Voting for Social Media in the Workplace

Last night the Cass Business School in London ran the Networking the Workplace session, with a number of Social Media Evangelists on the panel:

- Suw Charman-Anderson, Social Technologist (SCA)
- Jemima Gibbons, Author 'Monkeys with Typewriters: myths and realities of social media at work' (JG)
- Euan Semple, Independent Advisor (JG)
- Luis Suarez, Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist, IBM (LS)

(I've used initials in brackets to speed up referring to who made what point bekow)

Jemima was also launching her book (its available from Triarchy Press) and was heavily involved in putting the evening together - a great way to launch a book in my opinion (Maybe I'll take a leaf out of it one day...)

The system for the evening was quite entertaining - a question, a quick set of answers, some audience feedback - and then a vote. Here are the questions, comments and votes (Caveat - questions are written as best as I could capture them, comments are what stood out to me):

1. Does social networking waste time?

- JG no
- ES can be
- SCA no - too much measuring waste, not measuring saving
- LS nuanced - use it for the right thing eg finding right expert internally

Audience view: Social Media reduces friction, - can waste time but can be useful if you use tool carefully. Need to decide on when what you are doing is relevant, as with all tools

Vote: 47% yes 53% no

My take - I'm with the audience - its a useful tool, but it can waste time if its abused


Is email the best way to share information and ideas?

- LS has it's uses but not best way to share data with many
- SCA interrupt costs from answering email, plus used as proxy to show productivity
- ES twitter is the new email issue, its blurring personal and professional and showing that managing the firehose is a major issuel

Audience: Email co-opted into areas it wasn't designed for, but still the best and widest didtributed general transport system

Vote 35% yes 65% against

My take - I think Suw was in error blaming email for interruptions - I recall doing "White Collar Productivity" work in the 80's, email was seen as a massive benefit to disruption vs the technology at the time, the telephone which isn't asynchronous (and has a higher interrupt time). As others pointed out, as new technologies become the new major transport platform they then also will cause interruptions. (I note with interest that Twitter adds email functionalities at a month by month basis, most recent eg lists). (Added later >) Key is to be able to filter and offload stuff better done elsewhere off email.



Social Networking is a danger to corporate integrity?

- JG it's about how organizations behave
- ES it's about how organizations manage risk - its useful to have monitors, but biggest risk- risk is in the senior guys not the rank and file
- SCA do you trust your staff or not eg cameras and photocopiers can be used too. There is a need to create guidelines in an organisation
- LS depends on who you trust - are you hiring the right people

Audience - Carter Ruck/Trafigura example shows risk is not just internal. But, people tend to be less inhibited on social media, and it has real persistence, so slip more likely and longer lasting than inadvised slip in pub. Also, people can say stuff that is defamatory without realising it,

My take - imagine if the Climategate emails were on an internal social net, not email - I'm sure they would have got out a lot earlier. Also, having been involved in share price affecting activity, legislated "quiet periods" and dealing with state of the art IP, there will still be stuff that is sensitive and the easiest way to keep its safe is not to disseminate it too widely

Vote: For 65% No 35%


Will SocNets remove need for special expertise / the more experienced you are the more likely you are to make the correct decisions?

- ES no
- LS yes

Vote 58% in favour of experts still needed, 42% against
My take - agree with the floor


Open Source approach may work for software but not for business in general?

- SCA with enough eyes all bugs are shallow, lots of brain cycles help in development and testing
- JG - can't separate strategy from implementation, move to the perpetual beta
- ES - not everything can be done by crowdsourcing expertise

Audience/Vote - didn't buy it but vote went 75% "will work in general" (The original question was poorly worded, I think they meant it the other way, ie 75% think it won't work in general)


If companies allowed employees to self organize nothing would ever get done

- JG - tuttle example of self organising entity that gets things done
- SCA - Dan Pink TED video shows old style metrics don't work for knowledge work (we showed this video at TEDExTuttle in September, this is it). Gore Tex spins off units once they get to 150m people

Audience - you can't rely on self organisation in all cases, eg in financial services which is regulated and fast paced/big impact of poor play. General feeling - "It depends" - what size of business - what type of decision - depends on environment - self organize around what?

Vote: 20% sceptical, 80% not (again, the question was double negatived so I wonder if this is the right way round based on audience comments

My take: All the reading I've done around self organising people shows that they usually organise most effectively around some simple issue (eg single issue protest movements) but cannot actually run things (protest movements fall apart and a more rigid structure emerges once they win). They also struggle to organise fast and repeatably, things businesses often need. On the other hand, where they can be used within structures they can be very powerful, as cell manufacturing / working studies have shown.


My conclusion - the panel were by and large always more optimistic than the audience (by definition, they are all evangelists for the upside ). Personally, I think the "Wisdom of the Crowd" - the audience - was pretty sensible, ie they are more likely to be correct than the panel in terms of the real degree of difficulty implementing Enterprise 2.0 stuff, but every movement needs its optimists to get things moving and point to what might be. A good show.

I also learned how one may write referendum questions to get the answer one wants

Update - Suw has listed the actual questions in the comments, they were:

1. Online social networking during office hours wastes valuable working time
2. Email is the best way to share information and ideas
3. Social networking tools can be a danger to corporate integrity
4. The more experienced you are, the more likely you are to make the right decision
5. An ‘open source’ approach may work for software development but it can’t work for business generally
6. If companies allowed employees to “self-organise”, nothing would ever get done