SharePoint Is Social; Are You? Corridor Now Is!

On behalf of the Herculean efforts of a few key folks here at Corridor, I wanted to provide the appropriate kudos to thank those in the know for getting our corporate blog up and in action! Yes, a long time in coming; however, we have found that its importance cannot be understated as a complement to our other thought leadership, communications, and research. And, in this regard, I guess you could consider us just a bit more social!

On a more focused note, as we become more social, we thought it appropriate to dedicate our first blog to the social capabilities available in SharePoint 2013 - and to discuss how to leverage these within your organization. As Microsoft continues to further weave Yammer into the social fabric of SharePoint, these capabilities are becoming quite potent and powerful. Additionally, SharePoint has introduced greatly improved User Profiles, My Site capabilities, microblogging, alerting on much more content, and a variety of other important capabilities. To learn more about SharePoint specifics, I'd recommend you check out the TechNet link for
more information. You can also learn more via a great new book titled Essential SharePoint
2013 written by our great friends, Chris Bortlik, Scott Jamison and Susan Hanley. Now, on to the meat and potatoes of this, our first blog! Is Your Organization Social? Or, more specifically, is your organization using social tools that are linked into your corporate footprint? Yes, most if not all professional folks typically participate in LinkedIn, Facebook and other such communal/ social platforms. However, has your organization embraced such tools as SharePoint or other corporate platforms? Unfortunately, we find that the answer is typically "no", and if "yes", only a partial "yes". As much as we would all like to see our organizations embrace these tools and fully integrate them into our corporate culture, they are not. However, with some careful guidance, discipline, and continued commitment, you can help your organization turn the corner. Here are a few key steps to consider as you forge ahead with this endeavor.

Business Success - Not Just a Technical Success | The fundamental message here is that you may have the best SharePoint technologies (or other social technologists) in the world - and, they may install and optimize SharePoint perfectly so that it is undoubtedly a "Technical Success" - however, this does not mean that it is a "Business Success". For it to be considered a "Business Success", the organization, the people, and the culture must embrace and perpetuate the system such that the technology is, in many respects, an afterthought. Once accomplished, knuckles, high fives and kudos all around - as this is a difficult win to get under your belt!

Communities of Purpose - Not Communities of Interest | Tools such as SharePoint demand a different approach in comparison to their public brethren. The adoption of such technologies should be very purposeful; they should be time bound, properly facilitated and should have measured outcomes. This approach is much more focused than the "cloud" orientation of public social platforms. In some cases, it may make sense to integrate these together. This concept of Communities of Purpose is elaborated upon in much greater detail in an article that I co wrote in Information Week with Mary Lou Tierney. Please feel free to check out the link should you want to shed more light on this topic.

Rifle - Not Shotgun | The worst thing you can do is to just stand up SharePoint or your other social corporate tool for mass consumption. Get smart about it - target it for a specific purposes (see above!) and then publicize the heck out of it for all the right reasons. As you do so, learn from what went right, and as important, what went wrong, and then take on the next group. If you take this baby step approach, you'll find that demand may quickly exceed supply!

All for now - hope this sparked some interesting thoughts for you and stay tuned for our next piece!

Also, if you need anything or would like to discuss, please feel free to shoot me an email at
russ.edelman@corridorcompany.com

Happy blogging!

Russ