Tag Archives: Twitter

Launching the Sustainable Leadership Conversation

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imagesSustainability is moving into new territories, with new leaders and leadership styles emerging.

Across all industries, we now see many leading organisations stepping forward and placing sustainability truly at the core of their leadership.  At the same time, the use of social media is increasingly being used as a powerful tool for engaging, learning and sharing for collective sustainability leadership and organisational development.

Whether through corporate accounts or personal accounts tied to corporations, social media has the power to provide role models who are willing to share their experience and wisdom with others – through content creation (articles, blog posts) and content curation (sharing of key research or important discussions happening in a variety of places online).

The development of this sustainability leadership, amplified through social media is to be celebrated and shared broadly to impact the biggest picture we are all so passionate about – a sustainable future.

That’s why we, Andrea Learned and Martin Brown, have decided to come together, collaborate, and to co-host something we’ll call #sustldrconv (Sustainability Leadership Conversation). Our intention is to develop a sustained (pun could not be avoided!) and fluid conversation on just this topic.

Ideally, this will develop into a programme of Twitter conversations (and move into other networks) all toward understanding the issues facing sustainability leadership and how to use social media to learn and grow as quickly and solidly as possible.

We hope that our independent backgrounds and solid sustainability social networks will ensure a thoughtful and fun transfer of sustainability learning across sectors – and indeed transatlantic collaboration across ‘the pond’ and beyond.

The built environment, perhaps more than any other field/industry/category has huge influence on sustainability, and cannot be considered in isolation.  Every corporation, NGO, private and public sector organization operates within it.  What happens in the built environment has huge implications for all.

#SustLdrConv will kick off (July 30 at 12 noon PT, 3 pm ET, 8 pm BST) with a tweetchat, with examples of such partnerships, ideas or powerful new ones  and exploring the questions: So just what is sustainable leadership? Are we ready to partner with built environment organisations to co-create a sustainable future?

#SustLdrConv will, in the future develop beyond tweetchats, and include interviews, case studies, learning material and coaching.  The intention will be to continue these conversations across and outside social media boundaries.

#SustLdrConv is about how companies and people, those already on the journey and those still under the radar, are gathering experience and wisdom that we can all learn from.

#SustLdrConv will enable the transfer of innovative leadership

#SustLdrConv will support leaders in using social media for effective business engagement and future co-creation.

Background Reading:

A Low Carbon Diet For Construction Boards

Why the Sustainability Leadership Pipeline Begins with Women 

Are tweetchats the new digital benchmarking

Andrea, (@AndreaLearned) based in Seattle USA, is an author and communications strategist with a deep background in marketing to women (her book: Don’t Think Pink), but an even deeper passion for forwarding sustainability thought leadership.

She leverages social media to build “face to face” relationships between and among the field’s big thinkers – nurturing partnerships, developing content and spreading sustainability wisdom through every channel. Andrea’s personal interest in the built environment arises from her belief that it is the one unifying topic from which almost any business can see the case for sustainability.

Martin, (@fairsnape) based In Lancashire UK, is a business improvement advocate and consultant, founder of Fairsnape. As a built environment strategist he is committed to enabling success within and across organisations with a focus on sustainability, collaboration and social media. He is a Living Building Challenge Ambassador and partner with Green Vision, facilitating web-enabled events and #GVisChat tweet-chats for a green built environment.

(This blogpost  also appears on Andrea’s blog and elsewhere)

Construction CSR – A Clients View

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At the launch of the British Land Corporate Responsibility Report 2013,  Head of Planning and Corporate Responsibility, Adrian Penfold, gave people the chance to quiz him on our approach to corporate responsibility and on our plans for the future.

Here are Adrian’s responses to the questions we received via Twitter@BritishLandCR (original wording kept for all questions, including abbreviations).

Of course, I was particularly interested in my question:

Adrian, What do you see as key drivers for Corp Responsibility in built environ. over next 5 yrs? By Martin Brown @fairsnape

At a corporate level, we have identified three key drivers for corporate responsibility in general over the next five years:

  • Resource shortages and unpredictable climate patterns posing ever-greater risks to wellbeing and economic stability in developed and developing nations.
  • Public concern about how businesses operate leading people to ask questions about the role of business in shifting to more sustainable models of consumption and supporting wider societal needs.
  • Local, national and global issues stemming from low economic growth, challenges in accessing employment and skills shortages.

For the built environment, I think regulation will play an important part, particularly Minimum Energy Performance Standards and Building Regulations. But I believe the real changes are coming through in the attitudes of our customers. In our recent experience, Marks & Spencer and UBS are for example both very challenging in the environmental criteria that they require, particularly on new buildings. We welcome this, as we are well positioned to work with them in this area, and we expect to see more of this kind of requirement from other businesses.

Do read the whole article for similar comments on the built environment current challenges of wellbeing, energy, co2, green leases and green deal.

In addition to the comments this is another brilliant example illustrating the maturity of twitter in the built environment / corporate social responsibility sector, and why it should be a key tool for construction boards strategy planning.

Plans A and B – changing the sustainability debate?

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Yesterday may well be remembered as a significant milestone in the world of sustainability with two major events: Marks and Spencers celebrated their Plan A with Al Gore and others, meanwhile Richard Branson was part of a global team that launched Plan B.

And there was  much relevance for the built environment and construction sectors, on carbon, supply chain management, social responsibility and on the urgency to change, away from business as usual. Now.

It was also a significant milestone for social media – in particular twitter, with so much of the events being shared, enabling many around the world, like me, to listen in, share key messages and comment. (Hashtags #PlanB and #PlanA2013 – see Storify links below))

If ever there was a reason for built environment organisations committed to sustainability to have a presence on twitter – it was yesterday.

Despite some of the contradictory language – “Plan A because there is no Plan B” and “We need a Plan B because Plan A isn’t working” – the two should definitely be seen as complimentary.

Many, like myself have seen and blogged on the complimentary messages from the two events, for example the UKGBC opinion article The day the debate changed: Plan A or Plan B and the article by Eddie 

There was so much information and comment shared during the day, I have captured the tweets on to storify for later reading and digesting. The storify records are raw tweets so I can go back and read, but please read and be inspired. As I re-read them I will tidy up to curate a better stori-fy.

Plan A : raw tweets from Marks and Spencers Plan A Conference 2013

Plan B – raw tweets from the launch of Plan B – a global conversation and new sustainable business era

my shared links over the last week (May 12th)

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Experimenting with a round up of key links shared via twitter over last few days, brought together by Rebel Mouse.

[rebelmouse sitename =”martinbrown/Latest”]

A low carbon diet for construction boards

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benchmark

Question for you:who on your board is really championing sustainability and the low carbon agenda?

Board members, as Lucy Marcus reminded us at construcTALKs, need to balance continuity with change, to embrace the changes in technology.

From my experience in (small-medium) construction organizations, boards are too focused on looking back at performance, rather than forward; and when looking forward, tend to do so with the risk-eye of past problems. And sustainability is often only discussed when necessary, as part of an ISO 14001 project or incident issue. Too often, as 14001 sits with Health and Safety, sustainability takes a back seat. Rarely do construction boards view sustainability as a critical strategic, opportunity issue, rather than simply one to be dealt with at project level.

Yet the world is moving forward, and increasingly so towards a low carbon environment and economy. Only those with proven performance and attitude of low carbon approaches may well survive—all the more reason to have board members champion change. Non-execs tend to provide the independent financial and governance role, but increasingly they should drive the organization towards change.

Perhaps it’s because construction boards are slow to embrace the communication power social media can bring that they remain out of touch. I do wonder whether we had the same issue when other, now well-established, means of communication emerged; did we resist telephones, faxes, conference calls and emails as we seem to be doing with social media?

If construction boards were more diverse and embraced a wider range of views and outlooks, through board composition and social media awareness, the transition to a low carbon construction economy would be more successful.

Construction boards really do need to embrace social media potential, not just as a tool for others in the organization, but for the board itself, tuning into discussions and commentaries on emerging standards and legislation and sharing what is working or not. The likes of Twitter, Linkedin groups, blogs, forums and news aggregators are abundantly rich with low carbon and sustainable construction information.

This is all vital client, competitor and industry intelligence that enables boards to move their organization forward – and, through embracing social media in this manner, become role models for its mature use.

To quote from Lucy, boards need to be both Grounded and Stargazers.Are construction boards so grounded they go underground? Or do they at least from time to time stand on a hill and gaze the stars to wonder, then to understand what is out there?

This post originally appeared on CSRWire in April 2011 and savedhere from now defunct Posterous blog 

Managing sustainability knowledge across social media.

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fs social media workflow

After last weeks UCLAN Centre for Sustainable Development,  Social Media launch session I was asked how to ‘manage’ and ‘filter’ what you can learn and share across the world of social media sustainability.  It was not too easy to summarise in a few minutes on notepaper, so here is my ‘work flow’ and the five key applications used:


Inwards …

Twitter

Most of my inflow arrives via twitter or twitter based apps, eg tweetdeck or hootsuite. I have a number of established feeds or filters established which enables me to keep a real time watch on activity relating to the topics I am concerned with, or related to my clients interests.

Google Reader

Blogs and websites I follow are RSS subscriptions into Google Reader

Flipboard

Described as a social magazine, Flipboard is a brilliant feed application that enables me have a one stop ‘viewing’ place. In addition to having twitter searches feeding into Flipboard, I also have Google Reader, linkedin groups I follow, hub feeds such as the Guardian Sustainable Business and 2degreesnetwork. (Feeds also include cycling, outdoor, walking and weather interests.)

Managing …

Instapaper

Instapaper works across many platforms and is my main ‘receptacle’. It is used to collect and tag articles for later reading. Train journeys and waiting times are great Instapaper reading catch up time. From here I retweet, and / or move to Evernote for keeping or further reference.

Evernote

Rapidly became my everywhere note book. I am drafting this in Evernote! Articles or extracts in Instapaper wanted for reference are exported to Evernote and filed away with tags. These can be for future reference, inspirations for blog posts or, importantly topics on which I can hone, improve or enhance the services I provide for my clients across the built environment.

Outwards …

Tweets can be made either direct from Instapaper or buffered through Buffer which enables some interesting time lapse tweets, or repeated tweets to catch differing time zones. (Care is needed with buffer however to be sure to react to responses!)

My Blog

From Evernote and within Evernote I can easily then compose and curate articles and  for this and other (eg Green Vision) blogs

So there you have it. This has been an established work flow a quite a while now and one that  works for me. It would be interesting to know your work flow and what works for you.

Having a strategy or plan to deal with social media is critical to making effective use of your time online. Building on the support provided to organisations  to date on similar social media strategies, we can help you hone your social media plans, with one to one face to face sessions, or on online via (eg) skype.

In addition coffee shop based, sustainability related, social media clinics will kick off  very soon. Watch his space, subscribed to this blog, follow on twitter or drop me an email

Is the new Linkedin app a game changer?

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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?

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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.

#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

 

Gone phishing … changing passwords isn’t enough.

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I had started writing this piece yesterday on a train journey back from Leeds, and as phishing was mentioned on Radio4 this morning, including @subutchers ‘to the point’ tweet about password strengths being read out, I thought I had better finish it and post.

I felt ‘obliged’ to post something on passwords and phishing as I encourage and support people/organisations to join up to, explore and use twitter for a number of reasons (another blog item there!), as for example at the well received presentation on social media that I and @epaul gave to the Black Country Construction Excellence Club during the week. As a result a good many people have taken  their first steps into the world of twitter.
Also a high number of trusted friends have succumbed to the recent phishing attacks
Phishing is just what it says on the tin, scams and cons to get you to part with your password and twitter account details. And as Su Butcher says the strength of the password is irrelevant if you give it away! Phishers don’t invest in time and effort in cracking your password – they simply ask for it. And get it.
So why do we give it away?
It seems twitter users see the community as a nice friendly place (it hasn’t until recently had the hard core spam that email for example has had) So when a friend suggests a nice application for increasing followers, monitoring twitter influence, testing your IQ,suggesting people you should follow etc, we fall for it and give up our high strength password. And of course re-tweet that we have done so.
In addition there are an ever increasing number of new twitter apps for pc’s mac’s and phones and don’t we just love trying them out? And of course we give our ultra high strength password away.
There are phish scams that offer to clear your tweets up if you have fallen foul to a regular phishing attacks, all you need to do is hand over your new unbreakable password. And it seems tweeters do, again!
As I mentioned in the Black Country to potential twitters: treat your password as though it was your bank account details. Don’t give access to others simple. Or and if you do, change it immediately.
More importantly though is to check and know who you have given access and authority to. You may be surprised – I was and I thought I was ultra careful.
  • Go to the web application for twitter and open your account. (with the far more sophisticated twitter apps available many do not ever go back to the basic web app, this is a mistake as it is here that your account details are held and can be changed)
  • Go to settings
  • Go to connections
  • Here you will see 

    You’ve allowed the following applications to access your account:

  • Revoke access if you have any doubt what so ever.
  • Save
  • Then change password
Do this regularly and don’t visit links in tweets if you have any suspicions at all
But of course phishing is very successful due to the viral re-tweeting of tweets. NEVER re-tweet a link without you have checked it, otherwise you become the phisher!
And if you see someone has been caught, let them know, and refer them to some good advice.

Posted via email from martinbrown’s posterous