E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

How To Build An Enterprise 2.0 Culture – Empowering Everyone to Have a Voice and Starting Small

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Innovation, Technology Adoption, Culture, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Conversations, Weblogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarks, Podcasts, Tagging, Syndication, Critical Mass

I am having a day off today and, although I have spent a good amount of time making all of the different preparations for the upcoming trips I will be doing over the next few weeks, I still managed to spend some time this morning catching up with some RSS feeds. As usual, I was able to find a couple of, what I call, serendipitous knowledge accidents that I thought would be worth while sharing over here as they cover subjects that I have been talking about in the past. The first one comes from the Digital-Telepathy (Internet Marketing Strategy & News) weblog and it is titled How to Build an Enterprise 2.0 Culture.

It is actually a rather short weblog article with a number of worth while reading reference links at the very bottom that will make for an interesting and enlightening read as to why businesses should be paying attention to the social computing space in order to help their knowledge workers improve the way they share their knowledge and collaborate with others. As I said, it is a good read, indeed, if you would want to find out some more what some of the different advantages of embracing social software tools would be, but let me just quote over here a couple of gems that I am sure you would find equally relevant to the discussion:

"Somewhere inside those blogs posts, wiki comments and forum discussions are golden nuggets of information that could give executives some insight into the culture of the company, the next big idea or just reoccurring issues that need to be addressed before they get out of hand. Every person on your staff has something to say, so why not give them somewhere to say it" (Emphasis mine)

This is exactly one of the main reasons as to why I got involved with social computing about five years ago and why, throughout the years, I am still as excited as I was back then. This is actually one of the main reasons as to why I have always believed that social computing would bring back Knowledge Management, along with Personal Knowledge Management, into the spotlight and start balancing out that extra focus that has always been placed on both tools and processes leaving behind the people. Remember that pyramid graphic chart showing the three of them interconnecting with one another? Well, here is social computing bringing in the people aspect into play for any KM successful strategy. All in all in combination with both the tools and the process. All three now walking hand in hand to enhance the overall knowledge sharing experience.

At the same time, this is also a quote that I have found rather interesting from the perspective of how plenty of folks out there seem to be constantly saying that the blogosphere is full up with uninteresting information (To make use of a mild word) from different bloggers who are just sharing their silly thoughts that would be of no interest to anyone as they do not provide business value to them. Hummm, what can I say about that? How do you judge that? Just because a weblogger and his thoughts are of no interest to yourself, or those who you read, does not mean it provides whatever value add to others. The key thing in here is that people are empowered to share what they feel would be worth while sharing with others and that at some point there would be other folks out there who would be able to connect with those webloggers because of the content they share. As simple as that.

So just because it is not useful to you, it doesn’t mean it would not be useful for anyone else. We are all entitled to have a voice and express our own thoughts and ideas in whichever way we decide to go ahead with whether it will be done for a business reason or not. It will then be up to others to stick around or not, but don’t underestimate the power of knowledge sharing by every single knowledge worker out there, because there is a great chance that you will eventually bump into different "golden nuggets of information" that you would be able to reuse at some point and, why not?, find ways to connect with those different knowledge workers that you may not have thought possible in the past.

The other relevant quote that I wanted to share over here, based on different conversations I have been having in the past, is this one:

"Enterprise 2.0 not only works on the internal area of your business; it provides valuable insight into the B2B arena [...] Now do you read this and head back to your CEO and tell them, we need a blog, wiki, forum and live chat. Turning the big ship takes time, so start off by implementing one new social tool into your organization and see what kind of feedback you get"

A couple of interesting things in here. First one, is that social computing adoption should not be something that would be just happening internally alone. On the contrary, perhaps even much more useful it would be when adopting social software tools to reach out to customers and vice versa, allowing customers to provide you constructive feedback interacting with the multiple options you may put together, i.e. wikis, weblogs, podcasts, social bookmarks, etc. etc. As we all know, it is about getting the conversations going and building further up on the strong statement that innovation happens through close collaboration between both parties and, if anything, social computing tools are terrific to help spark those conversations and get them going in the first place.

And on top of that, you would be building up a closer relationship with your customers by allowing them to participate from the development process of your tools, offerings and solutions by interacting in common social software tools available to both internal and external audiences. So from here onwards it is perhaps now time to start questioning the usage of a firewall as it may be hindering your multiple methods of innovating with your customers. Some further food for thought, I am sure…

Finally, the last comment that quote sparked from my own experiences is that you do not necessarily need to start with a fully blown social computing tools suite to get those interactions going. You can always start small. And probably you should. For instance, just implementing blogs behind the firewall and allowing knowledge workers to have their own and get things going may be the best approach. Then at a later time they themselves would be the ones triggering the move on to the next one, which is probably when wikis, or social bookmarks, or syndication, or whatever else would come into place. And continue to build up from there till you have got a comfortable tools suite that everyone is not only familiar with, but that they would be more than willing to make extensive use of it as well.

The good thing about approaching social computing’s adoption within the enterprise in this particular way is that one that would allow knowledge workers to figure out their level of consumption from the different tools they have been exposed to. And from there onwards leave it down to them to decide which tools they would want to stick around with and allow them to become the critical mass that will drive the wider adoption of those different social software tools.

As you would be able to see from this weblog entry, building an Enterprise 2.0 culture may not be as difficult as what most people seem to think. Perhaps the most important initial step towards a successful cultural change in this area is for us all to let go that command-and-control attitude that still seems to be floating around all over and help empower knowledge workers to be just that: people collaborating and sharing across the board their knowledge with others by focusing more on the social aspects of knowledge sharing than whatever else they may have been exposed to in the past. That is the way forward. That is what will shape the change of different businesses from a labour-based business into an asset / knowledge based one. And it will be up to us, knowledge workers, to decide which way we would want to go.

Web2.Oltre – Web 2.0 as a Real Business and Awareness – Milan – June 2007

Tags: Emanuele Quintarelli, InfoSpaces, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Software, Web2.Oltre, Web2Oltre, Dion Hinchcliffe, Lee Bryant, Jeff Nolan, Richard MacManus, Italy, Startups, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration

A couple of weeks back, Emanuele Quintarelli, one of the folks in the social computing space whose weblog I have been subscribed to for quite some time now, and also a good friend, shared an article on a conference event that he is putting together for Reed Business Information and which will be taking place on the 13th and 14th of June 2007 in Milan around the subject of Web 2.0 and how business can take the most out of it. The title of the conference is Web2.Oltre, Business and Opportunity for the New Web and you would be able to read some more about it over here, although in Italian.

I must say that on the various conversations we have been having through e-mail and Skype I have actually been admiring the incredible piece of work Emanuele has put together thus far into making something like that happen. Not only has he managed to provide a very compelling program for the two day event (In English), getting together some of the most knowledgeable individuals in the Web 2.0 space at the moment (Dion Hinchcliffe, Lee Bryant, Jeff Nolan, amongst others), but also he has managed to draw some more attention from different businesses around the subject of social computing and successfully managed to get them into the conversation of why they cannot longer ignore the social computing space.

Now, I am sure that for most folks reading this weblog entry out there this may be something that you would consider a piece of cake, or, at least, relatively easy, specially given the huge amount of different social software events currently taking place all over, but Emanuele’s merit, and you would have to agree with me on that, is the fact he has managed to pull this together in Italy where perhaps social computing has not taken everything by storm, pretty much like it has in the U.S., for instance.

I mean, I seem to recall a weblog entry published by Richard MacManus some time ago where he talked about the healthy status of Web 2.0 in Italy, yet, somehow I am missing how the enterprise world is trying to adapt most of that Web 2.0 experience into the corporate world. And this is where, indeed, Web2.Oltre kicks in, because not only will it bring forward the conversations around the subject of social computing, but it would also get businesses talk about it, share experiences on whatever they may be doing, learning and leveraging what others have been adopting thus far, share lessons learned and whatever other experiences in how it all may have improved the way they are sharing knowledge and collaborating across the entire business.

Indeed, something to follow up on. They have even set up a weblog for the event itself, which you can find over here, so that they can start sharing some more information about the different challenges and how to overcome them. And although I do realise that it is in Italian it will certainly help people understand how this conference came together to be perhaps one that will kick things off and help accelerate the adoption rate of social computing in Italian businesses. Who knows. One thing for sure, is that if you check out the official homepage, you would be able to see how much effort, involvement, commitment, excitement and passion has been put into it to make it happen.

It would certainly be one of those events that I would have loved to make, for sure. I told Emanuele already that, unfortunately, I had other commitments to attend to, but if you have a chance to be in Milan around the 13th of 14th of June I would certainly encourage you to be there, because there is a great chance that not only you would be learning a whole lot more about Web 2.0, but also how to apply all of that knowledge and expertise to a business environment, which is where, I guess, most of us would want to end up in at some point. Or, at least, get the conversations started.

So, from here, a big thanks to Emanuele for putting together such a fine event and wishing him lots of great success ! And many many more events like this one to come, for sure! Why not? The more exposure we have to it, the better for us all.

Ghost Weblogging or on to Find Your Own Weblogging Voice?

Tags: Ghost Weblogging, Ghost Blogging, Blogging, Metablogging, Authenticity, Dilbert, Tina The Tech Writer, Musings

In a day where you have been back to back with multiple conference calls and meetings you wish that by the end of it words would come to you as easy as first thing in the morning when you are all fresh and ready to do some work! Yet, those words fail to come to you whenever you confront yourself with the creation of another weblog entry, like in this case. Well, after one of such days I guess I run out of words or, rather, my brain is thinking about something else and not processing the way it should.

So, instead of me putting together some words that I doubt would be coherent enough, I am just going to be doing some light weblogging and instead share with you one particular cartoon, from the one and only, that describes very graphically, what ghost weblogging is all about. Of course, it had to be Tina The Tech Writer. Three different vignettes that you can describe with a single expression: spot on!

Still think that ghost weblogging is a good thing? Well, stay tuned because very soon I will be sharing some further thoughts on this particular topic, specially after an exciting conversation I had earlier on today and of which you will be hearing some more about shortly… Very shortly.