According to a study of 1500 CEO's, the most important characteristics of a leader is his creativity. That results in creating and maintaining a competitive advantage. And creativity tends to quickly disappear in corporate environment.
Every company has a creative potential. People create, store information in files, which may or may not be accessible by their colleagues, they send e-mails, call, etc. However, creativity is not about where information is stored. It is the active promotion of knowledge of accidents. It is a condition that we all know: Long-term thinking about a problem. And then someone somewhere says something that inspires an idea and an ideal solution. Such accidents have a common denominator, which is the people. Around them there is the content, and the people form different communities and groups and converse with each other.
What does an internal social network look like?
- People: They introduce themsleves and spread information about themselves. On their profile, they write information about their qualifications and interests, but also they show their place in the organizational structure of the company.
- Conversation: They run in several dimensions. If you have a question, post it on your profile, and there is a strong likelihood that someone will respond. They are generally people whom you had added to your network (similar to "friends" on Facebook). This answer will then turn into a benefit for everyone else, who will visit your profile. Another option is an internal discussion forum, where people with similar interests meet. Finally, there are the ideation blogs. Lists of ideas for the company, where employees can vote for ideas.
- Open sharing of knowledge: People save on their profile what they create. Using the search function, all employes can search within the internal social network to find people, presentations, or any other outputs. Often it turns out that more people are trying to solve similar issues at the same time.
How to start?
- First of all, whoever does not start immediately, will be left behind.
- If you take a good look around, you'll find that many employees are already active on social media. It is these people you are looking for.
- Find contributors. There are those who have an inbox overflowing with queries from colleagues, or are still at their desk answering phone calls. Motivate them to respond through social network. They will then have to answer each question only once.
- Reward those who read these answers, i.e., the followers.
- Find the company sponsor. If the program of in-house social network does not have sufficient management support, its chances of success are slim.
Social network must have a value for each individual. Its introduction should focus on a specific problem. One such may be the overuse of e-mails, which leads to a reduction in labor productivity.
Status updates on social profile help to create knowledge accidents. The entire network will contain a large amount of valuable information that can be monitored by analytical tools. Measure of success of an introduction of internal social network is not an adoption rate within a company, but the specific business results.
The conference " The new ways of internal cooperation: SOCIAL BUSINESS " was held at the National Technical Library in Prague on June 5, 2012. HR News and Management News were the media partners of the event. Therefore, we can pass on to our readers the main points of some of the presentations in a series of articles.
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