DISQUS

Ari K · 11 months ago

Jason, we need more people like you out there :)

You'd be surprised to see how slow the wheel is turning. In my experience with my friends, even when people know and use these new technologies they seldom think of them as intra-company business tools.

Good luck in your sessions.

Danny Brown · 11 months ago

Completely agree, Ari - sadly Jason and what he's trying to do is outnumbered by the less forward-thinking companies. But... they are getting there, slowly but surely, which is a definite plus!

Jason Anthoine · 11 months ago

Indeed, the wheels are turning slowly, Ari. But there's starting to be some interesting uses of these technologies for internal communications. One that comes to mind is WorkBook, a Facebook overlay that helps to connect people behind the firewall and on a corporate network in much the same way Facebook connects people beyond the firewall. You can read more about it at www.myworklight.com

Once the Legal and HR departments get more comfortable with lots more conversation going on than they can control or would want to, you'll see the wheel turn a bit more quickly.

But you're right: you can almost hear it turning now it's so slow. It's sorta like watching paint dry sometimes.

The Lovable Rogue · 11 months ago

Jason, that's an interesting analogy. Let's hope that social media adoption rates do follow the pattern which you describe above. Unfortunately, in the UK at least, firms seem particularly reluctant to recognise the potential thereof. Even though many of these platforms have been specifically designed to develop the conversation, fear of the 'new' continues to represent a major deterent to organisational implementation.

Whilst your post specifically addresses internal communications, it is also directly applicable to communications which the organisation has with external stakeholders. Essentially, I think that the problem falls upon organisational mentality. At the moment, I don't think that genuine customer satisfaction is at the foremost of organisational thinking; or at least not to the extent that it should be. If it were, then greater attention would be placed upon addressing the customer's needs in whichever forum which these customers deem necessary.

At present, even those firms which do employ some social media strategies tend to follow a platform checklist (blog, Twitter, etc). Indeed, they seem to lack the foresight to adopt emerging platforms before they become mainstream.

TLR

Jason Anthoine · 11 months ago

TLR, you bring up an interesting point about a "platform checklist." Many companies do seem to go down a list of tools and put them in place simply to say they've done so. There's not much effort going into making the tools as robust as they could be. We see it a lot with blogs, in that a senior leader wants one, tries it for a few weeks (with comments turned off), and then lets it die on the vine, forever dooming blogs to be proclaimed a failure at the firm because of this one ill-defined attempt.

I guess when more companies believe there is value in the conversation, not just in the tool, you'll see more internal adoption. Sadly, most companies don't care what their employees have to say or what they think as long as the widgets are produced on time. That's ignoring the strongest growth engine the firm has, its employees. And it's doing so at great peril, especially in highly competitive, global markets where most firms operate these days.

Danny Brown · 11 months ago

You make a perfect example, Jason. Too many companies do ignore the employee, and in this day and age, that's almost akin to business suicide. I've long been a vocal advocate of encouraging greatness from the ground floor up - after all, even the most successful of CEO's had to start in the equivalent of the mailroom. They'd do well to remember that great ideas aren't judicious in their choice of origin.

The Lovable Rogue · 11 months ago

And let's not forget that energising the employees to willingly engage in social media initiatives can produce an extra channel for engagement with the customer. Such a channel can be implemented for almost zero cost, whilst encouraging the employee to feel passionate about their organisation.

TLR

Danny Brown · 11 months ago

Sadly, I think this is an inherent problem with UK companies on a great many levels, Chris (and, as you know, I say that as someone who lived and worked in the UK until 2006).

For some reason, Britain has fallen behind in the business innovation model - strange, given her history in leading the way for new discoveries and inventions. Yet when a survey says that more than 70% of UK PR companies don't have any kind of online strategy, and Government 2.0 seems a pipe dream, should we really be surprised?

Maybe UK businesses and corporations should look at how the individual is embracing the new models - they could learn a lot.

BarbChamberlain · 11 months ago

Thanks for the topic--definitely overlooked, and one that interests me. The communications staff I oversee handles both external and internal communications, and we're not using any new tools yet.

We're part of a much larger organization, and a couple of us who are on Twitter have talked about using that, or maybe Yammer, to connect everyone who's so spread out.

No matter what tool or platform we choose, there will be a learning hurdle that some of them have to get over if they're not already in that space.

To state the obvious: I'll continue to use email in addition to whatever I land on. Email is a common tool that I mention because it is a means of carrying on a conversation. I think we're so excited about the new shiny objects we often leave it off the list, and doing a better job of using email for internal communications would be a vast improvement in many workplaces and committees.

@SuzeMuse wrote a blog post on managing email recently that may be of interest: http://suzemuse.netfirms.com/2009/01/13/what-away...

@BarbChamberlain

Jason Anthoine · 11 months ago

Email continues to be an important internal communication tool, though it's value is diminished by the spam and unimportant messages we receive in our inboxes every day, especially those that are the result of a "reply all" response.

We conduct email usage surveys for companies and find that the majority of managers say that they receive a majority of email that doesn't apply to them and wish they could filter it out before it hits the inbox. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what internal mail is important and what isn't until you open it. Despite its shortcomings, though, it remains a critical tool.

I think you'll find Yammer worth your time. It's a fairly easy concept to grasp and allows for quick snippets of info to be exchanged fairly rapidly (like Twitter). Another you might look into for far-flung team members is instant messaging. Having your whole team available practically instantly on your desktop is a great help when coordinating communication activities. Our firm relies on instant messaging more than we do email and it's a critical business tool for us. Yahoo, Google and AOL offer some good solutions that are easy to implement, usually without involving your IT department.

Thanks for your thoughts, Barb. Your experience is very helpful!