Nice story, thanks for sharing.

I agree with your assessment that an effort to get employees to engage with ESNs does not face the same barriers that knowledge management systems faced in getting employees to enter metadata about chunks of information. I also agree that collaboration and sociability [sociality], on top of the tools and infrastructure, are key elements in making an ESN succeed. He is also saying that, at least some, social computing permeates the walls of an ESN even if it doesn’t officially permit the flow. Think here back to my distinction between process and practice.

I think the overall point Peter Kim made is that ESNs don’t need to be enclosed to succeed, and in fact related social networks and communities shouldn’t be enclosed by the ESN. A good example would be blogging. We know, for example, that if a company wants its website to rise in the google rankings then traditional SEO approaches are not enough. It is incoming links that are most likely to increase your ranking, So, having employees blog off the company’s website not only fails to support the perception that their views are authentic, but also fails to contribute to their company’s reputation in the communities and social networks their blog engages. Better to encourage employees to write their own blogs, even on company time, on separate platforms and link back to the company all the while placing a standard disclaimer, that their views don’t represent their employer’s even though most of the time the two will be in alignment.

The point doesn’t mean that ALL social computing ought to be allowed to permeat the ESN, but in some instances the overall purpose of doing an ESN actually requires such flows of practice to achieve effectiveness. The overall question seems to be when the benefits outweigh the risks.

That’s an old-fashioned view of enterprise social networking as potentially just another version of tired knowledge management. The issue is not about being distracted about ENTERING information it is about being thrilled by the value of what they extract and find.

Moving to Web2 and information-sharing and capturing knowledge has to be generative, that is, pulled from the shop floor. That requires a focus on collaboration (not collection) a focus on sociability and then the all important encouragement of use. Without that it won’t work.

I’ve just finished an assignment from the CEO of a 5,000 person engineering enterprise who previously encouraged and rewarded his staff on being operationally and functionally lean, mean, and independent. Now he realizes that he really needs information sharing, but how?

The answer is in the hygiene factors of the right infrastructure and tools, and then all the right human and social factors.

Facebook and purely social (as against enterprise social) networks already engage people, and employers worry about participation at work, whereas ESNs won’t just take off in the same way. Employers will be challenged with the reality of actually getting people to use them. I don’t believe that there is a strong correlation between the use of the Facebooks and ESNs and that this requires real effort and attention, of the kind I mention above.

By the way, although I was commissioned by the CEO and COO to undertake that work on how to make ESN successful in their organisation, my report really stopped them in their tracks. They were kind of expecting that it was about getting access to Internet across the organisation and the rest would follow – of course I managed their expectations to a degree but the reality of the organisational and leadership effort dawned on them very quickly.

Walter Adamson
http://www.digitalinvestor.com.au