Part 2:
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I am coming back to a popular and dear topic to many here: e-mail vs. conversations (I’ll use ‘conversations’ loosely, to refer to ‘enterprise social’ platforms in general). The discussion that seems to occur most often in my own experience, is regarding the “WHAT” (e-mail or ‘social’ tools) but not nearly as often on the “WHEN”, "HOW", or even more importantly in my opinion: the “WHY”.
If your team is currently debating over whether to use e-mail, or a social tool like Yammer or Groups in Outlook (available to Office 365 users), my advice is to first think through and discuss at least the following:
Let's go with a not to un-common example I think, to illustrate why it is so key to start with these essentials, before jumping into the tools side of things.
Have you noticed? I still haven’t talked about implementing a single tool yet!
After you start driving the change within your organisation and people start to adopt to the new requirements and opportunities, you may realise that to enable your now empowered teams, you need better communications and ways for your teams to co-operate within and across teams. You may also find that people need better and quicker access to information and new ways to share their knowledge, to be able to make decisions on the front lines. You now need to develop a Collaboration Strategy and a plan for how to implement it. At some point one of your tactics will surely be, to find the knowledge collaboration (Knowledge Management; KM) solution that meets your needs, and best supports the knowledge sharing and collaborative team culture you have evolved.
So what is my key take away here? What is the point that I am trying to make? A simple Pareto analysis, based on my own experiences of driving adoption change management in the KM and Collaboration space for almost 3 years now, and the learnings my team has made, which says: it is 80% about people and process (culture); and only 20% about the tools or technology.
Learn more about how we work with Knowledge Management internally, in Microsoft Enterprise Services, from this brief customer success story: Microsoft Services Reimagines Knowledge Collaboration with Cloud-Based Platform (Campus). It also emphasizes the importance of leading this as a people- and culture initiative first and foremost, following with the solution. We have presented our own learnings at several international KM conferences, and shared and exchanged knowledge, with many of our global customers already. And all seem to agree: it’s 80% people & culture – the rest is technology.
PLEASE NOTE: 1) The views and opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer; 2) The Business example is freely based off of the story about how "flattening the pyramids" was Jan Carlzon's key strategy, to turning SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) around in the early 1980's. He shares his story in Moments of Truth (Riv Pyramiderna!). I just re-read it and guess what... It still applies, just in a different dimension. Thank you for inspiring a few generations of leaders, and aspiring leaders, by now @Jan Carlzon!
Rebecka Isaksson is a thought leader and influencer with 15+ years experience of successfully driving Change Management and Operational Excellence multi-year programs, internally and as Management Consultant for many multi-national and global Enterprise Customers.
Rebecka may be contacted at: rebecka.isaksson@microsoft.com
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