Culture Change: Where it started

Where it Started

In my last blog post, I shared that over the past 6 months,  the organization I am in along with a couple of other organizations (over 300 people) have been working through a major shift requiring a significant change in culture. But to be honest the culture change started at least 6 months prior with a culture change within my organization and our sister systems organization. Let me explain.

Over the next several posts, my plan is to document the lead up to the bigger organizational change. It should give you an idea of how much change, and not just over a 6 month time period. So instead of digging into what has been happening over the past 6 months, I will get out the time machine and go back another 6 months.  In November of 2019, myself and my IT partner, Kelly, started working together for the first time. Leading up to November our two organizations had worked together, but they acted as two separate entities. Work would happen but independent of each other. But as Kelly and I started to work together, we knew that over the next year we would be transforming into a product ownership model and we needed to get our leaders and our organization to work together in a more seamless manner to make that transformation easier.

To be honest, we knew that we needed our leaders to act as if they were one team, instead of two but before we could do that, Kelly and I needed to work together in a more seamless manner. While I can't say we realized the following priorities before starting our journey, we both knew our teams to work as one. 

Priority #1 - Get on the same page. To be honest, the very first thing that Kelly and I realized was that we had to be on the same page. 

Priority #2 - We needed to model the behavior we wanted and since we were the joint leaders of this change, we needed to set the tone of what we hoped for from our direct reports.  

Priority #3 - Share with our directs that we were on the same page and to remind them periodically.

Priority #4 - have fun working together 

Priority #1 came about fairly quickly as Kelly and I met often through regularly scheduled weekly meetings, ad hoc, impromptu, between other meeting conversations, early mornings conversations and late evening conversations.  We compared notes on what we heard, we shared what we were thinking.  We did not hold back.  We agreed on lots but not everything but when we did not agree we talked it out and came to an agreement that we both stood behind. And critically, we both agreed that we needed a team that collaborated well and had each other's back.

Priority #2 we showed our team that we collaborated together. We had meetings and conversations with the entire team and showed them we collaborated together.  We had  small group meetings or 2 on 1 meetings where we showed that we could disagree but come to agreement. And across all of them, we showed that we were dedicated to working together and working well together. And it wasn't just a show, it was real.  It was what we wanted them to do, but also what we naturally ended up doing because it was the right thing to do. It wasn't one person had more power than the other, we were in it together.

Priority #3 came about as we met with our teams. We were transparent with our leadership team and told them and reminded them that we met all the time and that while we disagreed, we always worked it out. We slowly got to the point where one of us could anticipate what the other was about to say and that they could see we had each other's back.  And by verbally talking about the close connection that we had built, we were confirming what they were seeing. 

Priority #4 is important.  Always have fun doing what you do.  That is critical, and having someone there to share in the fun with is equally important.  But more on that in a future post.

Sounds magical, right?  This did not come by snapping our fingers together. But required lots of dedicated time from the two of us over many months. How many?  3 months? 6 months? Nope, I would say we are we still working on it and refining it.  The big muscle movements are done, but there is always areas for improvement or refinement. We spent and continue to spend a lot of time working through the nuances of the relationship that we are building.  We didn't agree on some things and we still don't agree on everything (which is critical). And to be honest, sometimes when we do just agree, I have learned that it might have been better to not have agreed so quickly, but that is for another post.

Making False Assumptions

Most of what you see and think is a lie. When I first read the title of one of John Stepper's blog posts (John is of Working Out Loud book fame, I wasn't sure what I would find. The title, The man singing falsetto in the ladies' room, definitely attracted me to reading his blog post.  And when I read it, what I read was not what I expected, which is exactly what John was trying to do with the title of his blog.  If you have not read the article, go read it, it is totally worth the 5 minutes it will take you to read it.

In John's blog post, he highlights that most people will make assumptions about the intentions of an action by another person.  We take lots of little pieces of information in based on our observations and then fill in the rest with our imagination.  Basically, what we do is fill in all the missing pieces. And by filling in the pieces, we often get it wrong. 






While it is not possible in all situations, if you catch yourself making assumptions about someone else or guessing what someone is thinking based on their actions, take a step back and try to assess the full story, ask questions and be thoughtful before making a mistake based on false assumptions. 


Go read the article, it is worth it and the punchline is awesome.

Efficient or Effective? An E2.0/Socbiz Dilemma

All efficiencies are not made equal.
Image: Roadsidepictures

I love going to conferences.  The best part of any conference is when you get to meet, talk and interact with the people at the conference.  These interactions and the conversations are informal and awesome. When I get a chance I love to talk about Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0), Social Business (socbiz) and/or Enterprise Collaboration (EntCollab).  Inevitably, the conversation turns to talking about how to make employees more efficient or productive. 

More often than not, these conversations start with someone asking how I believe employees could be more efficient while using E2.0 or Social business tools.  Unfortunately, for the person I am talking to, I don't think about efficiency as much as I think about effectiveness and I am not shy about sharing my opinion.  Let me explain.  First lets start off with looking at the definitions of each word.  Both word's origin is late Middle English based out of Latin with the base of each word coming from the same root, effect.  The oxford dictionary defines each term as:

Efficient : achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense
Effective : successful in producing a desired or intended result

While using E2.0 or Socbiz tools could provide efficiences by reducing wasted effort by employees, it is not always guaranteed, especially not during an initial rollout or implementation.  But employees will become more effective by engaging in SocBiz or E2.0.  While some companies that implement E2.0 or Socbiz tools do so without a goal or without knowing what they expect to happen, the most effective companies do have goals and do know the desired effect that these tools will have on their employees. What those intended results and desired effects are will vary greatly from company to company. 

Each company must determine these goals on their own. Based on my experiences, I have seen companies define their goals as simply as ensuring that employees share information more openly and that a change in culture is enabled by the use of these tools.  Other companies define the goals for E2.0 or Social Business as a way to enable the employees to find information quicker and faster than they did before. Others have defined success by having employees use these tools as part of their business process, improving the success of the business unit.  And lastly, others have defined them as a way to gain efficiencies.  Yes improving effectiveness can be defined by improving efficiencies.

Efficiency indicates that people are able to trim the fat out of the processes they do today, making their business units more productive.  Effectiveness is obtaining the result you set out to do. While every company that implements E2.0, or Socbiz tools is trying to gain business value. I am not actually saying that companies that implement these tools  won't be able to minimize the wasted effort.  That is probably going to happen, but if companies take the time to look deeper at how they are becoming more effective by using these tools, they will much more successful with their E2.0 and Soc Business implementations   

Who is correct?

Image by : Eric Ziegler

I recently read two very interesting blog posts.  They are interesting because they were both posted on the same day, and from what I can tell, they both were posted within hours of each other.  The are interesting because they take the opposite side to the debate.    And no, I am not talking about the U.S. Presidential race.   So what am I talking about?

Jacob Morgan and Steve Dale both had posts about collaboration on October 25th.  Jacob's post, Can You Create a Collaborative Organization Without Technology?, discusses the topic of how collaboration would not be possible without technology.  Steve's post, Social Collaboration: it’s the people not the technology, stupid! discusses the topic of how collaboration is about the people and not the tool.

Jacob states, "Is it possible to change behaviors or to build a collaborative organization without technology?  Think about that for a moment before you answer."  Steve states, "But regardless of what labels we give to the technology, the one constant feature is the people, i.e. the staff, the workers, the users."   At first glance, especially when looking at the titles and reading those quotes, you would think that if Jacob and Steve ended up in a back alley, a fight would break out.  Both appear to be on the opposite side of the debate.  So if they are on the opposite sides of the debate, which side is correct?

At this point of the blog, I want to make it clear that I believe both are correct. In addition, if you were to ask either of them, I think they would agree with each other, at least to some extent.  Why do I say that?  If technology was not available, collaboration would be possible, but the amount of collaboration would be less.  Technology enables collaboration.  But, technology does not make people collaborate.  As Steve says, build it and they will come mentality will fail.   I AGREE!   But, as Jacob states,  it is very important to enable the behavior or cultural change needed for employees to collaborate better in an enterprise.  Especially within larger organizations.

So what do you think?  Which is comes first, the culture change or the technology?  The good ole, chicken and egg question.

IT is not about the tools

Image by: Eric Ziegler

I love Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0).  I love the thought of helping people share their knowledge and collaborating better than they have in the past.

Just over two weeks ago, I presented at KM World (with one of my colleagues from work).  As I started out my presentation, I said, "I feel like I am in the minority.  There are just not many IT people at this conference.". I saw many heads nodding in agreement.  After seeing this, I went on to say, "I believe you will find our presentation refreshing and the message you will hear is not the typical IT message."  I believe that we did meet that statement, based on the great questions we received and the great conversations we had after the presentation.

Which gets me to the point of this blog post.  During the presentation, I offered that my company used a specific tool.  Even though I did offer it during the presentation, during the question and answer period, someone still asked which tool we used.  I regret my answer in both situations.  The reason I even offered which tool we use is because in every presentation leading up to ours, I heard people ask again and again, "what tool do you use for Knowledge Management or Collaboration?"

So what was wrong with me stating which tool we use?   Two reasons.  1) our presentation was not about the tools, it was about how we have nurtured collaboration and sharing, and 2) because I didn't give a caveat to my statement.  I should have added onto the end of my statement, "While the tool we use is XYZ, the tools is irrelevant.  The most important thing is what we are trying to accomplish. The goal is for people to share and collaborate."  

So I just want to reiterate what I was trying to get across at the beginning of the presentation.  IT people can think about the people, the culture, and the process.  IT people don't have to just focus on the tools.

Riding the Wave

Image by: Eric Ziegler

Since a recent vacation to Virginia Beach, I have come to realize the similarities between the fun I had with my family and the approach I take in my current job.  While at the beach, I am not someone that just sits on the beach and soaks up the rays, but rather I go down to the water and hang in the water for hours on end, playing with the kids, body surfing and riding my body board. Over the years, as the kids have gotten older, they have shown more and more interest in riding the waves, just as dad does.  This year was a banner year (and I expect them to continue to enjoy riding the waves). The were more interested in riding the waves and trying to figure out which wave was best to ride.  

I encourage them a great deal - helping them in different ways so that they can really enjoy riding the waves rather than just getting frustrated. With my kids, I took the opportunity to teach them the tricks of the trade on how to catch a wave, teaching them how to body surf and body board.  I taught them how to pick the best wave to ride, which included teaching them how to tell if a wave approaching was good or not and then teaching them how to determine where the wave is going to break. 

As with anyone learning for the first time, they were not successful the first time (or the second or the third ...).  Every day as we played in the water, they were learning and getting better and better at figuring out how to "ride the wave".  And when they couldn't get it after several tries on their own, instead of having them get frustrated, I helped out by giving them a helpful push to get up to speed, or a loud shout "NOW!"

My job implementing Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) solutions and enterprise collaboration parallels my interactions with my kids.  What I find is that employees don't know how to "read the waves".   They are often interested in collaborating and using the E2.0 tools, but they don't know how, when, or which wave to jump on.   Not all E2.0 tools are meant for all business areas, just as every wave is not meant to be ridden.  That is why having someone consulting with different business areas are so important.  The businesses need to know how to start and when to start.  They need to have someone be patient with them, repeating what they are taught and providing that helpful push in the correct direction. Some businesses might be able to figure it out on their own, but the initial interactions is key. Teaching early and often will ensure they are successful.

It is important to remember that everyone is on a different learning curve.   For example, my son, the youngest, is able to understand what I say about the wave, and knows when to start swimming or paddling to catch the wave, but he is not strong enough, and requires that helping hand "push" to actually catch the wave.  Some businesses need that extra hand push to get started.   They require someone to say, "now" and then the extra push to make it real. But as they grow and learn and get stronger, they will be able to do it on their own.   And that is what my team is there for.  To provide them a helping hand, lending our expertise in helping to navigate which wave to ride.

Enterprise Search Failure - Connections

Image: Eric Ziegler

How often do you hear someone say, "why doesn't our enterprise search work as well as Google search? Bing?" or "Why can't I find the content I want  to find." or "I can't believe our search engine sucks." or "Our enterprise has a very small fraction of the content that Google searches and I still can't find the content I am looking for." or "FIX IT!".

In my previous blog posts, I started a series of  posts about internal enterprise search and how it is not as good as internet search.  In my first post, I provided an overview of how internal social interactions can improve internal search engine results.  In my second post, I discussed how using the context of the employee can provide enterprise search engines a boost in providing improved search results.  As a definition for what I meant by employee context I proposed that employee context is made up of a wide variety of types of information, including HR system information, social profile information, social connections and social interactions.   In this blog post, I plan to discuss how the power of social connections can be used to improve search results within the enterprise.  

When I mention connections, I am referring to the idea that one employee "follows" another employee.  This following is similar to those external social networking sites such as facebook, twitter and google+.   But how can these connections between employees be used to improve search results?  Below are several illustrations of how connections can improve search results for each employee.  For each of the examples below, I am using the following base example to illustrate my point:  

Joe, an employee, follows five other employees and has 15 employees following him (Joe).  In addition, the five employees Joe is following, follow a combined 20 more people (some with multiple people following the same person).   Each of these connections (both direct and indirect) can play a key role in improving Joe's search results.  

Directly following:  Joe is directly following five other employees.  Content created, modified or interacted with (comments, likes, tagging, bookmarking, etc.) by these people has a higher importance to Joe then other employees.  Think about it, Joe is following these people for a reason.  So why is the content these people create, modify and interact with not given higher relevance when providing search results to Joe?

Directly being followed: Similar reasoning can be used for the content created by the 15 people following Joe, but it goes in reverse.   Joe does not realize that the 15 people are creating good content.   Joe is not following any of these people, but they are following Joe because he creates content that is related to ideas each of them are interested in.  Because of this, the content these people create has a higher chance of being valuable to Joe, he just doesn't know it.  But there is a caveat to this, Joe is not following these people, either because he has knowingly not followed these people or he has not discovered these people.   Because of this, the content created by these 15 employees should not receive as much of a relevance boost as content created by the direct followers.  

Indirectly Following: Again, similar reasoning can be used for the indirect followers.  Joe is following 5 people who are following a total of 20 people that Joe is not following.  Since Joe trusts and follows those 5 people, there is some merit and a higher chance that the content created by the 20 indirect employees will be of higher relevance and importance to Joe.  Because of this, the content created by these 20 employees should get a relevance boost in the search results. But just as the 15 employees that follow Joe, there is a caveat.   Joe is not following these people, either because he has knowingly not followed these people or he has not discovered these people.   Because of this the content created by these 20 employees should not receive as much of a relevance boost as content created by the direct followers.

With these improved relevance boosts for people direclty following, directing being followed and indirectly following, Joe searches on the term Java and receives results with an improved relevance boost for the 5 employees he is following, the 15 employees that are following him and the 20 indirect employees. In addition, the content from the 5 direct employees has the largest relevance boost, with the 15 employees following Joe and the 20 indirect employees he is following improving the relevance but not with as much of a boost in relevance.  

With these search engine algorithm improvements, the search results have just gotten tremendously improved, making searching for content a better experience for Joe and every other employee.  In future blog posts, I plan on continuing to discuss topics of how to improve internal enterprise search engine results. Future topics include reviewing how HR systems, employee profiles and social interactions can be used to improve search results.  So check back periodically to hear my thoughts on how enterprise search can be much better than it is today.

Enterprise Search and Context

Image: Breen Jones (link)

In my previous blog posts I talked about enterprise search and the reasons why search was not as good in the enterprise as it is in the enterprise.  The post was about why enterprise searches fail and that using social internal to an enterprise, enterprise search can be greatly improved.  +Joachim Stroh (@Joachimstroh) posted a comment on my blog that adds to my ideas.  He states:

"The traditional view is that content is coming from carefully curated repositories that are tied to corporate taxonomies that are tied to search facets. Way too complicated...."  

My response is absolutely correct! My thoughts are that if an employee has to do something beyond what is necessary for the job it probably won't happen.

So if employees are not helping other employees to find the valuable content they created, how do you improve search in the enterprise?  In my previous blog post, I mentioned that social business / E2.0 are both valuable ways to improve search results.  But there must be other ways to improve search.  In addition, social is way deeper than I could ever talk to in one blog post.  In this blog post, I will attempt to outline how enterprise search can be improved by providing search results based on the context of the employee performing the search.

As I did in my last blog post, I want to first analyze what are some of the tricks that internet search engines use to improve search results for each end user.  Internet search engines provide search results based on the context of who the person is that is searching.  They use the location of the person and provide results that are located closer to their current location.  Internet search engines keep track of each person's recent interactions and uses those interactions (which search results did they click) to improve search results. Internet search engines have now started the trend of incorporating end users social interactions to improve the results.  They are using a persons connections (relationships, who they are following, who they interact with most often) along with a host of other social information to improve search results. Each of these improvements to internet search is about providing search results in the context of person doing the search.  For example, when I search on a term, the potential that the search results are different for me vs. you are getting higher and higher.  These changes to how internet search engines provide search results to people is very powerful and a great way of providing the best results possible when there is a humongous amount of content in the internet.

So how does enterprise search learn from internet search?  Enterprise searches can do every one of these techniques to improve search in the enterprise.  And the amazing thing contextual search results is that I believe this is the one spot where enterprise search can do a much better job than internet search.  Enterprise's have a wealth of basic information that they know about employees.  While the internet search engines can learn from personal profiles, enterprise's can use information from the human resource systems along with personal profile information (internal and potentially even external (privacy could be an issue here)).  Enterprise search engines can learn from the interactions people have every day.  For example, the systems employees use and interact with each day can provide a wealth of information on how an employee does their job and what systems they use most. But interactions don't just happen with systems of record, but they also can occur on internal social platforms.  These social platforms can provide a large amount of information about who people are connected to, what interactions they have with other people, and the types of topics they are most interested in.   Lastly, by combining many of these pieces of information together, you can determine an employees expertise, which can also influence and improve search results for that employee.

In future blog posts, I plan on talking about the internal search engine topics.  This topic is so large and has so much potential that I will be creating several blog posts on how "employee context" can improve enterprise search.  Topics will include: the employee profile, the influence of interactions, the connections of employees and expertise of employees.  Each of these topics will review how they have the ability to improve search results for the employee.  So check back periodically to hear my thoughts on how enterprise search can be much better than it is today.

Enterprise Search Failure

Image by: Phillie Casablanca - link)

How often do you hear someone say, "why doesn't our enterprise search work as well as Google search? Bing?" or "Why can't I find the content I want  to find." or "I can't believe our search engine sucks." or "Our enterprise has a very small fraction of the content that Google searches and I still can't find the content I am looking for." or "FIX IT!".

Fix it sounds so easy, but it isn't that easy.  Internet search is dramatically different than enterprise search.  While there are many technical  differences, the biggest difference is not technical by behavioural.  People creating content in the internet are creating the content with the hope that others will find it.  These people, creating content on the internet, have personal incentives (marketing, personal brand, selling a product) to have other people find the content they are creating.  They use many different techniques to improve the finability of their content.  So, what techniques do they use to improve their content?

They tag their content, they use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sites to improve their content for search engines.  They use social media to  market their material, which also improves the findability of their content.  The more references to their content, the more likely the content will  show up in a search result.  By using social media, people are attempting to garner a loyal following that promotes their content (think free advertising).  And if they can use social media to have their content cross linked and promoted by other people, the chances that more people (directly connections and indirect connections) are going to see their content, which in the end is exactly what they are attempting to do.

Let's contrast this with what happens in the enterprise.  In the enterprise, employees create content typically for a specific group of people, not  intending for the content to be found.  In many cases, employees are not creating content to be shared. (There are exceptions but those are for  specific groups setup to share corporate information, such as a corporate communications teams).  In contrast, the vast majority of the enterprise is creating documents and information and not thinking about how the information could be found or discovered. They are not sharing and there are no  incentives (personal or corporate) to share the information.  In many organizations the tools the employees use to create content and store the content is not even setup to allow for the content to be easily found.  Enterprise search engines often are not even searching the repository where the content is stored.  While the technical connections are not available, the employee is not helping the rest of the company to find their content either.  For example, when the employee wants to let someone else know about their content, what tool do they first turn to?  eMail.  If you are lucky they send a link to the content.  If not, they send the attachment in the email.  The only people that benefit from the later is the sender and the recipient.  In addition, in both scenarios, search engines don't learn and improve relevancy when eMail is used.

What are some ideas on how to improve the search results in the enterprise?   Incorporating social media techniques into the enterprise is one method of improving search results in the enterprise.   By providing a platform for people to collaborate, share, and to tout what they are working on is just one step in improving search results.   If an employee can use these tools and the search engine can learn from the enterprise social media interactions, the search results will improve.  By providing these hooks, such as tagging of content, cross linking of the content, and getting more people to interact with each each other and with communities will improve the search results, much the same way social media improves the search results in the internet.

But that is not the biggest thing that needs to occur.  While a technology can be put in place to allow people to interact, interactions don't occur because of the technology.  Companies have to change their culture;  companies have to get their employees to think from a sharing perspective. They have to create information and documents with the realization that others can find it and learn from it.  Companies need to find the incentive for the employees to partipate and be active and to share.