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• Obama: Information becomes a distraction

  June 02, 2010

  Are we in an era of information overload instead of information empowerment? U.S. President Barack Obama recently said:

  “You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,“ Obama said at at Hampton University, Virginia. “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.“

  Since we’re very focused on social media in the context of work here at FMYI, let’s take a closer look at this from that angle. A recent survey found that although 52.3% of U.S. workers agreed that social media helped them learn more in less time, only 37% felt they got more work done. No doubt we have more information at our fingertips that we can learn from; the question is, are we leveraging new ways of sharing information to achieve goals in the most effective way possible? I think there are three key issues at play here:

  1. We need to manage the information firehose.

  Think about all the streams of information you manage daily. Emails. Text messages. Instant messages. Social networking sites. Phone calls. Voicemails. Snail mail. Face to face meetings. Water cooler talk. Videos. We’re surrounded by content, and if we wanted to, could immerse ourselves in it 24/7. Being deeply involved in social media definitely exposes you to more content. But it takes time to filter, sort, read, scan all the feeds. It’s not a given that “social business” is also synonymous with “effective business” especially with workplace collaboration. We need ways to better aggregate all the streams and filter it down to only the most relevant items needing our attention.

  2. We need to have more creative tools for innovation.

  In terms of the workplace, it’s not enough to just launch brainstorming discussion forums for sharing ideas, or talk crowd sourcing but rely on simple voting mechanisms. Technology needs to help connect ideas with people who have the skills and experience to make them a reality, or provide guidance with suggesting ways to get projects done more efficiently, or set up meetings on the fly based on need, or provide intuitive dashboards that help interpret activity going on and where people can best invest their time.

  3. We need to work in a whole new way.

  Old habits die hard. The only way to create lasting change is to put yourself in an environment that is conducive for the change. Just like it’s sometimes hard to tackle a brainstorming project while in the office because of all the day to day distractions (necessitating an afternoon trip to the neighborhood coffee shop), in order to work more efficiently or generate new ideas we’ll need to embrace a more flexible work structure. President Obama himself has been a supporter of workplace flexibility. We’ll need to build communities around this concept, and build workplaces to maximize the results.

  I believe achieving these is essential to the future growth of our economy. What do you think? We’ll be talking about examples in the coming months that illustrate the power of these solutions to mitigate the information overload we experience today.

  -Justin

  Continue Reading…

  

• Ning and the importance of a free version

  May 24, 2010

  Let’s talk about Ning. This is a timely topic since Ning has been in the news lately for replacing their CEO, cutting staff, and ending their free version. But occasionally we’ll get questions about how our service compares with Ning. We both offer platforms to create a social network for a group of people. Here are the main differences though:

  Differences between FMYI and Ning

  1. Ning is usually for public networking. FMYI is only for private invite-only groups, and we offer many levels of access permissions.
  2. Ning was created for people to network and communicate with each other, like a more social version of older tools like Yahoo Groups, or Google Groups. FMYI is specifically for collaboration, meaning the team of people are working together to achieve goals, such as managing projects, tracking contacts, and sharing resources in the workplace, in a class at school (college, university, or other higher education environment), or as part of a membership/networking association.
  3. Ning no longer offers a free version. FMYI has offered a free version for years, and always will.

  This brings us to a big question: why does FMYI believe in a free version? We think it’s important to let people experience what we’re all about without a limited time trial period. It take a little time for you to get to know us in terms of inviting people in to your site, experiencing the free email and phone support we offer, and trying out all the features we offer as activity ramps up in your site.

  We feel like the more time you spend with us, the more you’ll like us, and be interested in our upgraded features. But no pressure if you don’t want to upgrade, because you’re helping us to spread the word about FMYI with the people you invite into your FMYI site. And this viral word of mouth referrals are important for us to reach new clients. Tools like SurveyMonkey has had a commitment to providing support to their free users, and they’ve grown tremendously as a result of people spreading the word.

  So if having a free version is great, why did Ning stop offering one? A company has to make money, and Ning is smart to focus on boosting their revenue. At some point, even in this age of cheaper cloud computing, the cost of hosting millions of free users starts to have a major impact on the bottom line. If the percentage of paying users is in the single digits, that makes it tough unless you have major venture capital (2% of Evernote users pay but they have $25.5 million in funding) or other revenue streams to fund the product (less than 4% of Google Apps users pay but 95% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising).

  For FMYI, although we provide free support for all users, and free generates paying leads for us, our business development focus isn’t on the freemium business model. We spend most of our time generating revenue from our large corporate customers. This is key for the bootstrapping portion of our how we’ve grown over the years. It’s the notion that we try not to spend more than we earn. And we have a singular focus on providing a great collaboration platform, not on other activities that could distract from the quality of our service or our responsiveness.

  What do you think about the importance of free versions?

  -Justin

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• Five keys to collaboration success

  May 18, 2010

  Thinking about rolling out a collaboration site at work? Been researching online workspaces but you’re not sure how to get one going? There’s a lot of buzz about the social enterprise, collaboration software, crowdsourcing, etc. But frequently there are obstacles to getting full user adoption. Here are some lessons we’ve learned at FMYI after six years of empowering teams to make a difference:

  Download a copy of this presentation
  
  

  1. Rally your team around a goal.

  • Bring together people motivated to work together to achieve a goal.
  • Make it clear what they are responsible for contributing.
  • Focus in on how the collaborative effort benefits them.
  • Get support from leadership and share the results of the collaboration.

  Case study: A global hospitality corporation brought together green team members across hundreds of locations worldwide under the common banner of achieving their sustainability goals. They tailored their FMYI collaboration site to easily capture best practices and green team results. Everyone understood their posts would generate visibility for their sustainability efforts. Their CEO supported the initiative and had visibility to posts on the site, which gave transparency to the efforts of the green team and the VP of Environmental Affairs.

  2. Cut the red tape by making the business case for internal stakeholders like IT.

  • Focus in on how this specialized collaborative effort addresses a specific goal.
  • Be sure to convey how your initiative is different from others.
  • Make sure to address IT’s requirements and reduce their workload.
  • Lean on your vendors to help provide technical and customer support.

  Case study: A global media corporation rolled out an FMYI collaboration site focused on keeping everyone on the same page when it came to strategic planning. They wanted to make it easy to share information quickly, make changes to the site on the fly, and empower other team members to share information as well. This helped reduce the workload on IT by eliminating the need to deploy or customize another enterprise platform that was struggling to get user adoption. And FMYI addressed IT’s security requirements and provides all support needed, minimizing the burden on the media company’s team.

  3. Make it as easy as getting back on the bike.

  • To minimize the barrier to user adoption, set things up so the collaboration is as natural and familiar as possible.
  • With the rise of social networking, embrace the spirit of those sites to enhance adoption.
  • To create the conditions for maximum user adoption and stickiness, provide easy ways for people to collaborate together to answer questions, share updates, and get things done.

  Case study: A global sportswear corporation is using FMYI to easily and effective engage over six thousand athletes to provide input and data regarding new products. With a userbase reflecting a wide range of computer skills, and the importance of getting regular input from a cross section of athletes, FMYI’s social networking site look and feel helped increase user adoption, made the transition from an older solution seamless, and reduced the need for support. FMYI’s collaboration features also made the site more than a data repository and enabled collaborative conversations to happen, creating a private social network for greater engagement and insight.

  4. Give a helping hand right at the start.

  • It’s critical to understand how you can help the team achieve its goals, and build the collaborative effort around that. This includes learning what motivates most team members.
  • Involve key “change agent” team members in planning the rollout. They will give great input and assistance with getting others on board.
  • Schedule a kick off training event (in person, virtual via webinar, or a pre-recorded video/slide tour) to convey excitement of the benefits in addition to showing how things work.

  Case study: A multinational insurance corporation is using FMYI to help its salesforce improve results, track prospects, and manage clients. FMYI helped them understand the needs of its field force sales teams, worked closely with top agents across its salesforce, created customized template sites, and rolled out entertaining and approachable training sessions to engage the sales teams.

  5. Like karaoke, you need to rely on continuous improvement.

  • You can count on not getting it completely right the first time.
  • Ongoing support for the entire team is important for input to refine things.
  • It’s essential to have a solution that easy to update and change on your own.
  • Incorporating sustainability can help increase performance.

  FMYI provides all its customers free support no matter how small or large they are. This helps refine the features in our software. Configuration changes to FMYI sites are easy for site administrators to do without any technical knowledge, and updating pages in the site are intuitive for users. That way, the site stays relevant and useful over time. And FMYI’s commitment to sustainability means we minimize our environmental footprint, maximize our positive impact on our community, and empower our clients to do the same with built in triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit) features.

  Click here to view and download slides illustrating these five keys to collaboration success.

  -Justin

  Continue Reading…

  

• The five keys to sustainability employee engagement (and karaoke)

  April 09, 2010

  As I prepare for my panel at Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN next week, sustainability employee engagement has been on my mind. What is it and what does it have to do with karaoke? First off, I should say that I’m a terrible karaoke singer. Get me behind a mic and I’m dreadful. So bad in fact, that after just two hours of off-key warbling in a karaoke lounge, my voice will be shot for a week. Fortunately, I can say that I’m a sustainability employee engagement pioneer, having been involved as a change agent for 12 years both as part of a sustainability action team, and as someone who shaped employee engagement strategy at Nike.

  Simply put, sustainability employee engagement is empowering your internal stakeholders to create triple bottom line value. As we all know, there’s been a groundswell of interest and commitment to sustainability in the workplace building over the past ten years. But frequently, the percentage of employees within an organization engaged in applying sustainability to day to day responsibilities is small, confined to corporate responsibility/sustainability full time staff, and perhaps a few key employees involved with some aspect of compliance with climate change, recycling, labor practices, etc. Recently, a study showed that 86% of employees aren’t engaged by companies’ sustainability programs. Sustainability employee engagement is all about getting everyone involved with taking daily actions toward creating triple bottom line results. There’s a strong business case for doing it.

  Which brings us back to karaoke. How in the world are the two concepts similar? Let us count the ways — allow me to present you with the five keys to successful sustainability employee engagement and bring down the house karaoke:

  1. Create an inspiring vision for success.

  Sustainability employee engagement: Create a vision of the ideal sustainable future for your organization so everyone has something to shoot for — and be sure to involve a broad cross section of employees to development the vision. The beauty of this kind of exercise is you’ll learn so much about your brand, what employees believe your organization stands for, and you’ll identify areas for triple bottom line growth. The Natural Step offers a framework for creating a vision.

  Karaoke: Who are you ultimately trying to emulate? Beyoncé? Tim McGraw? Lin Yu Chun? Whoever you decide on, study the entire package and go for it. (Note: if you’ve developed your own unique singing style, dance moves, and lyrics, then you should be performing at concert venues instead of the karaoke lounge.)

  2. Have a process.

  Sustainability employee engagement: The New York Times Magazine recently had a feature on “Building a Better Teacher“ which focused in on not the subject matter knowledge needed to be an effective teacher, but the 49 classroom techniques required for getting students to focus and learn. Sustainability employee engagement is the same — you need to at least have a simple process for each team involved with engagement to do things like create ideas for improvement, put them into practice, measure the results, and spread them to other teams. Definitely check out the Northwest Earth Institute’s “Sustainable Systems at Work“ discussion course for an easy way to empower your teams to develop their process solutions.

  Karaoke: It’s definitely about the entire performance, not just the singing. How will you grab the audience’s attention at the start? What hand gestures to use during the crescendo? Do you memorize the lyrics so you can look them in the eye during the big finale? Having the process nailed down will guarantee success. That and making sure everyone has enough drinks in their hands.

  3. Build up your toolbox for scalability.

  Sustainability employee engagement: It’s vital to have effective tools. Otherwise, the engagement won’t spread beyond the initial green teams. Having the right tools is the difference between isolated pockets of sustainability activity and generating widespread triple bottom line results across a broad cross section of employees. When I was involved with Nike’s Shambhala program in 1999, it was a wonderful series of offsites designed to catalyze sustainability employee engagement efforts across the company. 55 middle management folks created their own green teams spanning multiple regions and divisions. But what prevented the momentum to continue after the offsites ended and from spreading to more areas within Nike was the lack of a platform to nurture the innovation community, share best practices, manage projects, and track results. That’s why I started FMYI to build a tool to do just that for sustainability employee engagement and beyond. We have a template for engagement initiatives, and companies like Hyatt are using it to bring people together across the globe to achieve sustainability business integration. It’s wonderful to see FMYI’s passion for sustainability realized with all the sustainability-related initiatives using our platform.

  Karaoke: Now, when it comes to karaoke, the tools may be different, but just as vital. Be sure to crank up the echo on your mic when singing to large crowds. And for maximum effect on your target audience, and to try out some new moves before a larger audience, book a private room.

  4. Capture the results.

  Sustainability employee engagement: Senior management is going to want to see results. Whether it’s metrics or success stories, make sure you’re capturing them along the way. This will help allocate more resources for engagement activities, attract new team members, and generate positive stories for sharing with external stakeholders. Above all, it’ll help you develop best practices for new projects. In an ideal world, each initiative would have its own living “Impact at Work“ guidebook like Net Impact’s.

  Karaoke: This one is easy. While someone is up there signing, be sure to capture photos and videos to post on Facebook and Twitter. That way, their performances are immortal reminders of excellence for family and friends to admire for years to come.

  5. Evolve constantly.

  Sustainability employee engagement: There is no finish line. This is a process of continual improvement and innovation, which can be exciting for everyone involved. For example, how can the concept of a “CarrotMob“ be leveraged? What are ways to embrace social media for building a community of practice? New ideas, new approaches, new people, new goals. And ultimately, scalable triple bottom line results.

  Karaoke: In order to keep your audience begging for more, and to keep things entertaining, you’ll have to figure out ways to evolve your act. Adding new artists, songs, and moves to your repertoire will pay dividends. And some day, you might be doing a karaoke performance on stage at the VMAs.

  
  So perhaps this entire blog post was a ruse to make me feel better about my sagging karaoke skills. I guess it’s in my nature to turn challenges into opportunities. I’m sure you can sing better than me, which means it’ll be even easier for you to be a sustainability employee engagement change agent!

  -Justin

  Continue Reading…

  
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