The future of business starts at school. Still a long way to go

October 26, 2011 By 1 Comment

Résumé :despite enterprises know they need to change the way they work, they make very slow progress at undertaking a deep change process. The unwieldiness ot their organizational structure is not the only reason to that. People have become the slow factor of change and not only because people don’t like to change. Change implies to re-learn many routines deeply rooted into our minds. If habits are learn young and get rooted over time, we are forced to admit that our education system is key to provide enterprises with a human capital that meet their needs if we don’t want to enter a loose loose game where enterprises struggle to make profess and people lose their added value and their ability to find a job. Enterprises operate in a global context in which they don’t own all the levers and it’s getting essential to build educational systems that favor the learning of collaboration, creativity, mastering a knowledge intensive environment…as well as a proactive attitude toward the emergence of new jobs for people who’ll need to be “oneself entrepreneurs”. Both society and enterprises need new behaviors relying on new values. What means an education system that promotes and teaches them…

Note : This post is mainly bases on my knowledge of the french system but there’s no doubt part of it also applies in many other countries. Those who’d like to know more, laugh or be scares may enjoy this article and all the links it provides.


Despite the fact a wide consensus exists on the need to reinvent the operation and management model, everybody knows it’s far from being easy. In such approaches, people are the slow factor. Their reluctance to change is often mentioned as the main cause but that’s only the visible part of the iceberg. Most of the change process is about unlearning, forgetting wrong reflexes and habits. That’s true for people who’ve been in the workforce for decades but also for the younger. The reason is well known : the “human software” is being programmed from the early years and habits learned young get so deeply rooted that it’s hard to change them afterwards. Contrary, with time, it’s getting harder to acquire new behaviors, most of all when they are the opposite of what has become a part of our unconscious.

In 2006 I wrote on the bad habits we were taught at school, explaining why the damage was already done before people enter the workfoce. Unfortunately, I have not seen any kind of improvement coming and the few smart initiatives are too isolated while we need a critical mass of people sharing the same mindset.

Let’s review some key points.

• Collaboration

I won’t repeat what I wrote in the above mentioned post. But if people are taught young that “one only learns alone”, “knowledge and ideas have to be kept for oneself”, “others should not know what one thinks or does”, it’s easy to understand how they’ll behave once adult. Ok, when we become older, group work is sometimes required by professors. But it’s too late. Rather than thinking together, share and elaborate a common vision, we only divide tasks up according to what each one is better at and the result of the all the individual work is gathered and stacked up instead of being melt. The final result is the sum of all individual skills, never more, what is not what collaboration is about. Of, course, groups form depending on people’s level…a group of good pupils or students will never allow a less talented one to be burden.

• Learning and understanding

In a knwoledge economy, learning, knowing for the sake of knowing is not enough. We need to understand things, make knowledge ours, be able to understand the context to reuse things later, adapt them. That needs exchanges, explainations, discussions, what are the opposite of our model. Of course, writing pages and pages during classes (most of time, nothing more that what’s in the books) may help to learn. But not to understand. Conversations ? Professors know, pupils listen. And the first is infallible so the second should not ask any question implying a answer like “I’m not sure” or “I need to check”.

In the same way, people able to understand the complexity of our world should not be focused on one only discipline, they need of broader understanding of things and their context. Understanding the world, finding relevant models by learning from the past without making the same mistakes needs some historical, economic, geopolitics backgroup…even for future scientists or people willing to spend their lives working with numbers. Our model makes the young starts specializing too young and overlook lots of matters that would help them understand the context around their major.

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Filed Under: Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR, Society 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 culture : change or do with it ?

December 2, 2010 By 2 Comments

Summary : Behind culture there are one thousand things, more or less objective or real to explain with more or less sincerity what prevent organizations and people from changing. Enterprise 2.0 faces the same kind of problems even if it’s not specific to it.  Acknowledgement : it’s an real concern that can be counterbalanced by corporate culture in some cases. There are many and varied solutions to override this issue but all are imperfect and none is universal. However, a difference as to me made between the impact of culture on behaviors than can be offset overtime with the right incentives and what has to deal with cultural identity that people will over try to protect against any change.

During the last Enterprise 2.0 summit I gave a talk about cultural boundaries and their impact on enterprise 2.0 and the transformation processus. This post is the occasion to sum up some of the discussions that followed my presentations as well as some thoughts I gathered from insightful posts that have been published since then.

To begin, we have to admit that this problem is as old as the world and did not wait for the raise of enterprise 2.0 to impact organizations. It’s a kind of usual suspects that’s pointed at every time something new is being implemented within a defined human, geographic, linguistic scope.

• A double importation issue seen from Europe

The question, in Europe, is that even before thinking of implementing enterprise 2.0 within european boundaries, it’s a north american concept that has to be imported. That’s easier in some countries for two reasons. The first is that the concept and many implementation strategies rely on positive thinking, what’s far from being a common attitude here. Then comes a systematic reaction towards what comes from overseas. The famous “it comes from overseas so it won’t work here”. What means many things. The first is rather a protectionist reflex, the second is a lack of self-confidence (“we won’t be able to make it work”). Note that the same arguments may be used wherever the change comes from. To be more specific on the second point, as I mentioned here, I see things changing and, as time flies, european organizations realize that they can make it, what has an interesting chain effect.

So that’s a concept that has to be “Europeanized” in terms of wording and levers before thinking to spreading it.

• A question that’s not only European.

Europe is not the only part of the world where the values that come with enterprise 2.0 may be problematic. In fact, problems will rise every time something has to be adopted and shared within people who have another identity (culture, language etc..). Maybe that’s a real concern in europe but the same kind of thing can be experienced inside one unique country. And let me tell you things may be much more complicated when we’ll have to deal with some asian countries.

• A false problem [Read more...]

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

Information security is too serious to be entrusted to IT people

September 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Summary : I recently read a survey about the dangerosity of social networks regarding to information leak, relying on the observation of a representative group of people. That’s a hasity concusion : it only proves that information security is not only a matter of technology but of usages, behaviors, a dimension that IT departements still barely master because they consider the issue from a technological standpoint. As an evidence, it seems that IT people are those who are the most likely to have dangerous behaviors, maybe because they only consider the technological side of the problem and overlook the behavioral one.

Recently I found a study about the dangerosity of some tools considering information leak. It says that email is the first cause of leaks (but is it a surprise) and that social networks are becoming a growing cause of such issues, what is not surprising because as they’re becoming more and more popular the risk is growing proportionally.

When I’m asked my opinion, my answer is always the same : no tool is dangerous by itself. It’s usage can be. Said differently : an irresponsible person is dangerous with any communication tool, even a homing pigeon. And the best way to fight irresponsibily is education, not interdiction. As a matter of fact when people are prohibited doing something without being educated, they send their time cheating with the system what may cause even more problems.

This study won’t make me change my mind. The way it was conducted is quite interesting :

The study sample group included 2,000 users from all over the world registered on one of the most popular social networks. These users were randomly chosen in order to cover different aspects: sex (1,000 females, 1,000 males), age (the sample ranged from 17 to 65 years with a mean age of 27.3 years), professional affiliation, interests etc. In the first step, the users were only requested to add the unknown test profile as their friend, while in the second step several conversations with randomly selected users aimed to determine what kind of details they would disclose.

The study showed:

  • More than 86 percent of the users who accepted the test-profile’s friend request work in the IT industry, of which 31 percent work in IT Security
  • The most frequent reason for accepting the test profile’s friend request was her “lovely face” (53 percent)
  • After a half an hour conversation, 10 percent disclosed personal sensitive information, such as: address, phone number, mother’s and father’s name, etc – information usually requested as answers to password recovery questions
  • Two hours later, 73 percent siphoned what appears to be confidential information from their workplace, such as future strategies, plans, as well as unreleased technologies/software

Some points to notice.

- some people accept a friend reques from an unknown person. It confirms my assumption. The problem is about people and the way their awareness about this kind of issue has been raised. There are two options. Either they would do exactly the same if they bumped into this nice looking girl in a bar and a full education program has to be implemented across the orgation or the fact they are online makes them lose their common sense and they have to be taught than the web is like real life : don’t follow a stranger.

Let me add that we already have more dangerous tools than social networks : familiy lunches, parties with friends and colleagues have been perfect situations for information leak for ages. I don’t even mention discussions in trains, people you can read their laptop screen when seated next to them etc…

- IT people are even more dangerous than others. Of course because they only see things through a technological point of view and only consider technological responses. A secured tool can be real strainer if people don’t use it well. Non IT people perceive the risk through a behavioral point of view, they analyze the nature of the context and of the relationship and may be more mistrustful.

Conclusion : anything that has to do with information security is not only a matter of technology and IT people may not be the best to handle the whole problem. Security is about technology and behaviors, this second point needing a specific program to be approached.

A last example. What’s better ? An employee who’s aware of dangers and uses Facebook or a non aware employee that can’t use facebook at work but uses it on mobile and at home ? The second is made harmless while he’s in the office but will be dangerous when he’s outside unless he’s educated.

Of course, pushing the “off” buttion is easier than implementing an awareness program. But it doesn’t solve everything.

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Enterprise 2.0 trainings are not useless

July 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Like any new topic, enterprise 2.0 comes with lots of myths. One of them dies hard : no training should be needed, if things are not simple enough to avoid training, rather give up. In fact it’s not that simple and, before all, we should wonder what kind of training we’re talking about.

The first idea that comes is “tool training”. Many say that if an enterprise tool needs more than five minutes to be understood, people won’t use it. Really ?

A difference has to be made between “basic” and “advanced” use. The first has to come intuitively, the second needs much more than five minutes and may, at the end, not concern more than a few users.

Why this 5 minutes thing ? In a perfect world I can understand that any tool, whatever its purpose is, should be as easy to use that no training would be needed. In this case we’re talking about social networkin tools, anything 2.0 or social but it should be the case for any application…starting with the settings of any OS than runs employees’ computers. But we also have to pay attention to what I call the “Excel case”.

We all know at least one “Excel Master”, someone able to design a tangle of spreadsheets that can do nearly anything and look like small personal ERPs. No one can say that mastering Excel to this extent is a simple and even pleasant things, but most of these people learned it by themselves. We can’t say either that it’s the kind of tool that makes people feeling like discovering or using it. But facts are here : people use it, a lot, well and every day more. Even those who are not savvy users are doing things with Excel because no one can’t avoid it in the workplace. Anyway, it takes more than five minutes for anyone to have at least a basic use of it, and it doesn’t prevent people from using it. The reason is simple.

Excel is useful. Excel helps to make in a fast and efficient way things that would take much more time and would be subjects to many errors if done otherwise. It’s often said that before having what we like, we have to like what we have and Excel is the perfect example. It does not matter people like it or not, it’s as indispensable as a screwdriver is to a carpenter. Vital.

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

Efficiency, performance, constraints and things 2.0

April 16, 2009 By 3 Comments

We saw in a previous post that one of the best ways to improve performance was not to push to people to make impossible things but to get rid of the constraints that crub their performance. Once that said, if the vision is understandable by everyone (rather than trying to push something large in a blocked thin pipe, better unblock and enlarge the pipe), it’s still useful to see what can be done in the day to day work.

So let’s find out what those constraints are and how to get rid of them. This will also be a good way to understand that enteprise 2.0 is not a goal by itself but a trigger to achieve organizational goals.

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