This post originally appeared on Lesley Crook’s LinkedIn.
In the past two weeks I’ve gotten to hangout with some really cool Dutch people, talking Dutch. However, I live in the UK and do not speak a word of Dutch. This has been enabled by Facebook machine-based translation and meeting Marleen Olde @Socialnow in Amsterdam a few months ago, and meeting Bert Vries @SMiLElondon last week. They’ve both been really supportive of my Working Out Loud in a Network #wolan approach. So much so that Marleen interviewed me. The interview has since been published in Dutch. Translation below.
I’m now an active member in Netherlands WOL circle. Supported by Facebook group WORKING OUT LOUD NEDERLANDS and Twitter chats. Loving the Dutch #wol generous co-creation spanning company boundaries, languages and geographies.
Marleen Olde interviews Lesley Crook – Working Out Loud in a Network #wolan
In preparation for the Working Out Loud week in the Netherlands, we looked for companies and people who already ‘work out loud’ at work. Obviously Netherlands itself has a few examples of how Working Out Loud could start, but just across the border in the UK we found Lesley Crook with experience.
How did you come into contact with Working Out Loud? Until May this year I worked at GlaxoSmithKline as Internal Digital Communications Manager. One of my tasks was to introduce Yammer internally, to help colleagues make optimal use of the internal network. In 2014 I partnered with IT colleagues on a campaign to celebrate reaching 50,000 employees on Yammer. Campaign centred around 10 success stories. We had 10 wonderful, authentic business cases and wanted to share these with the entire organization and champion the community managers of these internal groups, many of which are communities of practice. This sharing of information on the network using internal public and private groups on Yammer, was our first step towards really “Working Out Loud” and breaking down silos, aided by Yammer machine based translation.
Tell us something more about these success stories? Since the start of Yammer at GSK many functions/project teams created Yammer groups. Some of these groups were really valuable to the organization. One softer example was given the name “Our hero channel” and successfully helped raise money for the charity “Save the Children”. There was also a Yammer group that shared standard operating procedures (SOPs) relating to quality in manufacturing. And a product launch in the UK where sales reps shared health care professional anecdotes about how new products were making lives better (no PII shared). So important tacit knowledge was shared for other sales reps and teams. And not only that, head office management stayed in touch with what was happening on the road with the sales force. So… I can go on! What it boiled down to is that there were 10 authentic stories, written by middle management worker bees — 10 ‘champions’ who shared how their part of the business were successfully using Yammer to support strategies and cultural programmes.
The stories captured WHAT GSK does and HOW it was done by employees. What I like to call internal digital DNA enabled by #wolan. This approach was liked by the GSK German Works Council who approved the use of Yammer!
How is this Working Out Loud? Employees contribute with authentic, fast discoverable posts (see cartoon). Along with the 10 success stories we also found 10 senior managers who wanted to give a quote on the value of each Yammer success story, this demonstrated emerging empowerment and provided important qualitative and quantitative yammer business value. These stories were shared on the GSK intranet homepage so all employees could see them. It really was WOL for over 3 months. -end-
Find out more about Working Out Loud week in The Netherlands on public Facebook group: Working Out Loud Nederland.
Have you enjoyed #wolweek and discovered authentic emerging business value? Follow on twitter #wolweek
Lesley Crook is an internal digital strategy advisor at www.enterprisestrategies.com
Founder at WORKING OUT LOUD IN A NETWORK #wolan www.wolan.co.uk
Free Download: Working Out Loud in A Network – #wolan Approach
Working Out Loud in A Network decreases email dependency by removing the limits of a typical lateral, two-dimensional command and control structure.
Download the #wolan approach to learn more!
