When talking about social media we often are implicitly referring to the use of social media on the internet, then Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the likes are the tools being discussed. Another fast growing use of social media is internal social media: the social media within an organization’s firewall on the intranet. An application of social media that can improve communication and collaboration within an organization, hence improving employee engagement and employee satisfaction.
There are a number of examples available about successful adoption of internal social media on supplier websites, for instance at Socialtext and Socialcast. In the FIR speakers and speeches series we can hear Francesca Karpel explain how NetApp implemented internal social media. Among these stories are successes from pretty sizable and traditional organizations, like Nasa, Philips Electronics, Egon Zehnder and Humana. Especially in these larger, traditional, organizations the implementation of a social intranet is not about technology but more about the soft aspects. It will require a culture shift. These organizations are in general quite protective and closed by nature which is contradictory to the open and supportive behavior a successful social media implementation demands.
What I have been looking for and these success stories in general lack to tell, is how organizations have handled the culture shift and what the real hurdles were. As I will be involved in a customer project to extend a global roll out of internal social media I would be very interested to hear not only the success elements but also the difficult elements of an implementation. What has for instance been done during these roll outs to get top management involved beyond just approving the initiative. How did you get them to actively participate and what is the general user perspective? Please share them in the comments on this post, or when you prefer to do so in more private, please send me an email.
