Many, many, many customers are enamored of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 My Site’s extensive profiling feature. This is because a popular business need is, “Help me find experts more easily.”

Not familiar with My Sites? Check this out:

Yes, anything stored in an LDAP, a directory, or some other personnel data store can be automatically brought forward into My Sites, just like you can in Lotus Connections Profiles. It uses the Business Data Catalog to accomplish this, similar to how Lotus Connections uses Directory Integrator to bring data into the Profiles database and synchronize it with its sources, which is included with the Connections license.

And yes, a person can choose whom they share each individual morsel with – check out the right side of the pic. What, however, would be the point, since I’d be inclined to just lock my stuff down to the people I already trust, who probably already know what I know? But, that’s another blog post. Maybe it’s just a nod to the command-and-control cultures of old-school hierarchical organizations (my god, I work at IBM, and I typed that with a straight face!)

This is an email I just sent in response to a customer’s request.

Here’s the story I always tell to people who put their faith in some huge profiling system alone:

There are Seekers and Contributors in any organization.
Seekers are always searching for an expert in something. They love extensive profiling systems, because it enables them to locate people who they think are experts in a particular topic. Once they locate them, they email, instant message, or call that person for assistance.

Contributors hate filling out profiling systems. Why? Because it means yet another email, IM, or phone call, asking for their expertise. And if they are a true expert, their collaborative plate is already overflowing. They ask, “What’s in it for me? What benefit do I get from completing an extensive profile? All I see is just more people wanting my already-spoken-for time and energy.”

The result? The real experts never fill out their profiles, never keep them updated.

What we’ve found at IBM (Note: there is no definitive research supporting the following, only anecdotal evidence):

After almost 10 years of from-the-executives, repetitive, consistent pressure, only 60% of all IBM profiles are kept updated. (Note that Lotus Connections Profiles is the productized version of IBM BluePages, which has been around since 1998.) And that’s even with an automated email sent out every 3 months to remind people to update their profiles, plus a visual progress bar indicating how complete or incomplete a user’s profile is, plus people’s first-line managers constantly reminding them to update their profile.

This top-down-only approach doesn’t cut it. A bottom-up (or, bottoms-up, if you’re drinking), grassroots approach must accompany it in order to achieve success.

Once we gave Contributors the choice about how to share their knowledge and experience, we found that they were more likely to contribute using these social options, since they realized that the result would be fewer emails, IMs and phone calls asking for their basic expertise.

“Read my blog.”… “Check out my bookmarks.”… “Look at my activity templates.”… “Read my community forum.”

…became the new ‘RTFM‘, if you will.

Now, once Seekers find an expert via Profiles, they are able to consume some of their knowledge and expertise without disrupting them. The nature of the remaining email/IM/phone requests from Seekers were about their deeper experience, their knowledge that will always remain tacit.

In effect, Contributors sharing their more ‘basic’ expertise online enabled Seekers to accelerate whatever collaboration they further required from Contributors.

Zoom!

How did we do this?

We accomplished this by giving Contributors the ability to:

• share their important sources of internal and external information via social bookmarking, which are automatically associated with and are accessible from a user’s profile, as well as via a RESTful API. Also, Seekers can discover experts simply by subscribing to a particular topic from the social bookmarking service – no need to go through a profile first.
  
• share their experiences and expertise via an internal Internet-style blog service that enables not only individual blogs, but team blogs, and offers all blogs on a single website for easy browsing, searching, and integration with other applications via a RESTful API, also automatically associated with and accessible from a user’s profile. Seekers can discover experts simply by subscribing to a particular topic from the blog service – no need to go through a profile first (but you can if you want).
• share their experiences and expertise via Communities that are automatically associated with and accessible from a user’s profile, as well as a RESTful API. Seekers can discover experts simply by subscribing to a particular topic from the community service – no need to go through a profile first (but you can if you want).
• share their “good practice” about human processes through Activities and Activity templates, which, of course are automatically associated with and are accessible from a user’s profile, as well as a RESTful API (seems to be a theme here). Seekers can discover experts simply by subscribing to a particular topic from the activities service – no need to go through a profile first (but, of course, you can if you want).

For a wonderful (and short) education on this very thing, view: When social networking meets knowledge management

Final Thought:

Don’t just give Contributors a profile to fill out, that only enables them to list their skills, projects, etc., and that requires Seekers to use email/IM/phone – and social capital – to gain Contributors’ deeper knowledge. Give them the ability to actually share what they know through many social software choices, so that more Seekers can acquire that knowledge with fewer emails/IMs/phone calls, which degrade the Contributors’ productivity.

IBM’s R&D people – at least the ones I know – are cool. I say this in part because they have no problem with sharing their ideas, their useful information sources, and some of their research findings via IBM’s various social software tools. Plus, they value the ideas and information sources of the larger IBM population.

In short, IBM R&D people “get it” when it comes to looking beyond their departments and divisions for innovative concepts, and creating trusted working relationships with we non-R&D folks.

If only my customers felt that way.

I just presented to a company’s R&D group at the Lotus Executive Briefing Center in Cambridge, MA, USA (I’m there about two or three times a month, singing the Connections love song to various customers).

Here’s how it went:

Me: [shared research findings about the four archetypes: Lovable Star, Incompetent Jerk, Competent Jerk, and Lovable Fool, then explain that social software can help you find more Lovable Stars, and avoid the Jerks] then… “At its core, social software is about generating trusted working relationships. It’s about looking beyond your immediate network for innovative ideas.”

Them: “It’s about getting the information from the Jerks without having to interact with them. That’s what I want.”

Me: “Uh… ok. You’re describing the old method of KM. Where experts were expected to input their expertise into a database so that others can find it and reuse it. [nodding heads from the audience] The problem is that this method makes knowledge sharing an extra chore, and many people simply stop doing it. The knowledge becomes stale because it’s not kept updated.” [thank you, Luis Suarez, for educating me through your blog about this!]

Them: “Yes.”

Me: “Uh… um… but social software isn’t just about sharing knowledge in a software tool. It’s about connecting individuals in a way that allows them to not only share explicit knowledge, but to form trusted relationships so that TACIT knowledge is shared on a continuing basis.”

Them: “But, that only helps one or two people. I can’t search for that. [Gia’s thought bubble: No sh!t Sherlock. That’s the point.] I need to apply metadata to the information so that I can perform sophisticated searches on it. Our GOAL, Gia, is to discover knowledge so that we can create new knowledge from it. And we can’t do that if all this knowledge you’re saying gets input into social software isn’t structured.”

Me: [WTH?!?] “okaaaay…”

Them: “Look at Wikipedia. It’s structured, it’s social, and it works.”

Me: [I cannot believe this guy] “Wikipedia isn’t social networking software. Putting up a website and giving the world Editor access isn’t true collaboration, unless those people actually WORK with each other, TALK to each other to create the knowledge together.

“What goes on BEHIND THE SCENES between the core members of Wikipedia editors is what I’m talking about. THAT is the innovative collaboration that occurs when trusted relationships flourish. People who are not co-located must depend on social networking software to discover one another, learn about each other, and use MANY tools to communicate (email, IM, phone, face-to-face, wikis, Activities, teamspaces).”

Them: [one guy has his arms crossed, leaning back with a frown; other guy has an ‘undecided’ look on his face; the one woman in the crowd is leaning forward, smiling, nodding] “Hmph.”

The crotchity guy gets up and leaves – he has an appointment (we knew about this from the beginning).

The remaining guy starts shooting darts at me about all the missing collaboration features of Lotus Connections Communities v1, then challenges me:

“How do you solve THAT problem? I can’t even collaborate in this.”

Earlier in our conversation, I had acknowledged these shortcomings and stated that our R2 plans remedy it. Twice.

Me: [internal eye roll] “Like I said, we don’t have it today. You are right. But, here is what we’re planning for R2.” [show them a screenshot and explain it.]

Them: [placated] “Ah, ok. But, we need to be able to apply metadata to all that unstructured forum content.”

Me: I trot out the fact that you can create your own forms, complete with as much metadata as you’re willing to impose on your people, in Quickr and Notes applications – they’re a longtime QuickPlace and Domino customer.

Them: “Yeah, yeah, we know what we can do today. I want to know how to do it in Connections.”

Me: [looking for a sharp stick with which to poke myself in the eye, since that would be more fun at this point] “This kind of feedback is what our development team would enjoy hearing. How about we set up a meeting?”

Them: “Yeah, sure. Ok.”

I’ve presented to four different R&D groups, and only one of them “gets” social networking software. The rest simply poo-poo the idea that anyone other than themselves could be innovative.

So, help me out here. How can I communicate the value of Lotus Connections to R&D teams? I’m not doing a very good job of it, and I need to get better.