A World without Email by @elsua #intra13

We started out the workshop with sharing who we are and how we cope with email. Surprisingly most says they cope with email quite well and don't experience email as a huge issue. But all would like to use email in a better way and get others to do so as well. All participants have some kind of collaboration tool inside their firewall (not saying it's used well or not).

Luis Suarez finds many high-level manager balk when they hear the word 'social', so he uses 'open' more. He stresses that email is a great way to share information. Which is true, says Luis. But you must add: in a silo. And his 'war' on email is not about killing email but repurposing it.

Luis asks why colleagues of the partipants are reluctant to use (internal) social/open tools:

• time
• no big value
• loss of control
• relevance of information
• convenience
• availability
• security
• resources
• governance
• no fame
• what's in it for me?
• over-sharing
• extra tool
• not business critical
• etc.

So, why do people send email? The participants came up with the following list:

• thank you's
• cover you butt
• to do's
• attachment
• meetings
• reminders
• answers to questions
• notifications
• follow-up
• bacn (notifications from social networks)

So, how can we get ourselves and others to stop doing the above with email and shifting it to open/social tools. First, spend 5 minutes of your time educating someone how to use a file sharing tool (to stop sending around attachments). Thank people on their social profile instead of sending a thank you-email. Thank them publicly. Move status reports to blogs or wiki's. Move your to-do's in email to a public space or public task management tool telling others you're working on it, also allowing others to collaborate with you. Wiki's are great to share the agenda of meetings and the minutes, instead of emailing them. For gathering feedback, use fora or blogs. Ask question on social platforms so others can chip in and you'll be defined by the potential pool of experts.
What are the benefits of doing this in open/social platforms? We didn't have a lot of time to go into this. Luis advises us to define these benefits personally and show what how this helps us in our own work.

Luis wraps up his workshop with two tips that lead to 80% less email:

1. apply the above-mentioned use cases
2. stop responding to email today

Do you have more than 150 friends?

Do you know more than 150 people? You probably don't. And do you have more than 150 friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter? You probably do. But are they really your friend? Do you really know all 150 of them? I don't think so.

A long time ago I ran into Robert Dunbar's research on social networks. I wrote several posts about Dunbar's number and have been collecting interesting links as well. Just recently Dunbar was interviewed  by Technology Review about his number and social networks.

What is Dunbar's number about? His research basically showed...

...that humans have the cognitive capacity to maintain about 150 stable social relationships. 

The first time I read this I thought: What?! But it's is now my experience this is true. Even for social media friends and followers. I follow way more that 150 people, but I know and truly engage with 150-300 of them.

Of course Technology Review was also wondering if Dunbar himself still thinks his number still hold in the social era. Has the number changed due to social media. This is his response:

Apparently not at all. It is important to remember that the 150 is just one layer in a series of layers of acquaintanceship within which we sit. Beyond the 150 are at least two further layers (one at 500 and one at 1,500), which correspond to acquaintances (people we have a nodding acquaintance with) and faces we recognize.
All that seems to be happening when people add more than 150 friends on Facebook is that they simply dip into these normal higher layers. If you like, Facebook has muddied the waters by calling them all friends, but really they are not.

To me this also has implications for organizations as well. If Dunbar's number is correct companies larger than 150 employees have a problem. Employees simply can't know each other anymore. So, employees can't know what (all) other employees know. Shouldn't this have implications for the size of organizations? And isn't this also a good reason to use internal social tools, as they can make visible what other employees know and support the stream of information in the organization for effectively and quickly?

I don't know if it had to do with Dunbar's numbers, but there is a Dutch entrepreneur, Eckart Wintzen, that split his companies every time they grew larger than 50 employees. And Dave Gray's work on podular organization fits perfectly with this as well.

I'm curious what you think of Dunbar's number. Does it relate to your practice? And what are your thoughts on Dunbar's number and organizational size?

UPDATE (2 hours later): Talk about serendipity! Just hours after I published this post, ReadWriteWeb published a post about the same topic: 'Facebook Friends: How Many are Too Many?'.

Is email dead? Or is it moving to social networks?

Is email here to stay or will it die? Will it die because social media is here or will something else replace email?

Recently Steve Dale wrote an interesting post about this topic. It's titled 'Email is dead: long live email!'. It was discussed on G+ and the blogpost itself has many interesting comments. I thought I'd share my comments here as well. Please read Steve's post first. I think it's an important post for social business people.

Steve lists several reasons to use (and keep on using) email:

1. Email arrives near instantaneously. It can be accessed from almost anywhere. It brings not just text, but pictures, documents, links, and more.
2. Email is great for non-urgent communication. Things that don’t require an immediate response that others can deal with on their schedule.
3. Email can provide a powerful documentation trail. Unlike text messages or phone calls, email provides an authenticated audit trail of past communication. It is hard to deny past actions and messages when there is a clear history.
4. Email is one of the best mediums for communicating across time zones. It allows people on different schedules to communicate at their leisure.
5. Message formatting features come as standard.
6. The email client is a personal information management database. It can be browsed, sorted, filtered, tagged and searched. Features which I’ve yet to see implemented in most Enterprise Social Software activity streams.
7. Email can be closely integrated with business workflows, where an action or decision is required.
8. Email provides an (almost) foolproof 2-way authentication, hence why it is still used by nearly all online service providers to verify new accounts.

This is a good list. I'd like to add a 9th reason to use email: it’s good for 1-on-1, private/confidential communication. On the other hand, like one of the commentors wrote: This 9th reason may even be the only good reason to use email. The rest of our communication can move to SNA’s, although DM-ing and Messaging in Facebook still seems to be somewhat shaky. And risky… We’ve all tried to DM something that popped up in our public stream anyway, for instance…

But still, email is clearly moving to social networks. The thing I like about that is that communication is being done in a platform that is open by default instead of closed, like email. It triggers us to think open first and make something private if needed.

Moreover, emailing itself is changing rapidly. We used to use email like paper letters. Instead of writing “Dear Sir [content] Best regards, x”, we now just write “Thanks” or “OK”. Email is being used more like messaging and chat.

I love Steve's point about educating people to use email. This is a huge issue. Some time ago I asked someone (who is about 40 years old) to forward an email to me. He didn’t know what I meant and how he should do it… This is funny, but also a pretty serious issue. An even bigger issue is that people don’t use email (and other tools) productively. They simply haven’t learned how. This has to do with learning features of email, but also with learning a good and sound knowledge work process. I use ‘Getting Things Done’ for instance. It has increased my productivity in a big way. When I tell about GTD and train people in the principles it’s a revelation to them. I think 9 out of 10 people don’t control their email and related social tools. They just let it come at them and are overwhelmed by the amount of information every day.

We have work to do! :o)

To wrap up this post: the inventor of email also agrees with Steve! This post was also discussed on G+.

From trees to networks

Just before the weekend I wanted to share this interesting 10 minute talk with you about hierarchies and networks. For one because it's just fascinating to watch how RSA visualizes this talk. Secondly because of the talk itself.
Manual Lima's talk about "The power of networks" is fascinating. He gives an overview of how we used to try to structure everything in hierarchies and trees, because we like order and simplicity. And how we now shift to using networks more because trees simply can't describe reality. Knowledge, species, bacteria, our brain, our body, societies, etc. are highly connected. He wraps up his talk by asking if there is a universal structure? Well, do you think there is one?


Of course there has been lots of thinking and talking about what this means for organizations, people and technology. The shift Lima describes is the shift 'social business' and 'enterprise 2.0' is describing. And it's the shift social technology is trying to support.

Have a nice weekend!

Social technologies are extending organizations

McKinsey has been following the social business movement for some time now. And they're following to see if it can live up to the expectations. Recently they published the results of their 5th annual survey under 4200 global executives. The polled them how their organizations use social tools.

The finding of the report are interesting. There's clear progress: social tools are being used more and more and in more effective ways. When adopted across the networked enterprise and integrated in work processes of employees, clear benefits are seen. There's a boost in financial performance and market share, which relates to the results of previous surveys. However not many companies are fully networked, meaning they are internally and externally networked.

One of the most interesting things I read in the report was the fact that executives believe if organizational barriers to social tools diminish, they could transform the core business processes. This is a big statement as most business processes are formal and supported by heavy and expensive IT-systems. Exhibit 8 give you an idea of the processes that will/can be changed. This does not imply social tools are good for all business processes. Exhibit 7 should which business processes have the best fit with social tools. As you see, social tools are mostly used to scan the external environment.


The survey mentioned that 72% of the organizations have at least one social technology inhouse. And 40% have a social networking and blogging platform.

Of course we all want to know what the affordances of social business are. According to this report they are:

1. increasing speed to access knowledge
2. reducing communication costs
3. increasing speed to access internal experts

Another interesting finding is the fact that it is easier to loose benefits of social tools than to gain them. Implementing social tools is hard work and requires continuous effort.

Linking Strategies in LinkedIn

How do you use LinkedIn? Who do you connect to? Do you use LinkedIn Groups? This post on the NextWeb triggered me to answer these questions publicly.

Resume
LinkedIn is an interesting platform. I've been using it for several years now. At first I basically uploaded my resume to LinkedIn. I hardly visited LinkedIn after that, except for excepting link requests.
Some time after that LinkedIn introduced Answers. I followed several topics there, but stopped after about a year. The quality of the questions was horrible and it seemed I didn't get anything back from the answers I gave.

Groups
I also joined several LinkedIn Groups. Groups is interesting and it keeps me coming back to the LinkedIn site. Right now I'm following 27 groups, mostly in my area of expertise (intranet, social media, knowledge management, enterprise 2.0, social business). Most of the groups have interesting discussions. The update in my email every day helps me keep up with what's going on in there. If I see an interesting question that I can answer, I'll jump in. And, regularly, I also tap into the knowledge of the group members. The quality of the interaction and the people's knowledge in the groups is usually great.

Linking
Of course, I get invites to connect in LinkedIn. Regularly people that I don't know personally, contact me via LinkedIn with a request to connect. (This is also encouraged by a LinkedIn Group setting allowing group members to link directly to each other. I usually uncheck this setting.) I accept invitations to connect when I know the person quite well. I've talked with him/her, preferably face-to-face. I want to be able to say something about that person, if somebody asks me about him/her. For instance, when a recruiter is looking for someone in my network and asks me about him/her, I want to be able to give a recommendation. If I can't do this, I won't connect with that person. Of course I hope I'll be able to do so in the near future. Sometimes this interaction via LinkedIn even leads to a live meeting with that person.

What's your linking strategy?
I know there are different linking strategies. What's yours? Do you link to everybody who sends you requests? If so, why? Do you also join groups? How do you follow what's happening in those groups?

Understanding Social Media Concepts

This is a really good post: It’s Not Twitter or Facebook, It’s the Power of the Network! In workshops that I give about social media I always try to stress the fact that the underlying concepts of social media are more important to understand than the (popular) tools like Twitter. The tools will come-and-go, but the underlying concepts are here to stay, in my opinion. And they'll continue to evolve as well.
The above-mentioned post underlines this as well, responding to the claims that Twitter etc have caused the turmoil in Tunesia, Egypt, etc. Some quotes from the post:

The real trigger for the uprisings, they argue, is simply the frustration of the oppressed Egyptian people — which is undoubtedly true. But it also seems clear that social media has played a key role in getting the word out, and in helping organizers plan their protests. In the end, it’s not about Twitter or Facebook: it’s about the power of real-time networked communication. (...)

But is anyone really arguing that Twitter and Facebook caused the revolutions in Tunisia or Egypt, or even the earlier public uprisings in Moldova or Iran for that matter? Maybe cyber-utopians somewhere are doing this, but I haven’t seen or heard of any. The argument I have tried to make is simply that they and other social media tools can be incredibly powerful, both for spreading the word — which can give moral or emotional support to others in a country, as well as generating external support — as well as for organizational purposes, thanks to the power of the network.

Keep this in mind the next time you talk and think about social media and change. I hope this helps!
Comments are welcome, as always!

Thoughts about Quora

Of course you've heard of Quora. Lots of posts have been written about Quora. I've been using it for some time now. I'm not a heavy user; I dip into it every now and then. I think it's interesting. It taps into the power of asking questions. I am surprised though that Quora took off so quickly. Is the world really waiting for a new and separate platform specifically designed to ask and answer questions? For now it seems the world is. For the long-term I don't think Quora will stay around in this form. As I tweeted I think Quora will be acquired by and integrated into Twitter (like in Yammer). Or Twitter will add Questions functionality (like Yammer).
Why? Because knowledge workers are extremely efficient. They don't want to have the tools spread out everywhere and have to look into all those tools one by one. Furthermore, we could already ask each other questions on Twitter. Tweeps would just mark these tweets with a hashtag like #question, #justasking or #durftevragen. (The last hashtag is an extremely popular hashtag in Holland. Translated it means 'dare to ask', helping tweeps to ask questions more openly instead of keeping them for themselves.) You can even filter tweets with a question mark.
I guess Quora does a great job underlining the power of asking questions. As soon as we deeply 're-understand' this, we'll continue to ask questions elsewhere. And so for now I'll continue to use Quora happily!

Do you agree with my view on the future of Quora? If not/so, please leave a comment.

Connected Professionals - Novay

There's lots of buzz about 'The Future of Work'. And quite a bit is focused on technology. I don't think that's very strange. Most technology is specific, it's concrete. You can talk about how it works, which features it has, etc.
The Future of Work is about more than tools. It's also about facilities (building, furniture, colors, etc) and most importantly about organization (structure, processes and networks, culture, behavior, etc).
In my opinion one of the groups with the most fundamental research on this topic is Novay, specifically the Future Workspaces or ProWork group. And they ground there research in practice. Their approach is interesting because it's broad, focusing on organizational and technology issues (not facilities).
They've publish about their work regularly on their blog. One of their interesting reports is titled "Connected Professionals. Flexible working in a networked society". It shows their way of working: deep and broad, applied academic research grounded in daily practice.

The report shows that The Future of Work is mostly about organizational behavior change. I think they really do a good job of describing how the nature of work is changing and what the implications are for organizations and employees to cope with them. They point to four facets of work in the new connected workspace that have to be addressed: being in sync, in touch, in control and in flow. These require different behaviors, skills and tools. I see many companies moving to the concept of The Future of Work just assuming employees cope with working-apart-together, new coordination tools, result-driven work, etc.

The report closes with several concepts they developed based on their research and case studies for several companies. The concepts focus on several combinations of the facets of the new work. They show that existing technology usually only addresses some of those combinations and not all.

I hope this posts triggers you to take a look at their work. I'm curious what their next publications will be about.

A history of Social Networks - Open always wins

Techcrunch ran a very interesting series of posts about the history of social networking. They were written by Mark Suster (@msuster). I think you should go ahead and read all the posts, but I'll pass on some highlights here to get you started.

Marks posts are about the “6 C’s of Social Networking” – Communications, connectedness, common experiences, content, commerce & cool experiences (fun!). He stresses that social networks exists before they were hyped in our time they just work better now "and there are more people doin’ it." And a bit further on: "Yes, social networks of 2010 have much better usability, have better developed 3rd-party platforms and many more people are connected.  But let’s be honest – they’re mostly the same old shit, reinvented, with more people online and trained.
But less considered is the fact that the success of the Web 2.0 companies versus the Web 1.0 ones were enhanced because they coincided with hardware that allowed us to capture more content instantly – namely images and video – otherwide Web 2.0 might have been a lot less differentiated."
He relates back to the beginning of internet and AOL. "The funny thing about AOL is that while you dialed up to the Internet, the goal of AOL was to keep you locked into their proprietary content and thus earned the classification of “walled garden” because they kept you inside AOL." From AOL he goes on to show how closed and open social networks has been successful or not. "The lesson was learned over 30 years in Silicon Valley: you create ecosystems where third-parties can innovate and thrive and you become the legitimate center of it all and can tax the system later.
He closes off with social networking trends he sees (- I only list a few of them):

• Social Networking is becoming mobile "and that adds new dimensions to how we use social networks.  The most obvious change is that now social networks become "location aware.""
• Facebook is our social graph and will be so for the next decade, Mark says. He goes on to say Facebook with make our social graph portable or we'll move to new networks. Because "nobody exists in one social network." He thinks public and private network will be more separate in the future.
• There will be lots of focus on privacy in the future.
• Social networking will mix with everything we do. "As our social graph becomes more portable I believe that social networking will become a feature in everything we do."

What really struck me in these posts is that it shouts out: Openness always wins on the long run. Do you agree? This is the case in mobile, but also in social networking (tools).

Two other nice quotes to think about:

• "Twitter is much more.  ... in a nutshell it is: an RSS reader, a chat room, instant messaging, a marketing channel, a customer service department and increasingly a data mine."
• "When you’re on Facebook you’re not on the Internet—you’re on the InterNOT."

Launch of a merged intranet and first steps to an integrated social media platform #epem

Johan Hillebrand, Head of Internal Communication at ABN/Amro.

Two main challenges Communications has: information overload (too much email…) and they couldn’t find information. Another thing that was mentioned was: stop paper communication, move to digital. They decided to take on these challenges by building a new intranet.

Goals for the new intranet:

• Fewer channels
• Offer relevant information
• Centralize content

They choose to have the intranet look a lot like their internet site. No complaints about confusing the intranet for the internet yet. (They launched a couple of weeks ago.)

They kept the look and feel very simple. They combine general and local news. They assume people have 10 minutes to read news and cluster that in a box.

ABN has a separate social media platform (not integrated in the intranet). It's called Arena. It was built by one of their contractors. They plan to integrate it into the intranet in the future. But the look-and-feel is the same. They piloted within retail-banking (and it’s still in pilot phase). The platform was set up so all staff can engage in a dialogue.

Objectives for the social platform are:

• Create dialogue with staff
• To share knowledge in order to improve our services
• To accelerate problem identification
• Etc.

First feedback on both seems hopeful.

Establishing social software to drive expertise exchange and how to measure it #epem

Wolfgang Jastrowski of Swiss Re is up next.

They use Jive for their intranet platform (out-of-the-box). The interesting fact is that they don’t train users. Wolfgang is from IT. They provided the platform and have users decide how to use it.

Blogging has not taken off as well as they thought. So they created roundtable to increase blogging.

How did they introduce social media tools inside? In 2008 the company realized that collaboration is key. They wanted a community centric collaboration approach.

Objectives:

• Better support virtual teamwork
• Boost information sharing across functions
• Accelerate agility and responsiveness
• Advance innovation and solution creation
• Etc.

In short: they wanted a platform that would support their cultural change.

They went live with Jive in Q3 of 2009. They then already had 1500 users. At the end of 2009 they had 10000 users.

Their key lessons:

• Strive for long-term objectives but work in phases and take the time needed
• Position it as an integrated business platform with a clear business benefit and visible executive legitimation
• Recruit advocates from core business functions as early adopters and role models. Develop business relevant use cases and educate on community management skills. The whole project was done with 5 people: 1 knowledge management, 2 communication and 2 IT.
• Simplify business case to avoid complex benefits measurement
• It is a change project, plan it that way!

Thousands of business conversations every month create business value. This leads to a business case. They collect good examples to build their case.

Other ways of measuring value:

• The number of conversations related to the number of people who have access. After a year 85% is on board. This is OK, but...
• … they would like to measure the quality of interactions. This can be done by like/don’t like or rating functionality. But will it work. Will employees judge each other’s work? That’s a journey they are now taking.

Question: You remarked that there is also a classic intranet, besides Jive. How will those relate? Answer by Wolfgang: More content is moving towards Jive. I think information like guidelines will stay on the classic intranet. Information that may not be changed/discussed about. The distinction needs to be clear, because users need to know where to look.

A Holistic Approach to Enabling the Collaborative Enterprise #e20s

Lee Bryant closed the Enterprise 2.0 Summit with a talk about Social Business.

Where's Enterprise 2.0 headed next? It's in the direction of providing real business value.

Enterprise 2.0 has been adopted at least a bit by most organizations. There's a nice spread of use cases, showed by research supported by Headshift.

Lee sees Enterprise 2.0 as a Trojan mice for organizational change. Small but impressive changes to the organization.

Enterprise 2.0 is still in the early phase, patchy and tool-centric (like the KM wave was in the beginning).

We're looking for quantifiable business improvements, like:

• lower operational costs
• networked productivity
• business agility
• effective management (move away from information hostages: businesses run by writing and moving report up and down the ladder)
• customer centricity (Listen! But many companies lack a structure to socialize what you're learned by listening)

Where is business practice going wrong?

1. people, outdated view of motivation, behavior. Do we trust them. Trust is cheaper than control. We still have no real understanding of viral behavior inside organizations.
2. process, an expensive way to orchestrate activity
3. technology, a critique of the IT function. Businesses are spending lots of time on very basic stuff, like ERP/CRM. Light-weight processes with tools so employees can get things done. We used to believe that huge automation would lead to huge productivity improvements, which it did not.

What have we learned that can help here?

• human behavior, spread of influence in networks
• aggregation, flow, network effects, force multipliers
• open, collaborative working contexts
• designing for emergence and evolution

Moving beyond e2.0 adoption:

• social business program
• platform thinking for underlying capabilities (shows a really interesting picture of how this platform adds up technically)
• this will lead to an app store for every enterprise
• use cases and local, situated software
• e.g. better coping tools for information overload

Now he moves over to sharing open data to change behavior. Now the processes to send data up and down the organization is not real-time and not open. If it would be, every employee could change their behavior in increments.

Another future trends is social experience design: energizing networks. Lots of measuring and monitoring and changing on the fly. This could give you loads of information about the amount of engagement there is.

Finally, there are new opportunities for leadership. Leadership is not obsolete, but it will change. Or E2.0 helps business leaders to reach out. Intimacy at scale.

This can create meaningful change in organizations. It's not a full-frontal battle, or it shouldn't be. But it should weave in with the existing networks and structures. From biology we know we only need 5% to create flock!

Great end to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit!

Best Practices for Regaining Business Agility #e20s

CheeChin Liew (BASF) is up on the stage.

Interesting how CheeChin compares the development cycles in the organization with the development of communication tools. The increasing speed in product development cycles at BASF requires different communication skills and tools.

Connect.BASF consists of three pillars:

1. networking. Employees can be visible, profiles, in communities.
2. knowledge sharing. Communities (there is overlap with point 1), tags and search etc.
3. collaboration. Blogs, wiki's etc.

It is a global platform.

Ho did they start? It started in Communications (by Cordelia Krooß). They convinced to start a steering committee around this topic (@shake ) with a board member as sponsor. CheeChin was in R&D. He had launched wiki's there. E2.0 was not started by IT. IT came in later. This project is now permanent.

In the launch phase they focused on IT implementation a lot. They have connect.BASF days with external, inspiring speakers. They do a lot of demo-ing and presenting. Consulting is also part of the job, helping departments/groups understand e2.0 and use tools.

Up to the pilot phase BASF had 1000 users. Lots of communications up till then after that they stopped communications.

CheeChin shows in numbers how Connect.BASF went viral: 15000 users! But signing up is not the whole game, he warns. Growth has been nicely spread out over the regions.

BASF's communities grew emergently. "Don't coach them from the beginning." They have 4 types: experts and professions (U4O), projects and working teams (O4O), social networking (U4U), initiatives and services (O4U). (U=users, O=organization)

Best practices for adoption:

• people-oriented and voluntary character
• visible commitment from top management
• leadership by advocates and community builders
• transfer of communities and workflows
• sharing of benefits and success stories

Enterprise 2.0 The Book by @amcafee, A Review

Some time ago I said: Vacation First. I wanted to share my review of professor Andrew McAfee's book Enterprise 2.0 before I went on vacation. That didn't work out. I wish I could have written this review sooner, because the sooner you read this book the better. I'll tell you why.

Andrew McAfee coined the term 'enterprise 2.0' (in 2006) and has been one of the leading thinkers in the space of applying web 2.0 concepts and tools (or 'collaborative media' as McAfee likes to call them) to the workplace. This book summarizes his thinking over the years. Of course he's been blogging and speaking about this topic. So I was wondering if this book would bring me new insights. Well it did. And to me this is why I love books. You know thinking about the topic you're reading about in a book won't stop as soon as the book has been published. But a book does give you a summary of past thinking and concepts for future thinking. And all that in a limited amount of pages (instead of the endless amount of Internet pages...).

I like the way the book starts. It could have started by describing the new social tools and their underlying concepts. But it doesn't. Chapter 2 starts with several real-life cases we can all relate to. These cases make us reflect on information sharing and gathering problems in organizations. How can be solve them? What is the real underlying issue?

The next chapter goes on to explain the big shift. Is Web 2.0 really a paradigm shift or is it an incremental change? Or even just a hype? And how does this shift relate to businesses? Will it have effect only on the Internet or will it also change the way we do business?

Only then does McAfee go back to the issues mentioned in chapter 2. This interesting chapter explains the research on 'tie strength', pointing to Granovetter's work a.o. (which you should read as well!). Subsequently McAfee picks up every case of ch. 2 and shows how Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools addresses the needs, whereas 1.0 solutions couldn't do the trick. I think this chapter will be an 'Aha moment' for many readers, definitely for those that are new to these concepts.

This book contains information for people in different stages of understanding and implementing Enterprise 2.0. The book describes 'technologies and technology based communities' like blogs, Facebook, etc. For many there is nothing new here. But what I like about the book is McAfee's honesty. McAfee describes how he got interested in Web 2.0 and how his thinking about Enterprise 2.0 started. He didn't 'get it' from the start, but slowly and steadily started to understand and research it. I think this applies to most people in this space. Almost none can say: I understood it from the start. Most experts in this field started out as sceptics. But then made the leap and started blogging, for instance, and by using social media started to understand and be excited about them. This fact is inspiring to all who just learned about Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0. It will hopefully get them started more quickly.

This also relates to one of the last chapters of the book: Red Herrings and Long Hauls. Many think Enterprise 2.0 is an instant success. You just set up a (micro)blog and your organization will change and speed up dramatically. McAfee warns us for this and clearly shows we should organize for the long haul. I think this also underlines the need for management and strategic choices to reap the long term benefits of Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 requires deep changes in thinking about organizations, management, employees (users) and tools. Take time to help the organization understand these new concepts and tools.

Furthermore he also points to interesting research telling us that new tools have to be 10 times better than the tools we're using for them to be adopted. So, how much better is microblogging than email? Patience is necessary. Evangelizing, demonstrating, training and explaining as well.

This chapter also addresses the main obstacles (red herrings) to Enterprise 2.0 adoption. One topic I'd like to mention here is McAfee's research shows that "most people know how to act professionally in job-related environments, including digital ones". And therefore he has hardly seen Enterprise 2.0 adoption lead to security breaches like employees sharing IP sensitive information. He also points to the CIA using Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools. They concluded "that the benefits of better and wider sharing of intelligence information outweigh the risks."

I love the way McAfee advises us to work on the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools. He starts out by saying we should connect with believers. Employees already convinced of the importance of social media and their use for organizations. Have them help educate and evangelize. Another important point he makes is to connect to the existing tool set. We use email a lot. So start there.

This book definitely calls for a follow-up! Topics for the next book could be about the following:

1. There's lots of discussion about how the social tools relate to formal business and information processes. How this can be done and companies are actually doing it, is a great topic to systematically write down in a book. This would extend what McAfee says about 'in the flow' and 'above the flow' on page 184.
2. There's some debate about what comes after Web 2.0. O'Reilly and Battelle call it 'Web Squared'. What does this mean for Enterprise 2.0? What would Enterprise Squared be? Or is it already there? Lots of thinking is being done on this topic as well. Again, this thinking could be summarized in a book as well.

This is not a complete summary. I picked out things I found very interesting. Just to show you I really enjoyed reading this book. I have advised many to read this book and hope this review will get you to do so as well.

Thank you for writing this book and sharing your insights, Andrew McAfee!

Note: This review has also been posted on Amazon in the review section of the book.

Use Social Media to Understand Them

Absolutely great post by Chris Dixon about experiencing social media. Just go ahead and read it. It's short, but good.

This is exactly the reason I like to tell people about what I get from social media, but stopped to push them into this space. They have to do that on their own. Experience them. Give them some time. And dismiss them then if you like.

Scoren met Social Media [Dutch]

Er wordt veel gepraat en gesproken over social media. Maar wat is social media? Of is het: wat zijn social media? Waarom zou ik dit moeten weten en wat kan ik ermee in mijn dagelijkse praktijk? En als ik het zelf gebruik, is het misschien ook mogelijk om het zakelijk te gebruiken? Hoe zou het bedrijf waar ik voor werk social media kunnen inzetten?

Om deze vragen te beantwoorden heeft het bedrijf Entopic Internet expert Erwin Boogert gevraagd om een boek te schrijven. Onlangs is het boek verschenen en het heeft als titel 'Scoren met social media'. Het is te bestellen via Entopic of boekhandel.

Boogert is er goed in geslaagd om er een leesbaar en leerzaam boek van te maken. Leerzaam, ook qua praktische spits. Het boek wil de lezer echt aan het werk zetten, persoonlijk en zakelijk. De lezer wordt hierdoor aangespoord door alle praktijk cases die verwerkt zijn in het boek en het gedeelte van het boek wat wil helpen om te komen tot een social media strategie.

Het boek is opgedeeld in verschillende hoofdstukken:

1. Het eerste hoofdstuk geeft een definitie en overzicht over social media. Boogert kiest een wat ruimere definitie van social media dan ik zou kiezen. Deze insteek is wel goed om mensen te laten zien dat social media in een context geplaatst kan worden van oudere internettechnologie. Social media is niet uit de hemel komen vallen. En ik vind dat hij wat snel met praktijk cases komt. Ik had even daarmee gewacht. Ik merk dat mensen eerst de definitie en concepten van social media goed moeten begrijpen. Als je met praktijkvoorbeelden komt, verliezen mensen zich daar snel in of gaan ze die cases bekritiseren (ja, we leven in Nederland...). Dit neemt niet weg dat ik de vele voorbeelden heel verhelderend en inspirerend vind. Mensen en bedrijven kunnen zich eraan spiegelen.
2. Hoofdstuk 2 gaat over het voorbereiden van een social media strategie. Het gaat hier vooral over de organisatie van social media in bedrijven. Wie kan er het beste verantwoordelijkheid voor nemen? Welke afdeling past het beste of heeft het meeste aan social media? Voor het antwoord, moet u het boek lezen!
3. Hoofdstuk 3 gaat vervolgens over het formuleren en uitvoeren van een social media strategie. Hoofdstuk 2, 3 en 4 zijn lekker praktisch. Het helpt stap-voor-stap om verder te komen. Ik vind het bijzonder goed dat Boogert een objectieve, meetbare insteek kiest. Dat hoeft niet perse, maar is wel uitdagend. Stel jezelf doelen, meet die in de praktijk, stuur bij, etc.
4. En hoofdstuk 4 gaat terug naar het persoonlijke gebruik van social media. In overzichtelijke tabellen word je geholpen om de social media te kiezen die passen bij je doelen/mogelijkheden.

Ik heb dit boek met plezier gelezen en kan het iedereen aanraden. De ervaren social media man/vrouw zal niet heel veel leren (alhoewel...). Maar dit boek is goed om bij de hand te hebben om door te geven aan mensen die vragen over social media hebben en graag handvatten willen hebben om te beginnen.

Disclaimer: Ik ga binnenkort voor Entopic werken. En ik hoop als Entopic medewerker workshops te geven op dit gebied. Ik ben echter niet betrokken geweest bij het schrijven en publiceren van dit boek.

Relating structured and unstructured knowledge processes - KMers chat #kmers

Just a small post to invite you all to join the next KMers Chat on this Tuesday, October 5 from 17:00 - 18:00 UTC. I'll be moderating this chat. Participating is easy. All you need is a Twitter account. Just wait for the chat to begin and make sure to append your tweets with #kmers. Lots of interesting and smart people join in.

This chat will be about: Relating structured and unstructured knowledge processes.

Here's a short overview of this topic and some questions:

Knowledge Management is currently often related to the unstructured information and knowledge processes in organizations. In the past the focus of KM was on the structured side. But how can/are these combined in organizations? More specifically: how does enterprise 2.0 relate to BPM? (As you may know this is being heavily debated now on the web.)

Questions:

1. Intro: Is the summary clear? Is the distinction clear? What do you call unstructured information/knowledge processes and structured processes?
2. Do you agree KM currently mostly focuses on unstructured processes? Why is this?
3. Are both types of processes supported holistically/in context in your company or companies you know?
4. What does this mean for tools? Should tools support both processes? Or should we piece together a tool landscape?

Hope to meet you there!

The Problem with (Enterprise) Social Bookmarking?

The Dachis Group recently shared a really nice overview of "The 2010 Social Business Landscape", written by Dion Hinchcliffe. One of the tools I missed in his overview is 'social tagging' or 'social bookmarking'.

Based the research being done by my student, Arzu Yucekaya, on social bookmarking, I've thinking about and discussing with her why social bookmarking adoption seems to be harder than, for instance, the adoption of enterprise microblogging. At least, in the company I work for...

I'd like to share a citation from a (preliminary) version of her literature research. This citation relates to the adoption of knowledge sharing tools in organizations in general. She writes:

In the context of knowledge sharing systems, public good nature of knowledge introduces two major challenges that organization face (Prasarnphanich & Wagner, 2008):

1. The start-up problems (achieving critical mass)

2. Discontinuity problem (sustainability of actively contributing user base)

Critical mass is a small core of people who are willing to contribute at the expense of low returns in order to overcome the start-up costs and to create conditions for more widespread contributions (Prasarnphanich & Wagner, 2008). Critical mass theory concerns the joint action of groups that provide “collective good” or “public good”. The success of communities or social networks depends on two parameters: the shape of the production function of collective good and the heterogeneity of resources and interests across the potential contributors (Prasarnphanich & Wagner, 2008). Communities which consist of individuals with different backgrounds, interests and resources will maintain the attractiveness and will likely produce more public goods (Arakji, Benbunan-Fich, & Koufaris, 2009). (Arakji, Benbunan-Fich, & Koufaris, 2009) argued that the nature and contribution mechanism of web 2.0 communities is different due to their “low-barrier” characteristics; consequently, achieving critical mass is easier. (Millen, Feinberg, & Kerr, 2006) confirmed that the ability to reach critical mass does not present a problem as the marginal cost of bookmarking an existing resources is low. Following these arguments, the focus is on the second challenge in this thesis.

So, Arzu will focus on the second problem, because the bookmarking tool is easy to use, we just have to promote it more.

I agree we have to promote the bookmarking tool more and explain to colleagues why it's so useful. But these two problems bug me a bit. Are these really the fundamental reasons why knowledge sharing systems are not adopted and used over time? Or is there a more fundamental reason. For instance, if you don't understand the concept of sharing and the value of sharing, you'll never use tools that support sharing. Maybe this is a bit far-fetched, but I see this in practice. Just remember the 'knowledge is power' paradigm, which is still very prevalent in many companies. Or does this group of 'non-sharers' have no influence on the critical mass and therefore the adoption of these tools?

To make things more complicated: I'd use a blog and/or a bookmarking tool even if I was the only one using them. There's no critical mass there; I'm the only user. (Of course I understand bookmarking and blogging is more valuable and interesting in a network of bloggers/bookmarkers.)

So, what is the deal here? What is the real problem we are addressing? This is food for my thoughts and hopefully yours as well. I'd love to hear your ideas/remarks on this topic. And we'll definitely get back to you when Arzu comes up with more interesting insights!

Focus on Social Media Philosophy

Luis Suarez, one of IBM's well-known social media evangelists and email killer, has a really nice post titled "Forget social strategy, think social philosophy: Hippie 2.0". I hope you go ahead and read it. I'd love to hear your thoughts about his post (by leaving your comments on Luis' blog). I'll insert my thoughts here (that don't only apply to social media, by the way):

Nice post, Luis! I agree talking about the underlying philosophy and/or concepts of social media is insightful and helpful. I find talking in this way to employees and managers helps. As an IT manager in the company I work for said: "When deciding to do an IT investment let's not talk about money/ROI first, but first make a decision based on the story." In your terms: The philosophy should make sense and be understood first.