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Enterprise 2.0 is Neither a Crock Nor the Entire Solution
Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve a couple levels of problems.
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From a technology standpoint, E2.0 is addressing the failure of existing enterprise systems to provide users with a way to work through exceptions in defined business processes during their execution
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From a organizational and cultural perspective, E2.0 is defining a way of operating for companies that reflects the way work is actually accomplished €” by peer-to-peer interaction, not through command and control hierarchy.
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Corporate Social Media, from Macro to Micro
This concept of going from macro to micro must be the most significant development brought by the social Web. While in the past, the official position of a company was the *only* public position a company would have, today, a company’s public face is a composition.
In fact, if it’s done its job well, an organization could have a myriad voices, all different, yet all on the same cultural page.
Essentially, you would build the macro with a co-opetion of micros – from employees, to peers, to partners. If everyone in any organization could express themselves, unless you had an orchestrator, you’d probably have a cacophony. Not good.
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Gary Hamel described an innovative management approach that has stuck with me. W.L. Gore management has a hands-off approach to managing employees. Each employee is free to say €˜no’ to any request by a colleague. That’s right. Refuse to do something a colleague asks.
Damn, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? No more of those annoying requests that drive you insane.
But doesn’t it also sound like a recipe for anarchy? I mean, companies need employees to get specific things done, on a timely basis. It’s what make companies “go”. You get people refusing to do work, things will grind to a standstill.
All true, if the story stopped there.
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The biggest difference is the primacy given to the peer feedback. It is the crucial input on performance reviews.
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One outcome of management by community is that the visibility of one’s work becomes more important than ever. Two reasons for this:
- You want a record of the work you have done, so others will see it and be able to find it
- You need evidence of the work you are doing when you inevitably have to say €˜no’ to someone
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Creating public spaces for the sharing of work allows you to deliver on a specific task to a group of people in the same way. But it also lets others know what you’re doing. Someone who may be rating you down the road may not have been on that specific task. But they are now aware of your work.
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Another aspect of management by community is that employees will tend to associate to projects with work that matches your skills and interests. As you make decisions about what to say €˜yes’ and €˜no’ to, there will inevitably be a pattern to them. Generally, I’d expect a bias toward €˜yes’ on projects requiring talents matching yours.
Fact-gathering on 2.0 Adoption
Some of our best contributors in the Council are large consulting firms who are rolling out their own initiatives, and I expect these firms will leverage this intelligence to build their own practices at some point. During the first evolution of the web, a whole host of IT services firms cropped up to take advantage of the promise of enterprise transformation via the web. Most of those firms fell flat in the dotcom meltdown bringing down investors, customers, employees, and the echo chamber. I did a huge research report that profiled who those companies were and what dynamics were driving that sector.
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For instance, budgets for 2.0 are a lot higher than I would have guessed (if at all even established).
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Other interesting findings reveal that IT is not driving many of the decisions to implement a wide-scale enterprise 2.0 initiative. Lines of business comprise the lion’s share of our members.
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he people issues. It forces employees to communicate more. Additionally, the new processes expose the weak links in the firm and threaten job security/relevance. Greatest benefit? The initiative answers to the Board of Directors and provides predictable, reliable reporting that mitigates risk and ensures regulatory compliance
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“The platform should, however, allow [the firm] to be more nimble in the face of increased regulatory scrutiny. Management can now see the effects of re-allocating resources to review areas of the firm with a higher perceived risk.”
Types of Incentives for a Web 2.0 environment
I have been discussing incentives in for a Web 2.0 environment quite abit recently. Incentives comes in many forms, shapes and sizes. I would like to discuss more about the incentives that could be used in such an environment to improve adoption and usage. I will provide some high level case studies as well.
How 3M Forged a Culture of Collaboration
The Post-it company built and nurtured a system in which employees across divisions are encouraged€”even expected€”to collaborate
How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0
The heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business.
Why isn’t my SharePoint Environment Social???
When I hear about customer’s who have turned their SharePoint my sites into Facebook, Twitter (have you seen the free Tunnelpoint?), or Myspace. I chuckle a little, but when I hear what they’ve done, I realize that it isn’t that much of a stretch.
Those who have deployed their 2007 just like they did their 2001 and their 2003 environment simply by upgrading it, or simply didn’t spend any time figuring out how to take advantage of their features may feel like their environment is FLAT or they are feeling the chaos of a flat environment.
Exercising my network
I hate interrupting people by calling them. I hesitate to send e-mail updates because (a) people’s inboxes overflow, and (b) I sometimes get dinged because I’m « not personal enough » (although I’ve come to realize it’s mostly a matter of perspective). I’ve been working on keeping track of birthdays, but I haven’t quite gotten to the point of making people feel all warm and fuzzy.
And yet, somehow, people have called me a connector so often that I’ve come to believe it a bit myself. I’ve had the pleasure of learning from a great many people. I enjoy being able to connect the dots. I like remembering little things about people and referring to those things after most people would have forgotten. (I think that’s driven by my love of in-jokes and play.)
There are two ideas that make it easier for me to keep in touch, and maybe they can help you
Transparent Office: Enterprise 2.0: Skip the Pilot
There’s an orthodoxy in Enterprise 2.0 circles about how you’re supposed to run an implementation. The orthodoxy goes something like this: Start with small-scale pilots, define your business objectives, watch the pilots closely, evaluate their success, make a go/no-go decision. (A good recent articulation of this view is in Chris McGrath’s recent post on 8 Tips for a Successful Social Intranet Pilot.)
As far as I can tell it’s what everyone thinks. In fact, it’s what I used to think. Unfortunately, it’s dead wrong. The orthodoxy is wrong for a very simple reason: Size matters. By constraining the size of your pilot, you significantly alter the way your company can and will use the tools.
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There’s an orthodoxy in Enterprise 2.0 circles about how you’re supposed to run an implementation. The orthodoxy goes something like this: Start with small-scale pilots, define your business objectives, watch the pilots closely, evaluate their success, make a go/no-go decision. (A good recent articulation of this view is in Chris McGrath’s recent post on 8 Tips for a Successful Social Intranet Pilot.)
As far as I can tell it’s what everyone thinks. In fact, it’s what I used to think. Unfortunately, it’s dead wrong. The orthodoxy is wrong for a very simple reason: Size matters. By constraining the size of your pilot, you significantly alter the way your company can and will use the tools.
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An artificially constrained pilot is always a poor representation of post-pilot collaboration, because the range of potential interactions is so limited. The value delivered to each individual participant is exponentially smaller than it would be at full scale, and the ways that people will use the tool are different.
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If your E 2.0 pilot is struggling, don’t shut it down. Make it bigger. Open it up. Invite more people. Tell them to invite even more people. That’s the only way you’re going to find out the real behavior and the real value.
The particular focus here is on the points I made in response to John Tropea’s interesting vision of what he calls a “role-based” organization. In this, individuals would have greater discretion to organize their own roles and relationships to suit their particular talents and interests
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Despite retaining these beliefs, I would not equate this approach with the idea of “self-organization” in the sense that I now talk about it
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However, the critical thing to emphasize here is that it is the conversational interactions that are self-organizing. And it is through the self-organizing interplay of these €˜local’ conversations across the organization and beyond that €˜global’ outcomes emerge.
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I argue similarly in my Unlocking Organizational Talent framework that there is a need for “boundary management”. As individuals develop along the four dimensions, a key focus for the manager/team leader is simultaneously to enable and constrain performance by seeking to €˜manage’ the boundaries within which team members are operating.
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To sum up, then, I see self-organization as a dynamic of all organizations, regardless of how these might be designed and managed from a formal standpoint. Outcomes emerge from this process – both locally and globally.
Exemple d’utilisation de Twitter chez GM
Vous connaissez Twitter, ce fameux outil de micro-blogging qui permet de partager à peu près tout ce que vous pouvez imaginer en 140 caractères€¦ Pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas encore Twitter, cliquer ici.
Ce matin, j’aimerais vous présenter un article de Ralph Bernstein paru sur le blogue Lean Insider€¦ Est-ce que Twitter est un outil Lean ?
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
