Investing in people ? Are you kidding ?

Summary : the knowledge economy rely on people as an efficiency and growth driver. That’s a given. To ensure the competitiveness of businesses in the future, new operating models, frameworks and practices will be needed. That’s understood but not easy to implement. Investing in human and the frameworks that will ensure that the best use will be me made of their skills in the production process is a nonsense, most of all regarding to business and accounting indicators that were designed for other value creation models and lead businesses in the wrong direction. Knowledge accumulation and sharing, collaboration, frameworks based on trust which is essential in this context makes no sense regarding to rules that need change if we want to build a suitable environment that will favor business and employees’ development.

In a previous post, I mentioned that an economy relying on the intensive use of knowledge was, before all, a system relying on accumulation.

- knowledge accumulation : before being reused, knowledge should be shared, so made accessible so be formalized. In other words, if we take the example of an enterprise social platform supporting the way work is done, it will take time before a critical mass of knowledge can be found in the platform to make anyone found a reason to go there to take what they need and even bring their own knowledge.

- trust accumulation : trust is at the center of collaboration frameworks as well as of work models relying on knowledge sharing and exchange. But it can’t be ordered and only come over time, as people interact more and more the one with the other. Trust applies to lots of things : relationships between peers, with one’s manager and subordinates, with the enterprise as a cultural entity, trust in the tools one has to use, trust in the organization and work model. When anyone does not trust one of this elements, the whole system collapses.

- reputation accumulation : reputation is a kind of accelerator for trust because it says a priori that someone is legitimate, skilled, nice to work with, based on peers’ experience, before one starts to investigate to know if one is worth being trusted. It’s not the solution to everything but helps things to start and even accelerates them. But, like reputation, it takes time to build one’s internal reputation on any professional matter.

Let me add one more thing. Such a system also relies on combining. Combining knowledges, expertise and ideas that need to be continuously combined and re-combined to make decisions and solve problems in complex contexts that need a multidisciplinary and transverse approach. Since all these resources are embodied, are stored in people’s brain, it’s also about combining people and their work in an adhoc way, out of static and rigid structures.

Accumulation is nothing new. It was already there in the industrial economy we’re about to leave. It was about the accumulation of tangible capital. The cost for businesses was impressive but they were able to rely on rules that made it easier to follow the economic revolution that was on its way. Amortization with one this rules. Smoothing costs made investment possible. It’s only an accounting trick that made the spending acceptable on the balance sheet, keeping it nice-looking while lot of money was spent to prepare for the future even if the final cost was strictly the same. The only purpose was to make things acceptable without preventing businesses to invest for their future.

That’s the same with combining. When a department buys a machine they won’t use alone, their is a mechanism that makes sharing acceptable : the allocative key. Here again it does not chance anything to the price but makes resource sharing acceptable.

The economy we’re entering, usually called the knowledge economy, needs, to create value, an intensive use of intangible capital made of people, knowledge, relation or social capital that is key to agile and continuously evolving work. [Read more...]

Enterprise 2.0 needs reverse management

Summary : there will be no enterprise 2.0 without managers 2.0 with new practices and a new way to contribute to collective success. But holding managers responsible for the whole change is a mistake. Managers will need employees 2.0. In return for their new autonomy, employees will have new responsibilities in the management relationship and will need to learn how to manage their manager. But do they really want to ? Not sure at all.

When we talk about management and enterprise 2.0 it’s often about the unavoidable but tough evolution of the role of middle-managers and with a top down approach, focusing on the relationship between managers and subordinates. A role that’s moving toward facilitation, being supportive, someone who says “how can I help you” rather than “that’s the objective, the methodology…now help yourself”, someone who leads by leadership rather than by objectives etc… The least we can say is that this change is not obvious at all for the people in question. First because it goes against everything they’ve been taught for decades, what’s they’ve been rewarded for. Then because the “you just need to….” is easy but, when it comes to actually doing it, they feel rather lonely.

Of course, such a such is hardly possible without a strong support and accompaniment program. But managers also need their staff. Organizations tend to holding managers responsible for the whole change while employees also have a large responsibility and, consequently, a work to do themselves.

It’s not realistic to thing that managers will let things go, rethink the concept of power and how they contribute to collective success while empowered and autonomous employees will live their own lives, do what they want and ring their managers in case of need.

Employees will have to carry  a part of the change for two reasons :

- to support managers that will need signs, evidences that they do their job well, that they are useful.

- because the evolution of management relationships, empowerment and autonomy come with new responsibilities. Employees will have stakes in driving work relationships because they’ll assume part of the leadership to drive things.

In short, employees 2.0 will need to learn how to manage their managers and wear part of the once despised suit that used to be their manager’s one. But are they ready for this change ? Do they want it ?

I remind of a survey I heard of 2 or 3 years ago on french workplaces. It said that even if more than half of the workforce did not like the way their managers were doing their job, less that a quarter would like to be at their place.

Long is the road…

 

Picture of the week #51 : Before being a captain you’ve got to be a sailor

Before being a captain you’ve got to be a sailor

Illustration from the book “The Golden Rules for Success“.

Get the iPhone or Ipad App..and buy the high res pictures to use in your presentations

Thanks to Thierry d’Auzers for this excellent book, the rights of use and Dimitri Tolstoï for the pictures.

Offer yourself The Golden rules for Success.

Browse the previously published pictures of the week.

Links for this week (weekly)

  • “We announced the winners of the Management 2.0 Challenge (the first of three legs of the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation) here last week. Those seven entries offer compelling evidence that the undergirding principles, social structures, and social technologies of the Web not only offer up winning business models, they are the building blocks of a new management model for making organizations more resilient, inventive, and engaging.

    Here are just three lessons from our management innovators about leveraging social technologies to create truly social organizations:”

    tags: management management2.0 M-Prize trust

    • Trust your people with the future of the company
      For all of the talk about empowering, involving, and engaging employees, why is it that so many organizations still tap into just a sliver of what individuals have to offer? According to Management 2.0 Challenge winner Jim Lavoie, it’s because too many leaders focus on what they can get out of their people rather than entrusting them with the future of the company.
    • James and Bobby Fishkin argue in their winning hack, The Deliberative Corporation, that it’s not enough to listen to the crowd, it’s crucial to equip it. The Fishkins have developed a powerfully practical approach—including balanced briefings, moderated discussions, and expert testimony—to taking the bias, politics, and knee-jerk emotions out of decision-making in order to get at “what the people would think if they were thinking.”
    • Maximize peer connections
      As important as it is for employees to feel heard and respected by their leaders, it’s the relationship between peers that generates the agility, inventiveness, and engagement at the heart of a truly social organization. A number of M-Prize finalists demonstrated the power of organizing around that principle—none more dramatically than Morning Star, a 40-year old food processing company founded on the belief that “the best human organizations are those in which people aren’t managed by others, but in which participants coordinate among themselves, managing their own relationships and commitments to others.”
    • the network of colleague relationships defines the org chart, rather than the other way around—and reveals the “natural” hierarchy of authority based on expertise and achievement; the drive for performance actually strengthens without traditional oversight; and everything happens more quickly and with less conflict.
    • Capitalize on the Obvious
      Sometimes the simplest lever can crack open the biggest opportunity for change. That’s what Kim Spinder learned when, as an employee for the Dutch ministry, she invented a hack to eliminate government red tape and replace bureaucracy with free-form, cross-agency collaboration. Her simple Web-based booking system, Deelstoel (“share chair” in Dutch), was designed to allow any Dutch government worker from any agency in any location to work at any other government office
    • Instead, says Spinder, she and her team just “capitalized on the obvious”—the need for change, the resources waiting to be tapped, and the basic human desire to contribute to positive change
  • “My charter was to suggest a practical pathway for how HR can become a critical weapon in the arsenal of ‘compete to win in the 21st century’ planning and how the connected enterprise will play a role. As we got to the ‘great,-now-lets-talk-execution” part of this conversation, one of the issues we tackled together was what tomorrow’s Employee System of Record needs to look like if HR wants to become a meaningful player at the strategy table. “

    tags: humanresources strategy systemsofrecord hrperformance performance value findability

      • So I thought I’d abstract that discussion and bring it here.

         

        “I’m much more than what HR thinks of me, today”.

         

        The foundational ingredient to craft highly connected enterprises properly is two fold:

         

           
        1. The collaborative context that warrants a huddle in the first place, and
        2. Who the right players are to get the job done.
    • The single most important nut we need to crack first is the efficient ‘findability ’ of people.
    • Intelligence on who to reach out to is arguably the most powerful yet decrepit utility inside organizations today. At worst, its fragmented across multiple, difficult to use systems. Even for those organizations that are fortunate to not have multiple systems of employee records, the information regarding where the best minds hide and what they know is woefully incomplete, overtly guarded and not available at the point in time or location of decision making.
    • assessing the real value of ‘Me’ in the organization needs to be characterized by 4 dimensions that cover not just what HR estimates of me, but also be based directly on the merits of my work.
    • The value of this highly enriched data set on real employee value may well belong to HR as it always has, but the opportunity is much much larger than general purpose human capital insight
    • HR Performance

       

      You now have the opportunity to fold in important behavioral data such as degree of sharing, helping, engaging, contribution and involvement, giving HR a broader set of data points about the employees allegiance to the firm and dare I say, employee lifetime (with the company at least) value.

    • Line of Business Performance

       

      Todays customer is expecting us to break through organization silos and rally around their questions and other needs. In terms of business objectives alignment, measuring and dynamically optimizing how different functions come together to support say, field marketing, product launches, customer pitches or support inquiries now becomes much more efficient.

    • Financial Performance

       

      CFOs mostly learn about failing investments after the fact. In the flow analytics gleaned from collaboration also gives managers distinct insight into how projects are performing as they happen, if the resource mix is right, and again, who to keep, re-place, or remove, before its too late

    • Whilst we in the blogosphere bloviate about Social Business this and Enterprise 2.0 that, remember, this is all first and foremost about the smart identity access and leverage.
  • “In looking at different definitions with different perspectives and a business lens, the one above made the most sense to me. After 16 months, it was time to revisit a diagram created for “A Guide to Understanding Social CRM”. I will not go so far as to call my earlier work wrong, naïve is a better descriptor. The evolution diagram contained my thought process at that time. Without over using the concept, my own thinking has evolved.”

    tags: crm socialcrm data process relationship context interactions

    • For starters, the term ‘Social’ has become a blocker of progress. The attempted isolation of the social components from CRM do both concepts a disservice. The Social CRM discussion has pushed CRM into a bit of corner. How can a relationship exist without social elements?
      • We do not need to evolve to SCRM, we simply need to evolve CRM
      • To say that Social CRM means everyone is a bit over simplistic
      • While we would like to believe it is all about customer defined processes, it is not that simple
      • To believe that customers can set their own hours is great in theory, but let’s be real.
      • It is not simply about the number of channels, rather when and how people use the channels
      • The transaction will never go away, it needs to become a stop along the journey, somewhere near the middle.
      • CRM does need to become outside in, but it does not need to become Social CRM in order to get there.
  • “ocial intranets have changed the rules of successfully launching an intranet. While in the past it was quite helpful to involve employees throughout the process, today it’s a virtual necessity.

    A social intranet becomes an online community space and employees need to feel a sense of involvement and ownership starting early in the project so they feel it really is their community.

    While many of the opportunities for engagement listed below are standard practice for building a good 1.0 intranet, each one represents an opportunity to build a sense of shared ownership and create a shared sense of excitment over the coming change.”

    tags: intranet intranet2.0 socialintranet intranetdesign

  • “There are plenty of blog posts out there that have covered very well the topic of “The Future of the Workplace” and the impact of social computing in helping shape up the business world to become a whole lot more open, engaged, transparent and nimble. However, there is one particular article out there that became one of my all time favourite ones around this very same topic, and more than anything else, because it describes, pretty well, how work has evolved with the emergence of the Social Web in the last few years. “

    tags: socialbusiness socialenterprise work workstyle intranpreneurship

    • The Era of Intrapreneurship. An era, where thanks to the Social Web, whether internal or external, or both!, knowledge workers, for the first time ever, are now in charged of their own productivity, of their own workflows and personal business relationships with others, of their own responsibility not only towards the work that needs to be done, but also towards the fellow peers they collaborate and share their knowledge with
    • It’s that social revolution and transformation that will help us all understand how critical it is for each and everyone of us having the right access not only to relevant information and content resources, but also access to the people behind it by nurturing and cultivating those relationships and networks on a regular basis in order to make better, smarter, more sensible and more informed decisions, regardless of wherever we may well be, whether in a physical office location, or while working from home, while travelling or while at a customer site
    • he workplace has been transformed into something so empowering as helping employees take a bit more co-responsibility of their own workflows, without having to wait for orders, or being told what they would need to do.
  • Almost all leadership concepts start with the assumption that a key role for the leader is to set direction. This usually means designing and communicating a vision and a set of goals. Traditionally the roles of vision and goals have been there to help people to understand the direction of the enterprise and how they can contribute to it.

    Today we need something more.

    tags: enterprise2.0 leadership vision management socialbusiness creativity intelligence knowledgeworkers

    • As almost all organizations are becoming increasingly diverse and network like, and as all boundaries are increasingly flexible, the notion of what brings people together becomes even more critical.
    • Creative individuals need both the independence and the interdependence to do their best work. A creative organization thrives on the tension that arises from widely different but complementary abilities and views working with one another.
    • In industrial management, individuals were taken for granted and had no choice or voice. The foundations of work relationships are still largely built on asymmetrical relationships between the employer and the employee, the manager and the worker. This antagonism already affects labor markets in developed countries: firms are finding it increasingly hard to hire good people. Younger people are more and more attracted to self-employment and entrepreneurial possibilities instead of joining a corporation.
    • The social business is very different from the industrial corporation. In order to be successful, the firm needs to listen and involve people in the same manner that we are today trying to do with one group – the customers.
    • Knowledge workers want to have a say in what they do in life; where and when they work and most importantly – why and with whom!
  • “nterview avec Anand Pillai, Senior Vice President chez HCL Technologies. L’entreprise indienne de services IT a mis en place il y a cinq ans une méthode développée par son PDG et basée sur la valorisation et l’écoute des collaborateurs.”

    tags: hcl casestudies humanresources management engagement motivation empowerment productivity turnover

    • Après de nombreuses délibérations, nous avons conclu que c’était les employés et que nous devions les responsabiliser et les engager pour améliorer notre productivité.
    • Par exemple, un portail de discussions appelé “U&I” entre les employés et la direction a été ouvert. Ils peuvent y poster des questions, des commentaires sur n’importe quel sujet à propos de la compagnie. Nous avons aussi créé le “value portal” où les employés peuvent évoquer des solutions concernant des problèmes liés aux clients. Une équipe évalue alors la faisabilité de l’opération, et permet à l’employé ayant posté l’idée de mener des tests et de réunir d’autres collègues. Ce, quelle que soit sa position initiale dans la compagnie.
    • Nous avons amené beaucoup de transparence au sein de l’entreprise. Rien n’est confidentiel. Nous établissons un dialogue permanent avec nos employés pour comprendre ce qui les motive réellement. Résultat, nous avons calculé que la satisfaction et la productivité de nos employés sont passées de 30% à 70% depuis 5 ans
    • Nous nous sommes aperçus que les projets proposés par les employés étant tellement bons que nous en avons exécuté la plupart pour un total de 11 millions de dollars. En 2009, nous avons reçu le prix du meilleur employeur en Asie et en Inde par Aon Hewi
    • Les chiffres parlent d’eux-mêmes, nos revenus ont quadruplé en cinq ans et notre profit a été multiplié par trois.
  • “Type “innovation” into hbr.org and you will get nearly 4,700 results. For many ills, innovation is seen as the panacea — management’s equivalent of motherhood and apple pie — and few would challenge its significance. Indeed, one recent news article described it as today’s equivalent of the Holy Grail, so to suggest dropping it from your company’s vocabulary may come as a shock. Many of you will see it as deeply heretical, particularly riding on the coattails of the recent posts extolling Steve Jobs’s innovative genius.”

    tags: innovation productivity convenience speed choice benefits security prices value valuecreation

    • The word “innovation” comes from the Latin word “novus” meaning new. Creating something new is the goal of most innovation initiatives, but new does not mean valuable
    • Once you start thinking in terms of increasing value to customers, numerous potential enhancements reveal themselves, creating a range of options that extend far beyond adding new features or extending performance on existing dimensions. At a high level, there are eight ways to create value for custome
    • Thinking in terms of creating value for customers rather than innovation ensures the focus is on customers rather than the company. Success requires starting with the desired end in mind, not the means of achieving it.
    • Innovation experts will argue that when done rationally and properly such traps are avoided. But as pointed out in my previous post, we have learned from behavioral economics that assuming rationality is irrational.
    • Over the past ten years, innovation has become an industry in itself. Innovation experts are the first to encourage businesses to be heretical and challenge the widespread assumptions of their industry. Perhaps it is now time to do the same with innovation?
  • “I’ve always been a big believer in using results as the differentiator between success and failure. You either achieve your goals or you don’t. Energy, creativity, and activity are all good things — but they don’t create value unless results are achieved.

    Most organizations take the same stance. They put a great deal of emphasis on reporting and celebrating quarterly and yearly results — with the assumption that there is a huge upside to being perceived as a winning company. After all, positive results attract investors, raise stock prices, reinforce customers, draw talent, and more.

    But only athletic events produce clear winners and losers in the short-term — and most organizations are not actively engaged in those. In fact, in many cases, the immediate “results” are in reality unknown, ambiguous, or disconnected from current performance.”

    tags: performance results scorecard scoreboard longterm dialogue

    • This is not to say that we should abandon any of these ways of viewing organizational performance. Rather, we need to better understand how these numbers were achieved and what they are actually saying about a company’s long-term health. In other words, metrics are starting points for dialogue rather than conclusio
    • As individual managers we do not have the luxury of personal analysts, so we have to interpret the true meaning of results ourselves. But all too many managers avoid or ignore this part of their job — either because it takes too much time, is too difficult, or will lead to uncomfortable discussions. So instead they treat scorecards like scoreboards, with black and white numbers that they think tell the whole story.
    • Unfortunately without dialogue, interpretation, and reflection, numbers on a scorecard often lead to a distorted picture of performance — with too much, too little, or misplaced credit given for achievement.
    • Obviously, not every result requires deep analysis and interpretation. But without at least some amount of dialogue, we run the risk of misunderstanding what is really going on.
  • “Imaginez qu’une partie de votre salaire dépende de la satisfaction de vos clients. Si vos clients utilisent massivement votre site Web pour acheter vos produits et services, votre préoccupation sera alors de détecter les dysfonctionnements qu’ils rencontrent, et de les corriger le plus vite possible. Au-delà de cette amélioration continue de l’expérience client, vous souhaiterez aussi dialoguer avec vos clients et innover avec eux pour mieux répondre à leurs attentes. C’est la mission confiée à la LoveTeam de Voyages-SNCF.com que j’ai eu l’occasion de rencontrer.”

    tags: socialcrm customer customerrelationship casestudies SNCF Loveteam NPS customersatisfaction

    • La mise en place de ce type de dispositif suppose de faire de la satisfaction des clients un enjeux partagé par tous les collaborateurs de l’entreprise. En effet, les clients rencontrent toutes sortes de difficultés en ligne
    • La LoveTeam est ainsi née de la reconnaissance de l’importance de la satisfaction client, en complément du suivi des ventes. Et pour cela, il était nécessaire de combiner les efforts de trois métiers : la relation client, la technique et le marketing.
    • Sur le plan opérationnel, la LoveTeam est composée d’une équipe de volontaires s’appuyant sur des relais dégageant 30% de leur temps dans les directions métier concernées.
    • Cette équipe se réunit tous les lundi matin avec le DG et propose des arbitrages d’actions à mener, en s’appuyant sur un scoring suivant quatre grands axes : relation client, business (promesse client, résultat business), juridique, et technique. Les actions à mener peuvent couvrir la correction d’anomalies et de petites évolutions sur tous types de terminaux, et aussi l’alimentation des autres entités de l’entreprise avec les remontées client qui ne sont pas directement liées à l’expérience vécue sur le site.
    • 100 000 verbatim par mois sont analysés.
    • Les équipes opérationnelles sont alimentées en projets d’amélioration concrète, provenant directement d’idées proposées par les clients et répondant au mieux à leurs attentes
    • Tout d’abord, la mobilisation d’une équipe dédiée animée sous l’impulsion du DG est indispensable pour donner du rythme et pérenniser l’action.
    • Ensuite, la coordination permanente de la relation client, du business, et de la technologie, animée lors d’un comité hebdomadaire, assure l’ancrage opérationnel des décisions prises. Ancrage favorisé par une communication en interne des impacts d’un dysfonctionnement sous forme de métaphore, illustrée par des verbatim clients.
  • “There’s a bogus belief that gets in the way of managers when they evaluate performance. That myth says that in order for an appraisal to be objective, assessors must have quantifiable metrics to support their assessment judgment.

    That’s just not true. What is a performance appraisal? The straightforward answer: A performance appraisal is a formal record of a manger’s opinion of the quality of an employee’s work.”

    tags: performance performanceappraisal metrics performancereview opinion humanresources management objectivity subjectivity

    • Writing a performance appraisal requires managers to be fair, unprejudiced, and objective. But the fairness requirement doesn’t mean that you’re restricted only to using quantitative, numerical metrics in making your assessment. Your opinions, feelings, and judgments are what the appraisal process demands.
    • In every other area of managerial activity, the ability to make good decisions in spite of limited and perhaps even conflicting data is what they get paid for. Only in the case of performance appraisal do we feel unnerved about the fact that examples, experience, and judgment — not quantitative and provable metrics — are used
    • as long as you can provide solid examples to back up your assessments and ratings, then your appraisal is objective, even if quantitative measures aren’t available.
    • And despite the myth that objectivity requires metrics, people generally want to know their supervisor’s opinion of their performance
  • “Last week I asked if you were engaged in your work? Another post-Labor question is whether your job should have defined hours. This is the question asked by Mathew Ingram at Gigaom. Many people already do not have defined hours and I am one. However, I do not think there is a blanket answer. For example, many customer facing service jobs require either constant coverage or coverage during defined hours so the staff proving this coverage needs to be scheduled and coordinated. In addition, work that requires synchronous teamwork such as factory production lines need coordinated schedules.”

    tags: management humanresources workhours timemanagement productivity flexibility flexiblehours

    • . Hours used to be a way to determine productivity and for many jobs it is now results, not hours.
    • They place a focus on attendance rather than results.
    • I offer these examples to help make the case that for some types of work set hours are counter productive
    • The responsibility for making the transition to flexible hours lies with both workers and employees.
  • I think trying to define something is a very good exercise to understand what you are dealing with or what you are trying to do it for. It also helps to communicate internally. And regardless of what many say, I don’t think there are enough definitions of (Social) CRM, at least not good ones.. But that is a personal opinion, not relevant to today’s post.

    tags: socialcrm process strategy philosophy mindset capability technology practices performance customer relationship

    • I think trying to define something is a very good exercise to understand what you are dealing with or what you are trying to do it for. It also helps to communicate internally. And regardless of what many say, I don’t think there are enough definitions of (Social) CRM, at least not good ones.. But that is a personal opinion, not relevant to today’s post.
      • Regardless of the definition you’ll read or try to tweak, it will be one that fits into the following 6 (valid and viable!) concepts of CRM:

         

           
        1. (Social) CRM as a process (or function)
        2. (Social) CRM as a strategy
        3. (Social) CRM as a philosophy (or mindset or logic)
        4. (Social) CRM as a (cap)ability
        5. (Social) CRM as a technology
        6. (Social) CRM as a practice (or as practices)
        7.  

         

        OR, as a combination of all or some of the above concepts, in a non-alphabetical order.

    • CRM is more successful in highly commoditized industries, because there it provides a way to differentiate oneself from competition.. (yes.. CRM is what people mean they need when they say that Customer service must be a differentiator. They just don’t always realize it..)
    • CRM is at its best when it is supportive of a business strategy of differentiation and/or cost-leadership.
    • This is an important reality check.. Research shows as much as two thirds of your Customers do not really want a relationship with you.
    • And the worrying part is that it’s mostly the young and wealthy people who are not  interested in these relationships.
    • Most Customers are just connecting on-line with brands for the purpose of getting a perk or discount. They are not there for the engagement.

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

Google + : an enterprise tool ?

Summary : Can Google Plus become a major player in the enterprise software field ? It will depend on its positioning and the efforts Google will make to understand a field where things have always been difficult for them. Google Plus is not a social networking platform but brings relevant answers to exchange and communication issues that are more related to email than social networks. Anyway, Google Plus, will not only have to fill some gaps to become a credible enterprise tool but will also need to learn how to integrate in the complex ecosystem of existing enterprise applications, most of all for usages they’ve never been good at. Google has the means of his ambition provided he proves he has de right culture

After a first post on my first steps with Google +, it’s time to deal with the question that’s already in many people’s minds : can Google + become an enterprise tool. Let’s be clear : I’m not talking about using this tool for brands but as an internal work tool for employees. In other words : will Google Plus be a game changer the day it will be a part of Google’s enterprise apps pack ?

As a matter of fact, many see Google + as the missing link of Google’s enterprise off which still lacks a collaboration/social/conversation part. Until now, Google has always been very good at search, online office tools (which is a first level of collaboration but limited to documents) but has never been successful when trying to go further. Google sites despite being useful and powerful only meet a small part of people’s need and the “Wave” experiment…was only an experiment. Too early, too improvable, too powerful but too ununderstood…Wave was “too” too many things and Google decided to kill it instead of improving it. But it’s sure that they learnt a lot from Wave when they started working on Google +

Hence the reflex of positioning Google plus as Google’s Trojan on the enterprise social software market, on the enterprise social network part. But Google plus has nothing of an enterprise social network platform. It’s not a social network in the strict meaning of the word because it does not allow to validate the link between two people in an explicit way. You’re in my circle(s), I’m in yours but it doesn’t mean anything more. This is way even Twitter founder’s once said that Twitter was not a social network…even if it’s easier to consider it as such. It’s not either an enterprise social network because it’s functionalities are too light. Of course, integration with Google apps can solve a part of the problem but not the whole problem. Groups and communities also lack for an enterprise use.

[Read more...]

Making the most of key resources in collaboration

Summary : tomorrow’s organization will be connected and communicative. This is the only way to success in the knowledge economy. But communication and exchange, which are essential foundations for collaboration, need a sender and a receiver who mobilize their attention. But attention, more than time, is the scarce productive ressource which use has to be optimized. In the end, if everyone makes the most of the system in one’s own interest, the whole organization may become paralyzed. Solutions exist and suppose more accessible business tools, information filtering based on context and better education and training.

Whatever the organizational structure is, top-down, networked, push, pull etc… there’s always a constant concern : optimizing the use of resources. Said in other words : “get the maximum by spending the minimum”, “prevent productive potential wasting”.

In this productivity driven view, people see time as being the limiting factor. That’s, right…at least in a system based on repetitive tasks and involving few knowledge if any. But this assumption becomes wrong in a knowledge economy where time is not a relevant productivity indicator at all because individual production is not linear or constant anymore. And not individual either by the way. In this context, the limiting factor is attention, which could be defined as qualified time, a subdivision of time. That’s the time dedicated to do/deal with/process something, being focused on it (by the way it would be interesting to start a discussion on what attention at work is….to find a less shoddy definition than this one).

So attention is the scarce resource which use has to be optimized.

But we know than nobody can be focused, attentive, 8 hours a day. A least not 8 hours in a row. That’s, in fact, a reason why the barrier between personal and professional time is blurring.

One of the best way to avoid productive time wasting is not to make sure everyone is checking in the office at the right time but to make work tools available when and where attention is maximal. Note that attention is not always the result of a voluntary action. Who did never have a brilliant idea about a business concerns at night, on vacation or during a week end…and lost it because he was not empowered to work or share it at the very moment when it came ? Moment when one’s mind shifted to a business focus unpurposely on a non dedicated time ?

Another way is to avoid disruptive elements that come and interrupt employees in an “attention phase”. These elements are well known : untimely email reception as well as any incoming signal that grab attention and force to refocus after : instant messaging, phone calls or social media. There’s an easy solution being used by many people : disconnecting from everything. But disconnection has risks : not being able to communicate with people who can help, not receiving the information that would help to solve a problem. The notion of context that helps filtering the available information and, most of all, the information being pushed at a given moment is essential and will play a key role in tomorrow’s business applications.

Then after, there’s the need to master the human factor. As a matter of fact, these signals don’t fall from the sky : they’re sent by people. That’s the paradox of the new coming forms of organizations. If each person makes the most of his ability to share, alert and mobilize others, the situation will look like a tragedy of the commons applied to attention. If each person makes the most of other’s attention in his own interest, the collective result will be horrendous because no one will have enough attention left to do his own work. This issue is fare from being the easier to solve.

Of course, specific education and training will be needed to make people aware of the attention paradigm and what a wise use of people’s attention means (using any communication channel is using others’ attention by the way). But is this a risk for weak signals and serendipity which are essential in agile, networked and “pull” organization ?

The result will surely be a mix of all these solutions…but is still unclear…and far.

Anyway, if organizations need to become (over ?) connected and communicative, they’ll need mechanisms that will prevent these skills from backfiring and avoid the paradoxical trap according to which when everyone makes the most of the system, the organization as a whole will suffer from it.

 

 

Picture of the week #50 : Every Problem has a solution…

Every problem has a solution, or else, you’re part of the problem.

Illustration from the book “The Golden Rules for Success“.

Get the iPhone or Ipad App.

Thanks to Thierry d’Auzers for this excellent book, the rights of use and Dimitri Tolstoï for the pictures.

Offer yourself The Golden rules for Success.

Browse the previously published pictures of the week.

The death of serendipity ?

Summary : Serendipity is  finding things without knowing they exist and without looking for them. On the web this phenomenon is embodies by the multiple links that makes us browse from an idea to another until we find something we would never have look for. However, the recent evolution of search engines and social networking sites can be seen as a real threat : by proposing results filtered according to people’s social profile, they segment the web and may threaten idea spreading and discovery. By relying on proximity and popularity, these tools are bringing us away from relevance. The problem will even be more critical in an enterprise context. To limit the amount of information on a relevance bases without building invisible social filters and barriers, efforts have to be made on context and correlation.

Serendipity is the ability to find something while ignoring its existence, without looking for it. We all experienced it at least once on the web : searching for something, finding a resultt and then, from one link to another, finding something which existence was unexpected until then. Serendipity relies on both the human factor and trust.

Human factor because these links that make us discover new things are made by people. Trust because depending on what we know of a person we’ll give more or less credit to what he/she says and the sources being suggested. Of course, it’s a long term mechanisms because reputation needs time to form, so does trust. This as also some things in common with curation.

Today,, the way we’re looking for information on the web is evolving. To be more precise, that’s the way information is proposed to us that’s changing. With the masses of information that search engines or social networking platforms like Facebook have about us, our contacts,habits, the results that are pushed to us are filtered to correspond to what we are. Among the masses or information that will match my search, those that come from people that are similar to me, those that will please me will be prioritized. If you wonder why, for the same search, Google gives different results to you and your friends, now you know why. The same logic applies to what appears on your Facebook homepage and what does not.

The more this logic is becoming mainstream, the less one will have any chance to discover things that come from people who don’t think the same way or think of different things. What raises two problems to me

• First one if about being locked up into a trend, ignoring what’s being said elsewhere

• The second is to be unable to access to a wide part of the information available on a given topic.

Google (and the other of its kind), desiring to please me despite of me, are ignoring the difference between what would please me and what I would need to know;

This issue is not neutral at all for internal business purposes too.e.

[Read more...]

Teambuilding and breaking silos only take post-its

Summary : strengthening ties between employees, increasing the membership feeling, learning to collaborate out of silos are challenges organizations try to meet with limited success and at a quite high cost. But, sometimes, things happen by themselves. Lots of parisian workers made the most of the summer decreasing business activity to compete on frescos made with post its on the windows of their offices. Behind what may be seen as a game or triviality, we witnessed emerging spontaneous team building and creativity programs no HR manager would have even dreamed of, with no involvement from their part.

The need for working out of rigid silos, cohesion, collaboration, engagement are matters I discuss a lot on this blog. Most of times they’re addressed through heavy programs, supported by social software platforms that have an organizational and financial cost that can’t be overlooked. Either we talk about enterprise 2.0, social business, or making things change in more traditional forms of organization does not change anything. As I often witnessed : nothing happens online that would have not happened offline. In other words, if employees have no reason or will to talk to each other, exchange, share, collaborate, help one another, the best social platform or the nicest intranet in the world won’t change anything.

Businesses invest a lot in programs aiming at improving cohesion, in team building activities etc…and are far from always being paid back. But, sometimes, things happen by themselves, like a miracle.

In the first days of July, we saw lots of frescos flourishing on the windows of many offices buildings in Paris. All were made of post-its. According to “historians”, Ubisoft was the first to start the game. Of course, such an initiative is not very discreet as it can easily be seen from the streets and surrounding buildings. So, employees from companies in the neighborhood reacted to show they could do the same. We could even see “well done” written on some windows to congratulate the neighbor company that had made a great fresco. And, day after day, post its started to cover the windows of lots of offices buildings.

Blogs and even traditional media mentioned this phenomenon that quickly become famous as the “post it war”. [Read more...]

Your community manager should be a professional. But in which field ?

Summary :with a profile that’s still hard to define, community managers look like rare birds. The only certainty is that they should be true professionals. But in which field ? Knowing social environments, the way they work and their rules seem to be a prerequisite. But, having a closer took to what people really expect online, a good knowledge of the industry and real front-end experience may look at least as essential for a good community manager. Is it sensible for any organization willing to go beyond insubstantial chatter and have a real logic of service toward their customers to rely on people who never met a customer and are unable to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and understand what they feel ? Obviously not.

A couples of week ago a job offer for a community manager position showed up in my twitter timeline. It grabbed my attention and raised a questioning on what skills should a community manager have.

The offer details the skills the community manager should have and, among them, “Knowledge of the travel industry (a trump)”. I stopped on this item. If one think that the role of a community manager is to push messages that have been written by others, say “hello, we’re there” in twitter and facebook, chat with the audience as long as the topic is not too sensitive, it’s true that mastering social tools is enough. But if community management is supposed to be a part of a service driven approach, I’m doubtful.

We know, since the issuing of an IBM report earlier this year that enterprises are wrong about what they think their online audience expects. While they think customers (in fact nothing proves they are only customers…) need more closeness, to be a part of a community, the audience only wants information, discounts and services when they have an issue with what they bought. The social channel is a shared one and customer service is not its least use. In short, instead of communities, love stories and idle chatter, community managers should expect to be sent to the coal mine. It’s even more obvious in the travel industry as this survey shows.

“Airline companies are sending a lot of tweets. They sent over 25,000 in July alone, but users only tweet at these companies for a few reasons. Largely, users want customer service — 86.2 percent of users follow airlines for that reason. Only .02 percent want a social conversation and only 1.6 percent tweet about airline food and entertainment.”

Any customer who once ended up in troubles because of an airline or hotel issue is in fact in a crisis situation. People often mention Zappos as a successful example of a company able to do anything to solve customer problems and sell happiness. That’s true they’re awesome at that. But as I often say, not everybody as the luck of selling shoes. There’s few things in common between a late shipping or the wrong size being delivered and a cancelled/delayed flight, ruined vacations. The customer is not in the same situation, the problem is more difficult to fix, helping costs much more etc… This reasoning applies to many industries that are much more critical than books or clothing selling…

So, let’s come back to the “knowledge of the industry would a trump” point. [Read more...]