On Friday, the 14th of February, I had the opportunity to connect with other customers to talk about how Yammer can be used for Knowledge Management best practices. One of the people on the phone ran a KM team for a global risk management organization where he was launching Yammer. He stated that the key to success was to remind his champions that the success of the network truly is in their hands otherwise leadership will create a snowball effect saying “there’s no value in this tool for me.” Very quickly the other customers on the call looked to him as the expert as I quietly listened and captured core concepts of the call so others could take advantage of what was shared. They have now become a self-sustaining network and I am just a part of it being more of a coach to the group rather than just one individual customer and I couldn’t be happier.

Why would you want to adopt this model of working with your customers

You individually cannot make your customers wildly successful

As your network of customers continues to globally expand or perhaps it already is globally distributed, the constraints of time will limit the success your customers can achieve if they continue to look to you alone to guide them on their journey.

Imagine a network in which you and your customers were all working together to work towards a common goal and where you were learning as much from your customers as they were from you.

What if our customers guided each other as much as we guided them?

When we can connect customers to others who have gone through their own journey and are excited to share what they have learned, the resulting network is greater than the sum of its parts. We are able to uncover nuggets of knowledge we might not have known existed had two customers not talked and asked those specific questions.

Speed of change increases as your network becomes more complex

As your customer base grows, so does the ecosystem of people and information necessary to support the customer base. In addition, we enjoy increased access to social and mobile technology giving more people a voice and the opportunity to get involved. Our network no longer consists of just us and our customers, it includes our partners and other thought-leaders. The complexity of the network and resulting speed at which information transforms also increases. These two factors will put stress on the traditional channels of sharing information across these networks.

The problem we now face is about how people work and about empowering them with information and at the speed they need to get their work done.

The way to do this is by working as a network and by doing so, we not only pool our resources, people and information but we remove barriers to information sharing between each other as the rate of change increases around us. However, in order to work like a network, we have to help everyone see that they can contribute because they have the tools they need to be successful themselves as well as to help each other.

How to coach a network of customers

Our approach has been simple in aim but an ever evolving and challenging journey to achieve. In order to create a self-sustaining network, we have to coach the entire network of customers, partners and employees who may never see in person.

In one of my previous posts about our activity vs. account-based approach I referenced our role is not to lead but to participate. However, we participate in a very specific way. We first listen, then inspire and connect our customers and finally curate what comes back to use to be useful to the entire network.

Listen First

In any network of people there are bound to be commonalities in challenges and solutions to address them. In my last post about Elements of a powerful story, I referenced my colleague Daniel Brunt pulled out specifics around the value his customer has seen in their own company during one of our Engagement Power Hours*. Let me give another example of how we do this:

During a debrief after a meetup hosted in the San Francisco area between local customers, Noah Sparks, Tiffany Tong and I were sharing stories we had heard throughout the night. Noah shared with us a story he had heard from one customer who works in the IT department of a well known local retailer. He learned that she grew up on a farm in Ireland but based on her “low-tech” upbringing she did not feel she would be the ideal candidate to promote enterprise social in her company. However, Noah learned she had many years of experience in the retail industry in different roles. During that time she realized that the demands for information from people coming into the stores now require a faster and more engaging way of sharing information with them. He actually uncovered a fantastic champion, someone who could be the bridge between the departments that enable social technology to communicate between employees to the needs of the ever-increasing demands of their customers.

Inspire

Over the past month or so, Sarah Sheikh I have been working with a large logistics and transportation company based in Miami, FL who has been planning a three-day leadership symposium with the intent of building better relationships across their line of business leaders. They recognized that social is a key way to connect their leaders prior, during and most importantly after the symposium. However, they were a bit overwhelmed with how to gain buy-in and launch the platform in a positive light while meeting their goals.

I invited my colleague John Pan to talk about how one of his customers used Yammer to connect participants at a non-profit conference, that supports the public-private partnership dedicated to improving government through the application of information technology. He shared the value the participants gained including creating their own Alma Mater groups to stay connected on a personal level to continue building those relationships after the conference. By sharing these very tangible anecdotes and specific examples of success gained we inspired this customer to use Yammer as their primary vehicle to communicate with all participants at the conference.

Connect

We add value to the network of customers by being the conduits between customers, thought-leaders outside the network and helpful content to speed up time to value for our customers.

I have the honor of working with my colleagues and customers based in Australia to co-host an Unconference aimed to spread the power of working as a network. Through this initiative, Abi Goodfellow, Filip Crvenkovic, Luke Grange, Steve Hopkins are connecting customers who have joined us with thought-leaders, other customers in Australia and even unique local event spaces to inspire and connect with each other.

The customers who have joined us are co-creating the event with us. Together with our customers, we are the catalysts to transform us from a group of silo’d individuals to a network working to accomplish a common goal.

Curate

A network of people and resources must be cultivated and as its stewards we are responsible for curating what comes back to us to enhance the network to make it better than it was yesterday. The way we do this is by taking all that we have learned and curating the stories and insights shared into measurable and actionable resources from which the entire network can benefit.

My role during the knowledge management call I referenced at the beginning of this post is to mainly facilitate, listen and capture what was discussed so others can learn from the call even if they could not join. At the end of the call during wrap-up one of the participants mentioned that she was actually very new to social and had stumbled upon the event and notes from the last call. As a result of the call, she walked away with tangible examples of how other companies were working as a network and ideas to change her own company culture to speed up their adoption of social.

Tying it all together

The call I referenced above started as a request during a conversation with another customer to learn from others in the knowledge management space. It has blossomed into a regular monthly call where we crowd-source the agenda with topics participants want to hear and a running note of what was discussed for others to learn and connect in between these calls. We are collectively building out the resources and knowledge to work like a network that is constantly improving and growing.