Make your own enterprise 2.0 diagnosis

August 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The concept of enterprise 2.0 is still unclear to many, even though they are often less far from it than they think. If, for sticking to their reality, we look at it in terms of process socialization, we realize that a lot of Mr. Jourdain in companies that have a logical relatively close but not “institutionalized” and not tooled. In short there are many “almost 2.0″ islets but no many companies as a whole deserve the same name. (Notice : M. Jourdain is a reference to “Le bourgeois gentilhomme“, one of the most famous part of the play being when he was delighted to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it.)

For once I’ll try to make it short because I came across a simple diagnosis tool that can let you know where you are and, roughly, to determine where to focus your efforts.

I invite you to go read the post where I “stole” the matrix.

Image 1

Where are you in terms of technical maturity? And  in terms of ‘social practices’, a word that should not be confused with collaborative: there is a dimension related to independence, intrapreneurship that is not negligible. Determine both what you think being to be the key elements of the technological maturity, the key behaviors of the social dimension and you know where you are and, more importantly, what you need to develop. More relevant than aiming to a nebulous 2.0 and applying magic recipes that are inappropriate to your own situation.

By the way, this is close to what I already wrote on  IT / HR  synergies on such a project. Each axis is indeed a dimension related to one of these entities.

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

HR and IT depts in a 2.0 world : same fate ?

June 11, 2009 By 1 Comment

The question of the role, often considered uncomfortable, of the HR departments in internal social networking projects is becoming more and more meaniningful. This is all the more strategic since it’s one of the only traditional corporate function that has nearly all the needed competences and the legitimacy to drive such projects. Still remain the question of the intention and of the leadership.

To do that, HR players must be aware of the role they can play and understand the new paradigm that is becoming theirs.

Many peope have been thinking about the case of IT departments, in order to help them to find their place in a new context but very few started the same reflexion about HR depts and that’s a real pity. As a matter of fact both IT and HR depts situation share a lot of common points.

I remember the McKinsey-Cigref report I mentioned a few months ago. To make it simple, the conclusions were that IT depts can’t create any value alone and that they have to do that jointly with business managers, that they can’t achieve their goals only by providing (imposing ?) tools but by being an internal service provider, a facilitator. And, at the end, that performance has not be measured through IT indicators but business ones.

Couldn’t we say the same for HR departements that have to learn they are not supposed to only operate by themselves in the front of employees but also have to make in order to local practices have a positive impact on HR ? Not doing things alone anymore but co-building local mechanisms run by local managers on the flow.

One of the best practices I identified is to create an internal “enterprise 2.0″ expertise team which provides local projects with a global framework (tools, methodology, follow-up, consulting….) which meets both the corporate need for rationality, governance and security and the local management need for flexibility, autonomy, quickness. My experience tells me this kind of model, that works quite well, is in most cases driven by IT departments that hire a few “human things” professionals. Is it irrelevant to think that such a team could be built by an HR team or, even better, co-built by both HR and IT teams ?

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

Survey on the use of IT in french companies

February 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago I was invited by Microsoft to attend the presentation of a survey on the use of IT in fench companies. Two things made it really interesting

• Although the fact new generations were transforming the use of IT, there was no global study to quantify and qualify it.

• The methodology was neutral and exhaustive : they started with general considerations and focused step by step to get to business cases. So the survey provides sociological elements, that were qualified, assessed, turned into busines practices etc… Each step was managed by a specialized partner (Eranos, Added Value, Ifop andt BearingPoint ).

Let’s see what’s in.

[Read more...]

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

How to integrate innovation in your organization…with your IT dept.

February 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I’coming back on an article titled “Teaming Up to Crack Innovation Enterprise Integration” and issued in the Harvard Business Review in last november. It has many interests : it’s about the vital problematic of innovation, it shows this so-called innovation can only be distributed and rely on sharing, it shows how such principles can be put at work within companies and explain the role of IT.

• The principle

Growth rely on two factors : innovation (ability to propose new products that meet the maket’s expectation and conceive new processes and business models) and integration (ability to make separate entities work together in order to lower structural costs, higer overall production capacity and discover new opportunities).

• The constraints

Integration and innovation share a common point : they are not in most of corporate DNAs. Innovation because it breaks with traditional habits and is more often stifled than promoted, integration because it goes against local optimization that it tries to replace with a systemic approach.

More, because they suppose more exchanges and an increased work on information, these logics need a strong support from IT departments and yet the article mentions a survey that shows that if half the IT depts are in charge of integration and a third of innovation, very few of them are in charge of both.

[Read more...]

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

The future of cloud computing is not necessarily outside the firewall

February 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Discussing wheter companies have to keep their information systemes within their walls or host it, wholly or partly, outside is a central issue.

The Saas or “cloud computing” logic majes sens. The time has come to take away the sacred aura of what,  as Nicholas Carrs  wrote in The Big Switch, is becoming as banal as electricity or running water. Plug, use, unplung. Nothing more. It’s a service like any other and the software + hardware duo is not a sacred cow anymore in people’s life. So why should it be so at the office. Today it’s nothing more than a simple computer and nothing more than software, it’s a part of my everyday life and the only thing that matters is that it does what I expect it to do. I don’t care how it’s done or whether my favorite software is on the net net or on my hard drive. Employee’s computers have shifted from a strategic good to a common consumer good.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Intranets and digital workplace, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Enterprises far beyond enterprise 2.0

January 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I amused myself proposing a few tracks on what enterprise 2.0 may be in 2009. But I think pushing the reflection beyond would be worth : enterprise 2.0 is only a side of a much complex reality that is enterprise and will be of any use only in a global framework. Since enterprise, and economy in general, can be defined as the place where more and more numerous interactions melts, believing it can be improved by only cosmetic improvements. Evry initiative that’s not aligned with a macro vision that will take all these considerations into account won’t bring anything worthy.

So, let’s put ourselves in the main player’s place.

• The top management

The less we can say is that top management is very worried. Because of the downturn, CEOs are trying to protect the organization. It’s hard to find more revenue so, in order to preserve the result they want costs to be cut. Or spendings, which is not the same thing. In the other hand they know that if they keep on cutting costs, they will soon be unable to make any cent go in the bank so they try to find how to make work more efficient, to work on costs instead of expenses. And, finally, the idea of business networks comes to the surface. But how to make it happen ?

On the other hand, this crises is about something deeper that worries them a lot. Always promising more has its limits and now it seems that these limits have been reached.  Do they have to stop promising the moon since they know organization’s performance have its limit and trying to balance it with financial performance leads to the situation we now know ? Do we have reached the limits of a system and is this crisis the consequence of a management model failure. Do we have to reinvent the way we do business ?

In brief, an increasing demand for more responsability and sustainability in management, that is not so far from a tendency that brings many companies to think their development together with their human ecosystem’s in order not to ruin their tomorrow’s markets.

Many issues that have a lot in common and that, without forseeing the answers that will be given, will have to be taken into account this year.

[Read more...]

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

New jobs description for Enterprise 2.0 ? Try the Enterprise 2.0 job profiler

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Every day I notice that many companies, conscious that their move toward Enterprise 2.0 -like dynamics is a major issue, are beginning to hire people for new kinds of jobs. It’s both about aligning people-centric activities with corporate purposes, identify new opportunities, energize cross-organiszaiton dynamics, favor new practices and new tools adoption, re-align tools on practices.

A complex role that needs a mix between new knowledges and traditionnal competences. It’s generally devoted to internal people who discover this new complexity and have to be in two places ar once. As these organizations become more and more mature, they begin to build specific job description and hire a new kind of professionnals to manage these new activities as full-time jobs and rationalize what’s not an experimentation anymore but a new way to operate.

Wiser from their exprience in 2.0 tools implementation for HR and talent management projects, my friends from Talentys worked hard on this topic in order to formalize some job descriptions and key competences for these new issues. They propose

A « Community Manager » (CM

An« IT 2.0 expert » (ITE)

A « Chief Networking Officer » (CNO)

Feel free to download it and provide us with your feedback in order to improve it. And use it for your own needs if you need to hire someone… (Humm… this is a quick nighlty translation from the original doc but I think we did it well…)

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

Transforming usages in enterprise 2.0

November 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Last week I was a part of a panel about “enterprise 2.0 : usages transformation”. Here are, in a few lines, what I retain from this event. Of course these are my own impression since when you’re on stage you tend to focus on people’s concerns rather than what the panelist said.

• How do companies see enterprise 2.0 ? Must have or nice to have ?

The question was to know if there was an enterprise 2.0 issue for companes. It’s interesting to compare my experience as player of this industry with the feedebacks of people who are rather on the client side. Obviously both visions tend to align, and that’s quite a good thing.

I pointed out that the question is not to know if there’s an enterprise 2.0 concern but to know if businesses understand than adopting new practices (a word I find much more relevant than usages in a corporate context…) may help making business in a more efficient way. If yes, implementing these practices will imply joint HR/management/organization/tools initiatives that will lead to enterprise 2.0 even if this was not called this way.

I mentioned the latest McKinsey report.

In order to close the “nice to have vs must have” debate, I’d rather say there are two possible approaches : starting from defined business issues and treat all their aspects (organization, HR, business practices, tools…) or have a tool-driven approach which means saying “we have to try those new tools and see what we can do with them”. The first leads to a “must have” situation, the second is a “must try” that leads to a “nice to have” and “time consuming to use” situation due to a lack of alignment.

I’ll end with my favorite advice : “instead of wondering how to make people adopt tools you’d better wonder why”. By the way it would also close the ROI debate.

[Read more...]

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

CIOs don’t care about web 2.0 ? Neither illogical nor grave

October 5, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A recent Robert Helf survey tells us CTOs seem not to consider web 2.0 as a priority in their projects. I don’t find this worrying because it’s logical due to the very nature of those tools.

It’s now an established fact that the “web 2.0 question” is very present at companies’ heads. In terms of tools but also in terms of organization. Il aslo remind you the McKinsey-Cigref survey about IT depts role in value creation which have been also available in english for a few weeks. What conclusion can we draw from all that ?

• IT depts role is to keep the existing systems running, make the too, maintain a high level of availability and security, so its logical they focus on thses points.

• The use of web 2.0 tools is the consequence of the will of working differently and develop new practices and behaviors. This choice and the success of such projets is linked up to the existence of a project in terms of working mode. So it’s rather up to operative people to identify their own issues, build the adequate working mode and then look for the suitable tools.

• So that’s not IT depts but operative people, managers, who have to have projects in this aerea. Once this done, IT depts role will be to check if the tools meet their requirements in terms of security / reliablity etc. Because what the survey sais (sorry for the enticing title of this post) is that CTOs don’t have projects, which is not about value, relevance or tool’s ability to do what they’re make for.

Web 2.0 tools’ characeristics being not to do things by themselves but make it easy for people to do things together, their human and social dimension make them closer to management and HR projects than infrastructure projects.

• Que si le rôle d’une DSI est de maintenir l’existant, garantir une disponibilité optimale des outils et de l’infrastructure et que logiquement toute son attention est focalisée sur ces points.

• Que l’utilisation d’outils de type web 2.0 est la conséquence de la volonté de travailler quelque peu différemment, de développer de nouvelles pratiques. Ce choix, ainsi que la réussite de tels projets est intimement liée à l’existence d’un besoin et d’un projet en termes de mode de travail. C’est davantage le rôle des opérationnels que d’identifier leurs propres enjeux, construire le monde de fonctionnement qui permet d’y répondre et ensuite se mettre en quête des outils adéquats.

• Dès lors c’est à ces derniers que revient d’avoir des projets en la matière. A la DSI ensuite de valider si l’outil correspond à leurs critères en termes de sécurité / robustesse etc… Car ce que dit l’étude (désolé pour mon titre un peu aguicheur) c’est que les DSI n’ont pas de projets, ce qui n’est en aucun cas un jugement de valeur ou opinion sur la capacité des outils en question de faire ce pour quoi ils sont faits.

La caractéristique des outils en question n’étant pas de “faire” mais de permettre aux individus de faire, leur dimension sociale et humaine les rapprochent davantage des projets managériaux que des projets d’infrastructure.

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

Project Managers should focus less on processes and more on people

August 26, 2008 By 1 Comment

A second post on project management, not so far from the first.

As written in this post, if current methods reassure people, they obviously show their limits. At a matter of fact :

  • KPMG’s survey results which contrasted 2005 with 2003 revealed the following:
    • There was an 81% increase in the number of projects globally
    • There was an 88% increase in project complexity globally
    • There was an 79% increase in project budgets globally
  • The Standish Group survey results for 2004 revealed that only 35% of Information Technology projects were deemed to be successful as measured by being within their original budget, on schedule, and delivering all user requirements satisfactorily
  • Ernst & Young and numerous others state that there are three categories of Project Management issues:
    • People-related issues which on average represent 80%
    • Process-related issues which on average represent 10%
    • Technology-related issues which on average represent 10%
  • O’Neill’s 1999 study results revealed that on average the typical Project Manager spends 70% of his time on Non-Value-Added project activities

Do you find this inspiring ?

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »