GigaOM » social tools

Welcome to the post-normal age of work

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:00:07 +0000

It’s a now-prevalent notion that companies can advance by simply adding a social layer on top of existing business processes, integrating social tools with existing functional tools such as ERP, CRM, and HR solutions. The idea goes that this will make companies more social and therefore more productive.

That idea isn’t going to work.

Why? In a nutshell, social network-based communication is primarily organized around the concept of a “pull” medium — that is, a medium where individuals subscribe to whichever information sources they prefer and find useful. Traditional business processes, on the other hand, use “push” communications, where whoever created the information gets to decide whom it’s most important to. Simply put, the two parties don’t gibe.

Perhaps more importantly, the nature of work in our era has changed. Most people now have jobs based on non-routine work, where the predefined and fixed roles of business process do not reach.

I recently wrote a report as part of my activities in GigaOM Research, entitled “Social networks will displace business processes, not socialize them” (subscription required). In the report, I argue that we are drifting away from a business-process defined culture and towards a social network-shaped, cooperative one.

Source: Stowe Boyd/GigaOM Research

Above we see the variance between process-oriented organizational cultures and network-oriented ones. I consider this part of the transition from post-modern (1970-2005) to what I’ll call post-normal (2005-present and beyond) economic eras. These cultures also differ in the nature of social affiliation, with a loosening of the bonds that tie people together in cooperative cultures contrasted with collaborative ones. People in cooperative organizations will have a higher number on connections, but the proportion of those that are strong ties decreases relative to collaborative cultures.

Source: Stowe Boyd/GigaOM Research

Some corporate cultures are stuck even farther back in time because they are based on competition. I don’t mean competing with others in the marketplace, like Toyota competing with BMW. I am talking about a corporate culture based on zero-sum competition among workers, where one person’s advancement is someone else’s demotion. These are cultures strongly based on authority-based decision-making, and really are a holdover from the late modern era: the late industrial era.

Source: Stowe Boyd/GigaOM Research

In the report, I discuss the “fit” of different psychological profiles, or archetypes, in these cultures. For example, the Entrepreneur archetype (see above) fits well in collaborative and competitive cultures, and fits the entrepreneurial culture perfectly. But Entrepreneurs won’t like working in a purely traditional, “cooperative” culture, because they like to lead collectives that are managed through consensus. A cooperative organization is too loose for them: It’s a connective, and is based on laissez-faire decision making.

Source: Stowe Boyd/GigaOM Research

This is the debut of the 3C model — competitive, collaborative, and cooperative. It’s a psychosocial model of organizational culture, and I hope it helps address some key issues in organizational dynamics in organizations today as social technologies and practices are being adopted. Marshal McLuhan said, “we make our tools, and they shape us.” Keeping that in mind, we see the change that social network-based communication is causing.

Businesses are not making these changes on a whim or because individuals are made happier by cooperative work relationships. The fast-and-loose business is most in sync with the digital realities of today’s world, although most companies are still operating principally in a more traditional mode, and may even have a healthy dose of the “frozen-and-immobile” at the core. Nonetheless, businesses must move towards a more cooperative work environment because in doing so they will successfully compete in today’s fast-paced, digitally focused world. Older cultures that cling to traditional business processes will not.

To read the full report, click here (subscription required).

Thumbnail image courtesy of flickr user ShellVacationsHospitality.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

What every enterprise should know about social-business tools

Jenn Marston — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:30:24 +0000

Social-business tools are everyone in today’s enterprise, integrated into not just employee communication tools but also integrated into HR departments, finance departments, and other areas of day-to-day business. In the latest GigaOM Research podcast we hear from collaboration experts Stowe Boyd and David Coleman on the latest tools disrupting the enterprise and how to best integrate social tools into your business.

(download)

iTunes

Stitcher Radio

SHOW NOTES
Host: Adam Lesser
Speakers: Stowe Boyd and David Coleman

Social business software: The integrated approach
Social business software: Small and simple
LinkedIn gets pushed into social
How do you measure the value of social tools in the enterprise?
Disruption in the collaborative tools world
A “no fire” corporate policy: Could it change the business world?

PREVIOUS GIGAOM PODCAST EPISODES:

Instgram’s Twit-storm, Netflix nabs Disney, GMail’s Pretty iPad App

RoadMap re-run, our talk with Instagram’s Kevin Systrom

iTunes 11, When Things Connect, Sun Volt

What Aspiring New Media Stars Should Know About Agents and Managers

Holiday Gadget Gift Guide

War Tweets, Google TV and Nexus 4

Director Jay Duplass on low-fi movies through high-tech

Election Dissection, Ditching DSL and Dumping the iPad

Sandy’s Social, Infrastructure Impact and Forstall

Windows 8 Surfaces, and disruption eruption

iPad Mini, iMac gets skinny

Boxee Cloud DVR, Apple Rumors and Chromebook

Commutist interview: Joy of X author Steven Strogatz

Commutist podcast: Patent trolls, Costco ban and Passbook’s home run

Commutist, meet Nerdist, and interview with Chris Hardwick

T-Metro, Broadband Caps, Remembering Steve Jobs

Apple’s iO-Mess, Dirty Data Centers and Tesla

News from the Mobilize Conference

Paul Tough: How Children Succeed and what you can learn from them

The iPhone 5 Event

Come on, Kindle, Light My 4G Fire

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Employees skeptical of execs touting enterprise social, survey finds

Jessica Stillman — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:02:13 +0000

Among the primary selling points of enterprise social tools is their ability to prick the executive bubble and allow business leaders to get at the perhaps less than beautiful truth about what’s actually going on at lower levels of their organizations. By facilitating information sharing across organizational divides and hierarchical levels, this argument goes, social tools will help businesses forge a more cohesive and transparent culture.

It’s an argument to which employees apparently respond: Oh please! According to a surprising new survey from Deloitte, many executives have bought the party line on the effects of enterprise social media far more than frontline employees, who largely view social as more empty rhetoric out of the C-suite.

The Core Values and Beliefs survey from Deloitte asked 1,000 employees and about 300 executives for their views on social tools and the impact of these technologies on their organizations. In news that will surprise those who see social tools infiltrating organizations from the bottom up, driven by employee’s comfort with consumer social, the poll found much greater enthusiasm for social among execs that frontline team members.

45 percent of executives say social media has a positive impact on workplace culture; 27 percent of employees agree
41 percent of executives believe that social networking helps build and maintain workplace culture; 21 percent of employees agree
38 percent of executives say social media allows for increased transparency; 17 percent of employees agree
46 percent of executives say social media and online collaboration tools are critical to building and maintaining relationships with colleagues; 27 percent of employees agree

What do these numbers add up to? “Our research suggests executives are possibly using social media as a crutch in building workplace culture and appearing accessible to employees. While business leaders should recognize how people communicate today, particularly Millennials, they must keep in mind the limits of these technologies. The norms for cultivating culture have not changed, and require managers to build trust through face-to-face meetings, live phone calls and personal messages,” said Punit Renjen, chairman of the board, Deloitte.

Or in other words, implementing social technologies is all well and good, but employees will see through any claims that these tools are transparency, culture or cohesion boosting if the implementation is not backed up with an accessible, democratic approach by executives.

Do you think executives are often only paying lip service to the bureaucracy busting democratic ideals of enterprise social?

Image courtesy of Flickr user fredcamino.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

What’s the role of HR in building a social business?

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:03:45 +0000

So your company is trying to be more social, leveraging new ways of communicating to break down barriers to collaboration and information sharing. Great, but what role does HR play in that process?

That’s what David Kiron of the MIT Management Review recently asked Jeff Schick, the vice president of social software at IBM, in the course of a lengthy interview. The long conversation about IBM’s efforts to build a more social business and put all its social technology to use internally, dug into not only what specific tech tools IBM employs, but also questions of the culture of sharing that successful implementation of these tools demands.

“It’s not all about the technology. I think culture plays a huge dimension in how successful organizations are in transforming themselves into a social business,” said Schick. “This stuff is so easy to use that it’s not about what button to click to post a blog, but how do you create a vibrant community?” The interview goes on to touch on how IBM uses social “ambassadors” and gamification to encourage participation in its social communities, as well as offering heavy users the chance to win donations to charities of their choice by creating content.

But it also touches on the interesting and under-discussed question of whether HR should get involved in mandating or refereeing participation in an organization’s social tools, comparing different approaches used in different countries. Schick says:

As I travel around the planet, the role of human resources and what you can ask an employee to do or not do is subtly different. For instance, I spent time recently in Germany, and more than a healthy amount of discussion with clients was about, “Gee, there’s a workmen’s council in your organization, made up of different workers from different areas of the company. And as you make policy on employees and what they can do or cannot do, or tools that they can use and cannot use, the workmen’s council plays an instrumental role in whether or not they’ll permit that.” A group like that works hand in hand with human resources on changes that would take place in the organization.

An example is that we’re rolling out social software at Bosch in Germany; and working with HR and workmen’s council. So we ask, what should be our policy in asking an employee to fill out their profile? Can the company mandate it? Or is that not permissible? Have you established a set of business conduct guidelines that talk about the ethical aspects of being an employee, the way you need to behave, the way you would conduct yourself in terms of business, including blogging and responding to questions in Facebook?

So human resources does take an active role in describing and creating policy around leveraging social, both inside an organization as well as outside the organization. And this has become such a popular discussion with us that we actually publish our Social Computing Guidelines right on IBM.com, so people can understand the policy that we hold our employees accountable to.

Laying out what’s acceptable and what’s off limites when it comes to social technologies seems like a fairly inevitable responsibility of risk averse, legalistic HR.

But is social something HR can mandate or, like forced “fun” activities, is the whole cultural point of these tools lost when you require people to participate?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Brandon Giesbrecht.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Chatter builds its social supercontinent with new real-time features

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:01:10 +0000

Salesforce, executive John Wookey told GigaOM earlier this year, is betting on social, envisioning a future where not just communication tools get a social rethink, but nearly every area of business.

“Over the next five years this will start sweeping through companies. In the same ways that Rypple has taken this model of social networking as a fundamental design point and applied it to performance management systems, I think you’re going to see it apply to a lot of systems, whether it’s recruiting, compensation or learning systems. I think it will eventually hit things like your financial budgeting and planning systems, your project systems, anything where the work is inherently social,” he said.

That’s a lot of social. But hopefully, in Saleforce’s vision of how things unfold, not a lot of different social tools. We spoke with to Dave King, director of product marketing for Chatter, about new real-time chat and screen sharing features for enterprise social network Chatter that the company is announcing today, and he explained that the overarching aim of the new additions to the product is to integrate “islands of communication” so that employees need not switch through multiple tools but can access this growing array of social processes through Chatter. Salesforce wants, in effect, to link these islands together and create a Pangaea of social with Chatter at its center.

Looking very much like a Gchat within Chatter, the new messaging tool lets workers message others, either singly or in groups of up to ten, within the organization (i.e. other Chatter users at the company) without having to switch windows or open another application. Your buddy list is automatically generated from all those you’re already connected to on Chatter. The in-browser screen sharing application is designed to replace the likes of WebEx for internal discussions. Both tools are freely available to all existing customers as of today, as well as those using the free version of the product.

This additional functionality is good news for current users, but it’s also interesting in what it indicates about where Salesforce sees social tools going. “Every business process has a combination of unstructured or social processes and structured processes,” King explains. “Let’s take recruiting. When I’m recruiting maybe I email a PDF of the resume around and I’m IMing people who interviewed the candidate to get their feedback, but all of those things are in different places.”

Chatter wants to be your portal into all those actions and to the increasing array of business areas that Wookey predicted are getting a social overhaul. “We think it all needs to be united. So let’s say your files are in SharePoint and maybe you have an HR system in a different place, Chatter, with our Chatter Connect API, can be the unifying social layer that really brings all those things together,” King says, who added that Salesforce is also hoping to enable collaboration with those external to Chatter through the platform in the future.

Rather than tools proliferating as more processes go social, Salesforce wants all of those additional functions to integrate with Chatter. That’s good for the company, of course, as their products become more tightly woven into ever more aspects of your business, but the message out of Salesforce is it’s also a matter of increased efficiency for the user.

Do you see an integrated platform model dominating the future of social, or are we more likely to see a profusion of “social islands” dominate the scene for a good while yet?

Image courtesy of Salesforce.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Do we need WordPress for the enterprise?

Jessica Stillman — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:56:47 +0000

The collaboration space is very crowded, especially if you consider research showing most organizations are still just dipping a toe into the concept of social tools. So what does the fact that there are so many offerings clamoring for attention and domination mean? Is this slightly chaotic diversity of products a good thing? Do we need a war of attrition where one existing collaboration product fights its way to undisputed king-of-the-jungle status? Or is this welter of options a sign that the we’re still waiting for a product so intuitive and satisfying that we all finally sigh and say, yes, THAT was what we were looking for all along?

Jacob Morgan, co-founder of collaboration consultancy Chess Media Group, recently posted his answer to this question on his blog. His perspective: we’re still waiting for a breakout collaboration product, and it should look like “WordPress for the enterprise.” Of course, there is an enterprise version of WordPress, but assumedly that’s not what Morgan means. He explains how the collaboration solution he’d most like to see is instead like WordPress in key ways:

What we need is a “WordPress for the enterprise” and before its acquisition I thought Podio was the closest to moving down that road. When you think of WordPress you think of a content management and delivery platform but it’s more than that. Take a look at how many millions of sites all run on WordPress, each with a unique look and feel and each with it’s own set of features and plugins that can be customized and added to make every site unique and individual. Currently we don’t have anything like this for the enterprise. Sure, some vendors have their own app stores where you can buy and download application specific additions but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Atlassian is probably the closest vendor out there to building a complete enterprise ecosystem with apps but even those are focused on the single platform.

He calls this vision of DIY collaboration suites supported by an extremely flexible platform “the widgetized enterprise” and says there are several roadblocks keeping us from this version of the future. One, “we don’t have collaboration standards for all the vendors out there to get them to speak the same language,” and two the market lacks a true platform vendor. But Morgan has hopes that we’ll see something like what he’s after soon. “Eventually we will get to a more widgetized collaboration platform that allows us to take the bits and pieces we want from every vendor and combine them together to make something that works for us,” he concludes.

What do you make of Morgan’s vision of the future of collaboration tools – have you already found a platform that’s flexible and customizable enough to meet your business’s needs, or are does WordPress for the enterprise sound like the solution you’ve been searching for?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Phil Manker.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Social business and the valley of disinterest

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:04:53 +0000

With the rise of consumer social media and the untethering of work from a fixed geographic location, interest in ways to put social tools to work in the enterprise has been on the rise. A host of business-specific collaboration offerings from Yammer to Rypple are aiming to capture the interest of firms, while nearly every business is trying to figure out how to best utilize the likes of Facebook and Twitter. But are all companies equally engaged in figuring out how to do social?

Recent research that MIT Sloan Management Review conducted in collaboration with Deloitte reveals a striking pattern, according to an intriguing post in MIT Sloan’s Improvisations blog. When asked whether they believed social business was important, those at the biggest and smallest firms showed the greatest interest, with a steep fall off in interest among those at mid-sized organizations. Here are the percentage of respondents who agreed with the importance of social business by company size:

Less than 1,000 employees: 21.2 percent
1,000-5,000 employees: 13.6 percent
5,000 – 10,000: 13.6 percent
10,00-100,000: 12.1 percent
More than 100,000: 21.2 percent

Why might this be? The post speculates that, “social tools enable smaller organizations to appear bigger, and larger companies to appear ‘smaller’ — more accessible, responsive, and nimble,” noting that 31 percent of the smallest firms thought these tools were important to growing revenue, a much higher percentage than at larger companies. Gerald Kane, a professor at Boston College, suggests this may be because smaller firms can use social tools “as a way of increasing their voice, as a way of connecting with customers.” The analysis of the findings in ongoing, according to the post, and the final results will be published sometime this spring, so those who are interested should keep their eyes open for the full report.

In the meantime, what’s your reaction to these initial results – are mid-sized firms underestimating the potential benefits of social or are these tools really of less value to businesses of this size?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Nicholas_T.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Why is Facebook addictive but enterprise social adoption a challenge?

Jessica Stillman — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:02:35 +0000

It hardly takes a raft of studies or in-depth research to prove that consumer social media like Facebook and Twitter can be hugely addictive. From our personal lives and stories in the media, most of us intuitively know that the little shots of connection and amusement we get from these sites make it sometimes difficult to log off, even when you know your excessive time on them is less than healthy for your brain (or your self-esteem).

While the addictive properties of social media are totally obvious, so is the truth that introducing social tools in an enterprise context is a tricky business, and driving adoption is sometimes a painfully slow process. As David Lavenda, VP of marketing at social email company harmon.ie, recently pointed out here on WebWorkerDaily, recent Forrester research found widespread under-utilization of the social tools that organizations have invested in, with 64 percent of companies reporting they realized few, if any, benefits from the investment.

And that’s a paradox. Why do we love social tools in our personal lives but often shun them in a professional context? Author and prominent business thinker Tammy Erickson recently pondered this question on the HBR Blog Network, outlining the key differences between the consumer social experience and the enterprise one. In our personal lives, she argues, social media have these characteristics:

We’re usually invited to participate by people we know and trust.

There are specific things we want to do with the other people involved, such as share photos, stay up-to-date on a club’s activities, or develop a personal reputation.

We get something back from participation: advice, practical information we need, a network to tap when times are rough, or the emotional pleasure of seeing others’ photos or hearing their news.

We have control over who sees our information.

The applications are intuitive — there’s no training required.

The applications are well-tuned to support the specific tasks we want to perform, and their features are regularly rated and refined.

Meanwhile, social at work is very different:

Often we’re instructed to use it by someone in authority, rather than invited by friends.

Little of what we actually get paid to do (or believe we get paid to do) requires information or input from the vast majority of other people on the network.

Participation feels like dropping pearls into a black hole — there’s often no sense of getting something in return for sharing an idea or suggestion.

We have no control over who sees our information and little idea what “they” are doing with it.

The site is unattractive and requires a manual to get started.

The software is generic and requires a work-around to do the specific things we would really like to do.

In the thoroughly interesting post she goes on to make suggestions on how organizations can make enterprise social more appealing to speed uptake of the tools, including offering a clear purpose for the initiative and tailoring offerings to existing user behavior. Have a read for her complete recommendations.

Do you think Erickson has nailed the essential differences between personal and professional social tools?

Image courtesy of Flickr user See-ming Lee.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

3 popular ways to screw up enterprise social

Jessica Stillman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:00:51 +0000

Enterprise social networking may still be in its infancy when it comes to widespread adoption, but its popularity as a buzzword could hardly be hotter. What’s the result? A lot of folks with little experience of how to best use enterprise social tools rushing to introduce them. That’s not a recipe for a flawless roll out of new ways of working and sharing.

So what usually goes wrong? At Net:Work 2011 Podio CEO Tommy Ahlers suggested companies often make things too complicated, complaining about “Swiss army knives” that try to solve every problem and end up failing users. When I spoke with Yammer CEO David Sacks a few weeks ago, he suggested that companies often go wrong by “trying to bolt that on to some existing tool, because if the tool isn’t built from the ground up to be social, it’s not going to have the level of usability that’s required.”

Now David Lavenda, VP of marketing at social email company harmon.ie, has gotten into the act, offering up common ways that well intentioned companies muck up the roll out of social tools and suggesting better ways to bring these tools to your team. “Simply throwing out social tools isn’t going to work,” he says, pointing to recent Forrester research that found widespread under-utilization of social tools. The study shows that even though companies have invested in an average of five or more tools, 64 percent realized few, if any, benefits from that investment. Only 8 percent actually use social collaboration software once a week.

So what should you do if you want your company or team’s move to social to go as poorly as some of the roll-outs documented by Forrester?

Imagine your team loves change. Some people like nothing better than to shake things up and try something new, but you can be pretty sure that’s not everyone on your team. So when you’re thinking about rolling out a tool to make your organization more social, keep in mind the howls of complaint that greet even the smallest changes to social networks in the consumer space.

“People are naturally reluctant to change,” says Lavenda. “Enterprise 2.0 author Andrew McAfee warns organizations to, ‘never underestimate the fondness of people and organizations for the status quo.’ When transitioning to a social model, it’s imperative to understand exactly how users work. Then, build a strategy and toolset that integrates with these practices in a way that makes sense with their current workflow, rather than asking users to make a dramatic change in their behavior.”

Rip and replace. If the wheel is turning along with just a bit of a creak or wobble, it’s not a good idea to try and entirely reinvent it. “People are often lured into thinking they need something entirely new to solve a problem. Instead of a D-Day approach that flips the switch on relatively unproven technologies like blogs, wikis and allied next-gen tools—essentially asking employees to immediately abandon existing tools like email and documents—plan for a gradual introduction that allows users to get up to speed with new functionality and capabilities at a comfortable pace,” recommends Lavenda, adding, “the idea is to improve productivity, not hinder it.”

The more the merrier. More may be better when it comes to chocolate cake or vacation days, but not when it comes to tools for the social enterprise. Rather than asking your team to log in to six different things, try to find solutions that allow them one go-to place for many needs. “An effective social strategy must start in a familiar environment and then aggregate all other pieces into the users’ base of operations. The goal is to eliminate steps, not add more. Bundling collaboration tools together in a common context and shared window drives faster, more widespread adoption and delivers the promised benefits of social enterprise integration much quicker,” says Lavenda.

Have you experienced any serious screw ups in the real of enterprise social that you’d like to warn others to avoid?

Image courtesy of Flickr user markomni.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:39:31 +0000

The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.