Author Archive
by Shiv Singh
June 22, 2008 at 12:21 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, Web 2.0
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
June 1, 2008 at 10:46 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Culture
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
May 18, 2008 at 5:43 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
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
May 12, 2008 at 11:31 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
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
April 24, 2008 at 5:20 pm · Filed under
Collaboration
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 Shiv Singh
March 30, 2008 at 4:58 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0
Last week I attended one of Dan Roam’s workshops on visual thinking. He is a former colleague who left Avenue A | Razorfish to write a book called Back of the Napkin about visual thinking. Since its publication on March 13th, 2008 the book has already climbed to 107 in Amazon’s sales rankings. It’s been featured in Businessweek, Newsweek and Metropolis Magazine. Tom Peters also interviewed Dan for his blog.
So what is Back of the Napkin about? Fundamentally the book is about visualizing ideas - why its important and how to sketch them. Dan guides the readers through a series of frameworks so that they can first think more visually and then sketch their own business ideas too. He emphasizes that visual thinking is not something reserved for the designers of this world. It’s important for everyone to think visually and its possible too. He emphasizes that over half of the sensory neurons in our brains are oriented towards vision. And as Dan sketches on whiteboards and literally on napkins, he shows exactly how anyone can think and draw visually.
The hand drawn doodle as Businessweek described it, has the power to humanize the abstract and simplify the complex. It also lets you add humor to a topic and pull people into the process of solving the problem. A great example, is how in 1967 Texas entrepreneur Rollin King jotted down the name of three cities - San Antonio, Houston and Dallas on a napkin and connected them to form a triangle. He explained to his lawyer, a certain Herb Kelleher that a small airline that offered nonstop flights between these hot spots would have an edge over the large carriers that forced travelers in the region to fly through expensive and time consuming hubs. Southwest Airlines was formed and the rest is history.
How does this matter to work 2.0? Probably for all the wrong reasons. As our business lives get more complex, we’re going to need simpler and more intuitive ways to communicate ideas and solutions. Visual thinking and communication plays an important role here. Unlike most other work 2.0 solutions, its not technology deterministic. Rather it forces us to put the technology to one side. In fact, my visual thinking skills have been hampered by my increased use of technology. It is probably the same for a lot of others who depend on their laptops and blackberrys everyday.
Dan’s book isn’t necessarily for everyone but its key point is important. Visual thinking matters and to borrow a phrase from Jon Husband’s recent post, we mustn’t let our tools shape us too much. It maybe limiting.
by Shiv Singh
January 21, 2008 at 8:30 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0
I thought I’d begin my posting to the AppGap by listing some themes that I thinking about. As our conversation on the future of work evolves, I will revisit these themes. Do you agree with these? Have these always mattered? Are these important? You tell me.
1. Organizations are becoming more porous than we could have ever imagined. We’re learning much more from our customers than ever before. As a result, collaboration tools within organizations are often about connecting employees with customers and not just to other employees. In a sense, an enterprise solution doesn’t just include the enterprise anymore as the definition of an enterprise is broadening.
2. We’ve finally realized human insights are more valuable than anything that an encyclopedia or a library can offer. Within enterprises, we’re now focusing more attention on connecting with one another versus simply trying to get connected to information. This is because we use each other as filters through which we understand information. Information is free and accessible but knowing what is important is harder. This is why social networks within and outside the enterprise matter more than ever.
3. The consumer and enterprise worlds continue to collide. Design philosophies that drive consumer experiences matter increasingly in the enterprise too. Just look at the number of organizations that have successfully launched mini-wikis within their organizations borrowing the Wikipedia model. Our next challenge? To make our enterprise solutions so compelling that the consumer world can learn from them.
4. Enterprises want to focus on their core competencies again. Delivering solutions as a service over the web is gaining more momentum everyday (software as a service). Companies want to simplify their IT infrastructures and want consulting firms to help them figure out how they should be working in the future. These companies like light, hosted web applications that don’t require huge server investments. More enterprise solutions whether they be intranets, extranets or digital dashboards will be delivered as services. That’s why Microsoft is investing so heavily in its hosting business. Clients don’t want the infrastructure in house.
5. And finally the desktop and the web are finally blurring. We’re reaching a point where every computer interaction you have will be an Internet component to it. This doesn’t mean you’ll be using a browser all the time. It means that you maybe working in Microsoft Office or in Excel or with a blackberry but pulling data from the web or pushing data to the web in real time. As an office worker, you will choose the interface that you’re most comfortable with and through that you’ll interact with the Internet and other people on it - whether they be co-workers, business partners or your customers.
