Workplace Meta Shutting Down

Workplace from Meta closes doors to new customers

by with No Comment Facebook at WorkServices & SoftwareSocial Business

If your organisation is using Meta’s enterprise social network platform, now is the time to consider your options

It was announced earlier today that Workplace from Meta, launched all the way back in 2016, is going to be shut down for good in 2026.

At this point there is is no official announcement from Meta , but from an internal memo and company spokespeople offering comment to journalists, it was shared that the only preferred migration partner is Zoom-owned Workvivo, an employee engagement app, headquartered in the Republic of Ireland. Despite no official announcement at this stage from Meta, Workvivo has already stated that Workplace from Meta is discontinuing and that they are the only official migration partner.

Workvivo have stated that customers transitioning off Workplace will also be offered other Workvivo functionalities at no extra cost.

As you may be aware, I’ve spent a fair bit of my time the past 2 years deploying a new employee communications platform based on Workvivo at a global financial services organisation, and I have to say that I’m delighted at this early suggestion that Meta have been working with Workvivo to build an automated migration tool.

John Goulding, CEO and founder of Workvivo has stated:

We know that the news today may be disruptive for Workplace from Meta customers, but we’re so excited about the opportunity to support and help them. Meta has made a huge impact in this market, and we believe that Workvivo is the natural choice for Workplace from Meta customers to transition their employee experience platform.

It’s our top priority to support customers through this transition, and our team is working to make this process as frictionless as possible. We put our customers first, and this will be no different for the Workplace from Meta customers. We are excited to welcome Workplace from Meta customers into our incredible customer community and see the amazing things they can do with Workvivo.

Workplace from Meta will remain as is until August 31, 2025, then turning into read-only and free, and being completely decommissioned by June 2026.

Reuters have reported that Meta’s primary reason for shutting down Workplace is to allow a doubling down on the metaverse and artificial intelligence technologies. A spokesperson for Meta told Reuters:

We are discontinuing Workplace (to) focus on building AI and metaverse technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape the way we work. Over the next two years, we will provide our Workplace customers the option to transition to Zoom’s Workvivo product, Meta’s only preferred migration partner.

Any large-scale migration from one platform to another is never frictionless. Automated content migration tools ease the technical conversion, but platforms have different information architectures, capabilities and user experiences, and so even when the content is across, there’s usually a significant volume of tidying and finessing to be done. Then, as ever, the people journey is more critical than the technological one. Communications, training, and change management will all be key.

Migrating to Workvivo from Workplace from Meta is likely to be the most popular option – there are obvious similarities in functionality, and Workvivo’s product can be community driven. However, Workvivo is a broader employee communications platform (with features such as newsletters and digital signage), whereas Workplace is better described as an enterprise social network (as you’d expect, given it was based on the consumer Facebook platform). In speaking to many of Workvivo’s customers during the procurement process and at events, there are many customers for whom publishing is primarily a managed internal communications task, with more limited and contained social communities. Whereas on Workplace by Meta, the social channels tend to overwhelmingly dominate the platform.

For any customers facing the closure of their Workplace platforms, I’d firmly suggest that extensive due diligence is carried out around the best solution for migrating from Workplace, adding a new platform, or considering other options and other solutions. Whilst I can confirm that Workvivo is a great solution, it does have its limitations in specific areas (compared to Workplace and other competitive employee communications platforms). It wouldn’t make any sense to jump straight into the automated migration option without considering those pros and cons in significant detail.

On the other hand If you are a Workplace from Meta user, think of the announcement as an opportunity to stop and assess the channel’s effectiveness, and future alternatives and options available, before jumping into decisions. It could be that your organisation already has more appropriate options for your use case.

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A compelling new multinational insurance ESN case study

by with No Comment JiveSocial Business

It’s always good to read a successful customer reference story, particularly when the organisation’s culture and productivity has truly been revolutionised by deploying a new internal community. 

UNIQA logoThis is definitely the case with this new case study, featuring UNIQA Insurance Group. Based in Vienna, UNIQA have grown incredibly quickly over the past decade, particularly via a push into Central and Eastern Europe.  This has left them with a number of substantial challenges in terms of communications and alignment across these varied markets and native languages:

Jive Software, Inc. today announced that UNIQA Insurance Group AG (UNIQA Group), a leading European insurance group, launched a new Jive-powered Interactive Intranet to strengthen strategic alignment and employee engagement across its global workforce. With this modern corporate communications solution, the rapidly growing company is cultivating a more transparent, unified culture, while gaining a better understanding of the reach and impact of its internal messages.


UNIQA Insurance Group AG (UNIQA Group), a leading European insurance group, launched a new Jive-powered Interactive Intranet to strengthen strategic alignment and employee engagement across its global workforce

Over the past fifteen years, UNIQA Group acquired several insurance companies during its push into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The business is now one of the leading insurance groups in its core markets of Austria and CEE, serving more than 10 million customers in 19 countries. UNIQA’s 100 percent subsidiary, UNIQA International, manages 15 markets in the CEE growth region-most of which operate with different languages, cultures and other regional distinctions. The company’s international communications team struggled to efficiently deliver announcements and messages to various countries via email, multiple disconnected static intranets and expensive in-person meetings.

“As we expand, we’re striving to be a different kind of insurer. The cornerstone of our operations is companywide personal contact and direct collaboration amongst all employees throughout our countries and local branches,” said Gabriela Rusu, head of group communication at UNIQA. “Jive will bring us a big step forward in this journey by connecting those offices, and facilitating employee engagement and change management. We made the switch to Jive’s Interactive Intranet because we need a secure, cloud-based solution-with both powerful communications and collaboration functionality that save the organization significant time and money.”  

The interactive intranet-dubbed “UNIQAspace”-launched this summer to facilitate captivating communications that reach thousands of employees across all of the company’s markets. Underpinned by Jive, the solution makes it easy for executives to interact with employees through blogs and videos. People can ask questions, comment, share and discuss-opening up transparent dialogue between executives and country teams that fosters alignment around the company’s vision. UNIQAspace also provides consumer-style mobile apps with easy ways for employees to get company news, stay connected and participate wherever they go.

More >

I had the pleasure of working with UNIQA on the early stages of this project, and it’s been hugely rewarding to hear how well UNIQAspace has been received by their employees, and to see the transformational shift that is taking place in their international communications, knowledge-sharing and collaboration.

UNIQA are a good example of an organisation that has grown quickly, primarily by acquisition then followed by organic growth, where the existing centrally-published intranet and communications methodology simply hadn’t kept up with the demands of a relatively young, multi-national and multi-lingual workforce. Shifting to a open, transparent and collaborative work style via a cloud-based community has empowered employees, created opportunities for cross-team engagement, and ensured that all countries are representated, heard and understood.

Document management

Document management in online communities

by with 3 Comments JiveSocial BusinessStrategy

One of the key differentiators between the community solutions developed by Jive Software and those from IBM and Microsoft (talking Sharepoint rather than Yammer) is the relative lack of focus on the requirement for document management.

Document management

That’s not to say that Jive platforms do not allow the sharing and management of documents – far from it – but that instead, these are simply embedded within the standard content types and information architecture of the platform rather than treated as a specific pillar of the platform itself.

Jive Software logoJust as a user can create a native Jive document or discussion, so they can upload a file (e.g. a Word document) that can be previewed, downloaded, commented on, updated by others and managed from a version perspective. However, these files do not have a hierarchy beyond the place containers they reside within – there’s no concept of folders or libraries for instance. Files are primarily stored within Jive documents (or can be attached to other content types), and are managed using the same tags and categories that apply to all other content.

At the end of the day, in Jive communities, files are just one of the many ways in which users can collaborate. In many situations they are actually discouraged – group and team work can be much more effective when using native content types than when having to deal with the upload/download of sizeable files, the need for compatible editor support and so on.

This differs from IBM Connections in a pretty significant way…

IBM ConnectionsFile sharing was added to the IBM Connections product back the 2.5 release in 2009 alongside Wikis (back when it was still badged as Lotus Connections).

Initially, IBM seemed to envisage this support as being intended for lightweight social file sharing – the file management features were limited, meta data was very simplistic and all files were shared at a single level, relying on tags to provide any structure required. Right from the first implementations of Connections 2.5 it was pretty clear that this was not going to be enough for most IBM customers. Whether because users were typically migrating from Lotus Quickr or Domino Team Rooms, or because Connections customers tended to be large enterprises that had become conditioned to heavy use of document and content management platforms, users were adamant that they needed hierarchical storage architectures, heavy-duty file meta-data, complex library permissions and so on.

IBM responded to these demands by steadily adding more features to the Files feature in subsequent Connections releases. From the Windows Explorer connector to allow direct browsing of files from the desktop, through folder support (firstly for standalone files and then within communities), then the addition of industrial-grade Connections Content Manager (CCM) file libraries (built on IBM FileNet), to document editing and preview in IBM Docs and so on.  Looking at the Connections portfolio from the outside last year, it seemed as if almost every new Connections feature and enhancement was somehow related to the management of files in the platform! (I’m sure that wasn’t the reality, but that was how it read from the press releases and announcement letters.)

Personally, I find this difficult to comprehend (and I’ve had long and passionate discussions with both IBM product managers and IBM partners about this topic). I find files (particularly Microsoft Office documents) to be fine for point-in-time exports of collaborative content, workflows or decisions, but they are not supportive of productive team or community thinking, discussion or working in a general sense.

File formatsThere are, of course, situations where files are necessary – for example a creative team working on an image or video that needs to be shared outside the organisation, or a finance team working on a complex report. However, in the vast majority of situations, my personal belief is that the content should be stored in a native form in the best application to support the act of working together around that information, decision or process.  For most general knowledge work, that should likely be a native document, question or discussion in the collaborative platform, rather than a proprietary file that then needs to be managed as a separate entity. In addition, I continue to propose that folksonomy almost always beats taxonomy when it comes to collaborative use cases, and therefore that tags and categories are more appropriate ways to manage information than hierarchical folders.

HierarchySadly, but probably inevitably, I seem to be in the minority on this discussion. So many people (particularly those in their 30s and 40s) remain so subconsciously wedded to the concept of their knowledge being stored in a collection of files in a hierarchy of folders, all still named with long-unnecessary legacy three-character file extensions. It’s these folks that are demanding that IBM support this out-dated means of working within Connections, and thus it’s perfectly understandable that IBM is responding by supporting this left-over 1980s paradigm within Connections.

Why the difference between IBM and Jive customer demands?

Interestingly, in my time as a Jive Software strategist, I was rarely asked for similar file management features within Jive-n communities, whereas when working with Connections the requirement came up in virtually every workshop. There seemed to be a general understanding that a change in work culture was required in their organisations, and thus the deployment of a new community was more than simply a new platform, it required users to adopt new practices and work styles.

A second factor that often came into play is that most Jive customers also had another document management solution in place, whether for specific use cases, or for general access across the organisation – usually this was Microsoft Sharepoint. Typically this was universally detested by the users – described as unintuitive, hard to manage and impossible to search – but provided enough functionality that it could be left to handle the specific use cases where large-scale file storage was required.  This is less common in the IBM world where Domino is more common as the legacy team collaboration platform, and where Sharepoint can sometimes be seen as the enemy.  That’s not to say that I would propose anyone deploy Sharepoint specifically for document management (there are better tools out there if that is what is required), but simply that ‘good enough‘ is sometimes all that is needed for specific use cases that cannot be supported yet in the common collaboration platform.

But what if I want document management in my Jive community?

All that said (and I really do hope and believe that file management will no longer be an issue in 5-10 years time), it is good to have options and alternatives – no matter what your community platform of choice.  Therefore I am pleased that there is a new option for Jive customers… fme Document Manager for Jive.

This partner extension for Jive, gives a brand new way to explore your files stored in the community, allowing documents to be found more quickly, files to be uploaded in bulk, inline metadata editing and direct support for almost all office applications (rather than just Microsoft Office). This 10-minute demo video covers it well:

As I made clear above, I would love us to look to transition away from formal file and document management as our primary technique for collaboration. However, if this is still required for your use cases, then do take a look a fme’s product datasheet and contact either myself or fme direct if you need more info or to discuss the options available.

Thinking of launching your own online ESN or external community?

First of all, consider each and every requirement as an individual use case, that requires its own definition, configuration and community management. As part of the definition process, one of the key discussion points is to look at how the business processes and workflows can be best supported in the community – what content types, functionality and user interactions are required.  Only once these aspects are understood then look at what content types and/or files are required…

If formal document management is a necessity, then that ‘s the point at which to start considering whether something integrated like CCM or the fme solution is required, or whether those specific use cases would be better supported on a more formal and structured platform.

How do you approach this topic? Are you an advocate for document management, or do you believe that more open and unstructured collaboration is the correct approach? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below…

Unfollowed?

Twitter timeline zero

by with One Comment Social Business

Over the years, my Twitter followed list had become somewhat cluttered… Just over 4,000 accounts – the usual mixture of friends, family, colleagues, partners, thought leaders, brands and celebrities.  I’d had a few occasional cleanups, but put it this way, it was becoming difficult to see the wood for the trees.  The signal to noise ratio had become pretty awful, and most of the value I was seeing from Twitter came through the search terms I used in Tweetdeck columns, rather than from my timeline.  Thankfully, I’d never been a Twitter completionist, as quite frankly there was no way I had a hope of coming close in the past couple of years!

So what to do?

Reboot.

Put quite simply, it was time to start again.

So as of this morning, I’ve unfollowed every single account that I was was following:

followed

How did I do that?  Well here’s the trick.  Open up your following list in Google Chrome, and scroll all the way to the bottom.  It currently loads 12 accounts at a time, so in my case I had to keep scrolling for a long time.  Then open the Chrome Javascript Console, and enter the following jQuery command:

$('.user-actions-follow-button').click()

Leave it to run for a few seconds, and you’ll see that every single ‘following’ button gets toggled back to ‘follow’.  Of course, if you wanted to just unfollow a sub-section of accounts, you could search for them and then run the command.

So what now?

My plan is to follow Luis Suarez’s example, and to start using lists in a big way to manage my Twitter use, and to allocate each to a column in my Tweetdeck dashboard.  I know this isn’t exactly revolutionary, but do think it will force me to be more selective over whom I let enhance/pollute my timeline, and thus my attention.  At the same time, I’ve opened up my DM preferences to allow anyone to direct message me even though I’m not following them…

I’ll let you know how it goes!

State of Community Management 2015

The State of Community Management 2015

by with No Comment Social Business

The Community RoundtableIn my line of work as a collaboration and community strategist, one of the key milestones each year is the early summer publication of the State of Community Management report by the The Community Roundtable group.  It tends to provide accurate measurement of the progress of online communities within organisations around the world, as well as offering terrific insight in terms of how one’s own customers and projects compare to the both the average and the very best communities elsewhere.

If you haven’t come across the The Community Roundtable before, you should really should read up on them and their activities. Founded by Rachel Happe and Jim Storre, they’ve been leading the way on research and analysis of online communities for a long time now:

In 2009, we noticed the adoption of social tools and technologies begin to skyrocket, but there was no corresponding attention being paid to community management. Our collective background in business operations and technology (Rachel) and community strategy and management (Jim) set off warning bells. We knew the use of social technologies would open a pandora’s box of implications and challenges for organizations. There were a few early community practitioners who understood what it would take to be successful and we knew that their tacit understanding would be critical to capture and share if the social media, community and social business disciplines were to grow. The Community Roundtable was our answer to this need.

Amongst other efforts such as salary surveys and maturity models, the The Community Roundtable publish the State of Community Management report on an annual basis.  The 2015 version was released a couple of weeks ago:

We are particularly pleased this year to be able to break down the markers of community management maturity into maturity stages, which allows you to see more detail about what initiatives are most prevalent in each stage of a community’s lifecycle. This data helps considerably in building community roadmaps and providing stakeholders with data that supports it. Other new analysis features this year include:

  • Reporting on ‘inactive’ populations in our engagement profile – critical for putting the other engagement categories into context.
  • Discussion of some of our ‘data dilemmas’ as we analyzed the data, which will give you some insight into areas of the research that are still immature or non-standard.

Ultimately our goal with this research is to provide data that helps you:

  • Plan and develop a roadmap
  • Prioritize resources effectively
  • Educate stakeholders
  • Increase your credibility
  • Demonstrating your value as a community professional

This year’s research is as interesting and insightful as usual.  I’ve been working through the key findings and recommendations this week, and have been delighted to see how closely the research aligns with Jive’s existing strategy and methodologies.  However, there’s a huge amount of great content in the report, presentation and recording, am so I’m still digesting what changes I’ll make to my own recommendations as a result of this year’s info.

If you’re interested in finding out more, here’s what you need:

If you’re either a community manager yourself, or else consult on topics in this area, I really do see this research as being an essential part of your arsenal. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8jalG-i05s

Empty Office

Digitally-positive UK workforce let down by workplace tech

by with No Comment Social Business

Fujitsu today published a study revealing a lack of digital services being provided by UK employers to their work force.

In the Fujitsu report, ‘Digital Inside Out‘, 73% of employees stated that digital is vital to the future success of their organisation, despite only 45% of employees feeling they are provided with access to the technology services and applications they need to do their job sufficiently.

A 29% of the working population admitted that their ability to do their job is being hindered due to poor digital services.

Michael Keegan, CEO at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said: “Today’s employees are well informed and understand the benefits digital can bring to them in the workplace.”

The benefits digital brings to an organisation, and to the people working within it, were made clear by the employees surveyed.

Main advantages pointed by the respondents included the ability to work remotely (57%), real time access to information (50%) and time-saving (46%).

More >

Flags of Europe

Is Europe leading the way on Social Business?

by with No Comment Social Business

Dion Hinchcliffe certainly thinks so:

[I]t’s not lost on practitioners these days that many of the largest and most committed efforts with social business are now in Europe. The approach to IT in general in the region is certainly more pragmatic, yet it’s also clear that the evolution of the future of work and the new digital workplace is one the minds of just about everyone around the world right now.

So, is social business the leading model for operating our organizations yet? Perhaps not quite, but it is certainly gaining ground and these are some of the leading examples in top organizations today.

In this excellent piece for ZDNet, Dion lists seven major European organisations that are demonstrating  leadership in this space:

I tend to agree, the best case studies I’ve seen in the past 2 years have been European in origin. Not exclusively of course, but there certainly seems to be a theme.

Is this due to the cultural makeup of European businesses, or just coincidence? Can you suggest some US-based organisations undertaking similarly-sized social business projects that would fit into this group?  I’d love to hear from you…

Coffee Time

Using random meet-ups to build relationships and strengthen company culture

by with No Comment Future of WorkSocial Business

I love this idea…

One initiative we’re trying at the moment is CoffeeTime. CoffeeTime is an app, created in less than a day by Daniel, one of our developers. It works by pairing people up randomly, to meet and greet each other, often with someone you may not normally interact with. It doesn’t matter what level in the org chart, or role each person plays. Anyone can be matched up for a 30-minute chat (though people can choose to opt-out, of course). It aims to encourage the cross-team communication and serendipitous learning which otherwise happens naturally when co-workers share an office.

At its heart is the idea that the most important things to learn are often those you didn’t even know you needed to. By making more connections with the people you work with, it increases the likelihood that you’ll have access to someone who can help you further down the line. Maybe that person is having a similar problem or has experienced it before and can point you in the right direction. Or maybe you just end up making a new friend!

CoffeeTime visual

Either way, once a week CoffeeTime runs and you’re matched up with someone else in the organization. Each of you receives an email telling you who that person is. You then take it from there and arrange to meet in person or over a Hangout, to eat lunch or just chat.

The folks at Fog Creek who invented the CoffeeTime app have now open-sourced it and so you can try the concept out in your organisation.

I believe that any digital  transformation project needs to embrace and enable face-to-face as well as online relationships. I therefore think that this model has real potential in breaking down barriers, developing stronger cross-departmental ties and reinforcing an open and informal culture of collaboration.

What do you think? Would you consider running a similar app at your organisation?

Slack usage chart

Slack hits half a million daily users in its first year

by with No Comment SlackSocial Business

Slack turns one year old today. In its short but fascinating history, the startup has managed the remarkable feat of actually getting people excited about enterprise communication software. The company has more than 500,000 daily active users, and it’s adding tens of thousands more every each week.

“That’s our primary metric,” founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield tells Quartz. “If you’re not using Slack every single day, you’re not really using it.”

The chart above shows the peak number of daily active users every week in the last year. Minus the big drop off around the holidays, the company has been quickly gaining steam since August—around the time Wired published a big profile. Slack relies primarily on word-of-mouth marketing, helping keep costs low.

Impressive stats, and I really like the metric that they have chosen to represent their growth.  Not ‘registered users’ or ‘organisation domains represented’ but real users that are actually using the platform as it is intended to be used. ((And given Slack is not traditional enterprise software, they’re not indicating licences bundled with renewals for other products either))

I access Slack from my Mac and multiple mobile devices every single day, using it for the team that runs Social Connections, plus multiple other communities.  I have to say, no other tool I’ve used in the past year has had such a dramatic impact on my own personal productivity.  As I mentioned in my IBMConnectED post, I’m surprised that IBM hasn’t tried to counter the rise of Slack in any direct way.

However, other enterprise vendors have taken this on, and whilst I can see Slack continuing its impressive rise, it will be interesting to see how that chart continues over the next 6-12 months.

New Clues!

The Clue Train is back!

by with No Comment BooksFuture of WorkSocial Business

For many in this industry, The Clue Train Manifesto was a seminal work in the evolution of the internet, and in many ways forecast the development of social media and social business.

As I noted in my Social Connections session in Stockholm, it’s incredible both how prescient the site was (written back in 1999), and also how 15 years later, so many organisations are still failing to take note of the theses it offered.

The Clue Train Manifesto book is front and centre on my bookshelves in the office, and it gets thumbed through at least once a month.  The authors have gone on to varied and greater things, and the site has still looks much as it did 15 years ago, so I thought that was that.

So, imagine my surprise when I came across this today:

New Clues!

Yep! Two of the original authors, Doc Searls and David Weinberger, are back with their thoughts on today’s internet.  Here’s the intro:

Hear, O Internet.

It has been sixteen years since our previous communication.

In that time the People of the Internet — you and me and all our friends of friends of friends, unto the last Kevin Bacon — have made the Internet an awesome place, filled with wonders and portents.

From the serious to the lolworthy to the wtf, we have up-ended titans, created heroes,  and changed the most basic assumptions about How Things Work and Who We Are.

But now all the good work we’ve done together faces mortal dangers.

When we first came before you, it was to warn of the threat posed by those who did not understand that they did not understand the Internet.

These are The Fools, the businesses that have merely adopted the trappings of the Internet.

Now two more hordes threaten all that we have built for one another.

The Marauders understand the Internet all too well. They view it as theirs to plunder, extracting our data and money from it, thinking that we are the fools.

But most dangerous of all is the third horde: Us.

A horde is an undifferentiated mass of people. But the glory of the Internet is that it lets us connect as diverse and distinct individuals.

We all like mass entertainment. Heck, TV’s gotten pretty great these days, and the Net lets us watch it when we want. Terrific.

But we need to remember that delivering mass media is the least of the Net’s powers.

The Net’s super-power is connection without permission. Its almighty power is that we can make of it whatever we want.

It is therefore not time to lean back and consume the oh-so-tasty junk food created by Fools and Marauders as if our work were done. It is time to breathe in the fire of the Net and transform every institution that would play us for a patsy.

An organ-by-organ body snatch of the Internet is already well underway. Make no mistake: with a stroke of a pen, a covert handshake, or by allowing memes to drown out the cries of the afflicted we can lose the Internet we love.

We come to you from the years of the Web’s beginning. We have grown old together on the Internet. Time is short.

We, the People of the Internet, need to remember the glory of its revelation so that we reclaim it now in the name of what it truly is.

There follow 121 new clues. I have no idea if they’ll be as influential as the first set were all that time ago. However you owe it to yourself to take 10 minutes out to read and digest…

Identity

Establishing and maintaining a social identity: four to follow, four to avoid!

by IBMSocial Business

Here are my four standards for creating and maintaining a positive identity or brand online…

 

  • Be yourself.
  • Be original.
  • Be authentic.
  • Demonstrate integrity.

That’s not in any way meant to suggest that I get it right all the time – I realise my weaknesses and mistakes. However I do have this list on the wall in my office and regularly glance at it to evaluate if I’m holding true to my values.

Here are four opposing behaviours that I consider to break my standards above…

  • Telling others what to share.
  • Sharing verbatim a list of pre-written content that someone else has supplied.
  • Subscribing to services that automate delivery of others’ content to your social channels.
  • Solely sharing content that reflects your employer’s marketing brand.

If you’re doing one or more of the above, please consider whether it reflects well on your own personal identity or that of the brand you or your company wish to promote.

I firmly believe that in the long run, repeatedly demonstrating these behaviours will harm rather than enhancing the success of your efforts.

My Social Connections VI session: ‘Social Business: The unstoppable force to overcome immovable objections’

by with One Comment EventsSocial BusinessSocial Connections

As you may have heard by now, we took the significant step of recording every single session at Social Connections VI back in June.  As the videos have been processed and uploaded, the team have been publishing them on our Vimeo channel as well as highlighting some of the most popular sessions on the Social Connections blog – it’s worth checking them out if you haven’t already.

I’m pleased to say that my own session is now online.  Here’s the abstract:

“I’m too busy” “My work is confidential” “I’m never in the office” “My position depends on me being the only source of my knowledge” We’ve all heard objections like these – reasons why key individuals cannot spare the time to share knowledge or to collaborate with others. Whatever the role, be it as executives, consultants, sales people or any other part of your organization, for social business to truly revolutionize your organization’s culture and productivity, these objections must be overcome. In this session, you’ll hear about driving adoption in organizations around the world. Find out how to make the benefits of social business irresistible for all your staff, no matter how immovable they might appear!

I’ve embedded the recording here, or you can watch it on the Vimeo site.  The deck is available on Slideshare (I appreciate it is difficult to see in the video – apologies for that!).

I’d love to hear any feedback you have…

 

Top 25

The Top 25 Global Social Business Leaders

by with No Comment Social Business

Top 25Social business is about much more than social media. A social business is an organisation whose culture and practices encourage networks of people—employees, partners, customers and others—to create business value, and, ultimately, increase revenue and profits.

So who are the exceptional talents building today’s social businesses and what can we learn from them?

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has identified 25 leaders who are successfully applying social technologies, principles and strategies within organisations around the world.

Sponsored by IBM, this top 25 list highlights some of the organisations (and their leaders) that have truly revolutionised the way they operate using social technologies.  Here are the top 5:

  • Bonin Bough – Vice-president of global media and consumer engagement, Mondelez International
  • Marisa Thalberg – Vice-president for corporate digital marketing , Estée Lauder Cos
  • Chris Laping – Senior vice-president for business transformation, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers
  • Scott Monty – Former chief of global digital communications, Ford Motor Co
  • Gilberto Garcia – Director of innovation, Cemex

It’s a fascinating list, and there are definitely stories here that will be relevant to all sizes and types of organisations.

More >

When Cultures Collide cover

Communication patterns around the world

by with No Comment Social Business

Taken from Richard D Lewis’ excellent book, ‘When Cultures Collide‘ (originally published in 1996, updated in 2005), this insightful graphic summarises the author’s understanding of how different nationalities and cultures might communicate during a sales/purchase process:

Communication Patterns Around The World

Gus Lubin writes in Business Insider:

You can’t expect negotiations with French to be like negotations with Americans, and the same holds true for cultures around the world.

British linguist Richard D. Lewis charted communication patterns as well as leadership styles and cultural identities in his book, “When Cultures Collide,” now in a 2005 third edition. His organization offers classes in cross-cultural communication for big clients ranging from Unilever to BMW.

In support of cultural studies, he writes: “By focusing on the cultural roots of national behavior, both in society and business, we can foresee and calculate with a surprising degree of accuracy how others will react to our plans for them, and we can make certain assumptions as to how they will approach us. A working knowledge of the basic traits of other cultures (as well as our own) will minimize unpleasant surprises (culture shock), give us insights in advance, and enable us to interact successfully with nationalities with whom we previously had difficulty.”

Although cultural generalizations can be overly reductive, Lewis, who speaks ten languages, insists it can be done fairly, writing: “Determining national characteristics is treading a minefield of inaccurate assessment and surprising exception. There is, however, such a thing as a national norm.”

When meeting with French, be prepared for a vigorous logical debate.

When meeting with Americans, expect them to lay all their cards on the table, get upset when there’s a disagreement, and resolve as fast as possible with one or both sides making concessions.

Canadians, compared to Americans, tend to be more low-key and inclined to seek harmony, though they are similarly direct.

English tend to avoid confrontation in an understated, mannered, and humorous style that can be powerful or inefficient.

Germans rely on logic but “tend to amass more evidence and labor their points more than either the British or the French.”

Spanish and Italians “regard their languages as instruments of eloquence and they will go up and down the scale at will, pulling out every stop if need be to achieve greater expressiveness.”

The Nordic countries often have entrenched opinions that they have formulated “in the long dark nights,” though they are reasonable conversationalists. Swedes often have the most wide-ranging discussions, Finns tend to value concision, and most Norwegians fall somewhere in between.

Swiss tend to be straightforward and unaggressive negotiators, who obtain concessions by expressing confidence in the quality and value of their goods and services.

Hungarians value eloquence over logic and are unafraid to talk over each other.

Bulgarians may take a circuitous approach to negotiations before seeking a mutually beneficial resolution, which will often be screwed up by bureaucracy.

Poles often have a communication style that is “enigmatic, ranging from a matter-of-fact pragmatic style to a wordy, sentimental, romantic approach to any given subject.”

The Dutch are focused on facts and figures but “are also great talkers and rarely make final decisions without a long ‘Dutch’ debate, sometimes approaching the danger zone of overanalysis.”

Chinese tend to be more direct than the Japanese and some other East Asians; however, meetings are principally for information gathering, with the real decisions made elsewhere. Hong Kongers negotiate much more briskly to achieve quick results.

Indian English “excels in ambiguity, and such things as truth and appearances are often subject to negotiation.”

Australians tend to have a loose and frank conversational style.

Singaporeans generally take time to build a relationship, after which they can be shrewd negotiators.

Koreans tend to be energetic conversationalists who seek to close deals quickly, occasionally stretching the truth.

Indonesians tend to be very deferential conversationalists, sometimes to the point of ambiguity.

Israelis tend to proceed logically on most issues but emotionally on some.

These differences in attitude and approach can be so important, not just in deal-making and negotiation, but in all interactions – face to face and on social networks.

Do Richard’s findings match your own experience?

[Tip ‘o the hat to Rawn Shah for sharing this graphic earlier…]

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