Last week I had the pleasure of talking about the realities of social software and social networking in the enterprise with a group our member companies, including Sun Microsystems, Xerox, Glaxo Smith Kline, Cornerstone OnDemand and SkillSoft. 

You might be tempted to think, based on the composition of that list, that this was a conversation between a group of early adopters – pioneer organizations in uses of social software in the enterprise.

Not necessarily.

The dialogue was lively and all expressed intense interest in these applications, both personally and on the part of their organizations.  And while each participant did describe at least some initial organizational movement in this area, in reality all of these companies find themselves probably in much the same place as many of you reading this blog: very interested in the possibilities, but trying to figure out where and how best to implement these tools across the business.

A few highlights:

• So far, L&D organizations are not drivers of social networking in corporations.  Instead, usage is bubbling up from the business units.  L&D is very interested, but they are often coming to the party second or third.  The use cases of greatest interest to L&D are blending social and collaborative activities into learning programs, integrating them into new employee onboarding programs, and to support existing Communities of Practice programs.
  
  
• There is probably more initial usage of social software, and more comfort with that usage, in external and extended enterprise communities right now.  These are communities setup by companies to maintain connections with their general customers and with their partners and channels.
  
  
• Usage of public sites like Facebook and LinkedIn is exploding in organizations, causing no small amount of productivity and security concerns for the business – and confounding the issue as to the potential business impact of implementing similar applications “behind the firewall.”
  
  
• Social software – in both its internal and external forms – has caught the attention of IT.  IT is beginning to lead a movement towards developing enterprise wide strategies and solutions, but it may take some time.  In the meantime, organic departmental and workgroup driven adoption will likely predominate.
  
  
• The issue of governance models is a key question.   Are wholly new models required, or are existing company codes of conduct and technology usage policies sufficient to govern activity in these new tools?  The group was in agreement that anonymity has no place in corporate social networks.
  
  
• Content is and will continue to be the greatest challenge for success with internal communities.  Employees will engage when there is meaningful, useful content in the system, but how does that content get there without employee engagement - a chicken or the egg problem to be sure.  Some of the participants with some experience in this area stressed the need for the organization to assign owners/moderators/stewards to the community to champion interaction.

These observations definitely fit with our other research findings on the topic.  That said, what are your thoughts?  Does the collective wisdom of this particular group resonate with your own experiences?  Let us know in the comments.

I would like to thank all of the members who took part in last week’s call.  To other members reading this blog, please be on the look-out for future member forums.

Thanks,
David