business as i see it

image by syamastro, flickr artist

blog.  wiki.  ms excel file.  ms project plan.  ms sharepoint page.  basecamp project.

they’re all tools.  while people may prefer one tool over another, whichever tool it is will not take hold unless the culture there supports it.

i see a lot of proposed changes to current work streams and business processes fail because — even with support from leadership — the user base rejects those changes.  there could be a few reasons why:

• it’s not simple.  if the change is convoluted, adding extra steps to the workflow process or time to complete tasks, people are going to reject it – even if they agree in principle that the proposed new method is “right”
• they don’t understand it.  if you make a change that people don’t understand the reasoning behind, they will have a hard time accepting and implementing it.  #1 sign that you made boo-boos?  hearing employees say, “uh.. why are we doing this again?”
• it doesn’t fit.  if your changes contradict the way you do business, it’s only going to lead to confusion and frustration, and ultimately it will be abandoned.

if you’ve tried making changes to the way your team or organization does work in the past and failed, check the process again.  look at what you’re trying to do, and see what your people think about it.  when new tools don’t take hold, don’t discredit their use.

it’s the culture, stupid!

keep the tools and fix the culture.

image by oliver widder, creator of geek and poke

people don’t fully understand social media, and part of it is our own fault — the social media mavens.  i don’t think we do a well enough job of explaining it to everyone.

most people aren’t very fond of change, because change is unpredictable.  am i going to be better, or worse off?  will i be able to adapt?  can i make the necessary changes in me to succeed in this new environment?

the problem with social media, though, is that it’s really not a change from one thing to this other.  in the end, we’re all still communicating.  how we communicate — the tools we use — do (as everything) evolve over time, however.  but it’s certainly not anything to be frightened over.

we need to find better ways to communicate the benefits of social media to yesterday’s enterprise 1.0 stalwarts.  how do you get someone who is so loyal to the old way of doing things to change?

i think it’s in the metaphors.

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for some reason, people think that because they know how to set up an account on twitter and facebook that they can use social media.  but just because you can use a hammer, does that mean you can build a house?

social media isn’t just the tool.  blogs, microblogs, wikis, forums, are all just the hammer.  you can’t build a foundation, much less an entire house with just a hammer.  there ought to be a plan, or a blueprint before you start using social media.  understand what it is, and what it’s about before setting out on this journey of ‘modernizing’ your organization.

don’t set up a blog because you want comments (first!1!!! lolz!), and don’t set up a twitter or facebook account because you want the most followers [seth's blog].  you should be setting up a blog and twitter account to communicate with your readers and followers.  remember that the whole premise behind social media is the social aspect of it.

before you start building, you should have an overall communications plan or strategy (your foundation), and know what your end state is (the blueprints).  what are you trying to accomplish?  an increase of 10% in your sales?  an increase of 20% in brand loyalty?  to increase your workforce by 5% in each region?.. to decrease your workforce by 5% in each region?

just like any good construction firm, you better have inspections along the way.  identify the metrics you want to follow, and measure them throughout the process so you can tell if things are actually working or not.  not getting the results you expected? is the third bathroom costing too much money?  it could be time to change your approach (or at least lower your expectations).

you can’t show up to the job site with nothing but a hammer — and you can’t integrate social media into your organization just because you ‘know twitter’.  a lot goes into building a house, just like a lot should go into your social media and enterprise 2.0 plans.

image copyright the walt disney company, all rights reserved

i’m a big pixar fan.

i love everything about their company.  john lasseter’s drive to pursue his dream until it was fulfilled is something that we should all admire and look up to.  then, there’s the unsung heroes of pixar — the animators. every pixar movie made is 100% animation. that means there’s no help from motion-capture tools or other technological devices. the animation is done 100% by hand on computers.

and, of course, there’s the stories!  there’s a reason pixar wins year after year at the oscars for best animated movie despite competition from dreamworks animation, blue sky studios, and disney animation studios.  that reason is their ability to tell fantastic stories that appeal to young and old alike.  they’re stories that we all can learn from.

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when i was growing up in south philly, my family didn’t have much money.  but being kids, my brother and i did what kids do anyway.  we played roller hockey without helmets, gloves, shin pads… pretty much any protective equipment at all.  i tended goal with nothing but leg pads, a — what we called it back in those days — waffle board, a baseball glove, and a stick (all of which was borrowed, hand-me downs, or bought with my paper route money).  i’ve been hit with sticks and pucks in the face, and had more than my share of scrapes and bruises.  looking back at it — it was stupid.  it was dangerous.  but i loved playing hockey!

fast forward about 10-12 years, and i’m wearing a suit and tie — screaming at my team from behind the bench at the penn state ice pavilion with my heart beating out of my chest in my first game as assistant coach for the ACHA division 2 ice hockey team.  my love of hockey that was sown on the streets of philadelphia is the only reason i was able to reach that point in my life.  we beat SUNY stony brook that night by a score of 3-2 — the #1 ranked team in the league.  it was one of the greatest wins in our program’s history, and was the staging point for a season-long run that put us into the quarterfinals of the national tournament in fort collins, colorado that year.

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never assume that information you have is unwanted.

this isn’t a poker game in the wild west.  you don’t need to guard your hand from the eyes of everyone else.  it only hurts your organization.

just because someone sent you an email, or someone told you in a conversation, or you saw it on the internet — that doesn’t mean that you’re the only one who will find value in that information as well.

in this knowledge based economy the world is growing into, organizations need to manage their information better.   knowledge management seeks to answer the questions of who has the information, who needs it, and how do you bring those people together.  that’s the premise behind enterprise 2.0: collaboration is key.

at other times, the value is simply in that someone knows that you know it.  if you need help in decomposing that sentence, just think of yourself as a project manager or task lead.  quite frankly, they probably don’t care about what information you have — but it’s important to managers to know that you at least have information.  it’s there.  it’s out in the open.  it’s available.

i’m not sure why it is, but — much like the card game at the local saloon in the wild west — there is a lot of information guarding that happens in organizations.  we get split from our main team into smaller project teams with a specific focus.  then, we put our heads down and start working, looking around to share information only when asked for it.  but when we do this, we’re leaving out the knowledge, expertise, experience, and diversity of thought and opinion of a large portion of our own team, and an even larger portion of our entire organization.

the person who may be able to help break open the case might not be on your immediate team; they could be halfway across the nation (or the world).  but you may never know, because you’ve been guarding your information from the eyes of anyone who hasn’t asked for it.

business isn’t a crazy game of poker; put your cards on the table.  why?  because it may just surprise you who has the winning hand.

a co-worker of mine wrote a blog post recently about the “social media wave” and how it’s easy to be caught up in this tsunami of facebooks, myspaces, twitters, and more. with all the social media sites and services out there, in order to keep your head above the water you must have a strategy; you need to understand social media — not just use it.

i mention tracy’s post because of the discussion that it caused in her comments section. people see social media services as time-wasters. many corporations (including the united states’ military, though some restrictions have been relaxed) have even denied access on their networks to certain social media sites. unfortunately, it is a commonly held belief that these services cause more harm than good.

but do they really?

one of the questions asked in my conversation with someone was, “how does blogging help a plumber fix a leak? or how does twitter help an accountant balance the books?” i thought this question showed a great deal of ignorance about what social media is for, and what it does. i’ll take these two examples and explain further…

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