Tag Archives: social media

the stranger: why openness scares the shit out of people

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image from wikipedia

a friend and colleague asked me a question regarding some internal communications within our firm last week. during our conversation, she said, ‘i don’t know why [my team] won’t just ask everyone on yammer.’ i said it’s because on the internet, no one knows you’re a suit.

every day, in corporations all across the world, people go to work wearing a mask — sometimes more than one. like the billy joel song, they’re the faces of the stranger but we love to try them on. the marketing specialist. the associate. the senior vp of sales. but when you’re on the internet, no one can see that mask; all they can see are the contributions that you make. to put your ideas out in a public forum is to open yourself up to all kinds of criticism.

in business, you used to be able to hide behind your title. the senior tech said this is why we’re taking a certain approach, and that was the end of discussion because who would stand up to him? now the first-year analyst out of college can raise questions about, and disagree with, that approach. the person from accounting can share her thoughts on the marketing specialist’s ideas on the name of the redesigned newsletter. these enterprise 2.0 systems like yammer cause a flattening of the hierarchy and a cross-pollination of teams that we have never before seen in business.

and that scares the shit out of people.

but if we’re going to get the most out of our organizations — if we’re going to really excel in what we do — we’re going to have to become more agile and we’re going to have to look for solutions outside of our normal channels. each person has to pull on the same rope. the only way to really accomplish that is if we put down those masks, get over the fear, and go into work tomorrow as ourselves ready to work openly with each other.

i’m john scardino. i have a few ideas that i’d like to explore.

i hope i can explore them with you.

when humans are more powerful than machines

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a colleague asked me to help him find an example of an after action report (that final step in a project or project phase that everyone seems to ignore). i spent over 2 minutes looking for an example on our enterprise search engine. i performed a general search, and even a detailed search to look for only word documents followed by only pdf documents.

i got nothing.

after that failed, i sent a question out on our yammer network to my colleagues and friends asking the same question. roughly 2 minutes and 30 seconds later i had a colleague of mine forward along an example document with exactly everything i was looking for. this was a colleague whom i’d have never even known existed if it weren’t for social networking within the enterprise.

but here’s the kicker…

the enterprise system we’ve developed has cost the firm countless thousands of dollars (probably millions), meanwhile the yammer network we’re using is the free version — no cost at all to us. using this high-cost technology outfit provided me with no answers at all and was actually a time-suck when you look at it, meanwhile a free system available to anyone was able to connect the person who needed information with the person who had the information.

the moral of the story is this: business needs to rethink where it’s spending its money. high cost IT departments in organizations don’t have to be high cost anymore. there was once a time when machines could do things that we mere mortals couldn’t, and so we developed these new systems to supplant humans. the problem is that that paradigm has shifted.

the focus needs to not be on what the technology is capable of, but on what the technology enables us to do.

at the end of the day this change in focus is better, faster, cheaper, and more efficient.

not easier, but better.

life without email

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this post is being mirrored at my other blog: thisisjohnny’s posterous

monday morning was a morning like all the rest, for a little while at least. i woke up at my normal time—6:40a—ate reese’s puffs for breakfast, and headed out the door to the office. (fear not; i did get showered, clothed, and brushed my teeth in between.) when i arrived at my desk and opened the screen on my laptop, that familiar “boop” from the internal speaker of my firm-issued lenovo thinkpad rang true just as it has every morning since 2009, and i quickly pulled up microsoft outlook to check my email.

as i scanned my inbox for unread items, i had an alarming feeling overwhelm me: “there’s not a single thing in here that i want to read.” that’s not to say that i don’t like my job (in fact, my current tasking is probably as rewarding as my current role has ever been and i’ve learned a great deal from it) but the emails clogging up my 675 megabytes of exchange server space really didn’t need to be there. i pondered for a moment: how much of this is my own fault? how many of my emails are other people looking at right now thinking the same thing: ‘this is worthless!’ ? so right then and there i decided my goal for the week:

don’t send a single email.

one of my friends, astonished, asked, “…are you off [from work] all week?” nope. i just wanted to live more intelligently, so–boom–i cured it with my brain. shortly after, my brother sends me an email about going to a phillies game in april and i promptly reply on my iphone. doh! i convince myself that was unfair, i mean… i just started this thing, so i pull a kramer, “alright. starting.. now!” and the rest of monday goes off without a hitch. one day in, this isn’t bad! i was able to coordinate what i had to do in work with some simple, more engaging, phone calls and face-to-face micro-meetings. any and all other communication happens via text message, yammer, twitter, facebook, and online forums.

tuesday comes along with its own challenges (namely the fact that it isn’t friday yet). now people are asking me for tangible things! ‘that file’ and ‘that sql statement’. woof! even still, with people asking for powerpoint presentations and txt files, i’m able to use our corporate enterprise 2.0 system—based on microsoft sharepoint—to upload and store files on our team site and verbally tell folks, or drop an instant message, about where to go in order to get to it. four phone calls, two uploads, a handful of face-to-face conversations, and a circumvention of the rule by asking a coworker to email one particular file for me instead (hey, i still didn’t send it.. delegation of duties ftw!) and i’m through my second day of the week. confidence grows. i can do this.

on wednesday, this article about reply-all storms from the wall street journal crosses my yammer feed (thanks, nathan!). i’m convinced now more than ever that what i’m doing isn’t just good for me, but good for the whole company. i also convince myself that being able to fly is probably the one superpower i’d really like to have if i could only have just the one. i spend the vast majority of my time at client site for the rest of the week where email isn’t really available to me in any normal capacity. the vast majority of my work continues to use shared network services, face-to-face, and telephone calls. my personal communications are strictly through facebook, micro-blogging, lunch with a friend and colleague at taco bell, text messaging, and xbox live.

and here, as i type this on sunday evening, i have yet to send a single email since the one i sent to my brother on monday morning. so to the question, “what’s it like to live life without email?” let me just answer with one word:

awesome.

in sum…

pros: it’s far more engaging to work with actual people and not an inbox; not having to worry about “how is this going to come across?” or “does this make sense?”; it actually takes less time to call someone than to email them; using shared resources and e2.0 platforms (a) keeps version control, (b) lets everyone connect, not just those folks on the to: line, (c) keeps everything organized.

cons: some information doesn’t need to be persistent but for a while. using a wiki or other 2.0 tool is overkill, and a phone call or face-to-face meetup doesn’t provide the kind of fall-back reference needed; i miss signing my emails “- dino”.

overall: i’m not saying that email is completely worthless, but it’s mostly worthless. :D there’s not much value you get from email that you can’t get from any other means. i won’t say that i’ll never send another email again, but i’m certainly going to keep moving forward with this new perspective on the ageless tool of the digital age: less is more. why don’t you join me? do what i did… just try it out for a week.

the revolution will not be tweeted? think again.

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image source: treycopeland.com

i have to say this right up front: malcolm gladwell is my boy. i’ve read his books, i’ve watched his talks, and i’ve read his other pieces in the new yorker (his article on concussions in football is a must-read). so, with that being said, it pains me to say this but i think gladwell was wrong in his assumptions about the inability of twitter and facebook to rally people around an idea to promote social change.

in his recent article for the new yorker, gladwell states: “the revolution will not be tweeted”. i say, if the revolution will not be tweeted, ask gap how their new logo redesign efforts went.

now i know that malcolm gladwell is talking specifically about social activism more so than he is about anything else. he even mentions that social media can be used quite well for other situations that don’t really require people to risk much of themselves in order to do it. but if that alone isn’t a revolution, then i don’t know what is. because if there’s one thing that we’ve seen from gap dumping their logo redesign (and from facebook bending to the will of the user community and making changes to their privacy settings on multiple occasions), it’s that the authority is no longer the authority anymore.

organizations are responsible to more than their boardroom now. they’re responsible to their clients; they’re responsible to their people; they’re responsible to just about anyone that owns an internet-connected device. public opinion has always been important, but even more so in such a web-integrated world where one person’s tweet can turn into a meme that instantly spreads across the globe. it’s a lesson that organizations are going to have to learn, and learn quickly, if they’re going to be successful in this new world.

the revolution will not be tweeted? think again, gladwell.

it already has.

case study: the @zoowithroy brand

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i have really been enamored with a certain blog — pardon me — bolg this summer for many reasons, namely the brand its creator has been able to forge using microsoft paint and 140 characters.  it really hit me a few weeks ago when fox saturday baseball did a mid-inning exposé on a shirt that an impetuous phillies fan bought from the zoo with roy online store and mailed to colorado rockies manager jim tracy’s office.  this national exposure followed after zwr himself already appeared on espn’s first take.  talk about local celebrity; in philadelphia circles, zwr isn’t just a celebrity — he’s a folk hero.

i wanted to do a quick and dirty case study on the “i want to go to the zoo with roy halladay” brand to see if we can figure out how all of this national exposure came to a simple bolg that someone created on blogger.com (it has since been moved to its own domain).

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the difference between participation and adoption

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image by dharmabumx, flickr artist

i was listening in on a social media community of practice presentation today that a colleague of mine was giving about social media in the enterprise and individual performance.

while i feel that my colleague has done some great work — and really took a rather large bite to create a conceptual model for promoting participation in online networks which is itself valiant — i think it’s important to make the distinction between participation, and adoption.  it’s a distinction that i feel is greatly overlooked.

mike’s model talked about awareness, self-efficacy, organizational trust, and this notion of perceived improvement potential all being drivers of participation.  and i think that’s wrong.  in fact, i think it’s exactly backwards.

you might think that i’m splitting hairs right now; toe-may-toe, toe-mah-to, right?  but participation and adoption do have rather different connotations despite the fact that often times you’ll hear those two words used interchangeably.  i think, however, that you’ll find one is far more desirable (and much harder to come by) than the other.  in fact, one leads to the other.

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what if your phone calls were like your social media?

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chinatown phone booth

image by hensever, flickr artist

i’ve made this argument before: social media is social. you can’t just broadcast information; you have to listen to what’s coming back at you and respond.

recent conversation at work brought up the notion of pre-planning tweets for a client’s conference — or having pre-approved topics that one could tweet about. while some purists might find fault with that, i don’t.

there’s no problem with pre-planning your tweets because the tweet is just the medium. if you or a client are attending a conference or some kind of convention and you want to make sure that you capture certain topics or information in your tweets — go right ahead and do it. would you make a phone call to a friend or a client without first planning that also?

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social media: an evolution in communication

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image by oliver widder, creator of geek and poke

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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you can use a hammer, but can you build a house?

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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.

social media, “finding nemo,” and you

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image copyright the walt disney company, all rights reserved

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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