Command and Control

Management in business is based on the military command and control model. This has been refined over centuries to ensure compliance, discipline and standard ways of doing things. Often organisations have ‘ideas’ schemes and ‘innovation’ programmes that rely on such structures to assess the idea or the innovation. Those very structures that are designed to limit creativity and variety! We then wonder why few ideas make it all the way through to implementation. Hmm, I wonder.

Tiger Update

After being towed ignominiously off the track at Brands Hatch a few weeks ago, the Tiger now has a complete new ignition system – Megajolt, a re-mappable 3D system – which will enable the ignition to be set up to take advantage of the power of the Pinto engine. The system is plugged into a computer whilst on a rolling road and then tailored to get the best from the engine. The rolling road session is booked with Sanspeed in Bexleyheath and the car should be fully set up in time for the next tack day on 21st October. I have also now fitted a four leg and cross-braced roll bar which will be much stronger than the single loop bar it previously had and will provide much better protection in the event of a mishap!

Employee Engagement Conference

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at Osney Media’s Employee Engagement conference. I was talking about some of the practical considerations when deploying social media into a large organisation, and why doing so is a good idea.

A couple of things interested me about the conference. Bearing in mind the audience – mostly people involved in internal communications in the UK in one way or another – I was very surprised (read: startled) about how few read blogs, hardly anyone writes a blog and only two people out of about a hundred had even heard of Twitter. Like it or not, user generated content is a great way to ‘engage’ with the people in an organisation, and beyond. So why the lack of interest? Perhaps it’s symptomatic of the confusion amongst internal communications people about what the future holds and what their role might be. We seem to be working harder and harder, with less and less effect. And with the global downturn now really beginning to bite, maybe there’s some concern over job security, particularly as it’s so hard to demonstrate the direct link between engagement activity and the bottom line. I’ve blogged before that the seniors won’t need us in the future in the same way as they have done in the past. But they will still need us, and the longer we take to assume these new roles, the more vulnerable we’ll become.

The second thing that interested me was that questions were being submitted via an electronic voting system. That’s fine, although personally I prefer some interaction with the audience and was pleased when we also had questions from the floor. The upshot was that on arriving back at the office I was faced with an email from the organisers with a long list of all the questions that had been submitted electronically, all of which required answers. So, in case you’re interested, you can find my answers below.

· I thought Sharepoint was a CMS system?!
It is, but it also has team collaboration capabilities, personal content capabilities – MySite – and document management capabilities. See Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint].

· How do you control entries on wikis or blogs to ensure content is correct, not misleading?
User generated content on the BT Intranet sits under a version of the global navigation bar which indicates that this is user generated, not officially published content, and therefore care should be taken with its use. BTpedia front page contains a disclaimer to the same effect. Each BTpedia page has a ‘report this post’ button which flags it to the central intranet team. Other than that, we rely on the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to keep the content up to date, plus the red/amber/green content governance approach I outlined at the conference.

· How do you ensure the normal courtesies are applied?
Sorry, don’t understand the question.

· How do you avoid information overload e.g. 10,000 birthdays going up?
This hasn’t been a problem, and it’s unlikely that out of a population of 106,000 that 10,000 people would be seeking to make the same announcement on the same day J. If they did, however, this would be picked up by the moderator.

· Have you experienced abuses of trust or neglect of other work and how did you deal with this?
I’m not aware of any cases of people posting inappropriate material. Any ’neglect of work’ type issues would be picked up through performance management and dealt with accordingly.

· What happens if people aren't responsible participants?
That depends upon how irresponsible they are. If it was serious, it would be handled as a disciplinary matter. However, in my experience most people don’t want to harm the organisation they work for. We have a long history of openness in BT. For example, we have had a letters column in our employee newspaper for years, and all our senior executives are very accessible. This has created an environment where people are able to raise issues without fear of retribution, and to do so responsibly.

· You mentioned trust, have you had a problem with inappropriate information being published? What about employer obligations to protect other employees from some messages?
No issues with inappropriate information being published. The owners of sensitive messages would be publishing them through the formal channels, not the user channels. Also, we have done a lot of work, including mandatory training, to ensure our people are aware of their regulatory responsibilities in respect of information sharing.

· In many companies they have banned facebook and other similar sites - labelling them as social NOT-working rather than social networking. Do you have an opinion on this ?
Collaboration is of critical importance to business going forward. The social networking behaviours and norms learned on site such as Facebook should be encouraged, not discouraged. However, it’s more than just ‘Facebook for the enterprise’. See the Gartner report on the three stages of social software acceptance. http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=746017

· Any advice regarding 'managing a negative message being shared through any of your channels' - did you 'remove' it and if so what damage did that do the 'open comms' approach?
Have the conversation. Removing a negative comment would kill the conversation. If people have these issues, then they should be heard, responded to and dealt with. It’s a great opportunity to engage.

· In our org we have had to discipline then fire 15 people in the last 6 months for defrauding the company through excessive use of the social network sites before they were banned. What can we do ?
Have clear policies, communicate them and set the behavioural norms.

· What has sharepoint added to your business? is it truly embedded in workflow?
Sharepoint is still in the early phases. However, it has the potential to be transformational as it is totally embedded into the tools we all use everyday. Not embedded yet, but it will be I’m sure.

· Would you say your employer brand matches your consumer brand?
Yes.

· What topics are included in your btpedia as opposed to your intranet
The two can sit side – the formal intranet is for formal content, clearly owned by an individual and not usually up for editing by anyone except that individual. Typically, that would be policy type content. Wiki content is available for editing by anybody. Entries include things such as awards won, acronyms, building information, ‘how to’ content. It’s less formal.

· How do you ensure that people don't waste loads of time when they should be working blogging, using facebook etc etc - isn't there a danger of this?
See above.

· How would you handle on-line harassment or bullying via blogs when BT will be legally responsible?
People cannot post anonymously. I’m not aware of any cases but if one did arise it would be dealt with through our disciplinary procedure. We take any form of bullying very seriously.

· Do you 'manage' blogging or trust employees to manage it themselves? Any nightmare stories and how you resolved them?
It’s entirely self managed, but we do have content governance processes in place which are designed to ensure stale content is removed. No nightmare stories I’m pleased to say.

· Do you have any evidence (employee research or otherwise) that this is improving employee engagement or clarity of communications?
No research yet – that’s in the plan though. Plenty of anecdotal evidence that people are engaging in conversation with each other and collaborating. Also, it has opened up new channels for direct conversations with the people at the very top of the organisation. Disintermediating the internal comms people in the process.

· Do staff on the road (openreach for example) use these systems or is this just for office based staff?
They have access to them. I’m not sure what the take up level is amongst that community yet though.

· Do you monitor the usage of the BT social bits and see if someone's time is disproportionate to the time of their colleagues and what you think might be acceptable
See above.

· Would be interested to know the take-up of the different social media tools mentioned.
1300 articles on BTpedia and growing daily. Over 150 blogs and growing fast.

· Folksonomy??
User gernerated content classification. See Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

· What were your mistakes?
Trying to introduce Web 2.0 tools using Web 1.0 processes.

· I know that you said no website demonstrations - but would love to see what some of this looks like!!
Call me.

· How has BT tangibly benefited as a business from this? Some examples please!
Faster projects and agile deliveries through better collaboration. Tangible benefits through better engagement are notoriously hard to measure, as we all know! Research is in the plan though. See above.

· You have talked a lot about the process, but you haven't touched on the output! can you give us some reference to the improvement in employee engagement and also on the bottom line of the business?
As above.

· Have issues on internal blogs made it into the public domain? If so, was it problematic internally and how did you manage it?
Not been an issue.

· How can you be sure that the information being posted publicly on the wikis is accurate? Could be spreading wrong info throughout organisation. Much of what is on Wikipedia is wrong or inaccurate!
See above. I disagree that Wikideia is inaccurate. See: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/12/69844

· Could you please expand on the RSS comment - why is that critical?
RSS – really simple syndication. See - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE for an explanation of why it is so important.

· What if people don’t have time or the inclination to contribute. perhaps in less innovative companies?
That’s the challenge. Creating a culture which encourages, recognises and rewards collaboration and contribution to the corporate knowledge space. However, don’t assume that more connectivity is always better. It can become overwhelming and people may end up spending all their time managing their relationships which can bog down the organisation. Make sure people know how to focus on valuable connections and reduce the unnecessary ones.