Social Media, Web 2.0 & Org 2.0

Scale Positive Behaviors by Designing Them Into Social Software

March 20, 2012

Tweet Why doesn’t every piece of cake come with two forks? There’s no fixed reason why the cake can only come with one fork. But, having only one fork is an obstacle to sharing, even for the most generous of potential dessert-sharers. Why not bring me a second fork, to make it easy for me […]

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7 Frame-Changing Experts on Social Business and Social Organization

March 13, 2012

Tweet With the growing interest in social business and how social technology can change organizations, we’re starting to hear more and more mainstream business commenters weigh in with their opinions. While these new and novice commenters won’t drown out the voices of the well-established experts (especially those who have corporate support behind them), the increase […]

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“Social” Media Make “Voice” and Contribution Possible

February 22, 2012

Tweet What does it mean for organizations to become more “social”? Becoming “social” means that more people across the organization can contribute their ideas and have influence. Why? Because social technologies make it possible for more people to have Voice. What is Voice? Voice is having a say with the expectation that you will also […]

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Extended Organizations: Finding the Boundaries and Naming the Contents

February 1, 2012

Tweet Can you help me out with a messy research-related question? What are the best ways to set boundaries around subsets of an “extended organization”, and then give these subsets names so that they are easy to talk about? The problem seems on the surface looks like a question of semantics (i.e., what to call […]

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Communities of Commerce: Where the Marketplace is also the Meaning Place

January 11, 2012

Tweet Networks of people and organizations are usually either “markets” or “communities”. It bothers us that networks fit one or the other model of working together, because we envision something more –something both market and community —  in one network. We are often disappointed when markets don’t exhibit a commitment to any values other than […]

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Do Social Technologies help organization members think more holistically?

December 14, 2011

Tweet While it’s true that I’m an unabashed advocate for social technologies as tools for transforming organizations, there are lots of reasons why we’d want social technologies in our workplaces and ‘together places’. Social technologies help increase engagement and make organizational democracy easier — just to name the top two reasons. But the biggest reason to […]

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Social Business News: Too Many Wrong Messages On Social Media? Try Leadership, Not Control.

December 5, 2011

Tweet In my first contribution to Social Business News, I’m reminding organizations that want to align their social media messages to focus their efforts on leadership. I find it pretty frustrating that so many social media advocates recommend “governance” or “policy” or “control” when an organization finds there are too many voices, not enough voices, […]

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Growing Social: 4 Different Paths to Social Organizations

October 26, 2011

Organizations can ‘grow social’ through 4 different paths, driven by technology, social business, collective values, and ‘product’ resonance. Two of these paths are more likely than the others to create organizations that are authentically social. Can you guess which two, and why?

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Is Gamification a Cure for Entitlement?

October 19, 2011

Tweet What value is all this talk about gamification? It’s one thing to deploy game-design tactics to turn your for-profit services (like Foursquare or Hashable) into games. By playing games, folks actually will train themselves to use these products. More troubling to me is the idea of using gamification to redesign work tasks. Gamification and […]

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