How to Build a Social Organization
Posted on 10. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
This post was collaboratively written on a wiki by Gautam and Abha.
How would 2020 Social engage with organizations to build collaborative, open organizations
At 2020 Social we understand that while business is social – organizations must change internally to be truly authentic and social externally.
We have posted earlier on the changing nature of leadership in the age of social web within organizations, as well as some of the deeper trends driving this reality in organizations.
As the nature of work itself changes from personal productivity to group and team work, organizations need to have better tools to get work done between people.
Knowledge work can often get to be frustrating in most organizations because information is passed around in emails and often a lot of to and fro happens when two or more people try to collaborate on it. The problem gets compounded when people are in other locations
Social Technologies can address the issues that challenges communication and collaboration within organizations. It takes the focus away from information and puts the people in the centre of the conversation. Collaboration and internal networking can help employees use existing relationships to not only reach out to distant experts but also build trust and foster team and group bonding.
Tools to broadcast company related information can be leveraged by the organization.
2020 Social will engage with organizations in three main phases to make them social and collaborative
Diagnose
Diagnose would be the first step in a three step engagement process This would consist of two meta approaches – after the beginning of the engagement:
- Interviews with senior stakeholders
- Focus Group discussions with other employees
The output of this phase would be
- Major areas where collaboration is a challenge
- The business impact of non-collaboration
- Priorities that need to be addressed
- Sign off by top management on metrics to be tracked.
The interviews would also give data on the current level of readiness and maturity of the organization and its employees around the following areas:
a. Technology savviness
b. Readiness to experiment with new systems
c. Current level of work that can be done collaboratively
Based on organizational needs 2020 Social also looks at helping organizations develop social media policies that impact both internal and external social media and networking interactions.
Select
Based on the needs of the organization 2020 Social consultants would test various third party tools and select the one most appropriate tool with the functionalities suitable to the client
These tools would be a SaaS (Software as a Service) tool that an IT department is not required to maintain it on a regular basis. Currently we are in active talks with several such tool providers and in the process of tying up partnership agreements with them.
Engage
2020 Social Consultants would work with the client to train people on the behaviors and the tool. This would be necessary to drive adoption in the organization.
Some Objectives of the Tool related Training would be around
- Familiarity with product
- Roles of different user groups
- Usage of tool in specific scenarios
Objectives of the Behavioral Training could be
- Understanding changes how work itself is changing
- Articulating current pains and how they impact business outcomes
- Understanding that change in the way work will be done
- Helping them articulate apprehensions so that they can be addressed either in the training or later
Depending on the understanding and the complexity of the client system these could range from a workshop to a “train the Champions” approach and help desk support for the organization.
Want to know more?
Ask us how we can help you leverage social technologies within the organization.
And you can look at these three scenarios how we can help organizations build organizational culture, create an innovation mindset and facilitate effective team working by leveraging and creating internal communities around a passion and vision.
-
Gaurav Mishra
2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, connects their customers, partners and employees, and helps them achieve their business objectives.
