Part VII. Social and Enterprise Roles

This is part two in the multi part < ahref=”../?p=204″ “mini-series</a> and follow up to <a href=”http://juannycinco.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit

Who are the social media team? Who are the Enterprise 2.0 team?

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

So why and how is the social workplace skewed?

The environment is skewed because the platforms naturally favor, to a certain extent, distinct personality traits such as outgoingness, friendliness, and self-esteem.  To a greater extent, it is skewed by defined role.  That is, of course, your job: I keep telling you it’s not SOCIAL.  None of this is to say that you won’t get broad spectrum participation; however, you won’t get full adoption or full benefits from each of those participating because each one of us is an individual.  What you will find is that you can develop a sense of belonging and trust very quickly in the right social framework.  Of course, the right social framework is hard to create because it’s based on trust and inclusion.  What roles are creating that trust to create the reach and encourage adoption?  What roles exist to stifle that trust yet remain intrinsically necessary?

Social Ambassadors / The Delphi

The most visible role within today’s social enterprises are that of the Community Manager.  This is, of course, no surprise as the primary roles of a Community Manager are to provide marketing, outreach strategies, public relations and brand visibility at the external corporate boundaries and internally really spearhead the adoption of the E2.0 environment.The major functions would be primarily to:

• Represent the customer through listening, monitoring, garnering and understanding feedback provided through social medium.
• Direct the feedback and discussion through supported and moderated forums (localizing the discussion)
• Promote the product, brand, idea.
• Provide trust, a face, a human lubricant. Transparency starts with a human!
• Seek advocate support and encourage a brand loyal feedback loop
• Embrace detractors

Evangelists

Along with these community managers, you will often find the peripheral role Social Evangelists. These evangelists are usually either directly involved in the development or deployment of some aspect of the overall platform or are simply keenly interested in technology.

There is an important sub-classification:

1. technology based
   Early adopters, technical details, specification, open-source, open-standards forget they work FOR a company.
2. people driven
   Engage with people at a personal level, help, interact, provide feedback loops, want to be part of the company they work for.
3. market driven
   It’s their job.  Usually a combination of the other two forms.

Advocates

Advocates are quite simply end users that have reach, enthusiasm for platforms with a desire to spread the software around.  They are the general populace’s ambassador.  Similar roles driven by varying targets.  They are similar to evangelists but have a more laissez-faire approach.

The Keepers

These are the individuals who have either volunteered, or been volunteered, to provide a level of oversight to the particular area.  These keepers can be loosely categorized into three main areas:

1. The Time Keeper
   responsible for managing the metrics that resolve into time benefits or project level targets (e.g. Project Managers)
2. The Gate Keeper
   Responsible for managing the access to the appropriate resource (e.g. manager of the code re-use initiatives)
3. The Porter
   secondary level access management who are responsible for managing direct access once the gates have been navigated (e.g. project/wiki owner).

The Innovators, the Followers, the Troll, and the Silent majority.

These are all one category because this blog entry is way too long anyway.  The innovators are the rare creatures that will create new resources, furnish new ideas and push forward practical and simple reusable solutions.  They will adopt message boards, social sites, forums and blogs and perform the functions that The Followers respect and follow.

Unfortunately, there will always be the silent majority.  That is, those people who have the mental acuity to really drive innovation, provide creative and interesting input but lack the social fortitude to risk the humiliation that can be faced by a few misplaced comments and responses from the evangelists (mostly the technology based evangelists).

The Resume Whore

I’m not going to spend time here but you know who they are.  Ever seen an incredibly complex design using lots of new technology that solved a rather simple problem?  These are the “we need and Enterprise Service Bus to replace this single encrypted file FTP” people.  Enough said. Really.  They exist. They pollute your workplace.

The End Users

Often overlooked and often forgotten is the end user.  These users are not evangelists, they are not ambassadors, they are employees who use the social /enterprise model to get their job done. They are marketing who have a need to get information out into the public to advertise specials AND need access to the operations team to ensure that the support capability is in place.  They are technical support who need help to knowledge databases.  They are developers looking for reusable solutions.

Given their role is to get work done the amount it is surprising how often they are ignored.

The Executives

They exist.  They are the funding source. With one wave of their hand they can grow or kill initiatives.  This ability runs contrary to the position of organic growth but I will reconcile that eventually.