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cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology
Thoughts and observations on the intersection of technology and business; searching for better understanding of what's relevant, where's the value, and (always) what's the goal ...
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Collaboration "in the Wild": Some Observations
An Enterprise 2.0 dream scenario: implementing a complex project across multiple sites, in two different time zones, with a large team (well over 100). The team was reasonably savvy with collaboration tools; core team members were quite comfortable with Instant Messaging, and we have been relying on SharePoint for many months. A centralized, coordinated document repository; a single source, very public bugs/issues list - the foundation was in place for some time, so our "go-live weekend" experience was pleasantly predictable.
During this critical time, we had to coordinate with the multitude, and we did that with a highly structured "hour-by-hour plan", regularly scheduled "all-hands" conference calls, and web-based meeting places so all could review Completed, In Process, and Coming Soon tasks. After a successful weekend, we received plenty of positive feedback, and some interesting suggestions for improvements:
Conference calls were regularly scheduled, and featured tight agendas - which tended to limit individuals' ability to connect with the right person (until afterward). Since each location had a "war room" where the team gathered for the status calls, some suggested we leave the conference call open 24x7. I wasn't a big fan of this one, primarily because I'm the guy paying the long-distance bill ...
Few on the team are actively using Twitter, but one of the project leads noted that IM was quite popular, and imagined a Tweetdeck-like ability to see instant messages and responses that have gone out previously; "threaded conversations" that could be visible to all, helping collaborative problem-solving and knowledge transfer. I congratulated him on inventing Google Wave ...
Like most decent-sized companies, we have a highly structured Process for approving code changes into production - and like most decent-sized projects, we noted a few instances where promotions to resolve problems were delayed (while they worked their way through the Process). Might there be some streamlining opportunities here, since we are working on a high profile project with lots of oversight?
Of course, #3 was a non-starter, but the first two generated some good discussion, Yes, it's conceivable that we could augment our SharePoint site with a few new extensions or plug-ins to address the first two - but I'm actively working against any changes to our collaboration environments for a very simple reason - we're not finished with the big project. Phase 2 of 2 is coming in just a few weeks.
Am I being close-minded? Not really, I'm a huge driver of collaboration tools in the company. But, I'm also a realist - and I know two significant factors that argue against change at the time:
Prioritizing "Improvements": We are implementing ERP and other highly intrusive / foundational systems, and there's a lot of change that comes along with that. I understand that an organization can only take so much change at once - so why not focus on the stuff that's bringing real (ie. quantifiable, bottom-line, significant) business value.
New Collaboration Tools need Lead Time & Practice: Eight months ago, sharing files by e-mail and ad-hoc, unstructured meetings were the norm. To be fair, we were working smaller projects with teams of 10-20, and usually in no more than two locations. Over the past few months, as we were teeing up for Big Go-Live #1, we've been introducing the newer tools in small bits. For Go-Live Weekend, the team was already familiar with going to SharePoint for status updates, or recording a new Issue in the SharePoint list. The mechanics were old hat, and folks didn't need to think about it - which was nice, since we need them thinking about their Tasks. If we introduce new collaboration tools with little lead time before the Big Go-Live #2, Tasks will be interrupted with people struggling to remember how to communicate.
In the right setting, collaboration tools can clearly add value - even for the most conservative jaded technology users. However, you can't introduce something so new and expect people to "get it" in the short term. Better approach is to introduce the new tools early in the process, when there is no pressure. This lets the team build familiarity, understanding, and skills by the time you need to rely on these tools for critical communication.
Took some time today to work with the new communication meme - Google Wave. I wouldn't call it a fundamentally new way to communicate - well, not yet. I think Google is safe to continue with a "preview" label - clearly not even "beta" yet. No horrible bugs - at least on the Windows platform - but some obviously missing features. And, I am not all that impressed with the basic idea - it's just a mashup of Google Docs, instant messenger, and eMail.
Problems
All of my experimentation has been from a Windows machine - I am experiencing horrible performance issues with Firefox 3.5.3 on Ubuntu 9.04. I freely admit that this might not be a Wave issue - for the last two weeks, all of my Google sites (Mail, Docs, iGoogle, Reader ...) run brutally slow, timing out by graying the browser window. I know it's a weird issue because I can't Google for an answer (a disturbingly tight loop). Wave refused to even show me the stills from the introductory videos until I disabled Greasemonkey. Yes, I'm sure it has something to do with my setup, my installed plugins - I'm just surprised that the problems have been this stubborn.
So, to get anything done, it's back to Windows - still using Firefox, but no hint of platform troubles. Just an underwhelming experience with the fancy new toy.
I Am Legend
Interconnections on the internet are a wonderful thing; I put out a Tweet (sic) regarding my Wave invites, and a note in LinkedIn as well. Twitter generated the most responses, with folks I'd never met - great fun to connect like that. The following day, I got a note from someone looking to connect via Wave - I'm guessing from the information that I can see, this person saw one of my original notes via Friendfeed. Amazing how those copnnections were practically spontaneous ...
... while Wave feels like I'm in a walled garden. I still feel very cut off in the Wave world - a different domain from gmail.com means a new address to track, a new contact list to build. And it's difficult to find connections with folks you already know; I received another Wave invite from a friend, but since I didn't need it, I tried to figure out how to connect to him via Wave (I thought it a reasonable assumption that he, like me, has dived in). Unfortunately, I had to resort to an email message and some detective work to find out his Google ID - not something I could explain to most business users.
Yet Another Email Client
Yes, I am still at that opinion. Most of the opinions and articles I've scanned make it sound like we are working with a next-gen email client that does some of the basics right. I do note that the amplifiers tend to gush a bit, while the attenuators work hard to impress with wit.
One of my random invites went to this guy, who's review was a bit more positive than mind. Ok, maybe I'll jump into the with:public pool and wade around a while - it's probably the only way I'll really get it. However, I am very willing to be patient and continue the experiment - took me about 3 months to get Twitter.
Where do these great analogy ideas come from? Full credit - I got this one from a speaker at the SAP Research Center in Palo Alto, last spring.
A company is like a sphere.
As it grows, volume increases much faster than surface area, and the large a company gets, way more people get embedded and hidden from the end customer than are on the fringe, in customer-facing roles.
As a general rule, this is a bad thing. Well, maybe a less-than-optimal thing - what percentage of your corporate attention span is customer-focused?
Our Challenge is to poke some pockets into the surface, and get more surface area exposed to the outside air.
Will this help a company go farther? It seems to work for golf balls ...
Will this make the company more human? Perhaps, in a self-fulfilling / reverse fractal kind of way ...
Introducing buzzword-compliant technology like a wiki, or integrated collaboration spaces like SharePoint, will typically go well with a motivated audience like your internal IT department. But if you really want to understand how this stuff works, try it with "real people" - line employees in sales and marketing, operations, and finance.
Sure, you've heard complaints from these folks (they have better PCs at home, the SAP/Oracle UI is brutal compared to Amazon and AT&T U-Verse, and why can't they just connect their new iPhone to the corporate mail server?). Be warned; demanding users are not necessarily technically savvy when it comes to groupware.
Case in point; we are working a rather large project (many months in length, over 100 people throughout the business) using SharePoint as our collaboration space - and learning an awful lot about what we thought we understood about ease-of-use and intuitive user interfaces. Our collaboration space is a basic SharePoint project site, featuring the usual suspects - a Shared Document library, an Issues list, and an Announcements section. Simple right? Well, maybe not ...
Documents Check In, but they Don't Check Out
Just kidding, the actual check-in / check-out mechanism works fine. It's just very interesting that this basic concept of version control is lost on most end-users.
But let's start with the document library itself - it looks like a really nice version of File Explorer, but becomes very frustrating to folks when they try basic tasks like drag-and-drop. Yes, we found the simple solution - there is an option to open the folder in Windows Explorer, but since this menu option is buried right above the file list, it's hard to find - certainly not "intuitively obvious".
Version control was a difficult thing to explain - thank goodness for the tight integration with Office 2007. We found it easier to show folks how to edit documents with a simple double-click - that works just like their shared folders on the old file server! You can explain the concepts of version control quite easily, but the whole check-in / check-out, keep-a-copy-on-your-local-drive thing just gets too complicated. We did have to deal with the one-time task of checking in a new document after you upload it, but after that, they just open the files directly, and that's it.
There is one feature of Shared Document libraries that I really like - the ability to add custom attributes to documents that can appear as columns in the view. Makes it easier to sort / select / search on documents, and people "get it" relatively quickly. Just go easy on the version control.
... Here's a SharePoint Tissue
I think the most powerful and elegant feature of SharePoint is the flexibility you have with basic list management - even with WSS. Truly, this stuff should cover over half of the "fancy" automation tasks that folks are are asking for. However, I'm still surprised / dismayed by the fact that SharePoint doesn't include a standard graphical indicator - you know, the classic "stoplight" (green is good, yellow warning, red means um, er...). I've written about this one before - why can't I have a simple datatype (vs. putting together a sneaky little script to make it work).
I also have a significant warning / insight about trying to do too much with your Lists. Do you realize that most end-users in a typical SMB have older CRTs? I'll bet you still have a large number of 15" CRTs with slightly foggy tubes, on their last legs (but too expensive to change out for all but the executive staff) (ok, and IT too, sorry). In addition - well, let's just say that I'm not the only one whose eyesight is beginning to fail them; I can't tell you how often I've tried to talk folks into moving their screen resolution higher than 800x600 - but it just doesn't work.
What's my point? Before you put too many columns in your Lists, or too many gadgets on your Site, check with the average user to make sure that it looks okay on their Screen. Heck, before you even begin your design, use SMS or a simple script to poll the user community and find out what kind of screen resolutions have been set. Catering to the lowest common denominator is not a cop-out, especially when the point of a collaboration site is to get people to actually participate!
Push vs. Pull Messaging
(Another opinion:) I think most powerful aspect of collaboration sites is the aggregation of all knowledge about a project into a single, searchable repository. When people send project updates or resolve issues / hold discussions over e-mail, all that knowledge is buried and quickly lost inside people's inboxes. In SharePoint, a typical Announcements web part (yes, I know it's just another kind of List) is quite practical as a messaging medium, because folks can sign up for e-mail alerts.
Don't underestimate the attraction of the e-mail. People are used to getting information delivered to them in their inboxes - it's expected! All I'm saying with my Announcements list is that you have to subscribe to the information and pull it towards yourself (versus expecting me, the project manager, to remember to push it to you - and everybody else that might be interested).
Real-world learning: this concept didn't take long to grab hold in our project. It makes sense, people understand it relatively quickly.
On The Good Side
Don't get me wrong, there is lots of good that's going on. Now that the larger project is getting used to this new collaboration space ...
... our issue tracking list gets better every time someone touches it - and now we have consistent consolidated issue lists for all aspects of the project
... we are advancing our state-of-the-art for shared authorship; there is a lot more visibility to who is working on what, and we're getting more participation than a normal project
... the combination of all these different pieces - shared documents, issues, announcements, and other things - are massively facilitating communication, and it is noticed by the folks on the team
Yes - these collaboration tools will definitely will bring huge value and streamline communications to your project. Just don't think it's easy or obvious.
Business Benefits of Social Networks Exist, but ...
When I see / read articles like this, or hear the breathless claims of vendors, pundits, and True Believers, I'll privately chuckle to myself. All of this stuff - social networking, collaboration, and innovation - are 21st century takes on good old Knowledge Management (KM), circa 1998.
Do these sound like presentations from your recent Enterprise 2.0 conference?
Managing Cultural Change to Create a Knowledge Sharing Environment
Effectively Managing Information Overload in the Information Age
Information Content and Security in Document Management Systems
Using Technology and the Project Management Workbench to Accelerate Product Development Efforts
Shifting the Burden of Knowledge Sharing to All Employees
I dug up an old copy of the proceedings from a KM conference from 1998; if I did a global replace on "Innovation" for "Knowledge", I could probably get a bunch of folks to sign up today!
Ok, a little sarcasm is fun, but once you realize the similarities, there are other parallels with 1990's KM efforts - not the least of which is the identification of business benefits. Anyone involved with projects back then can testify to the difficulty in predicting hard benefits - clearly quantifiable impact on top line or bottom line, derived in a predictable, measurable manner. Sorry, it just didn't work out that way for KM - and it won't for Social Networks, either! The hype cycle will prevail ...
Hard Benefits of Social Networks Do Not Exist, but ...
Why do people insist on expecting a hard business benefit from social networks, or a payback from a project to implement a funny-sounding technology (wiki/blog/tweet) inside the enterprise? Has anyone ever gotten a quantifiable business benefit from participating on Facebook, LinkedIn, mySpace?
Well, yes, actually - plenty of folks have connected with friends / colleagues, collaborated on business ideas, come up with innovative new approaches - actually monetized all the goofy sounding tools. I myself have written about successes, and have made connections I could never have anticipated. Heck, the old KM conference guide has a couple of case studies as well.
Ah, but do you see the pattern? Business benefits are not predictable, they are always opportunistic and anecdotal. Success is characterized by stories of the home runs (rarely accompanied by comparable stats on strikeouts, by the way). You can't implement a social network within a company or a group, and predict how much and when the profits / savings / growth with start rolling in. You are setting up an environment of opportunity - nothing more.
When I hear people talk about business value or business return of social networks as if they could predict it, I cringe. They're trying to apply financial controls on something that's governed by chance - you can't do it. The incorrect assumption is that you can control good luck - but you can tweak your chances.
Active networkers know - I'm talking about people that have been networking for years, when connections were made face to face. Career coaches would exhort us to get out there and build our professional network - make the office visits, get on their calendar, develop some connections. You have no idea what could happen from any one connection or conversation - nothing might happen or something might happen - you trying to make your own luck.
What is it they say, luck is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration? Social networking is just automation for some of that 90%. And benefits will happen - just don't ask me when.
I know it's lean times in IT, and product / services vendors are all beating the bushes. Some interesting patterns have emerged over the last few months ...
My Boss Is In Town: This is far and away the #1 meme / structure of incoming cold calls; I get a (very) brief synopsis of services/value add, the caller and pushes for some face time with "their manager". Did some newsletter or web site suggest this novel approach last summer? I pinged a consultant friend for an opinion, and they said it might have to do with my title, but I don't think so - this seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon.
LinkedIn Surfers: Using the Who's Viewed My Profile feature, I typically only see names of companies. For the unfamiliar names, one or two clicks will tell me if they are software or services firms; at this point, I'll lay 1:2 odds that they will be calling or eMailing within a week. Not that this is bad - just predictable.
Never be Rude: In all of these conversations, I do try to be polite and listen to the conversation / "pitch" for just a few minutes. I think it's all about karma - the folks on the phone are just doing their job, and I'll give them as polite a response as I can muster, in complete sentences, etc. I'm not turning down face-time requests because I don't like these folks; the reality for most buy-side firms (I would think) is that [we] have limited time and attention span for new professional relationships, and limited resources for additional projects. If the product or service you are pitching is not on my close-in radar screen, I probably won't be interested - so let's just jump to the end game ...
Never say Never: However, I do like to exchange contact information, and I'll always ask for a short electronic synopsis of a firm and their skills / product offerings. Electronic - because I hate moving paper. Plus, I keep my conversations in a contact database, and index my hard drive for stuff like text-searchable PDFs, office documents, etc. When I do have a need, I will typically search my electronic resources to find out who (among those I have connected with) might have a certain set of competencies.
A Perfect World: Here's a thought: some really innovative firm could publish contact information and competencies in some structured text, or maybe make it electronically discoverable on their corporate web site - can you say semantic web?. Then I search & find by competencies when I have a true need. Of course, guys like me would love a spec and a how-to document to do the same for our departmental IT profile (key technologies, typical use of third party firms, IT procurement processes for Preferred / Approved Vendors, etc.). You know, if some firm out there defined, implemented, and popularized such a spec / standard, they'd really be showing me that they knew what they were talking about ...
Real World Chicago: Of course, my professional career has been centered in Chicago, and have built excellent networks and rapport with the folks I know, have spent face time with - so I do appreciate the value of that whole relationship thing. Still, please don't be offended when I keep the conversation terse.
Of course, all the best sales people get two orders every day, right? Get out and stay out!
(apologies to TQ, he always hated that joke).
Enterprise 2.1: Exiting the Trough of Disillusionment
Enterprise 2.1: Exiting the Trough of Disillusionment
"What will you do with that car if you actually catch it?"
-- what the cat asked the dog (from the Chicago Reader, circa 1989)
So you've gone all "Enterprise 2.0", spinning up a wiki, a blog, and a SharePoint or Drupal server inside your firewall. Now what happens?
The groundswell of interest in "cool tools" brings a wave of users and a burst of feed reader activity - for a few weeks. Before long, however, the organization will get some rush orders, a month-end close, a project deadline, and/or a few vacations on the team ... and the same old excuses begin to weasel their way into the conversations. Folks begin to realize that collaboration and participation is more than reading (I actually have to type something into this thing?). Management styles are tested, and we find out if KM can be pushed on or pulled from the group. The questions start on a familiar note ...
Why?
The classic pushback against documentation; we see no immediate value added. When I'm programming or implementing a system, I'm making stuff happen; when I'm documenting, I'm only creating files that no one reads (and some ambient white noise for my cube neighbors). Of course, if there's only one person in the department that knows how the system works, and if they happen to be out on vacation when a problem arises, it's all hands on deck and a general scramble to figure out how things work. Imagine your consternation when you find out it's a five-minute fix ... if only they had written something down ...
There's also the career flexibility issue; if you're the only one that knows how something works, you'll never be able to move to the next interesting technology - stuck maintaining the Unknown System. Unfortunately, a plea to the value of Future Flexibility doesn't help when you're dealing with someone who likes to maintain control over the Predictable Present. Sooner or later, the benefit of getting rid of their inflexibility far outweighs the cost of reengineering anything ... it's just delayed pain.
Who?
Another classic question (who is supposed to write this stuff? Not Me!), with a contemporary twist ... the collaborative tools allow us to quickly broaden our audience/author pool, including folks outside of IT. In fact, this is a significant difference from fads gone by - non-IT folks are getting exposed to collaborative documents on publicly available, open environments like Wikipedia and Google; it's getting easier to talk to a growing number of people about interacting in a collaborative environment; the team isn't limited to the techies any more!
Which?
A much more important question - which platform should we use to capture this knowledge? When do you use a blog versus a discussion forum? Will I wiki, or should I SharePoint? Choosing IM over eMail is easy, but when should I tweet instead?
If you're working on this question, it's actually a good sign - folks have enough hands-on to understand the good and the bad about a variety of collaboration media. Experience is your best guide here; wiki's are great for fast entry and immediate distribution, but (IMHO) it's difficult to maintain a table of contents, index, or any multi-chapter / multipage chunk of knowledge. At home, I'm building the fifth generation of my home software development environment, and I've already passed over my personal wiki tool as unsatisfactory. Too many processes and interlocking technologies surrounding the servers, development environments, and push-to-production processes. It's much easier to create an actual Administrator's Guide (sample); a formal document with table of contents, chapters, diagrams, even page headers and footers. If I bothered to print it out, it'll look great - but I don't care about the paper. I like the structure that a book gives me - this is broad collection of information about a set of technologies and processes required to do one basic thing.
Each of the different Web 2.0 / KM tools has different strengths and weaknesses - flexible info structures, formatting efficiencies, ease of distribution, and support for collaboration / version control. The light will come on when you understand your biggest problem is collecting the knowledge; presentation, distribution, search, and sharing are covered nicely by the various intranet technologies, but the magic is in the making.
Doom and Gloom - and a Silver Lining
Disruptive technologies come and go, there are no silver bullets, and there's always a problem somewhere. If the environment is user friendly, it won't scale. If users accept the concept, they won't have the time to create content. If you can get all of these budding authors to write prose that is readable, you'll struggle with making it findable.
But hey - we're trying to pull out of this "trough of disillusionment" - so focus on the things that Web 2.0 does well ...
Lowers the technology bar for collaboration - all you need is a browser!
You're not introducing new ideas, you're just making them work within your company
Widens the author pool (and experience base!) for knowledge capture
... and focus your attention on the "next version" (2.1) - practical questions of why? who? which?
We added RSS capabilities to our internal PMO systems this past month, and traffic & content is already building up to become a valuable resource. Some have [correctly] noted that this increased visibility puts a bit more pressure on project managers and team members, to keep updating project blogs with pertinent information. This "time shifting" of communication should develop into the most effective way to let the rest of IT know what is happening in all areas.
There are some very interesting threads and conversations going on ... for example:
One Supply Chain systems team informs us of process improvements in product development - nothing to do with IT, but interesting nonetheless
Another team is putting together ideas that will take some significant IT costs out - that's a very active thread
The SAP application team is debating with the Basis team on the merits of a Unicode upgrade - and onlookers from Supply Chain Planning and Data Warehousing are noting dependencies on Unicode in their platforms
These spontaneous, organic, and very impactful "conversations", between people still experimenting with a new technology, show me real potential for spontaneous innovation and idea sharing. More evidence of the value of [judicious] experimentation with new technology - no silver bullet, but just enough spark to start a few fires.
Interested in learning more about RSS? There's lots of good reading out on the Internet ...
Voyage is an imaginative RSS-feader which displays the latest news in the "gravity area". Interesting navigation - I don't think this is practical for internal use, but it sure looks good!
Newsmap translates news feeds and frequeny to a variable bar graph approach.
Universe DayLife is, well, spacey. Translates the universe of news and connections to stars ...
Yet another interesting way that the Internet has broadened my connections and collaborations ...
After connecting over LinkedIn and exchanging common interests via e-mail and blog post, the fine folks over at The Front End of Innovation blog asked me to do some posting there as well. They have a different posting style - shorter, a bit more volume than I can generate, and definitely focused on innovation (I know that I wander across many different areas of IT and business). However, I've got a series of post ideas I'm working on in the area of "innovation" - defintely a buzzword for 2008. I should easily be able to cross-post between the two.
Be sure to check out the other authors at FEI - interesting stuff, definitely worth adding to your blog roll!
There've been many articles in recent weeks about the tech-savvy Millennials and their impact on future work. I concede, even welcome the changes that business will need to introduce in response to these new expectations, but I don't see the massive change that some writers seem to think is inevitable. The world will not change to accommodate the Millennials, but relevant and effective new working styles will definitely be adopted where they make business sense.
I will certainly agree that communication styles will change. For example, there will be a greater reliance on (and expectations of) instant and ubiquitous connections - with people, information and technology. IM is already on the way out, and texting is the way to go; my high-school-aged daughters think nothing of racking up thousands of text mails every month.
Unfortunately, this kind of freewheeling message content is going to run headlong into the litigious real-world. Many companies are still struggling over records retention standards and expectations. Public companies will need to maintain some control over messages that could contain proprietary or inside information. Corporate survival and protection from liability are clearly not on the minds of students as they post embarrassing pictures on Facebook pages, and even adults get trapped by unfortunate text messages that come back to haunt them.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge believer in alternative messaging styles and flexible collaboration. I've managed and/or participated on multiple "collaborative" teams - people from different companies, zip codes, time zones and countries. Separation by time and space has been a business challenge for years, but you could set up a shared FTP folder, or swap e-mails about projects, as long as I've been working. The teams that succeeded understood the differences between working across the hall and working across town, and moderated their communication styles accordingly, using the best tools available.
The value the Millennials bring is a de facto openness to collaboration tools. To them it's not something new that they need to learn; they expect the rest of us to already be there. Their rude awakening will come when they need to invest some change management time getting us "old folks" to catch up to their fast twitch messaging style; they won't be able to pass us by because we've got the organizational and process knowledge. (that's why we're on the team, right?)
There are a few ideas circulating in the blogosphere as to what will bring Web 2.0 into the enterprise, including ...
The Influx of the Millennials; recent college graduates who have come to expect social networking, instant messaging and collaboration via the cloud. This groundswell of pressure will force IT to implement these new technologies.
Consumer High-Tech; populist technologies like Apple hardware and Google's suite of software has taken hold in our homes; folks who expect interoperability with their employer's network will create the demand.
The Innovation Imperative; apparently, the only way for IT to demonstrate relevance and appear innovative is to slap Ajax and some pastel colors into their enterprise projects.
I suppose these things will start some conversations, but there are entrenched forces within the business that are tough to overcome -
The Millenials will be in the minority, with low positions on the corporate totem pole, for a few years still. There is still a critical mass of folks who only know how to communicate / collaborate via e-mail - folks who still own the decision-making power.
Consumer gadgets change too fast, and sport an ever increasing array of connection technologies. Savvy corporate IT groups have standardized on a small number of technologies, so they can keep overall costs down. Few businesses will want to explode their IT costs just so folks can check corporate e-mail on their iPhones.
Innovation based on a fancy look-feel probably delivers nothing to the bottom line. Words like wikis and blogs are fun to say, but most executive management teams prefer terms like 30% annualized growth, category killer, lower inventories with higher customer service, and market outperform.
Still, all is not lost. For those who dream of seeing more FOSS and Web 2.0 offerings on the corporate servers, the door is cracking open, due to the economic pressure we all feel. It gets tougher and tougher to justify increasing maintenance fees and license costs for the traditional software vendors, when competitive alternatives exist at little to no cost.
If you're trying to get Web 2.0 into your company, sell the economics - not the ergonomics.
Anthropology of LinkedIn Answers: Five Days of Posts
Anthropology of LinkedIn Answers: Five Days of Posts
I have seven RSS feeds from LinkedIn Answers in my blogroll for a few months now. I'll answer a question every once in a while, haven't posted one yet, maybe some day. As I scan these questions, I can see this social network exhibiting multiple personalities, interesting patterns.
So this week, I let my blog reader pile up the questions for five straight days without marking any as "read". An entirely unscientific analysis (warning: I am not an anthropologist), but here's what I found as I sat down to catch up with the posts ...
Overall Statistics
The volume of unsolicited traffic in my voicemail and e-mail inboxes tells me that sales reps and recruiters are aggressively using LinkedIn for opportunity prospecting. However, the numbers below seem to show that the rest of us are looking to the network to solve technology problems (primarily), followed by a smattering of management issues ...
Technology
338
52%
Management
112
17%
Staffing and Recruiting
72
11%
Business Operations
66
10%
Professional Networking
29
4%
Offshoring and Outsourcing
20
3%
Mergers and Acquisitions
8
1%
Total
645
Scanning the questions, I found a number of interesting themes coming through ...
Ask a Simple Question ... some of these have been asked a millian times before - others are sound quite urgent. I can't imagine waiting for a response ...
As social networking sites proliferate and mature, we're all learning how to use these interesting new resources. True, it is just a modern take on "professional networking" - purposeful connections with different special interest groups, to share ideas and lay the foundation for current or future "opportunities".
I'm involved with a couple of organizations like this - I like to connect with peers, and I like to know what's going on in my city and in the industry. Recently I was talking with the organizer of one of these groups, and he asked what we could do to make our periodic meetings more valuable to the people that participate.
Most business meetings start the same way - a quick trip around the table, where everyone introduces themselves, gives their title and role, and typically talks about their expectations for the meeting, or what they want to get out of this next 60 minutes. That might be helpful at work, but when I'm at a networking meeting, there's a different dynamic involved.
To tell the truth - I don't really care what other people want to get out of the meeting … I'm trying to find out how they can help me. I'm looking for somebody who …
… has experience in the technology I'm struggling with - or knows who I might call
… can connect me with an interesting new job opportunity
… has been at the company I am currently interviewing with, so I can get some inside information
… is in the market for the goods or services I need to sell
… has done whatever it is I'm trying to do and can tell me all the shortcuts
Yes, I'm here for myself - and I'm not all that interested in what you want. I'm interested in finding out what or who you know - not what you want to know.
In fact, if the meeting is large, I'll probably tune the rest of you out, spending more time thinking about what I'm going to say (so I don't sound stupid) than listening to you, because (again) I don't care what you want, but I know I don't want to sound silly when I speak.
Hmm, a room full of self-centered louts … how to warm up a crowd like that?
So, my idea for the Meeting Organizer was to turn the whole thing around; as we go around the table, everyone needs to present what I called their Networking CV (or Networking Resume). I need to explain to the folks around the table what I have to offer:
Companies I've worked for
What industries … pharma? manufacturing? financial? not-for-profit? high-tech?
What business models … privately held? public? closely held? venture capital? entrepreneurial startup? Fortune 50?
Roles in the business … developer? DBA? PM? Unit leader? Product Manager? Sales? Strategy? Operations?
What technologies, and how deep is my experience?
What kind projects have I been exposed to?
Remember, you only should take a few minutes to go through this - so how might I find out more?
If you've got a detailed resume on the web, give out your site name - or give me a simple Google search term that will find you every time
If you're in a social network already (ex. LinkedIn), let folks know that you're out there, tell them to send you an invite and you will accept it
If we went around the table talking about this kind of stuff, I'd be listening intently to what everybody else is saying - because they're telling me exactly what I need to hear.
It might be a good idea to set some structure and ground rules around what people can and should say. You don't want folks to start bragging or going into too much detail. You just need to give out enough information to let folks know how you might help them. Not your accomplishments, but what you've been exposed to.
Now, at first blush this approach sounds both selfish and egotistical: I don't care what you want, just listen to how great I am. That's the stealthy, Zen trick behind this approach. By quickly identifying folks that I want and need to have conversations with, I will have more conversations, I will make more connections.
And the nice thing about those connections is that I'm coming to you for information - you're not trying to push yourself on me. I'm interested in the stuff that you know, but since you told me what you know, I'm coming to you. I am initiating the connection; you may be here to sell something, but I'm going to you to talk about your experience in this industry.
All of the first conversations are me asking you for something freely offered
Why is this important? Because when you start asking me for stuff, the ice is already broken. You may be trying to get new business with my firm. You may be asking if I know of any positions in my company.
Some of our multiple, future conversations are you asking me for something I may not want to give (money, time, or reputation)
However - the relationship has already been started, and it's built on mutual, opportunistic benefits, freely given. I know it's much easier to "do business" with folks you know - maybe that's the Chicago way …
So next time you're at a networking event, or putting yourself "out there" on these social networking platforms, try to make it clear what you have to offer. Your first visibility into the network, your first conversation, your first post on the board should focus on what you have to offer, what you will add to the network.
It might be a good thing - altruism, pay it forward, power of positive thinking …
It might be a bad thing - cynical manipulation, selfish, giving a little and getting a lot ...
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