Out from the shadows

One of the interesting phenomena of our social times is that much of the collaborative technology we have adopted at work has appeared without support or sponsorship from our IT departments. CIOs refer, with increasing anxiousness, to the challenge  of 'Shadow IT' - IT funded and delivered elsewhere. As their budgets tighten, they look with deep furrowed brows at the new 'engagement platform' that the Communications Team has just rolled-out with considerably more fanfare than a Sharepoint deployment ever got!

And they have good reason to be grumpy. Despite the apparent ease of dropping a web-based tool into the enterprise, it's rarely achieved without some degree of heartache  in IT. Machinations about synchronising profiles with those in the employee directory, bandwidth limitations on the campus wifi infrastructure, firewall settings, data management policies - Communications never thought about that, did they?

The solution? CIOs need to get social out from the shadows, illuminating it as a fully-considered part of our digital environment. CIOs need to think social from the outset and push-back into those dark corners of the enterprise. Arm-folded grumpiness is not the solution - an enlightened embrace is.

photo:  M Glasgow

Have you got Sunday Night, Monday Morning Syndrome?

There's a lot of chatter about Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and, let's face it, whilst most companies are still trying to get their heads around some of the challenges this presents, most people are simply getting on with it and bringing their own devices because it's often the most effective way to work.

But what can be done for those who are genuinely deskbound and limited to their corporate systems and platforms.  These are the people who suffer from "Sunday Night, Monday Morning" syndrome. At the weekend, they'll be playing collaborative games on the PS4, watching and uploading videos to YouTube, asking and answering questions from their networks in Jelly, chatting with friends in a Google Hangout and using any number of apps on their smartphones or tablets. Come Monday morning and they are waiting 20 minutes for a dusty corporate PC to fire up and, when it does, all of those slickly designed networks and apps are quite often blocked.

So where, does such a worker look for help? Well, let's hope that their company has rolled out an enterprise social network such as Yammer, or has some sort of knowledge management platform. However, quite often, those very networks which people use for personal time and leisure at the weekend are just as effective when applied to the world of work.  

Just think of how many 'how to' videos exist in Vimeo and YouTube, or how many people have asked and answered similar questions to yours in Quora. Sure, you aren't about to ask your Facebook friends about commercially sensitive projects right there on your wall, but you just might want to inbox a friend who works with a particular technology or company and ask for a piece of advice, mightn't you?

So, for those companies which still block social media and similar sites, just think about the extended networks of all of your employees and consider how they might be better used to your advantage if they could be accessed from the corporate desktop.  

You might not be able to stop people Bringing their Own Devices. Maybe you ought not to prevent them Bringing their Own Networks too.

Photo credit:  Thomas Stromberg

Get real. Get Social.

One of the tenets I follow in Building a Social Business is the importance of focusing on real business value. Personally, I’m quite comfortable in acknowledging the incredible contribution social is having to the way we work – I see it every day. But there is no better way to convince a sceptical CEO to invest time and money in the adoption of social technology and processes than talking about numbers in a P&L! Making the benefits of social ‘real’ is often the key to securing that precious commodity: CEO-level support for social business-building.

Fortunately there are some great stories out there to assist us in making social real. I find myself frequently citing giffgaff, a UK mobile service provider, who have used social technology to take out the cost of providing a service support function. Instead they have built a ‘gamified’ forum, relying on the crowd – their customers – to provide rapid and extensive assistance to each other. This is something that has broad relevance to all large corporates. If giffgaff can do this, at what point do you start challenging the need for your IT help-desk?

And if you needed more in your pursuit of making social real, why, McKinsey’s, that bastion of the corporate establishment, have produced a cracker of a report laying it all out for you.

All this helps you (and hopefully your CEO) realise that, in essence, social is a way of extracting latent value that has been built into the Internet. It’s an enabling technology, an enabling philosophy, that overlays valuable networks of knowledge and relationships on top of the connections that exist in the Web. Clever organisations like giffgaff are exploiting this to gain competitive advantage. Why wouldn’t you?

So, you’ve no excuse, now. Go upstairs and make it real for your CEO. You’ll be a huge step closer to building that social business.

photo:  reynermedia

So, how about this for a Social Business?

Today I'm working out of Ziferblat, on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Old Street.

It brings a new concept in social working to London, having already become popular in the Ukraine and Russia. 

Imagine a cafe where the food and drink is free but you make it yourself.  Instead of paying for what you consume, you pay for the time you spend here - a "micro-tenancy" if you will.  It's three pence per minute and, for now you track your own time and leave your fee in the donations box on the counter when you leave.  Soon you'll be handed a funky old alarm clock on arrival as your own personal timer. 

You press a roadside doorbell to gain access and then it's up a flight of stairs where you are welcomed by your host (Mark today).  

Mark pointed out the wifi password, invited me to take a seat anywhere, invited me to change the music if I wanted to or play the guitar or piano!  There are books on the shelves to read too, and in the kitchen there's free tea and coffee plus as much toast and jam or biscuits as you can eat.  You can bring your own food and use the microwave too. 

It's busy.  Articles in The Guardian, The Telegraph and elsewhere have raised its profile to the extent that the coffee machine broke yesterday with the demand. So it's instant coffee today! 

It's a buzzy atmosphere with people working quietly on their own or in small groups, there are even a couple of informal team meetings under way.  People are working with people they know.  People are sitting with and meeting new people.  Someone is playing chess and using a Rubik's cube at the same time! 

Nick Drake is on the record player, but I might change that in a while. No hang on, someone's just put I Am Kloot on.

It's a happy, busy and stimulating working environment.  Will this social business model take off?  We'll see, but judging by the air of productivity here today and the pile of coins and notes in the honesty box, it's off to a healthy start. 

It's open 10am until midnight, seven days a week. 

Useful links here:

http://london.ziferblat.net 

facebook.com/ZiferblatLondon 

twitter.com/ziferblatlondon 

instagram.com/ziferblatlondon