What am I working on?
SteveWho cares what I am working on? 
Flickr - P.Mike
Who cares what I have to say?
These questions were the gist of a comment left on my Microsoft and Microblogging post by Stuart Shaw.
I think Stuart hits on an important point, and it sheds some insight on why organizations attempting to embrace so-called 'Enterprise 2.0' or social collaboration that lead with simple status updates or microblogging certainly could face this issue.
If you think about corporate e-mail, the primary enterprise technology that microblogging and many other collaboration platforms are meant to supplant (or at least compement), this confusion and hesitation by some organizations and employees is understandable.
Consider the main categories of corporate e-mail message that a typical information worker receives and how they get dispatched. Fitting many of them in to the 'status update' paradigm is kind of silly. Now I know that there is much more to Enterprise 2.0 than the status update, but the culture of the status update is so prevalent in the 'social' world online, that it can often dominate the thinking in the enterprise, particularly among the rank and file workers that you are trying to reach.
E-mailed generic company announcements get deleted, lots of other emails are dismissed as unimportant, usually when you were copied on a long thread that you either are not interested in, or don't have any specific additional input towards. Most of the other emails, the ones that actually are important either consist of specific questions directed at very targeted people, or advance some kind of ongoing dialogue again with a discrete set of people.
And on and on. None of the typical corporate e-mail use cases really touch the 'What I am working on?' or 'What's Happening?' launching points that frame typical microblogging status updates.
Once an organization grows large enough such that people don't actually know everyone else personally, the idea of sending out a company wide e-mail essentially consisting of a 'status update' is pretty unusual.
And for many, if the message doesn't 'fit' into any of the familiar e-mail buckets, it can be easy to conclude that the message has no value, no one really cares about what I have to say, and to simply shrug and remain comfortable in the familiar tools and processes that have dominated workplace collaboration for that last 20 years.
So do the tools influence the messages themselves? Do they determine the kinds of messaging and information exchange that is 'acceptable'?
It does seem that we look at and assess new tools through that kind of a prism. If as a knowledge worker I only send/receive/evaluate a given set of messages, ones that support a defined process and reflect organizational norms, then it can be a significant switch to simultaneously adopt both brand new technologies and a new mindset and approach to communication and process.
The question I think many people (rightly) ask is, you have given me a new toy to play with, but I don't necessarily have anything new to say.
Reader Comments (11)
Very important points here about the cultural/organizational readiness or even need for social computing. Why do members of any organization care about what the other members are doing? In a sales organization, sharing detailed status updates re: each pursuit and prospect is done via the sales automation apps for the day to day and via email (in today's world) for the important, team-building updates, e.g. when a major new prospect appears, when that prospect gets toward closure, and when the deal is inked. Would all those sales people give a hoot, or worse be distracted by, knowing the every move of everyone of their colleagues. The answer would be YES in my opinion. But what about the group of scientists and mathematicians working collectively but spread around the world on the data analysis of the recent Large Hadron Collider experiments? Would they find not only comraderie, encouragement, and substantive value as they work around the clock to decipher what that data means but also welcome the interrupts if they marked micro-progress reports? I think YES here. I think the answers to the when/where/how/who of organizational micro-blogging or similar platforms can be found in why we are engaged personally with Twitter, Thought leaders, consultants, analysts, and many of the others with whom I engage via Twitter work alone much of the time except when specifically working with clients. We have an enormous need to know what's happening all the time across our areas of interest and, therefore, across the radar of the people we follow. And, increasingly, at least for me, this is the professional sense of community I lost when I left the comraderie of the management consulting firm for which I worked before going solo. Social platforms bring the most business and organizational value when they provide a better way -- not the first way or a forced way -- for people who want to/need to keep in touch to do so. Absent the desire/need that these platforms address, they won't be implemented successfully.
Ah Naomi- so true- I cross both- working in a scientific/analytic environment I echo the opportunity and get energized when I see cross collaboration- on theories and concepts- . We do not need to sacrifice IP for breakthroughs when we are talking about how websphere interacts with DB2 versus AIX as an example- . back to Sales- agree- I do not want my salesforce in facebook, and linked in for status updates- I do want them developing authentic internal and external relationships-. The reality is- unless the communication skills are outstanding, email is not the right tool.
Naomi and Debbie bring up great points. The organizational structure and, to a larger extent, its culture, will determine the best communication approach. One way where I think enterprise 2.0 may be valuable is in the area of knowledge management. While organizations have a way to automatically back-up e-mails, those systems aren't designed to capture knowledge in the way that a gmail chat does, for example. E-mail is cumbersome and imperfect in that respect. Set up the right way, social collaboration tools can allow employees to contribute ideas, while allowing organizations an improved method of capturing the various threads of knowledge being created by its workforce.
I have been wrestling with the question of the adoption (or lack thereof) of internal micro-blogging and I do think Naomi's examples may unlock part of the answer. I too work alone, though for my firm, and therefore I find that I am much better informed (and encouraged) by the Twitter tweets I read. But I have a simultaneous "need to know" across the many areas of interest I maintain within the firm. Thus, an internal micro-blogging approach is quite appealing to me, but perhaps that is a function of both role (social media) and "virtual" status. Could the greater adoption of micro-blogging internally hinge on identifying the "Hadron Collider" efforts underway across business units and geographies? Of course, individuals may need to risk some time at first to "experiment" with such a micro-blogging approach, to find if it does indeed bring value and encouragement. But I can remember, Naomi, when you tweeted (a year ago?) about your own initial (and valid) question of Twitter's value. I, for one, am glad you persisted in your "experiment." Keep those tweets coming!
Great post, Steve, but for me it leaves unanswered the fundamental question that (no surprise!) Naomi at least partially answers for those of us who work alone. As a newbie, tell me please what earthly good 'What I am working on?' or 'What's Happening?' tweets are for me? I benefit greatly from news announcements, reactions to presentations and clients recently heard, expert opinion and links to great written material that the people I follow on Twitter serve up.
But even among close friends (not peeps, people I knew before), I really could care less about the meal they've just eaten, the sports game they're watching or the current state of their lawn! Does that make me a sociopath? Merely selfish? Or someone with no time to waste? Having not been present at the creation, I'd really love to know.
BTW, my Zabar's Columbian coffee this Sunday morning (Grind #4) is as good as it's been for 20 years. And one of the handful of things I miss after leaving Manhattan for the leafy burbs about a dozen years ago is delivered to me within 36 hours of ordering online. Aren't you thrilled to know?
Darn it, Victorio beat me to the punch on this one. Knowledge Management for many companies is the ticket for adoption of Web 2.0, Social Media and Microblogging technologies. Knowledge is lost in email. Content management technologies such as Blogs, Wiki's and group chat applications are key to enhanced productivity. Imagine a call center worker who doesn't know the answer to a question from the person on the phone. They need access (quickly) to knowledge management systems get the answer to the question. It's possible that a status update from someone on a microblog would be instantaneous captured by the internal search engine and point the call center employee to IM the person since the status update indicated the person is working on a project that is the subject of the outstanding question. So what am I working on can be important if the right tools are in place.
@Naomi - Thanks Naomi for your thoughts. I think as a solo professional, the public networks can be leveraged in a way that keeps you informed, connected, and engaged in the community outside of your own practice.
@Debbie - Good point, keeping the correct lines drawn between sharing and giving away trade secrets is definitely a key.
@Victorio - I think you are right, but I would add there is a wide range of sophistication and capability in these tools to make information capture, retrieval, and re-use better.
@Bruce - Great point about how microblogging can and should help people see beyond the short term, day to day, and help them grasp the bigger picture.
@Bill - You are right, the coffee updates are only valuable inasmuch as the value of the insight that your friends and colleagues get as a result of knowing your favorite brand of coffee. But that is not necessarily none. Office colleagues in the past 'gathered around the water cooler' and talked about equally mundane topics. There is value there when seen as one small component of an overall relationship I think.
@Michael - Now you are taking this topic in a much more interesting direction. Intelligent chaining of microblogging to KM and expertise location is a capability I don't think we have seen yet, (or even talked about that much). Hmm...
Wow. Great to see this getting explored! I'll transport the gist of this over to our UK forums on HubCap Digital and see if there can be equal reaction. And sorry i've not said hi before. Where have I been? Holiday. Easter. No email. No email on my phone. No tweets. No blogs. No updates, till this one.
Someone asked me recently about the value in all the magazines that I read. The question was, what % of the information is high quality, correct and useful and what % is just plain wrong or useless? I had to stop and think about that because the real value is not in the information itself, but in how the information connects with and kickstarts other things I'm thinking about. It's a form of brainstorming in the sense that reading about one idea leads to another idea which leads to another. The pieces of information connect and create meaning in new ways.
Why do I bring this up? Because the snippets of information in internal or external social networks work the same way. You see that Joe Schmoe is working on project examining the effectiveness of X and you say to yourself......hey, I could do the same for my Project Y or I could connect with Joe and see if his results will help me on my part of Project X.
It's amazing how the smallest amounts of communication are capable of creating big, new ideas.
In fact, WebExit was born through a similar path. Back in 1999/2000, Nobscot was developing online interview technology for recruiting when someone on the old Adventive I-HR mailing list that I was moderating mentioned something about exit interviews. Having seen both the potential and the failure of exit interviews it dawned on me that the Internet was the perfect medium. We had such a great response when we released WebExit that we dumped our original product!
It's that kind of serendipity that is the real power in the "What am I working on" snippets.
Work groups don't have to be restricted to email - forming a Ning community for the team or using Campfire by 37signals are other approaches that can keep knowledge from being lost.
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