The Workplace Blog

By Shiv Singh

Earlier this week I was on a panel at a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley. Hosted by Charlene Li of Forrester, the panel discussed web 2.0 in the enterprise and how social media is changing collaboration behind the firewall. On the panel with me were leaders from Best Buy, Serena Software and Oracle. Titled “From Dilbert to Dude: Succeeding with Web 2.0 Within the Enterprise” the panel discussed how grass roots social media efforts take on a life of their own as they move from being “under the desk server” initiatives to enterprise wide programs.

Steve Bendt of Best Buy talked about Blue Nation, a social networking site that connects employees at the retail outlets to the corporate offices and to each other. Now, the employees who are on the front lines talking to customers everyday, have a platform to discuss new products, exchange ideas and provide feedback to headquarters on what products, display formats and marketing strategies are working. It is a perfect example of a company taking advantage of the wisdom of the crowds concepts. Also, interesting is that after the launch of Blue Nation, employee retention has gotten easier as employees feel a part of something special and important. No thank you email from a CEO can compare to the satisfaction that people get when they feel they have contributed to something larger. Turnover of employees who use the site is just 8 to 12 percent while company turnover is much higher.

Serena Software is another interesting company and I blogged about them a few years ago (on another blog) when they first rolled out their Facebook Fridays initiative. Rather than trying to build a behind the firewall social networking enabled intranet, Serena chose to build their intranet on the Facebook platform. But not just that, they also built tools to allow the Facebook pages to connect with company data sources in a safe and secure manner. So rather than bringing the employees to the intranet, they went to where their employees were spending most of their time - on Facebook.

In the case of Oracle, what’s most fascinating was how quickly Connect, the internal social network got adopted. Within an hour of launching the site 270 people were using it. The next morning the site had 8,000 people on it. Currently, the site has 10,000 active users who share information, news articles, powerpoint presentations and discuss budgets. This again was an initiative that began with no funding but tapped into the inherent nature of people to connect with each other in a purposeful and productive manner. Paul Pedrazzi from Oracle also discussed the risks. He mentioned that a person wearing a religious head dress like a turban could claim denial of a job because someone saw his profile picture and refused to interview him.

In discussing the Avenue A|Razorfish wiki and some client examples, I highlighted how understanding the motivations for use are important. We’re not on these social platforms just to socialize. Different people have different motivations and aligning those motivations with the social platform and the business needs is key to success. The wiki is viewed as a marketplace of ideas where people share their best thoughts and expect more in return. Sometimes the sharing even takes the form of bookmarks, blog posts and photographs - not just the regular word documents or powerpoint files. Through use of the wiki, natural experts who are the most passionate about specific topics get the attention and the focus that they deserve.

The panel was also covered in Infoworld.

By Shiv Singh

A much ignored subject in conversations about the workplace is the role that social influence plays. Recent research shows that when making decisions (any kind of decisions) we are much more influenced by known peers than we are by anonymous people or anonymous information inputs. It is the people that we know and trust that we consider the most credible sources of information. Because we’re much more connected to each other online, we’re influencing each other more than we ever used to.

This  simple fact has huge implications for the future of work. With the enterprise going increasingly social, we’re all observing one another much more. Because we’re connected to each other via internal wikis, department blogs and collaborative workspaces, we’re always watching what our peers say. Some of us comment on that and participate in the internal conversations, others just lurk. But lurking too allows for social influence to take place. Since we’re forced to collaborate more, we’re in turn influencing and being influenced by each other much more too. What are the implications of this? Here are three -

a. Greater internal alignment. Call it the result of increased voyeurism or what you like, but the fact that I have a much better sense of what my co-workers in the neighboring cubicles think, influences how I think and act at work. We’re much more in alignment with each other or inversely my workplace behaviour is a negative response to their actions.

b. Increased external alignment. Not only am I paying more attention to what’s going on in the work lives of my peers, but I’m also paying more attention to peers outside my own company. What they think and say in this social world, influences my actions within my own organization. This is healthy as it makes me a more informed, educated employee but it can also serve as a distraction.

c. Potentially rebellious employees. Since we’re watching each other so much more, we’re also processing a lot more information and thinking harder about our roles in an organization. Questions like why did one peer get a promotion over another or why do the benefits in one department differ from another crop up a lot more. It means that organizations need to think harder about how it manages perceptions among its employees.

By and large, social influence presents an interesting opportunity for most organizations. They can allow for positive social influence to take place by pointing their employees to positive, thought provoking influences. It also means that that the organizations don’t control their employee base like they once did. Its just how the world has changed. For more on how social influence work, take a look at this article where I discuss the motivations behind influence.

By Shiv Singh

An often forgotten fact about collaboration is that the people who typically want to collaborate are also the ones who trust each other the most. They are also the people who recognize that they can benefit in some manner by collaborating. Those benefits usually extend beyond just learning from one another to also recognizing that their reputations get enhanced as more peers observe their ongoing collaborations. But these people aren’t always in the majority.

As we design and analyze Enterprise 2.0 solutions, many of us work with the assumption that people inherently want to collaborate and that they will given the appropriate tools and motivations. That’s not necessarily true. Some people are more prone towards collaboration - they are the ones that see the obvious benefits. But there are others too - people who don’t recognize the benefits (and in some cases there may not be any at all) and people who fear that the collaboration can limit their competitive advantages among their peers. In other cases, its also simply a matter of trust. People may not want to collaborate with each other because they don’t trust the other people to recognize their contributions and play fairly.

The next generation Enterprise 2.0 applications, won’t just make collaboration easy. They will need to focus on helping organizations to identify who are more naturally inclined to collaborate and who need to collaborate for their jobs. These future applications will give those people the right collaboration tools based on what they’re trying to do and with whom. They will also recognize that there’s a difference between providing sharing capability and allowing for collaborative production. The applications will also be designed with the assumption that not everyone needs to collaborate or should be pushed to collaborate. That’s a different mindset from today but a more practical, logical and desirable one. Hopefully, we will get to that place soon.

by Shiv Singh

The other day a friend over at PricewaterhouseCoopers told me about a computing policy whereby employees receive notices discouraging them from sending emails over the weekend. They get these emails only when they log into their network during the weekend. (Coincidentally, Businessweek covered this policy in its latest issue).

Is this the future of work? A world in which we need guidance on when to send and when not send emails? Have we lost all sense of control over our lives that we need the technology to tell us what to do? Are we turning social construction of technology on its head with our obsessive computer habits? It certainly seems like it.

Social construction of technology or SCOT as its commonly referred to is a theory within the field of Science and Technology Studies which argues that human action shapes technology rather than technology determining human action. As a direct response to technology determinism, social construction of technology also argues that to understand a piece of technology, you have to understand it in its context of use.

But here we are using a piece of technology so obsessively that we need it to tell us when to stop using it. We have human action not just shaping the technology but shaping how the technology needs to guide us towards specific human action in the future. When email was invented, was this a fear that we’d need help in limiting our use?

I believe in social construction of technology and furthermore in the theory that technology cannot be understood devoid of context. I want to find out what aspects of the PricewaterhouseCoopers culture encourages people to email each other over the weekend. I also want to learn about the thinking behind the policy and whether that was something driven by a cultural nuance too. Are some organizations more culturally attuned to policies and procedures that such a policy seems normal in it? Is this the next stage of social construction of technology? This week I have more questions than I have answers.

By Shiv Singh

The April 28th issue of Businessweek includes some collaboration statistics that I found very interesting. Apparently 82% of white-collar workers partner with co-workers. That number appears low. There are fewer and fewer roles that don’t require any collaboration whatsoever now.

46% of white-collar workers are motivated to collaborate because they learn form others when they do so. 30% collaborate to accomplish a specific task, 19% collaborate because it is required of them and 4% to get ahead. Here’s my question - which of these segments are most likely to use online tools to collaborate? And how frequently does that group collaborate? My sense is that those that are motivated by learning use the online tools and collaborate the most and they probably also get ahead by collaborating more without realizing it .

Another interesting finding, 51% of women like working together so that they can learn from others in comparison to 40% for men. In terms of the different age groups, 18-24 year olds like working together the most (60%), followed by the 25-64 year olds (44%) and finally only 28% of the 65+ enjoy collaborating. These numbers aren’t too surprising and as time passes I expect more people to enjoy working together. With our personal lives getting more collaborative because of the social networks, it is only a matter of time before we bring those behavior patterns into the workplace.

And finally, 9% prefer working in groups of two, 54% like groups of three, 27% like groups of four or more and 10% are happiest working alone. There is obviously something special about groups of three. I haven’t seen any research to explain this but one reason maybe that when you have three people it is easier to make decisions.

There’s no question that knowledge workers are being asked to collaborate more everyday. Given the amount of information they need to digest just to do their jobs, they have to depend upon each other more. The smartest employees are the ones that realize that they need to be an active and generous player in this knowledge sharing ecosystem. They are the ones that are probably going to succeed the most. The others need to get on board or they will get left behind.

by Paras Wadehra

A web seminar Google held at KMWorld Magazine offered a great deal of insight into how Google manages projects and communication internally. The presentation by Google followed an employee through his first few weeks at the company, explaining the many tools he’s using: from the Google intranet MOMA, the Google Ideas site and Google Caribou Alpha, to Google Experts Search, “Googler Search,” and Google Apps.

Here are a few links to view the content of the presentation:
http://www.scribd.com/full/2263947?access_key=key-1×6vmvv1rya3xygdhfju

http://issuu.com/ialc/docs/innovation___google__kmworld_webinar_? mode=embed&documentId=080312113223-aa1c560259e24ac892c4e1cfa3f0c12d

http://www.beussery.com/innovationatgoogle.pdf

I just returned from the 3rd annual Avenue A | Razorfish Technology Summit in Austin. After sitting through presentations from Microsoft, Sun, Forrester Research, and Avenue A | Razorfish experts including Ray Velez, Amy Vickers, and Shiv Singh, there was one recurring theme that stood out: openness. Everyone seemed to be talking about openness: open standards, open source, open policies. But how open really are these companies? And how far are users willing to go?

While everyone at the conference agreed on the value of open source as a development concept, the most contentious issue centered on the openness of user data in a web 2.0 world. With the recent broohaha over tech cognoscente Robert Scoble’s ban (and subsequent reinstatement) from Facebook for “scraping” user data of his “social graph” (a word I learned means “all your connections on a social networking site”) via a rogue Plaxo script, the debate is quickly moving from the academic to the business domain. This will be a hot topic in the months to come.

The first related topic was Open ID. OpenID is an open, decentralized, free single sign-on system. Think of Microsoft Passport (I mean, Windows Live ID) but for a wide array of unaffiliated sites. Open ID eases that frustrating burden of having to remember a million user names and passwords for that increasingly complex ecosystem of sites you visit. With the proliferation of social media sites, there’s a lot of buzz about universal standards. Once you register with Open ID, you log on to all your favorite OpenID-supported sites/services with a single password linked to a provider of your choice (e.g., your existing Yahoo! log-in). Best of all, the user ID stays with you even if you switch providers.

The second related topic at the conference was data portability. Data portability is the idea of taking user data between different social networking sites. On day one of the AA|RF Technology Conference, Microsoft announced it was joining the Data Portability Workgroup, a consortium dedicated to defining inter-operability standards for data portability between sites. In doing so, Microsoft joins Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Google, Plaxo, & others. The open standards will “allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems,” reports TechCrunch.

Until days ago, Facebook stayed out of the circle. Why? Its business is based on owning your identity. Ever read its Terms of Service? Apparently, Facebook has the right to all your content for “any purpose, commercial, advertising or otherwise.” But, users shouldn’t have to read the fine print. And, they shouldn’t have to re-create their profiles and chart their complex social graphs next time the new hot social media site comes along. (You know how many hours it took to try to make myself look cool??!:-)

Microsoft agrees. Sr Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, Angus Logan, explained to AA|RF employees & clients that Microsoft will follow the “delegation” style of data portability. Translation: Windows Live tools will allow users to import their circle of friends and photos from other social media sites.

More details to come on this topic throughout 2008. Facebook’s recent reversals of its creepy Beacon ad product, Robert Scoble ban, and refusal to join the Data Portability consortium are steps in the right direction.

With the right security and privacy permissions in place, openID and data portability encapsulate two cornerstones of web 2.0: simplicity and user control.

As social media tools are increasingly adopted in the workplace, issues related to social identity will soon cross paths with the enterprise. Executives, be ready. Who do you think owns social data?

Last week Susan Scrupski published some great comments about Microsoft’s efforts to orient MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) towards Enterprise 2.0. She talked about Atlassian and Newsgator and how they integrate more tightly with SharePoint now allowing SharePoint users to find people and content more easily. It is also now easier to bring content into SharePoint and to take it out to other platforms and devices more simply.

And for those among us who are less inclined to go with SharePoint or for that matter any large company’s collaboration software, Susan recommends ThoughtFarmer which started out as a SharePoint project.

Above is a screenshot from ThoughtFarmer depicting an employee’s page.

I too met Chris McGrath at the Office 2.0 Conference and was very impressed with what his company is doing. Keep an eye on them.

I came across an HR perspective on Facebook in the Enterprise (PDF) via Web Stratetgy just now. Written for HR professionals, the article discusses how HR managers should approach the use of Facebook in the enterprise. I found this sentence which addresses improper Facebook user rather amusing -

A responsible way to handle this is for employers to negotiate a reasonable conduct policy with employee representatives, and make it clear to them what is expected of them in their private lives, both offline and online.

I don’t think a responsible way to handle improper Facebook usage is to negotiate a conduct policy with employee representatives. Rather, employees should be trusted to use Facebook appropriately. In the cases where there are misuses, those issues should be resolved in a private manner between a manager and his/her direct report. Don’t control unless there’s an absolute need to control.

If you want to learn more about Social Networks, read Danah Boyd’s primer which I’ve commented on at Going Social Now.

Our Enterprise Solutions summit ended with an interesting panel that included Andrew McAfee from Harvard, Michael Idinopulos from Socialtext and Forrester’s Rob Koplowitz discussing the future of the enterprise. Photograph courtesy Dion Hinchcliffe who also spoke at the summit.

The conversation quickly turned into the debate about how important enterprise 2.0 technologies are within the enterprise with Andrew being the strongest proponent while some members of the audience playing the skeptics.

Some of the key points covered included what are enterprise 2.0 technologies actually good for? Some wondered how much of a difference enterprise 2.0 technologies make while others emphasized that they are good for only certain business scenarios and aren’t meant to displace every other technology in place. That’s important to recognize, don’t expect Enterprise 2.0 technologies to solve all your problems. They do a few things really well within the collaboration and unstructured content domain but aren’t designed to solve a lot of other problems.

Another subject that came up was why aren’t enterprise 2.0 technologies making us collaborate a lot more. Adoption of these technologies and continuous use appears to be a major issue in most organizations. Here’s where the panelists encouraged the audience to start small, with small expectations and trust the community to do what’s best. They felt that the less rules that are in place, more the potential for growth. Some felt that the difficulty in getting the employees to collaborate is more an organizational behavior and sociological issue than just an Enterprise 2.0 one. You may have enterprise 2.0 technologies but that doesn’t mean you are an Enterprise 2.0 company.

A key worry highlighted during the panel was that Enterprise 2.0 technologies maybe misused. Audience members worried that an HR policy on a wiki maybe edited at whim or that important company information maybe vandalized. The panelists and other audience members highlighted the history features in wiki and also argued that vandalism and misuse can happen with email, in file servers, at the water coolers and everywhere else too. Its not an Enterprise 2.0 issue per se.

Andrew made an important point when he polled the audience asking them how often they engage in collaborative authoring versus primarily writing documents alone. Practically everyone answered with collaborative authoring. In fact, I strongly suspect that the one person who raised his hand for sole authoring, misunderstood the question! Andrew then asked why we use sole authorship tools like Microsoft Word versus the ones that have collaboration more deeply integrated into them. He had a point. Our tools have a lot of catching up to do. Old habits are hard to change.

For more on the summit, see Dion’s coverage (he also spoke at it), and David Deal’s at the Digital Design Blog where he talks about some of our Ford work.