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A Community of Innovators

Social enterprise network platforms are a hobby of mine.  I really enjoy learning all of the corporate options to “go social”

 

Companies can build their own site with MS sharepoint or they can purchase turn-key software being offered commercially.

 

What I find fascinating about this is not the change management that required to get employees to actually embrace these powerful tools.  Nor is it the great options being developed and sold by different companies. What amazes and excites me about social enterprise networking tools is the great potential they offer a company or any organization to get more healthy organizationally.

 

Toxic organization cultures drive me nuts !  I think that I am more sensitive to toxicity than the average employee nevertheless I am a unsympathetic with leadership creating toxic environments by ignoring culture or creating unhealthy environments with their behavior.

 

The behaviors necessary for an organization to become more social are the same behavior changes that an organization needs to become more healthy. Behaviors such as openness, collaboration, helpfulness, selflessness, doing what is right for the organization above personal career ambitions.

 

In general, the same people who will scoff at ever using a social platform are the same people who make organizations toxic and are the same people who behave selfishly in their careers, who keep secrets, who won’t collaborate with anyone outside of their tight circles.

 

For me engagement in social enterprise software is becoming a litmus test. I realize that this may be a bit too soon since we are only in early stages of social enterprise acceptance.

 

I am convinced that organizational health can be helped, can be driven from within partially using social enterprise software.  This is why I feel that organizations should “go social”, a healthy organization is far better to work in than is an unhealthy one.

 

Please comment on this post and connect …

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Are We Too ‘Career Selfish’ ?

I once devised the term ‘career selfish” in response to how I felt I was being treated in an organization.  I had gotten to the point that I could look at unfair situations within my organizations and instead of anger I began to look with empathy, I was able to put myself in the shoes of leadership and analyze the situation.

I started my career a little too early as a technician, a 20 year old associates degree technician in a sea of PhD’s, of MBA’s, and of professional engineers, I had only an associates degree at the time so the hierarchical obstacles seemed insurmountable.   I never gave up the ambition of trying to move up, of trying to get recognition and credit for my work and get promoted. I don’t know how many times I told my supervisors “hey, I have a career too… I care about my future here also, please care about my development, please care about my career..”.   What I came to realize is how common career selfishness is, myself included.  Whether it be credit stealing, kingdom building or simply not caring about the people around us.  Career selfishness is toxic when found in any organization, career selfish leaders create unhealthy cultures and career selfish employees.

A career selfish leader does not develop people that they do not like personally, any prejudice, any difference in political or ideological or worldview is a set back to the career of those under them.  They often have tight circles of like-minded allies and buddies.  The career selfish person can be great if you are in their circle but horrible for your career if you can’t seem to get into or don’t want to be in their circle.

me-me-me

There needs to be a space in a leaders life that develops people not because they like them, because they agree with them about politics, because they are the optimal gender or race that fits their biases well but simply because they are leading them on behalf of the company or organization. Leadership requires selflessness in this regard. An employee should be led well, developed to their fullest potential simply because they are a part of the organization, because they are a paid employee.  The thoughtful leader is smart enough to realize how important it is to have a healthy organization and is able to professionally develop and foster a healthy culture.

Career selfish people often begat other career selfish people, they promote career selfish, they encourage that behavior because they believe that behavior got them to where they are and will bring success in the future.  They call it “dog eat dog” or say “I am a shrewd businessman”

So what can we do if we find ourselves in the midst of an organization, or even our own career that has been career selfish.

A few suggestions:

  1. Let your supervisor/manager and surrounding team members know that you are trying to make them successful both in the professional goals of the team but also in their career and development, let them see your new selflessness.  This might be awkward at first, but it takes an effort to change culture.
  2. Tell your boss that you want to grow, that you care about your career, ask for help in your personal development and if they wont then work to leave that organization.
  3. If you’ve been selfish, simply apologize and start helping people under and around you.

I think leaders often have absolutely no idea how their behavior affects culture and the behavior of their direct reports. I love this quote from organizational development consultant Patrick Lencioni, speaking to leaders.

This is bigger than you think, you are part of people’s lives, and as  managers and leaders the way you manage and lead your people impacts this world in ways you just can not imagine…they treat their spouses and kids and neighbors and friends differently based on how you manage and lead them. – Patrick Lencioni

What are some other ways that can we overcome career selfishness in our organizations?

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A Social Network at Work – Why We Should Bother

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Foursquare, Google+, Pinterest, Youtube, Yammer, …and the list grows, social is everywhere and is growing, it has been largely spontaneous, and not forced, the demand for social tools pulls these new products into existence.

social media software

However, within many corporate organizations social tools are looked down upon or considered a marketing tool at best, we cling to email and archaic productivity tools that were great for the 80’s and 90’s but in comparison they are slow and overused. 

Social software tools absolutely can and should be used to collaborate within organizations.  Particularly within organizations where innovation is used for growth. All things being equal, an organization that collaborates and educates itself spontaneously using social media tools will innovate faster than one that looks down upon the same tools.

It is time that social software tools work their way into corporations and into organizations on a large-scale. 

Acceptance by corporate leadership and the corporate masses will not be as easy as has been with the general public.

Some of the reasons:

  • Corporate concern about proprietary issues, there is hesitancy to push these more open social tools.
  • Social media is a tool to enhance social interactions and few want to be “social” at work on a large-scale so other reasons for use must be placed at the forefront of people’s minds before adoption will be widespread.
  • There is not yet a dominant leader for social enterprise software as there is in the public (facebook, twitter, linkedin).

Here are three absolute musts for widespread adoption of social enterprise networks and software into the corporate environment.

  1. An absolute assurance of privacy and protection of proprietary information.
  2. A spontaneous motivation for the masses other than “leadership says we should be using social tools.” (‘keep up with the Joneses’ attitude can be a motivation even for those in the C-suite.)
  3. A clear and obvious advantage for the masses using social tools at work, they must want to use these tools to make their job’s easier.  They must realize its value or they are responding to leadership’s generous incentives.
  4. Credit and rewards given for use of social tools, ie… it could be part of the required collaboration and education of peers objectives that most corporations reward employees for.

So what exactly am I talking about here, facebook at work? Not exactly, but I am talking using social software to enable daily instruction and education of peers, I’m talking about having the ability to intentionally share what we are working on, intentional and incentivized collaboration enhanced with social enterprise tools.

taken from wikipedia…Enterprise social networking focuses on the use of online social networks or social relations among people who share business interests and/or activities. Enterprise social networking is often a facility of enterprise social software, which is essentially social software used in “enterprise” (business/ commercial) contexts. It encompasses modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication, collaboration and other aspects of their intranets. Enterprise social networking is also generally thought to include the use of a standard external social networking service to generate visibility for an enterprise.

Leadership should realize that social tools will not likely explode as they have in the public domain because reasons for use are different.

So lets discuss exactly why we should set up a social media network within our enterprise:

  • Social networking can speed up collaboration like nothing else, self collaborating teams that educate themselves can solve problems, innovate and accomplish MUCH more at a FASTER RATE than teams that are separate and siloed and are not collaborating.
  • The competition is increasinly using social enterprise tools and to compete we should use.

Leadership must realize that most employees don’t want to be social to the same level they do with friends and family on facebook so they must incentivized! They must constantly communicate the whys, the business advantages to social collaboration tools. 

Enterprise social networking has not yet exploded like public social networking has (ie. facebook) but it can if we are mindful about why it should and careful to consider how it differs from public social media.

What are some social media networking tools that are good for use within enterprises?

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