Connecting Organizational Silos: Taking Knowledge Flow Management to the Next Level with Social Media

Appendix A: Key Success Factors

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo DaVinci (1452–1519), Italian Renaissance architect, musician, inventor, engineer, sculptor, and painter

After reading this book, you should have a good idea of what some of the key factors are to keep in mind when you want to introduce an enterprise social network (ESN) and make it successful over time. For convenience and as a reference, here is a summary of those factors that have shown to be of relevance.

Leonardo DaVinci stated one of the most important success factors that you should keep in mind 500 years ago. He had great visions as an inventor, but likely wasn’t yet thinking of a technology that would make it possible to connect people across the globe in real time.

Nevertheless, it is simplicity that is appealing to people in a world where we often get overloaded with requests. It was the simplicity of people being able to post information and pictures about themselves to a large personal (or wider) community with a few clicks from almost anywhere that made social media a success on the Internet. It takes that same simplicity to motivate people to invest time to connect with others within their own organization.

Following is a list of those key success factors and lessons learned that you should be aware of, ordered by areas of applicability:

Building a Business Case

• Understand the motivations from those proposing to launch an ESN.
• Don’t start a social media effort with the goal to run ...