Today we have a guest post from Brian Solis. Brian is a principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture. Solis' latest book is titled, The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution. For more information, please visit www.briansolis.com.

In a post Occupy world, organizations everywhere should contemplate the themes that flooded the undercurrent for one of the greatest consumer uprisings in history. There's much to learn from the events that might have started in Wall Street to protest high unemployment and corporate greed, the prevailing tenets driving for new opportunities quickly spread to 2,773 Occupy communities in over 82 countries.

While the inspiration for the insurrection is diverse and deeply personal, one thing is clear, everyday people have had enough and collectively, the frustration and discontentment with the state of the economy, socioeconomic equality, and overall consumer disregard by business and government boiled over into a worldwide statement that screamed for action and transformation. We are witnessing the end of business as usual to say the least.

It's just a matter of time until, in its own way, the driving principles of Occupy take aim at your business or industry. To be honest, whether we realize it or not, the sentiment that contributes to disgruntlement is not new. Signs have been posted everywhere. And now with social media, these symptoms are avoidable only through old world customer service infrastructures or worse, process blindness. Business isn't changing because of social media, it's changing because consumer expectations are evolving. Either way, each play a part in heralding what I refer to as Digital Darwinism, an emerging phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than the ability to adapt.

Listen. Learn. Engage. Adapt.

Today, no company is too big to fail nor too small to succeed. The outcome is driven by an organization's ability to adapt to market conditions and customer expectations. It's not a new concept. But what is new is the tremendous journey that organizations must embark upon to get there.

Most business models are rigid, focused on operations, efficiencies, growth opportunities and P&L. This view has worked well for decades. However, now in a new era of digital influence, connected customers, and customers in general, are clamoring to be heard and to become part of the business ecosystem. As a result, leaders must embrace new methodologies, technologies, and systems to engage stakeholders and work together to build a new framework that upgrades the dynamic for stakeholder engagement and collaboration and the resulting experience now and how it's reinforced over time.

This requires nothing less than the establishment of a dedicated taskforce with an exact mission of transformation. The primary charter is to establish a course for evolution by aligning stakeholders and decision makers around collaboration and decision-making initiatives. It's not an overnight process. What we are talking about is retrofitting or in some cases re-architecting the foundation to compete in the years to come.

This is done through a four-step rigor that begins internally to have an impact inside and outside the organization. And, as a champion for new possibilities, everything begins with you.

1. Listen - Use new media tools to listen beyond keywords and sentiment. Observe trends, insights, and opportunities to improve experiences.
2. Learn - Build a procedure, with roles and responsibilities, and a path around discovery and innovation. Translate activity into actionable insights and ensure that a two-way path connects business lines and functions back to the market through direct engagement or the improvement of products and services.
3. Engage - The state of businesses are no longer created, they're co-created through shared experiences. Stakeholders, including customers and employees, must realize that you're listening and learning. Engagement is the key to steering and shaping experiences through collaboration. Doing so invests the cultivation of a meaningful community and ultimately loyalty.
4. Adapt - Customers don't always know what they want. But, they do know what they don't want. Everything gleaned from steps one through three reveal everything about how an organization can adapt to earn relevance as part of its everyday business practice. Processes, systems, technology, it's all rooted in the ability to not just move and react to customer revolutions, but eventually lead them.

This is an opportunity to re-examine relationships with customers and employees to not only avert potential crises, but steer more positive engagement and experiences as part of standard business practices - a new "business as usual" if you will. It starts with listening and learning and culminates with engagement and adaptation.

This is why your role is more important then ever before. Everything you know and everything you're learning will help your business or organization mature, increase in relevance, and deliver more significant experiences. The end results are preference, increased loyalty and advocacy, and ultimately connectedness. It's how you demonstrate the opportunity and the path forward that count for everything. This is your time...

Be sure to tune into Brian's webinar with Citrix where he will discuss this and more on Wednesday, January 18th at 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST.

Register here: http://t.co/Sw4EqQTF

Google+, the latest and greatest social network, hit the Interweb about 4 months ago in a limited field trial. A select group of, oh, 25 million people or so were invited to poke around and check things out. Last month, Google+ opened its doors to the public at large, so now you only need a free Google profile to get started.

But why join another social network, you ask? Well, that's not an easy question to answer, but the web is all about choice. Providing a new way to connect, share and collaborate might just be a good thing. With privacy and sharing features that differ from Facebook's and a posting format longer than Twitter's, Google+ is quickly becoming a contender in the social media market. I've been looking at G+ through the lens of a workshifter lately, and I'm finding all sorts of benefits for those of us who work in online offices.

Expand Your Network

I'm meeting all sorts of new people on G+. Whereas it can sometimes be challenging to follow the fast-moving Twitter timeline, G+ offers many neat filtering options that let me streamline the way I see folks - kind of like putting a magnifying glass on my social feed. By dragging and dropping people into Circles, I can surf by interest (adding people to lists on Twitter takes more steps than I'm willing to bother with). Most people on Google+ spend a lot of time sharing great content like links and videos, meaning there's an opportunity to get involved in some fun conversations. Google+ also allows long-form posts and displays comments pretty well, so it's easy to follow the real-time updates.

Search Socially

Since Google+ is owned by, well, Google, the search functionality is powerful (and even more powerful now that the site is public). For example, I can search for "fiction authors" and find posts where users are discussing writers, or I can search for people who actually are fiction authors themselves. Because Google profiles can be really detailed, they are extremely searchable. Think of what this means for connecting with others you're interested in and what it means for them being able to connect with you - powerful stuff. If you spend most of your time working alone, you are better able to reach out and network.

Organize Your Interactions

The Circles functionality is fantastic. You can create groups for any number of interests and organize your information streams any way you like. You can have a feed for close friends and another for book club buddies. Then, you can read and share information with just those people. Not everyone who follows me on G+ may be interested in my latest course development techniques or my veggie lasagna recipe. Google+ lets me have different conversations with different groups, which is great for connecting with people who share our particular hobbies or industry.

Hang Out

Want to meet up with friends but can't get everyone together in person? Dump them all into a circle and invite them to a Google Hangout, a multi-way video chat that holds up to 10 people. Google recently added some new "Extras" that allow you to name hangouts, create shared notes and sketchpads, integrate Google Docs and share screens. It's all nicely consolidated on one screen, too.

All in all, I think Google+ is one to watch, especially as a workshifter. It's robust, and for those of us who live online, it's got plenty of features. Why not give it a try?

Photo Credit: Magnet 4 Marketing dot Net

Do me a favor and think about the top tools that you like to use for workshifting.

Now if you are like me, I will bet that some, if not all, of the tools that you just came up with have some social aspect to them. Mark Zuckerberg is right, humans are social creatures and like to feel like they are part of something bigger, something that we can connect to. Much like the community we are building here at Workshifting.com, we all like to have somewhere to go to find people of like mind and thoughts and workshifters are no different.

If I were going to rattle off a list that many of you might have, I would bet it might include Twitter, Facebook, maybe a few LinkedIn's, but if your company is like a lot of others these tools are a no-no for use in the enterprise. To a certain extent there are valid arguments for not allowing these tools. Sharing company-specific information on a social network could be considered a bad idea. How many times have we seen Tweets or Facebook posts that have come back to haunt someone?

So what's a good workshifter to do? Why not consider introducing one of the new "enterprise class" social networking tools into your business? Companies of all sizes are starting to realize that the traditional ways of hiring and managing people are just not going to work any longer. The value of allowing people to communicate and collaborate in ways they feel comfortable is quickly becoming the present and future way that we are going to work.

The good news is that the enterprise social tools are getting better; I wanted to throw out a few that I know of and hopefully you can leave some that you like in the comments.

Microsoft SharePoint - If you are a Microsoft shop, SharePoint has quickly become the go-to intranet site for your business. Because it takes the tools that most companies use and love, the Microsoft Office suite, and builds in tight integration with SharePoint, the functionality is hard to beat. Microsoft has seen the social light and is quickly trying to build social aspects into their products and their latest release, SharePoint 2010, has the most social hooks to date. Best of all is that there are several bolt-on products from companies like Newsgator that can kick the social aspect up a notch.

Yammer - I consider Yammer to be the Twitter for the enterprise. Much like Twitter, Yammer allows you to create a profile for each of your employees, post and reply to comments and thoughts, securely share files, and direct message each other all via their app. They even have a great starting price: free! All you need is a company email address to sign up.

Salesforce.com Chatter - When you hear "Salesforce" you might instantly think CRM but they have rolled out a new collaboration tool that is getting pretty good reviews. I consider Chatter to be more like an internal, private Facebook for your business and all of the good Facebook features are there. Profiles, groups, status updates, file sharing - all that you need to help make your business more collaborative.

How about you? These are a few that I have come up with. Which ones would you add?

Photo Credit: stitch

Last month we published an infographic on the international language of business based on a study that Citrix Online commissioned from Forrester Consulting. Today we're happy to launch the results of that study. The study yielded surprising findings related to generational and cultural working behaviors that impact how businesses communicate and collaborate in an increasingly dispersed workplace, and the implications for the future competitiveness of SMBs.

Key Findings

The study asked information workers of all ages in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia about their business communication habits.

Gen Y does not have the monopoly on technology use and social tools during the work day. Meanwhile, the older generation is getting with the program.

• Gen Y is least likely to share information via text message (26%, compared to 47% of those aged 55+), and least likely to use video conferencing, video chat and web conferencing tools.
  
  
• Gen Y uses social networking the least frequently (40% of Gen Y workers who use social media do so daily, compared to 50% of those aged 55+).
  
  
• Older Boomers (55+) have increased their business use of social media 79% in the past year.  

The younger you are, the less you value meetings - and pay attention.

• Gen Y is least likely to think meetings are efficient. Only 29% of Gen Y workers think meetings used to decide on a course of action are very efficient, compared to 45% of Older Boomers.
  
  
• Gen Y is least likely to pay attention in meetings and barely half (51%) believe it's very important to do so in meetings to decide a course of action.

Americans have more meetings - and pay more attention.

• 90% meet in person to communicate and build relationships, more than any other nationality.
  
  
• Of those, 51% meet daily, compared to a mere 31% of French.
  
  
• 75% of Americans believe it's very important to pay attention in meetings to decide on a course of action, compared to 50% of the French.

The in-person meeting is alive and well, but not necessarily effective.

• 84% of all respondents have in-person meetings, but meetings often don't achieve their goals.
  
  
• Only 45% are very satisfied that planning meetings achieve the task in hand, and only 30% believe such meetings to be very efficient.
  
  
• Across all categories of meetings for designated tasks (e.g. review of documents, plan projects or initiatives, decision on a course of action), less than half of respondents believe those meetings are very efficient.

In an era of multitasking, it's still considered rude in a meeting.

• 83% believe that side conversations are unacceptable during a meeting, and 77% frown on those doing other work on a computer or smartphone.

We still like to look each other in the eye.

• Germans like to see others during meetings (75%), while Americans find it less important (55%) though they have the most in-person meetings.
  
  
• 79% of those aged 55 and over think it's important, compared to 65% of Gen Y.
  
  
• Why? To read body language, say 78%.

Usage among users of collaborative technologies is rising fast.

• 64% of those who use social networking tools in business use them more than last year. Video chat, team document-sharing sites and web conferencing also experienced significant increases in usage, with 56%, 55% and 52% respectively.

If you would like to download a copy of the report, you can find it posted in our Downloads section here.

Today we are releasing the results of a study that was conducted by Forrester with Citrix Online (you know, the GoToMeeting folks who help us keep the lights on around here) that looks at how business people communicate and collaborate across the globe.

As workshifters, we all know how liberating it is to work when, how and where you want, and that technology helps us do that without comprising quality of work or efficiency. But does the rest of the world get it? Forrester conducted a study with Citrix Online that looks at how business people communicate and collaborate across the globe, and it turns out that the in-person meeting is alive and well with 84% of respondents still having them. However, these in-person meetings often are inconvenient to coordinate and don't achieve the agenda's goals. In fact, only 45% are very satisfied that planning meetings achieve the task in hand and less than half believe any type of meeting to be very efficient! What is it then, fellow workshifters? Are people just in plain denial about the effectiveness of in-person meetings?

Communication isn't simple as people deal with complex and challenging work environments. From dispersed workforces, an accelerated pace of business and changing attitudes and work styles, it's important for companies to look at such snapshots of current trends and practices. It provides the opportunity to think about the implications for how to build the right organizational meeting/communication structure.

The study includes interesting findings that shed light on similarities and differences across generations and countries with how people like to interact with coworkers and what they need to be productive. For instance, contrary to what people probably assume, Gen Y does not have the monopoly on tech use and social tools in the office. They're actually least likely to share information via text messages and use social networking the least frequently!

And how do the different surveyed countries compare in their individual business languages? Check out the infographic below:

Many of you who read this blog are probably users of social technologies like Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr. I know I am! The interesting thing is the way people use the technologies. For business for personal or combining the two you'll never see the same usage pattern twice!

I'd love to share a story with you that I wrote about some time ago but felt was a great story to revisit. It's called, "How Twitter Search changed the Life of a man in a coffee Shop"  Enjoy!

The Coffee Shop Chronicles
About a year ago now, I visited a great little coffee shop and lunch destination in a small town just outside of mine. I began to work away on the computer as usual when a very well dressed gentleman sat next to me presumably stopping for lunch. After I finished banging out an email he seemed to get transfixed by my laptop screen as I opened up tweetdeck and asked me if that was twitter. I told him that it was a third party application but for all intents and purposes, "Yes it is Twitter". He went on to say that he had heard a lot about the service, but really had no idea why he would want to use it. And that my friends was the beginning of his love affair with twitter.

The Job
I went on to ask this gentleman what type of work he did. He told me that he was an independent pharmaceutical sales rep and that he was trying to get established with some local doctors. He had been at it for about six months and had regular calls, but most of his accounts were on the smallish side. I decided to do an experiment with him and run a twitter search on the name of some of the companies he repped for as well as names of some of the key drugs he was selling. So we went forth and created a real time conversational search using my tweetdeck client and he was amazed at what he saw.

The Search
The search immediately revealed that one of the drugs that he was told to push by his distributor was possibly going to be pulled from the shelves by the government due to complications of taking the drug. He was flabbergasted and honestly didn't believe what he was reading. I mean you can't believe everything you read on twitter....right? Well, like any other source you must look into the facts deeper. We clicked a few links and checked a few websites and sure enough this drug was in danger of being pulled. At that point this guys mind was completely blown and he left the coffee shop in a bit of a daze.

The Follow-Up
Two days after our first encounter I saw this gentleman again at the coffee shop and he approached me with a glow on his face that had not been there two days before. He proceeded to tell me that he called on a doctor the afternoon after we had spoken and that he was going to be making a fairly large purchase of the drug that we found was in question. He mentioned to the doctor that he might want to hold off and that he had done some research during lunch that indicated problems with this drug and that it may get pulled. The doctor thanked him and he went on to his next customer. The real magic came the next day when the doctor called him back and thanked him for alerting him to the news before it officially broke. The drug did get pulled from the shelves and the doctor was thankful for his insights. On his next visit to that doctor he was not only given a larger chunk of his daily orders, but was given three referrals of whom that doctor called personally in front of him.

A Month Later
About a month has passed and I have seen this salesman since. He is a regular user of twitter for it's search and monitoring capabilities and he told me that his income has increased significantly due to the referrals that stemmed from this early information. He bought me lunch last time I saw him and I was happy to let him.

How have you seen social media tools change someone perspective? Are you using social media in your daily work flow?

SXSW was a great place to network, learn and do business.  I was not sure how much work I would be able to get done and was a bit skeptical about the wifi at the Austin Convention Center, but was pleasantly surprised.  There were outlets everywhere provided by Chevy, plenty of tables and chairs and reliable wifi.  





What are your thoughts? How did you workshift at sxsw? 

In social media we understand and accept the principles of sharing, engaging and being open to serendipity. We benefit from engaging and sharing information with people online to form new friendships and working relationships. But how often do we ignore these same social media principles in "real life"? How many times do we sit in the coffee shop working all day with our headphones in trying not to make eye contact with the person sitting next to us?

I share my thoughts on sharing, engagement, and serendipity in a short video....


Your thoughts?

Photo Credit: Medmoiselle T

I have come across quite a few blog posts where the first paragraph is a general complaint about the hours we work; where we are the victim and technology is the weapon. To that I say, ignorance is bliss.  From my perspective, we CHOOSE to work beyond the confines of traditional work hours because we can.  We can, because we have the tools, not vice-versa.

It seems that just about everyday a new tool comes out that offers to pull the fabric of our self-made social web even tighter.  Some new tools on the block are Foursquare and Plancast.  Neither of which improve the quality of my network, but they are cool and fun, and I choose to try them out.  Now add these to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or whatever your social media weapon of choice, and there is some serious time spent in the name of connecting.

I am connected to the social web via TweetDeck.  I'm watching and participating in the conversations that I care about.  Does it add to my workload?  Definitely.  Do I like it?  No Doubt.  Is there value to my company?  Absolutely.  I think the debate stems from how "work-day" is being defined.

The view seems to be that of the old-school corporate time clock vs. workshifting.  One is focused on time and the other on outcome.  One is focused on the office and the other is location agnostic.

Therefore, if I'm focused on outcome and I'm location agnostic, does that equal a longer work-day?  No, it's equals a work-day that may include Monday morning at 4am or Sunday at 9pm.  It also may NOT include Tuesday at 9:30am and Friday at noon.  By re-framing perceptions of working hours and work space, you can quickly see that in most cases there are not more working hours, but the hours worked are more effective.  This also requires setting boundaries for when you're "on deck".  In other words, don't call me at home at 4am unless I'm expecting it.

By extending the definition of work-day to include workshifting, it opens up a world of possibilities on how to achieve an objective.  I can collaborate with social media tools, attend a conference or speaking engagement, have an online meeting and of course (at least in my case) go to the office for a dose of much needed corporate culture.  Despite how this post may read, I love going into the office because I need to connect in person.

So next time you read about how the evil social media tools are driving people to work 24 hours a day, stop and think.  The definition of work-day is growing up.  Are you growing along with it, or are you fighting for the status quo.

What say you?

Photo Credit: tranchis

So much advice is being disseminated I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about lessons learned from the inside.  We were experimenting around with social media in late 2008.  To be honest, we were just tinkering with Twitter.  We noticed that people were having conversations about our brand and we wanted to get in on the action.  To keep this post brief, I'm going to focus specially on Twitter.
 
We started working with New Marketing Labs to help us narrow our focus, or should I say, start focusing. Lesson 1: learn how to listen.  Listening is hard.  When we started, we responded to just about every post on Twitter. There is a balance between the community being self sufficient and the company's desire to join the conversation.  We were trying not to be "that guy".  You know..."that guy", the one that brings a hundred business cards to an event and measures his success by the amount of cards he gave out.  I think, in the beginning, we were "that guy".  We measured success by the amount of conversations we were involved in as opposed to engagement with the community.
 
Twitter, to many companies, is public customer service and the Twitter public timeline is the diary.  A company's successes and failures are there for the world to watch in real time.  The companies that do it right, are the best listeners, not the best talkers.  My advice is spend 2/3 of your time listening and 1/3 engaging.  It's a simple metric which is derived from from how we listen in the real world.  As humans we have the ability to listen at 400 words per minute but we talk at roughly 130 words per minute.  That's a good guidepost as opposed to a rule.  However, some of the most useful advice comes from the people that are the faces behind the branded Twitter accounts.

Glenn Dobson manages our GoToMeeting Twitter account and he was kind enough to give me his thoughts on how to be an effective listener.  Most people that follow GoToMeeting on Twitter know Glenn as ^GD.  He is the man behind the tweets.  I believe he even had a marriage proposal on Twitter from a crazed fan.  You should ask him about it.  

Glenn's Top 5 Tips for Effective Social Listening:

1. Be genuine in your interactions: People can spot a fake and do not appreciate lip service, you could do more damage than not engaging at all.
   
   
2. Be responsive:  If you are going to offer a presence you need to be there when needed.
   
   
3. Know when to take it offline: Sometimes 140 characters are not enough to work through an issue, know when to offer a more traditional support channel so that you can resolve the issue sooner. Don't be afraid to lose the publicity of resolving the issue in public on Twitter.
   
   
4. Be open to feedback even if it's negative: All feedback is good and sometimes negative feedback is best for growth.
   
   
5. Don't feed the trolls: Everyone knows the Internet is full of trolls, no one can make them happy so sometimes the best response is none at all. Put your efforts into the people who want to work with you.
   

My Top 5 Tips for Effective Social Listening:

1. Use tools such as CoTweet and Radian6 (and hire a ^GD clone).
   
   
2. Separate support inquiries from general conversations about your brand.  Assign a specific group to manage the support inquiries (in our case, tech support and product queries).
   
   
3. Create a branded Twitter account.  List the real names and pictures of the people "on deck" as part of the Twitter profile.  This helps humanize the brand.  Check out GoToMeeting Twitter account for an example of how we're doing it.
   
   
4. Use the carrot symbol and initials to identity who is posting.  If I was posting from the branded account I would end my post with ^DB. 
   
   
5. Learn from the best.  Check out: Southwest Airlines and Comcast as just two of the many great examples available.
   

It's very likely that you and/or your brand are being talked about on Twitter.  Follow the advice that is relevant to your needs, and toss out the rest.

What are your tips for effective listening?

Photo Credit: abrinsky