Bertrand Duperrin's Library tagged electronicarts → View Popular, Search in Google

Dec

2011

Managing Beyond the Organizational Hierarchy with Communities and Social Networks at Electronic Arts

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How do you manage a very large, very complex organization that is geographically disbursed in many different countries around the world? You already know that the outdated hierarchal organizational structure won’t work and if you are like many companies you are probably beginning to realize that the matrix type structure (where each employee reports to both a task manager and a resource manager) has its own limitations. Electronic Arts (EA) established cross-company communities that provide the benefits of coordinated decision making while preserving the independence required for creativity and innovation. These communities are supported by a unique governance structure and a fun and engaging technology platform"

www.managementexchange.com/...ocial-networks-electronic-arts

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communities electronicarts casestudies

- Leverage (re-use) existing services, processes, technology solutions
- Reduce complexity and duplication (of services, processes, technologies, capabilities)
- Promote principles of simplicity, standardization, efficiency, integration and continuous improvement
- Mentor & develop careers for our team members so that they feel empowered to their job better or are able to pursue new and exciting opportunities
An overall community steering committee. The steering committee oversees the investment in and achievements of the communities across the company.
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- A community champion who facilitates the firm’s overall collaborative efforts and evangelizes the benefits and goals of a communal structure within the enterprise
- Community sponsor: a community sponsor represents each community in EA’s leadership ranks.
- Community team lead: a community team lead is initially nominated by the EA community steering committee, and once the community is thriving, the next team lead will eventually be elected by the community members themselves.
- Community council: if the community membership is very large, each community has the option of forming a community council.
- The first hurdle was explaining the role that the communities played within the enterprise. Employees were used to the traditional organizational team structure and they were used to working in project teams. Initially there was some confusion about how this new communal model would not conflict with the efforts already underway within teams and projects
- Another challenge was convincing the employees that participating in a community was not another “job” they had to do on top of their existing workload
- The platform used to enable the communal and social interactions was also key to adopting communities. The platform had to be intuitive, engaging, and offer the content people need in a way they can easily digest
- EA initially launched too many communities, too quickly. Multiple communities diluted participation, which caused people to conclude the approach was ineffective, and the participation in some communities waned. “We launched with fifteen communities, but we soon found that in order to have a viable community you need at minimum thirty to fifty active participants. We should have targeted between four and six communities instead,”

Dec

2011

If Your Company is Still Blocking the Move to Social, Then Join Electronic Arts in Battle

"The world’s largest gaming company is going through a remarkable transformation into a Social Business. Electronic Arts understands that today’s technologies, unlike those of the past decade, are no longer limited to the individual.

They impact everyone. Impact that’s revolutionizing the way customers communicate. Impact that is forcing companies to listen, to learn, to adapt, to change its infrastructure and culture in order to stay competitive. Impact that is causing considerable anxiety in the C-Suite."

www.cloudave.com/...join-electronic-arts-in-battle

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casestudies electronicarts socialbusiness enterprise2.0 sharepoint curation communities profiles yammer knowledge IP

Our goal is to constantly answer the questions: How do we understand our customers better? How do we interact with them? It may sound easy, but it’s very challenging to do in practice.”
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- Still EA wasn’t satisfied and wanted to learn more about their customers, “There’s also deep telemetry and analytics on any online game.
- So does EA apply these same social concepts with their employees? According to Sandie they are just beginning but cautions, “because we work in so many countries, we are careful around privacy and we have offices especially in Europe and Canada.”
- So they obviously want to find other people and find information about them. Yet they might not necessarily have filled in their own profile which is really interesting
- It turns out completed profiles build deeper relationships
- Create critical mass on the platform by first persuading people to create profiles and personalized content. Then, persistently encourage employees to contribute work related content. But be careful not to censure employees. In fact, encourage debate as long as it remains civil
- “you guys built this on SharePoint?” Certainly a surprise since the site lacked any major 3^rd party social apps, Sandie added, “but our goal was not so much about the technology, we cared that it was usable, it was aesthetically pleasing and it was functional. It did all three of those things.”
- But once the social business platform is in place, Sandie recommends companies hire a curator to manage content and help make internal communities more active