Social Media, Web 2.0 & Org 2.0

“Add Women and Stir” Won’t Keep Women In Tech

May 16, 2012

How do we get and keep more women in technology-related careers? How do we increase the number of women creators, makers, designers, and coders? Why not just add more women to the mix, and go from there?  When all we do is “add women and stir”, without simultaneously and deliberately changing that system, we aren’t going to succeed. [...]

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What Level of Social Business Change Do You Really Want?

March 29, 2012

What level of change do you really want from social business? Do you want a little bit, or a whole lot? Do you want process improvement? Or, Do you want organizational transformation? Social technology means organizational change. Social Business and social technologies are indeed bringing changes into your organization. That we know. But what we [...]

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Scale Positive Behaviors by Designing Them Into Social Software

March 20, 2012

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 to [...]

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7 Frame-Changing Experts on Social Business and Social Organization

March 13, 2012

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 in [...]

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“Social” Means “Voice”

February 22, 2012

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 be [...]

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Extended Organizations: Finding the Boundaries and Naming the Contents

February 1, 2012

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 it). [...]

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

January 11, 2012

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 maximizing [...]

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Do Social Technologies help organization members think more holistically?

December 14, 2011

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 like [...]

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

December 5, 2011

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, or [...]

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