What is a "Social Intranet"

I thought that this diagram by Alex Dowbor is a great explanation how a social intranet is actually the intersection point of social sites, portals and team sites.

As Alex writes, it facilitates "emergent structures, structured and non-structured collaboration (read my earlier take on social collaboration) an evolving governance which is tied enough to existing day to day process"

Qontext is not a standalone system and can make existing document management systems like Share Point social and link it back to the social intranet, leveraging on existing IT investments.

Is it time for your organization to move to a "social intranet"?

Here's Alex's diagram:

Amplify’d from ornot.ca

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15th in the top 25 Online Influencers of Recruiting

So it was another of HRExaminer's list and was surprised to see myself in the Recruiting list

While I understand myself being ranked in the Talent Management and HR Influencers lists, I didn't expect to see myself on the Recruiting list, because I hardly create any content on that topic, and I promise - will not be adding content just to maintain my ranking :-)

Quoting John's post, I agree with his take on online influence:

Influence is, more or less, held by people who have the time and resources to be influential. While they may not frame it as wanting to be on a list of who is or isn’t influential, there is a whole industry devoted to making some people look like thought leaders. That is, it’s good for business to be seen as influential.
We’re noticing that some people are sprinters and some people are long distance runners. A good celebrity ecosystem contains plenty of both. The sprinters move between paying gigs while the marathoners are after institutional levels of influence.
Staying the course in social media, which means writing, rewriting and continuously publishing is exhausting. In some ways. it’s best understood as a long job application process. Very few people have the discipline to routinely publish across media over extended periods of time.

Online influence is a tricky area , and is evolving into a different meaning than influence in the real world. See this post by Shonali on Klout and its measures

The future of "Social Talent Management" is Rypple?

I had an interesting conversation with Daniel, the CEO of Rypple and got a demo of their product.

I had heard of Rypple earlier, as a tool that helps managers get social feedback from their employees. However, during the demo I realised that they were a lot more than that.

Primarily I was struck by the fact that it makes goal planning and tracking a social process, and a much more realtime process than traditional performance management systems.

See for example here:

It's a great way, I think, for people to choose their goals according to their strengths as well as their desires and not be bound in by organizational silos. If a goal is public, then everyone who is connected with the employee comes to know that he/she has enrolled in the goal.

The other very useful feature is the coaching and feedback sessions between two people (who are connected) around work on a regular basis. This feedback is linked to the goals people are working on, as it happens in the real world, and therefore captures some great data. See for example this screenshot of the one on one conversation around goals and additional feedback between two individuals

And this is the interesting and fun part, employees can give each other thanks and badges (take a tip from Foursquare) which can be seen by other people. So helping out a colleague, or doing some great team work gets a positive reinforcement by a public statement. I think this is amazing, and will cause firms to have some much needed positive energy every some someone does this.

Take a look at the badges and thanks

Daniel shared how the most popular feature amongst top leaders remains the anonymous feedback system, and once people do it (both the person who initiates it, as well as the people who give the feedback) they take to it like duck to water.

I was excited at what I saw, and had many questions. Daniel shared that they are looking at adding a lot of features to it, to focus Rypple as a tool that focuses on increasing organizational and people performance.

Yes, they were looking at disrupting the traditional HRMS market, and by going the social way they are targeting companies and cultures that are early adopters and focused on people and performance.

"So after performance, what's the next step? Learning and Development?" I asked and he said , yes, that would be the natural way to go, with social learning, and a social approach to career development and growth.

Daniel clarified that they are not looking at becoming a "social enterprise" player. They are happy to be plugging on to feed based systems already in the organization - and are listed as an app on Jive's App Market.

I look forward to the day when Qontext and Rypple can partner together :-)

Seems like my dreams of Social HR are close to reality in some companies at least. Traditional stand alone HRMS system folks should be worried!

Facilitating the Design of the Social Workplace

There are lots of Social technologies and tools that can be implemented within the corporate firewalls (disclaimer: I work with one such firm) And yes, most of them are freemium, that is, you can use most of them with limited functionality for a small number of users. For example, for companies with less than 26 people can use Qontext free. However, for integrations with business apps and for 26 or more users you have to pay for it.

However, thinking that you can use a tool off the shelf, however intuitive and feature rich it is, would result in lots of employees sharing and connecting with each other might not be true.

Building a social business is NOT about the tool.

Unless there is a method to it, linked to business objectives, a social intranet or a social collaboration tool may or may not be seen as a "good investment"

So while the tools are similar to external consumer tools like Blogging, Wikis, Twitter and Facebook, the difference in contexts would impact the usage of the tools.

So the first question the organization that implements it should ask itself is "Why are we doing it? What are we trying to achieve with it?"

The answers can be many.
From "We want our employees to feel engaged"
to "We want information shared so that we save time and reduce costs"
to "We want to understand what our employees feel about certain issues and hear what they have to say"
to "We want people to collaborate both within the firewall and with external partners, so that knowledge and information doesn't get locked into emails"

Once the objective is clear, an assessment needs to be done as to what the current status is - and what the tool can address, and what needs to be changed in the structure and processes to meet the objectives. (At Qontext we have tools like questionnaires that make the assessment process easy)

Post the assessment, roles are allocated (like which senior management team members would be involved, what is the cross functional team in charge of the deployment, who will be the community administrator and who is the community manager) and the tactical steps before the implementation is finalised.

Implementation needs an active facilitation of the community, which my friend Luis Suarez covered in two posts comprehensively, here and here.

Interestingly, at Qontext we have a team that helps takes clients through all these steps - so its not just about the tools !

Interested? Reach out to me. 

TOI Crest story on Corporate Social Networking

Jay Pullur, CEO of Qontext and I were quoted in this story on Enterprise Social Media in the Times of India, Crest , Delhi edition.

This was before I joined Qontext, so you'll find me quoted as a HR Consultant :-)

Excerpts:

So what if your company has blocked Facebook and Twitter? Enter Enterprise 2.0, a new improved form of office intranet, which is being touted as a marriage of work and social networking.
As a new generation of social networkingsavvy employees enter the workforce, companies in India and abroad are taking note of Enterprise 2.0 and launching internal company-wide social networks. These allow employees to make their own profile pages, post status updates, share files and do a lot more. By lending official conversations and discussions the informality of social software, these networks are changing the way people communicate with each other in an office. Employees are blogging, executives are podcasting, and newbies are decoding company jargon on Wiki.
The growth of Enterprise 2.0 has also helped businesses get over their wariness of Web 2.0 tools. Many corporates who feared employees would engage in frivolous pursuits like Farmville or spend every free minute tweeting put up strong firewalls. But now, the resistance is coming down. In a turnaround of sorts, the official intranet bulletin board just got Facebook-ised.

The trend is slowly but steadily catching on in India. “The awareness and accessibility of these networks is more in the US. Indian companies are still wary of using such services. Some Indian developers who make these software, in fact, end up selling to the external market,” says HR consultant Gautam Ghosh.
Another plus for organisations is that they get to monitor the interactions of their employees. Of course, that means being extra cautious before you hit the enter key, but with the Big Brother administration watching, it also means no trolls. “People will obviously have their share of fun and discuss their weekend plans, but there is a line that you know won’t be crossed. You can’t make anonymous accounts, everyone knows who you are. It’s a safe place to connect and socialize,” says Ghosh. A healthy enterprise, one might say.

So have you used corporate social networks within your firm? What has been your experience like? Leave a comment below and let's discuss 

Why didn't Mohandas Pai become COO?

After his resignation was announced today, Mint had this story. Shows how much a business (even something as delivery focused as IT services) depends on sales, that a Finance turned HR head can't really hope to land the top job without sales and marketing experience



Read more below

Amplify’d from www.livemint.com

In 2006 after steering Infosys finances for more than a decade, Pai abruptly quit his CFO role to take over as the HR head of the company and also its infrastructure expansion and management. Some saw this ‘rotation’ as Pai’s way of teaching himself the nitty-gritties of different roles, so that he could aim for an even higher role in the company. He was both respected and loathed for what his opponents internally saw as ruthlessness.

As the HR head however, Pai had a few stumbles. The iRace controversy of 2009-10 and the way the company handled its people during the 2009-10 recession came in for much criticism. Inspite of that Infosys continued to be among the top companies in numerous lists of ‘best places to work for.’

While he aspires for the top job, he has had no sales experience. Remember all Infy’s CEO’s whether Murthy, Nandan or Kris have spent time in the crucial US market, wearing out leather and selling stuff. Execution is important but secondary and will happen only if you are able to garner business.

Even in 2006, a very senior person in Infosys who wanted to remain anonymous had told your correspondent “Pai has several positive qualities going for him. He is a good capo regime for any Don. He is capable, ruthless and incredibly smart. But he is too ambitious for his own good as he is a bruiser and arrogant. While he aspires for the top job, he has had no sales experience. Remember all Infy’s CEO’s whether Murthy, Nandan or Kris have spent time in the crucial US market, wearing out leather and selling stuff. Execution is important but secondary and will happen only if you are able to garner business.

See more at www.livemint.com

 

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Social Objects as the fulcrum for a community

The term "Social Objects" was created by Jyri Engeström of microblogging startup Jaiku.  He defined it as the object that gets shared in the Web 2.0 world. For Flickr it is photographs, for Delicious it was bookmarks, for MySpace it was music. But in the age of Twitter and Facebook, what are their social objects.

Personally I (and my ex-colleagues at 2020 Social) defined a social object as not so much as an "object" but a shared passion, lifestyle, practice or cause. So for example, my HR professionals network has "knowledge of HR" as the shared object.

The implications for enterprise social networking are clear. Organizations have to realise that they have to build communities to enable higher employee to employee connection and engagement.

Think of social objects as the bonfire around which members of a physical community congregate. They might know some people there, but they all need the warmth of the bonfire.

The social object of a virtual community is the equivalent of the real bonfire, drawing people, encouraging them to connect and share with each other.

More thoughts on how we can light the spark in an internal employee community in forthcoming posts

What Is Social Collaboration in an Organization

My friend Prem blogs wondering what is social collaboration. He writes

The role power in a matrix organization is vastly diminished. Expertise power helps to a certain extent, but then in high performance/stakes teams everybody is going to be an expert of something or the other. The only other power left is relationship power. One negotiates using the relationship power to get things done. Reciprocity is a bigger coin than orders. No more command and control.

and then ends with the question:

Given this logic, what does 'social collaboration' mean? Where people collaborate outside of the contractual obligations? Which means outside of the role structures & job descriptions in the organization? Typical of a matrix organization, no?
What do you think? What are your views on 'social collaboration' and 'role power' in a collaborative enterprise (a bit more complex than a matrix organization)?

Well we call Qontext a social collaboration platform and wikipedia defines it as 

processes that help multiple people interact, share information to achieve any common goal. Such processes find their 'natural' environment on the internet, where collaboration and social dissemination of information are made easier by current innovations.

So what's the difference between collaboration and social collaboration? In my opinion, while collaboration in the traditional sense refers to picking whom you want to reach out to, sharing your assumptions, objectives and negotiating with him/her, arriving at a consensus and going forth. There is a project mindset, and an approach that knows who the expert is.

The thought goes like this (in a consulting firm), "I need to send a proposal on Entry to a Market Strategy for an Emerging Country for a Consumer Durable firm". The person then searches for data around the experts of Market Strategy, Emerging Countries and the Industry expert in Consumer Durables. He then finds time with all of them, gets their inputs, negotiates time with them and their availability, and then they work together to make the proposal.

The one aspect IMHO social collaboration is different, is that it is emergent. I'll share a recent example on our Qontext internal network. I shared a URL with the bookmarking feature and alerted two people in the firm who might have been interested in the website. One of them responded with a comment on the bookmark that we should do something like what the website said and then I volunteered that I could spearhead that initiative. After this whatever happens would be "traditional collaboration". The social tools helped us to recognize a need and then collaboration would take place.

I don't really know what Prem means by "relationship power". The closest type of power is "referent power" (in the five bases of power) which is more identified by charisma to influence.

However I'd classify this behavior not as any kind of power but a serendipitous outcome based on people's need to get psychological rewards (likes, comments) from their peers and colleagues.

What do you think?

Let's dig into this deeper....collaboratively !

 

Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 Data

Interesting data shared by Susan Scrupski on how 68% of US firms have adopted one or more Enterprise 2.0 app.

While Microsoft is the leader in terms of vendors in use now, thanks to SharePoint and Office, when it comes to overall performance, IT pros ranked Socialtext and Jive Software the top two providers, and IBM a close third. Microsoft checked in near the bottom. Customers are clearly finding value from small and upstart vendors, not just the largest players.

Andrew McAfee in his blog writes about how Indian IT firm TCS is going about implementing Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, spearheaded by my Twitter friend Krish Ashok focused on knowledge sharing using a QnA approach

As I listened to the TCS Lab team talk about how they went about their work, I heard a lot of good ideas. They skipped the constrained pilot and went enterprise-wide right away. They built in simple mechanisms to let people give feedback and praise, and signal especially helpful answers. This adds structure over time to the mass of information, and also gives people incentive to participate and be helpful to their colleagues.
This incentive is not ‘hard’ at TCS; a person’s scores and reputation in the Q&A environment are not directly tied to her compensation or performance review. Instead, they’re a lot closer to the incentives to be good at a multiplayer online game — mastery made visible, reputation within a community, position on top of a ‘leader board,’ and so on. TCS also made the smart move not to limit questions and answers to work topics; as they were showing me the live system I saw more than a couple questions about cricket.
Now, in some important ways TCS is pretty well positioned to succeed with Enterprise 2.0. It’s full of younger workers – digital natives – who are natural technophiles. Most of them write code for a living, after all. So if a well-designed 2.0 tool comes along to help them collaborate and interact with their peers, they might be expected to jump on it. I want to stress, though, that they’re compensated and promoted by being billable at work, not by being good citizens of the enterprise. So they could also be expected to ignore it, unless it were scratching some itch of theirs.
It clearly is. It’s meeting TCS people’s need to get questions answered and their desire to be helpful to others. It’s also bringing them pleasure when they see themselves atop a leader board, and activating their competitive juices when someone knocks them out of the top spot. And it’s showing the world of TCS what they’re good at, and expertise demonstration matters to people even when is not directly tied to a paycheck. I heard that TCSers frequently responded to questions in areas that had nothing to do with their current job titles or assumed expertise.
So I’m left wondering: what are the good reasons, if any, not to do try something like this in every enterprise? Are there legitimate reasons to hold back from trying to replicate TCS’s successes? I’m struggling to come up with any. The TCS team had no horror stories to share with me – no instances where the Q&A system had been badly abused — and as I’ve written I have less and less patience for arguments against E2.0 based on vague ‘security’ concerns.

Great to hear this story about TCS and Krish's success with using social tools to make KM work there.

So are you ready to try out something like this for your organization? Give me a call :-)

My Talk on Building and Facilitating Communities

Was invited by the organizers of Triggr yesterday to talk on Building an Engaging Community

Here's the presentation 

Communities using social media - gautam ghosh

View more presentations from Gautam Ghosh

And here are some of the Twitter responses to the talk :

Anna Hazare and the Social Media- Twitter and Facebook "revolution"

Over the last few days the Indian social media has been abuzz with people on Twitter and Facebook conversing about civil activist Anna Hazare's campaign for the Jan Lok Pal Bill. While the mainstream media has gone into a frenzy its been interesting to note how the denizens of Indian social media have responded.

There are some things to note.

Not too many people on the social networks know about the nuances of the Jan Lok Pal legislation that Anna Hazare is fasting for.

However, Anna Hazare has become (as my friend Vijayendra Mohanty tweeted) a hugely symbolic lightening rod for the huge emotional baggage Indians feel against corruption in everyday life. With the 2G scam and the Commonwealth Games scams fresh in memory, this has become a rallying point for ordinary Indians to vent their anger.

In that context social media, specially Twitter and Facebook have become tools for people to share their feelings, thoughts, and plans.

In the one end there are people who form groups on Facebook, add badges to their profile with slogans like "India against corruption" - exhorting people to support the fight, retweeting on Twitter and liking posts on Facebook.

At the next level are the people who are "doing" symbolic gestures, using these networks to gather middle class folks in their cities to express solidarity with the movement - light candles and shout slogans against corruption.

Then there are the sceptics - who doubt if all this would lead to any point. They point out that "liking" anti-corruption posts on facebook and retweeting will not end corruption. They are also disgusted with the binary argument of some people who believe that "If you don't support Anna Hazare you are condoning corruption"

Then there are the cynics - who believe that supporting Anna Hazare is futile by the same population that indulges in corrupt practices, does not engage in civil society and fails to get out of home to vote. A group who believes that the fast by Anna Hazare is a coercive tactic by a person who does not want to stand for elections and change the system - clubbing him with other opponents of the Indian government who also use similar arguments with different tools.

Then there are a few who actually know what the bill seeks to achieve and are uncomfortable with the thought of a body which is not answerable to anyone.

However, looks like the believers are right now leading - exhorting the sceptics and cynics to let go of their attitude and just believe. And the support by film celebrities to Hazare also is making the large number of twitter folks aware of the issue

As my friend Gaurav Mishra blogs:

It seems that Hazare’s India Against Corruption campaign is attracting some serious support on the Indian social web. The Facebook page has more than 120000 likes, the Facebook event has more than 60000 attendees and #annahazare is trending on Twitter worldwide. The campaign’s Twitter account @janlokpal is also getting some traction. Overall, the campaign claims to have received 7 lakh calls in support at +91-22-61550789.
Several celebrities and thought leaders have supported Anna’s campaign on Twitter. Author Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat), who wrote a blog post urging people to write “Mera Neta Chor Hai” (my politician is a thief in Hindi) on their forearm to spread awareness of the campaign beyond the English-speaking elite, is also being talked about.
Twitter users are using each other to go to Jantar Mantar in Delhi, Azad Maidan in Mumbai and Freedom Park in Bangalore to support Anna’s fast until death. India Against Corruption claims that protests have been organized at 400 locations around the world.

Some interesting HR news

1.6 million new jobs this year


The organised sector in India would create about 1.6 million new jobs in 2011. Healthcare sector, followed by manufacturing, hospitality, real estate and others are likely to be the leading sectors in terms of job creation, according to Ma Foi Randstad Employment Trends Survey (METS). This year too, Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Chennai would retain their top slots generating a total of 273,634 jobs among them, it said.
If this forecast comes true then we can expect an all out war for talent in these industries across all levels.

How do you think organizations should cope with this huge demand for talent and yet keep their salary costs low?

Study in the US, work in India

In a surprising finding, a recent study has concluded that an overwhelming majority of Indian students pursuing higher education in the United States would prefer to return home to begin their professional careers.
Only eight per cent of the nearly 1,000 Indian students who were surveyed expressed strong preference to stay back in the US. The rest are either planning to return home or are undecided as of now, says the joint study conducted by Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Nearly 74 per cent of the respondents plan to return to India eventually or had already done so, with most (53 per cent of the whole sample) preferring to get a few years of work experience in the US prior to returning, the study noted.
This could be the result of the visa lottery system in the US, but if this trend continues, Indian industry and economy would be the gainer of the American education system and short term
Representatives of 25 Indian blue-chip companies, industry mavens, and diplomats gathered in the US Congress that they are creating jobs in the US, not taking them away.

Indian firms presented a checklist of what it was doing for America in troubled times: employing 60,000 people across 40 states, more than four-fifths hired locally; acquisitions worth nearly $6 billion since 2005; hiring thousands of fresh US college graduates; all with the cumulative effect of saving thousands of American jobs.

TeamLease raises 100 crore for funding to push into vocational education


TeamLease completed an equity fund raise of Rs 100 crore to fund the vocational education expansion of the company. This capital was raised from ICICI Venture, and existing investor Gaja Capital Partners.
TeamLease Services, focused on the organized temporary staffing market since 2003, entered vocational education by acquiring the Indian Institute of Job Training (IIJT) in 2010.
Education and skilling are tipped to be the next big growth opportunities in India, and while the formal education sector is still regulated by the government, vocational skilling programs are the big way forward

Joining Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 firm Qontext

Here’s a small announcement I’d like to make.

Over the last 1.5 years since I joined 2020 Social I have built up a point of view of how businesses could use Enterprise Social Media and Software to connect employees with each other to collaborate and share knowledge. Connecting the dots over the last decade, I have worked with KM and e-Learning initiatives and believe that such processes – while they are the exception – must tie in with the natural flow of work for organizations and employees to fully realize the power of enterprise collaboration.

That’s why I am pleased to announce that I have joined Qontext Inc. as a Product Evangelist. Qontext is a product focused on building a social intranet which lets employees connect and follow each other as well as a collaboration platform that integrates seamlessly with any business application that an organization runs.

Here’s an interesting interview of Qontext CEO Jay Pullur in which he shares how HR leaders in India are looking at social tools like Qontext to engage employees – and external communities like prospective talent.

Here's a presentation about Qontext

What Is Qontext?

View more presentations from Qontext

To follow more about Qontext keep up on Twitter, YouTube and slideshare. In fact if you want to experience Qontext in action maybe you should log in to a Qontext powered community for SugarCRM's annual conference - SugarCON. Even if you are not a SugarCRM user, you can log in using your facebook id.

Interested to know how Qontext can help your organization become more collaborative ? Give me a call at +91-98731-41236 or mail me at gautam.ghosh @ qontext.com

My best wishes to my colleagues at People Matters – While I will no longer associated with it on a day to day basis I will continue to advise it on how to leverage the digital and social space to become a leading knowledge platform for people and organizational issues