I am asked to help fostering more collaboration in my business environment, and I am trying to establish a social media-worthy approach.
The first idea of everyone seems to be the founding of a Group in the Enterprise Social Network (ESN). All employees of an organisational unit shall be invited as members. This invitation is mostly implemented without opt-in for the employee, but mandatory. What is more, in order to – supposedly – onboard unexperienced social media users the default is set to send email notifications on each new post. I am not happy with this.
From my point of view this approach is contrary to the idea of social media, where users pull contest according individual chice of relevance by following people, hashtags or groups of their interest. Forcing people into groups is a repetition of hierarchical communication and may reduce the group to be a top down distribution list rather than a community. Employees having the courage to post may even drive colleagues upset, who find themselves overwhelmed by a multitude of information, with little relevance for the individual – not to speak of the amount of subsequent notification mails, spamming hundreds and even thousands of Inboxes.
However I would like to pick up the momentum, when business heads wish to create social networking. Do you have experience in this situation? Please share it with me – I will highly appreciate.
Here is the approach I am currently following to support leaders in fostering connected collaboration by means of ESN:
- clarify the real intent behind the original request with the respective leader
- support the respective leaders in posting on ESN on their intent to have more connected collaboration within the business. (and thus start a new way of communication themselves)
- Support in choosing or creation of a Hashtag for exchange on whatever the leader wishes for his business.
- Possibly invite employees to found hashtags starting with the department abbreviation, followed by underscore-topic (example: „#departmentname_topic“)
- Emphasizing, that connected collaboration needs nothing more than encouragement, confirmation and role models.
- Creating trust in leaving community founding to the employees, rather than founding them top down.
Looking forward to feedback and your experience on the topic. Be assured, I am still a beginner in this field trying hard to help my company rock VUCA ;). Any response highly appreciated.
Connective greetings, Benedikt Pape
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks! https://accounts.binance.com/zh-CN/register-person?ref=B4EPR6J0
Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good. https://www.binance.com/en/join?ref=FIHEGIZ8
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks! https://www.binance.com/uk-UA/join?ref=B4EPR6J0
I am currently writing a paper that is very related to your content. I read your article and I have some questions. I would like to ask you. Can you answer me? I’ll keep an eye out for your reply. 20bet
Your article gave me a lot of inspiration, I hope you can explain your point of view in more detail, because I have some doubts, thank you.
Reading your article has greatly helped me, and I agree with you. But I still have some questions. Can you help me? I will pay attention to your answer. thank you.
Can you be more specific about the content of your enticle? After reading it, I still have some doubts. Hope you can help me. https://accounts.binance.com/en/register?ref=P9L9FQKY
Your point of view caught my eye and was very interesting. Thanks. I have a question for you. https://www.binance.com/it/register?ref=T7KCZASX
I am sorting out relevant information about gate io recently, and I saw your article, and your creative ideas are of great help to me. However, I have doubts about some creative issues, can you answer them for me? I will continue to pay attention to your reply. Thanks.
Your point of view caught my eye and was very interesting. Thanks. I have a question for you.
Only some quick thoughts from over here at #Think2019:
– Absolutly agree on worthlessness of adding managers to a group – without a real good community management nothing will happen, managers will leave immediatly if they are spammed with automated updates
– develop a mixture of push & pull for the managers. Transfer relevant information (like relevant newsletter) from email to blog post in your ESN so they must follow relevant sources. Make them curious by sharing information they usualy do not find in their top-down-bottum-up linear information stream
– Tell stories: Talk about the good examples, show people who succesfull managed innovation and of course got rewarded – managers are vain people, too 🙂 Show examples where the number of followers gives more power to people in the org than the position in the org chart.
– Connect managers one2one with digital experts. Does not necessarily mean reverse mentoring, but offer a dedicated hour with an expert. Managers know everything, so they would never never admit in a training or in a group that they do not have a clue on social networking. They only ask questions. if nobody is around they can not loose the face 😉
– organize exchange with managers of other companies who live in the digital world
There are many good approaches, but of course its hard work. Celebrate the rare success in the first months, maybe a CxO starts blogging or something else. Assign significant ressources to help managers adopting to the new way of work. They will not come on own motivation in most cases… Good Luck!
Great help, Alexander! Love your approach of building bridges into the digital world, like offering dedicated hours for one2one support.
– So far I offered „ask me anytime“, but I will start actively inviting one2one appointments for individual support.
– celebrating success with digital mindset is great. Reminds me of a program run at Siemens called „VUCA prototype of the month“, where in a monthly open call, selected success stories are shared and celebrated.
– I think of making up a hashtag to share digital success stories like #digitalsuccessstories or similar.