Networks | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Managing information and people is not the same thing

November 22, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : “accept as friend”, “add to your network”, “follow” are concepts that are more and more present in our personal and business lives. That does not come without human issues. One may be interested in the messages, information, signals shared by another person without having a good relationship with this person. Sometimes there’s even no relationship at all. The problem occurs more and for frequently in both the consumer web and enterprise tools where things are even more sensitive. Binding how one manages the information flows he receives and how he manages his relationships with others causes complex and complicated situations that are humanly uncomfortable for people. The solution is simple : splitting both. The good news is that it’s a very actual trend.

I recently wrote on the difference between signals and conversations. It’s not only about words : it’s about the whole approach for people, for the system as long as we admit that conversations is only one way among others to share and transmit information. It gets even more important if we consider that a given person may be more or less comfortable with one or the other and that one or the other will work better in a given context.

A similar issue applies to relationships, contacts, friends etc. Managing what I’ll call relationships is about to become a pain on the consumer web and raises many questions on enterprise internal tools tools.

I won’t mention the wording that can kill the system by itself. It’s the somehow political context of work there’s a big difference between adding someone as a friend or as a contact. Accepting or requesting such a request from one’s manager or staff member is a kind of political and diplomatic decision. It comes even more critical when one has to make such a request, to state a relationship, to see what someone shares or interact with this person. Add to that the sensed attitude of users saying they don’t have the time (and often not the know-how) to manage as many relationships even if they need to shortly interact with one or the other to get things done.

It all comes from the confusion between managing one’s information flows and managing one’s contacts. By mixing up diplomacy and efficiency, many social platforms, internal or consumer facing, did not help their users and made themselves touchy to use.

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

June 18, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 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: collaboration, collaborative-tools, ecosystem, enterprise, interactions, knowledgeworkers, networks, outsourcing, providers, self employment

Enterprises far beyond enterprise 2.0

January 20, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 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.

CE0 concerns : network driven business models

December 16, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

What are CxOs real concerns ? How do they undertsand current issues ? Lots of people are talking about the need for companies to change in order to evolve in the context that is theirs now but it supposes the “information” has reached the highest decision makers and that they really understand what it’s about if we want things to slowly happen.

It would be very usefull for all the people who are “pushing” ideas and evangelizing to know the gap (if any) between their ideas and what CEOs really think.

Fortunately the work was done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in its 11th “CEO Survey”, titled : “Compete and Collaborate : What is Success in a Connected World”.

One year after predicting that three main trends will impact enterprises (Globalization, connectivity, communities), PWC follows the same way and focuses on the way business models will evolve and, most of all, on the way to create value with employees but also with competitors. With an underlying question : is building business networks a prerequisite to create value in today’s economy ?

Said in practical terms, companies are torn between two forces : collaboraton and collective actions in the one hand, competition and individualism in the other hand. The whole while considering the impact of a strengthened collaboration on power diffusion and control loss by management.

The report being freely downloadable, I’ll only focus on a few points.

1°) Current context

• New growth levers will be agility, talent and technology

• The downturn will bring many opportunities for mergers.

• An interconnected world is more exposed to risk but also offers much more opportunities

2°) Impact on business models

• Companies say their people are more important than ever but they still don’t translate it in concrete facts.

• Middle and junior management weakness is a real barrier to change

• In order to face this block, companies have to involve employees in the change process, build connected organization, develop people continuously, make people accountable at every level and make change become the norm.

• The HR function will have to work in front line, besides top management in order to drive change and not only being a support.

• Companies know of to collaborate on an opportunistic basis. But they still can’t “industrialize” that and learn from their experience. Opportunistic collaboration does not have to be an exception anymore but an organizational principle.

• Higer productivity will only be reached through new communication technologies, global networks and innovative management.

• Networks that were only use to transfer knowledge in a small perimeter will have to be deployed to deal with wider strategic issues; both internally (employess) and externally (partners,cliens…)

3°) Conclusion

• Growth must be responsible

• Defining the conditions for a long term success with clients is essentials. Short term objectives are not enough anymore.

• To make collaboration efficient, the objectives, the operating modes must be redefined, involving all the stakeholders?

PS : not a word on enterprise 2.0 : the evidence that the work around the concept has ended and the time of implementation has come. Lucky we are, it’s on CEOs agendas !

Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: business networks, busness model, collaboration, growth, Human resources, management, networks, organization, pricewaterhousecoopers, productivity, pwc, social networks, social responsability, strategy, sustainable development, talent, talent management

Tools on the cloud for “on the ground” benefits

November 13, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Even if cloud computing is not the same thing as social software and enterprise 2.0 et is more about the way tools are delivered than functionnal classication, it makes interesting shortcuts in order to remind people of some obvious things that are too often forgotten.

I always repeat that social tools related benefits are not to be searched into the tools but in people’s work which is most of times nothing 2.0 at all, and, at the end, in production. Intangible makes sense only when used jointly with tangible and, even if some people may find it shoking or dream-breaking, when it serves to make real money.

One can do everything in a 2.0 mood, should this buzzword really mean something, but at the end benefits have to be found on the ground, and not on the clouds. In a jumble :

• Politics 2.0 but at the end still counting ballots

• Innovation 2.0 but what matters are the number of new things actually launched or the saved money.

• Training 2.0 but what is important is the way the trainee’s performance is improved

• Marketing 2.0, but even if it’s nice when thousands of people talk about you brand, what matters is to sell more or in a more cost efficient way.

• More generally “work 2.0″ but at then end people mainly care about their pay-slip.

Just the once won’t hurt, I’ll refer to the general public web to end my demontration with the clear-headed Cyrille de Lasteyrie (aka vinvin) who works for Seesmic besides Loïc Le Meur and the keynote he made during last podcamp Montreal.

Cyrille told the audience that every online acitivities, especially in relation with video contents, are time consumer and that there’s always a point beyond which you have to monetize them, something that only very few people success to do. And he followed with the example of “Bonjour America” .

“Bonjour America” didn’t make him earn anything except people’s esteem, and we all know that’s a currency bankers rarely accept to fill one’s bank overdraft. In the other hand it served as a business card that made other things possible. No one offered him to fund “Bonjour America” on a wider scale by some opportinities were given to him to do other things, more tranditional, but fundable and funded.

It seems to me that it’s an excellent example of many things than happen online in terms of networks or contents production: very few value by themselves but an incredible value when people manage to tranform it “in real life”. They are only levers, but levers that help people making things in the concrete world.

What’s the value of the audience of a blog ? Of a network ? Of all the information that can be found on the web ? Nothing if using it in real life is impossible or has no sense. Huge in the opposite situation. But what will have value will not be the intagible but what will have been done because of it.

In my opinion a similar reflexion can be applied to enterprise 2.0, doesn’t it ?

Even if it’s not the only point he addresses, I advise you to watch the video of his speech (sorry…for once it’s in french)
Live Broadcasting by Ustream

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: cloud computing, Enterprise 2.0, intangible assets, knowledge-economy, networks, ROI, seesmic, social computing, social networks, value, web-2.0

Logic without good sense leads to catastroph

October 26, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago I attended a graduation ceremony. In such events I often find speeches boring, but this time I was really interested to ear the message that would be delivered to youn managers/entrepreneurs who will need to find their way in the business world in a time of crisis.

Finally I liked the way things were said, wih lucidity. I left with the title of a book I should buy and a very meaningful quotation : “logic without good sense leads to catastroph”.

What’s logic ? It’s what allows to draw certain consequences from established facts, most of times upon an experience based reasoning.

Good sense ? It’s what makes possible for people to realize that something obvious isn’t that obvious, that a good a priori choice will have negative effects, that avoiding complexity isn’t always a good thing. And that, sometimes, logic has its limits.

Logic is reassuring. It puts things into systems, into equations and gives us certainties about what the future will be. It’s consecrated bread for companies. We earned so much this year so if we do the same the same year we’ll earn as much money. A salesperson had such figures this year, so he’ll do at least the same next year. This way of doing things always worked…so it will work again. If an option matches such scoring criterias it will increase our performance…

Good sense tells us logic does not always work. Examples : the 100m world record is improved by 1/10 second every year. Logic tells us one day people will run the 100m in zero seconds and will break the sound barrier. Good sense tells us it’s impossible. Logic tells us a salesperson car improve his performance by 10% a year. Good sense tells us one day he’ll reach a ceiling unless you are ready to assume one people would be, one day, able to generate the equivalent of French GDP by selling peanuts at the corner of the street.

Logic, when applied to performace, makes us want to brings everything back to a linear function. So companies make promises and built models based on that. Good senses makes us say performance is rather a curve which asymptotic character is often forgotten. It tends with more and more difficulties to something but never reaches it. Do you remember when you studied functions limits in methematics class.

The two functions seem to coincide during a long time, during decades. Sometimes the performance curve can even be better than what’s expected. But the day comes then they cross each other, split. And what happen then ? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: crisis, economy, Entrepreneurship, finance, Human resources, logic, management, networks, organization, people-centric, performance

Network or proximity ? Where’s the value for businesses ?

October 21, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Social networks seem to be used to fit nearly any case, regardless to the fact their value come from the context. As an example, my newtorks on facebook and linkedin have nothing in common, links are built upon different criterias, in different contexts. Knowing than Mr. so-and-so is one of my contacts on one or the oher may help to understand the nature of our relationships. But in each case there’s a commonb point : one asked the other to validate we were contacts and the other agreed according to his own criterias. Materializing this relation built a link.

But the link can be created differently. Not only according to relations but objects. Dopplr uses travels as objects. Lastfm songs. FlickR pictures as I mentioned here. What creates the link is not the fact people know each others but an object

Not let’s imagine we’re in an enterprise context.

What’s the personal link related network within an enterprise ? People start by adding the ones they work with every day. Then they accept their superiors because refusing would be diplomatically hard. Then, followin the same logic, they link their subordinates. Then across the organization because we use to have coffee breaks together or use the same bus lie. Whatever : the only fact we have the same employer is enough to link one another. So we may have two kinds of result : either people reproduce the organization chart or eveyone is linked to every other. I do not use the “friend” or “relationship” in purpose.

What the interest for the employees ? None : the corporate directory would give him the same result. For the company ? None too : organizations know their orghanization chart and their employees directory (although….). Whatever. The general public web model does not operate in a corporate context.

So, what’s the solution ?

Disintermediarization : how a 2.0 practice can help against credit crunch

October 9, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Enterprise 2.0 is enterprise before being 2.0 and social tools are tools before being social. It’s very important to understand that anything 2.0 is, before all, characterized by a vision of interactions between people before being about the use of such or such tools. And a relevant vision can help bringing an old legacy business back to youth without changing its purposes nor its main characteristics.

The current economic situation shows us how once “what can’t be changed” faces a major crisis despite a presupposed infallibility, it’s possible to makes things change since the “we’ve always done things this way so there’s no other way” reflex is not relevant anymore. But it needs a real paradigm shift.

Banks don’t have money anymore ? They don’t trust people ? They don’t lend anymore ? They don’t even trust other ? Add to that the fact people don’t trust banks anymore too and you get all the required elements for a credit cruch.

So, strangely, everything that was only about mathematics, based on foresseable nature of things, cartesian risk scoring, showed its limits and more and more attention is paid to what was ignored : people, trust and what underlies all that, that’s to say the existence of links, of interpersonnal exchanges that make trust possible. Perhaps the beginning of an answer for those for are convinced that discussions and networkings had no business value.

Ambiant tools to catch your company’s social signals

September 14, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I know that many of my readers are more “enterprise” than “2.0″, but it’s important to have a look at what’s happining to the general public in order to understand what will happen to businesses tomorrow. First because the behaviors being developped always impact in one or anoter way the way people behave at work, second because (and that’s really new) because general public tools are now more advanced than those companies provide to their employees.

Let’s talk about twitter.

Although I’ve always been sceptical about it, I’ve been using it when I’ve nothing better to do, when I feel like joking with whoever wants to read. Of course, sometimes you get good surprises, as when I twitted my vacation route and find myself having breakfast in Boston with a very interesting enterprise 2.0 specialist I’ve never known about before. But how much noise is needed to find a small signal. So twitter is something like my trivialities’s garbage but, as you can throw valuable things out by mistake, perhaps one day you’ll find in my tweets something that may be interest you, since what’s mud for some may be gold for others. The problem with twitter is that it has a so large range of use, of audience, that it mixes everything and, as a consequence, often lacks some focus. I often tell myself that, limited to a given domain and audience it must make sense and bridge the wap that exist between existing tools, blog, IM and email for example. Of course you can have x private twitter accounts but it’s really makes things more complicated.

So there’s something behind twitter that goes far beyond the current poverty of this tool and what we (me included) to with it. But what ?

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

Logic without good sense leads to catastroph

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