The CorporaTe NewsleTTer Goes soCialseCTioN 1

IBM and Employee-CenteredSocial Media

by Robin Fray Carey

THE CORPORATE NEWSLETTER GOES SOCIAL

The CorporaTe NewsleTTer Goes soCialiNTroduCTioN

More oten than not, its our to eight pages,text-heavy and be-logoed, were thrown into thegarbage beore they could do any real harm. Itscavalier disposal was in contrast to its undoubt-edly tortuous behind-the-scenes production, asconrmed by my coounder atSocial MediaToday,Jerry Bowles, who was an editor o one o these tomes many years ago:

“M ft ct jb bc n t 1970,”J t m, “ tng n ntn n-tt  n  t tn Bg egt ccntngfm. i qc n tt t  t mtctnz bctn t cmn —tt b mngmnt— m nttn t t t bmtt t t seC. an tn  n n  ng t on cncctn, c n-cng t ntng tt mb ct ct.onc i ttc t ng tt t  jnmng n m jct, n, t tnmt tt   m t, m fc cn t g mt  t tt  gt.”

How many o us have delighted to the subver-sive versions o thePravdaso what lie waslike behind our corporate wall? Rather thanthe ocial story, we could read the more wittyand authentic version, created always bynameless, unsung heroes buried deep in thebureaucracy. Was our glee derived simply romthe bountiul humor, and the relie rom a “moreaccurate” version o events, or was it also romthe act that the transgressive version wasgenerated by corporate civilians, ellows inthe trenches with us—some perhaps knownto us personally—and not the tenders o thecorporateBorg?In our new, post–Web 2.0 world, the corporatenewsletter has gone the route o its parody, atleast in the vast universe o the world’s most“ur” corporation,IBM, the company that inventedthe blue-suit standard and rules o behavior thathave become associated with rigid, hierarchical,and uncreative “Corporate America.”The rst hints o the “disintermediation” ocorporate American newsletters came when thecompany hierarchies condoned, i not exactlywelcomed, the publication o rogue newsletterslike the amous example ounded and edited byRobert Scoblewhen he was still employed atMicrosot (he joined the company in 2003 andlet in 2006.).His employercame, eventually, toembrace his blog, especially once

The Economist

and other media proclaimed that Scoble’s bloghad done much to humanize the organizationthat had sought to trounce upstart Netscape andhad become known, particularly to Silicon Valleyopinion makers, as “the colossus o Redmond.”

Like most people who entered the corporate workorce during thelast century, I came o business age with the “company newsletter,”a compendium o all the news my company wanted me to know,rarely useul in its own right but ar more valuable as a rich sourceo parody.

THE CORPORATE NEWSLETTER GOES SOCIAL:IBM AND EMPLOYEE-CENTERED SOCIAL MEDIA

TaBle o CoNTeNTs

Employee-CenteredSocial Media .............3Greater IBMConnection ...............5Hierarchy,Transormationand Transparency ....9The Future ...............11Outside Sources .......12

The CorporaTe NewsleTTer Goes soCialsTraTeGiC deCisioN ToproMoTe iNNovaTioN

These days, IBM, the mother ship o corporateAmerica, is not only condoning this rogue blog-ger, it is encouraging more like him. With thelightest o hands, it moderates a networked dis-cussion by and or its vast network o 350,000employees in a way that would be seen asequally alien toThomas Watsonas the personalcomputer. Perhaps it echoes the same senti-ment that ormer President Lyndon Johnsonexpressed about J. Edgar Hoover, “It’s probablybetter to have him inside the tent pissing out,than outside the tent pissing in.” But among themany benets o the company’s new embraceo social media within its vast employeenetwork, besides a bow to the inevitable, isa visceral understanding o the most signicanttechnology advances since… yes, since ThomasWatson’sinvention.

Strategic Decision toPromote Innovation

At its heart, IBM’s move toward social mediastems rom an understanding—embracedby CEO Sam Palmisano on down—that businesshas changed undamentally in the post-Internetworld, and that in this global environment anenterprise must dissolve the boundaries thatdened it beore while intentionally empoweringits employees to think o themselves as creativecontributors to an ongoing and transparentendeavor.Ina speechgiven in 2006, a version o whichhas been his stump speech or the past twoyears, Palmisano refected on the current stateo the “Globally Integrated Enterprise”:

“a gb ntgt cmn  nt. T  n nt tt t ttg, mngmnt n tn n t gb . it ct tn nnctn n n t  b nt gt ct, t gt , n t gtbn nnmnt. an t ntgt ttn znt n gb.”

Refecting on key acts—the explosion o sup-port and development in India, the prolierationo the Google model, and the “startling” actthat 70 percent o computer chips were beingintegrated into non-computing products—Palm-isano notes that IBM was at this point drivenby three “laws”: economics, expertise, andopenness. Incorporated into his thinking wasthe huge success that IBM had enjoyed withits global “Jams” online, moderated, threadedconversations with employees and later, sup-pliers and customers, to create innovation andoster collaboration. Jams have been a core parto creating a connected and motivated employeebase and have been repeated, expanded, and,more recently, “productized,” an oering nowreerred to as Jam Consulting Services.Since the rst big Jam in 2001, which was72-hours long, the Jams have been ollowed upannually (covered in 2006 in

BusinessWeek

).ValuesJam, in 2003, gave IBM’s workorce theopportunity to redene the company’s corevalues or the rst time in 100 years. DuringIBM’s 2006 InnovationJam, the largest onlinebrainstorming session IBM has held to date,more than 150,000 people rom 104 countriesand 67 companies participated. As a result,10new IBM businesses were launchedwith seedinvestment totaling $100 million.IBM has launched and hosted many other Jamswith employees, partners, customers and thegeneral public: Consulting Jam, Sales Jam,Manager Jam, Automotive Jam, even a HabitatJam—which invited a global audience to addresswhat to do about slums and entrenched poverty.

These days, IBM,the mother ship o corporate America,is not only condoningthis rogue blogger, itis encouraging morelike him.