The Workplace Blog

By Shiv Singh

Earlier this week I was on a panel at a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley. Hosted by Charlene Li of Forrester, the panel discussed web 2.0 in the enterprise and how social media is changing collaboration behind the firewall. On the panel with me were leaders from Best Buy, Serena Software and Oracle. Titled “From Dilbert to Dude: Succeeding with Web 2.0 Within the Enterprise” the panel discussed how grass roots social media efforts take on a life of their own as they move from being “under the desk server” initiatives to enterprise wide programs.

Steve Bendt of Best Buy talked about Blue Nation, a social networking site that connects employees at the retail outlets to the corporate offices and to each other. Now, the employees who are on the front lines talking to customers everyday, have a platform to discuss new products, exchange ideas and provide feedback to headquarters on what products, display formats and marketing strategies are working. It is a perfect example of a company taking advantage of the wisdom of the crowds concepts. Also, interesting is that after the launch of Blue Nation, employee retention has gotten easier as employees feel a part of something special and important. No thank you email from a CEO can compare to the satisfaction that people get when they feel they have contributed to something larger. Turnover of employees who use the site is just 8 to 12 percent while company turnover is much higher.

Serena Software is another interesting company and I blogged about them a few years ago (on another blog) when they first rolled out their Facebook Fridays initiative. Rather than trying to build a behind the firewall social networking enabled intranet, Serena chose to build their intranet on the Facebook platform. But not just that, they also built tools to allow the Facebook pages to connect with company data sources in a safe and secure manner. So rather than bringing the employees to the intranet, they went to where their employees were spending most of their time - on Facebook.

In the case of Oracle, what’s most fascinating was how quickly Connect, the internal social network got adopted. Within an hour of launching the site 270 people were using it. The next morning the site had 8,000 people on it. Currently, the site has 10,000 active users who share information, news articles, powerpoint presentations and discuss budgets. This again was an initiative that began with no funding but tapped into the inherent nature of people to connect with each other in a purposeful and productive manner. Paul Pedrazzi from Oracle also discussed the risks. He mentioned that a person wearing a religious head dress like a turban could claim denial of a job because someone saw his profile picture and refused to interview him.

In discussing the Avenue A|Razorfish wiki and some client examples, I highlighted how understanding the motivations for use are important. We’re not on these social platforms just to socialize. Different people have different motivations and aligning those motivations with the social platform and the business needs is key to success. The wiki is viewed as a marketplace of ideas where people share their best thoughts and expect more in return. Sometimes the sharing even takes the form of bookmarks, blog posts and photographs - not just the regular word documents or powerpoint files. Through use of the wiki, natural experts who are the most passionate about specific topics get the attention and the focus that they deserve.

The panel was also covered in Infoworld.

By Shiv Singh

A much ignored subject in conversations about the workplace is the role that social influence plays. Recent research shows that when making decisions (any kind of decisions) we are much more influenced by known peers than we are by anonymous people or anonymous information inputs. It is the people that we know and trust that we consider the most credible sources of information. Because we’re much more connected to each other online, we’re influencing each other more than we ever used to.

This  simple fact has huge implications for the future of work. With the enterprise going increasingly social, we’re all observing one another much more. Because we’re connected to each other via internal wikis, department blogs and collaborative workspaces, we’re always watching what our peers say. Some of us comment on that and participate in the internal conversations, others just lurk. But lurking too allows for social influence to take place. Since we’re forced to collaborate more, we’re in turn influencing and being influenced by each other much more too. What are the implications of this? Here are three -

a. Greater internal alignment. Call it the result of increased voyeurism or what you like, but the fact that I have a much better sense of what my co-workers in the neighboring cubicles think, influences how I think and act at work. We’re much more in alignment with each other or inversely my workplace behaviour is a negative response to their actions.

b. Increased external alignment. Not only am I paying more attention to what’s going on in the work lives of my peers, but I’m also paying more attention to peers outside my own company. What they think and say in this social world, influences my actions within my own organization. This is healthy as it makes me a more informed, educated employee but it can also serve as a distraction.

c. Potentially rebellious employees. Since we’re watching each other so much more, we’re also processing a lot more information and thinking harder about our roles in an organization. Questions like why did one peer get a promotion over another or why do the benefits in one department differ from another crop up a lot more. It means that organizations need to think harder about how it manages perceptions among its employees.

By and large, social influence presents an interesting opportunity for most organizations. They can allow for positive social influence to take place by pointing their employees to positive, thought provoking influences. It also means that that the organizations don’t control their employee base like they once did. Its just how the world has changed. For more on how social influence work, take a look at this article where I discuss the motivations behind influence.