It takes a village…
Adventures in Implementing Enterprise Social
I had the realization today — albeit some may say a rather late one — that to effectively rollout our enterprise social network, I was going to need to enlist the help of a broader team. I don’t mean I was trying to do it myself, or that I don’t have a project team including an implementation partner involved: I wasn’t and I do.
What I came to see was that to meet the expectations that our major operating departments have functional communities starting on day one, I would need a much larger team. I am going to have to look beyond my team, beyond the project core team, and even further out than the extended team. It’s going to take a village.
This approach is going to present new challenges, chiefly training people that are less knowledgeable about the product and its capabilities so that they can in turn teach and guide others. It also won’t be their primary job role, so having them find time for it may be a struggle. With the right prioritization and effectively delivered training; however, using a wider group to help engage department leaders and community managers will enable us to reach a much larger group and will hopefully lead to a better initial experience for our employees.
Our “zero to launch” approach for our day one communities can be summed up as:
- Identifying the communities we want to establish
- Gaining community sponsor (typically company officer level) buy in
- Defining — in specific, written terms — the community objective
- Identifying and training community managers
- Setting up a community structure that matches the objective
- Loading the community with initial content
- Developing a launch plan that includes initial communications, keeping the content fresh, engaging members, and defined success criteria
- Inviting members and launching
Giving employees enterprise social network capabilities is in and of itself empowering and engaging. Ensuring that employees have a day one experience that is rooted in their core job will help drive adoption and engagement further and faster.
