it lunatics

Barriers to Corporate Use of Social Media - A debunking by tweetpr

While scanning through Twitter, I found a very interesting article by tweetpr on "Debunking the Social Media Barriers."  It focused on the 44% of companies who stated they would probably or definitely not use social media in a recent CEO Survey by PRWeek.  PRWeek followed up by asking them what they considered to be the most serious barriers holding them back.

Here they are:

• 44.5% said they consider it lack of relevance to target stakeholder groups.
• 37% said they are concerned about losing control of the message.  
• 28% said they were concerned about return on investment (ROI)  
• 22.5% said they were concerned about lack of knowledge and capability within the company.
• 19% said they were concerned about the lack of knowledge and capability within the public relations, advertising, and/or other marketing agencies the company works with.  

David does a great job in debunking these barriers.  I especially liked his discussion on controlling the message.  Consumers gained their own megaphone with the advent of Web 2.0 and consumer generated content.  Companies no longer control the message; it is a shared conversation with all of us.

So...what reasons does your company, organization, or group use social media to join the conversation?

 

Deparately Seeking Simplicity...the black sock syndrome

I went to go get dressed this morning and I quickly grabbed a set of socks from my sock drawer.  I thought I was grabbing a pair of navy blue socks in our darkened room, but once I got them into a good light, I saw that I grabbed a pair of black socks.  I went back to my sock drawer, this time in better light, and saw that there were only two kinds of socks...black and white.

Our daughter often does the laundry, including folding and putting them away.  What happened was that she did the laundry and matched the socks she found.  After that, she put all of the singles in a wash-basket to be sorted later.  I found the basket kind of buried in the laundry room and found a rainbow of colors.  I didn't find a quick match, so I went on with my black socks.

I remember being at a training event once.  Everyone was asked to tell some strange habit they had.  Mine was taking pictures of a miniature llama on my trips across the world (this is a picture of Dolly at Abu Simbel during our trip to Egypt).  Another man said that he only wore black socks and white socks.  Everyone laughed at him and thought it was a little silly.  But he explained..."look, it is too hard to match socks and find the right ones.  So I buy blacks socks that are all the same kind and white socks that are all the same.  It makes matching socks very easy."  I guess I fell victim to the same issue.

During my morning of reflecting on this strange occurrence, it struck me.  The same thing happens in our personal and professional lives.  We are constantly working to strike a balance between variety and simplicity.  We seek to explore the new, but will streamline our lives to make it easier for us to cope with all the complexity we face.

Companies do the same thing.  They seek to streamline the number of options to make it easier to manage.  Instead of offering different services to different types of users, they make everyone use the same "vanilla" solution.  Why do they make salespeople carry the same bulky laptops as the folks in the corporate office?  Why do they make everyone use SharePoint, when a wiki could suffice?  It all comes down to simplicity and control.

So I took a break from writing this post and went to work.  On the way, I listened to the new Six Pixels of Separation podcast from Mitch Joel.  He played an interview with Arielle Eckstut, one of the founders of the amazing LittleMissMatched, on his podcast. 

LittleMissMatched started with the premise of “Why do we have to wear matching socks, anyway? Maybe matching is overrated?!”  They sell socks in sets of three which allow three choices for a pair instead of just one. Suddenly socks aren’t just boring socks, but a means to self-expression and creativity.

Could the same concept apply to our work and home lives?  Can we identify flexible tools that allow us to mix and match them together?  Is there a way that we can pick a few very flexible tools that can serve a number of purposes?  In other words, can we simplify the palette of tools yet allow for greater creativity?

Web 2.0 tools may allow for this "divergent simplicity" but I think the jury is still out.  Can people make the shift to more flexible tools and then allow their creativity to take them to new heights of productivity?  Microsoft has created structure and interconnectivity between specialist tools to assist people in adopting a suite of office applications.  Are we able to diverge from this habit and be able to adopt "Technicolor" applications that can allow for both divergence and simplicity.

Old Habits Die Hard. Why?

Today I am working through a simple problem.  How do you get people to adopt a new way of doing work?  If they believe that their current behaviors are fine, how do you get them to "see the better way" and start to change?  How do you get them to adapt their current behaviors to be more efficient, more collaborative, or more effective by doing something different.

I know there is a lot of literature on the subject but it does seem very esoteric.  Whether it is "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoff Moore or "Heart of Change" by John Kotter, it seems to provide a nice cookie cutter approach to drive adoption but seldom seems to work in reality.  Most of the time I would attempt to blame myself for not doing a "good enough" job, but is this true.  In other words, why do more good things die before they ever have a chance.

That got me to thinking...  Why do people hate to change?  I just bought "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath, but I didn't start it yet.  So I am left on my own with my own experience...Star Trek.

I remembered several Star Trek Next Generation episodes where Commander Data explained friendship.  Commander Data (for you non-Trekkies out there) is the android member of the crew who seeks to become more human.  While he does not have emotion, he does try to explain what people mean to him and why he is feeling at a loss when someone dies or leaves the Enterprise.

Commander Data describe friendship as "As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The inputs eventually are anticipated. And even 'missed' when absent."

Are we the same way when it comes to our habits and work patterns?  Even when we know we can do something better, do we fall into old habits because it is the path of least resistance when we attempt to process it in our brains.  I asked a few people about this phenomenon and they remark that they often conduct many common tasks on "automatic."  This allows them to use more of their brainpower on more important tasks or problems instead of thinking about more mundane ones.  When we attempt to switch these patterns, we feel lost and sometimes at a loss without any real reason why.  In other words, we are disrupting the pattern.

I think that is why Moore's curve exists (explaining the bell curve of adoption of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority & laggards.)  Innovators and early adopters prevent those patterns from ever forming.  Instead, their pattern is always to look for the "new."  The other three segments have established patterns which need interrupted and reformed for adoption to occur.

To really make change work, we need to either hijack the already established habit or interrupt it so dramatically that change can occur.  As we think about using Web 2.0 tools in our workplace, we need to figure out how to move from a "PC application and e-mail" pathway of collaboration to a "web-based" process.  I think simple tools like Facebook help in getting people to interact on-line.  Now, how do we hijack it to turn it into a true "Work 2.0" work.

Thoughts?

Practical uses of blogs and wikis for everyday work

I am working through a number of projects this week which all focus on a simple question:  "What is a practical way to use blogs and wikis for my work?"  This often springs from a desire to use the latest, greatest and cheapest tools while still looking technologically advanced.  I have this tool, but I just am not quite sure what to do with it.

The pat answer would be, "what are your business needs and requirements?" and moving on from there.  But I think the issue is a little broader than that.  I was reading the July/Aug 2008 issue of Fast Company (one of my favorite and only off-line subscriptions), and came upon the article "Anchor and Twist" by Dan & Chip Heath.  These are the guys that wrote the book "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die."

The basic idea is relatively simple and fits with all the habit formation theory that's out there:  Anchor the idea in the familiar and twist it enough to be novel and innovative.

So, let's tie this back to blogs and wikis.  Almost everyone in the business world works on teams.  They meet, develop documents and slide decks, send e-mails and work off a timeline to get stuff done. 

In other words we:

• We meet together to plan or review.
• We create stuff and send to others for comments.
• We refine our work before sending for approval.
• We discuss how we are doing and what to do next.

Yes this is oversimplified, but it kind of repesents the 80% of what we do at work.  Instead of thinking about blogs and wikis as "new gadgets," why don't we think of them as potential replacements for what we do?  What are the cheap, easy, and simple replacements to meet, create, refine, and discuss our work?

• Meet -> move from physical to virtual using LiveMeeting, ooVoo, or Skype.
• Create & Refine-> attachment to on-line using wikis (word docs), Zoho or Google Docs.
• Discuss -> use blogs and rss feeds to keep a running project update and capture discussions.

Now, link it all to e-mail (links for meeting invites, links to documents, or even allowing people to e-mail the blog to create entries) and you have now pretty much anchored it back into the current habit.  Yes, there is still a learning curve, but if you ground education in a way that shows them how to do it similiar totheir current habit, it will likely work.

Is this really off-base?  Is this really radical?  I don't think so.  I think I am going to keep track of what I do over the next couple days, and see if they fit in the topics.  If so, the big question is:  Is it really that simple?

OK...It is time to meet Charlie!

Meet Charlie is a presentation I ran across about a year ago when starting to look at Web 2.0 and trying to figure out how it can be used in an Enterprise context.  We were asked by a client to think about how to launch Web 2.0 technologies inside their company.

Meet Charlie - what is Enterprise2.0?
From: slgavin, 1 year ago

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Scott Gavin did a great job in creating this presentation that helped explain how it can be used inside a company.  I think it distills the essence of Web 2.0 and the impact it can make inside a company.  Now, how to make it happen?

   

Not only was I educated on a number of tools, but was also intrigued by slideshare as a technology to share PowerPoint presentations inside a company.  I called them, and regretfully, they were not creating an Enterprise version of the software.  Talk about a missed opportunity.

OK...let's always ask the killer question...SO WHAT?!

1. There is a wide variety of engaging ways to get educated on-line.
2. Scenario-based presentations can be VERY POWERFUL in communicating big ideas.
3. Look for cool technologies in the Web 2.0 space, and ask, "how can we make this happen inside the Enterprise?"
4. Think about how you can take a nugget of an idea and stretch it.

I have used the presentation to educate a number of clients about Web 2.0 and used the format to create new scenario-based concepts.  Think about it.  Imagine explaining an SAP upgrade using a scenario.  I think it allows people to place themselves inside the context and makes it much easier to embrace.

    

I am in the process of making a few more of these types of presentations, and I'll let you know how it goes. 

   

Just a crazy thought to use at your next IT review meeting.