Enterprise 2.0 and social business : what to expect in 2012 ?

January 10, 2012 By 1 Comment

Résumé : what will be the enterprise 2.0 / social business in 2012 ? It will highly depends on choices organizations will make to deal with the paradox of finding ways to go out of the crisis while not having much money to invest. 2012 will certainly be the year where window window-dressing projects and deeper corporate ones will diverge as well as those aiming at adding a community layer to the existing organization vs those aiming at reinventing the organizational structure and operation models. Should the world be perfect, we’ll see budgets shift from technology to organizational transformation, from adding new layers to integrating existing ones, community approaches becoming more operations-driven, social becoming more a transformation than transplanting an external body. In a non perfect world we’d see window-dressing projects surviving a little bit before the final collapse, because of approaches too disconnected from the enterprise world to deliver results and sustain long term engagement.

A new year is starting…with the usual prediction challenge. It does not matter if these predictions become true or not, that anticipation is confused with taking one’s dreams for granted : predictions are a part of the landscape and even those who don’t take them seriously expect them. So I’m trying to play the game one more time.

First, let’s be clear on what prediction means. Even if I’m happy with what I “predicted” these last years (understand “I was right”), don’t expect to find anything revolutionary in the next lines. What we usually call predictions is nothing more than common sense (or lack of). Predicting the iPhone en 1990 would have been a prediction. Prediction the need from bringing social into the flow of work in 2009 was only common sense. Rather stating the obvious.

What leads us to a very important point. As long as one is lucid and clearly understands that, even social or 2.0, the real point is enterprise and business, with all the constraints and context that comes with, it’s not that hard to identify where things will block and what concerns will arise. Finding how organizations will decide to respond is much harder. Anyway each one will respond in its own way depending on its culture, its culture, the courage of its executives when it will come to make strategic decisions. Because of all that, we’ll surely see much more diversity than before in social business approaches…

So, here are the trends I seen for 2012.

1°) Budget : from technology to organizational transformation

Before being about people or technology, that’s a matter of money. Technology, accompaniment, internal efforts… And we all know that in 2012 money will fall from the sky and anyone will be able to spend it on any shiny initiative. Or not. So it all depends of a strategic choice for enterprises facing crises : getting ready for the crash or finding the winning way out.

Finding the winning way out may mean many different things. One of them could be keeping the investments and even making more efforts because it’s “now or never”. Another could be of not changing the amount but the allocation. I recently mentioned a survey saying that HR seem to refocus on organizational transformation to the detriment of some other points. I read another one, about services budgets, saying something like “less software and integration, more on building new business and organizational models”.

The most meaningful choice will on whether to favor technology or its usages. It seems that the second may win or at least not being the least considered part of the job anymore. Such arbitrations will be key facts to understand 2012.

 

2°) A more operations-driven approach to social dynamics

Some of us have been discussing this point for years but it seems that things are becoming more mature now. In 2009, anyone talking about a social approach to business processes was considered as an heretic. Today things seem to be converging and enterprises are more ready to listen and understand to such discourses that make more sense for them. Or maybe the disciples of the “Care Bears Social Church” have given up and admit that the word process was not a blasphemy anymore.

So, the job is not about keeping the old organizational structure and adding a community layer on its top, out of the flow of work, but :

1°) Bringing  social into the flow of work even it means fixing the flow to make it agile and adaptable

2°) Jointing flows of work and out-of-the-flow community approaches to ensure all the efforts will contribute to value creation. If not, the final conclusion will come quickly : communities = unproductive silos…and once again we’ll have missed a great opportunity to improve things.

But being aware does not mean acting accordingly. Even if a consensus forms on such an approach, it will take time to implement it because it needs organizations to put their hands in the organizational mess and out of age processes. That’s what the “E20 = E1.0+communities” was designed to avoid. Unsuccessfully.

Depending on the choices made in each organizations, we’ll see forks forming in the the social business world. And, in my opinion, one of them is a dead end.

Behind this point lies something deeper…that’s my third point.

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Management & HR, Software & Tools, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Enterprise 2.0 does not tolerate halve measures

November 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : many organizations have undertaken a transformation process. Each one is moving forward at its own rate, according to its ambitions and fears, to what seems possible and what they don’t want to tackle. But for what results ? As we may fear, a recent McKinsey study shows that such programs don’t tolerate half measures.. As a matter of fact, organizations that tackle organization issues and business processes make much more out of their projet than those who stay with the soft, community based and out of the flow of work approach. Even worse, the latter not only don’t progress but slowly regress as lack of sense, of alignment and coherence discourage even the more engaged zealots.

I’ve been observing many organizations on they journey to new forms of organization, no matter if it’s called enterprise 2.0 or social business, and the least I can say is that some of my early convictions are being reinforced day after day. Don’t worry, this is not about any outstanding disruptive concept or awesome discovery, but only common sense that can apply to any project. But, on the other hand, the only outstanding thing about this is the fact lots have believed and made others believe that so basic principles would not apply here for such a long time. A little but like if Boeing or Airbus started designing a new aircraft saying “for this one we’ll consider that gravity does not exist”.

In other words

1°) It’s easy to start with small shiny projects and end with a nice end result even it if means to make things more attractive that they actually are.

2°) Counting on passion and keen interest help doing this easily. But the further you’ll want to go, with a greater ambition and and wider scope, the more a rational approach focusing on operation efficiency will be needed.

3°) If we compare the progress curve with a hill to climb, a time comes when passion and interest aren’t enough. Even if they can conceal the lack of work on sense and alignment at the very beginning, adoption logics show their limits one day or the other. Something more is needed to climb the last mile.

3°) Talking about sense and alignment means making this new operating model logical, understood, coherent in the context of work. Making it structural. This can’t be done without rethinking management practices and making business processes evolve, what’s been a taboo for a long time even if things are slowly changing.

4°) Making a break in the middle of the journey is not possible. No one can say “I’m going to this point but not further…I don’t want to handle such or such kind of issues”. At this point the comparison with a hill is quite relevant : who stops on the middle of the way does not stay immobile but regresses. As a matter of fact, even the more engaged zealots are returning back on earth, tired of swimming against the current, adoption behaviors that go against the very nature of their organization and even against their own interest. So they end in letting things go.

In short, one can install any software, fall into the community illusion, thinking that making people participate in addition to their work in above the the flow communities will be enough. If nothing is done to proceed to the newt next, interest and motivation will decrease because of lack of coherence, direct benefits.

I’m even ready to bet that many of yesterday and today’s so-called successes will be only souvenirs in one or two years. When the community bubble, disconnected from the reality of operations will burst, when programs relying only one people’s willingness and passion will fail and, with them, window-dressing projects.

Guess what ? It’s more or less the conclusions of a recent McKinsey study. What does it say ?

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Getting rid of unproductive shadow organizations

August 30, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : enterprises will have to improve their organizational and management. Projects, pilots, initiatives are multiplying to experiment, learn, understand. But what is the right duration for sandbox ? The common answer is that it should take the time it needs but there’s a risk that’s growing with time. Many projects do nothing but creating shadow organizations inside enterprises, organizations that sometimes compete the one with the other and often with the official one. In the end, no one wins in such zero-sum games when they last too longs : enterprise see their immediate performance decreasing, projects fail at delivering their promise and employees lose their motivation. It’s essential that, at a given moment, enterprises align themselves with the projects they launched if they don’t want to loose everything.
If there’s a consensus on the fact today’s organization are far from being efficient and that things aren’t improving over time,  it does not go further. To some extent, we can say there’s a convergence on the future model but not on the way to get to it. Top-down, bottom-up, both, in an interventionist or optional way, evolution or revolution model… It would seem that all roads lead to Roma…let’s hope that’s true. But it seem logic : on people-centric project (people as a matter, a lever and a target) it’s impossible to overlook the past, culture etc..

To make it short, “push organizations” are dying, welcome to “pull” ones. Consequence : the largest part of what we call management is to make it difficult for people to work (these are not my words but Peter Drucker’s one…and I fully subscribe to that). This leads to the need of reversing the pyramids and to do it in an efficient and productive way. It reminds me of an anecdote taken from Vineet Nayar’s experience. At the beginning he set up the first elements of an organization designed to serve those who actually create value, then he realized the limits of his approach. Everything that was being implemented was applying and relying on the existing model, systems and processes, designed to be top-down. Hence a new approach aiming at building, step by step, a new coherent model aligned with its goals instead of a poultice on a wooden leg.

Now, let’s have a quick look at many enterprise 2.0 or social business projects. In how many cases did they come with process re-engineering ? With a reflexion on how to trace how value is created ? On how things and people are measured, evaluated, assessed ? Of course, that’s still a young and emerging matter. But, as I recently heard from two people that can be considered as convinced people, advocates, project ambassadors : “it’s been young and emerging for such a long time that it’s getting old now !”, “Ok for chaotic experimentations but we’ve been trying so many things in so many ways in so many directions for 5 years and the people ‘above’ haven’t understand that it’s time to blow the end of game whistle and make things square”, “Honestly, I’m about to give up the fight…I’ve been knocked about too many times for no benefits…and they still don’t get the thing”.

What were they talking about ? They were saying that these projects were generating new structures and way of working that go against the official organization compete with it and, even experimentations that compete the one with the other. [Read more...]

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Community management is like cholesterol

July 26, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary :we’re still fare from being done with discussions on enterprise community management. More complex to implement that it seemed, this kind of system did not always keep its promises and results range from the best to the worse to such an extent that some start to wonder if it’s really worth. Among poorly managed plans and doubts on the very role of community managers, many organizations are still in a state of uncertainty. In the end it’s all about the project and operational alignment. There are two kind of community management systems : those that are the consequence of a project and integrate communities into the operating modes and those who are the result of the attention paid to the existence of communities without any will to leverage them to create value (or only with words). When community management has no other reason to exist that the existence of communities it becomes useless. When it’s the result of an ambition to turn the community potential into an asset that can be leveraged, it can lead to awesome results.

There are still a lot of discussions and questionings on internal community management. After the “everything is a community” era that caused the rise of armies of community managers and the “community manager : bullshit of the year” era that logically came after when the limits of the system were reached as well as those of its implementation by, at best, idealists or, at worse, sorcerer’s apprentices, organizations seem to be lost.

Community management logics are an undisputable potential for organizations when wisely used but are not the solution to every problem and, despite of their apparent simplicity, need a lot of specific skills. This explain that after the times of overexpectations came the time of disappointment.

First, we have to distinguish between discussions related to community management and community managers. If community management approaches are necessary, lots of questions remains about community managers, their role and profile. There’s no doubt community managers will stay for long to manage external communities, things are different when talking about internal communities.

As a matter of fact it’s logical to think that, in a couple of years, community management skills will be part of everyone’s toolbox and there will be no more need for specific people. I fully subscribe to this point of view. But, unlike some people, I won’t pretend that managers will become community managers or, at least, not in an exclusive way. If it’s an unavoidable evolution of managers skills, methods and way of doing their job, it’s far from being enough. Managers have to set objectives, have also have a right to give orders and have to be able take disciplinary actions, what is not a part of a community manager role. They’ll have to combine both dimensions, what won’t be easy at all.

Then we have to keep in mind that there is no consensus on the level at which community managers should operate. A wide range of situations exists, from the senior manager in charge of managing a global system to the recently graduated person in charge of having the field and making some noise. The consequence is that there were lots of attempts to formalize different responsibility levels, with community managers, social media directors etc… Another big mistake was made in France where “management” was often translated into animation what causes that, with the same job title, lots of different profiles can be found.

That said, let’s come back to the concern that worries many organizations because of the varying results that can be observed here and there : is community management worth, are benefits worth the effort, or should organizations let communities live, die (and even not come to life) by themselves ?

The answer can be summed up in one analogy : community management is the corporate cholesterol.

[Read more...]

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Should organizations limit collaboration ?

April 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary :with the coming of social media in the workplace, organizations began to dream of a spontaneous self-driven collaboration that would get rid of rules and organization frameworks to deliver outstanding results. Today we all have to acknowledge that reality is quite different. Facing an impressive amount of possible options, employees are lost, all the more since the value proposition that’s been made to them made no sense regarding to their daily goals and constraints. Tom Davenport suggests us to limit the scope of collaboration in order to reinforce sense and focus : specific tools for a specific goal for a specific amount of time. But even if this way of doing things was proven successful with average uses, we should not throw the to throw the baby out with the bath water and forget community and serendipity principles : both can work together but are not about the same tasks, the same needs. However, Davenport’s idea may work for most people and, mot of all, directly applies to what’s key for them and impacts value creation.

With the coming of social media in the workplace, came the myth of a global, organic collaboration where everyone would collaborate with others not only to do their job but also to do awesome unexpected extra things, out of organizational silos. Years after, we have to acknowledge that it does not work. Or, at least, not the way we expected to.

The reason is quite simple to get and has been dealt with many times on this blog and many other ones. Everything started with the supposed universal and inevitable nature of networks and communities. But…

- networks shoud not be mistaken for communities…that are not teams either…

- communities are communites…and only exist by the will of people who want to more than their work, go beyond, out of the flow of their work. What is not what organization usually mean by collaboration.

- unlike the web where people using a given tool and sharing the same practices gather to do things together, most of work in the workplace happens in structured teams with known and defined people what implies that practices and tools have to be standardized within these teams There’s a big difference between gathering those who changed and change those have been gathered.

So, the “2.0 paradigmp” is still incomplete in the context of traditional production activities if not slightly improved. What reminds me of two things : [Read more...]

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Change or don’t change..but don’t stay on the middle of the ford

March 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : as any strategic project, a social business or enterprise 2.0 one need deep changes in the organization to be successful. One the most common causes of failure is that not all the consequences are drawn, that what has to be changed in order to make things coherent and beneficial for both employees and the organization are not changed. An old truth applies here : either a project is strategic and everything should be aligned accordingly or the necessary adjustments are seen as optional and so does the success of the project. In this case, it’s better not to start anything.

When any enterprise wonders about its evolution, about what it should become to stay or become competitive again, it builds a vision of its future in order to reach it. It’s often the transcription, according to what the organization is, its culture, past, constraints, of the theoric concept of enterprise 2.0 or social business. Objectivity makes us admit that many of these projects fail or, at least, are very relative successes.

Why ?

- because the “social” or “2.0′” things went with a tool approach and that the goal became to make people use the tools instead of making people serve the project with the tools. A good example of useless changes in behaviors when the system is in question.

- because the project was launched without any idea of what the goal was. Who does not know his destination often goes nowhere and fears trying new roads.

Deploying the tool that will support the new ways of operating and serve as a catalyst is the easiest part of the project, to such an extent that’s it’s often what’s done firs. In the other hand its integration in the existing IT and its choice depending on key criteria that can only emerge after a deep work on operational needs may suggest that it should be the last part of the project. An essential part, but not the first : who does not find logical to align tools with needs instead of forcing needs to meet what the tools can do ?

That said, an enterprise 2.0 project is not different from any kind of project from a reasoning perspective. There is goal. To reach it, some things are needed what are as many requirements. Each of these requirements has its own ones. All this breakdown can be sumed-up in a tree that shows what has to be done. I’d rather say should be because this step seems to be often overlooked. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Road to enterprise 2.0 : changing behaviors (only) is neither enough nor perennial

March 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : the switch from a traditional organizational model to enterprise 2.0 or social business needs a change in behaviors. This evolution often needs specific actions toward individuals to convince them to change the way they work. But is it sufficient and perennial ? It seems that the answer is “no”. Behaviors are determined by outside elements that impose themselves to employees in the context of work. Any action aiming only at changing behaviors will fail one day or the other. Solutions that work on the social web where systemic constraints that weight on people are lighter than in the enterprise are not viable in the workplace.

We endlessly repeat that a successful enterprise 2.0 (or social business…) project needs to convince users. That’s a fact but skeptics or dishonest people have arguments against this assumption. According to the number of things people do in the workplace and behaviors they adopt without being convinced, even being conscious that what they do is not what they should do, we could question a lots of things. Anyway, we all acknowledge thatorganizational change needs behavioral change and that the latter needs conviction. Evangelize, show, demonstrate, encourage…day after day.

If this approach is unavoidable, I don’t think it is either enough or perennial. As a matter of fact, even if the majority is preaching adoption through conviction, I’m more likely to believe in the trio : simplification, sense, alignment.

Sense and alignment because not only it makes things more obvious but also doesn’t force employees to fight against the system. Simplification because I’ve never seen anyone refusing somethings that makes his job easier…provided the two previous conditions are met. As a matter of fact if “easier” means swimming against the current and facing colleagues’ and even superiors’ disapproval, employees often switch back to less risky things.

The above statement shows one thing : when one manages to convince people to change their behaviors, the center of gravity of the organization makes them step back one day or the other. Why ? Because the behaviors they leave behind are the result of their adaptation to a system. A system that defines their objectives, the way they’re evaluated, their progression in the hierarchy, even imposes behaviors that are the consequence of old habits and corporate culture. And, of course, the management model.

Remember what I wrote here on people that can, alone, without being conscious, wipe-out all the benefits generated by others. That’s quite a similar situation : the person in question, because located at a strategic point of the flow of work (most of time because of his position or expertise) is slowing down the flow of work and even blocking it because of his behaviors. And what tells him to behave this way ? The system and the organizational structure.

That’s why, in the mentioned post, I suggested targeted actions to fix this. Targeted on a given person because it’s ability to change is the center of the problem but not by using the person as a lever (convincing him, urging him to do something) but by using levers that will impact the system around the person.

How many people did we saw embracing change with joy and happiness before giving up, disenchanted ? They made the effort of changing but while their environment was not changing they got exhausted. We often hear that, step by step, anyone change under the influence of his colleagues and that makes change sustainable. It’s a half-truth. It’s, in fact, the case when the mass managed to make the system change by impacting those who were driving the system. But if the latter don’t react we all know what happens on a long term perspective.

Actions aiming at making a person or a group change by convincing them of the usefulness of new behaviors are catalysts. But outside of a systemic approach their effect is seldom sustainable. Any approach relying on evangelization and conviction only has its limit even it looks like an easier way to make things change.  Unlike what happens on social platforms on the web : constraints are lighter so it’s easy for users to get out of their system by themselves.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Enterprise 2.0 and ROI : forget the “whether” and focus on the “how”.

September 14, 2010 By 2 Comments

Summary : even if the concep of ROI, in its traditional sense, hardly hardly works for enterprise 2.0, overlooking the question of tangible benefits tha should be expected is impossible. But the reasonnings on this issue suffer from a noticeable bias : technology is assessed in the current context while it needs organizational and management changes to deliver its effects. So there are few chances to have a solid demonstration if the focus is kept on the existence of ROI without a joint reflexion on how to make it happen.

The ROI of Enterprise 2.0 is interesting because it’s at the same time unavoidable and a problem that’s impossible to solve without rethinking the whole paradigm of value creation.

First, I’d like state something. I’m using the word ROI because it’s the one we all use to discuss this point while I think that “measurable improvement” would be more relevant.

Then, I’ll start with a metaphor. If a logical and rational thinking makes us deduct that an engine is the best solution to make a car move and that, despite your car has one that works, your car don’t move when you accelerate, it may mean two things. The first is that ou forgot to shift the gear box on the right position, the second is that it’s not connected to the transmission. Instead to trying to fix the engine or throwing it away, what needs a fix is the transmission.

Then let’s talk about ROA (return on assets). The number is well known but John Hagel recently reminded it to us : it has dropped to 25% of what it was in 1965 while people’s productivity has been skyrocketting in the meanwhile. Conclusion : that’s not employees that don’t pedal fast enough but the organization that struggles at turning their effort into value. So the solution is not to blame employees and put even more pressure on them but to rethink the way work is organized and people are managed.

Now, have a look at new ways of doing things and the tools that support them. Anyone with few objectivity understands that the easier it is for employees to access resources and expertises in a fluid way that helps to save time, the quicker problem solving and the better made decisions made will be. But since this system is hardly systematizable, organizations keep their old way of doying things. What means telling the cyclist to pedal harder and harder while the chain is broken.

So the true question about ROI is not to know if it exists but how to turn a potential into actual benefits. This is not about social media or behaviors (even if it will play a part) but about “plumbing”.

That’s exactly what I wrote a couple of years ago about strategy maps and intangible assets :

• Value creation is indirect : intangible assets don’t create value by themselves, but through their use in business process.

• Value is contextual : the value of intangible assets depends on their alignment with strategy

• Value is potential : if business process don’t use those assets, their value remain potential and can’t be fully realized.

• Assets are bundled : intangible assets have to be use in conjuction with tangible assets.

So it’s logacally difficult if not impossible to demonstrate any kind of benefit and, most all all, to measure them, if the question of alignment has not been tackled and if processes have not been designed or fixed to actually rely more on intangible assets.

Organizations have to forget the old principle according to which tools ahave an endogenous value : the value of social tools is exogenous and can’t be delivered if tools are not used in the context of adapted processes.

So there are chances we keep on discussing the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 again and again for years if the focus is kept on “whether” it exists instead of “how to deliver it”. Even people who are convinced and don’t care about the “if” shoud care of the ‘how” that ensures that processes will be able to turn the potential into tangible benefits.

As my good friend Luis Suarez rencently wrote, we should learn to work smarter, not harder. Lett me add : provided we avoid to pedal better but in emptiness.

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Behind enterprise 2.0 there’s coherence

June 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’d like to go further into a point I mentioned in a previous post and that deserves some more explainations.

According to what we can often hear or read (and that I sometimes wrote here too), organizations lack many things to perform in today’s context. What has to be understood like “they need to acquire and implement many things they don’t have” like ideas, competences, employee’s passion about their job and many other things. Finally I wonder if it’s that true.

• Ideas and innovative potential ? It exists both inside and outside the organization. Just have to bend down to pick it up.

• Talents ? I see many brilliant people, from any generation in every organization I know.

• The will to engage and do one’s best ? It exists, in proportions that may vary depending on local culture and the relationship between people and business world. I agree it can fade away if not sustained.

• ….

I don’t think the issue is the acquisition or the development (even if this last point can be discussed) of all these things but the way they are used.

• Talented and creative people at the marketing department, talented sales people…but no alignment and the impression that both don’t go in the same direction.

• plenty of ideas, sometimes heard and acknowledged. But seldom implemented.

• Rare expertises but hardly accessible and shared.

• People able to face the challenges of the organization…with incentive to do the opposite.

• Brilliant young qualified people, hired because they can bring something new in the workplace and who are asked to fit the mould once they join the company.

• ….

As we can see, organizations have an impressive energy tank, a huge potential, that fits today’s need. But the corporate engine is plugged on an old tank full of aldultered fuel. Or maybe the carburation is not set for today’s fuel.

Would it be with a management toolbox or new technologies, the question behind what we call enterprise 2.0 is plug the right tank on the engine.

That’s also the reason why ROI is very hard to get when talkin about intangibles : it’s hard to deliver any value when the engine does not use the fuel the company invests in.

The challenge is to bring some coherence, that’s to say aligning business practices with the fuel the organization is putting a lot of money in (human, intangible…). And if tools are needed to be used as catalysts to boost the reaction…

That will also imply to redefine some roles or have a more systemic vision of investments : those who invest in intangibles seldom are those who design the way it will be used. Yet, when businesses invest in the bottom layer they need to design the “plumbing” that will ensure it will impact the upper layer, what has many incidences on the structured and formal part of the organization. Remember this old diagram I published years ago :

Food for thought…

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , ,

Enterprise 2.0 adoption : it’s about comfort

June 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Times are changing. After having spend years discussing the “what and why”, the enterprise 2.0 world is now focusing on the “how” what is quite a good thing. So we discuss a lot adoption strategies, a wording I’m not comfortable with but that will be used in this blog because I have nothing better to suggest.

The challenge is both simple and complex at the same time. It’s about bringing new ways to collaborate in the workplace, positionning and articulating them with what’s existing, while taking the software side into consideration. Generally, we know where we start from (even if I often recommend a deep audit to avoid the biases caused by the misrepresentation people may have of the way their own business is doing) and with a good methodology and good advisors it’s not hard to know where to do. But finding the right way to get there is not the easiest part of the work.

One may be tempted to directly bring employees from the point A to the point B by selling him the approach in a nice-looking gift box. We now know that it seldom works and employee are blamed for refusing change. In my opinion it’s a too easy shortcut because it relies on the assumption that people go from A to B simply by pressing a on-off switch whereas it’s about travelling through a road. And when it comes to make a long trip in a foreign and unknown land, we’re not all created equal.

When we talk about a starting point, we don’t only mean the current practices in the workplace (that are not even unform but are often aligned by dumbing down) but also personal practices.That’s an important point because a part of the issue is related to social media which is the first significant example of adoption of general public tools in the enterprise world. But we also know that people won’t adopt at work at work behaviors they don’t have in their own private life. So it’s important to know what is their actual state of adoption before going further. Do they use such or such tool ? Are they passive ? Active ? Connectors ? Only readers ? It really matter even if these practices will have to be professionalized. This has to be assessed at both individual and collective levels because we’re talking about collective practices. If 2% employees are heavy users and 98% refuse to have a Facebook account, even if the 2% are a real opportunity, the 90% are the limitating factor. Encouraging the firsts won’t be of any use if the others don’t make any progress.

In order to make the 98% make some progress we can wait for the “practice leaders” to help them. It may take some time, leaders can discourage. That’s a good idea but maybe some facilitation is needed. And to go further we need to go beyond the way they master tools and their capacity to adopt new behaviors. We need to care about their comfort !

[Read more...]

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