Andy Jankowski, Co-Author
“Human communities depend upon diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson
Since social software tools speed idea sharing throughout an organization, they multiply opportunities for employees to get things done better together, hone skills and receive wider recognition. In so doing, the company culture becomes more open, productive and tight-knit. Smart firms are viewing their employees as ardent, articulate and connected internal and external ambassadors of their personal and company brand. In so doing companies optimize and retain their top talent.
See how you can move your corporation more swiftly towards social, by adapting one or more of the approaches that Kare Anderson heard at the BusinessNext conference she co-hosted with Mark Fidelman and that social enterprise strategist, Andy Jankowski, augmented with his insights.
“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” ~ Eric Hoffer
“Intelligence will become more and more collective; innovation and order will become more and more bottom up.” ~ Matt Ridley
BASF, a multinational chemical corporation, made a major move towards social by using IBM Connections to create, “a comprehensive internal online business network for employees to share knowledge, collaborate, and unify the company,” according to Social Business by Design co-author and chief strategy officer at The Dachis Group, Dion Hinchcliffe. Connect.BASF is one of the most extensive internal enterprise communities. According to Hinchcliffe, “this online system included information rich, social media-style employee profiles, status updates, communities of interest, searching and tagging capabilities, blogs, forums, bookmarks, file sharing, and wikis.” While the company hoped to increase worker efficiency and company value, yet Hinchcliffe knew that would only happen if employees were motivated to participate. That’s why BASF focused on showing employees specific ways they could perform their jobs better, using the tools.
“We tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never get solved yet sometimes we are able to solve a deep problem because what I don’t know is what the person to my left or right does.” ~ Peter Senge
“Collaborative cultures accelerate the evolution of ideas, because they nurture cross pollination. Competitive cultures slow down the rate of evolution by locking their ideas away.” ~ David Hodgson
IBM has been an early adopter of social enterprise initiatives. One of its newest initiatives, IBM Voices, is to “efficiently capture and share employee and customer insights in real time and in context of a particular business topic” according their director of enterprise social programs, Ethan McCarty. His bold goal is to create a dashboard where employees can more swiftly discover the latest news and thinking on topics most relevant to them via the aggregation of internal and external social streams that are represented on that dashboard.
That’s important for enterprise to encourage and capture the value of employees as company ambassadors. Observes McCarty, “We are all experiencing the convergence of organizational brand & culture with personal identity that is unprecedented — and the organizations that will win in this era of greater data transparency, permanence, velocity and discoverability will be those that can attract and retain people who improve company culture by embodying the company’s character. Essentially, social brand strategists need to create intentional systems of engagement that share benefit with employees and allow these individuals to contribute positively to how the brand is experienced.”
This project boosts that opportunity. As McCarty explains, “What is particularly interesting are the data visualization possibilities that exist with this type of aggregation. We are currently experimenting with various kinds of interfaces and visuals that could be used to help make better sense of all this dynamic content, filter it, categorize it, and present it in a multitude of ways.” That way any employee can tap the wisdom of the crowds most relevant to their immediate task plus, via this condensation of near real-time information, tap the synchronicity of seeing unexpected problems or opportunities.
“Those that regularly come into contact with people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up with innovative ideas.” ~ Steven Johnson
As 3M's social media leader, Greg Gerik told Jason Compton “We're very tribal, and we like to huddle around a table and solve problems. That lends itself to two huge advantages: Our culture is collaborative, and we have the mind-set of integrating the voice of the customer.”
More pervasively powerful than solo social media marketing, such bold initiatives for transforming whole enterprises, from the inside out, into social organization will have far more pervasive effects on us as workers and as consumers. After all business success is ultimately about how individuals can perform. Key is how well we, as workers, can participate in the design, use and benefits of a holistic approach to staying competitive, as companies and as individuals.
“Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.” ~ William Butler Yeats
The more that we, as the new “social workers” can see and successfully suggest holistic models for adoption in our own company, the greater the chance that we can use our best talents with others, and choose to stay at a firm, doing meaningful work together. That recognition circles us back to the beginning of this column where we cited Teresa Amabile’s recommended path for a company to ensure that employees are high-performing and happy with their bosses and peers, and find their work meaningful.