Liens de la semaine (weekly)

  • « A team of more than 40 IBM consultants have undertaken a massive redesign of IBM’s web properties: a galactic redesign that includes both the external website and internal intranet.

    The core objective: a Single design system that converges the intranet (W3) and Internet standards, incorporates reusable design patterns and evolves the design system through collaboration. »

    tags: ibm casestudies intranet intranet2.0 socialintranet W3 collaboration corporatecommunication internalcommunication expertslocation

    • ntroduce IBM experts, innovators, collaborators across the web, both internally and externally (.com and external web)
    • The new design uses darker and more subdued colors in the masthead and footer but brighter colors and more readable fonts in the content space making it easier for you to focus on where the real action is happening on the page:  the content space!!,
    • The new design makes it incredibly easy for you to add and remove widgets from the page, to change the layout of the page, and even allows you to easily add and remove your own pages customizing each for the way YOU work
    • Dynamic delivery of merchandising and Expertise Locator services through our services
    • No longer is there a single information workplace. No longer are we bound by the strict confides of a firewalled digital destination. The way we work transcends the binary notions of €˜internal’ and €˜external’. The body of knowledge we access and to which we contribute is now globally distributed across individuals, communities and disciplines. And our communication is constant, immediate and ubiquitous.
    • As an organization, we must reconceive how to serve and empower a global workforce €“ professionally and culturally €“ in a way that enables everyone to achieve his or her full potential.
    • evolving from distinct toolkit to integrated service; from a walled garden to a mode of engagement. W3 can become the service through which digital citizens (users/employees) engage to make the world work better.
    • In the future, w3 will cease to be a separate destination for IBMers. Instead, it will seamlessly integrate into IBM.ocm and the Web, serving as the frame through which they relate to their colleagues, the enterprise, their clients and partner
  • « Répondre aux demandes du marché nécessite un recours à  une innovation permanente. Dans cette optique, faire de ses employés les premières sources d’innovation peut être intéressant. « 

    tags: innovation performance crowdsourcing openinnovation casestudies tibco market rewards

    • . Par exemple, chez TIBCO, plus de 50% de nos revenus proviennent de produits qui n’existaient pas il y a de cela 5 ans. C’est bien simple, il faut innover en permanence
    • Il faut avoir plusieurs coups d’avance sur le marché, et cela passe par une innovation intégrée au process de fonctionnement de l’entreprise.
    • Il faut se dire tout simplement que l’innovation ne peut plus se contenter d’être un service spécifique au sein de l’entreprise, mais bien le fait de tous les employé
    • A mon sens, on ne pousse pas les employés à  innover : l’argent ne fera pas naître l’idée. L’envie et l’acte doivent venir des employés eux-mêmes
    • Et pour en revenir à  cette notion de récompense, celle-ci doit évidemment intervenir à  la fin, mais comme moyen d’entretenir l’innovation, et non comme moyen de l’initier.
  • « I have been blogging quite substantially about Lean Management lately and I have noticed a common purpose with Agile methodologies (which get me blogging 4 years ago) and Enterprise 2.0 (which has kept my blogging busy for the last 2 years) : they all address complexity and permanent change, the key characteristics of our business world. This is one of the key ideas of the great book by Yves Caseau Processus & Entrerprise 2.0 [FR]. »

    tags: lean agility knowledgeeconomy organization management leanmanagement taylorism complexity behavioralsciences education middlemanagement

    • We use the latest technologies, we mention innovation in every other sentences and yet we lag behind manufacturing in terms of management innovation as they’ve successfully implemented Lean Management.
    • Right now, your company has 21st-century Internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th-century management principles.
    • didn’t have management educational background and who innovated in management because they never were told what NOT to do during an MBA.
    • I’m not sure about MBA’s (we even have in France an Enterprise 2.0 Institute under the lead of Richard Collin). But for sure, these sciences are not taught in IT Universities as Laurent Bossavit noted.
    • If we want people on organisations to understand the complexity we are in, to be able to assess how appropriate Lean/Agile/Enterprise 2.0 are to tackle it and how inappropriate Taylorism is, we need to add Cognitive and Behavioural sciences in their curriculum and trainings.
    • Why would they spend their energy putting people in the best position to succeed, and losing all the credit they used to get from their team work ?
    • learning requires humility. Managers enjoying their status are not really subject to humility.
    • Middle Managers play a key role in the knowledge creation process. They synthetize the tacit knowledge of both front-line employees and senior executives, make it explicit, and incorporate it into new products and technologies
    • Taylorism prevails because Agile / Enterprise 2.0 don’t provide enough credibility and factual data regarding what  they’re bringing in terms of operational benefits
    • Do not (only) rely on “rah rah” rhetoric to sell the case of Agile/Enterprise 2.0. Provide regular scientifically measured set of data proving the value of these methodologies as Lean has been doing ever since it appeared.
  • « In today’s increasingly dynamic business environment, organizations must continuously adapt to survive. Ironically, change management has become a major bottleneck. Inefficient offline reviews are disconnected from daily operations and unresponsive to evolving requirements. Organizations’ need a practical mechanism for managing controlled variance and change in-flight to break the logjam. »

    tags: lean leanmanagement agility collaboration social socialcollaboration flexibility changemanagement businessprocess IT context

    • The more flexible an organization’s systems infrastructure, the better it can support desired or necessary change
    • The last forty years of mainstream business computing brought tremendous efficiencies through standardization, but this was predicated on relatively static models of processes, data, and capabilities.
    • The modern systems infrastructure simply wasn’t designed to adapt.
    • Ironically, change management programs have become the chokepoint for Enterprise Agility, an inefficient rate-limiter.
    • This suggests a flexible collaboration layer that enables dynamic interoperability between people and data, capabilities and policies
    • Organizations must find ways to efficiently satisfy individual requirements [4]. This represents a phase change from the age of standardization to the age of specialization
    • The Enterprise needs a new form of Collaboration Architecture to engage people [6] with the latitude to improvise, while providing for transparency, governance and audit
    • Following a linear process regardless of circumstances is nonsensical. We can’t anticipate all scenarios; an unrelated chain of events can impact best laid plans.
    • Rather than focusing on standard procedures, people need the authority to flexibly meet corporate objectives. People need to be able to respond to the environment, to adjust plans to keep goals in sight.
    • he standardization of business processes removed human discretion, problem solving, and innovation.
    • Social needs to be integrated into process itself, it has to be able to direct the flow otherwise it is simply chatter that is ultimately still dependant on conventional change management schemes. Processes need to become 2-way conversations.
    • Enterprise Social Collaboration is not about liberation, it’s about optimizing work
    • In combination the two provide for an integrated feedback loop [11] where the system both responds in context and enables process participants, based on authority, to ‘negotiate’ system requirements for their circumstances. This new form of ‘integrated’ collaboration supports real-time alignment of all stakeholders around business goals.
    • While the Web introduced the notion of self-directed navigation of linked content, popular social sites facilitate distributed collaboration, and consumer apps have introduced the notion of context-awareness, there hasn’t been a unified approach to Information System Agility.
    • it is necessary to re-think information systems architecture. Using same old methods and expecting different results is what Einstein called the definition of insanity
    • We need software architecture to support a looser form of application design that is not just modular, but can be contextualized and adaptive.
  • « Over the last decade, the Internet has had a profound impact on busi­ness. It has spawned a slew of new business models and has helped make operating models vastly more efficient. By contrast, the Web’s impact on management models has been relatively modest. »

    tags: management management2.0 web2.0 socialbusiness enterprise2.0 garyhamel knowledgeeconomy creativeeconomy

    • These include a rapidly accelerating pace of change, a growing swarm of uncon­ventional rivals, crumbling entry barriers, a rapid transi­tion from the “knowledge economy” to the “creative economy,” intensifying compe­tition for talent and a profusion of new stakeholder demands.
    • organizations will need to become far more adaptable, innovative, inspiring and accountable than they are right now. 
    • Before the Web, it was hard to imagine alternatives to manage­ment orthodoxy.  But the Internet has spawned a Cambrian explosion of new organizational life forms€“where coordination occurs without centraliza­tion, where power is the product of contribution rather than posi­tion, where the wisdom of the many trumps the authority of the few, where novel viewpoints get amplified rather than squelched, where commu­nities form spontane­ously around shared interests, where opportuni­ties to “opt-in” blur the line between vocation and hobby, where titles and credentials count for less than value-added, where perfor­mance is judged by your peers, and where influence comes from sharing information, not from hoarding it.
    • And complex coordi­nation tasks, like those involved in the design of a new aircraft, still require a dense matrix of “strong ties” among critical contributors, rather than the “weak ties” that are typical of web-based communities
    • If we can find ways of trans­planting the Internet’s DNA into our organizations€”the interwo­ven values of transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, open­ness, commu­nity and self-determination€”we may have the chance, at last, to over­come the design limits of Management 1.0
  • « Watson is designed to augment (improve) our capacity to think through complex problems, ask the right questions, judge possible solutions and make informed confident decisions based on real-world data that exists within our own memory banks and beyond. »

    tags: watson IBM deepQA productivity problemsolving Apple Siri naturallanguageprocessing knowledgework knowledge search confidence healthcare financialservices callcenters

    • IBM Watson„¢ and Apple Siri„¢  are early signals of what might transform work and lifelong learning around software based personal assistants that push human beings to think more deeply and broadly about questions, answers and their personal confidence levels in making decisions.
    • 1) Natural Language Matters
       
      Watson is not alive.  It is not artificial intelligence.  But it can (better than any other system on Earth today) understand the nuanced elements of meaning created by natural language.
    • 2) Knowledge in a Box Matters
       
      The web revolutionized access to information, but has also led to a world with too much information €” and at times €“  too much inaccurate information.
    • Knowledge requires filters for transparency, authentication and accountability.  There is benefit to controlling information in a silo that is constantly updated.
    • Watson does not give you a list of websites, it gives you the answer(s).
    • Watson knows that it is not perfect.  IBM recognizes that technology cannot deliver certainty on demand.

       

      So Watson embraces uncertainty and is honest about its confidence level with each response.

    • Imagine a work environment where people are honest and transparent in their knowledge level €“ and confidence level to respond to a particular question!
  • « Paying attention to customers seems like such a fundamental thing. So why do so many companies do it so poorly? How do companies lose touch with their customers, and lose their grip on the realities of the marketplace? »

    tags: customer growth opportunities strategy competition rigidity culture casestudies IBM Apple Sony Starbuck GE Kodak xerox customercentricity

    • Without question, customers are the single biggest factor in any company’s long-term growth and profitability. And yet, as companies grow, distractions multiply. Success can create such a dazzling array of opportunities that companies try to capitalize on too many of them, over-expanding and diluting their offering
    • Caught up in whirlwind growth, some companies become distracted by a landscape of opportunity and try to do everything just because they can.
    • “Obsessed with growth, we took our eye off operations and became distracted from the core of our business” says Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, in Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul.
    • While trying to do too many things can be a problem, a focus that’s too narrow can be equally problematic.
    • “They just could not seem to see that they were in the information business€¦ Xerox had been infested by a bunch of spreadsheet experts who thought you could decide every product based on metrics. Unfortunately, creativity wasn’t on a metric.”
    • But history has shown over and over that you can’t protect your customers from new, disruptive innovations, and if you’re not willing to cannibalize your business then someone else will.
    • When a company is large and successful, its size can be its worst enemy, especially when it is so dominant that it lacks serious competition. A company culture that drove success in the early days can become overly codified, rigid and ritualistic over time.
    • Name a company you love, a company you are loyal to, a company you buy things from all the time, and you will inevitably find a company that’s connected to its customers; that knows who they are and what they care about.
    • But some things won’t change. Customers will always want great experiences, great service, convenience, selection, low prices and fast delivery.
    • When in doubt, don’t look inside your company for answers. Turn around and face the market. Get back in touch with your customers.
    • Why? In some cases they don’t understand how social networks will impact the business. They can’t see a clear path or understand the implications. In most companies, however, there are a few people who do understand. But bureaucracy, corporate culture, blind spots, fear and risk-avoidant behaviors stand in their way.
  • « Technology does not determine social and organizational change, but it does create new opportunity spaces for social innovations like new employment forms. Partial employment for young unemployed people is becoming much easier than before, and truly global task-based work is becoming possible, perhaps for the first time in history. »

    tags: job work networkeconomy networkedconomy humancapital interdependance knowledgework tasks organization hierarchy

    • The opportunity today is in new relational forms that don’t mimic the governance models of industrial, hierarchical firms. We are already witnessing the rise of very large-scale efforts that create tremendous value in a very new way.
    • The production of information goods requires more human capital than financial capital. It is more about connecting with brains than connecting with money. And the good news is that you are not limited to the local supply. Work on information products does not need to be co-located. The architecture of work does not resemble a factory any more.
    • Our management and organizational thinking is derived from the era of tangible goods production and high-cost/low-quality communications.
    • Almost all economic theories make the same assumption: the employer €“ employee relationship makes work possible.
    • The other taken for granted assumption is that it is the independent employer/manager who exercises freedom of choice in choosing the goals and designing the rules that the members of the organization are to follow. The employees of the organization are not seen autonomous
    • In contrast to the above, digital work has brought about circumstances in which the employee in effect chooses the purpose of work, voluntarily selects the tasks, determines the modes and timing of engagement, and designs the outcomes. The worker here might be said to be largely independent of some other person’s management, but is in effect interdependent
    • The interdependent, task-based worker negotiates her work based on her own purposes, not the goals of somebody else, and chooses her fellow workers based on her network, not a given organization.
    • The organization is not a given hierarchy, but an ongoing process of organizing.
    • The factory logic of mass production forced people to come to where the work is. The crowdsourcing logic of mass communication makes it possible to distribute work to where the people are, no matter where on the globe they may be.
    • Knowledge work is not about jobs or job roles but about tasks.
  • « I’ve been saying for a while that simple and merely complicated work will continue to get automated and outsourced (read this post if you don’t believe it or look at this example of legal work getting automated). To keep a job in the creative economy (with core skills of Initiative, Creativity & Passion) one must become an indispensable linchpin in the organization. »

    tags: work job learningorganisation automation economy ROWE organizationchart networkdiagram humanresources socialcontract creativity creativework

    • “First we automated menial jobs, now we’re automating middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, we still demand that people have a job soon after becoming adults. This trend is going to be a big problem€¦”
    • I think more opportunities are being created than destroyed, but our institutions and our cultural mindset still are not ready for this change.
      • Abolish the organization chart and replace it with a network diagram (some new tech companies have done this).
      • Move away from counting hours, to a results only work environment (with distributed work, this is becoming more common).
      • Encourage outside work that doesn’t directly interfere with paid work, as it will strengthen the network (such as Google’s 20% time for engineers).
      • Provide options for workers to come and go and give them ways to stay connected when they’re not employed (like Ericsson’s Stay Connected Facebook group). Build an ecosystem, not a monolith.
  • « Employee turnover is a natural occurrence in the business world. But it can also be a costly one. As mentioned in previous posts, there are several areas that contribute to the high cost of employee turnover.

    Let’s look at where the first dollars are spent when an employee leaves and a company is suddenly faced with an empty position. »

    tags: turnover humanresources costs management productivity knowledge

    • The cost of knowledge, skills and contacts the employee leaving is taking with them. Depending on how long the person was in the position, the experience and networking gained are sure to be incredible resources, resources the organization will have to calculate as lost.
    • The cost of losing customers. The employee leaving may take their customers with them which results in a loss of profit. Or it could cost the company more to try and retain those customers
  • « Measuring ROI on social software is an elusive topic, so it’s wonderful when I find projects that have managed to quantify it in some way. The following story focuses on a particular task, that of social tagging.

    The Enterprise Tagging Service in IBM aims to provide an alternative approach to helping people find information compared to traditional search engines. Search based on keyword analysis often relies on a taxonomy that is rigid due to the way the software performs its structural analysis of web pages, identifying and classifying the keywords. Social tagging allows people to add human semantics to keywords that they define that sometimes can amount to finding a resource faster based on what people think is relevant. « 

    tags: casestudies IBM tagging ROI search

    • The ETS team instituted a survey to ask users howthis tool helped them. What they found was amazing when you look at itin context: the average person saved 12 seconds, across the 286000+searches performed through ETS each week. This sums up to 955 hourssaved each week across the company. In terms of cost savings, itamounts to a rough estimate of $4.6 million a year, in terms ofproductivity gain. The reusability of this page widget also resulted in$2.4 million in cost avoidance (reimplementing this for eachsite).
    • in other words, the knowledgedoes not get balkanized into separate tag systems, running in theclassic problem of information getting locked away in pockets in theorganization
  • « While Case Management has been a universally hot topic in the past year, there are various modifiers put in front of it: Advanced, Dynamic, and Adaptive. In this post I attempt to explain why “Adaptive” is the right concept and why that is so important. »

    tags: acm casemanagement dynamiccasemanagement advancedcasemanagement adaptivecasemanagement adaptiveness organization

    • Adaptiveness is not simply the capability to increase or decrease muscle size.  Instead it is more about the ability of the muscle to self-modify to fit the situation;
    • Homeostatis is the idea that an adaptive system responds to external changes in such as way as to keep certain aspects constant. 
    • We talk about a good ACM system facilitating what the professional wants (needs) to do.  Professionals play active roles in adapting the system to their needs.  We can think of this as being self-modification because there is no external software professional, or process analysts, needed: the professional can adapt the system anyway necessary to meet the constantly changing requirements. 
    • Human organizations are also naturally adaptive.  The day to day decisions are decentralized and delegated to front line workers.  Different divisions compete for scarce resources, and good management will shift resources as needed.
    • Adaptiveness presents a kind of homeostasis that allows an organization to keeps its character and form over the years even though people within the organization are constantly coming and going.
    • For case management to be successful, it needs to be adaptive.  It needs to be under the control of the case managers to be in a position to sense and respond to the situation.
    •   But “dynamic” means only that something “moves” and “changes”. The term dynamic tells you nothing about the agent causing the change.  An oppressive dictator can be dynamic, but never adaptive.

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Head of People and Operations @Emakina / Ex Directeur Consulting / Au croisement de l'humain, de la technologie et du business / Conférencier / Voyageur compulsif.
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