The system matters more than people

SocialBusiness

Summary :”with, by and for people”…such seems to be the creed of the “social” transformation. And results still look uncertain. Sometimes non-existant, sometimes great but looking like exceptions and not the consequence of a perenial systematic trend. The web syndrome has struck again, forgetting that employees were not common people or the people they are [...]

Lessons on the hard job of designing communities in the organization

SocialBusiness

Summary : If communities have a real value for organizations, there are still few certainties about their positioning and management. Out of the work flow by definition, communities only create an indirect value for organizations, hence the fact there’s been a lot of efforts to bring them as close to the flow as possible in [...]

Can participation be mandated into communities. Yes…most of all when it’s not communities

socialmedia

Summary : organizations have to face a real issue about  managing their communities : making the system work without mandating. unfortunately there’s no alternative : communities rely on voluntary service. But there are two possible options. The first is, since it’s impossible to mandate participation, to tackle what prevent people from participating. The second is [...]

Setting up a pilot is not only a matter of sizing

SocialBusiness

Andrew McAfee recently raised the question Michael Idinopulos discussed some months ago :  is the concept of “pilot” relevant to enterprise 2.0 and should we drop it. Some (excellents) thoughts can also be found on Emanuele Quintarelli‘s blog. In fact the cause of the discussions comes from some assumptions that are not always true : [...]

Are in-the-flow activities a cure against cultural barriers ?

The importance of culture on the success of enterprise 2.0 projects is now acknoledged by everybody. The issue was widely discussed at the last Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Franfort where I took part in a panel about it. Even apart from this specific session, culture was the hot topic in many discussions during the breaks [...]