Is workload measurement the problem of the century ?

January 14, 2010 By 10 Comments

Optimizing workload has always been a key concern for businesses and managers. A too heavy workload regarding to the capacity leads to explosion, a too low workload means resources are wasted. I don’t even mention last minute assignments to face imponderables. In brief, bad adjustments have an heavy price.

In a manufacturing economy things are more or less easy to manage. The capacity of a machine or the impact of bottlenecks on an assembly line are known facts. As for people accomplishing standardized tasks in such a context, the time needed to execute a precise task at a given level of quality is known too. When imponderables come, it’s easy to identify if an added production capacity is available since the maximal and actual workload are known facts too for machines. As for people, a glance at their work-in-progress is sometimes enough to evaluate the sitation. In short, in a tangible production system, it’s easy to know the sitation at a given moment and what’s the safety margin (if any). More, the situation can even sometimes be assessed by having a look around.

The move toward an intangible economy makes things more complicated. First because things are less and less linear and setting an optimized production planning that matches reality is a very difficult task, if not impossible. Tasks become problems to solve, solutions to find and if average durations can be calculated afterwards, making it a priori as a forecast looks like accomplishing a miracle. More, talking about knowledge work, notions like quantity and quality are closer than ever. That’s for what’s foreseeable (or looks like) and it’s even worse for unforseeable things.

This is a problem that’s both about production performance and management. In this problematic, our modern tools, even if they are a part of the solution are also the cause of new issues that are far from being trivial. [Read more...]

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

Considering the gap between management 2.0 and enterprise 2.0

February 24, 2009 By 1 Comment

I’ve been neglecting the management 2.0 topic for a long time although it was what this blog was about since 2005. Last years I slowely slipped from management 2.0 to enterprise 2.0, even if I find it sad that there were so many people to discuss about of make companies use 2.0 tools than people wanting to focus on building a new management framework in which these tools would make sense. But this question is coming back like a boomerang while companies are slowly realizing that small side adjustments won’t be enough to make tools useful and that a systemic overhaul is needed to make tools serve as catalyssts in a new organization model.

In february’s issue of the Harvard Business Review, Gary Hamel put this issue back to the headlines with an article called “Moon shots for management” which clearly defines management issues for the upcoming years.

Namely :

[Read more...]

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

Enterprise 2.0 and the myth of content generation

January 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Web 2.0 is fueled by user generated content (UGC) ans, logically, it should be the same within companies. It’s obvious : when connecting people to information and connectiing people through information is a driving principle, it’s easy to undersand that the existence of a published and shared information is the key to the new form of interactions companies want to make emerge.

Here’s for the “expert” side. Because, on the enterprise side things are not that simple. I’m not talking about creating and using contents, I’ talking about the concept of content itself.

It’s said that employees generate lots of contents. That’s true. That they will generate more and more contents. That’s true too. That they must be encouraged to generate and share even more contents. Why not. That companies have to imagine all this amount of information to understand how it’s important to switch to cloude computing. Certainly but..

Contents are like discussions : they are words companies may not understand and that may worry many managers.

It’s a misunderstanding that has to be vanished because the substance remains true. Two apects have to be taken into consideration : formulation and organization.

Let’s put ourselves one second in a manager’s shoes. Everyday he’s asked to do the impossible, he feels light fighting against a non-reactive machine and employees that are overwhelmed by work. Imagine what he may think when someone tells him about the “incredible chance that all the contents his staff will generate represents”. He will answer that his staff is not here to generate and spread contents but to work. If the example of internet is used to convince him, he will have the impression that his department will be turned into a leisure center. That’s one of the examples that show that web 2.0 logics have to be translated when it comes to import them into the enterprise.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Knowledge & Information management, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Is multitasking dangerous or a myth ?

January 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Multitasking is a big issue for both people and organization. It’s the (presumed and made essential) ability for someone to do many things at the same time. The social media phenomenon and the increasing number of information flows people are exposed to are making this concern more and more central.

I’m afraid that, behing th multitasking question, hides a fundamental and dangerous erreur that may make us lose sight of what matters.

Human beings are not fully multitask. We can fully do ony one thing at the same time and it will last for years even if I can admit that in a few centurys our skills will surely imprve. Even Digital Natives are not more multitask than others.

Being multitask and being able to switch from one thing to another are often mistaken. New generations (but many other too) can quickly shuttle between two tasks, what is sometimes seen as being multitask. These people are able to transfer attention and energer between two things, what does not mean they adress them jointly.

But we also have to assume that, when attention is continuously transfered from one point to another, it loses intensity and the more multitask people are the more errors can be found in the tasks they achieve. If you need to be convinced, please read this note .

Some may find it disappointing since  because they used to see in multitasking the response to many concerns about productivity. But it’s not that bad : the impacts of multitasking would not all be positive. I already mentioned the risk of an higher failure rate. But there’s also another point : the impossibility to respect due dates. Imagine three tasks, A, B and C, whose duration is 10 (minutes, hour, days… ).

If they are carried out in a raw, the first will be achieved at H+10, the second at H+20, the third at H+30. Now imagine they are carried out in a fragmentary way, on a 5 minutes slot base. The result will look like that :

image-28

I didn’t even take into account the time needed to re-focus on each task. Maybe it can make it possible to finish a task earlier but, on a global scale, it doesn’t help people to save any time.

People are overwhelmed by signals and information that force them to try to multitask. At the end, it only lowers their productivity although communication tools are supposed to help them improve it. That is not becaue a message is received that it’s treated, and everyone has his own prioriies. But, obviously, those who send messages and those who conceive the tools that carry them, seem not to be paying any attention to that.

Being exposed to a lot of flows that condition their work, employees need to take leadership upon tools and to maser channels instead of being under a waterfall. By the way I like the analogy that consists of saying that a multi jet shower is something pleasant while being under a waterfall hurts.

The response to this issue has two sides

• The first is behavioral : employees have to learn how to turn flows off and achieve a task without being interrupted.

• The second is rather technical: tools employees are provided with must allow them to master flows and not to be their victims anymore. They must be able to priorize some, put some on hold, reroute some others and make things in order to ” if information is relevant it will find me…if not it will wait”. In brief, tools will have to make it possible for people to build their own information supply chain, whose timing, rate and content will be under their control, starting from a information marketplace, a kind of marshalling yard. A major issue for the software industry where social software will have to play its part.

Filed Under: Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Can enterprises organize themselves as markets

January 17, 2009 By 3 Comments

What’s a market ? It’s a place when offer meets demand.

Companies love markets because it’s the more efficient way to find outlets for their products and identify suppliers. It’s a competitiveness factor because of the outlets it provides and the optimization of costs that competition makes possible.

The “social” web is a market somehow. Contents can find an audience, ideas outlets, projects people who’ll make them become real, people partners, question answers. It’s because of this market that events as trivial as flashmobs happened, that some people had great carriers evolutions, that some companies where born. This huge self-organized space made possible things that would not have been in a classical, organized, regulated market, operation costs making it irrational the organization of niche micro-markets. It’s because it has no physical nor economic barriers that the web made all this possible : intermediation and transaction costs are near to zero.

There is another place that is full of ideas, projects, needs, competences, longings, question, which would gain a lot if the ones were able to meet the others within its walls : the enterprise.

Experience showed me this is definitively the place where exist the more questions and answers, and the place where we can be sure there are very few chances that the ones meet the others. Companies are traditionnally, on this point of view, the place for misses opportunities. It may sound surprising according to all the things companies do, to all their obvious successes, but when looking at what they don’t  or painfully do and would make sense, it may makes us feel dizzy. A kind of vertigo that is proportional with the size of the enterprise. Are there any reason to that ? Of course : high transaction and intermediation costs and the fact companies don’t want to give intermediation up.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Information flows needs a plumber

September 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment


Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008
Information overload has thress main causes : the first is information dispersal among too many tools which force people to continuously switch from one to another in order to be sure not miss anything, the second is the fact people are affected by the information flow that fall on them as is they were at the bottom of the waterfall, forcing them to continuously sort and establish priorities without forgotting the time needed to refocus after interuptions, the third is the gap between the information people receive according to what others want them to known and the information people really need and spend a lot of time to find.

Sometimes I dream of seing within companies what we have on the net : millions of information sources which contents go “on the cloud” through RSSS feeds and APIs and are gathered in a sort of “common base” from which, according to searchs on people, tags, plain text…I extract feeds that really interest me in order to read them in an unique tools, according to my priorities, to the time at my disposal, mastering what I read instead of being bombarded with messages.

To illustrate this point I often the comparison between being under a waterfall and having a shower with multiple jets massaging me. Instead of experiencing the violence of an unique and uncontroled flow, I set every jet direction and power and comfort replaces pain.

It implies companies open their eyes, think about the notion of information flow (vs stock), governance and think in terms of marketplaces and personal information supply chain rather than in termes of massive and inefficiant spraying.

For those who are interested in that and would like to get more on these issues, I advise to have a look at Stowe Boy’s keynote at the next Web 2.0 expo, “Better Media Plumbing for the Social Web” in order to become more familiar with these new logics and issues and begin to wonder about new ways to live out information and transform the way people will exchange and interact in the upcoming years.

It’s not conceivable that two worlds will co-exist : the general public’s and the enterprise’s (which is made of the same people), with two radically different conceptions of information flows, separated by a will. And it’s not conceivable either that those who live in one side of the wall forget in a second what they are and the way they behave when they are at home, on the other side of the wall.

Otherwise, if you wish to attend the Web 2.0 expo, you can get a discount code here.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Enterprise 2.0 : the last step before the project economy ?

April 15, 2008 By 1 Comment

A few months ago I wondered if we were on the road to an externalisazion of enterprise’s non structuring function, which may paradoxally put value creation outside the enterprise. In this situation the enterprise’s only job would be to manage outsiders according to its needs. I don’t say it’s a good or a bad thing, it’s only an objective possibility.

Someone reminds me of this note and told me : “it’s more real than you may think : if we could measure ressources used to fight against the weight of the system compared to those reallu used to create value it would scare a lot of people”.

Let’s come back to the model that may be offered by the future enterprise. Let’s have a look on the engagement model proposed by the digital natives which looks more like partnership than employement. Let’s, at last, have a look at the Coase Theorem (enterprise’s size depends on transaction costs…but how much costs information today ?). Let’s also consider solutions like innocentive for example…

The most obvious conclusion would be to say that if companies can’t, internally, combine employement and partnership model, decreasing not only information acquiring costs but also the cost of use of all its intangible assets (ie making them available and usable, not only being satisfied they are “inside”), we may soon reach a tipping point. [Read more...]

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

Enterprise is not a closed system : the Starbucks example

March 22, 2008 By 2 Comments

No company can (sur)vive isolating itself from the outside. In the other hand it has to grow richer because of all its ecosystem and consider it as an allied, not an enemy. There are many reasons for that.

- improve the way it benchmarks by taking the most of ideas and feedbacks coming from what’s essentiel : its market, its clients, its community.

- avoid being overtakes : whatever people talk. It’s better joining the discussion and learn from it than turning a deaf ear. Doing disconnects a company from its ecosystem and doesn’t help building a welcoming brand.

- keep control : it’s useless putting barriers where a tidal wave is coming : there are many chances for  barrage gives away. In the other hand, by funnelling the wave you can create energy.

- starting a costless BI approach.

That’s exactly what Starbucks is doing with MyStarbucksIdea et dont Pascal Veilleux nous parle ici. Pas besoin d’en dire plus, son article résume fort bien la situation. As its CEO says :

Welcome to MyStarbucksIdea.com. This is your invitation to help us transform the future of Starbucks with your ideas-and build upon our history of co-creating the Starbucks Experience together.

And just like in our stores, our curious and passionate Starbucks partners are here. Engaging in daily conversation-bringing the warm, human connection of a great Starbucks experience to this online community.

So, pull up a comfortable chair and participate in My Starbucks Idea. We’re here, we’re engaged, and we’re taking it seriously.

Some say there’s a risk to see competitors come and take Startbucks’ ideas. It’s a wrong problem : the same facts must not have the same consequences for two companies. Depending on their culture, two companies having the same information are supposed to act two different ways. Just cloning one’s competitors lead to failure. The approach my be the same, results have to be different instead one don’t assume the importance of corporate culture.

But first, information has to be gathered.

Whatever, information marketplaces are a very heavy trend, a young model that will take more and more importance.

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