This week in links - week 18, 2009

After a few hectic weeks, I'm now restarting my weekly "This week in links". And what a way to do it, I have found some really great food for thought. Enjoy ;)

"Open Enterprise 2009: Interview with Laurie Buczek, Intel" by Stowe Boyd:

I had the honor to recently interview Laurie Buczek of Intel, who is heading up the most ambitious and broad internal social web initiatives these days.



...I believe there is tremendous value in her insights, partly because of the ambition that is driving the initiative at Intel, but principally because of her deep understanding of what makes sharing work in a work context.

"Death of the corporate portal?" by Dr. Laurence Lock Lee:

Maybe thats a bit harsh ... but as a former corporate KM person I know how hard it is to encourage staff to participate in collaborative corporate portals. A couple of years ago I met a lady from a global portal software provider who was dispairing about how someone had set up a Linkedin group for their firm which attacted in a matter of days hundreds of members. In contrast getting people to join up with the corporate portal was like pulling teeth.

Just scouting the LinkedIn groups of some major portal software companies who no doubt have excellent internal portals (at least from a software perspective) I can see lots of informal groups with many members: e.g. Oracle (78 coporate groups; biggest with 1,000+ members); SAP (105; 3,000+); Microsoft (150; 5,000+); EMC (13; 2,000+); IBM (91;10,000+). Obviously not all are current employees but where is the corporate knowledge going to reside in the future?

"Achieving intranet success today – and working smarter in the future" by Dorthe Raakjær Jespersen:

Recently, I had the chance to talk to Jane McConnell, intranet and portal strategy specialist, about how intranets can help organisations work smarter...//...I asked Jane a series of questions about the state of the intranet today.

As you look forward, what are some major trends to look out for when it comes to intranets?

“Intranets will offer workplaces for teams and communities that are often made up of internal and external people. Today, this type of “mixed” team is often forced to create parallel workplaces in the cloud, out of sight and out of mind for the intranet managers. This is not a sustainable solution.

Intranets will offer services over smart phones, for example news and contacts. Those are the two main needs people have, especially people far from head-quarters. I’ve done a lot of work with very decentralized organizations with lots of staff “on the ground” carrying out critical and sometimes difficult or dangerous work. What those people often need is access to essential information - nothing more, nothing less.”

"Sustainable KM: Principles & Approaches" by Andrew Gent:

So to summarize, the basic principles of sustainable KM are:

• Do not make KM extra work. Embed it in existing business processes.
• Avoid "Change Management". Let change manage itself.
• Design for humans, not data.
• Pay attention to the people, not the policies.
• Eliminate the opposition.

"The Social Software Value Matrix" by Michael Idinopulos:

The best place for your employees to learn professional social media is inside the company. Thomas Vanderwal was right when he told me that social media adoption is all about comfort. Most employees are intimidated by the openness and transparency of social media. By launching these tools internally--within teams, departments, divisions, business units, etc.--you acculturate your employees in controlled, comfortable environments. You can train them, educate them, watch them, and even (horrors!) let them make a few mistakes. Once your employees get used to using social software inside the company, it's easy and natural for them to expand their interactions to include customers, channel partners, and even the general public.

I think of Enterprise 2.0 adoption as a journey through a succession of benefits. I've illustrated them in what I call the "Social Software Value Matrix." The first step in the journey is pure operational improvement. You're not really changing the way you do business, just enhancing existing interactions within existing silos. Over time, the tools lead employees to interact in new ways, across silos. This creates cultural change as the company reinvents the way the different pieces of the business interact to create value. Finally, and most dramatically, companies can create new interactions with customers and channel partners. That's business model transformation, and it only happens when your business is ready for it.