a link to the post. I have had 44 total unique readers of that post since February 22nd just inside Lilly’s walls.

So the immediate reaction could be anti-Horizontal Collaboration – because a post publicized to a huge online public virtual audience (external web / Twitter) generated the exact same readership as the same content in a much smaller community (my existing Strong/Weak ties within Lilly). “So where is all the serendipity, knowledge discovery, Potential Tie conversion, bigger inner circle benefit you keep blabbing on about that a large transparent social network presence should bring?”

That’s when March 5th happened. Susan Scrupski (@ITSinsider) came across the post by chance and re-tweeted it. That resulted in 10 subsequent re-tweets from people following Susan to their respective followers (some of which have fairly large follower numbers compared with my “modest” 68 – admittedly bumped a bit by last week’s activity). By my calculations (adding up the total followers of those accounts, then calibrating to some percentage of overlapping followers and non-active followers) that the approximate reach of that post increased from ~500 people to over 15,000 people!  So what has happened with reader activity (outside of Lilly) since then?

  • Between March 5th and this morning (3.5 days) the post has been read approximately 131 times.
  • Between Feb 22nd and March 4th:  ~4 views / day
  • Between March 5th and March 8th:  ~33 views / day
  • So an 30x increase in “reach” resulted in an 8x increase in “hits.”

Now I am not a statistician, so there is probably some flaws in this experiment to consider it rock solid, but it is certainly eye opening for a few reasons:

  1. Knowledge and Expertise Management – Content doesn’t speak for itself anymore because there is sooo much of it out there. If you want to achieve reach, you need to create Weak Ties with individuals that have a much greater reach than you have! And the more you do that, the more you can sit back and watch the power of the network do work for you, instead of you having to spend significant energy trying to accomplish that same reach on your own. Large organizations without effective Horizontal Collaboration networking and consumption capabilities will lack the ability to leverage this phenomenon.
  2. Self-Filtering – You mean a 30x increase in reach ONLY resulted in an 8x increase in hits?? I actually find that encouraging data for critics that complain that a heavily populated social network will result in employees being overwhelmed with information they have no interest in consuming. Sure, a lot of information can come their way, but people will naturally apply an “applicability” filter on top of their automated social network connection filters. Do you feel like you can get away with only consuming 25% of the emails that others target to you specifically? Do you think people will thrive by merely consuming 25% of the serendipitous knowledge that appear within their social network activity streams that they have elected to target on their own?
  3. Network reach – Think about the capabilities available inside of your organization vs. those available to you in the external world right now? Do you have the ability to leverage a network effect like this example for innovative ideas / cross-silo collaboration / knowledge sharing inside your firewall?  Tools can’t make this happen without willing people able to leverage them appropriately, but willing people can certainly be obstructed from maximizing their value without the tools to set them free.

Please retweet 🙂

Getting Real with E2.0 – My best example from the week of people using E2.0 to generate value in the work environment:

Just because people recognize and encourage the benefits of “working out loud” and sharing transparently does not automatically translate into behaviors that epitomize the philosophy. Changing your core behaviors and habits takes time. I often catch myself putting something in an email message that after the fact I wished I had published using a different medium. That’s partly why I contrived this weekly blog format, to provide myself with a routine I could rely on to “train myself” to share my thoughts with more regularity instead of falling back into old, less collaboratively-responsible communication means.

Internally we had a blogger challenge herself to a 30-day blog post challenge – one post a day for 30 straight business days. And the posts had to be thoughtful each day, not just a funny Dilbert cartoon of the day, for example. She also wasn’t challenging  her readers to do so, she was just trying to spice up the process a bit to stay in the habit. But a funny thing happened – at least 3-4 other people were inspired by the idea and have taken on the “the challenge” for their own individual blogs. The result has been a daily stream of thought-provoking posts from the participants, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the trend extend to a few other people before too long. I myself have not joined the challenge as of yet, because I don’t want to saturate the market, if you will. But maybe as this first round slows down in 25 or so work days, I’ll jump in to the challenge myself to see if we can motivate a few other bloggers to practice “working out loud” too.

Top Reads of the Week:

  1. Social Media is key at the 100 largest Fortune 500 Companies – Jamie Pappas: Jamie summarizes some great data on the use of external social media by large organizations. I don’t have any data to support it, but I believe that transforming the “inside the firewall” culture to be more accepting of social collaboration amongst one another will begin to increase the comfort and aptitude to using external sources for effective customer / patient / partner / shareholder interactions. Benefits: Greater reach than almost any traditional medium, Lower entry cost than most traditional mediums.
  2. Webciety and Enterprise 2.0: A snapshot of today’s social computing conversations – Dion Hinchcliffe: Including some data on the dreaded ROI question – like the example where IBM “…cited that new collaborative technology had reduced the email volume in the company by 28%.”

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @Greg2dot0: “RT @carrieyoung: Microblogging will fade. We expect 2 C it as a feature of a fully integrated platform that has hooks across the enterprise.” – We’ll be watching this closely over the next few months because of the engaging and effective nature of short-form sharing and when / if / how the more powerful micro-blogging capabilities become incorporated into broader enterprise social collaboration platforms. I personally don’t want to see it “fade” as a capability, but only as a disconnected platform amongst other capabilities.
  2. @ITSinsider: “How innovation is measured at CSC. One of the best case studies in e20 from a conservative, traditional org. http://is.gd/9BRHo #e20″ – Anytime we can learn from the success CSC has had, that’s a good thing.

From the golf bag of @GolfinBP:

Sports Minute:

Holy spring-creep, Spiderman!  (That was a subtle shout-out to Camilo Villegas winning the Honda Classic this past weekend.) I received an email that my weekly golf league starts on April 8th! It was just 3 weeks ago I was shoveling my driveway nightly. My game is in no shape to take the course in defense of our league tournament championship from last season. I think Tiger and I are going to be on a similar training regimen over the next 4 weeks to return to action – Tiger focusing on the Masters at Augusta, me focusing on my 9-hole Big Divots Golf League at the historic Sarah Shank golf course.

TV Minute:

Obviously the voters for the Oscar’s didn’t read my blog post about Avatar, otherwise it would have won hands down. If only I could have gotten Ashton Kutcher or Oprah to retweet that blog post history, James Cameron would be “king of the world” yet again. I am sure he is really hurting financially as a result of that lost opportunity.
Top Reads of the Week:

  1. Tiger’s Comeback tougher than Ali’s – Bill Simmons: With football season being over, my non-work related reading is a bit down…and the golf I am reading about has to do with a guy that isn’t even playing yet! My apologies to the guys out there playing and living well. I am ready for Phil to play some more!
  2. PhRMA’s FDA Comments related to the Social Media hearing: Progress on the topic!

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @wingoz: “Chilean earthquake changes earths axis. Wow. http://bit.ly/duytno“ – Does this mean we won’t have to “fall back” next week? I don’t like losing an hour.
  2. @jimmyfallon: “Gatorade ended its relationship w/ Tiger. They checked his cell & found texts from Powerade & Vitamin Water.”
  3. @golfinbp: “Luke’s random and worrisome quote of the night (stated with sweet 3yo voice): ‘When I get my real light saber, Abby will be dead.'” – Heh, kids. Where do they get this stuff? Certainly not from me!

ME2: Social Features or Social Network?

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Thanks for visiting ME2: Monday Enterprise 2.0…my weekly foray into exploring professional and personal topics on the tip of my mind.

From the desk of @TheBrycesWrite:

Social Features or Social Network?

A distinction I think that will become more and more important in the next 12-18 months will be clarifying to business decision-makers the difference between software that has social features and software that is an effective social network. We are starting to see more and more announcements from major enterprise application providers that they are introducing one or more of the following basic social features within their platforms, using the Enterprise 2.0 moniker along the way:

  • User Profile / Expertise Search
  • User web publishing (blog / wiki / file sharing / link sharing)
  • Commenting on content
  • Rating / Recommending content
  • RSS feeds
  • Status Updates / Micro-sharing
  • Tagging / Tag Clouds
  • Bookmarking

Until this market shakes out a little more, this could lead to confusion among those only partially paying attention to conclude “I have this enterprise platform with blogs, tagging and tag clouds, thus I don’t need to invest in any other capabilities touted as a social network.” The business case WE then have to make is not about what the specific capabilities are or are not in varying platforms, but if our enterprise environment has anything that is capable / effective at helping cross-silo collaboration communities grow virtually and thrive? Without the following complementary capabilities to go along with the above list of social features, in my opinion, your enterprise and its organic virtual communities within will continue to feel unsatisfied and will continue to yearn for other collaborative options:

  • Community concept with opt-in membership (self-declared Join / Follow)
  • Aggregated Consumption – Filtered Activity Streams of your colleague AND community connections, in one easy to access place
  • Engagement – Features that engage users to continue conversation and contributions (timely and relevant notifications, participation points, highlighting popular contributions, etc.)

Getting Real with E2.0 – My best example from the week of people using E2.0 to generate value in the work environment:

This week my example is more of an anti-example. I’m not to the point yet where I am shouting from the mountains that email is dying and it has no place in the workplace anymore, because I don’t believe it. But what I do see and what I do prefer as a user is the trend that email is becoming more of a notification system and less of a conversation medium. For folks comfortable with email as a work day workflow mechanism, using email as your “news feed” for keeping up with relevant collaboration activity can work well to drive early adoption of more social tools (by being notified of activity and then linking to the source for further participation), particularly for mobile devices.

But each day I continue to see examples of extremely long emails that contain project status updates, organizational newsletters, brainstorming results in tables / diagrams, etc. within the body of an email and not captured in a medium better suited to later retrieval, central updates and sharing with broader audiences…particularly when better tools for doing so are available. Another illustration that just providing the tools is not enough, but educating and providing examples of it working is a constant grind to get people out of the “email for everything” mindset.

This is teaching me to be more patient as I realize this takes time. I am thrilled to see gradual adoption and new examples of people starting to utilize superior conversation mechanisms, but I want it faster and more often!! Serenity now, serenity now.

Top Reads of the Week:

  1. A Collection of 50+ Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies and Examples from Jacob Morgan – I’ll make this my only link this week since it has so much stuff.  But a nice collection of real world applications of Enterprise 2.0 activity. Again, about a month old, but I read it for the first time this week!

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @Mashable: “HUGE: Facebook Secures Patent for News Feed – http://bit.ly/cmn89j“ – Not sure this will turn into anything, but consider the possible Enterprise 2.0 ramifications if Facebook decided to be difficult with this. One of the key usability elements of drawing employees to such a capability is aggregation of connection-driven content/conversation…a nice use of news feeds!
  2. @hebsgaard: “10 emerging Enterprise 2.0 technologies to watch — http://bit.ly/9Tq1fg #gov20 #startups http://bit.ly/dmlint“ – Couldn’t help call out the relevancy to the use of the term “social features” when discussion a trend in Enterprise platforms…and “activity streams” beings called out as important to the industry (aka News Feed!..see above).

From the life and times of @GolfinBP:

Sports Minute:

So did anyone watch the exciting conclusion of the Waste Management Phoenix Open? No? Well, I have to admit I didn’t watch much of it either even as a huge golf fan because it was on at the same time as that hockey game yesterday. What most don’t know is that PGA Tour stop is probably the most fun golf television you get outside of the four majors (The Masters, The British Open / Open Championship, The US Open, The PGA Championship) due to the raucous crowd surrounding the 16th hole. It’s an NFL crowd at a golf event, the one and only such environment on the tour. But it has been very unlucky from a scheduling perspective in recent years. For the last few seasons it was always played on the same day as the Super Bowl, and finally this year with some schedule changes I am sure tournament sponsors were ecstatic to highlight that environment to a large TV audience! But then USA vs. Canada: The Rematch happened, Sunday at 3pm EST. Oops. Sorry Waste Management. I bet your ratings got trashed.

I think this video of  Tiger’s Hole-In-One during this first PGA Tour season tells most of the story. And that crowd behavior wasn’t just because of his great shot, they act like that constantly on the weekend and end up intimidating every golfer that comes through. Better luck next year sponsors! Hopefully you don’t end up opposite Michael Jordan’s first game back after he un-retires again and plays for the Charlotte Bobcats next year…against LeBron James.

TV Minute:

I proclaim proclamations: For the most part I thought the Olympic action was “tremendously tremendous.” But I found the opening and closing ceremonies to be overwhelmingly underwhelming.
Top Reads of the Week:

  1. LOST Cast and Creators Give Scoop to Fans on the End from Watch with Kristin at E! Online – #5 says “Some IS coming to the island.” And here I thought Jacob’s statement was just a metaphor for convincing Jack to come to grips with his destined role to the island. What do I know?
  2. Crosby beats Miller in OT to earn gold for Canada – You didn’t happen to see this game did you? Anyone, anyone? I am not an avid hockey watcher, but something about the speed, intensity, unpredictability and lack of commercials during periods made this great sports television! Way to go to both teams.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @SI_PeterKing: “RT @MikeVacc: And now, thus mandatory historical reminder: in ’80, US trailed Finland 2-1 after 2 periods … Thanks, Mike.” – This was posted at the beginning of the 3rd period of the Gold Medal hockey game between US and Canada.
  2. @ProFootballTalk: “More details on the possible overtime changes http://is.gd/9opkK #NFL” – Hopefully some changes get passed on the NFL overtime rules. Much overdue now that field goal kickers are so much more efficient (distance and accuracy) these days vs. when the rule was created.
  3. @EricStangel: “USA Canada – Al Michaels is running to the microphone right now. ‘Come on, let me say something about another miracle!!'” – Immediately following the goal for the US that tied the game against Canada.
  4. @golfinbp: “Dang. The one night I get out, I can’t get foursquare to check me in! At Fleming’s in Indy. Shout. #nevergonnabemayor” – Seriously, this was a big deal. With children the ages of 3 and 4 and no immediately family within a 2 hour drive, we really don’t get out much. I was just excited to use my new Foursquare Blackberry app. Come on, man!

ME2: Horizontal Collaboration

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Thanks for visiting ME2: Monday Enterprise 2.0…my weekly foray into exploring professional and personal topics on the tip of my mind.

From the desk of @TheBrycesWrite:

Horizontal Collaboration (AND Vertical Collaboration)

I have been using the term “Horizontal Collaboration” recently to describe to colleagues a key objective of our Enterprise 2.0 efforts – better enabling cross-silo community collaboration. This illustration also incorporates Andrew McAfee’s E2.0 Target Analysis concept to demonstrate the opportunity of encouraging culture and technology to better enable Horizontal Community Collaboration – significantly higher throughput of converting Potential Ties into Weak and Strong ties.

I am not pretending that the Enterprise 2.0 “movement” invented communities. Workers in the corporate environment have certainly operated in horizontal communities longer than I’ve been around, however, the means by which these communities have had to populate/share/communicate/persist have been a rate-limiting factor. Community originators and participants have been forced to work with business capabilities and culture rooted in Vertical Collaboration, resulting in high entry barriers, poor participation and attempts at knowledge sharing left poorly consumed, etc. Technology tools targeted at Horizontal Collaboration in combination with more transparent work behaviors can turbo-boost the benefits of organic communities within an organization.

It is also important to point out that advocating Enterprise 2.0 / social collaboration isn’t necessarily the equivalent to denouncing all forms of Vertical Collaboration. Each have their value and their place for particular types of work. Advocating Enterprise 2.0 / social collaboration is the recognition that we’ve found something effective at filling in the knowledge gaps left by traditional Vertical Collaboration methods that prevent organizations from maximizing the capacity of their people. Thus, encouraging the use of capabilities and behaviors that fill those gaps – Web 2.0 / social media inspired methods proving to be effective for Horizontal Community Collaboration – will complement your traditional collaboration methods well.

The trick then becomes 1) Aggregating the user experience of both styles of collaboration as to not add clutter to already inundated employees and 2) Education on easily identifying the unique merits of each method and how to make choices to maximize their contributions within each.

Fellow Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council member Stan Garfield shared with us this week his incredible Communities Manifesto. And I thought his table (copied here) was a great educational tool for clarifying the reasons and benefits of Horizontal (Community) vs. Vertical (Team) collaboration of a person’s work/knowledge:

Communities Teams
Purpose
  • Learning
  • Problem-solving
  • Innovation
  • Mission accomplishment
Motivation
  • Voluntary
  • Assigned
Duration
  • Ongoing
  • Finite
Interaction
  • Asking and answering questions
  • Sharing knowledge
  • Reusing good ideas
  • Solving problems for one another
  • Brainstorming new ideas
  • Sharing documents and files
  • Using a shared calendar
  • Attending regular conference calls and meetings
  • Maintaining a list of team members
  • Editing shared documents
Alignment
  • Practice
  • Interest
  • Responsibility

Getting Real with E2.0 – My best example from the week of people using E2.0 to generate value in the work environment:

Most blogs that are authored and published within Lilly’s collaborative environment are either 1) Authored by a single person or 2) Authored by a small group of people but for the intent of pushing knowledge out to people not a part of the small group.

This week I came across a team using our blog platform in a slightly different manner and I thought it was clever. They had a team blog they used for communication within their team amongst one another, but they had the security open so others could read and benefit from their internal team conversations. The team was using this technology platform in place of an email distribution group (no more Reply-To-All-athons!). Obvious benefits include single instance of a message instead of many, transparency of responses and resulting conversation and long-term storage for history retrieval.

Sample (and generalized) interactions within this blog include:

  • “Team, I’m over booked this week, can I get some volunteers to help me with these 4 tasks I am not going to be able to get to….?”
  • “X task is complete. You can find the results stored in Y at this link.”
  • “I can’t remember the ingredients to product Z. Does anyone know what they were or where I would look to find out?”
  • “Don’t forget to stay up to date on your safety and compliance training by Feb 1!”
  • “I have completed the work to get equipment X replaced. The new machine will be installed and ready for you to use in 3 weeks.”
  • “Thanks to everyone for such great work today!   We have the following 3 outstanding requests that need to be escalated: 1, 2, 3”

Email distribution lists with many replies and difficult to track response threads drive you crazy? Consider this approach if possible for you.

Top Reads of the Week:

  1. The Business Value of Social Networks – “Value creation has thus been shifting from protecting proprietary knowledge, to fostering collaboration, both within the company and beyond its boundaries, in order to help the firm participate in as broad and diverse a range of knowledge flows and thus improve its competitive position.”
  2. Social Media in Life Sciences – Not new, but I read it this week!  “The Social Workplace – Employees who actively share their knowledge emerge as experts, and companies that encourage employees to share their expertise build stronger peer-to-peer networks, accelerating internal productivity gains.”  My experience with the Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council is certainly a testament to this statement.

ME2: Can We Afford Not To?

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Thanks for visiting ME2: Monday Enterprise 2.0…my weekly foray into exploring professional and personal topics on the tip of my mind.

From @TheBrycesWrite:

Can We Afford Not To?

As of late I chuckle when I read so much in the E2.0 world about the inherent struggles associated with making a business case and driving adoption of new capabilities. Don’t get me wrong, I am not discounting the validity of those challenges, nor that I have experienced them in the past and will definitely have to work very hard on each in the near future. But as of late, my work time seems to be consumed by the opposite problem…new people/teams/projects coming out of the woodwork every week yearning for improved ways to collaborate…and wanting on board with my efforts ASAP. It’s a good problem to have, but I am beginning to feel the aches in my neck that Hercules probably felt about 6 months into carrying the world on his shoulders.

The problem lies in the fact that most people discover my project through a colleague of a colleague of a colleague. In such a large organization (sans horizontally-effective collaboration tools) it is difficult to make everyone aware of “coming attractions.” So what happens when people are desperate and frustrated with what is available to them and no immediate hope on the horizon? They find their own way (unlike my beloved Colts). Sometimes their “own way” includes going through the proper channels to implement a collaboration tool for local use, not knowing that introducing disparate social collaboration tools would be detrimental to the critical mass benefits we want to achieve. Other times their “own way” is using external tools where the data security and control risks aren’t well explored or mitigated. I at least have the luxury of describing what is to come to subdue localized efforts or inappropriate use of external tools for the greater cause…but I worry about organizations that aren’t yet to the point of being able to answer “When will then be now?” with “Soon!”

Can they really afford to not be closing in on offering their enlightened employees Hope 2.0?  (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

How long will intelligent and creative employees who are tired of wasting their time and energy with less efficient methods of collaboration wait idly by? It is way too easy now with the publicly available tools, many of which are free. And introducing corporate policies that “Just Say No” may work temporarily, but likely at the expense of employee engagement and ultimately productivity.

So back to the “driving adoption will be a struggle” concept…I am focused on it for sure because I understand that not everyone falls into the “already converted” camp that I describe above…but the reality has been for me that “herding the cats” has proven to be a huge time-consumer early in our E2.0 implementation efforts…and over time as we are able appease the self-converted with some capable tools…then our focus can shift to driving adoption for the next wave of employees via demonstration of real value and real business use cases identified not just by me, but also the people who showed some patience and afforded us the opportunity to deliver on the hope we promised.

Getting Real with E2.0 – My best example from the week of people using E2.0 to generate value in the work environment:

One of the most common themes I read from new internal bloggers is “I’m not sure anyone will read this or if anyone will care what I have to say.” Sometimes there is truth to that because we are all busy with our day jobs, but occasionally we all benefit from working out loud because of the potential for serendipity and ability to retrieve that conversation for future reference.

Just this week we had an example of an employee frustrated with how convoluted managing the security settings within a collaboration space had become. She blogged about her observations of the site (many security layers, individual items managed separately from the overall site, many people with admin controls applying different security strategy), how she was tasked with trying to fix it and asked if anyone had any advice on how to ease the pain and confusion.

In relatively short order a few people commented on her blog (including myself) with best practices on simplifying security management (like starting out more open than closed). She responded that the feedback was timely because she had a meeting coming up…she presented the suggested concepts to her director and team and they agreed to move in a similar direction. Benefits: 1) Quicker to learn from experience of others than reinvent the wheel yourself and 2) Easier to convince others your idea is a good one when based on the experience of others instead of developed from scratch.

And to top it off, that virtual conversation will live on as data and if anyone else ever poses a similar question, maybe they’ll find it via enterprise search or maybe they’ll ask a community with a member aware of this blog post…who can provide a link instead of reinventing the conversation all over again.

Top Reads of the Week:

  1. EMC Enterprise 2.0 Case Study Webinar – I’ve been a little link heavy on these webinars the last couple weeks, but it is warranted. There is great experiential data in these things that any practitioner should steal from shamelessly. Great job by Jamie.
  2. Critics Say Google Invades Privacy with New Service – If you haven’t been following the buzz on Google Buzz this week, this is a nice summary of the primary issues encountered. To Google’s credit, they have been quick to respond to these serious issues…probably faster than most would expect from a functional delivery standpoint. But it makes you think about speed vs. quality. Google is often used in case studies about how to deliver innovation quickly. And more often than not they have done so well. But examples such as this are what keep most of us operating more conservatively.
  3. What Really Motivates Workers? – “What’s my motivation?!!??” Progress. What’s my point? Read the first section of this blog post again.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @cflanagan: “Proud of our fellow @20Adoption Council member @JamiePappas is doing a great job on the EMC case study #acweb3″ – Check out the #acweb3 stream for more great tidbits from this webinar. Reaction and feedback was very positive.
  2. @SameerPatel: “RT @labnol: stupid advice from entrepreneur.com ‘Don’t let family obligations become interruptions to ur biz success.’ http://bit.ly/96Lv1F“ – My bad advice of the day: “Don’t let Valentine’s Day get in the way of completing your Monday blog post :)”
  3. @gyehuda: “+1 RT @Gartenberg: If Microsoft released Buzz the the way Google did, the lawsuits would have already started” – I haven’t tried it yet and probably won’t. Just amazed at the amount of conversation that Buzz has created this week when I don’t really see it offering much that we don’t already have, just in a different place. Even without the security issues, I don’t get it. (Now I sound like my Facebook friends that say to me “I don’t get Twitter.”) Touche.

From @GolfinBP:

Sports Minute:

As disappointed as I was watching the Olympics opening ceremonies, I was equally riveted watching Apolo Ohno in short track skating the next evening. In his first heat he waited at the back of the pack for 12 laps putting you on the edge of your seat. Then like lightning he passed every other skater on the outside like they were on a leisurely Sunday evening stroll. I couldn’t tear myself away when he was on the rest of the night. During the medal run I actually jumped out of my seat for the last 3 laps like I was watching the last two minutes of a Colts game. It is such a fluky sport with the falls and pushing and jostling, but I can’t look away when it is on!

My whole life the Kentucky Derby has been the “most exciting 2 minutes in sports,” but it actually crossed my mind last night that a medal race in this event with Apolo in it might be better. It is so unpredictable, as evidenced by the two Koreans taking each other out in the last turn and handing Silver and Bronze to the two Americans, including Ohno. I want more.

TV Minute:

I have to admit I have watched just about every season of Survivor since it debuted ten years ago. Although for the last few seasons I usually would watch while multi-tasking (translated as Tweeting, Facebooking, Reading news on my mobile) because it wasn’t holding my undivided attention. This season they have brought back some of the past contestants from other seasons and branded it “Heroes vs. Villains.”  I couldn’t look away. They had great personalities and memorable people. I think there was only one person that I couldn’t directly recall from previous seasons. The rest of them left permanent imprints on my memory as interesting personalities or impressive players of the game. If you aren’t watching this one, I recommend you give it a shot. My favorite plot line: the budding love tryst between Coach the Dragon Slayer and Jerri the Black Widow. How could that not result in pure entertainment?

Top Reads of the Week:

  1. LOST Redux – For LOST fans, a recap of some key thoughts from LOST. I still want to blog on this myself when I can find a few minutes.
  2. Colts Past Doesn’t Matter, and That’s a Good Thing – Some closure on the Colts season.
  3. 14 Fantastic Free WordPress Themes – I’ve been meaning to check these out more closely but haven’t yet.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @ApoloOhno: “Wow…historical night for me…I have absolutely NO REGRETS…thank you all for supporting me…I’m on cloud 9…skated a brutal hard race!”
  2. @MeganMurray: “RT @theresa_lauren: It’s okay, Canada. It happens to lots of host nations.”
  3. @SportsGuy33: “Serious question: Was ‘We Are The World 25’ an SNL Digital Short?”

Bonus Material:

Last evening my 3 year-old son was emptying anything he could find out of a closet in our computer room making a mess as is his norm. Well, one thing he pulled out caught my eye. It was a journal that I kept back in the mid-90’s while playing the Myst and Riven computer games (also remembering The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour as similar games). Anyone remember those? I was obsessed with trying to solve all the puzzles and mysteries in those games in late high-school / early college. I remember staying up into the wee hours of the night to play. My first entry was on New Year’s Eve in 1994. So it just goes to show how active my social life was back then!

Anyway, I bring this up for one reason…because of what I wrote in the final page of the journal back in March 1998 (college years): “I have now defeated Myst and Riven. I will play them again and document my results on my website this summer so I can share with my friends.” So I’ve been trying to find means to share my knowledge and learning for years!!??!…I was just meant to do this job I guess. Too bad I wasn’t creative enough back then to figure out better tools to do so!

ME2: Super Bowl Edition

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Thanks for visiting ME2: Monday Enterprise 2.0…my weekly foray into exploring professional and personal topics on the tip of my mind. Notice I have re-branded already from “Monday Morning E2” to just “Monday E2.” I’m not a morning person, and the sooner we I come to grips with that fact (including me) the smarter I’ll be.

From @TheBrycesWrite:

Game Changers

Boy did that Super Bowl take a lot out of me. So today is going to have to be short and sweet. All of my synapses are not firing correctly. So I’ll probably ask more questions as opposed to attempting to provide any answers.

In yesterday’s game there were two or three moments that could be called out as game changers…plays that completely shifted the momentum and likely the outcome of the game. Sean Payton’s decision to attempt an onside kick, and ultimately the success of that attempt, had a profound impact on Super Bowl XLIV. That was a game changer. Had the Colts gotten the ball as planned and put more points on the board, the Saints become the chasers instead of the chased. The Colts become the hunted instead of the hunters.

So to no surprise, I am in constant search for game changing ideas to create game changing moments (for the organization as well as individuals) that will generate excitement for and high adoption rates of our E2.0 / social collaboration tools. Is there such a thing as a momentum shifting game changer for efforts like mine? And how can I identify that opportunity so I can seize it and unleash it?

Quick hit ideas I need to develop include Seeing is Believing (demonstrable value), Word of Mouth (positive experience), Relieve Frustration (right place at right time), Make it Fun (completely new approach to generate interest) and Transformational (shift paradigm).  Like I said, short and sweet today. The trick is turning those concepts into something actionable, and soon. And I’ll need help from my friends to do it.

Getting Real with E2.0 – My best example from the week of people using E2.0 to generate value in the work environment:

I haven’t yet seen a better example of a group of “Potential ties” coming together to produce tangible results than what is occurring in the Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council. The webinar events shared the last couple of weeks are great examples of people collaborating to collate what they have experienced or are currently experiencing as the benefits of social collaboration for large organizations. Check out “The Before” and “The After” for examples of people coming together from disparate locations to produce tangible results for the good of others.

Top Reads of the Week:

  1. Encourage the Use of Social Media at Work – Good to see this message becoming more popular instead of talk about all the traps to avoid or all the reasons not to allow employees to use social media tools at work. Even “The Office” this past Thursday poked fun at Dunder Mifflin’s new parent company coming in and blocking Twitter and the reaction it stirred in Michael Scott!
  2. Gartner Reveals 5 Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond – Micro-blogging streams integrated into general activity stream is nice catch based on my limited experience with stand-alone micro-blogging communities trying to play in a larger collaborative structure. Adoption peaks at a sub-optimal level if “another place to visit.”
  3. Employees with Flex Time put in more hours – So companies can get more work out of their employees with less resentment? I’ve also heard anecdotes from other companies that have internal social networks, that they see more weekend activity in the network than they expected. Good or bad for employees? Is that a sign of improved engagement or danger of burnout? Probably some of both.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @20Adoption – “Member @dpontefract on why Micro-Blogging is good for your company: http://bit.ly/9LmzEk #e2adoption #microblogging” – What he said.
  2. @cflanagan – “Battelle also found that watercooler allowed users to get used to E2.0 tools/ less intimidating #acweb2 /via @christyschoon-//Exactly!!” – In other words, don’t rip out all the “social.”

From @GolfinBP:

Sports Minute:

I was thrilled with the game last night right up until two coaching decisions completely shifted the momentum and significantly altered the outcome. Jim Caldwell decided to not lose, and Sean Payton decided to win.

Immediately following the goal line stand right around the 2:00 warning in the first half, the Colts got the ball back at their own 1 yard line with all three timeouts remaining. The Colts play-calling and clock management said to me “Even though we have the best 2:00 drill QB in the game, we don’t want to make a big mistake, so we are playing to run out the clock and punt.” I understand they were pinned, but it didn’t take them long to get out of the shadow of the goal line. At least throw on 3rd down there. It yelled “We are playing not to lose.” Conservative.

Sean Payton, on the other hand, made the gutsy onside kick call, playing to win. What a decision. Based on how the game was going and how it went the rest of the way, I think whichever team recovers that ball (and it was close, and who knows what happened under that pile-up) wins the game. It was that crucial. Playing to win. Aggressive.

Ball game. Season. Congrats Saints, New Orleans, Sean Payton and Drew Brees. Winter Olympics anyone?   (Note: Each time I try to type “Payton” I accidentally type “Peyton.” I am scarred.)

TV Minute:

I can’t wait to talk LOST, but not here. May to a separate post on that one. Too complicated to get into here. But my favorite scene from all the TV I watched last night happened on Big Bang Theory. BAZINGA!

Top Reads of the Week: (all Colts/NFL related in celebration of Super Bowl week)

  1. Peter King’s MMQB – My Monday staple (although I haven’t read it yet, will tonight, but always a great read.)
  2. Colts Left With Nothing – Bob Kravitz from IndyStar. I am getting depressed. Moving on.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @golfinbp – “This is what Peyton was born to do. Drives like the one you are about to watch is what makes legend. #colts #SB44” – Right before Peyton threw the game ending interception. Hmph.
  2. @golfinbp – “Colts D came to play! #colts #SB44” – When the score was 10-0. Double hmph.
  3. @BrianRWagner – “http://twitpic.com/120w5y – Talk about a great pic: Drew Brees celebrating the win with son, Baylen. Have to enjoy this. Lasting memory.” – Okay, maybe not so bad the Colts lost.

MME2: Get It! Got It! Good!

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Thanks for visiting MME2: Monday Morning Enterprise 2.0…my weekly foray into exploring professional and personal topics on the tip of my mind. And don’t be confused by the “morning” branding when posts don’t appear until Monday afternoon. I promise that I was working on it on Monday morning, and at the point I post the article I am sure it will still be Monday morning somewhere.

From @TheBrycesWrite:

When we “Get It!”

As a self-proclaimed evangelist of the benefits of working transparently and collaborating in an open and connected environment, I am fascinated by stories of when people “got it.” When their understanding shift from “what a waste of time” to “this could be a game changer!”

Just last week I had the privilege of meeting with a Sr. VP here at Lilly to talk about some of the work I am doing trying to improve the adoption of and capabilities available for Enterprise 2.0- type objectives. He was already a proponent of finding improved methods for innovation and collaboration, but recent events in Haiti provided a real-life experience to strengthen his belief. You see he had family down in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, and he tried using traditional channels (government, media, etc.) to get up to date information and figure out courses of action to help them out, but wasn’t getting the information nor the results he wanted. Then he and his family turned to posting questions on Facebook, and in short order they were pointed to helpful information that helped contribute to ensuring his family members were safe. Now this wasn’t a work related incident, but he was adept enough to see how the network effects of a highly-populated social network could expedite knowledge and information to an individual faster than any of the traditional communication mediums we primarily make use of today.

My “got it” moment isn’t nearly as poetic and seems trivial in comparison…but it certainly worked for me. Last April on Sunday at the Masters Tournament Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson (both recently accused of “cheating,” although in drastically different ways) were trailing the leaders by a few strokes and were paired together! Tiger and Phil playing together in the final round of the Masters! And we were driving home from Cincinnati during the front-nine of that historic telecast! I informed my wife that she would be driving and I would be following leaderboards / blogs on my mobile during the trip – try finding golf on free radio some day. I was immediately frustrated because those resources were out of synch and I could tell they were at least 10-15 minutes behind the real action, or the blog would be 3 holes behind the leaderboard. I had a Twitter account but I rarely used it at that point…and for some reason on this trip I decided to check it out and search for some Masters-related posts…mostly because the slow blogs weren’t doing it for me. I started following about 15-20 people (mostly golf news outlets and some LPGA players tweeting while watching)…and immediately my involvement switched from frustrated to engaged in the experience. The best part was having real golfers tweeting about each shot from their personal perspective as they watched – describing Phil’s consecutive birdies, Tiger’s eagle on #8, Phil’s crazy recovery shot from the woods on #9, the two of them electrifying the golf course with a barrage of red numbers – tweeters saying “I don’t have that shot!” or “The leaders are stunned by the buzz of the crowd 5 holes ahead of them”.  And I was able to feel the emotion of it in real-time by reading tweets. I’ve been addicted to Twitter as a news/conversation source for live events ever since. Although my wife and kids in the car had a hard time relating to why I was practically jumping out of my seat just by reading short blurbs on a Blackberry.

Now how do I translate that story into getting why taking time to “share” can work in the enterprise as well? Having a Twitter-like environment within our firewall (Litter = Lilly Twitter) has provided similar experiences during internal conferences where many users are attending and posting to the backchannel (I wasn’t jumping out of my seat, but I think you get the point). I likely would have been skeptical of participating in such a backchannel had my Masters / Twitter day not served as a “Gateway Drug” to trying to replicate that experience in my work life. Today, considering myself a full convert since I’m now working on this stuff as a full-time job, my life and work experiences are enhanced because I can relate my conclusions / emotions / questions with other people. I’m more engaged in those events and those outcomes than ever before, because of a connection to the people doing the same.

So let’s see, I’ve used “Got It!” moments to realize benefits to speedy discovery, knowledge retrieval and engagement. Anyone out there looking to improve those aspects of your life and/or work? What have been your “Got It!” moments?

Getting Real with E2.0 – My best example from the week of people using E2.0 to generate value in the work environment:

For the last couple of months I have been experience significant performance issues with my work laptop. After running for only a few hours things would start going haywire and either I would have to reboot a couple times per day or it would just decide to reboot for me with no warning. I’ve been through memory upgrades, re-imaged hard drives, swapped out laptop “shells”, switching which browsers I use regularly, you name it, trying to get to the bottom of the issue with no success.

I had heard rumors that our diligent IT organization was working on a fix for the issue, but hadn’t seen any publications of when / if it would become available. Thanks to keeping up with Litter and a helpful peer posting that the patch was available in our software request system, I have installed it and so far things are much improved. Without the tool or the person’s willingness to share, I may have gone days or weeks without knowing that the patch was available, wasting who knows how many more hours in lost productivity waiting for multiple reboots per day. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that by writing this I haven’t jinxed the solution and I am now beyond the worst of my issues.

Top 3 Reads of the Week:

  1. Flexible Access: Impact of Interruptions caused by Enterprise 2.0 Technologies – Kathleen Culver:  I always like staying grounded and avoid pretending that what I work on is the nirvana of all things work. That’s why I like this post as a reminder. But like anything, I wouldn’t use this as an argument against involving yourself in E2.0 capabilities just like I wouldn’t use it as an argument to avoid email or instant messaging. Just a reminder that prioritization and discipline are important in how you work regardless of the communication mediums that surround you.
  2. Don’t Lose Yards in the E20 Super Bowl – Susan Scrupski: In honor of the Super Bowl this is an entertaining post with some valuable E20 traps thrown in for good measure. Although I have to admit I would have used “Face-Mask” to describe slide 15!
  3. What Can Facebook and Twitter Teach Us About Developing Knowledge Communities – Robert Coates:  This wasn’t written this week, but I discovered it this week, so that counts. Point #3 particularly resonates with me as people tell me about how the implementation must be targeted at specific business processes in order to work. I don’t disagree with that point, but I also don’t want to lose the creative value of people that have a flexible and capable platform to make it work for their needs without prescribing to them how it must be used. I trust in the smarts and creativity of the people that work here to discover innovative use cases.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @20Community: “Get ready for Monday Morning Enterprise 2.0 by Bryce Williams #e2adoption http://su.pr/5Wmg5T” – Thanks! I come up with an idea and write a post about it, and all of a sudden it’s being advertised. There goes that Twitter thing again.
  2. @humanfireplace: “If you don’t have time to read Enterprise2.0 and how it’s reshaping our business, listen to this short podcast: http://bit.ly/5H8ab2” – I certainly recommend the book but realize not everyone has time to read every book somebody else recommends. This could be a good resource to reference as an evangelist.
  3. @20Adoption: “1st of a 4-part webinar series Slide deck now online: http://bit.ly/dA9Jxe #acweb1” – As a member of the Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council, this was a cool event because I got to hear some friends do a bang up presentation and at the same time see some great conversation on Twitter about the event as well. Nice job team!

From @GolfinBP:

Sports Minute:

This is the ultimate sports week for me being a huge Colts fan and Super Bowl XLIV (that’s #SB44 for the Roman Numeral impaired) quickly approaching. I was lucky enough (Thanks Toni!) to attend both home AFC Championship games (New England 2007, New York Jets 2010). I am actually more excited about this Super Bowl than when the Colts one their first (as the Indianapolis Colts) 3 years ago. That season the big pinnacle moment was the AFC Championship game when Peyton and the Colts finally overcame their painful losses against Tom Brady’s Patriots. Because of the significance and exciting nature of that win over New England, the Super Bowl vs. Chicago almost felt like a consolation game (sorry Bears fans, it was just how it felt). That and the fact that I had a 4 week old baby boy and a 21 month old daughter at the time. Things were still a bit fuzzy for us with the lack of sleep, all the diapers and all the puking. The kids weren’t easy either.

But now the Colts are where they are supposed to be. When Polian initiated ColtsGate…which I still hole-heartedly support as the right decision as I wrote (sort of) in my blog post…it became Super Bowl or bust for the fans. And now they are here, 60 minutes from earning another Super Bowl trophy that will hopefully be the pinnacle of the playoff run and one that I’ll be rested enough to remember this time!

TV Minute:

As if this week wasn’t exciting enough with the approaching Super Bowl, but ABC decided to premiere the FINAL SEASON of the most addicting television series I have ever watched…LOST. I’m not going to get into the business of trying to predict what will happen, but I will be living up every minute of it…and if anyone tries to talk to me or make noise during any of the episodes, I’ll be rewinding, pausing, cranking up the volume until they get the hint! I won’t miss a word, a reveal or an explanation as to what every mystery, weird happening or relationship twist meant throughout the entire arc of the show. And I know DVR is great, but I am not taking any chances and waiting until the next day to watch. If I have to stay up until 2AM to see the full episode, I will.

I get excited when new TV content is available for my favorite shows, but I also dread it. My 4 DVR tuners will be recording about 10 hours of television on Monday and Tuesday evenings alone (24, House, HIMYM, Big Bang, Two and a Half Men, Heroes, LOST, LOST, LOST, American Idol). That’s a plethora of entertainment and a burden on my mind at the same time. This is going to be another week of little sleep because I dare not watch that stuff while my kids are still awake. Plus, I have to watch every minute of NFL Network coverage of the Colts media day on Tuesday!  Oof.

Top 3 Reads of the Week: (all Colts/NFL related in celebration of Super Bowl week)

  1. Tuesday Morning Quaterback – Gregg Easterbrook from ESPN: My favorite part was the analysis of how Jack Bauer from 24 must be at least 60 years old by now.
  2. NFL Hangover – DJ Gallo from ESPN: My favorite article every week with the quotes / pictures at the bottom. Laugh out loud funny.
  3. Jim Irsay turned team plagued by instability into model franchise – Mike Chappell from IndyStar: The Colts are lucky to have 3 people to look up to when stepping back to admire the consistent success they have had: Manning, Polian and Irsay.

Tweets of the Week:

  1. @NFLfootballinfo: “All Decade team: QBs-Manning,Brady. RBs-Alexander,Lewis, James,Tomlinson. WRs-Harrison,Holt,Moss,Owens” – The triplets live again! QB Peyton Manning, RB Edgerrin James, WR Marvin Harrison. Only Peyton remains on the team this year, but a testament to the sustained excellence of the Colts for the last 10 seasons AND their ability to replace top-level talent to remain competitive.
  2. @MoveTheSticks: “Haven’t seen one play of the pro bowl. My 2 year old son requested a mickey mouse clubhouse marathon and I obliged. No brainer.” – Been there, done that. “It’s the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! Come inside, it’s fun inside!” The recent obsession though is Chuggington.
  3. @stewartcink: “Packing up for my trip to Northern Trust Open tomorrow. Should I give my ‘new’ lob wedge a try? http://twitpic.com/10rj6s” – I can’t believe the fuss over 20 year old clubs because of the shape of the grooves. Just hit the ball and get it in the hole! If Phil and Stewart want to play a club built 20 years ago with all the “advances” in golf technology…why are people whining that they have an unfair advantage? “Boss, I think if I downgrade my poorly performing laptop to Windows 3.1 I’ll start running circles around everyone else here!”