Chatter: From Both Sides Now

The gala event, Dreamforce,  isn’t really my gig. The Enterprise Irregulars know “up and down and sideways” everything related to Cloud-computing. One of our EIs, Anshu Sharma, was a key architect  of Salesforce’s database.com offering announced last week.   In short, I spare everyone my uninformed opinion on most things Cloud-computing related for which I’m certain my EI pals and everyone else is grateful. But, because I’m an Enterprise Irregular blogger, I guess, I was invited to attend Dreamforce this year.  And even though I’m not really clued into Salesforce (the company), I accepted the invite because I wanted to see for myself – eyes and ears on the ground – what Chatter was all about and how it would fit into the social business landscape.

The good news on Chatter

The good news on Chatter is more about Salesforce.com than it is about Chatter the social tool. Like I said last year, having Benioff move front and center to embrace the social revolution is like a dream come true.   This sector needs a Benioff.   Grafting on JP Rangaswami to the SFDC social story was pretty slick as well. It occurred to me at Dreamforce that an item that has been conspicuously absent in the internal social-collaboration space (heretofore  called Enterprise 2.0) has been high quality marketing with great creative and real reach beyond the echo chamber we’ve been nestled in for the past four years.   So, the combination of Benioff who’s somewhat larger than life in real life and agency-designed creative is a huge plus to our sector.  Score one for professional marketing, awareness building, promotion, and tech rockstar iconoclasts. Related is the nature of Salesforce’s corporate culture. Again, I admit ignorance writing about a company I don’t know very well, but there is a detectable undercurrent of raw ambition that seems to drive the company ethos. It’s also a winner-takes-all, scrappy underdog vibe that is easy to spot from Benioff’s jabs at old skool enterprise vendors and thinking, to the high energy vibe on the floor of the Cloud Expo exhibit hall emanating from Salesforce employees and partners. Score two for raw ambition and high energy.  To make a distinction, Salesforce strikes me as the perfect blend of raw ambition without hubris. That’s tough to achieve in a competitive market, but that’s how I see it.  From a company whose primary customer is sales people, it kinda makes sense.   The remaining plus in Salesforce’s corner is its deep technology prowess and its playa status in the broader tech market due in some part to its status as a public company with revenues over $1B.  It’s unlikely to me that Chatter will face any technical obstacle it can’t solve or any partner who’ll reject its overtures. So, score three for technology wunderkind with deep pockets.

The bad news on Chatter

Even though it was announced last year at Dreamforce, Chatter is late to the party.  In the Council, we have hundreds (yes, hundreds) of the largest enterprises in the world already engaged in a social business initiative.   Granted, Dreamforce, is like a “revival” (h/t Dennis Howlett) for Salesforce customers and its ecosystem, so there was a lot of giddiness surrounding Chatter and its game-changing energy.   I found myself commenting to my blogger friends, I felt like I was surrounded in a sea of n00bs who just discovered social.  That’s actually not bad news, but it is bad news if the legions of non-converted enterprise employees flock to social via SFDC and cause a disruptive wrinkle (and endless analysis paralysis) in the strategic plan that’s already underway on another platform.  In truth, most of our members are not zealots for their platform (well, some are), but most of them simply want to deliver the best social collaboration platform for the company.  When we first started discussing the Chatter phenomenon, most of our members said something similar to this,

“I am a little worried about it “cannibalizing” some of what we are trying to do.”

Remember, the Council represents a small minority of all organizations on the planet who will eventually move to social platforms.  But, they happen to be some of the furthest along and most advanced.  One of our members summed up a good response after it was all said and done,

“I just got off the phone with Salesforce, followed by a conversation with our internal team that manages it. We will “turn it on” for current Salesforce users only. It will not be positioned for or compete with our enterprise solution. In doing so, we get data on how many Sales folks choose the “Hide Chatter” button, and if by some chance it does take off wildly, that becomes a good problem to solve later next year, and we can look at a much bigger play…”

So, net net Chatter arriving on the scene is probably a good thing for our sector.  I personally am counting on those ambitious SFDC n00bs to spread the word far and wide to the unconverted.  The faster social becomes a phenomenon in the Enterprise, the sooner we get to the promised land.

Social Business on the Ground

When we set out to investigate case studies, we were looking for “slam dunk” examples where 2.0 initiatives were inextricably tied to business results. In effect, we wanted to begin to dispel the criticisms that e20 was just the next silly, narcissistic exploit to enter the enterprise on the heels of yet another consumer fad: web 2.0.

Well?  We didn’t find those “slam dunk” examples. But, neither did we find any “failures.” What we did find was a massive movement shaking the bedrock of enterprise as we know it. The enterprise plates are still firmly in place, but our investigation revealed tremors– sudden energy being released among the employee population that is poised to crack the foundation of business as we’ve known it.

Time and time again we heard, “This is the most important initiative I’ve ever worked on in my professional life.” There’s something chilling, something inspiring about the people and companies who are leading the charge toward reinventing themselves to become socially savvy. As you read through these profiles and cases, you’ll come to appreciate while all of these companies are still early in the process, they all are confident they will succeed in their long term goals.  Some are realizing early successes already.   The prevailing operational mission at present, however, is to succeed at catalyzing the “ideological reformation” at the root level of the organization that needs to take place before real business value can be extracted, measured, and fine-tuned.  It’s a bit of a Catch-22, and almost as maddening and dangerous as originally described in the novel that coined the phrase.

We will continue to track the progress of these early adopters.  Regardless where you are in the spectrum, we all succeed when every case succeeds.  We’d like to thank IBM and MIT’s Center for Digital Business for lending support and sponsorship to this series of cases and profiles. Special thanks to all @20adoption members who participated in the series.

Current profiles and cases are posted on The 2.0 Adoption Council web site.  Feel free to download at will.  We have a few more coming, as well.

The Chief Evangelist Officer – How does your CEO compare?

We have a wide range of experiences with executive support relative to adoption of 2.0 in the Enterprise.   Some of our members are ecstatic when their CEO blogs on an internal platform without first going through PR; some try to keep the initiative under the radar of the leading executives.  We’ve seen it all.

That said…

This video by member @ted_hopton‘s company, UBM, is the new standard-bearer.   For all of you battling for executive support, watch it and weep.  🙂

Of course, we all hate the fact UBM calls its socio-collaborative platform a Wiki, but we’ll take it.

Awesome job UBM team!

Divided We #FAIL

With all my dedicated passion for the social web and its inspirational, world-changing promise, people often wonder why I’ve chosen to focus on the enterprise.  My answer is: because it’s hard and #ifnotyouthenwho?  One of the last bastions of resistance to embrace the tenets of 2.0 philosophy is found in the large corporate culture.  It also happens to be an area where I feel I can do the most good and leverage my career relationships to inspire individuals to start thinking and acting a different (read: better) way.

That said, the “2.0 for the enterprise” community is small.  It is a mere fraction of the worldwide tech population.  Consider the Enterprise 2.0 Conference brings out maybe 1500 people.  Compare that to, say a tech conference like Oracle OpenWorld, which will draw over 40K people to San Francisco alone next week.  Even if you layer on the explosion taking place with social media, social CRM, and online communities, it’s still a relatively new phenomenon even here in the USA where professionals are still just now signing up for LinkedIn and Facebook.  The #newTwitter will arrive as the only Twitter for the millions of people who have not been Twitter enthusiasts from the beginning. There will come a time when social media will be like air, but that is still a time in the future.

Considering where we are in the evolution of making a difference, today’s mission should focus squarely on inspiration, not perspiration.  It’s that 1% of spark of genius that will ignite a revolution in our time.  Last week, I tracked  JiveWorld 2010 via Twitter (#JW10).  I so now regret not going.  My hat is off to Jive for inspiring its customers to go beyond, to literally encourage and support them in their mission to change the world of work.  So many of our members who are Jive customers are having career-changing, life-changing experiences as a result of this newfound freedom and empowerment.   Take Council member Bart Schutte, for instance, who blogged passionately,

“As someone who has been in the IT industry for 28 years… together we have the opportunity to define this new revolution…I can’t remember being more pumped up about my work.  Nothing that I have done over the last three decades will have as big an impact as what I am doing now.”

And it’s not only Jive customers who feel this excitement.  Whether our members are working with SharePoint, Lotus Connections, ThoughtFarmer, or the so-called Frankenstein suites that have been integrated to meet the needs of the large enterprise, customers who are in the driver’s seat of this transformation all share a similar desire to create change.  My hope is all vendors will inspire their customers to get as charged up as Jive’s customers are.  In a small market, it’s easy to get drawn into religious wars over platforms and persuasions, but petty in-fighting is counter-productive to the larger task at hand.  That task is expanding the small pie sliver that now comprises the social business movement, so real change can occur on a grand scale.

Passion is no ordinary word.

To the uninspired that are not feelin’ the passion, I feel compelled to address the principle argument against embracing working socially: what’s the ROI?   Management theorists have posited that employee engagement leads to business outcomes for years.  There are books, lectures, MBA courses that even pre-date the 2.0 enterprise movement that validate this premise.  I am not worried there are no formulaic guarantees on social business successes yet. “If you do x, you’ll get y.”  Personally, I wish we could change ROI to become Return on Inspiration.  The fact remains, large companies who are experimenting and rolling out these massive deployments are still in the early stages.  I’m certain the proof positive is coming, but ask yourself: are we measuring the right indicators?  Are we (only) looking for evidence under the spotlight of things we know?

Which brings us to the job of the Internal Evangelist.  We call them evangelists because they are preaching a foreign gospel in their large organizations.  I’ve done this, it’s tough.  It’s a thankless and oftentimes painful job.  We are researching salaries for internal evangelists in the Council at present.  Although I’ve been pleased to see we have fairly high level managers responsible for driving this change, it occurred to me that our members should receive “combat pay” bonuses as part of their compensation package.  The career risks our members take every day on the front lines of change, should be rewarded in every way possible.  The members come to the Council for refuge, to get support when they are faced with skepticism and setbacks.  Yet, we rejoice a lot more than we complain.  In fact, we have a running tag in the Council: #clang.  We ring a bell for every victory.  This tag is by far one of our most popular tags.

Don’t hate the playa; hate the game.

So to all those who wish to derail the conversation away from what is needed right now– passion– I offer this video interview with Seth Godin and dedicate it to the hard-working folks who are doing this every day.

If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, here are some nuggets:

“The heart of what’s going on here; the heart of the shift in our economy is this at the core.  You don’t have to be [famous] to do this.”

“It’s not about permission; it’s about the passion and the decision to make an impact.”

“…highlighting and talking about the good stuff and giving those people a platform to succeed.”

“If you’re going to have an impact, you’re going to have to find out where the fear is.  What tricks do you have available to you to overturn that resistance to change?”

“Happiness’ best friend is kindness.”

“Passion’s best friend is generosity.”

“Give people the emotional gift of connection and meeting them in ways that matter.”

Working Out Loud*

It occurred to me recently that my blogging has all but slammed to a screeching halt.  Since the Council was bought by Dachis Group, I’ve barely managed to blog at all, and my tweeting has wound down considerably, as well.   This is not to say I’ve slowed down with social engagement, in fact, it’s the near opposite.   I man the command center at Council central on our Jive and Socialcast social sites, and I monitor Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well as our Dachis Group Yammer account all day.   I have a persistent chat going all day with my assistant on Skype, and I’m generally monitoring the social web for keywords I’m tracking via Google alerts.

I’m just not sharing a lot externally with my e20 neighbors outside of the Council, save for what I manage to post on Twitter or share via Facebook.  So, ironically, the social web has turned me anti-social.  I’m less transparent than I’ve ever been since I started blogging in 2006.  This is a peculiar and sad state of affairs, because I certainly know more now than I knew when I was blogging avidly.

All that being said, I am going to attempt to get back to blogging.  We debate a lot of important issues inside of the Council that deserve to be exposed to an external audience.  Another way we’re going to attempt to do this is via our new Podcast series that I announced this morning.  Of course, I have to respect the confidentiality of the members’ work-specific related issues, but the general trends we’re watching and trying to make sense of would benefit by some group discussion.

So consider this a short re-introduction.  I have a number of posts I’ve been mulling over.  I won’t waste a lot of time perfecting them, but will make every effort to stimulate some conversation.  Stay tuned.

*Work Out Loud is a great theme coined by our member @thebryceswrite

Nomination Season Begins! Who will be Internal Evangelist of the Year 2010?

Photo credit: Alex Dunne

It’s that time again.   Last year was our inaugural celebration awarding a Council member, “Internal Evangelist of the Year.”  (#IEoY09)

We created this award to recognize an individual who has gone above and beyond the #dayjob requirements and truly has been an inspiration for the company leading a radical (and most often) difficult transformation of the large enterprise.

As I said last year, the same is true this year:

“…the job of the internal evangelist is far, far more difficult. These folks toggle between fighting the good fight every day and then slipping uneasily into a sort of DMZ where they can peek out into the broader community for support and the rejuvenation they need to go on fighting another day. It’s often a thankless job with no clear roadmap for advancement, yet the majority of them do it because they believe in the principles of the 2.0 movement. I celebrate them!”

Interestingly enough, last year’s award winner, Claire Flanagan, was promoted to Social Collaboration Director at the Boston E20 conference.  Hence, she created her own roadmap for advancement and was publicly and privately recognized for it by her employer.   We’ve all had an amazing year.  When I posted about the IEoY09 last year, we had just 40 members in the Council.  We now have 6x that number and the percentage of our “heavy users/most engaged” far surpassed 40 a long while ago. Even with the natural churn (members coming, going, new jobs, etc.), we are consistently growing and individual members have the accretive value of every new node’s contribution to the group intelligence.

So, this year’s winner will be harder to choose than ever.  The final selection will weigh heavily on the member’s recommendations from colleagues in the company, but we are considering all nominations including self-nominations.  Do not be shy!  Vote for your favorite Council member.  It’s good for the member to be recognized for achievements and career advancement; it’s good for the company in that it reinforces how critical the social business effort is to the organization; and it’s good for the sector as it validates the passion and enthusiasm this particular trend brings to the landscape for business reinvention.

Here are the rules/instructions:

1. The nominee must be a member of The 2.0 Adoption Council.  If you would like to recognize someone who is deserving of the award and is leading a social business transformation at your company (or any company), please simply ask them to join the Council.  The Council is free to join for qualified members.

2. We are looking for that extra something.  How did the member sway opinion in the company or in the industry at large?  Did the member demonstrably take a risk that paid off?  Are there any success metrics you have regarding adoption or transformative change in the organization you can tout due to the members’ efforts?  Has the business realized any measurable gains specific to the 2.0 effort?  In other words, the IEoY award is not a popularity contest.  It’s an achievement reward.

3. Where to vote:
– We have two forms for nominations.  My preferred form is the same one we used last year on Google.  You can access it here.
– We have a duplicate of the original form on SurveyGizmo. You an access it here. We needed an alternative web address, as many of our members cannot access Google apps behind the firewall.  Please only use this form if you do not or do not wish to use the Google form.

4. Deadline for submissions is October 22, 2010.

5. The Twitter hashtag for this year’s award is #IEoY10.  Most of the Council members can be found on Twitter.  Jamie Pappas has a list, and the @20adoption account follows members on Twitter.

The award will once again be a main stage event at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference (West) this year held at the spacious Santa Clara Convention Center.

Good luck all evangelists!   As you know, I am your most loyal, enthusiastic fan and you are all winners to me. Let the race begin!