Understanding and learning to engage productively with internal collaborative communities and social technologies is a vital work skill. The capacity of an organization's agility, productivity and innovation is in large part based on the tacit knowledge and know-how of today's (cross-generational) workforce.
In a knowledge economy, it's the talent and knowledge of people, and the results of their productive interactions that create value - the ability to solve complex problems or invent new solutions, and engage with customers in more authentic and compelling ways.
What are some of the essential practices and capacities of working social and what are some of the skills and mindsets you need?
Adaptive adeptness - If your company or organization is rolling out enterprise social networking (ESN) and other collaborative tools and technologies -- learn them -- pro-actively. If you're new to a tool or a new social environment, try setting small goals -- take ten minutes a week and explore two new functions or features. I set a goal of 'tool of the month' and try to dig deeper into something I'm relatively new to or haven't yet tried. Suggest that a project team begin to use the ESN environment together.
Cultivate a robust enterprise identity - Old-style company directories may list the official, but often non-descriptive job title of an employee, basic contact information and maybe their immediate manager -- it's essentially your assigned identity by the company. Rich profiling and transparent work streams in enterprise social networking environments provides a broader platform for you to convey not only relevant background and credentials (your claimed identity), but your activity streams can also create an understanding of your recent work and projects (your performed identity).
Your knowledge, experience and background matters, to you, to your company or organization and to your colleagues. Developing a robust profile, and activating and evolving your identity helps colleagues and co-workers readily discover and tap skills or knowledge they may need. It can also help team members develop insight and affinity more quickly as new projects start up.
A richer enterprise identity provides more agile talent discovery for internal recruiting, and creates a reputation advantage for you by making your various social roles (i.e., answers questions, contributes to communities of practice) and social feedback (likes, comments, contributes to streams) more broadly visible (your recognized identity).
Use activity streams to work transparently - Enterprise social networking systems provide activity streams to support the transparent, interactive, persistent threads of work streams, shared artifacts, and discussion comments. There are several key value points in those characteristics -- transparency lets you bring in, or add colleagues to an activity stream - all interactions are visible and persistent in one thread - no more email rat-holes.
Relevant objects or artifacts to a project or team work stream can be attached, and versions easily identified. Various contributions from team members are easily discerned and key issues, concerns or contributions viewed. Varied modes of interactivity and response are often available -- commenting, and adding your voice and expertise to the work stream, adding affirming tags such as a 'like' identifier, a 'favorite' tag, an ability to quickly share specific content from a stream. Many offerings also support integration with email and other productivity applications. Mobile interfaces also provide a range of access points. Varied contextual alerts let you and your colleagues know what is happening in key activity streams.
Tag it now-find it when you need it - One of the key benefits to ESN is it's searchability of activity streams, people, communities, and artifaccts in the the organization. Whether you initiate an activity stream, or join a team using ESN for project work, it's important to identify and agree as a team on a small set of relevant tags. Simplicity is the watchword - but doing this as a part of the activity stream set up will help with information flow and group productivity in the near-term, and allow the results of your work to be discovered across the organization later.
The dynamics of working social in turn supports a climate of trust that allows people to negotiate their way forward. “Where trust is the currency, reputation is a source of power.” - and is not only a driver of greater productive behavior but helps surface leader mentors. As you grow your own facility in working social you can also actively mentor others, expand your social roles across the organization, and exhibit leadership.
Identify social learning opportunities - ESNs offers easy opportunities for communities of interest and practice to flourish outside of work group or projecct teams. Such communities can help you advance and accelerate your own professional development, and support your own capacity for mentoring others and gaining affirmation for your skills, experience and abilities. Look for ways to tap into these kind of informal resources.
Here are my earlier posts in this series.
- Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts #1 - Think Community
- Enterprise Social Networking Mindshfts #2 - Why Community Matters
- Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts #3 - Managing Social
Catherine, the mindset series is fabulous, thank you. To some, enterprise social networks are incongruous with the notion of social networking which even if not completely true is viewed as an organic bottoms up phenomenon. The market sizing statistics you quote in the series shows that the category vendors have adoption challenges to overcome beyond feature functionality. In reading your report and other articles on enterprise social networking I'm reminded somewhat of the loose footing under the unified communications market. I wonder if you see a parallel there too?
Posted by: Jeffrey Smith | February 25, 2013 at 08:49 PM