5/2/2016 ProjectManagement.com Using Social Media as a Strategic Tool for ProjectsLessonsLearned (PLLs) http://www.projectmanagement.com/article…

http://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/283539/UsingSocialMediaasaStrategicToolforProjectsLessonsLearnedPLLs 1/4

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Using Social Media as a Strategic Tool for ProjectsLessonsLearned (PLLs)Franco Shuwing Pang August 24, 2011

The growth of social media, fueled by advancing Internet technology, has reshaped the ways people communicate and networkwith each other. It allows networks to be built with people who would have otherwise not known each other in a physical sense.

Based on its degree of interaction, the social media can be classified into four categories: (1) private social media, such asnetworking sites; (2) online forums; (3) blogs and miniblogs; and, (4) organizational and professional knowledge portals, withparticipative and interactive features. Table 1 illustrates the different features of these four types of social media.

Social media is a powerful source of communication and networking, both personally and professionally. It also gives rise tonew opportunities to foster knowledge transfers within many professional arenas, including project management. Projectslessonslearned (PLLs) are cases in point. This article describes the power of social media, as a new means of facilitatingcommunication and interpersonal interactions, and how such power can be translated into a knowledgesharing platform ofPLLs.

The Competitive Edge of Social Media

Having grown rapidly over the last few years, social media has reached the point of enjoying the solid advantages of beingdeeply entrenched in the public and having an enormous networking capability and high degree of interaction. In particular,social media brings out the following strengths in the context of professional knowledge transfer:

Huge professional communities are already formed: Many social media channels have accumulated a largeprofessional audience. For example, more than 120 million professionals have registered on the networking websitewww.linkedin.com and about 365,000 readers are registered on the knowledge portal www.strategy+business.com.Familiarity: It has become a habit for many people to visit social media channels regularly for work and personalpurposes, such as networking with others and acquiring the latest trends and insights into their professions. Also, socialmedia has become an increasingly reliable source for people’s professional growth and knowledge gains.Low barriers to access: The majority of social media channels offer free and open access to the general public. In thecase of private social media, access is limited to employees and related employees of particular organizations, butbarriers to information within the media are free for these members; it helps them yield similar benefits while notmaintaining the security and confidentiality requirements of specific industries like defense. This lowers the costs andlimitations for sharing information and participating in other forms of activities.Multidimensional interaction: Social media enables diversified forms of participation to occur. For example, memberscan upload speeches on a networking site, update blog entries, contribute articles, and write comments on a knowledgeportal. Such interactions help form virtual relationships among members and participants in the media.Rapid dissemination of information: The combined power of huge communities in the social media and activeparticipation among its members result in information and ideas being disseminated easily and rapidly. For example, anew idea on leadership from J. P. Kotter’s blog can be read by thousands of professionals within a couple of days, whichin turn fuels people’s participation in social media of a similar type.

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5/2/2016 ProjectManagement.com Using Social Media as a Strategic Tool for ProjectsLessonsLearned (PLLs) http://www.projectmanagement.com/article…

http://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/283539/UsingSocialMediaasaStrategicToolforProjectsLessonsLearnedPLLs 2/4

Untapping the Potential of Social Media on PLLs

The abovementioned strengths make social media a suitable platform for project, program and portfolio managers, projectteam members, and other professionals to build up and share their PLLs. What is a good fit between the social media and thegoal of PLL knowledge transfers? We believe that a good fit lies in the following three areas:

Beyond organizational boundaries: These days, the majority of PLLs are maintained and being referred to withinorganizations. Significant benefits will be obtained if portfolios of PLLs can be consolidated and shared through socialmedia, such as expert groups on networking sites and knowledge portals. Social media allows project managers andteam members to learn from other organizations’ experiences when their own organizations do not have the necessaryexpertise and if an organization or a project team starts a new project in a new country, in a new industry, or is applying atechnology it is unfamiliar with. Such benefits will be particularly significant for smaller organizations in which resourcesare more constrained in acquiring the additional expertise through traditional channels like consultants.Efficient collaborative learning: The largest value of PLLs is not only the knowledge itself but also the learningprocess. Social media is a good medium for facilitating the learning process for two reasons: first, it has established ahuge base of users and audiences with different backgrounds, which provides a favorable environment that fostersdiscussion and collaborative learning among participants. Second, groups of specific industries (e.g., aviation anddefense) and areas of expertise (e.g., quality management, organizational development, and diversity) are alreadyclearly formed on the various social media channels. Both factors increase the efficiency for PLLs to reach their targetaudience and stimulate additional exchanges of knowledge.Maturing participatory level on PLLs: Discussions about project management experience and insights and PLLs withfellow practitioners on social media channels (e.g., online expert groups and blogs) are popular these days. What isemerging now is the trend of “knowledge brokering,” in which professionals make active use of their extended networksoutside their organizational and sector boundaries to look for novel ideas and new perspectives to solving problems orissues facing them.

For example, if a change manager in charge of a systemrelated process change program encounters difficulties in meetingthe objective of enhancing local line endusers with new knowledge and skill sets, the manager can seek experience fromoutside his or her industry (e.g., business coaches or even school teachers) for brainstorming possible solutions. This examplereveals that an extended network is a key ingredient to the successful application of knowledge brokering; therefore, socialmedia becomes a good base for professionals to develop such a network in other subject areas.

Recommend Practice on the Use of Social Media on PLLs

Social media can be a useful means that fits the purpose of the PLLs to support knowledge transfers. How can organizationsand individual professionals develop better practice in making use of lessons learned?

Strategic deployment of social media: Social media can be used by organizations, project management offices(PMOs), and program and project teams as a strategic tool for learning and managing knowledge.

The following factors determine how social media is deployed, which social media channels should be selected, what type ofcontent is chosen and how the content is presented, and what are the best learning and knowledge transfer processes (bothinternally within organizations and externally across industries or specialty groups):

Goals of PLLs: Are the goals of PLLs to enrich the project knowledge database for supporting future projects; supportproject managers and team members’ growth; build up networks in corresponding industries or areas of expertise,knowledgebased marketing, or other?Number of tools: Deploy social media as a standalone tool for recording and transferring knowledge or a part of anorganizational project knowledge database?Degree of interaction: From the more passive use of the media as a knowledge repository, toward more activeinteractions among internal staff members or even external communities.Flexibility for use: The use of social media is aligned with an organization’s (or a project management office’s) objectives.

Therefore, executive managers, PMO controllers, and program, portfolio, and project managers should assess the abovefactors before making decisions on how to engage social media on their PLLs strategy.

Make PLLs a structural process enabled by social media: PMO controllers, project, program, and portfoliomanagers should take a proactive approach by making use of the media’s interactive nature and managing the learning

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5/2/2016 ProjectManagement.com Using Social Media as a Strategic Tool for ProjectsLessonsLearned (PLLs) http://www.projectmanagement.com/article…

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experience. The process would be incomplete if PLLs were only distributed and shared without proper facilitation ofsubsequent idea exchange and the management of knowledge gained.

Recommended practice, which is worth implementation, includes directing the audience’s discussion, conducting regularreviews on the audience’s feedback, updating PLLs with constructive feedback, nurturing unexplored ideas from beingdiscussed and developed, and searching for related PLLs to incorporate them into a PLL database. The key principlehere is to make PLLs an interactive document and PLLmaking a lively process. Purely sharing lessons learned and thenceasing further reflection is a passive way of transferring knowledge with limited values. Managing the subsequentexchanges of ideas is an important valueadded component that must be included in a social media deploymentstrategy.

Select the right social media channels for your organizations: The various social media channels listed in Table 1have different features in terms of participants’ relationships and interactions. Matching the right type of social media withan organization’s needs (or a project team’s needs) is therefore important. For example, boutique practice firms or smallproject teams with expertise in a particular area (or a particular industry) may benefit more from focusing their PLLs onspecialist blogs and related expert groups on networking sites so that they can draw the attention of fellow expertstoward exchanging experience and expanding connections.

For larger organizations with a presence in multiple project teams and “areas of practice,” deploying different channelsprovides different benefits. Organizationspecific knowledge portals are more efficient for the maintenance and trackingof PLLs and the monitoring and management of external audience’s responses. An affiliated advantage of such portals isthat they attract a pool of professionals with interests about the development of organizations themselves, which mayexpose other opportunities. In contrast, networking sites can provide more secure and controlled collaborative learningenvironments for organizations’ members if the nature of PLLs is sensitive. In fact, secure virtual collaborative groupswere set up by Harvard University on www.facebook.com; such groups require clearer identification of participants toensure that the disclosure of PLLs is restricted.

Open sharing and exchange of knowledge and ideas:• Certain forms of PLLs are particularly suitable to socialmedia. Focusing on these forms can maximize organizations’ and professionals’ benefits of sharing PLLs through themedia and exchanging experience.

Business cases (minibusiness cases) and storystyle PLLs are appropriate formats to be shared on social media channelsbecause they provide the audience with sufficient specifics for others to understand the lessons’ situations and stimulate theirappetites for thought and discussion. The following is a suggested threepart structure for such PLLs: (1) backgrounds orcircumstances of the project (or event); (2) problems, opportunities or solutions that occurred; and, (3) reflections of what couldhave been done, what could be improved, or further recommendations. Apart from more comprehensive business cases orstorystyle PLLs, questionbased PLLs are another format used to draw the attention of fellow professionals and can stimulatefruitful discussions on particular subjects or cases. They help yield hints on lessons that may have not necessarily beenlearned.

Conclusion

This article reveals how the social media opens up opportunities to enhance integrated learning and knowledge transfer in anorganized and systematic way. Many individual project management practitioners and professionals have been actively sharingtheir PLLs on networking sites and blogs, but to truly maximize the benefits of social media, larger scale collaborations andclearer strategies are necessary.

About the Author

Franco Shuwing Pang is a Project Management Professional (PMP)®, a SixSigma Black Belt, and a Registered ChangeManagement Practitioner. He has twelve years of experience managing organizational change and process improvementprojects for multinational corporations, such as Walmart and P&O Nedlloyd. He obtained a BA (First Class Honours) degree ingeography from the University of Hong Kong and an MSc degree in Information Systems Management from the Hong KongUniversity of Science & Technology. He can be reached by email at pangsw@graduate.hku.hk or LinkedInhttp://nz.linkedin.com/in/shuwing

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5/2/2016 ProjectManagement.com Using Social Media as a Strategic Tool for ProjectsLessonsLearned (PLLs) http://www.projectmanagement.com/article…

http://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/283539/UsingSocialMediaasaStrategicToolforProjectsLessonsLearnedPLLs 4/4

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