Losing the Soul of Social

Technology can extend the human condition but it can also work to dehumanize, transforming the sincere ideals of community and relationships into exploitable resources. The vendor marketing machines have lots of money and content marketing is their new effort to turn spin doctors into gurus as they work to convince you they are not selling but educating. Let the buyer beware. Some "though leaders" in this space are really after mind control and in many ways I think it's working. For example I sat in a conference session recently which was a bit alarming. The discussion was centered on community building but was framed around tools. No discussion of trust and time and shared values or support. Rather it was a conversation about things like how to use gamification to get people to share! Or this recent post titled How to Master Social Marketing Quickly and Effectively which is chock full of advice like Automate It, Know Your Numbers, Get Followers. More likely than not some of the approaches in this article work in the short-term but are quite devoid of anything resembling sincerity or human relationship building.

Technology is seductive. I underestimated its power at my previous organization. I had leadership on board that improving transparency and collaboration would help in reducing redundancy and increase innovation; a huge win. Within days a team formed to assess social technology options! I was dismayed but also being new I figured it was best to tentatively support this as I naively believed that I could simultaneously explore technology solutions and also assess how we were currently collaborating and communicating throughout the organization. I carried on looking for where the pockets of healthy teams, departments and interactions were. I sought out conversations that informed me of barriers as well identified ambassadors or nodes in our already existing networks. I deepened my understanding of the business and culture. While I looked at business problems the tech train was gaining strength. My slow roll out was ultimately compromised by a need to justify the expense of a chosen solution. How ridiculous of me to a think we would leave a Porsche parked in the garage when it looked so sunny outside. The platform was on the table too soon and too many were letting tech take the wheel.  In the end the technology rolled out before the needs of the organization were really defined. Not quite a failure but definitely a struggle that was unnecessary as adoption became the goal not adaptation where real business value was.

"Money is in technology focus, but effect is in people focus." - James Tyer

Human history is littered with examples of where technology temporarily blinded us with devastating results to body and mind. The Industrial Revolution made people mere appendages of the machines and child labor was a widely accepted practice.  More recently (and far less cruel) Learning Management System spin has misled people into believing a formal course is how and where learning takes place and that access, completions and scores equate to learning - wasting time, money and reducing morale. The former was ultimately defeated through the birth of labor unions and progressive legislation and today, the LMS is under attack by progressive minds using data to help people see where learning is actually happening and change mindsets.  Eventually, as history shows, we do come to our senses. However, if we sit passively allowing the voices of deception to coexist with the sincere, the longer it will take us to realize the true benefits of social - benefits gained as we move through the machine not within it

Conversation Brings Change, Naturally

I've been thinking about Media Naturalness theory for some time. Well, more often it just pops up because it's not like I've invested all than much effort into it. In short, if you're not familiar, Media Naturalness Theory is the idea that human beings were built for face-to-face communication over thousands of years of evolution. Our gestures, voice inflection, eye movement, body language all contribute to giving and receiving information. Therefore anything that shifts away from this "medium" impacts our ability to effectively communicate. There was a lot of study around this with the introduction of email. To learn more I found this Wikipedia article a pretty good place to start.

Being more into the media rich New Social Learning (i.e. learning through social technology), I haven't put much stock into Media Naturalness theory but I had a bit of an epiphany at a recent meet-up here in Syracuse. I'm a member of a local Bloggers Facebook group. We comment and exchange posts as well as ask for advice, etc. I was wanting to meet some of these fine people in person and pick their brains about blogging and why they do it, how they do it, tools, approaches, etc. I think I'm somewhat of an outlier in this space as I don't blog for money, I do it for myself (although if the occasional speaking gig arises I usually don't say no), my topic is a bit fringe, and I'm a bit of a purist in that I focus exclusively on my writing/reflecting and do nothing in regard to researching tags, SEO and monetization.

Meeting virtual friends face to face is always pleasant and since we didn't engage much in long discussions in our Facebook group the opportunity was there to sit, have a beer and just hear each others voices if nothing else. Upon my arrival I moseyed up to a trio and introduced myself. After exchanging pleasantries I was asked by one, Joe I believe, "So what is it you write about exactly?" Without missing a beat I rattled off something like "I write about organizational social. How increasing transparency and openness can improve performance. You know, how social tools can be used inside an organization for sharing and collaboration."  As I sputtered out my final words I realized, but didn't feel compelled to add it in, that I said nothing about learning. I hadn't even whispered the term that has defined my career for over 20 years now. No ID. No elearning. No L&D. No training. Nothing.

Blogging has a unique pressure that really only strikes you when you hit "publish." Even as comments to your posts come in, you can pause almost indefinitely and ponder a reply. But in the heat of a face-to-face conversation, with real human eyes cast upon you and ears finely tuned, your response is unrehearsed, visceral and probably the most honest you can give. I write so much on my interest, beliefs, observations, efforts, etc that I really haven't even given conscious thought to the transformation I have been undertaking. In reflecting on this moment over the past week I started looking back at my conversations online, my blog posts over the past few months and years and the pattern was obvious; I have slowly shifted away from being L&D-centric and have been seeing the whole organization's role in impacting individual performance. Learning is a part of the work not apart from it. And thus learning is mostly indistinguishable from the other activities that make up the work we do, it is an unconscious underpinning. No longer does learning, in the formal sense, dominate my thinking and practice any more than communication, human interaction, culture, leadership, and trust.

Change happens one conversation at a time or in this case, change is made obvious through conversation. And why not - we've been learning about others and ourselves this way for thousands of years.

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.

The Open Office: Right Idea, Wrong Approach

In a not so recent article (Dec 2014) criticizing the open office idea as getting it wrong and ruining the workplace, the author ranted about how negatively disruptive this disruptive approach has been in her own circumstance. To that I say exactly- it's not for everyone. Organizations are as unique as fingerprints and if companies don't first understand the nature of the work being performed and just blindly follow a trend, well damned they should be.

Lafayette Studios photographs: 1930s decade

The real problem for me with this trend though is that when people think of an open office, they think of the traditional 20th century workplace but with low or no walls separating people. That's it. Remove physical barriers and viola! Innovation! Really?

This is just simply getting a good idea all wrong.

Daniel Pink, among others, makes the claim in his book Free Agent Nation, that 50% of U.S. workers will be free agents by 2020. And an Intuit 2020 report predicted a while back that traditional employment will no longer be the norm. It will be replaced by contingent workers; free-agents, part-timers, contractual.  If accurate, then 2020 is only 5 years away and although those numbers seem aggressive it appears things are moving this direction. With more short-term contractual workers, employers definitely need an open office... but not the physical kind, that's just silly. Open is practice not a space. For a person it's an internal choice, for an organization, a group of people, being open is a cultural underpinning. Openness is sharing, open to collaborate, open to criticism and to criticize, open to contribution... from wherever you are seated. Openness, supported by collaborative technology, turns the physical office into a concept. The "office" becomes an artificial structure, no walls inside or out. 

Removing cubicle walls may allow others to see the machinery but real openness, between connected people anywhere, invites them to move the levers. The open office idea today is missing the point. It's similar to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, business as usual in an increasingly unusual world. 

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..."

SharePoint for Formal Social Learning

Sometimes (many times) you don't have bottomless budgets and are "stuck" with the technology you've got. Well, true creativity happens in a box and sometimes that box is SharePoint. SharePoint as you are likely aware is a Microsoft enterprise platform that has many functions from document management, workflows, individual sites and department sites. Many organizations use it as their Intranet and can really pretty up the interface.  It has some features beyond document "collaboration" that, well frankly, get a bad rap when compared to their more robust cousins on the Web.  I'm speaking of the Blogs, Wikis, Discussion Forums, etc.

Recently Anne Scott and I co-hosted an ASTD Webinar titled Using SharePoint to Support Training.  Anne spoke of her experience on the design and development side and I, of course, talked of using SharePoint for more social activities like work narration and as a formative evaluation tool. Well, shame on me as I completely forgot about another way I used SharePoint to support training and felt I'd share it here.

In our Webinar, Anne and I laid out each example like this:

What was the problem

What was the approach 

What was the result

So I figured I'd follow suit in this post.  The example below is from my time working for a Dental Management company.

Problem:

New Office Managers (OMs) were not communicating treatment plan activities and financing option details consistently with the patients.  They were not being malicious but the inconsistency could raise red flags and complaints.  Since most of the Finance experts and Trainers were based at HQ and the Office Managers were in the field offices, support was difficult. 

Approach:

Working through and with peers is extremely powerful and often desired as many OMs worked alone. Working with the Director of Finance and several SMEs we developed a simple SharePoint site which incorporated document libraries, a wiki and discussion forum. A cohort of OMs had been identified as having some difficulty were granted access to this virtual scenario exercise. A virtual patient was created (see Edward Jamison above) and key  modified but authentic documents such as Health History form, Patient Information form, the doctors Treatment Plan and radio-graphs (xrays) were uploaded. 

The OMs were to review the material independently to better understand the patient and the doctor's plan.  The OMs used the discussion forum space to collaborate and clarify their understanding and then the real fun began!

"The patient enters your consultation room..."

This simple statement was placed in the Wiki.  The OMs were given 24hrs to collaborate and generate a greeting.  Upon agreement they typed it in the wiki and a SME was alerted and,  acting as the patient, gave a response. This  dialog between OMs and a virtual patient advanced asynchronously over several weeks as they were in their work environments.  Email alerts would announce that their fellow OM's had made a change and/or the SME (patient) had responded.  Leveraging the resources and each other the OMs worked together to educate the "patient" and move them forward humanely and ethically to accept the treatment they needed.  In this process they collaborated, compromised and engaged in a scenario that although was not authentic contextually it did involve real actors with endless possibilities.

Result:

This activity was part of a pilot program and done in conjunction with other performance improvement activities such as onsite observation and coaching by the OMs supervisors. As a piece in the puzzle it's hard to say what effect it had but we do know that better performance was seen over all (i.e. less complaints). Moreover, in this exercise the OMs were able to "see" their conversation with the patient.  Not only could they be corrected by the SMEs on misinformation during and post event, they could also identify where they did or did not address a patient's concern, where they could have redirected the patient or saved more time in the conversation.  Also, since it was in a wiki, it could be quickly edited and crafted as a reference document or function like a quick guide.  Overall the activity was robust for those who engaged in it but finding balance between work, this and other influences was tricky for some.

It's important to remember that sometimes you have to dance with the date you brought. Platforms and devices can have somewhat hidden affordances that can be leveraged to create unique and focused solutions. So, like in my Webinar with Anne, I hope you can extract some best principles and see how they can be applied in your organization. 

In Pursuit of Athens Inc.

On the recent anniversary of the Gettysburg address by Abraham Lincoln I serendipitously was re-introduced to an ancient text by the Greek leader Pericles which has uncanny similarity to Lincoln's famous speech in a similar context. Both wrote of their current struggles and the glory that was the nations they fought to preserve.

"We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens."

- Funeral Oration of Pericles

These are the some of the words of Pericles (Leader of Athens 444BC to 430BC.) where he gave historians a vivid picture of Athens and all it's practices that helped lead it to be a model for much of Western civilization.

Being a former History teacher, I have always been fascinated by eras of great advancements in humanity and the human condition which often are a result of cultural diffusion and removal of barriers. I see parallels to current events and the past and feel too that with the advancements in collaborative technology we are diffusing on a massive scale and entering a new and probably the most significant of Golden Age's ...and organizations can also be transformed.  

For example during the Golden Age of Athens, fearless and without hindrance, Athenians placed greater attention on creative and innovative pursuits. Furthermore Athens, being a seafaring power, ventured out to the edges of known civilization uninhibited. Through trade, Athenians brought more than merchant goods to all of Athens but idea from other worlds that would fuel its innovation and lead to advances in Arts, Literature, Architecture, Governance, etc permeate all of Western civilization today.

What lessons can organizations today, which can be compared to nation-states, take away from the Golden Age of Athens? 

Geographically Athens was surrounded by a rugged landscape. Fertile farmland was scarce and thus an agrarian society was not a choice. Athenians had to turn to the sea. Likewise organizations today cannot survive isolated; resting solely on its internal workforce and leadership will not result in a sustainable enterprise. The successful organization must reach out from its borders not to seek and acquire talent but to enable its people to connect with talent everywhere and through these connections grow, innovate and create. 

Athenian merchants, driven by self-interest, served themselves but unconsciously served to grow Athenian influence and power. Athenians were proud and loyal because theirs was a nation that placed the individual above the state. Together they rose. Today organizations who aim to contain and control their people in their pursuits limit themselves and ultimately create distrust and disenchantment; not the loyalty they so greatly expect and desire.

As Pericles eludes to in the excerpt above, Athens subscribed to both transparency and openness. They revealed their innovations to the world and invited others in knowing full well their strength was not in their systems and products but in their people. Their enemies might profit occasionally but the long-term gains of openness far outweighed the short-term losses. 

Organizations too, who choose to invest in their people and their happiness, drop their fruitless efforts at security and reap the rewards of individual freedom of the people. People, free to connect and create with passion and zeal, benefit their organization. And although organizations will encounter periodical challenges from competitors. This trust can only lead to greater gains.

Arguably the greatest reason for Athens success was [Direct] Democracy. The belief that the people, collectively, determined and directed policy. Debate was encouraged and contribution to Athenian politics was not a request but a duty. Hierarchy existed to execute the laws but not create them. Each, regardless of position, had a voice and was encouraged to use it.

Today, through collaborative tools, Democracy can be reborn in our modern [organizational] nation-states. We have an technology enabled ability in our organizations to hear all voices, to debate, to encourage contribution, and to influence hierarchy. These same tools can extend us beyond our borders, seek fertile environments and bring back to the enterprise innovative ideas and solutions. This is about trust; trust in our organizations, trust in the systems, trust in each other. 

Leaders today have an opportunity then to embrace the principles of openness, transparency, and democracy as Athens subscribed, resulting in great work and prosperity or continue down the path of exclusion, deception, control.

Community as the Cornerstone

There is a rush to social everything today. Organizations who rush to connect their workforce often painfully find out their big efforts fail.  I must say, that the idea of a completely connected workforce sharing and collaborating with knowledge flowing freely through Wirearchies is very enticing and frankly the right goal to strive for.  I want to be there too …but I am willing to move somewhat slower as I fear that what is being lost is the fact that social media, in its simplest definition, is a tool.

The social media tools we have today are useful for building up community, increasing collaboration and for sharing. If you have a business problem that can be addressed by one of these three, then social media should be explored and as success is achieved, expansion can be the next logical step.  Maybe if we target smaller problems first through a "Trojan Mice" approach as Euan Semple speaks of, we will change our organization's collective belief about "social" and ultimately change the culture... one collaborative practice at a time. 

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

An area I had the opportunity to target with a social solution was Employee On boarding.

The two high level goals of on boarding are: 

1.  To make new employees feel welcome and comfortable in their new surrounding.
2.  Minimize the time before new employees are productive members of their new team.


The reality is that most on boarding efforts fall quite short of meeting each of these goals. A 2011 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) revealed some very sobering data:

• Most on boarding lasts less than 8 days.
• Only 8% of organizations surveyed do extensive monitoring of their formal on boarding programs.
• Only 15% of organizations surveyed conduct an extensive evaluation of their on boarding program's effectiveness.

Of significance also is that only 57% of surveyed organizations provided new hires a personal mentor and 35% engaged the employees in any significant socialization efforts with their new work group. Yet 94% said these two activities are critical!

The biggest culprits noted:

Lack of time, Lack of resources, Lack of management support, and Lack of financial support

In the end, 6% of organizations surveyed reported that on boarding is longer in duration than it was 5 years ago with less responsibility given to newcomers to "figure things out for themselves." Well intentioned I'm sure but is the right direction one that provides for less autonomy when organizations are clearly struggling to provide an effective formal on boarding program?

It would appear that most on boarding efforts are top heavy, top down formal approaches. And frankly... formal is failing.  The truth is most organizations I fear focus on goal 2 (job skill development), for good reason but unfortunately they completely neglect goal 1 (socialization).

The Business Problem:

I was presented with a business problem related to on boarding new employees for a single department and I wondered openly about the current approaches in this area and what role social media could play in this effort. The head of recruitment intended to more than double the size of his recruitment team (9-20). He expressed that he needed help getting them up to speed on the company and the various roles they need to hire for (i.e. Dentists) These folks were experienced recruiters but not experienced in our industry. He hoped I could develop a training plan for them. Though he expressed that it wasn't ideal to bring them in for training as they would lose productive time in the field. On a secondary note he was tired of answering the same questions over and over in 1:1 calls and emails with his current group as this was taking him away from more strategic activities.

I believed the answer to his business problem was not a formal approach but in flipping the focus and getting the new employees to productivity by placing community (Goal 1) as the cornerstone and build knowledge through this community rather than begin with formal training programs detached from the job (Goal 2). 


Step 1: Buy-in 
Its more common than we want to admit but many present the solution before really knowing the problem. Digging deeper and having the executive articulate the real issues made it much easier to present a different approach and shake the training default mentality. It's nearly impossible to argue with ones own data.

Step 2: Partner with Your People 
On boarding should be a group effort. There are benefits for all involved to have the new hire succeed so all should play a role in making that happen. 

I suggested he ask his current experienced recruiters what the top questions Dentists interested in our organization ask during the recruitment process.  The group generated 85 unique questions! We placed these in a wiki and then had different recruiters answer each of the questions. The executive was able to review and was surprised at some of the inaccuracies but pleased that they were surfaced to be corrected. This short process provided a knowledge base immediately useful for new hires to draw upon.

Step 3: Social Media Introduction
My current use of Yammer in a small pilot within L&D made the tool selection easier. Plus, although it has many features, it is relatively simple to use and mirrors familiar personal tools like Facebook. Since the group was small I was able to take an opportunity to have all Recruiters in a 2hr discussion and overview of social media. The emphasis was on "why" not how.  I started by using a frame game I adapted from Thiagi, "Improved Solutions", where after being presented with an authentic problem the groups move through sessions where they generate, criticize, defend, collaborate and ultimately produce a viable new solution. I then collect all the papers, ripped them up and threw them in the garbage.  I remind them that this is what happens when we use email or phone calls to share and collaborate.  It resonated quite well and then we shifted to start playing with Yammer...yes, playing. Doing this together allowed more savvy folks to share with others on the "how to's" and I spent most of the time leading with phrases like "check this out." and "now you can ...". It was impactful because it was casual, experiential and meaningful to their work.  

Step 4: Encourage, Model, Acknowledge 
No training. The main ingredient is consistent leadership activity and my executive partner was more than willing (yes, maybe I was blessed or maybe it was due to step 1). Each email or call he received from one of his team members he asked that they post it on Yammer and get more heads around it - this took a major mind-shift  He was quick to jump into conversations and not give the answer but to stir up discussion and seek more voices. He used hash tags and shared them, he posted humorous material to show that it was OK to just chat and share. He leaned on me for advice and encouragement to stay the course early on and it paid off.

By January, only 8 months after launch the 24 member Yammer group generated over 1600 posts/comments.  We analyzed each and placed them into categories with the following percentages:   

Community: 34% - wit, wishes, jabs, and kudos

Collaboration: 36% - problem solving Q and A

Sharing: 30% - serendipitous offerings

The solution was small in scale: focused on a key group, and targeted results (rapid OTJ learning in work context). Social media could be leveraged to eliminate the need for out of work flow formal activities and allow the new hires to tap into the expertise of the veteran to find solutions, information and collaborate in real time. Furthermore it allowed the new folks to openly share their learned knowledge from previous organizations with the senior team members; adding value and with it a deeper sense of purpose to the community.

In the end the approach addressed many of the barriers to on boarding noted in the SHRM survey:

1. Limited monitoring and evaluating 
What could be easier and more transparent than using social media? Current efforts to monitor involve subjective feedback and delayed evaluations all well past the opportunity to impact those involved. Social media enables continuous monitoring and a sort of formative evaluation when adjustments can be made very quickly and benefit the new hire the most.

2. Lack of time
No longer was there a need to pull people out of production (HR, Training, etc) to support a new hire, they have a Community of Practice at their fingertips not only getting useful approaches and valuable information but gaining critical context from those within their work group, who really know the ins-n-outs of the job and the organization.

3. Lack of management support
When a solution calls for limited financial contribution and less drain on "human" resources it's a bit easier to gain agreement. CoPs with active community facilitation can guide a new hire to productivity quickly, efficiently and without all the unnecessary hand holding that is typically seen.

4. Lack of financial support
Our total monthly Yammer expense was 5.00 per person per month.  Small in comparison to using multiple professionals for training and material development, travel expenses, opportunity costs etc.  In the end, the on boarding project became a ongoing program reaping benefits far beyond ramping up a new employee. A community exists now that moved from basic knowledge and skill acquisition to collaborative innovation.

Start Small, Think Big, Go Fast!
It's time to rebuild on boarding programs around community and not control as the cornerstone of the new structure; we can't afford these any more. Moving away from formal designs, as social media charged networks offer a cost effective, resource relieving, transparent solution to the shortcomings inherent in formal on boarding programs. A slow growth strategy is one that if employed can strategically solve a specific problem in the short-term while working to create an collaborative culture in the long-term. 

Frankly, I don't believe organization wide social media platform adoption should be the terminal goal. The real goal is workers employing Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) skills in fertile networks both inside and outside the organization.  Platforms should then serve to support social initiatives and groups but should eventually exist as only a part of the workforce's overall network and tool set.

Below is my Webinar with Jane Hart from April 2012 which digs a bit deeper into my use of Social Media for learning approaches beyond this on boarding effort.

Nature finds a way

The 1993 movie Jurassic Park was an amazing film. However it was not the CGI that captured my imagination or even the exciting story line. It was always the man vs. nature / man's efforts to control nature plot line.

The most impactful scene for me was when the main character, Dr. Ian Malcolm, discovers an improbable dinosaur egg.

You see, in the film (if I recall correctly) the greatest scientific minds filled in missing ancient DNA with present day amphibian DNA and ultimately failed at meeting their goal ...no dinosaur breeding. In the face of the egg discovery Dr. Malcolm exclaims: "...that life, uh ...finds a way."


I'm reminded of this quote each time I encounter social learning in an organization. Peers sharing a tip over the cube wall, a brief discussion in the cafeteria, a quick mid-meeting text message, participant chit-chat during a live class and chat window discussions during a webinar...it's all become quite cliche.

It has also been well documented about organizations that look to snuff this activity out by imposing technical restrictions or creating cultures of fear built on archaic hierarchies of order and control.

Sometimes though, the organization is simply unaware of the potential of social media for learning and they unintentionally prevent these opportunities rather than purposefully crush them. I encountered a group of employees recently, isolated in their geographically dispersed roles, with only a regional level hierarchy for support, no org email access, and limited permissions on a SharePoint intranet at their disposal.

In a low tech effort to improve performance by formal means, a site of curated resources was developed on a SharePoint webpage for this group and it's management to leverage. Just before release I encouraged the addition of a blog to allow participants to share their opinions and uses of the materials. As harmless as it seemed on the surface I had basically slipped in a bit of foreign DNA so to speak.

An email was sent across the org to this group's supervisors announcing the page and asking them to review and share with their reports... and then it began...

Almost as improbable as the Jurassic Park dinosaur egg, posts and comments began to appear within hours. Mind you, there was no introduction, no on boarding, and no training. Almost immediately two employees in two different regions of the country began to collaborate on an idea to improve a critical task related to their role. Later, others joined in and a post titled "Wish List" was created; they started to add comments about system change ideas, needs, wants, and solutions to everyday problems. At last count there are over 15 posts, 90+ comments, and 8 members and growing.

A simple truth revealed - people will connect, people will share, people will collaborate. It's in our DNA to be social, it's our nature and ... that life, uh ...finds a way.

Leverage the Greenest to Create a Collaborative Organizational Culture

One of the biggest barriers to bringing collaborative technology into the workplace is organizational culture. Not all resistant organizational cultures are due to extreme command & control issues, resistance to anything perceived to be "time wasting" or a security risk. In fact I’d bet most barriers are not rock solid and are actually more like Andy Dufresne’s cell wall in Shawshank Redemption... thick but porous.

The thickness is simply layer upon layer of misconception and long held beliefs about learning in organizations having to be formal and tied tightly to an L&D department. However the wall is also porous, caused by the need for agility in a poor economy, and a desire for innovation. In this environment change is not impossible but it tends to be evolutionary; like Andy, one can chip away for years and years with a small rock hammer and then have to wait for a big thunderstorm (i.e. a huge painful business problem) before they can punch through.

Typically culture change is desired BEFORE one can implement collaborative technologies.

Could one use collaborative technology and approaches to change the culture or change it faster?
That's the question I, with my teammate's assistance, have set out to answer as we have employed an approach that just may work and is far less evolutionary.

The focus of our effort to bring collaborative technologies to the organization's mainstream is not through using SoMe tools to solve a specific business problem, nor is it to work with middle management to drive acceptance both up and down the hierarchy. No, actually it’s by leveraging the greenest, least entrenched, least empowered group in the whole organization, the Newly Hired!

Let me start by telling you that SharePoint is our Intranet, and the source of all our organization wide collaborative tools. Although these tools can sometimes be less robust than desired, I am pragmatic and work first with what we have, bringing oil to the wheel only if it squeaks.

The L&D department is one of the first to make contact with new hires. For their first 2 weeks of employment they are in field offices getting exposure to the business. It is here I began to introduce training class specific blogs to them before they come to our headquarters for the first of several weeks of F2F training distributed over a 10 week program.

While in the field, we ask them to use the blog to introduce themselves to their peers in other training offices and share their daily experiences.

Once they attend a week long training in a F2F environment at HQ they return to the field for more practical applications of their training. Naturally they now have placed a face with a name and begin to have less formal conversations via the blog, albeit they are mostly related to their work experiences.

The group begins to form an identity. Less inhibited, they are comfortable posting questions, sharing a tip, sharing a joke, and telling stories of successes and failures. I’ve asked our trainers to try to refrain from answering their questions immediately and encourage their community to do so. Also the trainers are to seed the conversations with requests for members to not only share what their successes were, but what they did specifically to be successful (process not just product).

The trainees are geographically dispersed for the majority of their new hire experience, so the blog serves to keep them connected and helps maintain a support system of true peers. As their time in the training program advances, the L&D staff begin to leverage the blog to extend formal classroom learning initiatives. These efforts focus on asking the new hires to draw upon practical experiences to complete collaborative Q&A sessions, share situational best practices, and reflect on the content used in context.

This social connection is alleviating pressure found in most formal environments; the 10lbs of content in the 5lbs bag syndrome. We are now able to spread formal training out and allow for deeper reflection on the content.

Secondary to the training extension and growth of social media use for learning is that the blog is becoming an invaluable formative evaluation tool of our training sessions. The trainers can ascertain from the posts which performance objectives are being met and which the class is struggling with. This real time data allows us to quickly update and improving the curriculum.

After the new hires complete the training and are placed into their role, the community is kept alive by the participants. These CoP’s are helping the isolated staff to stay connected and continue growing with peer support.

Today we are working to roll the 15 + training groups consisting of over 100 people together into a single company-wide blog that is exclusive to their role. Homogeneous groups can only grow their knowledge and skill so much.

By reaching out to veteran employees, who have not yet been exposed to internal social media, we plan to have a select few guests post throughout the year to share insights and ideas in an effort to grow the community and its value.

As more and more new hires are introduced to the tools their comfort level and expectation to use them grows. In addition, the newest in the company become a strong voice in promoting the value. As class by class rolls into the organizational mainstream armed with SoMe rock hammers they continue to chisel away in unison until the wall simply crumbles.

Work Within the System to Change It

Social Learning happens constantly in organizations, but the moment you recognize and work to formalize it by adopting social media, the skeptics appear.

Many organizations view learning as happening by and through training only. i.e. if we're not training, they're not learning...

Therefore when you present ideas that drive learning without training, bottom up solutions vs. top down control, collaboration & conversation vs. stand & deliver ... your bound to meet barriers.

So, how can you convince your organization to embrace the power of collaboration, sharing and community to cure company ills when the key stakeholders either don't get it, fear it, or are repulsed by it?

Mask it as training.

Here's what I did - you be the judge...

Last Fall I was asked to develop a 2.5 day "training" for mid-level managers to improve their staff's performance (ideally through stronger coaching/mentoring). I had roughly 55 managers who work in a highly mobile environment from across the US rolling into town for a January meeting.

I did my homework; I analyzed my learners, the contexts, and tools. I learned quickly that these folks varied in skill, experience and tenure. What they did have in common however was most interesting ... they almost never had opportunity to talk to each other.

The key for me then was to balance what made management comfortable/familiar (formal F2F training) with what the learner's really needed (opportunity to collaboratively problem solve).

Fortunately for me I had leaders who were open and trusting of my design skills.

The Plan:

1. Use a blog to open up conversation and identify prior individual/community knowledge
2. Leverage asynchronous elearning to prime the pump and create a baseline knowledge of a coaching model
3. Capture from the learners, through a survey tool, "stories" of unsolvable, lingering staff performance problems.
4. Create an opportunity for formal and informal collaborative problem solving to generate innovative solutions.

After capturing and analyzing 144 anonymous "stories" I saw several themes emerge. Drawing on the themes I selected the 8 best examples of those themes.

I set up shop in a local hotel conference area with multiple breakout rooms. Here I adapted and expanded a Thiagi frame game - Improved Solutions http://goo.gl/oPvE

8 Problems and 55 people moved between 4 rooms as diverse groups analyzed, dissected, created, and critiqued. Over a period of 5 hours people who rarely spoke offered their insights and approaches with each other. They shared, laughed, contemplated, debated and ultimately generated community vetted and approved solutions to 8 very sticky problems.

In the end the participants had a sense of empowerment, ownership and community. No top down answers, no F2F training, no media....all engaged, all social, all real solutions.

A good reminder that social learning is not one-in-the-same as social media. However, social learning can be a springboard to help with the adoption of social media tools in the organization.