Discussion & Discovery
Why Social is Good for the Enterprise
In an earlier post, I tried to answer the question What is “social?” in a way that put the idea in simple, relatable use cases. In summary, we are social beings, and social today really just means we are interacting with others to do things in both our personal and professional lives. The concept then of social in the enterprise is that we enable these types of interactions among employees by giving them tools that mimic capabilities found in consumer social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. At the heart of these capabilities are functions that enable discussion and discovery.
To facilitate discussion and discovery, modern applications incorporate features and capabilities such as liking, rating, commenting, sharing, messaging, friending, following, activity streams, and notifications all tied to a profile that embodies who the user is. These social features enable users to connect around common interests, facilitate conversations and interactions, and bring more and more information to the light of day. These outcomes benefit the enterprise by enabling the workforce to work better together. Let’s take a closer look.
Discussion
Discussion is two-way communication. The full loop. Enterprise social networks provide the medium for employees to produce content, for other employees to consume that content, and then to react to it. This feedback loop can go through multiple cycles and have multiple offshoots from a single piece of originating content. Content, in this case, can take on many forms from simple status updates, to shared files, to longer blog posts, to step by step procedures. Feedback loops are important.
Feedback loops help companies stay in touch with their workforces, and in turn make employees feel engaged with the work they do, the people they do it with, and the “bosses” they do it for. Social features that enable discussion are a key contributor to helping companies establish strong feedback loops with their employees.
Traditional communication channels typically enable unidirectional communication flow — often described as top down. This is great for getting messages out, but it does nothing for gauging how messages are received or interpreted. Tack on the ability to respond or comment, and you have improved the channel and created a simple feedback loop. This bidirectional communication can now facilitate some actual communication: message and response. Enterprise social networks go to a whole new level, however, if they are implemented in a way that gives everyone the ability to produce and share content. Now, we have omnidirectional communication.
In the omnidirectional model, each employee becomes a hub in a massive network. Employees connect with what is important to them whether based on their workgroup, role, location, or interests. Each of these connection points is an avenue for discussion. Each avenue for discussion enables the employee to do better work by giving them the means to collaborate effectively with their coworkers.
Companies need to give their employees the tools, processes, and — most importantly — authority to drive these discussions. Discussion is two-way communication. Two-way communication is collaboration. Collaboration is discussion. Social discussion is the new way of working that brings new digital capabilities and applies them to existing norms and use cases.
Discovery
Discovery is learning. In the modern era, learning is driven by social discovery. We ask our networks for help. We read reviews. We watch YouTube videos to learn how to get things done. And how do we know which are the best answers, reviews, and how-tos? By how many views, up-votes, likes, and recommends they have. Crowdsourcing and social networks are driving learning through social discovery at an unprecedented rate. Enabling this capability within the enterprise taps into the knowledge and skills of the workforce in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.
The enterprise social network is a platform for learning through discovery. The same concept illustrated above about omnidirectional communication applies to discovery. The employee becomes the hub in a massive network and can tap into the knowledge of that network.
Think about how many times you have heard about silos of information being the root cause to a problem. The left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Enterprise social networks help break down those silos and enable the free distribution of information and data across traditional departmental boundries. In the realm of social discovery, information flows freely in every direction.
Couple the power of free flowing information with the way that social networks bring information to you — through a system of ratings, recommendations, shares, and delivery through notifications and activity feeds — and you have a new paradigm for learning in the enterprise. This is the power of the enterprise social network.
Bringing Social to the Enterprise
Discussion and discovery are not foreign or new concepts. Using social applications and social features to enable discussion and discovery is something that the majority of us have accepted and adopted in our personal lives and now is the time to welcome these capabilities to the enterprise as well. With a variety of options available, it is easy for any company of any size to dip their toes into enterprise social or to take the larger leap and dive fully in with suites of applications or platforms that bring it all together.
One thing is for sure, today’s modern company can’t avoid social tools in the applications they use. No new software ships without social features.
