Comments (3)

By dan.pontefract, 02/06/2010 11:05 AM

Inside the organization, a dilemma now exists and is rapidly taking shape.

Employees want to connect with one another. Reasons are plentiful, including but not limited to the following:

• Increasing job demands > less time to get it all done
• Global workforce redistribution > 24 hour clock syndrome
• Cross functional – cross pollination projects > less formal/hierarchical teams
• Formal information overload > email & intranets are being ignored

Micro-blogging is starting to become a very effective way in which organizations can mitigate some of the aforementioned points. The problem, however, is that due to the rise in popularity of Twitter and its consumer driven use as a life-casting tool, the inherent company benefits get lost in the shuffle.

First of all, let’s discuss technology. I personally don’t care what tool, application or technology is being used to drive enterprise-wide micro-blogging, but it must be secure and ideally it’s behind the firewall.

Stand-alone options such as Yammer, Present.ly, Socialcast and Socialwok (amongst others) have cloud-based and internal VPN instances that you can deploy, but again, I argue that you should bring this functionality inside of your organization for reasons concerning intellectual property and security. Mike Brevoort does a good job of comparing these four tools over here.

Of course, if you already utilize platforms such as Confluence, Jive, SharePoint, IBM Lotus, Salesforce.com amongst others, there are built-in micro-blogging or status update features. Incidentally, the stand-alone options mentioned above have been, or are trying to integrate into the larger collaboration platforms. (this is a smart move in my opinion)

So what has this got to do with leadership and culture?

My main point is that micro-blogging will become a way in which we can flatten the organization. This will drive a missing connection between the field, the front line, the individual contributor, the manager, the director, the VP and the executive suite.

Today, employees are normally ‘heard’ when they are in team and project meetings or individual 1-1 sessions. Occasionally, they chime in on discussions in town halls, or potentially through ratings and discussions on the company intranet or wiki.

When micro-blogging enters into the equation, the connection can be so much more powerful. “Senior Leaders” can lurk, listen and actually get a stronger sense of what is going on in the company be it opinions, ideas, issues, etc. Individual contributors can not only contribute and be part of the dialogue, they can ‘hear’ the opinions and ideas of their peers (not necessarily in their team or even business unit) as well as the senior establishment of leaders.

This can do so much for the organization in terms of leadership and culture, including:

• Better understanding of what is going on in the organization across many teams & projects
• Personalizing the aura of senior leaders
• Seeking opinion before decisions are made
• Driving engagement and the feeling that everyone’s opinion matters
• Providing information that is timely, be it formal, informal or in fact social / community driven

Micro-blogging, by virtue of its definition, has an additional benefit which is the fact the updates are short, concise and succinct. It forces everyone (whether at the low or top end of the company food chain) to carefully think through their update or response.

To me, it’s a natural example of both informal and social learning.

Are there any risks?

If security is sorted out, the risk as I see it is if employees use the tool as a life-casting option. But, as an organization matures in the 2.0 world, it’s my belief that this will be less of an issue and micro-blogging will become a natural part and indispensable piece of the connected workplace.

On Twitter, (obviously an external example) I follow the CTO of Cisco (Padmasree Warrior) and CIO of BT (JP Rangswami). Their external Twitter micro-blogging tweets are transparent, open and shed personal light on their obviously senior roles. Sure, some of their tweets are life-casting in nature (this is Twitter remember – it’s external) but if they are in fact using internal micro-blogging tools at Cisco and BT, imagine how connected they are to their org, and what their employee population might be saying about their leadership?

That’s a culture I would want to be a part of.

Comments (9)

By dan.pontefract, 01/23/2010 3:52 PM

Since 2001, Microsoft has sold well over 100 million licenses of SharePoint generating more than $1 billion / year in revenue. It’s quite amazing, in my opinion, considering the product is relatively archaic and institutionalized.

Enter SharePoint 2010, due to release in Q2 of 2010.

As customers begin to appreciate the delta between previous versions of SharePoint and the 2010 enhancements, it’s my belief that more and more organizations will utilize it as a basis for becoming the ‘employee gateway’, or, as I wrote earlier, a window into the organization. It could be that the social computing and learning capabilities outshine the other functions of the platform itself.

Why?

There are three reasons in particular found below, and one bonus reason at the conclusion of this rather long posting:

1)      Learning Management System Federation

2)      Facebookisation of the Enterprise (see Confused of Calcutta for more details)

3)      Content, Collateral and Community

 1)      Learning Management System (LMS) Federation

As we shift from ‘training is an event’ to ‘learning is continuous, collaborative and connected’ through formal, informal and social learning opportunities, there is less need for a stand-alone LMS and a greater need to connect the functions of an LMS (course registration, eLearning player, etc.) to a collaboration platform itself. SharePoint 2010 has better 2.0 collaboration potential than previous versions by a long-shot. We need to establish a new line of thinking; employees should parallel formal learning with informal and social learning opportunities, so embedding the LMS into the SharePoint 2010 platform begins this transformation.  David Mallon wrote about this integration potential last year.

There are a few companies providing integration of an LMS into the SharePoint 2007 platform, and I’m certain they are working on the next version of SharePoint 2010, but I’m not completely sold yet on any one company in particular in terms of a recommendation. (but I’m keeping options open)

• Competentum– not as integrated into SharePoint as I would like to see
• Operitel– an extension of SharePoint, not necessarily embedded into the core
• ELearningForce – pretty well integrated, but their sales team requires some improvement
• Intralearn – seems to be more of a web-part than complete integration
• Lanteria– promising, but more of a traditional LMS baked into SharePoint

Microsoft itself has developed the SharePoint Learning Kit. It’s a noble start, but the company is missing the point. Turning SharePoint into Moodle may be somewhat advantageous for public schools and/or universities who utilize SharePoint, but corporations want something with a little more, well … integrated 2.0 rigour. I’ve approached Christian Finn of Microsoft to surface my thoughts and present my overarching argument to him later this quarter. In essence, Microsoft is missing out on a humongous opportunity by not having an out-of-the-box integrated LMS as part of SharePoint 2010.

(NOTE: Amanda Fenton pointed me in the direction of Rachel Fichter, who did exactly this for Credit Suisse – link to Amanda’s notes - thanks Amanda)

2)      Facebookisation of the Enterprise

JP Rangsawami coined this term in a recent blog posting of his, but I’m borrowing it to further my point around SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint is often referred to simply as a document management platform by those that don’t really understand its true intent. Granted, without proper governance, disparate SharePoint sites have infiltrated organizations and, sadly, given rise to the bad reputation.

If, however, SharePoint were to be a bit more like Facebook (and Twitter and LinkedIn and so on) perhaps it could further the argument of becoming the new employee gateway.

Perhaps I am naively oversimplifying things, but take a look at the SharePoint 2010 screenshot below:

This is the ‘out-of-the-box’ view an employee could see utilizing the vastly improved ‘my sites’ functionality. Imagine, if you can, how this could become the place in which the employee loops back into the organization in terms of displaying their skills, bio, what they’re working on, what they need help on, what communities they are a part of, etc. If you extend the thinking into the learning world … he/she could display how they could assist others (think mentor/coach/SME) as well as the place in which they register for formal courses, in addition to contributing back content & expertise through videos, comments, blogs, wikis, etc. (see below)

Imagine customizing this to the specific requirements of your organization.

This indeed could become the Facebookisation of the Enterprise and further validate the hypothesis of SharePoint 2010 becoming the new employee gateway. (NOTE: Electronic Arts really pioneered this type of thinking already on the SharePoint 2007 platform through the leadership of Bert Sandie – fellow 2.0 Adoption Council member and Canadian)

3)      Content, Collateral and Community

With Microsoft having woken up from the 1.0 slumber and realizing that 2.0 type of functionality had to be embedded into SharePoint 2010, we now have access to a collaboration platform that embeds end-user editing tools into the SharePoint navigation system itself allowing for ease-of-use editing on the fly when it concerns blogs, wikis, and content in general. It will be much easier now for end users to add documents, videos, audio and various pieces of social 2.0 collateral than ever before.

This is a good thing for several reasons:

• Formal content can now be searched and referenced with informal and social content
• Employees spend less time searching for any type of content, collateral and people/expertise
• Employees also spend less time uploading and/or editing content
• The aspect of ‘community’ should be easier to drive through better connections and access to content in a more timely manner (the use of ‘presence’ inside an all Microsoft environment is but one example)

4)      The Bonus Reason?

Microsoft has more than 100 million licenses of SharePoint out there … before SharePoint 2010 has even released. How many organizations are going to throw out this investment in favour of alternate social computing and learning platforms? A good question – no answers here though, only my personal speculation.

In Conclusion

Although I may come across as Microsoft-centric in this post, it’s merely my personal observation through the past couple of years as social collaboration platforms (and technologies) have surfaced to the forefront, that SharePoint 2010 is going to force organizations to rethink their LMS, Facebookisation and general Content strategy. Perhaps this is in fact Learnerprise.

Tony Karrer has stated he thinks there will be a lot of SharePoint related activity happening this year as well. There is an online discussion happening over at LearnTrends you might be interested in as well. If you are in fact utilizing the SharePoint Learning Kit, there is a forum entitled the Learning Gateway User Group that you might like to visit.

And finally, I believe Matt Asay said it best:

SharePoint (2010) is Microsoft’s best attempt to connect desktop applications like Office with centralized, cloud/cloud-like collaboration and storage. Yes, Microsoft has other initiatives like online Office, but none marries so well its legacy profit centers with future innovation. And, given that SharePoint is already a $1 billion and frenetically growing business, it has momentum that other initiatives don’t.

As an aside, I’m not entirely convinced Microsoft has sorted out the mobile strategy either, when it comes to SharePoint 2010. I hope I’m wrong.

Comments (2)

By dan.pontefract, 01/09/2010 1:43 PM

Previously I wrote about how Learning 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 thinking should align. I then defined Learnerprise as:

the use of emergent social software platforms as well as formal and informal competence exchange processes, between companies, partners and employees, to improve both productivity and business results

In the corporate world and thus corporate learning, I’m not making any predictions per se, but I would like it to be known that my sincere hope in 2010 is related to the rise of ‘Learnerprise’.

Far too many organizations remain polarized by the traditional training department (and their army of training vendors) as it relates to their formal only output versus the up and coming non-formal ways in which corporate citizens are beginning to learn inside and outside the organization itself. (with or without the blasted training department)

Rest assured that formal training has a place in the overall pie of learning investment and output, however, if an organization doesn’t recognize that the lines now blur between formal, informal and social learning & collaboration — via the concept of learnerprise — companies are going to continue misspending their investment and, frankly speaking, ticking off the workforce. (to the detriment of company growth as well)

Maybe we should just go back and call it blended learning, but I digress.

The 4 opportunities I ‘hope’ occur in 2010 are as follows:

• Champion Learnerprise
• Federate the LMS
• Rebrand the Department
• Training Vendors & Partners Need to ‘Get It’

2010, in my humble opinion, should be about the organization shifting the focus from the all-instructor-led and eLearning only intravenous drip of ‘training’, to one that supports learnerprise. Be it your mission to lead, champion, pioneer and instil both the systemic means in which employees learn, collaborate and exchange competence with one another … as well as the company-driven & sponsored programs & offerings that complement said action. I ‘hope’ you can combine them and then watch things flourish.

I also ‘hope’ that organizations see to it to begin federating their LMS into their social collaboration platform so the employee no longer thinks of the LMS as that place where I register for formal ILT and eLearning courses. (aka. Formal events) That’s nonsense. Make your LMS obsolete (or at least hide it in the background) and tie together the social, informal and formal means into your existing or soon to be launched social collaboration platform. Make that your one-stop shop starting place, not the LMS.

We don’t necessarily need to set fire to the training department per se, but I do ‘hope’ that attention is paid to rejig the roles, become less rogue, cooperate as the leader of all things learnerprise (formal, informal and social), liaise and partner with the CIO’s office, and ultimately rebrand yourself and your department as the quintessential leader in the 2.0 world of your organization.

And finally, I ‘hope’ that various training vendors and partners begin to get it, and view their services as integral to the success of a company. But only if they step up and a) understand the learnerprise concept and b) acknowledge that they can actually supplement the vision and thus the goals of the company by providing value that addresses the formal, informal and social needs.

And if you are in fact looking for predictions and not a measly ‘hope’ list, check out the following:

• The Internet Time Alliance has stated their predictions. (at least 4 of the 6 members have)
• Inge de Waard has some great points and opinions on 2010 as year of the learner/pedagogy.
• Of course eLearning Magazine has the usual army of industry pundits making their predictions as well.
• And finally, Tony Karrer is actively seeking your input & predictions as well. (should you care to post)