Motivating Change Behavior of My Team with a Glue Gun

The things I do to promote the use of SharePoint in our T&D development...

involve a glue gun. ????

I enacted a quasi award process when I first came on board because I had absolutely no influence tricks up my sleeves being the new kid.  No one trusted me, thought all my new *fangled* ideas were whipper snapper blithery doo, and were thoroughly resistant to me trying to nudge them into using the SharePoint portal sites I lovingly built for them.  Since throwing dollar bills at them every time they look at a site isn't economically feasible I had to come up with a different way.

So, Crafty Geek Girl to the rescue - Here is the program announcement approx 6 months after implementation, just prior to being blended with two other teams together (yes, stressful time - a lot of unknowns, speculation, and worry, so some fun was needed to shake things up).


Read more »

Hunting Bears using Social Media Content Development

My boss hunts bears.

My boss doesn't understand why discussion groups are cool.

But my boss uses them to hunt bears.

Bears.

grr.

My boss learns how to hunt bears more effectively from a discussion group.  He has questions about what are the best hunting areas, how to skin a bear properly, which outfitters are best, etc.  He doesn't really care that the answers he is looking for are in a discussion group, he just knows the answers are on this webpage that other people contribute their experience/s to.

A web page.  With areas to post and connect to others.  Others with expertise. Discussion Groups are neato.

The bear discussion group has been going on since 2000 and has approx 2437 different threads in it.  All of it moderated by 1 person.  That's thousands of posts over the last 10 years that detail countless topics about Michigan Bear hunting that is searchable and has historical value to newbie bear hunters.

The same can be done for your organization internally.

Imagine in your organization for one moment with online micro communities of practice, centered around topics of importance for your end users.  These communities have discussion groups, blogs, and wikis that all who enter them can participate in.  Your end users post questions and comments; your SME's moderate, answer questions, and escalate topics for resolution. E-learning courses can link to the community by way of wiki pages (how easy to update!) and discussion groups (blending learning!).  All the information is collected in one area making searching easier, updating a one time deal, and adding content a breeze.  People retire, but their contributions to the community remain helping new members learn, find answers, and get up to speed quicker.

In SharePoint 2007, it looks something like this:

this is my site...:)

On Ning, it looks like this:

The creators or moderators of these sites aren't the ones loading it with content, be it about bear hunting, e-learning, or other topics.  The community members are passionate, helpful, informative, and eager to contribute.  They work for the community because they are part of the community.  The community teaches itself, becomes stronger because its connected, and develops a history that is available to new community members. 

It just gives me goose bumps.  I'm making sites for people to go to, but am no longer spending hours loading it with content that I'm not even sure that the users are looking for.  My users will now ask each other and answer each other - with me looking on to make sure the content remains sound and on track.

Yep, my boss gets better at hunting bears using social media - but now he is starting to understand how a hunting bears online community "model" can be used internally to find answers, train end users, help them to become self supportive, all the while developing content that benefits the org over the long term.

Bears.  :)

How Yammer is like cave painting - a brief study in ROI

In Lascaux, France exists one of the oldest forms of communication, cave paintings.  These paintings were a method of communication between groups of Paleolithic hunters to deliver vital information about animal and human life during that time. 

Per Wikipedia, Social media can be said to have three components;

1. Concept (art, information, or meme).
2. Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).
3. Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

Painted on the walls of caves, these paintings  represent what could be considered the first instance of social media.  Hunters used the walls of caves (social interface) to paint images (media) of hunting scenes (user generated content) to communicate information such as types of animals, time of year, and techniques (concepts).

That being said, I'm fairly sure that the Paleolithic cave men didn't stop to ponder the ROI of what they were doing. Cave paintings equaled communication between hunters which equaled increased productivity on the hunting grounds.  I'm sure the equivalent of bean counters in the cave men world didn't care about the puka shell cost of the paint or the time spent painting, they just ate the results of the kill.

 Yummy

So why are advocates of the use of social media in enterprise continually asked about calculating the ROI for the modern version of cave paintings - Twitter/Yammer?   I have been struggling to find a good way to explain why calculating ROI for Social Media is impossible.  It's like asking me to calculate the ROI for use of email or a phone in the workplace.

If you search the interwebs, you will find pretty much the same opinion.  Some Quotes:

The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.

Considering social media use for business started in the marketing departments, my leadership has the misguided notion that I can definitively calculate the ROI of an internal social media program.  While I'm getting fairly good a deflecting the request at this time, I was having trouble coming up with a way of explaining the silliness of their request. 

I think that rather than explaining how the evolution of communication is important, maybe if we devolve and take away email and phones,  that would have more impact in communicating the value of forging ahead with Yammer.  :)

Yes, I'm evil.

But, the cavemen had it right.  Simple messages, delivered in a simple way,  freely contributed to by all, with a degree of permanence  in order to educate to new members of the community in future. The emerging workforce are the new  Paleolithic hunters, clamoring to paint on the wall and connect with their community.  Just like the cavemen, this new workforce knows it's integral to their and their employer's success....

....and they don't care about the ROI either. 

 

 

Aimwest Social Media Confab Presentation

Aimwest

View more presentations from mgenta.

Google Analytics with Social Media

Missed first part on Google Analytics - good stuff but available elsewhere....

Cindy et al from Amway

They have been listening to what has been happing online since 1999. Looked for a deeper understanding in who what and why.

They found out that conversation skews negative online - they are working to change it with Social Media

The products drive the good things about Amway - sales and recruitment are the bad.

Why do people say negative things - it was historical, things that happened in the 80s and 90s.

Where is the conversation coming from? Word of Mouth? ...

Not sure how much I'm engaged in this presentation as it doesn't speak directly to my issues. Had an interesting conversation in the long lunch line with a representative from Haworth, largely around implementing internal SM and how to track it.

There are many arguments for/against tracking. Right now I know that we don't track blogging and discussion board behavior on SP 2007, for why I do not know. But with the advent of SharePoint 2010, there will be rating and other tools, but I hope there will be more robust analyitcal tools available so as an enduser/poweruser I don't need to bug IT for more data.

Right now pretty beat from the conference, but will post more on this in future.

@Pistachio speaking at AimWest about Twitter

Influence was attracting attention to yourself.



.....and then my connection crashed. moving on...

Information flows very fast on twitter. Examples include when an earthquake happened and was tweeted, when the plane went into the Hudson and was tweeted almost instantaniously, the last tweet from an iranian protester.

The technology that twitter is most disrupting....
isolation...:P, email, and facebook were the top ones.

• Twitter is a way to connect with people who will drive your passions, share your interest and foster your productivity....by removing the isolation. Neat thing for West Michigan.
• With twitter, my people are always with me.
• use it where you think best.

Data analysis....twitter venn...very cool tool.

Analysis tools, integration tools, twitter is a way to connect to other avenues of social content.

Business Uses!!!!

• Externally - events, community lead generation, ....baker tweet? You open the oven, get the cookies, hit the button and it tweets about cookies. Very easy for employees to use.
• Internally - totally the reason why I'm here.....Sales teams, event planning project status, Employee Support, mentoring, problem solving, and purely social.

Off-Platform Benefits

• SEO
• Research - passively or actively
• Content Generation Engine
• Word of Mouth - example of HP/IBM? selling refurbished machine only using twitter...
• PR Gravity

How to start?

• Be useful - take selfish messages and turn them inside out.
• Listen first and engaged in the stuff they want to learn about.
• Learn
• Care
• Serve

Manners 101

• Dress nicely, background graphic, avatar
• Introduce yourself - fill out profile completely and mention twitter
• Be a good conversationalist - listen, respond, contribute relevant material

Business Objectives

• measured by the most appropriate standards for the objective
• Follower numbers....yes but....

Work towards efficiency

• Tools
• Objectives
• Discipline

Outlook -

• Landscape for business use of Twitter and microsharing generally
• How to think about brand opportunities in microsharing
• What's on the horizon, what trends should we watch for next?

Q and A - twitter has been english based but incorporating other languages - what happens to the global audience? Some fragmented but translation services are coming that will open the pathway up more.

How do you see twitter changing corporate culture? or does corporate culture need to change first - answer will different at every company. Ingrained culture is hard to crack - but the shift will have to come.

Once nice thing that sm emphasizes is quality and honestly - if you don't have it it will illuminate it.

There are many different SM tools, which one do you focus your time on - it's entirely up to you. Focus on the ones that work for you, you can't be everywhere at once.

How do you know you are listening/linking to the right terms? Personally would look what others are doing and how they are doing it - look for the signals.

Need to tell my boss about poptart and beer walmart story....

Networking Power Session

Came to this session late.....

Our panel of recruiters, users, and HR professionals will discuss current trends in building an online profile, marketing yourself, and successfully networking on the Web. Panelists include:

Beth DeWilde - Paragon Recruiting
Mike Yoder - Otterbase
Tom Chisholm - Facebook

Facebook is about sharing information.

All of the SM tools share the same theme - We pushing to make the world a more open place and we do this by building tools that help people use the real connections to share information more effectively - FB mission statements.

Right from the beginning FB has privacy settings, looked like apple designed it simple and glossy, - product opened up to developers to do things like farm town and mafia wars - the ability to monitize :)