2013 Resolution For KMers: Conquering Emotion

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Our gift may take us someplace. Our character will keep us there. – Joel Osteen -

Ready or not, the year 2013 and the year of Snake (Chinese Lunar New Year) is here. How should we, the KMers, prepare ourselves to practice KM and offer KM solutions to our “customers” for the rest of the year?

Without trying to be religious, I think we should pay more attention to conquering our emotion. (Hear Joel Osteen’s sermon for some sound advices on why we should exercise self-control on our emotion). Now I don’t want to sound like a pastor about this matter, so I’ll only talk about the relationship between emotion and KM.

Mastering emotion is important for every serious KMers because of the following three reasons:

First, uncontrollable emotions is disastrous as it can impair our ability to make quality decision. In KM lingo: no matter how much knowledge that we capture or distribute, we would not be able to reuse it if we can’t control our emotion. Dan Ariely, the author of best seller book: Predictably Irrational, ran an experiment that indicates that emotion can indeed cloud our judgment.

Second, mastering personal emotion is the foundation to employee engagement, which will eventually leads to knowledge sharing culture in the organisation. As Peter Senge mentioned in his best selling book: The Fifth Discipline, personal mastery (i.e. ability to control personal emotion, grow self-efficacy, and find life’s purpose) comes before shared vision and team learning. With personal mastery, people are engaged in their work and understand that knowledge capture/sharing helps to internalise their knowledge.

Third, controlling personal emotion is necessary for dialogue to happen. (Read David Bohm’s definition on dialogue for clearer understanding on what dialogue really is). Without personal mastery, people may not have the will / motivation to listen on the other person’s perspective. So they may blame others for what happened during After Action Review (AAR) or Retrospect sessions –  despite being told to focus on the action, not about the person carrying the act. When dialogue fails, knowledge can’t be captured.

I hope I have convinced you on the virtue of controlling your emotion and thus enhancing your EQ. On this note, Daniel Goleman’s classic bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, is well worth the time to be re-read.

Thoughts?

The Rock That A Social Business Is Build Upon

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O

Perhaps you have been reading this blog for quite some time, and you can’t quite figure out what’s this blog is about. I probably talk about too many things that I confuse you, dear reader. Fret not, the day of reckoning is here. I’m going to share the ties that bind the vast topic that  I have been talking for the past four years. The one thing that unites topics in this blog.

First thing first, you are probably wondering about what do these terms have in common: social media, social intranet, social business/organisation, social collaboration, knowledge management (KM), and gamification?

Well, the answer is (drum-roll please) people! 

Pardon me if the answer seems so obvious. I know. I have ranted about how the KMers shouldn’t just emphasise on people just for the sake of talking about it. Putting people at the centre of all the big terms mentioned above requires action. Action makes the biggest difference.

But how should you act? What can you do to make people at the centre of your action? I have been mulling about this question for some time, and finally I had an epiphany recently. No it’s not about technology. And social technology, or user experience (UX) doesn’t quite answer the big question.

Chris Brogan has been talking about “human business” for a long time. And it finally cross my thick skull that Chris is right. It’s all about nurturing human relationship! That’s the whole point of having social media, social intranet, social business/organisation, knowledge management, and gamification.

The commonality between my opinion and Chris’ ends here, however. The “human business” (i.e. social business) that I’m referring to, is beyond than just social media or having a great conversation with people.

The social business that I’m referring here, is about creating and maintaining the whole ecosystem to support relationships within an organisation.

Social Business = Ecosystem within an organisation that supports relationship with yourself and relationship with others.

There are two kinds of relationship that needs to be nurtured and supported for every employee in every organisation:

  1. Relationship with yourself. (Also known as personal mastery or emotional intelligence).
  2. Relationship with others. (Also known as social intelligence).

Why do bosses need to care about the two relationships? Because helping people to nurture and manage the two relationships can impact business bottom-line big time.

Zappos helps their people to manage the two relationship by getting the new hires to think about themselves (i.e. whether they really want to work in Zappos), and inculcating great company culture such that people can have a great working relationship with one another.

A healthy relationship with yourself will lead to a happier (and a more productive) you. You will be motivated and engaged in your work. And you will have a more resilient mindset – which would boost your capability to bounce back from setbacks at work and in personal life.

While a healthy relationship with others will also lead to (surprise!) a happier you and those who work with you. Naturally, the level of trust would increase and people feel comfortable sharing their knowledge, or providing constructive feedback, via social technologies, i.e. social media and social intranet.

Building the two relationships is critical for the success of social business. Resilient employees (people who have achieved personal mastery) can build healthy relationship with other employees, customers, and partners. This could lead to co-creation on problem-solving, innovation, and productivity.

Managing relationships is the rock that social business is build upon.

So if you are thinking to transform your business to be a social business, think about how you can help people to have a healthy relationship with themselves and others. Reflect on this, will you?

Wishing all reader Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2013!

The Real Value of Having An Intranet Team

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Value

At the end of my talk, titled When Social Media Meets Social Intranet, in November 2012 at Max Atria at Expo in Singapore, a gentleman asked me about how to ensure that the investment in social technology (i.e. social media and social intranet) worth the effort.

He told me that his organisation has invested in Yammer. However, after some initial enthusiasms, few people are using it now. So he was particularly interested on how to get people in the organisation to use Yammer.

This is a very common problem for social intranet. When there is a new technology in the organisation, everyone would want to use it – just like a new toy. However, after some time, people may perceive that there is little value in using it. After all, what’s the use of “yammering” your thoughts or ideas? You have better things to do.

The issue here is, of course, an expectation to get instant rewards from the use of social technology (i.e. Yammer). To bust such an unrealistic expectation, remind people to regularly share thoughts / ideas via social technology. And get someone (or a team) to do the nudging, promoting, and curating valuable insights and to profile the person who owns the idea.

When valuable ideas are curated and shared, people can immediately see the value of using social technology because they can straightaway harvest the “gems” of knowledge and skip the unnecessary stuff – often caused by over-sharing.

In other words, communities within Yammer or the social technology need to be cultivated and valuable knowledge needs to be highlighted. Only in rare exception, communities within an organisation, can grow by themselves through self-policing and self-managing – without any intervention by the management.

Organisations have to do away with “build it and they would come” mentality. Thus, organisations can’t just implement yammer, and expect people to just use it. Implementing social technologies requires time, effort, and patience – just like rolling out any corporate-wide initiative.

This is why organisations need to have an intranet team – who would be tasked with cultivating communities and leading change management effort to ensure the adoption of social technology. An intranet team need to also curate knowledge, facilitate discussion, and organise face-to-face activities that could boost the use of social technology.

Those activities require a dedicated intranet team – especially if your organisation is a large enterprise. If your organisation is an SME (Small Medium Enterprise), you probably only need one person to do the job. Getting part-timers (or getting people to do double-hatting) would be a bad idea because their attention will be divided, or worse, the work of cultivating communities is pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

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When Social Media Meets Social Intranet Part 3

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Continued from When Social Media Meets Social Intranet Part 2

How Social Intranet Delivers Value
Social Intranet is an intranet where all employees can author content and connect easily. Alternatively, you can think of Social Intranet as an internal social media for organisations.

Like Social Media, Social Intranet can provide many values to the organisation. But, mainly, Social Intranet can provide two main values: (1) A Platform for Internal Collaboration; (2) A Means to Reinforce Purpose and to Facilitate Change.

1. A Platform for Internal Collaboration
Internal Collaboration simply means making work “social.” For example, Vodafone, a telecommunication company, uses Social Intranet to boost productivity of their sales team. Before implementation of Social Intranet, the sales people used to handle difficult customers alone. But thanks to Social Intranet, the sales people can exchange tips and best practices on handling difficult customers.

2. A Means to Reinforce Purpose and to Facilitate Change
Social Intranet can also be used to facilitate change. For example, Farm Bureau Bank (FBB) in the United States, uses Social Intranet to communicate top management vision via internal blogs and discussion forums.

Other than blogs and discussion forums, Social Intranet provides a platform to launch a mock “internal social media” campaign. Yammer, one of twitter-like features, can be part of Social Intranet, and this feature can be used to further break down information silos in the organisation because it is essentially a platform for personal branding – which means employees can build their personal brand as they share knowledge via Yammer.

Social Intranet is pretty much like Social Media. A good Social Intranet has features like social networking, tagging, video repository, blogs, ratings, and wikis.

If your organisation is interested in building a social intranet, I have three products to recommend: (1) Microsoft Sharepoint and Yammer; (2) Jive Software; and (3) Thought Farmer. And if your organisation is an SME and can’t afford to invest in a social intranet, your organisation may want to try a free, cloud-based social intranet named bitrix24.

How Social Business Delivers Value

To recap, Social Media offers two values: (1) An effective platform for PR 2.0; and (2) A Platform to Emotionally Connect with Customers. And Social Intranet offers these values: (1) A Platform for Internal Collaboration; and (2) A Means to Reinforce Purpose and to Facilitate Change.

Consolidating values from Social Media and Social Intranet, we can immediately see values that Social Business can deliver: (1) Capability to deliver exceptional customer experience; (2) Collaborate better to improve productivity or to innovate; and (3) Be a more nimble organisation.

Two real-life examples illustrate the value of Social Business:
First, Samsung. By maintaining an active presence in Social Media and having a great Social Intranet, Samsung creates a service innovation called the smart care – which is a one-stop centre for servicing Samsung products.
Second, Xilinx who like Samsung, has an active presence in Social Media and a great Social Intranet. As a result, Xilinx raise engineers’ productivity by 25%.

Last slide. Three key take-away from this talk: (1) Organisations have to be in Social Media; (2) Social Media has to be supported by Social Intranet; and (3) Transform your organisation to be a Social Business to survive in today’s economy. Values are created, no longer through superior product or service, but through premium experience.

This blog post is part 3 of When Social Media Meets Social Intranet. Here are the links to all blog post:

When Social Media Meets Social Intranet Part 2

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Continued from When Social Media Meets Social Intranet Part 1

How Social Media Delivers Value
Social media can deliver many values to organisations. But the two main values are: (1) An effective platform for PR 2.0; (2) A platform to emotionally connect with the customers.

I’m sure you can agree with me that capability to effectively use social media is no longer a choice, because today’s customers are the most difficult customers ever! Today’s customers are citizen journalists – which means customers can voice out their displeasure through social media like blog posts, Facebook posts, or Twitter.

How many of you have heard of a gentleman by the name of Jeff Jarvis? He is a prominent tech blogger who in 2005, wrote a blog post titled: “Dell lies. Dell Sucks.” In the blog post, Jarvis ranted about how poor Dell customer service was, and the blog post attracted over 100 “Me Too” comments. Imagine a simple blog post gets multiplied 100 times.

The Need for Social Media Policy
The first step to ensure that social media delivers value, is to put social media policies in place. The right policies can help to protect the organisation’s reputation from misuse of the social media by the employee.

Let me give you two examples. First, Ashley Payne – a school teacher in the US – was sacked by the school because she posted a photo of herself drinking alcohol in her Facebook. Ashley Payne sued the school for unfair dismissal.

Second, in Singapore context, Straits Times was in hot water recently because a disgruntled employee tweeted profanity using their corporate Twitter account. Regardless of your opinion about the two cases, you don’t want a lawsuit filed against your organisation or your employees abuse the corporate social media account.

Creating social media policy is fast becoming a necessity for organisations. According to research, 47% of Facebook walls contain profanity, but should employers give a darn?

Yes! Absolutely. Because a simple social media policy is often sufficient to prevent the misuse of corporate social media account. Take for example: Ford who came out with a simple social media policy that says: “Play Nice, Be Honest.” But my favorite is Oracle’s social media policy that says: “Employees must establish that all opinions are their own and not Oracle’s, but at the same time, distinguish that they are indeed employees of Oracle.” It’s my favorite because it covers all angle, Singapore’s style.

Let’s return to how social media delivers value.

1. An Effective Platform for PR 2.0
Social media is an effective platform for PR 2.0. Facebook can be used to serve as the corporate magazine to update customers on the latest happenings in the organisation like what Zappos did on their corporate Facebook. Twitter can be used as a broadcasting tool to update customers on the latest products / promotions like what Starbucks did on their corporate Twitter. And Youtube can be used to serve as a repository for corporate videos to convince customers that the product/service is indeed the best out there, just like what Popeye Chicken did on their youtube account.

Furthermore, social media can be used as a means to showcase social proof. For example, Sony used Pinterest as a digital brochure that can showcase the number of likes that a product/service received. The number of likes is a social proof that some customers out there like the product/service.

2. A Platform to Emotionally Connect with the Customers
Social media can also be used as a platform to emotionally connect with the customers. What do I mean by connecting emotionally? A product/service is more than just what it is. A product/service means a tool to improve the standard of living of your customers, i.e. a way to make them happy. Connecting emotionally means highlighting the story behind a product/service, on how a product/service makes the customer happy.

Here are two stories to highlight this point: (1) University of Phoenix tells stories in Youtube about how online degrees improve the standard of living of their students; (2) Tom Shoes tells stories, using a corporate blog, about how the company helps disadvantaged children, in developing world, who have no shoes.

But no matter how well-crafted the social media policy is, and how good the creative content is, social media can still backfires as what McDonald and Nestle found out recently. McDonald’s Twitter campaign to collect positive stories backfires when it was swarmed by negative stories about McDonald’s product. While Nestle’s Facebook campaign backfires when a group of environmentalists posted modified logo of Nestle’s products. It got worse when Nestle staff tried to stop them from doing so.

So what can we do to prevent a social media campaign to turn against what it is intended to be?

Well, first things first, the organisation has to let go of control. There is no method or procedure that can 100% guarantee the success of a social media campaign. The next best thing your organisation can do is to use more of its internal knowledge (i.e. collective intelligence).

Let’s go back on McDonald and Nestle’s case. McDonald could have done better if they test their assumption internally, by conducting a mock internal campaign for example. While Nestle could have done better by testing the replies internally before posting them on their Facebook page. Nestle is so big – some of its staff could be environmentalists and could craft a better response.

So the use of Social Media has to be supported by Social Intranet, because Social Intranet provides a safe haven for testing ideas/assumptions within the organisation. But what is Social Intranet, really? Let’s discuss it in the next blog post.

This blog post is part 2 of When Social Media Meets Social Intranet. Here are the links to all blog post:

When Social Media Meets Social Intranet Part I

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I had fun giving a talk, titled When Social Media Meets Social Intranet, on 22 November 2012, at Max Atria, Expo, Singapore. The talk was part of Fuji Xerox Empowers 2012.

Here is the video:

When Social Media Meets Social Intranet from Roan Yong on Vimeo.

And here is the slides of my talk:

In addition to slides and video, I also provide the script below – so that you can have a preview of the content before you watch the video and can have an accompanying text while going through the slides. Happy reading!

Many organisations failed to make use of social media as a competitive strategy. For example: Goldman Sachs, a leader in banking industry, failed to make their corporate Facebook page thrive. Goldman Sachs’ Facebook page is devoid of any activity just like a ghost-town.

So too, SMRT, a leader in transportation industry in Singapore. SMRT, when they first started their corporate twitter account in 2011, put this statement: “We’re here, 9am – 6pm, Mon – Fri (Excluding public holiday)”. A statement which doesn’t suit the 24/7 nature of social media and reflect badly on SMRT’s capability to effectively use social media.

Organisations have to learn how to effectively use social media because millions of people are in the social media now. And the number keeps on growing day by day. Furthermore, according to research, 50% of web sales is going to occur by 2015 – less than three years from now.

But to effectively use social media, organisations need to also build a supporting infrastructure, i.e. social intranet, so that organisations can transform themselves to be a social business.

So what is a social business?

According to IBM, social business is a business that embraces networks of people to create business value. Networks of people are referring to employees, customers, and partners. This definition obviously makes sense because, employees and partners are actually internal customers! It’s impossible to make your customers happy while neglecting your internal customers at the same time.

To understand how social business deliver value for organisations, let’s look at its two components: Social Media and Social Intranet. Let’s first zoom-in to social media in the next blog post.

This blog post is part 1 of When Social Media Meets Social Intranet. Here are the links to all blog post:

Prostituting Change: Why The World Doesn’t Need Pussy Riot or Femen

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One of my favorite tv-series in the 1990s was Dark Justice. Check out the opening video clip above. It contains the coolest opening line ever – too bad it is in German. (No, I don’t speak German, but it is the best quality video that I could find in Youtube).

Here is what it says:

As a cop, I lost my case due to legal loopholes, but I believe in the system.

As a DA (District Attorney), I lost my case due to crooked lawyer, but I believe in the system.

As a judge, my hands are bound by the letter of the law, but I believe in the system.

Until it took my wife away. And then I stopped believing in the system. And start believing in Justice!

The Dark Justice opening lines are not only cool, but also emotionally engaging. Everybody lives within systems, whether it is a justice system, social system, technological system, cultural system, or any other system that exists in this world. Systems are everywhere!

But not everyone is happy with the system. Groundswell initiatives like Occupy Wall Street and its variants, Slutwalk, and more recently Pussy Riot and Femen -  show a disturbing trend. People began to believe that they can radically change the system by simply voicing their displeasure via the social media or by staging civil disorder acts.

Perhaps the rise of social media emboldens people, especially the gen-Ys (a.k.a. the Facebook generation), to commit these socially irresponsible acts. But as a gen-Y myself, I can hardly see the value of staging a protest inside a church ala Pussy Riot, or a naked protest ala Femen (uh-oh, thank God, Femen members are all female. See Femen’s Not Safe For Work publicity stunt here and here).

And what do these so called activists get in return? Far from reaching their goals, pussy riot members are indicted and convicted to two-years jail term, and Femen members are subjected to sexual jokes. What a pathetic, lame, and sad effort to launch a change initiative.

A better alternative to launch a change initiative is through a concerted lobbying campaign ala KONY 2012 or 350.org, that can spark a change initiative within the system. Yes, this requires lots of planning, strategising, and communicating – things that Pussy Riot and Femen don’t want to do.

Pussy Riot and Femen prefer to take a shortcut to change by creating maximum publicity with as minimal effort as possible. They are not heroes. They are publicity-seeking lazy bums who are naive enough to think that they can change the world.

Alas the world doesn’t reward laziness. There is no shortcut to change. In fact, there is no shortcut to anything without creating anarchy. Members of Pussy Riot and Femen got what they deserve for being anarchists. The world certainly won’t miss anarchists.

What’s your opinion? 

10 Interesting Contestants of Miss World 2012

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Miss China won miss world 2012 Wohoo! I’m happy for her because I’m chinese and I’m displaying my chinese solidarity. Furthermore, to best of my knowledge, this is the first time an asian won an international beauty contest. I think. Go figure if this is correct.

But seriously, why can’t they pick a better-looking, more articulate and sweet looking miss Hong Kong? Or the beautiful miss Macau? The judges must be blind. Or it could be because of the heat in Ordos – the chinese ghost town in Inner Mongolia, China.

Check out miss Hong Kong

And miss Macau

Among the three Chinese women, my favorite is definitely miss Hong Kong. Pretty girl, she is. My other favorite race of contestants is White. Here are the four most beautiful White contestants – in my opinion:

1. Miss USA 2012

2. Miss Spain 2012

3. Miss Mexico 2012

4. Miss Poland 2012

What do you think of them? Absolutely gorgeous right?

So far, I have shown you my six top contestants. Next, I will show you four contestants that illustrate the effect of multiculturalism philosophy. Here they are:

1. Miss Portugal 2012

2. Miss Belgium 2012

3. Miss South Africa 2012

4. Miss Australia 2012

I’m not going to comment on their looks. I will leave the honor to you – dear reader.

So that’s it folks! The 10 contestants whom I think are interesting. Six of them are interesting because they are beautiful. The remaining four are interesting because they represent multiculturalism.

Who are your favorite contestants?

Two Things All “Insanely Simple” Practitioners Must Do

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Almost every UX specialists, Information Architect, Content Strategist and other design professionals preach the need for simplicity. Yes, more people are joining the church of “Insanely Simple” – a philosophy championed by the late Steve Job and one that helped Apple to gain tech-world supremacy (for now at least).

I, too, belong to the church of Insanely Simple. And I’m sure millions of others would soon join the Insanely Simple cult – especially after they watched an engaging TED talk, titled “Simplicity Sells”, by David Pogue. Here, I embed the video for you. Watch it if you haven’t. It well worth your time.

Totally convinced that simplicity is the way to go? Great! Welcome to the real world. I say that because, from now on, you would have to think on how to implement Insanely Simple philosophy to your daily work.

(*Ahem*) It’s time to embark on a transformation, from a believer to a practitioner. And this transformation, my friend, is not an easy one – nor it is a short one. Talking about Insanely Simple requires no effort, but practicing it requires lots of hard work.

To practice the Insanely Simple philosophy, you need to know what to work at.  And, like many of you, I had no idea where to begin until recently – when I had an epiphany when I was creating the presentation for my talk, titled “The Rise of Citizen Developers” in Singapore Mini Maker Faire.

Insanely Simple philosophy involves work in two main areas:

1. Making User Interface Intuitive (Or Product Design)

Apple excels in this area, because its products are to intuitive to use. Pick any iPad, iPhone, or Macbook, and chances are, people will tell you that they don’t need manuals to learn how to use the Apple products, i.e. they learn through trial-and-error.

The product manual is the lead indicator on whether you still need to invest your time and effort on user interface – especially on making it simple-to-use. Ask yourselves the following questions:

  • How thick is your product manual?
  • How long does it take for average users to be proficient in using the product?
  • Do people able to use the product without reading the manual?

If the answer to the last question is no, then congratulations! You have achieved a gold standard in user interface design – which is kinda important considering less time is needed to persuade people to use your product and adopt it in their daily routine.

2. Designing Customer Service Processes (Or Service Design)

Great product alone is not enough to improve user experience because user experience is the total sum of engagement experience since the product is acquired until it is discarded.

Therefore Insanely Simple philosophy should go beyond products’ user interface. Practitioners should also think about how the customers being served during purchase time, during the life span of the product, and when the product is no longer required.

In other words, Insanely Simple practitioners must also think about customer service processes. Excellence in this area means people can get services related to their product without getting frustrated.

Some ideas to provide better service design are:

  • Simplifying the procedures that your customers have to go through
  • Shortening the idle period when waiting for services
  • Providing training for your customers at their convenience

Of course the above list is by no means exhaustive. There are millions of other ways to WOW the customers during customer service process. The sky is the limit.

There you go. The two work areas that you have to do to be Insanely Simple practitioners! Any thought on this?

The Rise of (Intranet) Citizen Developers

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Singapore Mini Maker FaireI was honored to be one of the speakers at the first-ever Singapore Mini-Maker Faire, at Singapore Science Centre (Newton Room) on 4 August 2012.

The working title of my talk was “the rise of enchanters”. I decided to change it to “the rise of citizen developers” as I felt that the term “citizen developers” is more apt for the event and is more inline with the maker culture.

In case you missed it, here is the slides of my presentation.

And here is the outline of my talk. (P/S: read the following text and go through the above slides at the same time – if you want optimal learning experience).

My talk is divided into three parts: (I) The Advent of Experience Economy; (II) The Rise of Digital Native Leaders: Citizen Developers; and (III) A New Class Awakens: Intranet Citizen Developers.

Part I. The Advent of Experience Economy

We live in an experience economy (Exp.onomy) – an economy where people are willing to pay premium price to have memorable experience when using products/services.

So organisations today can create value for their customers, not through superior product or excellent services, but through premium experience.

Let me give you several examples to illustrate the experience economy.

1. Nokia N-gage. It was a great product that combines phone capability and that of gaming console. Unfortunately, it was also a clunky device. And to make it worse, Nokia didn’t offer enough support for gamers. For example, questions like “what happened to my game license when I changed phone line?” are never adequately addressed by Nokia.

2. Microsoft Passport. It was a great product which offered great service. The idea behind it was to provide a single logon services to many Microsoft product. How cool is that? Unfortunately Microsoft didn’t pay enough attention to user experience (UX). The logon windows in Microsoft Passport pop-up many times even when they are not supposed to.

3. Google Wave. Like Microsoft, in Google Wave, Google has a great product that offers great service. Unfortunately Google Wave doesn’t have a clear value proposition! No one knows what Google Wave is and how to use it (it is too complicated to use).

4. Apple Inc. One of the few companies who understand that we are living in exp.onomy is Apple. The key to Apple success is their Insanely Simple design philosophy – which translate into: (a) simple product design that is intuitive to use and (b) simple service process.

This sort of insight (i.e. how to succeed in exp.onomy) is becoming important – especially in the age of social media where people are empowered to be citizen journalist.

Speaking of citizen journalism, one company that don’t get it is Dell. In 2005, a famous tech blogger, Jeff Jarvis, complained about Dell’s product and service. Jarvis’ blog post gets more than 100 comments. (A simple rant is amplified more than 100 times!)

Apparently, in 2009, Dell still doesn’t get it. A customer said that he preferred to buy a new, non-Dell laptop than going through Dell customer service hell.

In contrast, Apple made service process simple. If a customer shows up at its service centre with a broken device, then Apple sales rep would either fix it on the spot or offer a replacement. It is that simple!

Part II. The Rise of Digital-Native Leaders: Citizen Developers

In an environment where there is an insatiable need to have premium experience, who should take the lead?

Let examine several candidates.

Candidates #1. Techies. There are the kind of people who has good technical expertise but low empathy. These folks are in love with the sophistication of the product, and to them, customer experience is about providing a thick manual.

Obviously techies aren’t the best leaders for the exp.onomy.

Candidates #2. Business People. These are the kind of people with high empathy but low technical expertise. The Business folks are in tune with the premium experience that people crave for. Alas, they are often held back by their Engineers and thus succumb to low-tech means to provide premium experience.

Without technology, the Business people fall short of meeting the WOW factor in giving premium experience.

The kind of leader that we need, is business people who can tinker Ala Tony Stark (aka Ironman), who has high technical expertise and high empathy.

Developing ourselves to be such leader is easier than we think, because of the LEGO-tisation of programming. That is, programming using building block (Object Oriented Programming), or assembling third-party software.

The business people who can thinker is also known as the citizen developers. And these are the people who can empathise, prototype, and excite the ground.

Part III. A New Class Awakens: Intranet Citizen Developers

All medium to large enterprise require intranet because as the number of employees grows, email can’t meet the need to organise the enterprise information. Only intranet has the chance to meet the growing need to organise information within the organisation.

The problem is, intranet has to be custom-made. This is because each organisation has unique information need as a result of different groups of people, different business context, and the different content that the organisation consumes and produces.

Because intranet has to be custom-made, it is usually expensive. This lucrative industry is ruled by rapacious vendors who would push as many custom-made function as possible to milk as much money as they can from their clients. The biggest victim is, of course, the powerless employees who crave for a premium experience in information management.

This situation gives rise to intranet exp.onomy. And this intranet exp.onomy is going to get bigger – thanks to social media, cloud computing and mobile devices that complicate the management of information.

Fortunately, like many others in technology industry, intranet is being LEGO-tised. And Microsoft is taking the lead in the LEGO-tisation of the intranet with their hot-selling product: Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 (Sharepoint 2013 on its way).

Sharepoint is built based on webparts (in a way, apps-based), and it can be used in conjunction with other Microsoft products like Access, Excel, Infopath and Visual Studio. So, essentially, Sharepoint is giving you a free-hand in shaping solution to meet customers’ needs.

Microsoft invested a lot in Sharepoint – especially with the recent $1.2b acquisition of Yammer (or better known as corporate Facebook). So, it may be worthwhile to learn about Sharepoint.

The point is, with Sharepoint, you can transform yourself from weak passive employees to be proactive intranet citizen developers. To be a good intranet citizen developers, however, you need more than just a skill in Sharepoint. You also need to know Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Change Management, Usability, and Service Design.

So join me in a journey to change the world – one premium experience at a time.

Check out the video clip of my talk below.


RiseofCitizenDevelopers from Roan Yong on Vimeo.

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