The Social Employer Manifesto
Posted on 26. May, 2010 by Gautam in Announcements
David Armano recently posted the Social Business manifesto focusing on the relationship between a social business and its customers.
So I thought I’d give a shot to making a manifesto for the Social Business and its relationship with employees.
- We will no longer view you as “employees” only to do the work you are assigned. Instead, you are co-creators, participants, critics and advocates.
- We will actively ask for your input on products, services, structures, processes and give it to you to co-create them with us.
- We will focus not on the time you spend in office but the results you achieve.
- We will provide value, not jobs.
- We will provide you the tools to connect across silos, departments, locations to meet the changing demands of a networked economy and social customers.
- We will focus on your needs vs. our ends.
- We will together focus on reducing the noise within the organization.
- We will together destroy processes that do not let us build human relationships within and without.
- We will encourage you to build relationships that connect all of us with partners, stakeholders and customers in ways where we all benefit.
Cultural Change in Organizations and Social Technologies
Posted on 24. Mar, 2010 by Gautam in Ideas, Trends
As an Organizational Behavior person, I believe that Culture trumps strategy. And of course, can derail tactics and events that go against the grain of the culture within no time.
Today, I was talking to a CEO of a professional services firm who was sharing how he had tried to champion a micro-blogging tool within his firm to share information across locations and silos and how the fact they were a hierarchical organization probably killed the tool’s effectiveness.
Yes, technology, even when championed by the CEO can fail if it runs into culture.
Think of culture like the running river, and any initiative like a rock. The rock seems strong. With executive sponsorship, resources, and sometimes external consulting. Eventually the river wins. Not by strength but by persistence.
How To Balance Simplicity and Functionality in Designing Enterprise 2.0 Software?
Posted on 14. Mar, 2010 by admin in Ideas
Larry Hawes (@lehawes) wonders what is the right balance between simplicity and functionality for enterprise micro-blogging tools:
Early adopters of web 2.0 software in the enterprise appear to value simplicity in software they use. However… that may not be true for later, mainstream adopters… Having adequate features to enable effective, efficient usage is also necessary to achieve significant adoption. Later adopters need to see that a tool can help them in a significant way before they will begin to use it.
Alan Cooper in ‘About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design’ says that all users start as beginners, then become perpetual intermediates, while only a few become experts. So, software should be designed to quickly convert beginners into intermediates, but also provide for hidden-away high-end functionality for experts.
In the context of enterprise 2.0 software, it means that tools like Socialtext or Salesforce Chatter, which introduce users to collaborative software through easy-to-use activity stream features, but quickly move on to more advanced functionality, will win over Yammer, which is too simple, or traditional enterprise software, which is too complicated. Your thoughts?
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics Blog: Social Media and Social Change.
Designing Organizational Learning for the Social Business
Posted on 16. Feb, 2010 by Gautam in How To Guides, Ideas
Adults learn by social processes. David Kolb’s Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (1984) theorized that four combinations of perceiving and processing determine four learning styles that make up a learning cycle. According to Kolb, the learning cycle involves four processes that must be present for learning to occur:
- Activist – Active Experimentation (simulations, case study, homework). What’s new? I’m game for anything. Training approach – Problem solving, small group discussions, peer feedback, and homework all helpful; trainer should be a model of a professional, leaving the learner to determine her own criteria for relevance of materials.
- Reflector – Reflective Observation (logs, journals, brainstorming). I’d like time to think about this. Training approach – Lectures are helpful; trainer should provide expert interpretation (taskmaster/guide); judge performance by external criteria.
- Theorist – Abstract Conceptualization (lecture, papers, analogies). How does this relate to that? Training approach – Case studies, theory readings and thinking alone helps; almost everything else, including talking with experts, is not helpful.
- Pragmatist – Concrete Experience (laboratories, field work, observations). How can I apply this in practice? Training approach – Peer feedback is helpful; activities should apply skills; trainer is coach/helper for a self-directed autonomous learner.
Employee’s Participation in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives
Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Gautam in How To Guides, Ideas
I can see whatever the issues that were there during Knowledge Management
During the turn of the century – when KM – and the dream to let employees share what they know – was directed , the KM advocates (like me!) suggested that knowledge sharing should be given rewards. The thought was that if a person does not see a benefit for himself why would he share his knowledge with the behavior.
I have changed my belief – in part due to analysing my own behaviour on the social web.
Behaviours like sharing and collaboration are Organizational Citizenship Behaviors – and are a product of Employee’s Engagement with the organization. This discretionary effort is not like one’s work behavior – and needs to be rewarded not monetarily – but psychologically.
Psychological rewards will impact only a very few of employees, and that is okay.
Highly engaged employees who would indulge in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors follows the Power Law – much like social networks’ law. In that a minority will create and curate the majority of the content.
The making of a Social Organization
Posted on 21. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
At 2020 Social one of the things we believe is that we are a our own petri-dish. We experiment with technology and processes to convert ourselves into the kind of organization we think is suitable to be called social.
So not only do we have a blog, a Facebook page, a twitter account, a twitter list showcasing all our tweets – we’ve also now started a wiki to focus on building a repository of social media successes in India – and will invite participation from like minded folks soon.
On the other side of the seriousness spectrum we have started a Fun page where we publicly talk on the lighter side of life at 2020 Social
Internally we are driving online collaboration using three tools, Google Apps for mail, document sharing and calendering - Socialtextfor internal conversations and collaboration on a wiki – and Basecamp for project management.
As social media enthusiasts we have noticed that internally even we need to see a business/behavioral benefit to using a tool – and we understand that more traditional businesses would need to see it more.
One of the way to showcase this is look for external cases where ROI has been calculated – but we believe that using the tools showcases a greater commitment and a better story for any client.
Singapore Management University Social Media in Asia Wiki
Posted on 17. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Trends
The students of Singapore Management University have put together a nifty wiki on social media in Asia.
The wiki has sections for each country (see India) with pages for introduction, case studies, resources and interviews with local experts (Kiruba, Rajesh and myself).
In my interviews, I talk about how the social media marketing scene in India is maturing –
:: Tell us about the use of social media by businesses in India.
About 5% of Indians have access to the Internet and 35-40% have access to mobile services. These numbers may seem small but actually it means 30 million users. For several businesses such as Pepsi and Reebok these 30 million internet users are sufficient because they are urban, educated, and upwardly mobile. For other business this number is not enough. Eventually we need to analyze who the target audience are for businesses. Hence, not everyone needs or wants to use social media at the moment. Further down the line, this might change.
:: Could you give us a brief comparison between the Indian and the U.S. market?
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.
Using social technologies to build Organizational Culture
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Case Studies, How To Guides
BUILDING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE
The Story Until Now
(scenario 3 from here)
Over the last two decades LMN Corp has grown from a family owned business to a professionally run conglomerate with diverse interests in shipping, mining, IT, telecom and media. Growth has been robust as the diversifications have paid off.
Sumit Bangia, the 50 year old COO of the company, has been an old LMN hand. Over the last few years, Sumit has become increasingly concerned with the increasing turnover of younger workers. Sumit’s trusted HR Head, 35 year old Shalini Taneja, found out from exit interviews that recent recruits felt disconnected from the conglomerate and felt that they didn’t know how they fit into the big picture.
Sumit and Shalini decided that the key to retaining young recruits was to build an open organizational culture where young recruits could connect with each other and older mentors across levels and functions. It was also important that they felt empowered and encouraged to bring their whole self to work.
Fueling Effective Team Working using Social Technologies
Posted on 27. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
Shared in the flow workspaces to enable Team Work Effectiveness
THE STORY SO FAR
(scenario 2 from here)
Alacrity Legal Technologies is a new Legal Process Outsourcing firm which focuses on a complex method of helping law firms in the US get their litigation issues outsourced to India. On each of these teams it needs the various groups of people to work together so that case materials and lawyer’s notes for clients to work on before the start of the day. Hence teams of law researchers, Indian lawyers and US client managers need to work together to get fast turnaround times.
Sundar Raman, the 43 year old CEO of the firm, is concerned at the high levels of customer complaints – the key theme being that ALT teams always seem to be missing their deadlines. Sundar decided to dig deeper and found that the delays are caused by the serial processing nature of the work: a mis-communication in the to-and-fro chain of emails would stop everyone else’s work and cause serious delays.
Sundar instinctively knew that a way for people to work on documents together without necessarily emailing versions back and forth would speed up the deliverables.
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.
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