My thoughts this morning turned to a dichotomy between having not enough information (typical of a hierarchical control of information flow) and having too much information that may STILL not be what you need (what email, Web, and non-hierarchical information flows have brought about), adding in the variable of time (the information you need is never stable, always changing).
We covered some of this several years back in the context of the changes in the media industry wrought by digitalization in the "Lifestyle Media" white paper. I used a buzz word phrase back then: "the attention economy." The idea was that as the "media economy" has moved from one of scarcity to one of plenty, the last scarce resource is a customer's attention. I think there is a direct parallel in the enterprise to an employee's attention.
Consider the following thought experiment. In the hierarchical / limited information context the analog is being in a small work group focused on a common functional role. If you need information you'll have a mental map of who to go to in the group, which covers some but not all of your information seeking. If you can't map an information need to a person you can "shout out" to the whole group; that will work some times. But in many cases you'll hit an information wall, your information need won't be filled.
Now imagine you are at a huge conference in a massive room with thousands of people in it. You know a few people, perhaps colleagues, near you. You have an information need but those near you can't fill it. Because there are thousands of people there you know there are people in the room who have the information you seek but its too loud to "shout out" to fulfill it, so you just move around randomly asking people.
This latter situation is like today's email / communications environment in a large enterprise. Yes, email can empower you to go beyond the hierarchy, to reach out to anyone for information. And perhaps in not a completely random way, you seek and find information with rifle shot emails guided by "I think Jim in marketing knows, send him an email." Often this too fails -- Jim doesn't respond or doesn't know. You can consider an enterprise-wide "shout out." But in a large firm if everyone tries to virtually "shout out" (send emails to 10,000 people) in search of information you get email overload, people stop looking at emails, and the information need isn't filled.
We recently interviewed a social business expert. One key point he made was that enterprise social networks are more about following topics than following people. Consider the large room situation again. What if all the people in that room were self organizing into topics of interest or "birds of a feather" groupings, with a big sign above them displaying their topics. Perhaps there are 100 topics, in alphabetical order arranged around the room. Now the information needy person can navigate to the topic of interest and immediately ask someone in that group for information.
In Facebook we are following people, not topics (well, I follow the Roku place page so topics are coming into Facebook). Whatever, the point is to bring in the time dimension into what / who you are following. When you are following people the time dimension is less important -- friends don't come and go at high frequency. In an enterprise context you might follow a topic for a long time as well if it is core to your role. But you might follow some topics briefly for a specific reason, then drop it.
The point is, by following topics in an enterprise social network where people are posting questions and answers and links and documents and such it creates a way to move beyond the immediate work group to fulfill information needs - to "shout out" - without overwhelming or being overwhelmed by 10,000 other people shouting out at the same time. It can be a self-organizing, dynamic topic environment that can branch and subdivide if topics get over-subscribed. Like a large room divided into BOFs.
In short, just as in the media world, the most valuable asset is staff attention -- are staff using their attention efficiently and effectively? Enterprise social networks help direct and manage attention by supporting information seeking and fulfillment in a highly scalable way - a way not available to alternative forms of direct (face to face) or electronic communication.
We covered some of this several years back in the context of the changes in the media industry wrought by digitalization in the "Lifestyle Media" white paper. I used a buzz word phrase back then: "the attention economy." The idea was that as the "media economy" has moved from one of scarcity to one of plenty, the last scarce resource is a customer's attention. I think there is a direct parallel in the enterprise to an employee's attention.
Consider the following thought experiment. In the hierarchical / limited information context the analog is being in a small work group focused on a common functional role. If you need information you'll have a mental map of who to go to in the group, which covers some but not all of your information seeking. If you can't map an information need to a person you can "shout out" to the whole group; that will work some times. But in many cases you'll hit an information wall, your information need won't be filled.
Now imagine you are at a huge conference in a massive room with thousands of people in it. You know a few people, perhaps colleagues, near you. You have an information need but those near you can't fill it. Because there are thousands of people there you know there are people in the room who have the information you seek but its too loud to "shout out" to fulfill it, so you just move around randomly asking people.
This latter situation is like today's email / communications environment in a large enterprise. Yes, email can empower you to go beyond the hierarchy, to reach out to anyone for information. And perhaps in not a completely random way, you seek and find information with rifle shot emails guided by "I think Jim in marketing knows, send him an email." Often this too fails -- Jim doesn't respond or doesn't know. You can consider an enterprise-wide "shout out." But in a large firm if everyone tries to virtually "shout out" (send emails to 10,000 people) in search of information you get email overload, people stop looking at emails, and the information need isn't filled.
We recently interviewed a social business expert. One key point he made was that enterprise social networks are more about following topics than following people. Consider the large room situation again. What if all the people in that room were self organizing into topics of interest or "birds of a feather" groupings, with a big sign above them displaying their topics. Perhaps there are 100 topics, in alphabetical order arranged around the room. Now the information needy person can navigate to the topic of interest and immediately ask someone in that group for information.
In Facebook we are following people, not topics (well, I follow the Roku place page so topics are coming into Facebook). Whatever, the point is to bring in the time dimension into what / who you are following. When you are following people the time dimension is less important -- friends don't come and go at high frequency. In an enterprise context you might follow a topic for a long time as well if it is core to your role. But you might follow some topics briefly for a specific reason, then drop it.
The point is, by following topics in an enterprise social network where people are posting questions and answers and links and documents and such it creates a way to move beyond the immediate work group to fulfill information needs - to "shout out" - without overwhelming or being overwhelmed by 10,000 other people shouting out at the same time. It can be a self-organizing, dynamic topic environment that can branch and subdivide if topics get over-subscribed. Like a large room divided into BOFs.
In short, just as in the media world, the most valuable asset is staff attention -- are staff using their attention efficiently and effectively? Enterprise social networks help direct and manage attention by supporting information seeking and fulfillment in a highly scalable way - a way not available to alternative forms of direct (face to face) or electronic communication.
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