What do employees need to turn 2.0 ?

May 27, 2010 By 2 Comments

The paradox of enterprise 2.0 is that even when businesses manage to go on their fear of the unknown and decide to embrace this new paradigm, they are often not followed by their employees even if they bring a solution to their problems with solutions that are supposed to make their work easier.

Everybody now understands that employees need mor than tools and communication campaigns to adopt new practices and behaviors even if that would be beneficial to them. Even saying “do whatever you want, we trust you” doesn’t work”.

Here’s a little checklist of customer’s expectations.

• What are the expected outcomes ? What am I supposed to “produce” on these tools, and what is expected from the groups / communities I’m a part of.

• What are the limits to my responsability ? To what extent am I autonomous, beyond which point should I ask for permission or refrain from doing anything.

• Is it a part of the job I’m paid to do ? Will my manager or any person paying me with his budget consider my activity as wasted time ? Will they blame me for participating or reward me ?

• What’s my exposure ? How to control it ? What kind of information am I supposed to share ? Facts or opinions that engage me ? Can I set my own limit ? Who can access what ? And what will the information I share be used for ?

• Show me first and then I’ll follow.

• Before asking to me to any new thing, show me how all that can help me to do what I’m already doing today, how it makes it simpler and easier.

• Don’t scatter my attention. I already have so much to do so don’t distract me with pointless information and issues that have no added value according to my objectives and daily tasks.

• Don’t break my “personal workflow”. I don’t have time to play with 3 applications, aggregate information, forward it, copy/past. In this case I’ll focus on the tool that is not the best but that can do a little bit of anything, even not in an efficient way, without having to switch between several apps. (email ?)

• Don’t add but remove. For 50 years, the response to any new issue was a new layer of solution (tools, rules, practices), These layers have been piling up for decades and we’ve reached such a point that they slow me down and are sometimes contradictory the one with the other. Instead of adding new layers, remove those that are actual burdens, doesn’t make any sense anymore and are useless.

• Don’t bring me into one more experiment. I’m not a guinea-pig and the time I’m investing penalizes me in my real work and is even bad for my image and reputiation. I’m ready to learn, to explore, provided it won’t be shut down in 6 months and it will help me in my day-to-day word.

• How information will be used ? Reused ? It will help me to know what to share.

• Teach me, show me how to articulate the structured and unstructured part of my work, the formal and informal ones. And I hope tools take this need for articulation into account because I don’t want to play the human connector.

• Teach me how to seamlessly integrate it in my daily work and how to translate it into a simple, scripte, reassuring routine I’ll follow without thinking about it.

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Are you piloting or experimenting ?

May 6, 2010 By 3 Comments

When an organization tries to embrace something new, the first steps are made in a very cautious way and that’s logical. Even when there’s a clear idea of what is being done, things have to be tried on a small scale to validate some things, compare the plan and the reality. I don’t even mention cases when something is tried without having any idea of the purpose and of the possible benefits that can be expected.

This applies to many things and enterprise 2.0 is not an exception. So, even if this post will be more about this topic, many things can be generalized to other fields.

I won’t rewrite the debate that took place last summer about knowing if this preliminary steps made sense or not. As a matter of fact, when a critical mass is needed, a smaller scale may made this steps more or less relevant. In concrete words, the question is about :

1°) Knowing what is being done

2°) How it’s called and explained.

[Read more...]

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Is enterprise 2.0 possible without positive thinking ?

March 16, 2010 By 2 Comments

I’ll start with a statement that’s nothing new and won’t surprise anyone. We are all different, with our cultures, values, expectations, and even if things may look quite uniform at a local scale, the diversity of our world becomes obvious when we have to work in a globalized context.

In the same way, any idea, trend, concept, carry with it a part of the culture of those who created it. May we talk about jazz, gastronomy, democracy, basketball…they crossed the borders with their creator’s values and, as time went by, managed to become implanted in many countries by embedding a part of the local culture, being revisited by locals to become acceptable according to their own identity.

One of the charasterics of enterprise 2.0 is that it’ s tinged with positive thinking, something that’s very unfamiliar to us and that we can’t really understand before having many interactions with foreign people (even if we’re sometimes made aware of it at business schools…but nothing is like real experience).

Without going too deep into details, let’s say that that a culture that promotes certain values, where people always things they could improve things, make tomorrow better than today, where work and being successful at work are seen as means to improve one’s personal life, carries genes that are not neutral at all. It makes it natural and easy for people to explore new things, to engage with others and that becomes very interesting when a new field has to be explored, most of all with the topics that are ours.

This is clearly explained here:

Successful people act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Successful people often find themselves in situations where risk and uncertainty is hanging over them and if they were to take on a negative mindset then failure would rear its ugly head. Instead high achievers embrace risk and uncertainty in difficult situations and keep a positive outlook. Nine times out of 10 usually end up with the results that they had in mind all along.

Positive attitude is extremely important, as it encourages individuals to approach each day, and each problem, with a bright outlook. In a team environment, a positive attitude encourages a team to work together with individual styles and personalities. Positive attitude is not only about choosing to have a good outlook through good times and bad, but also about learning to love what you do. I have observed that outstanding business people are successful because they deeply love their work.

The french edition of wikipedia tells us that :

• it’s supported by moral qualities such as love and work, courage, compassion, résilence, creativity, curiosity, integrity, knowledge of oneself, moderation, self control, wisdom.

• collective value and ideals are : justice, responsibility, public-spiritedness, parenthood, support, professional ethic, team spirit at work, leadership, project and tolerance.

I can’t prevent myself from thinking that, not only the behavioral logics of enterprise 2.0 can be seen there, but also that everything that deals with deployment, adoption, often leverage these values.

I can’t prevent myself either to notice that, to be direct, our culture is quite the opposite. Not better, not worse, but different. Strict separation between private and work life, work seen as a constraint and not as something that helps self-fullfillment, mistrust toward enterprises and any attempt to “swallow” the individual, to lock him up into the group. I’m exaggerating on purpose but things are very close to that….

Once we acknowledge that, what conclusion should be drawn ?

[Read more...]

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What place for communities in collaboration ?

March 2, 2010 By 3 Comments

The switch from a compartimentalized enterprise collaborating on a small perimeter to an enterprise that harnesses mass collaboration and leverages social networks and communties is much harder than many expected.

But is “transformation” a relevant word ?

First because collaboration has many differents levels and scopes that not exclusive but complementary. Enterprise 2.0 does not mean the end of groups and groupware but brings a new dimension that helps getting rid of the known boudaries and addressed problematics that could not be before, or not in such an easy way. Then, and that’s a consequence of the previous point, because employees’ logic is to find a path to go from one logic to another without denying what they used to know and do before and still makes sense.

Communities form on a topic and is crowded by conversations about this topic. People’s driver is to share, learn, find solutions, make ideas emerge that will not immediately apply to something, answers to problems what may not have emerget yet. Unlike traditionnal formal structures, these communities have no objective to achieve at a given due date. They are more likely to be defined as background and ongoing processes than by defined things that have to be delivered at a given moment. Meanwhile, employees also collaborate into formal structures and there’s no doubt that their participation into communities improves their ability to bring the right answers into their everyday collaborative activities.

Compared with the web, 10% employees are very comfortable to participate in vibrant communities. The other 90% will only join them to find answers to problems that happened and could not be solved in the in their workaday perimeter.

This is not trivial at all and is the evidence that enterprise 2.0 only makes sense in a global framework that takes into account all the contexts people face.

• the approach must not only focus on the social dimension but on bringing some coherence to all the contexts, explain them to employees and help them to position in each one.

• tools may support a fluid circulation through all these contexts for both people and information without any break in flows and dynamics.

• the intensity of of the new practices may differ according to the context. Each context has its social side and needs but in a more and or less intense fashion. That’s not an “all or nothing” deal.

Let’s also admit than, on a cultural point of view, many organizations are not comfortable with communities and conversations but a first step maybe to focus on team efficiency, on day to day tasks, to help people and culture grow bolder.

For instance we often hear managers saying “people are here to work and not to have conversations” what is quite se same as the “I’m not here to run a social club” that Andrew McAfee used to illustrate how the “social” word was hard to het. For these people, maybe a workaday/task/project driven approach to “social” may make more sense, reassure and would help to demonstrate some benefits even if the challenge in terms of behaviors is more modest than in the “social big bang” approach.

Booz Allen Hamilton is one of the best example of successful enterprise 2.0. They started with the social and community approach. At the last Virtual enterprise 2.0 conference they told more about their future roadmap : integrated document management solution, incorporate the benefits of E2.0 methodology into structured projects and team sites. Be sure that other companies which are not BAH, this would have been the start. A few weeks ago I was on a panel a large company told that its main concern was to start from the existing and build on it.

So, we have to be aware that communities are not an end. It’s a component of a global framework and has to be considered as such and not as an exception to the way the organization operates. This also mean that community management is only a part of a global management problematic and, without articulation, community management may have few value.

Collaboration and communities

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Networking and collaboration : is enterprise a land of trust or distrust ?

February 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I recently wrote that it what obvious to me that for many people some activities and behaviors had to remain in their private sphere and, that social networking and everything that comes with is not a part of what they naturally want to transpose in the workplace. I also temperated my words saying that, of course, generation and local culture factors had to be taken into account. But, according to the last discussions I had with people from all around the world, the gap between some european countries and the anglo-saxon world is more than a supposition.

Luck made me come across a Microsoft survey[fr] since then. What does it say ?

The survey shows that the French are attached to preserving a clear boundary between their personal and professionallives : with 86% respondants, French are,by far those who want to differenciate their online profile from their professional one. 61% do it systematically.

The whole survey is available  here en english.

The survey also tells us, what may seem paradoxical, that the French are those who think the less than their online activities will affect their professional lives. Why ?

France is the outlier. French respondents reported being less concerned than other groups, and study findings suggest two key reasons for this. First, the data suggests that the French do not rely as heavily on online information to make either social or professional judgments about others. Second, data shows that the French are considerably more proactive in monitoring and managing their reputations and have, therefore, less to be concerned about.

In short, we care so much about the informations that may exist about us that we are sure (and maybe we’re wrong) that nothing that is left online can be harmful to us.

Two obvious conclusions have to be made ad this point :

• Strict separation bewteen personal and professional lives. Question : does it only concern informations or the related behaviors too ?

• We do our possible that the informations that can be found online about us would not help anyone to judge us. Question : do we transpose this behavior in the workplace ?

[Read more...]

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Social Medias : being there, doing as usual, doing new things

February 9, 2010 By 1 Comment

Everyday we receive new numbers that show that an always increasing number of  people are “on” an increasing number of social networks, that such percentage of an age class is there, that such country is more represented than another or is slowly bridging the gap with the others etc…

Hence the unavoidable conclusion : almost everybody is comfortable with the social logic and the tools that come with and, logically, everybody will be comfortable to use them in the workplace and even ask for them.

A first reflection about the number of users. If we differenciate the number of registered people from the number of active users, the numbers dramatically drop, as we recently sauw with twitter. If I had to sum the number of services where I have an account I oppened just to try or to be findable whenever someone looks for me, the number of services I actually use may be less than 10%. If I consider the average user who finally accepted an invitation because he was fed up with receiving tens or hundreds of invitations from his friends to join the last trendy platform…and who forgot both is password and the fact he had an account there…

What matters when it comes to assess the wealth of social medias is not the number of users but what they actually do (provided they do anything). So let’s focus on those who are really active.

Consider Facebook for instance. Look at the most common usage. Say what you’re doing, what you’re thinging. Share a joke. Share something you’ve seen elsewhere on the web. Does it remind you of something ? It’s exactly what we used to do with emails in the late 90s. Today, instead of sending a joke or a video to our whole address book by email why share it one Facebook. We also play on Facebook. In the 2000s, games were standalone services. We used to play and invite friends to the game… Now everything happens in the same environment. As for really new usages, some are very interesting but only concern a little minority of users.

Now, let’s consider more business oriented social networks, like linkedIn. Many are “on”, use them to push their applications when they are looking for a job (sometimes in a clumsy way without understanding that networks work differently than conventional ways), to push their product when they have something to sell. Some participate in groups, but not everybody. Some use the social filter to qualify their contacts…but a few people really do that.

There is a big difference between being on a social network and using it. Then, there is a difference that is at least as big between using them to make things “as usual” and using them to do new things or old things in a new way.

Now, let’s have a look at the workplace… [Read more...]

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Enterprise 2.0 adoption : you need both a voice and a screwdriver

December 24, 2009 By 5 Comments

This is a sequel of my previous post related to enterprise 2.0 adoption, enriched by the many discussions and comments that followed. Here’s a synthesis of what emerged from that.

• There must be someone on the driver seat

As Oscar Berg pointed out, there must be someone in the driver’s seat. Seen from this angle, of course, adoption can be driven. Rather, it has to be embodied : someone has to embody both change and novelty and carry it all with a loud, clear and intelligible voice. It’s about explaining, convincing and, in some ways, create dynamics and a kind of enthusiasm that will help things to happen. That’s the role of internal evangelists, adoption leaders and advocates.

• Enthusiasm and good words are not enough.

Even if those who are convinced, the passionate ones, the early adopters are numerous, we are forced to admit this is not enough. If it was, the adoption isue would have been solved for long and we wouldn’t be discussing it anymore. In their daily job, employees can hear the voice that says “it’s possible, it’s good, it’s beneficial….” and still prefer the status quo. Sometimes by fear but it can be dealt with with a good accompaniment. Sometimes the problem is deeper. Employees think that “yes, in a perfect world it would really be great, but it makes no sense in my particular case”. And they are often right.

John Tropea tackles a part of the issue here and here. Generally, if what the voice says is counter to what the common logic would make employees do, they won’t listen to it and follow the old rules that design their job and the way they are measured  even if they find them irrelevant. More, the benefits being inexistant if only a few people change, one has to change with his peers (or a large number of them) in a coherent way.

This pointis not about convinction or carrying a message. Even the bggest enthusiasm can’t do many things against the daily reality nnd workaday concerns. So it’s about working on alignement and make things become coherent. This is the manager’s call and has to be done as close to employees as possible. Of course the “voice” matters, it will explain things to managers, will share hints, best practices, but at the end the solution will imply a screw will be given in the organizational day to day mechanism, that will make that what the voices says will  not be only words anuymore but will be turned into facts.

This adoption depends in no way of enthusiasm and advocacy. It’s a matter of sense and alignment.

• What can be driven ?

Obviously everyone has his own vision and I won’t pretend mine is better. In my opinion, to drive something, you must be able to concretely change it by your own will and actions. One must have a hold on something to actually be able to drive it. So a part of the daily activities can be redesigned in order to align them with the pursued goal, assessment and measurement too as it was done at Cisco. But, in the other hand, and despite the hudge amount of energy spent, it’s impossible to have a hold on people’s mind, to be sure they will be convinced and change their minds. Evangelists can only do their best to make it happen but, since they don’t have any hold on the complex human mechanisme, it’s impossible to modelize what will make everyone see the light whithout any exception.

In the strict sense of the word, if activities’ transformation can be driven, leaders can only do their best to change people’s minds. We also have to acknowledge that the ratio between the ressource that are involved and the final result are more predictable in one case than in the other. [Read more...]

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Enterprise 2.0 between “next big things” and old tricks

August 18, 2009 By 3 Comments

You must have noticed how this summer was quiet in the enterprise 2.0 world. Of course, many people were on vacation (above all in France…), but there was a strange feeling. Something like emptiness, a kind of “end of something”. The end of a headlong flight.

The enterprise 2.0 has been knocking on companies’ doors for four years and, the most serious reports confirm it, if  some successfully achieved their transformation, many are struggling behind. The traditional answer has always been the search for “the next big thing”, the trick that will make things change dramatically. The said trick used to be a new tool, a new feature. So the “hunt for the next big thing” kept going on for years. But it appears that this quest is running out of steam.

If we compare it with the “Tour de France”, it may be a high mountain stage. But the comparison ends here : in the “tour” you have to leave the others competitors behind. In our case, we have to help businesses to keep up inventors and visionnaries. We are forced to admit that, as thoughtleaders were climbing faster and faster (pursuing the “Next Big Thing”), those who needed their help to climb the mountain (ie businesses) lost heart, and got off their bicyle in the middle of the ascent. Hence a gap that is the contrary of what was pursued.

[Read more...]

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20+1 reasons not to launch an Enterprise Social Software project

January 6, 2009 By 1 Comment

Let’s be clear : I’m talking about the reasons not to launch a defined project because it’s born to fail. That does not mean that it’s the case for every project : more and more of them are born to be sucessful mainly because of the growing maturity of companies about social networks.

1°) Your interlocutor wants hierarchy driven rights : it’s imposssible for any users to have the same rights as his superiors and so on… At the end the average users barely have the right to read. And don’t even think of letting them write or comment ! This kind of solution is an intranet. And it already exists.

2°) Your interlocutor focuses on document sharing : web 2.0 technologie are more about exchanges, are more about flows than about stock. If he wants a shared directory let him know he already has it on his information system.

3°) 50% of the project team aren’t on Facebook, linkedIn or any social platform : it means that those who will be the go-betweens, those who’ll embody the project in front of end users have no experience of social networks tools and practices. Knowing how many invitations we can receive a day to join such or such platform, it’s not accidental : it’s the proof they refuse the concept.

4°) Your interlocutor wants publication workflows : no one is able to publish anything without getting authorization from his superior while one of the project’s purposes if to fluidify information. By doing that, managers are turned into marshalling yards, censors, publication comittee (chose the right answer) and the only sure you can be sure of is that it will have a negative impact on productivité.

5°) Your interlocutor needs a detailed schedule of behavioral changes : Humm…how to say it ? Human nature is irrational and unschedulable, most of all when interconnected.

6°) Your interlocutor targets people he’d like to make work together but who have no reason to do so : he’s trying to use technology to solve management issues and it won’t work.

7°) Your interlocutor has no power over users : so he has only pious hopes toward people whose “day to day life” he can’t impact. So he won’t be able to facilitate anything while these people have to face constraints he can’t do anything about.

8°) Your interlocutor doesn’t want people  to change the way they work : it’ impossible to build new things without impacting old ones, above all if the purpose is to improve these old things.
9°) Your interlocutor’s purpose is to get a 2.0 platform : without taking care of what it would be used for. He forgot that necessicty is the mother of invention and that there are enough plants in offices for decorative purposes that there’s no need to add new ones on the intranet.

10°) Your interlocutor purppose is to make people collaborate and share information : “collaborate and share information”means nothing to his team. They need to be precisely told what they are expected to do. What is more, those words are only means : the real purposes are operational and neglecting them prevents from evaluatin the project. It even prevent the project to progress and receive any support because of its lack of sense.

11°) Your interlocutor will not play any role in the first projects : so he will go fishing for projects and say to someone who didn’t ask for anything “we are going to experiment on your team, for a purpose you didn’t idenfify and provide them with a tools that makes possible things you even cannot visualize. Worse, by recruited “designated volunteers” he may scupper the project by giving the impression of misappropriating resources.

12°) The team’s manager nickname is “Terminator” : and often answer to any idea or suggestion by “that’s bullshit”, “shut up and work”.  His first contributions will surely make people feel like giving up.

13°) The project team has no idea of how contents will be used : producting contents that won’t be reused in people’s daily work is useless. An “idea box” that nobody reads won’t cause any innovation. An informational bubble disconnected from real business is useless and often dies on its own.

14°) Your interlocutor will start a change management project only if the pilot succeeds : it means “I will get involved and mobilize resources only if you bring me the proof we don’t need it”.

15°) Your interlocutor wants to test a tool : once he would have validated functionalities on a blank test, he won’t be able to demonstrate anything, any ROI, any benefits because the tool was not used for business purposes. Perhaps  il will do reverse engeneering, saying “now we have a tool, let’s find it a purpose”. Back to 11°)

16°) Your interlocutor wants one to one conversations : he’s afraid that a conversation between two people could de followed by a third. He needs an email solution.


17°) Your interlocutor doesn’t have time : he wants things to work without taking any risk, without being seen as a change leader. Don’t expect his executive sponsorship.


18°) Your interlocutor doesn’t make the difference between leadership, expertise and hierarchy : he wants to be sure that the experts who will emerge will be the same as those who are considered as experts by the company and that a trainee will ot have better ideas than his boss.

19°) You interlocutor wants a one month pilot for ten people : at the end of which he won’t be able to prove anything due to lack to time and critical mass.

20°) Your interlocutor wants to wait untill the pilot ends to turn it into a business project : so he wants to makes his team work on trivial things that won’t mobilize people who are already very busy while people are waiting for solutions to make their job easier, more efficient.

And the last one

When you talk about the social side of the project, of people centrism, you’re answered : “oh ! stop ! be careful ! we are not here for any HR stuff”

A contrario, perharps it will help you to find success factors…

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