The Communications Revolution Part 3 - Social Networking In The Enterprise

We're in the middle of a Communications Revolution.  The social networking media explosion continues and shows no signs of slowing down. If you don't believe it check out this video and it's not even that recent.  The stats just keep rising.

I attended the #140conf in LA in late October as well as sat on a panel about the future of communications. A subject touched upon in a few sessions was enterprise concerns over allowing wider social networking use by their employees. Are these concerns founded? Are there solutions to ease these concerns?

There are some enterprise uses that appear to be generally accepted and businesses are wrestling with how to do and measure it successfully. These include;
1) Customer Service - watch for & serve/resolve customer complaints showing up in social network streams much more proactively and real time. The linkage to the enterprise contact center can and should be strong to make the social media stream just like any other stream (voice, email, web) input into the contact center and to the service agents
2) Brand monitoring & promotion - providing product information, enhancement ideas, and proactively getting reactions to your products, suggestions, feedback, comparisons to your competition
3) Marketing/Promotion - clearly social media is another channel to reach the eyes of the potential consumer.  More and more businesses are looking at social media for this purpose.

If you search there are plenty of blog posts with success examples, social media ROI discussions, the cost of not listening, and providing tips for sucess. One recent example I saw is Avaya.  There are several more.  Monitor Twitter using Tweedeck searching for "social media" and you'll soon see the many studies and examples I refer to.   Using social networks strictly for marketing, promotion, and customer service implies use by a limited number of the enterprise employees - contact center/service, marketing, possibly some sales order taking being the most likely.

What about broader employee use of social networks?
Enterprises are struggling with the if and how of allowing and supporting social network use widely within their employee population. There is certainly some risk and learning around using these new technologies. Is your enterprise having this debate?

The most common arguments against enterprise use of social networks are listed below. I don't imply any priority order to these concerns.

1) Productivity - does it benefit the Enterprise or not?
Con: Employees will waste time on social networks and lose productivity for my business. It's true that you could describe social networking as the biggest water cooler room in the world.  However, I contend that if an employee tends to be unproductive, they'll do so with or without social networking access. I agree there could be an increased temptation to use the networks improperly but I have some suggestions for that in a later post.
Argument For: Knowledge Worker Information Gathering - Employees can use the power of social networking productively.  For example, they can search for information and what's being said about potential products, suppliers, technology trends, or consultants your business is considering using.  They can use the network to reach out for advice or suggestions from friends, past colleagues in their area of expertise, or new experts they find on the networks. In today's world of multi-modal communication it's pretty likely that networks like LinkedIn, Skype, Twitter, Facebook etc. are where they are and the most real-time accessible means to reach them. In addition, isn't this just another form of "Googling It"? Is Google search discouraged in your enterprise too?

2) Security of Company Information
Con: Employees will purposely or accidentally divulge company Intellectual Property (IP), product plans or internal issues on the social networks. Of course, when they do, the audience will be far wider.
Con: Company liability for claims and comments made by employees about other companies or products, reviews, perceived or real "endorsements". Again, the reach is far and wide when it does happen.
Con: Airing dirty laundry. Concern over negative comments about products, the organization, management in such a widely viewed public forum.
Argument For: Most companies have a code of conduct or something similar.  Enforce it upon the discovery of such behavior on the social networks just like it you'd enforce it in other situations where such behavior is detected. Denying employees access or discouraging use at work is not the answer. The employees are going to be on the social networks in any case. You can't control that. If they are not allowed access from work, they'll access later from home and have the same opportunity to "misbehave". Doesn't it come down to ground rules and enforcement of what won't be tolerated?  Trust, but monitor your employees to do so. The emergence of social networking communication really doesn't change this. I agree the exposure to the misbehavior is much higher but that exposure is there with or without enterprise support of social media use.

In summary:

1) The social networks and real-time communication are here to stay and will continue to evolve
2) With or without the support of the enterprise, your employees are using them
3) The enterprise can gain by embracing rather than discouraging use. Discouraging use doesn't substantially reduce the risks
4) Most important - Create guidelines, publicize and train your employees on them. Be clear on monitoring and consequences of improper behavior. This last point appears to be the most essential. The use of the networks is inevitable so the best defense is clear guidelines and training.

What's the view of your enterprise? Additional comments and suggestions welcome!

Related Posts:
Communication Revolution Part 1 - Information Overload
Communication Revolution Part 2 - Social Behavior Impacts
Link to - What Unified Communications Can Do - Part 1

Suggestions and New Solutions For Information Overload

With the increased volume of communication modes, mobility power of smart phones, and information feeds available today, in real time, I often feel like I'm in information overload. Don't get me wrong, the "always on" availability and ability to receive, search, find etc. is a great thing. Like everything else, there can be some downside or social adjustment to it. I want to more effectively find and see what I really need to see as well as better control who, how and when it gets to me.

Common sources of information overload include;
- voice calls to desk or mobile
- voice messages
- email, often from professional and personal accounts
- RSS feeds from blogs
- streams from social networks to your smart phone and/or computer
- other private social networks or communities of interest you separately monitor

Information overload has several effects.
- interruption of thought, meetings, or personal time with family & friends. There have been studies discussing the thought recovery time after a phone call or other interruption. The other factor here for me is social etiquette.
- so much information that's it's difficult to know what to truly pay attention to in a timely manner. It takes too much time sorting through it all to find what I value.
- Some level of stress or pressure to "look" all the time just because "it's there"

Here's how I put some control on my information overload problem with today's tools and environments.

1. The most fundamental suggestion I can make is to DISCONNECT. Walk away from that computer(we'll discuss your smart phone later). This may be the hardest for all of us. Not much else is going to work unless you let yourself have some down time from email, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, RSS and blog reading etc. I know this isn't a new or novel suggestion as many other blogs have suggested this, but it bears repeating. There is a definite addictive aspect to the "always on" wherever I go nature of today's communications. I am one of those addicts trying to stay in "real time" rehab!

2. Use your email tools. If you have high email traffic, filter and sort your emails into in-box folders by categories of senders. For example, create project team lists and a related in-box folder to dump project specific emails into. Perhaps another folder for common "personal" emails from friends or clubs you belong to. Yet another for emails from your management chain. I find the sorting to be a help in itself. One other filter that can help is to distinguish between mail that you are on the "To" list vs only on the "CC". I realize you likely have multiple email accounts but the principles can still apply.
Note: Collaboration tools are aimed at reducing the use of email. I won't focus on this for now. Clearly if you can reduce your email traffic then managing it isn't as much an issue.

3. If you don't read it, drop it. Pick a few of the most historically useful to you blogs, news feeds etc to keep. Drop the rest. It may feel like you're "missing something". You may feel some stress if you don't try to read everything available to you. It's just not possible. If you don't/can't read it, then it's not information for you so drop it.

4. Don't send RSS or social network updates to your smart phone. At the very least severely limit it. You can't walk away from your computer and get any relief if all you do is vector it to your smart phone. The smart phone is my dominant source of interruption, distraction, and the addiction to "look". It's what steals my down time and annoys family and friends in the social etiquette sense.

5. Use social network organizing tools. Tools like TweetDeck can help you sort as well as pick sources and/or content keywords you are most interested in seeing. They can also handle multiple social network accounts. The recent addition of lists to Twitter is another capability that helps. You can set them up differently on your computer vs. your smart phone to get less on your smart phone.

6. Consider not using email on your smart phone. Of course this is not really an option for many given the mobile nature of many jobs today. As a compromise I don't route my personal email accounts to my smart phone.

I'm very interested in your methods, wishes and suggestions around how you manage your communication overload. Comments and dialog welcome!

Communication Overload And the Identity Crisis

With all the data and forms of communication coming at me on a daily basis it continues to make me think about solutions for managing it. I've blogged before on the overall communication overload pain. Many will say just "filter" it. I agree with that but it's still not all that easy to do. When it comes to Twitter for example, the recent addition of lists should help (once you finish the labor to set up and sort who you follow into those lists - which I have not!). I contend that the lists you want to watch varies for your personal vs. professional time so more improvement is needed.

One source of the pain appears to be that many of us have multiple identities or contexts in our lives; dad, soccer mom, work, family etc. The line between personal and professional is fuzzy at best and isn't as time-of-day defined as it once was. Work doesn't just shut off at 6 pm for example. Many of us need to see some amount of "professional" communications even "after" work.

Here's a thought that I've discussed with personal and professional peers like @Roger_Tee. How about the ability to control and filter your data feeds and incoming communications (yes, including voice) based on setting what "identity" you want to be at the moment?

For me personally that would mean a one click to switch to "personal" mode when I get home. Personal mode would have effects like;
- allow only calls that are from my "personal" contacts list. Due to the work/home blur that list would still include just a few key work contacts.
- allow only the set of tweets, IMs, other social media pings from friends or from my personal interest areas (like the Mets, Jets, Music or concert announcements, or NJ fishing). I'd turn off technology feeds or communications from my more casual professional connections
- Show me email only from my personal account(s).

If I were a coach on my personal time perhaps I'd have an identity for that too.

In short, for personal mode I'd try to disconnect as much as possible from my "professional" side. Turn off some of the inflow for a while. Two major factors for success here are you have to WANT to disconnect (the always connected addiction issue many of us have) and it has to be EASY to turn on such filtering.

"Professional" mode would be the opposite; turn off personal interest tweets and feeds, most personal voice calls etc. It's important to reduce interruptions, whether at work or at play. I don't have the link handy but there are many studies showing up about the cost of an interruption (email, voice calls etc) to your mental context and producitivy.

Perhaps some would benefit from multiple professional contexts as suggested by @Roger_Tee. Given he's providing consulting services to multiple clients, it may be useful to him to switch his context to the client he wants to focus on at that time. His email, tweets or other possible data feeds relevant to that client would then be in focus for him. He may or may not go as far as to change what phone or other forms of contact he wants to receive on a client by client basis. I have just started to try Google Wave. It may provide some of this context or filtering. I can see a wave per client for example. It isn't clear to me yet that Wave encompasses the full dashboard of incoming communication and information sorting.

I'm interested in the information and communication overload issue and how it impacts and changes our lives and some of our social behavior. Does any of this resonate with you? What ideas or wishes would you add? Please share with comments on this post.

#140Conf Observations & Relevance to Unified Communications

I'm in the telecommunications industry doing product engineering and development. I attended the 140 Characters, Exploring The State of Now conference in LA last week. It was my first "non-techie" type of conference and for that reason alone it was a very different experience.

You may ask, why would someone like me attend a conference like this? I attended for two reasons; my interest in social media as a new and highly popular mode of communication, and my passion for integrating social media with business communications systems that are in use in businesses today. The second reason comes from my history in VoIP telecommunications and that I'm currently employed by Avaya; a key player in the communications industry. I was invited to be a member of the Tuesday panel that discussed Google Wave and the Future of Communications. Social media is part of that future! Here is a video of the panel seesioin I was part of.

The conference itself was set up in the Kodak theater. It was very well organized by @JeffPulver, @jeffhayzlett and many more staff. Kudos to all involved in running the event. I particularly enjoyed the timekeeper use of the Oscar "music" to keep each session on time.

My main take-away from all the sessions and people I met is that social media is used across all forms of business and all walks and interests in life. I really enjoyed the diversity of the people I met and hearing about what they do compared to technology focused conferences. Social media truly is "the state of now" for news, opinions, reviews, forming and sharing in communities of interest - you name it. I'll repeat what I said on the panel; no it is not a fad and a key challenge is to figure out how to effectively integrate and manage it along with all other forms of communication. There were a few vendors, Avaya included, there discussing products and tools starting to aim at that very challenge.

There were many PR and marketing type firms discussing how businesses need to pay attention to and use social media to promote and monitor their brand, and respond to their customers. The examples were great. Given the state of now, any business that doesn't believe they need to pay attention to the social media revolution is in for a very rude awakening. That includes giving and encouraging their associates to access and use social media! Many other discussions centered around how social media creates and fosters communities of interest of all kinds; celebrities, sports, media shows, moms, illness, homelessness, specific expertise, and all kinds of business branding and customer service examples. Many panelists described how social media is complimenting rather than replacing the other forms of media (radio, TV, news services etc).

There was one very "entertaining" session I feel the need to call out because it struck close to what I write about. The speaker demonstrated, with crowd participation, a radical real time concept: a PHONE call. It's as real time as you can get and yet we seem to be drifting further and further from high touch communications. Food for thought, have we done so almost to the point of rudeness?.

I look at social media, and communications in general, from both the individual and business needs perspective. I call it people-centric communication. Look here for some thoughts on what that could be. How do you feel about social media and it's impact on your communication style and needs? I definitely got some insights into this from my attendance at this conference and the people I connected with.

In summary, this conference focused on people and communities and how social media really fosters connecting. It is supposed to be "social" after all. It's about connecting, helping people and making a difference; not just a new force in running business and "making money". The social media players and tools will change but the "state of now" real time is here to stay. If you are unsure about or considering social media personally or professionally, or if you just want to keep up with it's evolution, I'd check out future 140 conferences by following #140conf.