Enterprise and business first, 2.0 and social second

Summary : Enterprise 2.0 and social business when they become, as it often happens, their own goal, struggle to convince businesses of their significance. The reason is simple : beyond soft and qualitative benefits, the quantitative aspect is often overlook while, in the end, the enterprise has no other purpose than producing tangible wealth. This being the very basis of the concept of enterprise, there’s a need of reconsidering the social phenomenon regarding to this goal. Benefits of these new approaches are obvious in terms of value creation provided the changing nature of our economy that relies more and on people, knowledge and accumulation processes is taken into account. In this context, social and 2.0 speed up the processes that allow the accumulation of knowledge, relationship capital, trust and even reputation. This leads to a conclusion : pushing change in organizations which plan and value creation model does not take this factor into account won’t be more than a pleasant distraction. Organizations need the courage to bring the matter back to its real level where it has to be tackled : the value creation and business model one.

An increasing number of people are working through the world on transforming their organization into a social business or enterprise 2.0. In fact, this is partly wrong. In most cases it’s about making organizations adopt enterprise 2.0 or implement it where it’s possible (even in competition with the current organization), what is not the same thing. I’ve often said what the concept of adoption means to me, easy but fragile replacement for a real reflexion on sense and alignment, so I’ll change and mention this brilliant post from Oliver Marks where Oliver reminds us that “adoption is for kittens”.

Things happen this way for many reasons. Sometimes the people in charge are so passionate that 2.0 and social have become their one and only goal. The rest does not matter as long as many people use the wonderful tool that come with and form communities, regardless to the real business value of these communities. Sometimes the project is managed at a too low level of responsibility, sometimes with a poor sponsorship, so the person in charge does what he/she can with the available means, the provided support and the existing risk of doing too much. We all know what happens in such situations. If, in the first case, it’s only an excess of passion (and passion makes people blind), what causes the second (and may also apply to the first) is that there is no consciousness of the context in which people are operating. Enterprises are enterprises before being 2.0, business is business before being social. If organizations take no benefit from change in the context of reaching their goals, they have no reason to change.

If social and 2.0 forget the reason why enterprise exist, they become their own goal and are, at best, useless. The two above-mentioned cases are perfect evidences : when confined in a stooge role or added to the existing organization without being integrated in real business operations, social/2.0, even adopted, brings nothing. If the enterprise plan is not coherent, aligned with what social can bring, few progress will be made. Of course, many enterprise plans and discourse mention these points but it seldom means that the core of the organization is changing. Instead it’s often a nice making-up on things what don’t fundamentally change.

Don’t you find exasperating that too many discussions and event on the future of business are focused on how such or such technology spreads ? It seems that more and more people do. This revolution is presented as the remedy to all the things businesses suffer from in this early XXIth century. If I compare to this excellent post by Umair Haque, the problem is bigger and the cure needs a deep change of DNA. As a matter of fact most of the businesses that are mentioned in the most aren’t “2.0″ in the traditional meaning. They integrated this paradigm in their corporate plan, their value creation model instead of just trying to make people change the way they work. In this context, social and 2.0 are an important part of tomorrow’s enterprises, but not the only one. But, when applied to good old plans without taking into account new realities at a higher level, they won’t help to avoid the placebo effect.

So…what’s the goal of an enterprise ? [Read more...]

An internal social network replaces nothing but improves the existing

Summary : A social network ? Yes but to replace what ? How many times did we hear this question at the time this kind of tools was entering the corporate workspace. Considering social networks as something that will replace existing tools often lead some misuses, for things it was not designed for. As a matter of fact, enterprise social networks were more designed to make up for lacks than for improvement. Marketing approaches did not help either since saying “xxxx is dead, let’s throw everything away” was so easy. An interesting approach is to separate the social aspect from the network tool in our thoughts. The network is a tool that completes the existing, social is a conceptual and functional approach that improves the existing and creates synergies between all the tools, the resources that use them and the resources they handle.

This is a periodical question that comes like season. What ? The obsession, of wondering what part of the information system will be made obsolete and replaced by an internal social network.

Let’s sum up. We had “will ESNs replace the intranet ?”, “Will ESNs kill the email ?”. “Will ESNs replace the corporate directory ?”. “Will ECM be replaced by conversation ?”. “Will ESNs replace collaboration tools ?”. And what was the final conclusion ? “Yes…but no. ESNs are a part of a wider system that needs us to rethink the way we interact with others, with information, the notion of collaboration”. Since it appeared that adding a tool did not solve anything without having a more global approach, the the discussion moved to….replacing another tool. And so on…

As a matter of fact :

• ESNs to replace the intranet ? Except for those who have a simplistic vision of intranets or a SMB without very specific needs, ESNs only conver a part of the needs.

• ESNs to replace email ? Without a deep thinking on the way information is consumed, acted on, on the way exchanges are organized on a global scale, on the way we analyze, process and prioritize it, thinking that a social network will replace email and solve the information overload is nothing but illusory. [Read more...]

Toward smarter information systems

Summary : When we talk about working on information, we usually distinguish the work that’s been progressively dedicated to machines (mass processing of data according to pre-determined plans) and what remains the field for humans, a sharper and more qualitative approach to scattered and unstructured data. This second point lead organizations to organize accordingly, distinguishing between those who search, prepare and use these data. A dichotomy that has many chances to be questioned in a near futur as machines are getting able not only to explore unstructured data but also to understand questions and give answers.

When we have a look a the main components of any information system, we can see two poles coexisting :

• the “mechanical” one. It’s made of applications that replaced humans over time because they’re more efficient and reliable for some tasks, providing a substantial advantage both in termes of speed and quality, what means in terms of costs. They allow the mechanization of repetitive mass processing that need more calculations and processing power than intelligence and ability to react in front of unpredictable things.

• the “intelligence and knowledge” one. It’s made of applications that don’t replace humans but are supposed to multiply their intrinsic abilities that a machine does not have. Its about communication and collaboration technologies.

If we focus on the second point, it’s obvious that no machine can understand and treat unstructured data with the needed fineness. Should the need be about searching, using and make a decision relying on a huge mass of unstructured information without the existence of an history demonstrating what “a good decision is”.

On this part, the superiority of human versus the machines is about decision making. As for what’s about information search, it’s rather a burden but a necessary burden because even if the machine is powerful enough it’s unable to process a qualitative and contextual search on information.

But how long will that last ? [Read more...]

I’m more productive when I get rid of the tools I use

After a long reflection I realized that the tools I use were the cause of a high level improductivity. And that the others gives me incredible services.

Try to pay attention to this in the upcomming days. Try to take some distance on your own experience, listen to your colleagues, you friends, and I’m sure you’ll draw the same conclusion.

When someone talks about “using” a tool or when you feel you’re using one, it means there’s a problem somewhere : the simple fact to be conscious of using someting creates a kind of disruption in our work, needs an effort. In brief : our efforts are not about our work anymore but about using tools that are supposed to help us doing our job.

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What’s the value of knowledge and experience

It’s a very “hot”  question at this time. The blessed days when people could be assessed on hom many pieces they produced a day is over. Now the “knowledge capital” is key, and what has to be assessed is not a controlled production but the ability to face uncertainty and offer solutions.

In brief, expertise, experience, knowlegde has value but when comes the time to quantify it in real money things become more complicated. As I wrote previously about intangible assets value and ROI of enteprise 2.0 about which I still believe it has to be measured according to the formal processes that are supported by E.20 tools. By the way that shows us, once again, that time is the less relevant parameter to quantify employee’s work today.

No long analysis today, only two short stories in order to really get this point and shine in company.

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Do enterprises really outsource the right things ?

Some of my reflections point to the slow but unavoidable outsourcing of the human side of the enterprise.

First because of organization models and systems that allow companies to focus on their core business : identifying key issues and needs, they can concentrate on elaboring a stragegy to respond…and let others do the rest. The rest, from innovation to delivery can be fully outsourced, to the general public or specialized partnes whose small size helps them being really agile and reactive. This organization model provides even more satisfaction to partners than if they were employed within the company. So, large businesses’ performance will highly rely on its ability to fin right answers and organize the competence chain to deliver.

We also have to know that incurate tools and organization causing high costs to access that so important ressource that internal information has become, Coase law could apply in reverse since outside expertise and knowledge is cheaper than internal one.

Then, and this previous post was only an example among many others, because knowledge process outsourcing becomes a real market and a source of growth for many countries that want to jump on this train et benefit from what will be their industrial revolution, putting an incredible presse on occidental companies that may see the advantages to outsource their knowledge processes.

There’s a simple reason to all that : since machines were there to imporve activities’ scalability, knowledge related activities still rely on people’s time. Even if some are slowers than others, it’s useless to replace them by more productive ones when the purpose is more qualitative than productive, the only solution is to hire more people, with the consequences we know about costs. Which must make us wonder more than ever on the question of work related costs in our occidental economies.

Sure, things will get balanced one day or the other, than one day the Indian worker will be as expensive as the european worker. But when ? Perhaps too late. And we can’t be sure there will never be a “new India”.

In brief, although it may looks very attractive, this trend is not a good thing for our economies.

Another point is that, since we all know in a knowledge economy people will be companies’ more important wealth, businesses are doing exactly the opposite of what they should : they keep control of their tools and outsource their people.

Whatever we could say, many IT depts step on the brakes as soon as they hear the word “Saas”, although the fact they will more and more need larger and more complex infrastructures to store more and more datas, will make it inevitable according to the experts.

It’s a strange paradox to see competences, skilles, expertises, slowly going out of companies that, at the same time, don’t want their information systems to go out of their firewal : common sense would make companies keep their people, their knowledge and outsource their IT. I can’t see the benefits of investing in technologies that allow businesses to take the most of their talents if the talents have left the company.

I spend 28% of my time reading your useless emails !

That’s what many employees could (should ?) say to their colleagues and managers.

I’ve been pleading for a system which would make the right information find the right people instead of sending grouped emails to people who don’t need them and often forgot those for whom it would have been useful.

I’m often answered the same thing : people may miss some information. Yes, of course. And that’s a good thing. They will miss any information that is useless at a given moment, will stop wasting their time reading what does not concern them and having to refocus on what they were doing. And if, one day, they need to find it, a simple search on the intranet will do the job.

I’m talking about making it possible for people to build their own information supply chain depending on their needs and concerns and not about other’s people needs to show they are working or to cover themselves saying ‘”but they knew”. We already do it very well on the web with, on the one hand published information, and in the other RSS feeds coming from identified sources or search agents and I can’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be able to do this within the enterprise.

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Sharing knowledge is not a task but a way of working

I just saw this interesting post on this topic,  thanks to Martin Roulleaux-Dugage. The difference between traditional KM and its “2.0″ evolution is that it’s not a task anymore but a way of doing things, a on-the-flow activity.

Take time to classify, fill in forms, stock is real burden that often lead KM projects to fail. In the other hand, in just a few clics, classify, share an information as soon as it’s identified, write a quick note about it, quickly identify related documents and people who would be able to help me with my daily problemactics is rather a way of working. It’s not a task that need me to book some time, it’s an ever ongoing on the flow activity which is not its own purpose anymore but is linked to my daily problems solving.

This reminds me of my usual answer when I’m asked how much time it will take to a group to share knowledge within its members, how much time it will take to stimulate the group. The waited answer is often about hours, half days… My answer is the following : it won’t take a lot a time but it will take often a little time. But if there’s a business need behind, it will be painless. Minutes here, seconds there, on the flow, not hours spend when doing otherwise is impossible, when it’s impossible to wriggle and when job is botched up done reluctantly.

Why making people discuss about informal business issues is valuable

People have to exchange and discuss within the enterprise. Yes…but why? They just have to stick on basic relationships, they’re here for business and nothing more…

Yes but… as said in a Forrester report,  Informal learning connects with Corporate Training Programs, when, in 1986 75%  of the knowledge people needed to do their day-to-day job were in their head, this percentage dropped to 10% in 2006. People have not become stupid but the increasing need for specialization and granularity of expertises implies there’s too much to know for an individual. And if you consider the need for an ever improved reactivity???

What Forrester suggests :

THE DAYS OF FILLING EMPTY HEADS IS OVER!

The new critical skill is the ability to un-learn and rapidly learn new. Here’s a few suggestions I have for you to survive in this new world.

1. Enhance Your Network/Community
If only 10% of insight is useful, then the more connected you are the better the chances you will get the help you need with your network. Personally I prefer the concept of community over a network. Your network/community needs to have a trusting relationship to work. Notice I didn’t say build the network. The fact that you have 1000 contacts on LinkedIn is useless unless you are able to really tap into each of those 1000 contacts. Don’t just focus on quantity, focus on strength of your relationships.

2. Constantly Learn
Take advantage of RSS & Social Bookmarking! There is so much information out there, how do you find what is of value to you. RSS & Social Bookmarking holds part of the answer.

3. Collaborate
More and more we have opportunities to collaborate. Take advantage of them. If you want to be the lone hero all of the time… You will end up just being alone.

4. Develop Critical Thinking Skills
With the abundance of information, and no clear cut answer on anything. You’ll need to personally evaluate what is right and what is even more correct. Tap into the network, RSS, other sources but in the end make-up your own decision.

Hum… since I’m working onblog about productivity in the knowledge economy I think this may help…