Conversation and Being Liked at Work

Last week the popular enterprise microblogging service Yammer, released a new set of features under the name 'Leaderboards'.  With the new 'Leaderboards' capability, organizations that have deployed Yammer to support internal sharing and collaboration will now be able to gain additional insights into what conversations and topics are generating the most activity and interest, which employees are the most engaged on the Yammer platform, and how other employees value and respond to topics and each other.

Some of the metrics that the new feature will provide include:

• Most Liked Members: Top 10 users whose messages have received the most ‘Likes’
• Most Replied to Members: Top 10 users whose messages have received the most replies
• Members with the Most Posts: Top 10 users with the most public messages posted
• Most Replied to Threads: Top 10 threads with the most replies
• Threads with the Most Participants: Top ten threads with the most participants

A screenshot of the 'Leaderboards' feature is below:

The Leaderboard offers a small, but important step for organizations that have deployed Yammer as an internal messaging and conversation platform. Having a better view into which employees are most active and 'liked', which employees consistently and effectively engage the community with topics and updates that generate interest and dialogue, and what general subjects and conversations drive the most overall response rates across the entire organization, can provide organizational knowledge and insights into the pulse of the enterprise; and the kind of understanding the is often difficult to discern, particularly in large or dispersed organizations.

Looking at active and popular network participants and assessing what topics and conversation threads generate the most activity are valuable inputs that can lead to potential improvements in organizational design, workforce planning and deployment, and even with creation and execution of business strategies.

What users generate the most engagement? Perhaps their roles in the organization may need to be reviewed and enhanced?  Or more likely, the enterprise many need to make sure adequate succession plans exist for these drivers of network engagement?

What topics launch the most conversation?  It could be that senior management needs to do a better job articulating their messaging around these topics, or perhaps more attention needs to be paid to a particular popular or recurring theme.

It used to be that managers and leaders could try and sort out what was really going on at work by hanging out in the lunch room, or the watercooler, or the local bar at Happy Hour. Today though, many of the other informal and serendipitous meetings are taking place virtually, in places like Instant Messaging chats and increasingly, enterprise collaboration networks like Yammer.

Still for many managers and leaders, the value of a platform like Yammer may be hard to quantify, but with the development of tools like the Leaderboard, the 'sell' to these decision makers will continue to get easier. Knowing which employees are most engaged, who is capturing the interest of the most of their colleagues, and what conversations and topics are most resonant with the workforce is the kind of insight that can be incredibly difficult for management to gain.

Even if they spend a lot of time hanging around the lunch room and watercooler.

Of course cynics might say that once employees catch on the the metrics that drive the Leaderboard that they will try to find ways to artificially 'game' the system, to raise their profile and position, but in an online platform, with 100% visibility and attribution of comments and activity, it seems like any reasonably healthy community would sniff that out and put a stop to it rather quickly.

Do you use Yammer, or another similar internal microblogging too?  

Would this kind of insight into network activity help your organization?

A Collaboration Experiment

The past couple of weeks I have organized and have been monitoring a very small pilot of Yammer in our organization. For those who may not be familiar, Yammer is positioned as 'Twitter for the enterprise', a service that allows people to provide short text updates, ask questions, and provide information to their colleagues in (nearly) real-time.  Unlike Twitter where updates are typically visible to anyone on the service, Yammer networks are restricted to members of individual organizations, by means of valid

possession of a valid e-mail address from the company domain.

I managed to get several team members to register at the site, join the dedicated, private group that I created to keep most of their updates 'private' and internal to the group, and also walked everyone through the steps to download and install the Yammer desktop client.

So far, the adoption has been decent, and I think there is at least a 50-50 chance that Yammer will eventually become a reasonably important part of the every day communication process in the team.  But there are already a few key lessons that I have drawn from this brief experiment, lessons that I think would be broadly applicable to most other new 'collaboration' technologies (wikis, internal networks, or idea markets) that you may try and introduce into the organization.

Lesson 1 - Tools won't create collaboration immediately

Most of the work that is done by the team members has typically been done individually.  The practice and culture of primarily individual effort doesn't miraculously change or morph just because a flashy new 'collaboration' tool is available. Analysis of the traffic on the Yammer network reveals a modest amount of communication on actual 'work products' primarily centered around simple 'status' type questions and answers.  The tool has not immediately impacted the group to foster or encourage more collaborative problem-solving, development, or design.  That may come in time, but the tool itself won't make that change happen overnight.

Lesson 2 - The right people need to be included

One reason the collaboration levels inside this group are relatively low, is that much more interaction and collaboration actually occurs with folks outside the group, the customers for this team's development.  Inclusion of some of the key customer contacts in the pilot would likely lead to increased traffic and added value on the Yammer network.  In time it is anticipated that the 'wider' network will begin to communicate and collaborate more freely. So when organizing a pilot program, don't be afraid to cast a wider net in soliciting and including participants.

Lesson 3 - Simplicity is more important that almost everything else

Even with a dirt-simple tool like Yammer, I have had to spend quite a bit of time explaining how the tool works, how to get signed up, and how to download and configure the client application.  There were several moments of confusion and mis-steps along the way, while none of them are that complex, they still introduce unneeded friction into the process.  Any participants that are perhaps unwilling or disinterested in the pilot, or are slightly technology averse, may very well be completely turned off by these issues.  Whatever tools you plan to introduce to the organization, make sure you keep them as simple as possible, at least initially, if not forever.  Find the one or two key features you need, find a tool that supports them exceedingly well, and put everything else on the back burner. Simplicity is essential.

Lesson 4 - But not as important as executive support

This experiment may be successful, or it may not.  But I am 100% sure that if the 'right' senior executive found out about it, and was not comfortable or supportive, the project would quickly end. Once your collaboration project moves beyond just a few users 'playing around' and starts to gain some traction in the enterprise, you have got to secure senior level support.  This is so important. To have an executive sponsor that can break down barriers, protect your project from the budget ax (maybe), and serve as a champion in those meetings that you don't get invited to may be the determining factor in your success.  The most crushing and disappointing outcome sometimes is the hammer coming down from on high ending your project due to the lack of the right executive support.

Lesson 5 - You won't know unless you try

In my example, we are experimenting with Yammer, a free online tool.  The only cost is the internal staff time spent testing, explaining, and documenting the registration process.  The 'barriers' to this type of project are therefore extremely low. So consequently, it is an easy tool to try out.  Not all technologies in the collaboration space are completely free, but most are relatively inexpensive compared to most other enterprise software.  Wikis, internal social networks, and hosted blogs can all be tested and experimented with at modest costs. Many technologies have 30-day free trials that give you just enough time to get the feel of the technology.  You really can't just discuss these technologies to determine if they truly will be effective and important to your organization and deliver on the promise of increased collaboration and communication.  You really have to give them a 'real' test.  Fortunately, most of these tools are offered in the SaaS mode, do not require an upfront license fee, and allow you to walk away from the project with no penalties at almost any time.  But you may need to secure at least some funding to truly give these tools a try.

So far our project is progressing, and I anticipate over time, if we can keep in mind and learn our lessons, it will be successful.

I would love to hear what some other technologists have to say about the key lessons in introducing collaboration tools to the organization.

HR and New Technology - follow up

A quick follow up to the HR and New Technology post from earlier this week.  A point I should have made originally, in fact. Here it is:

If HR does not start learning, trying, embracing some of these new Technologies (Twitter, Yammer, YouTube, Facebook all the usual suspects), they will take root in the organization anyway, HR won't know what the heck happened, and jump back into classic 'regulate, monitor, make a policy so we don't get sued' mode.

Months ago I 'claimed' the Yammer domain for my organization.  I invited two or three HR colleagues (who are pretty tech savvy) and tried to get some interest and momentum in the tool.  But nothing happened.  Could not get the HR folks to see the value (or even attempt to see the value) in a tool that allows micorblogging, threaded discussion, image and file sharing, groups formation etc.  In a 'perfect' world, HR would lead the drive to adopt these types of tools in the wider organization.

Today, out of nowhere, I noticed a flurry of activity on our Yammer network.  It appears like one class of students have decided to sign up for Yammer and create a group to facilitate collaboration and information sharing. This could have just as easily been a faculty or administrative department, the specifics don't really matter.  What matters is that the organization did it on its own.

And what happens if this group discovers Yammer to be a great tool and spreads the word to the wider organization?  Maybe they'll get some kind of recognition or be recognized as 'innovators'.

Exactly he kind of PR that most HR departments really need.  That's ok, keep processing the forms, keep folks paperwork up to date, and try not to get noticed.

Rant off.

Yammer it up

Today we had a mini-crisis with our application that lets Student employees self-register for an Employee Self-service account to view their Payslips, sign up for direct deposit, and view other personal information online. The existence of the problem became known to me when I received an e-mail with the relevant details.

The specifics of the problem are not important, but it was sufficiently complicated that from report to resolution I received a total of 17 e-mails from four different people in less than one hour.

A total of six people were copied on the original e-mail, so in classic e-mail fashion as everyone who jumped into the issue kept checking 'Reply All' every time the web of the e-mail trap spread and spread.  And of course, each message itself got longer and longer and larger and larger as all prior messages were appended to the next message.

So in total we ended up with 102 distinct e-mail messages, with the entire content of the original message included in full on each and every message.  That must be some great e-mail that we now have 102 copies of it stored on our server.

And all this because across the organization, no other collaboration tools are widely used.  Sure one or two of my HR colleagues uses IM to contact me, occasionally we open an IM chat room.  I have started a wiki that only has been used my me and one other colleague (although I suspect he is starting to give up).  

I claimed my organization's domain on Yammer - which would have been the perfect tool for all this dialogue.  Almost all of the 102 emails were a sentence or two. And other folks who may have been of assistance may have seen the exchange, impossible in e-mail if they were not included from the start. So far only three others in an company of 3,000 have signed up. And two of the three are the HR folks who just IM me anyway.

So many tools are so far superior to e-mail for collaborative work and problem solving, why am I not able to get my organization to see that?

Any suggestions? Because I am not getting the message across.

Subscribe!