Strategy | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

No matter your organization is an elephant : it can dance too !

January 26, 2012 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

Summary : What makes a social business project successful ? To what extent question the existing and transform the culture ? Is success possible when top managers are not much concerned ? If we observe three major cases, there’ something obvious : the project was tied to an organizational change wanted by deeply involved CEOs. They become social business projects afterwards because they eventually used some new tools to support a years old approach. The example of IBM in the 90s shows that there are little limits to what’s possible and that arguments that “our culture doesn’t make it possible”, “that won’t work here” or “we’re too big to change” are not relevant.

Whatever the way we consider the problem, there is no example of an enterprise dramatically changing the way it operates without a strong leader deeply attached to a vision of business. Nothing new there since this has been proven right for decades even before words like enterprise 2.0 or social business became trendy.

Successful projects have a couple of things in common : a visionary CEO who is deeply involved, a goal at is not about social business and the courage to challenge the corporate culture. And those who fail ? Top executives that are not concerned and not very involved, projects aiming at implementing a social network and a moto looking like “don’t be rough with people, we’re not ready for that”.

Let’s have a look at a couple of cases.

Alcatel-Lucent. Whoever knew this enterprise 5 or 6 years ago should have been surprised when their project came under the highlights. If there were a place where such a thing could not have worked this should have been Alcatel-Lucent. Yes but…one day came Ben Verwayyen. We all know the story. First an email adress so employees could directly interact with him. Then an internal blog. Then, as his own approach was beginning to influence people in the organization, the need for a social network. All of this because his vision of business is made of words like transparency, accountability and that’s the way that he things a business should be run.

Danone. When a CEO (Antoine Riboud) states, in the early 80s, that “The most successful companies are those that think jointly technological change, work design and the changes in internal social relationships.” much is said. The rest is about sustaining a strong corporate culture. In th 2000s they started a program called “Networking attitude” to favor interactions, ideas exchange and problem solving. A program that was only about behaviors, management and the human side of the organization at a moment when web 2.0 and social networks did not exist. Technology will come years after and won’t be a break but a way to reinforce the corporate project.

Then IBM. Looking at the success of IBM, not as a vendor selling social business solutions but as a social business itself, is very instructive. But a large part of the lesson is missed if we don’t step back in time to learn from the Louis Gerstner era (1993-2002). I just reread the book he wrote about the time he spent at IBM (he also worked for American Express and Nabisco before), Who said elephants can’t dance. This book is very instructive for the very reason that, at this time, internet was not what it is today…and concepts like social networks or “anything 2.0″ where not even a dream. But, in some ways, Gerstner perfectly set the cornerstones that made social business possible ten years later.

This is a very important lesson for all those who think that “it’s not possible in our company”, “we’re too big to change” or “we don’t have to change…we’re the biggest, we’re the best”.

Enterprise 2.0 and social business : what to expect in 2012 ?

January 10, 2012 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

Résumé : what will be the enterprise 2.0 / social business in 2012 ? It will highly depends on choices organizations will make to deal with the paradox of finding ways to go out of the crisis while not having much money to invest. 2012 will certainly be the year where window window-dressing projects and deeper corporate ones will diverge as well as those aiming at adding a community layer to the existing organization vs those aiming at reinventing the organizational structure and operation models. Should the world be perfect, we’ll see budgets shift from technology to organizational transformation, from adding new layers to integrating existing ones, community approaches becoming more operations-driven, social becoming more a transformation than transplanting an external body. In a non perfect world we’d see window-dressing projects surviving a little bit before the final collapse, because of approaches too disconnected from the enterprise world to deliver results and sustain long term engagement.

A new year is starting…with the usual prediction challenge. It does not matter if these predictions become true or not, that anticipation is confused with taking one’s dreams for granted : predictions are a part of the landscape and even those who don’t take them seriously expect them. So I’m trying to play the game one more time.

First, let’s be clear on what prediction means. Even if I’m happy with what I “predicted” these last years (understand “I was right”), don’t expect to find anything revolutionary in the next lines. What we usually call predictions is nothing more than common sense (or lack of). Predicting the iPhone en 1990 would have been a prediction. Prediction the need from bringing social into the flow of work in 2009 was only common sense. Rather stating the obvious.

What leads us to a very important point. As long as one is lucid and clearly understands that, even social or 2.0, the real point is enterprise and business, with all the constraints and context that comes with, it’s not that hard to identify where things will block and what concerns will arise. Finding how organizations will decide to respond is much harder. Anyway each one will respond in its own way depending on its culture, its culture, the courage of its executives when it will come to make strategic decisions. Because of all that, we’ll surely see much more diversity than before in social business approaches…

So, here are the trends I seen for 2012.

1°) Budget : from technology to organizational transformation

Before being about people or technology, that’s a matter of money. Technology, accompaniment, internal efforts… And we all know that in 2012 money will fall from the sky and anyone will be able to spend it on any shiny initiative. Or not. So it all depends of a strategic choice for enterprises facing crises : getting ready for the crash or finding the winning way out.

Finding the winning way out may mean many different things. One of them could be keeping the investments and even making more efforts because it’s “now or never”. Another could be of not changing the amount but the allocation. I recently mentioned a survey saying that HR seem to refocus on organizational transformation to the detriment of some other points. I read another one, about services budgets, saying something like “less software and integration, more on building new business and organizational models”.

The most meaningful choice will on whether to favor technology or its usages. It seems that the second may win or at least not being the least considered part of the job anymore. Such arbitrations will be key facts to understand 2012.

2°) A more operations-driven approach to social dynamics

Some of us have been discussing this point for years but it seems that things are becoming more mature now. In 2009, anyone talking about a social approach to business processes was considered as an heretic. Today things seem to be converging and enterprises are more ready to listen and understand to such discourses that make more sense for them. Or maybe the disciples of the “Care Bears Social Church” have given up and admit that the word process was not a blasphemy anymore.

So, the job is not about keeping the old organizational structure and adding a community layer on its top, out of the flow of work, but :

1°) Bringing social into the flow of work even it means fixing the flow to make it agile and adaptable

2°) Jointing flows of work and out-of-the-flow community approaches to ensure all the efforts will contribute to value creation. If not, the final conclusion will come quickly : communities = unproductive silos…and once again we’ll have missed a great opportunity to improve things.

But being aware does not mean acting accordingly. Even if a consensus forms on such an approach, it will take time to implement it because it needs organizations to put their hands in the organizational mess and out of age processes. That’s what the “E20 = E1.0+communities” was designed to avoid. Unsuccessfully.

Depending on the choices made in each organizations, we’ll see forks forming in the the social business world. And, in my opinion, one of them is a dead end.

Behind this point lies something deeper…that’s my third point.

The problem with knowledge economy : it does not exist !

December 14, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : Enterprise 2.0 or social business initiatives aim at crafting organizations that fit what we call the knowledge economy. And that’s quite hard…for one reason. The knowledge economy does not exist. Knowledge work and workers do. Not the economy. What’s missing ? A global environment that would help its blooming, its take-off rather than forcing enterprises to make industrial decisions on matters that are not industrial. Education, law, tax system, accounting has to be rethought from a new angle. In the meantime, anything undertaken by organizations will be bricolage : it will need lots of efforts for marginal or even futile results regarding to the deep transformation challenges that are at stake.

When we talk about new organization or management approach, about the tools that support new ways to communicate or collaborate we often use the knowledge economy as a justification. Moving from an industrial to a knowledge economy means a deep change of context and responses of a new kind from businesses. That’s an obvious fact and none of the current social business or enterprise 2.0 expert has coined anything new : there already was an abundant literacy on these new forms of organization while most of os where still learning writing and counting at school. If we take the technology side apart, any old book from Peter Drucker could be a best seller if published today with the same texts and a socially fashionable title.

So knowledge economy is there and both organizations and people have to deal with it. But what do they do it so slow, with so much reluctance, fears and doubts ? Why can’t we see this draught, this collective march that happened when the world faced its last similar evolution ? The answer is easy : because the knowledge economy does not exist. Not because it’s a dream kept alive buy a few passionate and lunatic people but because it’s not a concrete reality, foundations on which we’ll be able to craft the future.

A field was not enough to craft the agrarian economy. A factory and some steam or electricity did not found the industrial economy. There were organization models designed for the factory. Labor laws evolved to lead the change. Financial mechanisms were set up to make the requires investment possible, what made industrial economy grow. A factory did not made the industrial economy but a set of rules, practices, mechanisms did. They turned a need and an opportunity into reality.

So, what’s about knowledge economy ?

One swallow doesn’t make a summer and a knowledge worker does not make a knowledge economy. Knowledge work exists. Knowledge workers too and they represent each day a bigger part of the working population. They are the resources that may help to build a sustainable growth for the future. But that won’t happen unless some requirements are met.

As a matter of fact, even if the potential exists it’s poorly exploited. First because businesses don’t do everything possible to make the most of it…but that’s an easy pretext. Businesses also are looking for sense, for reasons to do things. They don’t find these reasons because they are operating in an environment that did not change that much during the last 50 years. Consequence : they struggle to reinvent their model, to reinvent themselves. Evidence is those that success, that find the way of a new durable growth, are those who made choices that were both “obvious” regarding to where the world is heading and crazy according to the current environment in which they operate.

What’s missing to craft the appropriate environment ? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Society, strategy Tagged With: accounting, contribution, economy, education, Enterprise 2.0, extarnalities, growth, Human resources, income, Innovation, investment, knowledge-economy, knwowledge workers, labor law, law, participation, remuneration, social business, strategy, tax system

In KPI, K stands for Key

November 24, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : Any project must have KPIs. At first sight, defining indicators is an easy things but observation shows that it’s the contrary, most of all when it’s about a new field that is still being explored. But the problem with wrong KPIs is that, in addition to measuring the wrong things, may bring the project off the road, make success look like failure and failure like success. If anyone can find lots of indicator, the common misunderstanding is about their “Key” nature. An indicator is not key because of the importance of the project, the ego of the project manager or even because it’s an indicator. It’s key because it’s linked to the corporate project, because it makes and gives sense and because it proves an actual progress.

One can’t manage what one can’t measure and once one has invested anything in something it’s logical to try to know what came in return. Considering these wise words, organization add KPIs to all projects. Social and 2.0 ones are not exceptions. I know that many people says that, in this field, believing is enough but if faith can be helpful to start things it seldom helps to find one’s way along the path.

At first sight there’s nothing easier than setting indicators, most of all when organizations have the habit of measuring everything that’s measurable and build dashboards that look like we can be found in a plane cockpit. The result is known ; no one understands them. Setting relevant indicators in a new field, where experience often lacks is a real challenge.

So let’s consider each point of the question, the one after the other.

• Indicator : everybody knows what an indicator. Anything that can be measured, evaluated, assessed is an indicator.

• Performance indicator : knowing that measuring everything causes nothing but confusion, it’s logical to select indicators that focus on performance. Should it be about the overall performance of the performance of the project ? I think the right choice is the second one, because of what follows.

• Key Performance Indicator : there’s a lot to say here. There’s few consensus and understanding on what ky means, what can lead to horrendous mistakes. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: corporate plan, Enterprise 2.0, indicators, KPI, measurement, metrics, social business, strategy

What challenges for HR in 2012 ?

November 17, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

Summary : At the dawn of a year that’s expected to be rather difficult, businesses face conflictual choices. On the one hand there are the traditional formula to get prepared for the impact, on the other hand there’s the feeling that anticipating the shock won’t be enough and preparing to get beyond may be a better solution. Withe the same causes producing the same effects, keeping the same structures and functioning models while cycles are getting shorter and the need to adapt to fast transitions may be a dangerous option and rethinking the organizational whole a tempting one. What options will CHROs chose in 2012 ? A recent survey shows that indecision and even contradictory choices prevail. But, beyond the words, vital choices will have to be made. Jack Welsh once said :”When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight”. Will he be heard ?

Businesses are facing a paradoxical and challenging equation for 2012. On the one hand the crisis make them wonder about the future and how to have as little exposure as possible to what looks like a major threat. This usually make them freeze their projects and get rid of anything that may load them down when the shock will happen. But, in the other hand, there’s the feeling that this time things will be different. That the old formulas won’t work anymore. That if they content themselves with absorbing the shock, saying to themselves they’ll restart and recover after…they may not restart at all. That, beyond the economic crisis, there’s a crisis of management and organization models that caused the eratic behaviors that lead us to the point we’re now.

So there’s at the same time the reflex of keeping quiet, still and the feeling that a new way to recovery has to be found. Even the idea that there may be other ways to anticipate the shock. So the question is to know how businesses in general and HR in particular will manage this apparent contradiction. I found some pieces of answer in a survey made by TNS-Sofres for CSC in 8 countries.

Four main points

• Attracting and retaining talents is less important than one year ago (76% vs 80%)

• Training and education budgets will be downsized by 34% respondents

• Organization transformation is the new priority (80%)

• Less hirings and more downsizing.

In addition, 78% of CHROs think that CEOs expect them to focus on management effectiveness, 59% on the role of middle managers. The importance of a good social context and strengthening connections between people is mentioned by 64% of respondents.

So, what does it mean ?

Enterprise and business first, 2.0 and social second

August 16, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

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...]

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: accumulation, capital, corporate plan, Enterprise 2.0, goal, Human resources, intangible assets, knowledge-economy, knowledge-workers, profitability, ROI, social business, strategy, sustainability, value, value creation

On the place of social media in corporate strategies

April 21, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : More and more strategic plans are now involving social media. Should we welcome this or worry ? Knowing that tools are there to serve strategies it may be a bad news to see them promoted to the same level as what they have to serve. The risk of seeing the “social phenomenon” becoming something fashionable enterprises must mention without any real articulation with the strategic plan is very likely. Saying that tools are as important that the goals they serve shows that, in many cases, organizations still don’t understand the social thing and it may have negative consequences in the future.

As usual, when economy takes a turn, in a way or another, organizations change their strategic plans and explain what are their priorities for the next years. So a plan is replacing another that’s not been completed but that’s the way our world is : things change so fast that organizations need to change their direction as fast and often.

Now that’s the economy is slowly recovering, organizations have to change their pose, project and discourse to send signals to the market and re-mobilize their employees. These last months, I had a look at some of these strategic plans that’s been recently published. Most of them share three main points, usually worded like this :

1°) Put customers at the heart of the corporate strategy and concerns

2°) Improve employee’s well-being and development.

3°) Become a leader in social media.

More than being common places, points 1 and 2 are quite clumsy. They will cause comments like “Ah ? Because you didn’t use to care about our customers and employees before ?”. As for the third point, worded as such, it looks rather like a mandatory and opportunistic statement, because organizations can’t afford not paying attention to the last fashionable thing? What does “become a leader in social media” means ? Increase one’s presence ? Create one’s own services for customers and employees ? And what for ?

That’s typically what I call a social media strategy : any organization has to be there, and use these tools without knowing what for. What makes me say that they don’t understand why ? If it was the case, the articulation of the points 1 and 2 with point 3 would be more elaborated. To some extent, the point 3 would have nothing to do there because it’s only a means to serve a strategy and not a goal per se.

Then I guess we’ll soon be witnessing the coming of window-dressing projects, without any connection with reality and which impact will be hard to demonstrate. Have a “social media strategy is mandatory” so let’s have one to look modern. What would you think of a restaurant that would want to become a leader in mustard or pepper ? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: co-creation, customer, Customer Relationship & Marketing, social media, strategy, value, value chain, value creation

Change or don’t change..but don’t stay on the middle of the ford

March 8, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : as any strategic project, a social business or enterprise 2.0 one need deep changes in the organization to be successful. One the most common causes of failure is that not all the consequences are drawn, that what has to be changed in order to make things coherent and beneficial for both employees and the organization are not changed. An old truth applies here : either a project is strategic and everything should be aligned accordingly or the necessary adjustments are seen as optional and so does the success of the project. In this case, it’s better not to start anything.

When any enterprise wonders about its evolution, about what it should become to stay or become competitive again, it builds a vision of its future in order to reach it. It’s often the transcription, according to what the organization is, its culture, past, constraints, of the theoric concept of enterprise 2.0 or social business. Objectivity makes us admit that many of these projects fail or, at least, are very relative successes.

Why ?

- because the “social” or “2.0′” things went with a tool approach and that the goal became to make people use the tools instead of making people serve the project with the tools. A good example of useless changes in behaviors when the system is in question.

- because the project was launched without any idea of what the goal was. Who does not know his destination often goes nowhere and fears trying new roads.

Deploying the tool that will support the new ways of operating and serve as a catalyst is the easiest part of the project, to such an extent that’s it’s often what’s done firs. In the other hand its integration in the existing IT and its choice depending on key criteria that can only emerge after a deep work on operational needs may suggest that it should be the last part of the project. An essential part, but not the first : who does not find logical to align tools with needs instead of forcing needs to meet what the tools can do ?

That said, an enterprise 2.0 project is not different from any kind of project from a reasoning perspective. There is goal. To reach it, some things are needed what are as many requirements. Each of these requirements has its own ones. All this breakdown can be sumed-up in a tree that shows what has to be done. I’d rather say should be because this step seems to be often overlooked. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: alignment, change, change-management, Enterprise 2.0, Human resources, management, recruitement, social business, strategy

Trying to solve a business problem ? Don’t start with a social media plan !

November 23, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Résumé : even if maturity on social media is increasing, we still hear to many incantations like “if you dont’ use social media you’re gonna die”. Not only the systematic nature of the discourse, applied to any subject is irritating decising makers and is not a good thing for credibility, but it’s also misleading. Saying that social media are the only way to do anythigs leads to tool-centric strategies instead of problem-solving driven strategies. No tool will help to execute a plan that does not exist.

Clear-sighted as usual, Luis Suarez rencently wrote :”Dont’ start with the tools, they’re not your final destination”. I am sure that, unlike two years ago, everybody now understands this point of view and that even vendors, for whom it’s a very counter-natural and cultural point of view, now agree that their product is only a part of a global approach.

Yes but…

The small world of people convinced by social media still over-proselyte. The point is not about knowing whether they’re right or not but the manichean and systematic nature of the discourse. Consider any business issue. As soon as it becomes a little bit trendy, we can hear the “if you don’ use social media to….your enterprise will….”. What can be adapted to anything. “If you don’t use social media to innovare /engage / share / communicate, your enterprise will die / become obsolete / lose its customers…”. Maybe one day we’ll be advised to use social media to paint the office’s walls.

A discourse that raises questions in terms of credibility…and is even misleading because partly wrong.

A credibility issue first. Decision makers have been hearing this discourse for years, applied to any possible subject and its systematic nature is irritating them, and slowing losing its credibility. So, there’s no surprise they don’t listen anymore because they know what they’ll be told even before the gurus speak and the social media world is more and more looking like a sect where believers talk to believers.

Remember our childhood. And what our parents used to day to make us eat things we did notlike. “You should eat…. to grow up / not to fall ill / be good at school / not be feel tired”. Every time we felt a little ill or did not feel very weel, we could guess the answser prior to say anything. And, logically, it made use smile..but never changed anything.

Even worse : the discourse is wrong. Let’s repeat it again : Saying that if an enterprise does not use social media to innovate, engage or anything else it will face big problems is an intellectual swindle. You have an innovation / engagement issue, so install the right platform and wait… You may wait for a long time without seeing any change.

There organizations where everything is fine and employees are engaged, other that are innovative, other that are loved by their customers….and that don’t use social media. What does it mean ? It means that, before using social media to do anything, organizations have to decide to do this anythings, build a strategy and plan its execution. In many situations, social media will be a part of the system…but only a part. Organizations that are successful without social media today will come to it one day…but they have time because they already have actual strategies to address these issues and are not waiting for a magic tool to execute plans that have never been built for various reasons (that are not all respectable).

Social media will never help anyone to execute a plan that does not exist to serve a strategy that does not exist to reach a goal that is nothings more than a word that was expected to be self-achieving.

If you want to innovate, engage your employees, harness and capitalize on your knowlede….start by deciding to do so and build a real plan. Then choose the tools to support the plan. In some case you won’t need social media, in some others it will help you to deal with some barrieres and in some case it will help you to do much better. But if you start with the idea that you need social media to be successful, you’ll build a tool centric strategy instead of one that will help you to achieve your business goals because you’ll focus on how to make people use the tool instead of making the tool serve people that serve your strategy.

General Electric, for instance, had a problem solving system that have been working well for a long time “in real life”. Their internal platform only helped them to increase the bandwith of their system. They used social media to serve real plan. Their system gives sense to the tool that improves the way the system was working. But without the pre-existing problem solving approach, the tool is nothing.

Social media are catalysts, accelerators, tools that can makes things incredibly more efficent and simple. But they won’t support a plan that does not exist. Their use will never solve any issue by itself and won’t prevent businesses to face their actual problems.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: engagement, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, involvement, organization, problem solving, social media, strategy

Coordinated social media strategies by 2016 ? Why 2016 ?

October 26, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Gartner just issued their predictions about technologies that will deserve highlights in 2010, with a large part dedicated to social software. It includes both interesting and suprinsing things?

First, their analysis distinguish between “social networking”, “social collaboration”, “social publishing” and “social feedback”. Why not, after all. I even find that it makes sense from a learning point of view. Boundaries between social networking “stricto sensu”, tools that have a wide range of use or are used in the limited scope of a community and, at last, social spaces (that can be called “communities” or “groups”) are so blurred that organizations are totally lost. What brings a lot of confusion when they have to design any project related to these points. So this vision is relevant to help them understand how each logic works.

It’s surprising at the same time since it’s hrd to imagine one without the other. In order to make a social network help its members to go beyond strong ties, information is needed to identify people across the organization. So it’s hard to imagine a comprehensive strategy that whould nor articulate social networking and social publishing / collaboration. Let’s even push this logic further : in terms of product, it’s clear that any product that only offers one without the others will suffer from limitations that are more than crippling. Today, organizations can do DIY but the more this kind of issue will become strategic the less they’lln accept incomprehensive solutions.

For instance, social network analysis that Gartner puts in the social networking field would be more relevant if relying not only on ties but also on interactions…what brings us back to social collaboration and social publishing….

Gartner also says that, in 2016, social tools will be integrated with business tools. I already shared my point of view about that many times and have some other posts being writen : according to me that’s something unavoidable. Now, let’s talk about the 2016 dead-line. In my opinion, in addition to delivering more value by making the solution being one-click away from the problem (knowing that each additional click makes 30% users give up) such an integration has another upside : by making social activities more senseful, that favors tool adoption in order to make users come closer to community behaviors because they came to use tools for process-driven reasons. But I’m affraid that, until 2016, many people and organizations lose their breath in a middleware-employee logic.

I think the same about the idea according to which organizations will have coordinated social media strategies by 2016. That sounds obvious but let’s be careful ; if having coordinated tool strategies in one thing, but it doesn’t imply coordinated management strategies. Coordinating tool strategies will not solve the incapacity to share resources across silos, to use a social media as a channel to deliver anything or execute a plan instead of as a legacy media, to turn communication into service… I’m affraid that Gartner is mistaking technology strategy with global strategy…the latter needing to come become the former if one don’t want tools to remain on the shelf. It would be very dangerous for organizations to think that “everything will be solved in 2016″ just like by magic. Nothing will improve if they don’t start working on the needed global strategy to be ready by 2016

Je me fais la même réflexion par rapport à la prédiction qui veut que les entreprises aient une stratégie “coordonnée” en 2016. Par là entendons entre le networking et le collaboratif, entre l’interne et l’externe. Là encore, c’est quelque chose qui résonne comme une évidence. Mais attention : avoir des stratégies outils coordonnées est une bonne chose, mais dans ce domaine il faudrait également coordonner les stratégies managériales. On pourra coordonner tous les outils, cela ne résoudra rien à l’incapacité des organisations à partager leurs ressources entre les services, à se servir d’un “social media” comme un canal pour exécuter un plan ou un process et non comme un media, à transformer la communication en service etc… J’ai bien peut qu’ici Gartner confonde la stratégie outil avec la stratégie tout court…la seconde ayant intérêt à précéder la première si on ne veut pas que les outils restent sur l’étagère. Il serait dangereux, qu’une fois de plus, les entreprises se disent “tout sera réglé par magie en 2016″. Rien ne se le sera si elles ne travaillent pas d’ici là sur la stratégie en question.

Conclusion : A lot of things that make sense but I still don’t understand why 2016. Close enough not to be to far while letting enough time to issue other predictions and change one’s mindcin the meanwhile…

Lats point : analytics. I recently wrote things about bringing intelligence into social software and let technology do the middleware work that is often devoted to users. : the analytics concept is all about that. Globally speaking, the only value of social software today is to allow users to adopt more efficient practices. But let’s be frank : the software does not deliver any added value in addition to what people can deliver by developing new synergies. This step will allow enterprise social software solutions to add their own added value on top of user’s. Doing so, these solutions will be more appealing for users, so will be more used, so will bring more value…what is the start of a virtous circle.