Keywords are not the only thing that makes a page findable

Keywords are not the only thing that makes a page findable
Photo by Sarah Ziegler
Many people believe that keywords are the best way of making content easier to find. While there is some truth to this, it is pretty evident that as semantic search grows, the power of keywords in relation to other influencers diminishes. In short, in the current day, the power of keywords does not always provide the best way of making a piece of content findable. As I continue my path down of translating ideas from David's book to apply to internal enterprise search, I realize more and more that this basic concept is especially true for enterprise search.

Let's dig a little bit. It is a guarantee that when semantic search is involved, the search query always contains words which are not declared keywords on some of the pages returned in the search results. Instead these words come from other locations, from the content itself, from the comments on the content page, from social media that references the page. In addition, if the content or the page supports the ability to rate or like the content, these items can definitely influence the search results.

For employees to truly benefit from semantic in the enterprise, helping them to find the information they are looking for, social capabilities start to really have a huge influence that can't be ignored. While keywords might help, the content of the page, being written well, using the correct nomenclature on the page and allowing people to interact with the content in as many ways as possible becomes a very important factor.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 2056

Fulfillment through learning

Fulfillment through learning
Photo by Ben Ziegler
I learned from someone (wish I remembered who) that as you learn there is a point where you start to plateau. And as you plateau, you become complacent because you believe you have more knowledge than others.  And because you believe you know more, you stop pushing to learn more.

To keep from being complacent you need to jump to the next thing, to learn something new, taking the risk of jumping from what you are an expert on to something that you are not the expert on, for learning is what truly fulfill us.

Don't stop learning.

Corporate Publisher - you are more than just someone on a project

You are a not just an entrepreneur, you are a publisher too
Photo by Eric Ziegler
So, its been several weeks since I last posted. No good reason except for life was moving faster than I could write. Picking up where I left off, David writes about the need for entrepreneur to realize that while they might have set their company up to sell something, they still need to be a publisher. Why? My perspective is that it is simple, as an entrepreneur, you need to do marketing.

I have been in many position in the enterprise where this same concept applies. If you worked on an project implementation that crosses a large part of the organization, you are very much like the entrepreneur. You need to become a publisher, a marketer, a cheerleader. Unfortunately, teams that provide services to other parts of the corporation often forget that they need to do marketing.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1955.

Corporate communications ?= internal marketing

Corporate communications ?= internal marketing
Photo by Eric Ziegler
Isn't a corporate communications teams really just internal marketing team? Why don't they act like external marketing teams, using the same techniques?  The ones that I know, have not changed their ways to match the methods external marketing. In some instances, they don't embrace some of the newer ideas and technologies.

Are there reasons why? My guess? The biggest reason is probably that the focus and value provided by these corporate communications teams is perceived to not be as high as the ones that are "driving" people to purchase the products and services of the company. Because of that, they do not get the funding or the encouragement to step outside of the basic tools they are provided.

Unfortunately, enterprise communications teams are probalby more valuable than most people think.  They have the ability to really drive change in the organization, change to processes and new technologies. And unfortunately, they are often left with either the lack of tools to do the job of external marketing teams or the lack the ability to realize that they could be more like the external marketing teams.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

I wonder ... Enterprise profile photos in search results

I wonder ... Enterprise profile photos in search results
Photo by Eric Ziegler
I know that google has gone away from authorship and providing image previews, but I still wonder if there is some value in providing an image of the authori/authors next to search results. I believe that there is some serious value in the enterprise of showing all authors of a document or a piece of content, so people know who all contributed to the content.

I wonder if there could be some sort of UI design that would provide images of the authors in certain instances (they are authorities on a subject in the enterprise?) and not show the author images in the search results for when they are not the recognized authority on a topic.  Similar to my last post, this technique would most likely drive people to the "higher authority" content.

The only thing that puts some level of doubt into my mind is the changes that Google recently did to their search results. I wonder if they found that the pictures did not add that much to how people found the content they were looking for. I wonder if they determined that having those images did not improve the "trust" that people had for the content.  If that is the case, I wonder if providing profile photos next to the search results would increase or decrease the trust people had related to the content.  

I wonder...

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Images, previews and search results - how to attract bees to honey

Photo by Eric Ziegler
Much of the content in an enterprise intranet is documents. Documents of procedures, project plans, division and department policies, design document to, legal documents, etc. In fact this type of content completely overwhelms the content found related to corporate news, corporate communications and corporate policies. So how do you attract people to the content that is more important?

When people search for content, all content in the search results are not made equal and different techniques should be used to attract people to the content. One method is to provide an image or snippet of the actual content in the search results. Through semantic search, search should be able to determine which results should have an image, based on the quality of the snippet and the relative importance of the content. This technique means that not all search results would have an image snippet but rather a subset of the search results.

The two reasons why I came up with restricting images in the search results include:
  1. By only providing images for some content, the search engine can help drive people to specific content. For example, content that is growing in authority but does not have the highest authority score might have an image snippet provided.
  2. If all results had images, the search results would get over cluttered and the power of providing an image is actually a net negative, not a net positive.
To try to help the end user, I suggest that some images are provided and in other instances, the search results provides a way for people to click to get to a "preview" of the content. The image snippet would be a lower quality, less informative version of the preview. The images would attract employees to click the preview or go directly to the content, while the preview would allow people unsure if the content was what they were looking for a way to determine if the content is really what they were looking for.

And if you had not thought of it, the behavior of the image snippet and the viewing of the preview  can all feed into determining the best search results through authority and semantic methods.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.


Click through rates (#CTR) and search basics 101

Click through rates (#CTR) and search basics 101
Photo by Eric Ziegler
I recently completed reading and taking rough notes from David Amerland's Google Semantic Search. The books is well worth the exercise of reading. I recommend that you read through the book while expanding your thinking by trying to determine how it might apply beyond what David discusses. While I indicated that I am done reading the book, I still have 30+ rough notes to convert to intelligent blog posts. So sit back and relax over the next several weeks as I review and share my thoughts generated by David's book.

Today's thoughts are pretty simple and to the point. As I read David's book, I realize that I am relearning many concepts that I once knew while learning many new concepts. This post is about click through rates (#CTR) and the impacts that they have on search results. I am relearning CTR and also learned some new thoughts and concepts. What I knew was that CTRs include the number of people that clicks a link to go to a site. What I learned beyond what I knew was that CTR also how long the person stays on the page or site.

And the great thing about this is that semantic search finds value in analyzing the length of time someone visits a site or a piece of content. Semantic search infers that the quality of content is higher when a person reads the sites pages and content for longer periods of time. Basically, the longer people stay, the higher the likelihood the content is quality and the more trustworthy the content should be treated.

And the beauty of this is, that this basic principal applies to semantic search in the enterprise. And such a simple concept can have a very large impact on search results in the enterprise allowing people to find the content that is most valuable and most trust worthy.

Love it - search basics 101.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Helping corporate communication find value with an #ESN

Photo by Eric Ziegler
In my previous post, I talked about helping team find the value in using a new technology.  In this post, I am going to focus on one very specific example. Helping a corporate communications team that is stuck in their old methods of communication style.

In the traditional corporate communications world, most teams are just familiar with the intranet and email as primary vehicles to communications. In many cases this specific team will resist the desire to change communication methods. My guess on why they resist? They don't see the value. They are uncertain and doubt that a new method might be better. As I stated in my last post, to help a team like this find value, their biggest concerns, their biggest issues with communication need to be understood.  For example, are they seeing a drop in people reading their communications?  Are they hearing that people only hear about events after they occur?  Are they hearing that people can't find appropriate content?  

So when a new technology like an Enterprise Social Network (#ESN) is implemented, identifying solutions that will reduce the issues they see today is a great way of getting a team like this to adopt the new technology. So the question is how can an ESN help corporate communications with these hypothetical issues?

By using an ESN to advertise and promote the latest news article or event, people visiting the ESN will start to read more of the content. It is a secondary channel to share and obtain a greater readership. And if done well, the reach of the message could be even larger, as people share and re-share the information.

In addition, by sharing out the enterprise social network, the sharing and resharing will have an impact on the ability for people to find the best and most appropriate information and content. Similar to the internet, social plays a huge role in how search works. And by having employees engage with the content will allow search engines to automatically assess the most important information and will allow people to find the content faster (through multiple channels including the ESN and search).

This statement might seem out of place, but ...  the concepts of traditional inside the enterprise marketing has to adapt. Especially as semantic and social in the enterprise collide. The quality of the content that is created is all that much more important.  The higher and more relevant the content, the more likely it will be found.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Adoption is about helping to find value

Adoption is about helping to find value
Photo by Benjamin Ziegler
In the enterprise, when a new technology is brought in that all employees would use, the challenge is often not with the implementation but convincing all employees to adopt and use the new technology. A great example is an Enterprise Social Network (#ESN). How do you obtain adoption that meets your business needs and goals? Grass roots? Top down?

Often much of the effort of adoption center around some type of marketing campaign. And more often than not, to do the marketing of a new communication technology requires using the old communication technology.  eMail, intranet, etc. are likely the tools that will be used to market the new ESN. These are still important, but are there other ways?

One of the methods to help with adoption is to work with enterprise business units to help them realize the true value of the new tool. Find groups, small teams in the enterprise that will benefit from the new tool. Look for reasons they might not have realized were there to help them understand the true value of the new product. Listen to the employees of that team. Hear how they work, not just how they communicate. Look for opportunities of  how their jobs could be enhanced and then work with them over time to start using new techniques to make their work "betterer".


Reputation --> Trust --> Semantic Search in the Enterprise

Reputation --> Trust --> Semantic Search in the Enterprise
Photo by Eric Ziegler
Based on what I have been reading I believe that I understand that semantic search is built on the trusting the content that has been written. This trust can be gained via trusting the individual and can the trustworthiness can be increased by people indicating that they trust the content.  

Based on this assumption and assuming that reputation is built based on both digital and analog interactions (especially in a closed environment like the enterprise), how can a complete picture of reputation (and hence trust) be built within the enterprise? And how can a great enterprise search experience be built without the full enterprise reputation picture being created? I would venture to guess that the interactions in digital will approximate the reputation in the analog world, but then again, that is assuming that there is 100% adoption and interaction in the enterprise digital systems. 

Anyone else have any thoughts?

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1853.

Building Widespread Trust because of Digital Reputation

Building Widespread Trust because of Digital Reputation
Photo by Eric Ziegler
In the enterprise, reputation is traditionally built by analog interactions. Even when there are digital interactions,(email, esn, documents, papers, white papers, etc.) a large part of reputation still comes from 1:1, meetings, presentations, , etc. That means that reputation in the enterprise is not just based on a digital interaction. It also means that trust, which is based on reputation, is something that is built on both digital and analog interactions.

What I find interesting is that digital interactions can be so much more dramatically important than the analog interactions in building widespread trust. Why? The power of digital interactions in the enterprise is the reach it provides, allowing employees to build a reputation with employees they never work with and hence gain a level of trust with another employee that would have never been able to occur before that (series of ) digital interaction(s).

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1842

The Enterprise Knowledge Graph Grows from the Employee Profile

The Enterprise Knowledge Graph Grows from the Employee Profile
Photo by Eric Ziegler
This blog post has a little more conceptual thought that will probably require time to read David Amerland's book, Google Semantic Search (see the reference below to get an idea of what I was reading to understand the thoughts in this blog post)

The knowledge graph is a semantic search concept that is all about interpreting what is seen in the internet. The same concepts can be applied to the enterprise, and to be honest is probably a lot easier to do. If I understand how the knowledge graph works, the knowledge graph is built by manually and automatically. The automatic part is completed by the level of trust sites are given and the level of trust of information the search engines find. The knowledge graph is grown over time as it determine what is most trustworthy.

One of the many thoughts I had on the concept of the knowledge graph in the enterprise is that it can be grown systematically based on employee profiles. The links to project sites, links to primary contacts, links to topics that are related are often found in employee profiles. So Building out an enterprise profile is key to creating a social network of connections. The profile is a key piece of information that can help the knowledge graph grow - growing through the connections of topics to employees and employees to employees and then back from employees to topics.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1727

Measuring the Flow of Information in the Enterprise

Measuring the Flow of Information in the Enterprise
Photo by Eric Ziegler
In my previous post I talked about the idea of trust enabling the flow of information in a closed system like the enterprise. Continuing these thoughts, I conjecture that if there is trust which enables the flow of information, that these two items will make the workforce of an organization more effective. Assuming each of these things are true, how can you tell that an organization is becoming more effective? One way of determining this is to poll or survey the organization to see what people are saying related to trust. Gallup has a survey that is related engagement. a similar poll/survey could be used to determine the level of trust within the organization.

There are most likely other ways to measure effectiveness of an organization. For example, if you know that the flow of information is also correlated to trust and effectiveness, you might be able to measure the flow of information to gain insights into the effectiveness of the employees in an organization. And the great thing is, that by measuring it through this measure, you can obtain a second and different perspective on the level of trust and effectiveness in the organization.

So by measuring the participation between employees, where participation is not just the one way push of information, but the interactions between employees and the amount of collaboration between employees, you can start to get a picture of how much trust there is between employees in a company and you can measure the effectiveness of the organization. Going back to the big picture, if employees trust each other, they will start listening to each other, and the work force of an organization will become more effective. And going back to Ramanathan's statements, a closed system like the enterprise needs trust to occur to enable the flow of information.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1678.

Trust in the Enterprise Enables the Flow of Information

Trust in the Enterprise Enables the Flow of Information
Photo by Benjamin Ziegler
In David Amerland's book, Google Semantic Search, he references a research paper, Propagation of Trust and Distrust, by Ramanathan Guha. In the research paper, Ramanathan notes in his summary of results that "Typical webs of trust tend to be relatively 'sparse': virtually every user has expressed trust values for only a handful of other users." In closed environments there is a real need for wholesale participation in the system because that provides the connective matrix that helps generate trust.

Am I mistaken when I say that the enterprise is a 100% closed environment. Using Ramanathan's thoughts from his research, it is pretty easy to see that if you want information to flow in the enterprise, you have to build a level of trust within the enterprise between employees. As trust levels increase, flow of information between employees occurs at higher and higher effectiveness levels.

This concept does not just apply to Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) but it applies to the analog world and other technology systems. Obtaining 100% participation is easy when employees are in close proximity to each other but when people are spread across multiple floors, buildings and countries, obtaining 100% participation and building trust is much harder.

So if your employees need to trust people that are one floor above them or across the world, companies need to approximate close proximity. One of the best tools to use to enable improved communication through a trust network is an ESN built around virtual communities. Communities are places where people can go to share information about a topic of interest. These virtual communities can be for a topic like Java development or it could be about a project.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1680.

Trusting intranet sites to improve search results

Trusting intranet sites to improve search results
Photo by Eric Ziegler
Authority of a site or page is crucial for determining how a page or a site will show up in search results. That is the case for the internet and that is the case for enterprise intranets.  So, how do you measure the authority of a page or site in an intranet? Can the interactions of employees on sites help determine the authority of a site? How much does trust play in the role of authority? If the employees trust the page, should that have an impact on the authority rank of the site? Can you measure how much employees trust a site?
My opinion? Yep.  
And in many cases there are ways to systematically determine the authority of the site because of the actions of the employees on the site. One way of determining if a site is trust worthy is to measure the frequency of employees viewing a site. As enterprises embrace social though, there is the huge potential on how improving intranet search results.

David Amerland's book, Google Semantic Search, talks specifically about the internet and the influence of social on search results. Specifically, he states that based on individual interactions (social included) the search results are influenced. The ideas discussed in David's book easily translate to an enterprise intranet that has an Enterprise Social Network (ESN). David's list of influencers include:
  • Commenting in a blog post on the website
  • Responding to comments on a blog post on the website
  • Commenting about a website in social network
  • Responding to comments about a website in social networks 
  • Resharing the content of websites and adding a comment to the reshare
  • Resharing the content of websites without adding any comment
  • Following websites that have a presence on a social network
  • “Liking” or “+ 1-ing” the content of websites
  • Interacting with the social network posts of websites
Why is this list so important? Because the list provides a way for people to show that they trust the content. And if they show they trust the content, than the there is a higher chance that the page or site should have an increased authority.  And if the content has a higher authority rank, then it should show up higher on the search results.  Without this type of interaction, enterprise search will continue to fall short.  

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1560.

Trust and Authority of Intranet Sites to Improve Search


Trust and Authority of Intranet Sites to Improve Search
Photo by Eric Ziegler
My trek reading through Google Semantic Search book continues with some insights into trust and authority of pages and sites. I continue to see search engine optimization similarities between what happens in the internet and what should be happening in the enterprise. For instance, in this note, the idea of a page or site being authoritative can be applied directly to helping employees find content in sites that are created in a company intranet.  

Inside the enterprise, often there are many different types  of "sites". These sites range from sites or pages for policies, sites where projects occur, reference material sites, self help sites, business procedures sites and community sites. And for each of these sites, the level of authority of trust associated with each site varies. In addition, these trust scores vary based on the subject or topic of the site.

For example the policy pages/sites should have a high trust/authority score, since they are basically the rules the company and employees need to follow.  A site for a project should have a much lower trust or authority score. Project sites typically are working on future state ideas, and do not represent the current state.  Just imagine what could happen if an employee were to read and use content on a project site to answer an customers question.

Similarly, sites that are for communities of practice should have a higher trust / authority score for the subjects they are centered around. The Java community site should have a high trust / authority score on the Java topic. The customer support community should have a high trust / authority score on customer support. etc.

By improving the authority of specific sites, especially around subjects, the findability and discoverability of sites increases, making every employee's life in the enterprise that much better and makes each of them more effective.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Speed of Trust - The impact of Enterprise Social Networks

Photo by Eric Ziegler
Information in the internet flows along the path of trust.  Do I trust the person that shared that piece of information with me?  Yes? Than I trust the information they shared with me. And the interesting thing is, the internet is not even necessary, but the internet provides extra "grease" to make that flow of information happen faster.  

Similarly, information flows in the enterprise along the path of trust. This is true when there is technology involved (e.g. Enterprise Social Networks(ESN)) and when technology is not involved (the water cooler, break room, etc.). And just like in the internet, technology like an ESN provides the "grease" to allow the information to flow even faster. 

Why is this possible? Because the technology increases the reach of one message from a small group of people to a large group of people. And within the enterprise, trust of another employee is high that people will naturally trust what others say, even if they shouldn't.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Engaging employees by empowering them through authority

Photo by Eric Ziegler
Still on the SEO spin.

This time around though, SEO techniques (new and old) have the potential to have positive impact on employee effectiveness.

By promoting individuals to build their authority (author rank) related to a company product or topic or even just the company itself is brilliant. Why? If author rank (even the defunct version) is built based on the social aspects of the individual, allowing them to post ideas, thoughts, etc. is a way of empowering the employee.  And by empowering the employee, leads to a more engaged employee which leads to a more effective employee.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1471

The Personal Touch of an Individual

The Personal Touch of an Individual
Photo by Eric Ziegler
As I read through different books, each books gets me thinking and the note I create might not make perfect sense.  And sometimes when I review my notes, a note causes multiple thoughts to occur that are really not related. Yesterday's and today's post are both the outcome of the same note from the same location in David's book.

Enterprises are often very quick to use organizational or departmental names when posting an article or piece of content, instead of posting the content with an individual's name. While this is viable and there can be argued some great reasons to do this, there are definitely reasons to minimize the approach of using the non-descript, non-personal organizational name.

Using an individual's name and associating it with the content provides that personal touch that an organization name or identity does not. And if you do it correctly, the arguments for using an organizational name becomes less of an issue (not going into the details on that subject here). As a company creates content and applies a person's name to the content, the person becomes a voice of the department or organization, and the individual becomes the voice and authority on the subject or topic.  In addition, the employees will embrace and interact with the content more often because they feel a person is talking to them, versus some non-descript organization.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1457

Multiple Authors, Authority and SEO

Multiple Authors, Authority and SEO
Photo by Sarah Ziegler
As I read through different books, each books gets me thinking and the note I create might not make perfect sense.  And sometimes when I review my notes, a note causes multiple thoughts to occur that are really not related.Today's and tomorrow's posts are both the outcome of the same note from the same location in David's book.

One of the issues with authorship occurs when more than one person is responsible for the blog post, document, wiki page. This is especially exposed when the last person that modified the document appears as the author of the document or content. Thankfully in the enterprise, there is a solution already in place to help resolve this issue (at least in most instances). Most internal collaboration and intranet systems include a mechanism identify each of the authors via history and versioning. Based on this history, the content can be attributed to each of the authors.

Enterprise search systems can use this extra meta data to increase authorship rank, trust and authority of that person on the subject while also influencing the page rank of other content from the same author on the same subject.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1457

Page Rank, Authority and Enterprise Search

As explained in David's book, authority is used to help determine the rank of a piece of content.  And page rank is most likely influenced by using the items that David highlights in his book. Specifically:

  • Who created the content
  • What else that person has created in the past 
  • The content creator’s social media connections
  • The content creator’s online activity with further content
  • The content creator’s interaction with other people
  • How the content this person created was received in a social media setting
  • The content’s quality, authority, and originality.
  • The content’s stylistics (language level, reading difficulty, paragraph length, use of headings and subheadings, overall length, embedded links, supportive links in footnotes, citations, images, and any multimedia embedded in it.

I am not willing to completely read between the lines on this, but I sense that there could be a hint of not only knowing what content was created in the past by the person, but actually what content has the person created on the same subject in the past. If I do or do not read between the lines, I am thinking that authority can be taken to an extra layer of granularity within the enterprise.  What I mean is, authority can actually be assigned to employees for a specific subject area.  

Even in the enterprise, a page rank on a subject can still be applied using the bullets above with a couple of small adjustments.  Page rank would be influenced based on the person's previous content created on the subject, including both writing and social interactions on the subject.  

So, by building on the original thoughts in David's book, the ideas on determining the rank of a piece of content depends on not just the general authority of the person that created the content, but can be strengthened based on the authority the employee has on the subject the content is about.  (btw, I could have completely gone down the path that page rank should be based on the subject of the page, so it becomes more granular and is a subject page rank - this concept is much more difficult to do).

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon Location 1351






Enterprise Identity is not a Differentiator in Enterprise Search


Enterprise Identity is not a Differentiator in Enterprise Search
Photo by Eric Ziegler
As I read David Amerland's book, and I learn more and more about how semantic search works, I start to get a better understanding of how semantic web and semantic search might work within the enterprise.  

In the David's book, he refers to identity as being very important for building trust, authority and reputation.  As I think about the enterprise, all content has an author associated with it, especially when the enterprise has a collaboration system like Jive or SharePoint. In addition all content on the intranet portal like the news and policies have an author.  So in the enterprise, identity is almost always associated with content.

As David explains, identity enables authority which enables trust and builds a persons reputation.  So the question that I asked myself is, if identity is critical for authority, trust and reputation.  And if all content in the enterprise has an identity associated with it, what is the differentiator that builds authority and trust?

The differentiator that I came up with is ... identity is not a differentiator but rather the differentiator happens downstream where reputation is built based on the person's ability to become an authority on a subject.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon Location 1261

Enhancing the Enterprise Community via Search and Social

Enhancing the Enterprise Community via Search and Social
Photo by Eric Ziegler
This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

David mentions that communities back in the day numbered in the 100's and that in those communities it was easy to reach out and contact another person since most people knew each other.  In many companies (not all) the same thing happens, employees are numbered in the 100's. While companies can and are in many cases similar to the the small communities mentioned in David Amerland's book, it doesn't mean that employees can just go over and talk to another person to get the answer. Employees do not know everyone in the enterprise as they would in a community.  The dynamics in the enterprise is different than a community. So, some of the best ways of getting answers to question employees don't know is to use search and to use social.

And if that is the case, what are you doing to ensure that search is built in a way that finds useful information and how are you preparing your organization to embrace social?

Reducing the Gap through Semantic and Social

Reducing the Gap through Semantic and Social
Photo by Eric Ziegler

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search

As I think about semantic search and the value it can provide to an enterprise, I realize very quickly that enterprise semantic search is all about reducing the gaps and the distance between employees, groups, teams, departments, divisions. And combining the power of enterprise social with semantic search is even more powerful that either on their own.  These thoughts lead me to believe that it is all about getting people to realize and recognize that interacting, finding, discovering and interacting again is all about reducing the gap.





SEO won't fix a site that sucks

SEO won't fix a site that sucks
Photo by Eric ziegler
As I stated in my last post, my plan is to regularly post short little notes I created as I read books. My expectation is that the posts will come in spurts, based on my ability to find time to read the book I am reading. As you will find, my notes are typically caused by the book and are not notes directly of or from the book. 

A couple of ground rules. I will always reference which book I was reading which caused the thought. If I can, I will reference where in the book I was when I wrote my comment, but there are times where it just does not make sense and the only reference you will see is to the book.  The notes I am posting could be as short as sentence or they could be longer. I will not be posting more than one note a day, but there could be many days between posts.

This comment was inspired by  +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search
Remember, if people find the site through search or other means and the site sucks, you are going to do more harm than good. 







Collisions of Change

Collisions of Change
Photo by Sarah Ziegler
I have been in the midst of several small changes recently. I have a new position at work with new responsibilities, I have realized the beauty of using a task oriented system to keep me organized, and I have gotten back to reading both for pleasure and for growing my mind.

These last two items are colliding in a great and spectacular way. Well maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration....  What I mean is that with my reading, I have found that taking notes has done me wonders in helping me think through the thoughts that come up while I read them. And my method of taking these notes have caused them to start showing up in my task management system. My intention is to share these notes on my blog as a form of #workingoutloud (ala +Bryce Williams and +John Stepper of +Change Agents Worldwide ).  

The goal is that if I share these out loud, others might learn from what I see within the text and what I see beyond the text.  Hope you enjoy the series.

-eric

Enterprise Humility

Enterprise Humility
Photo by Eric Ziegler
Enterprise humility is extremely important. But enterprise humility in many companies is very difficult. Think about it. How many people are truly humble? I know that I can show humility and be humble. But I know that I am not humble or show humility in all situations. I can think of many situations where people have come up to me and pumped me full of stuff that made my head 10x's bigger. While I might not be humble as often as I would want to be, I do embrace humility and the humility that I show has served me well, allowing me to listen to others, respect others, which has turned into others listening to me and respecting me. If individuals struggle with humility, what is the likelihood that enterprise show humility?

As an organization, enterprise humility is about respecting the employees, accepting that your employees will make mistakes and encouraging them to learn from the mistakes. Enterprise humility is about encouraging employees to share, work out loud (#WOL) and try "things" that are risky but within some defined set of rules. If an employee is able to make mistakes, it enables them to push the limits of what is possible. They will learn more. The will grow faster. The company will be more effective and be more successful. While there might be a step backwards when a mistake is made, think about how much faster they will go when things don't go wrong. And if that happens, think about the impact it will have on the company.

Leaders play a huge part in humility in the organization. Leader humility is about enabling others to learn, grow, and be independent. If a leader is humble enough to let others build on their ideas and to step in to fill in gaps they all will grow. Leaders must be open to allowing their employees to make mistakes and if a mistake is made, not put a new process in to ensure that mistake never occurs again.

An organization needs to embrace humility and encourage people to be humble. Humility in the enterprise is important to ensure diversity of thought and the refining of ideas by all employees. Humility is important for innovation. Humility is important for engaged employees. Humility is important for driving business value.

To put it bluntly, an organization that does not embrace humility, is an organization that is not as effective as it could be and has a higher chance of failure.





Declare Victory!

Photo by Eric Ziegler
How successful are your enterprise social software implementations? If you are like me, I believe that the success of an implementation is never actually complete until well after the initial implementation and roll out. Why? Let me ask the question, do you believe that if you build it they will come? If you do, you will most certainly #fail.

While there is some truth to the idea that if you build it, they will come, I really question how many "they" actually is. Your early adopters will show up, but what about the quick followers? Or the lagging followers? Quick and lagging followers only come when you build it in the rare occasion. The issue is that they often can't see the business value that the social software provides. They don't see how it could improve the way they do their job. They don't realize that sharing openly, working out loud and collaborating in a social manner are ways to build a career that is much bigger and longer lasting than the age old ways of working.

Since success can't be declared immediately, how and when can you determine success and when can you declare "VICTORY"? I believe that some of the best ways of determining success with social software is based on the great stories of individuals, departments, groups, and divisions. How has the social software impacted them individually? How has the social software impacted their department and provided business value? How has a group used the social software to resolve an issue or implemented a new idea? How has the social software changed how the sub-division or the division communicates (e.g. is the communication two way vs. the traditional one-way communication)?

While each story gathered will be unique, the stories are great ways of getting across to anyone that asks why the software is a success and then also gives them ideas on how to use the social implementation for their own success.

How about sharing some of your stories of success?

Rewarded for Good Behavior

Photo by Eric Ziegler
In my last post, I talked about removing an expert from a team to make the team more effective. Obviously, the wrong behavior from an expert can be bad for a team. But not all experts are bad for a team and not all experts exhibit bad behaviors. In addition experts are definitely not bad for organizations as a whole. And that is what this blog post is about - experts rewarded the right way can be invaluable in an organization.

Employees are often rewarded for being the expert at something - Java development, financial analysis, trader, vendor product integration, sales person, etc. The question is, how are these "experts" rewarded. Does the reward influence behaviors and make the individual better, the team better, or the company better? Ideally the reward is influencing to have a positive impact on the individual, the team and the company. But more often than not, the reward is not given as a reward that enhances the team or the company directly and is directed at the individual. In some cases, these rewards could have a negative effect to the team or the company.

Rewards are often given to the expert for some type of heroics. Saving the day when the system blows up or bringing in the big dollars at the end of the quarter, or delivering functionality after spending 20 hours one day implementing or delivering on a major project. It is easy to find reasons to give rewards under these circumstances. But experts are much more valuable to an organization than heroics and rewarding employees and experts for the material things we see everyday.

Experts and employees can provide much more value in an organization by sharing their knowledge and information about their expertise. They are much more valuable when they help others, educate others, and coach others. And experts should be rewarded for these good behaviors. Experts and employees should be rewarded for sharing their knowledge to their team and rewarded even more for sharing their knowledge to other parts of the organization.

Enterprises typically do not have reward systems in place that account for the team sharing or the organization sharing. In addition, there are little to no expectations set by organizations for employees to share. While rewards and expectations are great, there is another issue. Employees are not provided any guidelines on what, how, when, where, and why to share. Employees are also not given any guidelines or expectations on who to share information with. Even if an organization has rewards for this type of behavior, without help, the employees will flounder and in some cases share in ways that are not as effective as possible.

As organizations change and start thinking about how their employees can share information more freely, they will need to not only setup expectations they will need to tell the employees what sharing looks like so the employees can mimic these good behaviors. Lastly, to reinforce these good behaviors, a little reward does not hurt.





Who moved the expert?

Who moved the expert?
Photo by Eric Ziegler
You are the manager of a team. Your team is good at what they do but you believe they could do even more. They are just not clicking and getting as much as you would have expected. As you review how the team is doing you also notice that some of the employees on the team are not learning the material / topic / technology / etc. as well as they could. If you were to characterize the team, you could almost say that they have stagnated their knowledge grows slowly, and they appear to just walking aimlessly through each work week.

As you start to observe the team closer, you realize that one person is viewed as "The Expert" on the team and everyone on the team goes to this one person for support and direction. While this does not happen in every situation, it happens in so many situations that you realize that "The Expert" is considered by the team as indispensable. "The Expert" is invaluable and the team raves about the person. The Expert is the go to person and answers all questions, helping the team get to a solution quicker.

But how invaluable is "The Expert" really? How indispensable is "The Expert" really?

If you remove "The Expert" from team, what happens? Do new people step up and become an expert? What are the short and long term implications to doing something like this? Short term things slow down, no doubt. But long term, do people start to step up, do they start to lead and does the expertise that was with one person start to be dispersed into the team? Does the team get smarter and the team starts to click like a well oiled machine, getting more done than when "The Expert" was part of the team?

Is removing the expert from a team a risk? Absolutely. But, remember, it is a risk to not make a change also. The risk is that the team is not growing, learning, and being as effective as they could be as a team.





Working Out Loud Requires being Vulnerable

Working Out Loud (#WOL) requires being Vulnerable
Photo by Eric Ziegler
I love listening to Podcasts. I listen to podcasts when I drive to and from work. I listen to podcasts when I am on a long drive - 6+ hours. I listen to a broad spectrum of podcasts: Football (soccer), Finance, Economics, News, Public Radio, Social business, etc. This weeks blog is prompted by a one episode I listened to recently from the podcast Shift, by +Megan Murray and +Euan Semple.

The podcast I am referring to is episode 21, about Vulnerability. As I listened to the podcast the first thing that popped into my head was that Working Out Loud (#WOL) requires you to put yourself out there and to be willing to be vulnerable. When I think of working out loud, I think of people sharing what they are working on, asking questions, asking for input on a project, takling about an issue you are trying to resolve. In each of these situations you are risking that someone will think less of you. You need to be vulnerable to do any of those things.

People are scared of putting themselves out there and working out loud. They are fearful that there will be negative repercussions when they make a mistake out in the open. They are fearful that people will think less of them. They are not willing to risk sharing because there is no benefit or that other people will not find what they are sharing as interesting or informative.

The opposite is true. Working out loud has so many benefits and everyone should be doing it within an organization. People will learn and grow quicker and faster by working out loud. Organizations are more effective when people share and are open with each other. The likelihood of finding a piece of information increases as more and more people work out loud. People learn from each other only when information is shared. People improve and innovate on ideas only when ideas are discussed openly. By working out loud, your chances of getting the best information, in timely manner goes up tremendously. Even if a conversation happened out loud months ago, finding that piece of information increases because it was stored for others to discover, read and learn from.

So be brave, take the challenge, work out loud and be vulnerable.





Working Out Loud can not be Automated

Working Out Loud
Photo by Eric ziegler
Not sure how I ended reading an old post by +Bertrand Duperrin but I did.  Maybe something was calling to me.  Maybe it is just purely coincidence that I re-read his blog post. Either way, it has triggered me to write a blog post for the first time in several months. Let's dig in.  

Bertrand Duperrin, posted a blog post back in August of 2012 called Employees don't have time to waste narrating their work. What caught my eye originally was the title. First reaction, huh? You have to be kidding me. Bertand might be just trying to be sensationalistic with his title, I am not sure.  But it did catch my eye and cause me to read his blog post. While the title is interesting, I have to say that the blog post hits a nerve. Bertrand starts his blog post with a concept that I agree with ...

It’s impossible to think about emergent collaboration and self-organized structures without visibility on others’ work. 

This first sentence makes me think of +Change Agents Worldwide (@chagww, #CAWW). Why?  #CAWW is a self organized emergent collaboration organization that is about helping individuals, teams, companies, employees, etc. be more effective.  #CAWW works as a network of individuals that interact, share, and cooperate and collaborate on different topics and ideas, always trying to improve upon ideas that will help organizations be more effective. It is almost like he wrote this sentence with the concept of #CAWW in mind. 

In Bertrand's 3rd paragraph he continues down the same path by stating ....

collaboration, cooperation, problem solving and even innovation requires something to be shared so trigger the dynamic. Moreover, people often don’t realize they can be helped : sometimes we believe we’re doing right while we’re doing wrong, we’re doing right while we could do better, differently.

While the first sentence could be interrupted several ways, this statement does not align with the title at all. Only after you get more than half way through the blog post do you start to see where the title becomes relevant.  I believe this statement best summarizes the rest of the blog ... 

if people’s work’s worth being narrated, people should not always be the narrator. Their time is too precious to ask them to play the role of transponders. 

So now I get it.  People's time are too important to waste on working out loud (#WOL).  Bertrand continues and discusses the idea of having systems do the narrating by automatically creating activities in an activity stream - weekly reports, updates to profiles, etc.    I understand where he is going, but I think this concept misses the importance of working out loud (#WOL).

What do I believe? The idea of working out loud is not about the automated interactions? There is some value, but the biggest value is sharing information in a way a system can never do. Sharing information includes asking questions or putting a thought out that could trigger a thought by someone else. Automatic system updates are too prescribed to cause an emotional reaction by the receiver and bacause of that, the value it just not as high.  

I will say though, I do agree with his concept of having people jump out of their every day work systems to work out loud is not effective. To get people to be most effective, the system to work out loud needs to be integrated into the systems they work in every day.

Automatic system updates are the antithesis of what social networks are about. While an automatic update might provide value, they do not deliver come anywhere close to providing the same amount of value as working out loud.