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

When Command and Control Needs to Become Engage and Support

Every so often there are those times when you bump into a couple of articles published by people, who you know and respect dearly for the tremendous amount of great work they have done in the space of Social Computing, that give you such an adrenaline rush, while reading through them, that you just can’t stop thinking about anything else for a little while. And if those blog posts have got to do with two of my favourite topics from all along (People and Trust) in that context of the Social Enterprise, you know I will surely be sharing my two cents of the conversation.

So here I am; more than happy to point you to two essential, and worth while going through, blog entries that will surely make you think quite a bit on how important trust is for Enterprise 2.0 to succeed within the corporate firewall (And beyond, for that matter!); yes, I do realise that trust is one of those recurring terms / themes that perhaps may have been abused quite a bit, specially in the workplace context (Just as much as terms like Collaboration, Communities, or, even, Knowledge Management), but then again, when you see the word trust you know pretty well what you are referring to and could very well explain it in a sentence or two.

Well, my good friend Oscar Berg has just done that over at one of his recent blog posts titled "Control is waste & trust drives value creation", where he shares a couple of golden nuggets worth while remembering, when describing how crucial trust is for any personal business transaction amongst peers, customers or business partners:

"Trust is the fuel for any enterprise. Trust in your purpose, trust in your peers, trust in yourself.

Trust drives value creation.

Control is a sign of trust failure. Control does not add value. Control is waste. Control restricts value-creation. It is something management adds when they don’t trust their employees to perform as expected" [Emphasis mine]

I couldn’t have said that in much better words that those employed by Oscar; trust is the glue that makes collaborative work happen effectively across teams, communities and networks by helping knowledge workers excel at what they know best: constantly innovate. Every move, every conversation, every personal business interaction happening in an open environment where there are no restrictions, no limits, "no rules", just a bunch of knowledge workers wanting to make a difference for their customers and their business by sharing their knowledge across and collaborating efficiently.

The rest of his article is just as good and equally thought-provoking, so I would encourage you to go and read through it and find out his thoughts on how that lack of trust impacts tremendously the overall performance and productivity of those knowledge workers. Priceless!

Ok, now that you have read Oscar’s article, check out the absolutely delightful piece that my good friend, the always insightful, Euan Semple, has put together over at infoBOOM under the title "The Trojan Mice Approach to Enterprise 2.0", where he touches based on one of the recurring themes I have been mentioning on this blog for a long while already; and that is the critical role that people (Knowledge Workers) play in the successful adoption of Enterprise 2.0 within the corporate world, regardless of the tools / technologies and processes that may be available out there. To quote:

"You can build as fancy and expensive a system as you like but if people don’t want to use it and don’t feel comfortable using it then you might as well not have bothered. To get people to embark on this sort of culture change you have to gain their trust and they have to learn to trust each other. This is a process that has to happen incrementally and over time. Those charged with helping it to happen have to be sensitive to the powerful dynamics they are opening up and respectful of those they are expecting to engage" [Emphasis mine]

Once again, Euan nails it; it’s never been about the tools, nor the processes in place, but on the people themselves making good, and responsible, use of those tools as what they are, enablers, to help execute on each and everyone of those business processes they may be responsible for. It would be only then when things will really progress further in the right direction; that one of a very much needed change where those business needs will be finally matched up with the true, up until now hidden and ostracised,  talent, expertise, skills, know-how, experiences that knowledge workers have been accumulating over the course of time and which have been waiting all along inside that closet of command and control for far too long.

Euan, once more describes it much better than I could and, as usual, in his very suggestive and succinct way:

"The trick will be to move from “command and control” to "engage and support”. Building trust takes time. Becoming comfortable enough to be “social” takes time"

The remaining challenge though may well be whether businesses would be patient enough to wait for that more than worth it change to take place or whether, instead, they would prefer to do things the usual way: business as usual…

Tags: People, Trust, Oscar Berg, Control, Command and Control, Value Creation, Business Value, Personal Business Interactions, Euan Semple, infoBOOM, Time, Change, Change Management, Business As Usual, Support, Engage, Enable, 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, Productivity

When This All Gets Cool, It’s All about The People and Your Passion

After a couple of rather hectic days at work, I guess it’s time again to update my blog over here sharing with you folks a couple of thoughts that have been lingering around in my mind lately and which, more and more by the day, have continued to demonstrate what, to me, is the whole thing around Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Social Networking, Web 2.0 or whatever other "expression" you would want to use: it’s all about the people; and it’s all about passion, your passion!

Yes, I know most of you would be able to differentiate between one and the other, if I would ask you to go ahead and define them all; however, two of the key characteristics that will define them all would those ones I have just shared above on all about the people and passion.

And this is not the first time I blog on this very same topic; when most folks are talking about how social computing / networking is all about a new wave of social tools on the Internet that would help us become more productive while sharing our knowledge across and collaborating with our peers, I keep thinking that we should probably not make the same mistakes we have done over the decades in trying to justify such kind of movements as technology / tools based, because they aren’t. They are all about the people behind them, and tools are just that: tools. Enablers. And that’s where it all ends for them.

And that’s when it gets really fascinating and exciting for us all! Did you have a look into my good friend’s, Chris Brogan’s, blog post titled "When This All Gets Cool"? If you haven’t, I would strongly suggest you take a look, because he has put together one of those articles that would surely resonate with you all quite a bit and won’t left you indifferent. Yes! It is that good!

Chris shares on that blog post pretty much basically what I have said above on where the real focus should well be all along, as more and more businesses are starting to explore various different efforts on social software adoption, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall: not on the technology, nor on the tools, but on where we could get the most out of the whole experience. To quote him:

"Social media are a bunch of tools. They let us see things a bit differently. They empowered new ways of working together. But they’re just the tools. When this all gets cool is when we start really turning this stuff on our own passion projects, on our bigger goals, on what COULD happen."

What he has managed to do with that blog post is to inspire tremendously a whole bunch of folks into doing (Or continuing to do…) things 2.0 related in a completely different way: i.e. making a difference! So if you did enjoy some of the brilliant suggestions he made on what other things we could do with social software tools (Other than thinking they are the primary focus), I would suggest as well you take a look into the extended commentary where plenty of folks have been chiming in and sharing plenty of golden nuggets of what passion for what they do would mean to them and, most importantly, how they are attempting to make a difference in how they interact with things! Just brilliant!

Yes, it’s all about the people! It’s all about the passion your let permeate through every single part of your body, and brain!, wanting to share it across with others. And make it contagious! That’s exactly how I felt yesterday when I did go through one of the suggestions Chris offered in his post: "Give your local school teachers or library a free class on how to use the tools for their projects".

Ok, it wasn’t my school, but rather ESCOEX International Business School in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; it wasn’t a talk with the school’s teachers, either (Nor the library!), but instead it was a rather energising two hour event with a bunch of amazingly talented group of youngsters wanting to make a difference and surely preparing for themselves the way to do just that!

I bet when they saw me coming into the classroom, they were expecting to hear about this strange guy who telecommutes, has got his bosses thousands of kilometers away, works for a rather, perhaps too large, corporation making trouble for living "A World Without Email" and just probably wants to tell his story and go back home. Funny enough I had other plans for the session … and for them…

I didn’t use a single set of slides! In fact, I didn’t bring with me any gadget whatsoever other than my mobile phone, which I didn’t even use at all during the entire time; they were probably thinking they were going to learn some things from me on what it is all about using social software tools in a business environment. Yet, I was the one who had an opportunity to learn so much from them all that I am still digesting most of the incredibly cool things that we discussed during the entire session.

I am working already on a follow up blog post where I can share some of those various different insights with you folks. If you would want to take a peek, ahead of time, into some of the stuff we discussed during the session I would highly recommend you have a look into today’s blog post that my good friend Víctor Ruiz put together under the title "Luis Suárez (IBM) y su lucha contra el correo-e" (Yes, it’s in Spanish!).

In it he details, very nicely!, a good chunk of what we discussed and comes to conclude whether I live in a parallel universe, or a different world altogether, since it looks like things within local businesses are going rather slow at the moment, and perhaps for the next few years still, with regards to their own adoption of these social tools to try to keep making a difference.

Yet, there I was! With all of my passion for the topic, focusing on the people, on their conversations, on each and everyone of the students knowing we may not be that far off from that reality I seem to be living in. I won’t be disclosing further details on what I mean by that (In an upcoming blog post you will see what I mean…), but one thing that I can certainly share with you all, and which resonated with Chris Brogan’s blog post I originally mentioned above, is that "To me, the cool stuff has very much yet to happen. We can do SO much more".

And yesterday I witnessed, and experienced!, the sheer talent behind those younger generations who surely are passionate about what they do, and who certainly want to make a difference in this world. They may let them do it; they may not, but one thing that surely came out from yesterday’s event at ESCOEX International Business School is that they are going to try it damn hard and I am surely going to help them succeed! Will you?

Will your passion help them make a difference at whatever they truly believe in? Not sure about you, but they certainly have mine! For a long while …

Tags: 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, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, The People, Passion, Passionate, Tools, Enablers, Web 2.0, Chris Brogan, Escoex, International Business School, Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Victor Ruiz, Making a Difference, Things That Matter

7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication

I can’t remember the exact date when I first took part in a backchannel chat while participating in a virtual event; I guess it must have been a few years back when I first started making use of Lotus Sametime for group chats while at work, back in the early 2000s. The thing is that nowadays (Whether using IM tools, Twitter, Meeting Rooms, whatever) I just can’t live without those backchannel chats, whether I’m attending a team conference call, a virtual event (Seminars, webinars, workshops, presentations, conference events, lectures, etc. etc.) or whatever else. They have remained, over the course of time, an indispensable collaborative tool I just couldn’t do without.

Yes, I know, and I fully understand it, since I experienced it myself in the past, I realise that for plenty of folks out there, it may not work out all right altogether, more than anything because of that ever increasing sense of being overwhelmed by the event itself AND the backchannel. Where do you place your attention, right? Can you focus on both tasks at the same time? I mean, paying attention to the event and then the backchannel as well? Quite challenging, indeed!

It’s not easy, I agree with that, but in my experience that’s just at the beginning; just till you get the hang out of it; till you have attended a good number of them to make them feel second nature to you. It’s only then when you would be able to see how powerful such backchannel conversations can be to enhance the overall experience of what’s been shared across, and when you are soliciting input with a bunch of team / community members, that’s probably as good as it gets, too! Having everyone on the same page listening to that specific media and giving them an opportunity to expand that user experience by chatting with others is just priceless. And those who may have tried it out already could probably vouch for that last statement as well…

However, how do you get started? How do you overcome the initial hurdle(s) of starting to incorporate backchannel chats into both virtual and face to face events? Are there any good resources out there you could leverage to get things going? Yes, there are!

Here is one of my favourites: check out the short blog post from iLibrarian on this very same topic: "7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication", which references a whitepaper put together by the good folks behind Educause that provides a very clear, insightful, very helpful and thorough overview of the main key benefits behind backchannels (Link to .PDF here)

In that specific article the folks at Educause start setting up the stage by putting together an scenario of how it could well work out for one of those virtual events I mentioned above: a lecture and using Twitter as the backchannel. From there onwards, there are seven different sections that cover, very nicely, the overall content of why these kinds of online events do matter, more and more by the day, in helping facilitate a much richer, endurable and engaging overall experience. And I can tell you, after having participated in hundreds, if not thousands!, of them over the course of the last few years, they have now become an indispensable and integral part of how I enjoy these kinds of events myself.

Here you have got the seven questions put together that the whitepaper covers, so you can have a glimpse of what you may expect on that two pager .PDF article:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

I realise the article has got an embedded flavour for a learning / education background, but if you scratch that out and change it for business it still does make perfect sense, which makes a rather interesting resource for those folks out there interested in wanting to spice their (virtual) events even more and continue introducing some more of those 2.0 elements that everyone keeps talking about while attending those virtual events.

Then perhaps in a later blog post I will share with you folks my Top 10 reasons on why I do benefit the most from backchannels for events not just as a communication tool, but also as a powerful real-time collaboration environment that is, by far, superior to any other kind of collaborative tool. But for now, how are you benefiting from backchannels yourself? Do you still find them an overwhelming experience? Can you live with or without them? What do you think? Do they make sense in today’s interconnected world?

Tags: iLibrarian, Educause, Whitepapers, Education, Learning, Backchannel, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Micro-Sharing, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Business Value, Communication, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Resources, Virtual Events, Conference Events