Why Atos Banned Emails

Posted on February 1, 2012 by shankar

Atos, the French IT giant, was much in news, late last year, when it’s CEO, Thierry Breton made a revolutionary move to ban emails in the company.

The 56-year old chief executive (the age is important as you will find out that it is not just young people who prefer social media), a former French finance minister determined that only 20 out of every 200 emails received by his employees every day are important. It wastes a good amount of employees’ everyday work hours.

Sounds familiar, isn’t it?

So, Atos’ 80,000 employees in 42 countries will have stopped using emails eighteen months from now. They will instead use social media tools and in-person communication.

Our customers might not have taken such radical steps as Atos, but they use KineticGlue more for the same reason – to cut unduly long, inefficient email conversations.

KineticGlue enables our customers to share and track group updates in a single place. Members intuitively understand who is to act on a message. Conversations are threaded, so they are not lost. There is no need to repeat. And there are no confusions as to know what is the latest stand on a particular topic. The most recent conversations are automatically pushed to the top, enabling team managers to stay on top of everyday activities.

This is a refreshingly efficient way of working than sending copies & copies of emails!

You can use KineticGlue to make your work-life more efficient. We are glad to let you know how. If you are interested, do let us know – you can find the ‘Contact us’ form in our homepage. You can also setup a free network to try it out with your team.

Customer Interview: Future Group

Posted on January 30, 2012 by shankar

And here’s the audio clip of Joathan Dotan’s interview for KineticGlue.

Jonathan heads the Digital and Media Strategy at Future Group. As I had mentioned in my earlier post, Jonathan’s marketing team has been using KineticGlue for more than a year now.

In his interview, Jonathan shares lots of practical advice on using a Social Business Software for regular business. He has been hugely successful making Future Group shake hands with its customers through social channels. So it is not surprising to hear him talk about employee social network as an essential, natural extension to what you do in the outside world.

This is a great way of deriving value from a platform like KineticGlue: Some companies treat an internal social media as a separate channel (such as email). They start thinking about the kind of newsletters and other communications that they will share through this media. That sounds like an awful lot of effort. Totally unnecessary!

Rather, if we look at such a platform as a way of getting work done, then there’s no effort. You start doing work through the platform, that’s it. Yes, it involves a slight behavior change, but you do not have fish or invent new content. And the platform becomes surprisingly, exponentially useful as people start talking about their day-to-day work, more and more through the platform.

Project Management Tip: How to avoid heartburn

Posted on January 23, 2012 by shankar

I was talking to my friend who’s a project manager. He had to travel to be at his client’s office for a few months. He was talking how it was difficult to get a clear status update from his offshore team during those months:

“All that I wanted to know is whether something is done or not. And yet, I don’t get it. It’s always ‘Yes, but….. “.

“Then they start telling reasons: I was waiting for such and such input, but didn’t get it. They could have told me earlier.”

Project members are averse to giving a clear yes and more so, a clear no. Because, there’s always a reason why things were not done according to plan and they want managers to hear them out before making a judgment. And in these details, lies the Devil; or God, depending on how you see it.

The point that I was trying to make is that these details are important. Not hearing them out, or not hearing them clearly could result in too many wrong assumptions, hasty plans, demotivated team members, frayed managers and dissatisfied customers.

Not surprisingly, my friend was managing his status updates through emails and telephone calls. I suggested that my friend try KineticGlue or for that matter, any online team collaboration software to track statuses. People ask questions, status updates only through the platform, and people who are responsible for that item respond. The last posted reply is the latest status. There’s nothing in between. One has to just motivate people to be honest, open and transparent. Do not penalize people for not doing something, but penalize them if they did not let the status known.

My friend was skeptical at first. I coaxed him to try the free version of KineticGlue. He continues to use the free version of KineticGlue, but he’s at it these days. He says his meal times are more peaceful. I believe him.

Why ‘socialize’ projects?!

Posted on January 17, 2012 by shankar

It’s a big puzzle why access to project management tools is a privilege (or a burden?!), given only to project managers and supervisors. Sure, they are the people who define deadlines, manage resources and keep track of things.

However, the real work is about getting people to action, getting status updates, discovering obstacles early on and leading the team to a timely delivery. Social collaboration software becomes an ideal choice to do this work for the following reasons:

The work is highly people and conversation intensive, making a social collaboration platform becomes a great choice. Most traditional project management tools stop with the Boolean statuses and never capture the nuances.
A social software with project management capabilities provides greater transparency to the project team members – about the project deadlines, responsibilities, current statuses, who’s doing what etc. There’s no reason why these should be kept a secret.
When time is sparse and agile is the key, a social collaboration platform can greatly help cut time and make available time more productive. Team members do not wait for status meetings to pose their issues and the management gets signals early on.
The conversations in a project team may not be just about statuses. People will be discovering new issues and inventing new solutions, which may be more useful than just for the immediate project needs.
In a typical offshore-onshore setup, nothing works as well as a social project platform to get you timely updates. A simple, well designed collaboration platform can obviate unproductive, long email chains.
What’s more, one can selectively include members from customer organizations in the projects. Highly useful in the requirements gathering and validation phase.

Our customers have liked KineticGlue because of its project management capabilities. Apart from the above benefits, the ability to store project related documents and get status updates right on the project tasks, always gets an appreciative nod!

The Virtual Tree House

Posted on January 11, 2012 by shankar

I have been reading these amazing stories from the Red Frog founder Joe Reynolds, about giving unlimited vacation days to employees and building a tree house for them right in their office. These are great strategies to retain great talent and attract new talent.

Though the thought and technique is new and refreshing, the idea is inherently the old, well-known one: happy employees are productive employees. Ensure that your employees are happy. And Joe’s strategies only indicate that its not always money that keeps employees happy. [By the way, Red Frog is a success story of a company that rocketed from $5000 to $45 million. So these things do work!]

The unlimited vacation days policy is really interesting. The underlying idea is to provide enough flexibility to employees so that they are not constrained by a 9 to 5 office schedule, and yet remain productive. Going by Joe’s blogs, such flexibility only enables employees to be more productive than if they were doing a 9 to 5 job in their office.

If this is the idea, why not consider an Enterprise Collaboration Platform? A collaboration platform could, perhaps, be the best way to incentivize employees to be more productive. You show that you trust that they will be responsible enough to accomplish their work and are giving them freedom to use their time as they wish to use it. This doesn’t mean you lose track of who’s doing what, when.

And as Joe says, people are really responsible and do not misuse such provisions for freedom. This has been our experience with our customers as well. So, in all, a social business platform could be the virtual tree house that you build for your employees. And what’s more, your employees can be seen happily going about their work in this tree house, even when they are not physically present in their offices.

Break Free from Meaningless Traditions

Posted on January 4, 2012 by shankar

Traditions, by themselves, are not bad. They become bad when we start misusing them and overusing them – like how we end up having a hundred different calendars and diaries, some of them recycled, around the New Year. And why anyway gift diaries and planners in the days of Evernotes? Or like how we use emails.

I’ll follow the good old tradition of doing a New Year post. It’s a good tradition, as it helps one to look at things that have gone by and attempt to connect the dots.

2011 has been a great year for KineticGlue – a lot of activities, a lot of customers and hence a lot of questions. I found some questions and points recurring in my conversations with customers and decided to summarize them:

It is time to get past the question of whether a social collaboration platform is going to work.

Not many ask this question anymore. This question is very unfashionable. Really. The point is not just about young millenials flooding the workplace. The point is that enterprise collaboration platforms mark the next generation of tools in the lineage of the, now typical, word processing and spreadsheet software. They are meant for making your work easier. They have both direct and indirect impact on organizations’ bottomline.

This is not all new anymore. Enterprise 2.0 has found its payday long ago.

People are not in love with email; they don’t have a choice.

Very surprisingly, I often get to hear ‘email’ as a competitor to us. Of course, no one states so openly. It is just that email seems to be used for anything and everything. Most realize that this ineffective way of working – some move forward and adopt KineticGlue and some stay wondering. After all, habits, especially bad ones, are hard to shake off that easily.

There’s a reason why Atos has banned emails.

Social networks creating flash mobs of frustrated people is an unfounded fear.

As I might have said numerous times, this does not happen at all. People are more vary to do any such thing in an open network, where there’s no place to hide. Not everyone might share your opinion and especially your style of talking about an issue. So it is not going to work. Emails, water coolers, canteen tables and telephones are safer options.

The problem is the answer.

The real question is what such an enterprise collaboration platform will work for. And the answer lies only partially with the capabilities of the platform. A good portion of the answer lies in the problem that you’re trying to solve or the objectives that you want to accomplish. I find that, nearly 90% of the time, people who articulate these objectives well, subscribe to the platform.

The ROI of a business social network is tied to the problem you’re choosing.

This is an overbeaten point. The benefits of an enterprise social network could lie anywhere from better employee engagement to faster sales cycles. All this might sound fluffy, unless you have approached the idea with very specific objectives in mind (our favorite point!). Your problems and objectives are much more real and concrete. And when you have the problems, you will also be able to measure the ROI of an enterprise collaboration platform.

“I am going to start with an informal social network and build more concrete use cases over a period of time” is a bad, bad idea.

An official informal network is an oxymoron. Your employees are not waiting for an informal conversation platform. They would rather have such talk in their personal social networks. They are looking at ways of getting their work faster and better. Help them by choosing work-related issues that can be accomplished faster through a collaboration platform. They will come to like you more!

It is easy to blame the software or your employees, but YOU’re responsible for adoption.

A collaboration software, like any software, only provides the necessary tools. What you build out of these tools is up to you. You might let your employees make sense out of the tool, but then they might use it for purposes, not all of which you might like. Anyway, they are busy. Unless they are motivated enough, they are not going to figure out objectives for the new tool that you have bought. You would have to define them and grow them over time. And like everything else, adoption takes time. Expecting overnight successes is unrealistic.

10 Simple Strategies for Creating a Social Movement – Part II

Posted on July 27, 2011 by shankar

Its not that it took so much time to think about the next 5 : ). Here we go!

Make it more Democratic

Agreed that the platform is meant for official work. And you’ll set this context by defining the appropriate use cases. However, be slightly open and liberal. Open forums where employees can share more informal stuff, have water cooler conversations. It does not really hamper their productivity. Instead it has shown to trigger new ideas and solutions. If you really think that its going to affect productivity, then think again – it’s not because of the platform and it doesn’t necessarily happen through the platform.

And in our experience so far, employees have been far more responsible on what they say and how they act on their networks.

Show them Success

Nothing is as powerful as peer reviews. Good reviews add to the credibility of the initiative. Success stories tell people how to use the platform and what benefits they can derive. Besides, emulating is far easier than leading. Keep a watch on teams actively using the platform, gain feedback, follow-up on what they’re achieving, where they face trouble. When results are evident, make a splash.

Proliferate

Based on initial experiences, create best practice guides. Use successful teams to coach other teams and departments. That way, you make these teams responsible for others’ success as well. After all, isn’t that what collaboration is all about?

Lead

Nothing is more effective than employees finding their leaders active in their collaboration platform. Its lame if leaders site their age or their busy schedule as reasons for not actively engaged in the platform. That tells their subordinates that their leaders don’t consider the platform important.

Besides several benefits, a social collaboration platform provides a great channel for recognizing your people’s talents and achievements.

Is microblogging now and then sufficient? The author of this post in CEC Insider doesn’t seem to think so.

Be Patient

This will be perhaps the first point if we ordered all these strategies in terms of their importance. Like any new initiative or invention, a collaboration platform takes time to catch on. People will take time to understand the new channel, move away from their ‘very convenient’ emails and adapt to the platform. Andy like any other typical social media, not everyone will contribute, at least immediately. It doesn’t mean that they’re idle. Showing them the benefits will help them switch.

How did you drive adoption for your internal collaboration platform? Do share your views.

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10 Simple Strategies for Creating a Social Movement – Part I

Posted on June 18, 2011 by shankar

Jagdish’s previous post on the need for a community manager prompted me to think more on the topic of bringing people to adopt the social media initiative in an organization.

“This is social. It should work by itself. People should flock to the network. After all they all are in FaceBook,” is a very common attitude that I have come across in many organizations. Well, this logic is fundamentally flawed in its premise. As Aaron Weiss points out in his article, there are incentives for people to be in FaceBook. What’s the incentive for employees to be in their company’s collaboration network?

That’s a good question to start with. And there are a few other things that you, as an organization, can do to bring in the social change, for the better.

The following are a few strategies that worked for our customers. They are not in specific order:

Set the Context

It helps if employees understand why they’d use the network and what they’d accomplish by doing so. Leaving the network open and letting people figure out its purpose is not a wrong strategy per se. However, people will make their own meanings of the platform. The management should be open to this possibility and not expect people to stick to its agenda, which it never communicated.

This HBR article on Social Media’s Leadership Challenges succinctly communicates this message – “Successful communities all have compelling and inspiring goals for their existence and their leaders are passionate about these goals.” (The article, by the way, has plenty of good advice to offer.)

In fact, the context and the use cases should have been defined right at the beginning – product evaluations should have happened based what you intend to achieve by using the system. Also define appropriate metrics and success criteria so that it becomes easier for you to find if intended results are being achieved.

Provide Flavors

When defining the use cases, remember to have a variety in the kind of activities that people are going to do in the network and in the content that they’re going to consume. Its more interesting if I can get to know HR-related updates in my platform where I also work with my colleagues on my day-to-day projects.

Get in people from the business, HR, Training and Corporate Communications as stakeholders for the platform. Discuss and finalize what use cases each of these departments is going to bring to the platform. Consistently stick to it.

Create the Buzz

Mail Campaigns, posters, SMS and other announcements are definitely useful, especially when the platform has been introduced by the management. One of our customers organized a live chat on the platform with the CEO. Employees got an opportunity to interact and quiz their super leader. The conversation was not about the new platform, but was more about the company and where its heading. That’s another point to remember – focus on the content, rather than the technology.

Bring in the SJs

Like all jockeys, Social Jockeys can make the crowd jig. SJs are people with high-voltage enthusiasm, who know how to create the buzz, the fun and make people want to participate.

No, they are not essentially community managers – people with administration and moderation roles; though community managers could be SJs as well. SJs are people who are acknowledged by their peers, for their knowledge, expertise and thought leadership. So, yes, they need not be necessarily heads of department and line managers.

The initial team you put together from different departments should essentially be made of SJs.

Don’t Scare Off

Policies & guidelines are important, especially when the organization is trying out a new communication channel. Strict & clear definitions of do’s and don’ts are absolutely essential. But do not stress them often, that too, when users have not got a full hang of the platform. This only sets a context that the platform will be highly monitored and curated. People do not want to participate in (one more) initiative where they have to play by very strict rules.

One of our customers attached the policy document to the launch email. Another customer just provided a link to the policies link the platform. Employee responses were definitely different in both cases.

The need for a community manager

Posted on June 2, 2011 by jagdish

The need for a community manager

While it always ideal that networks evolve and grow with minimum intervention, a role of a community manager cannot be ignored. A community manager who understands the power a social collaboration tool can act as a catalyst, to ensure that the organization derives the desired benefits. I read good article recently which provides insights into what kind of roles a community manager plays.

Here are some:

Welcome Wagon
Gardener
Referee
Listener and Moderator
Member Advocate
Brand Spokesperson
Nurturer of Brand Champions
Someone Who Measures, Analyzes, Adjusts, Rinses, Repeats

For more details checkout the article.