Currently I am one of the two project leads for our Office 365 – New Work Style. As I promised to „work out loud“ and as a return for the great support from my networks, here is our Team and Project Introduction Video about our implementation and adoption journey.
One power of social media is in the ease of sharing feedback in many forms. We still see many people struggling with a simple „Thank You“ – which (quite some time ago) I gathered my experience and made a personal, practical feedback recommendation guide. The „features“ needed for this are extremely simple to operate and are available on any! social platform.
Maybe that is also helpful for you:
… by showing appreciation, asking questions also critical feedback is great or saying „Thank You“ or „Well done“ …this is so engaging! Also supporting with your profession or competence to further develop the content is a great feedback. (see also Working Out Loud)
In the „digital world“ (LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, XING, Connect, Yammer, Jive and any other social platform) it works exactly in the same way – and since we work globally together, in a virtual environment you can choose from the following „engagement“ levels: (mehr …)
What an honor! Jon Ingham (British HR Consultant) (LinkedIn / Twitter), Organization Strategist (website) is about to publish a new book, which adds „social and digital“ to our organizational thinking. He gave me the great opportunity to read it upfront and despite having very little time for additional extra projects, this caught my attention very fast.
We see more and more books coming out form all kind of authors – evangelists, regular authors making money, just a few people actually being in the process of re-organization (they are typically quite busy right now 😉 Jon’s book is different. (mehr …)
Organizations are so strange. Everyone wants the high potentials, the best employees on the market. But once they are hired, they are often put into the „leader“ (think, involve, solution) and the „employee“ (work, follow, problem) drawer.
So employees are not being asked or involved in decision making or planning. That might sound black and white, but ask yourself:
Who is asked in your organization,
once a decision is needed?
Leaders or Employees
I am happy to share with you the results of one of my recent projects at Continental on my future work mission – the Flexibility Engagement Campaign – For people, with people.
Click below to read the full story with additional videos, results and summary presentation:
A big part of the Digital Transformation is the role of our leaders.
At conferences, magazines and the internet we can read every day, that leaders have to change. I have a slightly different perspective on that. It sees whenever something new comes up, we are talking about „change“ as if there is a magic method to get from present to future state.
In my eyes most of the time it would be more valuable to take a closer look, what are the new demands and how to educate ourselves to become familiar and professional about it.
For a conference, where I was asked to share my personal view on „Digital Leadership“ (as I was recognized with a „Digital Leader award„). (mehr …)
Lately more and more people asked me about the GUIDE Self Introduction Form, which I developed as an application form (and filter) to find voluntary Change Agents. Here it is – with some background information and how I put it together (and why) It has been a lessons learned review for me as well – so thanks for the trigger.
In 2012 I had the task to drive a huge culture change at Continental – introducing Enterprise Social Networking. To reach all our (back than) 86.000 colleagues with access to a computer, I needed a network of passionate change agents. My goal was to have at least one in every location (in 50 countries) and this „GUIDE“ should not have to take care of more than 200 people, personally. So I had to find about 400 highly engaged, self driven colleagues in all levels, all regions, functions and age – also hierarchy level.
How to find 400 passionate change agents (without THEM knowing, they could be) The only fast communication channel, back than has been eMail, so I won over our CFO and CHO to send out a short note to every colleague worldwide:
During the three year journey, I never mentioned Change Management tools, methods or terms or called anyone „Change Agent“.
Many had doubts that those „voluntary“ colleagues could do the job
I did not ask for grades, positions, functions, education levels. The only request I made has been:
What a great day – Daimler goes digital and started with their first netWORK camp in Stuttgart. 
80 highly engaged colleagues gathered to get inspired, to align, share, do workshops and set pace for the digital Journey and Enterprise Social Media implementation. Goal is to build a Multiplier Network like we did with our global GUIDE Network at Continental.
John Stepper (Father of Working Out Loud),
Lee Bryant (Famous Digital Strategist) and me have been invited to inspire with our keynotes and do some workshops together.
We all learned a lot that day..
Here is my „Storify Protocol“ – a collection of the more than 800 tweets of the participants (and us)
https://storify.com/HaraldSchirmer/net-work-camp-daimler
Interview with Harald Schirmer (Continental AG) on the Role of HR in the Digital Transformation:
German Graduate School: Harald Schirmer is one of five leading HR practice partners in our online course „Human Resource Mangement in the Digital Age“. Starting October 3rd.
Our trailer, more details and registration: https://novoed.com/ggs-digihrm. Join in!
What do almost all collaboration platforms have in common?
learning the basics about the
five core elements of digital collaboration,
will make your life a lot easier!
No matter if it is UBER, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, LinkedIn, My Hammer, eBay, YouTube, ESN…? Many people struggle about the great amount of different platforms. Once they realize that mostly they are depending on others, which platform they should use (because the company uses it, an event participation requires you to use it, you university or even your sports club), many are frustrated because of the huge variety of available platforms, apps and systems.
They almost all work quite similar:
Taking a closer look, most platforms start with a registration (mehr …)
If you are afraid of information overload, you can keep crying or start improving your skills!
Blaming information, people or… is not going to help you. In fact the information has not increased, but it’s accessibility, Today it is finally possible to get information from many places, events and actions with just one click. As long as you still want to „control“ it, you will burn out. Start building a valuable network, connect with like-minded people, follow those who share information, you are curious about (or in business context – topics along your profession and projects). One core functionality of social collaboration is the consolidation power of your network. Relevance is given by likes and comments… your network will support you with seeing, what is relevant … start building trust and learn! There is no information overload, and there is no un-important information (it’s just unimportant from your perspective) – understand that in Social Communication not you, but the „audience“ decides, what is relevant – and when. We call this going from push (your mails) to pull (everything is available at your fingertip)
PS if you are suffering from eMail overload… you are just using the wrong tool 😉
