How Yammer Helped Us Ship Yammy #magicofYammer
Back in 2010, I wrote an article titled “Mining the #Value of Microsharing”. It was so early in the enterprise social era that I was still referring to it as “microsharing”! As I reflect on that article, I’m reminded of just how important it is to identify and share those instances where people are making new connections, sharing their expertise, and leveraging the knowledge of an organization’s network. Seven years later, it can be easy for those of us that have been ingrained in this space to take for granted the unique magic that happens in platforms like Yammer.
Recently, I had an interaction on our Microsoft Yammer network that reminded me of the distinct value that Yammer brings to organizations. Rather than let the experience wash over me, I thought I’d document it and share it with you. Perhaps this will turn into a series of posts where myself and others can share instances where they’ve experienced the #magicofYammer.
A colleague of mine from Australia was interested in shipping Yammy to a customer for a launch event. In case you’re not familiar, we have a Yammer mascot, Yammy. Yammy is our lovable mascot that periodically makes appearances at trade shows and other various events.
My colleague, Glen, posted:
I remembered that we had shipped Yammy to a customer at one point, but wasn’t sure of the details. After doing a quick search on Yammer, I found this thread and shared it with Glen.
Let’s break this down a bit further. I’m sitting in my home office in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the morning of February 22nd, 2017. Back in November of 2014 (…2014!!!) Shuichi, sitting in Japan, decided to ask his question on Yammer. Had he asked his question in email, I would have had almost no chance of finding it since he likely would not have included me on that email. Had he instant messaged another colleague, any information exchanged would have been trapped within that chat.
Instead, he chose to ask his question in the wide open space of Yammer. In doing so, the answers to his query became available to me and anyone else that might wonder about procuring Yammy for their event.
I won’t bore you with the 40 replies to Shuichi’s original post, but suffice to say that it included sufficient information to indicate that there was a precedent for having Yammy shipped to a customer to support a launch event. The thread went on to cover details such as shipping costs, insurance considerations, and approximate shipping times to Japan. This was plenty of information for Glen to return to his customer with information on the feasibility of getting our beloved Yammy to his customer.
Also, some companies feel the need to apply data deletion policies on their Yammer network. Those policies where companies feel safer deleting data so as not to be responsible for it. Thankfully, Microsoft doesn’t apply such policies to our Yammer network. Imagine if Microsoft applied some 90 or 120-day data deletion policy to our network. That would essentially render our network of knowledge useless. I would have had no chance of surfacing this discussion and Glen and our team would’ve been left scrambling to find relevant information.
So, what have we learned here? If you have a question, and there’s even the remote possibility that someone else might wonder the same, ask it on Yammer. Use your network to help you answer questions. Questions that can be searched for and discovered by your colleagues when they will inevitably need the same answers later.
Do you have a #magicofYammer moment you’d like to share? Let us know about it! Share it with us on Twitter and tag it with #magicofYammer.
