The Social Enterprise is a Garden. Dig it!

The Social Enterprise is a Garden. Dig it!

•  Pieces of information •  More pieces of information •  Even more pieces of data

Full Adoption. Deep Engagement. 100% Real Business Value…  

These are the fruits everyone tries to harvest when deploying enterprise collaboration software. But, without experience, weeds can immediately pop-up. Some try a hands off approach: build it and they will come. Others are so top-down involved that a frost comes early. Many enterprise collaboration deployments don’t blossom over night. Organizations that don’t have a plan or a dedicated project team will not see the results they may have hoped for. But don’t get discouraged. We’re going to share with you simple but powerful tips to reap the benefits of internal social collaboration for your business. With use cases to plant, conversations to seed, and the right governance models to line the path, we’ll present the best ways to grow success.�

Create the Best Environment

Soil: Cultivate a Culture of Sharing This is the terra firma to success. Start by communicating why openness and sharing are critical to the business. Is it to increase competitive intelligence,

to develop an innovative culture, or provide deeper insights for sales reps? Inspire employees and get their buy-in ahead of time.  

Sunshine: High Visibility & Clear Communication about Usage  

Have senior managers shine rays of attention on the benefits of social collaboration from the get-go. Present concrete use cases employees can

envision and put to use as soon as they join the network.  Water: Shower Support  

Without adequate planning and preparation, collaboration software rollouts can soak up time and energy. To this end, it is important to have a small but committed project team. To stay with our metaphor,

your garden needs regular watering. It is important to have a small but committed project team to advocate core activities, such as: collecting requirements, helping employees get started, initiating discussions, clarifying success criteria, and more. The Project Team should be well aware of both the business and technology requirements, so that decisions on these activities are well-informed. Bottom line: no one should be foggy on the expectations and preparations.

Get Ready to Plant

What business outcomes are you looking for? The answers are often overly simplistic such as, “Increase the speed with which employees find experts and answers.” Let’s get more specific here. Ask which projects are most critical, what are the success criteria, what are the timelines. This should be done for about five solid use cases. It’s best to ensure the use cases are designed for most if not all of the users. These first use cases quickly propagate.

After the project teams propel the discussions, the subsequent bulk of users discover a vibrant sharing community and follow the pattern by creating their own bottom-up use cases, self-formed groups, and so forth.

Prepare High-Yield Use Cases  To make collaboration highly sustainable, the initial use cases should be setup to create cross-functional interactions. Although having a couple use cases focus on a homogenous team or project is fine, design most use cases to cut across multiple departments, management layers, communities, and geographies. The result will be greater activity with greater insights, sharing sources, and serendipity to showcase the value of collaboration. It also helps to include the social bees in your organization for the initial use cases. These folks may not have the most seniority and experience, but are high-energy, socially plugged in, strong communicators and natural leaders, and more likely to create the buzz that drives activity. Make sure to have enough users to start. If only a small percentage of users are involved, they may have to remember, search for, and manually invite other users to make collaboration really

Cross-Pollinate Use Cases  

happen. This type of thinking instead of just doing can bury a collaboration project before it sees the light of day. In other words, the more users, the more activity you’ll start to see.

Get Ready to Plant Continued…

Now that you have started setting up the right conditions for growing your network, it’s time to create the initial content that the bulk of users will see on day one, and hear about in the invitation and other call-outs. The main goal is to provide immediate value to users so they come back. Show examples of high-valued work conversations. For example, your vice president of sales could share a story of how an employee closed one of their biggest deals, followed by conversations about how they could apply those sales tips to other deals. Build momentum by starting discussions for each practical use case.

Seeds of Thought  

To help seed the content, enroll not just the social bees previously mentioned, but also identify an advocate for each use case and from each group and department. Invite these folks into the collaboration instance before the bulk of users. These early users can also help to confirm the validity and value of the initial subject hierarchy, which is covered next.

The Trellis of Use Cases

Receiving a stream of insights from your colleagues is useful, but only if it’s relevant to your work. Make sure your social platform gives users the ability to organize and subscribe to discussions based on relevant topics, groups, projects or individuals involved. tibbr Subjects, for example, organize relevant information into these distinct categories. The flexible structure enhances the discovery and filtering of information so that it goes to the right people. Think of subjects as the trellis of use cases, your support framework. The initial subject hierarchy should be built before the first phase launch, then employees can explore and follow discussions that are relevant to them. It also helps to not overly-administer the subject hierarchy. Allow some flexibility and let the users create, alter and evolve the hierarchy.

1.  Brainstorm topics of conversations needed to promote business objectives

2.  Determine sensitivity of subjects ahead of time: public verses private.

3.  Don’t over structure it. Leave room for employees create subjects as needed.

The Support Structure   Tips for Building the Hierarchy  

Your knowledge workers are swamped. The average knowledge worker has to access about nine different applications per day, which really slows down the time it takes to find the right information to make a decision. Therefore an important part of the collaboration solution is to enable users to pull in just the information they want from these applications – and act on it, in context – all in one unified interface. Your enterprise social network should stream the updates you need when you need them. For example, marketing manager George just entered a purchase requisition and needs final approval from legal before he can launch a new pay-per-click campaign. Rather than trying to find the right person in legal to ask them for a status update, he simply posts a question under the latest update from the procurement system and the right person from legal responds with an ETA. This way, your employees can collaborate in context to close the loop on key business decisions.

Integrate Highly Contextual Data Streams

Propelling a successful collaborative environment comes with experience. tibbr strategy services work with our clients to ensure full adoption and tangible business outcomes from the beginning. These services include: •  Identifying Key Use Cases •  Tips to Involve Senior Management •  Best Examples for Pre-Seeding Content •  Templates for Creating the Right Taxonomy •  KPIs to Measure Progress •  Best Practices for Creating a Simple

Governance Model tibbr CMs cultivate these best practices for adoption and engagement. But, it’s important to note that every customer is different. What is best in one engagement often varies depending on your specific circumstances. In that way, use this guide as starting point and when you’re ready to make adoption and engagement grow, reach out to us.

A green thumb…

How tibbr Strategy Services Help  

By following the tips in this guide early as well as periodically, you will make it easy for others to collaborate and achieve real business outcomes early on. Clients who follow these best practices find that users quickly get directly involved in creating their own subjects as well as determining their own use cases. It’s necessary to foster those initial experiences to then start tracking the change management necessary for collaboration to bloom in today’s business landscape.

References

•  Slide 1: http://comefillyourcup.com/2011/08/30/how-to-dig-deep-for-the-meat-of-the-word/ •  Slide 3:

•  Soil http://www.wakeforestnc.gov/soil-erosion-101-.aspx •  Sunshine: http://rainbowsunshinekittens.tumblr.com/ •  Water: http://fogmistandlight.com/you-will-be-like-a-well-watered-garden/

•  Slide 4: •  Shovel & Gloves http://www.avascapes.com/ •  Bee http://www.wesavebees.com/

•  Slide 5: Seeds http://www.anthonyfernando.com/2010/09/07/seeds-of-thought/ •  Slide 8: Irrigation http://pics7.this-pic.com/key/%20Furrow%20irrigation •  Slide 9: community manager http://socialfresh.com/community-manager-report-2012/

Sub-Head  

About tibbr�tibbr connects people, applications and data in context and, in an entirely personal way. tibbr is the universal enterprise social platform revolutionizing the way we work, collaborate, learn and share. tibbr brings together what matters-to individuals or groups-to get work done better, faster. With flexible deployment options, tibbr can be delivered on premise or in the cloud, minimizing IT resources and getting all your employees started within days.

www.tibbr.com