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

The other day a friend over at PricewaterhouseCoopers told me about a computing policy whereby employees receive notices discouraging them from sending emails over the weekend. They get these emails only when they log into their network during the weekend. (Coincidentally, Businessweek covered this policy in its latest issue).

Is this the future of work? A world in which we need guidance on when to send and when not send emails? Have we lost all sense of control over our lives that we need the technology to tell us what to do? Are we turning social construction of technology on its head with our obsessive computer habits? It certainly seems like it.

Social construction of technology or SCOT as its commonly referred to is a theory within the field of Science and Technology Studies which argues that human action shapes technology rather than technology determining human action. As a direct response to technology determinism, social construction of technology also argues that to understand a piece of technology, you have to understand it in its context of use.

But here we are using a piece of technology so obsessively that we need it to tell us when to stop using it. We have human action not just shaping the technology but shaping how the technology needs to guide us towards specific human action in the future. When email was invented, was this a fear that we’d need help in limiting our use?

I believe in social construction of technology and furthermore in the theory that technology cannot be understood devoid of context. I want to find out what aspects of the PricewaterhouseCoopers culture encourages people to email each other over the weekend. I also want to learn about the thinking behind the policy and whether that was something driven by a cultural nuance too. Are some organizations more culturally attuned to policies and procedures that such a policy seems normal in it? Is this the next stage of social construction of technology? This week I have more questions than I have answers.

By Shiv Singh

The April 28th issue of Businessweek includes some collaboration statistics that I found very interesting. Apparently 82% of white-collar workers partner with co-workers. That number appears low. There are fewer and fewer roles that don’t require any collaboration whatsoever now.

46% of white-collar workers are motivated to collaborate because they learn form others when they do so. 30% collaborate to accomplish a specific task, 19% collaborate because it is required of them and 4% to get ahead. Here’s my question - which of these segments are most likely to use online tools to collaborate? And how frequently does that group collaborate? My sense is that those that are motivated by learning use the online tools and collaborate the most and they probably also get ahead by collaborating more without realizing it .

Another interesting finding, 51% of women like working together so that they can learn from others in comparison to 40% for men. In terms of the different age groups, 18-24 year olds like working together the most (60%), followed by the 25-64 year olds (44%) and finally only 28% of the 65+ enjoy collaborating. These numbers aren’t too surprising and as time passes I expect more people to enjoy working together. With our personal lives getting more collaborative because of the social networks, it is only a matter of time before we bring those behavior patterns into the workplace.

And finally, 9% prefer working in groups of two, 54% like groups of three, 27% like groups of four or more and 10% are happiest working alone. There is obviously something special about groups of three. I haven’t seen any research to explain this but one reason maybe that when you have three people it is easier to make decisions.

There’s no question that knowledge workers are being asked to collaborate more everyday. Given the amount of information they need to digest just to do their jobs, they have to depend upon each other more. The smartest employees are the ones that realize that they need to be an active and generous player in this knowledge sharing ecosystem. They are the ones that are probably going to succeed the most. The others need to get on board or they will get left behind.

by Paras Wadehra

A web seminar Google held at KMWorld Magazine offered a great deal of insight into how Google manages projects and communication internally. The presentation by Google followed an employee through his first few weeks at the company, explaining the many tools he’s using: from the Google intranet MOMA, the Google Ideas site and Google Caribou Alpha, to Google Experts Search, “Googler Search,” and Google Apps.

Here are a few links to view the content of the presentation:
http://www.scribd.com/full/2263947?access_key=key-1×6vmvv1rya3xygdhfju

http://issuu.com/ialc/docs/innovation___google__kmworld_webinar_? mode=embed&documentId=080312113223-aa1c560259e24ac892c4e1cfa3f0c12d

http://www.beussery.com/innovationatgoogle.pdf

If Nichalos Negroponte and the OLPC group have their way, they could be shipping tens of millions of these very cool low cost laptops. Check out images and details about the devices here. It looks like a bunch of countries already have orders in. Definitely an innovative concept with the integrated strap, hand crank for power, instant on, instant off, linux based device there seems like a lot of potential. The innovations go beyond the hardware to include online/offline synchronizable ebooks, quick easy ways to build applications, and lots more. The olpc wiki has captured some of the discussion. Think time is very good indeed, especially when that time is connected with people’s passions.

If you’re still not sure what Web 2.0 is, then here’s a video explanation from the editors of ZDNet. Everybody seems to be defining Web 2.0 these days and that makes me wonder about coinage of the term. Here’s my definition which borrows heavily from o’Reilly over at Boxes and Arrows. Be sure to read the comments at the end of the article.

CIO magazine this week talks about how people are using VOIP to execute a ‘vishing‘ attack. Leveraging voip, it’s easy for people to get a number, use it for a short amount of time and then drop it. Skype and Vonage, among others, provide a fast way to get a voip number. Looks like another item that your chief security officer will have to look after.

CIO magazine had a great article on governance and the impact it can have on an organizations productivity. “we have ‘business projects’ in which IT is a major and often critical component.” is a great quote from the article. The point is that staying close to user and business needs is critical. We have learned this over the last 5 years and need to remember it moving forward. All too often it was easy to get caught up in massive implementations in which the project was an IT project and not a business project. In this new world of agile like approaches and smaller release iterations it should help us stay on track, ensuring that we are always delivering business value. Agile, refactoring and other techniques have helped teach IT and Business organizations stay more nimble and focused on the business. Growing lightweight manageable governance policies can help deliver more of the same.

The promise of wikis within the enterprise has been much touted. For example take a look at this (“Hands On: Why you need a wiki”) article.

There are at least two areas worth mentioning that might still be needed however: One has to do with search (cf. Seth Godin’s recent post) and the other has to do with strategy integration. (cf. Mike Yamamoto’s article)

We’ve already seen how wikis have improved in their user interface (i.e. see article on JotSpot). Endeca’s recently patented Guided Navigation search engine might (arguably) help wikis reach their promise within the enterprise. (see Forrester’s Vendor Report excerpt of the fee-based article).

In The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics, Eric D. Beinhocker argues that the traditional view of economics as a static, equilibrium-balanced system is going through a radical rethinking involving a multitude of disciplines. The new spin is “complexity economics,” in which the economy is a highly dynamic and constantly evolving system that is all but impossible to predict. Given such radical dynamism, how can companies set strategy? Beinhocker proposes viewing strategy as not singular or unified but rather a portfolio of experiments. He writes:

“The key to doing better is to “bring evolution inside” and get the wheels of differentiation, selection, and amplification spinning within a company’s four walls. Rather than thinking of strategy as a single plan built on predictions of the future, we should think of strategy as a portfolio of experiments, a population of competing Business Plans that evolves over time.”

An excerpt printed in Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” newsletter details how Bill Gates’ and team pursued six competing strategies in 1987 thereby enabling Microsoft to rise to dominance.

What I find compelling about this mode of thinking is its emphasis on preparedness. By preparing for multiple scenarios, businesses can be more agile within an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace and hence remain competitive. A major step toward facilitating the preparedness and agility necessary to practice a portfolio approach to business strategy is making knowledge management a top priority. For further insights, download “The New Knowledge Management Imperative: User Centered, Focused, and Organic” and find out why Avenue A | Razorfish was named one of KMWorld’s 100 Companies That Matter In Knowledge Management.