This is the UK Web Focus blog, written by Brian Kelly, UKOLN. UKOLN is a national centre of expertise in digital information management, based at the University of Bath. UKOLN is funded by the JISC.
You Care About Innovation? Then Tell Me What You Think, Not Who You Work For!
Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) on 19 May 2009
I recently commented how Twitter provides a means for not only finding out and discussing new ideas but also establishing and developing new professional relationships. And sometimes the contacts may take place initially in the blogosphere which can then be supported by discussions, or even just listening, on Twitter.
But how easy do we make it for others to establish new contacts and engage in discussions in this way? I was thinking about this in the context of a comment made recently by Nicole Harris who described how “the fact that I am connected to JISC in my e-mail address is important…“. As I wanted to read Nicole’s blog to see what else she’d written on this topic I Googled “Nicole Harris JISC Blog” - and found that her staff page on the JISC Web site was the first hit. This page provided contact details (including her JISC email address) and a brief summary of her areas of work – but no link to her blog. I had to scan through the Google results more carefully before finding her JISC Access Management Team blog – and, interestingly the link was to a post entitled “The opinions expressed on this blog are only the opinions of…?” which concluded with the questions:
- As a manager at JISC, should my blog posts reflect my personal opinions or that of the corporate body of JISC?
- How can senior managers within our organisations best understand the role of web2 platforms so we don’t get our wrists slapped for being vocal on such platforms?
- Should we be vocal on such plaforms?
- Should policies be governed by communication mode (i.e. blogging), platform (JISC Involve versus general WordPress) or job role (would this policy be different for me and mark, who now lives in JISC Collections but continues to blog with me)?
Now a discussion about the contents of a blog is worthy of another post. In this post my interest is in how one’s active participation in innovation can be surfaced for the wider community. Shouldn’t it be the address of the blog which is included in one’s profile in various social networking services (e.g. Link-in). And shouldn’t a staff page on one’s organisational Web site link to the place where views and opinions are being surfaced and discussions take place?
Surely if you care about innovation (which I know Nicole does) then you’ll make it easy for your user community and your peers to find out what you think and help then to engage in the discussions and debate? And these days that is increasingly likely to take place on blogs and via Twitter. And the debate never took place on instituional Web sites, did it?
DIH said
I think we’re in complete agreement Brian. Certainly my work blog points to my personal blog and the description I provide of that link makes it clear that is the place where I make comments about innovation. Likewise my personal blog links back to my work blog.
I know others feel you can do both from a single platform, but I don’t! Perhaps that’s the institutional IT bit of me coming out. Even when I use twitterfeed to announce a blog post, which admittedly aren’t as often as I’d wish them to be, I have different introductions to differentiate the two blog platforms. That way I ensure separation (in my mind at least).
I agree with you entirely that it would be a “good idea” for the JISC contact list to permit links to personal websites and this then could be the place where personal views and innovative ideas might be floated. This is a real dilemma for organisations and does indicate a lack of maturity in the organisation, makes assumptions of where people do most of their actuakl work, and also could be seen to be a barrier to innovation – as you suggest.
Staff at IBM addressed this problem by setting-up the eightbar blog and hosted it off-campus – for exactly this reason. This is where Roo Reynolds, Ian Hughes and Andy Piper had a space to develop their thoughts and ideas on social media unconstrained by any corporate policies.
I’m coming increasingly to the opinion that in all walks of life the individual is becoming so much more important than the organisation. Organisations just cannot move quickly enough to keep up with innovation. For this reason and for this reason alone, I actively encourage, in conversation, people to start their own personal blog.
epredator said
Thankyou for the eightbar mention :) We did indeed use eightbar as en externally hosted blog, of which a few of us are now alumni. My feeling is that as organizations are merely collections of people, whilst there may be some sort of brand ownership for a label it should not stop the expression of sub groups and individuals affiliated with that organization. Everyone can be far more connected than ever before, so it becomes a virtuous circle that those with a niche view of an area can connect to others with a niche view, in or out of the bounds of a corporate entity. All that has happened is that the hierarchy of management is now bypassed to some extent. It used to be that only those out of the road, attending the golf events etc would form strong bonds and affiliations with others in their field. Now this is spread evenly so that anyone can connect.
Large organizations have been built on the principles of the factory, of the resources, customers and staff all needing to be gathered into one place. That brought economies of scale. Once that distribution is no longer required, but instead we have lots of small groups of interested parties gathering virtually it adjusts the pwoer structure somewhat.
The first signs of that, and hence where control is often applied to stop such things happening is via social media.
Business though is just people talking to one another, so I am convinced this is a good way forward, whilst it might cause some disruption to those in the middle management layers, they are just as able to join in, to share their work and ideas and to actually lead by doing.
Eightbar is a prime example of us having been responsible yet playful with the IBM brand. The blog (which then became more groups and affiliations in places like Second Life) started of as “Raising the Eightbar” and refered to the IBM 8 bar logo as it is known. We were showing we were IBMers, as that was important context, but that we were not IBM official spokepeople. The fact that we were genuine, and it was really us meant we tended to get more credibility and access to people than official channels. As we became more listened to we felt even more responsibility to our own mini brand, to one another and to the company that we represented. I know we put a lot of effort into getting the tone right. It is hard to do the right thing, but I think it is safe to say we did. That certainly scared a few people, and we got asked questions like “how did you get permission to do x, y and z”. The point was we cared about the brand, and we cared about our own external reputations. That sense of ownership and teamwork brings out the best in people I think, and that then shows to others.
Hence my appreciation of Seth Godin’s Tribes. We became tribal leaders through our actions, and that lets us help others understand the potential as all this can’t be argued with and is very personal.
The key is to share, when you share what you think others will gather around it with you, then you start to push things and innovate.
Andy Piper said
Actually it’s not just Tribes that talks about different management styles. I talk a lot about Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management, which describes exactly what Ian talks about here – the old-style early 20th century factory style management structures, versus the more open experimental approaches being tried by Google, WL Gore and others. Both of these books have had a major influence on me.
Really appreciate you calling out eightbar here. It’s been an amazing journey, and we have a number of alumni, whilst retaining the culture. Arguably the culture is becoming ever more widespread and becomes more transformational as it does so. I still enjoy the “credibility” of not being a full-time social media maven, but using it to improve my productivity and network whilst getting on with the day job.
Joss Winn said
On the point of affiliation by email address, I wonder if academic staff value their institutional affiliation via their email address as much as service dept. staff. I certainly see plenty of academic staff using their personal email address for work-related communication, and as for students, they seem to care even less for the institutional brand. There’s probably studies that have looked at how academics relate to their institutions vs. their disciplines.
There was a JISC case study recently on institutions moving to external email services such as Google apps, and 96% of students at Westminster were forwarding their email to a personal address (http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2008/12/15/outsourcing-email-and-data-storage-case-studies/ ). For many, it’s less about identity and more about ease of use and what is most practical to get the work done. I tried using Google for all my work-related email/calendar/tasks a few months ago but returned to Outlook a couple of weeks later because it was easier (my phone syncs with Outlook, calendar invites are better handled, etc.) It had nothing to do with identifying myself with @lincoln.ac.uk
Nicole Harris said
You are right Brian – of course. I have now updated my details on the JISC website (will hopefully appear when website is refreshed tonight). Interestingly in updating, I now note that there are fields for your twitter username and skype username in the staff field template on the JISC website…but not for blog unfortunately so I have put a link in the description field.
Mark Williams said
Now linking to me on the access management blog from the JISC website -yep good idea thats a given -and comments I make there clearly represent an element of corporate view….but link to my twitter user name…uummmm?