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Working together is great - most of the time. I really enjoy working with other people on tasks, instead of alone. Usually it's more fun, we get to results faster, the results are better, etc. But how often do we give 'working together' some thought? What I see is lots of time is spent on who should we work with and for ("who are our stakeholders?"), when the work should be done and what the objective of the tasks is. But how often do we think about the 'how' of working and what this means for the 'what' and 'when'? Deliberately thinking about how we are working to get better results. I think we should do this more and recently a great report was published to help us all do this more. Martin White recently wrote an interesting research paper about 'working together' . First I thought it was 'only' about meetings, live and virtual. And if the report was just about meetings, it would have been valuable enough. My expe...

We love shiny new things. The latest hype, oh, let's talk about it! But is it really new or does it just have a new name? Just think about how we talked about 'groupware software' back in the day. Nobody calls it that way anymore. We talk about 'collaboration software/tools' now. The same goes for 'web 2.0'. Nobody says that anymore. We call is 'social media' now, although I'm sure we'll have a new term for it soon. A last example (as I could list many more examples): everybody is talking about 'digital transformation' now. Before that all the talk in town would be about 'social business' and before that it was called 'enterprise 2.0'. Definitions are important. It's all about being clear about what we mean. What I don't understand though is the way many present something as completely new while it clearly isn't. The term is different, but the underlying theme is the same. That's why I...

Markets are conversations , remember? In 1999 this was the central thesis of the great book The Cluetrain Manifesto . The book is just great. It's a must-read. I'm surprised how many people in the digital marketing and communication market know and have read it. Not to mention that I think we still have a lot to learn from the book - so don't just read it once! Markets are  conversations. We know and feel that deep down. But are we as humans and are companies actually doing accordingly? There is so much in marketing, communications, advertising, selling, etc. that has nothing to do with a conversation... Maybe there's something more fundamental that we are not getting here. I'm about 90% through Sherry Turkle's book Reclaiming Conversation . And what a great book it is. I love books that really make you think. And this is one of those books. When your a 'digital' fan and junkie like me, you almost want to put it away. The book is a mirror and what...

There are quite a few books about ‘collaboration’. Recently one was added to the list: ‘Collaborating in the social era’ . I had the pleasure to read Oscar Berg ’s new book twice. Once in ePub format and then in paper. And I must say I enjoyed reading the book and highly recommend you read it too. Reason to read the book The first reason I enjoyed it is because I’ve been following Oscar’s writing ( blogging ) for years now. It’s great to see his writing has been collected, structured and extended into this book. Intranatverk did a great job publishing it. The second reason is the fact that many books you read about collaboration are theoretical. They give us general and more strategic things to think about. And these kinds of books have their own right. I enjoy them as well. On the other hand, after finishing those books, I can feel lost. What steps can or should I take? Oscar’s book is not about that. For one, it’s clear that Oscar is not only a consultant, but has done ...

I'll liveblog large parts of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit. I'll try to publish my notes as soon as the talk is over. First talks at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit are by Jon Mell and Dan Pontefract about ' Heading from Engagement to Passion in Future Work Performance '. Flat army First, Dan Pontefract about 'Flat army'. Pontefract starts with some stories about his experience in corporate life. Why do organizations feel like jails? Research (Gallup a.o.) shows employee engagement is horrible in most large organizations? In the US research shows this leads to huge losses in productivity. Disengagement is a huge issue in organizations. How do we avoid disengagement in organizations? Most people want to find purpose at work. At Telus, the company Dan works for with 40.000 employees, they use several different models to encourage engagement in leadership, collaborative tools, etc. Telus had engagement issues. Half of the employees were not engagement. They d...

How will businesses collaborate in the future? This is the core question of a GigaOm Pro report released some time ago. It is titled ' Practical business collaboration: personal tools show the way ' and was written by Thomas van der Wal and David Card. Based on a survey of business managers, problematic areas around business content collaboration were signaled and directions for solutions are given in the report. Much of today's collaboration still happens in email. 96% says they use email for internal content sharing and 92% for sharing with externals (and this does not correlate with age...). Some companies like Atos are (planning on) banning email. Businesses are looking for ways to increase employee "productivity, accommodate or counter email limitations, and reduce costs". If a new tool addresses these topics it will probably be adopted quickly. Searching and tracking documents is still a big problem for companies. Access or lack thereof to content ...

My notes from the pre- conference workshop with Michael Sampson about User Adoption strategies for Sharepoint. (This workshop is part of the Intranet Conference .) Technology is easy compared to getting people to use the technology. Most people aren't first wave users. They don't say: Give the new tech to me. They ask: "Why should I use it? What is the reason for the new technology? My work has to be improved by the new technology." They basically tolerate the tools. If something is easier it's better for them than that it is perfect. Most organizations assume adoption will be 100%. So, there's a problem. The objective is not user adoption. It's the overal effectiveness of the organization for instance. Or, improve work. The overal approach to user adoption is very important. (Refer to the Collaboration Roadmap .) Research shows that people are least satisfied when IT rolls out and the most dissatisfied.... Sharepoint is a platform. This means ...

This breakout (track 3) at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit is about 'Mastering the social work mindset'. Breakout speakers are Anthony Poncier and Ellen Trude . Anthony kicks off with a sort presentation about HR and Enterprise 2.0. (Last year there was only one participant from the HR department at this Summit. This year there are many more.) HR should be on the wagon because people are the core of organizations. McKinsey recently stressed that the role of HR in E2.0 is essential. Why? Because of the inter-generational cultures (millenials, etc.), new job descriptions (like the community manager), talent management, impact on visibility and mobility (career development, L&D), etc. It's important to look at and change the tradition HR processes for E2.0 success. Ellen doesn't like the word training relating to social media and enterprise 2.0. Training is too much a one-way lecture. At Ellen's company they developed a social learning environment. The courses a...

Martin White recently sent me a review copy of his new book ‘The Intranet Management Handbook ’. I reviewed it in Dutch here (Frankwatching link will be inserted soon). I’m posting slightly different review here on my blog. One with a bit more questions about the book. What is the book about? Not many books have been written about intranet. And the existing books usually address an aspect of intranet. For this reason the publication of ‘The Intranet Management Handbook’ is special.  I’d like to congratulate the author of the book, Martin White, with this event! I really enjoyed reading the book. It is well-written and complete. (For those that don’t know Martin: he’s one of the older internationally known intranet experts.) As I said I enjoyed reading the book. It addresses all or most of the intranet topics. It doesn’t go into too much detail, but enough detail for it to be a real handbook. It helps intranet managers and employees in their daily work. Whether you’ve been in ...

Although social media has been around for some time and more and more examples of the opportunity of social media for business are popping up, I find we are still just getting started. More experiments need to be done to show the power of social media within, between and outside companies. More research need to be done to prove the value of social media for business. And that’s one of the things Jacob Morgan of the Chess Media Group is doing. With the survey The State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration they want to get more understanding on “how emergent social and collaborative technologies are being used for sharing information and collaborating within organizations (not partner or customer facing)”. Jacob has written several case studies about Enterprise 2.0 adoption . One of which I had the pleasure to provide input for. Filling out the survey will only take about 10 minutes. I hope you can find that time to help us all gain a deeper understanding of this new, vibrant and exciti...

I just wanted to make some noise for one of the largest Intranet conferences in the world. I've been there twice (to give a breakout session) and can say this conference is one of the best I've ever attended. The location is great, the people are super, the content is inspiring, the food is good, etc. This year I'm one of the organizers of the conference and I hope we can live up to the expectations... ;-) Are you coming to the Intranet Conference (Dutch: Congres Intranet )? I hope you are. You can find the program here in English or Dutch . I think we have really nice list of keynote speakers. Dion Hinchcliffe, Jane McConnell, Martin White and Tony Byrne. Big thinkers and inspiring speakers in the intranet space. As the program shows, we're taking a bit broader approach to intranet than the previous years. So we'll focus on the traditional intranet, but also on social intranet, social media, enterprise 2.0 and social business. Peter Hinssen will lead us throug...

Some time ago I had the privilege to give a workshop about social media and collaboration for about 50 secretaries.  I wrote about the exciting workshop in the past , but I never shared the slides with you. They're on Slideshare now and you can flip through them below. I hope you enjoy them. As always, comments are welcome. And if you have any experiences with secretaries and new ways of working, please leave a comment. I'm curious if your experience relate to mine. Workshop New Media 4 Secretaries View more presentations from Samuel Driessen .

Jane did it again! Her Global Intranet Trends for 2011 report is out. And it's loaded with all kinds of information about the intranet. Fact and figures, stories and trends. As in previous years I'll pass on some of my highlights from the report. For two reasons: to show you what a great resource this report is, and, to get you to buy it. I think it's worth your money. There's something strange about the intranet. The intranet has been around for a long time now. Some say the intranet is 'so passé'. Social media is the new intranet. At the same time when I read this report I wonder: if the intranet has been along for so long, how come so few companies get their intranet right? Why isn't it the case that we just copy the great practices of other intranet concepts and technologies to have our own great intranet? Of course I know the answer to at least part of this question. But still, with resources like Jane's survey you should be able to make a very go...

Johan Hillebrand, Head of Internal Communication at ABN/Amro. Two main challenges Communications has: information overload (too much email…) and they couldn’t find information. Another thing that was mentioned was: stop paper communication, move to digital. They decided to take on these challenges by building a new intranet. Goals for the new intranet: Fewer channels Offer relevant information Centralize content They choose to have the intranet look a lot like their internet site. No complaints about confusing the intranet for the internet yet. (They launched a couple of weeks ago.) They kept the look and feel very simple. They combine general and local news. They assume people have 10 minutes to read news and cluster that in a box. ABN has a separate social media platform (not integrated in the intranet). It's called Arena. It was built by one of their contractors. They plan to integrate it into the intranet in the future. But the look-and-feel is the same. They piloted withi...

Helen McCarthy, eCommunications Manager at Nestle. Nestle is a huge organization. 280000 employees at Nestle (100000 in factory), 449 factories, operations in 83 countries. Nestle runs their old portal on SAP. Of course they also have email, fileshares, etc. What they needed was collaboration, up-to-date content, reduced information overload, transactions/workflows, global vs local communications, ability to target, confidentiality/security. They set up a new portal based on SAP. One landing page, showing relevant information to the employee. But the employee couldn’t decide if he/she wanted something else targeted to him/her. The targeting was too restrictive. The technology was as well. So, they had a Kit-Kat break! ;-) They now want to model their intranet around their internet site. Their internet works and won awards. It was built on Sharepoint and so the intranet will be as well. They're aiming for the iPad as the standard of usability. Nestle's intranet will have the em...

Wolfgang Jastrowski of Swiss Re is up next. They use Jive for their intranet platform (out-of-the-box). The interesting fact is that they don’t train users. Wolfgang is from IT. They provided the platform and have users decide how to use it. Blogging has not taken off as well as they thought. So they created roundtable to increase blogging. How did they introduce social media tools inside? In 2008 the company realized that collaboration is key. They wanted a community centric collaboration approach. Objectives: Better support virtual teamwork Boost information sharing across functions Accelerate agility and responsiveness Advance innovation and solution creation Etc. In short: they wanted a platform that would support their cultural change. They went live with Jive in Q3 of 2009. They then already had 1500 users. At the end of 2009 they had 10000 users. Their key lessons: Strive for long-term objectives but work in phases and take the time needed Position it as an integrated b...

RichardHare , British American Tobacco is the next presenter. They have 60000 employees. Richard is a Knowledge, Communication and Collaboration Consultant. He starts out with the question who loves their intranet? And who’s users love their intranet? Not many hands go up. Complaints about their intranet: Search takes 20 seconds to return meaningless results Content out of date Difficult to navigate when based on hierarchy … but people still want sites. They connected the roll out of the content management tool to the roll out of the new corporate brand. This helped pull things together. (He showed several local intranets. Most looked the same.) Their intranet only has top navigation, no left-hand navigation. Activity updates in the middle, daily news on top. People-centric navigation. Evaluation of the set-up was done with senior management based card sorting and benchmarking. To define if people can find things and understand what the labels are called. Social media at British A...

Oops, missed the 1st minutes of Neil Morgan , Head of Global Intranet at WWF International (5000 employees). How did they get to their new collaboration platform? Surveyed users by asking questions and watching the way they worked. Based on the survey’s they came up with personas. They found that lots of work was very labor intensive. To address their ‘problems’ they turned to Google. People were already using Gmail, Google Docs, etc. They went for Google Apps: Calendars Docs (e.g. Forms), Spreadsheets Presentations Google Sites (best practices, wiki space, etc.) Neil stresses how really simple it was to set up Google Apps and how simple it is too use. He also shows how well the parts of Google Apps integrate. Search Docs or Search All from one box. Create a document, share it easily and chat about it in the sidebar. Etc. How do they link all these sites back into the intranet portal. They implemented a newsroom approach on the central intranet. They want the sites to think more in a n...

Mikaela Terhil of Wartisila Corporation is on the stage. They provide lifecycle power solutions. Wartsila recently allowed employees to access social networking platforms like Facebook from inside the company. They started by integrating the intranets into one intranet. Then they added social features to the intranet, workspaces and office communicator. Why social features? They wanted to help employees do their work, find the right employees, connect people together, bring expertise and different perspectives together, share knowledge, etc. In short: knowledge sharing and productivity. So they now have: People search > search over all profile information. Employees fill in profile info, blogposts etc are automatically related, you can also follow others Compass profile > this is personal blogs, which is planned but not implemented yet Personal site > collects and shows all your personal information on the intranet (not MySite, but MS profiles) Poll > to get a feel of what ...

Next up is Viviane Dupre of Bombardier. Bnet evolution will be done in a more formal and structured approach. It’s more than intranet; an enterprise 2.0 implementation. They have high level management buyin for the project. A heavily organized governance model. Current version of the Bnet employee portal is from 2004 with less than $100.000 investment. It replaced 100 plus intranets. They have 350 content managers. Minimal governance at the content level. Bnet has been identified as a business critical application. In May 2009 they did a survey. 5000 employees responded to the survey. 64% gave a negative rating of the home page. They also asked what employees actively used on the internet. Like Youtube, LinkedIn. 42% were contributors in 2009. This project was also used to improve employee engagement. By empowering employees, be recognized. Increased employee engagement should lead to increased customer engagement. They wrote up a mission for the Bnet. Stressed enabling and increasing...