—–

Re-cap

In Part 1, we described the emergent and prescribed approaches to creating an initial Jive SBS structure. A blend of the two is recommended.

In Part 2, we explained what situations were good candidates for Jive SBS Spaces and Groups, accompanied by recommendations about how to design and manage them.

In Part 3, we’ll discuss initial space taxonomies and groups that provide enough comfort for people who need to browse, and that offer enough of a pattern of use to seed proper taxonomy growth.

Taxonomy Patterns

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind when structuring your initial Jive SBS taxonomy is that it’s NOT just about publishing content, and it’s NOT just about broadcasting one-way messages. You probably already have applications for these uses.

Jive SBS is about engaging people about specific topics and content. Of course, many clients find that Jive SBS’s ease of use entices the publishers and broadcasters in their organization, and that’s perfectly fine. Just help them to understand that people will talk about their stuff, and they should respond.

The Lobby Pattern

Note: This pattern was first shared with us by Claire Flanagan. Thanks, Claire!

In the Lobby Pattern, spaces are used as entry points to a particular topic, with relevant sub-communities highlighted on the Overview page. If it makes sense for the topic, this is where the “official” general blog resides, where people can ask general topical questions, and/or where general information about the topic is posted. For more specific focus, people are encouraged to browse any existing sub-communities.

Sub-communities about the topic can exist as Jive SBS Groups and/or sub-spaces. Encourage people to create Groups if membership and self-service group management matters more than the granular permissions, controlled creation, and hierarchical order available with Spaces. Ensure they tag their Groups with the main topic at the very least. For example, groups created about R&D should include “R&D” as a tag. This makes the groups more findable when people who search include “R&D” in their search string. Make this an element of any training materials about Groups.

The lobby space’s manager lists these relevant groups – and in some cases, highlighted sub-spaces – in a Formatted Text widget on a space’s Overview page. As mentioned in Part 1’s discussion about the emergent approach, the goal is to make the groups more findable for participants who choose to browse the space taxonomy. It isn’t necessary to add all groups, because when a participant visits the Overview page for any group, he or she will see related groups in the Similar Groups widget. The space manager should refresh the list of groups periodically by adding new groups and removing those that become inactive.

Here’s an example:

Here’s another example:

A third example uses the Lobby Pattern to educate people how to use the Jive SBS features that sponsors want to promote the most. At the same time, it clearly encourages people to create Groups (and avoid requesting spaces):

• Help
• About Groups
• About Profiles
• About Blogs
• Feedback
• Ask a Question
• Break Room

In very large organizations, where it is practically hopeless to try to create a space taxonomy that would make sense to all, the Lobby Pattern can provide a browsing experience that helps new participants feel comfortable, without overwhelming them.

The Units Pattern

It is inevitable that someone on the planning team or a sponsor will want to create spaces for any number of “units”. These are usually geographies, departments, divisions, functions, products, services, customer segments, partners, competitive segments, industries… you get the idea.

There’s nothing wrong with creating spaces for these units, as long as someone agrees to take care of each space, as explained in Part 2. Don’t create a bunch of spaces for all the organizational units in your company, and expect them to thrive without owners. Resist the urge to organize everything for everyone in advance. Remember, this isn’t just about making content available – it’s about interactive communities.

You CAN encourage a Units Pattern taxonomy growth over time, however. For example, if you anticipate that functions across the organization will want their own spaces – Marketing, Finance, IT, R&D, Communications, HR – either find people who will serve as community managers, content contributors, and advocates for each and every space, or do so with just one. Create it as a sub-space under a “Lobby” patterned space called “Job Families,” or “Functions,” like this:

• Job Families
  • R&D

Usually, people will notice that R&D has a space, but HR doesn’t. This will prompt them to ask for their own space, at which time you can educate them about what it means to manage a space. Perhaps you can educate them about the Lobby Pattern as well, so that they realize they don’t have to create and manage a bunch of sub-spaces in addition to their Lobby space.

Again, it’s all about ownership by the people, not the implementation team.

If you’re concerned about upsetting potential key stakeholders by not representing the units they care about in the initial taxonomy, then reach out to them first. Communication about what you’re planning will go a long way to mitigate obstacles to your success.

Initial Taxonomy Example

A combination of the Lobby and Units patterns tends to be a solid way to start for large organizations with somewhat of a traditional culture. If your culture is more collaboratively and Web 2.0 savvy, this might be too much structure to begin with – try it with your initial participants, and adjust as you go.

Here’s an example – the dark items have assigned community managers; the grayed out items represent future growth:

• Using Brewspace (peer support community)
  • Feedback
  • Success Stories
• The Fighting Five (key strategic initiatives)
  • Customer Experience (lobby)
  • Globalization (lobby)
  • Becoming One Company (lobby)
  • High-Performance Teams (lobby)
  • Being Green (lobby)
• Innovating Business Processes (key strategic processes)
  • Idea-to-Market (lobby)
  • Standard Operating Procedures (lobby)
  • Proposal Creation (lobby)
• Products and Services (lobby)
  • Plastics (product family lobby)
  • Adhesives (product family lobby)
  • etc.
• Functions
  • R&D
  • Finance
  • HR
  • Marketing
  • etc.
• Businesses
  • Corporate
  • Americas
  • APAC
  • EMEA
  • Acme Subsidiary
• Break Room (off-topic discussions)

Summary

• Combine the emergent and prescribed approach to structure, placing emphasis on emergent.
• Ensure Spaces and Groups have people who will care for them.
• Create Spaces with the four “keys” in mind.
• Create a structural pattern that new participants will understand and that will prompt them to create Groups or request valid Spaces.

One last thing: don’t be afraid to change the structure as you go. It’s a living, dynamic thing, just like your company.

Special shout-out to my colleague and friend, Kathryn Everest, for writing this entry.

—–

Jive SBS Spaces

Types of Spaces

In a large enterprise, space structures should reflect:

• key enterprise knowledge domains (e.g., products, customers, industries) where there is significant business value to be gained by improving collaboration at the enterprise level
• key strategic topics where your organization is trying to stimulate enterprise conversation and collaboration (e.g., Innovation, High-Performance Teams, Growth, Globalization, Customer Focus)
• key business processes where there is a strong collaborative requirement (e.g., idea-to-market product development methodology)
• key stakeholder groups or business units (e.g., executive sponsors’ groups)
  

Spaces are relevant for:

• different or granular levels of security - spaces can either inherit the permissions of its parent space, or be completely different
• completely different user communities than what exists.  Subgroups of a user community, however, do not always need a subspace.  Consider using tags and tag groups (see below) to view content by topic, or use a Jive SBS Group
• different branding/themes – a space can have a completely different look and feel from other spaces

Space Management

Ensure each space has an owner, and that users understand how the space is managed. If there are no owners or champions of the space, it may surface a larger organizational issue around accountability.

Questions to ask people who request a Jive SBS space:

1. Is it really a strategic area (see the “keys” above)? If so, there should be accountability somewhere in the organization.  If not, the topic may lend itself better to being deployed as a group, and not as part of the formal space hierarchy.
2. What will be offered in the space? In addition to displaying information, what collaborative capabilities will be in the space? Communities are NOT just about content – they’re where people collide with content and with one another. To facilitate this collision, a space must have at a minimum one or more of the following elements:

• Blog
• Document (e.g., wiki-style pages and files) sharing
• Discussions
• Video (if implementing the video module)

It is not mandatory, but recommended that each of the elements are stewarded rather then just enabled.  This means that for each element that is enabled, there is a specific plan in place.  For example, if the blog is implemented, what is the plan for the blog?  Will there be a group of people who will blog regularly?  Will it be open to anyone to blog?  In the Products space for example, perhaps a general product blog can be managed by product marketing, but the space wouldn’t provide a discussion area or document sharing.  Product-related documents and discussions would be available in sub-spaces dedicated to specific products.

If a document or discussion were to be available, how would they be managed?  Would anyone monitor the space to ensure questions are answered within a reasonable time frame?  Would anyone monitor the documents to ensure they are tagged appropriately and stored in the correct space?  If it is difficult to identify what types of content would exist, or who would be interested in helping to ensure it is properly managed, this could be an indication that there isn’t a sufficient need to include the capability.

Space Layout

Develop a guideline for space layout to provide a familiar environment for participants who are members of multiple communities. For example, always place the Actions widget on the right, Tag Groups (”Topics” in the screenshot below) on the left. Ensure that every space initially created has been designed – don’t rely on the default space layout.

Jive SBS Groups

Groups were included in Jive SBS in version 2.5, in direct response to customer requests for a more simplified, self-service approach to forming ad hoc places. They are an essential part of the structure, providing a method for the formation of more organic and/or smaller areas, which lends itself to an emergent approach to structure.

Groups have a strong membership component, unlike spaces – there is a Members tab, in fact. Because of this, groups are a great way to uncover pockets of like-minded people within your organization, and provide an opportunity for them to discover one another.

Types of Groups

Groups are typically used for:

• Committees and teams
• Communities of Interest dedicated to sharing best practices around topics such as social media participation, iPhone or BlackBerry devices, Web 2.0, Being Green, etc.
• Communities of Practice dedicated to sharing best practices and support around a profession or designation, such as .NET, Project Managers, Architects, Sales Engineers, Community Managers, etc.
• Social groups, such as a cycling club, book club, sports enthusiasts, etc.

Since groups can be public or private, create usage patterns and include them in training materials to demonstrate when to use public versus private groups. This will assist participants in deciding what type of group to create or request.

Group Management

Groups do not include the variety of management options that spaces do. There are no granular permission levels, and group managers do not need access to the space administration console in order to manage their group. Primarily, the person who creates the group is the group administrator – he or she can assign this permission level to any other group members through the end user interface.

Group Layout

As with spaces, design of the group’s Overview page is important. The default layout, however, is typically good enough, and provides uniformity across groups.

Tags and Tag Groups

Tags are keywords that can be added to any type of content by the author. Additionally, participants can tag content created by someone else by using bookmarks. Tags are the “Web 2.0” way of categorizing and making content more findable. A rule of thumb is to tag content with words or phrases you might use to search for it later. Create a tag phrase by using hyphens or underscores between the words, instead of spaces. Initial participants should be well trained in the use of tags.

Space managers create tag groups in order to collect tags into logical groups, or categories. These tag groups appear as choices in a drop-down selection box within each content type (documents, discussions, blog posts), and as a list of folders within the Tag Group widget on the Overview page for spaces. The tags within a tag group are displayed when the tag group is selected within a content type. Participants can select or manually type multiple tags from one or more tag groups. When a tag group is selected within the Tag Group Widget, all content with tags in that tag group will be displayed.

Not sure when to create tag groups? Review the emergent vs. prescribed approaches described in Part 1 for details.

—–

Stay tuned for Part 3 later this week, which will suggest an initial space taxonomy and initial groups that provide enough comfort for people who need to browse, and that offer enough of a pattern of use to seed proper taxonomy growth.

—–

There are generally two approaches to creating an initial Jive SBS structure: emergent, and prescribed. An organization’s culture dictates which approach is predominant.

Since many organizations are in the process of a cultural evolution about how they collaborate and network when they first implement Jive SBS, the best approach to structure involves a combination of emergent and prescribed. Jive SBS can be a useful environment to help participants transition from old, traditional collaboration and networking behaviors (“Enterprise 1.0”) to a newer way of collaborating and networking (“Enterprise 2.0”). To aid in this transition, the structure should be a combination of the old and familiar, and the new and innovative.

Emergent Approach (few Spaces, many Groups)

The emergent approach involves creating very few spaces in which participants interact about a wide range of topics. It also involves allowing participants to create groups for whatever they need. Participants are encouraged to use tags extensively in order to help others find their content more easily.

Over time, the Enterprise Community Manager reviews the content being created, how it is being tagged, and how participants interact with one another about that content. From this, the community manager can usually determine a structure that makes sense to the majority of participants. Implementing more structure based on this analysis can help to better organize participant interaction and content findability. It also enables participants to more finely tune their subscriptions and Your View page to focus on the people, places and content they care about.

Here is an example list of initial spaces designed to let structure emerge over time:

• Help and Feedback: peer support community about how to use Jive SBS and how to improve it
• Exploring Ideas: where thoughts are shared and discussed about anything related to the company
• Questions and Answers: where people can post questions and answers about anything related to the company
• The Break Room: where people can discuss anything not related to the company

Implementing in Jive SBS

To implement this emergent structure within a space, the community manager can create tag groups – collections of the tags that participants have been using – and display those tag groups as a list of folders within the Tag Group widget on the space’s Overview page. Sub-spaces can also be created to provide better organization. Content from the original space can be moved into these sub-spaces, and spaces can be merged together.

To implement this emergent structure for groups, the community manager reviews the Group directory’s tag cloud, then determines which groups to relate to which spaces. She or he adds a Formatted Text widget to a space’s Overview page, then lists some of the groups related to that space’s topics. The goal is to make these groups more findable for participants who choose to browse the space taxonomy. It isn’t necessary to add all groups, because when a participant visits the Overview page for any group, he or she will see related groups in the Similar Groups widget.

The emergent approach works best if new participants are instructed to use the search function to find people, content, and places.

Risks

New participant confusion

The emergent structure approach tends to cause confusion for new participants. This is because they typically expect a browsable taxonomy, similar to their experience with other software applications (e.g., shared file drives, corporate intranet, email folders, desktop file folders). To reduce this risk, repeatedly reinforce the use of search over browsing, and encourage content creators to use tags consistently. Accomplish this through training materials, the telling of success stories, and community email newsletters.

Note: Seasoned participants rarely browse the space taxonomy or the group directory, because they’ve learned how to fine-tune their Your View page and various subscription and notification selections to follow the people, places and content they care most about.

Duplicate groups

Understandably, this approach can lead to the creation of duplicate groups about particular topics. Since groups have a strong membership element, however, many groups about a particular topic can encourage people in different parts of the organization to discover like-minded people that they weren’t aware of before. You must be prepared to tolerate duplicate groups and group proliferation. Some structure can be applied, however, by manually relating groups to a space, as described earlier.

Routine manual “gardening”

While this approach can sometimes feel chaotic and disorganized, and requires routine “gardening” on the community manager’s part, it is extremely effective in generating a structure that makes sense to most participants. This is because an emergent structure tends to reflect how people truly think about and interact about your organization’s people, business processes, functions, business units, competitors, products and services, etc. Such structures can lead to more meaningful and more sustained participation over time.

Prescribed Approach (many Spaces, few Groups)

The prescribed approach is a more traditional approach to structure. It is most commonly used in creating structure for corporate intranets and shared file drives, for example. This involves creating several spaces and sub-spaces based on the implementation team’s perception of what will make sense to most participants. It also involves limiting the creation of groups by implementing a request process.

Here is an example structure of initial spaces designed to prescribe structure from the outset:

• Help and Support
  • Getting Started
  • Success Stories
  • Feedback
• Corporate
  • Communications
    • Internal Communications
    • Corporate Communications
  • HR
    • Compliance
    • Benefits
    • Job Postings
  • Finance
  • Legal
    • Regulatory
    • Intellectual Property
  • Manufacturing
  • Marketing
    • Competition
      • Competitor 1
      • Competitor 2
      • Products
        • Brand A
          • Product 1
          • Product 2

          Brand B

          • Product 1
          • Product 2
      • Services
  • IT
  • R&D
• EMEA
  • Communications
    • Internal Communications
    • Corporate Communications
  • HR
    • Compliance
    • Benefits
    • Job Postings
  • Finance
  • Legal
    • Regulatory
    • Intellectual Property
  • Manufacturing
  • Marketing
    • Competition
    • Products
    • Services
  • IT
  • R&D
• APAC
  • …
• Americas
  • …
• Etc.

Implementing in Jive SBS

To implement a prescribed structure, the implementation team determines which main spaces and sub-spaces will make the most sense and be the most familiar to a majority of participants. They also determine which tag groups to create within each space, as necessary.

Participants can request a group through a request process. This process can, for example, require that the requester describe what the group will be used for, whether they’ve already searched for any existing groups or spaces that will meet their needs, and indicate that they are legally responsible for the group’s content and members’ interaction with one another.

Risks

Participant confusion

Creating too much structure early on can be confusing, invoking the question ‘where does this go?’ when participants attempt to create content. This can result in early abandonment and slow adoption over time. Less structure and good examples and training materials can reduce confusion.

Collaboration stifling

Requiring participants to request groups through a laborious process can result in the stifling of organic collaboration and business networking. A simple or automated request process, or no process at all can limit the stifling.

Content scattering

Creating too much structure inhibits critical mass in any one area.  The information becomes too scattered to get diverse parts of the organization to interact with one another, and to create opportunities to discover new information. Less structure and education about the use of tags to organize content can encourage a critical mass of interaction and content about particular topics.

Empty spaces

Creating spaces without any content in them, or without identifying people who will manage those spaces leads to a dead, empty environment. In general, only create a space or sub-space if someone or a collection of people are committed to maintaining it.

—–

Stay tuned for Part 2 later this week, which will explain what kinds of spaces and groups to create to blend the emergent and prescribed approaches.

Here’s what we’ll be sharing at 4:15pm on Tuesday, November 3:

Making Health Care Providers Social: Kaiser Permanente’s Enterprise 2.0 Adoption
Kaiser Permanente’s success as a premier health care organization depends on connecting approximately 200,000 physicians, nurses, employees, and contractors to promote collaboration, the sharing of best practices, and overall continuous improvement. KP IdeaBook is a socio-collaborative environment that helps make this happen. Learn how we’re rolling out KP IdeaBook in a way that creates excitement and sustained adoption, while balancing the risk of introducing an open environment in a regulated industry and a traditional culture. We will also share how our Enterprise 2.0 vendor is helping us to develop adoption strategies.

Jive Software has been working with Miles and his team since January 2009 to plan a full launch of KP IdeaBook, an implementation of Jive Social Business Software for Kaiser Permanente employees. The organic adoption KP IdeaBook has experienced to-date helped to inform what I can only call the “Go To Market” (GTM) strategies that Kaiser Permanente and Jive have crafted to eventually bring IdeaBook to the approximately 200,000 individuals that provide health care to millions of members.

So, be prepared to learn, because we plan to go deep into the planning required to undertake such an adventure within a regulated industry and a traditional culture. We’ll also give you an idea of what you should expect from your social software vendor beyond technical configurations and customizations, and generic whitepapers about adoption tactics (and yes, I know Jive has those whitepapers, too. Rest assured, we back them up with reality.)

See you in November!

Houston, we have a problem.

I am amazed at how disparate Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 are. I recently attended and presented at Social Fresh, a new type of conference for social media folks. Jason Keath, founder of Social Fresh LLC, took a chance on me as a presenter, because my point of view and experience was so very different (fresh, perhaps?) that I felt like an ambassador from Planet Enterprise 2.0.

What the hell kind of language were these people speaking?

I stuttered some basic questions, which probably sounded like I was asking where the bathroom was in very bad Russian. “I’m sorry, but what is Social CRM again?” And, “Explain what ‘conversion rate’ means, please.” And, “What’s a WOM?”

In my conversations with the excellent people I met at Social Fresh, I learned that they are models for what marketing people should become. They focus on creating and maintaining genuine relationships with customers, and they know how to do it effectively (just see some of the excellent Social Fresh presentations, videos, and images to learn more).

But, I got the feeling – correct me if I’m wrong here – that marketing people don’t have a deep grasp on what really goes on inside their companies. And the rest of us have no idea what’s going on outside of it, even if we’re immersed in public social networks!

Examples of the disconnect

When I voiced my concern about how Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 peeps don’t “get” each other, one smart dude piped up with, “that’s because Marketing and IT don’t get along.” I’d say that used to be true, but today, it’s because they do not speak the same language. At all.

Another smart dude talked about how employees will learn what we’re saying about your company on Twitter, Facebook, etc. via their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, like salesforce.com. When solutions like salesforce.com integrate with Twitter and the like, I guess that’s called social CRM. I call it bullshit. The only reason anyone interacts with a CRM application – or any application, for that matter – is because it’s part of their required work behavior. Sales folks are usually the only ones who must use a CRM tool. And, if an application was built for the people who need reports on the data within, and not for the people responsible for supplying the data, the phrase “force to use” is extremely appropriate. Welcome to Enterprise 1.0, y’all!

Another example of the disconnect: A smart lady mentioned that there were only two sessions about Enterprise 2.0, and they were scheduled at the same time. On the surface, that may have been true, but her comment demonstrates the fact that many don’t see how to apply social media concepts inside an organization.

What problem do we need to solve?

One of the biggest problems we need to solve before “Business as Usual” can evolve to “Social Enterprise Media 2.0″, or Social Business, is this: most large companies are not relationship-centric. They are sales-centric, customer-centric, product-centric. They are focused on whatever produces direct, measurable outcomes. So, we need to figure out how to measure the direct outcome of deeper, trusted relationships between employees and employees, and employees and customers, and employees and business partners, and business partners and customers, and… you get the idea.

But, how do you scale trusted relationships? (Hint: you can’t. At least, not in the traditional ways.)

You know what cancer is? It’s how disease scales. It’s job is to get big, fast. And getting big, fast, seems to be a good goal, right? The industrial revolution taught us how to do it. Mass production, y’all. The problem is that we want to AUTOMATE TRUST, and do it fast. This is why Spike Jones from Brains on Fire struck a special chord with me with his 10 Lessons Learned Igniting Brand Ambassador Movements presentation. He talked about word of mouth (WOM) movements, which struck me as a great model for slowly transforming corporate cultures into relationship-centric ones.

You CAN scale trust, but you have to do it by – get this – trusting people to spread trust one by one, two by two. You must make it part of their required work behavior to network/share/learn.

Now, if we can just figure out how to measure the bottom-line outcome of such a thing, we’re all set.

Here’s what I voted for, and on what page they appear:

• Enterprise 2.0: Community Management Page 2
• Barriers to Enterprise 2.0 Adoption: Why Bad Things Happen Even with Good Tools Page 2
• The Dark side of Enterprise 2.0 Page 2
• The One Year Club: Five Things Companies Learn After a Year of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Page 3
• Taming Big Blue: Users’ Perspective on Emergent Tools for the Global Workforce Page 3
• Making Health Care Providers Social: Kaiser Permanente’s Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Page 3
• Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts and Laggards Page 3
• Case Study of the EMC Community Network – Lessons Learned Page 3
• T3 and the Tank: The Story of a Company and its Employee Community Page 3
• Heading for the Cloud: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly Page 4
• Social Project Management Page 8
• How Intel is Using Governance to Shape Social Computing Success Page 10
• Internet Collaboration Transformation at Nike Page 11
• Enterprise Business: Collaboration Lessons, Bruises and Accolades Page 11 (mentions Jive)
• Tagging is in Everything. What happened to Tagging? Page 11
• The Key Role of Advocates: Making them Partners in Your E2.0 Deployment Page 12
• Four Steps to Securing Management Support for your Social Business Software init Page 12
• 10 Reasons I Abandon Your Community Page 14
• Microblogging an International Crisis: Lessons Learned Page 15
• Micro-Blogging, The Doorway to E2.0 Page 15

Your turn to speak up. Vote today.

2.0 Adoption Council (What is)

Susan Scrupski of ITSInsider hatched this idea after the June 2009 Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, MA earlier this year. About the council, she says:

We are a collection of managers in large enterprises that are charting the course for 2.0 adoption.  Although we may use different platforms and tools, we all share a common enthusiasm for bringing a new way of working to our representative companies.  We call ourselves “internal evangelists” and some say we have one of the most difficult, yet exciting jobs in the global marketplace.

To qualify for membership, you must work for a company with more than 10,000 employees and your full time job must be about bringing 2.0 technologies and behaviors to the enterprise.

The council is by invitation-only, but you can apply to become a member of the Council by sending them an inquiry on LinkedIn. They’ll get back to you in 48 hours.

Jive SBS 3.0 User Training Videos

Note that similar videos are available for purchase for system administration and space administration.

Structure

• Make the login process as painful as possible.
• Assume that your Jive Social Business Software (SBS) environment is only about delivering and consuming content, and not also about connecting and collaborating.
• Ignore the fact that adoption happens virally – make your SBS environment an unwelcome and confusing experience for ad hoc joiners.
• Create a space for every permutation of your organizational hierarchy – try to mimic your intranet structure.
• Assume that structure is immutable.
• Assume seasoned participants look at the All Content page or space hierarchy a lot.

Communication

• Never let executives express their support publicly or repeatedly.
• Don’t get the word out to executives or general users – just build it, and let them come.
• Ignore middle managers – they will put a stop to all this “social nonsense” and tell their employees to “get back to work.”
• Just send out one email to everyone. That should do it.
• Call it a “collaboration tool” and not a “collaborative networking environment.”
• Be secretive.
• Don’t involve your Legal department until you’re about to launch.
• Avoid the Sharepoint zealots in your organization.

Training

• Don’t bother showing users when to use Jive SBS vs. some other application. Give them too many choices. They’ll just use email that way.
• Make sure all the help content is in extremely long text documents, and doesn’t include any images or videos.
• Don’t bother mapping “how we used to do it” to “how we do it in Jive SBS” in any of your help content. Users love change, and they pick up on new ways of doing things overnight.
• Actually, don’t create any help content at all.

Managing and Monitoring

• Don’t bother with real use cases – fluffy goals, like, “collaborate and innovate better” are just fine for measuring business value.
• Make sure to enable moderation on everything. People love it when they’re micro-managed.
• Disable blogs. Nobody wants to share their opinions, anyway.
• Force participants to request new groups. Self-serve capabilities are too enabling.
• Don’t do anything about lagging participation metrics. Let things slowly die.
• Never report on progress to anyone. They don’t think what you’re trying to accomplish is important.

Let’s take it to the Interwebs. You’ve got your LinkedIn recommendations, Facebook suggest-a-friend, and I’m too lazy to list whatever else is out there. Thinking inside the corporate box, I’m not aware of any commercial social networking applications that do a good job of enabling recommendations, other than the backdoor method of bookmarking their profile, then including a description about why and for what you recommend them. (For a very interesting look at the recommendation phenomenon from a Jungian dude, check out Michael J Pastor’s (@michaeljpastor) discussion about a related topic, reputation.)

Then there’s Twitter.

I asked Twitter: Is following someone in Twitter similar to recommending them?

Answers:

• Macker: it means they have something to say that I want to hear/read. so I guess that’s a tacit recommendation.
• rickysays: Not for me. I just follow people I know or who have similar interests. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend them all tho (no offense)
• turoczy: Not exactly. Follow some people on Twitter to hear their opinions, opinions with which I disagree. I don’t “recommend” them.
• tselrahc: It would be a recommendation for twittering, but I would not extend that to other domains. That’s my criteria for follows.
• stickfight: sort of, that and a mixture of the fact that they are one of the interesting animals in the zoo
• passepartout: Follow means ‘you interest me, for now‘ If I follow someone FOR A WHILE, I could recommend you.
• IainColledge: For me a follow does not have that high a status, I follow because I want to but not sure it is the same as a recommend