The Name of the Thing

The name of your social intranet or social business platform is important. It's what people should be entering into their browser everyday (if not bookmarked or set as their home page).  They should associate certain things with it.  It's a brand.  Don't be fooled into thinking it's anything else.

There's a philosophy out there that says the name of a thing (or person) has a huge influence on the nature of that thing.  My husband looked into it when we couldn't figure out why our amazingly beautiful cat, Zella, was so hostile.  She loved my husband, put up with me, and hissed and clawed at everyone else.  So one day my husband decided to look up what the name Zella meant and found out it was a German derivative for "the hostile one".  The name fit.  If he had only named her Fluffy or Rainbow we would have had a very different cat.


My point is that real thought should be put into the name of your social intranet.  Your end-users will associate negative or positive connotations you may have not thought through if you make the naming decision too quickly.  Some names I've seen used at multiple companies are "Connect", "Engage", "The Hub", "MyCompany", "OneCompany", and "The Mix".  The interesting thing about The Mix is one consumer products good company and one medical devices company both used that name.  The fun thing is they could both use slogans like "Mix it Up" or "Are you in the Mix?".  

Try to find something that plays off your company name, culture, or corporate mission.  You want to grab the hearts and minds of the end-user.  When I was at my last company I ran an idea campaign to crowdsource the name.  We ended up with Hal (a "2001: A Space Odyssey" reference for all of you non-geeks out there) as our new intranet name.  It was perfect.  It exemplified our company culture and by crowdsourcing the name got a lot more people invested in the name and the new intranet.  At my current company our intranet is called Brewspace.  It's another great play off the culture but also plays into the concepts of innovation and collaboration with the thought of brewing up ideas.

So please don't make your social intranet name an afterthought.  If you don't have a brain that works that way (mine doesn't) bring in some brains that do.  Or crowdsource it.  You want a name that will inspire people to work differently.

Do you have an awesome name for your social intranet?  Please share it in the comments.  (And for the rest of you there is no shame in cloning greatness.)

  This post was written in memory of Zella, the beautiful and hostile cat, whom we lost this week.

Kudos to You

(I originally published this on the NewsGator blog but given today's CMSWire #socbizchat on Employee Engagement I thought it was appropriate to re-post.)

According to Gallup “Actively disengaged employees erode an organization's bottom line while breaking the spirits of colleagues in the process. Within the U.S. workforce, Gallup estimates this cost to be more than $300 billion in lost productivity alone.”¹  And that’s just the disengaged employees who stay at the company.  What about the ones who leave?  Many companies I work with have found that their highest attrition rates are with employees who have been with the company for less than 5 years.  That’s the group with whom they haven’t yet had the chance to recoup their recruiting and training costs.  Lower your attrition rates and you lower your recruiting and training expenses.  These are just two reasons to make sure you have engaged employees.

One of things that Gallup asks participants to rank in their Employee Engagement survey² is “In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work”.   Receiving recognition for a job well done is a key indicator (one of Gallup’s 12 key indicators) of employee engagement.  According to Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class (I interpret “creative” to mean “innovative”) modern workers are motivated significantly by peer recognition³.   Who doesn’t like getting a pat on the back?

So where am I going with this?  Well, I use the stats to back up the use of Kudos badges within an organization.  These are badges (depending on your social business platform) that anyone in the company can give to anyone else by going to that person’s profile on the intranet, choosing an icon that matches the reason for recognition, and adding a description of why you are giving this person a Kudo.  I gave a Kudos badge to a co-worker and it looked like this:

Hopefully this made Brian feel good to be recognized for the work he does.  I also targeted his manager and his manager’s manager, to make sure they knew what the customer had said and to reinforce that Brian rocks.  One of the reasons peer-to-peer recognition is so important is that peers are often closer to the work a person is doing than the manager is.  This isn’t the first time I’ve given a Kudos badge but for some reason something really struck me this time.  You want to know what I found?  Giving the kudos made me feel good too.  This doesn’t mean I’m going to go on a random Kudos-giving binge to everyone for managing to wear matching socks.  It might mean though that I’m more likely to give a Kudos badge the next time someone stands out by doing an excellent job.  And if I do it more often others will too.  And if the theory is true that one of our significant drivers is peer recognition, that might just mean we are all more likely to exceed expectations on a regular basis.

What would be interesting is to tie Kudos into our performance reviews.  They could be a virtual take on 360 degree inputs. 

What about you?  How are you driving peer-to-peer recognition?  Have you tied social into existing processes like performance reviews?

1.  http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/121535/Employee-Engagement-Overview-Brochure.aspx  page 1, last paragraph

2.  hhttp://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/121535/Employee-Engagement-Overview-Brochure.aspx  page 2

3.  http://www.peoplemetrics.com/blog/5-tips-3-approaches-for-encouraging-peer-to-peer-recognition/