SAN FRANCISCO -- In a pleasant surprise, the Department of Labor has reported an another increase in total nonfarm employment. The U.S. added 243,000 jobs in January, ticking the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent.
Yet, according to a recent Gallup poll, more than two-thirds of new workers in the U.S. are "unengaged" in their workplaces, leading to unfulfilled productivity.
Adam Pisoni, CTO of Yammer, thinks his team has the key to unlocking this cache of unused productivity.
Yammer, whose eponymous product is at the leading edge of social media for business, is now poised to expand rapidly in the wake of the coming Facebook IPO.
In a recent interview, Pisoni described a board meeting when he first realized that Yammer had created something more than just another piece of software. Yammer was about to start a revolution that would change the way people work, forever.
"We were going to talk about [the new software] we were releasing," Pisoni told me, his voice laced with anticipation.
The CEO and founder of Yammer, David Sacks, entered the meeting clearly ready to try something different. An untested move might be risky considering the audience. Yammer's board is stacked with some of the biggest names in tech, including Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame.
When Sacks came into the room, he turned on the wall monitor and "created a page in the Yammer network." He titled the virtual page simply, "Why I like working at Yammer."
Much like posting on a Facebook wall, Sacks then wrote a live message to his employees so they could all see the page he had created. "Hey, I'm in a board meeting. I'm curious why people like working at Yammer?"
Pisoni, who is also co-founder of Yammer, was incredulous. "Literally within seconds," he said, "all these people started joining this page and simultaneously writing the things they like about Yammer."
Sacks minimized the page and returned his attention to the board meeting.
"Not more than two minutes later," Pisoni said excitedly, "David clicked back to the page and there were five pages of material written, of new material." The content had gone "viral within the company."
What's the key to unlocking that unused two-thirds of productivity in U.S. companies?
For some companies, like the French tech concern, Atos, the answer to increasing efficiency will come from banning in-house emails.
For Adam Pisoni, self-forming teams on Yammer's egalitarian network make employees happier and more engaged, and therefore more productive.
Sounds like a revolution worth yammering about.
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