Luis Suarez (LS), Louis Richardson (LR), and Luis Benitez (LB) are presenting Pardon the Interruption - Social Business Hot Topics. Some notes:
1. There are 18 topics they are going to cover. Will give the topic, and then each person will have 60 seconds to give an answer.
2. Getting started can certainly be overwhelming. What are some tips of how to begin my Social Business journey?
- LB - have a use case. A need for it. It's a complete cultural shift.
- LR - find a problem. Vitamin vs aspirin. Too many people think "social" is a nice thing to have. Find the business need.
- LS - get use cases going by studying how people work. Enough with the talk; let's get into the action.
3. Who owns the company's social system? And who decides what's in and what's out?
- LB - it's going to be transformational. It needs executive support. Users owns the data. Do the strategy at the top level, and push it forward.
- LR - it's a cultural question. Hopefully you should feel like you own it - then it will be more successful. Need to take personal ownership.
- LS - there is one group that should own it - HR. Need to morph into "human relationships," don't like the term "human resources." HR should lead it.
4. How do I get my executives involved? How do they start living social?
- LB - get them to focus on their pain points. Help them to get the real facts from employees. An easier way to share information with employees.
- LR - find the EA / AA, and get them social. You may not get the Executive to blog. It's not critical that executives become super social upfront. But they should support.
- LS - for command-and-control, micro-managing managers - stop it. They need to start leading, not managing. They need to pass on their experiences to the next generation.
5. How about the people who "hate" social? How do you get them to adopt it?
- LB - let them be. If you don't like it, so be it. Sometimes the haters are using social to say how much they hate it. Can be a lie.
- LR - you won't convince people who hate it. Stop wrestling with the pig. Go be social / innovative / productive - and you'll show the haters that it works / needs to be done.
- LS - haters will keep hating no matter what. Listen to their hatred. There will be something you will learn, and can make use of that. If you can turn them around, they will become a very powerful evangelist.
6. The Boss wants the old way. You want the new way and the employees don't care either way ... now what do you do?
- LB - Just go ahead and do it. Will become more productive / effective.
- LR - Can you work in the new environment? Sometimes people are social to get work done, and then put it into a spreadsheet. Get a consultant in to help evangelize what's possible. Find the use case / pains.
- LS - Focus on the outcomes, not on the tools. Show the outcomes to the boss, and they'll love it. Will win over other people too. Focus on your effectiveness.
7. How much education is required to get started? What should be the primary focus?
- LB - Show the "why" of using social, and how it benefits an individual.
- LR - Find the people who are socially active external. Ask them to become champions inside. Find the pain points, and guide them through.
- LS - We need to have formal education on how to use social effectively - habits, mindsets, behaviors - otherwise we will repeat the mistakes of email.
8. Bottom-up or top-down for adoption?
- LB - Both. If picking one - bottom-up. Get some content / participation in the system. Get them to become your evangelists.
- LR - It's the middle managers that kill us. See the YouTube video on "M&Ms." The bottom layer will love doing it. The top layer may give permission.
- LS - Take a hybrid approach. Need the passion at the bottom - the champions. From the top down - need leadership / vision for 10-15 years.
9. What's the single ultimate best way to drive adoption?
- LB - Get started. Get the executive support. Bring social to the end users.
- LR - Bring social to where people are at. Don't make it something else / separately.
- LS - The champions / ambassadors ... they will drive adoption of how to change the way work is done.
10. Can social loudmouths cover up the good ideas from less vocal users?
- LB - No.
- LR - No. Their information will be credible or not. You can choose to listen or not. If they say irrelevant things, people don't follow them anymore.
- LS - No. Usually the community will tell them to shut up. But - can you get your idea into their head?
11. How do you know the person who answers your question is a credible resource?
- LB - Check and figure it out. Look what they've said.
- LR - A social system will tell you about their credibility. Social analytics bring the credible people to the surface.
- LS - Aren't we all experts in our own domain? We should be sharing this everyday.
12. Will all the communication options, how do you keep out the noise?
- LB - Don't follow everything. Be careful what you follow.
- LR - Social has much better filters to cut out the noise. Can dial in and out of the level of information at any time.
- LS - Stop hanging out with the wrong network. Find the people / network that has the best information for you.
13. How does a company handle a mix of internal and social networks?
- LB - Up to the company. Depends on how comfortable you are with pursuing the benefits of social.
- LR - Go to where the desired audience is. Need to filter the message for each area.
- LS - Key word is "balance." You do need collaboration inside the organization, but the final frontier is collaboration with your customers outside the firewall. So you need to go there.
14. How about the way people view and cling to folders vs. tags?
- LB - Talk it through with people, and show them the difference between folders and tags. And how to find a file; vs. using a tag.
- LR - We've been using folders for a long time. Folders are worse than tags. It's better to use tags - for a variety of reasons.
- LS - I don't care; they are both the same things. They are both types of labels. The more folders / tags, the easier is the findability.
I had to run to another session, but there were then questions on five other topics.
