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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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“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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Competency is Critical

Good Leader Bad Manager

Have you ever wondered what makes a great manager? It is more than leadership skill, I know of several good leaders who make ineffective managers. There are also effective managers who don’t seem to be strong leaders. What can explain this discrepancy? How could a strong leader not manage well? I think that competency makes all the difference in high-tech R&D leadership.

In the field of high-tech R&D an effective manager needs to be competent in their field. The level of competence needed for effective management is often underestimated. Many think strong leaders will lead well wherever they are. If they are trained in management then they will lead well even if they are not competent in their field. Project leadership teacher say one does not necessarily need to understand the science in depth to lead a technical project. I believe this is often not the case.

“Competence is possessing skill and knowledge that allows us to do something successfully. It also describes the ability to apply prior experience to new situations with good effect. Our competency usually increases over time as we acquire more information and ability through inquiry, observation, and participation…” –  www.wisdomcommons.org

High Tech Competence

Most R&D projects require high-tech competence beyond the average person. Compared to running a retail business or marketing products or managing a construction project, high-tech competence is difficult to find. Therefore managers of these projects must be willing and able to learn from his/her scientists. Even be able and willing to work as a scientist in order to gain the necessary competency to manage.

Often the employees who are highly competent in science don’t make great managers because they are not interested in management. They became scientists because that’s what they wanted to do, they love science and love inventing. Few want to move into the stressful field of management? As a result many scientists are not accustomed to making difficult decisions under pressure.

But for those brave enough to venture into management I think there are at least three things we can do to prepare ourselves to manage R&D projects.

  1. Pursue competence through study and research, don’t take the shallow expert in everything approach, go deep into whatever you are working on.
  2. Always be in the habit of learning from your own experiments or other scientist’s work?
  3. Become decisive, develop the habit of making decisions and correcting bad decisions, break through the fear of making bad decisions.

Have you ever noticed a strong leader who is a lousy manager? and was competence part of the problem?

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