Over the centuries, there have been different patterns observed in the way human beings do work. In ancient days, humans worked individually to sustain their families; for example, hunting prey for their own families. Later, this changed, and people living in same area started working together toward one goal and sharing benefits equally; for example, cattle breeding, farming, and other tasks where collaboration was necessary for business growth. People started hiring others to execute their work, paying them wages or a salary. This way of working lead to the development of companies or small-scale factories.
As a result of globalization and the rapid disruption in technology and communication, companies became able to work in different locations with common goals, and thanks to the immense development in computer technology and the internet in the last 30 to 40 years, today we are witnessing global organizations—i.e., one name, one culture, one ambition, but present in several different countries. Small companies have become huge by merging or acquiring new companies.
With this tremendous development in the way of working, we see people collaborating with each other to achieve company goals. The primitive way of individual working did not last much longer, and it has mostly died out. Today, we do not see such a working pattern. For any small to big business, collaboration between colleagues is necessary to achieve profits. In short, human beings are born to collaborate for their own self-development and for the organization or company for which they are working.
Birth of Being “Social”
It takes two flints to make a fire.
—Louisa May Alcott
By nature, human beings are social; they live with other human beings to interact and form a lifestyle of their own in order to survive on this planet. The word social has different meanings. According to Webster’s dictionary, a person is social when he or she is likely to seek or enjoy the company of others or tends to group with others of the same kind. A person who has an active social life has a life marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with friends or associates. Surprisingly, a person who drinks with a set of people at a get-together is termed a social drinker.
The word social has been closely associated with the word society. Some synonyms of social are companionable, extroverted, friendly, and hospitable. In short, we understand that a person is social if that person is interactive, good, approachable, and active. People like to be associated with those who are social for many reasons, such as finding specific information, seeking help or advice, figuring out solutions to problems, and simply to talk. This is society’s accepted meaning of the word social. Also, a person with social attributes is accepted as a good person and is often compared with others—they set a benchmark for good character.
Collaboration—An Introduction
Collaboration is a Human Behavior not a Technology or a Process but an Act or series of acts that you choose to perform with one or more specific people to accomplish specific purpose or goal.
—David Coleman, Collaboration Strategies
Let’s say you are in a huge store, such as Walmart, and plan to buy groceries, books and stationary, clothes, and small electronic items for your family. You took a taxi—booking it online—to travel to the store. Normally, big-box stores like Walmart are huge, and things that should be obvious around you cannot be found so easily, so you tend to ask for help, only to discover that the things you wanted to buy actually were close to you. Later, you might give feedback to the sales people working on the floor on how to organize things so they can be located easily by customers. This is probably not a very good experience for you, given you spent about two or three hours in one big store.
Once you enter the store, you open your list of items to be purchased. First off, you approach the information counter and ask them where the Books & Stationary section is. You are able to find the books you want and drop them in your cart. Then, you realize that there is a book called The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, recommended by your friend, that you are unable to find in the shelves. So, you ask for help from the sales people in that section: Why can’t I find this book? When will it be available? What is the discounted price? And so on. To impress you, the sales person answers your questions and gives several recommendations of other books to buy, sharing short overviews about the books and their authors to try to sell you other books available in the store. Finally, you decide that these books sound interesting, and you choose to buy some of the ones recommended by the sales person.
Next, you go to the clothes section to buy some of your favorite-brand jeans, keeping your fixed budget in mind. You go to the shelf and start picking up jeans, but you are unhappy with their size or color. Again, you call a sales person over and ask for help. This smart sales person understands your needs and recommends a pair of perfect-size jeans in the latest color—and you like them! Even though they are on sale, you feel uneasy with your budget and ask for other varieties. Normally, you do not express your budget constraint to strangers. However, sales people understand customers’ budget needs, and this sales person recommends a pair of jeans with a more discounted price, a perfect fit, and in your preferred color. Besides, you buy two pairs of jeans and stay in budget!
What next? It’s time to rest and grab a coffee and a sandwich before you continue shopping. These days, big-box stores have small in-house restaurants to attract customers with decent food and exciting combo offers. So, you decide to have a cappuccino and a chicken sandwich on whole grain bread. You are enjoying your food, listening to the good music around you, when suddenly somebody says hello to you. A sales executive from a reputed bank tries selling you a credit card with zero fees, minimum documentation required, and a 10 percent discount on most products in the store. It is a perfect deal. Anybody would consider getting it, and you decide to sign up for the credit card. After completing your paperwork, the executive hands you a set of stationary, and that too is absolutely free. What an exciting experience!
Then, you set out to buy your groceries. This time, you immediately seek the help of a sales person to find out the latest discounts and offers. However, the sales person is unable to help you find the infused oil you are looking for as they are new to the store. However, they seek the help of another experienced sales person and finally help you find the best infused oil with the best price.
Now you are left with only the electronic items to buy, and you want to get the best LCD television for your house. Once you are in the Electronics section, with different types of televisions around you, you get confused as to what product you want. This time, you choose to check reviews online, looking at people’s ratings for each LCD television available in the store. Then, you finalize your decision about brand and size and request a demo from a sales person. After an exciting demo, you ask for a discount; however, the sales person says that the chosen product is not on sale. You do not want to end your good shopping experience on a bad note, so you approach the sales manager and discuss your problem. Sales Manager who are willing to help customers though could not offer you discount but could offer product on monthly easy installments with minimum interest.
Finally, you are checking out. However, the cashier introduces you to a profit club card that will provide you with more discounts and is free of charge. You decide to buy profit club card, and you get 10 percent cash back and 120 minutes of 4G internet. At last, you take a taxi home after your pleasant shopping experience.
It’s a big example, but it will make it very easy to understand the concept of collaboration. So, what is collaboration?
In the big-box store example, it was you who wanted to buy the best products from a family of big brands, with the best fit and best prices. In short, this was your goal. On the other hand, there were sales people, executives, and managers who wanted to sell their products, achieve their sales target, satisfy clients, and meet management expectations. So, this was their goal. To achieve their respective goals, both parties spoke to each other by sharing information, asking questions, providing guidance, and finding a solution to the problem; i.e., when you were unable to find your book, the sales person gave recommendations of other books in line with your interests. When you wanted jeans but had no idea what to buy, the sales person helped you find the best fit and best price. When you were unable to get a discount on an LCD television, you chose to discuss your concerns by asking questions of the sales manager, who in turn helped you buy the product with easy monthly installments.
So, all you and the store employees did is discuss or collaborate between you to achieve your respective goals.
In the preceding example, there is a lot of technology involved, such as a credit card, a profit club card, the scanner at checkout, and the review system. You and the employees used it to achieve your goals. Getting a discounted price via the credit card or the profit club card allowed you to buy products with more freedom and choice. Technology was and is a facilitator for collaboration.
Also, there are processes in place in a big-box store. To get a credit card, you need to sign forms; you pay for your purchases at checkout with a card or cash; and you might contact store employees for assistance. You and the employees used processes to achieve your goals. Process facilitates collaboration.
Collaboration is not limited to being just between people. It can between organizations, educational institutions, and departments of the same or a different organization. Today, different countries work collaboratively in the areas of science, technology, and medicine to achieve their individual goals. Countries work together in crises as well. For example, after the crash of MH370—a Malaysian airline flight—countries such as Australia and Malaysia worked together to find debris of the missing flight.
The concept of collaboration exists everywhere. Collaboration can exist between ships or vessels. A daughter vessel collaborates with its mother vessel to carry goods within a given timeframe to meet the delivery needs of customers. In restaurants, chefs, kitchen staff, and servers collaborate with each other to serve food that has been requested by their customers. In academics, students and professors work together to write research papers, review articles, and journal articles. On information technology service teams, onshore and offshore teams collaborate with each other to achieve customer delivery. In manufacturing companies, different assembly lines collaborate with each other to build a final product. Collaboration exists in almost every industry, whether it is IT service, product, shipping, or manufacturing.
Collaboration exists not only in the professional arena but in personal lives as well. Organizing a family picnic involves collaboration between family members; you come up with a good holiday destination after collaborating with your friends and colleagues; you find good restaurants by collaborating with your friends and reading their reviews; you try a new product, such as shoes or a radio station, by collaborating with your friends and family members; and, finally, if you invite people for dinner at home then you collaborate with them to find the best possible time.
In the entire chain of collaboration, people are an important focus. Without people, collaboration does not exist. You may challenge that two or more assembly lines or two or more machines can work in human-like collaboration. This is true in the sense that it is people behind the machines or assembly lines who have configured these systems to work collaboratively. You cannot simply take away focus from people. They are needed in the entire chain of collaboration, or collaboration will not exist. As mentioned earlier, technology and processes can facilitate but cannot replace collaboration.
What Is Social Collaboration, Then?
Co-existence of social and collaboration
We know from looking at the term social that, by nature, human beings are social and live with other human beings to interact with and form a lifestyle of their own so as to survive on this planet. A social person speaks freely, is friendly, is confident, and has other good attributes. Collaboration is well understood after looking at the big-box store example, where your goals and the employees’ goals were met by discussing, sharing, and asking questions. As a result, collaboration was well established.
Social collaboration is not difficult to understand. It means that to form social collaboration one has to socially collaborate. This was already seen in the shopping example. You were very social, i.e., polite, when asking questions about discounts and missing books, or when talking to the new employee, who was unable to help you until they consulted a colleague. Neither you nor the employees in the store were rude, brutal, or unfriendly in the quest to achieve their respective goals. Neither you nor them became aggressive or called police or decided to send legal notice when dissatisfied. The collaboration existed without any violence, which is very important. So, it is thus important to be social during collaboration to achieve social collaboration so as to reach everyone’s goals.
“Social collaboration is an act or series of acts that you choose to perform with one or more specific people to accomplish a specific purpose or goal.”
- 1.
A team working together to send a rocket into space
- 2.
A football team scoring the most goals to win match
- 3.
In relay-race competitions, athletes passing the baton to win the race
- 4.
A group of students working on a research project
- 5.
A military parade
- 6.
A set of doctors performing surgery
- 7.
A group of dancers
- 8.
A journalist sharing news through web camera
- 9.
Meetings and discussions through applications such as Skype for Business
- 10.
Workers on a civil contractor site
In the preceding examples, the social aspect is very important, and the minute you take this aspect away you are likely to have an unhappy ending.
Social collaboration can occur face-to-face or virtually. It may happen that you cannot see human faces or cannot speak with them, but through technology you can collaborate with them to achieve mutual goals and establish connections.
Fundamentals of Social Collaboration
It is a rule of thumb that every concept needs the fundamentals in place before it can be achieved, and this rule is very much applicable to the concept of social collaboration. The fundamentals will help you understand the concept, clear out doubts, and create a roadmap for implementation. By using the following list of fundamentals, readers of this book can easily implement the concept of social collaboration in their organization or wherever they are working.
- 1.
Identify groups or parties between whom social collaboration will take place.
- 2.
Define the goals you want to achieve.
- 3.
Define the way of collaboration; i.e., the way both parties will discuss, share information, and assist each other to achieve goals.
- 4.
Collaboration could be face-to-face or through video or audio or text.
- 5.
Keep your collaboration purely social and professional.
- 6.
Respect the interests of each participant.
- 7.
Define a time limit for the collaboration so that the discussion will be fast and energized.
- 8.
There is no hierarchy during social collaboration. People defined with roles and responsibilities need to act whenever needed.
- 9.
Groups or parties need to work as a team as there is no hierarchy.
- 10.
Sustain motivation and energy.
Social Collaboration Makes an Enterprise Work Like a Network
In social collaboration, you will have team members, project managers, directors, executive vice presidents, and so on taking part. However, in such a situation there is nothing bigger than business goals. There is no hierarchy defined in social collaboration, but each individual has to work to achieve the business’ goals. In a relay race, different participants take part in the race to represent their country. There could be a gold medalist, a multiple-times world champion, a record breaker, and another who never won a medal for their country. During a relay race, all this is kept to the side, and the focus is on presenting as one team for their country and winning the race by passing the baton as quickly and smoothly as possible. Once the team sets their focus on winning the race, nobody cares about past gold medals, world records, and the like; the only thing they keep in mind is winning the race. This is social collaboration.
Social collaboration can be done face-to-face or virtually with audio, video, or text. You can choose one or two or all three of them. There are technologies available that will facilitate social collaboration. Choose technology such that your team across geographies can participate in achieving business objectives. You cannot bring people from different continents into one room for face-to-face collaboration every day. However, technology makes it possible to bring all participants into a virtual room or into a forum or space where they can discuss their issues or problems in order to achieve their goals and thereby satisfy customers.
Advantages of Social Collaboration
The concept of social collaboration has been helping different organizations, which you can confirm by examining the huge investments being made by companies. Today, products are built using the concept of social collaboration. Microsoft Office 365 is built and deployed with huge investments. All services in Office 365, such as Yammer, SharePoint, Skype for Business, and Sway, are seamlessly integrated so that you can share content from one service to another, use one credential to access all services, and view one service into another using widgets.
This fascinating development can make anyone realize that collaboration is important. In the world of today, Office 365 is at the forefront of any type of industry, and it all revolves around collaboration. Technology such as Microsoft Office 365 facilities social collaboration independent of geographies, hierarchies, and time differences.
Such investments or developments in collaborative technologies have become possible by researching the working methods employed by people to work effectively. People are open or social when they are part of collaborative teams rather working in silos or in a hierarchy model.
Technology plays a critical role in fostering social collaboration at workplaces and thus makes employees work like a network. There are various tools available in the market that facilitate social collaboration; widely used tools are Yammer, Chatter, Tibbr, Jive, and SharePoint.
- 1.
You work like a network and not in a hierarchy.
- 2.
Your people are more open; i.e., more social.
- 3.
The focus is on business goals.
- 4.
You get a 360-degree view of the entire organization.
- 5.
You build a culture of sharing, since “sharing is caring.”
- 6.
You connect with like-minded people.
- 7.
You develop groups of like-minded people; i.e., a community.
- 8.
You collaborate, connect, and share between like-minded people.
- 9.
It is an opportunity for management to take or give feedback.
- 10.
There is a strong connection between leadership and management teams.
People who know a technology—for example, SAP—can walk and talk about SAP; however, people who know SAP cannot walk or talk about other technologies such as Java or Oracle as they are living in the world of SAP. Unknown crises, new issues, or serious problems related to SAP can be debated or discussed by people who live with SAP and can predict solutions, but they cannot predict solutions for Java or Oracle. To summarize, like-minded people can collaborate well in a controlled environment and will develop innovative solutions. Like-minded people form a community where there is no hierarchy, but rather a group of people ready to collaborate socially to achieve business goals.
Social collaboration helps you identify like-minded people and then leads into the development of a community that collaborates, connects, and shares with other like-minded people in order to achieve business goals. In subsequent chapters we will learn more about communities.
Introduction to Social Media
Social media is a computer-based technology that helps with the sharing of ideas and information and the building of virtual social networks and communities of like-minded people across the globe. Generally, social media is internet dependent and offers users an easy way of communicating personal information and sharing videos and photos within their social network. Users remain engaged with social media via computer, tablet or smartphone.
- 1.
Social media are accessed the using internet.
- 2.
Users can maintain their user profiles, which contain personal and professional information.
- 3.
Users can share content such as text, images, and videos and express emotions about them by using features such as comments, likes, and start conversation.
- 4.
Users can connect to other users and form their own social network.
- 5.
Users can maintain their profiles as private or public per their choice.
- 6.
You can manage your own profile picture.
- 7.
Users can do either one-to-one or one-to-many chats with other users.
- 8.
Users can tag posts with similar content.
- 9.
Users can access such applications through mobile devices.
- 10.
Special users such as developers can access the application programming interface (API) to build customized innovative solutions for other users.
Year | Name of Platform |
|---|---|
1999 | Yahoo! Messenger, a popular instant messaging service. |
1999 | MSN Messenger (also known as Windows Live Messenger), a popular messaging, video, and voice calling service, launches. |
2000 | Habbo, a game-based social networking site, launches. |
2002 | Social networking and gaming site Friendster launches. The service would be popular in Asia and the Pacific Islands. |
2002 | Business-oriented social networking service LinkedIn launches. |
2003 | Social networking website Hi5 launches. |
2003 | Another business-oriented social networking website, Xing, launches. This service is more popular in Europe. |
2003 | MySpace, one of the most popular social networking sites ever, launches. |
2003 | Skype, a very popular instant messaging and video/voice calling service (VoIP), launches . |
2004 | Facebook, the most popular social networking service to date, launches. It now features a voice and video calling service, as well as a widely used instant messaging service. |
2004 | Flickr, an image and video hosting website, launches. Many users use Flickr to keep personal photos, and it is also widely used as a platform for hosting images and videos that are later embedded in other websites and services (such as blogs). |
2004 | Orkut, a social networking website owned by Google, launches. |
2005 | Reddit, an American social news aggregation, web-content rating, and discussion website, launches. |
2005 | YouTube, a video-sharing service that allows users to post virtually anything, from music, let’s plays, and vlogs, launches. Users can then comment on these videos. |
2006 | Twitter, one of the most popular social networking sites worldwide, launches. This website is very popular in Brazil and India. |
2007 | Tumblr, a popular microblogging and social networking website. |
2009 | WhatsApp Messenger, a freeware and cross-platform instant messaging service, launches. The application allows the sending of text messages and voice calls, as well as video calls, images and other media, documents, and user location . |
2010 | Pinterest, a photo-sharing website, launches. This service allows users to submit images, or “pins,” then other users can “pin” them on personalized “pinboards.” Users can then comment on each other’s content and interact with it. |
2010 | Instagram, a photo/video-sharing and social media service. |
2010 | Quora, a popular question-and-answer platform. |
2011 | Snapchat, a photo/video sharing and social media service. |
2011 | Google+, a social networking service. |
Timeline assembled from publicly available information.
Facebook: 2.072 billion users, 500,000 new users every day, six new profiles every second, 60 million active business pages
Twitter: 330 million users, 1.3 billion accounts, 500 million tweets sent each day, 6,000 tweets every second
LinkedIn: 500 million users, average CEO has 930 LinkedIn connections, 3 million companies have created LinkedIn accounts
YouTube: 1.5 billion users, 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute, people watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day, 1,148 billion mobile video views per day
Instagram: 800 million users, 40 billion photos shared, 95 million photos are uploaded each day, 4.2 billion Instagram likes per day.
The preceding figures are publicly available through the website: https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/96-amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts-for-2016/ .
- 1.
Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are used by people to connect with people (and brands) online.
- 2.
Media-sharing networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube are used by people to find and share photos, video, live video, and other media online.
- 3.
Discussion forums such as Reddit and Quora are used to discuss and share news, information, and opinions.
- 4.
Bookmarking and content-curation networks such as Pinterest are used to discover, save, share, and discuss new and trending content and media.
- 5.
Blogging and publishing networks such as Tumblr are used to publish, discover, and comment on content online.
This information is publicly available using https://blog.hootsuite.com/types-of-social-media/ .
Start of New Definitions
Until now, the word social has been associated with people who are good, friendly, approachable, and open to talking. However, while such an understanding exists in dictionaries and books, with the evolution of social media the meaning of the word social has changed drastically, and all of Generation Y (people born after 1981) has a common understanding of this definition. Today when we refer to someone as social it means one who is active on social media channels. A person may try bringing all the traditional attributes of being social (good, friendly, approachable, and open to talking) to their social media channels. However, a person may also display on these platforms attributes that are not aligned with the traditional definition of social. Social media platforms are so open that you are free to share content of your choice, connect with people of your choice, and give opinions. There are no rules whatsoever!!
The most interesting part of social media platforms is their access. You need just one email address to create an account, and that too is free. There is zero cost involved in creating your account, sharing content, and giving opinions. You can access these platforms from any part of the world through the internet using desktop, laptop, and mobile devices.
Social media has changed the definition of being social, and no one is bothered to think about the older definition. Humans deemed social by the traditional definition have now switched to social media channels to continue their activities and continue to be social as defined today.
Rise of Internal and External Social Media
In 2009, as part of Siemens IT Solutions and Services—SIS (which has not existed since 2011 and was a subsidiary of Siemens AG), I started my social collaboration journey with an application called TechnoWeb 2.0, which was built was by a team based in Vienna, Austria. For an application management support (AMS) organization, I was given an opportunity to manage various SAP communities through an initiative called “Community Exchange” to create a culture of knowledge sharing, social collaboration, and connection between employees. At that time, people were not really exposed to external social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter or to the mobile technology revolution we have today, and the assignment itself was quite new and challenging. I had several opportunities to train thousands of end users in the social features of TechnoWeb 2.0.
Increase efficiency of daily work.
Leverage collective intelligence and content generation.
Facilitate internal exchange of contacts and information at zero cost.
Keep relevant networking within corporate boundaries and reduce “digital emigration.”
Background of Communities Exchange Initiative in AMS Organization
For each community, there was a unique community created on TechnoWeb 2.0, a community charter, and an engagement plan.
Increasing community membership on TechnoWeb 2.0 was one major goal for each community.
The community engagement plan contained actions such as a community plan with the underlying scope, publishing weekly five hot topics, and creating knowledge assets.
For governance , there was a weekly review meeting between community leaders and sponsor to track the progress of each community. Reviews were so serious that it was mandatory that each community leader, who normally was of higher designation, or their backup be present with their weekly community highlights, and minutes of the meetings were immediately sent to all after the weekly review to set expectations for the next week.
Integration of Reward System with Communities Exchange
Most Vibrant Community
Champion of each community
Author of the Month
Community Exchange Accomplishments
70 percent of workforce subscribed to communities within a period of five months.
The average participation was about 50 posts per week in all communities.
Five hot topics were launched in all communities as per engagement plan.
All communities were cross networked.
- The following success stories were discovered:
An incident solution was discovered through TechnoWeb 2.0 communities during a crisis.
There was a roll-out of a new enhancement management process.
New customer references were found.
Customer satisfaction stories were generated with the help of TechnoWeb 2.0 communities.
Birth of Yammer
Social collaboration in an enterprise lead to the development of enterprise-level social collaboration, and Yammer has been leading the race since its inception. TechnoWeb was built by an internal Siemens AG team for Siemens only, whereas Yammer is the first ever social collaboration platform built for any enterprise that wants to transform itself into a social and collaborative organization. Yammer (acquired by Microsoft in 2013) was launched at the TechCrunch50 conference on September 8, 2008. Since then, it has been ruling the world of enterprise social collaboration platforms. Yammer is available as Software-as-a-Service; no in-house installable is available. Yammer grounds itself with “Facebook DNA,” and Facebook’s founder president served on Yammer’s board of directors at one point in time. Yammer is the default social network on Office 365 and seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft 365 family of services.
Social collaboration in an enterprise
Day-to-day business queries
Business issues are normally queries, and Yammer helps you find answers to them. With Yammer, you can find answers from a larger audience.
Yammer is a social collaboration and networking platform used inside an organization, whereas external social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, are used for similar purposes outside an organization.
Summary
In this chapter, we have learned what social collaboration is, how social and collaboration co-exist, and the important role social collaboration plays at workplaces. The overall information on social collaboration provided in this chapter will help you build a social and collaborative culture in your organization, and you will be able to clearly explain social collaboration to the people of your organization.
Yammer is a popular platform for social collaboration adopted by most global companies, such as Deloitte, Capgemini, Accenture, Wipro, and others to collaborate, connect, and share about business-related activities. Yammer makes day-to-day work social, mobile, collaborative, able to be done in real-time, and contextual. In the upcoming chapters, you will learn the guidelines of Yammer implementation, how to break silos, and how to create a collaborative workforce using Yammer, transforming the way you work.