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: , , , , , , , ,

The conversational enterprise : opportunity or dead end ?

February 16, 2010 By 2 Comments

If we listen to what’s being said here and there, the future of business is conversation. A concept that’s not so easy to get for many organizations for two reasons :

• Intuitively, conversation makes think of chat…what means waste of time

• In the management ideology, there are those who talk and those who do. So, having conversations is the opposite of doing.

That’s not so hard to understand. Let’s imagine what imagining his whole team having conversations all day long would make any manager react. And, even when he can intuitively get the value, it’s hard for him to explain how it may improve his team performance because it is his main focus. As for the staff, they may wonder what to converse about…and, most of time, they don’t want any of their conversations to be heard by their hierarchy.

SO, buying the concept is very difficult.

But even so that’s a dimension that organization have to develop in a near future. For instance, in a Social CRM approach (which as a very clear and understandable value proposal), conversations are essential to create the needed engagement. Globally speaking, there are known things that have to be reached and the ability to seize opportunities that are, by definition, unknown at the start. In this second situation, everything starts from these famous conversation that have, most often, a topic but no purpose for participants, and that are essential to make purposes emerge. Conversations are the fertile grount where action grows up.

Even at this point many managers say “that’s nice…but that’s not for me”. And they’re right.

[Read more...]

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

Do we work the same way with providers and with colleagues ?

June 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The answer is obviously not. And not only because this is not the same kind of contracts. It’s because businesses still act according to the model that makes them consider their employees on one side and the others on the other side. And in the middle…they build walls. They proctect from the outside although value is not created on one or the other side of the wall alone but by people, from both companies, sitting on the top of the wall. Externals can’t access the tools that are used to collaborate inside et interactions between insiders and suppliers are much harder than between colleagues (even if, even in this case, it’s often far from being easy).

A few months ago I was wondering if the future of businesses was to manage an ecosystem of partners and outsource many competences.A phenomenon that won’t be driven by circumstances but by an organizational vision (which limits can easily be found)

I’m reading here that self employement will dramatically increase in the US in the ten next years. If this prediction is true, businesses will have to learn how to work efficiently with a growing number of external people, getting rid of irrelevant barriers.

Changes have to be undertaken, both in business and management practices (consider the others as a part of ours) and tools (platforms that allow both formal and informal interactions, open to external people). How many companies do open their internal collaboration spaces to their providers ? And, even when they do, what kind of interactions do they make possible ?

Working with providers as if they were one’s own employees is not only a self-fulfilling concept. It has noticeable implications which may soon become vital.

écosystème, collaboration, entreprise, externalisation, knowledgeworkers, outils-collaboratif, prestataires, réseaux, travailleurs indépendantss, travailleurs-du-savoir,interactions

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

B2B,B2C, E2E…and why not EWP ?

June 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

My point here is to consider the way the interaction within businesses and between businesses and their environment are thought and realize how old language habits structure our thinking and lock it up into old schemes.

At the beginning there was B2B and B2C. B2B because businesses used to make business together and B2C because businesses also used to have clients like you and me. Then, things went more complicated.

We say the appearance of B2E for Business to Employees. It took time but businesses were realizaing that operational and human relationships between them and their employees mattered. Even best : E2E, for Employees to Employees, because interactions between staff members may be important too !

I was about to write that all this things will surely lead us to “E2P”, “Employees to People” which would be about facilitating interactions between staff members and people from the outside. Customer care, collaborative innovation, community marketing…we’re heading in that direction.

But something makes me feel uncomfortable with all these definitions, something that telles me a mental barrier has not been broken, that some paradigms have to be cleaned up. It’s the 2, the “to”, which makes us guess we still think about one-way models. Me to the Others. I act. And the others ? They receive, they listen, they obey.

I’m afraid this is outdated.

What if we changed the old “to” for a “with. Finally, ain’t it our purpose ? Because it will be impossible to buit winning synergies if our thoughts tell us to direct people while our primary purpose was to make things with them. In short there will be no win-win relationships if we start with the assumption, even if it’s unconscious, that there will be a dominant and a dominated.

“Business with Business”, Employee With Employee”, “Employees with People (EWP…)… I’m sure that if the elaboration of any action plan started by wondering “what do we want to achieve with them” instead of “what do we want them to do in order to achieve our own goals”, we’d get slightly different results.

Words and their meaning have, even unconsciously, a certain impact in the way we put our ideas to work.

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

Boards in the mist

February 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Boards have to be mobilized in order to make the right decisions to survive the crisis. Nothing new. But according to this essay from McKinsey, it’s far from being that simple.

Three reasons are put forward

• Boards follow unchanging procedures and ritualss. Defines shedules on a yearly basis, documents  and agendas fixed many weekds ago.

It may seem absurd that people who make strategic decisions are traped into such straitjackets but this is facts. With all the consequences we can imagine on adaptability.

• Interaction modes that are not constents with the purpose. Boards are the place for consensual discussions, members only validate what has been done in preliminary works. It’s in no way a place for brainstorming and reflection from which anything innovative will emerge.

It seems that the only conflictuous point in a board meeting may be power. Not strategic issues.

• Many board members are not in touch with what’s going on in the economy. They are more comfortable with “preservation” strategies, waiting for things to solve themselves rather than with trying to take the initiative.

As a result, they will find themselves struggling to withstand tough conditions and badly positioned in the new environment.

Conclusion : board have to get rid of received ideas, to learn to think differently in order to find the means for strategies heading to the future instead of to become ossified on the present. Unlike halves-strategies.

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What kind of social networks do companies need ?

February 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Need for synergies, for connections, to do more with less ? Whatever the official reason is (and sometimes the unofficial one), companies are now turning back to the gool old network, renamed “social network” to stick to the the current climate, to find new pools of performance.

Because companies focus on efficiency, people’s network is not a collection a business cards lying about in a drawer. More, it’s more usual to collect external’s business cards than colleagues’s. The network got “webized” and companies are wondering of to professionalize a Facebook, internalize a LinkedIn. So social networks becomes entreprise-class applications, specialists quickly took a stand, traditionnal vendors tryid to add a “network” thing here and there. The fact remains that, behind an unique word and a sotfware feature hide many realities which embody the many visions company may have of social network. To make it short the question is : what is the useful kind of networks for a bsiness. According to PWC the future is “business networks”. But what are they ?

My point here is not to discuss what a network is. I’m convinced there is no generic and ideal form of network and that we need to adapt the one that matches our needs to our purposes.

[Read more...]

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

Digital Nomads : today’s community for tomorrow’s workers

August 19, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Perhaps you’ve already heard about Digital Nomads. More than a site it’s rather a community for those who break the traditionnal link between working and being at the office and use the right tools to be connected and able to work anywhere, anytime. Alone but not isolated : digital nomads often interact more with their ecosystem, are more informed about what the others are doing and keep more the others informed than people who work close one to another in traditional offices usually do.

In short, more than a way of working it’s rather a new daily way of life for more and more people. Please don’t tell me it’s only for independant workers or small companies : more and more companies now have mobility and nomadism programs that are more than experiments. Sometimes it’a about home office, sometimes it allows people to work from wherever they want. Those who read Tim Ferri’s “Four hours workweek” will appreciate… [Read more...]

Filed Under: Intranets and digital workplace, Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do french companies really understand nothing to web 2.0 ?

June 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A recent Jemm Research survey made upon IBM request [fr] shows that french companies can’t identify web 2.0 tools and their benefits. Do we have to worry about that ?

According to me the way things are asked introduces a bias in the answer, most of because they took the issue wrong side up. What are the benefits of social networks, blogs, wikis, in a top-down organization, where whitholding information means power, and where a taylorian work model applied to activities that are not made for it make people not waste time to help others ? A first sight : None !

In the other hand, if we think about working differently in order to maximize the use of knowledge, expertise, if we don’t want to spend thousands hours to reinvent the weel, then tools make sense.

In short, if people are asked what they think of new tools since they are formated to work and see things through an old paradigm, the answer is obvious. If they were asked “wouldn’t it be more efficient to work this way ?….and in this case are those tools relevant ?”, perhaps the answer wouldn’t have been the same. [Read more...]

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