Social media and governance

I have been reading several posts lately that adress the issue of governance of social media governance within corporations. Opinions range from designing guidelines to defining and deploying policies. To my mind, both are right and wrong, as governance is first dependant on a company’s culture and organization.

To be on the practical side, this is what I do when adressing social media and governance:

• Linking with the existing governance structure of the corporation, rules, practices, culture and the new social culture (internal and external),
• Not setting a document (a charter, for instance) but developing a «charter community» to manage the issue in the longer term,
• Work on a beta mode, both on the contents and the form that will be given to the governance charter and charter community
• Take time to work on principles (that should not evolve easily),
• Take time to work on the «how to» dimension, that should evolve more often.

Progressing towards an increased level of collaboration (that I really prefer to the much publicized Enterprise 2.0) is about managing changes and evolutions. I think developing a real governance initiative is key only when:

• The first pilots are over, before it is too much of a constraint and it is enough to define the few principles that will ensure consistency between pilots;
• The scope is large enough. Without the proper scope, the need for governance is less obvious at executive level.

Once governance of the social media environment has been designed, once it is operational, it is time to manage relations with key issues: HR driven regulations, communication policies and management practices. How we manage these relations will make all the difference between implementing a social media or transforming the corporation.

My connected life changed with Twitter

I am just about to start working on a presentation I will be giving at Netexplorateur next Thursday and as I sit and gather some papers, some thoughts and some coffee, I look at Firefox opening ...

Gmail, Google Calendar, Linkedin, Facebook, Friendfeed open slowly and I also launch Twhirl. I can tell you I am rather tired at this time of the evening and feeling rather slow intellectually.

Then I notice an RT (retweet) from Bertrand Duperrin, speaking about how Michael Arrington was spat on the face earlier today. I read his post, which impacts me strongly.

And I start thinking about how Twitter and my small but growing Twitter world has impacted me since I became an active member about a month ago. I actually, right now, two minutes after my MacBook opened, feel much better, energized by all those guys I see working and reflecting on the same subjects I work on, or just twitting some news about their life, their friends or the latest news from their reader (right now, Andrew McAfee wondering whether executives should know about the cloud, and I'm answering yes, obviously).

The subject I am trying to organize my ideas about is "Management, mobile Technologies, stress and autonomy". Just thinking about Twitter, writing this post, I get at least one insight: To feel autonomous, not only do I need to learn about tools and usages, but more importantly I need to be a member of the correct community through the correct media. And I need to be able to change tools and communities if I change subjects. This is all about increasing intellectual and social mobility for all of us, empowered by mobile and social technologies, and seamless access to the cloud. Managing this is something corporations have not learned to do.

For me, Twitter is the place where I go when I am working or thinking by myself. Yes, not so much by myself, now. I am just beginning to understand it, I think this little tool has changed the way I work.

By the way, for those interested in Twitter, don't miss the great series from FastForward blog.

Web2.0 and profits ?

I was just pointed out this article by the Web 2.0 LinkedIn Community. It basically says that social media ventures will make no money, and be bought by other new start-ups which are trying to increase the utility of the web (location based servides and payment systems), that they dub web 3.0

The comparison with the glorious era of railways development has often been made, and yet it is useful to say it again: social media is basically a new kind of infrastructure that shortens distances and time between people (just as the railways did).

In the end, there will only be a handfull of social media companies around and they will regroup most social media vehicles (blogging, microblogging, video, presentations, podcasts, virtual, ...).

We are learning to "travel" in these new infrastructure and maybe some of the frenzy about blogging or microblogging can be compared to what happened to former generations when they discovered railways, cars or the telephone. I am happy to be part of the frenzy and more than thankful to Facebook and its likes.

I do not agree that money will not be made. But even more importantly, a huge value is just being created, a value that might be difficult to evaluate from only a short-time financial point of view. Strange that Fortune should appear to be this shortsighted.

Collaboration, business and democracy

I am working on a couple of "what's next" projects about corporate networks and communities, and this post by Jon Husband (The New Management - Bringing Democracy and Markets Inside the Organization), really struck me as very accurate.

One of the key milestones for widely and successfully deploying collaboration in an organization is the process for choosing a new governance charter. Basically, in my experience, after some pilot communities and networks have helped identify why and how a specific organization should deploy a collaborative way (to innovate further; to increase individual productivity; to bring its internal culture to the level of its employer brand; and so on), people start thinking about some key issues like:
- what name should we choose for this initiative,
- what rules should we have to organize our collaboration,
- how should HR processes change to take into account this new dimension ?

Bringing an answer to those questions is one of the key milestones to bring collaboration within the corporate culture. And, more than the answers themselves, it is how the organization choses to bring an answer to those issues (how it learns to think, design and decide collectively) that matters.

Why did Jon Husband post stricke me ? Well, I think we are at a time when the rules and governing principles of corporations are going to be built by the employees. That is, to my mind, somehow a move that "increases the democratic level" of the corporation.

Most governing principles used to come from power or from history: corporations internal organization codes and rules are mostly based on hierarchical decisions or on culture (the way we do things around here).

What I see now is quite different. Collaboration projects, and even more so if E2.0 tools are chosen and deployed wisely, can result in new rules and charters that have been collaboratively built and adopted. This is new and can be very powerful.

This is hapening. But we should not be too idealistic. I do not think this is about how the corporation will become a democracy (at least, not yet). I think it is about how the responsibility for the organization projects, performance and social role is more widely distributed and accepted than before.

By asking to build the rules, the employees are asking for more responsibility, and by launching these collaborative projects the organization is getting ready to share it. I could not say what will be the outcome of this. What I can say is that most corporations structure and processes will have to change deeply to benefit from this trend (see Martin's last post on Cisco for an example of change).

Christmas thoughts

I am just about to leave for holydays, and was thinking about how 2008 is finishing. It actually started out pretty well for all of us engaged in "collaboration based change management" or "enterprise 2.0" development. But then, there was the credit crunch.

Simply put, somehow along the way trust disappeared, and the whole system started contracting. It is still contracting.

The question is, why did trust disappear ? Too complex a question to adress in a post. In here, I would only say that we do not believe the economy can go on growing at what was its pace in the past few years. Or, more precisely, that it cannot continue growing if it keeps the same structure and governing principles.

Isn't then this crisis a good moment to step back and act (not think) on those governing principles ? Based on the most visible reactions (governments and big business), it certainly does not seem so.

On the government front, billions have been poured into incumbant banks, financial institutions and industrial groups. Nothing has really been done to ensure that they will learn from past mistakes.

On the business front, we are getting ready to cope with the huge layoff frenzy that goes with this type of crisis (200 000 jobs to be lost in France according to Les Echos, even the tech layoffs are happening).

At the same time, there has been a lot of buzz arond how Enterprise 2.0 (to be overly simplistic) could have a positive impact in these times. For instance, putting down IT costs (as argued by Ross Dawson here) or even reinventing our business models (as argued in this interesting conversation led by Paula Thornton here)

And yes, I have to agree that all this "collaboration-based change" will have increased productivity of work (individual and collective) as its main impact for incumbent corporations. At the same time, and as argued in the post of Paula Thornton, business based on different business model and even different founding principles will emerge.

It's time that leaders started thinking big and forgetting about old recipes. I do not think they will work. In fact, I think we have just started a period that will end with bringing down two of the idols on which we have built our economy: growth for growth and financial value.

Poursuite du cycle E2.0 de Boostzone

Suite aux deux premiers petits déjeuners sur l'entreprise 2.0 (transformation des usages et transformation de l'organisation), l'Institut organise le 9 janvier 2009 le dernier petit déjeuner de ce cycle, centré sur l'Innovation

Plus d'infos sur http://www.boostzone.fr/

Le dernier petit déjeuner, sur la transformation des organisations, avait aboutit au constat du nombre de questions encore ouvertes sur les transformations au cours. Le petit déjeuner du 9 janvier offre l'opportunité de répondre à quelques unes de ces questions sur le sujet de l'innovation.

Collaboration will push people management from execution to strategy

I was with a client yesterday, thinking about how to bring collaboration skills (and awareness) to future leaders. Several points come to my mind after this conversation:

- This particular client has broken down its HR department: HR administration, social matters and people development are really managed by very different departments and people. This is pragmatic HR innovation to my mind !

- Putting the whole collaboration affair in the People department is a great approach, but one that should be managed carefully. When looking at collaboration through classic people development lenses, we are brought to think about classic people development services (using training and development to develop new usages, skills, technology skills, ...). That's important but clearly not enough.

In this approach, it is more important to find key issues on which to collaborate (and learn to better collaborate) than to identify "collaboration skills" that would afterwards be deployed through training. I think that training can only come as a support of a wider methodology.

The best way I know is to open collaborative spaces (communities or networks) and launch these communities or networks with minimal support (ensuring only consistency accross communities and in the support given). In these "people development communities", if issues are carefully chosen, people should be oriented towards working differently (contributing rather than producing; rating rather than evaluating; ....), and should be recognized and rewarded for so doing (not financially on a first step).

Why act this way ? The whole idea, to my mind, is not to try to impose standards tools (blogs, wikis, feeds, microblogs, ...) or average skills, but to bring the employees to discover the ways that match their needs - that is, that help them solve business issues.

The people development department will not be deciding which are the key skills or competencies to develop, it will rather be building an advanced "framework for collaboration", in which employees will test and invent the new ways of working that make sense for their particular business (that match their industry, culture, processes).

Discovering how to manage the collective side of people development is one of HR paths to value creation.

After the crisis: the new or the old ?

I have been reading several posts lately about how the 2.0 (for want of a better name) could be what we need to go out of the crisis (here, here).

I think the question is even more important. By adressing the crisis wih the same state of mind and methods that we use to have, only at a bigger scale, are we not reproducing the same behaviours that took us where we are ?

By pouring money into ailing banks or carmakers what are we saving ? Jobs ? Or are we preserving a model that has proven its limits ? Time will say.

But in the corporations that are going to come out of the crisis, I think it is the leaders responsibility to innovate in management and governance, or at least to be able to recognize their limits if they are reaching them. We are probably at a paradigm change in management (and in society). For those that recognize it, it is a great opportunity.

People centered organizations

I re-read recently a couple of posts by Stowe Boyd, on his notion that "the individual is the new group" (here).

Stowe's point, as I understand it, is that the important thing for the new social tools is giving people the ability to form the groups they need at the moment they need them (Stowe says this much better and in more detail). This implies that groups (the vast majority of them) are short lived and serve a specific purpose. I think this should also be the case for networks and communities even though their purpose is often more complex and they are therefore longer-lived.

More importantly, I think this kind of thinking greatly illustrates the kind of organization that are emerging today: organizations centered on people. Organizations that give every employee the ability to organize the resources she needs, at the moment she needs them, in order to do her job (think, execute, share, solve problems, ...). And today, resources means talent resources, that is fellow employees.

And I think this goes way beyond tools (which are key):
- It means ensuring that employees have the sense of responsibility that is needed to go beyond the existing boundaries of the organization (geography, product, hierarchy, ...);
- It means ensuring that the employees that are able to break boundaries in the interest of the business are proprely recognized (I have already talked about how to reinvent assessment and development systems here),
- It means ensuring that employees have the skills and behaviors needed to be able to work in different environments (we call these collaborative models), hierarchical, community of practice, peer network, functional network, ...
- It also means ensuring that leadership at organizations recognizes the potential of these new ways of working and of organizing and that they go the whole way they need to go to adapt their own individual and leadership styles.

E2.0 ratings or Peer People Reviews : should companies change their development and evaluation processes ?

In a conversation launched a month ago by Andrew McAfee in this post, and continued last week through this post, there was a lot of buzz on whether it was a good idea or not to measure E2.0 participation of knowledge workers. I tend to agree with Andrew McAfee that measuring E2.0 activities would "encourage and increase participation and contributions". And I think we are looking at a major change opportunity.

I would first like to stress that E2.0 ratings should be linked to a correctly organized peer network or community (in a post last week, I pointed out that we call these Collaborative Models at the Boostzone Institute). If ratings are allowed from any employee in the company, I am worried that it will be a long time before they are taken into account by management for decision making. But within a peer network, these ratings can become a powerful tool for expertise recognition. In a interesting article from HBR, Creativity and the Role of the Leader, Diego Rodriguez, a partner from IDEO, points out that "contributing to an interdependent network is its own reward". I would go further, as Andrew McAfee does, and say that ratings can encourage friendly competition and self-improvement.

The change opportunity I am pointing at is how these E2.0 ratings could become the basis for network or comunity management.

In a very classical view of HR, how would E2.0 ratings be considered ? As the measurement of an employee's performance in using E2.0 tools ? Probably. The reality is slightly more complicated. E2.0 ratings should be used to start building Peer People Reviews (PPR).

In classic People Reviews, a particular employee is given a triple assessment of himself: her performance, her potential for evolution at her current employer, her "development needs". This triple assessment is based on a hierarchical view of the organization: people are assessed by their managers, based on performance management systems that are deployed down hierarchical lines and on skill frameworks that, more often than not, are built top-down by HR teams.

I think these People Reviews are particularly well adapted to developing managers within a hierarchical organization. Most other systems (mobility, rewards) are based on this one. As for 360° assessment and other more "democratic" assessment systems, they are still management-designed tools and are far from the peer potential of E2.0 ratings.

Peer People Reviews, that is E2.0 ratings, to my mind, would be different from classic people reviews in at least two dimensions. From a process point of view, they are continuous assessment processes, continuously evolving as network member work activity produces additional ratings. From a content point of view, the ratings are very different from performance indicators or skills description. These, in classic people reviews, are designed in advance. In Peer People Reviews, only the rating categories can be designed: the content of the ratings will continuously evolve also, based on the evolution of content development by the network. And therefore, assuming that the peer network has a clear link with value creation, the ratings become a great indicator for network performance.

In the same HBR article mentioned above, the authors say that "one doesn't manage creativity. One manages for creativity". I would use the same approach to say that an organization does not manage community or network performance: an organization can only build the environment for community or network performance.

Individual People Reviews should be used to drive individual managers development, while Peer People Reviews should become a "common way of working" within any collaborative model. Building the framework for the Peer People Review and continuously monitoring it is management work.