Table of Contents · 2019. 12. 16. · usability and design e• orts for dozens of clients, including AT&T, Avaya, A€ nnova, Constant Contact, † e Massachusetts Medical Society,

1Creating Vibrant Online Collaborative Communities

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

BACKGROUND...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

FORWARD..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

PREFACE.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

� e Wisdom of Crowds............................................................................13

De� ning the Study....................................................................................14

Why Should Business Communicators Care About Online

Communities?...........................................................................................14

Unique Challenges....................................................................................15

� e World Is Ready to Bring Social Media into the Workplace.................15

Methods....................................................................................................16

LITERATURE REVIEW.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

� e Power of Crowdsourcing....................................................................21

Paid Versus Free Crowdsourcing...............................................................22

Elements of Successful Collaboration........................................................24

Online Collaboration and Corporations...................................................24

Open Versus Closed Collaboration...........................................................25

Building Successful Collaboration E! orts.................................................26

Technology................................................................................................27

Conclusion and Recommendations...........................................................28

Creating Vibrant Online Collaborative Communities2

DETAILED KEY FINDINGS.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

Types of Online Collaborative Communities Identi� ed in � is

Study.........................................................................................................33

Communities of Interest Form to Share Knowledge.................................34

Project-Based Teams Do All � eir Work on the Platform.........................35

Open-Source Communities Automate Project Management and

Work� ow..................................................................................................35

“Water Cooler” Communities Allow Employees to Interact

Informally.................................................................................................36

Planning an Online Collaborative Community.........................................36

1. Evaluate your organization’s capacity for online collaboration.............36

2. Secure top-down executive support.....................................................37

3. Secure bottom-up employee support...................................................43

4. Run a successful pilot..........................................................................48

5. Create awareness for the community...................................................50

6. Develop guidelines and governance to � t the organization..................51

7. Find a platform that matches employee work� ow and organizational

needs....................................................................................................54

Conclusion ..............................................................................................57

APPENDIX..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

How to Obtain Top-Down and Bottom-Up Support for an Online

Collaborative Community........................................................................59


RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61

Discussion Guide for Phone Interviews....................................................61

Discussion Guide for the � ree-Day Online Bulletin Board.....................63

Recruiting Email for Community Managers.............................................65

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Websites....................................................................................................66

Twitter.......................................................................................................66

Blogs.........................................................................................................67

ABOUT THE IABC RESEARCH FOUNDATION.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people who helped me research and put together this report. First I would like to extend my appreciation to Mari Pavia of the IABC Research Foundation and to Marketwire for sponsoring this project. � anks to Julie Bjorkman, Ph.D., ABC, for her guidance and assistance with framing the questions for the interviews and online discussion board and for her comments on the draft of this report. � e IABC review panel’s comments on the � rst draft of this report added immeasurable value to the � nished product. Heather Turbeville of IABC and Ruth Walker of Charles River Wordsmithing provided top-notch editing of this report and the lit-erature review. Tom Missler of Missler Design helped to make the process of gaining “top down” and “bottom up” support understandable with his amaz-ing information graphic.

� anks also to Lauri Stevens of LAwS Communications and Laurie Fernald for providing initial guidance on internal collaborative communities from their experience as social media strategists. Paul Gillian of Gillian Communi-cations o� ered leads to valuable initial insights on how business is using paid and unpaid crowdsourcing techniques. � anks also to Brent Bultema, Mike O’Hara, Christine Allen, Maureen Todaro, and David Aponovich for leading me to great people who were willing to take part in the interviews and online panel. Above all, I’d like to thank my husband Kevin for reviewing each draft and for supporting me through this epic research project.

I would like to acknowledge the online collaboration experts with whom I spoke:

• Jono Bacon, community manager of the Ubuntu Community and author

of � e Art of Community

• Christian Finn, director of SharePoint product management at Microsoft

• Barry Libert, author of We Are Smarter than Me and Social Nation

• Meghan (Scott) Mehrens of Yum! Brands

• Giovanni Rodriguez, CMO of BroadVision


I would also like to thank the participants of the three-day online panel of community managers:

• Daniel Eckhart, head of community management, Swiss Re

• Brice Jewell, manager, uCern, at Cerner Corp.

• John Lovett Jr., manager community programs, CA Technologies

• Maggie McGary, consulting community manager

• Scott Moore, director of community development, Answers.com

• Marilyn Pratt, community advocate, SAP Community Network

• Vanessa Szpara, marketing communications manager, Entegris

• Karen Trewin, department of public a! airs, Mayo Clinic

Several participants who asked to remain anonymous are not listed above.

—Kay Corry Aubrey


BACKGROUND

Kay Corry Aubrey, researcher and author of this study

Kay Corry Aubrey is the owner of Usability Resources, which specializes in user-centered research and design. Kay has over 20 years of experience in applying qualitative research methods and usability testing to technology-oriented products and collaborative software. She has led user research and usability and design e� orts for dozens of clients, including AT&T, Avaya, A� nnova, Constant Contact, � e Massachusetts Medical Society, Mayo Clinic and iRobot.

Kay has taught at Northeastern University and Bentley University’s Center for Human Factors and Information Design. She is the managing editor of the QRCA VIEWS magazine, a market research journal that is read by over 5,000 qualitative research consultants and buyers. Kay has an MSW in community organizing and group work from Boston University’s School of Social Work, an MS in information systems from Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Engineering, and a BA from McGill University. She is a RIVA-certi! ed Master Moderator who enjoys doing research with both groups and individuals.

For further information on Kay’s background, please visit http://www.UsabilityResources.net.

Julie Bjorkman, Ph.D., ABC, IABC consultant

As a results-oriented change communication and organization development (OD) expert, Julie’s more than 20 years of experience include working with multinational companies going through large-scale change. By using data-based research methods, she identi! es and creates the appropriate change intervention and communication strategy to develop a full range of deliverables to engage and retain the workforce.

Her professional experiences with large corporations such as HSBC, British Petroleum, Allstate, GE, Sara Lee and Takeda Pharmaceuticals have given her a wealth of on-the-job experience with organizational change. Her niche areas include change communication, HR transformation and employee engagement. She is an adjunct faculty member at both Benedictine and Roosevelt Universities in Chicago.


As an active IABC member, Julie served on the IABC/Chicago board in a variety of leadership roles, including Chicago Chapter president from 2003–2004 and director-at-large on the international executive board from 2004–2006, where she was a member of the � nance committee. Julie earned her bachelor’s degree in English from John Carroll University, her master’s degree in OD from Case Western Reserve University, and her Ph.D. in OD from Benedictine University with a research focus on change communication. She is a published author on change communication and continues to conduct research, write, and consult with organizations on this topic.

Sponsor

Marketwire advances the way the world communicates by electronically delivering news and information to traditional, new and social media audiences, including newspapers, magazines, databases, analyst terminals, online portals, blogs, and more. Marketwire maximizes the power of its clients’ communications by leveraging the latest in search engine optimization, multimedia, social media, monitoring and new technologies. Sysomos, a Marketwire company, provides unparalleled business intelligence for social media through advanced monitoring and analytics. Serving more than 12,000 clients worldwide through 20 o! ces on four continents, Marketwire is a dominant distributor of company news releases and other communications. For more information, visit www.marketwire.com, @marketwire and http://blog.marketwire.com/.


FORWARD

Marketwire’s work environment is “open-concept.” I think that’s what makes our culture truly remarkable: It is collaborative and full of energy. As I walk around our Toronto o� ce and listen in on conversations among colleagues, vendors, clients and potential clients, I witness the importance of creating communities, sharing information, and fostering relationships. Today, our communities extend into the virtual realm, thanks to the real-time democra-tized reach of social media.

Our commitment to fostering a vibrant online collaborative culture is why we supported the development of the IABC Research Foundation’s study, Creat-ing Vibrant Online Collaborative Communities Within an Organization. ! is study will help you understand how communication professionals are making use of social media for online collaboration, gain insight into emerging trends and navigate through the fast-moving social media landscape to better meet the future needs of your important stakeholders.

Many of this study’s key " ndings echo what we at Marketwire have been experiencing while navigating the convergence of traditional and social media. Like many of the study participants, we are learning to integrate social media into our overall communication strategies while at the same time providing innovative thought leadership to the thousands of clients who trust us to com-municate their messages to their audiences, both internal and external.

! roughout Marketwire’s history, we have encouraged collaborative commu-nication, and we have continuously invested in leveraging the latest technolo-gies that help to facilitate those e# orts—both o# - and online. Our recent acquisition of Sysomos, an analytics service that brings business intelligence to social media, further underscores the value we place on the power of social media communication and the intelligence to be gained from all it has to of-fer. Our vision for the future is to build upon our foundation as a dominant global force in news distribution by incorporating tools and technologies that enhance the way communication professionals engage with their various communities at every stage of the process. ! is study is yet another piece of intelligence to help us deliver on our promise to advance the way the world communicates, and we are proud to have been able to support IABC in its development and to share it with you today.

—Michael Nowlan, President and CEO, Marketwire


PREFACE

As social media tools proliferate, more and more communicators are chal-lenged to explore the options these tools o� er for their organizations. With geographically dispersed employees, customers and consumers, the world is becoming a smaller place. Technology allows those in the U.S. to chat with an outsourced operation in India, a call center in Bangkok, and fellow communi-cators in Australia and South Africa.

Online mass (or global) collaboration systems rely on large numbers of people to engage in discussing and solving a speci� c problem or addressing a complex organizational situation. � e advent of the Internet and social media tools provides a cost-e� ective means of creating a platform for mass collaboration, as well as for engaging stakeholders well beyond the capacity of other com-munication methods/tools. Discussion groups, wikis, blogs, forums and other social media have created a variety of mass collaboration tools that are readily available, many at no cost. � e ability to communicate across organizational and geographic boundaries changes the relationship between customers and organizations, between organizations themselves and within organizations. It o� ers the potential to break down barriers and facilitate interaction and, ulti-mately, collaborate in order to share information and solve problems, as well as to address complex situations that may not have a “solution” but that can be improved through this type of collaboration.

A growing number of organizations understand the value of online communi-ties. Many prominent ones, such as Proctor & Gamble, Boeing, and the BBC, use online collaborative communities for generating ideas and developing new products. Online mass collaboration, also called crowdsourcing, leverages social media and the Internet to tap the collective creativity and intelligence of large numbers of people. Crowdsourcing provides a general solicitation for problem solving. For example, a business may have a problem too di� -cult to solve by itself so it poses the question over the Internet—to the entire world—and anyone can o� er a solution. Crowdsourcing has proven to be a very e� ective and inexpensive way to solve di� cult business, technology and scienti� c problems.

Other organizations are leveraging these techniques internally through em-ployee-led, online collaborative communities. While internal communities can bring signi� cant bene� ts to an organization, they are quite challenging to launch and even more challenging to see through to success. Many fail, in spite of large monetary investments, usually due to the human element,


not technology. Internal collaborative communities require people to change their attitudes and behavior—a paradigm shift within the organizational cul-ture. However, business communicators can help their organizations succeed in implementing online collaborative communities if they can secure the support of both senior management and the employees.

� is report encapsulates the commonsense advice from 15 thought leaders and community managers who have actively established internal online collabora-tive communities. By capturing the best advice from the study’s participants, this report provides a commonsense guidebook for business communicators about how to set up and run vibrant online collaborative communities within their organizations. � ese experts o� er detailed advice on the steps they took to gain both top-down and bottom-up support for their e� orts. � ey also describe the day-to-day hard work necessary to keep their organization’s communities vibrant and relevant.

There is a natural pairing between online communities

and the role of the business communicator. Business

communicators know how to drive change management,

create awareness, and develop the governance, educa-

tional, and communication policies needed for success.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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The Wisdom of Crowds

� e Internet and social media tools allow unlimited numbers of people from anywhere in the world to come together and collaborate in areas where they share a highly speci� c interest. � is is the essence of online mass collabora-tion, or crowdsourcing. � e “wisdom of crowds” is a major bene� t of crowd-sourcing. � e wisdom-of-crowds e� ect occurs when a problem or question is posed to a large and diverse group of people. � e crowd will produce a wider range of solutions and ideas than might have been proposed by only one or two experts working on the problem.

� e crowdsourcing bene� t arises from gathering solutions from a large group of people, each with their own viewpoint, training and problem-solving meth-ods. Since 2006, Proctor and Gamble (P&G) has used online communities to tap the wisdom of crowds (Libert, 2008). For example, when P&G could not � gure out how to print on a PringlesTM potato chip, the organization present-ed this challenge to its online communities and found a bakery in Italy with a process to do this. � is technique has delivered so much bene� t that today 35 percent of the company’s new product ideas now come from outsiders, and P&G’s productivity has soared 60 percent. Eighty percent of P&G’s product launches are now successful, compared with an industry standard of just 35 percent (Libert, 2008).

Crowdsourced e� orts are usually speci� c and leverage both the wisdom of crowds and the reach of the World Wide Web. A good example of crowd-sourcing in everyday life is Wikipedia. Millions of people from across the globe read, contribute and edit each other’s work on the site. Wikipedia contributors generally have deep knowledge about their topic and are willing to share their expertise. � e net result is a repository for rich, peer-reviewed information on every imaginable subject.

� e LinuxTM operating system was created using crowdsourcing. Linux uses an open-source model where hundreds of thousands of software developers volunteer their time to write small pieces of computer code. Similar to Wiki-pedia, tiny contributions and cross-checks from a large number of developers add up to a robust and relatively bug-free system.

Some crowdsourcing e� orts are paid. For example, InnoCentive, in Waltham, Massachusetts, sets up online communities for companies such as Eli Lily and the U.S. Air Force to solve speci� c problems they cannot solve themselves (Tapscott, 2010). Problem solvers submit their solutions and are paid tens of thousands of dollars for winning ideas.


Most crowdsourced e� orts, however, rely on volunteer labor, which raises an obvious question: Why do people work for free? In the case of open-source software development or Wikipedia, motivation comes from having the chance to connect with others who share a similar interest and to work together on a common mission. Sometimes the motivation is to learn new skills that will lead to future paid work.

Defi ning the Study

! e original intent of this study was to explore how business communica-tors can leverage internal and external crowdsourcing within their organiza-tions. Early insights from preliminary interviews identi" ed the online mass collaboration phenomenon as being made up of a thousand little conversa-tions versus one gigantic conversation. From the experts’ frame of reference, online collaborative communities allow people with a very speci" c passion or focus to come together to work and share ideas, which is not mass col-laboration. ! e business communicator’s goal, therefore, is to make it easy for people to " nd each other, form collaborative relationships, participate and be productive. ! e researcher decided the best focus for this project was to look at how to make internal online collaboration work within an organi-zation.

! ere is nothing new about the notion of online collaborative communi-ties—email distribution lists, online bulletin boards and discussion groups are just a few examples. Online collaborative communities provide a con-venient platform for people who share a common passion or focus to come together. ! ese communities allow people to share knowledge, coordinate and carry out work, debate, brainstorm, and learn. Today many organiza-tions recognize the strategic importance and necessity of such communities. When done right, online collaborative communities are an e# cient way to centralize communication, collaboration and the sharing of best practices. ! ey lead to a more democratic and open culture. When an organization invests resources to develop and maintain them, it sends the message that everyone’s opinion matters.

Why Should Business Communicators Care About Online Communities?

! ere is a natural pairing between online communities and the role of the business communicator. Business communicators know how to drive change management, create awareness, and develop the governance, educa-tional, and communication policies needed for success. Online collaborative communities can be meritocracies that knock down organizational silos and bring employees together so they can contribute more fully to the organiza-


tion’s success, regardless of their position in the company. If the business com-municator is part of a core team that de� nes, plans, and launches a successful online collaborative community, this could provide the communicator a seat at the strategy table, where they can de� ne a more relevant role for themselves as they make a powerful impact on their company’s culture.

Unique Challenges

Creating an online collaborative community presents many challenges. Em-ployees must transition from relying mostly on email to communicating via the platform. Communication patterns shift from top-down to becoming more democratic as employees from all levels in the organizational hierarchy interact with each other. You need to gain top-down support from executives as well as bottom-up support from workers for the community to succeed. While it is not necessary to win over the entire organization, your community must reach a critical mass of participants before its value manifests and it becomes self-sustaining.

The World Is Ready to Bring Social Media into the Workplace

As of July 2010, some 500 million people—or one-twelfth of the world’s popu-lation—were on Facebook (Carlson, 2011). It is common for professionals in North America to have a LinkedIn pro� le. A growing population of profession-als worldwide not only understands social media, but uses the tools as a primary channel for communication with the people closest to them in their personal lives. ! ese people are trained and primed to apply these social media skills to their work relationships. ! ere is, of course, another group, often in senior leadership positions, who do not understand social media and fear it. Commu-nity managers refer to this condition as executive FUD—fear, uncertainty and doubt. ! ese people need to be won over for the online community to succeed, and this report details approaches a business communicator can use to achieve this buy-in.


Methods

� is was a qualitative study that focused on in-depth interviews with experts in crowdsourcing and online communities, and insights from a three-day on-line panel with 10 community managers. A review of the literature within the areas of online mass collaboration and crowdsourcing helped frame the study by identifying the major trends, resources and key players. � is secondary research identi� ed prominent individuals in the online collaboration space, along with developing the interview protocol.

� e data collection methodology consisted of in-depth interviews and a three-day online panel. For the interviews, the researcher recruited the author of two best-selling books on crowdsourcing and social media, the founder of Ubuntu—the largest open source software development community in the world—and three internationally recognized founders of very large internal online collaborative communities. For the three-day panel, 10 hands-on com-munity managers were recruited.

Several recruiting techniques were used to � nd the best community manag-ers to serve on the panel. � e researcher located community managers who had spoken at Enterprise 2.0 conferences (the premier conferences on internal online collaboration), who were active in the Community Roundtable (the best known professional organization for community managers), and who blog about this subject. Tweets were also sent to community manager Twitter groups with a link to a detailed description of the type of people sought for the panel. All community managers were interviewed to ensure they met the criteria before being admitted to the study. � e community managers who participated in this study were international and represented a broad range of organizations and industries from hospitals to armed services to insurance.

Participants included the following:

• Barry Libert, author of We Are Smarter than Me (2008) and Social Na- tion (2010), best-selling books on crowdsourcing and founder of the enter-prise social software company Mzinga

• Jono Bacon, author of ! e Art of Community Management (2009) and

founder of the Ubuntu community, the world’s largest open-source software community

• Giovanni Rodriguez, an internationally-known community manager and social media consultant who specializes in developing online collaborative communities for the Hispanic culture


• Christian Finn, director of product management for SharePoint and

founder of one of Microsoft’s most successful communities, which allows 80,000 technicians from all corners of the globe to share expertise via video podcasts

• Meghan Scott, a founding member of the Yum! Brands online community “iChing,” which employees use for training, expertise sharing and to drive food sales

" e discussion guide covered topics such as how the study’s experts lever-age online mass collaboration within their organizations, advice for business communicators who wish to develop communities within their own organiza-tion, tools, planning steps, execution, and how to align the community to the needs of the business. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the researcher coded the transcripts to synthesize the information and to identify themes and key issues across all conversations. Information from the inter-views was used to formulate the questions for the online bulletin board.

" e phone interviews were followed by a multiday online bulletin board with 10 hands-on community managers of large-scale online collaborative com-munities. Participants were accomplished community managers who had been at their posts for at least a year, and were passionate about their work and the value of online collaborative communities. " ey also worked in large and well-known organizations that had implemented successful online collabora-tive communities across a range of industries and national boundaries.

" e community manager participants included:

• Daniel Eckhart, head of community management, Swiss Re.

• Brice Jewell, manager uCern at Cerner Corp.

• John Lovett Jr., manager community programs, CA Technologies.

• Maggie McGary, consulting community manager.

• Scott Moore, director of community development, Answers.com.

• Marilyn Pratt, community advocate, SAP Community Network.

• Vanessa Szpara, marketing communications manager, Entegris.

• Karen Trewin, department of public a# airs, Mayo Clinic.

Several community managers who participated asked to remain anonymous and are not listed here.


� e discussion guide for the bulletin board covered questions pertaining to laying the groundwork for an online collaborative community, and build-ing the business case and the planning steps for the community. Questions explored the participants’ experiences with piloting online communities, creating employee awareness, maintaining participation and focus, resolving con� ict, decision making, technology, and governance. As they took part, the community managers were able to see and respond to each other’s postings, and the researcher was able to ask ad hoc questions. In e� ect, the online bul-letin board was an example of a time-bound online collaborative community.

REFERENCES

Carlson, N. (2011, January 5). Goldman to clients: Facebook has 600 mil-lion users. MSNBC. Retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40929239/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/.

Libert, B. & Spector, J. (2008). We are smarter than me. Saddle River, New Jersey: Wharton School Publishing.

Tapscott, D. (2010). Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything. New York City: Penguin Group.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Online mass collaboration is an emerging phenomenon

that has the potential to reshape global communication,

economies, politics and the social order in ways that can-

not yet be predicted.

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Organizations have harnessed the power of crowds to help them do everything from creating and extending the Linux operating system, to developing heat-resistant product packaging, to prospecting for gold and rating movies on Net� ix (Libert, 2008). Fast, often inexpensive and ubiquitous Internet connections allow strangers around the globe with a common passion to coalesce into teams to work together on a common project (McAfee, 2009).

� is literature review focuses � rst on examining key works that explain the general phenomenon of online mass collaboration and how it is changing the social, economic and political landscape. � e review then shifts to explore works that look at how people collaborate within the work environment because the end goal of this research is to provide communicators with a recipe for leveraging online mass collaboration within their organizations. � e literature suggests that the online mass collaboration model has potential within an organization’s walled ecosystem, but this approach needs to be adapted to accommodate the realities of the workplace.

The Power of Crowdsourcing

Don Tapscott (2010) authored Wikinomics, one of the � rst major business books that focused on how companies leverage online communities and social media to help them innovate. � e author uses the term “prosumers” to describe a new kind of consumer who is actively involved with the companies that create products they love—as product innovators and re� ners. He sees the trend signaling a new mode of production and believes “that the corporation may be going through the biggest change in its short history” (p. ix).

Tapscott (2010) describes the online mass collaboration environment as a place to tap into the “ideagora”—the marketplace of ideas. � e ideagora can be harnessed not only for monetary gain but also to serve humankind in unprecedented ways, especially when organizations are willing to share their intellectual property to access the collective genius. He warns throughout this book that the main challenge of mass collaboration is how to be open and transparent enough to attract outsiders while restrictive enough to capture economic value.

Je! Howe’s (2008) Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business is another popular book that made an early and accurate identi� cation of the online mass collaboration phenomenon. � e author dis-cusses how the line between producer and consumer is eroding, as people are easily able to contribute their ideas to organizations with social media tools. Crowds can be more intelligent than experts when the members come from diverse backgrounds and so are able to use di! erent problem-solving strate-gies.


Libert and Spector’s (2008) book, We Are Smarter � an Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business, o! ers case studies about dozens of activi-ties businesses have outsourced to online communities via social networks. " e book itself is a product of the crowdsourcing model—dozens of volunteer moderators used online communities to collect stories for the book.

" e authors describe how companies such as Procter & Gamble, Amazon Turk, Cookshack, Common Angels and Prosper use online communities for every aspect of their business. Tapping collective intelligence has paid o! . P&G works with online communities of consumers to come up with ideas for new products. Prosper o! ers loans online to individuals who belong to small groups of borrowers with something in common (such as all being alumni of the same college). " e idea is that group social pressure ensures borrowers will repay their loans, thereby lowering the risk of a default. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk auctions tens of thousands of discrete software development tasks to over 100,000 engineers across the globe who visit the site. Amazon receives a com-mission on each transaction. " e o! ering company spends a fraction of what it would pay to get the same work done within the normal marketplace. " e engineers who provide the labor see their work as an interesting pastime and a way to improve their skills—and they receive token compensation (Libert & Spector, 2008).

Paid vs. Free Crowdsourcing

Distinguishing between paid and free crowdsourcing is important. From the workers’ perspective, the two types of crowdsourcing involve di! erent sets of motivations. Paid crowdsourcers tend to have specialized skills and need # ex-ible work hours. Unpaid crowdsourcing projects draw people in because they are entertaining or emotionally ful$ lling, or lead to some sort of recognition within a $ eld. Some workers, moreover, $ nd unpaid crowdsourcing work a stepping-stone to paid work (Bacon, 2009; Shirky, 2008; Tapscott, 2010).

Frei (2009) divides paid crowdsourcing into two distinct segments: work exchanges and work parsers. In a work exchange, the online community is a matchmaker between seeker and provider and manages all aspects of the engagement, from the introduction to the completion of work. A work parser is, in e! ect, a simple job board that displays opportunities to the worker, who then does all the legwork of connecting with the employer to get the assign-ment. " e most successful paid outsourcing sites—InnoCentive, Elance, Rent-ACoder.com, Guru, LiveOps, oDesk, and TopCoder—are exchanges. " ey tend to deal in more complex projects. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, now 10 years old, $ ts into the work parser category and deals in micro tasks (Frei, 2009).


Like the engineers who � nd work through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, people who get work through paid outsourcing sites earn a lot less than those with conventional employment (Frei, 2009; McAfee, 2006; Shah, 2009). � e paid crowdsourcing marketplace is still concentrated mostly in North America. � e work o� ered tends to be in web design and development. Discrete, low-risk tasks such as transcription and translation are also commonly crowdsourced.

Frei (2009) predicts that paid crowdsourcing will soon be a billion-dollar industry. Within a few years, it may be as common as e-commerce is today. Before this happens, however, the websites o� ering paid crowdsourcing have to re� ne their service so it is e� ortless, secure, and risk-free, and protects the interests of both the work seeker and the work provider. As these services gain credibility, they will amass huge global pools of talented, reliable workers who can be plugged into temporary assignments that match their specialized skills (Frei, 2009).

Linux and Wikipedia are two examples of successful enterprises built on the e� orts of unpaid workers (Leadbeater, 2008a; Li & Berno� , 2008). Partici-pants contribute for the intellectual challenge and the opportunity to take part in an e� ort that serves the greater good. � e Linux operating system is so robust, its developers maintain, because it has a thousand people each testing small portions of it, rather than only one person running a thousand tests. � e operating system can be modularized into tiny work parcels, each of which is freestanding and can be worked on independently (Bacon, 2009).

According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, “With participatory culture, economics dictates that we pour more resources into building an infrastruc-ture platform that anyone can use, so most resources go into empowering the ‘long tail.’ Small groups of people can come together and make use of a pow-erful infrastructure to enable them to pursue their own passions and interests, without regard for popularity. � e result is projects of a much larger scope than ever seen before” (as cited in Shah, 2009, On Participatory Culture and Mass Collaboration section, para. 3). Wales (as cited in Shah, 2009) explains, “My primary design philosophy involves putting the tools into the hands of the community, and thinking really hard about avoiding bottlenecks which require some top-down intervention” (On Wikia section, para. 5).

Howe (2008) was the only author in this review who mentions the ethical issues of organizations making money by selling goods produced with un-paid labor. He sees this as a real danger. � e author posits that it is up to the sponsoring organization to o� er its online community meaningful rewards for their contribution, both because this is the right thing to do and because their crowds will abandon them if they feel they are being exploited.


Elements of Successful Collaboration

Charles Leadbeater (2008a), a best-selling author of books on mass creativ-ity, describes crowds as intelligent “only when their members have a range of views and enough self-con� dence and independence to voice their opinions” (Contribute section, para. 3). According to Howe (2008), the innovative capacity of the group erodes as members get to know one another because they tend to adopt a common frame of reference that inhibits their capacity to think independently. To accomplish serious work, even volunteer com-munities need a social structure, which often takes the form of a “benevolent dictatorship,” where a core group of individuals determines policy, sets up the structure and makes decisions (Leadbeater, 2008b).

Within the open environment, roles need to be clear and the tasks modu-larized. When the overall project is broken into discrete components—like LegoTM blocks—the modular structure coordinates everyone’s work. � ere is no need for social interaction. A thousand people can work in parallel on a project, each contributing a small piece of labor that adds up to a signi� cant result. Even Wales (as cited in Shah, 2009) believes that top-down structures have their place with certain types of collaborative projects: “While participa-tory culture can create a Wikipedia, it is not likely to produce something like the Star Wars franchise. I don’t think that’s a problem, because I don’t think we have to choose between participatory and top-down culture—both will thrive” (On Participatory Culture and Mass Collaboration section, para. 5).

Internet-enabled software tools allow small groups to band together e� ort-lessly. Shirky (2008) discusses how the ability to band together into huge numbers of informal groups is undermining the power of established business and social structures because, unlike corporations that have to manage risk, informal groups of volunteers have an in� nite ability to innovate and make mistakes because their mistakes have no cost. He also identi� es three reasons why online communities form: to share (reviews, blogs, bookmarks), to take collective action (Belarusian protesters used LiveJournal to organize � ash mobs), and to perform collaborative work (Wikipedia). Shirky (2008) o� ers a three-pronged formula for success with online collaborative communities: (1) a clear and credible promise, (2) an appropriate use of social media tools, and (3) an attractive bargain for and with potential participants.

Online Collaboration and Corporations

How can the force of online mass collaboration be applied to closed sys-tems—to corporations and the traditional workplace? Is there a phenomenon that might be thought of as “internal crowdsourcing,” and how is it di� erent from the way crowdsourcing is described in popular business books? Collabo-


ration between separate units or divisions within an organization is most often seen as a good thing. In theory it breaks down silos and promotes cross-func-tional teams; this enables the company to leverage everyone’s skills and knowl-edge better. But Morten T. Hansen (2009) advises managers to weigh the risks and hidden costs of cross-unit collaboration before jumping in. � ere are opportunity costs because the team’s energy is focused on making the relation-ships work, and concrete costs, such as travel and maintaining an infrastruc-ture. In Hansen’s (2009) mind, the biggest cost is usually time spent resolving con� ict between groups over goals, budget, schedules, turf, sharing resources and the division of labor. Even when the collaborative e� ort succeeds, there may be little tangible return to the organization in the form of increased sales or more advanced research and development. He advises managers to subtract the opportunity and collaboration costs from the projected return to arrive at a monetary “collaboration premium” before deciding whether to embark on an internal collaboration initiative.

Open vs. Closed Collaboration

Online mass collaboration is premised on the idea that, because good ideas can sprout from anywhere on earth, companies need to learn how to go outside their walls to harness the wisdom of crowds. On the basis of their 20 years of research on collaboration, Pisano and Verganti (2008) o� er a practical guide for an organization to choose the collaborative form that is most appro-priate for its strategy and situation. � ey contend there is no best approach to leveraging the power of outsiders; di� erent situations require di� erent col-laborative modes. � e choice boils down to two basic questions: “Should we use open or closed collaboration?” and “Who decides which problems we will tackle and which solutions we will consider?” (2008).

Open collaboration (in which theoretically anyone is invited to participate) should be considered when an organization doesn’t know the domain, or the key talent and the task can be broken down into small chunks. � is makes the most sense when the organization doesn’t need to own the intellectual prop-erty involved and when the “transaction costs” of enlisting participants and evaluating their submissions are low. For example, Apple went from concept to ! nished product design for the iPhone by leveraging a succession of small groups with elite contributors (Pisano & Verganti, 2008). However, when it came time to add software functionality and applications (“apps”), it shifted to an open collaboration approach where anyone could contribute an iPhone application “to encourage a thousand � owers to bloom and allow the market to decide which ones should be picked” (Pisano & Verganti, 2008, p. 85).


Closed collaboration modes are appropriate when the organization can de� ne the problem and framework for solving it, knows who the experts are and has access to them (Pisano & Verganti, 2008). Closed groups are more e� cient because they produce fewer solutions to evaluate. But before proceeding with a closed collaboration, an organization should make sure that the risk of miss-ing important ideas and solutions by narrowing the sources of input is small.

� e governance of open and closed collaborative teams can be either hierar-chical or � at. A � at mode of governance makes sense when no central group has a full understanding or skills in the space being evaluated, and contribu-tors all want to have a say in which problems are examined and solutions adopted. With hierarchical governance, one body has the ultimate decision-making authority. Hierarchical governance should be considered when the overall task is complex and will require coordination. � is mode is also appro-priate when the organization fully understands the topic at hand and has the ability to de� ne the problem and evaluate the solutions. Pisano & Verganti (2008) describe a collaboration architecture that is a cross-product of open or closed, � at or hierarchical: closed and hierarchical (an elite circle), open and hierarchical (an innovation mall), open and � at (an innovation community), and closed and � at (a consortium).

� e collaborative framework needs to match the situation. International product design � rm, Alessi (closed and hierarchical), invited 200 elite design-ers to help create new product designs. � e company controls the innovation process but shares kudos and pro� ts with its contributing designers (Pisano & Verganti, 2008). � e Linux open source movement has a core team of developers who create and maintain the collaborative structure and make all the decisions (open and hierarchical). � readless, a T-shirt company that lets anyone submit or vote on a design for (or simply buy) a T-shirt, uses an open and � at approach. IBM’s microelectronics consortia (closed and � at) consist of semiconductor companies that contribute highly specialized knowledge to chip development. � ese companies will use the resulting technologies in their own factories, so the consortia have � at governance.

Building Successful Collaboration Efforts

To learn the essence of how to build successful collaboration e! orts, Gratton and Erickson (2007) evaluated 55 teams on 100 factors such as task design and corporate culture. In their sample, virtual teams, teams of strangers and teams with more than 20 members found collaboration challenging without special planning from the organization. Teams with the most experts and


highest educational level experienced the most con� ict and stalemate. On the other hand, collaboration proved easier if people perceived similarity between themselves and their teammates, or if some members had worked together previously.

Organizations that had consistently successful internal collaboration shared similar characteristics. � eir leaders demonstrated that they value collabora-tive behavior by creating a “gift” culture, which recognizes human relation-ships, mentoring and coaching. � ey designed their company’s physical space so employees saw one another regularly and were forced to rub shoulders (e.g., atriums that function as cafeterias or meeting spaces). � ey helped teams learn how to collaborate by o� ering training in communication, plan-ning and con� ict resolution. Managers were chosen as much for their ability to foster positive relationships among people as for their ability to get the job done. � eir teams tended to contain some members who had worked together before. Everyone had a clear and nonoverlapping role but all team members were given the power to determine how they should collectively accomplish the task.

Rosen (2009) identi� es 10 cultural elements that are most often present when collaboration succeeds: trust, a willingness to share, common goals, a desire to innovate, a physical and virtual environment that promotes collaboration, willingness to accept “collaborative chaos,” the ability to deal with con� ict and confront di� erences, good communication, and a sense of community.

Technology

� ough several well-regarded books on social media and online community design and moderation are listed in the bibliography, this literature review has not focused on the technology needed to design or run such communities. � is is because the technology aspect of online mass collaboration—while not trivial—is rather mature. Collaborative technology is expensive—both in terms of purchase price and the internal costs of rollout and integration in a large organization. Technology is among the topics addressed in the inter-views and in the online bulletin board with subject matter experts, as is how to ensure an excellent user experience for community participants. Readers can acquire an overview of the speci� c technology and social media tools needed for online mass collaboration by reading McAfee’s (2009) Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges and Farkas’s (2007) Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaborations, Com-munication, and Community Online. User interface design considerations for


online collaboration are addressed in Designing Social Interfaces by Crumlish and Malone (2010) and Joshua Porter’s (2008) Designing for the Social Web. Excellent advice on how to set up and run productive online communities can be found in Jono Bacon’s (2009) ! e Art of Community and Patrick O’Keefe’s (2008) Managing Online Forums.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Online mass collaboration is an emerging phenomenon that has the potential to reshape global communication, economies, politics and the social order in ways that cannot yet be predicted. ! e world witnessed its awesome potential in real time with the events in the Middle East during early 2011. ! e writ-ten part of this review has attempted to describe online mass collaboration in general by reviewing both books and articles that deal with how such collabo-ration works. As shown in this review, there is a lot of excellent literature on external online mass collaboration; however, not much has been written about internal online collaboration.

Likewise, the original focus of this study was to learn about online mass col-laboration. From reading the literature and from conversations with promi-nent and seasoned social media practitioners, it is apparent that this new com-munication medium is not so much “mass collaboration” as it is made up of thousands of intense little conversations. Further, the methods of using online collaboration vary depending on whether an organization’s focus is internal or external.

Because the goal of this research is to o" er best practices to communicators on leveraging online mass collaboration for their organizations, this study will focus on how to launch and maintain internal online collaborative communi-ties.


REFERENCES

Aubrey, K. (2010). How to grow your business with virtual teams. � e QRCA VIEWS Magazine, 8(4), 56–60.

Bacon, J. (2009). � e art of community: Building the new age of participation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: O’Reilly.

Bishop, M. (2009). ! e total economic impact of InnoCentive challenges: Single company case study. Retrieved from http://www.innocentive.com/" les/node/casestudy/total-economic-impacttm-innocentive-chal-lenges-sca-case-study.pdf.

Bjorkman, J. M., Ph.D., ABC. (2009). Change communication: Enabling individuals to act. Research in Organizational Change and Development, 17, 349–384.

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: Managing and measuring social media e! orts in your organization. Indianapolis, Indiana: Que.

Community Roundtable. (2011). State of community management 2011: From exploration to execution. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/rhappe/the-2011-state-of-community-management.

Crumlish, C. & Malone, E. (2010). Designing social interfaces. Cambridge, Massachusetts: O’Reilly.

Farkas, M. G. (2007). Social software in libraries: Building collaborations, communication, and community online. Medford, New Jersey: Informa-tion Today.

Frei, B. (2009). Paid crowdsourcing: Current state & progress toward main-stream business use. Retrieved from http://www.smartsheet.com/" les/haymaker/Paid%20Crowdsourcing%20Sept%202009%20-%20Re-lease%20Version%20-%20Smartsheet.pdf.

Gratton, L. & Erickson, T. (2007, November). Eight ways to build collab-orative teams. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 102–109.

Greif, I. & Millen, D. ( 2003). Communication trends and the on-demand organization: A Lotus Workplace white paper. Retrieved from http://domino.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/58bac2a2a6b05a1285256b30005b3953/4c770c7a5a4e128085256d66005d111b/$FILE/TR2003-06.pdf.


Hansen, M. T. (2009, April). When internal collaboration is bad for your company. Harvard Business Review, 87(4), 83–88.

Howe, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. New York City: Crown.

Kahai, S., et al. (2007, November). Team collaboration in virtual worlds. ! e Data Base for Advances in Information Systems, 38(4), 61–68.

Kleinbaum, A. & Tushman, M. (2008, July–August). Managing corporate social networks. Harvard Business Review, 86(7/8). Retrieved from http://hbr.org/2008/07/managing-corporate-social-networks/ar/1.

Leadbeater, C. (2008a). Five principles for successful mass collaboration, part 1. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/130023.

Leadbeater, C. (2008b). Five principles for successful mass collaboration, part 3. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/130025.

Li, C. & Berno , J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Libert, B. & Spector, J. (2008). We are smarter than me. Saddle River, New Jersey: Wharton School Publishing.

MacCormack, A. & Forbath, T. (2008, January). Learning the ! ne art of global collaboration. Harvard Business Review, 86(1/2). Retrieved from http://www.wipro.com/resource-center/wipro-council-for-industry-research/pdf/whitepaper/learning_! neart_global_collaboration.pdf.

McAfee, A. P. (2006). Enterprise 2.0: ! e dawn of emergent collaboration. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47(3), 21–28.

McAfee, A. P. (2009). Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organiza-tion’s toughest challenges. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

Nielsen Norman Group. (2011). Intranet design annual 2011: Year’s 10 best intranets. Fremont, California: Nielsen Norman Group.

O’Keefe, P. (2008). Managing online forums: Everything you need to know to create and run successful community discussion boards. New York City: Amacom.


Patel, S. (n.d.). Pretzel Logic: Enterprise 2.0 execution and social software. Retrieved from http://www.pretzellogic.org/about/.

Pisano, G. & Verganti, R. (2008, December). Which kind of collaboration is right for you? Harvard Business Review, 86(12), 80–86.

Porter, J. (2008). Designing for the social Web. Berkeley, California: New Riders.

Rosen, E. (2009). ! e culture of collaboration: Maximizing time, talent, and the tools to create value in the global economy. San Francisco: Red Ape Publishing.

Rosen, E. (2010, April 20). Creating collaboration takes more than technol-ogy. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved from http://www.business-week.com/managing/content/apr2010/ca20100419_510753.htm.

Shah, V. (2009, June 20). How participatory culture and mass collabora-tion are shaping our world. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://thoughteconomics.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-participatory-culture-and-mass.html.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: ! e power of organizing without organizations. New York City: Penguin Press.

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York City: Penguin Press.

Tapscott, D. (2010). Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything. New York City: Penguin Group.

DETAILED KEY FINDINGS

“Spend time understanding your company’s core busi-

ness strategies, their big plays, their overarching mission

and goals. The business case should illustrate how those

goals are aided by the creation of the community.”—

Marilyn Pratt, community advocate, SAP Community

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Study participants described several types of internal online communities. Two of the most common were communities of interest and project-related online communities. Others were open source communities and informal wa-ter cooler groups. In each of these examples, the social aspects of the technol-ogy enhance team interactions (e.g., activity feeds, discussion groups, polling, rating, member pro� les or idea exchange) over and above traditional methods. A possible area of future study might include identifying other types of com-munities using a larger sample.

Types of Online Collaborative Communities Identifi ed in This Study

TYPE OF COMMUNITY DESCRIPTION

Community of interest Employees come together to share ideas, best practices and expertise. Members often have similar job functions and work in di! erent locations. Some communities of interest are open, others are by invitation only.

Example: video podcast com-munity used by sales engineers to share tips and solutions to arcane customer problems

Project-related communities A project team moves its work to the enterprise social software platform. All communication takes place on the platform versus via email threads.

For example, a software team might use an online collaborative community for all project-related work from ideation to user re-quirement de� nition to implemen-tation and launch.


TYPE OF COMMUNITY DESCRIPTION

Open source People with speci� c skills come together to produce a product. � e platform and community manage-ment handle distributing work and project management. Contribu-tors often do not know each other. Open-source platforms have a very well-de� ned social structure and work� ow.

Example: Wikipedia or the BBC open source documentary series to which thousands of amateur videographers contribute content

“Water cooler” groups Informal employee communities centered on a common passion, a� nity or other nonwork-related interest. � e goal is to connect and engage employees and to get them to use the platform.

Communities of Interest Form to Share Knowledge

Communities of interest provide a centralized place to learn best practices, participate in discussions and � nd premium content. � ese communities are often (though not always) moderated to maintain credibility, quality control and focus. � e ability of these communities to share best practices brings enormous value to global organizations.

Microsoft is one example of a company with a community of interest. As the company’s sales engineers leave a customer site, they produce brief video podcasts that describe unique solutions to customer issues. Microsoft employ-ees search, tag and rate these podcasts. After three years, 18,000 of them have been produced. � ey have become a primary mechanism for sharing knowl-edge as well as identifying and grouping subject matter experts from across the globe (Finn, 2010).


Communities of interest have become embedded at Yum! Brands, which is the world’s largest restaurant company and the owner of KFC, A&W, Pizza Hut and many other well-known brands. Global employees from across the di� erent divisions go to the communities for a host of reasons, ranging from sharing sales presentations to learning hand-washing techniques and other best practices in the restaurant industry (Mehrens, 2011).

Project-Based Teams Do All Their Work on the Platform

When asked for key steps a company should take to ensure an online commu-nity’s success, respondents recommended moving project work to the commu-nity. " is compels employees to visit the community in order to do their jobs. Having a centralized location for all project work brings signi# cant bene# ts to the organization. " e community o� ers “one-stop shopping”—access to all documents, schedules, status and personnel. All communication takes place through the community, so critical information and project history are no longer buried in people’s email # les where they can get lost when people move on to other jobs. As new people join a project, they can quickly get up to speed by visiting the community.

Open-Source Communities Automate Project Management and Workfl ow

" e third type of community encountered in this study was the open-source, collaborative community model. With over 150,000 members, Ubuntu is the largest example of an open-source collaborative community in the world. Within Ubuntu, paid employees and volunteers join forces to create high-end and highly reliable software for the Linux operating system. Volunteers perform small and discrete programming tasks. Ubuntu’s leadership created a self-sustaining process and community structure in which large pieces of work are broken down into small, manageable tasks that can be done by a volun-teer in half an hour. Volunteers submit their completed work to other, more seasoned volunteers whose skills have been certi# ed. " e certi# ed volunteers check submissions, and if they are correct, place the code into a queue for incorporation into a project. Ubuntu o� ers a place for technically-oriented people to interact, learn, and develop and practice new skills while giving them the opportunity to contribute to a cause they care deeply about—free software for all.

Consumer product companies now routinely use the Internet and specially designed software to leverage the wisdom of crowds for testing and re# ning new o� erings. " ese external collaborative communities represent a large and growing industry.


“Water Cooler” Communities Allow Employees to Interact Informally

� e fourth type of community is the voluntary “water cooler” group. Most of the organizations in this study allow employees to create any type of commu-nity with the idea that this is a way to get them to use the platform. Commu-nities have sprung up around passions such as comic book collecting, cooking, travel, alumni clubs and sports teams. Such communities also serve as a way for employees to � nd and connect with each other and form friendships.

Planning an Online Collaborative Community

When planning an online collaborative community, there must be a leader for the initiative. � e leader sets the vision, evangelizes the community and serves as the change agent working directly with senior management to secure execu-tive sponsorship. � is person de� nes the mission, scopes the community, drafts the transition plan, proposes the budget and time line, and determines the methods for measuring success.

Respondents all described a similar series of steps for planning a community, as detailed below.

1. Evaluate your organization’s capacity for online collaboration

An online collaborative community works in a ! exible and democratic organi-zational culture where individuals are encouraged to speak their minds. Such communities will likely fail in organizations with a rigid hierarchy, where people hoard knowledge and communication � lters from the top down. Most large organizations have these elements to some degree, and these characteris-tics presented a challenge to many of the study’s participants. Such hurdles are less of an issue in organizations with already existing frameworks that encour-age collaboration and building know-how. People transition naturally to the Web 2.0 platform because it already matches their natural work style.

“If you’re led by traditionalists, it won’t ! y, period. You need a few forward thinkers, a few open minds. � is, too, is becoming increas-ingly easy as more and more folks in the workforce use social media in their private lives—the leap becomes smaller.”—Daniel Eckhart, head of community management, Swiss Re

� e community managers stressed that it was critical to get top-down as well as bottom-up support.


“One of our major challenges was political. Communications people within our organization were greatly concerned that communication would never be the same again; they were right. It took some longer than others to learn that top-down and bottom-up communication can work wonderfully together.”—Daniel Eckhart, head of commu-nity management, Swiss Re

Organizational leadership must visibly back the e! ort and provide enough people, money and time to get the community o! the ground. Employees need to see how participation directly bene" ts them. # ey must be willing to shift their communication channel from email to the platform. Fear, inertia, and resistance can be overcome with patience, persistence, and skillful com-munity organizing if the other key positive forces are at work.

As with any kind of organizational change, fear presents a gigantic obstacle. Often the proposed collaborative community overlaps with existing technol-ogy and work processes. People invested in the status quo justi" ably worry they may lose status or even their jobs. # e groundwork for a collaborative community has to include a thorough analysis of who will be a! ected. During the planning stages, you need to consider how you can address these people’s anxieties and show how they will bene" t from this new approach.

2. Secure top-down executive support

# e " ndings of this study point to " ve major characteristics in building a suc-cessful online collaborative community within an organization:

1. Time

2. Permission

3. Money

4. Knowledge

5. Passion

# e " rst three require executive sponsorship. You need a senior executive sponsor with the authority and credibility to help bring about the culture and behavior changes needed for success, and you garner executive-level support by framing the community as a solution to a speci" c business problem.


Focus the community on solving a business problem or advancing a major initiative

To be successful, all communities must focus on a speci� c business problem. � ose spearheading the e� ort need to demonstrate in a tangible way why the community is needed and the bene� t it will bring to the company. For example, a global restaurant chain uses its online platform to deliver interac-tive training to thousands of cooks and waitsta� who work at its retail outlets throughout the world. � is e� ort has led to standardization of hygiene and cooking practices as well as a 20 percent increase in employee retention. At one multinational � rm, globally dispersed employees from product develop-ment, marketing, engineering, and supply chain use the platform to coordi-nate and execute product launches. Frontline employees log in to the platform to learn new ways to interact with customers, which results in increased sales. At the Mayo Clinic, geographically dispersed medical teams collaborate on patient care. At Microsoft, CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives use the community channel for internal communication because that is the best way to reach employees.

“Spend time understanding your company’s core business strategies, their big plays, their overarching mission and goals. � e business case should illustrate how those goals are aided by the creation of the community.”—Marilyn Pratt, community advocate, SAP Community Network

Typically organizations use online collaborative communities to deliver cus-tomer support, to facilitate employee brainstorming and to share best prac-tices. Having the ability to share best practices is especially useful within large organizations because the global community lets the organization use its size and scale to share collective knowledge that provides competitive advantage.

Determine the community’s success indicators and how they will be communicated

When trying to gain support to launch an online community, respondents recommended � nding case studies of online community success that are within your industry or business model. Case studies will show senior manag-ers what is possible and will alert top management to keep from falling be-hind the competition. Consider inviting representatives from outside—from a respected but noncompeting company—who can provide a fresh point of view from a respected company. When you are trying to convince your leader-ship, it is very important to frame your stories so that executives with limited experience in social media can understand them.


Leverage end user testimonials across job functions to track the employee experience. In testimonials the employees should describe how collaboration through the platform has transformed their work by making them more ef-� cient and e� ective. Video testimonials are especially e� ective. Within a large organization, one strategy is to collect video testimonials by job function—for example, marketing saying how they use the system, � nance describing how the system has helped them work more e� ciently—and then distribute these videos (with an introduction by the CEO or executive sponsor) to the senior managers of those functions.

“We utilize storytelling to illustrate the various aspects of Mayo’s strat-egy. People love hearing stories about patients and peers, and it usually motivates them to read or view the story and join the conversation.”— Karen Trewin, Mayo Clinic department of public a� airs

In addition to providing anecdotal evidence of success, � nd a way to generate credible numbers that show the value of the investment.

• A large software manufacturer that has moved much of its internal and external technical support to an online community correlates a decrease in support calls to increased community interaction.

• Another large global � rm is introducing “social equity” ratings that com- pare logins, postings, and replies to “value measurements” such as “likes” and accepted solutions to questions.

• A community manager in this study developed a set of success metrics through tracking membership (retention, gain and loss) and participation (login and replies).

! e idea is to use such ratings to identify, by some objective metric, those who are making the most signi� cant contribution to an organization’s online com-munity. Overall, though, most of the respondents feel that strategic stories communicate value more powerfully and accurately than numbers, which can be hard to come by.

Address executive FUD from the start

In the online panel discussion, many participants identi� ed executive fear, un-certainty and doubt (which they called FUD) as major challenges to initiating online collaborative communities. Many executives do not use social media and therefore do not understand its value. ! e diagram below visually depicts the phenomenon of executive FUD.


Cultural constraints

� e siloed culture of many organizations is another obstacle to developing meaningful online communities, especially across business units. To create a successful collaboration, leadership has to work with teams to reach agreement on goals, budget, schedules, turf, sharing information and resources, and the division of labor, if these factor into the online community. Indeed, the study’s respondents overwhelmingly advise focusing one’s initial online com-munity development e� ort on those cross-functional groups that have already formed bonds and are working together harmoniously in the physical world. Investing time in building relationships with key stakeholders is important in order to learn their real concerns and fears and to develop a process to miti-gate risk.

On the other hand, some top managers embrace innovation and will o� er active and visible support to an online collaborative community development e� ort. Many of these leaders actively participate in the community—whether through actual contributions or by reading employee postings. � ey work with the planning team on strategy and o� er political support as well as bud-get and head count to ensure the program succeeds.

FIGURE 1. RECOMMENDED PROCESS TO GAIN TOP-DOWN SUPPORT FROM MANAGERS AND ADDRESS FUD


Work with stakeholders on governance and methods for mitigating risk

Top executives’ most common concerns are that employees might use the system to waste time, post inappropriate or con� dential content, or give bad advice. You cannot prevent these things from happening. However, these risks already exist today; they are just not as obvious. Participants noted how inci-dents of misbehavior are few and far between—all postings can be traced back to the creator, and employees are not interested in disseminating misinforma-tion or posting information that will get them � red. � e diagram below visu-ally depicts the process for overcoming executive fear, uncertainty and doubt.

FIGURE 2. SUGGESTED STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME EXECUTIVE FUD

Almost everyone in this study mentioned the need to get support and early buy-in for an online community from HR, legal, IT and corporate security at the earliest stages of planning. � e plan must concretely address everyone’s concerns.

• � e IT department usually plays a role in selecting and managing the platform. � ey will play a much bigger role if the product is installed on your organization’s servers.

• � e security team will need to ensure the data is secure and available only to authorized users.


• ! e lawyers will worry about security, traceability, compliance and potential lawsuits.

• ! e human resources function will want employee policies, clear behav- ioral guidelines and strong controls on personally identi" able information.

“We made changes to our employee rules of the road about our client terms of use and privacy policies. We also put a process in place for managing any posts in the community that got # agged as abusive and inappropriate. Ultimately this is the right thing to do for your com-pany and your users.”—director of communities for a large retailer

Start with a small, tiered budget that is tied to specifi c milestones

! e panel advised starting small and letting the community grow organically. Executives are often most comfortable seeing budget projections over two to " ve years. ! e budget might begin with a modest pilot and show scheduled increases as certain milestones are met. When money is tight, several roles can be played by one individual or shared by volunteers.

“I’d suggest a tiered budget with a smaller initial investment (so you don’t scare o$ the skeptics) and then lay out the next investment steps in concurrence with your planned checkpoints. ! is way you can prove you have used the initial budget e$ ectively and show what your plan is for an increased budget.”—community manager for an armed services organization

Provide adequate staffi ng

You will need money for technology and people. In terms of people resources, an online community needs leadership, project management and community management. ! ese are three separate functions that can be performed by one person in a smaller organization or during the early days of a community.

• ! e project leader leads the charge for the online community and is re- sponsible for developing the business cases and budget.

• ! e project manager oversees the project schedule and works with vendors and the IT department.

• ! e community manager deals daily with end users to keep participation high and ensure the value of the online community. Community managers monitor analytics and coach members on best practices.


“Speci� c teams had business processes they wanted to move into the new collaboration tools, so they were the � rst ones to get started and seed the community. We consulted with those teams to best use the tools to achieve their goals. We still do that today.”—director of com-munity management for a software manufacturer

! e project management role within a virtual community is very similar to project management in traditional face-to-face work environments. In an online setting, this resource focuses on the actual work performed by the community. In the case of a community that produces a product, the project manager will break down larger tasks into smaller traceable units that can be parceled out to many people. ! ey run meetings and keep track of people’s progress and the project schedule. Project managers typically have a deeper understanding of the technical side of the equation, so they also work more closely with their organization’s IT department and vendors.

! e community manager works directly with ambassadors and members, getting people involved, helping them establish themselves and ensuring they come back. ! is capacity might include training and coaching on best prac-tices, generating excitement, resolving con" ict, providing advocacy, making people feel welcome, carrying out user campaigns, pruning inactive groups, assisting with governance, moderating comments, curating content, managing incentives, and capturing and reporting anecdotes and data to demonstrate the community’s value and usage. Community managers come from varied backgrounds, though many have worked in customer support, teaching and instructional design.

3. Secure bottom-up employee support

What skills do your employees already have?

Research the social media tools your audience is already using and how they are using them. Start at the point where your constituents are comfortable and already have skills. Do people in your organization already use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter in their private lives? If so, you can assume a level of comfort with social media. If not, you need to � nd a way to get them up to speed. Use this research to plan a realistic strategy for training and adoption.

To help employees become acclimated to the new tools, Cerner built a “help space” inside its “uCern” online employee community that was loaded with best practices, documentation, FAQs and short videos. Members could post discussion questions there. Cerner also created a video to help participants get started and posted it on the home page with links to popular documents


posted by people in various job functions to help new members quickly understand the community’s purpose and the value it o� ered. � ey also provided one-on-one training where needed.

“We provide ongoing webinars/workshops that address what good content looks like, what does a good post consist of, how can you best elicit the responses you need to make progress.”—community man-ager for an armed services organization

Target groups that already exist within the organization

As a ! rst step, ! gure out how people might connect with each other. � is in-volves targeting the groups in your organization who are already collaborating or who would most likely bene! t from online collaboration. Identify groups for a pilot through existing email distribution lists and online communities because these people already have relationships and demonstrate an interest in working collaboratively.

As you select the ! rst groups to target, make sure to analyze each employee’s role and work" ow to determine whether an online community makes sense for their situation. Most experts advise starting small in ways where you think your audience will seek interaction and achieve success. � en work with the members to grow in ways that make sense to them.

“� e nature of employee roles in our organization is extremely varied; an outpatient physician practices much di� erently than a surgeon; a research fellow’s work" ow is very di� erent than that of an emergency department intern. Understanding the varied roles and the nature of their work" ow is key. We have launched several online communities at the request of leaders that didn’t get o� the ground simply because they involved people who were much too occupied during the course of their day to log in and participate in a conversation and answer questions.”—Karen Trewin, Mayo Clinic department of public a� airs

� e following diagram shows the panel’s recommended approach to gaining bottom-up support for an online community. � is involves getting a feeling for employees’ current understanding and comfort with social media. Next, identify existing social groups, as these people already have working relation-ships that will transfer more easily to the new online platform.


Find your ambassadors

Many of the study’s participants mentioned the critical importance of en-listing enthusiastic volunteers to help grow and manage the community. Ambassadors serve as “multipliers,” welcoming new members, keeping the conversation moving along a productive path, modeling appropriate behav-ior and reporting abuse. � e ambassadors are easy to spot; they are the ones who gravitate to the community without prodding. � ese folks have a natural interest in building and nurturing communities and are willing to ful� ll the community management role on a volunteer basis. Most are frequent users of social media in their personal lives.

“You need matchmakers and connectors and party hosts who know how to make people feel comfortable, or productively challenge their comfort and know how to map things that people want/need with other resources—resources that know how to recognize multiplier resources very quickly.”—Marilyn Pratt, community advocate, SAP Community Network

As depicted in the following diagram, ambassadors are particularly helpful during the early stages of a launch. � ey encourage co-workers to take part in the community and often provide training and support to help others over-come obstacles with training and ramp-up.

FIGURE 3. RECOMMENDED FIRST STEPS FOR GAINING BOTTOM-UP EMPLOYEE SUPPORT


Consider providing material incentives for participation

Participation in the community needs to be rewarding and necessary to induce people to change their current habits. As a way of seeding the commu-nity and attracting initial interest, consider material incentives such as reward points or entry into a contest to win a prize. In the long run, though, the most compelling reasons for participation are personal: opportunities for rec-ognition, visibility, connecting with others, learning and sharing knowledge.

Many employees are drawn to the community because they have the chance to talk one-on-one with executives and innovators within their company. During the volcanic eruption in Iceland during 2010, employees of one large media company (which was not part of this study’s sample) who were ma-rooned in Europe used their online community to � nd other employees so they could keep each other company. � e CEO happened to be in London and invited all employees who were also there to breakfast.

“Make it about them, provide them content or access or other bene� ts they couldn’t otherwise get. � ere is a lot of competition out there for their attention, especially with regard to their time spent online.”—Margaret McGary, consulting community manager

“If the front line isn’t using the community and � nding value in it (because there are too many rules or [too much] moderation in place, because it isn’t required for them to do their jobs, etc.), it will die on the vine.”—director of communities for a large health care organiza-tion

FIGURE 4. RECOMMENDED APPROACHES FOR CREATING AWARENESS OF AND ENGAGEMENT WITH THE COMMUNITY


Make sure the community serves the employees’ interests and needs

Online community founders must cleverly leverage the WIIFM factor (What’s in it for me?) in their strategy for building grassroots support. � e most e� ec-tive tactic is to move project work and communication to the new platform so employees must go to the community to get their jobs done. In addition to this draconian measure, ensure the community o� ers an informal place for developing personal relationships. Some participants also noted how impor-tant it is to give people a chance to meet in person at least once.

Providing curated, high-quality content that cannot be accessed elsewhere will encourage participation. In the big picture, organizations need to let people express themselves in their own words and must be willing to tolerate a cer-tain amount of inaccuracy and informality. Communities that o� er premium content require rigorous curating and fact-checking so the content is fresh, interesting, trustworthy and easy to � nd. In other situations, meticulous mod-eration also makes sense, especially within communities that o� er information essential to the organization’s success.

Put excellent community management in place

Community managers encourage and enhance participation by being hands-on and showing continuous appreciation for people’s contributions. A manag-er who sees an insightful posting might call or email the author to thank him or her—and then publicly acknowledge the value of the person’s ideas. If they notice informal chitchat in a water cooler area, the manager might encourage the correspondents to move their conversation to a specialized thread so oth-ers who share the same interest can read it and join in. When people see the community is friendly, respectful and supportive, they will be more likely to return.

“Our active participants tell us that they come to the forums because they are desperate for interaction and connection with others in the organization—they want to get out of their silos and learn from their peers and without our tool, they have very few ways to connect in an organization of our size.”—community manager for an armed services organization

Solo community managers can still operate on a shoestring by “replicating themselves”—� nding enthusiastic members to serve as ambassadors, volunteer moderators and content creators. � is approach has the additional bene� t of giving members a genuine role in creating their own community.


Encourage employees to fi ll out their profi les

Over time, as more employees participate in the organization’s online com-munities, some will emerge as local celebrities or natural leaders. People gain a reputation because they produce excellent content, which others tag and review. Every posting has the author’s name and a link to his or her pro� le. � e community becomes an expertise network as individuals become known as subject matter experts on highly speci� c topics. � ese employees become a resource for the entire � rm. � ey might be tapped by the sales department and asked to sit in on customer presentations or o� ered job opportunities for which they would not have been considered had they not been able to show-case their expertise through the online community.

“Each member creates a pro� le that details their experience/areas of expertise, their location, their interests, and why they joined this community. Each member can self-tag their pro� le and others can tag them as well, which [makes it easy to search] for someone with a spe-cial skill/interest to ping directly for more information.”—community manager for an armed services organization

“When left to their own devices, people don’t tend to � ll out pro� les. But everyone has their recent activity and what topic areas they are working on [automatically recorded]. In each category, we list recently active users and on each pro� le, we list the categories they are follow-ing. We also link any kind of recognition badge back to some way of contacting a program leader or another member.”—Scott Moore, director of community development at Answers.com

4. Run a successful pilot

A pilot program is an opportunity to engage senior-level leaders in your plan-ning process and to address their concerns in a concrete manner. � e experi-ence gives everyone the opportunity to see what the bene� ts and potential of this new communication channel are and whether socially enabled software will work in your environment. Some of the community managers consulted in this study did not need to do a pilot and went directly into a soft launch because they felt their culture would transition naturally. Another respon-dent’s pilot was so successful that the � rm ended up with 1,500 users from around the globe, with every business function participating. � is company transitioned its pilot directly into a functioning business system.


Launch with great content

Whether you run a pilot or dive directly into a live community, it makes sense to include useful content and o� er incentives to members to create their own content. Microsoft o� ered free portable video cameras to employees in ex-change for their promise to produce a certain number of videos in their area of expertise each month. After three years of operation, they have 18,000 pod-casts. Another company gave video recorders to technicians and asked them to record and narrate their thought process as they � xed customer problems and then upload the videos to the online community at the end of each day. An-other respondent, who works for a large health care system, mentioned how she runs a pilot for each new group she brings in. Part of her prework with people from each new planned community is to have at least two face-to-face meetings, several trainings, and a great deal of communication to create awareness, understanding, and buy-in.

Staff the pilot project

! e core launch team might include a project leader, a project manager, tech-nical and IT support, and a community manager. Other start-up costs include training and building awareness. As the community " ourishes, larger orga-nizations might add content strategists, information architects, collaboration specialists, data analysts, content creators and user experience designers. As usage increases, more content is stored so there is also a need to make a larger investment in storage, backups, networks and other IT infrastructure.

Put excellent community management permanently in place

Community management is always critical to success. ! e community man-agement skill set combines a passion for social software with skills in human relations, community organizing, moderation, advocacy, content manage-ment, marketing and business communication. ! is profession is growing rapidly as online collaborative communities become mainstream. Its largest professional group is the Community Roundtable, which publishes the State of Community Management, a summary of the research it collects from an annual survey and interviews with its membership.

“We tend to recommend heavily targeting the kinds of people who will be the creators and caretakers of your community; attract people who like to teach, collaborate, share, assist, support and help others. ! ese are the engine of your community.”—Scott Moore, director of community development at Answers.com


Overall, everyone consulted for this study emphasized giving people a reason to return to the community by providing fresh and interesting content and access to people and resources that are unavailable anywhere else. WIIFM rules the day when it comes to building a successful online collaborative com-munity

“Just announcing that it exists isn’t going to be enough—you will have to make a compelling case for why your community is a place they want to be—what’s in it for them—do it repeatedly and in many formats, e.g., email, existing social networks, contests, ongoing events.”—Margaret McGary, consulting community manager

! e panel described how once people are emotionally engaged in the com-munity, they want to have more control over de" ning and evolving it. At this point, the community becomes cohesive and self-perpetuating, so there is less need for active marketing to that particular target audience. ! e ability to engender trust is also vital to long-term growth—both between the moderator and the members and among the members. As one manager noted, “you gain trust by giving trust and by sticking to your word. Authenticity and transpar-ency help too. Your job is to facilitate and connect people to each other and to the resources within the organization.”

5. Create awareness for the community

Jono Bacon, who directs the Ubuntu open-source community, sees getting the word out to potential and current members as an essential element of com-munity management. ! is builds awareness and trust:

“A lot of my work is just banging the drum and getting people excit-ed—giving exciting presentations to international audiences and writ-ing passionately about the community. I’ve taught a lot online. I do video casts every Wednesday where I do a Q&A because I believe that level of transparency is important for a community.”—Jono Bacon, founder of the Ubuntu open source community

Guerrilla marketing techniques, which rely on creativity and passion versus a big marketing budget, are very e# ective in building awareness and inter-est among employees. In the early days of Microsoft’s online communities, the founders would go to internal events where their initial target audiences were and grab people as they were leaving to ask if they wouldn’t mind do-ing a two-minute video podcast on their impressions of what they had just


learned. Yum! Brands used a variety of fun and intriguing approaches to build awareness, like posting large chat bubbles on restroom mirrors to call employ-ees’ attention to their new iChing community, holding informal brown bag trainings and systematically enlisting ambassadors to help co-workers get on the system. Participants described promoting their community through email, contests, giveaways, � iers, etc. Word of mouth and the personal approach—talking to people one on one and in meetings—are highly e� ective.

6. Develop guidelines and governance to fi t the organization

While all online communities need some form of governance and guidelines to keep them on track and productive, most community managers in this study recommend letting members manage themselves whenever possible. " is is especially true for “open” communities, which anyone in the organiza-tion can join. " e goal of open communities is to draw everyone in and keep them participating. Closed communities are more like private clubs. " ey are exclusive and highly focused on a particular topic area or limited to individu-als with a speci# c position. " ese communities tend to be heavily moderated and # ltered so the information presented is pristine, accurate and relevant.

“" e legal base needs to be covered, especially when you are dealing with an idea-sharing community. Community guidelines—how peo-ple are expected to behave when interacting with each other, and what behaviors won’t be tolerated, who owns the ideas shared in the com-munity, and how the ideas will be used by the organization need to be spelled out.”—Margaret McGary, consulting community manager

Open communities increase in value as membership rises due to the network e� ect. " e leaders of open communities use a light touch with governance and moderation because they want people to contribute freely and without fear or unnecessary bureaucratic cross-checks. For these communities to thrive, the organization has to be willing to tolerate open and spontaneous expression and imperfections such as bad grammar, ga� es, and slight inaccu-racies. However, gentle moderator intervention is needed to deter abuse and damaging remarks and to keep the conversation focused and on a productive track.

“Some communities need more governance, depending on their rank in the organization. Some of the younger communities need a quick overview in professional communication and the protocol of interact-ing with your peers in a public venue.”—community manager of a large armed services organization


� e governance approach needs to be thought through early in the planning stages of a community. New members typically agree to terms of use and a privacy policy that spells out community mores and acceptable behavior. � ere also need to be explicit policies around originality of content, quality and intellectual property. Company policies must also be in place. � e panel said their team and the volunteer ambassadors and moderators do a pretty good job of casually and unobtrusively monitoring content.

“Our most successful communities have come together around a com-mon problem, looking for an innovative solution. � ey work together to create a charter that de! nes their goals, responsibilities, and how they will govern their community; most important, they tap a sponsor who can lead the charge through the organization, sharing their prog-ress and eventually their wins.”—director of community management for a large retail organization

Open-source communities need considerable structure and governance

� e Ubuntu open-source community has over 150,000 members who work together to produce free application software for the Linux operating system. A well-de! ned chain of command, rules, and processes o" er governance while providing a structure for member input.

“In the Ubuntu community we have a group called the community council…which is ! ve or seven people who are voted in by the com-munity to act as representatives. � ese people make decisions around community policy.... We also have a technical board that reviews things like technical policy. If we want to change some technical conventions in which we work, the technical board decides it. � ese two boards actually are completely open to everybody to join.”—Jono Bacon, founder of Ubuntu

Ubuntu and other similar open-source communities use what is a" ection-ately known as a “benign dictatorship” approach to governance. � ousands of contributors, none of whom know each other, take on small pieces of a much larger and complex mosaic. � e work in an open-source environment is broken down into discrete, traceable units that can be completed by a single person in a short amount of time, and then easily tested and submitted. Each tiny work parcel must ! t perfectly into the larger product, like Lego blocks. � e rules and chain of command are very clear because the goal is to keep the work on track and of high quality.


However, the governance model is also a meritocracy that rewards good work and provides an opportunity for meaningful input from individual members. Anyone can contribute code to the Ubuntu community, but those with no track record need to � nd sponsors to test their work and make the submission on their behalf. Over time, those who continually submit good computer code develop a reputation as dependable and skilled. After � ve to 10 contributions, they will be asked to join the community. And if they are interested, they go to a public meeting with an elected community council and ask to become an approved developer. If the council grants them this status, they now can sponsor others as well as take on higher-level, more challenging assignments. Ubuntu might o� er highly productive developers a paid position or reward them by paying all their expenses to attend the Ubuntu international conference.

Use technology to fl ag inappropriate and noncompliant postings

Enterprise social software is designed to ! ag infractions such as vulgar lan-guage or the posting of con� dential product information. Editors, HR, or legal departments can be noti� ed when employees click the “Report Abuse” link for content that they feel is plagiarized, con� dential, or otherwise inap-propriate. Participants in this study were from a range of industries, some of which deal with classi� ed and con� dential information, where leakage, even on an internal website, could result in serious consequences. However, once the communities are up and running, respondents said infractions are rare, not the serious problem originally feared. " ey felt it unnecessary to “police” forums, because community members do a pretty good job of policing them-selves.

“We have institutional guidelines for collaborative tools/social media, which are based on our overall expectations of sta� in terms of mu-tual respect, maintaining patient con� dentiality, etc. We do moderate comments in our tools that are used across the organization. We have only had to remove a handful (less than six) posts, and in most cases, if we ask that a speci� c reference to a patient be removed or language be changed to be less in! ammatory, users are happy to do it.”—Karen Trewin, Mayo Clinic department of public a� airs

“We are a large corporation with many di� erent communities—so consensus is a challenge with regard to governance. Trying to get every community and all internal teams to agree can be a Herculean e� ort. Fortunately, given the number and diversity of communities we have, along with the time and duration with which the communities have


existed, we have many practical examples to use with regard to both normal and aberrant behaviors. � is is where the blending of online and o� ine interaction has helped us tremendously. We have practical examples to guide us in many situations which others may not have experienced yet.”—director of community management for a large retail organization

Do not allow anonymous posts

� e community managers mentioned how they need to coach senior manage-ment to allow a certain amount of negativity and dissension because this is honest and healthy. Sometimes it is necessary to deal with childishness and obnoxiousness, as long as it is harmless. While for many, the opportunity to self-promote is a key incentive for participating in an online community, some people go too far and need to have limits. One community manager mentioned that her biggest behavior challenge is employees “gaming the sys-tem” because their performance plan includes a certain amount of measurable participation in the company’s online communities. Some individuals have gone to the extreme of creating two user accounts, and having the two user IDs carry on conversations with each other while o! ering high recognition points to each other for producing great content.

� e most e! ective way to ensure self-governance is not to allow anonymous posting. Everything a user does in the system—whether watching a video, making a post or commenting on someone else’s work—should be traceable back to that person’s user ID. In this way, if an individual divulges company secrets or makes malicious comments, everyone knows who created the post. In a work environment, people are not going to put their reputation or jobs at risk, so they think twice before misbehaving.

7. Find a platform that matches employee workfl ow and organizational needs

While you need to think about technology in the earliest stages of your plan-ning for an online collaborative community, the study participants agreed that the technology decision should be made last. In the initial phases, choose technology that will help your organization transition to social software most naturally and that builds on skills your target users currently have. � e tool should be transparent, intuitive, " exible and highly usable.

“We tried to # nd something that was easy to use ‘out of the box,’ with minimal instruction. We also worked to # nd something that would be compatible with our current and emerging intranet platforms.”—Karen Trewin, Mayo Clinic department of public a! airs


Social software production tools can vary. Some organizations start with wikis, which allow collaborative editing and publishing. Others use video podcasting as their primary content generation engine because it takes just a few minutes to produce a video but much longer to write a thoughtful blog or wiki entry. Video podcasting makes sense in fast-paced environments or in situations where people are unfamiliar with social media. Videos tend to be short so people don’t mind watching them, and they communicate rich detail. � e downside of video is the need to budget exponentially larger amounts for storage if the system takes o� .

Some of the study’s participants said they ran initial tests using a free service such as Ning, but these attempts were limited because of security concerns. � ere are many excellent, secure and robust cloud-based services that can be purchased for under US$200/month that might be perfect for getting a small-scale project o� the ground. Other basic tools include Camtasia, discussion forums, blogs, RSS feeds, the pro� le and a content management system. One panelist with no budget to run her community has done well with Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, YouTube and LinkedIn. She manages the conversations through HootSuite. “Not very high tech but it works,” she said. Open-source systems include Drupal, Joomla, Plone and Yammer. Organizations with deep pockets have considerable latitude with product choice. Some companies mix and match systems from various vendors so they can more closely match their needs.

Aside from providing security, content management, and supporting employee’s work� ow the social software platform should o� er features that encourage employee adoption. � ese features include making it easy for members to create and administer their own communities, create and main-tain their own pro� le and view those of others. Members should be able to search pro� les to � nd speci� c expertise. � e platform should also make it easy to generate and evaluate ideas as well as comment, like, and share ideas, postings, documents, videos, and other items. � e organization should be able to control access rights and the overall community structure.

As with other elements of introducing online collaboration to an organiza-tion, using a phased approach to technology might make the most sense. � is way, you can start with a medium that many people already under-stand (e.g., a message board) and prove its value before moving on to more novel but powerful solutions. Many of the study participants outsource the actual software aspect of their communities. � ey use vendors who provide web-based enterprise social software platforms, the industry term for online collaboration technology. While this can be costly, it removes the need for a dedicated technical group and helps to estimate expenses several years into the future. One large organization, with over 90,000 global employees, has done this and needs only a part-time IT liaison to work with the vendor.


Many areas need to be considered when choosing software. � e software product needs to integrate with the organization’s current systems. It also must be completely intuitive to minimize training, and it should have a powerful search function. � e gold standard is the “federated” search, which integrates results from the communities into the existing search. However, a federated search may need to be a longer-term vision due to the technical complexity of setting it up.

Respondents recommend mapping out the user experience you want people to have. � is involves identifying employees’ task � ows, communication patterns and overall work� ow. For example, an instructional designer might want his team to review the modules he creates. His team needs to have access to his work and be able to mark it up. He needs to collect their remarks and then have an easy way to incorporate changes into the document. In another situation, a hiring manager might seek a worker with very speci� c skills. She should be able to go to the community, do a search on keywords associated with the skill set and locate employees who have created postings, video podcasts or other types of content on that topic area. She should be able to use the rating system or volume and quality of their contributions as a quick way to narrow the pool of candidates.

“� e key aspect of the technology was not in the platform itself but more that it suited our needs, had the room to grow, o! ers the ability to do reporting and analytics as well as integrate with existing sys-tems.”—director of community management for a large retail organi-zation

“We had a pretty large list, and it led us to consider a number of technologies. Other key components for us were ease of use as well as customizability (typically in contrast to one another!). Vision was also important...we wanted a company that had a vision and product road map as big as our goals.”—director of community management for a health care services � rm

� e technology choices of the panel were largely driven by budget and their speci� c usage scenarios. Several purchased full-featured enterprise social soft-ware systems after evaluating several vendors. Others started small with open source and free social media. Technology choice is a complex decision and has a very large impact on what you can do with the community. But in the end, online communities are about people connecting to each other, not about the technology. An online community should be robust, intuitive, scalable, and transparent while meeting the speci� c collaborative needs of the organization.


“We also learned (the hard way) that online collaboration needs to be supplemented and reinforced in a blended fashion so we also employ old-fashioned tools like the phone, email, and webinar capabilities.”—Daniel Eckhart, head of community management, Swiss Re

Conclusion

Online collaborative communities have become an established and immensely valued resource within the organizations where they have succeeded. ! ese communities thrive in environments that are democratic and open. ! ey break down silos and allow employees to contribute more fully to their orga-nization’s success. Once established, the communities can become a central-ized repository of the critical information and expertise the organization needs to run its business.

Getting an online collaborative community o" the ground so that it is self-sustaining is a challenge. ! e business communicator needs to secure both top-down support from top executives as well as bottom-up support from the employees who will participate in the community. By talking with 15 experts whose daily work involves creating and maintaining internal online commu-nities, this research has sought to identify the key planning steps for successful implementation.

REFERENCES

Finn, C. (2010). On becoming a connected enterprise: ! e seven essential truths Microsoft has discovered so far [keynote presentation]. Enter-prise 2.0 Conference: Boston.

Mehrens, M. (2011) Implementing iChing—A new way to do business at YUM. Enterprise 2.0 Conference: Boston.

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How to Obtain Top-Down and Bottom-Up Support for an Online Collaborative Community

When attempting to garner top-down support from senior management for an online collaborative community, the participants spoke at length about the need to overcome executive FUD—fear, uncertainty and doubt. � ey advise business communicators to anticipate FUD and address it before embarking on any organizational collaborative community e� ort.

Business communicators should present their proposal to stakeholders face to face, listen carefully and directly address each issue. � ey should come equipped with a clear description of how the community serves company interests and a time line containing milestones, budget, and methods for evaluating the community’s e� ectiveness. Sometimes you may need to educate organizational leaders on the concrete bene� ts social media brings to business. Additionally, work with stakeholders to develop governance standards before the community launches.

You gain bottom up grassroots support from employees by demonstrating how the system improves their work lives. � e corollary to FUD for employ-ees is WIIFM (what’s in it for me). According to participants in this study, employee bene� ts included increased visibility, enhanced understanding of the organization and where they � t in, access to premium content and subject matter experts, the opportunity to connect with co-workers who share similar work, knowledge sharing, the ability to easily locate employees with special-ized skills for help when solving a problem, and much more. � e community managers o� ered detailed advice on how to lay the groundwork for success-ful employee adoption. As a � rst step, they recommend polling employees to learn about their current social media use and providing training to � ll in the gaps and bring people up to speed as they transition to using it within the organization. Inventory email distribution lists, ListServs, and other virtual groups that exist within the company.

� e following diagram encapsulates the major aspects of what has been cov-ered in this report: how to secure both top-down executive and bottom-up employee support in the service of establishing an online collaborative com-munity.

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RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS

Discussion Guide for Phone Interviews

� e objective of the phone interviews was to uncover best practices for busi-ness communicators who wish to leverage social media and online mass col-laboration techniques to promote internal and external collaboration, and to understand how business communicators can overcome the challenges associ-ated with this type of initiative.

How they have used online mass collaboration

How would you de! ne online mass col-laboration?

How have you used it?

What advice would you give communi-cators trying to implement this in their organizations?

Are there lessons you’ve learned from your experiences that you would like to share?

How organizations can leverage online mass col-laboration

What are some of the most interesting ex-amples you’ve seen for how organizations have used online mass collaboration?

What are the key elements that lead to success for this type of initiative?

Do these key elements seem to vary de-pending on the type of organization?

Where would it not make sense to at-tempt this?

Tools What tools do you use?

How did you settle on these (learn their evaluation criteria and the products they considered)?

How does your organization use the dif-ferent tools?

For a communicator with a limited bud-get, what type of tools would you recom-mend?


Planning What are the most critical bases that need to be covered when planning an online mass collaboration initiative?

How might these planning steps vary de-pending on the nature of the initiative?

What roles need to be ful� lled to make this work? What skills do people need to have?

How do you structure an online commu-nity so it is productive?

Execution How do you get people to participate?

What is the role of the moderator?

What should be avoided? What are the most common mistakes?

Building the business case What advice can you o� er a communi-cator in building a business case for an online mass collaboration e� ort?

Have you seen examples of particularly e� ective ones? Please describe.

How can ROI from this type of initiative be measured?

Trends Do you see any new trends in online mass collaboration?


Discussion Guide for the Three-Day Online Bulletin Board

DAY ONE: LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR AN ONLINE COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY

Morning: Building the business case

1. What general advice would you give someone who wishes to create an online collaborative community for their organization?

2. What type of resources do you need to get started?

3. What advice can you o� er a communicator in building a business case for an online collaboration e� ort?

4. Describe some of the challenges you needed to overcome to get a green light for your online mass collaboration project.

Afternoon: Planning an online collaborative community

1. What are the most critical bases that need to be covered when planning an online mass collaboration initiative?

2. What roles need to be ful� lled to make this work?

3. How do you structure your online community so it is productive?

4. How do you determine a budget and time line?

DAY TWO: CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY AND LAUNCHING THE COMMUNITY

Morning: Getting people to participate in the community

1. What is the best way to make people aware of the community? How do you attract them?

2. How did you get people to participate?

3. What kind of training seemed to work best?

4. Which incentives work best?

5. What were your biggest challenges to user acceptance? How did you overcome them?


Afternoon: Selecting a technology platform

1. Which tools do you use to run your community?

2. Describe the evaluation criteria you used in selecting your technology

3. How does your organization use the di! erent tools?

4. For a communicator with a limited budget, what type of tools would you recommend?

DAY THREE: GOVERNANCE AND KEEPING THE COMMUNITY VIBRANT

Morning: Keeping the community engaged

1. How do you maintain people’s interest so they keep coming back?

2. What do you think motivates people to participate in your online collab-orative community?

3. How do people " nd each other within the community?

4. Describe the structure of your communities (e.g., open to all or to only select individuals, moderated or self-regulating).

Afternoon: Governance

1. How does the structure of the community a! ect its governance?

2. How are decisions made?

3. How are con# icts resolved?

4. What are the most challenging aspects of governance and how do you deal with them?


Recruiting Email for Community Managers

Seeking panelists for an IABC/Marketwire discussion panel

Are you a hands-on leader of an online collaborative community? Are you in-terested in sharing your experiences with other online community leaders and learning from them? We seek to recruit 10 community leaders for an online discussion board to learn best practices for setting up and running vibrant online communities. � e online discussion will take place between 28 and 30 March. Participants will log into a website twice a day at their convenience to answer questions.

Participants will use the discussion board to share their experiences on a range of topics critical to building a successful online collaborative community. � ese topics include how to lay the groundwork for an online collabora-tive community, how to choose social media tools, how to attract people to your community and keep them focused and engaged, and the role of gover-nance. We will encourage our panel to share success factors as well as “lessons learned.” � e goal of this discussion panel is to help business communicators who wish to create an online mass collaboration community within their own organization. Participants must have been actively involved in setting up an online collaborative community, and/or have primary responsibility for keep-ing it vibrant and successful.

We estimate the total time commitment across the three-day discussion board will be about two hours. Participants will receive a US$150 honorarium—either sent directly to them or to a charity of their choice. Participants will also receive a copy of the � nal report where they will be listed as contributors within the study acknowledgements. � is research is funded by Marketwire for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).


Additional Resources

WEBSITES

� e Community Round Table: http://community-roundtable.com/

• FeverBee: http://www.feverbee.com

• Social Fish: http://www.social! sh.org/

• Social Business Council: http://council.dachisgroup.com/

• Social Media Today: http://socialmediatoday.com/

TWITTER

Hash tags:

#socialmedia

#strategy

#engagement

People to follow:

@rhappe (behind Community Roundtable)

@rawn

@oscarberg

@gyehuda

@sameerpatel

@ross

@dhinchcli" e

@gialyons (Jive’s CM)

@ITSinsider

@peterkim

@jowyang

@elsua

@andypiper

@Annemcx

@marilynpratt


BLOGS

• Community Roundtable: http://community-roundtable.com/about/

• Danah Boyd: http://www.danah.org/

• Dawn Foster: http://fastwonderblog.com/

• Henry Jenkins: http://www.henryjenkins.org/

• Kellie Parker: http://www.kellieparker.com/

• Lee Aase, director of the Mayo Clinic center for social media:

http://social-media-university-global.org/

• Martin Reed: http://www.communityspark.com/

• Michael Wesch: http://mediatedcultures.net/

• Natalie Hanson (SAP): http://nataliehanson.com/welcome.html

• Randy Farmer & Chip Morningstar: http://habitatchronicles.com/

• Sanya Weathers: http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/


ABOUT THE IABC RESEARCH FOUNDATION

� e International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation serves as the research and development arm of IABC. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is dedicated to contributing new � ndings and knowledge to the communication profession, and to helping organizations and communicators maximize contributions to organizational success.

For more information about the IABC Research Foundation, please go to http://www.iabc.com/researchfoundation/.

Documents

Table of Contents · 2019. 12. 16. · usability and design e• orts for dozens of clients, including AT&T, Avaya, A€ nnova, Constant Contact, † e Massachusetts Medical Society,