I won something

Not the lottery, stopped doing that years ago. This is an IBM award for spreading the love about social media in IBM.

flying papers by Aldor

Some people think I should talk about these sort of things mroe often, ok, here goes.

The full name is “BlueIQ Most Valuable Ambassador” which along with 9 others I won in the first half of 2009. It is actually the 4th consecutive time I have been given this award, which I think shows how much I enjoy and believe in what we are doing.

The idea of the award and the BlueIQ community (it’s global not just the UK)  is simply to help other IBMers get as much value out of using social media as possible. This can be as simple as a one to one education session but go all the way up to looking at ways of changing culture and processes to be more social in outlook.

Although just about everyone in IBM has contributed to one (usually several wikis) or commented on a blog or w3 article, there are many less obvious things they can be doing that improves their working life, expands their network, makes finding stuff quicker and improves their employability.

Anyway, so a global community of nearly 900 (and growing) ambassadors are there to help, to sort the wheat from the chaff of new applications and websites, to enable employees. As you know I work in internal comms, which we call Workforce Enablement so it fits right in with what I do.

In a nutshell, my philosophy is that I can’t possibly know everything that is going on in the business, and sometimes the best people to tell the story are those that lived it, so I can sure as hell help those people get out there to talk and work.

You know, many of us get caught up in what we are doing and although there will always be the geeks, early adopters and simple masochists that want to endure the latest release of everything, not everyone will. So as the human filter for the innovators in IBM we help shape in some way the things that devs come up with and try to get to the people that can find new ways of employing it at work.

Part of the award is that we get to pitch an idea to several of our VPs later in the year… I need to think about that one.

Left a bit, right a bit, up, up, just there..nice.

The other day I mentioned at the end of a rather long and tiresome bleat about social media and internal communications that one of IBM’s biggest assets in this area after our culture is the social computing guidelines.

what?

Now you can watch this video (link on the right of the page) that Global Social Media Comms Manager and Power Lunch botherer @adamclyde made about this very subject during his lunch break with our VP, Security Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Harriet Pearson (honestly don’t know if she is on Twitter).

If you are wondering what the music is, it’s an updated version of the IBM anthem, which we are all forced to sing and dance to when we get to the office.

Please note what we think differentiates IBM from our competitors, us, the IBMers, because that is how people experience the IBM brand.

And for that matter, your brand too.

Adam is available for birthday parties where tacos are served.

Does that sound right?

In reply to a question by Robin Crumby my open answer (or rather ramble) to:

“So, if  ’social media for internal communication’ doesn’t work for you, what is the alternative?”

Not sure this is an alternative, the confusion lies in what people think the term means.. (hold your breath – ok don’t)

image by adewale oshineye

I’m not sure a function or corporation should or perhaps can engage it’s employees through social media (or technology that enables social interaction) only other people can do that. For a start, the business and the Internal Comms function is made of people, it’s not an entity it is own right that has an office on the 4th floor. The person running it might think that. Doesn’t mean he/she is right though.

So what is the role of Internal Comms when it comes to social media? One thing it’s not is to send out messages about the business as if it was just another channel like email, that stuff will carry on regardless, emails from the CEO, intranet articles with news, wins and strategy.

I see our role as enabling our employees (that is everyone from the CEO to the Tea Lady should they want to) to be able to take advantage of ways of exchanging information, ideas, experiences, thoughts and challenges with the people that need it and letting everyone else go about their business. At one level you can include a comment feature to allow and encourage conversations to develop within an intranet article – but that is as much about people talking with each other than the company.

Not so long ago intranet owners were looking at how many hits they were getting on every story, in some odd way thinking that everything on the site was of equal value to everyone. More important (and you don’t need me to tell you) is that the right people get the right information at the right time.

Also Internal Comms has a habit of taking out the very soul of the story (ok a bit strong perhaps) it is trying to sell, turning it into a series of corporate phrases and platitudes, with a rather badly taken photo of the team that “did a great job” people I don’t know and don’t really care about because I have no contact with them . A couple of potted quotes are just that.

Rather that team had been documenting and talking about its challenges and pressures on an internal blog so that others could either help or learn from the experience. Perhaps building one or two strong relationships along the way that leads to greater collaboration and/or innovation in the future. To the business, this I think is more valuable.

That’s one scenario.

Putting communication in the hands of the people, giving them the responsibility for what they want to read and write and contribute to, creating value for the organisation.

Internal Comms can make a huge impact for the business in understanding what the feeling is in the community by listening to what people are talking about, what is making them happy and sad, where the challenges and successes are. This though requires a culture that respects the individuals right to fair speech – not abuse – but the right to criticise processes, put forward alternatives and challenge the status quo, for the better of the business.

I’m not advocating every business set up Lotus Connections tomorrow and tell employees to speak their minds – that would be a disaster for most. As I said before, tools do not make a company social. What I’m saying is they need to get on that path of evolution, especially those companies in the knowledge economy that are locking down the IT desktop. That may mean looking at the current culture, providing education and clear guidelines.

I really think that one of IBM’s biggest strengths is it’s Business Conduct Guidelines. Not every company has them, but they should. We talk a lot about the social computing guidelines but the BCGs have for a long time set clear requirements on what is expected of each person in IBM. The SCG just re-word those for a new type of technology and interaction that so many people find confusing and others find liberating.

I’ll let everyone else sense check this.. gotta run

Connecting ourselves

Not written much here for a while, the odd link and video but this has been because I’ve been on holiday and also busy with a series of projects and activities at work that are just taking more and more time.

"Miles of files" drpritch

But I’m not neglecting my blogging entirely, in fact I’ve been blogging more internally as that is where, right now I need to focus.

I get a bit bored and confused when companies and especially Internal Comms folk start saying that they are using social media for Internal Communications.  To me it sounds like they have got the CEO to “write” a blog or get some “safe” employees to write. That misses the point. Sometimes though it means they have a “Facebook-like” system, which if they are really lucky turns out to be employee profiles, often several versions, none of which can be connected to any other applications running in the enterprise, hence making them nothing more than a time-sink.

I would hope Internal Comms is help employees to use social media to work better with each other.. not just utilise it as another “channel” which is fast rising on my list of Top ten twenty thirty most hated words or phrases – along with stakeholder.

How many have email clients, profiles, blogs, forums and micro-blogging integrated into an enterprise-wide platform for social media and a policy that encourages and enables employees to get stuck in (even if we do still have a fair few lagards)?

Even then it’s not the end of the story. Tools and policy are one thing (two I suppose) but a culture that is open, honest and trusting is needed to take advantage of those opportunities, not to mention motivated and questioning employees, part of which is grown out of the trust  that is displayed in behaviour by management (no one is perfect but things are relative) that means people take their responsibility as brand ambassadors seriously.  Quick note on brand ambassadors, your employees are whether you like it or not, for good or bad.. just try to make it good, eh? Get ‘em to make videos like KFC not Dominoes.

So back to what I was orginaly waffling on about which was a number of projects that I have been involved in. Working with a variety of people with different expectations and practices can get a bit perplexing at times, especially when you are sent 6mb after 6mb file. I’m by no means anti-email like some but I can see better ways of using it rather than being the default for all chat at work.

So I’ve been encouraging some people to get it on with Files on Lotus Connections (we have 2.5 deployed internally). This is made much easier by showing them the time and effort it saves, using other projects as examples.

I’m lucky enough to work with a bunch of people that are mostly pretty good at using things the right way (that is my way) instead of one tool for all jobs. Explaining how a file we were updating on an employee engagement package was being updated and handled between a bunch of us – then showing how Files kept the previous versions (so you don’t have to – as the advert says) went down a treat. Not only that but we could assign each person with certain level of access, and keep changing that level when we jolly well felt like it.

I could then bore you with the amount of time, (sending emails) money (sending emails to people with large attachments that never open them but leave them in their mail file, just in case) and more money (those attachments keep building up with each wave of emails) and confusion (because you all know which file is the right file – the one in Files) you save, but I won’t.

Don’t knock at the door, I’m out

What I have noticed more and more these days is how much time I spend in Lotus Connections rather than my email and how while I was away for a few days recently my status updates came in useful for people. I now not only leave an “out of office” message in Notes but in all my status points. This firstly cut down on un-required email as more people knew I was away before they sent me the damn thing. Secondly the updates that I had been posting related to things that I was working on, intranet pages, files, video etc.. links where people could find what they were looking for.. this useless track of information I had left behind which also included how wet I got on the way to work while cycling actually came in useful for some of the very people that say they don’t have time for such things.

To quote someone more sensible than me, “With social media, forget about the media and concentrate on the social.”

I’m afraid if I get the energy I’ll more rants coming your way too.. must be something to do with the clocks going back or something or my recent discovery and move to Ubuntu Linux. So I might also change my name to Karmic Karl in future.

Turning audiences into advocates

If you have two mins watch this video of Adam Christiansen on CNBC Power Lunch, not eating tacos, but talking about how IBM has embraced social media.

So for the last time, before I go off my head, any company looking to ignore what people are saying and clamping down on employees using the Internet – IBM’s estimated (we have no idea how many) bloggers are not checked, vetted, censored, scanned or mess around with in any way. People are trusted to use the tools available to them to do business and bring value to our clients and the organisation.

You may ask, why can IBM do this. Well because as Adam says in the video, employees are trusted, it’s one of our values. We have a good set of guidelines and plenty of education (mostly from each other).

If you are one of  these companies shutting down access, preventing employees engaging in conversations with clients/customers because, “OMG, it’s so gonna end our company” get real.  Even though there have been a couple of “bad” moments on-line (mention no names), it’s not brought any company down to it’s knees.  If you think that letting employees go and chat on the web is a problem, you have bigger issues to face up to.

What does bring a company down to it’s knees are poor customer service, bad products, not listening, lack of innovation and generally doing things like you always used to.

I will never touch this subject again. Possibly.