Social Computing Guidelines and Why You Would Still Need Them

December 17, 2015 • Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, elsua, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Open Business

A few weeks back I wrote about the first of the 5 pillars I keep using with clients, time and time again, whenever they are embarking on the so-called Digital Transformation journey. Back in that blog entry I mentioned how having the right purpose is the main trigger to get things going. From there onwards it all starts rolling out and for today I thought I would go ahead and continue with the series of articles and write about the second pillar itself, which I know is going to cause a bit of a surprise, and perhaps a bit of a stir, too, because most people are not going to believe that here we are, nearly at the end of 2015, and we still need them and pretty badly: Social Computing Guidelines.

Yes, that is right, whenever you are embarking on the Social Business journey, right after you may have figured out what the main purpose is for that transformation initiative through social / digital tools, the next big activity to look into is to have a rather robust, representative and relevant set of social computing guidelines. I know what you are thinking, here we are, already passed through 2015, and we still need guidelines? Really? Haven’t we learned much from the last 10 years or so? Well, you are probably not going to believe it, but we certainly do need them!

Initially, because when starting to make use of social tools, whether internally, or externally, you would *not* want to use or talk about rules to describe how people should behave at work, no matter how insistent senior leadership may well be when stating they want to control how people behave in this brave new world of digital tools. Narrative matters, nowadays more than whatever you would have thought of in the past, and that’s the very first thing senior management would tell you that you would need to take care of: ‘Yes, I want to have a bunch of rules, so that my employees would not be goofing off, nor misbehave and what not and instead continue to work really hard. I want to command and control what they do‘. As if that ever happened in the past, right? Bless them …

Here is the thing, if you let that happen you are just opening a can of worms you don’t want to open. Rules, control, entitlement, arrogance, (a certain) position or status, micro-management, etc. etc. don’t work well in an unstructured, almost chaotic, network driven environment where democratisation of conversations by earning the merit, the attention and the conversation of your peers is the new modus operandi. We no longer talk about rules, but guidelines. We no longer talk about imposing a certain method of operating while getting work done, but, instead, work through influencing certain behaviours to flourish and thrive over the course of time. Openness, transparency, publicy, trust, engagement don’t work well with rules. Quite the opposite. Those Social Computing Guidelines are your entrance door into modelling certain new mindset(s), behaviours and overall good business practices.

Now, let’s have a look into what it would be like not having those social guidelines in place. Let’s take, for example, Twitter. Umair Haque put together, not long ago, a superb piece of writing in which it became pretty clear, right from the start, what Twitter is all about without those social guidelines themselves. The World Wide West would not suffice to put it mildly. You haven’t seen it just yet? Take a good look into Twitter’s Trending Topics, for instance, whenever you have got a chance, and you will see the kind of vitriol that takes a whole new level of describing what both trolling and bullying is all about. It’s just as if we are using these social tools as an additional digital layer of sociopathy that de-humanises not only who we are, but also both our actions and interactions with others. No wonder senior leaders are so scared of embracing internally social / digital tools, if they think things would be pretty much the same as what happens out there in the Social Web.

See? There are many reasons why you would want to put together some Social Computing Guidelines in place, before you would run into potential trouble, but perhaps there are two of them that keep coming up time and time again in the conversations I usually have with my clients:

Organisations need to become comfortable with their employees making good, smart and responsible use of these social tools, so they can put together a green check on their corporate legal records, and move on…
And people in organisations (i.e. knowledge workers) need to become smarter in terms of how they can make the most out of social tools to collaborate more openly and share more of their knowledge across to, eventually, help them get work done effectively vs. using it as a corporate weapon of massive destruction (of one’s own digital reputation, that is).

That’s why whenever I work with clients I firstly asked them: ‘What’s your purpose?’ and, right after they have shared across the why, the what’s in it for them, I usually ask them whether they have thought about putting together a certain number of social guidelines to help their employees, and the overall organisation, prepare for the journey. And, if not, why not? Having a conversation about potential social media bloopers and evaluating, initially, the potential (negative) impact they can have within an organisation helps understand why those guidelines may well be needed, after all. From there onwards, ‘how do we get started with them?‘ usually comes up and it’s time to roll up our sleeves and start working on them.

The good thing is when trying to get things started we are never starting from scratch. There are tons of really good resources out there already, as well as dozens of examples, of other businesses and organisations that have graciously shared their own as an opportunity to contribute into the overall #SocBiz community effort. Take a look into the Social Media Governance Web site, for instance, where you will find hundreds of those same examples I just mentioned above. Even just go into Google and search for ‘Social Computing Guidelines‘ and you will find (first link on the top!) the one that has been perused over and over again over the years: IBM’s own Social Computing Guidelines.

Back in May 2005, yes, that’s not a typo, IBM decided to ask a bunch of very brave and rather prolific IBM bloggers to come together over the course of a couple of weeks, and using a wiki, put together an initial ‘Blogging Policy & Guidelines‘ that will then need to be cross-checked with both corporate communications and the legal teams to ensure things were all right and then publicise them both internally and externally. After a couple of weeks of frantic co-editing, updating, adding, removing, revising and working together the guidelines were done and presented to both of those teams. Not a single update was needed and IBM’s Blogging Policy & Guidelines were born. May 2005.

That was, right there, IBM’s opportunity to, instead of blocking the use of social tools, send out a pretty loud and clear message to its employees, customers, business partners and competitors that, if anything, IBM wasn’t going to block access to them at all, but, instead, fully support and embrace them altogether. And IBM’s official journey to become a Socially Integrated Enterprise had just begun. Two years later, pretty much the same group of bloggers, as well as everyone else already using, internally and externally, those social tools, came together again to revise them and update them accordingly with guidelines about new tools, trends, and what not. And IBM’s official Social Computing Guidelines were born. During that time none of us, i.e. that group of bloggers, would know such guidelines would become an industry standard, but they, eventually, did. If anything, reaffirming the power of co-creation, through a wiki, of a bunch of enthusiasts, advocates and overall 2.0 practitioners.

10 years later I keep thinking the main reason why those different guidelines (not rules!) were a success, both for IBM, as well as other companies that decided to adapt them to their needs and embrace them accordingly, was because of two different factors that were taken into consideration right from the start:

Match those guidelines to the corporate culture of the organisation, to send out there a very clear message to everyone that these social tools are business tools, and, as such, there is a certain netiquette that needs to be respected, complied with and abide to. It’s how you do business, people to people.
Put yourself in the shoes of those (back then new) 2.0 practitioners and ask them how they would want to make a smarter use of those digital tools in a business context. Then invite them to tell you what directives they would feel comfortable with and embrace those. Helping define a level of comfort for those 2.0 practitioners in a co-creative manner they would want to go ahead with is just the beginning of sending out a clear message, from there onwards, that you, as an organisation, do care as much as they do. Why? Well, you trust them to do the right thing. And they will.

With those two underlying principles in mind, and with all of the resources already mentioned above, it’s now a good time to get things going and decide whether you would want to open up the process of creating those social computing guidelines, as IBM did back in the day, or whether you would want to have a representative team, as much as possible, to work on them. Either way, let’s start!

Here are though, some additional thoughts you may want to take into consideration as well when beginning to work in those social guidelines that may prove to be both helpful and relevant:

Align them to current, existing business conduct guidelines, corporate values, code of conduct, etc. that you may be using already to set the tone and their overall purpose. In a nutshell, it’s still work.
Keep them simple and straight to the point. You would not want them to be longer than a single page people can go ahead and quickly print & have it ready at their desk for when in doubt. Don’t over engineer nor add too much corporate speak into them. You don’t need it, neither do they.
Use plenty of common sense. If you see those guidelines don’t have much of that, start again. Till they make good business sense both to the organisation and to those 2.0 practitioners.
When in doubt, ask those social computing champions, ambassadors, evangelists (or whatever other naming convention you may be using) to give you advice. They live daily this brave new world of social networking for business. Use that to your advantage and let them help you accordingly, where you may need it.
Think about your customers, because, more than anything else, you need to remember the final frontier is not that people should use internal social tools and that’s it. It’s way bigger than that. They need to be able to use, in a smarter manner, external ones to interact, collaborate, connect and share with your customers and business partners.
Don’t spend too much time in them; get them out of the way as soon as you can and publish them out there for everyone to use. Observe and learn how people would behave through them and if you would need to adjust, correct, update them and iterate again, do it. Better adjusting on the way than having to wait for 6 months or a year for your legal team to come around telling you it’s ok. Keep the pace up.
Ensure confidential content is properly addressed in the guidelines. There is a chance everyone would already know what to do with it, but better to still have it down in writing, in case people might forget. You know, just in case.
Be prepared for the unexpected; there is a great chance once you get started with this process you would be entering unknown territory and that’s a good thing. Learning to act accordingly while on the move will probably dictate whether the guidelines will be a success or not. Adjust and adapt accordingly.
Finally, once the guidelines are done, publicise them externally, communicate about them, bring them up at every single place you can imagine. The more you communicate about them, the better. You would want to have every single employee wanting to use social tools be well aware of them even way before they dive right into it.

From there onwards, let the fun begin!

It’d then be a good time to move into pillar #3 of the Social Business and Digital Transformation Journey, where, in an upcoming blog entry, I will be talking about Building a Solid Library of Use Cases to help your 2.0 practitioners dive right into how they can get work done more effectively by working smarter, not necessarily harder. By making good use of the social / digital tools at their disposal, focusing on the tasks and activities at hand to help, in the long run, entice a new set of behaviours and mindset and, overall, good business practices to become a successful Socially Integrated Enterprise. But that would be the topic for another blog entry coming up next! 😀

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Social Business Is People to People Business – The #Movistar Story – Part Deux

December 8, 2015 • Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise2.0, Open Business

Over three years ago I wrote an article over here around the ‘Joy of Business Travelling’. I still feel pretty much the very same way about it as I did back then when I wrote it, but I guess I underestimated how draining it can well be if you embark yourself on a European Tour of sorts over the course of a few weeks, and before you realise it, a couple of months have gone by without you noticing much! And that’s exactly what I am starting to recover from nowadays, as I just finished my last round of business travelling for the year. And, of course, it’s time to resume my blogging mojo, once again, now that things have, finally, started to slow down a bit, as I get to wrap up another year. My goodness and what a year it’s been altogether!

If you remember, back in December last year, and over the course of the following 2,5 months, I put together a round of different blog posts about the appalling customer service I received from my local ISP provider (Movistar), that, pretty much, disabled my ability to work properly throughout all of that time by not providing me with an opportunity to be connected to the Internet (where most of my work happens nowadays), in a timely manner, at my new home. A year has nearly gone by and, boy, how has the story changed from that horrendous customer experience.

Giving good credit where it’s due is a healthy behaviour, if only, to act as a proof of concept that not all of us keep complaining about poor customer experiences ad nauseam via social tools no matter what, so, as an opportunity to resume my blogging activities, I thought for today’s blog article I would share a short story about the truly amazing customer service I received a couple of weeks back from the rather smart and talented folks at Movistar. Who would have thought, eh?

Well, it’s not the first time that it happens. In fact, over three years ago I wrote this other piece that confirms that good customer service, even from Movistar themselves, is, after all, possible, that is, if you bleed the purposeful intent of delighting your clients to the extreme. And the folks behind @Movistar_es (on Twitter, that is) surely do!

You see? There are many many reasons as to why I keep hearting Twitter, as my preferred digital tool from the Social Web tools suite, but one of the most compelling is what great customer service experiences you can get from it vs. other traditional means such as email or the Help line. And just a couple of weeks ago I had myself a first hand experience of how delightful customer service can well be via Twitter itself. Who knew, right? When everyone tells you that social / digital tools don’t really work for customer service, here comes Twitter to prove everyone else wrong. Ha!

So, like I was saying, a couple of weeks ago, I had an issue that was bugging me for a little while already with my Movistar full package for Internet access, Satellite TV and both phone and land lines. Typically, you would expect that I’d pick up the phone, call the Help line and ask for help. Or perhaps send an email :-P. The thing is that I didn’t. I went on Twitter and sent a Direct Message out right away, and without much thinking, to the folks behind @Movistar_es asking for help and guidance on how to sort out my problem. What happened over the course of the following couple of days was an intense, in terms of frequency, exchange of wonderful DMs with Raúl, Noelia, Amor, Nazaret & Coral to help me get answers to the various different questions I kept having, over and over again, that I wanted to have an answer for.

All the folks I just mentioned above were, simply, superb! Incredibly helpful, witty, polite and specially patient in trying to clear out all of the various different issues and concerns I was having as a client for one of their products / services. Never a foul word was exchanged. On the contrary, one of the most delightful exchanges I can remember when embarking on that horrifying experience of customer service that sometimes we bump into without really wanting it. In this case, everything but that. It almost felt as if they were in the same room as I was trying to help me understand how to address and fix the problems I had with their product. Did I mention how patient they were with me while I struggled to comprehend the situation I was going through initially and that they managed to clear out accordingly AND on a timely manner? Gosh, they surely were!

Bless them for that, because they managed to turn around, completely, the horrendous customer experience I had earlier on in the year to a delightful one this time around. And, like I said before, it was not the first time either. I’m not too sure what happened from that linked story over 3 years ago to the unfortunate happening earlier on this year, but I can certainly tell you one thing I have learned throughout those different exchanges and over the course of time: the moment you treat your customers as people, as human beings, with respect, trust, and open, frank dialogue of genuinely wanting to help, the moment you are starting to embark on that fascinating journey of, like I said multiple times, becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise. And you know what? This time around it was Twitter, once again, the one that came to the rescue confirming how powerful listening to your clients’ needs & wants via digital tools can well be.

You know, they say that customer centricity is really hard. Then there are those other folks who keep claiming that customer centricity is just plain obsolete and that we should move on away from it (Oh, by the way, read this absolutely brilliant refutal from my good friend Javier Recency on this very same topic to re-think why that would be a bad move). But then again you bump into other pretty interesting and insightful reads that confirm how critical that transition into customer centricity would be for most organisations to survive into the 21st century, and when you rely on that transformation process in your own energetic, enthusiastic and creative employees there is only one other major perk coming along that, if anything, will help us all re-humanise not only our very own businesses, but also ourselves and how we work: employee engagement. Why?, you may be wondering … Well, you know how it goes… happy employees produce happy customers.

That simple. And, right now, I can tell you all I am a very happy customer (once again) 😀

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10th Year Blogiversary – The Unfinished Journey of Blogging and Why It Matters

October 20, 2015 • Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, elsua, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Freelancing, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Learning, Metablogging, Open Business, Personal KM, Productivity Tools

Remember the good old days when people were writing about the death of blogging thanks to social media tools? When they wrote, rather prolifically, about how Google Plus, Tumblr, LinkedIn’s Pulse, Facebook’s Notes, Medium and a whole bunch of other platforms were just going to kill our own ability to have a personal Web Journal of sorts where we would be able to host our own thoughts, have conversations, learn and overall build, over time, strong online communities about topics we were all passionate about and that we would keep on writing about for years to come? Well, 21 years later, blogging is still alive and kicking, thank you very much! And on October 10th, 2015, I just made it through my 10th year blogiversary for http://elsua.net. Who knew… The Death of Blogging? Hummm, I don’t think so!

Thing is this is not the first time I write about this very same topic, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last one either. It’s also not the first time I share across the many benefits as to why blogging still rules in the social / digital tools extensive landscape. But what I find the most baffling from it all is while a few people keep claiming that it’s now a dead medium for online publishing and personal journaling several other dozens more keep talking, and writing extensively, about the many perks behind having your own blog, whether it’s a corporate blog or not. The articles with dozens and dozens of tips can get quite overwhelming, but then again I keep getting dragged into reading through all of those listicles, because, you know, we are always going to be drawn upon them, whether we like it or not, so we better try to enjoy them and move on, don’t you think? Phew! That linking exercise I just did above to curated blog posts I have enjoyed in the last few months alone! has just been exhausting! Oh, don’t worry, I don’t expect you to go through all of them. It’ was just an opportunity for me to highlight how blogging is alive and kicking if just a sample of the articles linked above contained hundreds of different blogging tips, whether you are a beginner, intermediate or an advanced blogger. Mind you, if you are starting your own blog, or think you could go and learn some new tricks, put some time aside to go through some of those. I can recommend reading through them to learn a new trick or two. I did.

Anyway, see how silly the whole argument about the death of blogging really is? Here we are, 2015, and we are still talking about it. Yet, we keep on blogging. Regardless. And that’s a good thing, more than anything else because, if anything, blogging should be about just that: you writing along as an extension of your brain, of your thoughts and ideas you would want to share out there with the world. Just because you want to, not because of whatever other people may tell you otherwise. It’s about a unique opportunity, we all keep taking for granted, it seems, about having a voice (your voice!) and an opinion on a particular subject at your own place, that you care about and / or are really passionate about. Blogging, essentially, writing, is all about you. You are what you write. It’s a personal craft that takes years to master, if at all, and nothing, nor anyone, should be able to take that away from you. Ever. Don’t let them.

See? Writing in your blog on a more or regular basis can be both therapeutic and rather healthy, but perhaps, most importantly, cathartic and while you are all going to tell me you keep on writing on multiple different venues, i.e. social tools, with exactly that very same flair writing in the long from in your own blog where you reflect deeper on a particular topic of interest can well be a rather intimate and overall engaging activity of you yourself and your idea(s), before you allow the world to get a glimpse of them and do something about it.

David Weinberger (@dweinberger) put it brilliantly in this particular article under the thought-provoking title ‘Why Blogging Still Matters’:

‘But, we thought, the most important challenge blogging posed was to the idea of the self in self-expression. Blogging was more about connecting with others than about expressing ourselves. Truth, we thought, was more likely to live in webs of ideas and responses than in the mouth of any one individual braying from soapbox, whether that soapbox was The New York Times or a blogger read by five people. By linking and commenting, we were consciously building a social space for voices in conversation.’

To then continue with this other rather relevant quote:

‘We bloggers are still there, connecting, learning from one another, and speaking in our own flawed human voices’.

And that’s where I am myself, after 10 years of blogging in this blog, and although I have been blogging for nearly 13 years now in total plenty of other blogs I have had in the past have come and gone, whether on Intranets or not; and whether using various other different platforms for online publishing the thing is http://elsua.net still remains that special place I always call Home. A place, over the course of the years, I can always return to and be just my self:

‘[…] a place for the sound of the individual’s own flawed voice in open conversation with others, building something bigger than itself.’

Thank you very much for sticking around throughout all of these years, faithful readers of this blog, and for allowing me to show and share with you my special place, my blog, my home. Thank you for being an integral part of quite an amazing, yet unfinished, journey!

Welcome on board!

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What Do You Sell?

October 20, 2015 • Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, elsua, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Freelancing, Learning, Open Business, Open Leadership

‘What’s your own purpose then?’ That’s the main question I keep getting asked myself over and over again after I wrote about that very same topic a few days ago. ‘Is it still pretty much the same as when you were a salaried employee at a large IT firm? Or has it changed now that you’ve become an independent adviser on Social Business and Digital Transformation?’ The questioning goes on and on and on (People are curious, after all, I suppose) and I keep answering pretty much the very same thing as if I were asked the following question: what do *you* sell? Because, you know, after all, deep inside, whether we realise it or not, we are all both sellers and marketers. Thus, what do I sell then, eventually?, you may be wondering, right? What’s my purpose? Well, I have been giving it plenty of thought and, over the course of time, I have pretty much narrowed it down to a single keyword that has become my mantra from all along, even while I was at IBM: enablement.

Originally though, I always thought my main purpose for everything I do at work was all about empowerment, as in empowering others to take control back of their work lives and do something meaningful and purposeful with it. But, then again, my good friend, John Wenger (@JohnQShift), showed me otherwise and taught me empowerment is not really what I was aiming for, as he brilliantly put together on this particular article under the rather suggestive and thought-provoking title: ‘Why you can’t empower someone’, where the sub-header pretty much nails it for me in terms of describing what I do for work: ‘Effective leading is about enabling (not empowering)’.

‘What do you sell?’ Have you asked yourself„ out loud, that same question in the recent past and come up to a single keyword to describe it? Well, if you haven’t, you should. I can highly recommend it as an exercise to keep you focused and very down to earth on what you would want to achieve at work day in day out. To me, the answer to that particular question is pretty much the main purpose of doing what I do for work. Enablement. Now, I fully realise that in some cases both don’t align well with each other in terms of what we keep selling may well not be what our main purpose is right from the beginning, but, in my case, it certainly is. I don’t think I would be able to have it any other way, for that matter. That’s probably why, back in the day, I decided to stick around with this job title that pretty much describes what I love doing:

Chief Emergineer, People Enabler and Digital Humanist.

Organisations are pretty much broken. We all know that. They may as well have been for a good few years already and while I think everyone could venture to state one, of multiple!, reasons as to why they are pretty much borked, those folks who have been regular and faithful readers of this blog would recognise the one single reason I keep tooting my own horn on with regards to what I feel is the main problem with organisations today: employee engagement or, better said, employee disengagement. To me, all along, and over the years, it’s the main business problem out there that needs fixing and pronto! We are already pretty late, judging by some recent studies done over the years. It’s the most critical business problem to fix that clearly would impact a whole other set of issues currently happening at work, all of them tightly aligned with the overall employee experience. Let’s not forget, happy employees = happy customers. Unhappy employees …

Yes, I know, employee engagement is a fully loaded theme already, totally overhyped and perhaps too empty already from being abused left and right. On the other hand, my good friend, Perry Timms (@PerryTimms) is a big fan of Employee Involvement. And I quite like that idea for sure as it proves to be ever more refreshing and enticing into wanting to do things different in terms of what’s not working with employees at the moment: getting them involved in the first place! I do strongly believe there is a lot to be done in terms of helping improve the overall employee experience of knowledge (Web) workers at their workplace. That’s why, still today, my pet peeve continues to be employee engagement or rather the poor job we keep doing at it, if we look into the recent data put together by Gallup from 2013 where globally only 13% of active knowledge workers are engaged at work. And the data for 2014 (US only, alas) doesn’t seem to provide us with much hope for a huge % increase…

Plenty of businesses will keep telling you all sorts of different problems they may have, or perhaps new business opportunities they would want to explore. Yet, the lack of, or better said, the low % of engaged employees doesn’t seem to be much of a worry for them, because, after all, there is still this implied thought that employees should just be happy they have got a job that helps them pay their bills at the end of the month, and, as such, they should keep quiet and be ever grateful. And if they are not happy they can always leave the organisation that thousand other people would be waiting to fill in that position in a heartbeat anyway. Somehow it just feels like people have become, over decades!, hankies you can easily dispose off while buying some new ones. Awful, terrible state of things, isn’t it? Where did we go wrong in the first place? Where did we turn sideways from believing that the biggest asset from any organisation are their people, i.e. their knowledge workers, and, yet, they are the very first thing they get rid of when things get tough without even looking what what they themselves could well do to help out?

See? That’s why I get up every morning to come to work. A while ago (around 2007 to be more precise), and after thinking I could change the world and convince everyone there are better ways out there to get work done more effectively through social tools, while treating your employees with respect, trust, plenty of caring, and, specially, empathy, I realised I couldn’t change people. I still can’t today. Nor can we change organisations for that matter. We can only, essentially, provide the right conditions for people to come forward, self-empower themselves and change what’s broken for them and the work they do, from the inside, as if it were trojan mice, and as a personal transformation journey of sorts that happens within each and everyone of us and that’s usually triggered by doing something, making a start, like my good friend, the incredibly talented and rather smart, Anne Marie McEwan (@smartco), wrote recently on this very same topic quite brilliantly.

Thus, my purpose, i.e. what I sell, is to help people, knowledge (Web) workers, get enabled on changing the nature of work, for the better, for themselves, without having to wait to tomorrow for the future of work to arrive, but, instead, take action today to perhaps start making their own work a little bit more open, transparent, collaborative, less hierarchical and more wirearchical, and, overall, more social altogether while we transition into new operating models like networks and communities (i.e. Wirearchy). In a nutshell, it’s some kind of democratisation of the workplace (as Harold Marche – @hjarche – wrote not long ago), where the knowledge worker feels self-empowered to make the right decisions to keep learning, iterating and improving their own employee experience, so they can then influence their customers’ for the better…

In order to make this happen, it takes a bit of bravery and courage to realise that everyone would need to step forward and become, potentially, a leader, an open and connected one, constantly learning understanding that ‘if work is learning and learning is the work, then leadership should be all about enabling learning’. And since all along I have been very much in favour of leadership as fellowship (more than fellowship) it’s the co-creative learning process we are all in together that does the trick for me, because I have always suspected that enabling knowledge workers to find their own potential leadership capabilities in whatever form and shape, while they connect and network with their peers accordingly, is perhaps our very own, and only, chance to change not just our own selves for the better, but also businesses and organisations, and overall our societies, as our mere matter of survival changing the world. Today. Not tomorrow.

To me, that’s where the magic happens, and why, 18 years later, I still love doing what I do, as if it were just my very first day at work: that is, helping others become better at what they already do.

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What’s Your Purpose?

October 8, 2015 • Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, Employee Engagement, Enterprise2.0, Hippie 2.0, Humanise, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Life, Open Business, Open Leadership

Apparently, ‘two thirds of digital transformation projects fail’. I know that headline may well be both a bit too provocative and rather pessimistic at best, but I guess we can’t deny there are far too many reasons out there as to why that may be happening, as Dion Hinchcliffe himself wrote, quite nicely, over 6 years ago, in a rather insightful article titled: ’14 Reasons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail’. Even today. When looking into it with a bit more detail though, one can find that perhaps, right at the heart of the matter, one of the most powerful reasons as to why that happens is because most organisations haven’t been able to answer properly the one question that matters: ‘What’s your purpose?’

When talking about Social Business Adaptation (not the same as Adoption, by the way), there are 5 different pillars, over the years, I have considered essential for any successful Digital Transformation programme (not a project either, by the way); and since I mentioned earlier on, in another blog post, that I’d start sharing plenty of the methodologies, strategies, processes and tools I use for my work as an independent adviser, I thought I would get things started with the one single question that, to me, triggers those transformation efforts: figure out the why first, before you dive in to the how.

Throughout all of these years of having been involved in Social Business Adaptation (both while at IBM and nowadays as a freelancer) I have been exposed to a good number of different purposes as to why both people AND organisations embark on that so-called Digital Transformation journey. And time and time again there have been a number of them that typically fall sort of the expectations towards the second year that they have been put in place. Three of them in particular come to the top of the list and I thought I would share them over here in the hopes that, if you bump into them, you may have an early warning, and some pointers, on what you may need to do to shift things a fair bit in a different direction perhaps. On the other hand, there are also plenty of other great purposes for which people/organisations have pretty much nailed their efforts into becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise. So we will talk about those other three as well in a few minutes (Yes, I know, I like to see things in threes and multiples of threes :-D).

Why Digital Transformation Projects Fail?

I am pretty sure that, by now, your head may be spinning around a fair bit coming up with a good number of different reasons as to why you think Digital Transformation programmes keep failing over and over again over the last few years. To me, it’s all down to figuring out what your purpose is. Why do you want to do what you are about to do? What is it that you expect to happen, once you get started with the Social Business journey? And what are, potentially, some of the expectations you would want to meet up at some point in time?

Now, this is not, at all, at this point in time, about trying to figure out the ROI of Social Business. We already had that conversation a while ago and it didn’t take us anywhere. Total waste of time, really. In fact, if you look around, today, you would hardly see anyone trying to question the return on investment from your digital transformation efforts anymore. It’s just not happening. It’s 2015, it’s considered a given. Why? Well, mainly, because we no longer have a choice (never had, actually!). I mean, look at the alternative(s) of not diving in to the Digital Transformation journey. It’s ugly and it will become uglier over the course of time even more so if we keep ignoring the inevitable: change.

With all of that said, you may be wondering what are the main three purposes I bump into, every now and then, that are bound to create more trouble than help out with those transformation efforts. I am sure you all have your own favourites and I would love to read about them in the comments, but, for me, here are the Top 3 Reasons as to why digital transformation programmes fail, based on what their main purpose may well be:

Cost savings: Bean counters, and everyone else, dealing with the financials of your organisation would love you lots if this is the main purpose of why you would want to start the Social Business journey. Yet, the reality would be quite different. Justifying the existence of a Digital Transformation programme within your organisation as an opportunity to cut / save costs and become more efficient as a result is bound to fail on the second year of life of the initiative. Why? Well, mainly, because there will always be something out there that would help you cut costs, specially, in the technology space, and that means the moment you find something else to help you cut costs there goes your Social Business effort. Down the drain. To no avail. Efficiency has never been a good friend of Change and Transformation programmes. What you are after is effectiveness. Big difference.
Competitors driving your agenda: ‘My competitors are all going through this Digital Transformation programme already. We are late into the game!’. That’s typically another popular reason as to why people figure their purpose is just to play catch up with their competition. Don’t worry, you are already late, if you are just getting started now. Why worry then? What you may want to do is shake off that strong feeling that your competitors are driving your agenda, whatever that may will be, and perhaps re-focus on what you really want to do as a business, which, last time around we checked was no other endeavour than delighting your clients through an excelling employee experience. Focus on that. You will be much better off, believe me.
Take a look, for instance, into IT vendors, specially, in the Social Software / Collaboration space. There are plenty of them that will always tell you that they are doing much much better than the competition, so they will flood you with all sorts of information, brochures and marketing speak on features and capabilities on a certain product, etc. etc., almost as if it were a whitewash of sorts, to then match themselves against their competitors for you to see how good they are, when, eventually, they keep failing on meeting up with a clear premise: what business problems are they trying to solve for you? Then there are other vendors that just focus on helping the competition, competing accordingly, and they are doing just fine, because that’s their main focus, both the employee AND the customer. Seriously, if the products you are trying to sell your customers are wonderful and meet their needs, you don’t need to worry about the competition. There isn’t any. Go the extra mile.
Change for the sake of changing: It’s not a good idea. It’s never been. On the contrary, it would just show that you are not ready for the change itself, nor the (digital) transformation process. Whether we like it or not, we just can’t change organisations, nor can we change people, for that matter; we can only provide the (right) conditions for knowledge workers to be self-empowered to come forward and change themselves leaving it all up to them. So thinking that we need to change because we don’t have a choice anymore will only create even more trouble. If only, it would work out as adding another layer of (social) tools and think we have changed. When we have only put but more lipstick on the pig. Still a pig.
Yes, I can see the urge from most organisations to want to hang out with the cool kids who have already gotten started with their own transformation journey. I realise how plenty of businesses would want to jump the shark and join those very same cool kids on the open Social Web, interacting with their customers, business partners, even their competitors, but then again still operating, pretty much, as v1.0 on the inside. Frankly, to be 2.0 on the outside, requires that you may well be 2.0 on the inside, because otherwise you are off to a massive wake-up call when things go messy. And they will.

The Journey of Becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise

Like I said earlier on, I am pretty sure there are tons of other reasons as to why organisations have decided to embark on the so-called Digital Transformation journey, that may well not have worked out as planned, while trying to answer as well the key question ’What’s your purpose?’ I bet you all know, or have, quite a few and I would certainly love to hear them in the comments, if you would have a minute to share them with the rest of us, but for now, let’s go ahead and focus on the Top 3 Reasons as to why digital transformation programmes are a wonderful success within (some) organisations:

Transform how the entire organisation works: Through a co-creative process, where no-one and everyone owns it, the social business and digital transformation journey is mostly focused on transforming how the entire business works. The focus moves on from being on either technology and business processes and, instead, it’s all about the people, about self-empowering them to become more accountable and responsible for what they do, how they work, connect, collaborate, share their knowledge more in the open, transparently, and, eventually, get work done in a much more democratic, egalitarian, wirearchical, engaged manner. The change process begins when the organisation realises they need to relinquish control, become less risk averse, more open and transparent, to then re-gain it back through how they nurture and build healthy networks and communities as the new operating model. The wake-up call? That these conditions of operating through social networks are not going to go away any time soon, so we better adapt to them and act accordingly. Or we are in trouble. Big trouble.
Address business pain points: Perhaps the toughest of reasons. I mean, no-one wants to air out, even internally, what doesn’t work, whether it’s related to technology, processes or people. We all want to keep drinking the kool-aid, to control the message, to continue distrusting our peers, because, after all, we never did, so why start now, right? Alas, it doesn’t work out that well in reality, so if you take those business pain points and turn them into business opportunities through both some bravery and courage admitting not all things are working all right, there is a great chance you will find the right purpose to correct your due course.
And if you are brave, again, one more time, to involve your entire workforce to help you not only surface what doesn’t work, but also try to provide different solutions to each and everyone of those issues, there is a great chance that you will be on the mend sooner than you think. Both the change and transformation processes will kick off by themselves, without even needing to have a certain strategy. Biggest leap of faith to come across? Understand we are not the experts we all think we are; we are all weak, vulnerable, constantly making mistakes (and learning from them!), and it’s our relying on building those strong networks across the organisation that will only help us, collectively, address those pain points and venture to suggest some potential solutions. And initiate that process of self-healing that’s so very much needed in each and every single business today, in each and every single individual knowledge (Web) worker.
Finally, identify new business opportunities: Indeed, create new markets. I know, I know, easier said than done, but what’s stopping us? What’s stopping us from thinking we can, collectively, change the (business) world for the better? The realisation that it’s going to be impossible? Or perhaps the itch that we can’t attempt to realise the impossible, because, you know, it’s the impossible, after all. How could we? That’s exactly why we need to venture into creating those new markets. New frontiers and I’m not necessarily just talking about technology in general. Think about the world we would all want to live in, say, 15 to 30 years from now. 2030 and 2045. What’s the world going to look like? Most importantly, what’s your dent in this universe for which you would want to be remembered when you are gone. How would you like your offspring to remember you? As those folks who had the chance to change the world and failed because they were not courageous enough to explore and create new markets? Or those folks who didn’t have a clue about what they wanted to do down the line, but there was a very clear premise in the air: leave behind a better (business) world than they themselves experienced throughout their (working) lifetime. And perhaps start working towards achieving that goal. Why not?

My goodness! Talking about having a meaningful and rather impactful purpose for us all! How does that sound to you folks in the long run? Please do tell me you are, with me, in the second group. Please do tell me that, when you are pondering to embark on this so-called Digital Transformation journey within your own business you are thinking about potentially answering ‘What’s your purpose’ with this particular mindset: what kind of world do I want to leave behind me / us when we are all long gone? Something tells me that if we shift focus on that short term purpose, gains, and think more into the near future, into the long run, we would all be so much better of, collectively. Not just for our own mere survival, but for all of those who come after us pushing harder, stronger, higher than whatever we all attempted to do in the past.

Yes, exactly, ‘What’s Your Purpose?’ starts with you asking yourself every single morning, when you come to work, what you would want to achieve that day to make this world a better place. After all, it’s our chance to make a dent in this universe while we change and transform not only the way we work, but also the way we live our lives. Not just for ourselves, but for them, whomever they may well be …

Signing off, sincerely, your #hippie2.0.

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The Trials and Tribulations of Freelance Work

October 6, 2015 • Luis Suarez • Collaboration, Communities, elsua, Enterprise2.0, Freelancing, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Learning, Open Business, Personal KM

Ever since I went independent, nearly two years ago, a recurring theme has been coming up in plenty of conversations I have been having, whether offline or online, with a good number of people going from former colleagues, to family members and friends, to several acquaintances. It’s a topic I have been interested in myself for a good while, although I never thought I would be experiencing it first hand, but, since I have been doing it for a while, I guess it’s time to start talking, more in length, about freelance work and how it is shaping up the nature of today’s work. After all, you know, people keep claiming it’s the future of work itself.

Today.

After having worked at IBM for over 17 years, and deciding it was time to move on into the next big adventure, whatever that may well be, little did I know I would end up doing what I am currently working on today. Like with everyone else, potentially, it crossed my mind a few times to become a freelancer, why not, right?, but I was never too sure. I guess that was the toll I had to pay for having an extensive corporate life, according to today’s standards. I gave it a lot of thought though whether I wanted to work for another major corporation, or just stick around with a small, nationwide business (even within the IT industry), or perhaps even work at a startup (You are never too old for that, right?). I, eventually, decided to go from one extreme to the other and see what it would feel like. See whether I would be able to make it in the long run. Or not.

After all, switching from the largest, most complex, IT firm in the world to running your own business as an independent adviser on Social Business and Digital Transformation can be quite something and, now that I am nearly two years down the road with it, I can surely confirm that it can be a lifetime changing experience. For the better, of course. And since I keep getting asked about it time and time again I guess it’s now a good time to start blogging about it and share some first hand experiences on what it is like having a new single boss to respond to: your customers.

I know, and fully realise, that this new series of blog posts I am kicking off today perhaps doesn’t have much to do with the usual themes and topics I have blogged over here for nearly 10 years, but I suppose I’m also getting a bit weary of having to answer the very same questions from multiple people over and over again with the same information, so I figured it may actually work out all right. We shall see. Either way, if you, faithful reader, feel like the time for you to move on has arrived, as I introduce this new series of articles around freelance work, please do go ahead and do so. No hard feelings. Life changes, constantly, and so do we, whether we like it or not. Best we can do is to adapt accordingly and where possible. The choice is ours. Always has and it will always be. Thank you for spending your precious time sticking around for that long…

This is also part of the reason why I decided to open up this new series of blog entries around what it is like the trials and tribulations of a freelancer, more than anything else in the hope that some of those experiences, insights, know-how, hints & tips and practical advice may help out other freelancers, as well as others who may have already started hearing the internal voice that their time in big corporate life is now, finally, coming to an end (hopefully, a happy one, too!) and it’s time to move on to something else, whatever it may well be.

Oh, in case you are wondering, this doesn’t necessarily mean I will stop writing over here about subjects that are pretty dear to my heart, like Social / Open Business, Digital Transformation, Knowledge Management, Online Communities, Learning, Productivity, social networks, social networking and social software in general. Quite the contrary. I am hoping to be able to add further up into each and everyone of those not only from that corporate point of view of 17 years at IBM having worked with hundreds of customers over time, but also add on a fresh new perspective of what it is like being an Open / Social Business as a freelancer and describe in full length how work has shifted into networks and (online) communities to a point of no return any time soon.

It’s a fascinating journey, it already has been for certain, seeing how there are plenty of differences, but also lots of similarities, in terms of how we, knowledge (Web) workers, operate whether working as salaried employees or just by ourselves, going solo. The thing I am hoping will be an immediate outcome from this new series as well, and that may also benefit others, is how I’ll keep walking the talk on what I have preached for a good number of years now about the many benefits from working out loud, even as a freelancer, as I plan to write about how I work by exposing plenty of my work routines, tools and processes I use, etc. etc.

It’s bound to be good fun altogether, I am sure, as, if anything, it will help me get my act together as well on something that’s been in my mind for a good while now on whether one can thrive at work as an independent knowledge (Web) worker and still have a life. Yes!, work / life integration is also going to be one of the main topics I will be talking about in terms of being able to rediscover something I may have thought I lost at one point in time: productivity, or better said, effectiveness, without having to clock in 80+ hours per week. I think I may have just had enough pretending to be a workaholic. Why should we? There must be a better way out there, don’t you think? I suppose it’s time to explore, learn and co-create together, play and iterate accordingly, and where appropriate, and keep moving on…

All in all, and to wrap up this blog post, I thought I would put together over here a list of topics I will be covering over the course of time in terms of what it is like doing freelance work and whether it is worth while doing or not through sharing plenty of first hand experiences. Here it goes:

Why freelance work? What’s in it for me?

Practical hints & tips on how to get started, what to watch out for, initial first steps, etc.

What social / productivity / business tools may well be a must-have for freelancers (according to my own experience)

What are my daily work routines and business processes? How does client prospecting work out?

How do the finances of a freelancer work eventually? How to cope best with the uncertainty creeping in every now and then?

Is freelance work the panacea of the so-called future of work? Why or why not?

What role do social networks and communities play in helping freelancers thrive? Are we really all alone by ourselves?

What other additional resources do I have available to freelancers we should all be aware of?

And, finally, work / life integration: do freelancers have a life, after all?

I am pretty sure there are tons of other topics that will come up over time I may be able to include over here as well, accordingly, but, for now, I think this will do. I’ll be counting on you all as well to share in the comments, and your own blog posts!, what it is like for you being a freelancer or having worked with a freelancer (why not?). I am not sure about you, but I am excited about the opportunity to start writing about what it is like both life & work from the other side of the fence, and to explore together whether freelancing really is the future of work, or perhaps a new fancy, hyped, buzzword we have been told it will save us all from our current miseries (and there are far too many!), if at all.

Ready for this new, exciting journey? I surely am!

Let’s go! Let’s do it!

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The Trials and Tribulations of Freelance Work