Yam Jam Quick Guide

?Yam Jam Quick Guide Host and manage a successful event HYPERLINK \l "_What_is_a" What is a Yam Jam?Cause and effective benefits HYPERLINK \l "_Organize_a_Yam" Organize a Yam Jam HYPERLINK \l "_Roles_and_responsibilities" Roles and responsibilities HYPERLINK \l "_Best_practices" Best practices What is a Yam Jam?It’s a real-time Yammer discussion for a limited duration on a focused topic, where employees have the opportunity to break hierarchy and interact directly with senior leaders.Cause and effect benefitsIt brings two-way accountability and builds employee confidence in senior leadership making our organization a great place to work. Enlisting leaders to lead or participate in the conversation gives them a good opportunity to directly interact with practitioners and remain connected to the vast reservoir of talent at our organization.When leaders:Listen to problemsRespond to queries Act on the invaluable suggestions of employees with whom they have never personally interacted in the past.Then practitioners:Get bold and energized to report problems.Readily devise solutions.Volunteer their time to solve challengesOrganize a Yam JamTake a small step, initially: Consider the skill set of your audience. If you think your team or targeted audience are not social media savvy, better consider a Yammer training session beforehand.Choose a topic that will engage your audience: Participants will contribute more if the discussions involve timely topics and topics with varying viewpoints. Structure your Yam Jam with details: Schedule your Yam Jam session at a date and time when it is likely your audience will be in a position to participate; consider the time zone, day of the week, and holidays, particularly if you are including professionals from multiple geographic areas. Specify a limited time frame; doing so will lay the foundation for real-time discussions. However, realize that part of the value of Yammer is asynchronous discussion, so be prepared for discussions to linger after the official Yam Jam time has ended.Recruit leaders and moderators: Encourage leaders to engage with the participants during the Yam Jam. Equip the leaders and moderators with thought-provoking questions to use if the conversation lags (though this is seldom an issue during a Yam Jam).Identify the moderator: For larger Yam Jams, organizers should consider recruiting experienced Yammer users other than leaders in their team who can efficiently moderate the Yam Jam session. Create a group: Unless you are hosting a network-wide Yam Jam, you should host your Yam Jam event inside a Yammer group. Consider whether current group traffic, group membership and group topic are appropriate for your Yam Jam. If not, create a new group just for the purpose of the Yam Jam.Advertise the event: More engaged participants result in increased interaction and likely productivity. To encourage more of the right participants, rigorous advertisement through Yammer Events, group announcements, Outlook invites, targeted emails and intranet communications as far in advance as possible (preferably 2–3 weeks) are advised.Set ground rules and expectations: Articulate what constitutes acceptable behavior to the participants, leaders and moderators. Refer them to the social media guidelines. Set realistic expectations in your communications for the leaders, moderators, and participants. Build confidence among the participants by outlining the action that will result from the Yam Jam.Be prepared for disruptions: In a live conversation, it is always possible to encounter radical ideas, dissenting opinions, or seemingly irrelevant comments from participants. Leaders should be open to divergent points of view to stimulate rich collaboration and should avoid attempts to quell side conversations, unless inappropriate for a business environment. When discussions veer from the Yam Jam topic or theme, leaders and moderators should make every effort to ignore the sidebars and gently steer the conversation back to the Yam Jam theme with new posts or responses to ongoing conversations that are on point. If a no side conversations rule is part of the ground rules, it is a best practice for one of the participants or support team to self-govern and mention politely that side conversations should take place outside of the group. Take feedback: At the end of your Yam Jam, provide a vehicle for participants to share their feedback about the event. Consider posting polls to the group to encourage feedback.Roles and responsibilitiesModeratorLeaderMonitor and manage the discussionSchedule moderators 30 minutes prior and 30 minutes post Yam Jam.Watch inappropriate content.Manage the transitions between leaders according to scheduleMaintain the conference line and Live Meeting informationIntroduce leaders at the beginning of the session. Have opening and closing remarks, prepared responses, links, and topics with hash tags (#) handy so that you can respond to inappropriate remarks and guide the conversation per requests from leadership, and so on.Make sure that the participants and leaders tag their conversations with the relevant topic in all discussions.Ensure dialogues are marked properly with Topics.If there are incidents contrary to the ground rules, remind the participants about the ground rules. Arrive early and be present.After introduction by moderator:Submit your opening remarks.Open the conversation with your first tagged #topic. In the case of multiple leaders:Be respectful of your own start/end times. If participants and leaders want to continue your conversation, mention posting in a separate group with a specific topic.Be activeStart a new thread for each topic (post your topic in the “what are you working on” box and click Update).Contribute informally (this is your chance to show “human” side, flatten hierarchy).Be relevantIf the topic is about technology innovation, don't ask what everyone's favorite mobile device is. Ask people to share their ideas and experiences with our mobile strategy and how it can be improved.Prioritize topicsThe crowd may take things in a different direction and one topic may consume the entire session.Have some responses preparedAnticipate questions and have responses ready to copy and paste. Also have some links handy to share.Have closing remarks prepared.Support teamParticipantGet people involved. Prework Be sure your leader has signed up for Yammer in advance and turn off leader’s email notifications to minimize disruptions.Send calendar invite with:Conference bridge number Live Meeting link to the leader moderators Encourage participationAnswer questions.Keep conversation going. Ensure taggingMake sure that the participants and leaders tag their conversations with the relevant topic in all discussions.Contribute and engageReply to posts within the same thread, not in a new conversation.Ensure dialogues are marked properly with topics.Mention other users that should be aware of a conversation by using the @mention feature.Stay on topic and respect your audience.Best practicesExpect a lot of traffic. Depending on the size of your Yam Jam, prepare yourself for a very busy experience. There will be A LOT going on in a short period of time. Expect this and be flexible.If a conversation gets exciting, you can add Topics by clicking the More link next to a post and clicking Add Topics. Ask for suggestions/ideas that will further your strategy or business agenda. That way you can comment on those that interest you but not feel compelled to comment on every submission/entry. Remember ─ it may be VERY active but it’s only for a limited time! When the cursor is not in the “What are you working on?” or Search boxes, press the “.” button on your keyboard to quickly and easily refresh the stream of conversations.Consider compiling a summary to provide to participants either as an attachment to the group or via email or other communications vehicles, whichever makes more sense to the size of your audience. Include interesting metrics you captured, as well as content highlights. ................
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