Luis Suarez: The evolving knowledge web worker
Posted: Tue May 27, 2025 4:53 am
'Find your voice'
When you use social tools as an organization, you need to 'find your voice'. “You have to workout where you stand for”, Semple emphasizes. Go beyond marketing and management language and get to the essence. This way people get interested and this way of communicating comes to life in the organization. Learn from comments on blogs, leave your digital footprint in the organization.
And you shouldn't have to have your blogs signed off by fourteen managers. It is a critical success factor to get something like this working, that the employee has the freedom to do what he wants. To get there you often have to take small steps, which he also calls 'Trojan Mice'. One by one you release them, into the organization.
Finally, don’t be surprised if a tool’s life cycle is finite. If you want to keep it alive, you have to keep putting energy list to data into it. Use it yourself, care about it, love it. Roll up your sleeves and invest. “ Love makes the intranet tick!”
Luis SuarezLuis Suarez is an experienced Social Business evangelist and 2.0 expert. He works for IBM and has over 16 years of experience in knowledge management, collaboration, learning, online communities and enterprise social networking. He blogs at elsua.net .
Almost every organization is busy implementing social software for communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing. But only a few stop to consider the skills knowledge workers need to use these tools optimally. While success depends on that, he says in his presentation .
Waiting during the conclave
White smoke from the chimney
There is no need to deny that the world has changed, says Suarez: the people in the photo below are standing in St. Peter's Square waiting for white smoke to rise from the chimney, during the conclave in 2005 and 2013.
The rise of tablets and smartphones is changing who we are, and how we work. It’s a changed mental state. Work is a verb, it’s not a physical place. And these are the skills (just a small list) that modern knowledge workers need:
When you use social tools as an organization, you need to 'find your voice'. “You have to workout where you stand for”, Semple emphasizes. Go beyond marketing and management language and get to the essence. This way people get interested and this way of communicating comes to life in the organization. Learn from comments on blogs, leave your digital footprint in the organization.
And you shouldn't have to have your blogs signed off by fourteen managers. It is a critical success factor to get something like this working, that the employee has the freedom to do what he wants. To get there you often have to take small steps, which he also calls 'Trojan Mice'. One by one you release them, into the organization.
Finally, don’t be surprised if a tool’s life cycle is finite. If you want to keep it alive, you have to keep putting energy list to data into it. Use it yourself, care about it, love it. Roll up your sleeves and invest. “ Love makes the intranet tick!”
Luis SuarezLuis Suarez is an experienced Social Business evangelist and 2.0 expert. He works for IBM and has over 16 years of experience in knowledge management, collaboration, learning, online communities and enterprise social networking. He blogs at elsua.net .
Almost every organization is busy implementing social software for communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing. But only a few stop to consider the skills knowledge workers need to use these tools optimally. While success depends on that, he says in his presentation .
Waiting during the conclave
White smoke from the chimney
There is no need to deny that the world has changed, says Suarez: the people in the photo below are standing in St. Peter's Square waiting for white smoke to rise from the chimney, during the conclave in 2005 and 2013.
The rise of tablets and smartphones is changing who we are, and how we work. It’s a changed mental state. Work is a verb, it’s not a physical place. And these are the skills (just a small list) that modern knowledge workers need: