New White Paper on Enterprise 2.0

I’m happy to announce the release of a new white paper on enterprise 2.0. In fact irt’s not that new. Last year, my fellow member Anthony Poncier gathered most of the more relevant french enterprise 2.0 practitioners to write a white paper, each one being in charge of a chapter on his favorite topic. The paper had a lot of success here and we decided to work on an english version…that took time to be released but is now available.

Some of you will find names and people they already know. For the others it will be the occasion to discover the “French touch” of enterprise 2.0.

Enjoy !

View more documents from Anthony Poncier
I’d really like to thank Anthony for his involvement and the coordination work. Nothing would have been possible without him.

Enterprise 2.0 and ROI : do we ask the right people ?

Summary : when talking about the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 projects, people often focus on the ROI of the software they’ll use to achieve their goals. But social software, morst of all in the enterprise world, has no ROI by itself but a potential ROI that needs that need technology and new usages to be coupled together to become real. In fact the ROI question does depends on software vendors who are often asked it as much as it depends on the the enterprise that knows how far they are ready to go in its transformation process. So there’s so surprise businesses don’t get the answer they need from vendors and suppliers : no one has the answer except themselves.

I recently has the pleasure to moderate a panel on “ROI 2.0″ at the last MIS  conference(Management, Information, Strategy) in Paris.

Many interesting things came from the discussion. Some are slowly but surely becoming mainstream, some others being more specific and demonstrating that maturity is improving what allows some new approaches to emerge.

In the first category, there’s the fact that ROI as both a qualitative and a quantitative side. But, even when one decides to focus on the qualitative sides, it does not mean that it should not be measurable. Other point : progress is hard to measure because lots ot improvements are about things that did not use to be measured before/

Another very important point is the consensus on an activity oriented operational vision. If one want to measure anything worthy, it need to apply on an activity, a process which execution needs to be improved. Social networks are generic tools which use has to specifically target one’s need in the context of his work. Of course, the “above the flow” dimension will still exist and matter but it’s better to start focusing on practical  things, meeting identified needs and bringing tangible improvement in people’s work.

Last, it’s difficult and even impossible to propose hard numbers beforehand (but is it useful ?). What can be done is to target activity oriented usages that ensure a potential improvement, then measure on the flow to align and improve.

What leads us to the most important point, what is the consequence of what  precedes : changing tools without changing the way work is done does not improve anything. In oter words, what makes a potential ROI become real is the will to change processes, organization, rethink HR models etc… What is not anecdotical since it sends back the ROI question to the one who asks it : the enterprise.

As a matter of fact, enterprises tend to ask the question to their suppliers and vendors first, while the latter only master a small piece of the approach. They are responsible for the tools, its functionalities and a part of the potential ROI. But they have no impact of delivering the ROI because it will depend on what the enterprise will do, how it will use the tool as a part of a global transformation program. The same reasoning works for the implementation of new work practices ? What’s their ROI ? It will depend on whether the enterprise will decide to change as less things as possible, just to say “we’re doing 2.0 things”…only for show.

Organizations ask their suppliers and partners questions they have the answer to and only depends on a factor called willingness (or courage). Those who supply the tools or methodologies can only provide a potential ROI, sometimes advise to make the first steps. But, to get significant results, enterprises should ask themselves : “how far am I ready to go ?”.

As a conclusion on “ROI 2.0″ :

- 2.0 or social tools are inert tools : they do nothing but allow people to do things. They don’t have any ROI by themselves but enable the ROI of a global approach.

- rather than the ROI of a tool, organization should focus on the ROI of the tool/usage couple. Then, couple this duet with activities and processes. What provides a potential ROI.

- to move from potential to real ROI, it’s all about the courage and ability to align the work context (ROI, processus etc…) with the project in question.

- the ROI word, in its usual meaning, does not mean a lot in such projects. Talking about tangible, observable and measurable improvement is more relevant.

 

Enterprise and business first, 2.0 and social second

Summary : Enterprise 2.0 and social business when they become, as it often happens, their own goal, struggle to convince businesses of their significance. The reason is simple : beyond soft and qualitative benefits, the quantitative aspect is often overlook while, in the end, the enterprise has no other purpose than producing tangible wealth. This being the very basis of the concept of enterprise, there’s a need of reconsidering the social phenomenon regarding to this goal. Benefits of these new approaches are obvious in terms of value creation provided the changing nature of our economy that relies more and on people, knowledge and accumulation processes is taken into account. In this context, social and 2.0 speed up the processes that allow the accumulation of knowledge, relationship capital, trust and even reputation. This leads to a conclusion : pushing change in organizations which plan and value creation model does not take this factor into account won’t be more than a pleasant distraction. Organizations need the courage to bring the matter back to its real level where it has to be tackled : the value creation and business model one.

An increasing number of people are working through the world on transforming their organization into a social business or enterprise 2.0. In fact, this is partly wrong. In most cases it’s about making organizations adopt enterprise 2.0 or implement it where it’s possible (even in competition with the current organization), what is not the same thing. I’ve often said what the concept of adoption means to me, easy but fragile replacement for a real reflexion on sense and alignment, so I’ll change and mention this brilliant post from Oliver Marks where Oliver reminds us that “adoption is for kittens”.

Things happen this way for many reasons. Sometimes the people in charge are so passionate that 2.0 and social have become their one and only goal. The rest does not matter as long as many people use the wonderful tool that come with and form communities, regardless to the real business value of these communities. Sometimes the project is managed at a too low level of responsibility, sometimes with a poor sponsorship, so the person in charge does what he/she can with the available means, the provided support and the existing risk of doing too much. We all know what happens in such situations. If, in the first case, it’s only an excess of passion (and passion makes people blind), what causes the second (and may also apply to the first) is that there is no consciousness of the context in which people are operating. Enterprises are enterprises before being 2.0, business is business before being social. If organizations take no benefit from change in the context of reaching their goals, they have no reason to change.

If social and 2.0 forget the reason why enterprise exist, they become their own goal and are, at best, useless. The two above-mentioned cases are perfect evidences : when confined in a stooge role or added to the existing organization without being integrated in real business operations, social/2.0, even adopted, brings nothing. If the enterprise plan is not coherent, aligned with what social can bring, few progress will be made. Of course, many enterprise plans and discourse mention these points but it seldom means that the core of the organization is changing. Instead it’s often a nice making-up on things what don’t fundamentally change.

Don’t you find exasperating that too many discussions and event on the future of business are focused on how such or such technology spreads ? It seems that more and more people do. This revolution is presented as the remedy to all the things businesses suffer from in this early XXIth century. If I compare to this excellent post by Umair Haque, the problem is bigger and the cure needs a deep change of DNA. As a matter of fact most of the businesses that are mentioned in the most aren’t “2.0″ in the traditional meaning. They integrated this paradigm in their corporate plan, their value creation model instead of just trying to make people change the way they work. In this context, social and 2.0 are an important part of tomorrow’s enterprises, but not the only one. But, when applied to good old plans without taking into account new realities at a higher level, they won’t help to avoid the placebo effect.

So…what’s the goal of an enterprise ? [Read more...]

Enterprise 2.0 in 2011 : value or denial of reality ?

Summary : what will happen in the Enterprise 2.0 world in 2011. Making predictions is very difficult because many things will depend on what enterprise 2.0 wants to become. After 5 years of experimentations, thoughts, discussions, there’s enough maturity on methodologies, limits, improvements to be made that we should say the big change is on its way. But the road is long from words to actions and many things will depend on enterprise 2.0′s ability to get out of kind of denial of enterprise. Accept to frankly talk about value, put hands into complex and sensitive mechanisms that drives production and execution, forget the idealistic and angelic vision of a dreamt organization driven by passion, openness and nice intentions wlll be key in 2011. What’s at stake : moving forward or losing credibility.

Before trying to guess what the enterprise 2.0 world will look like in 2011, let’s start summing up what has happened since 2006 and what the situation looks like today.

In 2006 Andrew McAfee came to the conclusion that the use of social software could support new ways of working. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s what he called “tech-enabled organization”. These new ways of working being made desirable and even necessary by the evolution of the economy and value creation models, lots of people tried to implement the above mentioned tools. Often without success. Then came the conclusion that (for those who did not get it before…) tools were nothing but enablers (the “tech-enabled” thing in McAfee’s writings is too often overlooked) and that organization, management, people and even culture were parts of the equation.

With time and after lots of experimentations and reflection, it became obvious that the structure of work and organization had to be tackled (read my 2009 and 2010 predictions) to make the change possible and be sure it would improve value creation. What led to a consensus on the need to tackle business processes both for alignment and value creation matters. It was quite a logic conclusion for anyone knowing the deep mechanisms that drives operations and value creations but was light-years away from the dominant doctrine that was nearly exclusively focused on building communities above (and out of) the flow of work. The idea was not to favor the one or the other but to articulate both to meet organization needs and create synergies between unstructured cross-organization exchange dynamics and structured and vertical operation ones.

Meanwhile, tools improved a lot in terms of richness, integration capabilities etc.

Let’s sum-up :

• awareness that we have to tackle the organization mechanisms and machinery

• awareness that we have to articule on the flow and above the flow dynamics.

• awareness that we have to go beyond community dynamics

• existence of a lot of valuable knowledge and sets of practices about community management. Let’s be honest ; we have “best practices”, heaps of methodology, lots of cases and the tools to support the whole (Cf: the incredible work of the Community Roundtable). More and more people are now able to build and manage successful communities and what gives the opposite feeling is that too many businesses try to turn into communities what is not communities (hence the need to do beyond…)

• we have good social software tools.

So everything is alright and enterprise 2.0 won’t experience any issue in 2011. Things are going well, we’re on a straight highway and success is ahead. Problem : it seems we take pleasure driving with he hand brake on.

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Enterprise 2.0 : who spends one’s time reading a dictionnary forgets his bank statement

Summary : the Enterprise 2.0 Conference that took place last week in Santa Clara leaves those who followed it from a distance with a strange impression. While we could expect, with the increasing maturity, a real breakthrough on value creation models, we end with a petty squabbling about enterprise 2.0 and social business. What brings, one more time, the focus on what enterprise 2.0 is, is not, its limits…at the risk of desperating enterprises that don’t see any change in the problem they’re facing meanwhile and would like to be told how to improve things instead of being offerd to join the dreams of the ones or the others. In the end, the debate is meaningful not because of its content…but because of what’s not in : value creation and ROI are still missing.

I followed the last Enterprise 2.0 conference from a distance, mostly on twitter. In general I’m often good at feeling what the hot topics will be but this time I have to admit I did not see what was coming at all. I would have bet that things woul dhave followed the same path as in Franckfurt but the debate focused on two points (at least according to what I read…assuming there may be a difference between what happened and what attendees wanted to highlight) :

• still a strong focus on communities (to such an extent I thought it was the Community Management Conference). I’ll share my views about this in a next post but, in my opinion, even if that’s a key element of the system, it’s not the only one and seems to be over-dealt with regarding to the rest. It’s impossible to claim addressing organization challenges on a global scale while focusing on dynamics that, by definintion, rely on employees willingness, out of work flows and which final impact on performance, even if potentially impressive, is still unpredictable.

• a new “enterprise 2.0 vs social business” debate. Is the first dead and being replaced by the second ? Is an heretic group trying to grab the power at St McAfee’s church ?

I was really surprised by the extent this second point reached, seeming to be the biggest point of concern. I first thought I had nothing to say about it but, finally, I realized that it was important not because of the arguments used…but because of what was not mentioned. By the way, a good occasion for those who still wonder what enterprise 2.0 is to make their own opinion.

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Being done with the enterprise 2.0 value discussion

Summary : many still wonder what new tools will bring to their organization and still have trouble visualizing the benefits. The reason is simple ; they imagine these tools in their current organization while it’s difficult to see their contribution out of a new way of working. Organizations built rules to accomodate to the constraints of existing tools. If these constraints are removed by new tools, organizations have to built new rules that will replace the current ones.

I recently found this post on the value (or lack of) of a new technology. It applies to new technologies in a general way, applying it to social software is very instructive.

First, let’s try to answer a few simple questions.

1°) What’s the main power of this technology

It makes information sharing easier and more efficient as well as enterprise-wide discussions related to business issues, the whole taking place out of organization and application silos. It allows anybody to identify, mobilize, put together all the information, data, expertises and people on a scale that was impossible before because of the above mentioned silos. So it allows, in fine, to provide employees with what they need to be efficient in what is called the “knowledge economy”.

2°) What are the limitations this technology is removing

The difficulty sharing unstructured data, identify information and people out of a silo.

3°) What rules were built to accomodate these limitations ?

In the context of a given business process, organizations started with the assumption the information needed for delivery and decision making was not findable. So they built operation models that rely on preset rules aiming at minimizing exceptions even it it meant to deliver an acceptable result in any situation but never something adapted to a very specific need. Assuming this, knowing that people will never have to look out of the process, the time allocated to informal-out-of-process-and-silos-collaboration was considered as wasted time…what impacted the way people were measured.

List to be continued…

4°) What rules should be implemented now  ?

I won’t elaborate that much on this point because it’s specific to any situation and many contextual elements are needed to give an answer that applies to a specific business, industry, business process. But it may look like “service oriented organizations“, social routines,articulating structured and unstructured work activities, rethinking quality

Taht’s only the starting point of a deeper investigation that has to be conducted within a given organization. Anyway, conclusions are the same than those I made about the ROI of enterprise 2.0.

- technology has no value by itslelf

- technology should allow to to things that couldn’t be done before

- rules were set to accomote the limits of previous technogies. The new technology has no value is old rules are not replaced with new ones adapted to the new potential that can now be harnessed.

In one sentence : rules have been set to accomodate constraints. If any technology removes constraints, rules have to be changed or the technology will be useless.

To end, when organization wonder “how to think” their social network or any social media project, they should wonder what rules have to be removed and what should replace them. Designing such projects without thinking a new way of working is removing all the value of the project from its beginning. It’s also the evidence that, to convince an IT dept,  a value co-construction process has to be implemented with business people because it’s simply not their role to care about how business is done.

Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed…but not luckily

Summary : there’s a missing link in the enterprise 2.0 discourse that does not reassure organizations. They’re being asked an impressive effort to generate information, connect people, they’re being told all the benefits they can draw from that but are not explaine the mechanism that will turn this information potential into tangible results. The fact this link misses is certainly one of the reasons that explain why we still lack some matter in the ROI discussion. This transformation, that’s too often overlooked, will certainly be made possible by the implementation of organizational and management mechanisms as well as a redesign of some process.

If a chemist observes an organization through Lavoisier’s words, he would say that it’s impossible to get anything from such a system :

• Nothings is lost : wrong, organizations lose everything. They lose their non capitalized knowledge as people retire of resign. The NASA and Boeing have already painfully learned it, but not everyone has begun to prepare the future. Worse, they can’t even find what’s within their walls. A former CEO of HP used to say “if HP knew what HP knows we’d be three times more productive”. The problem still remains.

• Nothing is created : that’s the difference between business and chemistry : businesses creates, and innovates. In fact that’s theory. Practically talking they don’t create enough. Not enough innovation, not enough solutions to new problems (or not fast enough) : it’s hard to find how to solve a problem, without even mentioning how hard it is to implement any new solution.

• Everything is transformed : of course…provided organizations want it. Not only a reaction does not happen by luck, most of all in organizations where silos are built to prevent elements to mix together and where any reaction has to be kept under control. The taylorian legacy dies hard and the “silos and control” approach still rules, what causes few transformation except by luck or when a manager builds a clandestine laboratory.

Many organizations understands this is a critical stake and know they should favor transformation if they don’t want to be at risk in a near future. Favoring information capitalization and sharing, breaking down silos to create and innovate more and faster…that’s a current (or scheluded) program in many organizations and initiates call it “enterprise 2.0″.

But, to be honnest, most of them are still afraid of embracing this new paradigm, wonder if it’s really worth. They’re still waiting for an answer to this questions, some in terms of ROI calculation some others looking for the certainty that things will improve. Said in other words, they want to be sure the new potential they’ll built will be turned into tangible results. That’s a double edged issue because it both brings an answer to a strategic questions and force organizations to think about reinventing the way their employees actually work, their managers manage. But that’s the difference between an actual improvement and a façade change. [Read more...]

Enterprise 2.0 and ROI : forget the “whether” and focus on the “how”.

Summary : even if the concep of ROI, in its traditional sense, hardly hardly works for enterprise 2.0, overlooking the question of tangible benefits tha should be expected is impossible. But the reasonnings on this issue suffer from a noticeable bias : technology is assessed in the current context while it needs organizational and management changes to deliver its effects. So there are few chances to have a solid demonstration if the focus is kept on the existence of ROI without a joint reflexion on how to make it happen.

The ROI of Enterprise 2.0 is interesting because it’s at the same time unavoidable and a problem that’s impossible to solve without rethinking the whole paradigm of value creation.

First, I’d like state something. I’m using the word ROI because it’s the one we all use to discuss this point while I think that “measurable improvement” would be more relevant.

Then, I’ll start with a metaphor. If a logical and rational thinking makes us deduct that an engine is the best solution to make a car move and that, despite your car has one that works, your car don’t move when you accelerate, it may mean two things. The first is that ou forgot to shift the gear box on the right position, the second is that it’s not connected to the transmission. Instead to trying to fix the engine or throwing it away, what needs a fix is the transmission.

Then let’s talk about ROA (return on assets). The number is well known but John Hagel recently reminded it to us : it has dropped to 25% of what it was in 1965 while people’s productivity has been skyrocketting in the meanwhile. Conclusion : that’s not employees that don’t pedal fast enough but the organization that struggles at turning their effort into value. So the solution is not to blame employees and put even more pressure on them but to rethink the way work is organized and people are managed.

Now, have a look at new ways of doing things and the tools that support them. Anyone with few objectivity understands that the easier it is for employees to access resources and expertises in a fluid way that helps to save time, the quicker problem solving and the better made decisions made will be. But since this system is hardly systematizable, organizations keep their old way of doying things. What means telling the cyclist to pedal harder and harder while the chain is broken.

So the true question about ROI is not to know if it exists but how to turn a potential into actual benefits. This is not about social media or behaviors (even if it will play a part) but about “plumbing”.

That’s exactly what I wrote a couple of years ago about strategy maps and intangible assets :

• Value creation is indirect : intangible assets don’t create value by themselves, but through their use in business process.

• Value is contextual : the value of intangible assets depends on their alignment with strategy

• Value is potential : if business process don’t use those assets, their value remain potential and can’t be fully realized.

• Assets are bundled : intangible assets have to be use in conjuction with tangible assets.

So it’s logacally difficult if not impossible to demonstrate any kind of benefit and, most all all, to measure them, if the question of alignment has not been tackled and if processes have not been designed or fixed to actually rely more on intangible assets.

Organizations have to forget the old principle according to which tools ahave an endogenous value : the value of social tools is exogenous and can’t be delivered if tools are not used in the context of adapted processes.

So there are chances we keep on discussing the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 again and again for years if the focus is kept on “whether” it exists instead of “how to deliver it”. Even people who are convinced and don’t care about the “if” shoud care of the ‘how” that ensures that processes will be able to turn the potential into tangible benefits.

As my good friend Luis Suarez rencently wrote, we should learn to work smarter, not harder. Lett me add : provided we avoid to pedal better but in emptiness.

What’s the ROI of social media for an employer brand ?

Last week I was invited by Weavlink to facilitate a series of workshops on the ROI of social media for employer brands. Attendees were mainly HR people with uneven maturity levels but who were deeply investigating the area. Of course it was not possible to do deep inside the issue in half an hoyr but here’s how I structured my presentation to make them think about their own model.

1°) Introduction

• It’s a concept that’s hard to get with our traditional thinking models. Do you know the “streetlight” story ? A guy is walking around a streetlight in the middle of the night. A passer-by comes and ask him what he’s looking for. “My keys”. “Wait…I’m gonna help you”. After a few minutes of unsuccessful search, he asks : “Are you sure you lost them here ?”. “Not at all but this is the only place where’s there’s enough light to search”. We need to learn to search beyond the streetlight !

• There’s no mathematical model because such systematic models don’t work for activities that are not systematic, that are about working on knowledge and information, where everything is exception and unique. We can’t equate people and interactions.

2°) What’s your goal ?

• Being on twitter, Facebook or wherever is not a goal. It it was, companies would find themselves idle in spaces where they would not know what to do because no one would know the goal that’s strived toward. They would be tossed, react insread of act and put themselves in danger. So, what matters before all is to know why they move into these media.

Quick reminder on Norton and Kaplan’s strategy maps. Working on intangible only creates a potential that has to be used into formal activities to reach tangible goals.

• All successful social media initiatives (internal or external) share a common point : they aim at improving the delivery of a process or activity, in this case it could be recruiting, building a corporate image etc…

• Social media don’t change the nature or goals of an HR department but are one more tool they can use to fullfil their goals. Hence the need for segmentation : social tools (and each of them taken alone) has a varying importance depending on the targeted population (you won’t recruit you CEO on Facebook or a Yer with an ad in the NYT)

• That’s not because no mathematical formula exists that what is done can’t be measured as well as the impact on the efficiency of a given processus.

• 3 challenges for the employer brand : sourcing, image, engagement.

• Then, what matters is not to wonder what are the impact of social media toward these challenges but how to use and include them in strategies that aims at addressing these challenges.

• If any improvement can me measured in the way any action plan is executed in termes of speed, quality, scalability or cost, then we have answers to the ROI question.

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Enterprise 2.0 and ROI : beyond numbers it’s about meaningful arbitrations

The debate on the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 is far from its end even if I often have the impression that avoiding the question is a common easy answer. Either the “we don’t care” or the ‘it’s different, you can’t understand” answers don’t satisfy me.

When an enterprise is asked to invest energy, time, money, it’s legitimate to want to know what it will get in return. More precisely :

- if their will be any return

The answer is obvious : yes

- if this return will be a vague “better something”, nebulous and unseizable or if it will be measurable in a way or another, in a un unit that would not be too eccentric (money for instance…)

Here, my answer would be double. There are things that have a direct impact on opeations and thant can be measured and quantified. For instance the lenght of the innovation or sales cycle, the time saved by avoiding micro-coordination…

There are things that are not measurable by themselves but impact things that are. This is clearly demonstrated by Strategy Maps.The idea is to implement the mechanisms that will ensure that what’s invested to improve intangible will actually impact value creation. In brief, make sure that everything is conherent with the investments and that the way work is done is aligned with that in order investments are made profitable (it’s seldom said but businesses usually don’t suffer from a lack of talent or innovation…only a lack of coherence that impacts the whole value creation process, preventing processes to harness talents and innovation potential).

3°) If this return can be foreseeable in a mechanical and linear way.

Here, the answer is : no. In the other hand, between the exact prediction and the “we can’t predict so let’s five give up” I think there’s a long work to be done by searchers and specialists to be done. Without this work that will help to implement relevant measurement and predicition means, the risk is high to see managers piloting businesses with indicators that have nothing to do with the current reality, the way operations are done and the matter that is processed.

That said, there’s another side of the issue that should also be tackled. Basically, being sure that the investment will bring some benefits should be enough to start a project, regardless of the quantifiable predictability of the benefit. The latter matter when the point is not to choose between doing and not doing but arbitrate the choice between two possible investments. In this case it’s obvious that the chosen one will be the one with the highest return so both possibilities have to be comparable what implies being predictable.

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