Decision making comes in many forms. One can easily see the difference between a decision that you make yourself, and a decision that must be made by a group. In the latter example, many people are not quite happy with the outcome, some even not at all, and only a few are getting the outcome that they wanted in the first place. Everyone can have an opinion on the issue, which can all vary on many factors. So what’s the best outcome?
Before you answer this question, we should ask ourselves what status ‘Twittering’ really is. I’d like to call it a tool to update your status. Twitter or Facebook starts with updating your status. The basic idea of a status update is to share others what you are doing, what you are thinking of, or any other thing you would like to share. Some say that status updates is the same as microblogging. Whatever you would like to call it, it’s a means for one-to-many communication (or broadcasting). The question remains, why should you update your status?
One of the important rules is that it is always up to you to update your status. It’s not required to do so. There are pro’s and con’s about doing it or not doing it. It’s an activity that you’ll have to feel comfortable with. Another thing to remember is that in one-to-many communication it is likely to have more people in the audience than in broadcasting. So it is ok for people to keep track of other people there statuses, without updating theirs. Sharing and reading is voluntary, like it is with many communication methods.
The best known channel for this kind of communication is Twitter. Many people use it for their own needs, it can be for news, fun, nonsense, anything really. Good enough for personal use, when it’s not a problem that all ‘tweets’ are public, and are indexed by search engines. Not very attractive for usage within a company. As a response, there are many vendors that offer a similar service, but not for the public. For example, only people in your organziation that share the same email extension (you@company.com) are allowed. Services like Yammer, SocialCast and Present.ly are some examples. However, privacy and security concerns can still be problematic for many organizations.
I think sharing statuses can be really valuable when used in organizations, especially for organizations where employees that are geograpically distributed. It makes it possible to know who is working on what, in an easy manner. When applied rightly in intranets that people are used to, it can be a very effective addition to one’s work.
Some of the advantages of sharing status updates:
Disadvantages:
The challenge is not in using such a tool, but in how to use it, or, better, in how to empower employees to use the tool best. How to overcome the disadvantages? It should fit in the daily work and routines of the people using it, it should not become an extra burden for the majority. That makes it extremely important how such a tool is introduced to the potential users. It is not about the tool, but about the people using the tool. This is something that is often and easily underestimated. Such a tool can only be introduced once. That one time is the chance to have the advantages overcome the disadvantages, and to have many people feel not too uncomfortable from the beginning.
Another challenge is that there should be some intelligence attached to the usage of the tool. Otherwise it would be a black box, very useful, but hard to understand and to act upon. For example, good intelligence makes it possible to identify social and informal relationships between employees, other than the hierarchical and formal relationships as they exist on paper. This and other metrics add to the richness of analyzing communication between employees, and can add to the understanding of other online and offline behavior, which ultimately can lead to a better business.
Most people have joined one or more social networks nowadays. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter: many people have found a way to use them to their advantage. They know how to create value out of it by participating, or even just by observation. People feel comfortable by doing that. Participating and joining discussions with their peers, known or unknown, can lead to unexpected leads, build knowledge that you were or weren’t looking for, and can keep you updated in many ways.
Power, creativity and controversy: these are three keywords for yielding more results from innovation communities. However, it is not just simply more power, more creativity and more controversy that a community needs… Or is it?
Some time ago I was researching an employee-driven innovation community (EDI). The community was developed for the purpose of optimizing and innovating business processes, procedures and products by starting a dialogue between staff members and other employees. Main mechanism was sharing ideas and thoughts, followed by discussion to shave away the edginess to eventually result in a useful concept for that particular organization. Read more and discuss… »
Needless to say that crowdsourcing with customers is getting big and that many companies are attempting to emulate lighthouse examples as MyStarbucksIdea and Dell Ideastorm. Obviously this is easier said than done. Many initiatives founder after the initial excitement. What makes MyStarbucksIdea work?
Upon visiting the MyStarbucksIdea site you will see many ideas that have been submitted countless times. And you will see a limited number of ideas that are truly original and potentially valuable. A thought leaps to my mind: Would a two-day brainstorm session with some lead users and experts produce similar results? The crowdsourcing evangelist would say: Ah, but just suppose you would have hit upon that one brilliant idea, why care about all the redundancy? And do not forget, one of the reasons of congregating is the opportunity to bask in the glow of an icon brand. We all love Starbucks and sharing this affection is a primary driver for participating. So…
Okay, I agree with the brand engagement argument. MyStarbucksIdea is a collective brand experience. And it is a crowdsourcing platform for aggregation. To be fair, there is even a remarkable degree of community interaction and validation. In fact, setting up a platform merely for validation and insight mining is a perfectly good reason. The focus on finding THE BIG IDEA distracts attention from what is essentially the primary benefit of many crowdsourcing initiatives.
The reason why StarbucksIdea works is that people allot Starbucks a far bigger brand delivery repertoire than just good coffee. They see Starbucks as a location-based occasion for relaxing and reenergizing, for personal contemplation and social discourse. This mental brand position offers a much wider scope for discussion and idea generation than the average coffee retailer. It allows people to show their expertise in other fields than just coffee.
An icon brand draws huge attraction. The fact that people join in droves does not mean that they duly accept everything Starbucks says or does. On the contrary, aficionados tend to be critical of a brand stepping out of line. They need little prompting however to explore ways how to improve or deepen their Starbucks experience.
The Starbucks case shows us the following critical requirements for successful collective mobilization:
• A strong connection
• A vested interest
• A multilayered product
• A rich situational context
The context criterion cannot be underestimated. A rich yet demarcated context allows people to play a pivotal role in the daily reconstruction of the brand experience. They become actors in a setting where every item, every action, every word contributes to the Starbucks Idea.
The Starbucks case is not easily emulated. Icon brands are by definition exceptional. And even icon brands do not always have a rich context. Take Coca-Cola, the most iconic brand of all. Its context is diffuse, for the simple fact that Coke has always stressed its generic message of being ‘always everywhere’ (No doubt Coke marketers beg to differ..).
For mainstream brands the open call will not work, let alone unleash similar mass following and output. These generic brands are less able to rally their customers around their brand. They often lack a rich context. They need to narrow down the scope of the open call to prevent general disengagement (not for me..). In fact, they need a burning issue to arouse attention. They have to prove much harder that they are truly capable and committed to the outcome of the process.
In other words, crowdsourcing is hardly a free ride. The omnipresence of social media does not entail that your audiences will jump to the opportunity offered. The sobering conclusion is that it takes serious effort to mobilize your audience and spark valuable contributions on a sustainable basis if your name is not Starbucks..
In an earlier post I introduced the term Communitize, signifying the trend where traditional company codes and structures are gradually submerged in a constant flow of community-driven exchange and collaboration, defying organizational divisions and boundaries.
Communitizing enables organizations to absorb and harness the collective wisdom of their constituencies, increasing their capacity for change and innovation. Communitized companies are adaptive creatures, sensing and capitalizing on emergent shifts in market currents.
Examples abound of companies like Semco and P&G, which apparently have succeeded in opening up and connecting in- and outside talent. Unfortunately many more examples hint at a more sobering and even distressing reality.
I mentioned earlier that one of the key hurdles is the lingering lack of trust among staff and outside audience. Is this a temporary fad, a marketing ploy? Is the organization really up for it? Can it persist? If people are expected to converge and interact outside the formal channels, they want an unequivocal message, confirming them time and again in the honest intentions of the initiator.
And this is where we hit the iceberg.. Many companies behave like market places, where a management call often is the start of a subtle negotiation and adoption process, instead of a kick-off for a seamless execution. Ambiguity rules, with the echo of the management call being drowned out by overriding everyday considerations, voiced by middle management. These contrarian sounds may spring from an authentic concern about potential risks, but may also represent vested interests keen to preserve the status quo.
In a highly structured work environment, people have learnt to abide by clear, formal rules and guidelines. At times these rules may be perceived as stifling and frustrating, yet they also offer comfort and safety. Stepping out of this cocoon requires courage, trading a familiar game for a promising perspective that yet has to materialize. If every cautious step is accompanied by contrarian signals, people will ultimately lose faith and lapse into old habits.
So is ambiguity the slow killer? This would be the case if management has overestimated the ease and pace of transformation. Management needs to state empathically its dedication to the communitizing strategy, even if everyone seems to concur. Silent opposition is less visible from the top, but is easily noticed by the workforce as fuzzy conflicting signals start to accumulate. So management needs to speak out and lead by example, while duly noting that a Janus-faced appearance is sometimes unavoidable.
Yet there is something very peculiar about ambiguity. Ambiguity is not only a critical phenomenon in the change process toward a communitized organization; it is also the norm in an open collaborative environment, where people jointly refine their protocol as they proceed. This does not imply that a networked-based model of value creation is anarchic by nature. It does say however that the network rules leave room for interpretation and negotiation. This fuzziness, where contradictions are not entirely erased or cornered, is the inevitable byproduct of self-organization and flexibility. Ambiguity is here to stay. You better get used to it..
In the last couple of weeks I stumbled upon the term ‘Employee engagement’ in some blogposts. The term almost sounds redundant, as one would assume employees are engaged by principle.. Research shows otherwise. Employees apparently are not engaged in their work. In 2007, a study shows that only 21% is truly engaged, implying those who work a bit harder for the sake of the company. A staggering 38% is not engaged at all. Gary Hamel suggests that this is not on the agenda because most managers are not even aware or simply do not care. See the exhibit below for an illustration. The question is, what is the benefit of having engaged employees? And what is true engagement? Let’s find out.
All projects we undertake with our clients have one thing in common, there are multiple parties involved. Before officially launching the project to all parties, already many people from different companies are involved. When launching a project, the most important group of people are connected as well. This group is the largest, and has therefore the greatest influence.
Usually they are the personnel of a large company, or a large group of individuals, but always connected somehow. They can have real power. However, the power they can possess can only come to surface when all parties involved are great in collaborating with each other. One of our responsibilities is to try to create a situation where collaboration can really occur, to unleash the power of the large group. What is collaboration really, and what is needed to really make it happen?
Most co-creation projects incorporate a sophisticated website to be the basis for the mass dialogue that comes with a successful project. Although we always like to think hybrid, mixing cyber conversations with brainstorms in real life, it is definitely of great importance to employ a best-of-breed software platform. It should facilitate your project in the best way possible.
It is very attractive however to make the infrastructure for your co-creation project the center of your attention. Quite convenient also, since configuring a website is a process you can easily control. It takes your mind off a far more difficult task you face: How to attract a committed audience and how to motivate it to contribute to your cause with ideas, experiences and lively discussion.
A platform will not do that. Elegant lines of code, html and flash programming do not attract or entertain crowds into co-creation. Even the most beautiful of designs does not convince people to let go of skepticism or resistance.
Communitize.. Typically a verb only a non-native speaker would invent.. Since I (more or less..) coined the term, I guess am free to choose whether communitize is an active or passive verb: Do you communitize or are you communitized? I decided on both. Communitize is something you can actively strive for or it is something that simply happens to you.
So what does it mean? Communitizing expresses the current shift of organizations experiencing the limits of functional stratification, the evaporation of their boundaries and the surge of value creation networks.