8 weeks after launching a social intranet and collaboration platform: What are the surprises?

Since April 2014, I have been partnering with many colleagues from across the business to introduce a new way of working/interacting/sharing knowledge in my company (Industry: financial service). This new way of working is enabled by a new social intranet, networking and collaboration platform which has been rolled out in mid June 2015. This is part of a wider cultural change initiative to future proof our business, build capability for change and to empower all our talents.

Since launch, all employees (3500+) join in within 4 weeks. I am not excited by the figures, and more by what my colleagues are doing on this new enterprise-wide digital ecosystem (which comes with seamless integrates with MS Office suite, online chat and telephony, email). They are embracing new behaviour and using this ecosystem to get their real work done. The use cases come from all business area (e.g. HR, communications, marketing, operations, IT, risk management, legal, leadership development, sales, senior executive). They help to illustrate that we are not rolling out a new shiny social chatting, time wasting social platform. Instead, this is about real business and real work, and together we are redefining the future of work.

So 8 weeks later, after I came back from the summer holiday, I wonder how the adoption is going, how colleagues are adjusting to this new way of working, has the novelty effect worn off, and what are the surprises. My reflection is as follow, when compare to the time when the ecosystem is first launched, 

1. My team got many calls for 1:1 coaching (not just training on how and where to click), especially from the senior management and middle managers level, colleagues want to know how to make the platform truly useful, purposeful and impactful at work, they want to understand the principles and what/why they need to behave differently. They want to understand the consequences. This thought process is encouraging. It is signaling to me the project is enabling cultural and mindset change. 

2. Many colleagues are beginning to worry they receive too many email notifications, and that not everything is relevant to them. At launch, some colleagues feel they are "forced" (or a better word "encouraged") by their managers to follow specific people (boss, peers) and groups that are meant to be relevant to them. However, they are not necessary getting relevant messages because the communication model is exactly the same as the old email push model based on organisation hierarchy and structure. Coachng them that it is alright to unfollow and search, find and follow what they truly find value-adding is needed after 8 weeks. Would I do it differently? No. Because our adoption strategy is to start within colleagues comfort zone, and then show them the real empowerment comes from their ability to opt in and out, and access ideas/people which previously they would not have access or do not even know exist.

3. Some colleagues start to worry about duplicate content posting, fragmentation of topics, and creation of duplicate communities/groups. It is a valid point, and they are introduced to the "emergence" principles, ie instead of assuming every posts or interaction have to be orderly, let's accept the messiness in getting work done. We need to coach our colleagues to learn to let go, let the interaction/content surface, facilitate the dialogue amongst fragmented group or content owners. Ask them "should these groups be more joined up? Do they serve similar purpose?" Building the understanding and having the dialogue on its own is more beneficial than trying to fit content into boxes.

4. There is less than expected resistance to move out of an existing old-style document centric static intranet to this new social intranet as colleagues want to provide the modern experience, and benefit from the real time metrics (to track how many people view a post), the improve searchability of content they own and want to share globally, and the ability for the target audience to follow and stay connected. They found it so much easier to manage content, design the user experience UX. 

Reflecting on what happened 8 weeks after the launch, I noted the coaching/training/support that my colleagues' need have changed. I believe it will be changed again in another few months. It is important that we continue to adopt an agile and flexible approach to help our colleagues to move out of their comfort zone and to embrace a new normal way of working. What works at launch need to be adjusted based on emerging patterns (questions, complains, needs) of our employees. I continue to remind myself that it is important to go with the flow and make adjustment quickly, don't foget it is people and culture I am dealing with, and so I must respect our colleagues as dynamic, living, breathing human beings and co-evolve the company culture together.

And the change journey continues.

Social business and business transformation: where are we heading?

I am preparing my talk at the Henley Conference Forum 25 and 26 Feb this month. Reflecting on my publication on Social Strategies in Action: Driving business transformation (2013), my experience in the past 12 months driving business transformation within a highly regulated financial institution , and on McKinsey's latest research on Transforming business through social tools, I understand the huge challenge leaders are facing and I am also excited about the future.

Whether you call in Social Business, Enterprise 2.0 or use of social media in the extended enterprise, it is now seeded in most enterprises and is considered becoming mainstream. We are finally scratching beyond the surface, and get ready for deeper transformation.

What do I mean? Here is how I experience it and where I am playing my humble part to shape:

1. Enterprise 2.0 is no longer about introducing new digital social tools to employees

2. Enterprise 2.0 is about embracing a new way of working to create value in a much more networked world, and it means rethinking what "management" means and what management processes and practices are relevant in this new world. It also means employees need to relearn how to behave when they are not being "managed" (or perhaps for some being "control") in a traditional way. 

3. Enterprise 2.0 is about empowering employees to change old habits and build new reflexes on an individual level in the context of doing their day-to-day work. The change is on a micro-moment level and so it is hard because it is so personal, so real and so intense. 

4. Enterprise 2.0 requires Leadership 2.0 (which I advocated in 2009) and it means making a conscious effort to be mindful and cultivate good practices around communication, conversation, listening and dialogue, and feeling comfortable navigating in an uncertain environment. In an open and network enterprise, this is required at all levels, not just a requirement for leaders.

5. As all of the above happen, it means that we (leaders, managers, employees) will build new reflexes, redefining the norm, working together, communicating, collaborating in a different way, And the business workflow and day-to-day process as a result will be transformed. 

Now that the real hard work begins, as we pay attention to people, and how they communicate and how they work together. How can we create an ecology that create value, unleash employees' potential, help our employees and even our clients to grow and learn? I expect a lot more experiment and innovation in this space.

I look forward to exploring my ideas further at the upcoming Henley Conference in Feb, and with my blog readers here.

On a social collaboration platform, knowledge does not sit still...

On a social collaboration platform, Knowledge never sits still....

What do I mean?

If your company has a vibrant social collaboration platform which is embedded in the day-to-day business process, I expect your employees would be adoption the following new behaviour:

- instead of going to the intranet homepage to check out what is new, employees receive real time updates on their acitivity steams.

- instead of waiting for the newsletter curated by the communication or knowledge manager to summarise all the useful resources, employees are following people, content relevant to them, and getting the updates before they receive the newsletter

- instead of waiting for the next knowledge sharing meeting to connect with other community members, employees can connect with one another online before the event. 

- Instead of only getting to knowing colleagues via face-to-face meeting or working on same project/team, employees can get to know, exchange ideas and learn from colleagues belonging to a completely business different network

- instead of relying on knowledge managers to organize and categorise approved content which goes into a knowledge base, employees can organize what they need according to their own preference, employees can create their own set of dynamic feeds and alerts to useful resources. 

- When employees need something, they can do a search, or ask a question on the community, and go direct and interact with the experts (but not via the intermediaries).

In this environment, KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT SIT STILL. It constantly gets updated, viewed by employees who want to know, get challenged and changed by the conversation, comments, insights exchanged between the author and the employees. It gets created more rapidly. It becomes obsolete quickly too (if it no longer serves the purpose). Policies, pitch decks, product brochures are updated faster with continuous user feedback.

So what is the role of knowledge manager in this networked workplace? 

If knowledge does not sit still, knowledge capturing and organizing can be costly and time consuming but its value can be very short lived. We have to be selective to pick the strategic content that we must invest time/effort to manage, and let go of the rest.

I would argue we need to seriously focus on managing the "flow" of knowledge rather than managing information/knowledge as content objects. We need to pay attention in designing the time-space moment when "knowledging" happens, ie help employees discover what they need just-in-time, create an environment where they can make sense of the knowledge they encounter (including listening, reflecting and commenting with context), and enabling them to create new knowledge and disrupt outdated ones at a unprecedented speed. (Note: if you like to dig deeper into "knowledging" see this paper I co-author with my mentor Dr Brenda Dervin)

We need to continue to acquire new skills and embrace new mindset to operate and add value in the networked enterprise. 

Fellow knowledge managers, what are your latest innovation to facilitate knowledge flow? Please share....

Knowledge management: a journey from 15 years ago....

I started introducing knowledge management to Arthur Andersen Business Consulting 15 years ago under the coaching of the then Global KM Director based in Atlanta, US, I remember we focussed on the following:

- we built best practice knowledge base to enable the consultants to re-use good practices

- we created top down communities of practice

- approved resources were posted up by knowledge managers

- members of the communities were brought together because of their industry focus

- members of an industry segment community were added to a email DL, they received newsletter with latest updates, wins, best practices every week

- KMers role were to cold call partners/consultants around the world to encourage them to share proposals, presentations, and then sanitised them (ie take out confidential info, client names, financial figures) for globale re-use

- KMers were there to understand consultants' information needs, and give them what they want 

- the consultants had limited channels to find information other than the centrally design KM platform (or use their own personal network). At that time, Internet was not as a rich resource as we are today. Consultants rely on good KMers to organize knowledge and make them accessible.

Just over 10 years ago, in 2001, I became the Knowledge Management Director of the British Council. I recalled the KM focus has evolved:

- knowledge management started to move away from building best practices knowledge base and centrally controlled intranet

- static intranet was still an important KM tool, but it was starting to show its limitation

- the intranet navigation was corporate controlled, stable, and required approval to make changes

- for a global company with cross-country initiates to be rolled out globally, the project team need to coordinate amongst themselves, learn from one another quickly, they need collaboration space connected with the intranet

- the role of knowledge managers change from being the approved webmaster, best practice publisher sitting in the centre, starting to help to create collaboration groups, focus on building communities of practice which allow the members to talk and learn from one another

- collaboration tools became common: email DLs, Sharepoint team sites (Sharepoint 2003)

- KMers became community facilitators not only managing content, but facilitate learning, conversation to help members to learn from one another

- knowledge sharing event / communities of practice / After action review became popular

That was the age of collaboration, more specifically, I call it the age of collaboration in silos because:

- it was difficult then to see the connections across communities

- good KMers put in so much effort to try to create vibrant communities, and engage with all the members, with tools such as meetings, phone calls, collaboration sites, intranet

- good KMers became facilitators / community managers, not just knowledge base, intranet or content managers.

About 8 years ago, Enterprise 2.0 or enterprise-wide social collaboration platform enter the picture. Since 2006, I happened to have the opportunity to work with a visionary CEO of the world's largest environmental consulting firm, and then a visionary CEO of a large global bank. I recalled these visionary leaders spotted a gap, they noted the external world has changed so much, but the internal environment has not caught up. There are opportunities to change how we connect, collaboration and communicate to improve how work gets done.

After spending four years connecting all the employees in the environmental consulting company, and transforming how work gets done across boundaries. I took it as a personal challenge to move to a global bank to continue to innovate and fine tune my approach and thinking, this time round, driving business transformation from within a business focussing on business-specific use cases.

This is also the time (roughly about 4 years ago) that a few other banks are starting to invest in enterprise social collaboration program to test the water. I noted these programs tend to be led by the communications team or IT team, and not business-led.

The technology is so disruptive that initially, managers and employees have no idea how they use the shiny new tools. I remember:

- intranet managers wanted to replicate traditional intranet on the new platform, wanting the same level of control, taxonomy structure

- communications managers asked for creating default setting when they can force email notification to all employees worldwide

- users and community managers had lengthy discussions as to where a document should sit, is it more appropriate to be in Community A versus Community B (not aware that a document is associated with an individual employee in this new world).

Soon we realised that this is a totally different world.  The control, the habits, the processes, the tools (especially email) we have grown used to at work have to evolve/disrupt if we want to put our employees at the center of this new ecosystem.

Knowledge managers started to realise the power of social collaboration platform, ie:

- individual employees are in the driving seat (the knowledge manager as an intermediary function to manage content fades away). We cannot manage all the content, organize and tag them all. Employees can share, can tag and decide what to follow and subscribe to. They can search themselves at the time they need information.

- Content, communciation, community, collaboration converge in context, they cannot be handled separately if we want to give a holistic experience to the end users. 

Fellow KMers, should we be worried: do employees still need KMers to anticipate their needs and bring the updates to them? should we be celebrating: do we finally have an opportunity to take the flow of knowledge to another level? If so, how?

It is time to rethink our role, why companies need us, and how can we create value? Are we designer of a knowledge ecology? Or are we gatekeeper of approved content? Where should we focus? Fellow knowledge mangers, what do you think?

What is Knowledge Management becoming?

The world has changed, consumers are connecting, collaborating and sharing information in a new way. What about at work? Where is our knowledge?

Many (most) companies have not caught up yet. 

• Information is locked in shared drive, emails, team sites 
• Intranet content is static, and search you cannot find
• Employees are geographically dispersed. They need to connect (whether it is by email, phone and F2F meeting, online chat, conversation or latest digital tools)
• Employees and expertise are locked in functional silos, organisation hierarchies. Cross boundary collaboration is not easy and can be political.

My research and professional interest throughout my career has been trying to find ways to allow knowledge to flow within and across boundaries within geographically dispersed global enterprises and institutions. Most people think my role is "to break down silos".

I am enlightened by a CTO who reminded me that silos are created for a purpose. The functional and hierarchical reporting lines (which reinforce silos) are needed to run the business. So no matter how we restructure a company, we need to find ways to connect employees across boundaries based on emerging needs, not just based on organisation structure.

The question is HOW? How do we get knowledge flow across boundaries, and let the knowledge reach the right person at the right time? 

In the past 10 years, I have been knowledge director for 3 different global companies, the senior management all want to improve knowledge and collaboration to increase value for the company. Somehow I begin to roll out social collaboration platform within large enterprises, and as I get close to the business, I touch on all aspects of the business (from sales, to product innovation, HR, learning, etc.) I realise my KM scope has changed. 

Last year, August, I published this book titled social strategies in action: driving business transformation. In this book, I outlined 13 different use cases how the use of social collaboration platform has transformed how work is done, how people share ideas, communication, share knowledge. As I speak at KM conferences and speak with knowledge managers. I got this response "Bonnie, you talk and your book is very interesting, but you are not talking about knowledge management." I am bemused.

I have been a knowledge manager (and eventually promoted to knowledge director) since 1995, I come out of library and information school, started as a cataloguer cataloguing medical books in a hospital library in Hong Kong, and eventually completed my PhD research on information seeking and use behaviour, joined Arthur Andersen Business Consulting to lead the KM program in Singapore/Asia, then move around various industry leading KM initiatives.

In the pass 10 years, although the job title had not changed, the scope of knowledge work has been transformed significantly:

• I see I am moving away from managing information, content, intranet, categories to managing communities, conversation and dialogue. 
• I see internal communication and engagement (and even marketing) being put under my knowledge management remit
• I see I am moving from managing specific knowledge repositories with a clearly define scope and boundaries, from managing a highly centralise intranet to managing an interconnected ecosystem that is organic and constantly changing
• My work is started to be labelled differently such as creating a digital workplace, building responsive organisation, defining the future of work. 

I wonder what is going on? What is KM becoming? What is my role? What is the role of my fellow knowledge managers / knowledge directors / CKO?

Do you share similar experience? Do you feel the change as I have experienced? More in my next blog post as I further reflect on my knowledge management journey....

My advice for someone new to Knowledge Management

Paul Corney, a great facilitator asked me recently: If you were talking to someone new to Knowledge Management what advice would you give them?’

Here is my response:

"My friend, if you stay focus on the business goals and understand what is high up on your management team's radar, you can make Knowledge Management whatever you want it to be. By the way, avoid using the term "knowledge management",  just talk about how best to connect, collaborate and share knowledge to get work done better and faster (and to develop talents). I have been in this field since 1996, I am regenerating myself every few years, I never have a dull moment. Go for it!"

My unconference reflection

I am grateful to #ResponsiveOrg for inviting me to the first London event on 10 May. It was a Saturday and over 150 people self select to spend one full day to discuss and exchange ideas on changing the way we work and creating a movement to build responsive organizations. It was the first time I participated in a full day unconference with no predefined agenda and speakers. The closest I have had similar experience was my hosting of a World cafe in Berlin last year Oct (Social Business Collaboration 2013 #wcsocbiz)

Coming out and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the end of the day, I ask myself what have I learned? How would I evaluate my own experience of a full day unconference?

What I like:
1. The novelty effect of allowing agenda to emerge and no pre-defined agenda
2. Setting interaction protocol at the beginning so participants understand they can "vote with their feet" and can move from one discussion group to another. This also set the expectation to the speakers that don't be hurt if people leave the session you host half-way into the discussion.
3. Some great discussions and ideas came out from the participants (some are thought leaders / prolific blogger in the field which I did not recognize initially; others are enthusiastic and have interesting point of view even though they have much less experience). Everyone is treated equal.

What I struggle with:
1. The ideas emerging are very similar. Many of the ideas are not new, they are common sense. (Perhaps I have already been reading their work on the Internet. Perhaps we are all converts and influence by the same authors).  I was hoping to hear more radical ideas and join in debate. Overall, there is not a lot of disagreement or controversial discussion. Everyone seems to be nice and polite.
2. How each session is conducted depends solely on the style of the facilitator. In certain sessions, some people talked a lot, others were quiet. I wonder how could we make the best use of the 1 hour+ facetime to have deeper dialogue, to listen to one another and give time for reflection on how the ideas relate to myself and my work.
3. There is a lot of talk, and it is not clear (nor it is the expectation at the beginning) that one need to identify actions to take. I guess a lot of participants leave with "So what? Now what? What is next?"

Wearing my practitioner's hat, I like some of the concepts and some of the experience I have had today. I wonder how I can bring some of the unconference concepts back to work to create/nurture/energize a global champions network to promote a new way of working (including promoting the usage of an enterprise social networking platform). My colleagues are busy and hardly can spend time to attend a full day training. I think they are going to find unconference too unstructured, too fluffy, too abstract, and lack of specific outcomes.

I think I need to tweak the approach, perhaps by considering the following:
1. Allowing emergence happen before the face to face event. E.g. Could the participants propose the discussion topic online prior to the unconference event?
2. Could the participants who put a discussion idea forward post a 1 min video prior the event to promote their discussion topics?
3. Could the discussion be facilitated with a more structured communication protocol. Eg Ensure everyone have a voice, provide a note taking form to encourage participants to jot down what they agree, disagree and actions they can take back to their workplace, people they want to follow up with.
(Note: my view is informed by Dr Brenda Dervin's Sense Making Methodology, for those who would    like to dig deeper, here is an article: http://tinyurl.com/odzdpno)

Is that just me who have the above thoughts? I wonder what other participants think?

I certainly have had a great experience today, and glad to meet so many Tweeter avatars face-to-face. Thank you to the organizer for giving me this experience!


I wonder what other participants think?

Positioning enterprise social collaboration at the heart of business transformation in 2014: Be mindful of 5 pitfalls

Since I published the book "Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation" (Ark Group) in Sept 2013, I had some in-depth discussions with business executives, technology leaders, social business consultants and in-house evangelists who have hands-on experience introducing and using social collaboration technologies to transform the way we work within companies.

Through these conversations, I am made aware of a gap in my book which on hindsight I should have paid more attention to. I have emphasised throughout the book that successful social business (defined as using "enterprise social collaboration platform" and introducing "collaborative way of working" to drive business transformation within companies) must align with the company's strategic business objectives. The question is how do we (as social business leaders) position enterprise social collaboration program as strategic and critical to deliver the company's business strategy, and how can we engage with the senior executives to establish the much needed strategic alignment?

This critical success factor is highlighted in a number of enterprise social media/social business conferences I have attended recently. Here is my observation:

1. In a typical panel discussion, increasingly, I noted the panel comprise of speakers talking about enterprise social collaboration platform being adopted in their global companies for over 5 years, as well as speakers who have just started the journey a few months back. 

2. These practitioners both share the passion in rolling out enterprise social collaboration in their organization, and interestingly, they ask similar questions. The company with more social business experience asks "Now what after 5 years? How we can ensure what we are doing still align with the business goals? How do we (re)engage with senior executives and demonstrate value?". The company with less social business experience asks "How do we start in a way that is business focussed, on strategy and enable the company to deliver his objectives? How do we engage the executives and show them the value of a different way of working?" 

To engage with the business executives on a strategic level, to get buy in from business, and to truly put social collaboration on executives' radar, here are the 5 pitfalls that enterprise social collaboration leaders (myself included) need to be very mindful of. I am keeping them in mind to guide my thinking and practice in 2014.

The 5 pitfalls are:

1. We are perceived as too passionate. As enterprise social collaboration leaders, we tend to see every opportunity that social collaboration can bring to an organization in a positive note. We see potential use cases to deliver business value and transform business anytime anywhere. We ask "how could employees work and communicate in outdated mode and waste so much time". I am full of passion to drive the change, but I have also learn that we should not forget the business executives, team leaders, functional heads have a business to run and a P/L to manage. For them, social collaboration is an enabler to deliver their business goals (and only if they see it can help them immediately). They don't need to be passionate about using the enterprise social collaboration platform like we do. We like them to be passionate about empowering their team and creating the right environment to deliver their goals. We need to be pragmatic, learn to re-set our expectations as to what we want the business executives to be passionate about. We can do so by seeing the world through the executive's eyes and thinking like an executive.

2. Social collaboration is not always "best practice". An experience senior executive reminded me that social collaboration is not a panacea to all business problems nor can it meet all business needs. Not all business activities require crowd-sourcing for input, not all business communication requires feedback and follow up discussion. Some companies have been effectively engaging with employees before social media technologies come into picture. We need to recognise and admit we are here to introduce appropriate communication tools for the right purpose. Listen carefully to the executives' needs and do not assume going social is "the only right way". I also learn one should not pitch social collaboration as if all existing communication practices are ineffective. Business executives can be pissed off. We need to learn to be humble, recognise existing strength and good practices, and present a more balanced view when introducing social as a better of working to address specific area of concern.

3. We tend to position ourselves as social business evangelists, it is time to position ourselves as executives and think like business executives. It is easy to suggest any enterprise wide social collaboration program need to align with the company business objectives. In practice, the alignment is often very difficult to achieve, especially in large companies where there are multiple products, sales and operations heads operating in multiple locations. Having direct access and buy-in from the CEO and the next level down is a great start. Having a mandate from the executive team that social collaboration is a key enabler to drive business performance is critical. To align with the business objectives, we need to focus on implementing early use cases that contribute directly to the success of the strategic initiatives that are on the executives' radar. Continuously demonstrate strategic alignment by reporting success alongside other established business reporting metrics. Very often, in the spirit of driving early adoption, we take a scattered gun approach to reach as many users as possible, which drives short term success, but unless this approach converge with the company's strategic business goals, the momentum will remain at a grassroots level and the benefits delivered become patchy or hidden to senior executives. The senior executives attention will soon fade away, and so will the social collaboration program.

4. Generic use cases are too bland to excite and drive behavioural change. As enterprise social collaboration becomes mainstream, consultants and social business leaders are sharing more use cases to illustrate the power of a different way of working. Unfortunately, many use cases I come across are too generic and out-of-context. For example, social collaboration can improve communication, employee engagement, document sharing, improve learning etc. They are too bland to create emotional attachment to get the executives excited and take further action. If this is about transforming the way we work, then the context to introduce social collaboration at work has to be artfully crafted to create a realistic image in your audience's heads. The business lingo we chosen to introduce these use cases are critical to get attention. I remember a colleague asked me, "So what does social collaboration really mean for a sales manager who are busy meeting clients and closing deals? Why should one be bothered?". Telling the sales manager to embrace social collaboration platform to improve document storage, sharing, commenting and findability is meaningless. In fact, he is probably doing all this by email. Explaining to him that he can address a telco client question faster by leveraging the global network, finding the winning sales presentation Tony (or insert any real name) has developed for a client based in Hong Kong and saving him 8 hours reinventing the wheel, and that he can keep his finger on the pulse on a key account (insert a real client name) and know the real-time insights the global sales team are gathering from client meetings will stimulate the sales manager and his whole team to want to come onboard. Social collaborations leaders need to be the "translator" to turn generic use cases into business-specific use cases. By doing so, we can show the executives vivid examples as to how benefits are delivered in real business context.

5. Driving change is extremely hard inside a company. Recognize this is a fact. There are many social business thought leaders and consultants who champion new ways of working and manage to get the CEOs buy-in to make an investment. However, once the enterprise-wide program is kicked off, the real change and resistance happen. I know of consultants/evangelists who are frustrated by the slow pace of change, and they complain about entrenched behaviours/culture. As a result, they move to other assignments only to find out they experience the same slow pace of change and get frustrated once more. We need to accept changing employees' day-to-day work habits is very very hard. We need to be determined to embrace the challenge, be persistent and even better learn to love the challenge. We should tell it like it is to the business executives who understand how hard it is to drive change. One executive suggests to me that it is helpful for the social collaboration leader to set expectation upfront that there are going to be numerous failures along the way amongst other emerging successful use cases. 

Thinking ahead as we enter 2014...

2014 is going to be an exciting year for us to reflect, consolidate and learn from the past 5 years as we strategically move forward and position social collaboration at the heart of business transformation agenda. 

Whether you are 5 years into your social business journey or just starting now, I hope by being mindful of the above pitfalls, you can build rapport with business executives and establish closer alignment with the business strategy.

Once you get the executives buy-in, there are other useful tips you can draw on to drive social business adoption within companies. You can read them in my book titled "Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation". You can download a free chapter here. I welcome your feedback. 

My new book "Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation"

I have not taken any vacation this summer because I want to take time to reflect. I want to pause and think and write down what I see, what I experience, and I hear from my peers as to how social media technologies have been utilised within companies to drive business transformation. The result is my new book (my publisher prefers to call it a report) titled "Social Business in Action: Driving Business Transformation" which has just been released. You can see the Table of Content and download a free chapter here.

When I read articles about social business, many of them focus on how marketing, PR or customer service team are using social media to reach and engage their target audience. This is not what my book is focussing on. There is not a lot of published examples as to how social media is being used within companies (behind the firewall). For those I am aware of, many are produced by consulting companies and they tend to be a bit high level. I know a lot of great work has been done within companies, but they are hidden and not easily accessible with the depth that is needed to guide practical actions. So I decide to put together 13 examples in this report. For each use case, I introduce what the business is trying to achieve,  what changes (sometimes quite unexpectedly and radical changes) are needed to drive a new way of working;  what worked and what did not work; and end with the lessons learned. 

These use cases, all showcasing how business transformation is happening from the inside out, cover a wider range of business areas and are all very very business focus. In other words, no social chit chatting, no sharing of grandma photos, and mostly not even the word "social" is being mentioned. I started reflected on practical examples around these 16 area, and eventually zoom down to 13 examples.

1. Innovation – crowdsourcing ideas from employees, inviting them to build on one another’s ideas and voting for the best;
   
2. Employee consultations – seeking input and ideas to drive improvement in business processes;
   
3. Online internal communications – increasing staff engagement with a new style of newsletter and executive communications;
   
4. Knowledge marketplaces – creating a place to allow people who do not know one another to interact, for example with a question and answer forum, or the ability to anyone a question at an ‘online water cooler’;
   
5. Expert communities – connecting people who share subject matter expertise so they can learn, discuss ideas, and share best practices and mistakes with one another;
   
6. Knowledge bases – using the social intranet to create and curate product and marketing materials and share them with the sales team. This can also include subject matter experts blogging their insights to reach a broader audience;
   
7. Product innovation and life-cycle management – enabling product teams to gain insights from client-facing teams to enhance products and build employees’ excitement to share new product releases; 
8. Expertise location – finding experts based on the content they share or comments the post; following experts so their updates and knowledge ‘follow’ the employees;
9. Events management – building and continuing momentum for strategy meetings or employee events;
10. Process improvement – streamlining business processes by bringing unconnected and fragmented processes, content, updates, meetings, all in one place, e.g. for account planning, safety logging, and risk management processes;
11. Project management – enabling project managers to connect with project team members, sharing updates, meeting minutes, project documents, and facilitating discussions;
12. Sales enablement – connecting the sales team to align priorities, developing account plans or pitch decks, connecting the global sales team to share client insights to spot opportunities (some call this ‘social CRM’), and sharing real time market and competitor insights;
13. Operational efficiency – reducing support costs, building a dynamic knowledge base, and improving response time to support questions;
14. Learning and development – enabling social learning to allow deeper self- reflection and learning from peers, enabling leaders to reflect and share leadership experience to help junior staff to learn, and improving job morale and job satisfaction by enabling employees to learn on-the-job in real-time;
15. Onboarding new hires – enabling new colleagues to tap into the global network on day one; and
16. Research and development – collecting market research and competitors’ insights from external sources and publishing latest research findings to reach followers.
    
    This is the first time I author a whole book, and the learning curve is huge for me. I welcome readers' comments (whether you resonate with the examples or not) and feedback (good or bad) to enhance my journey. Leave me a comment here.

Are we entering the age of superficial Enterprise 2.0 adoption?

I have been leading and driving the use of Enterprise 2.0 in a large complex bank in the past three years, and I have been watching closely how my peers are doing this in similar and different industries. Everything seems going well, the picture seems rosy. 

1. Research from McKinsey Research Institute titled The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies suggests a US$1.3 trillion of unlocked value for business to reap. 
2. Many large multinational companies and vendors declare success and have been sharing impressive adoption rate within a short deployment timeframe (e.g. 10 social leaders for 2013)
3. Others are starting their pilot and plan to move in the same direction. 

Compare to 2 years ago, I see we have come out of the "age of ignorance" when business leaders do not think they need to pay attention to the use of social media technologies within the firewall. We now enter the stage where business leaders want to do something about it, but not sure how best to do it so it is purposeful and embed it into the core business processes; and make it part of the employees' digital  workplace experience. 

With all the great examples/use cases I have orchestrated and many more examples implemented by others, I wonder are we heading into the right direction to use social technologies to transform business? or are we entering the age of superficial Enterprise 2.0 adoption? 

Some examples for you to consider:

1. Business are using the social technologies, however,  they can be using the social technologies to do exactly what they have been doing in the past (e.g. product information or marketing brochures sitting on static intranet is moved into the social intranet with like-for-like functionality and navigation design; executives communications are posted onto the social platform as "blogs" which are written in exactly the same old way; online discussions are hosted inviting employees to have their say and the "usual suspects" have a lot to say and the quiet group stay silent). Yes, social platform allows more content to being shared and become much more searchable. However, the fundamentals as how work gets done have not changed. 
2. Business want to leverage the power of their employees' network to gain insights, intelligence from people on the ground. Social platform are introduced to allow employees to easily provide comments, feedback, ideas. However, the perception is that as a result "there is just too much noise", and "we have to find the gems from the haystack". So who decide what are the "gems"? Most likely the seniors/subject matter experts who have the power, knowledge and who maintain the status quo. With all the good intention to drive efficiency and time savings, they want to eliminate the "noise" so our employees can find exactly what they want the employees to know quickly. So how is the business going to get any new insights when the experts already know what the "gems" are and also play a role to eliminate noise? 
3. Business are using the social platform to organically form communities around strategic initiatives, clients, projects, industries, functions etc. Many communities sprung up, many may have similar names, some have similar purposes, and they are set up as separate communities with no intention to connect. The social platform surface these hidden issues, it does not mean all communities with similar purpose must come together, but who is going to help to build bridges and facilitate the connection. How would companies break down silos?

I worry we have entered the age of superficial Enterprise 2.0 adoption. Social platforms are being used, the adoption rate is going up, but we are using the social platform in a sub-optimal way. (Think about how we use current technologies in a sub-optimal way: how many time wasting meeting do you attend each week? How many cc emails you should not sent or received? how many conferences you have been to that push powerpoint slides at you and you wonder what have you learn at the end of the day?)

I see opportunities to take Enterprise 2.0 to the next level, and this requires leadership, discipline, courage to transform business processes (ie not just embed social in the the existing business processes), rethinking of the digital workplace experience and it is going to be hard work to get there. 

If, like me, you are trying to figure out how best to make the social platform purposeful to your business, I find it useful to remind myself the focus should not only be on driving user adoption of the social platform, instead, it should be on redefining some fundamental work practices ('habits') such as: 

1. Reset communication protocols within your company: define what is considered appropriate to voice in public, what to share by email, make it clear to welcome dissent (public or private), invite views that contradicts the status quo, and treat them with respect (even if they are not taken up at the end)
2. Facilitate online conversation and communities: if you throw 500 people in a meeting room and ask them to talk, you can imagine the chaos, the loud people shout loudest, people talking over one another. It is no different online, to open the space for online conversation, set ground rules for participants and for the facilitators, ensure hidden voices are expressed, help each individual to make sense of others' contribution. This does not happen by chance, it has to be designed. 
3. Embrace change as the new constant, accept best practices can be outdated quickly (in weeks, not months): coach the subject matter experts/people who have a dominant voice in the organization to step back and listen, and have an open mind, watch the trends and activities in social ecosystem, make adjustment as they discover anytime new to refine existing best practices.  Social technologies when properly deployed provide agility, not just efficiency. 
4. Redefine business processes: coach managers not to assume the current business process is the most efficient way to run a function. These processes are designed based on existing  communication tools (namely email, phone, shared drives, intranet, collaboration sites), the business process does not need to stay the same way in a networked world. When a team/function embrace social technologies, it is also redefining their current business processes. The outcome is not going to be a more efficient process, but a different process.

Are you ready for the transformation?

This is not a recipe! What is the process to develop a knowledge management strategy?

I was recently asked to share my personal views on the process to develop a knowledge management strategy with some university students in 5 minutes. I have written up these thoughts so I thought I should post to my blog in case my blog readers are also interested in this topic.

Based on my experience formulating and executing KM strategy in the past 15+ years, here are my thoughts. Please do not take this as a recipe, use it to inform your thinking if it helps. 

Typical process to develop a KM strategy is as follow:

(a) seek senior executive's buy in, especially the CEO, the senior executive in charge of transforming the business model. Confirm the commitment to support the delivery of a KM vision, and recognise there are tons of resistance along the way.

(b) articulate in very simple terms (visually if possible) what KM means to the business. Companies define KM in different ways, from data/information management, collaboration, social business, communities of practice, business intelligence, market research to people development/human capital management. Most companies include a number of these components in the KM strategy. There is no one size fit all KM definition, so it needs to make clear what this KM vision is.

(c) align 100 percent with the business strategy and direction. KM is a means to an end, the end game is where the company wants to head towards. Any KM projects which derive from the KM strategy have to clearly enable the delivery of the business strategy whether it is to increase revenue, improve staff engagement, improve customer service, sales enablement or process improvement.  Work extremely closely with the senior executives who are in charge of these business goals. Show them the possibilities using internal and external use cases to get buy in.

(d) measure the success and report the success along the way. Set KM goals and targets which align with business goals, show the direct connections. this is easier said than done, capture and share stories to highlight early benefits along the way. Make these stories part of the reporting. Celebrate success to create buzz. In all my KM roles, I have collected numerous testimonials from employees to show how KM has benefited them and increase their work productivity.

(e) stay flexible with the KM strategy, business and external market conditions changes very quickly nowadays, stay align with any changing business directives. Be ready to drop certain initiatives and bring in new initiatives as the business needs arise.

(f) don't forget to build the bottom up groundswell. Buld personal engagement with staff of all levels, get to know them in person, understand their pain points and their information needs. Encourage them to participate, seek their feedback along the way, ask them to show others the way. Recognise their contribution. They are critical advocates to make any KM program works, ultimately they allow the top down strategy and the bottom up needs to be met. Most importantly, any KM program's ultimately empower every individual staff to work better (not just the senior executives).

What do you think? Do you share similar views? Are there things that I miss out? Let me know.

The end of business as usual: is it possible in the workplace? (Part 2)

Continuing from my last blog, I wonder if the 10 steps to use social media in the consumer world could work within the firewall. (Sorry for the long delay to publish this blog, I drafted it long way back, but have been finessing my thoughts for a long while).

1. Working as a team at work, it is about getting things done. If you are the team lead and you want the members to get their work done (enabled by social platform), do you consider why your team members want to engage with you (other than the fact you are the defacto leader). What would make your team willingly engage with you even if you are not in your position? Could it be working with a leader who cares, who is inspiring, who help their team members to develop and grow in their job.... Have you considered why your staff want to engage with you? Do you bother? Why should your staff bother? Do you invest in content and in engagement? (This also speaks to point number 9)

2. What brings people together at work is based on projects, functions, tasks to deliver specific business goals. Good conversation within a team help every team member to see their purpose, how they can play a part, and answer what's in it for me. How many managers and/or team members do this effectively offline in face-to-face events/meetings? Can we assume we can/will have great conversation online because your company is rolling out a new social platform....?  (This also speaks to point number 8)

3. Identify who are the influencial people in your organization who can make or break the initiative you are trying to roll out. Find out who they are, and then create a dialogue online (on the social platform) that is mutually beneficial. We know how to do this offline, go and talk to the key stakeholders, influence them, convince them, get them on your side, get them share their support in important meetings. Can we replicate this model online? Start a conversation, get the key stakeholders to comment postively to show "public" support. This is all about reinforcing existing power structure. What is interesting is to discover "influential people" who may not be in power, but attracts a lot of followers/interaction in a specific topical area but whom you do not know personally, they are the additional people to watch and engage.... They create the new rule of the game in a networked organization. How do you think the people in power would think/feel? Smart leaders will leverage the power of these hidden network.

4. Study what best practices other organisations are embracing internal social platform to transform their business model. McKinsey has published a great report on "unlocking the value of social networks", it is definitely worth reading. Also share early success examples to make it real for the late adopters (or people who do get it initially) to come on board.

5. Translate early learning into opportunities to share with business executive. Yes, this is so needed in any internal social platform roll out to continue to get senior support and buy in. Unfortunately, the measurement and reporting system in a traditional company does not help to present the value created by social business, I don't think we have a measurement and reporting model which can showcase the benefits of emergence yet! (David snowden certainly is doing great work in this area, I do not see any other examples. If you know of any, leave a comment here)

6. Listen to what the employees are saying to identify insights and opportunities. The social platform allow these voices to bubble up. Who's responsibility is it to listen to the voice of employees ( and I do not mean an annual HR survey)? Employees are chattering about business intelligence, competitors movement, latest wins and losses, customers' feedback, have your company invested in an approach to analyse and bring these intelligence shared into insights? Are these insights funnel to the right function for action? Who is in charge?

7. Observe what social tools are used by the employees. Give employees the tools they need to get their work done. This does not mean you force one single platform to do everything. Instead, make the social platform part of their day-to-day experience, make it part of their email, mobile experience.

8. See above

9. See above

10. Give employees value in using the social platform which they cannot get anywhere. It has to add value to each individual. And each individual will get something different out of it!

The conclusion is that these 10 steps are as relevant to introduce social platform internally within an enterprise. However, I would argue that the maturity level is so much lower than in the consumer world, and it is going to take a long time to change, especially in these area:
- invest in content and engagement with employees (We have managing employees in a "mechanistic" way since the industrial revolution. Here is an opportunity to go back to basic and treat each employee as valuable living breathing human beings with passion, dreams and emotions and listen to what they can offer)
- good dialogue (Good leaders do it all the time. Look around the workplace, and you notice that most dialogue is one-way, directional, with no give-and-take. Here is the opportunity to bring back two way dialogue and listening in the workplace)

This is tough. Not only seniors have to change, employees have to "unlearn" and take responsibility 

Companies are way ahead in the consumer world to embrace social technologies, including defining the processes and new roles to listen, engage and serve the customers. Within the firewall, whilst new social platform is being put in place, the required change in management practices has yet to catch up to fully realise the potential.

The end of business as usual: is it possible in the workplace?

I was reading brian Solis blog titled "this is the end of business as usual and the beginning of a new era of relevance.

http://www.briansolis.com/2012/11/this-is-the-end-of-business-as-usual-and-the-beginning-of-a-new-era-of-relevance/

In this blog, he focuses on the consumer world and how social media has required people to adopt 10 Steps Toward New Relevance:
1. Answer why you should engage in social networks and why anyone would want to engage with you
2. Observe what brings them together and define how you can add value to the conversation
3. Identify the influential voices that matter to your world, recognize what’s important to them, and find a way to start a dialogue that can foster a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship
4. Study the best practices of not just organizations like yours, but also those who are successfully reaching the type of people you’re trying to reach – it’s benchmarking against competitors and benchmarking against undefined opportunities
5. Translate all you’ve learned into a convincing presentation written to demonstrate tangible opportunity to your executive... make the case through numbers, trends, data, insights – understanding they have no idea what’s going on out there and you are both the scout and the navigator (start with a recommended pilot so everyone can learn together)
6. Listen to what they’re saying and develop a process to learn from activity and adapt to interests and steer engagement based on insights
7. Recognize how they use social media and innovate based on what you observe to captivate their attention
8. Align your objectives with their objectives. If you’re unsure of what they’re looking for…ask
9. Invest in the development of content, engagement
10. Build a community, invest in values, spark meaningful dialogue, and offer tangible value…the kind of value they can’t get anywhere else. Take advantage of the medium and the opportunity!

All 10 steps point to one simple fact - there is a major shift in empowering the consumers, companies have to learn to listen, engage and give them what they want!

I wonder how much we can apply these 10 steps when introducing social platform within the workplace, when groups and team come together to get things done (whether to create new solution, serve clients' needs, solve a problem, set the strategy, execute an initiative), but not necessarily working as "equals" (and so the power structure and individual ego kicks in).

In the next blog, I will assess to what extent do these 10 steps are useful to guide the introduction of social platform inside an enterprise.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment here.

What is the future of information professionals?

What do information professionals do? What do others think we do? What should we be doing now? What is our future? How should we define it?

Information professionals seem to be undergoing enormous transformation in the past 15 years as internet/mobile technologies and social media open up new ways to communicate, share, seek and use information on personal, community-based and global-level. Personally, I think the major shift is not about technology, it is how we redefine information from "static, objective" information that we can manage as objects to "communicative" information whereby information is a "process of becoming" (the process to inform, to understand, to share common struggles, to look for facts, to look for multiple perspectives etc). Through this "communicative" process, the user who look for information changes, the information being retrieved takes on new meaning in new context, and even the author of the information can increase their own understanding of the information they've shared as they learn and listen to the users. This shift is fundamental, it is still ongoing (accelerated with the rise of social media usage), and it requires a rethink of the role of information professionals in creating value for your companies or stakeholders.

What should information professionals be doing (or should have been doing) if we embrace this alternative approach to define information? Where are the future opportunities?

First of all, let's do not start thinking about us, us, us - the information professionals. Let's switch our attention to understand where the problems are which require our users to engage with information (and with the author of the information).

Based on personal experience working with business executives, middle management, knowledge workers, enterpreneurs, educators and parents, these are problems they face:
1. How do I stay agile in an ever changing external market? There is so much information (facts, opinions, news, advertisment, comments) out there, how do I pay attention to what matters to me/my business to stay ahead of the game and make the best decision?
2. How can I enable my workforce to connect and share information to drive revenue growth and avoid reinventing the wheel or making the same mistakes?
3. How do I get my messages/directives across to my team/workforce (as well as customers) and make them pay attention to it and take action, when they are facing "information/email overload" and ever increasing workload in their day-to-day work?
4. How can I function effectively as a knowledge worker when there is so much relevant information/experts out there which I will never have the time to fully understand (or to connect with the experts)? and at the same time there is so much "junk" information out there that creates noise? How do I stay on top of the game?
5. How do I educate my children/students on the best/worst practices to engage with information (and with other people) on internet/social media sites when I have limited exposure and understanding of these tools myself?

I think these real emminent problems present the opportunities for information professionals to lead and exert positive influence on the world now in the future, starting now. The opportunities are:

1. Be a strategic partner of business leaders - help to resolve real business problems whether it is cost pressure, retaining talents, innovation or improve team collaborate or internal communication.
.
2. Offer new perspectives and practical solutions to enable and facilitate knowledge sharing in the organization in the context of people's day-to-day work - it goes beyond managing document repositories, intranets, library and information center. It requires us to play a role in shaping a company's strategic IT roadmap, business model, communication practices, talent development programme, innovation and more.

3. Be a trsuted advisor in helping senior/middle managers to understand what/how to share information to engage with their team/workforce (and customers) in the networked world? Can we help them to be successful without taking credit away from them?

4. Be a champion of new way of working - Many of the employees do not grow up with training how to seek, use and engage with experts using a range of new technologies, they do not feel comfortable with the change. Can we help every individual to be more effective? more critical when engaging with information? Can we share ways to relieve painpoints and encourage them to empower themselves and continuously learn in the networked world? If we don't do it, who will?

5. Partner with educators to prepare our students for now and in the future - The fact that milleniums and new recruits grow up using internet/social media does not mean that they are reflective of how they use and share information in the public online space. Can we partner with educators to bring the awareness and prepare them from unintended consequences?

I see opportunities everywhere. Our challenges are:

1. Do we have the skills and competence ourselves to become the trusted advisors? Are we ready to lead and have the confidence to partner with business leaders. Can we get a seat at the senior table?

2. We cannot just talk, we need to demonstrate by showing what we can offer, and show the results as a result of our intervention. We need to share examples where it works. We cannot be seen as "idealistic".

Why I still believe information professionals should fill this gap and lead the world into the future? It is because:

1. We understand the history, the past, and how information has evolved. The best people to solve tomorrow's problem is the ones who understand the history and where we are today, and how we get here.

2. Traditional information management is a subset of the future solution, and we understand it very well. Progressive information professionals building on our strength (and awareness of potential weaknesses) when designing innovative information solutions such as social intranet, interactive information centers which seamlessly integrate in user journey, collaboration, social network etc, many of us are already in the frontier.

There is only one thing which hinder us from leading in the new world, i.e. our own confidence and our own committment to help shape the world. Information professionals out there, are you ready? Leave me a comment here.

I don't understand social business...

"I really don't get it" said a colleague. "it does not wow me." "May be I am slow, tell me what value does it add in the work context?" Some confess "I am not using social media in my personal live, I am not sure I can manage it at work..." I know a lot of friends who are interested in the potential power of using social platform in the business setting, however, they have not experienced its power yet and they are not sure where to start. To help to make it real, I look for great videos to explain the concept, read books, mckinsey's research report (unlocking the value of social business) and thought leadership blog (@johnstepper, @euan), collect use cases where it work for companies, and I share those stories. I realise no matter how much I try to say, and try to explain the value that embracing social platform can brings to companies, and how much I try to explain how twitter or LinkedIn or blogging works, the starting position has always been positioning my colleague (who is willing to learn) to look from "outside" in, as if social platform can be learned objectively and experience as an outsider (perhaps even like an objective scientist) trying to understand how it all works. What is missing? Unless one swim in it, you will never get it. Trying to teach people conceptually how twitter or blogsphere work is really pointless. The best training manual wont cut it. To really learn how social media works for you personally, you have to look at it from "inside", ie look inside in. Why? Because social platform is personal. Try look at your friend's or colleague's activity stream or twitter homepage, it makes no sense to you and it is full of noise. Of course, they are not meant for you to consume or interact with. When you start to share your thoughts, and when you receive responses and comments to the area which interest you (personally and/or professionally) and you truly care about, you will get your first aha moment. Until then, you will continue to observe as an outsider and wonder what's in it for me. Do you agree with me? leave me a comment here.

Leadership 2.0 in ACTION: A journey from knowledge management to “Knowledging”

Here is an abstract and link to a full paper which I co-authored with Dr Brenda Dervin. Cheuk, B. & Dervin, B. (2011). Leadership 2.0 in Action: a Journey from Knowledge Management to "Knowledging“. Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL), Vol 3, No 2 (2011). http://kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/article/view/107/87 Leadership 2.0 is a set of alternative management values and practices driven by a set of coherent assumptions about the nature of human communication. In this paper, the authors argue that Leadership 2.0 is critical to make Web2.0 work. This paper is informed by Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology (SMM) as an approach to design knowledge sharing platform incorporating Web2.0 features which allow user-generated content and have a stronger emphasis on collaboration and interaction amongst users. SMM is a philosophically derived approach which allows knowledge management (KM) researchers and practitioners to more fully understand and listen to user’s needs so as to inform the design of dialogic KM practices and systems to promote knowledge sharing. This paper presents a “Safety Moment” project to illustrate how SMM has been applied to inform the design of a Web2.0 enabled ‘knowledging’ application in Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the world’s largest all-environmental consulting firm. The project discussed has been implemented since January 2008 as part of ERM’s commitment to improve Health & Safety Performance to ensure all ERM employees, contractors and clients are safe at work. The use of SMM informed Web2.0 application has correlated with increased staff satisfaction, increased company reputation and reduced risks. If you have the chance to read this paper, I like to invite you to share your comments with me and the blog readers. Do you share my experiences? Do you have different experiences to share? How do what we have shared in this paper connect with your work, your life, your organization?

Social business in the enterprise: two stories

There has been a lot of interests introducing social platform within enterprise to improve knowledge sharing and business interaction. Putting in place the tools are relatively easy, identifying the opportunity to use interactive 2.0 tools to add value to the business is an art (as it requires good understanding of business needs and organisation culture), ensuring the online interaction/conversation is authentic, meaningful, genuine and deep is the hardest.

Here are two stories to get me/you recognise the challenges in using 2.0 tools to flatten hierarchy:

1. A senior executive is hosting an online discussion with his global team. He invites everyone to ask questions and leave comments relating to a strategic topic. One staff has a question, but instead of posting on the forum, the staff feels more comfortable sending the question to his line manager, asks his line manage to review and edit the question before he posts it up to the forum. What intrigue me is that on one hand the senior executive wants to break down hierarch using the forum, on the other hand, the hierarchical structure continues to reinforce the norm to seek line manager's approval before one can speak, and even so, what he posts up is not his authentic voice. Does the discussion forum achieve the purpose of supporting 2-way dialogue to break down hierarchy?

2. A blogger posts a blog post with a controversial title which gives the impression that he does not agree with a senior executive's judgement. Within 24 hours after the blog post went up, the blogger receives a call from someone working in senior executive office sharing the feedback that blog post may give the wrong impression to other readers and suggests the blogger to edit the blog title. What intrigue me is that many enterprise wants to promote blogging to improve knowledge sharing, but on the other hand are not ready to tolerate diverse views and perspectives. What is the point of blogging when blog posts can only agree with the status quo?

It is a long journey for business to go social within the enterprise (Euan Semple asks us to be patient in his recent blog), because it is not system implementation, it is not even cultural change, it is a fundamental change in how the hierarchy works and how every individual interact with one another and establishing new norms. And when we get there, it is going to be satisfying to look back and realize so much has evolved and everyone has changed.

My Reflection on the Asia Pacific Online Information Conference 2011

I had the opportunity to attend and present in the first Asia Pacific Online Information Conference 2011. After 2 intensive days, I finally got a chance to sit back and reflect on what I have learnt from this event. However, I have to admit that I have procrastinated in publishing this post until today.

1. Robert Hillbard talked about information-driven business. Diane Cmor talked about information literacy as a practice and mindset to effective seek and use information. What strike me is that information is generally recognized as a strategic asset, to turn this recognition into action, information professionals working in different settings can play a strategic role to (a) help identify what information is critical to deliver preferred business/organization outcomes; (b) evaluate how accesible is this critical information; and (c) present/visualize the value of making the critical information available. If one can grab senior executives' attention to invest in making the critical information flow, and result in investment in appropriate programs to make it happen, we can truly show the value information professionals can add to business, society or institutions.

2. In my own keynote presentation, I emphazied that to make Enterprise 2.0 work, we need Leadership 2.0. Preparing this talk makes me thinking deeper about Leadership 2.0, which I have been advocating for a number of years that it requires leaders to open up the communication space, to value diverse views and ready to be surprised. In my view, they are important but they are not enough to take E2.0 to the next level. Open up the space does not necessarily lead to good conversation. Good conversation has to be well facilitated to allow diverse voice to emerge, allow the participants to connect with one another's ideas as well as to self reflect. Good conversation goes beyond spontaneous dialogue. This is easier said than done online for 3 reasons: (1) most people think 2.0 is easy and intuitive, having faciltiated or structured online dialogue does not seem to align with the idea that 2.0 conversation is easy; (2) designing and facilitating good online conversation requires preparation and investment (which 2.0 team may not have considered nor budgeted for); and (3) good conversation can be intense and result in deep learning and change in awareness, it is valuable but the learning experience for the participants can be demanding.

Overall, I really enjoy meeting old friends from Singapore and meeting information professionals in hong kong and get to spend time with other keynote speakers to exchange ideas. What we all share is a passion that information is a strategic asset for organisations, and that we can play a part to bring this asset to the forefront.

Social media challenges for leaders

My experience working with many senior executives leading government departments, professional consultancies and banks tell me that as more and more communciation channels / social media emerge, the leaders face challenges on multilevel. First, they need to develop an awareness of what's new and figure out what it is. Then, they need to think strategically about the potential to introduce new communication channels in the organization context to add real value and achieve top line and bottom line outcomes. And once a decision is made to embrace these new channels, the implementation can be a challenge too for early adopters as you don't have examples to follow. New technologies open up new possibitilies and very often challenge existing leadership model, current business processes and resulting in greater organization change than one anticipate. Turning a concept from napkin paper to reality requires putting the righ team, having the strategic focus and persistence to get there. I know of many companies who are struggling to figure out how to use twitter-like or facebook-like applications within the enterprise setting. It is this part of innovation that excites me personally.
 
The leaders also face a number of dilemna when introducing new communication channels. Typical questions include: Should I open up more channels and encourage more conversation from all staff members versus should I focus on facilitating quality and purposeful conversation? Should I promote nice conversation to create a happy-clappy team cultue versus should I ritualize dissent, surface diverse voice, promote debate so that difficult and controversal ideas and topics emerge and can be dealt with earlier? How much can I (or should I) control and moderate the conversation? Bottomline, these new technologies are asking leaders to go back to the basic, and think deeper about what it means to have two-way genuine dialogue with your staff and with your clients.
 

Information Literacy in the Workplace Context

A friend who is passionate about "information literacy" in the education context recently asked me "Do you have any view on the impact of information literacy or is being addressed in the corporate/business world?"

My interest in information literacy started in mid-1990s when I was exploring my PhD research topic, eventually I specialize in knowledge management (or I prefer to call it knowledge sharing) and focus on helping workers within companies to share and use information effectively . His question made me think more about information literacy in the workplace context.

My response is yes, information literacy is very important and has high impact in the corporate/business world. Knowledge workers interact with information all the time. Information is exchange in business conversation as well. Information literacy can improve knowledge workers' work productivity. On a more strategic level, management team which invest in building a company's capability to share, organize and disseminate information drive innovation, expedite learning, avoid repeating mistakes can result in competitive advantage and reap tangible benefits.

However, the phrase "information literacy" which library and information professionals tend to use is disguised under many different names (e.g. understanding of information use policies/legal and compliance guidelines, awareness of information resources, research and information organizing skills, writing reports, visualizing data/findings, knowledge management, collaboration, marketing and business intelligence scanning, communication and presenation skills, and more recently social media awareness and understanding the implication of its use). I can add more to this list.... but you get what I mean. Some of these information literacy skills are required more in certain role than the others, but no matter what you do, they are required at different times.

How "information literacy" is being addressed in the workplace, I have not heard of any "information literacy" curriculum that companies run for staff , and I don't think it is the right approach either. Information literacy is so embedded in our day to day work that it cannot be separated as something different. The challenge for educators is: how can you prepare students with information literacy skills/mindset so that they can be effective in the workplace context (and in their day-to-day lives). Information literacy education really need to be embedded seamlessly in the whole education curriculum.

I wonder what do you think? I love to hear your views to refine my thinking.