1

The Social Intranet

Oscar Berg

Twitter: @oscarberg

●Management Consultant at Acando, Sweden

●Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Collaboration and

Content Management

●Strategy, concept development,

requirements, architecture and change

management

●Blogging at www.thecontenteconomy.com

and www.aiimcommunities.org/e20/ (AIIM)

Trends & forces

Predictable

Static

Long-term planning

Unpredictable

Dynamic

Prepare for change

Before

Changes are happening faster and faster

Based on illustration by Dennis Bottjer, www.DennisBottjer.com

Now

Partners

People expect more from organizations

• Freedom of choice

• Transparency & influence

• Need-driven

Integrated systems

Accessible information

Cooperating organizations

Customers, Citizens

• Fast response

• Accessibility

• Simplicity

Customer Experience

Diminishing

returns

The returns on optimization efforts are diminishing

Efforts

Retu

rn o

f in

vestm

ent

Focus is being shifted to value creation

Value creation

Collaboration

Learning

Innovation

Relationships

Optimization

Transactions

Automatization

Commodities

Outsourcing

Collaboration is required for value creation

Production Units

Suppliers

R&D

Sales&

Marketing

Distributors

Customers

Agents

Focus is on

the core

business

Knowledge work becomes increasingly strategic

Structure-based work

Processes, routines, controls, manuals…

Knowledge-based work

Research, problem-solving, relationships…

The only irreplaceable capital

an organization possesses is

the knowledge and ability of

its people. The productivity of

that capital depends on how

effectively people share their

competence with those who

can use it.

Andrew Carnegie, 1835-1919

“

”

0.30

0.25

0.200.15

0.10

0.05

0.00

0 30 60 90 ... Separationdistance in feet

Tom Allen, MIT, 1977

Probability to communicate once

per week

The further away we are, the less we communicate

How to collaborate?

How do I

share?

When is it my turn to

contribute?

Anything new?

Who knows what

I need to know?

Where do I find the

Information I need?

71% agree that it is easier to

locate "knowledge" on the

web than to find it within their

internal systems.

AIIM Industry Watch Collaboration and

Enterprise 2.0, 2009

“

”

Why are we so

powerful as

consumers

but so lame as

employees?

Geoffrey Moore,

TCG Advisors

“

”

What if you could read a dynamic magazine about

what’s happening at work?

Lesson learned

Embrace the new paradigm in

communications to improve

business performance and fuel

business innovation.

Why social software?

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Better use of shared knowledge

Increased collaboration

Faster communication

Increased agility/responsiveness

Reduced travel costs

Brokering - bringing together people and expertise

Reduction of IT costs

Increased innovation and reduced Time-to-Market

The average Intel employee dumps

one day a week trying to find people

with the experience & expertise plus

the relevant information to do their

job…Let me just say that it is

motivating us to take action.

Laurie Buczek

Enterprise Social Media Program Manager, Intel

“

”

This is the end of the intranet

as we know it

The majority

consumes

A few

produce

We are no longer just consumers…

Produce &

Consume

…since we both produce and consume

Valu

e /

Fre

qu

en

cy

Low

High

Who knows the

NPV function

in Excel?

What are

you working

on?

What’s our

travel policy?

How do I perform

this activity?

We have different kinds of information needs…

Information need

Information need

Cost to serve

…each of which is associated with a ”cost to

serve”

Valu

e /

Fre

qu

en

cy

Low

High

Predictable needs

Created by experts

Permanent nature

Dokumenterbar kunskap

Content serving information needs

Organizations naturally focus on the needs where

the value exceeds the cost…

Cost to serve

Low

High

Valu

e

What’s our

travel policy?

How do I perform

this activity?

…and avoids to produce, or even eliminates,

content which can serve the remaining needs

Cost to serve

Low

High

Valu

e

Content serving information needs

But now that the costs of communicating and

sharing have collapsed...

Low

High

Valu

e

Cost to serve

Content serving information needs

Information

User-generated

content

Serve unanticipated needs

Content created by anyone

Transcient nature

Specialized knowledge

… employees can help each other out

Who knows the

NPV function

in Excel?

What are

you working

on?

Low

High

Valu

e

Cost to serve

How do we avoid drowning in information?

It's not information overload. It's filter failure.

Clay Shirky“ ”

Illustration from The Economist

Information disseminates rapidly in social

networks…

…but social networks also make great filters

Social Graph

We need to make content social…

Document News Event Photo Presentation Graphic

Video Link Community Group Person Organization

Discussion Comment Micro-blog Feed Blog post Wiki

Profile Bookmark Meeting Location Application Device

……

…by interacting and talking about it…

Tag

Subscribe

Like

Micro-blog

……

Link to

Follow

Rate

comment

Bookmark

Share

…so that our collective social activities make

relevant content surface

Ocean of information

Likes

Bookmarks

Views

Tags

Kommentarer

We are stuck with bad practices

Document ping-pong

People try to collaborate by sending-replying e-mails with

different document versions back and forth.

Communication bottlenecks

Central editorial teams or

managers become

bottlenecks in employee-to-

employee communication.

Information hoarding

People collect, hoard and protect information as if it was

their own property and sharing it would make them less

powerful.

Occupational spamming

CC

People force other people with little or no interest

in a discussion or issue to participate, with no possibility

for them to opt out (occupational spam).

Some use cases

for a social intranet

Use cases intranets often fail to support

• Ask a group, a person, anyoneFind an answer

• Ad hoc , long term, project, department…Form a group

• With a person, a group, anyoneShare information

• Share, coordinate, get notifiedCoauthor content

• Name, role, location, responsibility, expertise…Find a person

• People, content, description, free access, restricted access

Find a group

• Ask a question, publish file, get rating and comments

Collect feedback

Example: Share information

Objective Share information with anyone who might

find it valuable

Current Practices • Email everybody

• Publish on the intranet

• Share on a file server or collaboration site

Problems • Emailing everybody not ok (occupational

spam)

• Editorial process for the intranet with limited

room for sharing unrelated information

• Lack of shared spaces (silos)

New Practices • Enterprise micro-blogging

• Blogging with blog portal

• Social bookmarking with bookmarks portal

• Enterprise wiki

Since we operate in silos…

My Team

?

?

?

?

What is going on? Who is doing what?…

…we are forced to become detectives…

My Team

Oops!No access

What’s new here?

What are you up to?

…or we choose to focus on our own objectives

My Team

Rework

Suboptimization

Group think

Idea scarcity Knowledge

lockin

Bad decisions

Now, if we get everybody talking and sharing…

…we can get on top of things

Monitoring

Dashboard

Community

blog Project

blogProject

blog External

blog

Who is

expert at

Excel?

If we can go from searching for officially appointed

experts…

…and instead find ways to get our questions

answered , problems would be solved faster

I have some samples

and a tutorial

Check out the blog

excelcharts.com

Look at the

Microsoft web site

How do I

make great

diagrams in

Excel?

If we just have accessible platforms for open and

scalable collaboration…

Read

Comment

Read

Team

Here’s my

feedbackAha, good to

know!

…we can avoid document sharing chaos and email

lockin…

??

Stakeholder

Team

Stakeholder

Social features

Social features

Forums

ExpertiseLocation

Micro-blogging

Profiles

Groups SocialBookmarking

Wiki Blogging

Sociala Networking

ActivityStreams

Tagging Podcasts

Webcasts

QA

Questions & Answers

Sharing Idea Market Social SearcCommunities

……

People Search Likes SocialAnalytics

WebAnalytics

We will look at these basic social features

Forums

ExpertiseLocation

Micro-blogging

Profiles

Groups SocialBookmarking

Wiki Blogging

Sociala Networking

ActivityStreams

Tagging Podcasts

Webcasts

QA

Questions & Answers

Sharing Idea Market Social SearcCommunities

……

People Search Likes SocialAnalytics

WebAnalytics

Profiles

Describes your identity, expertise, network,

communities, activities, status…

Blogs

Your own platform for sharing information, ideas,

knowledge, opinions…

Activity Streams

Help you creates the workspace awareness

needed for targeted sharing and collaboration

Tags

Allows you to organize information and find it

based on users’ vocabulary

DEMO

SHAREPOINT 2010

Scenario walkthrough:

Enriching corporate content and

making information flow with

user-generated in SharePoint 2010

News Portal

News Portal Blog Portal

News Story Blog

1. Read news story

1

News Story

Blog Portal

Blog

2

1. Read news story

2. Write a blog post about it

News Portal

News Story

3

Blog Portal

Blog

1. Read news story

2. Write a blog post about it

3. The blog post appears on

the news story page

News Portal

News Story

News Story – Blogged about this news story

Blog Portal

Blog

1. Read news story

2. Write a blog post about it

3. The blog post appears on

the news story page

4. The blog post appears

among most recent blog

posts on the Blog Portal 4

News Portal

News Story

Blog Portal – Recently published blog posts

Blog Portal

Blog

1. Read news story

2. Write a blog post about it

3. The blog post appears on

the news story page

4. The blog post appears

among most recent blog

posts on the Blog Portal

5. The blog post appears in

the most blogged about

news stories on the

Blog Portal

6. The news story also

appears in the most

blogged about news

stories the Blog Portal

5

News Portal

News Story

6

Blog Portal – Most blogged about news stories

Demo summary

●Corporate content is enriched by explicit and implicit social

user activities and can automatically flow to new contexts

●Popular content is allowed to surface in social spaces such as

a Blog Portal where users can explore content which currently

is subject to lot of social activities

●By capturing user activities, allowing syndication of content,

and encouraging users to build their social graphs allows

relevant content to be filtered out and appear in their activity

feeds, for example on their profile pages.

Social principles

Enable anyone to…

…participate…contribute

…help out…be recognized

…reach out to anyone

…connect

Don’t put lipstick on a pig

”We have added the possibility to activate commenting

for corporate news”

Key principles for a social intranet

Freeform

Let the purpose and context

decide the format and structure.

Key principles for a social intranet

Freeform

Usability

The application is an obstacle

between the user and the goal.

Key principles for a social intranet

Freeform

Usability

Openness

Make sure that anyone who can

and want to participate can do so.

Key principles for a social intranet

Openness

No, what?Have you

heard?

Dialog

Freeform

Usability

Sharing knowledge requires

understanding.

Understanding requires a dialog.

Key principles for a social intranet

Dialog

Transparency

Openness

Freeform

Usability

If you don’t know everything there

is to know, how can you make the

right decision?

Key principles for a social intranet

Transparency

Recognition

Good work!

Dialog

Openness

Freeform

Usability

Recognition is the primary driver

for sharing. Period.

Creating social spaces

The Water

Cooler 2.0

The Bulletin

Board 2.0

The Whiteboard 2.0

The Knowledge

Base 2.0The Address

Book 2.0

New solutions to old problems

The Meeting 2.0 The Suggestion

Box 2.0

Networking 2.0

The Water Cooler 2.0

The Address Book 2.0

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_socialstaffdirectories/index.html

The Suggestion Box 2.0

Facilitating change and adoption

90% is people, 10% is technology

The technology is the easy part - changing our own

current practices, behaviors (habits) and values is

the really hard part.

VALUE

EFFORT

Me

My colleagues

Our organization

Scope the

changeEase of

learning

Ease of

use

Minimise

Maximize

Communicate a clear vision that top management

has committed to

“Know thyself”

Culture “Me” “Us & Them” “We”

PracticesDocumen-

tationCommuni-

cation

TechnologyFree (or no)

choicePortfolio of

toolsPlatform

GovernanceIgnorance or

blockingPolicies & guidelines

Culture of discipline

Reactive Managed Proactive

Conversation

Fix the root causes (motivation)

I don’t have

time!I don’t want to!

Do some gardening (governance)

Plant seeds

Sort out the weedsDo some watering

Arrange the plants

Frågor?

Will the real knowledge worker

please stand up?

Thanks - Rock on!

Photo and image credits

●http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=1171398

●http://www.iconarchive.com/show/office-icons-by-custom-icon-

design/calendar-icon.html

●http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_socialstaffdirectories/index.html

●http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=1113494

●http://www.economist.com/printedition/index.cfm?d=20100227

●http://www.flickr.com/photos/longo/2748338269/sizes/o/in/photostream/

●http://www.slideshare.net/leapfactor/leap-factor-executive-presentation

●http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/1972425722/sizes/l/in/photostre

am/

● fc67.deviantart.com/fs40/i/2009/017/e/a/mosh_by_sean_tron.jpg