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006 – Improve Your Company’s Culture w/ a Social Enterprise Network

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Feature Segment: Improve your Company’s Culture with a Social Enterprise Network

 

In this episode Adam discusses ways to improve your company’s culture

 

As was said last week, there are at least four types of employee reactions to the prospect of adding social enterprise network at work. There are advocates, users, agnostics and detractors.  Asking employees to teach is one management strategy for winning over detractors while stimulating collaboration in your culture.

 

Social Layer Segment: Three Pillars to Healthy Innovation

 

I think there are three pillars to healthy innovation, this content is taken from my May 13, 2013 blog post here:

  1. Teaching, spontaneous employee-to-employee teaching is one sign of a highly innovative company culture.  Knowledge silos can limit the growth and success of a company.  Breaking down knowledge silos can improve the speed and overall competitiveness of any company.
  2. Collaboration
  3. Organizational Health

 

I will cover the 2nd and 3rd pillars in later episodes but for today lets look at the concept of intentional teaching as a strategy to help your culture.

 

A great strategy for breaking down knowledge silos and converting some of your social business detractors into users is to ask employees to teach other employees using the company social network, such as blog posts or simply sharing files generated by the employee.  It is not too much to ask an employee to teach, most companies expect employees to teach already through other tools like: monthly reports, research reviews and patent filings.

 

Be patient and persistent because being social does not come naturally to everyone.

What are some other ways that social enterprise software can improve a company’s culture?

 

Next episode I discuss crowdsourcing, please send any crowdsourcing questions or content to adam@sociallayerpodcast.com

 

Please rate this podcast in iTunes here, please reach out with feedback via email or Twitter @Colliers2

 

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Working in a Knowledge Whirlpool?

I’ve noticed that there is a flow to the knowledge that enters a company.  Imagine with me if we could actually see the knowledge that our teams acquire, would there be a pattern to its flow?  We would see if it stays attached to certain people or if it diffuses throughout the organization?   If the knowledge were smoke it would be an easy visual.

 

We’d see the smoke sticking to certain people or flowing out of certain people depending on if they are teachers or secretive/ poor communicators.  Then think company-wide, how would our “knowledge smoke” flow?  The knowledge may enter the company through experimentation, it may enter the company through a certain publication or text-book, it may enter the company through a new hire, but what is particularly important is how the knowledge flows once inside!

 

On some projects that I have been a part of, the knowledge enters the company through a variety of channels, experiments, literature searches, new hires, textbooks, but once inside the smoke finds itself in dozens if not hundreds of whirlpools.  The knowledge flows in one direction (up to managers) if at all.  At the start of each whirlpool is the key scientist, engineer or technician doing the learning.  When I say learning I am not only talking about using science to invent the next product or process.  Learning happens in a variety of ways; experimentation, internet research, telephone calls with vendors, employees attending conferences to name just a few.  Learning occurs all of the time, knowledge is entering our companies in a wide variety of ways and where that knowledge flows after it is in the company matters almost as much as getting the knowledge in in the first place.

 

Healthy organizations have free-flowing knowledge!

 

In a healthy culture employees are not incentivized to hold knowledge hostage until they get credit or rewards of political favor.  The knowledge that enters our companies may enter through one narrow channel but once inside it should disperse easily through a variety of channels.  Whirlpools exist when water is flowing into one narrow path, unlike a whirlpool large portions of the Nile river in South America flows slowly in over a wide area, the Rio Negro is a river basin in Brazil that flows like this.

 

The water flows everywhere giving life to huge area of land mass.

 

Does the knowledge flow in your company like whirlpools or like the Rio Negro in Brazil?

 

I see three exciting ways that a company can free up its knowledge flow.

 

  1. Use social enterprise business software, recent products that are coming out designed for employee connectivity and collaboration are amazing.  I have been researching the many options for this and I can’t recommend it enough, it is well worth the investment.  I use social business tools, and am amazed at its potential to change how companies function, like facebook and twitter have been I believe that these software tools will be company game changers, a driver of cultural change… if they are embraced.
  2. Do not reward secretive, competitive employee behavior, this is difficult because many times the most secretive and competitive employees are also the brightest and best performers.
  3. Reward teachers, reward those who are generous with knowledge internally. The effect of this shift in what leadership values in regards to knowledge sharing will gradually change the company culture.

 

What other ways can leaders “un-stick” the knowledge that flows through their organizations ? please share…

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Teaching – One Pillar of Healthy Innovation

I think there are three pillars to healthy innovation within a company or university.

  1. Teaching
  2. Collaboration
  3. Organizational Health

Leave-Me-Alone

In this post I’d like to discuss teaching, I’ll touch on the others in later posts.

Have you ever encountered scientists or engineers who refuse to change their innovation habits?  They seem to know everything, they ridicule most efforts at managing innovation and are almost impossible to influence.

I’ve acted this way myself, scoffing at attempts to manage innovation, telling managers and the like to just leave me alone, I’ll figure it out and send you a report. There is value in just leaving a good innovator alone but that is just one tool of many in innovation management.

The accumulation of knowledge tends to increase ego, if you’ve spent a lot of time around certain University professors it is not hard to see this:

1 Corinthians 8:1 … knowledge puffs up …

Valuable R&D professionals discover, accumulate and manage knowledge very efficiently.

We need to lead our innovative teams in a way that will both cause our most innovative R&D pros to collaborate together and in a way that does not trigger anger and resistance.

I am convinced that there is a win-win if we can encourage our scientists to teach.  If we can get our R&D professionals to teach one another, teach leadership, and document learning’s with a motive of teaching this will trigger collaboration, sharing of knowledge, and a feeling of being engaged, (which will speed up innovation long-term).  The great thing about teaching is that it appeals to intellectual ego that can cause us to be uncooperative at times.

What are  other tips at getting R&D professionals to collaborate?

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