Wiki, for instance, is a tool (or a set of like patterns implemented in various tools) designed to support collaboration, but a wiki often fails to support successful collaboration because one or more essential members of the group don’t (or can’t) use it. This is often because wiki is so undesigned – which can be a strength in making it adaptable, but turns out to be a weakness for those who need more structure, more of an imposed information architecture. Just one essential member’s failure to adopt can produce failure, so the wiki format has succeeded only where it’s been modified (as in the SocialText “wikiblog,” which became less of a wiki as it became more of an enterprise application).

I’ve seen resistance to pretty much any collaborative tool. We tend to use Basecamp, which combines several communication patterns (messaging, wiki, shared to-do lists, file sharing), and we find that among those who have used Basecamp before, there can be a small but significant percentage who push back – who are looking for an effective alternative for whatever reason.

A few years ago I was involved in multimodal “happenings” to create collaboratively a paper published by Joi Ito, called “Emergent Democracy.” We initially combined audio teleconference with a form of realtime chat that included color-coded flags and a “hand” you could “raise” if you wanted to talk. The chat was partly used for these visual cues, and partly as a backchannel that added more depth to the conversation. We took notes on a wiki. The draft of the paper was intially shared as a Word document with change tracking, then dropped into QuickTopic where it could be collaboratively edited. It was finally dropped into a wiki for more collaborative editing. The collaboration was very successful. Today we have reasonably inexpensive tools, like GoToMeeting, that incorporate voice, chat, and shared presentation – very similar to the combination of patterns in the happenings.

More tools are emerging for collaboration, and one that we’ve been studying with keen interest is Google Wave. It’s still very beta, with limited adoption, so our experiments have been limited so far. However it’s promising: in Wave you can create a conversation, add participants at any point after the conversation starts, and play back the conversation as needed to keep track. Wave accommodates collaborative editing as well as conversation. It’s not an application that Google is developing, but a protocol that is being developed with Google in the lead, but with many external developers participating. The intention is to have a far more robust communication protocol that will replace email.

Finding the right tool set is key, but another crucial challenge is social: how do you keep a conversation on track and focused on decision and action? This is especially challenging with flatter hierarchies and headless organizations. In the emergent democracy discussions, we talked about a concept of emergent leadership, which was an acknowledgement that you must have leaders to make decisions and get things done, and in a context where no one is elected or appointed to lead, we look for one or more leaders to emerge. There are questions around how that leadership emerges, how it’s identified, acknowledged, accepted by the group, etc.

In companies and organizations where leadership is based on assignment or election, the questions about leadership are more traditional: how to get buy-in from the group, consensus on decisions, agreement on action items. This is partly about leadership quality (is the leader acknowledged and accepted by the group?), but also about organization (how well is group input and ultimate consensus orchestrated and managed?)

Bijoy Goswami of Bootstrap Austin and I recently worked together on a presentation called, an earlier version of which can be found on Slideshare. In defining how to create effective communities – communities that get things done – we considered Bijoy’s “human fabric” of three personality types: maven (knowledge-oriented), relater (relationship-oriented), and evangelist (action-oriented). We suggested that communities, like individuals, can be characterized on a scale between any two of the three personality types. For instance, a community might fall on the axis between maven and relater – i.e. be focused on knowledge and relationships. This is where we would place an online community like the WELL, where members “hang out” and have casual conversations that are not focused on any action or deliverable. We went on to say that action-oriented communities would have a strong evangelist flavor, and would include one or more evangelist types who push for specific results.

This is probably true for any collaborative environment, including a small meeting. An evangelist or action-focused leader could be more effective in getting specific actions accomplished. This person might fall naturally into the leadership role. However a strong evangelist should be sensitive to the relevance of the other personality types: it’s important to have enough of the right knowledge to move forward, and getting things done can require attention to relationship.

In summary, effective online collaborations (meetings, projects, organizations) depend on tools that work for all stakeholders, or at least on a shared commitment to adopt and use the same tool set and patterns for communication/collaboration. Social considerations and leadership are as important as adoption of and commitment to the right tool set. It may be effective to include evangelists in action-oriented workgroups, and to have them lead, but sensitivity to the balance of personality types and strengths is important. And, of course, the reality is far more complex than we’ve taken time to capture here.

The Personal Democracy Forum explores the social relevance of the decision to adopt Drupal, which is known for its interactive community features:

Let’s really try to extract the last drop of possible meaning from a choice over a CMS. Squint a bit, and it’s possible to see the White House’s move to open-source software as a move towards the idea that collaborative programming can inspire — or at least, support — a more distributed politics. That idea bubbled up in 2004, when young programmers experimented with using Drupal itself to turn the Howard Dean campaign into the Howard Dean network. [Jon Lebkowsky of Social Web Strategies was part of that effort.] This idea, that a politics crafted by the people could be a powerful thing indeed, emerged in a slightly mutated way during the Obama presidential campaign, but has arguably receded below the surface during the first nine months of the Obama Administration. First the WhiteHouse.gov CMS gets more open, then the White House OS? Perhaps.

• Time is different online. People who are always on and respond quickly experience online interaction differently than those who log on less frequently. (Gilly Salmon called this  ”snowflake time“.)
  The latter can experience a sense of overwhelm and being “left behind.” Make this dynamic visible to the group and encourage the fast posters to slow down a bit and the others to log on a bit more frequently. Understand that if this gap persists, the group may  splinter. If that is the reality, consider sub groups and weave ideas between them as their facilitator.
• Punctuate time. Alternate synchronous with
  asynchronous as a way to keep the “heartbeat” of a group going. Like a first time runner, groups “heartbeats” have to be faster at first to build relationships, establish norms and patterns of interaction. Over time as the runner “trains” the heart beats slower. So with the group.  For example in a three week online workshop I like a  minimum of one synchronous telecon interspersed with asynchronous activity. This is a simple matter of attention – which we always find is in short supply!

But it’s complex, and the appropriate strategy could be markedly different from one brand to the next. Before beginning the virtual barn-raising in a new community initiative, tread carefully and consider what success means to you.

He goes on to say that

From a marketer’s perspective, the idea of a brand community sounds great. The expectation is that it will be a petri dish which will virally grow customer engagement, and this type of engagement will lead to sales. The problem is, few customers jump into that petri dish, fewer still will stick around, and the community interaction usually has no contextual bridge to purchasing. That’s three strikes. Most brand communities serve a very, very small set of customers (in relation to their customer base or market size) with either a lot of passion or a lot of time on their hands. And let’s face it, not every brand has the potential to inspire lasting passion and sustain a Facebook-type community. Exceptions are cult brands that have passion and community built into their product ethos, such as Harley Davidson or Apple. But you can’t create that by putting up a community. That starts way upstream, with the product and the brand.

I wouldn’t call Facebook a community – it’s a crowd within which communities can emerge. I would define community (following Cliff Figallo, former director of the seminal online community, the WELL, as shared relationships that persist and gain a history of interaction. Social network systems like Facebook are more fragmented. Facebook has a group-forming facility which can work as a platform for intentional community, but many of those groups don’t get a great level of adoption and participation. I say all this to make the point that Sam and I probably don’t agree about what constitutes community, and how or whether community can scale. The most successful online communities (e.g. the WELL) have scaled through the emergence of smaller subcommunities as the number of active participants grows, and that’s a good thing if you can meet the community management challenge it presents.

He says “when the community audience is small and unfamiliar with one another, a prospective visitor’s motivation to build social capital or help others dissolves.”

If visitors are not passionate about the topic, they are less likely to jump in. And for both reasons the vibrance and participation in the community are next to go. Which causes the next visitor not to join. This is the domino effect that leads most brand communities to turn into a ghost town.

I don’t disagree here, but there’s a solution to this problem. From my comment on his post: “seed the community early with members who will commit and persist, who care about the subject(s) of the community, and who are articulate.”

I think the thrust of Sam’s post here is that the Bazaarvoice social commerce model – which “creates interactions and contributions around the product or service they’re trying to sell” – is the most effective solution – but I don’t know that it’s a community solution. This model “fosters opportunities for the creation of content that helps others make purchasing decisions, driving more sales and resulting in a quicker ROI.” He goes on to say this:

This type of strategy needn’t require a person to register or become a full-fledged member — they should be able to write a product review, ask or answer a question, or write a story without feeling like they have to make a commitment. Whether that contributor feels like they’ve joined a community by participating is not the point. Their contribution is useful for the visitors to the site, who came to learn more about the brand and get their questions answered — not to “friend” people or help others. And yet, once a critical mass of content is shared, a community of shared interest will start to form. People will write the 101st review because there’s a community around a product! This “accidental community” starts to form, which amplifies the engagement to the content and profiles.

I don’t see much chance of persistence or relationship in this context – this is more of an interactive audience than a community. This is not to diminish the proven value of the Bazaarvoice product – the growth of the company suggests they’re creating real value with their approach.

This leaves the question whether “brand community” is desirable and worth the effort required to make it happen, and I would say that depends on the brand and the goals for the community. You might want to create a community of advocates – or critics – to work as something like a focus group, and that community would not necessarily have to scale large to be effective. You might want to support a very active affinity group – an example is the platform for its community of riders created by Specialized Bikes, where you could find other Specialized writers and set up rides.

If you think community is a good fit for your business, you should pursue a well-considered strategic conversation – make sure your goals are clear and that they would be served by a community solution, and how that would work.

1. Seed the community at the beginning. This could mean starting as a beta community with a limited set of articulate, committed members.
2. Don’t allow anonymity. Do what you can to confirm real identities. Anonymous users have no accountability and can wreck your community.
3. Cultivate leadership from within the community. Use passionate, committed community members as hosts and mid-managers. Give them a private place to meet and compare notes.
4. Listen to your “citizens” and watch what they do. Look for opportunities to stimulate conversation. Be aware of tensions within the community and prevent them from escalating.
5. Manage lightly. Remember that it’s their community, you’re just providing oversight and support.
6. Follow a ‘benevolent dictator’ model. Though governance is generally light, you have to be prepared to step in to defuse tensions, and to remove trolls and “energy creatures.”

The questions:

• How can enterprises (companies with $1B in revenue or greater) use social to gain an advantage?

• What are the greatest risks of social to an enterprise? How can these risks be mitigated?
• How can social be used to improve leadership and decision making in the organization?
• How can social be used to drive product development and innovation?
• How can social be used to improve investor relations?
• How can social be used to improve recruitment and human resources management?
• How can social be used to improve customer/client relations?
• For the average large company, what should its social profile look like by the end of 2009? End of 2010? End of 2011?
• How can you rally top management to support social? How should the social effort be organized internally? Who should own it? Who should lead it?

Here’s the response I posted as a comment. Of course, we invite your input:

More questions: How will new companies in the era of “social” organize – e.g. will we see more coworking clusters that form into larger entities, or perhaps form into networks of companies that remain independent, but share personnel and capacity to scale work? And assuming new companies emerge and grow differently, what effect will this have on existing larger companies? To what extent might they emulate by becoming more like networks?

To your specific questions…

How use social to gain an advantage? Knowledge processes are social, and with more social transactions there is the potential to produce more knowledge. Challenge: how to capture knowledge effectively, and how to maintain a high signal to noise ratio with more (omnidirectional) information channels. Companies that are more effective in leveraging social technology to produce, capture, and use knowledge will have an advantage.

Risks of social: Multichannel omnidirectional communication flows are potentially chaotic, could result in high noise to signal, loss of focus, information inefficiency. Highly competitive internal environments where everyone is entrepreneurial could breed contention and create power vacuums. Avoid this by creating a collaborative culture and being clear about values and goals throughout the organization.

Improve leadership and decision making by using social media to create and find more and better leaders within the company. Learn to spot emergent leadership. While existing lines of authority and responsibility within the organization won’t go away, those in acknowledged leadership roles must learn to see and acknowledge where knowledge and social capital are produced and where natural leaders exist within the company, build collaboration around hubs and high knowledge productivity areas of the company. Leverage collaborative communication networks internally to crowdsource decisions where it makes sense.

Product development: use social media to collaborate with customers as well as internal innovators.

Investor relations: Build social networks for ongoing communication with investors and staff the business of listening to what they say. Company reps in communication with investors have to be well-trained and sensitive to the issues inherent in that communication. Don’t be afraid to accept the challenge inherent in this communication.

Recruitment and human resources: You now have ready access to data about potential employees via systems like LinkedIn. You can search and find potential employees who weren’t necessarily searching for work, and make offers – much larger base to consider, and with robust search, you can zero in on ideal candidates. You can often assess potential hires in social contexts where you get a much clearer sense of who they are and how they might fit.

Customer/client relations: Build customer communities, not necessarily on a single platform, but leveraging social media platforms that make sense – go where your customers are, and invite them to come to you. The challenge here is in staffing ongoing robust, and more direct, communication with customers online, and scaling that activity. Many companies are saturated with knowledge/information that customers never see through traditional channels, so it’s compelling to find ways to connect internal knowledge resources with the customer base. We envision a whole new discipline growing around this activity, using already existing best practices for online facilitation and community development.

Large company social profiles: By the end of 2010, be working on a communication strategy that includes analysis if internal and external social networks and value networks, and definition of robust communication stragegy internally and externally: for managers, employees, shareholders, partners, customers. Consider that these communities are not defined but their platforms, but leverage many existing platforms. By the end of 2011, have clear authority, responsibility, and staffing for social/community development and interaction, and be attentive to change management (transformation management) issues as you open up communications and begin sharing knowledge. Become adept by the end of 2011 at identifying and acknowledging social capital emerging from value networks around the company, both internal and external.

Your last question about rallying top management, how to organize, etc. is probably defined differently for different companies. You’d have to have c-level support. As to who should own it, that’s already been a barrier. Is this marketing or operations? It’s both, it works across the traditional lines of demarcation within the corporate environment, so ownership and responsibility for what I’ve described requires new thinking about how we organize. It really is a transformation.

We see a clear connection between social media and sustainability, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Increasingly, I’m encountering just that sort of social chemistry at openings, parties and clubs. And this brand of socialilzing often begins with announcements such as “Hey, I follow your tweets!” or “Oh yeah, I know you from Facebook! How did that heart surgery go.”

Yes, indeed – the line between social media and socializing face-to-face seems blurred – because it doesn’t really have to exist. Increasingly people are building positive and productive networks of relationship online that reflect and enhance their offline social networks, and that’s really not new, but it’s new for many people, and we’re getting away from some issues that Barnes addresses, with some inaccuracy, in today’s column:

First-generation social media – e-mail, discussion boards, chat rooms – often spread social poison. The main reasons are obvious: anonymity and pseudonymity. One could “flame” with impunity as long as nobody knew who you really were. Combine that with an inability to ascertain precise emotional tones in digital exchanges, and one could be forgiven for avoiding all chat rooms and keeping e-mail conversations short and to the point.

I say this is inaccurate for a couple of reasons. First of all, the online anonymity/pseudonymity Barnes refers to here was not necessarily the rule. For example, the WELL, a seminal online community that has existed since 1985, has always verified the identity of community members and insisted that they make their real names available (though they also have pseudonyms by which they’re commonly known within the community).

Second, pseudonymous presences can establish clear and persistent identities even where identity isn’t published, and completely civil communities can exist where “real identities” are masked. It is better to require some kind of identity verification, if only clear association with a verifiable email address, to establish at least the possibility of accountability and reference, but you don’t necessarily have to share that with other users. Some have found the ability to create and play with alternative identities in online social spaces very powerful and helpful.

In systems like the WELL, where identity is verified and shared, you still see massive flame wars, just as you see, in physical networks and communities, minor and major arguments and wars. And while I acknowledge that it’s easier to “‘flame’ with impunity” in a context where no one connects your online identity with the identity you and most people think is real – the one you use “in real life” – anonymous flames have little weight. They’re no big deal. Those of us who’ve been online for years have learned to ignore them, just as we ignore traffic noise, smog, billboards (an early version of spam) and other forms of pollution.

All that said, it is interesting to see the effect of mainstreaming on social media, and the concurrent commitment to work out best social practices so that online experiences are most fruitful and productive, and minimally stressful and bothersome. We all have an interest in promoting civility and sane communication. It’s insightful for Barnes to note that this is being reflected in all of our communications and gatherings, online and off. Maybe this Internet thing will lead to a better world, after all?

Do you think a company will survive the next decade without establishing a beehive?

Successful companies today require a social component to succeed. In the early stages a company may be able to get by with only command-and-control running operations. But, as soon as success starts to take place, knowledge sharing – which operates outside the traditional hierarchical org chart – becomes critical. Companies that prefer to isolate their members by keeping their noses to the grindstone, focused only on their work program lose valuable competitive advantage. I don’t know of a company today that can operate that way and succeed.