Grundfos is a global pump manufacturer with over 18,000 employees worldwide. It began a social collaboration initiative using Yammer to better connect its global workforce. The presentation outlines three small successes using Yammer, including a global talent event and change management project. It also discusses five important lessons learned, such as focusing on use cases where value is visible, integrating social processes, and ensuring a clear purpose drives social collaboration. The goal is to leverage opportunities, ideas, and expertise through greater internal and external connectivity.

1. Social Collaboration in Grundfos
Martin @Risgaard Rasmussen
ProActive, Aarhus, November 2013

3. In this presentation…
• A few words about the company
• Global Working Culture & Innovation intent
• Yammer – how it all began
• Three small successes
• Five important learnings

4. Grundfos Facts & Figures
Founded in 1945 by Poul Due Jensen
Main shareholder is the Poul Due Jensen foundation
(87.6%)
 The world’s largest manufacturer of pumps and pump
systems. Annual production 16m units.
 Turnover of DKK 22.5 billion (EUR 3.03 bn) in 2012
 More than 18,000 employees worldwide


The Grundfos Purpose
Grundfos is a global leader in advanced pump solutions
and a trendsetter in water technology.
We contribute to global sustainability by pioneering
technologies that improve quality of life for people and
care for the planet.

5. Global Working Culture in Grundfos
The Global Working Culture initiative is born out of Carsten
Bjergs intent of creating a global organisation where everyone
works and collaborates as effectively as if all were ‘sitting
under the same roof’.
-Global Working Culture charter, 2011

6. Socially Empowered Organization
18.000 x Opportunity
The Organization in the Organization
Public
Community
Manager
Social Business
Manager
Selected
Thought
Leaders and
(some) Executives
The 10’s
SME’s, campaign
resources, support people
The 100’s
Socially Empowered Employees
The 1000’s
Governance: Lead Node Network, Policy and Guidelines
Source: pyramid adopted from the “IBM Select” model

7. Purpose and High-level Goals
To drive business growth, innovation, and strategy execution,
by making it normal to engage actively and openly in the globally connected
Grundfos – internally and externally – with the dedicated purpose of
leveraging opportunities and ideas, collaborating effectively, or reducing
inefficiencies.
Connectivity
Cost efficiency
ROX (Expertise)
Communication costs
ROE (Effort)
ROT (Time to problem
resolution)
Meeting cost
Faster product
development cycles
Travelling cost
Examples
Decision Making Quality
E-mail use for
problem solving can
be reduced by 90 %.
Increase in
knowledge
searchability and
solution speed.
The ‘Value Time’
can be increased by
50 – 200 % for many
business critical job
roles.
€
Productivity
Shorter customer
support cycles
Ideation and
brainstorming in
global teams will be
produce better
results without
flying people
together.
Revenue
Improved global sales
effectiveness
Improved customer
retention
Improved marketing
effectiveness
Internal Events can
be implemented at
50 % cost or less.
The Output Value of
Internal Events can
be Improved by 50 –
200 %.

8. How it all began: It was a beautiful and quiet spring day…

9. We need something new!
(Workshop in Copenhagen)
”How can we use social media to connect people
before they meet physically in Copenhagen?”
The Approach
• 2 ”IT guys” called in to help…
• 4 Community managers appointed
• 40 Invitations sent out two weeks before the
event.
• Hosts posted new content regularly to
encourage feedback
• Secondary purpose: Yammer would allow users
to involve ”people at home” in the workshop.

10. 3 Success Stories

11. Global Talent Event 2013
The Challenge
 48-hour strategic assignment to be solved by 4 global teams –
no travelling allowed.
The Approach
 Utilize virtual collaboration tools to stay connected.
 High degree of autonomy – focus on tasks
 Work 24/7 with virtual handover to participants in other parts
of the world
The Result
 3 out of 5 members of top management engaged on Yammer
 A ”WOW” experience for many participants
 Significant cost saving compared to the traditional way.

12. Grundfos 365 – Mail and Calendar change management
The Challenge
 Create an efficient, open and honest communications channel
to reduce reliance of email and show new ways of working.
The Approach
 Invite all appointed change agents to a Yammer group.
 All communication from the change management team to take
place using Yammer.
 Open for volunteer participation, eg. people who had working
experience with Outlook.
The Result
 360 participants, 170 conversations, 429 replies in 3 months.
 Less than 10 emails from change agents to change
management team
 Group has today developed into a peer-to-peer Q&A channel

13. MHD Community – distance leadership
The Challenge
 Creating a sense of belonging in a department of ~80 people all
over the world.
The Approach
 Invite people to Yammer group.
 Incentivize use my making Yammer use a part of manager’s
annual bonus targets.
 Provide extensive support to the local champion who also
happens to be dept. director.
The Result
•
•
Yammer played key role in development of new department
strategy and is now way of working
An extremely committed champion in a part of the
organisation that can benefit a lot from working virtually

14. Working Social or Surfing Social?

15. 5 Lessons learned in the first 1½ year

16. It’s not about devices… But…
Source: McKinsey - Organizing for change through social technologies, November 2013

17. It’s not about features… but…

18. Communicate, Communicate…
Early
Adopters
First Wave
CHASM
Early
Majority
Second Wave
Sources: Rogers (1962), Moore (1991), Sampson (2010)

19. The ‘Participant inequality theory’ is real
The number of people who create content on the Internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content. For
example, for every person who posts on a forum, generally about 99 other people are viewing that forum but not posting. (from Wikipedia)

20. …and most importantly: It all starts with a purpose!
Clear purpose
=
Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement
=
Big results!

21. So what’s next for Grundfos?

22. Intranet

23. The value of Enterprise Social
…or rather: Make the value visible!
Actions for 2014
• Strengthen our YES Team (Yammer champions)
• Social Business Cookbook
• SocBiz skills for managers
• Sharepoint <-> Yammer integration
…and much more…

24. In sum – Grundfos’ Yammer journey so far
Find use cases where the value is visible quickly
Integrate social into processes – don’t make processes
for social
Focus on culture but it’s also not not about technology
Tell the good stories in an open and honest way
Patience is a virtue – especially with critics
Everything starts with ”Why” and the answer is a clear
purpose

25. Comments? Questions?
Martin Risgaard Rasmussen
@Risgaard
http://connaxions.wordpress.com
Thank you!

26. Read more about Grundfos’ social journey on…
www.socialbusinessjourney.com
Christian
Martin
Thomas

27. REVOLUTION DOESN’T
HAPPEN WHEN SOCIETY
ADOPTS NEW
TECHNOLOGIES,
IT HAPPENS WHEN SOCIETY
ADOPTS NEW BEHAVIORS.
CLAY SHIRKY
CHANGEAGENTSWORLDWIDE.COM