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

How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation

I have mentioned already a couple of times how my first contact with social software tools inside IBM, my current employer, was around the year 2000, when one of the communities I still belong to (And still one of my favourite ones, too!) decided to put together a wiki where we could all contribute and share our knowledge across. From there onwards, the continuous learning experience of transitioning from traditional collaboration and knowledge sharing tools to these social tools has been quite exciting, to say the least. But I am sure you may be wondering when did IBM *really* got started with all things 2.0 on a wider scale, right? Well, this is a blog post where I will share some of those insights myself.

However, I am not going to start telling you all sorts of various different details on how IBM has been adopting social software tools over the last few years, starting probably on that landmark date of late 2003, when a blogging platform called BlogCentral  first became available through the Technology Adoption Program (a.k.a. TAP). No, I am not going to do that. Mainly, because I am not very fond of re-inventing the wheel myself, and, secondly, because there is a stunning online resource out there that has done a wonderful job in describing very thoroughly how everything got started and where we are now.

Check out the article put together by Casey Hibbard, over at Social Media Examiner, under the title: "How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation". Casey has been working with my fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, Adam Christensen, putting together, perhaps, one of the most tremendously comprehensive and thorough articles / reports, available out there that clearly describes in very simple, effective and helpful terms what IBM’s Social Media strategy is at the moment, and how it all got started a few years back.

In a way, the article itself is a lovely trip down the memory lane on how things got started, not only from the perspective of what social tools there are out there available to us, from back then till today, but also how something so important as IBM’s own Social Computing Guidelines came about and how IBM made a conscious decision to not just have a single corporate social media voice, but instead have thousands of voices! making them all become *the* brand. I know that this may surprise a few folks, but if there would be a single word that I could use to describe it I would probably stick around with effective.

Another interesting part from the article itself that both Casey and Adam talked about is the section on "No Policing", which I am sure it is going to come about as a shocker, specially for those businesses out there that still live in a command-and-control world. Well, here is an interesting, and very relevant, quote from Adam on what IBM means with that "No Policing":

"We don’t police. The community’s largely self-regulating, and so there hasn’t really been a need to have someone go about and circuit these boards and blogs" Christensen said. "Employees sort of do that themselves… And that’s worked wonderfully well"

Indeed, again thanks, for the most part, to those Social Computing Guidelines I mentioned above. Thus, as you will see, it’s not unrealistic to have such policy. Yes, I am sure you would be thinking by now there is a lot to risk involved, but then again, there is plenty more to gain. And having had those guidelines for nearly five years now, and living by them quite dearly, I can assure you that the advantages have been much more numerous than the disadvantages. But you can read more about it on the article itself…

Finally, you will be able to see a couple of other very interesting, and revealing, sections around the subject of the key role from Jams in helping mature those efforts of social software adoption as well as how social media plays that paramount role within the Smarter Planet initiative. Rather fascinating read!

Before I let you go though, as I am wrapping up this blog post, I will tell you what’s my favourite part of the entire article; one that has always been in people’s minds with regards to their own social software adoption efforts (And initiatives): proving the business value of social software. Yes, the good old dilemma of figuring out the ROI of social networking. Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while already, you know what my ¢2 of the conversation are. So I’m going to finish this article with Adam’s take on it (Which, by the way, I wholeheartedly agree with 100%!!):

""I think if you d ask any senior executive at IBM, How important is it for our employees to be smarter? , inherently they understand that these tools can play in helping with that, Christensen said. "I don’t see myself rarely or ever having that hard conversation on the value of engaging employees in these spaces.""

Spot on, don’t you think? All the way coming down from the top! It’s all about how smart and productive you would want to be with these social tools as a knowledge worker. And next time that someone asks me what IBM is doing in this space of Social Computing or what my thoughts are on proving the business value of social software, I guess you folks know where I will be pointing people to, right? …

Exactly!

Tags: Social Media Strategy, BlogCentral, Technology Adoption Program, TAP, Casey Hibbard, Social Media Examiner, Adam Christensen, Social Computing Guidelines, Guidelines, Policy, Brands, Branding, Voices, Jams, Smarter Planet, Business Value, ROI, Return On Investment, Leadership, Smart Work, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, IBM, Social Networks

Defining Knowledge Management and Enterprise 2.0 – Sharing Your Story

Most of the folks out there who know me, and have been following this blog for a while, have probably realised by now how much I dislike definitions, and putting labels on things, in general. Funny enough, that has been like that for quite a while, having gotten started around 2001, when I was first getting exposed to Knowledge Management (KM or Knowledge Sharing, whatever you would prefer) as time and time again I kept bumping into multiple knowledge managers wanting to define it. I am sure that would sound very familiar to plenty of people out there.

Fast forward to 2009 … and we still haven’t come to terms with the fact that we may not be able to define it, after all; at least, that’s what may be coming out after all of what has been written on the topic over the last few months, where KM definitions seem to have peaked up again. Ray Sims made a very brave attempt by managing to compile the whopping number of #62 of them. Yes, 62 different definitions of KM!

Steve Barth ventured, earlier on this year, into putting some very thought-provoking arguments on the need for one, after all, and he shares his favourite one:

"Knowledge management refers to strategies and structures for maximizing the return on intellectual and information resources. KM depends on both cultural and technological processes of creation, collection, sharing, recombination and reuse. The goal is to create new value by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of individual and collaborative knowledge work while increasing innovation and sharpening decision-making"

David Gurteen shared, just recently, another KM definition by David Weinberger, which I am going to take the liberty of quoting over here, since it fits in quite nicely with the direction I am heading for this blog post… and you will see why shortly:

"But the real problem with the information being provided to us in our businesses is that, for all the facts and ideas, we still have no idea what we’re talking about. We don’t understand what’s going on in our business, our market, and our world.

In fact, it’d be right to say that we already *know* way too much. KM isn’t about helping us to know more. It’s about helping us to understand. Knowledge without understanding is like, well, information.”

So, how do we understand things? From the first accidental wiener roast on a prehistoric savannah, we’ve understood things by telling stories. It’s through stories that we understand how the world works"

Getting closer to the real thing, don’t you think? Well, it gets better, because just recently, one of my virtual mentors, someone for whom I have always had the greatest of respects as being one of the fathers of Knowledge Management himself, the fine Dave Snowden, finally, after over 15 years (Perhaps even more!), decided to put together his definition of KM. And he blogged about it under "Defining KM" just a couple of days ago:

"The purpose of knowledge management is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation throughout the organization. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programmes.

The following guiding principles will be applied

• All projects will be clearly linked to operational and strategic goals
• As far as possible the approach adopted will be to stimulate local activity rather than impose central solutions
• Co-ordination and distribution of learning will focus on allowing adaptation of good practice to the local context
• Management of the KM function will be based on a small centralized core, with a wider distributed network"

Not bad, eh? Indeed, not bad at all! Both Weinberger’s & Snowden’s definitions of Knowledge Management would probably as good as it gets and it’s just amazing that it’s taken over 15 years (And several dozens of definitions!) to reach this stage! However, has it been worth it? Has it been worth while all of the hundreds, if not thousands, of heated discussions, articles, blog posts, white papers, interviews, podcasts, etc. etc. to reach for that one or two definitions that we would all be happy with? Have we just invested, perhaps, far too much energy, effort and commitment to the cause intro trying to create a label for something that may not have been needed, in the first place?

I know, plenty of food for thought on that one, don’t you think? Here’s the thing though. We may not have invested enough such energy and effort, because nowadays we are just embarking ourselves on, yet again, the same kind of activity, but this time around with a different label, but still dealing with the exact same core principles. Yes, I am talking about the recent Enterprise 2.0 and the on-going (And growing!) discussions on not just how to define it, but also how to re-define it!

Ouchie! It looks like we never seem to learn from the past, don’t we? Here we are again, after 15 years of trying to successfully define Knowledge Management, trying to do the very same thing with Enterprise 2.0. Again! Why don’t we just focus, instead, on the overall message from Snowden’s definition or the last sentence from Weinberger’s: "It’s through stories that we understand how the world works".

Wouldn’t we be so much better off not getting lost in the semantics of trying to nail down what we may never be able to, and instead focus on those stories? I bet things would be so much better for all of us, knowledge workers. After all, we get to share, learn and apply most of our knowledge through the sharing of those very same stories. So what’s stopping us from doing that? Do we prefer, very much so, it seems, the rhetoric of finding a definition of a label we may never get to re-use again? I hope that’s not the case!

At least, I would rather prefer to focus on the stories, on the use cases, on their execution, because somehow I feel I would be able to learn so much more not just from Enterprise 2.0, but from knowledge sharing and collaboration, in general. And I think that’s what matters at the end of the day, don’t you think? If not, have a look into this YouTube video by Nick Milton, who, very successfully, in my opinion, explains very clearly the differences between Data Management, Information Management and Knowledge Management… And he doesn’t use a single definition for each of them. No, he doesn’t. Not a single one!

Instead, he does it by sharing a story we can all learn from and relate to. A story that would help us explain next time around why Data & Information Management are quite different, in substance, from Knowledge Management. Who would have ever thought, right?

Is it still worth while looking for that golden definition, or label, of Enterprise 2.0? Or whatever other term you would want to call it? Not sure what you would think, but perhaps not. Maybe there are many more interesting activities in the 2.0 space that we could focus on and learn the most from. Because learning from definitions, as always, is incredibly limiting. Instead, I doubt we could say the same thing from sharing stories. So, what’s your story?

Tags: Definitions, Social Business, Ray Sims, Steve Barth, David Gurteen, David Weinberger, Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, Stories, Sharing Stories, Storytelling, Narrative, Nick Milton, Data Management, Information Management, Use Cases, Business Value, Case Studies, Business Cases, 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

Big Blue’s Collaboration Challenges with Mark Hennessy

Earlier on today, a fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, John Rooney, shared in various microsharing Web sites (Both internal and external) a link to a recent interview I thought would be rather interesting for folks out there who would be keen on reading further on IBM’s efforts exploring the world of social software and using its 400.000 + employee workforce as testbed for many of the social tools most of us have been exposed to for a while already and some of which eventually make it into IBM products in the area of Enterprise Social Software.

The interview itself was hosted over at Forbes’ CIO Network, where I hoped the embedded options would be a rather pleasant user experience to go through overall, but I guess I was asking for a bit too much. Yuk! So I am afraid you will have to head over there and watch Big Blue’s Collaboration Challenges.

The interviewee is one of the folks I have been admiring and respecting for a long while now, ever since he came into his current job, and not because of the job title he has (IBM’s vice president and Chief Information Officer), but eventually because he is one of those executives who walks the talk; blogs (Internally) on a very regular basis and everyone is more than welcome to reach out to him with any question / comment / concern / query they may have and that would need his help. In fact, just recently he did an internal podcast of about 13 minutes with another of my favourite high level executives, Bob Moffat Jr. where they both talked about social software and the business value they are both getting from making use of these social tools. Won’t say much more on that topic, since I’m working on whether I can share that podcasting episode outside of the firewall some time soon! Thus stay tuned for a potential new update coming up soon…

So, of course, I am talking about Mark Hennessy, IBM’s vice president and CIO, who spends a little bit over five minutes sharing several stories on how IBM is making use of social networking tools to reach new levels of productivity. The link to the interview can be found over here, like I mentioned above already, but here are also some other tidbits you may be interested in as well that he talks about for a few minutes:

• IBM Lotus Sametime: with over 10 million instant messages shared across every day (Yes, 10 million!!); and highlighting the fact it’s the biggest productivity boost for real-time collaboration and interactions available out there to us, IBMers, and certainly my number #1 tool to keep living "A World Without Email"
• WikiCentral: our internal wiki platform from which Mark shares plenty of business & uses cases on how wikis can be used inside the corporate firewall to help improve collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams and communities to take innovation into new levels. Quite a story on this one! I tell you.
• Business Value of social software: Mark shares how IBM’s focus on measuring the business value of social software is based on measuring the output, not the social tools themselves; i.e. how many folks are using them; how many new ideas are being created; and so forth. And for that a key role has been played all along by the Technology Adoption Program (a.k.a. TAP), where early adopters and innovators / developers work together on pushing the limits on innovation by co-creating the next wave of social tools and interactions.
• And, finally, Cloud Computing: in this fragment he gets to talk about a couple of mature cloud environments, one of them being TAP itself, with over 120.000 IBMers participating on a regular basis following a self-service provisioning model; you will also find out plenty more about his thoughts on what cloud computing is, where it is heading and how IBM is benefiting from it, both internally and externally. Very enlightening, for sure, specially for those folks who may want to know more about what IBM is doing in that space…

And, that’s it. Those are some of the major areas that Mark Hennessy gets to cover in this five minute interview at Forbes’ CIO Network ("Big Blue’s Collaboration Challenges") and which I hope it would have last for a lot longer as he always has got plenty of really good insights and stories on how he engages himself with the rest of the IBM population to help shape up the next generation of the collaboration, knowledge sharing and social computing tools we will use tomorrow.

Yes, I know you would agree with me on this one. It was just far too short and would have wanted to watch plenty more! Don’t you think? … Wonderful stuff though!

Tags: John Rooney, Rooney, Forbes, Forbes CIO Network, CIO Network, CIO, Chief Information Officer, Vice Presidents, Executives, Challenges, Opportunities, Walking the Talk, Drinking Our Own Champagne, Bob Moffat Jr, Mark Hennessy, Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Real Time, Real Time Collaboration, IM, Instant Messaging, Productivity Boosts, WikiCentral, Wikis, Business Value, Use Cases, Business Cases, Technology Adoption Program, TAP, Early Adopters, Innovators, Developers, Cloud Computing, Cloud, Computing, 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