• Intellipedia suffers midlife crisis

  “If the intelligence agencies want to get further gains from the site, they need to incorporate it into their own formal decision making process, he contended. Until that happens, the social networking aspect of Intellipedia is “just a marginal revolution,” he said.”

  tags: decisionmaking, intellipedia, cia, collectiveintelligence

• Five failure predictions for 2010

  “Failure has been around since the time two people first starting working and collaborating together, so it’s safe to assume that it’s going to be with us in 2010. Let’s spend a few moments thinking about and predicting the shape of failure in the coming year.”

  tags: IT, enterprise2.0, failure, cloudcomputing, socialcomputing, socialcrm, crm, saas, process

  • Next year, organizations will continue to buy heavy-duty backbone systems from major vendors, such as SAP and Oracle, and some percentage of those implementations will just not meet expectations.
  • Relationship failure arises when a cloud vendor does not follow through on service quality, pricing, or other commitments. Service availability fails when the the cloud vendor goes down, effectively locking the customer out from his or her own data.
  • Unfortunately, many enterprise buyers learn too late that deploying social computing successfully is easier said than done. These poor folks will implement blogs, wikis, and undertake a variety of other social computing initiatives, only to discover a sad truth: just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come.
  • During this coming year, many large companies will learn painful lessons about what happens when you stop paying attention to customers.
  • Social CRM can help companies develop greater responsiveness and a more intimate conversation with customers. Companies that recognize this and take active steps to foster genuine customer relationships will find success in 2010.
  • Successful relationships between an organization and its customers, or between two individuals, depend on the parties coming to tacit or explicit agreement around basic expectations for both process and results.

• The 4 Key Ingredients Of Great Organizations

  In this environment, companies need to evolve into what I call an Aligned Enterprise which I’ve defined as:

  An organization that acts cohesively and embraces change in its environment

  tags: alignment, alignedenterprise, leadership, design, engagement, responsiveness, adaptability, customers

  • • Purposeful leadership. Establishing and maintaining a clear and compelling vision for where the organization is heading and why it’s going in that direction.
    • Adaptive design. Infusing the realities of the marketplace (customers, suppliers, technology change, etc.) into the creation and evolution of products, services, and processes.
    • Customer-responsiveness. Increasing the magnitude and speed with which an organization learns from, and responds to, customer feedback.
    • Employee engagement. Building strong commitment from employees through alignment of hiring, on-boarding, training, coaching, communications, and incentive programs.

• Iberia’s Web 2.0 Digital Communication

  tags: iberia, airlines, casestudies, web2.0, communication, blogs, twitter, socialmedia, socialcomputing, socialnetworks

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• L’autre fracture numérique : celle des 16-25 ans

  “Des chercheurs de la Fondation travail et technologies de Namur, en Belgique, se sont penchés sur une “fracture numérique” méconnue : celle qui touche les jeunes de 16 à 25 ans. Si leur étude montre que peu de jeunes sont totalement “offline”, elle révèle aussi qu’en moyenne les jeunes Belges ne sont pas aussi à l’aise avec les nouvelles technologies qu’on pourrait l’imaginer. Entretien avec Gérard Valenduc, codirecteur du centre d’étude de la FTU et coauteur de l’étude.”

  tags: digitalnatives, digitaldivide

  • il est très difficile de franchir la passerelle qui sépare “leur” monde Internet, le chat, le téléchargement ou l’écoute de musique et de vidéos en ligne… de l’utilisation que la société attend d’eux, à commencer par leurs employeurs.
  • Oui, mais elle ne sépare pas ceux qui ont accès au Web de ceux qui n’y ont pas accès. C’est un décalage entre un univers de divertissement et un univers plus large.
  • Nous estimons qu’il faut faire davantage converger, notamment à la fin du secondaire, l’éducation aux médias et aux technologies.

• Internal Communications: What Is Social Computing’s Role?

  “I believe it is a way to better achieve some of the strategic goals of internal company communications, but I want to engage the reality that it isn’t yet displacing legacy approaches in significant numbers by articulating the realistic questions that proponents of social computing should be asking themselves in light of these findings:”

  tags: internalcommunication, communication, intranet, email, socialcomputing

  • 2. What is the proper role of social computing in a company’s internal communication strategy? Is it to replace previous tools and do better the same things those tools were trying to accomplish, or were there internal communication needs that previously went unmet that now could be addressed using the new tools of social computing
  • Why posters are so popular in 2009 is a mystery to me. Maybe people like posters because there are times when you have something the organization should hear, but you may not know precisely the audience for that content — so you post it where all can see it and the people who need it, you hope, will find it. Although, of course, you really have no assurance that actually happens.
  • But it’s also interesting to note that, with the exception of face-to-face, all of these are push communication styles:
  • People want to have productive back-and-forth exchanges with precisely the right people who can help them and a face-to-face conversation does that. But what about when you are not in the same physical location and yet you need to collaboratively exchange expertise with someone else, or a group? That’s when social computing tools can fit the bill because they are web-based approximations of the face-to-face dynamic.
  • Finally, it’s interesting to me that there’s an implication in the reliance on push communication technologies that I think is worth addressing. When these tools are used to communicate corporate messages to the employee population, they imply a finality to the thinking contained in the messaging — they do not invite debate, collaboration, response or input.
  • But what about times when that’s not the implication you want to communicate, times when you do want input from the organization? Such cases are ones in which social computing tools might be the appropriate choice

• Community Is A Management Approach, Not Just a Role

  “The way we currently think about community management – for the most part – is a role played by someone managing a set of relationships often mediated by an online destination”

  tags: communitymanagement, role, management, conversations, workflow, outcomes, metrics

  • Over the last nine months working with and speaking with a wide array of individuals who are practicing community management it has become apparent that community management is not only an explicit role or career but also a general approach to management. 
  • A better understanding of how to incorporate real-time conversation into traditional workflows
  • A persuasive approach to business outcomes such as inbound marketing that lowers costs, reduces cycle time, and increases satisfaction.
  • Methods of looking at and tracking not just the last touch point before a business outcome but the behavior paths that drive business outcomes.
  • While we typically recommend that the metrics used to measurement business outcomes today be the same as the ones used to measurement performance in a community-oriented approach, the cycle time and investment/return profile look different.

• Consistency & Translation in Community Management

  “I was recently asked for one word that best describes the skills needed by community managers. My answer was ‘translation’ – community managers sit at the nexus between various groups both within and external to the community. Translating – not in the traditional sense of translating different languages – but in the more complex sense of translating the same concept or decision in to the language used by various groups is core to gaining support, resolving conflict, and communicating effectively to groups of people over which the community manager has no direct authority. But that’s my perspective “

  tags: community, management, sense, translation, language

• The Three Realities of SCRM Right Now

  “We discussed definitions, and models, and strategies and plans. What they are doing, what they want to do, what they would love to do. Ended up with a great view of where the market is now from all different perspectives. There are three different views of SCRM.”

  tags: socialcrm, vendors, organization, strategy, crm, sales, marketing, services

  •  Since there is no defined SCRM market beyond taking on the social channels and integrating them with CRM, they are all right.  What they call SCRM is an integration between Social Media (Channels) and CRM functions (Sales, Marketing, and Service).
  • This reality will start shifting in 2010 as consolidation starts to take over and a market begins to materialize (led by customers spending again, slowly at first), and larger and well-funded vendors begin to look for tools to complete their suites.  We will see a lot of movement in this market as we approach the summer, and very heavy towards the end of the year
  • There is a realization that beyond the hype, vendors and organizations are actually beginning to understand that, and starting to see the path.  And the echo chamber (what happens when visions of the future and how to achieve it become common speech among practitioners and no one else) is quieter than usual. We also see more organizations embracing the concepts early on.
  •  On one hand there is a group of people led by those inexperienced in the enterprise applications market that is screaming at the top of their lungs how you have to engage, you must listen, become social or begone.  On the other hand we tell them they must create a strategy, that it is all about a strategy and everything else falls into place, don’t worry about the social aspect yet.
  •  I cannot even count how many meetings and conversations I had in the past four months with executives who wanted to talk about SCRM – only to be asked how to setup Twitter or Facebooks Fan Pages.
  • Control was made to be the evil word of 2008-2009.  Guess what? organizations won’t simply empower an employee or group to become their social voice without some degree of control.
  • This trend will result in a large number of formal SCRM strategies created and implemented in the second and third quarters of next year.
  •  CRM is not going away.  Nor is SCRM going to replace CRM.  Neither is Social Business going to make CRM and SCRM irrelevant.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Comment tuer son intranet

  tags: intranet, communication, worsepractices

• Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: Part Two – Change Management Efforts

  “As Walton mentioned in our last post, the challenge is only in part technical. Broad culture change and user input became integral to Hello’s rollout and acceptance within the firm. This is one reason he staffed the team with as many change management people as technical people. Enterprise 2.0 systems are more transformative than many past technologies. Walton said that in the past a person with the most knowledge has power. Now the person with the most connections has power. “

  tags: boozAllenHamilton, casestudies, management, change, changemanagement

  • This transformation has to be both understood and accepted in the organization. Walton related a meeting with 25 partners about the new transparency

  • Hello is not a mandated system like email. It was rolled out in a “soft” launch and then promoted virally.
  • Walton started the roll out in the largest office outside of the central offices. He wanted people in the field to feel that the system was for them and supported their needs.
  • Prosci advocates building strategy around creating Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Action, and Reinforcement (ADKAR). Hello’s change strategy used the ADKAR approach to focus messaging for social media advocates, early adopters, mid-adopters and late adopters. They did not invest in resistors as they either will adopt at their own pace or will continue to resist.

• Edward Lawler on new management models

  “So what I have been trying to do in a new book is say what that looks like, and yes, I have incorporated certainly some of the things that we did in Management 1.0 and Management 2.0. I think it really has to have a different philosophy and a different orientation with respect to both organizational design, how we treat the work force, how we think about the work force and basically how we lead in this kind of economy and in this kind of competitive environment.”

  tags: management, management2.0, management3.0, organizationaldesign, involvement, control, organization, wirearchy

  • It seems to me that, if you are going to have a valid, viable 3.0, it has to include the right blend of leadership behaviours. Yes, where you inspire people by a sense of mission, sustainability, accountability – but also have a valid management approach which deals with fundamentals like goal setting and work specifications and product evaluation produced by employees.
  • I think it depends substantially on what business you are in, how sophisticated the business is, and how complex it is, but I see much more self organizing, much more use of information technology, social networks, and perhaps even internal markets to create the forum and allocate financial resources within organizations, and that’s an area where there would be enormous differences.

• Web 2.0: The Benefits and Challenges of Adoption

  “Because of these potential benefits, some companies are moving quickly to embrace Web 2.0., but others see challenges and barriers that should be addressed before their organizations can realize the new technologies’ full potential.”

  tags: web2.0, enterprise2.0, kpmg, collaboration, productivity, innovation, benefits, adoption, security

• Social CRM – a dead end?

  “Bolting an “S” onto the CRM seem to make it harder not better. Of course in the days of Social Media companies need to do something. But sCRM seems to be the opposite direction. sCRM seems to be accelerating the disaster we have on the sales side. “

  tags: crm, socialcrm, dataadministration, relationship, sales, lead

  • The worst are the ones who still promote the “low touch sales model”.
  • We are customer data admins, not customer relationship managers. We manage the theoretic aspects of the relationship but I am about 10-20% of my business hours with a customer – at best
  • AT BEST. Other activities are reviewing the lead process, the nurturing process, we have very sophisticated processes and it takes a lot to actually go through them every day”.
  • Take the C out of the sCRM”. As our networks grow exponentially, we also may need a good tool, but we need a tool that helps us with the actual relationship

• Beyond “enterprise 2.0″: age of the builders

  “It seems to me that English (or Chinese) are going to be replaced as the must know language. Tomorrow, we need to learn to talk to the machine. Technology skills will be basic skills for the future blue-collar or white-collar worker.”

  tags: technology, automation, language, knowledgeworkers, contribution, productivity, leadership, googlewave, bots, problemsolving

  • When a platform like Google Wave is adopted, the difficult thing will be to adapt to bots, to make them more friendly, and then to develop new ones, adapted to real needs
  • As a matter of fact, we already have bots all around us, we just did not know they were bots until someone (Google) called them by their names
  • We will be slowly entering a new era, the «I have to automate it era».
  • we’ll go from solving problems to designing systems that solve problems
  • Tomorrow, we need to learn to talk to the machine.
  • But slowly, in some enterprises, Enterprise 2.0 is gaining speed. In these workplaces, people are still users, but they need to get ready to continuously master new usages. Not learn them once or twice. Continuously change usages
  • If they succeed, the next challenge is to become contributors
  • When these corporate collaboration platforms are widely spread, we are going to become builders.
  • Training is the answer today to people obsolescence. Not enough. Because not everyone can be trained at the same pace, and training is still an industrial process, based on a mechanical view of the corporation. Adoption of collaboration platforms should also lead towards changing our mindset as organisation and value are concerned.
  • Contributors build value differently. They are helping the corporation built another key system : if we assume the IT network was built for users, now we needed the knowledge network for contributors.
  • What about builders ? We have builders all over in our corporations : leaders, researchers, managers, … But they are still in the minority side of the company.
  • When collaboration platforms are adopted, more and more people will be considered as builders, because building will be expeced of them
  • Users are left with a difficult choice : become a contributor or go be a user to any other, lesser, corporation; similarly, contributors are left with the choice to become builders or go contribute some-place else. Even builders, once they have put all they had in a bot, will have to learn to build bots for something different or go build solutions to other, lesser corporations.
  • Or maybe not most value will come from productivity … maybe, as some companies already do, people development will become the central process of the corporatio
  • Corporations are not bots. They are machines from hell. Whatever is expected of them, they do. Today, leaders expect quaterly earnings from corporations, at whatever cost. It will be good to challenge this short term vision.
  • At this point, one thing is clear to me: leaders are needed to define what the corporation needs to become. Otherwise, the disparity in household income that we consider high today, will have just been the beginning of a sad story.

• Are You the Bottleneck in Your Organization?

  “You may be the reason your company isn’t growing. You are micromanaging — and it’s stifling the organization you are trying to build.”

  tags: management, micromanagement, bottlenecks, decisionmaking, quality, revenue

  • Entrepreneurs cannot avoid getting their hands dirty with the nitty-gritty. That said, decisions and the information necessary to make them should be pushed down the ranks whenever possible
  • Successful entrepreneurs know that their time is best spent preparing their employees for potential difficulties and helping those same employees learn from their mistakes. Only then can future mistakes be avoided.
  • Routing every decision through yourself is unsustainable. Entrepreneurs that fail to evolve their management style from “doer” to “coach” will never have the resources to seek new opportunities!

• Measure, But Measure Wisely

  “Measurement and metrics tracking is not a decision-making tool. It is a performance indicator. The numbers neither know what you are trying to achieve nor are they the only factor in understanding performance. Do not use them that way – it is simply poor management to rely on numbers to make your decisions. Use them to assess and evaluate.”

  tags: communities, socialmedia, indicators, decisionmaking, measurement, performance

  • From my experience, metrics are essential to understanding if where you are spending your time is working well or not
  • The result of the measurement is not to dock your pay, criticize you, or indicate that you should stop blogging.  It was to learn something about how you did something to improve it the next time.
  • .  Better management would say “Well, let’s track week over week and see where you are after a few months and evaluate whether we want you to continue blogging.
  • Combine them with content analysis, the business outcomes you are looking for, and some contextual judgment to make decisions about how and what to change if the numbers are not where you want them to be

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.