My Webcom 2009 in a few words

You may have a few ideas of what I liked at webcom if you followed my twitts yesterday, but before going deeper into each topic into future posts, here’s what I found really interesting. Some thoughts, ideas, favorites in a jumble

• Don’t refuse abnormality because it’s tomorrow’s normality. Cycles from the one to the other are getting shorter and shorter. Companies have to understand what something that is abnormal today means. It’s, once again, a matter of culture and its impact on decision making and organizational performance.

• “Open is the future”. Open stack, open mesh, open social.. But there are cases when, according to me, it can be counter productive. Anyway it’s the best (and only ?) mean to fight against personal fragmentation on many social platforms, private or corporate, and to turn into a platform centric world into a people centric one. Everything can be portable, not everything must be. Toward an “open governance” ?

• Turning the pyramid model into a network. Nice, I wrote about that this morning. But this just don’t happen by luck and a preliminary analysis is desirable. I was really impressed by Jessica Lipnack (Netage) presentations and the use of the l’Orgscope. According to me it’s an essential approach to design an enterprise 2.0 project, knowing that it as to articulate with the actual corporate structure and its purpose which is to produce, deliver processes. But it implies a deep understanding of how things are actually getting done today.

• Then came the “usual suspect”. Companies are facing challenges that will force them to adopt new tools. Even if there’s nothing new for those who know him, Claude’s approach, relying on demographic, sociological elements and cross-generation dynamics is still relevant. More than the “2.0″ dream that relies on unexpected serendipity miracles. Another traditional issue is open innovation about which Innocentive is still relevant according to its deep experience and their record of achievements.

• And a little “family touch to end. The very refreshing presentation made by Cyrille de Lasteyrie (CEO  Hellotipi) had two interests. The first was to show how a strong message could be delivered through storytelling without mentionning a product or service. The second is that he made us think about the sociological dimension of social media, about people’s concerns about privacy an about cross-generations dynamics that are made possible by massive social media adoption within the society. I have no doubt that businesses will have a lot to learn  to what will happen in these family networks because the person that walks though his office’s door is the same than the one who shares pictures of his baby with his family. Beyond constrained behavioral changes, his expectations and fears remain the same in his mind.

A last word about the conference itself. Wifi worked perfectly well what does not happen so often in such events. But it was a pity for all those who couldn’t attend that the streaming didn’t work (but all the videos will be put online soon).

It was my second time at webcom (always in may…I’m affraid of the weather at the november session ;-) ). I attend very few conferences to protect myself from the “bowl” effect : always being with people who think like you often makes you forget the “real enterprise”. Here, a lot of “real” people, looking for answers to their concerns, I really had the impression that something is transmitted instead of self-contragulating among “experts”. Of course, there were the speeches (interesting, no bla-bla that only highlight the speaker without any value for the audience), the business contacts…but also a human contact with the people, the city, I hardly find elswhere. A business event that makes you feel well is so rare…

It’s really worth crossing the ocean. Anyway, we don’t have such a “web, business and enterprise” conference in France. A real pity.

Entreprise 2.0, hiérarchie, innovation participative, montreal, netAge, open innovation, organigrammes, organisation, orgscope, réseaux-sociaux, web-2.0, webcom, webcom2009,décision,performance organisationnelle,

Is there a 2.0 way to draw an org-chart ?

When talking about enterprise 2.0, something we offer hear is “sounds interesting but our company is not designed to work this way”. Understand : we decide to do something and we “push” it, don’t even think of allowing a bottom-up flow to exist in this context. Of course, that causes gaps, the company isn’t able to meet clients and employee’s needs right away, many realignments being necessary while the exchanges that would makes it easier are not facilitated at all. In  a colorful language, companies use the existing pipes, hoping all pieces will fit together at the end.

That’s why I suggested to think about a Service Oriented Organization, which starting point is not the top of of the pyramid but the goals the organization has to achieve. Don’t forget that the purpose of any company is not to keep people busy or give to what already exist a reason to live but to meet the market’s expectations, even if it means to change what already exist.

Now let’s play a little game.

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What kind of social networks do companies need ?

Need for synergies, for connections, to do more with less ? Whatever the official reason is (and sometimes the unofficial one), companies are now turning back to the gool old network, renamed “social network” to stick to the the current climate, to find new pools of performance.

Because companies focus on efficiency, people’s network is not a collection a business cards lying about in a drawer. More, it’s more usual to collect external’s business cards than colleagues’s. The network got “webized” and companies are wondering of to professionalize a Facebook, internalize a LinkedIn. So social networks becomes entreprise-class applications, specialists quickly took a stand, traditionnal vendors tryid to add a “network” thing here and there. The fact remains that, behind an unique word and a sotfware feature hide many realities which embody the many visions company may have of social network. To make it short the question is : what is the useful kind of networks for a bsiness. According to PWC the future is “business networks”. But what are they ?

My point here is not to discuss what a network is. I’m convinced there is no generic and ideal form of network and that we need to adapt the one that matches our needs to our purposes.

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Seen, read, heard this week #2

A new column that will be weekly…or not. Will last..or not. Sometimes I read, hear, see things that are not worth a post but that I feel like sharing like I would do at the cofee machine, around a drink or a lunch…

Seen

• This mindmap of enterprise organization by Richard Menneveux. Ok…it’s in french but the it’s so (sadly) true that it’s worth sharing it for the few french speaking people that may come here
Organisation d'entreprise

Read

“if you spend more time taking care of your team than with your boss, say any promotion goodbye” a Twitt[fr] of my friend Ray Dacteur. Sadly true.

• Don’t even think of hiring away linkedin users, they are happy where they arel. Anyway, linkedIn is become much more than a tool to manage your career.

Entendu

• “Cloud computing is ineluctable. We must learn how this may help providing our users with more value with all these E2.0 tools”. Someone from the IT dept of an (supposed to be old school) biggest french companies.

• “There’s no crisis. Crisis supposes both a sudden dyfunction and the fact we try to restore the previous situation. In the current situation, we must not restore the previous situation but invent something new”. Frederic Dalsace, Social Business Chair incumbent at HEC School of Managementl (Btw, will write more about social business later).

Hierarchy vs Wirearchy ? Or only complementarity ?

Wirearchy is a very interesting concept I discovered weeks ago from a post from John Husband. Not that new (he’s been talking about that for a long time) but interesting enough to dig further.

Facts are obvious : new tools allow a new kind of information flows, because they’ree generated by peope. Those flows allow new kind of interactions, outside what’s been built by the organization, what creates an informal organisation. Not a counter organisation, but an actual and informal one which permanency only depends on people’s needs.

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What do you think of an employees made organization chart ?

cogmapIt’s a common word to say organization charts are never up to date. I’ve always thought that the only way to know who’s doing what in an organization is to letj people manage their own personal space. In fact those charts (lately udpated) onl show your function bunt never your expertises or what you really do…or those are the questions who are asking people who make a search on a intranet.

Cogmap is a service that allows employees to build their company’s chart online. Datas being accessible for everybody it’s also a good opportunity to identify qualified contacts in a company.

I’m looking forward to know how this service will develop et how many people will put datas in the base. We may also think that companies will take the opportunity of putting themselves their chart online instead of letting their employees do that by themselves.

I’m also waiting for the first case of “non official job” unveiled by a thoughtful by zealous employee.

What do you thing about that ? Will this kind of service meet success ? Risk or opportunity for companies ? And for employees who will play the game ?