I’ve always been convinced that enterprise 2.0 had a hudge potential but that it was often wasted because of 2.0 experts’ navel-gazing and a kind of will to marginalize those they consider as backward-looking people. In short, enterprise 2.0 often failed to speak a language that could be understood by the enterprise. It’s in no way a matter of capacity but a matter of languange, a disinterest toward “old things” that were ignored to the extent it was useless to say a word about them, that their very existence was neglected or denied. What a pity, since these things are enterprises’ spine column.

I broached this issue earlier this year and I’m glad to see this was one of the lessons of the ast Enterprise 2.0 conference. It’s encouraging for meany reasons.

In my “let’s talk about old things” series, I’d like to say a few things about quality. For many people, quality is as subjective and…qualitative concept. For other people, quality is about providing customers with what they expect to get. This logic was carried on to its deeper ends by Deming who expressed it this way : quality = (results of work efforts) / (total costs). The consequence is that when quality increases  costs decrease, and when any organization focuses on costs, quality decreases automatically. I won’t go further but if you want to know more about this, I advise you  to read “Out of the Crisis” which is still very relevant 20 years later and may make us think not all the consequences where drawn from Deming’s teaching. In short, Deming went beyond compliance control and turned quality into a real theory of management. That’s the point that may interest many enterprise 2.0 practitioners.

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