Koolspace Vs. Breezaire

The Role of an Enterprise 2.0 - A Social Media Manager

collaborative work of a generalist with pronounced business comprehension within a cross-functional team

Anja Wittenberger

This was one of the open space topics at the E nterprise 2.0-Summit 2010 in Frankfurt am Main. The probably most important European conference in the field of Enterprise 2.0 was filled with very helpful input and talks with other E2.0 experts. During the second day of the conference an open space took place with the leading question “What is the role of an E2.0-Manager?” and “Which tasks does he have and what kind of skills does he need?”

This text will give you a short summary of the outcomes of this open space topic.

At first, we clarified for the whole group that an E2.0-Manager is not a community manager and has a different range of responsibility. In details this means, that the E2.0-Manager is the person, who clears the way of change for enterprise 2.0 within an organization or company. He furthermore is responsible for the community managers within the company.
However, this discussion brought the group to the question, if this person can really be the type of manager in the conventional way? The discussion group negated this.

In fact he or she is:

• an entrepreneur
• who understands different business perspectives and pursuits business objectives
• a visionary
• who is seeing the big picture and can inspire others to take on this way
• an integrator/ facilitator
• who is building connections between the different interests and opinions and is encouraging dialog
• a coordinator
• who is keeping track of the roadmap, is taking the project step-by-step to the next level and who is getting together the right people to make the project successful
• an active listener
• who is helping different interests of people to become evident and with it is helping to form a common understanding
• a leader
• who is seeing the different strengths of people and is able to give motivating feedback
• a problem solver
• who is able to think and communicate solutions oriented 
• a member of steering board for the strategic E2.0-initiative in the organization
• ...

The E2.0-Manager brings experts together and enables the network and collaboration flow.

To be able to do so the person needs to use skills and expertise like:

• knowledge of the business
• visionary
• credibility
• communication skills
• leadership skills
• authority
• analytical skills
• sense of urgency
• ...

Yes, you can guess it, he or she is supposed to be superman or superwoman ;-)


cc-licenc

If the E2.0-Manager is supposed to do the tasks successfully, it has to be specified which kind of responsibility the person should have within the organization:

• knowlegde management (KM)
• innovation
• social tools
• employee satisfaction
• company strategy
• communication strategy
• ...

The last question from the discussion covered the topic of E2.0-adaption. It was said that there is no standard approach and the adaption of principles and culture of E2.0 differentiate from one company to another. The question is now, if a general model exists for the E2.0 and his/her working environment.

The following graphic shows that the role of an E2.0 manager does not only depend on his or her person, but also depends on the collaborative teamwork in a cross-functional team and where this position is embedded within the organization.


cc-licenc

This article is to be understood as the impulse of the upcoming discussion on positions, roles, and tasks for companies who decided to take on the change to an Enterprise2.0.

I look forward to all your comments and new articles.

Click on the picture or this  Link for the mindmap

guestpost written by Anja Wittenberger   ( TwentyOne AG ) works as a
Consultant for collaboration and communication in the enterprise2.0-way

Appropriate Dress For Public Sauna

Night @ Perkins Park

Imagine following: Your young and like going out from time to time, depends on how business lets you. Now imagine you are excited the whole day, you get all dressed up, you pick up one friend, drive to another, have a drink or to and finally set off to your aimed destination.

It’s dark, rainy and very cold. As you arrive you see a big crowd waiting already outside. No matter what, you want to get in there. So you end up staying in line. Say, an hour later you finally arrive at the securities, where you realize that  this is only have the path to go. There is another hour waiting for you till you actually end up at the front door.

Now imagine yu are wearing white shoes, a blue modern jeans and a nice shirt, matching your outfit. You are close to 30 years of age and you still get asked for your ID from Mr. Nice Guy Security.

 Imagine further you made the biggest mistake you can possibly make. You are 2 guys and 1 girl....

Oh my God !                 That’s one girl not enough !!

And guess what happens. You don’t get in ! Sounds like a normal story, doesn’t it ?

After you politely try to ask for the reason, you get no answer. Well, actually, you do get one. The first one is “ We are looking for more sophisticated people”. The second one you get from Mr. Not So Nice Guy Security by grabbing you from behind, pulling you away, hitting you slightly and telling you to get the hell out of there.

You get a little upset, but hey there are other clubs, who cares.

But NO, you decide that’s not the way you should be treated. You grab the phone, search for the phone number of the club and call.  The first time Mrs. Perkins Park hangs up. The Second time she laughs at you being outraged.

OK, they are other ways to express your feelings you think to yourself. The next day you run your PC, open your browser, start typing facebook in and end up on the Fan Page of The famous Perkins Park Club.

You start expressing your feelings in an still outraged, but honest way and to your surprise, you realize there are other guests complaining about the same thing. Great, finally you made it, you think. But hey, we are talking about the Perkins Park Club ;-). You know, the Famous One.

A few hours later, your complaints, or lets better say “comments” are deleted and you get denied access to posting anything on the Fan Page Wall anymore. Another direct, more moderate email doesn’t get answered.

Now I ask all my Social Media friends. Is that the way you should handle Social Media as a company ? Not interested in a dialogue at all. I mean, I will surely get over the experience J but for me it’s still a good story for the category

Social Media Disaster

What do you think ?



Milos Vujnovic

Barbecue Sandwich How Many Carbs

Social Software - An Enterprise Perspective - Part 3: SWOT Analysis of Micro-blog

Today we are continuing our series on Social Software- An Enterprise Perspective with part 3, the SWOT Analysis of Micro-Blogs.

History & Definition

Noah Glass and Jack Dorsey from Odeo Inc. first began to experiment with the idea of an micro-blogging application in March 2006. In 2007 at the SXSW interactive festival twitter was first located at flat panel displays. This can be defined as the birth of twitter. Here and here you can find two impressions from the early days of twitter.

Microblogging is also known as micro-messaging or micro-sharing within a network. In this network colleagues share information with short messages (140-characters). This messages can be used as sort of a status update and can be shared, viewed and even posted mobile.

Types of Micro-Blogs

There are different types of micro-blogging applications. The most known micro-blogging tool is twitter which is mainly used for private matters, advertising and marketing. Other forms of micro-blogs are for a example Communote or Yammer. For a more detailed list with over 30 different micro-blogging tools you can look up this post by Jörg Höwner.

Operational Area

Micro-blogs can be used in various approaches. Twitter for example is a good micro-blogging tool for all kind of public relations, marketing and personal contacts. But it is of course not the right application for the internal use of a company. For this kind of approach there is the possibility to build up an own internal micro-blogging application.

These internal micro-blogs can be used for status updates of e.g. project work. This allows all people who are working on the same project to receive real-time information about the project status, upcoming questions and completed milestones. A big advantage therein is, that meetings can be more time-efficient, because the project progress telling time can be reduced.

But there are a lot of other possibilities to use micro-blogs in an enterprise. Questions can be asked, meeting dates can be evaluated, information can be shared and lots of other things can be done. There is yet a wide range of possibilities and the potential of micro-blogs in companies is not close to being exhausted.

But what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of corporate based micro-blogs?

SWOT Analysis

The following SWOT analysis shows the most improtant facts of micro-blogs in a corporate environment.

View more presentations from enterprisezweinull .

In case you want to look up our previous SWOT posts on wikis or blogs, take a look here:

• Part 1: SWOT Analysis of Wikis
• Part 2: SWOT Analysis of Blogs

Further Readings

• Microblogging
• An Overview of Microblogging
• Corporate Microblogging - How to Use Microblogging in a Business Environment
• Communication Aspects of Enterprise Microblogging
• Awareness 2.0 - Ein Anwenderbeispiel von Microblogging im Unternehmen 
• A Case Study of Microblogging for Learning at Qualcomm
• Enterprise Microblogging Use Cases: Help Reduce Your Inbox Clutter!
• Writing for Twitter
• Value creation with Microblogging and Twitter - Issues

References

• Microblogging im Unternehmen
• Socialtext - Micro-Blogging
• Web Strategy: What the Web Strategist should know about Twitter
• 30 Enterprise Microblogging tools

How To Polish Boots With A Lighter

Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2010 - Crossing Borders, transparency

The Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT 2010 discusses the success factors for an open, transparent and flexible company. International experts - Panels and users discuss how Enterprise 2.0 activities contribute to the innovation and competitive advantage.

experiment According to Business Week, 77 percent of all German companies with the transition to a so-called Enterprise 2.0. While they were three Years dominated phone and e-mails everyday work, companies are already widely on social software tools such as wikis, blogs and microblogging. By 2013, many companies want the world ten times their investment in Enterprise 2.0 tools, because they have recognized the development potential of Web 2.0 for my organization
: Companies with a strong collaborative culture to increase their productivity by up to 250 percent, Harvard researchers have calculated.


The new information, knowledge and collaboration approaches based on social software , previous work procedures and hierarchical structures changed, made traditional organizational and operational organizations in question. Under the topic "Setting the Path to an Open and Agile Enterprise," discusses the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT 2010, the current challenges and success factors for Enterprise 2.0 projects. The focus is on leadership and organizational concepts, performance measurement, participatory management, and cross-cultural challenges in this process of change should be answered in the main issues.

• In which application scenarios make the new communication and collaboration forms the results?
• As the introduction and adoption is best initiated and controlled?
• How to optimize these new forms of cooperation and the contribution they make to the business?

The event will be opened by Richard Collin (Grenoble Ecole de Management) and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz of Sony Music (USA), discussing the key elements of the new management concepts in Enterprise 2.0 projects. In the course of the conference participants can switch between select switch and two parallel panels:

• In the subject line "Enterprise 2.0 practices present business leaders from across Europe present their project experiences and lessons learned. Included are Bayer, Hewlett-packing method, Bertelsmann, Société Générale, BMW, Océ, Lufthansa, Swiss Re, BASF, The Boston Consulting Group, Renault, T-Systems International.
• In expert-Track " Enterprise 2.0 Challenges discuss "technical experts like Luis Suarez (SP), Franck La Pinta (FR), Bertrand Duperrin (FR), Oscar Berg (SW), Jenny Ambrozek (USA), Dr. Alexander Stocker (AT), Mark Masterson, Prof. Dr. Joachim Niemeier, and other developments and strategic success factors of the topic.

Another keynote will be JP Rangaswami (British Telecom) on the organizational foundations of Enterprise 2.0. The final lecture of the conference, Lee Bryant from the UK views on the social
business design.

interactive workshops and discussion groups provide an intensive exchange of experience between participants and speakers. Accumulated knowledge and practical know-how in addition give two practical seminars on 26 October on the topics of social messaging Culture and social networking.

interested? To register for the Summit, it goes here .

If you want a discount on the regular ticket price, can be protected with a subsequent promotion code 10% off the regular admission price. Simply enter the code when registering with state.

• Promotion Code: e2010mv

The Practice Workshop will be on Tue, 26 October 2010. The two-day conference follow the debate of 27-28. October 2010 is

Here there is a detailed overview regarding the timing of the event.


About the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT
The Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT is the annual European Congress on new forms of information, knowledge and collaboration management. The focus is on conceptual, practical, cultural and visionary aspects of Web 2.0 applications are in the company. Expert and user panels discuss current strategies, and project experience from practice. In addition, the SUMMIT a platform for knowledge exchange and networking. Because of the international speakers and participants, the conference is English. This year's Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT held in Le Méridien Parkhotel in Frankfurt am Main. The early bird rates valid until 08th October 2010. For more information and to register for the event are available on www.e20summit.com For news on the event follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/enterprise20) or on Facebook (Www.facebook.com/e20summit)

About the Congress The Congress Media GmbH
Media GmbH is a provider of high-quality professional conventions and information services to business innovation in the areas of content management, enterprise 2.0, social web and online strategies. The quality of the content of the events has always top priority. Congress Media goes with it both as an inspiration and knowledge transfer as well as networking and exchange
platform for decision makers and experts more information. Www.kongressmedia.de

More information can be found at:

Press
Cathy Gill
Congress Media GmbH
Knorrstr. 85, D-80807 Munich
cg@kongressmedia.de
+49 - 89 2000 1463