Are you using Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) in your organisation? How are you using them and, should you be using them for communities of practice? That’s something I’ll look at in this post. Please let me know your thoughts below.
People and communities are central to the Digital Workplace
If there is one theme which came out of the Congres Intranet & Digital Workplace 2019 in Utrecht, organised by Entopic, it’s this. People are central to a Digital Workplace. James Robertson, StepTwo (Australia) and Sam Marshall, Clearbox Consulting (UK) both focused their keynotes on the topic of (Digital) Employee Experience and Engagement. It was a theme which seemed to appear throughout the event.
Community Management is digital gardening
I recently joined Bind as a Community Management Consultant, but what does that mean? What is Community Management?
If communities are people who share a common focus, then Community Management is the proactive design, development, activation and ongoing cultivation of the community. It’s a professional approach, backed up by relevant data, to connect people around a common goal. It’s about building bridges and creating value.
Organizational change should be made from the bottom up
During any kind of organizational change there will be a temptation to tackle the process with new procedures and technology. Which makes sense, since these are concrete and quantifiable elements. Attempts at sustainable change of this sort will however always fail. This is because people are the defining factor. And to win over people’s heads and hearts, these people will have to be your starting point.
How to integrate an online community into an organization
Unfortunately, too many existing online communities fail to integrate in the organization facilitating them. It will come as no surprise that these networks lead a rather dormant existence. To allow a community to reach its full potential it is essential that it is thoroughly embedded in the organization. Only then will there be anything at stake for both the community participants and the employees of the organization. But what is the best way of doing this?
We need more digital leaders
When we visit a client, we always hope that management will fully embrace online networks. Making a success of a social intranet or online community is so much easier when a director is fully on board and acts as a digital leader who leads by example and does not throw in the towel at the first sign of resistance. But what exactly is a digital leader, and what is it that they do?
Online collaboration, cooperation and networks: what are the differences?
Looking at an online community like Wikipedia from the outside, it might seem like a tightly organized group of millions of people working toward the same goal. But look more closely, and you’ll see all kinds of members working on a wide range of activities, with varying motivations. Collaborations, various networks, cooperations and coordinated activities run in parallel. For good community management it is essential to understand the differences between them.
A successful social intranet starts with good group moderation
An unmoderated social intranet will often lead to an uncontrolled proliferation of groups. With one client we even found groups made up of one individual, who was just using these groups as an additional hard drive for his files. One thing that good group moderation does is to ensure that your intranet does not turn into a graveyard of long-forgotten initiatives. Proactive moderation can make all the difference here.
Organizations of the future operate as communities
Meeting the demands of the digital age will require a new way of working. Take for instance the decision-making process. Organizations no longer have the time traditionally taken up by this process through a decision tree. The future belongs to organizations which are made up of multiple autonomously operating communities forming part of the larger whole (so-called pods).