We're Cool Now

Sorry for the absence, it's been busy.  There's a lot to talk about.

I gave some consideration around a "big thought" to capture the spirit of where we are now.

I think "coolness" is a good way to describe it. 

We're cool now.

I'll Skip The Preamble

Rather than try and recap the journey up to this point, I'll just invite the interested reader to scroll back a bit and get the context.

Strangely, the title of this blog is turning out to be eerily prescient -- it's a journey, and we're having fun now.

Being Cool

Now, at EMC, the end of the year is a special time.  Sure, we're busy closing out the year, the field force is incredibly busy (but in a good way), but the mood is different for non-field people.

There's time to poke around at things, including our behind-the-firewall social media site.  Traffic (and participation) is way up.  Every day, there's good stuff happening.

More importantly, many people and groups have to sit down and figure out what they want to do in 2008.  And we're seeing "EMC ONE" (our platform's name) becoming an increasingly frequent participant in the conversation.  More people are planning to use the platform through explicit intent.

Simply put: it's now "cool" to be an active participant on EMC ONE.  It's also cool to have a presence, and to have a plan to use the platform to solve a business problem.  Once "coolness" kicks in with anything viral (like social media), you've got the wind at your back.

Our coolness factor increased a bit when I convinced one of senior execs to start a blog on leadership.  He's a great guy, and has wonderful stories about leadership, values, customer focus, etc.

In addition to being a good sport and just being generally willing to help out with cool projects, there's a real benefit for him -- he spends a lot of time telling the same stories repeatedly to different audiences.  Now he tells it once (online) and everyone can read it.

And, it's fair to say, if one senior exec does something cool, certainly others will follow.

Self-Organizing Communities

It took a while, but it's happening.  People are getting comfortable enough to find each other (even though they've never met), discuss topics, find a problem, and start working to solve it.  I don't have a small number of examples, I now have a much longer list. 

The first wave was awkward, but -- we gave it some time, kept the energy level up -- and magic is now starting to happen on a more frequent basis.

Connections From Distant Outposts

EMC has a Center of Excellence in China.  I don't know how many people are out there (probably more than I realize), but there's a legit business problem in getting people on board, helping them feel connected, etc.

The fellow who runs this COE tells everyone something simple: go to EMC ONE and write a blog entry, introduce yourself, and look around.  And, surprisingly, people from this part of the world are writing back and saying "welcome!".  More coolness.

The Self-Generating Research Library

I get dozens of interesting bits of research, reports, analysis, etc. that flow through my email inbox.  So do lots of other people.  They're in email, and then they're gone, never to be seen again.

I created a space, started posting stuff, and invited others to do the same.  They did.

Pretty soon, we had a big pile of documents.  All searchable.  All discussable.  Not particularly well organized, but better than buried in email, or living on my hard disk.

Now, we've got a Research Group at EMC.  Sure, we'd love it if they took ownership at some point, but it wasn't necessary.

Value to EMC: significant.  Incremental cost: zero.

Product Suggestions

Someone posted a question wondering what new features we should put into a particular EMC product, one of many hundreds.

Wham!  Passionate discussion from dozens of people (some of which didn't know each other), a couple of cool use cases that no one had really thought of, some information shared that wasn't widely known.

Having a product marketing background, there was about 3 months of research that happened in the course of 48 hours.  At zero incremental cost.

Was it a complete replacement for traditional product requirement processes?  No, not really.  But it was a great complement to the standard process.

Behind The Scenes

When we set up the original plan, we knew we didn't want people talking to IT, we wanted someone on the user side who was more of an enabler.  We hired a contractor, but it didn't work out.  Turns out that social skills are incredibly important with social media projects.  We made a change, and it's already much, much better.

We've now opened the floodgates -- we feel we can handle as many users and communities that are willing to jump on board.  We were worried about viral adoption swamping our ability to keep up, but that hasn't been the case.  Everyone, c'mon in, the water's fine!

We made an upgrade to the latest version of Clearspace (1.8?) and it fixed a bunch of annoying problems we'd been having.  The platform is stable and fun to use.  Most of our problems now are with our own IT group, and not with Jive (although there's always more to do, guys!)

Which brings us to our IT guys.  I don't want to be critical -- really I don't.  They've been wonderfully helpful and supportive.

The problem is that social media is not your typical IT application.

Every time I talk to them, I have this mental picture of square peg, round hole, pushing hard, splinters everywhere.  It's not pretty.

There's a somewhat petty control battle going on as well.  We've defined the boundaries as "the business controls the user experience, not IT", which is a role partitioning exercise I would highly recommend for just about anyone considering this stuff.

Let's just say they're not happy with this for a variety of reasons, and -- although this has been agreed at a management level multiple times -- it seems like a few people keep trying to find ways to move the boundary lines in their favor.

Not until they stop thinking like IT guys, and start thinking like business people.

I wish we could spend more energy on more productive pursuits.

That being said, there are few key individuals (you know who you are!) who are blessedly helpful, and take time out of their busy days to help us with one aspect of the platform or another.

But, I try to remember that we're past our nascent phase -- this platform ain't going away anytime soon, and if it changed significantly for the worse, there'd be a riot. 

People like it that much.

Behaviors Are Still The Long Pole In The Tent

If I had to summarize the one thing we need to work on, it's weaning people away from doing everything (and I mean everything) on email.  Even people who are proficient on the platform will occasionally revert to old habits.

This isn't going to change anytime soon, so I guess I'll have to learn to be more patient.

And There's More ...

But it's late, and I'm tired, and I have about a bazillion messages to respond to on the platform, so I'll save it for some other time.

Comments

[An admirer]

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the story. It is amazing that an organization as large as EMC can implement, stick with and eventually see results from social media. The fun and cool part is seeing things evolve over time until they become something people intuitively know when and how to use- without encouragement.

It's cool too how times and tech uses change- I received an email today from a Facebook friend and it felt like she had sent me a postcard.

Best regards,

Bonnie J. Anderson

[Eric Fraterman - Customer Focus Consulting]

Hi Chuck:

Here is a useful, simple and cheap application to help in creating a beehive around shared ideas and making them searchable. Go to www.connectbeam.com .

Hope this helps.

Eric