Carol Rozwell

My colleague Jim Sinur commented in his blog, “Processes need to wrap themselves around people in way that seems unthinkable today. This will only happen when the processes are context enriched. The process knows who, where and when to be involved with a person or persons in a collaborative and social way in context of conditions, conflicting goals and physical device that happens to be the closest and desired.” See Jim’s complete post: Winds of Change

Applying context awareness to processes is a natural extension of technology to collaborative work activities. Today’s gadgets can tell us where the nearest restaurant is based on our current physical location. So why shouldn’t context information help us find a expert in, say molecular biology, who works for the same company I do, has an office in the same building and is currently available for a call. Great information to know if I am a research scientist trying to complete the design of my next experiment.

There are any number of situations where individuals and teams must use their discretion and judgment to carry out their work. Gartner calls these “unstructured processes.” They are most commonly those processes where work is complex and many people are involved. For more information on unstructured processes, see Expand Your BPM Horizons by Exploring Unstructured Processes

Context could inform such processes with information about people, prior art, the environment or other context helpful to the execution of the work. The result would be better execution, fewer errors and insight that could be reused next time around.

I’m really looking forward to the day when we get that boost in organizational productivity from teams that can collaborate and more effectively use the knowledge inherent – but often hidden – in the social network.

Last week, I was treated to a number of interesting vendor briefings, the most engaging of which was conducted in Second Life. But despite having the opportunity to view some innovative product offerings, I also had to contend with some frustrating vendor practices. In the spirit of helping vendors maximize the short time they have for a briefing with an analyst, I offer my list of five worst practices I wish vendors would curtail:

1. Don’t tell me about the market I cover. It’s important to understand how a vendor positions their product in a market, but taking 10 minutes of a 30 minute briefing to tell me about a market segment I’ve covered for years is a waste of precious time. It takes time away from what I really need to see – the product.

2. When I ask a question, please answer it – there and then! If I ask a question about sales revenue or product design, I do so because I want to hear the answer – right then. It’s incredibly frustrating to have the vendor say “we’ll get to that later in the presentation.” You should know that analysts have short attention spans. So if you gave me a slide deck, I’ll go off looking for the answer myself and ignore what you are saying about what you thought was more important than answering my query.

3. If you are going to make me log into a web meeting, use the interactive nature of the tool – don’t just present PowerPoint slides. We try our best to keep the briefing appointment once it’s been confirmed. But is sometimes means that I will have to take the call from a location other than my well-appointed office. Logging into a web conference may be inconvenient and it always wastes time. So if you are only going to show slides, save us both the headache.

4. Don’t read slides to me – do the demo. I’ve done lots of briefings; I can figure the rest out. Factual information about location, personal, revenue, etc is important. Unfortunately, too many vendors feel compelled to read every line on every slide before progressing to what I really want to see – the demo. Provide the info, but make the demo the centerpiece of the briefing.

5. If you ask me what I want to hear about, don’t ignore me and talk about something else. It is refreshing to have a vendor ask what information would be of most interest to me in my research. But once I’ve told you, don’t ignore me! If I told you I know enough about strategy and would prefer to hear about recent wins, cover that topic.

There, I feel better now. And if you are a vendor who will be briefing me in the future, I hope you appreciate these constructive suggestions.

As 2009 draws to a close, it’s a good time to review what has transpired and anticipate the year ahead. We humans seem to place particular significance in years that end in “0” which is why the advent of 2010 feels a little special. Or maybe we are anxious to leave behind some of the more tiresome issues that have occupied our attention and get on to some shiny new topics.

The economic challenges of the recent past have rekindled interest in innovation. I’m hoping that the work companies have done this year to increase their capacity to innovate will “stick.” For those brave folks, I’d like to share a list of 10 Innovation Proverbs for Leaders written by Joyce Wycoff, author and InnovationNetwork Co-Founder.

1. PEOPLE do innovation.
2. Innovation means doing something that hasn’t been done before.
   By definition there is risk involved.
   No risk; no innovation.
3. Innovation is a win-win process.
   It creates new value for the customer and the organization.
4. Innovation is a team sport.
   Teams are built around a common objective and trust.
5. Innovation requires risk.
   Risk-taking requires trust.
   Trust requires honesty and openness.
6. Innovation requires energy.
   Energy comes from challenges that excite the imagination.
7. Innovation is about creating the future.
   Cost-cutting and downsizing are about fixing the past.
8. Innovation is not just a rah-rah word or fad.
   It is an investment in the future that requires
   new processes, time, energy, commitment and resources.
9. Innovation requires new information — from co-workers,
   customers, suppliers, competitors and from the world.
10. Innovation requires time — time to think, time to tinker,
    time to talk about possibilities and ideas.
    Down-to-the-second controls can kill innovation.

Innovating is a little easier if we look for the opportunity in change rather than the threat. Best wishes for the New Year.

Susan Boyle’s video on YouTube is now officially the most frequently viewed video of 2009, as reported by BBC News. Clearly she grabbed a great deal of attention with her stunning rendition of the song “I Dreamed a Dream.” Why? On one hand, many of us were mesmerized by her lovely voice. But on another hand, she also struck a cord with so many people who have viewpoints, talents and perspectives that yearn to be heard but have not yet garnered attention.

There is a strong correlation with her story and the stories of successful innovation I hear from clients – incredible value comes from unexpected sources. As we talk with clients who derive significant benefit from their innovation programs, they invariably comment on the quality and novelty of input from unexpected sources of insight.

Initially this search for new perspectives – is this insight really ‘fresh’? – threatens people in roles expected to come up with the best ideas for new products, or better ways to perform some business task, or new ways to generate revenue, or . . . well the list goes on. But those organizations that plow past that NIH perspective emerge to find new sources of intelligence. Sometimes it is resident in their organizations. That’s a great place to look – for starters. The bravest companies also look outside for even more diverse opinions.

So the critical question is: What is your organization doing to engage people who have passion, experience and knowledge about problems that vex your organization?

They are there. They have ideas they talk about in the company. They collaborate with friends in the organization and in professional associations outside of ‘the four walls.’ They spend time on social media contributing their ideas to any number of topics that strike their fancy and ignite the imagination.

As we plan for 2010, it’s a good time for senior managers to ask, “What are we doing to harness that enthusiasm to profit our bottom line?”

Best wishes to you as we gear up for another exciting year.

There is much evidence to suggest that the same techniques used to train animals, either pets or performers, is just as effective with children, spouses and employees. What’s the trick? Positively reinforce the behaviors you want to see continue. The corollary is also true: you need to model the behavior you want others to exhibit.

I raise this issue because in so many of my recent conversations with clients about the adoption of social software and collaboration tools, a huge disconnect emerges. Managers and team leaders say they want employees to ‘play nice together’ but then they actively discourage collaboration through actions, directives and metrics.

You are aghast at this assertion? Well consider a few examples from recent discussions:

• Community leader who refused to use the community team space in the collaboration tool and instead preferred to use email when authoring and updating deliverables.
• Team manager who will not allow employees to add expertise to their social profile to avoid having them ‘poached’ for other projects.
• Leadership team that awards recognition solely to individual contributors.

 I suspect there are plenty of examples that we’ve experienced over the course of our work. Please feel free to share stories of actions that discourage collaboration, and, more importantly your suggestions for fixing the problem.

This week, I attended a vendor event. It followed several Gartner events where the attendees used Twitter as an additional channel to experience, participate and make the event their own. What I find significant is that in the course of about a year, microblogging during events has become de rigueur.

Admittedly, not everyone attending an event tweets and not all tweets come from people who are actually at the venue. People interested in experiencing the event who cannot be physically present get a window into the key points and impressions of those who are there.

So after watching the tweet stream, here are a few things I have learned.

There are three types of microbloggers:
• Most people microblog about the points that resonate with them. They highlight key points made by a speaker, the people they meet or they just make general observations. Most often the tweets are positive.
• Some people will (shamelessly) self-promote. These are the people – often times working for vendors – that want to make sure you know they are there. They may take a point a speaker makes and direct attendees to their booth at the show or simply let others know something about their activities.
• Only a small percentage of microbloggers will make snarky comments. This is the biggest fear of most clients I speak with, that there will be a vitriolic stream of microblogs criticizing the speakers, the event or their company. In fact, this happens rarely. When it does happen, the snide comments speak volumes about the microblogger. When taken in context with all the other positive comments, they stand out as just a bit of nastiness.

Another thing I learned is that the collective kicks in quickly. Again this week I saw that when someone steps out of line, the collective will ‘call it.’ If someone proffers incorrect information or makes a comment that is inappropriate, other attendees step up and make a correction.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are figuring out how microblogging fits into their marketing strategies. What is clear that microbloggers should not be ignored.

Cnet posted a story on the analyst keynote delivered at Gartner Symposium last week  Gartner: Loosen up on social networks, security which received many thougthful comments. Here is some additional detail related to the talk:

• Social media is a new and emerging communication channel. Enterprises will make the decision to utilize, resist or ignore it in the workplace. But opting to resist or ignore it is a decision – one that shuts your organization off from valuable insight.

• Work is a collaborative activity and humans interact as social beings during work. Few, if any, jobs can be completed without the involvement of collaborators so ‘greasing the skids’ of relationship-making and maintenance is essential for performance.

• An employee wasting time on social media is a performance problem. Don’t blame it on social media. Productive employees are too busy with work to spend lots of time in social media having personal conversations. Instead, they use social media as a means to get their work done. Check out any of the Gartner groups on LinkedIn – you will see they are clearly work-related conversations.

Social media is an additional communication channel that augments others such as the phone and email. It offers a new source of information and, perhaps, insight. I’m talking about the opportunity to actively seek information in realtime, as well as to mine collected information for new ideas and perspectives. As an analyst, I can continually monitor what’s being said in social media such as Twitter, facebook and LinkedIn about topics and issues relevant to my research. For other ideas, see Jeff Mann’s research Four Ways in Which Enterprises Are Using Twitter 

Work is a collaborative activity. Today people work on 8 – 15 projects at any point in time. They are constantly switching contexts and needing to create or re-establish work relationships. Social profiles give people the opportunity to find out about the expertise of colleagues and ‘get to know them’ even before they meet. They can shorten the ‘mating ritual’ that occurs as a new team forms and allow fellow workers to stay in touch with each other.

Researchers at UCLA found brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. To read the article on their work, see  Managing with the Brain in Mind

Researchers at Harvard Business School found that team familiarity is positively related with team performance. To read the working paper, see Team Familiarity, Role Experience and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services

An employee wasting time on social media is a performance problem, not a social media problem. Dealing with performance issues head-on is uncomfortable. An employee who is not carrying their weight demoralizes the whole team. I once had to fire a guy who came into the office, opened up the newspaper and sat reading it all day. Today, he might have spent all his time on facebook, but he still would be underperforming.

During the BPM Summit in Orlando, the attendees engaged in person and in social media. We have been experimenting with using Twitter at Gartner events as Jeff Mann describes in his blog post (http://blogs.gartner.com/jeffrey_mann/) as a way of allowing attendees to share their thoughts and observations with people at the conference and those following the event from the comfort of their office.

Nearly 100 people tweeted during the BPM Summit, creating 438 tweets. Predictably, the majority of the tweets were generated by a small percentage of the tweeters. Fifty-nine percent of the tweets emanated from just 10 people although a wide range of people tweeted – even some who were attending the event vicariously. The most prolific tweeter sent 10% of the messages.

We continue to learn best practices for using Twitter during events and look forward to the continued support of colleagues who take the time to share their perspectives with fellow attendees and their social network.

While listening to an interesting program from the BBC on the use of social media for learning Learning Curve, I was struck by connection between learning and collaboration discussed by many of the interviewees. To paraphrase, “the real learning occurs when people talk about the content.” In another time, we might have called this exchange a knowledge transfer of business expertise. Today, it’s more likely to be called social learning. Or just collaboration.

Why do I make the point if it is obvious? We see learning leaders struggling to articulate the value they bring to the organization. We see collaboration teams ask about the ROI of social software. It seems there is an opportunity to collaborate on how to quantify the value of social interactions that make an organization better prepared to deal with change.

I had the opportunity to review an organization’s strategic plan for knowledge management recently. While the document was well organized and covered the essential points one would expect (scope, goals, objectives, opportunites and risks), it described an approach that sounded circa 2000. When I spoke with the uber manager, they explained the trouble they were having getting the project manager to think differently about knowledge management – to shift the paradigm from capture to connections. In some recent research on knowledge management in an age of social software (Socialization of Knowledge Management), I described this shift and its implications for the supply and demand side of knowledge. But somehow the changes were not being included in the plan.

So if you were in the manager’s place, what would you do to help people on your  team understand the change that has taken place?

What are your tips for exposing colleagues to the joys of social software?