Adhocracy | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Enterprise 2.0 as a part of the Global Enterprise

May 12, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 6 Comments

Many questioning about enterprise 2.0 these last weeks. How to make it work, how help companies to understand it, how to calculate the ROI ? So many questions that, at the end, can be summed up in only one : undestranding how these new logics can integrate into the existing and add to it. Without that, it’s obvious that either companies don’t dare either they will dare with overcautiousness and won’tbe able to get the most from their initiative, either will dare in a bad way and things will be counter-productives.

One consequence of this misunderstanding is that “2.0 projects” are isolated from the “real enterprise” in order to preven itself from any side effect of something that’s still not well understood (what proves once again how important it is to find answers to all these questions). So, what’s needed is to help companies to visualize things according to what they are today and according to their very nature.

First, the primary goal of any enterprise has to be identified. Easy : make money. Period. Of course we can discuss what can be done with that money and what can and cannot be done to make it, but it is the only undisputable goal.

What leads to an undisputable consequence : companies spend their time trying to organize themselves in order to produce as efficiently as possible. Becoming an enterprise 2.0 is not a goal for any enterprise and should not be. The only one is : improving the way things are done everyday, the way it produces.

But what does “production” really mean ?

Toyota : a good example of SOO that reduces business risk

August 31, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

First a quick summary of the Service Oriented Organization concept (SOO) : it’s about giving employees the ability (ie tools and organization model) that allows them to bridge the gap between task they have been assignedJ and thoses that are actually required by their day to day job, assuming that organization reached such an optimum in verticality that deviations, that are more and more frequents) can’t be solved verticaly but by adhoc.

A good example comes from Toyota and its integrated suppliers system. This ecosystem is so optimized that expertises, skills, are often unique. What would happen if a factory, manufacturing a piece used on every vehicle, burn ?

What management has to learn from the Airbus vs. Boeing competition

August 8, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

Remember, it was a long long time ago, that, in the times we are living, means something like ten years. At this time Airbus was wondering how to compete with Boeing on the big carriersmarket and was working on what would become the A380. On its side, Boeing was not thinking about replacing its mythic 747 and was working on a smaller carrier, which would become the 787.

Why these two so opposite approaches ? In fact, they were the embodiment of two radically different visions.

According to Airbus, airlines companies and were should be on a trend of rationalizing costs and most globally transportation organization. So their conclusions were that passengers would have to be taken to Hubs from where they would fly to their final destination, possibly another Hub. That meant that, for example, to go from Marseille to Miami, you should go from Marseille to Paris where you would be gathered with a lot of people going to the USA, then fly to New York and, then onlyn take a plane from NYC to Miami. It would allow to rationalize the use of airports infrastructures (for which companies has to pay), take off slots, ensure a maximum planes occupancy in order to lower the cost per passenger.

In the other hand, Boeing was convinced the future was in peer to peer travels (ie direct flight from Marseille to Miami). That implies smaller planes that can be more easily filled filled.

Who was finally rigth ?

What if the future of organizations was SOO (or SPO) ?

June 20, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

The idea of this post came to me after a meeting with someone working for the French Armament Comission, a few month ago. When he asked me “do you know what our job is ?” I answered, hesitant, “Choose the weapons the army will use”. “It’s a bit of that, but it’s more complex”. “Really ?”

Initially, I believed that the army what what it is (ie navy, airforce etc…) and the only point was to built the needed weapons, planes, ships, in order to provide people with what they need to do their job. In fact things were not that simple.

They don’t provide the existing structure with tools, they respond to identified issues with ad-hoc systems. What does it mean ? They identifie potential issues, threats and build a response in terms of systems. A system is the interaction between people, tools and an operating mode. None of this component has sense by himself regardless of all others and the issue.

This makes a big difference with the way companies behave.

Can enterprise 2.0 spread without adhocracy ?

June 9, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

The fact that more and more people agree on the fact that enterprise 2.0 is mainly about the way we do things takes us back to corporate culture issues.

It’s not something that’s easy to deal with. Since it’s been proved that culture is a key performance factor and that it’s important to recruit people who are aligned with the corporate culture, one logical attitude would be to say “strengthen and preserve it”.

It’s also proved that launching a project which may not be aligned with the culture is like organizing failure. Which is logical because it would be like asking an enterprise to act the way she is not, to ask people to act according to values which are not those those they were hired for.

That leads us to the central question : what to do is your culture is not aligned with the goals you want to achieve [Read more...]