Yammer Benchmarking Insights #3 – Collaboration at the Personal Level
In this episode we drill down to the most detailed level. That’s you, the individual collaborator.
‘At SWOOP we have designed behavioural personas to characterise individual collaboration patterns based on your pattern of activity.For example, if you are a Catalyst, you are good at getting responses to your posts. Catalysts are important for energizing a community and driving the engagement of others. If you are a Responder, you are good at responding to other people’s posts. Responders are important for sustaining a community and extending the discussions. An Engager is able to balance their Catalyst and Responder behaviour and is seen as the Persona to aspire to, as the Engager effectively balances what they give to others in the form of posts, replies, likes etc. and those that they receive from others. Therefore they are well placed to broker new relationships. Broadcasters tend to post without engaging in conversations. Observers are simply not very active, with less than a single activity every 2 weeks. We see Broadcasting and Observing as negative personas.
What does an organisation’s portfolio of Personas typically look like? The results below are generated from our benchmarking results from close to 40 organisations. The lines indicate the minimum-maximum range and the blue square is the average score.
The large range of % Observers, between less than 10% to over 70%, may reflect the large variation in maturity amongst the organisations we have benchmarked. It may not only be the case of maturity though, as it is fair to say that the smaller organisations have an easier time engaging a higher proportion of their staff with the Enterprise Social network (ESN). We show the break-up of the active (non-observer) Personas, which shows that Catalysts lead the way with just over 40%, followed by Responders at just under 30%, Engagers just over 20% and Broadcasters at 10%. This would indicate that in general, ESNs are relying on Catalysts to continue to drive participation and then Responders to sustain it.
Personas within Groups
Given that groups are the space where most of the intense collaboration is likely to happen, we were interested in what the Persona patterns were for the leaders of the best performing groups. We used a combination of two-way connection scores and activity scores to identify the strongest groups. We then applied the same measures to the group members to identify the group leaders. In other words, a group leader is someone who has a high number of two-way connections with other group members, and meets a threshold level of overall activity.
Firstly, we plotted all members on a graph, locating them by the size of their network (y-axis) within the group and the number of 2-way connections they have in the group (x-axis). The bubble is sized by their relative levels of interactions (activity). As you can see, the group leaders are clearly identified in the top right hand corner of the graph as different coloured nodes.
Secondly, we then plotted the top 5 leader’s Persona movements in 1 week intervals, over a 6-month period. In the example above you can see that the leaders played the Catalyst, Engager and Responder roles primarily. The size of the bubbles reflects their relative number of connections made (breadth of influence), for that week. Not all leaders were active every week. What becomes interesting is that we find some leaders have preferred Personas that are sustained over time. Leaders 1 and 4 in this case have a preference for Catalysing and Engaging. Leader 5 prefers Responding. Leaders 2 and 3 appear to be comfortable switching between Personas.
What appears to be important here is that high performing groups need leaders that can cover the spectrum of positive Personas i.e. Catalyst, Engager, Responder. While it’s fine to have leaders who have a preference for a certain behavioural Persona, it is useful to have leaders who can adapt their Persona to the situation or context at hand.
Personal Networking Performance
At SWOOP we use a fundamental network performance framework, which measures performance against the complementary dimensions of cohesion and diversity. We have indicated that individuals with a large number of two-way connections are likely to have more closed and cohesive networks. Cohesive networks are good for getting things done (executing/implementing). From an innovation perspective however, closed networks can be impervious to new ideas. The best ideas come from more open and diverse networks. In our view therefore, maximum network performance occurs by optimising diversity and cohesion. In other words, it’s good to be part of a strong cohesive network, but this should not be at the expense of maintaining a healthy suite of more diverse connections.
In the graphic below we have plotted the members of one large group on the Network Performance graph. In this case the diversity is measured by the number of different groups that an individual has participated in. The size of the bubbles reflects the size of the individual’s network (breadth of influence).
We have labelled regions in the graph according to our Explore/Engage/Exploit model of innovation through networks. We can see that the majority of group members exist in the ‘High Diversity/Low Cohesion’ Explore region. This is consistent with what many people give for their reasons for joining a group. The ‘Engage’ region shows those members who are optimising their diversity/cohesion balance. These are the most important leaders in the group. In an innovation context, these people are best placed to broker the connections required to take a good idea into implementation. The bottom right corner is the Exploit region, which for this group is fairly vacant. This might suggest that this group would have difficulty organically deploying an innovation. They would need to take explicit steps to engage an implementation team to execute on the new products, services or practices that they initiate.
The Innovation Cycle – Create New Value for Your Organisation
We conclude this third edition of Yammer Benchmarking insights be reinforcing the role that individuals can play in creating new value for their organisations. For many organisations, the ESNs like Yammer are seen as a means for accelerating the level of innovation that is often stagnating within the formal lines of business.
As individual’s we may have a preference for a given style of working, as characterised by our Personas. Your personal networks may be large, open and diverse; or smaller, closed and cohesive; or indeed somewhere in between. It is important however to see how your collaboration behaviours contribute to the innovation performance of your organisation. Innovation is a collaborative activity, and therefore we recommend that in your groups you:
Avoid lone work (Observing/Broadcasting) and look to explore new ideas and opportunities collaboratively, online (Catalysing/Engaging/Responding).
Recognise that implementing good ideas needs resources, and those resources are owned by the formal lines of business. Use your network to engage with the resource holders. Make the connections. Influence on-line and off-line.
When you have organisational resources behind you, it’s time to go into exploit mode. Build the cohesive focussed teams to execute/implement, avoiding distractions until the job is done.