One the first questions that is raised in any enterprise 2.0 project is to know who to rely on to spread the change across the organization. The fact is there is not one but many kind of people to rely on and, most of all, each of them have a specific role that needs a specific enablement. There's not one message to deliver through multiple channels but many kinds of levers to use.
The most talked-about ones are community managers. They are in charge of building vibrant communties on relevant business topics, recrute and motivate members. They also have to identify employees' needs and concerns in order to address it through the enterprise program. Their role is essential to enable cross-silos exchanges, formalize tacit knowledge and make ideas emerge.
But even if community managers excels at enabling some kind of social dynamics they can't address all kinds of needs alone. They have no legitimacy to address execution related issues that need in-the-flow social activities. That's managers' call.
Managers have to ensure their staff will achieve expected results. New collaboration practices enabled by social tools may often be a relevant answer to their needs but not in the way community managers address it. They need to be aware of how social tools will improve collaboration, coordination, problem solving to build and implement the use-case that will work in the specific context of their staff. As it's about day-to-day activities, the focus won't be about stimulating conversations or networking but getting things done more efficiently.
Employees don't necessarily need community managers or wise managers to start using social media in the workplace. They can have their own initiatives, open a project blog for reporting, start a wiki to share and update some kinds of information, share files instead of sending them by email etc... In many cases, they are not aware of how things could be easier if they changed their practices now that tools that can enable new ones exist so they need to be shown things in order to understand what can be done. Their awareness can be raised by a corporate program but, most of times, they will be more likely to listen to their peers.
So you also need "internal evangelists". It's a group of people who are able to explain and demonstrate the power of changing the way things are done using new tools and are passionate enough to do that in addition to their job. They are not dedicated to the program and the fact they are also "common employees" makes them more trust worthy. Other employees will be more likely to pay attention to what they say because they share the same constraints, concerns, do the same job.
In any enterprise 2.0 project, there's not one message to spread but four kind of people (community managers, managers, employees, evangelists) to enable, knowing that each has its own needs, concerns and won't react to the same kind of stimulus.
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