I’m excited to announce that I will be writing a book on enterprise collaboration for McGraw Hill which will be out around July of 2012!  The purpose of the book is to help guide executives and decisions makers who are responsible for these collaborative initiatives within their organizations.  The book is going to be supported with data which we are collecting from our enterprise collaboration survey.  Just a reminder if you participate in the survey (provided it is relevant to you) you will get access to four free case studies on enterprise collaboration!

We have seen quite a few social media books published over the past few months on social media and customer facing social strategy; but in my opinion (and many of my friends and colleagues agree) there is a lack of resources for organizations looking to deploy these social and collaborative tools internally for their employees (commonly referred to as enterprise 2.0); that’s exactly what this book is going to be about.  Over the course of the next few months I’m going to be writing, interviewing, and collaborating with some of the world’s leading experts, practitioners, and consultants on enterprise collaboration (from some of the world’s most well known companies).  I really want to add insights, ideas, and contributions from the industry as a whole so I’ll be reaching out to quite a few people, in fact I already have several folks who are going to be contributing but won’t announce them yet.

I just want to be clear that although I did write a social media book a few years ago that this book is NOT about social media or customer facing social strategy, this is all about deploying social and collaborative tools and strategies WITHIN organizations.

This is a topic I am very passionate about and I feel that enterprise collaboration really impacts all facets of an organization including its impact on customers.

The book doesn’t have a definitive title yet but it’s something I’m working on with my publisher.  As far as the content goes the book will be broken up into three parts modeled after a game of chess. Meaning we will cover the opening, middle game, and end game.

The opening is going to focus on things such as what organizations need to know about implementing these tools and strategies within their organization, here we will cover things such as who needs to be involved, evaluating risk, and identifying business drivers (among other things).

The middle game is going to be about implementation and adoption strategies for organizations.  Here we will also cover things such as resistance, governance, and the adaptive social business framework.  As I mentioned above multiple sections will devoted to practitioners within large organizations who will also be sharing their ideas and insights.

Finally we will be exploring the end game.  This chapter is really going to focus on sustaining these initiatives which is something I believe is oftentimes overlooked.  So, what happens after you have implemented and achieved your adoption goals?  How do you keep this thing working in the long run?  We will also explore measurements of success as well as what the future of enterprise collaboration might look like.

I’m very excited to be working with McGraw Hill on this and I recognize that there is still a lot that needs to be learned about enterprise collaboration.  My hope is for this book to become THE resource for executives and decision makers on enterprise collaboration and I hope that with the supporting data and contributions from industry practitioners, that it will help elevate the level of knowledge, education, and insights around enterprise collaboration.

Over the coming weeks and months I will be sharing more information about the book including more detailed information about the content, contributors, unique value points of this specific book, and plenty of other interesting discussion topics 🙂

In the meantime I want to thank all the readers here for their continued support.  Finally, I’d like to encourage you to participate in our enterprise collaboration survey if you are responsible for these initiatives.  If not, please forward and share the survey with relevant friends or colleagues.

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow…”

~Lawrence Clark Powell

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