Part V. Adopting and Adapting.

This is part two in the multi part mini-series and follow up to Part IV. Feeling Good About Being Social

Organic Growth and Idea Value

Organic growth is critical to the success of an internal social platform because it provides the participants with real ownership.  Not ownership of code or objects but of ideas.  As ideas take root, they can be shared, picked up, and grow without inhibition. With a little care and a little pruning ideas can become real changes. People will wander into the fold, will acknowledge the value of ideas and add, use, and sprinkle a little knowledge. It is the basis for Microsofts campaign “Windows 7, it was my idea”.

Growth and Time Value

There is also the very simple fact that people are inherently lazy and will adopt whatever means and methods necessary to lessen the burden on their time –especially in those areas where time is rewarded. Consider sales commissions. The more business a salesperson can push through the more the financial reward.

It is easier to encourage participation by making participation available and free than to provide the need to fulfill some metrics based analysis prepared for the executives.

Ideas and societies grow much faster organically than through mandate.

No measurements, no commitments, no ratings based on participation.

When Socializing is Work

In the court of public opinion much of social software and enterprise software is seen as profligate and a waste of resource and some items are deemed “work worthy”. The following is a brief look at the more common type of apps:

1. Wikis.
   These are dynamic knowledge centers universally accepted as reasonable work centers. I, for one, have never heard… “These Wiki’s aren’t work; they’re just there for people to waste time.
   
2. Blogs.
   To the contrary arrive blogs which are considered personal. Personal implies one dimensional. I have often heard it said that there are key bloggers who are worth reading and the rest are just wasting time. Typically post to reply counts are appallingly low (as they are on this blog:)).

3. Congregational Sites/Serendipitous Network.
   The most social of the platforms. There are generally no limits to what is posted – families, pets, and hobbies. Generally these sites are about connecting on a personal level. Often considered frivolous use of time.
   
   
4. Micro blogging/messaging.
   This is generally the “what you had for lunch” platform. It will also incorporate internal versions of twitter, instant messaging, polling, “tapping” for help and IRC. This category gets the entire breadth of sentiment – from waste of resource through intelligent use of time as the platform enables filters to increase the signal to noise ratio.  For this reason IRC is often considered a better productivity tool than Twitter.  However, twitter is a better marketing tool than IRC precisely because of the low noise ratios.

5. Source and Asset libraries.
   This is the most enforced social software. This is typically considered and essential and fundamental prerequisite to improved efficiencies.

6. Application Reach.
   This is the most ignored aspect of the Enterprise 2.0 argument (and is, the major focal area that led to the greatest future success….remember this is a blog from the future). This is the level of direct reach into the application through the entire tool suite. Sales with access to technical subject matter experts is the social reach and accessing sales support data through a media phone is the data reach. Sometimes being social is just about awareness and not actual personal interaction.

I will evaluate the reality of these solutions in the conclusion as there is a striking separation from opinion and reality. It is clear however that the divide is split into very distinct black and white camps. There is WORK and there is SOCIALIZING.

Moreover, work is good, and socializing is acceptable sometimes in  strict moderation.

The successful platforms and companies of the future are the ones that were best able to remove the black stain of the implications of “socializing.”  Adding more white and more grey to the corporation and removing the black.

There is the clear white – collaborating and sharing specific work functions, and then a vast gray area which is the socialization of work. The idea that the socialization will ultimately grow into work value and productivity will come to fruition if, and only if, we let it mature in a sparsely managed and largely natural way.

We must let the structures and interactions from organically with guidance and with minimum interference to get quality long term results. It cannot be forced, it cannot be driven through mandate, and it certainly can’t be given milestones and deadlines as much as this is the modern executive approach.

When Work is  Socializing

In simple terms, Social Business Software needs to operate in a fashion that would be the organic foods equivalent of putting an allotment on each street corner. What I see for the past (your today) is the equivalent to the grocery store putting up a small shelf in the out of the way corner, charging extra and assuming that lack of sales indicates a lack of desire for organic food.

Interfering metrics yield bad metrics and this is far more serious an error than no metrics.

Be sure to understand that I’m talking social metrics. The cost and capacity management type metrics can be maintained; however, the cost burden should, ideally, not be used as a reason for abandonment of a tool or platform as this yields rather large discontentment among the advocates, and it is the advocates that generate the natural platform growth.

Those organizations that institutionalized collaboration metrics produced high volume, low yield, poor quality returns in the short term and social famine in the long term. Measuring “stars given”, “reuse of objects”, “wiki entries made”, “contributions to the knowledge repository” stifled the organic process.

Yes, stifled.

Mandates stifle creativity. People will naturally share; will naturally collaborate without being ordered to do so. Process is boring and process is an impediment. Process is never an improvement when it’s mandated and different to the existing rule-set. It’s that simple!

The most successful process engineering is the engineering you can’t see or feel.

The only metrics of value to the end users are access and knowledge that the access is unfettered, unregulated, and free of any strings. Participation is far too important to leave it to management enforcements.

The thought I’d like you to take away about Social Collaboration Software:

An organic approach may have a higher initial expense but it produced higher quality yields with better natural controls. Avoid over processing and overregulation and allow for natural and organic growth. The rewards are improved long term collaboration, quality, and most importantly health. Metrics can provide value, but only if they can be managed in a non-interfering manner and augmented by end user opinion free of executive will..

Series Navigation

«Part IV. Feeling Good About Being SocialPart VI. Social Domains»