Signal to Noise Ratio

How much signal can you get out of a message when there is too much noise. Did I lose you? While signal to noise ratio is typically a electronic communications issue, signal to noise can also be a problem with communications. How many companies do you know that when they communicate something to its employees, that they all heard it. Too often that message is sent using only one channel, the intranet, or an email. But to do communications really well, communication must occur over multiple channels over a period of time. And of course, too often it not good either (too much noise).

Why? I believe a section in David Amerland's book, Semantic Search, can help shed some light. No matter the channel used, every message sent and received has three basic pieces, the emitter, the signal and the receiver. Let me use a simple internet example. The person that tweets, is the emitter, the tweet is the signal and the receiver is anyone that is following the "emitter".

Depending on the channel, the noise to signal changes. An email signal to noise ratio is different than using a intranet content. To be successful, the emitter needs to take the amount of noise on the channel into account to ensure the message is received clearly and concisely.

In addition, the channel that is chosen needs to be chosen carefully. As with internet marketing, there is many ways of getting a message out (commercials, twitter, facebook, print, etc.). As with the internet marketing, the enterprise communications team needs to choose the correct channel(s). Choosing the correct channel(s) over a specific time period is critical to ensure that the message is received by as many employees as possible. And remember, sometimes noise can obscure the message, especially if the emitter is someone that sends too many messages out to its audience.

This note was inspired +David Amerland book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 2129.

Knowledge graphs built from Enterprise Social Networks

Photo by Eric Ziegler

More and more companies are building social networks in the enterprise. For those keeping track, the common term used today is Enterprise Social Networks (ESN).In almost all cases, the reasoning for implementing an ESN is to improve collaboration, break down silos, ease the flow information, etc. One that is often missing is how it could influence search results in the enterprise.

In the internet, social networks play a huge role in helping with search results. This help does not come in the straight up indexing of the content and adding to the overwhelming amount of content already being indexed, but rather from the building a a social or knowledge graph from the social networks.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. have built algorithms to mine the content in social networks and to try to understand the relationships between the interactions happening in the social networks. While this information is used for many purposes, the mining of the data is used build out what is called a social graph and to extend knowledge graphs (think really big taxonomies or ontologies).

There is a big opportunity for companies to leverage their ESN implementations to improve their search results. This concept goes beyond the idea of ESN and could even be applied to any location people interact with each other (online meetings, Chat sessions, even corporate email).

By mining the information from these interactions, a social graph of related to topics and concepts can be built, that will improve how people search and eventually find the information they are most interested in.

This note was inspired  +David Amerland book,  Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 2111.

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

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".

Measuring the Flow of Information in the Enterprise

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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

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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

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.

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.

Enhancing the Enterprise Community via Search and Social

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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

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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.

Declare Victory!

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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?

Incent to Share

Photo by Eric Ziegler

Your company doesn't share information.

There are silos in your organization.

Each silo is not interested in helping the other silos.

Enterprise Social tools are integrated into business tools

Enterprise Social tools are still not being used.

Why is it not working?

Culture culture culture.

Technology is not what wins the battle, change and culture, that's what's needed .

Find the incentives for people to share.

Setting Expectations

Photo by Sarah Ziegler

A friend and I were recently talking about adoption. Specifically we were talking about the adoption of tools that help build enterprise communities. One idea we discussed that I haven't read that much about is:

        Setting expectations.

While I know this idea is not new, I have not heard much about the use of setting expectations for Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business or adopting enterprise social networks. For example, as a people manager, if you have read it once, you have read a million times. To help guide your employees to ensure they know what to do, you need to set expectations with your employees. If you don't the manager is at a higher risk of not getting the best performance out of each employee.  This is an oldie but goody. But why don't we use this same idea in the enterprise for adopting enterprise social tools?

I find that for some people, they just want to create a community because their peer has one (the me too syndrome).  Others have good intentions but don't know where to even start to build a vibrant community. In both situations, neither have defined what expectations they have for their community. In both situations, instead of just allowing them to create the community and have it fail, the requester needs to clearly understand their goals so they can use the technology to meet their goals.

So, step 1: get the requester to define their hopes and dreams for the community they want to build.  Have them define how do they see the community working. Have them, articulate what their goals are for the community.  Work with them to design how the community will work. The key to the success, is to get them to set their own expectations for the community and then have them work to have their community meet that expectation.  

While setting expectations are great for the community, one of the keys to ensuring the community is as vibrant as desired, the community manager must communicate what expectations they have for the community to the community. In addition, as the community grows, the community manager must influence the community to meet those expectations, while being willing to reset their expectations and adapt to how the community grows.  

Setting expectations are crucial, being influential and flexible is equally important.  But then again, isn't that the recipe for success in almost all situations?