I salute you fellow heroes...

This time some announcement which might be of interest for some of you. If you happen to be in Barcelona in beginning of May 2014 and you happen to be at the European SharePoint Conference, I'd be delighted to have you attending my session about "Raising End-User Productivity with Social EnterPrise and Gamification in SharePoint".
The conference will be from the 5th to the 8th of May 2014.

I salute you fellow heroes...

As promised in my last blog article about Gamification, I would this time focus more on how Gamification could be used in practice in the example of a Gamified Intranet based on SharePoint 2013. As you may have figured, in my daily work, I currently have a lot to do with SharePoint, I find it natural to figure out ways how SharePoint Intranets could be made more engaging, social driven and even more exciting. Because of that, my good fellow Knight Sir Chris Müller (@Scolab) and I sat down and figured out some ways how to do that. 
We'd be happy to hear your comments and thoughts about our way to tackle this challenge.

May the force be with you!

I salute you fellow heroes...

This time I will tell about one of my favourite topics ever nowadays. Gamification! This is the first part of an article talking about what Gamification is all about and how it can be used in classic Intranets (in example on SharePoint) to amplify end user engagement and boost productivity. Is Gamification the silver bullet in information portals? It might be, if it's used right. Let's have a look...

by Ian Gee

Like many of my fellow OD practitioners, I have made good use of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s work “On Death and Dying” in my practice. In particular, her work on transitions and taking this from the realm of death and dying and relating it to the stages people go through as they deal with organisational change and transformation. I have designed exercises and interventions to help people understand what stage in the change process they are at, how to move between stages and if they are stuck, how to unstick themselves and get back into ‘flow’. I am sure you all know her model and like me have worked to develop it and apply it in your practice.

Hail thee fellow information worker heroes...

Since the days are getting darker and colder we can definitely say "Winter is coming", a fellow SharePoint Knight and myself sat together on a round table, shared some tales of our battles and glorious victories over some cold ale and firewater of smoke and peat. Unfortunately due to the rules of my fellow Knights lords, I shall not say his name in here but I may tell from the wisdom he shared with me. We shall name him "The mystic black knight." :-)

This time we tell about Yammer VS SharePoint 2013 Social features.

May peace favour your swords fellow heroes.

Hail thee fellow heroes of SharePoint

In order to spread some news and tales around SharePoint, Yammer and Office 365, I have created a digital newspaper called SharePlanet! My main goal is to gather all the newest and most relevant information around SharePoint, Yammer and Office 365. Hopefully this is to any use for you.

Have a look and share it in your network. Also let me know if you know of good content sources.

You have my thanks! :-)

Enjoy the tales of SharePlanet!

Ser Jussi

Hail thee fellow information worker heroes...

After having told my 1 2 3 tales about information worker productivity with SharePoint, this tale will go now a level higher and leave the SharePoint focus a bit on the side. Now I would like to give you an overview on the metrics of information worker productivity. Where can be the pain points and where you would need to apply certain measures to make your working environment more effective on personal, team and organisational level. All this I would like to present to you in "tadaaaa" one simple matrix, where you can see all the interconnections at once. 

May peace favour your swords fellow information working heroes...

Behold the Matrix!

Hail thee fellow heroes of information worker productivity!

In the first part of this article we looked into the general benefits of adopting social networking to an Organization. In this article we look into how SharePoint 2013 becomes a core driver for corporate social networks.

May peace favour your swords fellow information worker heroes…

Form thy own kingdom!

Hail thee fellow heroes of information worker productivity.

Everyone talks about social networking and social media nowadays. This new media definitely rocks our boats in our daily lives. This blog article looks at the power of social networking and how it could be used within the organization to boost productivity. In the first part we look at social networking benefits in general, while the second article focuses more on the social networking features of SharePoint 2013. 

Now relax, get some cold ale and enjoy. ;-)
May peace favour your swords fellow information worker heroes…

Hail thee fellow SharePoint information worker heroes!

This is the 3rd part of the "Conquest for information productivity" Article. In the first post, I wrote about conginitive readiness, so having the knowledge how to slay the dragon to save the princess. In the second article I wrote about having the right tools to accomplish your quest of honour. In the 3rd and last part of this article I will write about the mindset or attitude which ultimately will drive you forward to plunge your sword into the heart of the dragon of SharePoint un-productivity. :-)

May peace favour your swords, fellow heroes...

About the SharePoint infrastructure

In the first part of this article I was talking about how it is important to use SharePoint the right way in order to become productive. It sounds obvious right? However the most obvious things are not always the easiest to reach. It’s like seeing the princess in the tower, guarded by the fierce and evil dragon. Now in the second part of this article I will focus more on the Infrastructure. On the things I need to have with me in order to slay the dragon, climb the tower and rescue the princess from her horrible fate. So let’s pick up the sword and start our adventure.

May peace favor your swords fellow heroes…

Quest one: Raising Information Worker productivity with SharePoint Part 1

As a freshly anointed SharePoint Knight it is my duty and honor to share insight from my daily battles out there mostly fighting valiantly and fiercely against un-productivity and false use of information management tools. My first quest is about how the evil and dark villain of low SharePoint End User adoption and productivity could be defeated.

May peace favor your swords fellow heroes…

"Team Nokia, you guys have been absolutely stellar and an excellent example on how a corporate SM outfit can conduct business. I do not use a Nokia phone, and had no interest, but in terms of Brand recognition you guys have simply kicked ass with your Empire Avenue works." (12-3-2012)

Guest Post by Ian Gee from The Illusion of Work

We now live in a world with so much data readily available that I sometimes think it is hard to know where to start! Little Data can be intimidating let alone what do we now do with Big Data! My last blog post ‘Making the Soft Stuff Hard’ was an exploration of the challenges this places on our practice. Your comments have really stimulated my thinking. I want to take this exploration a bit further and look at how the web and social media might offer us some new opportunities and possibilities as well as raise some challenges, in terms of data gathering and its use.

In particular, I want to explore the use of sentiment analysis in OD and how it can potentially help us to understand what is going on inside and outside the organisation. Sentiment analysis can be best described as ‘opinion mining’. It’s a software driven process that analyses text and identifies feelings, reflections, likes and dislikes. At its most sophisticated it can give you a very good temperature reading and a good sense of what peoples attitudes are to particular issues. It provides you with an understanding of the judgements people are making, their inclinations, passions and opinions.

Sentiment analysis in OD is nothing new. As practitioners we have always done it through reviewing the data we gather from interviews, observations, focus groups and surveys. Trying to make sense of the data, above and beyond the literal content we search for opinions, similarities and differences. We then make, what we hope, are skilful understandings and interpretations. These ‘data bubbles’ as I like to think of them, have been of immense benefit to me in my career and I hope to my clients as well. Now though, with the proliferation of social media and the web, data is everywhere and not just what we choose to focus on and systematically gather.

Most company intranets have the facility for employees to comment and contribute. In progressive companies, discussion and even dissent are actively encouraged. This generates masses of data and information. But what do we do with it other than watch it pass by like a news ticker? As an OD practitioner, challenged with developing large company interventions, my question is how can we make best use of this rich source of what is on the surface can seem to be random data or chitchat? I don’t believe we can simply ignore it and carry on as we have; we do this at our peril. At the same time, the sheer volume of data can be daunting. It is usually made up of long threads of comments covering multiple issues and usually across numerous platforms. To start to analyse it manually can seem to be bit like trying to read the Internet! This is where I think sentiment analysis provides an answer.

Here is a personal example of where I used a sentiment analysis tool to good effect. I was recently working on a global project where I was not at all sure whether or not some of the key players were truly supporting the changes or not. I am sure you recognise this as a classic issue of stakeholder alignment. Most of us have faced this at some time in a transformation project. As an experiment, I used a very simple and free web tool to analyse a large number of emails I had received from the team and was very interested in the results. By looking at the words and strings of sentences the tool highlighted the fact that the majority of the statements were indicative of people sitting on the fence and waiting. My intuition told me we had alignment issues, the sentiment analysis gave me the data I needed to have conversations with the team and find out what was needed to get them fully on board. Now you could argue I might just as well have trusted my intuition and ‘held up the mirror’ based on what I was feeling. However in a ‘High Tech’ environment, being able to share the results of the sentiment analysis made for a much more fruitful, useful and interesting discussion.

Apparently there are even more sophisticated tools that will analyse anything from tweets, blog posts and discussions both on the company intranet and also the web generally. I think for my own practice, when I am next asked to get involved with a company wide change programme, I am going to recommend that we use both internal and external sentiment analysis as part of the initial diagnosis and continue to use it, at given periods, to see how sentiment shifts (hopefully I a positive way!) as the transformation progresses.

On a final note I am assuming you are all familiar with http://www.glassdoor.com and other similar ‘trip advisor’ type-sites for business? Have you ever used these sites to help you build a case for change?

I would be very interested to get your thoughts on the use of tools like sentiment analysis as a support to change and transformation. I am wondering if this is this one of the ways in which our practice of OD can be advanced and made more relevant and interesting? If you have any websites demonstrating tools to share that would be great. See below, for a couple of them from my friends Tim and Matthew. Over to you all now!

http://www.sentiment140.com/

http://www.tweetfeel.com/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization/

Really love this video, so nicely made!

Wolfram Alpha's Facebook Report is now available to anyone with a Facebook account. Of course I had to go ahead and give it a try, wondering what I could learn from it. Quite a lot actually. Apparently I have friends in no less than 48 countries, residing in no less than 321 cities (see figure 1.). How do you mean the world is a village?

Figure 2. See that blurb on the left? That's my friend network. 

They roughly divide into 3-4 categories which I have to say is pretty accurate. 

You can generate views that show you your male or female friends, those younger or older than you, and from your home town or the place where you live.

That big blue blob on the left side are connections made through or via social networks like Second Life, Facebook, Twitter or Empire Avenue, most of which I have yet to meet in person. What remains are colleagues, friends and family. It's just that easy to meet new people in the digital space these days, and to me this graph is evidence of that.

Of those that have posted a relationship status, you get to see how those are divided (Figure 4.).

There are actually quite a few facts being made available in the report, such as the age distribution or who your friends are who have the most friends. Perhaps too much to tell in a single article.

One of the more interesting ones is a section dedicated to telling you whom the "social insiders", "social outsiders", "top social connectors", "social neighbours" and "social gateways" are in your network.  


This article can however merely give you an idea of what's in store for you should you decide to run the report. If you do, what stood out most for you?

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I would like to talk about habits, both good ones and bad ones, and how people have difficulties having to give them up.

If you want to change the way that people work within an organisation, you have to change the way you look at change itself, a good friend once told me.





Whether you would like people to start tagging their data or collaborate in a social manner, in order to succeed you will need to have a way for people to be able to give up their old habits, or unlearn what they are used to, and replace it with something that is more rewarding to the individual as well as the organisation.

One such idea would be for example to encourage people to have meetings while walking outside. Take a stroll around the office building for a change. The fresh air will refresh your thinking. Or at this time of the year in Finland, since their is still a lot of snow outside, set yourself a goal as a team to build a snowman, or even a Polar Bear made out of snow. It doesn't really matter what you do, as long as working together and achieving   a tangible result is the goal. In short: Have Fun! It's great for increasing your productivity.

The problem in big organisations is that it is all too easy for people to hide, or stay clinging to their old habits.  We spend hours on end in meeting rooms in the comfort of that glowing rectangle called a computer screen trying to figure out how to make this whole digital thing to work better. This prevents change and is very costly in the long run.

Ultimately, any company's ability to adapt to way to do things better, faster will determine it's level of success, and employees that are eager AND allowed to try new things are healthier, happier people that are more productive. 

Social Media acts as a critical enabler in this process in many different ways, as it can give you insight into the heartbeat of your organisation in ways that were never before possible.

Or, as another friend told once wrote in a blogpost on one of my favorite blogs called 'The Illusion of Work', work is not a time nor a place. 

Just think for a moment what the creative possibilities are of that kind of approach to work! 

I received an invitation from Jussi Mori of Peaches Industries to come and speak at the first Information Worker Productivity Day in Helsinki, Finland. The event taking is place in the end of May.

It might be of interest to you or someone you know, so thank you for helping to spread the word, looking forward to seeing you there!

The First Information Worker Productivity Day of Helsinki Finland is coming up this May! Be there and mark your calendar for May 30!

Productivity is everything for us in our daily work! Although it is very hard to grasp and measure for information worker, it is always there on the backs of our minds driving us to get things done! Without productivity we don’t get anywhere.Faster, better, cheaper! How to get there with less resources and without information overflow? 

Peaches Industries, Cloudriven, eWork Nordic and Onsight Helsinki warmly welcome you to this free seminar, which covers topics around raising information worker productivity in todays daily work situations. Our sessions are about topics around productivity on an enterprise level down to every individual. Our speakers all are experts in their field of work and have proven their expertise many times during work or other public events as speakers or panelists.Here an overview on the most important info about the first productivity day of Finland:

Date: Thursday 30th of May 2013
Venue: Auditorium Keilaranta 1, Espoo
Organizers: Peaches Industries, Cloudriven, Onsight
Maximum number of attendees: 200

Other important notes:Refreshments and snacks will be offered at the event

I posted this on Facebook last week, and an interesting discussion arose. Come and join the discussion if you like.

Ok so I promised to start talking about Gamification and Augmented Reality, because there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about these topics out there. Let's start with gamification.

What many don't seem to realize, is that we all encounter some form of gamification at a very early age. Let me give a couple of examples:

Were you ever told as a child to start counting sheep when finding it difficult to fall asleep?

Have you ever been promised a reward in exchange for doing any kind of chore? Cleaning up your room before being allowed to go outside and play?

If you have, you have had your first encounter with gamification.

What other examples can you give? Have you had any personal encounters with gamification? Would be interesting to hear your experiences!