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Learning from HBR: Making corporate social network collaboration successful

February 4, 2017February 4, 2017 by Ramkumar Yaragarla

Corporate social network: The key is in listening and engaging with the employees.

Collaboration in professional corporate organizations, starts with a small banter. It could be as mundane and simple as talking about, what you have in your lunch box or sharing it with your team members over lunch.

But before we get into this, a quick look at what the research and statistics say about social media and its usage can help steer this discussion.

The usage of social media across the globe by people of all ages has tripled in the last 3-4 years. All of this increased usage has been more towards the consumer social media systems like Facebook, Twitter as well as Word press and so on.

Worldwide statistics from Statista as well as Global web index show, as of Jan 2016:

The world population is about – 7.3 billion;

Out of which:

The internet users are about – 3.14 billion;

Within that,

the active social media users are about – 2.3 billion.

With all this popularity and acceptance among people from all walks of life for consumer social media, it has not translated well into the usage of corporate social network nor has it found its strong footing among employees and leaders within global corporate multinational organizations and in small workplaces.

The obvious question is: Why the corporate social network lacks the participation and lively zest found in consumer social media systems? And what can be done about it?

I happen to read a recent article from HBR on why “Why no one uses the corporate social network?”. Interesting as the title, it is true most of the time. As I read through the article, I began to gather my thoughts and drew a couple of insights from the great examples provided there. My sincere thanks to Charlene Li for highlighting the examples in the article. Charlene Li, is the founder and CEO of the Altimeter group.

The HBR article showcases a study and a survey conducted in 2014 by the Altimeter group on more than 55 global companies.The usage of corporate social network among organizations, does not strike a chord nor has any agreeable similarities that the usage of social media systems (both professional and casual) has among the masses. Leave alone collaboration, even social interaction, sharing and employee advocacy has challenges.

To know more on how “Collaboration” can happen in social media,

Please read our blog post – “Social media collaboration: A synergy in the making at workplaces”.

What is a Corporate social network?

A Corporate social network is the same as an Enterprise social network or a social collaboration software. They are a combined bundle of software, exclusively meant for all kinds of social interaction. This includes: community forums, discussion, chat, hubs and collaborative groups within corporate organizations.

The latter term ‘enterprise social networking’ is used by software vendors in this market space for convenience purposes.

A Corporate social network involves the use of the internal corporate intranets or custom made software solutions by its employees within the company network. Employees can share information, interact and collaborate with other colleagues across business units and also at times with other business partners.

Examples include: SharePoint, Yammer, Chatter, IBM connections, Jive, Slack, and Social Chorus etc. to name a few.

There are many productive business impacts.

Collaborative insights leading to successive iteration of ideas and there by innovation is one of the biggest positive impact.

There are recent claims from some organizations that they want to completely do away with emails. In this milieu of things, emails have taken the biggest brunt. It is reported that, employees spend unproductive time browsing and replying to emails. Corporate social networks can help companies make that move with much ease.

Usage of corporate social network – Survey results

The survey results, point to some interesting results.

Usage of corporate social network graph — graph

Source: Altimeter Group survey of 55 companies.

The percentages on the usage of collaboration platform software and the Enterprise social network are not so bright with just about 36 % and 20 %. These two constitute the two biggest chunks among the lot.

What is interesting to note is the ‘No plans to deploy’ intention across the software in all the organizations, is quite high. The rest is self-explanatory.

There will be implementations in the coming years only if the adoption rates are better. There are chances that it might takeoff but then, much depends on how the employees and leaders plan to sustain it in the long run.

Issues and challenges surrounding the corporate social network

issues in corporate social network — Issues in corporate social network

Many enterprise social network software vendors have promised a rosy picture of a well -connected employee wide corporate social network in the past. A seemingly good picture of a well-connected enterprise with all employees sharing knowledge and expertise, solving critical problems and collaborating together for innovation with hierarchies breaking down, is nice to have. But this picture is far from reality.

There are failed implementations across organizations as well as lack of commitment and not able to see the real results of such an investment.

To understand the challenges for using social media in organizations,

Please read our blog post: “The promise of collaboration – Using social media in organizations”

Charlene Li, thorough her research, says that the Leadership of the organization is the single most important factor in driving engagement of corporate social network in big organizations across the globe. If the leaders don’t see anything in it worth their time, employees won’t either.

There is an irony in this story. It is a fine balance between how much information to give in and how much to hold. In a high strung, result oriented environment, the emphasis is on productivity and getting the work done. This shifts the cause from sharing vital information and expertise to more towards holding the information.

Interestingly, Charlene, points out at the situation of management command and control. It is part of the hierarchical structure in almost all corporate organizations. Senior management would find themselves losing the power structure, if they close the distance between them and the employees. By engaging in social network interaction, the gap closes and they risk status quo and authority.

The Wikipedia on Enterprise social networking has stated many issues impacting the adoption of corporate social network in many big organizations. The notable among them are: Transparency, Perception, Privacy and Security issues.

However, there are solutions and natural leeway that leaders and employees can start looking into. They can take productive and constructive steps in their organizations, using the corporate social network to their advantage.

Ways for Corporate social network to flourish

Here are some of the ways that leaders and employees can latch on to.

1.Improving the perception on ROI (Return on investment):

The following has been an evergreen question within the corporate circles: What are benefits of using social media in an organizations? In fact, it is a very common search term.

A further drill down on the question is “Can the benefits be quantifiable?”

The common benefits cited are: Employee community building, sharing of knowledge and information and employee branding within the organizations.

But these are not digestible and sometime unacceptable considering the result oriented, profit driven and productivity driven organizations. The perception of corporate social network takes a beating within the leadership team.

Infact, owing to this, many software vendors have re-branded their products as ‘social collaboration’ software. The key is in the word ‘collaboration’. The word ‘collaboration’ makes sense for decision makers, as it rings bells and takes them closer to the profitability and productivity at the end of the day.

This requires a separate post. But for now,

please do read our blog post: “Benefits of using social media in the workplaces”.

From Work Monkey Labs perspective, we have summarized the below benefits, which is quantifiable and can help manage the perception.

Collaborative Innovation and knowledge generation.
Integrating collective decisions and wisdom.
Providing most valuable “Context” to information.

2. Lending a listening ear:

The essence of collaboration is a shared understanding among people. Managers and Leaders need to listen to their employees. There are numerous outlets through review and feedback sessions but this concept of lending a listening ear goes beyond this.

It involves sharing a feedback loop on an immediate pertinent problem right there at the very moment leading to corrective actions. Very often, the pains and process blocks are experienced as a fire-fighting scenarios by employee who work are live on the field or in live scenarios, supporting customers or selling products to them.

Example: A CEO of a leading Fortune 100 organization was with the sales and support people to solve a server shutdown scenario for a high profile customer. The mere presence of the CEO with them on a rare occasion had motivated the support team to work on the weekends, round the clock, to rectify the situation, so as to minimize business impact for the customer.

The customer was happy and in the process the team earned accolades. It so happened that the CEO and the entire support team were on the same corporate social network platform exchanging information.

3.Only if everybody knows what each one knows:

The statement “Only if the company knows what each employee knows” was made by a famous CEO of a Fortune 100 company some years back. Obviously, the person was mentioning about managing knowledge and sharing information within the company.

Managing knowledge the old way has gone. Employees have known and have experienced that managing knowledge repositories in databases is cumbersome, time consuming and has not helped them much. Now it is expertise sharing. Expertise sharing finds its rightful place in corporate social networks.

Instead of sharing just knowledge, it would be better to share the context around it.

Please read our blog post on: ‘Expertise sharing’

In-fact, many professional consulting companies like Accenture have incorporated such knowledge management strategies within their organization.

4.Engagement and interaction to gain trust:

Leaders can share selective information at the right time and at the right place genuinely. Leaders can entrust the job to a group of corporate social network evangelists to take things forward and spread it in the right spirit.

In the past and even currently, we see emails doing the circulation within the company intranet on ‘the latest company alerts and strategy’. The same would fetch a lot of interaction and instant feedback from employees and leaders, if done within the corporate social network.

This could also be a conduit towards ‘open door policy’ for receiving feedback. This could also be an opportunity for the employees and the leaders to be in touch. This action gains trust among employees.

Trust builds, when employees see that their feedback is being recorded and suitable actions are taken.

5.Strengthening the network structure and cognitive triggers:

From a social network standpoint, technology is only good as long as it gets used. And that’s how far it gets. The underlying behavior of the employees and the way the corporate networks are structured also play an important role.

Like mind attracts only another like mind. It is true. If the cognitive ability and experience levels of the employees are at the same level, they would feel free and will not hesitate to interact and share. Having different corporate social networks for different business units would make sense in the long run.

6.Handling Privacy and security issues:

Privacy and security issues are a big concern when using social networks within the organization. There could be a breach, if vital information is not safe guarded. The irony stands out here again. Even though information sharing is encouraged, there is a fine balance between how much to give out and how much to hold on.

There is a sense of moral responsibility on the part of all employees when using the corporate social network.

Leaving behind: What I would like to say

Meaningful collaborations and interactions over the corporate social network will happen only if all the employees share the same giving culture. The global multinational organization is a melting pot of multiple work cultures, all fused and working together.

Finding out how people share information is a challenge. Finding a common thread that connects across all cultures is something of a task for proponents and evangelists of corporate social network.

It would be nice to talk about Adam Grant’s book at this juncture. His book “Give and take” is ground breaking and well received by professionals all over the world.

When you give, you receive. This is the new mantra. He talks about effective strategies on how to handle all the giving scenarios. His “5 minute favor” gesture in organizations can be practiced by everybody, whether you are a leader or an employee at your workplace. If you have time, please have that book in your reading list.

Coming back to my point mentioned earlier in this post, yes, collaborations happen over the lunch box or it can even be at the water cooler. Perhaps, this calls for a separate post.

Having said that, trust is the single biggest motivator for collaborations in the corporate world. Only when you trust the other person or group, people would like to share important details.

The onus for fostering the right culture and the right environment lies with the leadership team. Having great technology and software is only secondary. More than the technology or the social media, it is the behavior of the underlying social network that is more important.

Where there is trust and reciprocity, there is meaningful collaboration and corporate social networks can flourish.

For further resources on this subject, please find below.

Why no one uses the corporate social network – HBR

Image source: Pixabay

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Learning from MIT: 8 Strategies for successful digital platforms

February 1, 2017February 1, 2017 by Ramkumar Yaragarla

The strategy from MIT for digital platforms has never been so clear.

This article came up at the right time and at the right moment when I was browsing through the content at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Derived good insight by reading through the content. I am sure, the content would excite others as well in this field.

I would like to thank the authors from MIT executive education, Innovation@work blog, in posting this wonderful article. Some of the strategies are so mundane that it never occurred to us. There are so many ways that are possible to give our online digital platforms a new start.

The push and pull strategy with respect to a non-platform and a digital platform was very much relevant. The push strategy might work well in a traditional brick and mortar industry. The push is what is being followed through advertising and focused PR in traditional industries. The concept of reciprocity and attracting the users through rewards and recognition based pull strategies work very well in online platforms.

“Users should feel the need to come back”

As rightly pointed out, the needs and the reciprocity should be built into the platform. The reciprocity should be in such a way that needs promotes repeat users and referral cases.

Geoffrey Parker a research fellow at the MIT institute on the digital economy, says through his book “Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy – And How to Make Them Work for You”, that there has always been a dilemma in people who run and manage digital enterprises. They had the proverbial “Chicken and egg” question. But then, he says that both the “Push” and “Pull” strategies can be used intermittently on and off.

He goes on to propose 8 digital strategies for meeting this challenge and dilemma in his book and how successful digital platforms can be launched. Examples of world’s best global multinationals, who made it big on the Digital platforms were also provided.

Please find the 8 successful digital platform launch strategies from MIT executive education, Innovation@work blog.

Follow the rabbit strategy – Example: Amazon.
Piggy back strategy – Example: PayPal piggy backed on EBay.
The seeding strategy – Example: Adobe.
Marquee strategy – A common strategy adopted by a large number of companies. Providing incentives and rewards for people participation and contribution.
The single side strategy – Example: Open table.
The producer evangelism strategy – Example: Skill share
Big bang adoption strategy – Example: Twitter
The micro market strategy – Example: Facebook

Each of the 8 strategies presented were stellar. All of them have their own merits and demerits, some were pure pull, while others were push.

The big bang strategy adopted by Twitter needs to have a huge marketing budget backed by sponsors. Twitter’s big bang moment came up in 2007 when it hung up giant screens during the South by South west festival. Users were able to see their won tweets and their user base tripled by the end of the festival. This was a typical push strategy adopted by the company.

In my personal opinion, the marquee strategy can be used with a low budget and development costs. We develop the product in such a way it appeals to a certain cross section of producers and consumers. Once this section of consumers and producers get satisfied they will spread it and go on inviting others.

We invite readers to go through the below link for more resources on the 8 strategies.

Reference:

Link from MIT executive education blog : http://executive.mit.edu/blog/8-ways-to-launch-a-successful-digital-platform

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Swarm social media systems: Intriguing insights from Nature

January 26, 2017January 27, 2017 by Ramkumar Yaragarla

Swarm social media systems require understanding of Mother Nature. We human beings are super organisms living in a swarm, constantly evolving and co-creating. An individual neuron (the brain cell) in our brain, decides to trigger based on its connection and interaction with its neighboring neuron. When one brain cell talks the other listens. The swarm social media systems should replicate this environment.

Swarm theory

If you happen to walk into a garden during any of the rainy wet days, do not miss the chance to see nature at work, in its intriguing best. Try to uncover a dense vegetative growth from the muddy earth or the surface of a dead rotting wood. There are good chances, you will find a small orange or pink colored blob sticking on to it. It is nothing but the “Slime mold”.

Slime mold - Yellowish orange blob — Slime mold – Yellowish orange blob

Till recently, the Slime mold was categorized under the Fungi family. Now it is an independent species, an organism. There are about 900 species of Slime mold all over the world. The word ‘slime’ derives from the gelatinous structure of the organism.

The peculiar behavior of the Slime moth is what brings our attention to. The Slime moth exists as a single-celled organism most of the time and not as a yellowish-orange blob. But then during specific conditions, the cells miraculously disperse and the yellowish-orange blob completely disappears. It so happens that during abundance of food, they exist as single cell organisms, not visible to the naked eye but during food scarcity, they all aggregate.

Intriguingly, the slime mold is a single cell organism and yet they all miraculously find their way back and unite again as a yellowish –orange blob.

Each and every Slime mold cell, acts like a simple mini-brain.They do simple tasks. No one single cell is in charge.

Yet with great intelligence, they all congregate and aggregate as a mass under natural circumstances. They come together as a swarm and act like one organism.

This behavior of the Slime moth has been studied by researchers all over the world from the last 60 years and are still not able to understand the logic in its entirety. This is Swarm theory and the fundamentals for understanding the Swarm intelligence. It is important to understand the Swarm theory in designing the Swarm Social media systems. Infact, such Swarm intelligence has been found in other species, as diverse as Bees, Ants, Birds and Fish to name a few.

Can humans display and act in such swarm intelligence? The intriguing answer is – Yes, we already are. We do not know about it.

What is swarm intelligence?

You must have seen sometime or the other, a band of ants marching across your kitchen floor. Yes, they have found a food source and are foraging it. A band of marching ants are smart, an individual ant is not. A colony of ants are far smarter. An individual ant is relatively dumb and depends on its colony to make decisions.

The individual ant does not know what task to do next. But as a colony, the ants are smart they are able to effectively and efficiently respond to their environment. They are able to allocate tasks and defend their territory together.

As a colony, the ants are able to do, what becomes unthinkable for an individual ant. How are they able to this? They are able to do this through Swarm intelligence. Swarm intelligence is also referred to as the “Wisdom of the crowds” or even “Collective intelligence” in different contexts. But according to this post and author, they are all the same. There are countless ways and manner in which Mother Nature displays wisdom. Ant colonies are just one.

Other such questions as, how are bees able to make decisions together for collecting honey for their hive? How is a school of fish, able to make a coordinated decision together to swim in a particular direction?

The Wikipedia defines Swarm intelligence as a collective behavior of a decentralized and self-organizing system. Much of Swarm intelligence is applied right now in artificial intelligence and robotics.

Designing a swarm social media system from ground level is not easy. In designing such a system, the local knowledge and micro level behavior of the individuals should determine the macro intelligence, the structure and adaptability of the system.

Read our blog post on Degrees of connection in social media systems: This talks about the various levels of connection, we human beings have within a social media system.

Principles of Swarm social media systems: Learning from Ant colonies

There are five principles of Swarm social media systems that we can learn from the Swarm intelligence of the Ant colonies.

1.Need for critical mass:

Having a critical mass of people to make intelligent assessments of the overall state. Having a ten member group, scanning an environment is not enough perhaps a few thousand would do. Like ants, more number of people need to contribute. The more the better.

As an example: wandering ants leave a small amount of pheromone secretion at the food source. They do their part. They do this act, unknowing of the fact that this act actually leaves a trail for other foraging ants to follow through. A kind of self-less behavior. Their self-less behavior creates a mass distribution line for other ants to join.

This behavior would not have been understood, if we were to study only the individual ants. The entire system need to be understood. If more number of ants are involved in this behavior and if they do different activities then it is better for the entire system.

2.Ignorance is bliss:

A very popular saying ‘Ignorance is bliss’ works well here. Not everyone in the group, need to have all the expertise and knowledge in the world. It is enough, if we do simple things. We need simple elements and simple behavior. Big macro level behavior should rise from simple acts. Dense interconnecting Swarm social media systems need to be built with simple elements that allow smart and intelligent behavior to arise out of it.

This takes direct cue from the relative stupidity of an individual ant. Individual ants just do their job. This works well with the swarm logic. We do not want a single ant in the colony to know everything or the overall state of the system. This becomes a real liability for the swarm logic and the swarm social media system.

The same analogy can be applied to the human brain as well. We do not want each one of the billions of neurons in the human brain to be sentient. The neurons need to be collectively acting together to produce a macro level thought pattern. I will be talking more about this in my blog post on social brain.

3.Random interactions are better:

The interaction among the members need to be in random fashion without any pre-planned effort in a swarm social media system. A simple rule of thumb interactions are better. Just like ants need freedom to look freely for their food, as individuals we need to interact freely. Our interactions with others, allows the system to have macro level behavior in a desired direction. It is only through such interactions, the overall change in the system can be assessed and stated.

4.Self-organizing patterns and signs:

Once we have the free interactions with others, we need to identify and assess the bigger self-organizing patterns. Swarms need to understand the overarching behavior, so that everyone follows suit. In ants, the gradient of pheromone trails leads other ants to a macro behavior, which is normally towards the direction of the food source. But sometimes, depending on the amount of pheromones, it could be for foraging or nest building.

This self-organizing capacity is inherent in ant colonies. Usually, the same logic applies when members in a group follow, what the vast majority of people are already doing. In a typical swarm behavior, we need to look for patterns.

5.Pay attention to your neighbors:

In a swarm social media system, it is important that members see what their neighbors are doing and learn from them. It is only through such interactions we learn from each other. And when we learn from each other, we begin to solve problems by ourselves. An intelligent collective behavior emerges. Ants do the same. They learn from neighboring ants.

It is important that we design a swarm social media system which is free for everyone to interact. Without interaction it would just be a meaningless grouping. It is only through relationships and interactions that things start moving. This is swarm logic.

Leaving behind: What I like to say

We are just not individual organisms but super organisms living collectively in a swarm. The key to designing a Swarm social media system lies understanding human nature. But then, a more visible organization that Mother Nature displays is through the ant colonies. There is no management. There is no boss or a manager ant and yet the individual ants display and act in remarkable sincerity and commitment to do their part.

Each individual ant does its duty and does its part. This is important.

The ants talk to each other through myriad ways. There are countless interactions between them. These interactions result in super intelligence to accomplish insurmountable tasks. They are self-organizing and that is Swarm social media system for you

Further resources on this subject

Swarm theory, National Geographic
Emergence, Steven Johnson.
World computing.
Wiki on Slime mold.
Wiki on Swarm intelligence

Other useful sources

James F.Kennedy, Swarm Intelligence (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Evolutionary Computation)

Andries P. Engelbrecht, Fundamentals of Computational Swarm Intelligence

Marco Dorigo, Ant Colony Optimization (Bradford Books)

Image source : Pixabay

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