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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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Failure & Intrapreneurship

Working in R&D I realized that effectively we are all intrapreneurs.   We’re constantly trying to develop new businesses for the corporation.

Intrapreneur is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as:  

“A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation”

One thing that entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs share is the goal of profitability.  We both are creating businesses, we are both looking for ways to create value and systematize the creation of that value.

The added complexity of contending with entrenched culture, entrenched bureaucracy and toxic organizations can make the intrepreneurs’ job more difficult.

On the other hand the added restraint of available funds make the entrepreneurs’ job more stressful and more risky.

One thing however that both the entrepreneur and intrapreneur must struggle with is …FAILURE.

 imagesCAGLJTA7

The failure rate of my projects in R&D over the past 17 years is much greater than 50%.  Projects fail for a variety of reasons sometimes due to technical challenges, other times due to external market conditions, other times due to poor leadership or employee performance.

Entrepreneurs have the luxury of controlling their culture around the topic of failure because the entrepreneur can just adopt a positive attitude about failure, the entrepeneur usually works alone or with a very small team of like-minded leaders.

“I never fail, I just learn how things don’t work.” – unknown

In other words an entrepreneur can make up his/her own mind that failure is just part of the process, it is just a mechanism of learning.

The intrapreneur must contend with organizational health, a large team of people many more powerful and influential than himself, he must deal with culture, if the culture in ones R&D organization does not handle failure this can spell trouble for the intrapreneur.

Failed projects can result in finger-pointing, in blame politics, which can spell real career trouble.  One thing that R&D organizations should do is to constantly frame the story, the attitudes of everyone around failure. 

I have been part of organizations that lambasted the members of a failed project, the courageous leader was “torn to shreds”  so to speak, blamed for the wasting of millions and it was a career altering delay.

This is not healthy, R&D leaders can learn from the attitudes of entrepreneurs and lead accordingly.  Blame and perfection are culture destroyers in the innovation organization.

“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” ~ Sven Goram Erikson

A healthy perspective about failure is easiest way to rapidly improve R&D culture, at the highest levels corporations need to stop the blame game and permit failure, so we can relax and create system for capturing and spreading learnings and developing R&D professionals to develop business’ more effectively and more rapidly.

How does your organization handle failure?

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“Corporate America” Bashing

I listen to the motivations entrepreneurs often and have noticed that one of the top reasons they give for starting their own companies is to escape from “Corporate America”.  The “Corporate America” term has come to mean bureaucracy, dysfunction and frustration for many many people. This bothers me because…it does not have to be this way!

Fist-in-air

What if leader’s in “Corporate America” began a personal mission to heal the bureaucracy, dysfunction and frustration within their organizations?  What if organizational health became one of our top objectives?

Think of impact that this would have on productivity, think of the impact this would have on turnover rate.  Think of the impact this would have on financial performance over time.  Think of the impact this would make in employee’s lives and in job satisfaction.

I believe that the impact from this would be amazing!

Get healthy corporate America! care about the impact of your team and project leadership, don’t be lazy in your people management, understand the impact of your leadership …or lack of leadership in people’s lives, in people’s careers, on people’s salaries and most importantly on your company’s performance in the market.

Here are three things that we can do in the short-term to improve the health of our organizations:

  1. Communicate the purpose of the organization and your commitment to health constantly, even if it seems redundant, say it out loud repeatedly.
  2. Care about the growth of our people, challenge them to grow and expand their skills and tangibly reward them when they do.
  3. Ask our people for help in making healthier teams, because they have a major role to play in team health.

 What other things can we do today to make our organizations more healthy?

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