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

New Technology – The Threat to Our Corporate Information

If you have been exposed to Social Computing within the enterprise for a little while now I bet most of you folks out there would probably be able to identify one or two of the main issues that every single corporation has got with regards to the wider adoption of social software tools, both inside and outside of the firewall. Those two issues are actually privacy and security. Oh, and perhaps risk management, too!

Well, let’s leave out privacy for now, and spend a few minutes going through security and risk management. Specially, in the context where some people keep postulating that social tools make things a whole lot easier with regards to sharing your company’s secrets across, as well as leaking confidential information out to competitors and whoever else. But do they really expose such threats? Are they the only ones creating this discomfort? Well, probably not. And here is why…

I love it when going through the various interactions from my social networks on a daily basis you keep bumping into a rather interesting resource that continues to pop up time and time again and you eventually go through it and you realise that the overall content put together is amazingly accurate (Perhaps, too scarily accurate!) today, even thought it was first published over two years ago! WOW! Yes, two years ago! I know that things happen incredibly fast on the world of the Internet, but to think that you bump into a specific piece of content that is incredibly accurate, even today!, but that it was written over two years ago, it surely is quite something!

Well, go and have a look into New Technology – The Threat to Our Corporate Information. A Slideshare presentation that has been making the rounds lately (once again) and which touches base on those interesting, and always relevant, topics of security and risk management. The deck was actually put together by Norman Lamont (?), like I said, over two years ago, and with a rather special sense of humour, and very much with tongue-in-cheek, trying to portrait, very faithfully, how using social software tools as business tools may well have the same risks, and pose the same security threats, as various other traditional collaboration and knowledge sharing tools. In this particular case, the telephone.

Yes, that lovely mobile device that I bet almost everyone of us has had at some point in time and whose usage continues to grow exponentially year in, year out. That mobile device through which, in multiple various occasions, I am sure!, more than once, twice, or even three times!, we have been hearing conversations from people around us that I bet we shouldn’t have been hearing in the first place! Whether waiting to take public transport on the way back home, whether waiting at the doctor for that appointment, whether we are doing shopping or whether we are having lunch or dinner at a restaurant, you know there have been multiple various conversations over the mobile phone that you realise should never have happened in the first place!

Ouchie! Yes, that’s the premise of this Slideshare presentation I mentioned above: New Technology – The Threat to Our Corporate Information. It’s funny. Actually, it’s hysterical! Hilariously entertaining, to put it in other words, just to see how Norman has put together, back then!, a couple of years ago, a bunch of rather simplistic slides, with very little text and visuals, trying to convey what the real problem for these issues of security and risk management are all about: it’s never been about the technology, nor the tools, like some people keep claiming over and over again, but eventually it’s down to the people themselves, the knowledge workers. Those who always have got a unique and unprecedented opportunity to mess things up pretty badly, unless they are careful enough…

And that’s exactly what Norman talks about in his Slideshare deck. That social software tools are not going to get businesses in more trouble with leaking confidential information out there, because if employees would really want to share that critical information with the wrong kind of crowd, they probably wouldn’t care about social tools to do that. They would eventually use anything within their reach! Email, Instant Messaging, phone calls, informal face to face conversations, etc. You name it! Even if they are not fully aware of what they have been doing!

Like I said, if a knowledge worker decides to leak that paramount to the company information, knowledge and / or resources, believe me, the last thing they are going to make use of is social software tools! Ironic, eh? Why, you may be wondering, right? Well, like Norman said, mainly because "wikis, blogs and forums are the tried and tested ways. Every entry is named and attributable, and can be corrected if wrong. All corporate communication should take place this way!"

Because "How do you update and correct a telephone conversation when it’s done?" (You will have to go through the slide deck to find out… not going to reveal the answer just yet! You will have to find out for yourself this time around! One thing for sure is that as you go through the presentation I’m pretty certain you will be nodding in agreement with Norman, at the same time that you are going to find the slides rather entertaining, if not hilariously funny! Yes, this is one of those blog posts referencing a rather nice, simple, but effective presentation with plenty of tongue-in-cheek all around. Or… well … maybe not!

Maybe we are over-exaggerating a bit, or perhaps over-reacting more than we should; after all, wouldn’t we trust our knowledge workers to be those hard working professionals we hired in the first place, working on a rather healthy, content, satisfying, highly motivating innovative, knowledge sharing prone and collaborative environment, who keep revalidating their commitment to the business every year by complying with those business conduct guidelines you encourage them to live by? Yeah, who knows, perhaps we are freaking out a bit too much. Shouldn’t we trust them more to do the right thing?

Maybe we should. Why not? What would we have to lose? Most importantly, what would they have to lose? Probably a whole lot more than we all think…

Tags: Privacy, Security, Risk Management, Enterprise 2.0 Barriers, Social Computing Barriers, Barriers of Adoption, Adoption, Technology, Internet, Information, Knowledge, Norman Lamont, Telephone, Phone, Mobile Phones, Mobile Devices, Knowledge Workers, Slideshare, Presentations, Trust, Motivation, Quality, Happy Employees, Engagement, Employee Engagement, Professionals, Business Conduct Guidelines, BCGs, Commitment, Involvement, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity

Being Human – What Are You Afraid Of?

Last week Friday, my good friend, the always enlightening Euan Semple, posted one of those very thought provoking blog posts that one cannot ignore, just like that. Under the title Being Human he shared a few insights around the abstract that he submitted for the wonderful Social Business Edge conference event that will be taking place in New York in a couple of weeks and where he will be one of the many talented speakers. In that article he comes to reflect some more on why knowledge workers, in general, face some tough issues at work, while they keep pushing the limits on their wider adoption of social software within the enterprise. Mainly:

"The biggest challenge to getting people to share isn’t to do with technology it is to do with very personal challenges and issues that relate to their sense of self and their relationship with their employers"

The conversations that have sparked as a result of that blog entry by Euan have been amazingly inspiring (Go and read through the comments as well!) and surely are worth while reading through to get a glimpse of the potential solutions that the corporate world could well start exploring. The sooner, the better. KM extraordinaire Jack Vinson also picked up this topic under the post "What is it about humans?" and he actually finishes off that relevant article with some very thought provoking and controversial questions whose answers could perhaps address most of the key points that Euan discusses on his post.

So what is it? Why are knowledge workers so afraid of sharing what they know (Their ideas, experiences, know-how, skills, lessons learned, etc. etc. you name it!)? Is it because they don’t want to disrupt the current enterprise status quo? Is it because they want to please their boss and don’t go beyond the line? Is it because they don’t want to stand out and just basically keep doing their jobs, so that they can get their paychecks by the end of the month? Specially, given the current financial crisis most countries are still recovering from? Is it because knowledge workers have never been told, nor taught, why sharing is a good thing? Or perhaps is it due to the fact that the corporate world keeps rewarding individual performance which lives on knowledge is power and therefore people have a tendency to hide away their knowledge and not share it widely?

Or is it perhaps something larger? Something much more profound and deep within every single business out there? A matter of trust? Trust that walks both ways, by the way, from the employee to the employer and vice versa? Or, better said, a lack of trust from either party that prohibits knowledge workers from excelling at what they are good by nature, social sharing, and which most businesses today would consider that a threat to their own status quo?

Who knows… The key thing, and that’s something that I, too, agree with Euan big time, is that it is just such a missed opportunity! Businesses should not only encourage their knowledge workers to constantly share what they know, but they should go the extra mile. They should make an effort to help facilitate their knowledge workforce to challenge the business itself. Constantly. Day in, day out. To keep them real with feedback on what works, and what doesn’t. To collectively improve the overall business processes in place, specially those that everyone knows need improvements, yet no-one speaks up about them! To, finally, open and speed up the innovation process where those knowledge workers would be much more in control, but without ignoring, nor neglecting, the structures already in place.

Businesses that don’t have that kind of attitude or mentality are surely declaring, out loud, clear statements that, overtime, are going to harm the business even more; not encouraging your knowledge workforce to share and participate from open, unrestricted, provocative conversations to help generate more business value is basically telling them up front they are not to be trusted and their work as good, hard working professionals can’t be trusted either!

And that’s probably the worst thing you can do as a business: start undermining, right from the start, from the moment they join the company, the great talent of your workforce by not encouraging them to openly share what they, as working professionals, know they could go and deliver: their best of breed thinking.

I keep seeing such attitude time and time again all over place, specially when management is involved. I am sure you can hint why this is happening, right? But let me tell you this. There is *nothing* out there in the corporate world that could be more rewarding, for both the company and the employee workforce, than constructively challenging management decisions. It’s a healthy behaviour. It keeps management real, down to earth, connected with their workforce, alert on what potential issues may be coming from their knowledge workers and already hint what could be done to address them. It keeps the business on guard by providing an opportunity to break hierarchical structures, to make them more dynamic, more agile, more proactive in helping tackle actual business problems. And find solutions…

It helps employees as well feel connected with their management line; it helps them understand that they, too, are humans, with a need to be social, to share, to collaborate, to work together (After all, they are on the same boat, aren’t they not?!?!); in short, to partner together into making good companies great companies to work for. That is, challenging management decisions will help your business grow further much faster,  much more intelligent and smart, much more involved with your employees, as well as customers and business partners, to the point where it would continue to deliver the business value of your company into a higher level of interactions.

Why? Because it makes you human and, like we all know, humans like to converse with other humans; they like to share what they know, they like to socialise, they want to co-create your next generation of great products, they want to take an active part in shaping up not only the relationships between customers and your company, but also within your own company. It’s the age of the knowledge economy, where knowledge sharing, collaboration and rampant innovation walk hand in hand no longer in the shape of a nice thing to have, but more as an essential, critical and integral part of every business. And your knowledge worker is the gatekeeper. So the sooner you release that power, the better for you, as a business and, of course, for your customers, which is what matters at the end of the day, don’t you think?

That’s exactly why social software tools are so powerful in this scenario I have tried to describe over the last few paragraphs from this post. Why they keep breaking the traditional model of engagement behind the firewall, where only a few had got an opportunity to share their ideas. Now, everyone can! With social tools like blogs, wikis, social bookmarks, tagging, podcasting, vodcasting, etc. etc. everyone has got an opportunity to have a voice and an opinion inside the company; and value it for what it is: an indispensable, inexhaustible resource every single business out there just can’t ignore any longer.

Thus what are you, as a business, going to do? Are you going to release, and make the best out of, all of that unused brain power? Or are you going to continue muting your own knowledge workforce, because whatever they may have to say may hurt your feelings and status quo? Are you going to show the way and lead them by example on how they, too, can be as human social beings as they would want to and therefore help re-humanise your company once again? Will you finally unleash the power and allow them to have the control for what they were hired to do in the first place? Being a hard working professional doing the right job?

It’s up to you. Really. But hurry up, because there is a great chance they themselves won’t wait for you much longer, if you don’t start Being Human yourself …

Tags: Euan Semple, Being Human, Social Beings, Beings, Social Business Edge, New York, Jack Vinson, Being Afraid, Cultural Barriers, Knowledge Is Power, Workplace, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Workforce, Employees, Businesses, Employers, Best of Breed, Management, Challenges, Leadership, Leaders, Management 2.0, Leadership 2.0, Converse, Socialise, Social Business Design, Social Business, Humanising the Enterprise, Re-Humanise, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity

A World Without Email – Year 3, Weeks 1 to 8 (On Email Sanity by Zen Habits)

It has been a bit over two months and I guess it would be a good time now for an update on how things have been going so far. Yes, I know in the past I have been blogging about this on a monthly basis, more or less, but as I am making my way into my third year, I feel that blogging about it is going to be more spaced out than ever before. Of course, I’m talking about living "A World Without Email", the initiative I started about two years and two months ago, which I still keep going about, probably for a good while now, where I decided to give up on corporate email for good, Thinking Outside the Inbox.

Yes, indeed, those two have the main major themes I have been running through over the last few months where I have finally ditched corporate email altogether in favour of social software tools. If you would remember, the last time I blogged about this initiative was the entry of the final report for Year 2, Week 52, where I mentioned how during the course of that second year running I was getting an average of 22 emails per week. So how have I been doing over the last two months since that last blog post, you may be wondering, right? Have I given up on giving up corporate email altogether? Still going at it? Still going strong? Still with no regrets of making such a bold move?

You bet! There have been a couple of times, during those last eight weeks, where I thought about stopping with this initiative altogether, since I thought I had proved well enough you *can* survive in the corporate world without making use of email. But then again I thought for myself that perhaps I’m not ready just yet to call it quits that easily. Specially, now that I have been enjoying the true pleasure, and what a treat!, of no longer being dependent on email. Yes, I know, quite a relief!

So I didn’t give up. I kept moving along, now well into my third year without using corporate email and placing, perhaps, a much stronger focus on my continued use of social software tools to help avoid falling into the email trap, once again. But how have I been doing? As usual, I have been putting together a bunch of weekly reports, which you can find over at my Flickr account, but here is the latest one that puts together those eight weeks without email in a row:

Not bad, eh? If you do the math, you will see how I have gone from 22 emails per week for Year 2, to 18 emails a week, on average, for Year 3. Indeed, not bad at all! Quite the opposite, don’t you think? I just keep getting less and less emails by the month, by the year. Remember how, when I was starting this experiment I was getting an average of 30 to 40 emails a day? Now it is 18 per week! Absolutely fantastic and something that surely serves as good enough motivation for yours truly to keep pushing gently living "A World Without Email".

I am not sure when I would be blogging again about my next progress report, perhaps in another few weeks, but one thing for certain is that, if things keep going the way they are, I can imagine this year I may well be going below the 15 emails per week mark, which I’m sure would be classified as a huge achievement! But we will have to wait and see …

Talking about huge achievements though, how about your email sanity? Are you keeping in control of it all? Have you declared email bankruptcy already several times? Have you achieved Inbox Zero and still make sense of it all? Before you answer any of those questions, let me ask you to have a look into the really wonderful blog post put together by Leo Babauta, from Zen Habits (One of my all time favourite blogs, by the way!), titled "Email Sanity: How to Clear Your Inbox When You’re Drowning".

It’s an excellent read that I can surely recommend to all of those folks who still make use of email as their primary means of communication and collaboration. It will actually give you a few hints and tips on how you can tame that email beast (Before it takes over from you!) with plenty of great advice on how to handle both already existing emails and incoming ones. It then gets better, because Leo shares some really good piece of advice on how to not only process old emails, but, finally, how to "Stop the Flood", which is, I guess, what most of us may have been suffering from all along.

Lots of great tricks in that article, I can tell you. Worth while a read and all of the time that you may spend on it. However, I thought I would add a couple of thoughts to Leo’s great post by sharing with you folks how I eventually stopped the flood myself over two years ago. So every so often, and from here onwards, I think I’m now, finally, ready to share with you folks the hints and tips I have learned over the years on reducing my email clutter, to the point where it is non-existent at this point in time.

Thus, instead of making a lovely list of "How to" items (Which I guess I can put together as well in subsequent blog entries as time goes by), I thought I would just highlight three different actions I embark on whenever I spend time in email, which nowadays it’s typically about 10 minutes per day versus the two to three hours a day I used to spend on it in the past. But now not anymore.

The key message towards reducing your existing email flood is to eventually do something we all *can* do, which is sending less emails in the first place! Yes, this is related to the same point that Leo makes on his post: if you would want to receive less email, stop sending emails yourself! It’s that easy! So let’s go!:

• Stop sending emails yourself: This is probably the toughest thing to do; I know how very tempting it can well be to have that poignant question you know has got an easy answer within a matter of seconds by sending an email to this or that other colleague. Bang! Answer is there! Well, stop! Don’t send it just yet! Think! Think about other ways you could make use of to get that answer; whether you could make use of social software tools, or a quick Instant Message, or a phone call or just find the answer online, don’t just hit Send right away. Wait for it as if it were your very very last resort. There is a great chance that by that time you may have found the answer already! And therefore no need to send that email.

  So first step; stop sending emails yourself; think of better, more appropriate, ways of engaging with others. Just because email suits you just fine, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will suit others; in most cases it won’t. Respect that! Help them help you become more productive by not making them waste their time going through their Inboxes hunting just that email. Remember, the more email you send, the more email you will get back! That’s a well known fact!

• Stop replying to emails: Yes, just as tempting as sending an email yourself, so is replying to people’s emails. You know the drill; you get that lovely email from one of your colleagues with an interesting tidbit of information you could rather respond to or add further on, and, what do you do right away? Indeed, you hit reply! Don’t! Just like I mentioned above: Think!, before you send out that reply. There may be better ways of getting back to that colleague than through email…

  Have you thought about perhaps a quick phone call (Remember, we can talk much much faster than we could ever write down!)?; or an Instant Message, if you see your colleague is online at the moment you have read their email? (This is, eventually, my favourite method of replying back, when the other person is online in IM! So much faster!); or perhaps reply back through micro-blogging/-sharing tools, or maybe a blog, or a wiki, or through an activity stream? Like I said, think before you hit reply, because there is a great chance there’s a better option out there to respond back!

• Refuse to engage through email: At all costs, if people keep insisting on sending you email after email, and you know there are better collaboration and knowledge sharing tools out there, keep pushing them away into those social tools; show them the way; spend some time with them showing how much you are benefiting from using these other tools so that they would want to try them out themselves. Move email conversations away from your Inbox and into social spaces.

  Unless you are having a 1:1 confidential / sensitive kind of conversation, move it away from your Inbox. Respond back through whatever other means rather than email. What you will be showing is a good response time, at the same time you are already hinting what other better ways folks would have to get in touch with you. And next time around they will be using those instead…

Show them the way; show them how they, too, can free up themselves from the email yoke, that one that keeps adding on additional pressure time and time again, specially when you lose control of it. It all starts with those three, very simple principles:

• Stop sending emails yourself
• Stop replying to emails
• Refuse to engage through email

That’s pretty much essentially how over the course of 3 years, I have now moved from 30 to 40 emails a day, to 18 a week, of which a good bunch of them are calendaring and scheduling notifications that, unfortunately, I still have to process through email. But how long does it eventually take me to click on Accept / Decline on those events? A second? Two seconds? Well, that’s where most of my time spent on email is nowadays and by the looks of it, I guess it’s going to decrease more and more for me, despite what some other people have been saying lately out there.

They say that life nowadays is all about simplyfing both your work and personal lives; well, since email has been ever so disruptive, both in our work and private lives, may be it is now the time to finally break free from it! … For good!

Are you ready? Would you start it today? Could you also live "A World Without Email"?

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Reports, Flickr, Leo Babauta, Zen Habits, Email Sanity, Email Yoke, Email Beast, Taming the Email Beast, Stop the Flood, Productivity 2.0, Think!, Social Spaces, Simplify