Organization Horsepower

It’s been a busy last couple of weeks as I travelled to both Orlando for the Learning 2010 conference and to San Francisco for a portion of DevLearn. Attending sessions on Social Learning and Communities at both conferences, it wasn’t so much about learning new things as it was a confirmation of our beliefs and writings on Social Learning to date. It’s always nice to get some validation, but more importantly it’s an indicator of overall corporate readiness to adopt Social Learning principles into learning strategies.

It was also nice to see that there were quite a few companies who have chosen Microsoft SharePoint as the underlying technology for their efforts. However it was disappointing to see many of the sites shown showed little attention to aesthetics, user experience, or true collaboration. SharePoint is capable of so much more. Not only can it look great, but you can also mash-up work flows, forms, discussion, and blog elements to form a cohesive community with true collaborative functionality.

Beyond SharePoint, there were a number of key take-a-ways for those developing communities based on any technology platform. Probably the most pervasive sentiment was that communities are so much more than a collection of functionality. You can build the sexiest community site with chat integration, message boards, blogs, tagging and all the rest, but still see low usage rates if you don’t plan for more than just the functional community framework.

At some point at Learning 2010, I read an interesting tweet from a well known and respected colleague at Intel, Allison Anderson. She wondered “Why is it when we do create and open environment, we get low participation?”

Successful corporate communities have ownership, a pre-planned group of super-contributors, and are centered on functions or tasks that people want — and need — to have conversations about. Not every group within your organization needs a community, but when you plan carefully and pick the right focus areas you may hit on a community that has the potential to become self-sustaining.

Another question heard quite often at both conferences was in effect: “How do I control what people put up on the community?” The knee-jerk answer to this question is that you have to monitor it closely, but the truth is that you shouldn’t have to. People have to be allowed to have opinions, and if those opinions cross the line to misinformation or slander, then most companies already have a way with dealing with that. The point is in order for communication to open and active, there has to be trust. It can be a balance, but you have to temper trust and control.

I also overheard another comment in the crowd about how popular their community was at first, but how a year later it had virtually died out. While this person was looking for suggestions on re-energizing their community, it got me thinking about whether or not this was a bad thing. Sometimes, groups have a logical lifespan. It’s not always a bad thing when a conversation has run its course; it can mean that the topic has reached a new baseline of competence, and that has to be a good thing.

My final thought in retrospect on these two great conferences in respect to Social Learning Communities, is that we have to find a way to make our communities accessible and relevant on mobile devices. I find myself increasingly relying on my mobile device for my own social networking activities and would dare say it surpasses my desktop use by a good margin. I can’t help feeling that our busy, travelling, and multi-tasking team members feel the same way. While many social networking platforms include some mobile page support, SharePoint included, gaining secure access from a mobile device remains elusive in environments that require hardware/software security and encryption.

Looking to the future of corporate communities and social learning the potential is clearly evident. However, that potential can only be fully realized with care full attention to:

• Design and planning for the function AND use of the community
• Appropriate topics and focus areas
• Trust
• Accessibility and usability from both desk-based and mobile devices

Media 1 can help you plan and build SharePoint communities that work. For more perspective on corporate communities, check out my prior blog “Communities of Practice: Batteries Not Included”.