Category: Uncategorized (Page 52 of 72)

My team is in Japan and discover a big AHA moment for Toshiba!

In August, Toshiba’s research and development division decided to use IBM Connections for an internal jam to prepare for their technology preview.  The jam was conducted during a 4 day time span in early October and was deemed a success as they had roughly 400 participants across R&D, Engineering Planning, Sales, Marketing, Personnel, and other divisions.   This maxed out the number of people as they had only wanted 400 .. WOW!

Toshiba leveraged a focus on Communities. They had a main jam Community to guide the discussion rules and provide information by using wiki, files and bookmarks. The bulk of the content was contained in 10 sub communities for discussion around different themes primarily using forums and the ideation blog. Each sub community had a facilitator and leader. Prior to launching the jam, Toshiba used blogs, board updates, email and other collaboration tools to market and announce the internal jam.

The actual content of the jam is confidential to Toshiba, but here are some interesting facts from their jam.

• Jam produced over 900 pieces of content
• 100% of the survey participants think they should hold a jam again in the future
• 88% of the survey participates found it successful

This Toshiba example, is indictative of using Social for Ideation or Innovation.  McKinsey says that on average a company using Social for Ideation improvements see a 20% success rate improvement in new product, offerings, or program introductions!  

What’s your story!

This is our last of this week’s focus on Crowdsourcing.  Market Research 2.0 will be done with Social. 

Here is a great example.  Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership and Groundswell, is using information for her next piece of research.

To whet your appetite, here are some early findings so far from her Crowdsourced research:

• Creating a “watercooler” is still the most common reason for deploying — but these suffer because of lack of adoption and more importantly, purpose.
• Companies are beginning to deploy enterprise social networks with specific business goals in mind, ranging from optimizing a business process like sales to supporting a change in strategic direction.
• Metrics, however, are lacking. Most deployment focus on engagement metrics around adoption and usage, rather than tying efforts to business goals.
• Some larger organizations are linking adoption and use of enterprise social networks to employee retention — engaged employees tend to be happy employees.

Take the survey!  It takes only a few minutes!  And experience crowdsourcing!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/36FZHVQ

Yesterday I was invited to share Social Business for the NAFE group, the group of Female exeuctives dedicated to assisting women in their search for professional growth.

While waiting to present, they shared some facts that I found appalling.  They come from a Catalyst study:

• Women seem to be paid for proven performance—women who changed jobs two or more times post-MBA earned $53,472 less than women who rose through the ranks at their first job.
• In contrast, men seem to be paid for potential—men who had moved on from their first post-MBA job earned $13,743 more than those who stayed with their first employer.
• Across all career profiles, men were more likely to reach senior executive/CEO positions than women; in the most proactive category, 21% of men advanced to leadership compared with 11% of women.

The working session then focused on these women helping to set up “Sponsorship” focus vs mentoring.  The full study showed that woman do have mentors, but not sponsors.   People willing to stand up for them, and push them and let them learn in new roles.  Men tend to get these “potential” promotions based on their sponsors.  

The same strategies don’t work equally well for men and women. Women must adopt strategies different from their male colleagues’ to advance their careers. When women were proactive in making their achievements known, they advanced further, increased their compensation growth, and were more satisfied with their careers. They also advanced further when they proactively networked with influential others. Making their achievements known did not impact men’s careers. Rather, gaining access to influential others also helped men advance, and indicating a willingness to work long hours and conducting external scans for other opportunities helped men increase their salaries.

Hope this helps.  As a mom and a professional, it helps me doubly. I’d love your thoughts.

Crowdsourcing is a top value of Social Business.   Crowdsourcing is the act of soliciting input (knowledge, insight, ideas and other forms of social capital) from a widespread, diverse population in order to produce an optimal solution, product or service. Often either monetary or non-monetary incentives are provided as motivation.

How do you select your crowd for this innovation?

Some suggestions!

1. Decide if you want an open “crowd” — i.e.  everyone and anyone, or an invited “crowd” based on a set of criteria.
2. Where do you find that crowd?   Do they hang out on LinkedIn? Facebook? In a particular communtiy?
3. How do you reward them to come to your “crowdsouricing party?”
4. Articulate your goal and process clearly so that the right people stay.  For instance, Community to Innovate 2015 Technology Trends.   We will start brainstorming in community y, for 3 days with votes deciding the winning ideas.
5. Make sure it matters enough to your team — SR team as well — to participate with your Crowd!

And always thank the Crowd!!!!

1. And always remember to say Thank you!

Keeping with our focus on crowdsourcing this week, here is a great view by Cemex on their structured approach to crowdsourcing through an app called Think n Build. Cemex is a $14B company based in Mexico that provides high quality building products to customers in 50 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. They produce, distribute, and sell cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregates, and related building materials.

A true brick and mortar company!!!

Cemex structures their “innovation lesson” into 5 steps for all their employees!

1. The Challenge.  They open the innovation with a “challenge” to all employees.   This challenge is simply a problem statement.
2. Brainstorm.   Employees go in and brainstorm on the challenge.
3. Rating.   Employees rate the ideas and refinements.
4. Priorization of the ideas.   Based on the ratings, doability, and a number of factors, the ideas are sored.
5. Implementation and Execution.     The best ideas get implemented!

Hundreds of ideas for growth have been explored in this manner!  Have fun watching the video and be bold in trying this yourself!

IBM is eating our own cooking with being a true Social Business…crowdsourcing our Social Business ads!

By leveraging the “Wisdom of Crowds”, we took the best of the best from our Social Jam in February.

What do you think?!
Sandy

Happy Monday ! November is already here! Hard to believe.

This Monday’s coffee break is around the value of Crowdsourcing! The McKinsey Study showed that on average crowdsourced products are 20% more successful in the marketplace. Pretty compelling in today’s economy!

Have a listen and this week we will focus in on crowdsourcing examples!

Beginning November 8, the W3C Organization is hosting a worldwide event, called a Social Business Jam, a three-day online event to discuss how best to apply social technologies to maximize business effectiveness. W3C is a well respected standards organization in the tech industry and is responsible for key ideas that make it possible for you to read this page with your web browser. It is interesting that they are inviting business, government, and academia leaders for an open discussion on issues around social business and understand the role of open standards. A glimpse into their motivation may come from recent data reported that more than 50% of social technology users still have doubts about the effectiveness and value of the technology to their productivity at work.

Participants have the opportunity to interact with the Special Guests during the event, ask questions, raise challenges, and confer with speakers and other participants using an online discussion format that transcends schedules and world time zones. I see that Tim Berners-Lee will be one of the those Hosts. Should be exciting to see Tim’s views on Social Business.

The W3C event is free and the six topics described on the Jam information site are relevant to anyone attempting to move beyond just social media.

Registration is open and free.

I am excited and proud that IBM is a supporter of the W3C Social Business Jam as an industry focused, vendor neutral event.

I recommend you check out the Jam and register today: (http://www.w3.org/2011/socialbusiness-jam/)

This weeks Social Business Coffee Break features the new job types that Social Business will drive in the marketplace.

I find it fascinating how many jobs were created by the internet. Like web master, SEO expert, etc. SOCIAL will do the same! Love to hear your thoughts!

All:

I was invited to Farmer’s to present new Leadership Skills in a Social Business world. First, I view this as a insightful move from the executive team.  The line up of speakers was impressive and their focus on coaching and 21st century skills was amazing.

As I did 4 sessions to the highest senior team, I think I learned as much as they did but on different things.  Here’s what I learned from Farmer’s.

• Farmer’s is commited to leadership 2020.  This meeting focused on the leadership skills required to get them there.  So many times companies focus on strategy and priorities. They focused on people.
• As I love to say, culture eats strategy for lunch.  Their culture is one of authencity and teaming to lead them to that growth.   It is impressive.
• While growth is top of mind, the thing that impressed me the most, was their focus on “not at any cost”.  They reminded me about the mission of “caring for people” and how that has impacted their company.  They care for people — their employees, agents, and clients.   This oozes from everything they did.

I often say that becoming a Social Business will amplify your culture and values.  I was very impressed with Farmer’s Insurance as a company, and its leadership team and have no doubt that Farmer’s Journey will be successful.