Articles

Could not generate link to image with ID: Social networking sites are often blocked by corporate IT and upper management.  What do we have to learn?  Are we actually planning our social calendar and losing productivity, or do we need an avenue for internal discovery?

Strengthening social ties 

Sociologist Mark S. Grannovetter published a theory in 1973 (The Strength of Weak Ties)  exploring phenomena of small-scale interactions that yield important large-scale patterns.   In a survey of people that recently changed jobs in the Boston area, he discovered that 55.6% of respondents received the job tip from someone they saw less than twice a month and 27.8% said they saw that person less than once each year.   He concluded that, "it is remarkable that people receive crucial information from individuals whose very existence they have forgotten."   Hmm. The value of social networking. 

Formal Networking for mutual self-interest 

-  Can employee A share information with employee #_____ informally across the "corporate graph"?

According to the McKinsey Quarterly review of Informal Employee Networks ,

"Professionals who want to work horizontally across an organization currently find themselves forced to search though poorly connected organizational silos for the knowledge and collaborators they need. In many companies these matrix and other hybrid organizations have become dysfunctional. The symptoms include endless meetings, phone calls, and e-mail exchanges, as well as confused accountability for results."

Busting the Silos & Creating the Network

Tools to create the network include all the standard collaborative pieces that we've been talking about for the "Interactive Enterprise."  Andrew McAfee  offered his suggestions for the leader in each category:

Collective Success

Much has been written about Google's 20% time for all employees.  At first glance, this would seem that those employees are distracted from the other work.  In practice, Google engineers will spend weekends and time well beyond the 20% of the workweek to develop new products for the company.

As a result, creative engineers and innovators are developing half of Google's new search products out of that 20% time.   

Every company, no matter the size, has large numbers of thinking-intensive and creative employees.  The winners will be the organizations that enable those groups to create more profits by putting their collective mind power to use. 

Near-Time was mentioned in a CIO Insight article today.   This quote sums it up nicely:

As the Internet blossoms into Web 2.0, some workers and managers are discovering new tools to cope with task and data overload: Flexible tools designed for the myriad challenges knowledge workers face, not just for routine tasks. Tools that help better manage and prioritize work, rally the strongest team members for each job and use talent most efficiently. Tools that help deliver work and gather feedback. And perhaps most critical, tools that let only the essential information through the floodgates, in the most useful format.

Thanks to new collaborative tools, these employees have the power to do their jobs in a whole new way—a way that makes the best use of their time and their company’s resources. It’s hard to fault them for feeling a little like superheroes, capes rippling in the wind.

 

 Netscout’s June Nugent is interviewed about the NetScout user group and their use of Near-Time. Read the full article on CIOInsight.com

Far-flung teams prove to be some of the biggest fans of these new tools. Take the folks at NetScout Systems, which makes integrated network performance management solutions. The company, which has some 3,000 enterprise customers around the planet, needed something to help users help themselves.

June Nugent, NetScout’s director of knowledge resources, realized that members of the company’s user group—network managers— didn’t have much free time on their hands. They needed an organized information source that could evolve as fast as their business needs did. But Nugent wanted something that would complement, not replace, its formal service channel.

That led her to Near-Time, a hosted service that can be used to build wikis and blogs, share files, create podcasts and handle RSS feeds. Near-Time’s principals had co-founded Extensibility, an XML solutions provider acquired by Tibco Software in 2002. Near-Time’s plans for corporate users range from $700 to 5,000 a year.

All plans include an unlimited number of wikis, blogs and other content tools for an unlimited number of users, but the highervalue plans include analytics, storage, bandwidth and other features as well.

Nugent’s team has used Near-Time to create tutorials on best practices and to facilitate training. Instructors use the tool to post preparatory work for classes, and students use it to post questions after the classes. "The result," says Nugent, "is a richer communication channel with our customers."

It’s important for companies to create new, informal channels between them and their users, "in no small part to help the former see what the latter needs and cares about," Nugent says. The Near-Time wiki tool helps NetScout do just that. "We are definitely extending our footprint for training," she says.

Five Keys to Successful Use of Collaborative Tools (Gartner)

Don’t Allow Anonymity: Chances for polite, productive collaboration are greater if users’ names and reputations are on the line.

Managers Must Manage Collaboration, Too: Even in Wikipedia’s free-flowing editing environment, super-users occasionally step in to resolve problems.

Dole Out Responsibility: A wiki-work ethic won’t develop overnight, but you can speed the process along by giving users a clear stake in its growth.

Think Wiki: Encourage users to think about the many ways they collaborate—formally and informally—every day.

Think About What’s Not Wiki: Not everything your company does is a candidate for collaboration. Set appropriate boundaries.

The NYTimes.com launched their customizable RSS feed display today.    It looks like a relatively similar play to MyNewsweekor AOL’s new recently launched widget-based page.

I think we can spot a trend.  Traditional news services are leveraging the blogosphere and external feeds to aggregate information for their readers.   

 This is a valuable heads up display for content at a glance when you can see your weather, your e-mail (YahooMail or GMail), and a few of your favorite columnists.

Newsvine is one of the most popular Web 2.0 news aggregators and could have spawned this entire trend.  Near-Time’s syndication feature is of a similar mindset of bringing content into your collaboration space.  

So the take home point—  the trend is here to stay.