A discussion of common gaps and challenges with enterprise social networks, and human capacity and skills building in the digital workplace.

1. Enterprise social networks
and the Digital Workplace
Catherine Shinners
Merced Group
A conversation with SIKM – August 15, 2017

2. ESN and the Digital Workplace
 About – Catherine Shinners
 Elements of the Digital Workplace
 Grappling with common gaps in a holistic approach
 Structuring an enterprise social network program
 About those humans
 Approaches
Merced Group

3. CATHERINE SHINNERS
In our networked world we’re
more connected to our
organizations, society,
environment - and each other.
Catherine brings her
background as a change
agent, educator, marketer and
technologist, to help
organizations and people
build new agilities and
adaptations to the way they
network, learn, lead and
create value.
@catshinners
collaboration-incontext.com
MercedGroup.com
Changeagentsworldwide.com
Merced Group Social business consultancy since 2004
Founding member since 2013
Information and Knowledge Strategy Master’s
School of Professional Studies
Since 2014
Merced Group

4. Brings web benefits within
SLATES, mobile, multimodal (video, voice, text), rich
experience, location
Pull not push
Subscribing, alerts, tagging, social graph
Contextuality
Immediacy of conversation - Resources, assets are in the flow.
Authentic leadership voices. Socializing knowledge – learning as
we go.
Behavior, capabilities, ethos
Transparency, networks of relationships, reciprocity, personal
knowledge curation
Empowered association
Communities of practice, knowledge networks,
crowdsourcing
Elements of the Digital Workplace
It’s all been there for a while, so
why does it seem so far away?

5. GAPS IN A HOLISTIC ESN DESIGN
Miss focus on
business
relevance at
the start
Just another
platform
Lack of
understanding
of Future of
Work skills
Organizational
processes
stuck in 1990s
Merced Group

6. ESN Business Architecture
Strategy Leadership
Community Management
Communications &
Content
Measurement &
Business Value
Tools &
Technology
Advocates and
Champions
Communities
of Practice
Corporate
Initiatives
Business
Imperatives
Adoption & Engagement
Policies &
Governance
Training &
Enablement
Intranet
Business Use Cases
Project & Team
Collaboration
Executive & Internal
Communications
• Social Media
Policy
• Business Plan• Business Imperative
methodology
• Business
Imperatives
• Executive
sponsor
• C-Suite
advocacy
Security
• Live training
• Video training
• Office hours
• Business advisories
•Community Manager
blog
•Adoption campaigns
•Success stories
•Advocates Program
•Regular newsletter
•Special cohorts
•Measurement program
•User survey
•Narratives
• Mobile
• Tools
integration

7. THE CONVERSATION AROUND MEASUREMENT
How many active users did
we have last month?
45,000!
Wow, that’s great!
Merced Group

8. Business Value Assessment and Operational Metrics
8
Business Value Assessment Program & Operational Metrics
Aligned with strategic business imperatives
Quantitative business outcomes
• Impact metrics against business use case
scenarios
Qualitative business outcomes
• Narratives that create understanding of impact –
success stories, case studies
• Sentiment surveys
Platform analytics
• Measure basic usage, baseline adoption
Campaign & communications metrics
• Measure employee understanding, awareness,
engagement
Social Network Analysis/Organizational Network
Analysis
• Measure increased connectivity, knowledge
sharing, cross-organizational knowledge flows
Business Value Assessments – used to assess business and organizational impact
Program & Operational Metrics – used as indicators of progress in adoption, engagement,
communications and training programs – identify gaps and areas for improvement
Merced Group by Catherine Shinners

9. Measuring for Value
9
Business Imperative Business
Scenarios/Use
Cases
Impacted Groups
or Organization
Benefits
Quantitative
Benefits
Qualitative
Organizational transformation
• Converge, reduce technology
platforms
• Employee engagement
• Advance culture of
collaboration/digital workplace
•Intranet
•Organizational
communication and
coordination
• Internal
communications
• Human resources
• Senior leadership
• Tech $ reduced
• Operational $ reduced
• Employee engagement
surveys show improvement
• Sentiment survey
• Workplace satisfaction
• Adaptive leadership
Productivity
• Enhance info seeking, sharing
• Organize, manage teams
• Institutional knowledge capture
• Expertise location
• Streamline, simplify work processes
• Surface institutional knowledge
•Team/Dept-level
collaboration
•Project Collaboration
•Knowledge base
•Communities of practice
• IT
• Product
development
• Sales support
• Accelerated product cycles
• Cost management/
• Reduction
• Accelerated change cycles
• Improved customer
satisfaction
• Success stories
• Culture of continuous
learning
Sales
• Improve sales cycle • RFP Process
• Deal management
• Sales - Pre-sales,
RFP response
teams
• Faster response
• Increased # of RFPs
• Higher quality output
• Better capture, reuse of
tacit know-how for
continuous improvement
Strategic business imperatives identify business relevancy.
• Engage and gain buy-in from executive management
• Create understanding and rationale for ESN among broad set of stakeholders
• Provide value-based focus for measurement of impact and success
Merced Group by Catherine Shinners

10. Humans
Working Out
Loud
Communities
Personal
Knowledge
Mastery
Merced Group

11.  Growing knowledge work complexity
 Rapidly changing environments
 Geo-dispersed teams
 Dynamic shifting roles
 Diverse reporting structures
 Workers engage w/ 10-20 people/day
 Growing organizational information
flows….
 Pre-web mental models
 Work practices
 Management practices
 Knowledge management
practices
 Tools, tools, tools
 Information overload
Adding more, more, more on old frameworks
Merced Group

12. Team, Group Collaboration
Joint project work, artifact development,
combine expertise & skills
Communities
Shared knowledge, augment practice,
advance domain knowledge
Network Cooperation and Collaboration
Emergent learning, engagement within an
ecosystem, insight & influence
Inside organization Wider world
Reporting,
project or
role-based
ties
Professional
or interest-
based ties
Develop skills & capacities for people to productively inhabit all domains
by Catherine Shinners
Merced Group

13. Personal Knowledge Mastery
 Navigating, cultivating networks
 Working Out Loud
 Mastering filtering
 Personal curation
 Social learning
 Sense-making
“Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM)
is a framework for individuals to take
control of their professional
development through a continuous
process of seeking, sensing-making,
and sharing.”
– Harold Jarche
Amidst the proliferation of tools,
we leave people to stumble through this on their own
Lack of
understanding of
FOW skills
Merced Group

14. Working Out Loud (#wol)
Ethos Bryce Williams (2011)
#wol = Narrating your work + Observable work
Practice – John Stepper (2015)
Working Out Loud for a Better Career and Life
 Building relationships
 Generosity
 Visible work
 Purposeful discovery
 Growth mindset
Merced Group

15. Digital Workplace DNA = PKM, WOL, Communities
Build these capacities in everything you do
Community Management
Discipline
Advocates Champions
Keystone Projects Leadership Targeted processes
• Stewardship, Facilitation
• Exemplary practitioners
• Curation
• Engagement techniques
• Community of CMs
• Masters of tools
• Adept at applying to
work practice
• Network connector
• Enlister
• Special cohorts
• Applied to discipline (i.e.,
project management,
communications, support
• Influencers in their domain
• High impact application
of ESN, DW DNA
• Aligned with business
imperatives
• Executive
communications
• Participatory interaction
models
• Internal communications
• New hire onboarding
• Intranet publishing
• Learning & development
Merced Group
by Catherine Shinners

16. THE CORE ENGINE OF WOL
 TRUST - start with small groups
and teams
 PURPOSE - create a shared
purpose
 RECIPROCITY - role model
generosity, responsiveness &
awareness of others
 FLOW - identify a few inefficient
activities and transform into WOL
activities

17. 17
Content change
triggers via streams,
alerts, filters, or tags
improve awareness
& accessibility
Visibility of work
expands knowledge
collections and invites
diversity of more
inputs
Sharing updates and expanding
connections using robust profiles,
brings richer context and stronger
cohesion
Transparent creation and co-creation of
content in the flow of work leads to new
conversations and feedback loops
WOL DYNAMICS
Catherine Shinners, Merced Group
Network-
based group
cohesion &
connection
More agility &
knowledge
flows
Content
awareness &
accessibility
Transparent
conversational
flow of work
THE CORE ENGINE
IN ACTION
ME
ME
WE
WE
Merced Group

18. WOL FOR RFP PROCESS
AT FORTUNE 100 TECH COMPANY
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Moving a complex RFP process out of
fragmented, narrow and above-the-flow
practices into open, in-the-flow WOL
processes.
18Merced Group

19. An RFP response is a complex, cross-functional work process that involves:
❏ technical domain specialists
❏ product specialists
❏ legal staff
This Fortune 100 Company needed a quick response to multiple requests for
proposals from clients but their response was slowed down by:
❏ A workflow driven by email
❏ Loss of context because of poor coordination
❏ Versioning confusion resulting in poor quality control
❏ Time wasted in status update meetings
❏ Tacit know how buried in emails
19
SITUATION & CHALLENGE - Fortune 100 Tech Company
❏ sales staff
❏ senior management
❏ project management staff
Merced Group

20. (DYNAMICSOFWOL
CONT’D)
20Merced Group

21. WHAT THE TEAM LEARNED
❏ Shorter time to completion of RFPs
❏ Higher overall quality and accuracy
❏ Reuse of tacit know-how for continuous improvement
❏ Increased visibility of team members leading to more cohesive response
❏ Collectively up-to-date through alerts, notifications
Easier to track versions, contributions to the project
❏ Conversations, comments around issues and problem-solving visible to all
Conversations become valuable artifacts to continuous improvement
21Merced Group

22. Communities for ChangeAccelerate pace and breadth of change
Old change models – slow, push
Use network-based social structures – communities - with
digital workplace technologies
• Broadens learning and practical application
• Transparency brings insight to expert stakeholders and
business leaders
• New cycles of change built on earlier community activity &
learning
• New networks established across organization
Drives growth in new skills, expertise – applied to business
Moves culture change – peer-learning, Working-Out-Loud,
deeper, direct insight by management
Agile
Data science
Digital Workplace programs
Strategic business initiatives
Merced Group by Catherine Shinners

23. Thank you
Keep the conversation going
@catshinners
collaboration-incontext.com
catherineshinners@mercedgroup.com
Merced Group

24. Shutterstock
network…............................................hunthomas
open air office…..................................Monkey Business Images
tugboat...............................................symbiot
cartoon...............................................studiostock
origami bird........................................CHAINFOTO24
Marigolds............................................kornnphoto
Photodune
staircase..............................................Christopher_Boswell
train.....................................................perutskyy
honeycomb..........................................cocu_liu
dna......................................................ksimage
crowd..................................................Rawpixel
Death to Stock Photo
toolboard...........................................
Photos