I have always been a tech guy – not so much as a user, but as an imagineer – “what can this shiny new toy do for us?!” It was what got me to my line of work – studying … Continue reading From Technology to Purpose in 5 Steps
In 2008, I made a pitch to a steering committee about replacing our SharePoint intranet with some kind of early social network technology. We had interviewed stakeholders around the world about how they wanted to interact with each other and … Continue reading “This is about the company; it’s about us, and it’s about me.” Maybe, it can be about you too.
I thought, for a while there, that technology had unleashed me on to an unsuspecting world (just ask some of my warier colleagues). Technology as liberator! Technology that unlocks the door and then, wait for it, steps aside and ushers … Continue reading I Thought Technology No Longer Carried Such A Heavy Cognitive Load: Scratching My Head Out Loud #WOLweek
Email really is old school. It has reached the limit of its use case. Too much of my communication is transactional and/or emotional – and email does not work well for those outcomes. Email works for action and for details. … Continue reading I Like Liking. Thumbs Up Yo!
Is the saying clean desk, dirty mind? No, that can’t be right. Cluttered desk, cluttered mind? Anyway, the cubicle space is a revealing one. There is intimacy there, a cocoon. I rather prefer the idea of hotdesking, because it gets … Continue reading This Much You Know: What You Can Learn From My Desk
This is a story about Yammer, but from what I read online, it could substitute for the existential angst that comes from adopting, and fighting for, most transformative social technology, as apps and tools get swallowed up in the technology consolidation rush. … Continue reading A Phlegmatic Response To Social Technology Consolidation
Four years ago, before “social” was a thing inside my company, I tried a few things out. One of them was an anonymous blog on the crappy old intranet in which I gently, but directly, skewered various big personalities and important people in the organization, through the voice of The Pundit.
The Pundit always referred to The Pundit in the third person. The Pundit was self-important and zealous, convinced of The Pundit‘s rectitude. The Pundit antagonized and poked colleagues throughout the world, trying to galvanize social discourse and watercooler chat that was visible to all. The Pundit was very edgy, a satirical representation of the back channel protagonists and gossip mongers that patrol the office corridors.
The Pundit, unsurprisingly, was a highly divisive character – hierarchy killing hero to some, rude and ridiculous troll to others.
Continue reading “3 Things I Learned From Being An Anonymous Enterprise Troll”
Enterprise Social Networks flatten organizations, they release untold energy and stories and knowledge, content that floods through the network and makes the company come alive…right? Well, it depends who is watching. Everyone in social business will tell you that executive sponsorship is critical for the successful evolution of your social enterprise endeavour. Well, yeah, but no. I agree that support is required, some engagement too. But ownership top-down roll-outs, not so much. Case in point… A friend told me a story the other night: –begin– I got an invite to a yammer network from a developer colleague. Seems like Yammer is … Continue reading When The Eyes Of Your C-Suite Are Staring At You (Unblinkingly), Your #ESN Will Fail
Yesterday’s post about how networks support getting work done was reformatted from a post I did inside a walled garden ESN last year. It stirred up a few reflections from my network colleagues, and inspired today’s post. As mundane work is increasingly outsourced and automated, it does NOT mean the future of work is ‘jobless’ – au contraire, it is ‘jobfull’. Most knowledge workers will have (to have) multiple concurrent gigs. We will have to specialise further as the generic skills get automated and outsourced. Anyone sitting still and not upskilling iteratively and constantly will be lucky to survive. In … Continue reading The Future Of Work Is Not ‘Jobless’ – It Is ‘Jobfull’
For me, fellow Change Agent Harold Jarche triggers more deep thinking than any other blogger; and this post is no exception – getting larger and more menacing every day is the looming shadow of realisation that the future ain’t what it used to be! All knowledge workers are under threat – from information overload and big data, from automation and outsourcing. The futurist Ross Dawson says: “…in a connected world, unless your skills are world-class, you are a commodity.” The only way out? Expertise, Relationships, and Innovation. Welcome to the network. From Jarche: “We are seeing experiments in new forms … Continue reading I Am The Next Middle Class, And I Need Your Support.
We have to think differently about our personal brand than we did 10-15 years ago. Then, in order to get ahead, to get promotion, to get on that juicy project you could scan your immediate work environment and determine who it was you had to impact to make a difference. Now, things have changed. Your network of influence might be social, virtual, global, segmented based on the communities in which you hang, participate, lead. When I am hiring, the first thing I do in a cursory scan of a resume is to look for online avenues of investigation – therein … Continue reading Dissecting Your Personal Brand: How Do You Show Up Online?
Or, How John Hagel, David Armano, Hugh MacLeod and Harold Jarche Kickstarted Me. Here’s how it began. 2011 Back story: In my MarComms job, I had two projects front of mind – launching an Enterprise Social Network (we were the first company in the world to completely replace our intranet with Yammer) and developing a bunch of infographics on business performance (turning heavy PowerPoint slides into something more digestible). Independently, I was mentoring some young communicators who were trying to work out their pitch and career paths. I spent a lot of time thinking about these topics; with plenty of online … Continue reading What Does A Friend Look Like In The Age Of Social?
