okay we're back here live at IBM information on demand this is the cube our flagship program would go out to the advanced extracted signal from the noise this is SiliconANGLE and booking bonds production exclusive coverage of information on demand we have a crowd chatting on right now go to crouch at net / IBM iod this is a chat web app mobile version coming so I saw the complaints earlier be part of the conversation to log in and share your opinion with us ask questions a lot of folks on there right now great engagements with all that all the comments go to the public timeline of LinkedIn or Twitter wherever you sign in on to the hashtag IBM iod we'll be watching that I'm John Furyk gentleman my coach Dave vellante and we have Marsha Connor on who's the principle of sense of I grew she's also an author and she writes about the topic welcome to the queue thank you glad to be here so what is social business I mean you know we love we love talking about social business but it's kind of like you had this term web 2.0 which is everyone argued about you had big data which everyone kind of argued about which actually Israel 30 it's a real market social business which is kind of an elusive term what the hell does it mean is that Twitter or Facebook is it social media consultants is the real value there since this is the kind of question that everyone's talking about and we're talking about so what's your take on that >> my take is very simple for way too many years decades when people go to work they have to leave their personality their heart their cares their relationships in the car or in the subway or however they got to work that day and social business is really the first opportunity we have to be human beings at work we're allowed to actually talk about the things we care about to be able to bring our interests and our passions into the conversation to be real trustworthy people and what happens as a result of that is that for the first time ever there is an acceleration in the workplace because people can actually be their full selves it seems so simple only because the the backlash or the way that we have worked for so long has been so strong and so overpowering that we almost equates not being human with what business is so the idea of social and business being together it seems a little off we assume that business is human is inhuman but the idea of bringing them together is a huge step in the right direction and it opens up the possibility of actually doing great things >> there should be some anti social >> Jeff chick just say we maybe software in commenting about it's almost too social right now people need to kind of bring that personality to work so it's very interesting day what's your take on this I mean you're an analyst you look at the market is social business really mean what's your take on that yeah I think it slowly rabbids to me it's just it's second nature right i mean i remember the conversations not that long ago it's probably 2006-2007 what's the ROI on social media and do we really want to apply it to business and then so what happened was people just did it right and when they did it they said this surely works and we're getting productivity gains and people are happier and it's just a sort of a natural progression of what we're doing in our everyday lives so I just think to me the real opportunity is now okay what's the future what can you do with all this data were collecting and how can you actually affect you know changes within organizations and feedback to people and power them in different ways so that's kind of you know what I think about it I mean does that make sense to you >> it does actually I take the almost opposite view though it's not that they're in fighting with one another but the idea is that we need to figure out what we need to remove not add so it's not that we have all this new data and we can actually be doing more stuff but the question becomes for me and their organizations that I work with this what can we remove what are the policies that the nonsense that happens in work every single day that shouldn't be there is only there because we don't have a better way a more trustworthy more human way of actually working together so it's incredibly liberating or incredibly open from our perspective simply because it's it's less >> processes you haven't evolved to adopt >> so you're saying the business ooh the permeation of social networking within organizations that's not true for >> all organizations right i mean when >> they're starting with a green field the >> business processes are very social right >> about 70 people though and all of a sudden somebody says we need an HR department we need that the number was 50 >> 70 actually well especially for organizations that have aspirations of growing very very large and they get to this point where they believe that they have to put these things in place because there's this expectation that business means heavy process organized codified and I'm not saying that there aren't some benefits of actually having some order amid the chaos there's absolutely benefit there but we need to be thinking about what is needed at human scale versus what is the building or the organization itself need to be maintained to keep going >> saying if they take a small startup that >> so you're very social they've got social tools in place as they grow your day they muck it up just that what you see >> that is what I'm saying one of my clients a number of years ago I pulled me well actually I overheard this and then I had a conversation with him off line he pulled me aside who said you know what you really do is you make work not suck and he said it so candidly and it's a leader in a very large corporation I thought to myself wait a minute I had never really thought about it that way but for the large part that's people in the organization's feel like the amount of time that each of us spend on actually just maintaining the organization it's time that we could be using for far better things and so if we can start moving away from that maintaining of the organizational rigor we can actually start using that in those ingenious skills back to what we're doing >> example i was using about the use of the >> so the startup of the green sheet of paper the better example is the big company that you're sort of overlaying these social processes on top of how are you helping them sort of break the old habits maybe >> talk about what they should be doing >> yeah well the most specific thing I do is I very rigorously scalpel like actually organizations tell me of going in and identify one of the things keeping people from being able to do work that they were hired to do when's the last time you hired an idiot when I >> asked that question >> question we were just talking about I >> I won't answer that >> I ask that question actually very often is sometimes actually just speaking to a very large group and somebody always gonna raise their hand there's time the story and that's a little uncomfortable at times but the reality is we hire the best and brightest people that we know we try to find great people but something happens about two and a half weeks in all of a sudden they just get stupid right all of a sudden they can't do whatever it is >> very social they don't blame yourselves someone else I didn't I didn't improve that guy but let's not over though but some finish the story here because you're basically saying we inject stupidity into the system it's generally >> Yes we inject the stupidity in but we put them in cages in large part we ask people to say leave a large part of who they are what they're capable of doing somewhere else and so what happens is the longer you work for an organization the more likely you are to be incredibly invested in your community you either work at the Boy Scouts or or you you know you lead a program inside of your community to do better food services a well we have we find consistently is the more you feel like you've been stuffed into a desk drawer the more likely you are to still bring those capabilities to some other part of your life that's just ridiculous don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of people doing great things in our communities but it's really sad to me to understand that we can't bring those same capabilities that same ingenuity into the workplace where people were hired to actually share those gifts >> okay so so but so you go with the scalpel okay oh let me tell you a policy manual how do you not cut to the bone sami do you absolutely there are you not cut into muscle well such an example yeah that would help us I'd say most organizations have no idea where that muscle on that bone is it i mean that's actually a great question so so it at a more abstract level let me just say that there's i have been handed paper-based read notebooks from some of the world's largest organizations where you are going page by page by page of the policies the procedures and sometimes those are handed out in the new employee orientation other times that they're just assumed where people have to actually to start learning from you know social learning from the people around them as to what's the appropriate thing or what's an inappropriate thing to be doing and if you start actually looking at those you discover time and again that those policies those guidelines this what is establishing the culture are largely based on one person doing something really stupid and that person probably especially given a social business world probably wouldn't have done it a second time in this new environment but in this particular case they did that and all of a sudden we had to actually like in a community after a wreck now a stop sign are you had to you know put up a light because you hate had the lawyers be involved in this there's an incredibly yeah covering your ass you're overreacting simply because we haven't had better processes in the past one of the things we know for example of social tools is that when somebody says something stupid their co-workers almost always rise up and say that's not right anymore that's incorrect or here's a better way to do it the only thing worse than people saying dumb things work is people believing dumb things work and with these tools we all of a sudden have the opportunity to correct those things where people do smart things again so from a scalpel like perspective it's looking at what are the underpinnings of our work what are the things that are controlling how we work not only just the processes but the behaviors that are there and to actually look through them systematically and to remove everything that's there then the next step is really talking with people and being able to prove to them that when they work in different sorts of ways that they will be treated in different sorts of ways and frankly that becomes a harder exercise the larger the corporation >> chat from grant case how does an >> so question from our crowd organization start that journey especially in a firm like financial services where that might already be part of the culture >> is always part of the culture you advances in financial services I work with a very large business the business ensure for example and what we found is that when they start introducing social tools into the workplace they weren't so worried that people are going to say dumb things they were more worried that their employees were like cats under the stairs that nobody would say anything because they were so terrified of what would happen as a result of them saying that and so we had to do is are introducing into the culture of that organization processes that would say we care about what you think we had a woman for example say that when we went to her and we've been told that she would not participate in something like this when we went to her she said you know I've been putting in my desk drawers literally for over 20 years all the cool things I've wanted to do in this organization and you're telling me i can now blog about those things or i can actually put them in a micro and and we said yes and says well i really don't believe you so it wasn't even mad saying we can do it but well I get in trouble you know I get in trouble and I not even get troubled by the big police but just well I get you know looks from my peers and so we actually started giving her examples of some of her peers and some of her colleagues who were doing different sorts of things in her being able to build trust that this was a workable system >> does crowdsourcing just Twitter does a success of Facebook and LinkedIn the social networks nicely the rise of the hashtag which has become a great waited for people to dial into folksonomies of groups or active conversations does that change and give people more of a it removed some dissidents if you will about okay it's okay to be public does that change the game a little bit on social software is it validated or just a scare people further into the into their caves we see on crowd chatter there's more anonymous viewers that happy boo actually sign in it has become kind of like an arena we mentioned sometimes it's like gladiator the thought leaders battling it out for you know we seen this on forums right higher see chat rooms you know so people just want to watch yeah >> so what you're what you've done though is reduce this down to one personality type and the reality is that we have have extroverts and introverts in our workplace we have people who are comfortable talking in public and those who aren't and so the simple introduction of online tools brings to our workplaces a way for people who are uncomfortable sharing to do that with a little bit more anonymity and to have a lot more comfort and being able to do that they may not want actually look people in the eye when they say these things but it doesn't mean they don't have valuable things to say I was asked by a journalist a number of years ago if I believe that the introduction of social tools would all of a sudden mean the end of meetings in the workplace and I said absolutely not but what you're now going to hear is the voice of people who never spoke up at meetings and to actually have a well-rounded workforce you need to have the voice of all those brilliant people you hired >> wait a moment yes I think I said all the forecast for cars was limited because they didn't people think enough chauffeurs to drive them you know nobody will buy them still is gonna bite it's a big barrier small market it's not enough show first is a wreck yeah >> but if we can actually provide a venue for everybody to be able to contribute at work one that's either in person or online we're just opening up the possibility of who could >> okay so what's the craziest thing you've seen both on two spectrums with social business successful crazy and crazy good meaning kind of like Anna Steve Jobs craziness way to a crazy fail you have to name names he just can talk about the use cases I mean by that or you can talk about the names if you want to the appoint people out crazy good wow they really levered all the aspects of the data they they were innovative just or lucky or two they put a lot of money into it and it could failed miserably yeah okay I think I can come up with two I'm not so sure and the crazy like in woohoo were in Vegas kind of crazy example though give me a few minutes wrapping up with that one okay though I will say that in a large financial services organization that the Vice President of Human Resources i actually have photos of her going around to every single cube on her floor and taking person and taking photos of each employee for their personal profiles because people are so terrified of actually even doing taking that step that she walked around the floor of her building and took pictures of every single person and that may not see a saying some crazy in Las Vegas sense but it was pretty radical for her to be doing that but it showed her commitment to be able to do this so let me give you a different example electronics firm we're going through I'm so a large global not going to name names but you can probably actually make some guesses we're going through some horrible financial problems and it was just a right around the time they introduced social business tools into their workforce and when they did that the the pretty much the person who is supporting that initiative would send out emails to move people toward working in a social way at he would send out emails that would be fairly scandalous actually and they would say things like it's about to get on the press that we were about to lose dot dot dot at all his email would say and then there was a link that they had to actually go into the social system to be able to learn the rest of the things he not only had a blast actually eliminating the whole lot of link faded the entire over a hundred thousand personal work for that's good pageviews assassin twitter / ma been going on to in a matter of days they had pretty much converted the entire organization to be using these tools and as a result of that they believe that they actually didn't have all the problems they would have had had they not done this because for the first time ever people weren't just sitting behind their desks and being terrified for their lives going back to your crowdsource point they were there together and they actually could talk about what's going on they created what we call rumor central which is a practice that I bring into many organizations they actually had a group within the organization that anybody could ask anything they could actually ask the question what is the rumor you know they could say here's the rumor I've heard how accurate is it and then somebody in the organization would actually be there to answer that and be able to correct that and be able to fix that and it was a beautiful example of how that works >> from the crowd chat along the line of >> we had a question coming question we just had to run the people extroverts and introverts so the question is what is the value of a lurker in social business is there one well if it's a person kind of hanging around question was that that's a great question oh yeah >> I thought you're muttering under your breath like a lurker okay the problem with workers he said she's yelling in the cheap seats what we know about lurkers is that traditionally they are people who wouldn't raise their voice in a meeting that they are also somebody who is just going to you know sit and listen but what happens is it that person then goes to the restroom or goes to the cafeteria or actually even on the bus that night or in their community and they talk about what they've learned so the idea of measuring people as lurkers or participants is a very shallow way of looking at it because it only means that the value is in the conversation of their having at that time or that they didn't comment or they didn't contribute that that is what provides value it's a skewed perspective on engagement it's a cute perspective of what brings value to the organization if they can be listening which is a truly an untapped skill and most of our workforces that they can be listening and then they can actually be thinking also a crazy idea and actually then be able to figure out what they are doing and then be able to do that all the value there but I'm I actually am a little bit weary sometimes when I see the people who are commenting all the time >> it's like lurker so in social context if you can see the participation if someone's just just online with an online button you don't even know if they're listening right so I think that's I think that's the key point if they're listening and they're active that's an interesting data point so like one things that Dave and I look at and lurkers is are they in context to the conversation and are they active so getting that active data is interesting in context to what's being measured so if we look at a cluster of a crowd like a crowdsource crouched at hey if someone's actively talking they're in in the in context >> I still think that's an extroverted way of looking at it I still think it's a way of saying that that engagement is only by hearing or seeing their voice so let me give you the example so I work with a large an organization the intelligence community I'll leave it at that and one of the things that they track is where people actually look online and as a result of that they're actually able to follow the thread from the first thing that they looked at what do they look at next and they have and are able to establish breadcrumbs as to what someone looked at first and then what they looked at next and then what they did after that and what happened is along that whole continuum somebody eventually at some point in time will do sort of the equivalent of a like or they'll add a comment somewhere along that path but then if you go in and you were looking at that first document and you then get to see sort of like amazon recommends other books you can then say other people who looked at this document looked at these things next now that first person may have not commented for a very long time if ever but the value to the other people in that organization by understanding the other amazing and wonderful and helpful or not helpful things they saw afterwards brought incredible value to the organization and that was a a passive way of actually sharing and helping and narrowing down and helping people make better decisions but it was by no means the level of active engagements that so often we are looking at as the only measure of value in the organization Marcia we got cut on time here our next guest but amazing conversation folks go see her blog guys awesome thanks for the comment we'd go another hour okay but they'll give you the final word what is just share with the folks out there your view of the future next couple years what's going to come around the corner connect the dots what do you see happening is going to be an implosion the kind of Biggs is going to be more growth what's going to happen what do you think is going to how is this industry industry how is social business going to shape up >> well I'm if we're talking about the next few years I think that we are all in for a big wake-up call not only are we starting to see the structures and the systems around us failing from my government and economy all sorts of different ways a perspective but if we look at epochs of history this happens consistently and we're about the end of this particular epoch and I say that not as a doom and gloom er at all but to say that I believe for the first time we have the tools and technologies to be able to do something significant to be actually be able to rewrite how organizations work what work means how human beings get to interact to be able to make change in the world that has been cordoned off for way too long and so as these systems the systems that aren't workings are falling away we have the opportunity to actually be able to lean in to be able to live in and to be able to say I want to be a human being 24 hours a day I don't want to be a number or a chess pawn any longer and i am going to actually make a difference in the work i do and i'm going to do that throughout my day every day so i'm i'm incredibly excited about the prospect of what we can do it requires us all to actually look inside figure out who we are figure out what we want to do and actually be able to go do that social destruction of old with new new >> humanization of the crowd and waves of innovations we always say tave you don't get out in front of you become driftwood and there will be some destruction in business models we love it this is social business this is the cube exclusive coverage from information on demand ibm's conference here in Las Vegas is the cube we write back with our next guest right thank you the cube