Part VI. Social Domains

At this point in the series I have shared two key fundamental ideas that were the framework for the transition to the full Semantic Enterprise (also known as Enterprise 2.0+), namely:

1. Social Software – it’s not social at all .
2. Growth is/should be organic

These two facts left the community managers and social software evangelists with a huge adoption problem.  Adoption will not occur because of the ill-fated human need for companionship in the work place; after all, we do have a job to do, and that’s real work.  Neither will adoption work if it mandated through the enacting of metrics and an executive feedback loop.  In addition, it made it difficult to provide succinct feedback to the executives and funding resources.

The problems involved with the adoption of the social enterprise are not entirely unique and often have been solved if we know where to direct our searching eyes.

Before beginning to search for the solutions it was important to understand the different domains where businesses have what technical people will call interfaces and what project managers might call touch points. Of course, layman, would understand this best as what does social enterprise mean to me?

Social Domains

Skills, Knowledge and Experience Sharing

The transfer of skills and knowledge has become a PULL function of employees: the data, the mission is clear and it is the employee’s responsibility to take advantage. The following types of sharing are critical in today’s business.

1. General Knowledge Sharing How do enterprises get general skills, knowledge and experience transferred between their employees? This sharing is often described to the employees as increasing their deep knowledge or, if they are more agile inclined,  their adaptability.
2. Specific Knowledge Sharing How do enterprises get specific enterprise skills, knowledge and experience transferred between their employees?  This is the narrow, specific consultant based, Six Sigma, CMM, process engineered, rate-changing skill set.

Together these are what I call the company Skills Knowledge Experience ME (SKEME) because a good mnemonic is never amiss in the information technology landscape. The company SKEME is the idea that knowledge is power and that the normal siloed approach to work will not enable high productivity rates and high volume distribution will create better, quicker and more standard processes and procedures.

The technologies involved are  typically interactive and dynamic (Wiki’s), static (repositories).  Some variations can exist in terms of the technology being moderated (pure static or process managed)  or un-moderated/user-moderated (dynamic user rated).  In most instances there are the knowledge center is not the open field, blue sky model but the castle fortress model; that is, once you have found and passed the gatekeeper to the repository, you must then find the porter who will let you into the tower.  Protection of the asset is important but at what cost?

The old knowledge sharing model must be updated for your Enterprise 2.0 to work.  Knowledge needs to be dynamic within a process, and not process engineered to be constant.

Collaboration and Efficiency

The primary goal of any business in the 21st Century is to produce a positive net balance position.   This simply means increase revenue and/or decrease costs.   The semantic enterprise can link skills, link ideas, and link people to improve the overall level of innovation.  This linking is the innovation and driving center of the enterprise business: where sharing of knowledge reduces rework and encourages standardization, linking and collaboration is the corporate gateway for new ideas and new improvements.  Collaboration is part of the unofficial requirements pipeline.

Furthermore, the argument goes, people are empowered to put forward improvement suggestions (potentially with reward).  There is a think place, an idea box, an initiative address.  We’re all encouraged to look out for business opportunities and share them with our employer.  E2.0 is about effectively implementing the asset of collaboration and not just collecting ideas.

Transparency

I’m sure that you have heard through many outlets – transparency is the new black.  The idea is that the company has nothing to hide and opening up the windows and revealing the boudoir of the organization will somehow instill confidence and trust from your customers.  There are many voyeurs looking into your boudoir, how does your organization look naked?   The truth is that there is no company showing true transparency, there is only the appearance of something translucent.   The effective social business solution provides key access into what would be public information, scattered with a little self serving humble pie.  Outsiders, don’t be fooled!  The blinds are left strategically open, just a little business flirtation, you understand?

Accessibility

1. Accessibility to People and Knowledge Essentially the argument for accessibility can be two-fold based on the overall implementation.  The simple and direct solution provides internal, and potential partners, sales and marketing a method to bore through the bureaucratic layers of business and get direct answers, feedback and opinions in almost real time from the area’s experts be it software or hardware.  This is the often missed as a true business benefit that can have real visible returns.   Identification of the appropriate resources and skills attribution is a must.  It’s about guiding the horses to the appropriate well or they won’t drink.
2. Accessibility to Delivery and Supply Chain and Back Office As stated in the previous blog entry in the series this is the most overlooked and ignored segment of the business social software platform.  This isn’t about being social, it’s about being productive.

Marketing, Advertising and Customer Reach
This is the public face of your business and is where transparency is replaced my pure brand, recognition and public opinion.  It’s not about internal improvement it’s about sharing your integrity in terms of an overall dependability, capability, purpose and satisfaction targeting to the consumers of your product.   Customers and clients are voyeurs: they have been checking you out!  How you look to your voyeurs should be built into your operational model.

But which of those goals are Social Media and which are Enterprise 2.0?

Social Media and the Enterprise 2.0 platform are not the same platform or entity but are interlinked and are, in fact, two separate components of the overall platform that work together (a diagram would be nice but that takes work ).

Social Media is the publicly visible portion of your enterprise and it’s what your customers see and what your employees speak.  If you imagine the cloud that is your enterprise then look at the large landscape outside, social media is the lubricant that keeps everything moving freely. Firewalls are windows you can open.

Enterprise 2.0 is how the organization functions, how the internals link, how the components stay focused on common goals.  The overlaps, or touch points and interfaces, are at the intersections of these two concepts.  These interfaces are a key focus for area and it is the understanding of these fuzzy border lines, the inside/outside the cloud, the data ownership/stewardship issues, the accessibility and leverage of data that will ultimately define the social business software winners.   That said, are they social business software, or business software with social plug-ins?  Interesting, yes ?

What are the major challenges ?

So now I’ve outlined a couple of the main areas involved in the social business fabric of the company and now I will turn to the idea of the skewed dynamics of the social workplace.  What does that mean, exactly? Well what it means is that in order for any concept, idea, structure, or platform roll out to be successful, you have to understand not only the domains in which you are working but also the roles and personnel involved.  Simply put, and restating previously stated obviousness: any social business platform needs participation; moreover, that participation should be founded on natural and organic growth and feedback.  But still, the definition of the team is important.  Who are the social media team? Who are the Enterprise 2.0 team? And how do we tell executives that it is providing value?

Isn’t it everyone? Well, yes, and no… but mostly no.

So why and how is the social workplace skewed?