Category Archives: social media

Is the new Linkedin app a game changer?

I must admit I have had a love hate relationship with Linkedin.

Loved it for its contact management relationship building power and the amazing groups which I see as modern digital communities of practice, Hated it for the clunky nature of searching – you have to go looking for interesting updates, even the email alerts prove too spammy as they only tell you an update has been made, not its content.

Until recently it hasnt fitted into my online workflow as say Twitter or Flipboard has (scan, save to instapaper, read offline at leisure then archive to Evernote)

I say until recently … the new iPad Linkedin app I am begining to see as a game changer. It has been designed as a morning feed app – ie you can bring yourself up to date with news from your contacts and updates to groups over a morning coffee, and note interesting articles for reading later, With a similar concept to Flipboard, it brings a brand new look and feel to the social network, and its a pleasure to use.

Since using the iPad app I have discovered much more function and ease in using Linkedin, for example running conversations through the message function, and I have been using Linkedin on other devices for a good number of years.

I am looking forward to learning more user tips from expert Su Butcher at our Linkedin/Twiiter training workshop in Manchester next week. See you there?

Could built environment leaders cut it in a digital world?

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An excellent Communique newsfeed from Nancy Settle-Murphy this morning, at looking at effectiveness of leaders in a virtual world. It strikes me this is a lesson perhaps for built environment and construction leaders as we move into a communication era that is increasingly digital, web based, social media enabled and BIM (Building Information Model) focused:

Even the most experienced team leaders can make us weep with boredom. They torture us with their monotone narrations of 10-Mb slide decks. They regale us with irrelevant minutiae, while sidestepping the really important stuff. Their meetings are more like monologues, with everyone else listening from the sidelines. And for the most part, they probably imagine they’re pretty interesting people!

When we experience boring leaders face-to-face, we have to at least pretend to be somewhat interested. We might take notes (even if it’s a shopping list!), throwing in a few occasional nods so we won’t be called on to replay key points. Copious amounts of caffeine help to some degree, as do the many bio breaks we’ll inevitably need as a result. And who hasn’t had a colleague place an “emergency” phone call in extreme cases of ennui?

Tuning out boring virtual leaders is far easier. Once you put yourself on mute, there’s no end to the more important things you can do, like responding to emails, writing up your latest status report, or finding the best price on that new digital camera you’ve been pining for. (If you work from home, this “important” work can extend to laundry, dinner prep, weight-lifting and more.) As long as you’re within earshot of the conversation, your team leader may assume you’re present while in fact you are completely absent.

So, how can boring virtual leaders learn to become more captivating? (And no, it is not an inherent skill that some are just born with!) In this issue, I take a look at some steps even the blandest leader can take to evolve into an engaging, stimulating and captivating leader, from near or far.

No one actively aspires to be boring. And yet regrettably, few leaders actively attempt to be interesting.

Read on … from Nancy Settle-Murphy on Commique

Five Emerging Themes in Construction CSR

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A recent CSR in construction workshop ran some very interesting discussions on just what CSR in construction is, what it could be and what it should be.

There emerged a number of salient, central themes:

CSR is not a badge, a new lick of paint or indeed something to do to generate responses in bids and PQQ’s to win work, but is something that goes deep into the organisation. It is the brand, image and reputation of the business, in many ways CSR is part of the DNA upon which the business will grow and flourish. Words such as heart or soul of the business become relevant.

CSR thinking will challenge existing business models. We have moved from a era of CSR being bad news, not seen as a business issue, to one of commitment to being responsible and doing good whilst running a business. The challenge businesses may now face is moving forward, how to make a construction business of out doing good, where social responsibility is the vision and core of the organisation. Combining triple line thinking in an integrated strategy and integrated reporting approach will give new perspectives on construction businesses.

CSR approaches cannot be simply imposed top down. Whilst needing strong leadership vision, CSR requires real engagement of all staff and indeed all those who work for the business through the supply chains. Empowering managers to lead on CSR and engaging people in sharing CSR good news stories will become essential.

CSR transparency means all aspects of construction are increasingly on open public display. We cannot put one message to clients in bids, another to staff and still allow conflicting, or perhaps irresponsible practices to exist. The recent Goldman Sachs is a timely reminder that we are in the Age of Damage as described David Jones in Who Cares Wins

The power and potential of social media is yet to be realised. On one hand it presents a phenomenal tool for sharing news, keeping informed and engaging with clients and partners, on the other hand it can be the Achilles heel, rapidly broadcasting irresponsible practices or intentions. Having an appropriately positive approach to Social Media with guidelines or codes of practice for use by staff in the business and on projects will increasingly become high priority.

Supporting built environment organisations on developing CSR strategies it is encouraging to see a real desire for strategic CSR approaches that go beyond the volunteering and sponsorship models. If you wish to engage in conversations on CSR in construction follow and join me on twitter @fairsnape, subscribe to or share this blog post, or get in touch via fairsnape@gmail.com

Preston Bloggers Award for fairsnape blog

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Its always great to get acknowledgement for this blog, hence am delighted to have received recognition from EAOM, an online marketing agency in Chorley, Lancs, as worthy of their Preston Bloggers Award.

Part of our blog training process for our clients is to show examples of great blog posts which created by Preston based bloggers

We have reviewed many local blogs judging them on overall quality, readability, relevance and the value they add to the community and/or to their customers.

After much deliberation we created a short list of winners which includes Fairsnape. We really feel you got blogging right with posts such as Can social media drive built environment sustainability? showing what Preston has to offer to the blogging community.

As winner we’ll be showcasing your blog in a post on our own blog on eaonlinemarketing.co.uk/blog and twitter feed in the coming weeks.

This fairsnape blog started way back in January 2007, as a service to the clients I then supported, and many of whom I still do, on built environment improvement. It soon became a more generic industry news, information sharing and comment blog, focusing on a core of sustainability, collaborative working and the use of social media.

The blog went through change as the potential and power of twitter as a micro blogging tool for news and link sharing became obvious, leaving the fairsnape blog to become more of the commentary service it is today.

Can social media drive built environment sustainability?

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Can social media drive built environment sustainability?

Over the last few weeks I have been working with Ryan at the Construction Network and the team at Sustainability Now on an exciting project to bring social media discussions into the free to attend virtual online Sustainability Now event on the 9th and 10th November

There are two main linked themes to this initiative, a unique sustainability social media ‘list’ and an online social media lounge

The listing, in collaboration with Peerindex ranks UK sustainability twitter users on authority in sustainability and is derived from other lists recently curated by the Construction Network (eg Architecture with Su Butcher and Built Environment Paul Wilkinson for example). It includes all aspects of the built environment from civil engineering to FM to PR to architecture to products to construction and more.

Being ranked on authority in sustainability we will see some surprises when the list is launched at midday during the show. Those with low a Peerindex score, or low activity may well see themselves quite high on authority listing, whereas those with very high activity or Peerindex scores may not rank in the top 100 at all. Quality not quantity perhaps?

Peerindex describe authority as the measure of trust; calculating how much others rely on your recommendations and opinion in (sustainability), and is one component of the overall PI score. ie, it is where people will go for sustainability information on twitter (At least to UK sources, we may well expand to a global list next time)

The second exciting initiative is the social media lounge. Over the two days of the show a number of social media practitioners and advocates will be in a virtual lounge discussing the use of social media in the built environment, and in particular how it can be used to drive sustainability.

Those in the lounge will include @gb_news and @greenbuildexpo, @EEPaul @CKEgroup, @SuButcher @KirstieColledge @priteshpatel9 @KLHSustain @carinawtweets, @DIEMltd.

Amanda Jones @Peerindex will also be online to answer questions on the sustainability list, alongside myself and Ryan (@fairsnape and @ryanbriggstcn)

For more background information see:

Sustainability Now Registration Page

Social Media Lounge Residents

Sponsors and Supporters

Green Build News Article

Twitter Building Down Barriers

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A few tweets caught my eye on Friday between two SELCA (SE Lancs Construction Association) members, nothing really remarkable in content, but what was interesting was the exchange was between joinery and bricklaying contractors, @rlmbrickwork and @tmjcontractors. As was mentioned, such conversations just wouldn’t happen on site.

That got me thinking, I have long maintained that organisations cannot really collaborate (few are designed to collaborate), hence the need and importance of last planner approaches, but that its people across organisations that collaborate, and of course that social media can only foster and enable more person to person connectivity.

And real collaboration.

So thoughts mused on how twitter can be used to enhance the last planner approach, enabling real time sharing of progress and issues between subcontractors. eg

@joiner: will the 2nd floor be ready for us on Tues as planned?

@plumber: @joiner first fix complete on for you to start in tues morning. Spoke with @electrics who will be done too. Good to go

@joiner; great thanks, will have a couple of guys there

@contractor: delivery of plasterboard expected for 10am, loading out to level 2 for you

@joiner @contractor ok, we can help offload ?

Dreaming or Potential? I know many SME contractors who dismissed the idea of any weekly last planner type sessions with subcontractors a few years back, but now see them as essential to construction project management. Maybe in a few years twitter will be a key project tool …. ? (After all if social media can be used to organise flashmobs, even dare I say riots, then surely we can use it to coordinate construction projects?)

Last Planner: There are many definitions of Last Planner in the context of lean construction, but essentially its about collaborative working, planning, scheduling and progress reviews with trade supervisors – the last planners – to reduce costs and delays, waste in its widest sense and add value. Often run as a series of weekly or daily planning and progress sessions on site.

Twitter Building Down Barriers: By the way the title above is purposely taken fromBuilding Down Barriers, a 1997 (just pre Egan) action research initaive to remove barriers between construction players that has shaped much of todays Modern Methods of Construction Management thinking.

Construction lacks green, key business and foresight skills

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Construction lacks essential skills. A recent poll of 1,450 construction employers, conducted by Construction Industry Training Board and Sector Skills Council, CITB-ConstructionSkills, skills gaps such as understanding the implications of green issues (43%), identifying potential new business (39%) and not having sufficient IT skills (43%) were all areas picked out by industry managers and supervisors as lacking in their organisations.

In addition, a third (32%) of employers said that keeping up to date with the latest innovations, products and techniques was an important concern for their business. A further 32% also stated that their management team’s ability to identify the training needs of staff was an area that needed improvement.

Begs the question what have we been doing in the world of construction improvement over the last two decades since these skills were identified in seminal reports, eg Egan , Latham and others.

Importantly it also demonstrates a lack of awareness and vision at board, owner or senior management levels to identify, acknowledge and prepare for emerging trends, particularly in the sustainability, IT and social media arena.

Links:

A Low Carbon Diet For Construction Boards (CSRWire post by Martin Brown)

Future Proofing the Boardroom – Part One: Grounding and Stargazing (CSRWire post by Lucy Marcus)

Link to CITB

#tweetchats … observations + how to

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What is a tweetchat? In my view: a global online brainstorm: a fast paced collection of expert opinion, links, references, questioning, learning but above all sharing around the theme of the chat.

“A tweet chat is a pre-arranged chat that happens on Twitter through tweets that include a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation” Formal Twitter tweet chats are arranged in advance and occur at set times. They may include a formal agenda with a specific leader or “speaker”, or they might involve a free flowing discussion between all participants.

Dont attempt to make too much sense of it at the time, dive in, chat and share. Make sense of it later (which makes the output and transcripts very important). A brilliant use of twitter!

Having participated in a number of tweetchats over tha last few months #futrchat, #CSRchat and the more frivolous #sugarfreetweets for example, I recently took on the task of oragnising and facilitaing #GVisChat ‘Future of Energy in Buildings’ for Green Vision.

For an inaugural chat it worked well, with thought leaders and seasoned tweeters conversing and sharing with those who made their first tweet during the chat, which has to be a result.

Here then are my thoughts and observations:

Preparation:

Choose a hashtag and check it hasnt been used for another chat.
Most hashtags end ‘chat’ which has become a notation for tweetchat.Make the hashtag simple and memorable
Get the word out there – through twitter but also through related groups, forums both online and real.
Get the time and date agreed: Check there are no other big, subject related chats scheduled around the same time: Balance between working day time (9-5) and a global enthusiast though leader chat: It does seem the popular time is 7, 8 or 9 pm UK time for a global input. (and looking at a recent spreadsheet of existing scheduled chats, USA tweeters would appear to be more comfortable with the tweetchat format.)
Have instructions you can point to in order to help participants, for eg: How to take part in a tweet chat and How to join up to twitter (you don’t want to exclude those not on twitter who may see the whole twitter thing a bit of a dark mystery)
Agree roles – I think there are three, a facilitator, a subject driver and an amplifer See below (I did all three so it can be done but … wow – it gets busy)
Agree Questions in advance, say 5 or 6 but be prepared to change and flex with the direction the chat may take.

Setting up to capture:

Register the hashtag with tweetchat.. Tweetchat provides a nice simple format that puts you in the ‘tweetchat room’ for the chosen hashtag and automatically adds the hashtag. Overall though I find tweetdeck easier to use during the chat.

‘Facilitating’ the chat:

Introduce topic, and the first question. The start of the chat was probably the most ‘awkward’: unlike real meetings there are not many signals to pick up on that people are there and ready to go so you have to dive in. I had a sense of I was waiting for tweeters and they for me to kick off.
Welcome – be sure to welcome people as they enter the chat, that is make their first hashtaged contribution
Let twitter know the chat is running
Feed in the questions – the skill would appear to be in introducing next question at the right time, not too soon or too late – keep the fast pace going…
Amplify good points (ie RT and add to)
Praise good points being made, thank people for links (as you would in a real world brainstorm)
Challenge, question, throw in off the wall out there concepts to widen the discussion (eg future of energy chat led to possibility of building on the moon)
Give time checks, especially towards the close – the 60mins flies past rather swiftly!
Watch for contributions from people forgetting or not using the hashtag and RT them so they get into the mix. (and remind people to use the # and Q and A numbering)

During the chat I used tweetdeck so I could have a DM channel open for closed communication with other hosts and a timeline to watch for related tweets from friends who forgot the hashtag!

Post Chat

Use a service such as the brilliant Tweetbinder to capture the tweets as well as statistics on the tweetchat.

Drop the tweets into Storify to create a transcript

Use the tweets and links to craft an interview sytle article for publication on blogs or elsewhere

Thanks: These are my observations and lessons learnt from organising a tweetchat for the first time. I do hope they help and encourage you to get involved in a chat and to facilitate, they are great fun, generate a real buzz and to me prove the potential business and learning power of twitter is yet to be fully realised

I am indebted to Cindy @Urbanverse, a great friend and seasoned tweetchat expert for help and guidance

Use of social media can lead to innovative #smworkplace employees

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Following my last blog on Social Media in the workplace two very interesting links have come to light:

From Business Insider:

As elaborated by the Harmon research on social media productivity … inclusive collaboration will unleash huge organizational potential for knowledge discovery with benefits including greater innovation, reducing time spent searching for information and elimination of duplicated effort.

and

Innovation comes also by multidisciplinary collaboration … with … social media are a means to this end, obstructing this opportunity will do more harm than good in the long term. Adaptation and transformation of people, processes and technology will have to occur sooner or later, because both the organization and the competitive landscape will demand this.

(my emphasis)

And from Tools for internal communications back in Jan 2010:

Melcrum have also begun a major research project into the use of social tools for internal communications; initial findings confirm “widespread adoption, a clear business case and visible return on investment for communicators.”

“Many organizations have now moved beyond the experimentation phase and begun embedding social media into the way they do business,” said Victoria Mellor, CEO of Melcrum. “There is a fundamental shift happening with how information flows inside an organization. Peer-to-peer online networks are enabling real-time feedback from employees to inform decision-making, not to mention facilitating collaboration between remote workers,” she added.

social media in the workplace

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Workplaces need social media. Martin Pickard @FMGuru posted a question on twitter this morning on (should we) use Social Media in the Workplace in preparation for a debate this week. These debates are happening across all sectors, particularly so within the built environment, but I find it odd that we are have these debates at all and wonder:

What do I tell my son who is learning how to use facebook and how to blog at school, with QR codes to promote school sports day results, that when he starts work he wont be allowed to use such skills?
Did we have these discussions when the telephone or fax was introduced. (Lets send a hand written note around, get people together to explore whether we should allow the telephone on to sites)
Or indeed when email was introduced. I work with construction contractors who still do not allow computers on site, emails are send to an info@ address, printed in the head office and taken to sites by the contracts manager. We laugh at this now, but are we doing the same on social media?

Lets think about social media as collaboration and communication. Do we really want to have a debate as to whether we need ‘communication’ in the work place? Or whether we want people to work together, to collaborate?

Increasingly we shore up our policies and employee guidelines preventing the use of social media rather then guidelines on responsible behaviour. Better to have a workforce of ambassadors across social media than a frustrated annoyed workforce who criticise or worse during their own time or in their lunch times?

If we start to use the expression of ‘Real Time Web’ rather than social media it opens the door to thinking about using it as a tool for learning, sharing, communicating and gathering the intelligence an organisation needs (market, client, comptetitors, innovations etc)

Google have enabled Real Time as part of their search options. Staff can now see who has tweeted, blogged or shared anything they search for. Should we hence prevent the use of Google. We cannot stop the use of social media or real time web, are we (as employers, managers, directors etc) just trying to stick more and more fingers in the soon to break dam?

Reading the traits of successful collaborative leaders for a piece of work with an innovative construction organisation and I see time and time again that a collaborative leader, (to which most built environment leaders would profess to be) is one that is connected, internally and externally across many sectors, through, yes, social media as well as traditional media. (Blog post to come)

Increasingly I am working with organisations who are waking up to the use of social media applications to improve winning work potential, from gathering leads/market/client/competitor intelligence, to gathering evidence for PQQ’s (from eg project blogs) to collaborative writing of responses and much more. (Follow me on @fairsnape for more on this)

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