S.M.A.R.T. Blog

Denovati, Here We (Be)Come!

Earlier this year we announced an initiative to create a new brand identity for the SMinOrgs Community. This blog post details the reasons for making the switch, as well as the 13 criteria we developed for selecting the best new brand. As the effort evolved, it became evident that what we were doing was much bigger than simply coming up with a new name for SMinOrgs. It was really about rebranding and consolidating SMinOrgs, the Renaissance Strategic Solutions consultancy, and the Global Center for Digital Era Leadership (GCDEL) under a single unified identity.

The results of a survey we conducted in February to solicit feedback on the four brand options we had identified produced a clear winner: Denovati (day-no-VAH-tee), which translates roughly as follows:

• DE = Digital Era
• NOV = short for novani, the Latin term for colonists, immigrants, new residents...
• ATI = those who seek knowledge and/or are in the know

Put another way, the Denovati are Digital Era explorers, pathfinders and immigrants who seek to understand and effectively leverage new social and digital technologies.

The Denovati Group can be viewed as an alliance that enhances the success of individuals and organizations in the Digital Era. Here's an overview of how the alliance will be organized, along with some of our working taglines (click the image to enlarge it).

 

 

Our working short descriptions are as follows:

• The Denovati Group enhances the success of individuals and organizations in the Digital Era through research, thought leadership and guidance, consulting and training services, and a professional community that fosters communication and collaboration.
• The S.M.A.R.T. Blog explores the applications and implications of Social Media And Related Technologies in organizations, focusing on both opportunities and challenges from both conceptual and tactical perspectives.
• S.M.A.R.T. Resources include white papers, research reports, ebooks and other materials that provide both strategic and tactical Digital Era guidance for individuals and organizations.
• Denovati Solutions (formerly Renaissance Strategic Solutions) helps individuals and organizations function more efficiently and effectively in the Digital Era through the design and implementation of innovative and leading-edge strategies and programs.
• The Denovati Network (formerly the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community) is a global, multi-disciplinary professional community that helps individuals at all skill levels successfully navigate Digital Era opportunities and challenges.
• Through research and thought leadership, the Denovati Institute (formerly the Global Center for Digital Era Leadership (GCDEL) and SMinOrgs) provides a forum for exploring important Digital Era issues that individuals, organizations, economies and societies face.

We are still finalizing our brand identity, including the logo and color scheme, and have started building our new website and related digital network. We'll be revealing additional changes gradually, targeting a full official reveal by the end of May.

Stay tuned... Lots of new and exciting developments are in the works!

Do People Need Social Media Training? Yes. And (Much) More.

Earlier this year I shared my thoughts about online social learning communities in response to a Forbes post by Meghan Biro. This post supplements those ideas by reflecting on a 2012 series written by Shel Holtz about social media training:

• Part 1: Introducing a series on social media training
• Part 2: Getting buy-in for social media training
• Part 3: Research is at the heart of social media training
• Part 4: Social media training for employees: decisions, decisions
• Part 5: Should C-suites and boards of directors be exempt from social media training?

I'm always glad to see others write about the need for education and training, which becomes more important as the gap between technological and human capabilities continues to grow. I especially appreciate the thought and effort leaders like Shel Holtz put into helping leaders understand why the issue is important and how it can be addressed most effectively.

But just as marketing is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the applications of new communications technologies, so is social media training when it comes to Digital Era competencies. Based on my own research and writing on the subject, as well as the preliminary results of some focus groups on digital competencies I've been conducting, I offer the following considerations for both individuals and organizations:

1. As internal applications and implications of social and digital technologies expand (and will become far more pervasive and relevant to workers of all types), the training provided by organizations will need to expand as well. The focus must move beyond external discussions on public platforms to internal communication and collaboration on private digital networks. No functional area is exempt.

2. Our prevailing LIY (Learn It Yourself) attitude may have some limited effectiveness for personal uses of new technologies, but it is both inefficient and ineffective for professional uses. Most people - and especially later adopters - need help to develop the competencies they need. There has to be a balance between formal and informal learning, with different weights applied to each depending on an individual's baseline competencies. The ultimate goal, however, should be to enable people to engage in self-directed learning.

3. Education and training will have to range from high-level concepts to specific skills. Everyone should know how to do basic tasks like insert and crop an image and hyperlink text, for example, but they should also have at least a basic understanding of things like the role of mobile technology in commerce and legal considerations for both individuals and organizations.

4. Similarly, we have to focus on both the simple and complex. Yes, learning can often be boiled down to a few simple points, but those points hardly reflect everything someone needs to know. For example, knowing basic accounting principles like "assets = liabilities + owners' equity" and "revenue - expenses = net profit" is important, but that knowledge hardly qualifies someone to be a bookkeeper, let alone a CPA or CFO. 

5. Education and training must also address strategic and tactical considerations, again to varying degrees depending on the learners and the learning objectives. In addition to knowing what they need to do and how, professionals - and especially organizational leaders - need to understand why they should be be doing it.

6. Not everything can or should be taught in house. Some aspects of education and training should be customized, but general concepts and skills can be developed through more standard approaches. We need more valuable services to provide what organizations need - and organizational leaders must be willing to make the necessary investments in those services.

7. Higher education - especially in professional schools like business - has a critical role to play in developing competent Digital Era professionals and effective Digital Era leaders. There is MUCH more that they can and should be doing to create the necessary foundations for ongoing professional development of all types.

You can learn more about Digital Era competencies and the need for education and training through the Related Resources listed below. I encourage folks to share additional resources and especially welcome comments and questions about the challenges faced by digital rookies and what they need to bridge their own digital divides.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD 

 

Related Resources

10 Digital Era Truths

Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU

Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up?

What's Your Social Media Sophistication? The SMQ (version III)

Social Media Education and Training: Pro or Con? Please Discuss…

Social Media Education & Training: Where We Are. Where We’re Going.

A Master’s Degree Specialization in Social Media & Online Communities

Digital Era Leadership: The Role of Business Schools

For even more resources, check out slides 35-42 from my closing Impact99 keynote, The Road Forward: Striving for Balance. More recent pieces can be found in the blog archives from December to the present. 

Welcome to the Digital Era. Now What Do You Do?

Like many professionals - especially those who have attained "senior" status - you are probably unsure of the steps you need to take to enhance your skillset to include digital competencies. If that's the case, you may benefit from participating in a discussion group focused on Digital Era opportunities and challenges. This post provides details and an invitation...

===//===

Earlier this year I gave presentations to two groups of senior professionals in transition. With the first group, comprised of HR professionals, I talked about what it means to be a leader in the Digital Era. For the second group, which included 100+ people from all functional areas, I gave a formal presentation on career management and job search.

One of the most profound take-aways from both sessions was the sincere interest the attendees had in better understanding social and digital technologies and how they can be used by individuals and organizations. They fully understand they can no longer dismiss social media as a fad, but they've barely begun to leverage new technologies to achieve their goals - primarily because they are overwhelmed by the possibilities and have no clue where to start.

Over the past several years I've researched and written about Digital Era leadership, digital competencies, and the need for formal education and training, but I always felt like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness. It's very exciting to now see signs of a growing appetite and demand for learning and understanding among later adopters, especially those who occupy senior ranks.

To capitalize on this interest and determine the best ways to help these professionals climb the necessary learning curves, I have decided to run some discussion groups focused on Digital Era opportunities and challenges, from both individual and organizational perspectives. These sessions, which begin next week, will help me better understand the perspective and needs of digital rookies in particular, and will help participants better understand what they need to know/do to be successful as their careers progress.

The initial focus groups are comprised of senior professionals from all functional areas who are currently in job transition, but I also welcome the opportunity to talk with people who are currently working and those in earlier career stages. 

If you'd like to participate in one of these focus groups, please send a message expressing your interest to focus@sminorgs.net. Please be sure to include a link to your LinkedIn profile, so I can learn more about you. In the short term these groups will be face-to-face, so participation will be limited to folks in/near Chicago, but we can experiment with virtual discussions as well if there's enough interest.

Thanks! I look forward to hearing from you.

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Related Resources

Welcome to the Digital Era

• 10 Digital Era Truths (link)
• The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards (link)
• Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up? (link)
• Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU (link)
• "Social Media" is SO 2009! 7 Proposed Semantic Upgrades (link)

Digital Era Leadership

• What Does it Take to be a Leader in the Digital Era? (link)
• 4 Big Barriers to Social Media Adoption in Organizations: Key Research Findings (link)
• Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road (link)
• The Social Media ROI Challenge: Are We Making Progress? (link)

 For additional resources, check out slides 44-51 in the Job Search in the Digital Era presentation deck.

 

Custom Google Maps: A Great Digital Engagement Tool

 

One of my favorite features of Google Maps is the ability to create personalized maps that you can save and share. I've used the feature to map out a route (and more) when we took a road trip through the Western United States in 2011, and to develop a daily tourist itinerary for a visit to Dublin, Ireland in the fall of 2012. 

But custom Google maps aren't just useful to individuals. They also have a variety of potential applications for organizations, groups, and communities, which can use them in ways that produce value for both themselves and their individual members/stakeholders.

 

Key Features

Google maps are...

Visual. The popularity of infographics and sites like Pinterest and SlideShare clearly demonstrate how much people appreciate visual displays. Google maps are a great way to show geographically-oriented information in a visual way. Here are some examples:

• We have created a Member Map to illustrate both the geographic diversity and relative distribution of the membership in our LinkedIn group. In a similar vein, non-profit organizations could use them to share chapter information, chambers of commerce could display member businesses, and academic institutions could use them to illustrate where their graduates have ended up (an alumni diaspora if you will).
• ERE.net has a EREjobs map that enables recruiters to "navigate through recent recruiting job openings geographically."
• Craig's List created a housing map that shows properties for sale and rent, as well as sublets and available rooms.
• Google has a 2007 Googleplex map that displays "photos of life at Google Headquarters."
• The America's Highway project produced the America's Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66 map.

 

Customizable: As many of the examples above illustrate, the pins on a custom map can include more than simple text. They can include photos and links to websites as well. You can also change the pin icons themselves and format the text in a variety of ways, and even edit the html.

 

Flexible. Map owners can choose whether to make their maps public or keep them "unlisted." They can also opt to leave the map in its Google location or embed it on their own website (as we have done).

 

Collaborative. Map owners can invite other individuals to develop and edit individual maps.

 

Dynamic. As soon as there's a significant change, most maps can be updated quickly and easily.

 

Engaging. There are many ways to use Google maps to generate interest and dialogue. At the simplest level, people who view the map can rate it or write a comment directly on the map. When the map is embedded in a website, it can also stimulate discussions about the map's contents and/or give people an incentive to take action. Finally, the map and its activity can be shared via social media to regularly invite people to check it out and engage. Here's one of our recent tweets as an example:

Toronto is the seventh urban area to hit 100 members! ow.ly/iaX8v Check out our updated member map!

 

General Development Tips

You can get super-fancy with Google Maps, which involves lots of coding and technical skills. But as Google themselves noted when they introduced the feature in 2007, it doesn't have to be complicated. You can create a fairly simple map manually, using a free service like this one, or by converting data in an spreadsheet to a KML file (we used BatchGeo for this) and then uploading it (if you'd like specific tips on doing that, please email maps@sminorgs.net).

Here are a few specific lessons Assistant Community Manager Sean Pearson and I learned from our recent efforts:

1. Every map has an "owner," who has to have a Gmail account. Rather than having the owner be an individual, it's probably better to create a Gmail account using a corporate identity (i.e., myorg@gmail.com).
2. If you have map collaborators who don't have access to the login credentials for the corporate Gmail account, each of those collaborators will also need a Gmail account.
3. Individual Google maps are limited to 200 pins. If you're going to need more than that, you'll have to collapse pins and/or create multiple maps.
4. Determine how you want to display the list of pins on the left-hand side of the map, focusing on an arrangement that best meets your goals and makes the most sense to a map viewer. Once you've determined that order, make sure the pin list accurately reflects that order, both when the map is created and as you add to it. It's very easy to drag and drop the list items to create the desired order.
5. It's also very simple to embed a custom map on a web page. Google creates the code; the only adjustment you may have to make is to correct the height and width to fit in the space you've allocated.
6. The default url for custom maps is L-O-N-G! Google will also create a short url for you. If you don't plan to embed the map in your own website, use the short url.

If you're experienced with creating custom Google maps and have other tips to suggest, we'd love to hear them. And although we're no experts, we're also happy to try to answer any questions you may have.

Happy mapping!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt