Comments on: Social First!

By: How do you get people talking on an enterprise social network? â€” Technkl

How do you get people talking on an enterprise social network? â€” Technkl — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:53:36 +0000

[…] network, I think the most important is for social learning. Clark Quinn says in his article titled Social First! that “When we’re facing a performance problem in the organization, our first resort […]

By: Robert Penn

Robert Penn — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 00:09:34 +0000

I agree that social is better than performance support for being up to date, and can be more targeted (contextually relevant) since a live person can tailor their advice to specific situation. On the other hand, there are costs to social – namely, the time of the person(s) providing advice and help. Also, being highly targeted, social responses can be hard to reuse. An example in our business (a software company) are posts to our forum. Often users have questions that are similar, but not identical, to questions others may have asked in the past so the old posts are often not discovered or used. Lastly, how well does social learning (or performance support) address issues where learners don’t realize they are under performing? E.g. if a company uncovers problems with its safety procedures, it’s unlikely that learners would pro-actively seek out ways to improve via social tools.

Nonetheless, I agree with your argument that social should be considered first and will become more important as change continues to accelerate.

By: Dan Pontefract (@dpontefract)

Dan Pontefract (@dpontefract) — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 21:23:47 +0000

When a baby learns to walk, is he/she sent to class to learn how to do it? Or … do the parents, grand-parents, siblings, etc. offer words of encouragement in a ‘social’ setting?

The same metaphor can be applied to almost all things in an organization.

By: Delphine Renie

Delphine Renie — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 19:13:52 +0000

Social first, I agree. And mobile.
Social is also a good way to be more inclusive, not rely always on the same experts. And to include former colleagues with a deep knowledge of the organization.
How interesting it would be to rethink all our programs by putting the social first!

By: Andy Wolber

Andy Wolber — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 14:08:13 +0000

I like the direction of your thinking.

I do consulting work with many nonprofit organizations, and I’ve considered moving toward a “working in public” model. Since I do mostly technology planning, there’s not typically any info that really requires confidentiality: e.g., it is mostly about a need for an organization to move to cloud-based tools, improve infrastructure, upgrade devices consistently, etc. (The confidential stuff is usually login / configuration info that I insist the organization fully maintain control of themselves.)

I’ve moved so far as to share nearly all my presentations I give (http://www.wolberworks.com/p/presentations.html), as well as content for a course I teach (pa311.com). But I haven’t yet moved to a “social”/”public” first model for my organizational consulting. I’ve brought the idea up with a couple of orgs, but there’s a strong belief that “we’re unique” or “we need to keep our info private”. I’m not sure that’s the case; but that seems to be a strongly held cultural belief in the orgs I work with.

I’d be interested to know how your ideas translate into practice!

Andy Wolber
@awolber