Thinking of a two hemispheres brained intranet

intelligenceWe all know our brain is composed of two hemispheres. Each of us is more comfortable with one than the other, that implies many things in the way we do our daily tasks. Obviously we use both sides, but we take more from one, very few people being able to use their complete brain.

When you build a team, the art consists of chosing people who have complementary use of their brain, that’s to say mixing administrators, planners, facilitators, visionaries. What is unusual at an individual level can be build at the team level.

If you consider enterprise as a team, it’s obvious enterprises decided a long time ago to use only half of their brain.

Which are the available tools to help enterprises using their right brain ? Nearly none. Hopeless when you know this side is responsible for global analysis, the notion of group, and creativity.

When I talk about intranets 2.0, the point is not to pull down what already exists but to add social tools to exploit the enterprise full potential, knowing organizations especially miss things related to innovation, creativity and “all things we can make together”.

Till then enterprises only focused on process and administration tools, that’s to say on how to exploit their left brain. Now it’s time to exploit their right brain.

You may also have a look at this very interesting note (in french but I think everyone can understand the diagram).

Would you like to see your intranet on internet ?

We all known intranet 2.0 is a matter of transparency, of visibility. These are necessary behaviors but evenu those who agree with that acknowledge it may be frightening for a lot of managers. And they surely consider the bank manager I talked about in a former post is inconscious.
What do people exactly fear ? To let their people talk about what’s wrong ? They’re already talking about that by email or at the coffee machine. To make it visible ? Breaking the thermometer will never lower the temperature. Knowing things is always an importunity to improve. Making everything in order not to know brings peacefulness…but just for a moment. When things happen it’s too late even though if things had been known earlier problems could have been avoided.

It’s obvious the only people in a company who really know what’s going wrong are operational. Since the rule is “report only about what’s going right”, top management seldom know about what’s going wrong. So they can’t make decision about that.

Moreover, if you don’t allow transparency inside you’ll find it outside. People have, outside the company, as many tools as they want to do what they’re not allowed inside. So let me introduce you the manager’s worse nightmare.

Could we assume such things wouldn’t have happened if there had been a space for transparency, exchanges and interactions inside the company ?

2.0 adoption : management matters

images.jpegThere are sentences you read as divine messages since they bring an approach to 2.0 adoption that seems to fit much more enterprises stakes and context than tools-centric visions do.

Seen on Euan Semple’s blog, in response to one of his notes :

… it doesn’t help when you have a management which talks about digital futures and then manages the staff with a Victorian attitude.

Tools won’t be fully efficient untill you build a managerial context which also takes into account the stakes linked to digital, interconnected, social (it’s not an exhaustive list…pick your prefered or add your own items)…enterprise.

The real digital divide doesn’t have so much to do with tools than with the context in which we try to run them.

Intranet stores information, intranet 2.0 remembers of you though process

It’s sometimes very hard to explain to people who aren’t especially 2.0 savvy what difference it makes to use 2.0 solutions on their intranet. And to make them understand there’s no competition but complementarity between both.

In fact, as we all know, intranets mainly stores informations (or datas for those who makes the difference). What’s on the intranet can be considered as facts as it’s been validated and , since it’s published, must be considered as some kind of undisputed truth.

But, in many cases, when we have to face a similar case, or want to improve what has been done, we don’t only need facts, we need to know how where those facts are coming from. Why did we build such a process, how did we come to the conclusion that in such case we must have such answer. Because context always change, applying the same reasonning may bring different solutions depending on outside factors. That’s why we need not only to have the solution,but to keep formalized the way we get to it.

Most of time, getting to a solution is an informal process, made of talks, choices, arbitrations…a very informal process that brings to a formal solution. But since we have the solution we often forget the past and months or years later, nobody can explain the “why” of choices, arbitrations, no trace of the amount of ideas that were suggested on a brainstorming… Of course because it’s an informal, process which content can’t be seized and capitalized.

In the era of knowledgeworking the “how and why we thought” is as important as the “what’s our conclusion”, it’s clearly valuable.

Intranet 2.0 is the place were those informal and social practices may take place, a virtual place for interactive relationship between distant people involved in a projet. An as things take place on the intranet, we can keep trace of them, and so doing learn from the past and be able to improve easily what’s been done before.

Enterprise and intranet 2.0 : starting from the right point

collaborationThese late days we could see a lot of posts about enterprise 2.0 adoption, some of them saying it will be very hard, others saying that enterprise 2.0 won’t change the organisation. In the one hand I’m convinced we’re at the beginning of a very important transformation in enterprises. In the other I know there’s a lot a brakes, of fears, that make enterprise 2.0 hard to accept and to implement. In fact, and as I said here, the question is to know what we’re really talking about. At first sight you would be surprised if I tell you how much I appeciated a note by Tom Davenport called “Why enterprise 2.0 won’t transform organizations“. In fact and I said there the point is to define what enterprise 2.0 really means. And, even if Tom Davenport’s note may have disappointed some people, I think it’s really close to truth.

He says that, whatever you do, enterprise remains something hierarchical and political and that blogs and wikis won’ be enough to transform it. Saying that he points at what seems to me being a big misunderstanding about enterprise 2.0 : if we agree to say that enterprise 2.0 is an enterprise which uses blogs, wikis and other 2.0 things, I’m affraid we’re going to face big troubles. The challenge is to transform a “geek” vision in a corporate vision.

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What about a digg like on your intranet ?

images-2.jpegA few days ago someone asked me about the interest of using u a digg-like tool on an intranet and if I knew about such experiences.

It was hard for me to find such examples as I think, and that was my answer, that a digg-like would represent a real danger in an enterprise. Voting is chosing, it’s also promoting…or excluding. You will never be sure whether the vote will concern the content or the author.

If We’re in the context of a discussion, one can say “I agree / disagree” because he will have to give arguments, to explain his position. But in the case of a simple vote the risk of subjectivity is to high. We want people to evaluate content…not authors.

Unless…

Unless we talk about external informations feeds, neutral and anonymous. At this time people will only evaluate the content since it comes from many outsides sources. We can make people co-evaluate external feeds but making them evaluate (whitout justification…just one click to vote) isn’t, in my opinion, the appropriated solution for user generated contents inside the enterprise.

Any experience of corporate digg-like ? Any opinion ?

Thoughts and guidelines

ideaHow to make people understand they have to move their organization ? That enterprise 2.0 is not fashionable but suitable ? And how to convince those who only believe in information technology that putting 2.0 tools in an organization is not the starting point but the consequence of a change in global strategy and organization.

First, enterprises have to reconsider the way they make people work together ( and the way they work…full stop), the way they consider relationship between indivuduals and organization. Then the new borned organizational process has to be virtualized to take into account the XXIth century enterprise characteristics. That’s why we have have to explore the other side of the intranet, the one which is dedicated to people, not to process anymore. I’m not saying we have to throw our “old intranets” away : they do what they are supposed to do. But they fail to do things they we’re not built for…so we have to find a place for those new “social things”. We don’t talk about replacement but complementarity.

So these are my posts guidelines for the upcoming weeks :

  1. Enterprises are entering straight into the knowledge economy era.
  2. This brings many changes in its environment, its structure, its organization, its stakes, its human capital.
  3. In this context the human capital is strategic for two reasons : it must be improved to answer new stahes. But, in order to take full benefits from it, organization have to reinvent themselves, to reconsider the way they work and people are managed.
  4. Most of brakes are due to inaccurate KPIs and assumptions that have no reason to exist anymore but that still last because of inertia.
  5. The organization’s stucture itself implies that those new fundation count of intranet tools in order new uses and dynamics go threw the office’s wall to spread in a whole splitted organization. Intranets must not be only a place for process as they used to be but also a place for people and synergy.

Does it inspires you something ?

Is web 2.O organization-compatible ?

I’m a part of the people who are convinced that web 2.0 tools will change a lot of things inside organisations. But the fact is clearly that organizations are not in a hurry to experiment such changes. While we’re saying “intranet 2.0 is great”, “what we were dreaming about 20 years ago is now possible because of people centric tools” enterprises are still stuck on the side of the road.

How possible they ignore such a change ?

Bringing 2.0 things into organizations is much more that installing new tools. It’s based on uses, on behaviors and so it impacts much more than te classical IT sphere. We’re talking about a 360° change in culture, in management. This change is requested by the effective emergence of the knowledge economy. People are becoming more that workers but source of value by themselves and they need a specific management and specific tools to give all their potential.

The point is not 2.0 tools or not. It’s : “are companies conscious they have to make a wide and deep change in their values, their believings, their management, their organization”. If the answer is “yes” then the second question is “are they ready to aknowledge it and start a change process?”. When the answer will be “yes” and we’ll have to provide them with tools and concept to make the change possible, at this time the interest of web 2.0 tools will be obvious. [Read more...]

Why answering people’s questions ?

images-2miniature.jpegOne of the main interests of an intranet 2.0 is its ability to favor exchanges and interactions. At the time organization have to be not only productive but also intelligent and when knowledge workers are taking more and more importance, this is a kind of thing companies can’t neglect.

But you will always find people saying “why would I help others ?” or “anyway, others won’t help me”. Are you sure ? Jeremie Berrebi [fr] asked people on Yahoo ! Answers “why do you answer questions on Yahoo! Answers” ? Even if the answer he got were not supposed to concern office behaviours, I found interesting things in.

For example :

- “To score points”. And it’s even the same at work. Don’t forget people help colleagues not only beaucse they want to help, but because they want to be seen helping others…

- “To learn things”. If I help others I also help myself, increasing my knowledge by the way.

- “to have a break when I’m at work”. This could be frighteneing because it implies a lost of productivity. But once you acknowledge people can’t be dedicated to their tasks 100% of their time, that they need a few breaks in their work, would’nt it be valuable that they would spend this moments helping their colleagues ?

My conclusion is that creating win/win interactions on an intranet is not counter-nature, and that people see their own interest in it. Since its also matches the organization’s interest (collaboration increased) we have to look for tools that make it possible. And then explore the possible 2.0 side of your intranet.

When blueKiwi meets HR problematics

blueKiwiIf you’re staying in France next week and want to see how an collaborative intranet 2.0 can help you to manage your HR problematics, you can attend the conference that will take place at the Microsoft Technology Center Microsoft Technology (Salle Everest, 148 rue de l’université 75007 Paris) on tuesday october 31st from 5 to 7 PM.

After a quick show of HR 2.0′s stakes, you’ll be shown a presentation of blueKiwi and will be able to talk with companies that already use bK (Dassault Systems in this case).

For this time we chose to focus on HR but “bK” as we call it can do very much more for your organization.

If you’re interested please register here.

Disclaimer: I’m now working for blueKiwi.