Embraceable Me

Yesterday Tracy Parish challenged me to do a #Blimage. If you are unfamiliar, this is an interesting and fun approach to inspiring a blog post. It was introduced by Steve Wheeler and friends and the original post can be found here. Tracy wrote an excellent post based on an image of a cemetery titled Learning While Wandering. I enjoyed that she looked at learning very personally versus professionally and focused on the importance of reflection. Like all #Blimage challenges the object is to relate the image to learning and so she provided me this Star Wars snap from Flickr. 

First, let me begin by saying I am not a big Star Wars guy and fortunately I was able to immediately move past that part and look a bit deeper into the image (as if Star Wars Lego people can really be looked at deeply). Maybe the intent of the image is a Father-Son relationship or maybe it is to portray the comfort of hugging of a doll? For me, with the challenge of "learning" in mind, I see the "importance of the smaller self".

The world around us seems to be all about The Big. Big announcements (watch how products are rolled out), Big technology (The LMS and Enterprise Social Network platforms to name a few), and Big data (analytics, measurement). Yet at an individual level we long to get smaller. Our personal lives merge with our professional ones as humility and being real is how we make sincere connections. Social technology puts the the large planet in our pocket. We find personal satisfaction in tighter, more focused networks where the work gets done. And real power is in being a node in these networks not in being the know it all. 

This picture reminds me that our smaller, less imposing persona is what breaks down barriers between people and putting our smaller selves front and center is what matters most today.

Big Social Isn't Always Best

I've been thinking more about how Social has become SO big, so fast. Maybe it's having been in Texas recently (where everything is bigger!) for mLearnCon last week or it's because I've been reading a lot of Stowe Boyd's reviews and research tied into his ideas on "sets vs. scenes." Social is not necessarily getting bigger in the sense of popularity but in the sense that enterprise social, to be deemed successful today, has to involve the entire organization - the scene as Stowe would call it.

My observations and conversations have led me to believe that technology is ruling the day and leading the narrative. And having a vibrant ESN is the golden calf (or is that hippo?). Successful social is not however in the depth and number of connections but in the meaningfulness of the social activity. Often, unfortunately, the larger the networks, the more superficial the relationships can be. Whereas In organizations, our closest, most impactful relationships are those that are around the work we do. A simple principle to grasp is that Social forms around objects, and the object in organizations is the work. The farther one is removed from the work we do, the farther they are from our interests and that is quite natural.

By PJ KAPDostie CC BY-SA 3.0 

In my work promoting "social" in my various organizations, I found another principle to be true; the smaller the better. Specific groups, already with a clear "object", be it shared work (department, project, program) shared experience (on-boarding, training), or shared problem (solutioning, crisis) were most successful. Larger roll-outs, not so much. Social technology success was achieved when it was used as a tool to solve small specific problems. From here it could scale, but please don't call it a community. People sharing, collaborating, and conversing should not instantly be seen as a community. A feature in a tool called a "community" is not a community, it is marketing spin by ESN vendors. True communities form when their is trust, common purpose and mutual support. This takes time, not tools. Can these gatherings in virtual places become communities? Absolutely. They can also scale but that takes nurturing and attention, support and communication. If your organization is not ready for this, it's OK. Organizations as community is not always the end goal or often immediately realistic. If groups come in and out of interactions using social tools to solve business problems then this should be seen as successful social too.

Maybe the message is as simple as the one I tell my kids; don't let others define what success is. Celebrate the small wins, they add up.

Network Navigating

I've written recently about the futility of organizational internal social efforts. Their efforts to corral conversations into an ESN is ineffective and short sighted. Wirearchy is here. It exists with or without ones conscious effort as our networks extend in multiple directions and multiple "places."  We will go to where our people are and if our people overlap, all the better, but the reality is they rarely will. For example my running community members have zero interest in my social learning and social business discussions. 

So it is that we must learn to move in and out of various channels of conversations and relationships, adjusting as we need to to make it all work. However in the networked age this seems as overwhelming as the amount of information that comes at us.

Do choices have to be made? Of course. It's really no different than our behaviors prior to the advent of social technology. We made room and found balance then in things like our physical meeting spaces, telephone conversations, email, etc. We made choices then of how and where we would spend time. We (often unconsciously) seek out the people who matter most and in that seeking we inadvertently learn to navigate the places that keep us connected.

My networking "places" are as fragmented and unique as my relationships. Here are a few of my places I visit daily which I'm sure look much like yours.

• Twitter for amazing global relationships and conversations
• 2 Facebook groups for specific professional development and a book club
• LinkedIn for local ATD conversations and sharing
• iMessage groups (smaller, family & friends)
• Skype group for larger L&D discussions, tips, needs
• Evernote chat for project collaboration
• Yammer for organization cooperative and collaborative activities
• Slack for idea sharing in L&D topics for various activities

This is our reality. I doubt highly that as social tools evolve there will be one tool to rule them all or a way to link them. This reality may be inconvenient to many but social networking has always been inconvenient to some extent. Waving the white flag is not an option. We will learn these new network navigation skills through experimentation, increased exposure and they will strengthen with deeper experiences in the context of connecting. With modeling and guidance by those in the know, the learning curve can be reduced more quickly but even without the experts, we will learn to navigate, it's what we are built to do.

The "Working" Culture and the Struggles of Social Business

Tim Kastelle recently shared his excellent post about flat management efforts at Zappos and how they paid about 210 people to leave if they didn't like the direction of the organization. He went on to point out that in the past 12 days over 15,000 people were laid off in various industries (which can be seen on a site that tracks daily layoffs) as an exclamation point about the ridiculous attention Zappos is receiving. What happens next is anyone's guess. Hopefully the 15,000 land quickly on their feet, hopefully they left on good terms. But I doubt it. Many may had been blindsided, many will struggle, many will be bitter. And when they do return to the world of work they will carry this memory with them. It will taint their perspective, attitudes and sense of trust.

Today much of the Future of Work conversation refers to organizational culture, the idea that in the confines of a single business people behave a certain way. Although this is true, I do think it overlooks a significantly larger culture, the Working Culture - a culture of workers ironically created by cumulative actions of all business.

Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge. - Harold Jarche

Each worker's experience contributes to the present Working Culture's understanding, beliefs and practices. The Working Culture permeates organizations but isn't easily diffused by an individual organization's culture. So no matter what an organization's efforts at "engagement" are, most employees are skeptical and will remain so.

This skepticism has developed over the past 25 years or so due to factors such as globalization, a focus on short-term results, systematic turnover (as noted in Tim's post), contractual and temporary work, the demise of unions, automation, and outsourcing, etc.  Due to these factors loyalty is non-existent on both sides; employer and employees have disconnected from that part of the working relationship. A good lagging indicator of today's Working Culture can be seen in the less than stellar adoption rates of enterprise social network platforms (ESN) and their failed promise of corporate-wide collaboration and cooperation. In an interview style post, Sahana Chattopadhyay elaborated on the nature of collaboration in work environments saying:

"In many instances, [collaboration] takes place only at the team and project levels and does not radiate or percolate to other divisions." 

I agree but would argue that this lack of adoption is found in MOST instances not just many.

When the work doesn't "percolate", it's less about the tools that make the invisible visible and more about people just not caring enough about the work happening outside of their own areas. Care and trust are very intertwined and is happening at the point of work and not easily advancing beyond. Lack of leadership involvement and leadership style can be a barrier for sure, but so too is a workforce with an expectation of intentionally short tenures. Grow and go attitudes seem to dominate the Working Culture resulting in employees staying a mere 18-24 months (a far cry from the 20+ in generations past). Can that really be enough time to build trust and a level of community beyond the point of the work? The trust issue therefore is bigger than within an individual organizations, this is about trust of business as a whole and it is our social tools helping us to see this condition more clearly, not necessarily improving it.

Change happens one conversation at at time and those conversations can change organizations. But until a critical mass of organizations changes, the Working Culture will generally remain one that is jaded, suspicious and distant. "Change the practices and a new culture will emerge..."

Shortening the Social Tool Learning Curve with Open Office Hours

We strove from the onset to make the technical part of social networking as easy as possible and really modified our ESN platform to focus on the basic elements of social; community, collaboration and sharing. No frills, no unnecessary functionality. Our strategy has been "grease the wheel only when it squeaks," meaning that we will present functionality and features when the needs arise.  Even with a Simple is the New Black belief, an ESN is still foreign territory even for regular users of open tools and platforms. There is a learning curve for some especially when it comes to settings, notifications and the creating of streams to be more laser focused on the conversations they want to be a part of.  In addition to video demos and job aids being available in the platform itself, we would be naive to think people would naturally seek those out as their default learning action. We know people are much more apt to give it a try and then pop their heads in another's cubicle and ask for assistance. It's human nature to do first, ask questions later.

Early on we launched a series called Friday Features Feature and tagged it as #FFF in the platform. These 20-25min informal webinar events happened around lunch time where people could register in advance and set their calendars to attend. Very informal with a single objective highlighting the "how to" of a certain feature but with significant emphasis on the "why to." My Performance Specialist, Nona Gormley wondered aloud if we couldn't take this a step further, to make it even more convenient for our workforce as this has always been my battle cry: limited (learning) friction on the workflow. Her suggestion was to make it possible for anyone at anytime to reach out and have somebody walk through a feature or process. From this the idea of Open Office Hours was born.

Using a combination of Join.me and an internal conference line, I set up a 6 hour window where my screen was being shared (showing our ESN) and the conference line was open. No registration and 3 simple steps. Below is the invite.

From 9:00am to 3:00pm the lines were open.  We had 3 callers/observers attend in our first effort with specific questions about settings and other features. In some cases the questions were beyond my understanding of the tool's capabilities but it led us to explore together, in the open. Humbling to some extent but I think it was also quite humanizing to the attendee, as it makes things a bit less intimidating when someone like me who has success with social tools reveals that he doesn't know it all. This took me back to the point I was making in my post Learning Through Inexperts, that learning with and through even those muddling about can be beneficial to build community understanding.

By Snowded CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

To sum up, technology is logical, people are not. People are inconsistent and emotional. So in terms of Dave Snowden's Cynefin model, when environments are complex, such as organizational ones, sense making only happens in retrospect. So the efforts to enable and support people using social tools can't have a rigid strategy but require more of a flexible 'Probe-Sense-Respond' process.  For me this means to try something, see how it works and either expand it, or move on from it.

An Open Office Hours approach is just that, and although only 3 took advantage this time, it's far from a failure and more likely something we will tweak and try again soon.

FrankESNstein

"Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator!  Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?"  - Frankenstein's Monster

In 1818 Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein. In part the novel explored how electricity, a strange new power then might be used to create what only occurred naturally- life. 

The take away for me - don't mess with a good thing.

        Well, in the world of Enterprise Social I fear many didn't heed the warning. Our platforms often resemble the hideous Monster with it's parts fused together. Features such as streams, blogs, tags, filters, discussions, status updates, polling, places, groups, etc have value but when jumbled all together and released on the unsuspecting - they litter, complicate and ultimately frustrate and repel employees. It is often that the platforms resemble the 8' man-made man that terrifies the bewildered villagers. In some cases the people will slowly and only partially accept the platforms. In other cases they shun them and destroyed the incarnations through their inactivity versus overt aggression.

       Web 2.0 was a simple concept and simple technology but once brought inside an organization as an ESN it has been perverted and manipulated to mirror the comfortable but outdated systems and structures of the organization itself. 

The spirit of social technology is being crushed. It vaguely resembles the experimental, fun, easy world in which it was born. It is often a tool of the organization but not of the people. I've written about "simplicity" in the past and believe Simple is the New Black. That, like in Frankenstein, we have messed with the natural course. Twitter is a perfect example of "nature". A simple interface w/ simple rules and a simple goal to connect people which millions caught on to. It also had obvious affordances with its open API allowing for fantastic uses and integrations. Web 2.0 like Twitter blended seamlessly into the chaotic World Wide Web. In it's simplicity it amplified humanity, conversation, and sharing. The technology took a back seat. 

Work environments, like the web, are equally complex and growing more so with ever changing technology, system, customer need, and competition. Yet the answer for many is to release monstrous platforms that often add another layer of work to get working done. Ryan Tracy shared this, which I think nailed the issue because of how ridiculous it is. Yet if you swapped Facebook for many ESN implementations, it wouldn't be funny at all. Web2.0 vs. E2.0.

Social technology does work in some organizations but that depends on what one means by work and the organization using it. All are unique and one's definition of success, user adoption, is not the same as another's, work adaptation.   How do we avoid creating a monster enterprise social network? Yes we need advocacy and yes we need to draw on good examples and approaches promoted by the likes of Jane Hart but before that, potential community managers and leaders need to put egos aside and...

1. Ask yourself why? If your answer is to bring the workforce closer together, do they even want to be closer? Are they close now? It's a culture, people issue first.

2. Keep it simple. Start small doesn't mean just starting with a pilot, it means thinking of light design.

3. Play guide, not God. Encourage people to find A way, don't create THE way.

Learn from Dr. Frankenstein's mistake. Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Know the needs. Know the culture. Know your limits.

...Of These, Isn't The Greatest Modeling?

I found myself inspired by the #wolweek (work out loud) movement that took place across the Web a few weeks ago. The concept is relatively simple; share what you're doing, make the tools of your work visible and open so others can see, comment, and contribute.  This means working in more public "spaces".  So if you followed #wolweek on Twitter, many people blogged about their work, successes, struggles, thoughts, questions, etc.  Still others really opened the gates and let people see materials and prototypes. 

I shared the concept internally in our ESN. I said: 

...Organizations have the same opportunity to do this and reap the potential rewards within their own walls.  In a small way we do this already without thinking. We ask questions of others in and outside of our ESN such as Who has a certain certification? Where can I find a form? What's the best way to...?  In each of these questions we really reveal a little about our efforts. Imagine then if the work that the answer to these questions fed was just as visible? Would we have to even ask as many questions anymore?

I didn't get much of a response to the idea.

So....it's been said that L&D is ideally positioned to lead organizations in Social Learning, Curation and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM); supporting people in learning how to learn independent of courses and classes.  Of course doing this means L&D must let go of formal approaches and instead serve as coaches, models and guides. Most important in my opinion is the modeling. It really is the least intrusive action where others can see, reflect on, and if done right, feel they can approach to have meaningful conversations. 

A little back story first.  L&D in my organization has been moving (slowly) on an initiative to help create a mentoring culture.  The idea is ultimately to 1st help new hires acclimate to life and work here by not only having material resources readily available but a real human resource to lean on.  We always knew this how how people really get up to speed in an organization and the idea of finding a "buddy" has always been haphazard... left to the individual to figure out.  What if this was just something we helped everyone with? What if each new person came aboard and in addition to their team and manager they had another they could just tap into. Having an expert available, get a question answered, and a few tips on "how it really works here" goes a long way.  Can't this model scale we thought? And so through research inside and out, we began the slow process of developing a multi phase program to not only to help new hires but also look to weave a program like this into the career path as well. Imagine someone desiring to be a manager and having to show that they can first successfully mentor another? Isn't that the main job of a manager, to develop his/her people? 

Behind the scenes, in our own silo, we talked, researched, developed, reviewed and shared all of this. And I thought it time we eat our own dog food (for lack of a better expression) regarding openness and transparency and WOL.  We needed to practice what we preach and take what has been a young internal L&D initiative and make it very public - wild hairs, half-baked prototypes and conversations included.  It was a perfect way to model open collaboration in the workplace and build proof of concept, help others see how it can scale, and ultimately open the door to conversations on how to get it going in their own areas. Our once hidden work and process is now available for all to see and comment on... and some have. In the end people outside our area can add much value by sharing their own experiences in mentoring with us, maybe post a few good documents and ideas we should consider in making this a reality.  Maybe they will do nothing at all but "lurk" but at least now they are in the know and invited to the conversation.

Call of the Wild

My wife recently took a position with the development department at the local zoo. As part of her on boarding she has been engaging in "behind the scenes" activities to see and engage the animals more closer with the keepers.  Last week she met with the Elephants. She learned of their love of jelly beans and was told that each night the Elephants check the locks as the keepers leave. Not to ensure they are locked but maybe in the hopes they might be unlocked.

This got me to thinking about captivity. How the once wild can remain wild in a controlled environment and if they really live as they had.   As we continue to support our internal network I'm curious of the specific interplay of people within an ESN (E2.0) vs. that of those in Web 2.0.  

How that, although the tools on the "inside" mimic the tools on the "outside", the behaviors on the inside differ greatly to those on the outside. For example the food and environment (habitat) are similar to an animal's natural environments but we know and more importantly, they know, they are captives.

In ESNs and zoo's the "members" are each dependent upon others to maintain their environment and therefore are no longer functioning as they would in the wild. Both are observed continually, fed on schedule from "keepers", limited in freedom, and regardless of the care, attention, and stimulization they receive, wouldn't they still just rather be free? Free to choose, free to roam, free to test their abilities and explore different environments? 

ESNs are not cages and employees are hardly captives but the question is, can we ever fully expect the vigor, beauty, comfort and energy of those engaging in the wild world of Web 2.0 to happen in an ESN? I think not. No more than we can expect captive animals to remain unchanged.  To even come close to the benefits we see in the wild there are few principles ESN "keepers" might be mindful of:

• Trust takes time. Trust as in trusting those with knowledge will share openly and share when its needed most. Trust as in revealing ones limitations is not judged as weakness. How much time? It's different for each and their "lifespan" or tenure in the organization too is different for each.
• Expand, not constrict the environment, encourage more of the outside look, feel and flexibility to come in. Remember, that unlike zoo animals, employees lead a double life inside and outside your network. Bridging the two is not a technical solution alone.
• Monitor to aid the inhabitants not to manipulate as a showcase for onlookers (stakeholders).
• Respect the ebb and flow of independent activity without forcing desired behaviors for the satisfaction of onlookers. 
• Support the needs of the inhabitants rather than drive the wants of the organization. Organizational impact is a result of a healthy environment.
• Maintain realistic expectations. No matter what you do, not all will *survive*.

As my wife grows into her role and connections at the zoo I want her to ask of the keepers, "how do you really know when an animal is not just surviving but thriving?" Might be something to look at more closely in our own environments. oh and if the Elephant finds the door unlocked, what then?

Curation in the Enterprise

Being a digital curator gets much attention today and rightfully so as information is being created exponentially and knowledge is in a state of ever-change. Having people and tools to help capture the relevant and make sense (and use) of it is critical.  It's obviously easier to see curation happening in open social networks as tools like Storify are used and we can easily follow those who share consistent, vetted content.  Likewise curated courses like "How to be an Effective Digital Curator" led by Sam Burrough recently using Curatr were open and available to all.

However when the conversation shifts away from ones own professional development and into curation by individuals in organizations its a little harder to see. For me, all curation activities align pretty well with Harold Jarche's model of Seek-Sense-Share but with the benefactor of the new understanding not being just the one curating, because curation is what one does for others.  I think the goal of curation, like learning, is a change in behavior.  Traditionally if one attends a curated art exhibit are they not intended to walk away with a deeper understanding and an emotional reaction?  In work contexts curation should serve to help people better understand in order to do their work, do it more effective and/or efficiently.

For example, recently having numerous people obtain a foundations level certification became a growing interest in our organization.  Like any certification it was assumed by leaders that testing and coursework were required.  The initial request was to "look into how much it will cost us to get X amount of employees trained and certified."  Normally L&D would run off and either develop or identify vendors that could deliver the training.

excerpt of curated materials

My colleague Nona Gormley and I decided to go in a different direction. I asked her to dig around a bit and gain a better understanding of the needs of obtaining the certification [seek].  She followed by processing the resources and information she collected. Reflecting individually and collectively (with me) and adding context to each resource [sense]. And then made this information available in our ESN within a conversation to encourage people to openly discuss and share the information [share].  The context she added was extremely valuable as the research and the story she crafted was ultimately that the 90% of people who took the foundations certification exam passed and training was not required.  She provided links to resources, tips, practice assessment questions and videos. In her web search for this information she drew upon the crowd sourcing to help determine the most valuable content; items most highly rated as useful in the passing of the exam. This is a topic that we will continue to monitor but more importantly encourage others to contribute to.

In essence this is an example of curation in the enterprise.  With collaborative tools we can openly model curation approaches and help others learn how to help themselves and their colleagues. I think too that conducting activities such as curation really shows (not just tells) a shift to the new value of L&D in organizations.

Stand and Deliver

A social network conjures an image of people connecting and sharing from personal to professional and driven by ones own interests. Although it can be large in terms of connections, the conversations can be small in nature which in my opinion builds stronger bonds between the participants.  When Enterprise is added to the title, as in Enterprise Social Network, the nature of it all seems to change and the expectations tend to increase. The organization becomes the center point and work and profit are more the focus. 

When these tools are open, enabling people to share their stories without expectation, however large or small, great opportunities to transformation individuals arise. And organizations ultimately are individuals. Some of these transformative moments are so small that their impact is hardly felt at all. But over time they can accumulate, they gain momentum, they infect and spread.

"Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge."

                                                                            - Harold Jarche

A few weeks ago we launched our ESN. And as we monitor, model and encourage, I take more stock of the small things; the many minor "shares" becoming the big things for that is what I believe are the seeds of a community.

For example I've watched (and participated some) the conversation about the purchase and use of a standing desk. Certainly not a direct impact on the bottom line. One employee posted that they had one, shared a photo and briefly wrote of it's health benefits.  As I passed through our office a few days later I did a double take as one of our Project Managers was standing and typing! Coincidence? I didn't engage him but instead went back to review the series of posts and comments and noticed he hadn't contributed to the conversation at all. 

I proceeded to casually asked him about the desk and how it was working out. He explained that he was getting used to it and was working it in throughout the day.  When I inquired as to how he heard of it he mentioned the colleague who originally shared as well as another in the thread of about seven different people.  I openly wondered if it was because of them that he purchased it?  He confirmed it was, as he knew both well.

Another two days passed and we got to talking again in passing.  When I asked about the benefits of the desk he spoke about his increased energy. He shared that usually he fades around 4pm but yesterday had no such feeling. I expressed my surprise as I only thought about back discomfort being alleviated. When I asked him to share his experience in our network he laughed and said "I don't Jive."  To which I smiled and replied, "apparently you do and owe it to the network to share your experience."

At 8:00am the next morning he posted about the positive impact of the desk.

A new idea shared by a trusted colleague leads to an experiment with surprisingly productive results... and all openly shared. 

The wind or the sun?

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said: “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin.” So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on. - Aesop

Many workers approach collaborative tools with skepticism,  fear, or as a burden; "something else I have to check." Others bring to the workplace their personal use bias and see them as frivolous time wasters. How are you addressing people's cloaks of resistance? Are you slowly and gently radiating the opportunities and advantages or are you just pushing hard for rapid adoption?