Think of the long journey. Slack v Teams

One of my clients staff just posted the FT article regarding Slack.

https://www.ft.com/content/8a9a8d98-0039-11e8-9e12-af73e8db3c71

It was used to support the argument that Slack ‘is better’ and they should stop trailing MS Teams (which is in pilot).  Slight digress – it’s interesting to read some of the responses to the FT article. It takes me back 20 years when people were saying the same about email!). Anyway – back to the point.

If we look at the experience of other organisations who were early adopters of MS Teams (or Skype Teams as it was then) it’s not uncommon for those already on Slack to find it hard to adjust. Ideally, people already on Slack would be avoided as early pilot users as there are some ‘unconscious basis’ aspects, as there are with most pioneers of new technologies. For those interested in these type of technology developments it’s interesting to see early Slack users now moving to new ‘tools’ such as ‘Riot’ and ‘Mattermost’ (not that I’m suggesting it’s fashion rather than functionality that attracts many of the early pioneers)

As a standalone ‘chat based’ collaboration tool Slack has many advantages. It’s ‘momentum-friendly and the ability to link ‘third party tools’ and its open platform approach makes it appealing but the more you try to link in with ‘enterprise functionality’ the more you see its drawback.

So, I wouldn’t think of it as a matter of Teams v Slack but more a case of how you can begin to seamlessly collaborate using many capabilities. The more O365 capabilities that Shell introduce the better the experience of Teams will be and you begin to see far more advantages of using Teams over Slack.

There is also the risk and security issues. As companies learnt during the NotPetya cyber-attack in June 2017 the advantages of having an integrated enterprise wide chat tool, complying with all security aspects, are paramount. I know of many companies having their MS Teams cleared and restored within 48 hours, while other products took weeks to be fully verified and restored (or in some cases banned completely from ever being used again).

That could be part of the reason some articles now predict MS Teams will ‘overtake’ Slack by 2019 (although I would urge caution with any such reports but you begin to see the trend).

So, while many will still prefer what they use now (a basic instinct which we all have) I feel it’s important to look at the long-term roadmap of where these type of collaboration technologies are heading.

Running at a different pace

Been involved in quite a few discussions on how PMO functions in companies use O365 to change the way they run projects. Here is a brief guide (including the addition of some new capabilities) looking at how other companies have used O365 to change the way they run and deliver projects. Generally you would use:

PMO / Project Working
– O365 Groups – individual project team working (shared calendars, Planner, OneNotes etc)
– Teams – persistent chat channel for project teams (linked to O365 Groups – Tip: create the O365 Group first and then link the Team to the group.
– SharePoint Online site – PMO top level site bringing all activities together
– Power BI – creating dashboards from the PMO level

Project Communications / Change for ‘end user’
– Yammer – for enterprise wide awareness, feedback, focus groups, promotion
– Delve / Yammer – finding and recruiting informal advocates for your awareness activities
– Delve – get project members to blog about project progress (or use Yammer)
– Delve – create some promotional ‘boards’ that can be shared enterprise wide
– Forms (new) creating surveys, feedback channels for focus groups / enterprise wide initiatives
– Sway – creating engaging presentations / collateral for digital presentations
– SharePoint Communication Site (new) – formal enterprise wide communication / access to collateral

Big Data on the way YOU work

Totally by accident, something popped up on LinkedIn this morning which turns out was a glorified advert for an IoT/PowerBI dashboard solution which tracks employee performance in relationship to their environment.

http://sapience.net/enterprise/

Personally (and professionally) these types of ‘behaviour’ tracking tools fascinate me. Tech companies spend millions developing capabilities to help us work better and organisations spend millions deploying them but the expected benefits never materialise. There is a big discussion on the whole change / adoption approaches taken by organisations in nurturing the workforce but these types of ‘employee performance’ tools begin to move us to the next steps by exploring the way we as individuals / organisations work and eventually providing solutions, not just around technology but also on behaviours and environment.

Tools like those mentioned in the article above, and others such as Microsoft My Analytics, can eventually tell us how much time we spend on email, in meetings, creating documents, extent of network etc. It could also look at enterprise wise behaviours – i.e. if you project team are spending most of their days in meetings you may have a cultural issue around decision making; if managers are spending too much time in hastily arranged meetings and email there may be a fire-fighting, hero and devolution issue in the culture; if a leader’s network doesn’t extend far enough across the organisation there may be an engagement issue and so on.

So, technology that tracks the way you work and can present remedies from both an individual and an organisation context can be a very valuable capability for companies undergoing digital transformation. You sense its part of the reasoning that companies such as Microsoft are buying training and learning components and LinkedIn so they can begin to link ways of working to job families, skill sets, organisation culture and beyond. It will begin to dramatically change the way organisations look at design, recruitment, technology and the physical environment.

Technology is a people business

Interesting article about digital workplace trends. Interesting for me is that 5 years ago these type of trend articles were almost entirely focused around technology. Now the shift is towards the people, cultural and behavioural aspects. That’s reflected in the disciplines within the consultancies that produce these type of reports. They are no longer published by the technology streams but from Human Capital Management and Org Design areas of the consultancies. Technology is becoming a people business.

http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/10-digital-workplace-trends-shaping-the-future-of-work/?utm_source=cmswire.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cm&utm_content=MW-170412-1000&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkdNNU9XSXhOR1l5TW1NeCIsInQiOiJ2S2tcL2VcL0drVVY4dlFOZzM2NVN2d3RSXC9pa1ltQkRBRXFkOUJZZURCRFBiYXVRYlkzS0YwdFNMbWpXcHptVlVKQTNiNzEwaFJpRFlGUE1udmRXT3oxdGlCREJ3ZEFnWWZFclk0cW5jMkowb0E1M2ZpRFJUTEgybjF5aGYzSWRBTyJ9

Facebook at Work or O365

Anyone who is involved in discussions with colleagues over Facebook at Work (I imagine many of you are the same ones that deal with the Slack discussions) here is an informative article around progress on the product.

http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/a-facebook-at-work-progress-report-whats-changed-and-where-it-fits/?utm_source=cmswire.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cm&utm_content=MW-160914-1000&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT0dObU9UTmxOakF6WW1aayIsInQiOiJ5bFwvWXJlajBLdVhjU1FSWXBCVTFPSlhYY0RqekVhMDRob0N1TUZUMkxKdm1haU55Ymt4RGN3bHZzNmY3d3IzbHF5dEpkODN1cXNUT0NMWDhSRU9FTWQ0TzhwM1wvekpEWWV1YVN4SUZ0U2QwPSJ9

I echo the authors comments around building relationships and community as a driving force for new ways of and Facebook at Work does have nice features.

However, no communities or relationships within an organisation sit in isolation from the way work gets done or linked to its strategy, processes, workflows, campaigns or initiatives. You could spend time integrating Facebook at Work with search but eventually you will need to leave Facebook at Work to deal with the outcomes of the communities and relationships.

The benefit of O365 is the increasingly ‘seamless integration’ with other capabilities that may be needed as a result of the community outcomes. For example, files uploaded on Yammer will be hosted on SharePoint. Conversation on Yammer could bleed into a Skype Teams call. Videos displayed on Yammer will play through Stream. There is linkage to Office apps, O365 Groups etc. All activity will be understood and surfaced via Delve. The need to leave O365 becomes increasingly unlikely within the collaborative process.

The compelling narrative behind O365 will be the seamless integration with the way people collaborate, not just building community and relationships, but in group work, file sharing, communicating and other collaborative activities.

One things I strongly agree with thought is “It’s not the tool but the people and programming that make enterprise social a success.”

My bias comes from a people centric perspective (rather than document or process centric) so I’ll be interested to hear other folks opinions, especially if you have been involved in a Facebook at Work trial.

Yammer and LinkedIn

I’m sure Microsoft brought LinkedIn with a specific purpose in mind although it wouldn’t be the first time they know something is good, buy it and they figure out what to do with it!

It sometimes reminds me of some of the mega-rich English Premier League clubs who buy in talent that have very little to do with the current style of play, sit them on the bench and wait for a situation to arise when it becomes clear why they brought them in the first place – or just serendipity!

I would like to think that Microsoft see the future value of collaboration around new ways of working is not to just support the current hierarchies and structures of an organisation. In essence that’s what most of O365 does in supporting this structure of group working around file uploads, storage, document production etc. All important stuff but does nothing to drive innovation and new wealth / value creation.

Where the value creation comes is from building networks, relationships and communities, nurturing new behaviours and processes and blending diversity to create new ways of working.

Yammer and Delve begin to achieve this inside the organisation and adding something like LinkedIn gives an organisation the opportunity to source content, connections and resources far beyond their current network.

I’m thinking of an example where a project manager can initiate a new project and Yammer / Delve (whatever these channels would be called in the future) to source ideas, content, connections and resources from within the organisation and then get seamless connectivity to a LinkedIn type resource (professional and educational) to source gaps or enhancements to the knowledge they have within the organisation. It changes not just the potential reach but also the relationships organisations have with professionals. It would also increase the diversity of thought that an organisational begins to call upon, ideally making it far more social, transparent, agile and democratic.

Still a future for Yammer despite Skype Teams

Microsoft are now looking to compete with Slack.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-beef-up-skypes-team-collaboration-capabilities-to-take-on-slack/

In the article it mentions how they fail to see what the future of Yammer would be and they struggle to see where it fits in. In my eyes they have completely different capabilities.

Yammer is about networking, relationship and community building. It enables discovery, innovation, crowdsourcing and engagement that potentially involves hundreds and thousands of colleagues.

You would struggle to do that with Slack or Skype teams. The key word here is teams. Skype Teams would work well with defined, identifiable colleagues – in essence building around existing hierarchy and structures.

With Yammer you discover and network with people and groups you never knew existed before, creating new ways of working through the diversity that can be attracted through discover.

Stewardship of the Enterprise

At a session today with a company to talk about the tasks around Enterprise Community Management (ECM) – the initial stewardship required to develop a Yammer network.

The tasks can vary dependent upon your Yammer strategy (every company should ideally have a Yammer strategy closely linked to the overall business strategy (and related KM, New Business, People, L&D, Engagement strategies etc.) which will help define the priorities around the ECM tasks.

Other companies Yammer strategies have included:

• Help change a ‘command / control’ company culture
• Remove middle management roadblocks
• Develop untapped future talent
• Remove remote team’s reliance on reporting into the centre
• Support development of a social learning programme

And the ECM tasks can vary greatly to help meet the strategic requirements.

Here is an outline of some of the tasks we will run through.

• Help sections – maintain and update ‘Getting Started’ and Help areas on the network
• Use Cases – assisting to develop use cases to show case the possibilities of Yammer
• Stewardship – making sure everybody plays nice and all voices are heard
• Formal Governance? – some companies need this so generally you’ll be involved in coordinating
• Promotions – active in promoting Yammer through numerous channels
• New Joiners – getting Yammer on various New Joiners radar
• Coaching – determine how this is dealt with. Some formal ‘how to’ or focus on behavioural change and community management (my preferences are the last 2)
• Events – running events around Yammer (Yamjams, 30 days of Yammer etc)
• Advocates – nurturing advocates of the network
• Strategic Initiatives – involved in any planning around big initiatives
• VIP’s – Not everyone gets the same treatment so if someone ‘special’ joins Yammer give them the ‘silver service’ treatment
• Community Management – developing good community management practices. Linked to coaching
• Case Studies – Pulling together case studies to show the value it delivers. Good storytelling works wonders
• ROI / Metrics – Pulling these together. Linkage to overall governance

Approaches aren’t mutually exclusive

Over the last few days I’ve looked at various approaches you can take to creating adoption of collaboration tools.

It’s important to remember that none are mutually exclusive.

Adoption by chance

• You can run a standard approach believing you may be the exception.
• Once you fail to gain adoption you can switch

Adoption by hierarchy

• You can structure a formal approach but if roadblocks and delays are occurring (scheduling workshops, factfinding etc) then begin with a social approach for early quick wins

Adoption by ‘social’ (tribes and communities)

• If your social approach spreads success quickly you may wish to consider how to align the organisation with a ‘mini formal approach’ to deal with leadership requests

And you can also try a concurrent approach

To maximise the chances of success you could run both a formal and social approach (bottom up and top down), ensuring awareness, sustainability and rapid quick wins

It’s more than the ‘like’

Colleagues that are thinking of how to strategically deploy Yammer are starting to ask questions around metric packages that will provide some of the traditional measurements around online sites.

In terms of ‘measurement’ here are some of the basic criteria you could use to benchmark participation and activity within the communities based on attraction, attention and adoption:

• Total number of users
• Number of new users per week
• Number of new posts, threads (plus response), ideas, blog and other content
• What are members doing in the community?
• What are the popular trends in posts?
• What resources are being used?

We still see the benchmark of activity as something which should be measured. But the value of the activity is something which stakeholders rarely ask for.

As a Yammer network matures leadership begin to realise how it can be used strategically and the ‘ask’ for measurement begins to look at the value of the relationships and communities that are being developed. Generally, they would look for articulation around:

• Social Knowledge – this can be defined in many ways such as assets being shared around a community (and beyond) and related practices emerge.
• Relationship development – the ability to create new relationships and networks that previously didn’t exists
• What collaborative activities are emerging?
• What threads, replies, comments or connections contain referrers to potential collaborators
• What threads contain creative or innovative ideas
• Are members sharing personal stories and how much emotional support is provided

Some of the questions I ask to evaluate these items would include:

• % of members / users which make a contribution
• Members active within the past 30 days
• Contributions per active member and the value of these contributions related to the purpose of the community
• Content popularity
• Number of relationships created by individuals – look at followers and participation in threads
• Discovery of communities – have members joined communities outside their ‘physical’ or existing network

The default Yammer analytics will not provide this type of information and much of it will be antidotal evidence. Social analytics are poor within most social tools (it will be a major revenue stream for a vendor that can start to provide some of the softer metrics that articulate quality and not just quantity).

To measure the value of the relationships and transparency created by the individuals, groups and communities residing on Yammer we still need to conduct a lot of manual digging to find measurement around such artefacts as:

Over the years of working within companies here is my list of useful metrics from ‘mature’ Yammer networks that have developed from basic ‘microblogging platforms to integrated work process and social business / learning platforms (the need for ‘measurement’ moves from attraction to outputs from relationships).

You may not think these type of metrics will be useful now but fast forward 18-24 months and these will be the type of measurement leadership will be asking for:

• What % of newcomers remain members for more than a month
• Speed of replies to discussions. How quickly are discussions receiving a reply? The faster the responses, the higher the level of social presence within the community and the greater the level of participation
• The % of newcomers which initiate a discussion. This highlights whether newcomers may be unmotivated or intimidated to start discussions
• Do members’ interactions have continuity and depth. (Are members engaged in productive, on-going, interactions?)
• What collaborative activities are emerging?
• What documents, tools, resources, or other artefacts are created and utilized. (How are these useful to the members?)
• Is the community providing value for its sponsors?
• Is participants’ involvement in the community affecting their professional practices and learning
• What are the on-going practices and processes that contribute to the “life” of the community and keep members engaged?
• How is knowledge being shared within the community? Beyond the community?
• Are leaders or roles emerging in the community? In what ways? How are they being cultivated?
• How are members being supported in the community?
• How are members contributing? Posting? Replying? (When? How often?)
• What are the prevalent patterns of interactions?
• What is the proportion of new topics that get 5+ replies? The percentage of new blogs at get 5+ comments? The percentage of (video, audio, lesson plan, etc.) uploads that get 50+ downloads or 5+ comments?
• What proportions of new topics or new blog posts are un-responded to or uncommented on (an important measure of the responsiveness of the community, which in turn affects key factors like trust)?
• What is the average new (topics, replies, blog posts) created per member?
• What are the emerging benefits of the community for members?
• What is the average number of “followers” that community members list or have collected in/on their member profile pages?
• What are the proportion of topics or replies that specifically relate to the practice?
• The proportion of replies where links to potentially helpful resources or other referrals are provided
• The proportion of replies to a post in which helpful or constructive advice is directly provided
• The proportion of replies that build on previous posts (as opposed to just responding to the original poster)
• The proportion of replies that contain offers of collaboration or introductions to potential collaborators
• The proportion of replies that contain creative, novel, or innovative ideas
• The proportions of replies that summarize, distil, or synthesize prior posts/replies
• The proportion of posts in which community members show or express vulnerability, such as a lack of domain knowledge
• The proportion of posts in which community members share personal stories
• The proportion of posts in which community members are (emotionally) supportive or helpful to other members