This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is our very own Alan Patrick, one of the 3 founders of Agile Elephant. We met in the early days of OpenCoffee and Tuttle Club meetups, and put together the Patchwork Elephant series of social business events which were the progenitor of our new company this year. Alan will be heavily involved in presenting the workshop sessions of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London. He’s well known as a social collaboration speaker and influencer, as well as being an expert on data analytics.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

I think we have still got quite a lot of differences of opinion

the reason we called ourselves the Agile Elephant is everybody sees different bits of the Elephant and believes that is what it is

today there were arguments about what;s the state of social collaboration today – anything from complete revolution to actually things are just going to stay the way they are

still a lot of discussion and a lot of debate

from our analysis we’ve seen 3 different groups

best run British companies or top 50 companies who people want to work for who are definitely pushing very hard around engagement and collaboration of the workforce, what they’ve basically realised is that higher employee engagement drives better results

another group are doing it for economic reasons, all of them are start-ups or small companies where the traditional structures don’t work well enough

a third group are companies who often have a history of being jointly owned (like John Lewis) where they are starting to experiment with new ownership models to drive productivity in the business

nobody is doing this just for the sake of being social, they’re doing it to try and get business benefits

other people are trying to manage very global businesses and are using social technologies to keep in touch with very diverse populations

“the future is here, but unevenly distributed”

the early driver was definitely to increase sales

you’ve started to see people looking at it for cost reduction, things like increasing customer service or increasing internal business collaboration

and there are general business benefits to have more engaged people, so those three are the big value drivers at the moment

 

If you want to hear Alan and find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Jon Ingham. Jon’s a well know human resources and human capital management expert who has been blogging around the topic since 2007, and before that authored Strategic Human Capital Management: Creating Value Through People. Our paths have been crossing regularly in the social media, social business and digital workplace space and so we were delighted to get his viewpoint.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

very positive, very dynamic

I feel, in one way, that we talk less about social business than we perhaps we were a few years ago

but there are more social businesses around – there are more organisations that know their sucesss depends on being social, doing collaboration, bringing their people together

HR is very much at the heart of creating that type of organisation

I still think the main driver tends to be technology, the move to digital, the move to mobile

I think that tends to be the wrong the idea – we were talking about 5 years ago that we could bring social technology in to the organisation and experiment, about using wikis and different things, and that would help me become more social – I think that’s largely been disapproved

the attempt to introduce social in to process, in the workflow – I don’t think that’s getting there either

I think what works is being a social business, introducing social in to the culture

but that’s not what it’s about, the driver is to improve the effectiveness of the organisation, the collaboration of the people, the connectedness of all of the people across departments, across functions – when the driver is that social business works more effectively

HR people who really do understand the power of the culture, how engagement can be shaped, how collaboration can be enhanced and doing terrific things in this area

but are also involved in organisation design, team design, organisation development, reward policies that ensure everybody is collaborating, in reshaping their performance management

a lot going on and I’m very proud of what we accomplish in HR

I would appoint HR as the head of that effort

I’m biased as I work mainly with HR… …a lot of HR people understand what social business is all about… … but (some of) their CEOs don’t get the plot

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26.  More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media.  Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Jon Mell.  Jon and I first met when we were both speaking at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese in Italy back in 2008.  He was in IBM, after that leading sales for Headshift, before going back to IBM to be their Social Business Leader UK and Ireland.  Back in February Jon was keynoting at the Paris edition of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit.  He’s a social collaboration expert who has been around in this space for a long time and brings a practical perspective to using social to drive business.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

I think it’s going pretty well

companies aren’t thinking of it necessarily in terms of social, they’re thinking in terms how do they improve their customer care process, how do they get products to market more quickly, how are they looking at recruiting and on-boarding new talent and they’re looking at social as a way to do that

they’re not looking at social as something in its own right

I don’t think they’re necessarily concious that they’re even thinking about social business

when an organisation looks at how do they attract the right talent, how do we break down silos and barriers in our organisation they’re thinking about solving those problems, they might use social to do it but they aren’t waking up in the morning and thinking “I want to collaborate using social business”

how can they get closer to their customers, how can the be more valuable in their marketplace and they’re looking at social as a way of doing that

we’re seeing a lot of interest from internal communications, we’re seeing a lot of interest from CHROs, but also lines of business, heads of sales, heads of R&D

how can I increase the innovation pipeline and get new products to market more quickly

seeing smaller companies get involved, using social as a way to punch above their weight

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26.  More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media.  Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Lee Bryant.  Lee was one of the pioneers of using social tools inside the enterprise in the UK, starting Headshift way back in 2002, well before people were talking social business consultancy or digital transformation.  Over the years we’ve supported each other’s events from London Wiki Wednesdays to SOMESSO (which used to be a conference) to the Dachis Business Summit. Headshift was acquired by Dachis Group in 2009, became Dachis Group London, but then Lee and Livio Hughes rebooted with Postshift, a foundry for new business structures, a consultancy and a place for learning in 2013.  Lee will be contributing and running a workshop session at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

in an interesting place

a lot of companies have gone through the phase of building a platform or putting a platform in place and beginning to see a little spike of collaboration and sharing

many of them have got to the point where they’re asking what that’s for and maybe in some cases lost a little bit of purpose and so they’re starting to ask questions about organizational transformation and what comes next, you know how do we make this more business relevant?

many of these projects began with CIOs or IT departments, but I think now they’re being owned more by the organisation so we are seeing more communications leads, more HR leads, more knowledge leads

and also executives, which is the really important thing, are starting to take over these projects and to try and define their purpose for the future

interesting times!

gone past the initial excitement, just beginning the next phase which is about what is the impact on the organisation, how does this really improve the business, and how does this change the way we’re organised and structure?

people are tempted to link them to business objectives

but we are zooming out now to look at the wider impact on the organisation and that’s what makes it really interesting… …in terms of business purpose

OD and HR are starting to understand they have some some skills and some experience that could really help push this forward, but I think it’s still in the realm of enlightened executives

where we are seeing real change, it’s enlightened leaders who are leading that

digital transformation is probably the overall goal

you need a base of a more socially connected organisation on the inside

 

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26.  Lee will be on an expert panel and running a workshop session called “Building the next generation organizational chart”.   More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. At our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Benjamin Ellis. We’ve known Benjamin from the London start-up, social media and social business scene (OpenCoffee, Tuttle Club, etc.) for around 10 years.  Benjamin, like us, is on Microsoft’s list of leading social business influencers for the UK, and runs two businesses – Redcatco which develops, builds and delivers social technology solutions for business, and SocialOptic which provides provide SaaS and Cloud-based applications and in particular Milestone Planner, a combined cloud/social/mobile approach to planning which gives you a new way to agree, track, and manage who does what, by when on a project.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

at a particularly interesting time right because the early adopters of social media technology are quite mature and starting to think about what’s the next step for them

at the same the bigger majority of businesses are now just getting kick started with their projects so you’ve got this dynamic of one set of people looking at what is the second generation of what they do with these tools, and whole other set of business saying we’re just starting off, what can we learn from what those other businesses have done?

first group were more entrepreneurial, tended to experiment, try social t0ols in certain areas of the business before rolling it out across the whole organisation, and so experiment and pivot and learn

some of them have been through multiple tools already

people starting with their first adoption are much more structured, and they’re really looking to deploy across the whole of the organisation, and they tend to have settled on one tool… …so quite different approaches

more of an uphill push to get people using the tools and incorporating them in their business process

interesting thing about organisation change is that it is a phenomenally slow process and you have to be realistic about that

talking to the CEOs they talk about 5 years, 7 years sometimes even 10 years

we can deploy a Software as a Service tool within minutes or weeks but the change in business culture, you’ve really got to allow time for that

the interesting thing for me is that you can use social tools to change the culture, so a combination of change of culture and using the tools to accelerate that change

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26.  Benjamin will be one of our panel speakers.   More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.

This is the first in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media.  At our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.

Here is Luis Suarez, well known for being the IBM champion of social collaboration and knowledge sharing, who lives “outside of the inbox“! Luis made the break from IBM just a few months ago and is working as an independent consultant and change agent.

Watch the video, but here are some highlights:

I’m taking for granted that digital transformation is happening across the board

Technology is driving innovation. It’s happening, but it’s not why, but how we do it in way that matters for my business!

We’re spending a disprotionate amount of time talking, not enough time doing.

The UK market is realising their clients ar not restricted geagraphically – we can get to Europe, the USA and emerging markets… …the UK has more a leading role to play

It’s happening all over, even the traditional world of government is back in the game digitising the conversation.

Not questioning why, but doing, diving in and learning

If government is doing it, what’s your excuse?

The rest of the countries in Europe may be saying we’re not ready

We might not be ready to kill the hierarchy but we need to challenge the status quo

10 years ago no-one was questioning the hierarchy. Can we flatten (our organisations) and change?

It’s’ going to a gradual transition to a more flat world, but both will exist for a long time.

If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. More information here.

More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.