In Enterprise social media: Don’t forget, users are people too, Scott Schnaars of Socialtext makes the distinction between referring to those who use tools like wikis, blogs, social networks, etc. as people, instead of users:

People, on the other hand, have names. People share ideas and information. People form communities. People, are the backbone of your organization and their ideas, especially in a crumbling economy, are the ones that will make or break your company. People, not employees and certainly not users.

I’ve been making a conscious effort recently to use “people” instead of “users”, so Scott’s post hit home for me. It humanizes technology usage, and is a good reminder that paying attention to the real, specific needs of the people in your organization is the key to success when you introduce new tools. To wit:

Your enterprise social media strategy needs a similar level of specificity in order for it to succeed. It is great to ‘want to collaborate’, but for an implementation to really succeed and in order to get the highest level of adoption, what ails you has to be very clearly defined.

This is precisely what I work on with clients. Identify the specific things that can be simplified, shortened, enhanced, and you have the measurable framework for a good and successful start.

Here’s Scott’s specific example:

Case in point, I spoke with a firm last week whose collaboration strategy on weekly sales reports was for the VP of Sales to send an emailed report to her 30 reps. Each rep had a specific window in which they had to fill out the report and mail it back to her. At the end of the week, she would compile the report and roll it up to her CEO. The process took each rep about an hour to do and was more complex than what could be completed in a traditional SFA. The VP of Sales was spending a measurable part of her week on this report.

What if one of those sales reps is out sick, in a meeting, on the phone with a customer, or distracted in any one of countless other important ways, during their “specific window” in which to complete the report. Oops! The process breaks down.

This is where a tool like a wiki can help:

Instead of the linear, easily disrupted chain of “specific windows”, the VP can simply create a wiki page with the report template, and ask all the sales reps to complete the report by the end of the week. Same overall timeframe as before – but now it’s a shared timeframe instead of the linear one – and less prone to a breakdown that holds up the whole process.

After a week or two, the VP will likely find that the timeframe can be reduced from a week to few days, or even hours. Now, instead of once weekly reports, sales can be analyzed more frequently – perhaps twice a week – and smaller, more iterative changes can be made to fix small problems, instead of waiting for a much larger warning sign that’s the tip of a much bigger problem.

Look at your daily work processes: What are you doing right now? Are you doing it as efficiently as possible? Can a wiki help? Let’s hear your stories of how you’re making everyday work processes easier for your team, and yourself. Comments welcome!