Archive for January, 2010

I don’t like Twitter as much as forums. This is strange because they have a great deal in common: they’re actually built out of the same core components. Still, they are patently not the same, and older means of classifying channels (based on medium or media type) are increasingly difficult to apply. This prompted me to consider another way to classify collaboration channels.

Participants, content, topics: in no particular order, and often under different names, these are the core components of most collaborative channels. Twitter has tweeps who tweet, sometimes about topics tracked via hashtags. Forums have users who post in threads. The concept extends beyond discussion channels: LinkedIn has members who exchange personal data and opinions for various professional reasons; MS SharePoint (amongst other things) lets employees share documents relating to a range of different activities.

Ultimately, all of these channels enable people to organise interactions and the products of those interactions. Same conceptual ingredients, different recipes and outcomes. One possible visualisation is a tri-polar space in which one can plot the position of any collaboration tool by considering the relative importance it places on participants, content, and topics:

Obviously this only rough visualisation, but the intent is to illustrate how different channels emphasise different core components. Twitter, I would argue, is all about people and content (with a nod to topics), whereas forums are highly topic-centric ways of organising discussions (content).

On reflection, I gravitate towards topics, which explains my love of forums. Truth is I became most comfortable with Twitter when I began to regard it as a gigantic forum that had been shattered into millions of fragments (which one must then selectively collect and re-assemble). That’s not quite as outlandish as it sounds: if you use hashtag search columns in TweetDeck, you’re effectively recreating forum threads (topics) on the fly.

Besides my personal angst about Twitter vs. forums, I think this model might be useful for planning an organisation’s collaborative channels mix. For example: if you’re already developing a next generation corporate address book with Facebook-alike features such as status updates, you’ve probably covered the participants angle well enough to consider skipping a Twitter-alike channel; however, this may leave you light on topic-centric channels, making structured discussion forums a better complimentary choice.

What do you think about this way of looking at the relative emphasis of collaboration channels?

Change as we all know is the one constant in any organisation. And the effective communication of change remains one of the core roles of any communicator. So as a new year, indeed decade begins and my focus set firmly on a couple of change projects, what better time to reflect on some of the main priorities when communicating change. What’s really interesting is how little the list has changed in 10 years.

• Clarify the objective. One area of change management I believe organisations have improved in is the clarification of programme goals and success factors. I absolutely believe communicators should follow this lead and be very clear about their objectives if only to demonstrate that their role on the project has been a success. And in an age when survey and polling tools sit on most Intranets, ongoing measurement is a must.
• Consult, consult, consult. How often have you heard people ask who exactly was consulted? It is of course code for this doesn’t work for me (or something like that) and is often a consequence of the late introduction of the professional communicator to the process. A key priority for any change communicator is to grab the ongoing consultation and testing so dialogue is constant, professionally managed and received in time to be of value.
• Experiential, peer to peer communication. This strictly is two points but between them, sum up by far the most effective way of getting change messages across. First, don’t just talk about it, show people how it works. There really is no substitute for demonstrating the new system or procedure in action. And second, enrol people whose opinion is valued by your audience to do the talking. Any other way simply smacks of unwanted imposition.
• Manage the whole brand experience. Change teams are often disparate combinations of contractors, subject matter specialists and enthusiastic in-housers. They are often transitory and have a tendency to ignore the truism that a brand communicates in many ways. Many people come into contact with a change brand long before it is introduced and ensuring that all interactions with that brand are everything they need to be (responsive, speedy etc) is for me another big priority.
• Get the product right. This one goes well beyond the compass of the communicator but it is fair to say that a bad product will undermine, if not totally negate the very best communication. Clearly it is our job to make the change owners aware of any potential issue and if we’ve done each of the four earlier steps, the chances of this happening are greatly reduced. But we must always be prepared to cope with a crisis and ensure that the damage is limited.

The list could of course go on. But there is a wealth of knowledge and experience to tap into out there. And a good place to start is probably http://www.melcrum.com/topics/change.shtml.  Good luck!